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PROSE WRITERS

OF

GERMANY

BT

FUEDERIC 11. HEDGE

ILLUSTRATED "WITH PORTRAITS

Die deutsche Nation ist nicht die ausgebildetste, nicht die reichste an. Geistos-
und Kunstprodukten, aber sie ist die aufgeklaerteste, weil sia die giuendlichste ist,
sie ist eine philosophische Nation — Fs. H. Jacobi,

SECOND EDITION

PHILADELPHIA

PUBLISHED BY CAREY AND HART

1849

ENTERKD, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1847. BY

CAREYANDHART,

IN THE clerk's OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT

OF PENNSYLVANIA.

STEREOTYPED BY J. FAGAN.
PRINTED BY T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS.

(2)

^-

P EEP A C E

^WVS/W/>.^WVW\/V>./W\A

The volume of translations which is now offered to the Public,
though bearing the title, "Prose Writers of Germany," in conformity
with the series of publications to which it belongs, is far from pre-
tending to be a complete exhibition of the prose literature of that
nation.

The impossibility of representing in adequate specimens, the vast
body of writers who might claim to be represented under this title,
too-ether with the unsatisfactoriness of brief extracts, has induced the
editor to adopt a different course, — to give few writers and large
samples, and instead of a " collection," as Mr. Longfellow has cha-
racterized his "Poets and Poetry of Europe," to make a selection.

Every selection is liable to the charge of partiality ; and those who
are much conversant with German literature will doubtless miss some
favorites who shall seem to them entitled to a place in these pages.
It is believed however that the Classics, in the stricter sense, (writers
of the first class) are mostly here. With regard to the rest, access or
want of access to their writings has had some share, as well as per-
sonal preference, in determining the admissions and the omissions.

Some difficulty has been found in reconciling a just apportionment
of space in our pages to different writers with the prescribed limits
of the work. The difficulty, the editor is aware, has not been entirely
overcome. While want of room has compelled him to omit altogether
some writers whom he would gladly have introduced into the present

Ciii)

/?0*?^ 'Ti\

IV

PREFACE.

selection, he regrets that the same necessity has required him in
several instances to limit his extracts.

The editor avails himself of this opportunity to thank those who
have assisted him in the work of translation. Besides his indebted-
ness to existing publications, especially to Carlyle's German Romance,
he has to acknowledge the contributions of J. Elliot Cabot, Esq.,*
Rev. J. Weiss,t Rev. C. T. Brooks,t Mr. Geo. Bradford,^ and Mr.
Geo. Ripley. II The extracts from Moser, with the exception of the
first, and that from Hamann, are by the same, anonymous, contribu-
tor. Likewise the translations from Hegel are by an anonymous
friend possessing peculiar qualifications for that difficult task. Above
all, his thanks are due to the Rev. Mr. Furness of Philadelphia, who
has kindly taken upon himself the general superintendence of the
work while passing through the press.

Bangor, May, 1847. ' ,

* In the translations from Kant with the exception of the last, and in the translation
from Schelling.

t In the translation from Schiller. ~ , .. ,

I In the extracts from the Titan of Jean Paul.

§ In the translation from Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaiteu.

II In the translation from Schleiermacher.

CONTENTS

MARTIN LUTHER Page 9

On Education 1 1

Conceruin" God the Father 15

Concerning Angels 16

Simple Method how to Pray 18

Prayer at the Diet of Worms 20

Selections from Letters — Letter to the Elector Frederic 20

To the Elector John 23

To Caspar Guttel 23

To his Wife 25

To his Wife 25

To his Wife 26

JACOB BOEHME 35

To the Reader 37

Of God and the Divine Nature 37

Of God's First Manifestation of Himself in the Trinity 38

Of Eternal Nature after the fall of Lucifer, &c 38

Of the Creation of Angels, &c 41

Describing what Lucifer was, &c 41

Of the Third Principle, or Creation of the Natural World 42

Of Paradise 42

Concerning the Supersensual Life 43

Concernina; the Blessing of God in the Goods of this World 44

On True Resignation 45

ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA 46

On Envy 46

JUSTUS MOSER \ 50

Letter from an Old Married Woman, &c 52

How to Attain to an Adequate Expression of Our Ideas 54

Moral Advantages of Public Calamities 55

IMMANUEL KANT 57

From the Critique of the Judgment 63

1* (V)

I . . — _ —

vi CONTENTS

The Notion of Adaptation in Nature 65

Judgment by JMeans of Taste, Aesthetic 66

The Pleasure that Determines the Aesthetic Judgment 67

The Pleasure Derived from the Agreeable 67

The Pleasingness of Good, Connected with Interest 67

Comparisons of the Three Kinds of Pleasure 68

The Beautiful What 68

Comparison of the Beautiful with the Agreeable 68

An Aesthetic Judgment, when not pure 69

Of the Ideal of Beauty 70

Plan of an Everlasting Peace 71

Of the Guaranty of an Everlasting Peace 73

Supposed Beginning of the History of Man ., 74

Remark 77

Conclusion of the History 78

Concluding Remark 79

o

JOHANN GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING 81

From Laocoon 85

From the Educator of the Human Race 91

Fables 95

Extract 98

MOSES MENDELSSOHN 99

Letter to J. C. Lavater 102

Supplementary Remarks 106

On the Sublime and the Naive 107

JOHANN GEORG HAMANN 119

The Merchant 121

CHRISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND ." 128

Philosophy Considered as the Art of Life 130

Letter to a Young Poet 132

On the Relation of the Agreeable and the Useful 1 38

From the Dialogues of the Gods 141

JOHANN AUGUST MUSAUS ..........' 154

Dumb Love * 158

MATTHIAS CLAUDIUS 182

Dedication to Friend Hans 182

Advertisement to Subscribers 182

Speculations on New Years' Day 183

The Sorrows of Young Werther 183

On Prayer 183

A Correspondence 1 84

On Klopstock's Odes 185

CONTENTS. vii

JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER 187

On the Nature of Man 191

Of the Truth of Physiognomy 193

Of the Universahty of Physiognomical Sensations 1 95

On Freedom and Necessity 196

Of the Excellence of the Form of Man 197

Of the Congeniality of the Human Form 198

Resemblance between Parents and Children 200

Observations on the Dying and the Dead 202

Of the Influence of Countenance on Countenance 202

Of the Influence of the Imagination 203

Male and Female 204

FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBI 206

From the Flying Leaves 209

Learned Societies 220

JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER 231

Love and Self 236

Tithon and Aurora 242

Metempsychoris 248

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GCETHE 263

The Vicar of Wakefield 270

From the Elective Affinities 278

Confessions of a Fair Saint 282

Indenture 304

The Exequies of Mignon 305

Extracts 300

Novella 345

The Tale 353

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER 365

Upon Naive and Sentimental Poetry 372

JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE 383

The Destination of Man 384

JOHANN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER 405

Rome 407

Leibgeber to Siebenkas 411

Second Extract from " Flower, Fruit and Thorn pieces" 413

Dream 415

Letter to my Friends 417

The Marriage 418

Thoughts 420

AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL 423

Lectures on Dramatic Literature 424

viii CONTENTS.

FRIEDRICH DANIEL ERNST SCHLEIERMACHER 441

Discourse IV. Church and Priesthood 441

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL 446

Introduction to the Philosophy of History 447

Who thinks abstractly ? 456

JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE 459

The Poor Vicar 459

FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL 472

Lectures on the Philosophy of History 473

NOVALIS (FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG) 489

From Heinrich von Oefterdinger 491

From the Fragments 496

LUDWIG TIECK ............!...... 498

The Elves 501

FREDERIC WILLIAM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING 509

On the Relation of the Plastic Arts of Nature 510

ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN 521

The Golden Pot .... 522

ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO 544

The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl 547

I ' ^t' :Ln 't* rnr

MARTIN LUTHER.

Born 14S3. Died 1346.

" Japeti de stirpe satum Dodore Luthcro
Majorem nobis nulla prop a go dabit."

To Martin Luther belongs, with strict
propriety, the foremost place in this collec-
tion intended to represent the German mind.
Luther is regarded by his countrymen as the
original of that mind, — the prototype of all that
is most distinctive in German modes of thougiit
and speech. Other writers of German had
attained to eminence before Iiim. Tauler, in
particular, the celebrated mystic of Strasburg,
is still an honored name. Nevertheless, the
national-intellectual life of Germany dates from
Luther as its parent source, and is emphati-
cally referred to him by a grateful posterity.
There is scarcely another instance in history,
in which an individual, without secular autho-
rity or military achievement, has so stamped
himself upon a people and made himself, to so
great an extent, the leader, the representative,
the voice of the nation. He has been to Ger-
many, in this respect, what Homer was to
Greece.

While devoting himself to the regeneration
of the national religion, he unconsciously con-
ferred upon the national literature a service as
signal in its kind, as any which the church de-
rived from his labors. He first gave to that
literature an adequate organ. He created the
language* which is now written and spoken
by educated Germans. For though a constant
approximation to the modern High German is
undoubtedly visible in the writings of his im-
mediate predecessors, — as e. g. in Albrecht
Diirer, the painter, and the translator of the
Gesta Romanorum, — there is still a great
stride between their language and the Lu-
theran, in point of movement and well-defined
inflection. On the whole, the modern Hiofh
German must be considered as having first at-

*" Er schufdie Deutsche Sprache." Heine. This may
seem too strongly put, when we consider the necessary
laws of language. The Lutheran was not a creation out
of nothing, certainly; but it was the evolution of a per-
fect and harmonious form out of a rude and undigested
mass.

tained its full development and perfect finish
in Luther's version of the Bible. By means
of that book, it obtained a currency which no-
thing else could have given it. It became
fixed. It became universal. It became the
organ of a literature which, more than any
other since the Greek, has been a literature
of ideas. It became the vehicle of modern
philosophy, — the cradle of those thoughts which,
at this moment, act most mtensely on the hu-
man mind.

Martin Luther was bom at Eisleben, in Sax-
ony, during a visit of his parents to that city,
November 10, 1483. His father, Hans Luther,
a poor miner, who had previously resided in
the village of Mohra, removed to Mansfeld the
following year; and here it was that Martin
received the first rudiments of education. At
the age of twenty, he obtained the degree of
Master at the University of Erfurth. His father
had destined him to the study of the Law, but
Theology drew him with irresistible attraction.
He became a monk of the Augustine order, at
Erfurth, and, in process of time. Doctor of Di-
vinity, at Wittenberg.

He began his labors, as a reformer, in the
year 1517, with an attack on the sale of Indul-
gences, in ninety-five propositions, which he
sent forth into the world, as it were a cartel
aimed at Tetzel and Rome. Three years later
we find him at the Diet of Worms, defending
himself and his doctrine before tiie emperor
Charles V. and the German princes. That
was the most remarkable assembly ever con-
vened on earth, — an empire against a man !
Lucas Cranach's picture represents Luther as
he stood there, so lone and strong, with his
great fire-heart, — a new Prometheus, confront-
ing the Jove of the sixteenth century and the
German Olympus. "Here I stand, I cannot
otherwise. God help me ! Amen." Imme-
diately upon this followed his translation of
the Bible, which was his best defence; and

'9)

10

MARTIN LUTHER.

from this time, until his death, which occurred
on the 18th February, 1540, such a succession
of labors in behalf of the Reformed religion, as
to justify tlie epitaph,

" Pestia cram vivens, moriens, tua mors ero Papa .'"

Luther is represented as a man of low sta-
ture* but handsome person, with a " clear brave
countenance," lively complexion, and falcon
eyes. Antonio Varillasf says; "Nature gave
him an Italian head upon a German body ; such
was his vivacity and diligence, his cheerfulness
and health." His voice was clear and pene-
trating, his eloquence overpowering. Me-
lanchthon, on beholding his picture, exclaimed,
" Fultnina erant singula verba tua." Another
contemporary said of him, that he was a man
" to stop the wrath of God." Another calls
him the third Elias. He was a liusband and a
father, fond of society, of a free and jovial na-
ture, much given to music, himself a composer
and an able performer on the flute. A man
of singular temperance and great industry.
He throve best on hard work and spare diet.
An easy life made him sick. As to his cha-
racter, a man without guile, open, sincere,
generous, obliging, patient, brave, devout. " He
was not only the greatest," says Henry Heine,|
" but the most German man of our history. In
his character all the faults and all the virtues
of the Germans are combined on the largest
scale. Then he had qualities which are very
seldom found united, which we are accustomed
to regard as irreconcileable antagonisms. He
was, at the same time, a dreamy mystic and
a practical man of action. His thoughts had
not only wings but hands. He spoke and he
acted. He was not only the tongue but the
sword of his time. Moreover, he was, at the
same time, a scholastic word-thresher and an
inspired, God-intoxicated prophet. When he
had plagued himself all day long with his dog-
matic distinctions, in the evening he took his

* " Untergesetzter Statur." See Des seligen Zeugen
Gottes. D. Martin Luther's Lcbens umstiinde in 4. Th.
von Friedrich Siegmund Keil. Leipzig. 17C4.

^ Liher hist, de hneres, quoted by Keil.

I Ziir Geschiclite iler Religion und Philosophic in
Deutschland. Salon, vol. 2d. Hamburg. 1835.

flute and gazed at the stars, dissolved in me-
lody and devotion. He could scold like a fish-
wife, and he could be soft, too, as a tender
maiden. Sometimes he was wild as the storm
that uproots the oak, and then again, he was
gentle as the zephyr that dallies with the vio-
let. He was full of the most awful reverence
and of self-sacrifice in honor of the Holy Spirit.
He could merge himself entirely in pure spi-
rituality. And yet he was well acquainted
with the glories of this world, and knew how
to prize them ; and out of his mouth blossomed
the famous saying,

" Wer nicht lieht Wein, Wether und Oesang,
Der blcibt ein J^Tarr sein Lebenlang."

He was a complete man, I would say, an ab-
solute man, one in whom matter and spirit
w^ere not divided. To call him a spiritualist,
therefore, would be as great an error as to call
him a sensualist. How shall I express it?
He had something original, incomprehensible,
miraculous, such as we find in all providential
men, — something awfully naive, blunderingly
wise, sublimely narrow; — something invinci-
ble, demoniacal."

The position which Luther holds in the es-
timation of his countrymen, as father of the
German language and literature, together with
the intrinsic worth of his writings, has seemed
to me to justify more copious extracts, than one
who knows him only as the great Reformer
or the dogmatic theologian, might expect to
find in a work like this. I have endeavored
to preserve in the translation the slight taste
of antiquity which marks the writer of the
sixteenth century ; although the language of
Luther is less antiquated than that of contem-
porary English writers. In fact tlie antiquity
resides in the thought ratiier than the idiom.
The idiom is substantially that of the present
day.

The following specimens, with the excep-
tion of the letters, are taken from the edition
of Luther's works by Walch, in twenty-four
vols. 4to. The letters are from the complete
collection published by Martin Leberecht de
Wette, in five vols. 8vo. Berlin. 1826.

MARTIN LUTHER.

11

ON EDUCATION.

FROM A-mSCOUESE ON THE SPIRITUAL ADVANTAGES ARISING FROM
THE FURTHERANCE OF SCHOOLS, AND THE INJURY CONSEQUENT
ON THE NEGLECT OF THEM.

Now if thou hast a child that is fit to receive
instruction, and art able to hold him to it and
dost not, but goest thy way and carest not what
shall become of the secular government, its
laws, its peace, &c., thou warrest against the
secular government, as much as in thee lies,
like the Turk, yea, like the Devil himself. For
thou withholdest from the kingdom, principal-
ity, country, city, a redeemer, comfort, corner-
stone, helper and saviour. And on thy account
the emperor loses both sword and crown; the
country loses safe-guard and freedom, and thou
art the man through whose fault (as much as
in thee lies) no man shall hold his body, wife,
child, house, home and goods in safety. Rather
thou sacrificest all these without ruth in the
shambles, and givest cause that men shall be-
come mere beasts, and at last devour one an-
other. This all thou wilt assuredly do, if thou
withdraw thy child from so wholesome a con-
dition, for the belly's sake. Now art thou not
a pretty man and a useful in the world? who
makest daily use of the kingdom and its peace,
and by way of thanks, in return, robbest the
same of thy son, and deliverest him up to ava-
rice, and labourest with all diligence to this
end, that there may be no man who shall help
maintain the kingdom, law and peace ; but that
all may go to wreck, notwithstanding thou thy-
self possessest and boldest body and life, goods
and honour by means of said kingdom.

I will say nothing here of how fine a plea-
sure it is for a man to be learned, albeit he
have never an office ; so that he can read all
manner of things by himself at home, talk and
converse with learned people, travel and act in
foreign lands. For peradventure there be few
who will be moved by such delights. But see-
ing thou art so bent upon mammon and victual,
look here and see how many and how great
goods God has founded upon schools and scho-
lars, so that thou shalt no more despise learning
and art by reason of poverty. Behold ! empe-
rors and kings must have chancellors and
scribes, counsellors, jurists and scholars. There
is no prince but he must have chancellors, ju-
rists, counsellors, scholars and scribes : so like-
wise, all counts, lords, cities, castles must have
syndics, city clerks, and other learned men ;
nay, there is not a nobleman but must have a
scribe. Reckon up, now, how many kings,
princes, counts, lords, cities and towns, &:c.
Where will they find learned men three years
hence? seeing that here and there already a
want is felt. Truly I think kings will have to
become jurists and princes chancellors, counts
and lords will have to become scribes, and
burgomasters sacristans.

Therefore I hold that never was there a bet-

ter time to study than now ; not only for the
reason that the art is now so abundant and so
cheap, but also because great wealth and honour
must needs ensue, and they that study now will
be men of price ; insomuch that two princes
and three cities shall tear one another for a
single scholar. For look above or around thee
and thou wilt find that innumerable offices wait
for learned men, before ten years shall have
sped ; and that few are being educated for the
same.

Besides honest gain, they have, also, honour.
For chancellors, city clerks, jurists, and people
in office, must sit with those who are placed on
high, and help counsel and govern. And they,
in fact, are the lords of this world, although
they are not so in respect of person, birth and
rank.

Solomon himself mentions that a poor man
once saved a city, by his wisdom, against a
mighty king. Not that I would have, herewith,
warriors, troopers, and what belongs to strife
done away, or despised and rejected. They
also, where they are obedient, help to preserve
peace and all things with their fist. Each has
his honour before God as well as his place and
work.

On the other hand, there are found certain
scratchers* who conceit that the title of writer
is scarce worthy to be named or heard. Well
then, regard not that, but think on this wise:
these good people must have their amusement
and their jest. Leave them their jest, but re-
main thou, nevertheless, a writer before God
and the world. If they scratch long, thou shalt
see that they honour, notwithstanding, the pen
above all things; that they jilace if|' upon hat
and helmet, as if they would confess, by their
action, that the pen is the top of the world,
without which they can neither be equij^ped
for battle nor go about in peace ; much less
scratch so securely. For they also have need
of the peace which the emperors, preachers and
teachers (the lawyers) teach and maintain.
Wherefore thou seest that they place our imple-
ment, the dear pen, uppermost. And with
reason, since they gird their own implement,
the sword, about the thighs ; there it hangs fitly
and well for their work ; but it would not be-
seem the head ; there must hover the plume.
If, then, they have sinned against thee, they
herewith expiate the offence, and thou must
forgive them.

There be some that deem the office of a
writer to be an easy and trivial office ; but to
ride in armour, to endure heat, cold, dust, thirst
and other inconvenience, they think to be la-
borious. Yea ! that is the old, vulgar, daily
tune ; that no one sees where the shoe pinches
another. Every one feels only his own troubles,

* Scharrhansen, men who scratch for money, and think
of nothing else. Tr.

tThe word Feder, feather, is used indifferently in Ger-
man to denote pen or plume. Tr.

12

MARTIN LUTHER.

and stares at the ease of others. True it is, it
would be difficuk for me to ride in armour ; but
then, on the other hand, I would like to see the
rider who should sit me still the whole day
long and look into a book, though he were not
compelled to care for aught, to invent or think
or read. Ask a chancery-clerk, a preacher or
an orator, what kind of work writing and ha-
ranguing is? Ask a schoolmaster what kind
of work is teaching and bringing up of boys ?
The pen is light, it is true, and among all trades
no tool so easily furnished as that of the writing-
trade, for it needeth only a goose's wing, of
which one shall everywhere find a sufficiency,
gratis. Nevertheless, in this employment, the
best piece in the human body, (as the head)
and the noblest member, (as the tongue) and
the highest work (as speech) must take part
and labour most; while, in others, either the
fist or the feet or the back, or members of that
class alone work; and they that pursue them
may sing merrily the while, and jest freely,
which a writer cannot do. Three fingers do
the work (so they say of writers), but the whole
body and soul must cooperate.

I have heard of the worthy and beloved em-
peror Maximilian, how, when the great boobies
complained that he employed so many writers
for missions and other purposes, he is reported
to have said; "what shall I dol They will
not suffer themselves to be used in this way,
therefore I must employ writers." And fur-
ther: "Knights I can create, but doctors I can-
not create." So have I likewise heard of a fine
nobleman, that he said, " I will let my son
study. It is no great art to hang two legs over
a steed and be a rider ; he shall soon learn me
that; and he shall be fine and well-spoken."

They say, and it is true, the pope was once
a pupil too. Therefore despise me not the fel-
lows who say '^ pancm propter Deuni' before the
doors and sing the bread-song.* Thou hearest,
as this psalm says, great princes and lords sing.
I too have been one of these fellows, and have
received bread at the houses, especially at
Eisenach, my native city. Although, afterward,
my dear father maintained me, with all love
and faith, in the high school at Erfurt, and, by
his sore sweat and labour, has helped me to
what I have become, — still I have been a beg-
gar at the doors of the rich, and, according to
this psalm, have attained so far by means of
the pen, that, now, I would not compound with
the Turkish emperor, to have his wealth and
forego my art. Yea I would not take for it the
wealth of the world many times multiplied ;
and yet, without doubt, I had never attained to
it, had I not chanced upon a school and the
^vriters' trade.

Therefore let thy son study, nothing doubting,
and though he should beg his bread the while,

* A song or psalm which the poor students of Luther's
time sang, when they went about imploring charity at
the doors of the rich.

yet shall thou give to our Lord God a fine piece
of wood out of which he can whittle thee a lord.
And be not disturbed that vulgar niggards con-
temn the art so disdainfully, and say : Aha ! if
my son can write German and read and cipher,
he knows enough; I will have him a merchant.
They shall soon become so tame that they will
be fain to dig with their fingers, ten yards deep
in the earth, for a scholar. For my merchant
will not be a merchant long, when law and
preaching fail. That know I for certain ; we
theologians and lawyers must remain, or all
must go down with us together. It cannot be
otherwise. When theologians go, then goes the
word of God, and remains nothing but the hea-
then, yea! mere devils. When jurists go, then
goes justice together with peace, and remains
only murder, robbery, outrage, force, yea ! mere
wild beasts. But what the merchant shall earn
and win, when peace is gone, I will leave it to
his books to inform him. And how much profit
all his wealth shall be to him when preaching
fails, his conscience, I trow, shall declare to
him.

Iidll say briefly of a diligent pious school-teacher
or magister, or of whomsoever it is, that faithfully
brings up boys and instructs them, that such an
one can never be sufficiently recompensed or paid
with money ; as also the heathen Aristotle says.
Yet is this calling so shamefully despised among
us, as though it were altogether nought. And
we call ourselves Christians!

And if I must or could relinquish the office
of preacher and other matters, there is no oSice
I would more willingly have than that of school-
master or teacher of boys. For I know that
this work, next to the office of preacher, is the
most profitable, the greatest and the best. Be-
sides, I know not even, which is the best of the
two. For it is hard to make old dogs tame and
old rogues upright ; at which task, nevertheless,
the preacher's office labours, and often labours
in vain. But young trees be more easily bent
and trained, howbeit some should break in the
efibrt. Beloved ! count it one of the highest virtues
upon earth, to educate faithfully the children of
others, which so few, and scarcely any, do by their
own.

ON THE SAME SUBJECT.

FROM AN EXHORTATION OF M. LUTHER TO THE COTTNCILMEN OF
ALL THE CITIES OF GERMANY TO ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN
CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.

Let us consider our former misery and the
darkness wherein we have been. I deem that
Germany has never before heard so much of
God's word as now. One finds no trace of it
in history. If, then, we let it pass thus, without
thanks or honour, it is to be feared we shall
suffer yet more horrible darkness and plagues.
Dear Germans ! buy while the market is at the
door. Gather while the sun shines and the
weather is good. Use God's grace and word

MARTIN LUTHER.

13

while it is there. For you shall know that
God's grace and word is a travelling shower
which does not appear again where it has once
been. It dwelled once with the Jews, but gone
is gone ; — now they have nothing. Paul brought
it into Greece, but gone is gone; — now they
have got the Turk. Rome and Italy have had
it once; gone is gone; — now they liave got the
Pope. And ye Germans must not think that
you will have it forever ; for ingratitude and
neglect will not suiier it to remain. Therefore
seize and hold fast whoever can. Idle hands
have slender years.

Yea! sayest thou, though it be fitting and
necessary to have schools, of what use is it to
teach the Latin, Greek and Hebrew tongues,
and other fine arts? Could we not teach, in
German, the Bible and God's word, which are
sufficient for salvation 1 Answer : Yes, I know
alas! too well, that we Germans must always
be and continue beasts and wild animals. So
the surrounding nations call us, and we deserve
it well. But I v^onder we never say: of what
use are silks, wine, spices and outlandish wares
of foreign nations ? seeing we have wine, corn,
wool, flax, wood and stones in German lands —
not only a sufficiency for supj^ort, but also a
choice and selection for honour and adornment?
We are willing to contemn the arts and lan-
guages which, without any injury, are a great
ornament, use, honour and advantage, both for
the understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, and
for the conduct of worldly government ; and are
not willing to dispense with outlandish wares
which are neither necessary nor useful, and
moreover distress and ruin us. Have we not
good reason to be called German fools and
beasts 1

Indeed, if there were no other use to be de-
rived from the languages, it ought to rejoice and
animate us that we have so noble and fine a
gift of God ; wherewith he has visited and fa-
voured us Germans above all other lands. It
doth not appear that the Devil would suffer
these same languages to come forward by means
of the High-schools and Cloisters ; on the con-
trary they have always raved most vehemently
and still rave against them. For the Devil
smelled the roast,* that if the languages revived,
his kingdom would get a hole which he could
not easily stop up again.j- Now, since he hath
not been able to prevent their revival, he thinks

* " To smell the roast" is a proverbial expression with
the Germans, equivalent to our " smell the rat," i. e. to
suspect mischief. Tr.

t The study of the Greek and the Hebrew is said to
have been discouraged by the clergy prior to the Refor-
mation, in order to prevent a nearer acquaintance with
the Scriptures. "They have discovered," says a monk
of that period, "a new language which they call the
Greek ; beware of it, for it is the mother of all heresies.
I see in the hands of some a book written in that lan-
guage, called the New Testament. It is a book full of
thorns and poison. And as to Hebrew, my beloved bre-
thren, you may be sure that wlioever meddles with that
will immediately become a Jew." Tr.

still to keep them so poorly, that they shall de-
cline and fall away again of themselves. It is
no welcome guest that hath come into his house
with them ; therefore he means to entertain him
in such a way that he shall not long remain.
There be few of us that perceive this wicked
trick of the Devil, my dear masters ! Therefore,
beloved Germans ! let us here open our eyes,
thank God for the noble treasure and take fast
hold of it, that it may not again be wrested from
us, and the Devil ■wreak his spite. For we
cannot deny this, that howbeit the gospel came
and comes daily through the Holy Spirit alone,
yet it came through the instrumentality of the
languages, and, by means of them, has ad-
vanced, and by means of them must be pre-
served. For straightway, when God was minded
to let his gospel go forth into all the world
through the apostles, he gave tongues for that
end. And he had before diff"used the Latin and
Greek tongues so widely in all lands, by means
of the Roman Government, to the end that his
gospel might bring forth fruit speedily far and
near. Thus also hath he done now. No one
knew why God caused the languages to revive,
until now, when it is evident that it was done
for the gospel's sake, the which he was minded
afterward to reveal, and thereby to discover and
destroy the kingdom of Antichrist. For this
cause also he gave Greece to the Turks, that the
Greeks who were driven out and scattered
abroad might carry forth the Greek tongue and
become an introduction to the study of other
languages also.

And let us understand this, that we shall not
be able to preserve the gosj^el without the lan-
guages. The languages are the sheath in which
this sword of the Spirit is hid. They are the
casket in which this jewel is borne. They are
the vessel in which this drink is contained.
They are the cupboard in which this food is
laid. And, as the evangile itself showeth, they
are the baskets which hold these loaves and fishes
and fragments. Yea! if we should so err as to
let the languages go, (which God forbid !) we
shall not only lose the gospel, but it shall come
to pass, at length, that we shall not know to
speak or write, neither Latin nor German aright.
Of this let the miserable and dreadful example
of the High-schools and Convents be a proof
and a warning ; where they have not only lost
all knowledge of the gospel, but have so cor-
rupted the Latin and the German language that
the wretched people have beome mere beasts,
cannot write or speak correctly, either Latin or
German, and have also well nigh lost their
natural reason.

Yea! sayest thou, many of the Fathers have
attained to blessedness, and have also taught,
without languages. That is true. But to what
dost thou impute it, that they have so often
failed in the Scriptures ? How often does St.
Augustin fail in the psalms, and in other ex-
positions'? So also Hilary, yea all who have
taken upon themselves to expound Scripturo
2

14

MARTIN LUTHER.

without the languages. Was not St. Jerome
compelled to translate the Psalter anew from
the Hebrew, because, when men argued with
the Jews out of ouf Psalter, they mocked and
said it was not so written in the Hebrew, as
our people quoted it?

Thence comes it that since the time of the
apostles the Scripture has remained so obscure
and that no certain and permanent exposition
of it hath been written. For even the holy-
Fathers (as I have said) have often failed, and
because they were ignorant of the languages,
they are seldom agreed, but one goes this way,
another that. St. Bernard was a man of a large
spirit, insomuch that I might almost place him
above all other teachers who have become cele-
brated, both ancient and modern. But see, how
he so often sports with the Scriptures, (howbeit
spiritually) and quotes them aside of their true
meaning ! For this cause the sophists have said
that the Scriptures were dark, and have thought
that in its own nature the word of God was so
obscure and spoke so strangely. But they see
not that the whole difficulty lies in the lan-
guages. Nothing more simple than the word
of God has ever been spoken ; so we under-
stood the tongues. A Turk must needs speak
obscurely to me — because I know not his lan-
guage— whom, nevertheless, a Turkish child of
seven years can well understand.

Neither let us be deceived for that some boast
themselves of the Spirit and think meanly of the
Scripture. Some also like the Brethren, the
Waldenses, deem the languages not to be useful.
But, dear friend, Spirit here. Spirit there, — I have
also been in the Spirit and have also seen Spi-
rits, (if ever it be lawful to boast of one's own
flesh) perhaps more than these same people
shall see in a year, howsoever they boast them-
selves. Also, my spirit has proved itself some-
what, while theirs is quite silent in a corner
and does little else than protrude its praise. I
might have led a pious life and have preached
well enough in quiet. But the Pope and the
Sophists and the whole Government of Anti-
christ I should have been forced to leave as
they are. The Devil cares not for my spirit so
much as for my language, and my pen in the
Scriptures. For my spirit takes nothing from
him save myself alone. But the holy Scriptures
and the languages make the world too narrow
for him and injure him in his kingdom. So then,
I cannot praise the Brethren, the Waldenses, in
that they despise the tongues. For though they
sliould teach aright, they must often fail of the
right text, and remain unarmed and unfurnished
to battle for the faith against error.

Now, although, as I have said before, there
were no soul and no need of schools and lan-
guages for God's sake and the Scriptures, — yet
were this alone a sufficient reason for establish-
ing everywhere the very best schools both for
boys and girls, — that the world has need of
skilfLd men and women in order to maintain
outwardly its secular condition. The men

should be fit to govern Land and People; the
women should be well able to guide and pre-
serve house, children and servants. Now must
such men be made out of boys and such women
must be made out of little girls. Therefore it
is important to train and educate little boys and
girls aright for such work. I have said above
that the common man does nothing toward this
end, neither can he, neither will he, neither
knows he. Princes and lords ought to do it, but
they are occupied with sleigh-riding, with drink-
ing and with muinmery; they are laden with
grave and important affairs of the kitchen, the
cellar and the cliamber. And though some
would do it willingly, the others must needs
scare them with the fear of being called fools
or heretics. Therefore, my beloved Council-men,
it remains in your hands alone. You have
space and vocation for it more than princes and
lords.

Thou sayest let each one teach and train his
own. Answer: Yes! we know very well what
kind of teaching and training that is. Even
when it is carried farthest and succeeds well,
it amomits to nothing more than a little disci-
pline of forced and decent manners. For the
rest, they are mere blocks of wood, and know
nothing eiUier of diis or of that, and can neither
counsel nor help. But if they were taught and
trained in schools or elsewhere, where there
are learned and able masters and mistresses,
who teach languages and odier arts and histo-
ries, they would hear the history and the say-
ings of all the world ; — how it fell out with this
or that city or kingdom or prince, man or woman ;
and they would be able, in a short time, to bring
before them, as it were in a mirror, the being,
life, counsels and designs, the successes and
failures of the whole world, from the beginning;
whence they might learn to order their thoughts
and adjust themselves to the course of the world,
in the fear of God. And they should be made
witty and wise by these histories, knowing what
to seek and what to avoid in this outward life ;
and should be able moreover to advise and
govern others. But the educajion which is given
at home, without such schools, attempts to make
us wise by our own experience. Ere that comes
to pass we shall be dead a hundred times over,
and shall have acted inconsiderately all our life
long. For experience requires much time.

How much time and trouble are bestowed in
teaching children to play at cards, to sing and
to dance. Why will we not spend as much
time in teaching them to read and other accom-
plishments, while they are young and have lei-
sure and capacity and disiiosition for them? I
speak for myself: if I had children and were
able, they should not only hear me languages
and histories, but they should also sing and learn
music and the whole of the mathematics. For
what is all this but mere child's play, in which
the Greeks aforetime instructed their children,
and by means of which they afterward became
wonderfully skilful people and capable of many

MARTIN LUTHER.

15

things 1 Yea ! what grief it is to me now, that
I did not read more poets and histories, and
that no one instructed me in these matters.
Instead thereof, I have been made to read the
Devil's filth, philosophers and schoolmen, with
great cost and labour and injury, so that I have
enough to do to get rid of it all.

Thou sayest, who can give up his children
and train them all, for squires? They must at-
tend to the work at home. Answer : My opi-
nion is not that we should establish such schools
as there have been heretofore, where a youth
would pore for twenty or thirty years over Do-
natus and Alexander and learn nothing after
all. We have a ditlerent world now, and things
are otherwise managed. My counsel is that
the boys should be suffered to go to school an
hour or two each day and none the less work
at home the rest of the time, — learn a handy-
craft and do whatever is wanted of them. Let
both go together, seeing they are young and can
wait. Besides, do they not spend ordinarily
tenfold as much time at marbles and ball and
in running and wrestling?

So likewise a girl may find time enough to
go to school an hour a day, and still wait upon
her work at home. They sleep away and dance
away and play away more time than that.
The only difficulty is this, that there is no hearty
desire to train the young and to help and in-
struct the v/orld with fine people. The Devil
loves, rather, coarse blocks and good-for-nothing
people, that man may not fare too well upon
the earth.

Therefore, dear masters, take to heart the
work which God so imi^eratively demands of
you, to which your office binds you, which is so
necessary to the young, and which neither the
world nor the Spirit can do without. Alas! we
have long enough been rotting and corrupting
in darkness. All too long have we been " Ger-
man beasts." Let us, for once, make use of our
reason, that God may mark our gratitude for his
gifts, and that other lands may take note that
we too are men, and such as can either learn
something useful of them or teach them some-
thing;— so that by us also the world may be
made better. I have done my part. It was
my desire to counsel and help the German land.
And albeit some may contemn me in this thing
and give to the winds my faithful advice and
pretend to better knowledge, I must even en-
dure it. I well know that others might have
done better ; but seeing they are silent, I have
"3one as well as I could. It is better to speak
right forth, however unskilfully, than always to
be silent on this head. And I am in hope that
God will arouse some among you, to the end
that my true counsel may not wholly fall in the
dust, and that you will consider not him that
speaketh but ponder the thing itself and let it
go forward. **»*»*

Herewith I commend you to the grace of God.
May he soften and kindle your hearts so that
they shall earnestly take the part of these poor.

suffering, forsaken youth, and, by Divine aid,
counsel and help them to a happy and Chris-
tian government of the German land, in body
and soul, with all fulness and redundancy, to
the praise and honour of God the Father, through
Jesus Christ our Saviour ! Amen.
Given at Wittenberg, Anno, 1524,

CONCERNING GOD THE FATHER.

FROM AN EXPOSITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CREED, DEUTEKED AT
SMALCALD IN THE YEAR 1637.

Aut. I. " I believe in God the Father, the Al-
mighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.''

Here, it is first of all held up to us, that we
know and learn whence we are derived, what
we are and where we belong. All wise men
have ever been concerned to know whence the
world and ourselves have proceeded, but have
not been able to discover. They have supposed
that man is born by chance, without a master
by whom his birth is ordained and brought to
pass, and that he lives and dies by chance, like
other beasts. Some have advanced farther and
have pondered this subject until they were
forced to conclude that the world and man must
have proceeded from an eternal Go<.l, because
they are such mighty and glorious creations.
Nevertheless, they have not been able to attain
to any true knowledge thereof. But we know
it welI,-howbeit not of and from ourselves but
from the word of God which is here brought
before us, in the creed. Therefore wouldstthou
know whence thou and I and all men are de-
rived, listen, and I will tell thee. It is God the
Father, the almighty creator of heaven and
earth, an only God, who has created and pre-
serves all things. Now thou knowest it. It is
indeed a simple doctrine to look at, and a plain
sermon. And yet no man, be he as wise as he
could be, was able to find it, save he who came
down from heaven and revealed the same to us.

The wise man, Aristotle, concludes that the
world existed from eternity. To that one must
say, that he knew nothing at all of this art. But
when it is said that heaven and earth are a
creation or work made by him who is called
an only God and made out of nothing; that is an
art above all arts. And thus it is with me and
thee and the world. Sixty years ago I was
nothing as yet. And so, innumerable children
will be born after us who as yet are nothing.
So the world six thousand years ago was nothing,
and, in time, will be nothing again. And so,
all was brought out of nothing into being, and
shall be brought out of being into nothing again,
until all is created anew, more glorious and fair.
This, I say, we know, and the Holy Scripture
teacheth it us, and little children have it pre-
sented to them thus, in the words of the creed
— "I believe in God the Father, &c."

Therefore, learn first of all, from this, whence
thou comest ; namely from him who is called

16

MARTIN LUTHER.

Creator of heaven and earth. That may be
counted a great and sublime honour, which I
ought reasonably to accept with great joy, that
I am called and am a creature and work of the
only and most high God. The world seeketh
after honour with money, force and the like.
But it hath not the piety rightly to consider and
reflect upon this honour, concerning which we
pray, through the mouth of young children, here
in the creed, that God is our master, who has
given us body and soul, and preserves them still
from day to day. If we rightly believed this, and
deemed it true, there would spring from it great
praise and boasting ; for that I can say, the
Master who has created the sun, he has also
created me. As now the sun boasts its beauty
and its glory, so will I boast and say : I am the
work and creature of my God.

With this honour should every man be satis-
fied, and say with joy, I believe in God, Creator
of heaven and earth, who has hung his name
about my neck, that I should be his creature,
and that he should be called my God and Maker.
It is a children's sermon and a common saying,
nevertheless, one sees well who they be that
understand it. We deem it no particular honour
that we are God's creatures, but that any one
should be a prince or great lord, we open eyes
and mouth. Yet are these but human creatures,
as Peter calls them, and an afterwork. For, if
God did not come first with his creature, and
make a man, there could be no prince. Yet do
all men clamour about such an one, as if it were
some great and precious thing, whereas it is
much greater and more glorious to be a creature
of God. Therefore should servants and maid-
servants and all men accept this high honour,
and say, I am a man. That is a higher title
than to be a prince. Not God, but men make
the prince, but God alone can make me a man.

It is said of the Jews, that they have a prayer
wherein they praise God for three things. First,
that they are created men and not irrational
animals. Secondly, that they are created male
and not female. Thirdly, that they are created
Jews and not heathen. But that is praising God
as fools are wont, by flouting and vilifying other
creatures of God, at the same time. So doth
not the Psalmist praise him. He includes all
that God has made, and says. Praise the Lord
on the earth ! ye whales and all the deeps 1 &c.

Furthermore, this article teacheth us not only
who hath created us and whence we are, but
also where we belong. This is shown us by
the word Father. He is at the same time Father
and Almighty Creator. The beasts cannot call
him Father, but we are to call him thus and to
be called his children. With this word he
showeth what destination he hath appointed us,
having first taught us whence we are and what
praise and honour have been bestowed upon us.
What is the end and purpose of the whole?
This, — that ye shall be children and that I will
be your Father. That I have not only created
you and will preserve you here, but that I will

have you to children, and suffer you to be my
heirs, who shall not be thrust out of the house
like other creatures, oxen, cows, sheep, &c., that
either perish all, or else are eaten, but, besides
that ye are my creatures, ye shall also be for-
evermore my children and live ahvay.

Thus do we pray and. confess, when we say
in the creed, / believe in God the Father, that,
in like manner as he is Father and liveth for-
ever, we also, as his children, shall live forever
and shall not perish. Therefore are we by so
much a higher and fairer creation than other
creatures, that we are not only creatures of God
and his work, but are destined also to live for-
ever with our Father.

This is an article with which we should day
by day converse, that, the longer we taste
thereof, the more we may prove it ; for it is im-
possible, with words or with thoughts, to com-
prehend what is meant by God the Father. A
sated and weary heart may hear but doth not con-
sider it. But the heart which rightly received
such words would often think thereon with joy,
and when it looked upon the sun, moon, and
other creatures, would recognise herein a special
favour, that it is called a child of God, and that
God is willing to be and remain our Father, and
that we shall evermore live and remain with
God.

This then is the first article, whence we
briefly learn that a Christian is a fair and glorious
creation that cometh from God, and that the end
which he craves and for which he is destined,
is eternal life.

CONCERNING ANGELS.

FROM A DISCOURSE ON GOOD AND EVIL ANGELS, PREACHED AT WIT-
TEMBEKG. AT THE FEAST OF MICHAELMAS, 15 3 3; FROM THE WORDS :
" TAKE HEED THAT YE DESPISE NOT ONE OF THESE LITTLE ONES !
FOR I SAY nNTO YOU, THAT IN HEAVEN, THEIR ANGELS DO ALWAY'S
BEHOLD THE FACE OF MY FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN." MATT.
XVm. 10.

* * * Seeing then, that the Feast of St.
Michael, and of all the angels, exists, we will
retain the same in our churches. Not for secular
reasons alone, and the income which is derived
from it ; but much rather for spiritual reasons.
Because it is useful and necessary that Christians
should continue in the right understanding of
angels, — so that the young people may not grow
up, neither learning nor knowing what dear
angels purpose and do ; and have no joy therein,
and never thank God the Lord for this gift and
benefit.

Now beginneth the Lord a sermon for chil-
dren, and saith, " Take heed that ye despise not
one of these little ones," &c. There thou hast
a clear text, which thou oughtest, with certainty,
to believe. For this man, Christ, knows, of a
surety, that children have angels, which do not
make the children, but help to preserve them

MARTIN LUTHER.

17

whom God hath created. So then, we preachers
and parents ought to begin where Christ began,
and impress vipon children that they have an-
gels. * * * After this manner would I
train a child from early youth, and say to him.
Dear child, thou hast an own angel. If thou
prayest morning and evening, this angel shall
be near thee and shall sit by thy little bed. He
has a little white coat, and he shall nurse thee
and rock thee and take care of thee, that the
bad man, the Devil, may not come nigh thee.
'Also, when thou lovest to say thy Bencdicite and
thy Gratias before meat, thy little angel will be
near thy table, and will wait upon thee and
guard thee and watch, that no evil may befal
thee, and that thy food may do thee good. If
this were impressed upon children, they would
learn and accustom themselves from youth up
to the thought that the angels are with them.
And this would not only serve to make them
rely on the protection of the dear angels, but
also cause that they should be well-behaved,
and learn to stand in awe, and to think: Though
our parents are not with us, yet the angels are
here ; they are looking after us, that the evil
Spirit may do us no mischief.

This, peradventure, is a childish sermon, but,
nevertheless, it is good and needful ; and so
needful and so .simple that it may profit us old
folks also. For the angels are not only present
with children, but also with us who are old.
So says St. Paul, in the first epistle to the Co-
rinthians, xi. 10, "For this cause ought the
woman to have a power on her head, because
of the angels."' Women should not be adorned
in the church and in the congregation as if they
were going to a dance, but be covered with a
veil for the sake of the angels. St. Paul here
fetcheth in the angels, and saith that they are
present at the sermon, and at sacred offices and
divine service. This service of the angels doth
not seem to be precious, but herein we see
what are genuine good works. The dear angels
are not proud as we men; but they walk in
divine obedience, and in the service of men, and
wait upon young children. How could they
perform a meaner work than to wait day and
night upon children 1 What doth a child ? It
eats, weeps, sleeps, &c. Truly, an admirable
thing, that the holy ministering Spirits should
wait upon children who eat, drink, sleep, and
wake! To look at it, it doth indeed seem a
lowly ofilce. But the dear angels perform it
with joy, for it is well pleasing to God, who
hath enjoined it upon them. A monk, on the
contrary, saith, shall I wait upon children?
That will I not do. I will go about higher and
greater works. I will put on a cowl and will
mortify myself in the cloister, &c. But if thou
wilt consider it aright, these are the highest and
best offices, which are rendered to children and
to pious Christians. What do parents? What
are their works? They are the menials and
the servants of young children. All that they
do — they themselves confess — they do for the

sake of their children, that they may be edu-
cated. So do also the dear angels. Why, then,
should we be ashamed to wait upon children ?
And if the dear angels did not take charge of
children, what would become of them ? For
parents, with the help of prince and magistrate,
are far too feeble to bring them up. Were it
not for the protection of the dear angels, no
child would grow to full age, though the parents
should bestow all possible diligence upon them.
Therefore hath God ordained, and set for the
care and defence of children, not only parents,
but also emperors, kings, princes, and lastly, his
high and great Sjiirits, the holy angels, that no,^
harm may befall them. It were well that the
children were impressed with these things.

On the other hand, one should also tell chil-
dren of the wiles of the Devil and of evil
spirits. Dear child, one should say to them, if
thou wilt not be pious, thy little angel will run
away from thee, and the evil Spirit, the black
Popclmann, will come to thee. Therefore, be
pious and pray, and thy little angel will come
to thee, and the Popclmann will leave thee.
And this is even the pure truth. Thp Devil
sits in a corner, and if he could throttle both
parent and child, he would do it not otherwise
than gladly. ******

Thus are the dear angels watchmen also, and
keep watch over us and protect us. And were
it not for their guardianship, the black Nick
would soon find us, seeing he is an angry and
untiring Spirit ; but the dear angels are our true
guardians against him. When we sleep, and
parents at home and the magistrate in the city
and the prince of the country sleep likewise,
and can neither govern nor protect us, then
watch the holy angels and guard and govern
us for the best. When the Devil can do nothing
else, he aflrighteth me in my sleep, or maketh
me sick that I cannot sleep. Then no man can
defend nie ; all they that are in the house are
asleep ; but the dear angels sit at my bed-side,
and they say to the Devil : Let this man sleep,
&c. This is the office which the angels perform
for me, unless I have deserved that God should
withdraw his hand from me, and not permit his
angels to guard and defend me, but suffer me
to be scourged a little, to the end that I may be
humbled, and acknowledge the blessing of God
which he conferreth upon me by the ministry
of the dear angels.

Further, it is the office of the dear angels to
protect and accompany me when I journey,^
to be with me by the way. When I arise in
the morning and perform my prayer, and pro-
nounce the blessing of the morning and go forth
into the field, I am to know that God's angels
are with me, — that he keeps good watch over
me against the devils that are around me, be-
hind and before.

* * * This doctrine comforteth and re-

joiceth us, and causeth that we take courage in

our necessities, and think within ourselves : Thou

art alone, it may be, and yet thou art not alone ;

2*

18

MARTIN LUTHER.

the dear angels given thee by God are present
with thee. Thus we read in the second book
of Kings, c. vi. When the prophet Elisha was
about to go forth from the city of Dothan with
his servants, he saw a great army of the king
of Syria, which had come to take him. Never-
theless the prophet went forth. This was an
excellent boldness that the prophet should go
forth with his servant against so large a host
and a nation of warriors. The servant was
atlrighted, and said, "Alas, my master! what
shall we do?" But the prophet was undis-
mayed, and said. Fear not: for they that be
with us are more than they that be with them.
Such was his defiance and courage. The ser-
vant could not see it, but the prophet prayed
that the Lord would open the eyes of his ser-
vant. Then he saw that the mountain was full
of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

So, likewise, we read of the patriarch Abra-
ham, that he sent out his servant to bring home
a wife for his son Isaac. And when the ser-
vant knew not the way, Abraham said, " The
Lord God of heaven shall send his angel before
thee, and thou shalt take unto my son a wife
from thence." Abraham sends his servant out
as one would throw a feather into the air. It
doth not trouble him that his son Isaac is not
acquainted with the bride, and doth not know
where she is to be found; but he saith : The
Lord will let his angel go witli thee, who shall
show thee the way; and thou shalt find the
bride. Is it not a fine thing that the angel of
the Lord must be present and woo a wife for
Isaac ? It sounds foolish in the ear of Reason,
that an angel should trouble himself as to how
we wed. * * * And David also, in the
thirty-fourth Psalm, saith: "The angel of the
Lord encampeth round about them that fear him
and delivereth them." Castra mclatur angelus
Domini, the angel of the Lord erects a bulwark,
he saith. An angel can soon do that. In a
trice he can make a rampart and a bulwark
about a city, and it shall be an excellent wall.

In like manner, we read that the bad and the
good angels contend and war with each other.
We know not how this is, neither do we behold
it; but the Holy Scripture declareth it.

How many devils were there, thinkest thou,
last year, at the diet at Augsburg 1 Every
bishop brought as many devils there as a dog
hath fleas at St. John's time. But God sent
thither also more numerous and more powerful
angels, so that their evil purpose was defeated.
And howbeit the devils stood in our way, and
we were forced to separate ere peace was made,
yet were our enemies unable to accomplish
aught that they meditated and desired.

In the Revelation of St. John, cap. xii., it is
written that the old dragon, the Devil, and Mi-
chael contended one against the other. The
Devil had his angels and came up against Mi-
chael : and Michael had his angels also. That
must have been a grand and mighty warfare in
which the holy angels and the devils strove

thus with each other. The Devil is strong in
understanding, power and wisdom ; but Michael
with his angels was too strong and powerful
for him, and thrust him out of heaven. That
is a warfare which is carried on every day in
the Christian world. For heaven is Christen-
dom on the earth. There good and evil angels
contend. The Devil hinders men from receiv-
ing the gospel, creates enthusiasts and factious
spirits. Even among us, he maketh many to
be sluggish and cold. That is the Devil's army
in which he placeth himself and flghteth against
us. But Michael with liis angels is with us.
He awakeneth other pious preachers, who con-
tinue in the pure doctrine and in the truth, that
«ll may not perish. For one preacher can save
twelve cities, if God will.

I myself do often feel the raging of the Devil
within me. At times I believe; at times I be-
lieve not. At times I am merry; at times I am
sad. Yet do I see that it happeneth not as the
evil multitude wish, who would not give so
much as a penny for preaching, baptism and
sacrament. Now although the Devil is beyond
measure wicked and hath no good thing in pur-
pose, yet do all orders proceed and remain ac-
cording to wont. *****

If we keep these instructions of which I have
spoken, then shall we continue in the true un-
derstanding and faith, and the dear angels will
continue in their office and honours. They will
do what is commanded them by God, and we
shall do whatsoever is commanded us. That
thus we and they may know and praise God
for our Creator and Lord, Amen.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER'S
SIMPLE METHOD HOW TO PRAY.

WRITTEN FOR MASTER PETER BALBIERER. (BARBER.)

Dear Master Peter.

I give you as good as I have, and will show
you how I myself manage with prayer. Our
Lord God grant unto you and every one to ma-
nage better. Amen !

First, when I feel that I am become cold and
indisposed to prayer, by reason of other business
and thoughts, I take my psalter and run into
my chamber, or, if day and season serve, into
the church to the multitude, and begin to rej^eat
to myself — just as children use — the ten com-
mandments, the creed, and, according as I have
time, some sayings of Christ or of Paul, or some
psalms. Therefore it is well to let prayer be
the first employment in the early morning, and
the last in the evening. Avoid diligently those
false and deceptive thoughts which say : Wait
a little, I will pray an hour hence ; I must first
perform this or that. For, with such thoughts,
a man quits prayer for business which lays hold
of and entangles him, so that he comes not to
pray, the whole day long.

MARTIN LUTHER.

19

Howbeit works may sometimes occur which
are as good, or better than prayer, especially if
necessity require them. There is a saying to
this effect, w'hich goes imder the name of St.
Jerome : " All the works of the faithful are
prayer." And there is a proverb : " Whoso la-
bours faithfully, he prays twice." The meaning
of which saying must be, that a believer fears
and honours God in his labour, and thinks of
his commandment — to do wrong to no man, —
not to steal nor take advantage, nor to betray.
And, doubtless, such thoughts and such faith
make his work a prayer and an offering of
praise. On the other hand, it must be equally
true that the works of the unbelieving are mere
curses, and that he who labours unfaithfully
curses twice. For the thoughts of his heart in
his employment must lead him to despise God
and to transgress his law, to do wrong to his
neighbour, to steal and to betray. What are
such thoughts but mere curses against God and
man ■? * * * Of constant prayer, Christ in-
deed says, men ought always to pray. For men
ought always to guard against sin and wrong,
which no man can do except he fear God and
set his commandment before his eyes. Never-
theless, we must take heed that we do not dis-
use ourselves to actual prayer, and interpret
works to be necessary which are not necessary,
and by that means become at last negligent and
indolent, and cold and reluctant to pray. For
the Devil is not indolent nor negligent around
us. And our flesh is alive and fresh toward
sin and averse from the spirit of prayer.

Now when the heart is warmed by this oral
communion and has come to itself, then kneel
down or stand with folded hands and eyes to-
ward heaven, and say or think, in as few words
as possible, &c. &c.*

Finally, observe that thou must ever make
the "Amen" strong, and not doubt but that God
assuredly heareth thee with all his grace, and
saith " yea" to thy prayer. And think that thou
kneelest or standest not alone, but the whole
Christendom, or all jdjous Christians, with thee,
and thou among them, in consenting unanimous
supplication which God cannot desjjise. And
quit not thy prayer until thou hast said or
thought, — "Go to now, this prayer hath been
heard with God ; that know I surely and of a
truth." That is the meaning of Amen.

Also, thou must know that I would not have
thee to repeat all these M'ords in thy prayer, for
that would make it, at last, a babble and a vain
empty gossip — a reading from the book and
after the letter, such as the rosaries of the laity
and the prayers of priests and monks have been.
My purpose is to awaken the heart and instruct
it what kind of thoughts to connect with the
Lord's prayer. If the heart be rightly warmed
and eager for prayer, it can express these thoughts
with very different words, perhaps with fewer,

* Here follows, in the original, after a brief invocation,
a paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer.

perhaps with more. For I, myself, do not bind
myself to precisely these words and syllables,
but say the words to-day after this fashion, to-
morrow otherwise, according as I feel warm
and free. I keep as nearly as I can to the same
thoughts and meaning. But it will sometimes
happen that, while engaged with some single
article or petition, I walk into such rich thoughts
that I leave the other six.* And when these
rich and good thoughts come, one ought to give
place to them and let other prayers go, and listen
in silence, and on no account offer any hin-
drance ; for then the Holy Ghost himself preaches,
and one word of his preaching is better than a
thousand of our prayers. And so I have often
learned more in one prayer than 1 could have
got from much reading and composing.

Wherefore, it is of the greatest importance
that the heart be disengaged and disposed to
prayer; as saith the Preacher, (cap. iv. 17,)
" Prepare thy heart before prayer, that thou
mayest not tempt God.''j- What else is it, but
tempting God, when the mouth babbles while
the heart is distracted with other things ? Like
that priest who prayed after this fashion : " Deus
ill auditorimn mcum intende ; Fellow, hast thou
unharnessed the horses ? Domine ad adjuvan-
diim 7ne fcstina ; Maid, go and milk the cows !
Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto; Run, boy,
as if the Devil were after thee!" &c. Of such
prayers I have heard and experienced much in
Popedom, in my day. * * * 'QuX. now, God
be praised, I see well that that is not prayer, in
which one forgets what one has said. For a
true prayer is conscious of all its words and
thoughts, from the beginning to the end of the
prayer.

Even so a good and diligent barber^ must fix
his thoughts, his purpose and his eyes, with
great exactness upon the razor and the hair, and
not forget where he is, in the stroke or the cut.
But if he chooses to chat much at the same time,
or hath his thoughts or his eyes elsewhere, he is
like to cut one's mouth and nose, and throat into
the bargain. Thus each thing — if it is to be
done well — requires the entire man, with all
his senses and members. As the saying goes :
Pluribus intentus, minor est ad singida sensus : he
who thinks of many things thinks of nothing,
and does nothing aright. How much more
must prayer — if it is to be a good prayer — ^pos-
sess the heart entirely and alone.

This is briefly said of the " Our Father," or
of prayer, as I myself am wont to pray. For,
to this day, I suck still at the Paternoster, like
a child. I eat and drink thereof like a full-
grown man ; and can never have enough. It
is to me, even more than the psalter, (which
notwithstanding, I dearly love,) the best of all
prayers. Assuredly, it will be found that the

* Luther divides the Lord's Prayer into seven petitions.

t The lest here quoted is probably the first verse of the
fifth chapter of Eccl. ; but it differs widely from the com-
mon English version.

I Luther was probably writing to a barber by profession.

20

MARTIN LUTHER.

right Master hath ordained and taught it. And
it is a pity upon pities that such a prayer of
such a iNIaster, should be babbled and rattled
over by all the world, so entirely without devo-
tion. Many pray, it may be, some thousand
Paternosters a year ; and if they should pray a
thousand years, after that fashion, they would
not have tasted or prayed one letter or tittle
thereof. In fine, the Paternoster (as well as the
name and word of God) is the greatest martyr
upon earth, for every one tortures and abuses it ;
few comfort and make it glad by a true use of it.

LUTHERS PRAYER
AT THE DIET OF WORMS.

Almightt, eternal God ! What a strange
thing is this world! How doth it open wide
the mouths of the people ! How small and poor
is the confidence of men toward God ! How is
the flesh so tender and weak, and the Devil so
mighty and so busy through his apostles and the
wise of this world! How soon do they with-
draw the hand, and whirl away and run the
common path and the broad way to hell, where
the godless belong. They look only upon that
which is splendid and powerful, great and
mighty, and which hath consideration. If I
turn my eyes thither also, it is all over with
me ; the bell is cast and the judgment is pro-
nounced. Ah God ! Ah God ! 0, Thou my
God ! Thou my God, stand Thou by me against
the reason and wisdom of all the world. Do
Thou so! Thou must do it. Thou alone. Be-
hold, it is not my cause but thine. For my own
person I have nothing to do here with these
great lords of the world. Gladly would I too
have good quiet days and be unperplexed. But
Thine is the cause, Lord; it is just and eternal.
Stand Thou by me, Thou true, eternal God ! I
confide in no man. It is to no purpose and in
vain. Everything halteth that is fleshly, or that
savoureth of flesh. O God ! 0 God ! Hearest
Thou not, my God? Art Thou dead? No!
Thou canst not die. Thou only hidest Thyself
Hast Thou chosen me for this end ? I ask Thee.
But I know for a surety that Thou hast chosen
me. Ha! then may God direct it. For never
did I think, in all my life, to be opposed to such
great lords; neither have I intended it. Ha!
God, then stand by me in the name of Jesus
Christ, who shall be my shelter and my shield,
yea ! my firtn tower, through the might and
strengthening of thy Holy Spirit. Lord ! where
stayest Thou? Thou my God ! where art Thou?
Come, come ! I am ready, even to lay down
my life for this cause, patient as a little lamb.
For just is the cause and Thine. So will I not
separate myself from Thee forever. Be it de-
termined in Thy name. The world shall not
be able to force me against my conscience, though
it were full of devils. And though my body,

originally the work and creature of Thy hands,
go to destruction in this cause — yea, though it
be shattered in pieces — Thy word and Thy Spi-
rit, they are good to me still ! It concerneth
only the body. The soul is Thine and belong-
eth to Thee, and shall also remain with Thee,
forever. Amen. God help me ! Amen.

SELECTIONS FROM LUTHERS LETTERS.

FROM A COLLECTION TN FIVE VOLS. 8vo., PUBLISHF.D BY DR. W. M. L.
DE WETTE, PROFESSOR OF THEOLOOY AT BASLE. BERLIN. 18 2 6.

Extract from a Letter to the Elector Frederic and Duke John
of Saxony, containing an admonition to those princes to sup-
press, according to the authority entrusted to them by God, the
rebellious spirit which at that time possessed the peasiintry in
various parts of Germany, and which manifested itself in the
destruclioa of churches and in other riotous acts.

To the most Serene, the High-born Princes and
Lords, Duke Frederic, Elector of the Roman
Empire, and John, Duke of Saxony, Land-
grave of Thilringen and Margrave of Meissen
—my most gracious Masters :
Grace and peace in Christ Jesus our Saviour.
— This fortune hath ever the Holy Word of
God, that wherever it appeareth, Satan opi^oseth
it with all his power ; first, with the fist and
insolent force ; and where that will not avail,
he assaileth it with false tongues, with erring
spirits and teachers. Where he cannot quell it
with his might, he would suppress it by means
of cunning and lies. Thus did he in the begin-
ning, when the gospel first came into the world.
He assaulted it mightily with the Jews and the
Gentiles, shed much blood, and made Christen-
dom full of martyrs. When that availed not,
he brought on false prophets and erring siDirits,
and made the world full of heretics and sects.
* * * So must it be now, that it may be
seen that it is the genuine Word of God, because
it haj^peneth unto it as it hath happened in all
time. Pope and emperor, kings and princes
assail it with the fist, and would fain quell it
with force. They damn it, blaspheme it, and
persecute it unheard and unknown, like men
devoid of sense. But judgment hath been pro-
nounced, and their defiance condemned long ago.
(Ps. 2.) " Why do the heathen rage and the
people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the
earth rise up and the rulers take counsel to-
gether against the Lord and against his Anointed.
But he that sitteth in the heavens shall mock
at them ; the Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath
and vex them in his sore displeasure." Thus,
of a certainty, shall it happen to our raging
princes. And they will have it so, for they will
neither see nor hear. God hath blinded and
hardened them, that tliey shall run upon de-
struction and be shattered in pieces. They
have been sufficiently warned.

All this Satan seeth well, and perceiveth that
such raging will coine to nought. Yea! he
noteth and feeleth that the more it is oppressed

:±J

MARTIN LUTHER.

21

(as is the wont of God's word) the more doth it
spread and increase. Therefore he will now
attack it with false spirits and sects. And we
must consider this, and not suffer ourselves to
be deceived by it. For it must be so, as Paul
saith to the Corinthians : " For there must be also
heresies among you, that they which are ap-
proved may be made manifest among you." So
then, Satan being cast out, after that he hath
wandered about one year or three, through dry
places, seeking rest and finding none, he hath
settled down in your Electoral and Princely
Graces' dominions, and hath made him a nest
at Jllstadt, and thinks to fight against us under
cover of our own peace and shelter and protec-
tion. For Duke George's kingdom, howbeit it
is near, is far too kind and gentle toward this
undaunted and unconquerable spirit, (for so it
boasteth itself) to prevent the manifestation of
its bold daring and defiance. It shrieks and
wails horribly, and complains of its sufferings,
whereas no one hath yet touched it, neither with
the fist, nor with the mouth, nor with the pen.
They dream to themselves some great cross
which tliey suffer. So wantonly and without
all reason inust the Devil lie. O ! he cannot
by any possibility hide himself.

Now it is a special joy to me that our own
proceed not after this fashion. And they them-
selves boast that they are not of our party, and
that they have learned nothing and received
nothing from us. No! they come from heaven,
and hear God himself speaking with them as
with the angels ; and it is a poor thing that Faith
and Love and the cross of Christ are preached
at Wittenberg. God's voice, say they, thoti must
hear thyself, and must suffer and feel God's
work within, that thou mayest know how heavy
thy pound is. Scripture is naught — " Bah ! Bi-
ble^ bubble, babble .'" &c. &c. If we should speak
such words of them, their cross and suffering I
ween would be dearer than the cross of Christ,
and they would esteem it more highly. So will-
ing is that miserable spirit to bear the credit
of cross and suffering, and yet they cannot bear
that one should entertain the least doubt or
question that their voice is from heaven and
their work of God ; bvit they will have it straight-
way believed by force, without consideration.
So that I have never read or heard of a more
high-minded or protider '^ Holy Spiiit" (if such it
be.) But here is neither time nor room to judge
their doctrine. I have examined and judged it
twice, I think, ere this, and, if need be, can judge
it again, and will, by the grace of God.

I have written this letter to your Princely
Graces chiefly for this cause, that I have heard
and have also gathered from their writing, how
this selfsame spirit will not rest its cause upon
the Word alone, but is minded to carry it on
with the fist, and would fain rise with forc'e
against the magistracy, and straightway set on
foot a veritable rebellion. Here Satan suffereth
the rogue to peep forth. It is too palpable !
• * * Therefore, your Princely Graces, here

is no time to sleep or loiter, for God demands
and will have an answer touching the negligent
use of the sword which he hath committed to
you in earnest. Neither is it excusable, before
the people and the world, that your Princely
Graces should tolerate rebellious and insolent
fists.

* * * First, it must needs be a bad spirit
which cannot manifest its fruit in any other way
than by destroying churches and cloisters, and
burning saints, which the most abandoned vil-
lains in the world can do as well, especially
when they are safe and unresisted. I would
think more of this Alstadt Spirit if it would go
up against Dresden, or Berlin, or Ingolstadt, and
there storm and break down cloisters and burn
saints.

Secondly, that they boast themselves of the
Spirit availeth nothing, for we have the word
of St. John for it, to prove first the Spirits whe-
ther they be of God. Now is this Spirit not yet
proved, but dashes on with impetuous vehe-
mence, and rages wantonly, according to its
own pleasure. If it were a good Spirit, it would
first suffer itself to be proved and judged in hu-
mility, as the Spirit of Christ doth. * * *
What manner of Spirit is that which fears in
the presence of two or three and cannot bide a
dangerous assembly"? I will tell thee. He
smelleth the roast.* He hath had his nose hit
once or twice by me in my cloister at Witten-
berg. Hence he fears the soup, and will not
stand, save where his own people are, who say
yea, to his precious words. If I (who have no
Spirit at all and have no voice from heaven)
had suffered such a word to be heard of me by
my papists, how would they have cried victory,
and have stopped my mouth !

I cannot boast myself and bid defiance with
such lofty words. I am a poor miserable man.
I did not open my cause with excellency of
speech, but, as Paul confesses of himself with
weakness and fear, and much trembling. And
he might, notwithstanding, have boasted of a
voice from heaven, had he chosen. How hum-
bly I attacked the Pope, how I besought and
entreated, let my first writings prove. Never-
theless, with this poor spirit of mine, I have
done that which this world-eating spirit of theirs
hath not yet attempted, but, on the contrary,
hath thus far shunned and fled, after a very
knightly and manly fashion ; and hath even
most nobly boasted of such evasion, as of a
knightly and sublime act of the Spirit. For I
stood up to dispute at Leipsic before the most
dangerous of all assemblies. I appeared at
Augsburgh before my greatest enemy, without
escort. I stood up at Worms before the empe-
ror and the whole empire, albeit I knew before-
hand that my escort were betrayed, and that
wild, strange malice and treachery were level-
led against me.

Weak and poor as I then was, yet such was

* Smells a rat.

22

MARTIN LUTHER.

the state of my heart, — had I known that as many-
devils were aiming at me as there were tiles
on the roofs at Worms, I would none the less
have ridden in ; and yet I had never heard
anght, as yet, of the voice from heaven and of
God's pounds and works, and of the Alstildt
Spirit. Item : I have been made to answer for
myself, in corners, — to one, to two, and to three,
to whomsoever, and where and howsoever they
listed to question me. My timid and poor spirit
hath been forced to stand forth, free as a flower
of the field, and could not appoint either time,
or person, or place, or mode, or measure, but
must be ready and willing to give an answer to
every man, as St. Peter teacheth.

And this Spirit, which is as high above us as
the sun is above the earth, which scarce consi-
ders us as worms, appoints for himself only un-
perilous, friendly, and safe judges and hearers,
and will not stand and answer to two or to three
in sundry places. He feels somewhat that he
does not love to feel, and thinks to scare us with
swelling words. Well! we can do nothing but
what Christ gives us. If He shall leave us,
then shall a rustling leaf perchance affright us ;
but if He will keep us, that spirit shall yet be
made sensible of its lofty boasting.*

But I would fain know whether, — seeing the
Spirit is not without fruit, and that theirs is so
much loftier than ours, — whether it bears nobler
fruit than ours ? Truly, it ought to bear other
and better fruit than ours, seeing it is better and
nobler. So we teach and profess, that the Spirit
which we preach bears the fruits spoken of by
Paul to' the Galatians — " love, joy, peace, long-
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance.'' In fine, the fruit of our Spirit is
the fulfilling of the ten commandments of God.
Now then, the Alstadt Spirit, that will not leave
ours in peace, must, of a surety, yield something
higher than love and faith, long-suffering and
peace ; notwithstanding St. Paul reckons love
to be the highest fruit. It must do much better
than God hath commanded. I would fain know
what that is, since we are assured that the Spirit
imparted by Christ is given for this end only,
that we fulfil the commandment of God. * *

I perceive as yet no particular fruit of the
Alstadt Spirit, except that it is minded to strike
with the fist, and to destroy wood and stone.
Love, peace, long-suffering, goodness, gentle-
ness,— they have thus far been very sparing in
their exhibition of. Doubtless, they would not
have the fruits of the Spirit become too common.
But I can show, by the grace of God, much fruit
of the Spirit among our people. And, if it comes
to boasting, I might set up my single person —
the meanest and most sinful of all — against all
the fruits of the whole Alstadt Spirit, much as
they blame my life. But, to accuse the doctrine
of any man because of the infirmities of his life
— that is not the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spi-
rit reproveth false doctrine, and beareth them

* i. e. be made sensible of the vanity of it.

that are weak in faith and in life, as Paul teach-
eth, Rom. xiv. and in all places. Neither am
I troubled that the Alstadt Spirit is so unfruitful,
but because it is a lying Spirit, and setteth itself
up to judge the doctrine of others.

* * * Be this then the conclusion of the
whole matter, my gracious Masters. Your
Graces shall not hinder the function of the Word.
Let them preach away as much as they please,
and against whom they please, for, as I have
said, there must be sects, and the Word of God
must take the field and fight. * • * If
their Spirit be the true one, it will not be afraid
of us, but maintain its ground. If our Spirit be
the true one, it will not be afraid of them, nor
of any man. Let the Spirits tilt and charge
against each other. If, meanwhile, some are
led astray, so be it ! It is according to the course
of war. Where there is fighting and strife, some
must fall and some must be wounded. But he
that striveth honourably shall receive a crown.

But if they attempt to do more than to fight
with the word; if they go about to destroy and
to smite with the fist ; — then your Graces shall
take hold, whether it be we or whether it be
they, and straightway forbid them the land, and
say to them : "We will willingly bear with you,
and see you contend with the Word for the
maintenance of the true doctrine ; but keep the
fist still, for that is our business ; or else take
yourselves out of the land." For we who bear
the Word of God must not fight with our fists.
* * * Our work is to preach and to suffer,
not to defend ourselves and to strike. Christ
and his apostles destroyed no churches and
broke in pieces no images, but won hearts with
God's word, and then churches and images fell
of themselves. So should we do likewise. * *
What need we care for wood and stone, if
we have men's hearts 1 See how I do. I have
never laid hands on a single stone. I have de-
stroyed and burned nothing in the cloisters.
And yet, through my word, the cloisters are now
empty in many places, — even under those
Princes who are opposed to the gospel. Had I
attacked them with storm, like these prophets,
the hearts of men in all the world would have
remained captive, and I should only have de-
stroyed here and there a little wood and stone.
Who would have been the better for that?
Honour and fame may be sought that way, but,
assuredly, the good of souls is not sought by
such means. There be some who think that I,
without carnal weapons, have done the Pope
more injury than a mighty king could have done.
But these prophets, willing to do something
special and better, and not being able, leave the
saving of souls and take to assailing wood and
stone. That is the new and wonderful work
of this high Spirit.

• If they argue that the Jews were commanded
in the law of Moses to destroy all idols, and to
abolish the altars of the false gods, the answer
is, they themselves know that God, from the
beginning, has wrought with one word and

MARTIN LUTHER.

23

kinds
*

of

«

saints
*

and

faith, but with diverse
works. * * *

Nay, if it were right thjit we Christians should
storm and break down cliurclies like the Jews,
it would follow further that we ought to put to
death all who are not Christians, as well as de-
stroy images, — as the Jews were commanded
to slay the Canaanites and the Amorites. Then
the Alsladt Spirit would have nothing more to
do but to shed blood ; and all who did not hear
their "voice from heaven" must be slain by
them, that there might remain no occasion of
ofleuce among the people of God. Which of-
fence is much greater from living unchristian
men, than from images of wood and stone. * *

The removing of offences must be accom-
plished by the Word of God. For though all
outward otience were destroyed and done away,
it would avail nothing, unless the hearts of men
were brought from unbelief to the true faith.
For an unbelieving heart will always find new
cause of offence ; as it came to pass among the
Jews, who erected ten idols where they de-
stroyed one. Wherefore, we must employ the
true method, according to the New Testament,
of banishing the Devil and offences; that is, the
Word of God. With that we must turn away
the hearts of men from evil ; and then, perad-
venture, the Devil with all his splendour and
his power shall fall of himself

Here will I rest the matter for the present,
humbly beseeching your Princely Graces ear-
nestly to discountenance such storming and
swarming, that these matters may be managed
by the word of God alone, as befitteth Chris-
tians ; and that all occasion of tumult, for which
Master Omnes* is ever more than too much in-
clined, may be averted. For they be no Chris-
tians who, not content with the Word of God,
are fain to lay hold with their fists also, and are
not rather ready to suffer all things, — yea, though
they boast themselves filled with ten Holy Spirits
and filled again.

Miiy Gods mercy strengthen and keep your
Princely Graces evermore! Amen! Given the
21st August, Anno 1524.

Your Princely Graces'

Obedient Mart. Lxttheb, Doctor.

TO THE ELECTOR JOHN.

A LETTER OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT IN RETITRN FOR A PRESENT OF
SOME ARTICLES OF CLOTHING.

Grace and peace in Christ! Most Serene,
High-born Prince, and Gracious Lord ! I have
long delayed to thank your Electoral Princely
Grace for the clothes and garment sent and pre-
sented to me. But I will humbly entreat your
Electoral Princely Grace not to believe them
that speak of me as one that hath need. Alas!

* The mol>.

I possess more, especially from your Electoral
Princely Grace, than my conscience will bear.
It befitteth me not, as a preacher, to have super-
fluity, neither do I desire it.

Hence I receive your Electoral Princely
Grace's all too generous and gTacious favour in
such wise, that I straightway fear. For by no
means would I willingly, here in this life, be
found with those to whom Christ saith : "Wo
vmto you that are rich, for ye have had your re-
ward." Moreover, to speak after the manner
of this world, I would not be burthensome to
your Electoral Princely Grace, since I know that
your Electoral Princely Grace hath so much of
giving to do that it may not have more than
enough for its need. For too much bursts the
bag.

Wherefore, although the liver-coloured cloth
had been too much, yet, that I may be grateful
to your Electoral Princely Grace, I will also
wear the black coat in lionour of your Electoral
Princely Grace, howbeit it is far too costly for
me, and were it not your Electoral Princely
Grace's gift, I could nevermore wear such a coat.

For this cause, I entreat that your Electoral
Princely Grace will wait until I complain and
beg, myself, to the end that your Electoral
Princely Grace's anticipation of my wants may
not make me shy of begging for others who are
much more worthy of such grace. For without
this, your Electoral Princely Grace does too
much for me. Which Christ shall graciously
and richly recompense. That he may do so, I
pray from my heart. Amen.

Your Electoral Princel}'- Grace's
Obedient Martinus Luther.
The 17th Aug. 1529.

EXTRACT

FROM A LETTER TO CASPAR GUTTEL, PREACHER AT EI8LEBEN.
WRITTEN AGAINST THE ANTINOMIANS. JANUARY, 153U.

* * * I MARVEL much how the rejection
of the Law and the Ten Commandments can be
imputed to me, seeing there are so many and
such various expositions of the Ten Command-
ments by me, which are daily preached and
made the subject of exercises in our churches ;
to say nothing of the Confession and the Apology
and our other books. Moreover they are sung
in two difierent ways, and painted and printed,
and done in woodcuts, and repeated by the
children, morning, noon, and evening, so that
I know of no way in which they are not prac-
tised, save (alas!) that we do not paint and
practise them in our conduct and life as we
ought to do. And I myself, old and instructed
as I am, repeat them daily, word for word, like
a child. So, if anyone had received a different
doctrine from my writings and yet saw how
diligently I handled the Ten Commandments, he
ought to have accosted me in this wise : " Dear

24

MARTIN LUTHER.

Doctor Luther, how is it that thou insistest so
strongly on the ten commanihnents, seeing it is
thy doctrine that they ought to be rejected"?''
So ought they to have done, and not to have
mined in secret behind me, to wait for my
death, to make of me what they listed, after
that. ******* c

I have taught indeed, and still teach, that
sinners should be moved to repentance by
preaching, or by the contemplation of the suf-
ferings of Christ, that they may see how great
is the wrath of God against sin, for which
no other remedy could be found than that the
Son of God should die for it. Which doctrine
is not mine but St. Bernard's. What do I say?
St. Bernard's? It is the doctrine of all Christ-
endom. It is the preaching of all the prophets
and the apostles. But how doth it follow there-
from, that the Law should be done away? I
find no such consequence in my dialectic, and
I would like to see and hear the master who
could demonstrate the same. * * * For
the devil knoweth that Christ may soon and
easily be withdrawn, but the Law is written in
the core of the heart and cannot by any possi-
bility be done away. * • * But he goeth
about to make people secure, and teacheth them
to regard neither the Law nor sin, that when,
hereafter, they are suddenly overtaken by death
or an evil conscience, who before had been
accustomed only to sweet security, they may
sink, without help, into hell, because they have
learned nothing but sweet security in Christ.
* * * It is only sorrowful and sufl'ering
hearts that feel their sin, and they are to be
comforted, for the dear Jesus can never be made
sweet enough to such. * * » But these
spirits are not such Christians, because they are
so secure and of good courage. Neither are
their hearers such, for they also are secure and
well to do. A fine and beautiful maiden singeth
in a certain place — an excellent singer — " He
hath fed the hungry with good things, and the
rich he hath sent empty away, He hath put
down the mighty from their seats and exalted
them of low degree. And his mercy is on them
that fear him.'" (Luke i. 50, 52, 53,) If this
magnificat be correct, God must be an enemy of
spirits that are secure and that fear him not.
And such spirits must they be, who put away
Law and sin. * * * For this I will and
may boast with truth, that no papist of this time
is, with such conscience and earnest, a papist
as I have been. For what is now a papist is
not so, from the fear of God, as I, poor wight,
was forced to be. But they seek other things,
as any one may see, and they themselves know
it. I have had to experience that saying of St.
Peter : " Crescite in cognitione Domini.''' I see no
Doctor, no Council, no Fathers — though I should
even distil their books, as it were, and make a
quinta essentia out of them — who have accom-
plished the " crescite' at once, at the beginning,
in such sort, as to make the crescite a perfectum
esse. By token, St. Peter himself was forced to

learn his own crescite from St. Paul, Gal. ii. 11,
and St. Paul from Christ himself, who must say
to him : " SufTicit tibi mea gratia," &c. 2 Cor.
xii. 9.

Dear God! can they not bear that the holy
Church should confess herself a sinner and be
lieve in forgiveness of sins, and pray for the
same, in the Lord's prayer?

Ah ! I ought, in reason, to have peace with
mine own. To have to do with the papists
were enough. One might well nigh come to
say with Job and with Jeremiah : "Would that
I had never been born !" So likewise might I
almost say. Would that I had never come with
my books ! I care nothing for them. I could
bear that they had already perished, all of them,
and that the writings of these high spirits were
offered for sale in all the bookstalls as they de-
sire,— that they might have their fill of fair
fame. Then again, I must not esteem myself
better than our dear Goodman of the house, —
Jesus Christ, — who, also, here and there com-
plaineth : " In vain have I laboured, and my
trouble is lost."* But the Devil is lord of this
world. And I could never believe, myself, that
the Devil should be lord and god of this world,
until now that I have pretty much experienced
that this also is an article of faith : Princeps
mundi, Jens kujus scecuU. But God be praised !
it will remain unbelieved, peradventure, by the
children of men ; and I, myself, believe it but
feebly. For every man is well pleased with
his own way, and all hope that the Devil is
beyond the sea, and God in our pockets.

But, for the sake of the pious who wish to be
saved, we must live, preach, write, do all and
sufier all. Otherwise, when we behold so
many devils and false brethren, it were better
to preach nothing, to write nothing, to do no-
thing, but only to die quickly and be buried.
They pervert and blaspheme all things, and
make of them nothing but mischief and a cause
of offence, even as the Devil rideth and guideth
them. There will and must be fighting and
suffering. We cannot have it better than the
dear prophets and apostles, to whom it hap-
pened also after the same fashion. * » *
It was a special presumption and arrogance
in them that they also must needs bring forth
something new and peculiar, that people might
say, "I opine truly, this is a man! He is
another Paul ! Must they of Wittenberg alone
know all things ? I have a head too !"' Yea !
a head indeed, that seeketh its own honour and
befooleth itself with its own wisdom ! * *

From all which we see, and might, if we
would, understand the history of the churches
from the beginning. It hath happened so in all
time. Wherever Gods word hath arisen and
his flock been gathered together, the Devil hath
become aware of the light, and hath blown
against it, out of every corner ; — puffed and

* These words are given as a quotation from Isaiah,
xUi. 4.

MARTIN LUTHER.

25

stormed with great and strong winds to put out
the divine light. And if one or two winds
were checked and fended off, he hath evermore
blown through some new hole, and stormed
against the light. And there has been no end
nor cessation, neither will be imtil the last day.

I hold that I alone (not to speak of the elders)
have suffered more than twenty storm-winds
and factions which the Devil hath blown. First,
there was Popedom. Yea! I think all the world
should know with how many storm-winds. Bulls
and books the Devil hath raged against me from
that quarter ; how miserably they tore, devoured
and destroyed me; and how I only breathed
upon them a little now and then, with no effect,
save that they became the more wrathful and
mad to blow and to spit, without ceasing, to this
day. And when I had now well nigh ceased
to fear this manner of the Devil's spitting, he
bursts me another hole by means of Milnzer and
that uproar, wherewith he had near blown out
my light. And when Christ had almost stopped
that hole, he tears me sundry panes out of my
window with Karlstad t, and breezes and fumes,
so that I thought he would carry away the light,
wax and wick together. But here too. God
helped his poor torch and preserved it, that it
went not out. Then came the Sacramentists
and the Baptists, pushed open door and window,
and thought to quench the light. Perilous they
made it, but their will they accomplished not.

And though I were to live yet a hundred
years, and could lay all future storms and fac-
tions, as, by the grace of God, I have laid past
and present ones, I see well that no rest would
be secured by such means to our posterity,
seeing the Devil lives and reigns. Wherefore
I also pray for an hour of grace,* and desire no
more of this stuff. Ye, our posterity! do ye
continue to pray and diligently to follow after
the word of God ! Preserve God's poor taper !
Be warned and armed ! as those who must ex-
pect every hour that the Devil will break you a
pane or a window, or tear open door or roof, to
put out the light. For he will not die before
the last day. I and thou must die, and when
we are dead he shall remain the same that he
hath ever been, and cannot cease from storming.

I see yonder, from afar, how he puffeth out
his cheeks, till he becometh red in the face, and
intendeth to blow and to storm. But as our
Lord Christ, in the beginning, (even in his own
person,) smote those puffed cheeks with his fist,
and caused them * * * so will he do now
and ever forth. For he cannot lie who saith,
"I am with you always vmto the end of the
world :" * » » Jesus Christ, « heri et hodie
et in scBcula,'' — who was, and is, and shall be.
Yea ! so the man is called, and so no other man
is called, and so no odier shall be calleil.

For thou and I were nothing a thousand
years ago; nevertheless, the Church was pre-
served without us. It must have been his doing

* i. e. for the final hour.
D

whose name is '■^ qui eraV^ and '■^heriP So, now,
too, we exist not by our own life, and the

Church is not preserved by our means, and

we and it must go to destruction together, as
we daily experience, w'ere there not another
man who evidently sustains both the Church
and us whose name is ^'■qui est" and "ho-
die." Even so shall we contribute nothing to
the preservation of the Church when we are
dead ; but it will be his doing whose name is
"qui venturus est" and "in scenda." And what
we now say of ourselves, as touching these
things, that have our forefathers also been con-
strained to say, as the Psalms and the Scripture
witness ; and our posterity shall also experience
the same, and they shall sing with us and the
whole Church, Ps. 124, "Had it not been the
Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say."
* * * For this time enough of such com-
plaining ! Our dear Lord Christ be and remain
our dear Lord Christ, praised in eternity ! Amen.

TO HIS WIFE.

To my Gracious Lady,* Catherine Luther, of
Bora and Zulsdorf, near Wittenberg, — my
Sweetheart.

Grace and peace, my dear maid and wife !
Your Grace shall know that we are here, God
be praised ! — fresh and sound ; eat like Bohe-
mians,— yet not to excess — guzzle like Germans,
— yet not much ; — but are joyful. For our gra-
cious Lord of Magdeburg, Bishop Amsdorf, is
our messmate. We know nothing new but that
Doct. Caspar Mecum and Menius have journeyed
from Hagenau to Strasburg, in the service and
in honour of Hans von Jehnen. M. Philipps"]"
is nice again, God be praised ! Tell my dear
Doct. Schiefer, that his King Ferdinand will
have a cry, as if he would ask the Turk to be
godfather, over the Evangelical Princes. Hope
it is not true, it would be too bad. Write me
whether you got all tliat I sent you, as lately,
90 Fl. by Wolf Paerman, &c. Herewith I com-
mend you to God. Amen. And let the children
pray. There is here such a heat and drought
that it is unspeakable and insupportable, day
and night. Come dear Last Day ! Amen. Fri-
day after Margarethce, 1540. The Bishop of
Magdeburg sends thee friendly greeting.

TO HIS WIFE.

To the rich Lady at Zulsdorf, Lady Katkerin
Lutherin, — bodily resident at Wittenberg, and
mentally wandering at Zulsdorf, — my be-
loved,— for her own hands. In her absence
to be broken and read by Doct. Pomeran,
Preacher.

* Jungfer, literally, virgin. Luther's letters to his wife
are generally marked by a dasli of irony, particularly ia
the superscriptions. t Melanchthon.

3

26

MARTIN LUTHER.

* grant that we may find a

good drink of beer with you ! For, God willing,
to-morrow, as Tuesday, we will set out for Wit-
tenberg. It is all dung with the Diet at Hage-
iiau, — pains and labour lost, and expenses in
•vain. Howbeit, if we have done nothing else
we have brought M. Philipps out of hell, and
will fetch him home again, from the grave, with
much joy, if God will, and by liis grace. Amen.
The Devil out here is, himself, possessed with
nine bad devils; he is burning and doing mis-
chief, after a frightful fashion. More than a
thousand acres of wood in the Thuringian forest
belonging to my most Gracious Master have
been burned and are yet burning. Moreover,
there is tidings to-day that the forest of Werda
is also on fire, and many others beside. No
attempts to quench the flames are of any avail.
That will make wood dear. Pray and cause
prayers to be said against the wicked Satan,
who seeketh, veheitiently seeketh to ruin us not
only in body and soul but also in name and
estate. May Christ our Lord come from heaven
and kindle a bit of a fire too, for the Devil and
his angels, that he shall not be able to quench !
Amen ! I am not certain whether this letter
will find you at Wittenberg or at Zulsdorf, else
I would have written more. Herewith I com-
mend thee to God, Amen ! Greet our children,
our boarders and all. Monday after Jacobi 1 540.

TO HIS WIFE.

To the deeply learned Lady Katharin Lutherin,
— my Gracious Housewife at Wittenberg.
Grace and Peace ! Dear Kate, we sit here
and let ourselves be martyred, and would fain
be off"; but methinks that cannot be, under a
week. Thou mayest tell M. Philipps to correct
his postil. He never understood why our Lord,
in the gospel, calls riches thorns. Here is the
school to learn that But I shudder to think
that thorns, in the Scripture, are always threat-
ened with fire. Wherefore I have the greater
patience, if haply, by the help of God, I may be
able to bring some good to pass. Thy sons are
still at Mansfeld. For the rest, we have enough
to eat and to drink, and should have good days,
were it not for this vexatious affair. I think
the Devil is mocking us. May God mock him
again ! Pray for us ! The messenger is in
great haste. St. Dorothy's day, 1546.

TO HIS WIFE.

To my dear Housewife, Katharin Lutherin, Doc-
toress, Self-martyress, my Gracious Lady, —
for her hands and feet.
Grace and Peace in the Lord ! Dear Kate,

* A line is wanting here.

do thou read John and the little catechism, con
cerning which thou once saidst, tliat all con-
tained in that book is by me. For thou must
needs care, before thy God, just as if he were
not Almighty, and could not create ten Doctor
Martins if tlie single old one were to drown in
the Saale,or the Oven-hole, or Wolf "sVogelheerd.
Leave me in peace with thy anxiety. I have
a better guardian than thou and all the angels
are. He lies in the crib, and hangs upon the
Virgin's teats, but sitteth, nevertheless, at the
right hand of God, the Almighty Father. There-
fore be in peace. Amen !

I think that hell and the whole world must
now be emptied of all their devils, who, — per-
ad venture all on my account, — have come to
gether, here in Eisleben. So firm and hard the
matter stands. • * * Pray! pray! pray
and help us that we may do well ! For I was
minded to grease the wagon to-day, in ira mea,
but pity for my fatherland withheld me. I too
am become a jurist. But it will not go. It were
betterthey let me remain a theologian. • * •
They demean themselves as they were God ;
which they were best cease from betimes, ere
their God-head becomes a devil-head, as it hap-
pened unto Lucifer, who could not remain in
heaven by reason of his arrogance. Well, God's
will be done i * * » The domestic wine
here is good, and the Naumburg beer is very
good, except that I think it makes my breast
full of phlegm with its pitch. The Devil has
spoiled us the beer, in all the world, with his
pitch, and, widi you, the wine, with sulphur.
* * * And know that all the letters which
thou hast written have arrived here ; and to-day
came that which thou wrotest next Friday, to-
gether with the letter of 31. Philipps, — that thou
mayest not be impatient. The Sunday after
Dorothy's day, 154G.

Thy dear Lord,

M. Luther.

TO HIS WIFE.

To my friendly, dear Kate Luther, at Witten-
berg. For her own hands, &c.
Grace and Peace in the Lord ! Dear Kate,
we arrived to-day, at 8 o'clock, in Halle ; but
could not proceed to Eisleben, for there met us
a great Anabaptist with billows of water and
cakes of ice, covering the country, and threaten-
ing us with baptism. For the same cause we
could not return again, on account of the Mulda ;
but were forced to lie still at Halle, between
the waters. Not that we thirsted to drink of
them. We took, instead, good Torgau beer and
good Rhenish wine, and comforted and refreshed
ourselves with the same, while we waited till
the Saale should have spent her wrath. For,
since the people and the coachmen and we
ourselves, were fearful, we did not wish to
venture into the water and tempt God. For

MARTIN LUTHER.

27

the Devil is our enemy and dwelleth in the
water, and prevention is better than complain-
ing, and there is no need to give the Pope and
his officers occasion for a foolish joy. * • •
For the present, nothing more, except to bid thee
pray for us and be good. I think if thou hadst
been with us, thou would st also have counselled
us to do as we have done. Then, for once, we
had followed thy counsel. Herewith be com-
mended to God. Amen. Halle, on the day of
Paul's conversion, anno 154G.

Martinus Ltjthek, Doct.

TO HIS FATHER.

A LETTEK OF CONSOLATION IN SICKNESS.

To my dear Father, Hans Luther, citizen at
Mansfeld in the valley. — Grace and Peace in
Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour ! Amen.
Dear Father, Jacob, my brother, has written
me that you are dangerously sick. Seeing then
that the air is now bad, and that otherwise
there is danger from all quarters, — also in regard
of the times, I am moved with anxiety on your
account. For although God has hitherto given
and preserved to you a firm and hardy body,
yet doth your age, at this time, cause me anxious
thoughts. Albeit, without that, we are none of
us secure of our life a single hour, neither ought
we to be. Wherefore, I had been beyond mea-
sure delighted to come to you bodily, but my
good friends have dissuaded me therefrom, and
I myself must think that I ought not to tempt
God by venturing upon danger, for you know
with what favour lords and peasants regard
me.

But great joy would it be to me, — so it were
possible — that you, together with the mother,
would suffer yourselves to be brought hither to
us ; which my Kate also with tears desireth,
and we all. I hope it; we would wait upon
you after the best manner. To this end have I
despatched Cyriac to you, to see if your weak-
ness might allow of it. For whether, according
to the will of God, you are destined for longer
life here, or for life hereafter, I would, from my
heart, as is fitting, be bodily near you, and,
according to the fourth* commandment, with
childlike faith and service, prove myself grate-
ful toward God and you.

Meanwhile, I pray the Father, — who hath
created and given you for a father to me, — from
my heart's ground, that he would strengthen
you according to his groundless love, and en-
lighten and preserve you by his Spirit, that you
may know, with joy and thanksgiving, the
blessed doctrine of his Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ, to which you have now, by his grace,
been called, and have come out of the horrible
lormer darkness and errors. And I hope that

* According to the Lutheran Catechism, which adopts
the Roman Catholic arrangement of the Decalogue.

his Grace which hath given you this knowledge,
and therewith hath begun his work in you, will
preserve and continue it to the end, into yonder
life and the joyful future of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen !

For he hath already sealed this doctrine and
faith in you, and confirmed it with tokens, to
wit: that you have suffered, for my name's
sake, much reviling, contumely, scorn, mockery,
contempt, hatred, enmity, and danger, together
with us all. But these are the true signs wherein
we must be like unto our Lord Christ, as St.
Paul saith, Rom. viii. 17, that we may be glori
fied together with him.

Wherefore let your heart be refreshed and
comforted now in your weakness, for we have,
in yonder life with God, a sure and faithful
helper, Jesus Christ, who, for us, hath destroyed
death together with sin, and now sitteth there
for us, and, together with all the angels, looketh
down upon us and tendeth us, when we go out,
that we need not care, nor fear to sink, nor fall
into ruin. For he hath said it and promised,
he will and cannot lie nor deceive us. Thereof
there can be no doubt. Ask ! saith he, and ye
shall receive, seek and ye shall find ! Knock
and it shall be opened unto you! And the
whole psalter is full of such comfortable assu-
rances, especially the 91st psalm, which is par-
ticularly good to be read by all that are sick.
* * * But, if it be his will that you be still
withheld from that better life, and continue to
suffer with us in this troubled and unblest vale
of sorrows, and to see and hear our misery, and,
together with all Christians, help to bear and
overcome it, he will also give you grace to ac-
cept all this with willing obedience. For this
cursed life is nothing else but a right vale of
sorrows. The longer one remain eth in it, the
more sin, wickedness, plague and misery one
sees and experiences, and there is no cessation
nor diminution of the same until we are beaten
upon with the spade. Then, at last, it must
cease and suffer us to sleep contentedly, in the
peace of Christ, until he shall come and wake
us again with gladness. Amen!

Herewith I commend you to Him who loveth
you better than you love yourself, and hath
proved his love in that he hath taken your sins
upon himself, and paid with his blood, and hath
given you to know the same by his gospel and
to believe it by his Spirit. * • * The same,
our dear Lord and Saviour be with you and by
you, until — God grant it may come to pass here
or yonder — we see each other again in joy.
For our faith is sure, and we doubt not that we
shall shortly see each other again with Christ;
seeing the departure from this life to God is
much less than if I should come hither from you
at Mansfeld, or you should go hence from me
at Wittenberg. That is true, of a certainty. It
is but an hour of sleep, and then all shall be
changed.

Howbeit. I hope that your pastor and preacher
will show you richly a true service in these

28

MARTIN LUTHER.

things, so that you scarce shall need my gossip,
— yet could I not omit to excuse my bodily ab-
sence, which, God knows, grieveth me from the
heart.

My Kate, Ha,nschen, Lenichen, Aunt Lehne
and the whole house greet you and pray for
you faithfully. Greet my dear mother and all
our friends! God"s Grace and Power be and
remain with you forever! Amen.
Your dear son,

Martinus Lutheu.
Wittenberg, I5th February, anno 1530.

TO HIS SON JOHN.

Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little
son. I see with pleasure that thou learnest
well and prayest diligently. Do so, my son, and
continue. When I come home I will bring thee
a pretty fairing.

I know a pretty, merry garden wherein there
are many children. They have little golden
coats, and they gather beautiful apples under
the trees, and pears, cherries, plums and wheat-
plums; — they sing and jump and are merry.
They have beautiful little horses, too, with gold
bits and silver saddles. And I asked the man
to whom the garden belongs, whose children
they were? And he said. They are the children
that love to pray and to learn, and are good.
Then I said, Dear man, I have a son too, his
name is Johnny Luther. May he not also come
into this garden and eat these beautiful apples
and pears, and ride these fine horses? Then
the man said. If he loves to pray and to learn,
and is good, he shall come into this garden, and
Lippus and Jest too, and when they all come
together they shall have fifes and trumpets,
lutes, and all sorts of music, and they shall dance,
and shoot with little cross-bows.

And he showed me a fine meadow there in
the garden, made for dancing. There hung
nothing but golden fifes, trumpets, and fine silver
cross-bows. But it was early, and the children
had not yet eaten ; therefore I could not wait
the dance, and I said to the man : Ah ! dear sir !
I will immediately go and write all this to my
little son Johnny, and tell him to pray diligently,
and to learn well, and to be good, so that he
may also come to this garden. But he has an
aunt Lehne, he must bring her with him. Then
the man said, It shall be so ; go and write him
so.

Therefore, my dear. little son Johnny, learn
and pray away ! and tell Lippus and Jost too,
that they must learn and pray. And then you
shall come to the garden together. Herewith I
commend thee to Almighty God. And greet
aunt Lehne, and give her a kiss for my sake.
Thy dear Father,

Martinus Luther.
Anno 1530.

TO JONAS VON STOCKHAUSEN.

A LETTER OF ADVICE INSTRUCTINO HIM HOW TO CONTEND Vmn
HIS WEARINESS OF LIFE. WRITTEN THE 2Tth MOV., 1532.

To the sevexe and firm Jonas von Stockhausen,
Captain at Nordhausen, my Gracious Master
and good friend.

Grace and peace in Christ! Severe, firm,
dear Master and friend. It hath been made
known to me by good friends how hardly the
foul Fiend assaileth you with weariness of life
and desire of death. 0 ! my dear friend, here
is high time not to trust, by any means, nor to
follow your own thoughts, but to hear other
people who are free from such buff"etings. Yea !
bind your ear firmly to our mouth, and let our
word enter your heart; so shall God through
our word comfort and strengthen you.

In the first place, you know that man shall
and must obey God, and diligently guard him,
self against disobedience to his will. Since
then you are sure and must comprehend that
God gives you life, and will not yet have you
dead, your thoughts should yield to his Divine
will, and you should obey him cheerfully, and
have no doubt that such thoughts, as disobedient
to the will of God, are, of a certainty, shot and
thrust with force into your heart by the Devil.
Wherefore you behove to resist them firmly,
and forcibly bear, or tear them out again.

To our Lord Christ, also, life was sore and
bitter, yet would he not die without his Father's
will, and he fled death, and preserved life
while he could, and said. My hour is not yet
come. And Elias and Jonas, and other pro-
phets, called and cried for death, by reason of
great sorrow and impatience of life, and, more-
over, cursed their birth, their day and life. Yet
were they constrained to live and to bear their
weariness with all their might, until their hour
came.

Truly, you behove to follow these words and
examples, as the words and admonitions of the
Holy Spirit, and to spue out and throw from
you the thoughts which drive you the contrary
way. And, though it may be sore and diflicult
to do, let it seem to you as if you were bound
and fettered with chains, out of which you must
twist and work yourself loose, till the sweat
breaks from you. For the Devil's darts, when
they stick so deep, may not be drawn forth
with laughter, nor without labour; but with
force must they be torn out.

Wherefore it is needful that you take heart
and comfort against yourself, and speak with
indignation against yourself: "Nay, fellow! be
thou never so unwilling to live, yet shalt thou
and must thou live; fol: my God will have it
so, and I will have it so. Get you gone! ye
devil's thoughts of dying and death, into the
abyss of hell. Ye have nothing to do here,"
&c. And grind your teeth together against such
thoughts, and set up such a hard head for God"s
will, and make yourself more obstinate and stifl-

MARTIN LUTHER.

29

necked than any curst boor or shrew, yea, harder
than any anvil of iron.

If you shall so attack yourself and contend
against yourself, God will surely help you.
But if you do not struggle nor defend yourself,
but leave such thoughts free to plague you at
their leisure, you will soon be lost.

But the best of all advice is, not to fight with
them always, but, if you can, to despise them, —
to act as though you felt them not, to think of
something else, and to speak in this wise :
Come ! Devil, do not teaze me ! I cannot now
attend to thy thoughts ; I must ride, drive, eat,
drink, do this or that ; — also, I must be merry
now. Come again to-morrow ! &c. And take
in hand whatever else you can, play and the
like, that you may be able, freely and easily, to
despise such thoughts, and send them from you,
even with coarse, uncivil words, as: Dear Devil,

if thou canst come no nearer to me, then

, &c., I cannot wait for thee now.

Let them read you, as touching such matters,
the example of the " Louse-cracker," of the
" Goose-fife," and the like, in Gerson, de cogita-
tionibus blasphemice. This is the best counsel ;
and our prayer, and the prayers of all good
Christians, shall help you. Herewith I com-
mend you to our dear Lord, the only Saviour,
and true conqueror, Jesus Christ. May he
maintain his victory and triumph against the
Devil in your heart, and rejoice us all by his aid
and his wonders in you ; which w^e comfortably
hope and pray, according as he hath bidden
and assured us. Amen !

Doctor Mahtinus Lutheh.
Wittenberg, Wednesday after Catharinse.

TO THE LADY VON STOCKHAUSEN.

LUTHER COUNSELS HEK IN RELATION TO THE MELANCHOLY OF HER
HUSBAND.

To the honourable and virtuous Lady N. von
Stockhausen, Captain's lady at Nordhausen,
— my gracious and kind friend.
Grace and peace in Christ! Honourable and
virtuous Lady! I have written, in haste, a
brief letter of consolation to your dear Lord.
Well ! the Devil is hostile to you both, for that
you love his enemy, Christ. You must pay the
price of that, as he himself saith : "Because I
have chosen you, therefore the world hateth
you and the prince thereof; but be of good
cheer." Precious, in the sight of God, are the
sufferings of his saints. But now, in haste, I
can write but little. Take heed, before all
things, that you leave not your husband one
moment alone ; and let him have nothing where-
with he might do injury to himself. Solitude,
to him, is jture poison, and therefore the Devil
himself driveth him to it. But it were well to
tell or to have read in his presence, many
stories, new tidings, and strange matters. It
will not be amiss, if, at times, they are idle and

false tidings, and tales of Turks, Tartars, and
the like ; — if haply he may be incited thereby,
to laugh and to jest. And then, down upon
him with comfortable words of Scripture.
Whatsoever you do, let it not be lonesome or
still about him ; that he may not sink into
thought. It shall do no harm, if he should be
made angry on account thereof. Pretend as if
you were sorry for it, and scold, &c. But still
do it the more. Take this in haste, for want of
better. Christ, who is the cause of such sorrow,
will help him, as he hath lately conferred help
on yourself. Only hold fast ! you are the apple
of his eye. Whoever toucheth that, toucheth
him. Amen !

DocToii Martinus Luther.
Wittenberg, Wednesday after CatharinDe, 1532.

TO CHANCELLOR BRUCK.

A LETTER OF ENCOURAGEMENT IN RELATION TO THE CAUSE OF
THE REFORMERS.

To the estimable right learned Master Gregory
Briick, Doctor of Laws, the Elector of Saxony
his Chancellor and Counsellor, my gracious
Master and friendly, dear Gossip.
Grace and peace in Christ ! Estimable, right
learned, dear Master and dear Gossip. I have
written now several times to my most gracious
Lord and to our friends, so that I think I have
overdone the matter, — especially, as concerneth
my most gracious Lord ; — as if I doubted that
the aid and grace of God were more abundant
and more powerful with his Electoral Princely
Grace than with me. I have done it at the in-
stigation of our people, of whom some are so
careful and cast down, as if God had forgotten
us. — who cannot forget us except he first forget
himself. Then were our cause not his cause,
nor our doctrine his Word. Otherwise, if we
be assured and doubt not that it is his cause and
Word, then is our prayer certainly heard, and
aid is already decreed and prepared, and we
shall be helped. It cannot fail. For he saith :
"Can a woman forget her child, that she should
not have compassion on the fruit of her womb?
And though she should forget, yet will not I for-
get thee," &c.

I saw lately two miracles. First, as I looked
out at the window, I saw the stars in the hea-
vens and the whole fair dome of God ; yet did
I see no pillars on which the Master had placed
this dome. Nevertheless, the heavens fell not,
and the dome stands yet fast. Now there are
some that seek for such pillars. They would
fain lay hold of and feel them. And because
they cannot do this, they struggle and tremble
as though the heaven must certainly fall, for no
other reason than because they cannot seize or
see the pillars. Could they but lay hold of these,
the heaven would stand firm.

Next, I saw also great thick clouds hover over
us with such weight that they might be likened
3*

30

MARTIN LUTHER.

to a great sea. Yet saw I no floor upon which
they rested or found footing, nor any vessels in
which they were contained. Still they fell not
down upon us, but greeted us with a sour face
and flew away. When they were gone, then
shone forth both the floor and our roof which
had held them, — the rainbow. That was a
weak, thin, small floor and roof; and it va-
nished in the clouds ; and, in appearance, was
more like an image, such as is seen through a
painted glass, than a strong floor. So that one
might despair on account of the floor, as well
as on account of the great weight of water.
Nevertheless, it was found in truth, that this
almighty image (such it seemed) bore the bur-
den of the waters and protected us. Yet there
be some who consider, regard and fear the
water and the thickness of the clouds and the
heavy burden of them, more than this thin, nar-
row and light image. For they would fain feel
the strength of the image, and because they can-
not do this, they fear that the clouds will occa-
sion an everlasting sin-flood.

Thus, in friendly wise, must I jest with your
Honour, and yet write without jesting ; for I
have had special joy, in that I learned that your
Honour hath had, before all others, good courage
and a cheerful heart in this, our butfeting. I
had hoped that, at the least, a pax politica might
have been obtained, but God's thoughts are far
above our thoughts. And it is even right, for
He, as St. Paul saith, heareth and doth supra
quam intelligimus aut petintus. " For we know
not how to pray as we ought." (Rom. viii. 26.)
If he should hear us now, after the same man-
ner in which we pray, — that the emperor may
give us peace, — it might be infra, not supra
quam intelligimus, and the emperor, not God,
should have the glory. * * * ^Q^^^ ^j^jg -work
which God hath vouchsafed to us by his Grace,
he will also bless and further by his Spirit. He
will find way, time and place to help us, and
will neither forget nor delay. They have not
yet accomplished the half of what they under-
take, the viri sanguinis. Nor have they yet all
returned to their homes, or whither they would
go. Our rainbow is weak, their clouds are
mighty, but in fine videbitur cujus toni. Your
Honour v/ill pardon my gossip, and comfort
Magister Philip and all the rest. Christ shall
also comfort and preserve me our most gracious
Lord. To Him be praise and thanks in eter-
nity! Amen! To His Grace I also faithfully
commend your Honour.

Mahtinus Luthek, Doct.
Ex Eremo, 5 Aug. anno mdxxx.

TO JOSEPH LEVIN METZSCH AT MILA.

ANSWER TO THE QUESTION WHETHER INHERITED DEBTS ARE TO
BE CONSIDERED AS A PART OF THE CROSS LAID UPON US BY GOD.

To the severe and firm Joseph Levin Metzsch,
at Mila, my kind, good Master and friend.

Grace and peace in Christ! Severe, firm,
dear master and friend. Whereas you are
moved to know if pecuniary debt, inherited
from parents, be also a cross imposed by God, —
you may suppose that every scourge wherewith
God scourgeth his children is a portion of the
holy cross. Seeing then that debts, or need, or
poverty are no light scourge, for him who knows
not how to bear them, they are also, without
doubt, a perceptible particle of the holy cross,
with the children of God who know how to bear
and to use it. But, like every other chastise-
ment of the dear Father, it ought not to terrify
the conscience, as a serious disfavour, but to
comfort and strengthen it, as a fatherly rod or
fox-tail.* For whether one fall into debt wan-
tonly or carelessly, or whether one innocently
inherit it, it is nevertheless appointed by God,
and the rod is laid upon us through our own
carelessness and wantonness. Herewith be
commended to God ! Amen.

Martinus Luther.
1 2th March, 1520.

TO THE POPE, LEO X.

Luther, in this letter, defends himself from the charge of hav-
ing attacked the person of the Pope ; expresses his willingness
to do all that is required of him, except to recant or renounce
the right of private interpretation, and admonishes the Pope
not to listen to flatterers, but to those who speak the truth. —
This letter was originally written in Latin, and afterwards
translated by Luther himself into German.

To the most Holy Father in God, Leo the tenth,
Pope at Rome, all blessedness in Christ Jesus
our Lord ! Amen.

Most holy Father in God, the troubles and the
controversy in which I have been entangled
now, these three years, with certain wild men,
compel me, from time to time, to look toward
thee, and to think of thee. Yea ! seeing it is
believed that thou art the only principal cause
of this controversy, I cannot avoid to think of
thee without cessation. For though I am com-
pelled by some of thy unchristian flatterers, who,
without all reason, are incensed against me, —
to appeal from thy chair and judgment to a free
Christian coimcil iti my cause ; yet have I never
so estranged my mind from thee, as not, with all
my powers, to wish the best at all times to thee
and thy Romish Chair, and, with diligent, hearty
prayer, as much as I was able, to implore the
same from God. True it is, tliat I have taken
upon myself greatly to despise and to overcome
them that hitherto have been at pains to threaten
me with the loftiness and greatness of thy name
and power. But there is now one thing which
I may not despise, which also is the reason that
I write to thee again ; and that is, that I per-
ceive that I am inaligned and misinterpreted,
and am said not even to have spared thy person.

* A kind of whip.

MARTIN LUTHER.

31

But I will freely and openly confess that, so
far as I am conscioiis, as oft as I have made
mention of thy person, I have ever said the best
and most honourable things concerning thee.
And if, at any time, I have not done so, I can,
myself, in no wise commend it, and must con-
firm the judgment of my accusers with full con-
fession, and wish for nothing more dearly, than
to sing the counterpart of this my insolence and
wickedness, and to retract my faulty word. I
have called thee a Daniel in Babylon ; and how
diligently I have defended thy innocence against
the slanderer Sylvester, every one who reads it
may superabundantly understand. * * *

* * * But this is true, I have freely at-
tacked the Romish Chair, which they name the
Roman Court, concerning which thou thyself
must confess, — and no one upon earth can con-
fess otherwise, — that it is viler and more shame-
ful than ever was Sodom or Gomorrah or Baby-
lon. And, as far as I perceive, its wickedness
henceforth is neither to be counselled nor helped.
Everything there has become altogether despe-
rate and bottomless. Wherefore it hath vexed
me, that under thy name and the semblance of
the Romish Church, the poor people, in all the
world, have been cheated and injured. Against
which I have contended and will yet contend,
while my Christian spirit liveth within me. * *

* * * Mean wliile thou sittest, holy Father
Leo, like a sheep among the wolves, and like
Daniel among the lions, and like Ezekiel among
the scorpions. What canst thou alone do among
so many wild monsters ? And though three or
four learned and pious Cardinals should fall to
thy lot, what were they among such a multi-
tude? Ye should sooner perish with poison ere
ye could undertake to help the matter. It is
over with the Romish Chair. God's wrath,
without cessation, hath overtaken it. It is op-
posed to the general Councils. It will not suffer
itself to be instructed nor reformed. Yet shall
not its raging and unchristian manners hinder
it from fulfilling that which is said of its mother,
the ancient Babylon, " We would have healed
Babylon and she is not healed, — we will let her
go." Jer. li. 9.

Haply, it were thy task and that of the Car-
dinals to prevent this misery ; but the sickness
mocks medicine ; — horse and carriage obey not
the coachman. This is the cause why I have
ever so grieved, thou good Leo, that thou hast
been made a pope at this time, who wert well
worthy to have been pope in better times. The
Roman Chair is not worthy of thee and the like
of thee ; rather the evil Spirit ought to be pope,
who also surely doth reign in Babylon, more
than thou.

O ! would to God thou wert rid of the honour,
as they call it, — thy most mischievous friends, —
and mightest maintain thyself with some pre-
bend, or with thy paternal inheritance! Truly,
none but Judas Iscariot and his like, whom
God hath rejected, should be honoured with
such honour. For tell me, whereunto art thou

yet of use in Popedom? Save, that the worse
and more desperate it grows, the more vehe-
mently it abuseth thy power and title to injure
the people in body and soul, to increase sin and
shame, and to quench faith and truth. 0 ! thou
most unhappy Leo ! thou sittest in the most
dangerous of all chairs. Verily! I tell thee the
truth, for I bear thee good-will. * * »

* * * I will speak yet farther. It had
never entered my heart to storm against the
Roman Court nor to dispute concerning it. For
since I saw that there was no help, — that cost
and pains were lost, I treated it with contempt,
gave it a letter of dismission, and said; Adieu
dear Rome! That which stinketh, let it stink
on ! and that- which is filthy, let it be filthy still !
(Revel. XX. IL) And so I betook myself to the
silent, quiet study of the Holy Scriptures, that I
might become profitable to them among whom
I dwelt. And, when now I laboured not un-
fruitfully in this matter, the evil Spirit oi^ened
his eyes and became aware of the same.
Straightway he stirred up, with a mad ambition,
his servant John Eck. — a special enemy of
Christ and the truth, — and bade him drag me,
unawares, into a disputation ; — seizing upon a
word touching the popedom that had escaj^ed
me by chance. ******

* * * So now I come, holy Father Leo,
and laying myself at thy feet, entreat thee, if it
be possible, to put forth thine hand, and to place
a bridle upon those flatterers who are enemies
of peace, and yet pretend peace. But, as to
retracting my doctrine, of that nothing will come.
And let no one take it upon himself, except he
wish to entangle the matter in still greater con-
fusion. Moreover, I may not suffer rule or
measure in the interpretation of the Scripture,
seeing that the word of God, which teacheth all
freedom, must not and shall not be bound. If
these two articles be allowed me, nothing else
shall be laid upon me, that I will not do and
sufier with all willingness. I am an enemy to
strife and will incense or provoke no one, but
neither will I be provoked. And if I be pro-
voked I will not be without a word, spoken or
written, God willing. Thy Holiness may with
short and easy words take it upon thyself, and
extinguish all this controversy, and thereupon
be silent and command peace, which I have,
alway, been altogether eager to hear.

Wherefore, my Holy Father, do not listen to
thy sweet ear-singers, who say that thou art not
mere man, but united with God, and hast all
things to command and to require. It may not
be, and thou wilt not effect it. Thou art the
servant of all the servants of God, and art in a
more dangerous and miserable condition than
any man upon the earth. Let them not deceive
thee, who lie to thee and pretend that thou art
lord of the world ; and who will not suifer any
one to be a Christian except he be subject to
thee; — who babble that thou hast power in
heaven, in hell, and in purgatory. They are
thy enemies, and seek to destroy thy soul.

32

MARTIN LUTHER.

* * * They err all, who say thou art above
the Council and universal Christendom. They
err who give to thee alone the power to inter-
pret Scripture. They, all of them, seek nothing
else than how they may sanction their unchris-
tian doings in Christendom by means of thy
name; as the evil Spirit, alas! hath done through
many of thy predecessors. In brief, believe
none who exalt thee, but only them who humble
thee. That is God's judgment, as it is written :
" He hath put down the mighty from their seats,
and exalted them of low degree." Luke i. 52.

See how unlike are Christ and his vicege-
rents ! For they would all fain be his vicege-
rents, and, verily, I fear, they are too truly his
vicegerents. For a vicegerent is so in the ab-
sence of his lord. If then a pope reigneth in
the absence of Christ, who dwelleth not in his
heart, is he not too tndy the vicegerent of Christ?

* * * But what may such a pope be except
an antichrist and an idol? How much better
did the apostles, who called themselves, and
sutfered themselves to be called, only servants
of Christ, who dwelt in them, and not vicege-
rents of an absent Christ.

Peradventure I am impudent, in that I seem
to instruct so great a height, from which every
one should receive instruction, — and as some
of thy poisonous flatterers represent thee, — from
which all kings and judgment- seats receive
judgment. But I follow in this St. Bernard, in
his book addressed to pope Eugene, which all
popes ought to know by heart. I do it, not
with the design to instruct thee, but from a pure
fidelity of care and duty which, of right, con-
straineth every man to take thought for his
neighbour even in those things which are secure,
and sufiereth us to regard neither honour nor
dishonour, so diligently doth it consider a neigh-
bour's danger and mishap. Wherefore, since I
know that thy Holiness floateth and hovereth
at Rome, — that is, upon the highest seas, — with
countless dangers raging on all sides, and liveth
and worketli in such misery that, haply, thou
hast need of the help, even of the meanest
Christian, I have thought it not unmeet that I
should forget thy majesty until I had fulfilled
the duty of brotherly love. I may not flatter in
so serious and dangerous a matter, in which, ^
if there be some who will not understand that
I am thy friend and more than subject, — there
shall yet be found one who understandeth it.

In conclusion, that I may not appear empty
before thy Holiness, I bring with me a little
book,* which has gone forth under thy name;
for a good wish and a beginning of peace and
good hope; from which thy Holiness may taste
with whiVt kind of business I would fain occupy
myself, and not unprofitably, if thy unchristian
flatterers w^ould let me. It is a little book, if
thou regardest the paper ; but yet the whole
sum of a Christian life is comprehended in it,
if the sense be understood. I am poor and

* Liber de Libertate Christiana.

have nothing else wherewith I may make
proof of my service; neither canst thou be
benefited more than with spiritual benefits.
Herewith I connnend myself to thy Holiness,
whom may Jesus Christ preserve forevermore !
Amen.

Wittenberg, 6th September, 1520.

TO BARBARA LISCHNERIN.

LUTHER SEEKS TO PACIFY HER IN REGARD TO HER DOUBTS OF
FUTURE BLESSEDNESS.

Grace and peace in Christ ! Virtuous, dear
Lady ! Your dear brother, Jerome Weller, hath
made known to me that you are greatly troubled
with doubts respecting the eternal Providence.
For which I am heartily sorry. May Christ,
our Lord, deliver you therefrom ! Amen.

For I know the sickness well, and have lain
in the hospital with it, even unto eternal death.
Now would I fain, over and above my prayers,
counsel and comfort you. But writing in such
matters is a feeble thing ; yet, as much as in me
lies, will I not refrain therefrom, if God will
give me grace for the work. And I will make
known to you how God hath helped me to es-
cape such bufietings, and with what art I yet
preserve myself from them day by day.

First, you must fix it firmly in your heart,
that such thoughts are assuredly the inflation
and the fiery darts of the Devil. So saith the
Scripture, Prov. xxv. 27, " He that searcheth the
height of majesty shall be cast down.''* Now
are such thoughts nothing but a searching of the
Divine Majesty ; they would fain search his
high Providence. And Jesus Sirach saith:
^'■Altiora ne quasieris" " Thoit shalt not inquire
after that which is too high for thee ;" but what
God hath commanded thee, that look after. For
it profiteth thee nothing to gaze after that which
is not commanded thee. And David also com-
plaineth that he had brought evil upon himself,
when he would inquire after things that were
too high for him.

Wherefore it is certain, that this cometh not
froin God but from the Devil. He plagues the
heart therewith ; that men may become enemies
of God and despair ; which, notwithstanding,
God hath strictly forbidden in the first com-
mandment ; and he willeth that men shall trust
and love and praise Him by whom we live.

Secondly, when such thoughts occur, you shall
learn to ask yourself: "Friend, in what com-
mandment is it written that I should think of
these things or handle them?' And if no such
commandment is found, then learn to say: " So
get thee gone, thou ugly Devil ! Thou wouldst
fain drive me to care for myself; whereas God
everywhere speaketh : "I care for thee; look

* English version : For men to search their own glory
is not glory.

MARTIN LUTHER.

33

unto me and wait that which I shall appoint,
and let me care," — as St. Peter teacheth, — 1
Pet. V. 7 : " Cast all your care upon him for he
careth for you ;" and David, Ps. Iv. 22 : " Cast
tliy biuden upon the Lord and he shall sustain
thee."

Thirdly, albeit, such thoughts do not imme-
diately cease, (for the Devil doth not willingly
desist,) you likewise, on your part, must not
cease, but must still turn your heart away from
them, and say : " Hearest thou not. Devil, that I
will not have such thoughts? And God hath
forbidden them. Get thee gone, I must now
be thinking of his commandments, and let him
care for me himself the while. If thou art so
exceeding wise in such matters, then get thee to
heaven, and dispute with God himself. He
can sufficiently answer thee." And, in this
way, you must still send him from you, and
turn your heart toward the commandments of
God.

FROM A LETTER

TO THE CHWSnANS AT ANTWKRP, IN WHICH LUTHER CAUTIOKS
THEM AGAINST FALSE TEACHERS.

Grace and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ ! My very dear masters
and friends in Christ ! I am moved by Chris-
tian love and carefulness to send this writing
unto you. For I have learned how that Spirits
of error are bestirring themselves among you,
which have the boldness to hinder and defile
the Christian doctrine, as happeneth in various
places. *******

* * * This one will have no baptism,
that one denies the sacrament, another supposes
a world between this and the last day. Some
teach that Christ is not God ; some say this and
some say that; and there are almost as many
sects and creeds as there are heads. There is
no simpleton now so rude, but if he dream or
imagine somewhat, the Holy Spirit must have
inspired it, and he claims to be a prophet. *

* * * So then, dear friends, there hath
come among you also a Spirit of disorder, in
bodily shape, who would fain cause you to err,
and lead you astray from the right under-
standing, into his conceits. Therefore take heed
and be warned ! But that you may the better
avoid his tricks, I will here relate some of them.

One article is : he holds that every man hath
the Holy Spirit.

The second : The Holy Spirit is nothing else
than our own reason and understanding.

The third : Every man believes.

The fourth: There is no hell or damnation,
but only the flesh is damned.

The fifth : Every soul will have eternal life.

The sixth : Nature teaches that I should do
unto my neighbour as t would that he should
do to me ; and to will this is faith.

The seventh: The Law is not violated by
evil lust, so I do not gratify the lust.

The eighth : He who hath not the Holy Spirit,
hath also no sin, for he hath no reason.

AH these are mere wanton articles of folly,
and excepting the seventh, not worth answering.
And your love shall do right to despise this
Spirit. For he is as many others are now, here
and there, who care not much what they teach,
and only desire that men may speak of them,
and have to do with them. And the Devil also
seeketh this uneasiness, that he may wrestle
with us, and the while hinder us, so that we
forget the true doctrine, or converse not with it.
Even so he useth to deceive the people with
other hobgoblins, that they may miss their way,
&c. And he setteth their mouth agape, that
they cannot attend to their business the while.
Just so this Spirit does with you, in these arti-
cles.

Wherefore, be warned, for God's sake, and
take heed that ye despise and let go all that
presenteth itself as new and strange, and which
it is not necessary to the salvation of the soul to
know. For, with such goblins, he seeketh to
catch the idle. ******

We have all enough to do, our whole life
long, to learn the commandments of God and
his Son Christ. When we are well instructed
in these, we will further inquire into these
secret articles, which this Spirit stirreth up
without cause, only that he may obtain honour
and fame. So then continue in the way, and
learn what Paul teacheth the Romans, and look
at my preface there, that you may know which
is the right method of learning in the Scriptures ;
and withdraw yourselves from useless prattlers.
Herewith I commend you to God. And pray
for me ! Amen.

TO HIS MESSMATES.

HE COMPARES THE ACTIONS OF THE BIRDS ABOUT HIM TO A DIET.

Grace and peace in Christ, dear Masters and
friends ! I have received the letters written
by you all, and have learned how it fareth on
every hand. That you, on your part, may learn
how it fareth here, I give you to know that we,
namely I, Master Veit and Cyriac, go not to the
Diet at Augsburg, but we have come to a diet
of a different sort, elsewhere.

There is a ?'OoA:eri/ justbeneath our window like
to a little forest. There the jackdaws and the
crows have established a diet. There is such
a riding to and fro, — such a screaming day and
night without cessation, as if they were all
dnmk, full and mad. Young and old chatter
together, so that I wonder how voice and breath
can hold out so long. And I would like to know
if any of this nobility and military gentry are
left with you ; for methinks they have assembled
together here, from all the world. I have not
yet seen their emperor, but the nobility and the

34r

MARTIN LUTHER.

great fellows hover and wriggle constantly be-
fore our eyes. They are not very splendidly
clad, but simply, in uniform colour, all alike
black, all alike gray-eyed, and all alike sing one
song; yet with a pleasant difference of young
and old, great and small. They care not for
great palaces and halls; for their hall is arched
with the fair wide heaven ; their floor is the
field, wainscotted with beautiful green bows ;
and the walls are as wide as the ends of the
world. Neither do they care for steed or har-
ness. They have feathered wheels with which
they can fly from the firelocks and escape from
wrath. They are grand, mighty lords ; but what
they will decree, I know not yet.

But so far as I have learned from their inter-
preter, they intend a mighty expedition and
warfare against wheat, rye, oats, malt, and all
kinds of grain ; and there will be many a knight
made in this cause, and great deeds will be
done.

Thus do we sit here at the diet, and hear and
see with great joy and love how the princes and
lords, together with the other estates of the em-

pire, sing and luxuriate so joyfully together.
But a special joy have we when we see in what
a knightly fashion they wriggle, wipe their bills,
and overthrow the defence, that they may con-
quer and acquire glory against corn and malt.
We wish them joy and weal, and especially
that they may be spitted upon a hedge-stake.
But I hold that they are nothing else but sophists
and papists, with their preaching and writing;
whom I must needs have before me in a heap,
that I may hear their lovely voice and discourse,
and see how useful a gentry it is, to devour all
that is on the earth, and, in return, to chatter
for pastime.

To day we have heard the first nightingale,
for they have not been willing to trust April.
Hitherto we have had only splendid weather.
It hath not rained once, except yesterday, a
little. With you peradventure it may be other-
wise. Herewith be commended to God, and
keep house well !

Mahtinus Lutheh, Doct.
From the Diet of the Malt-Turks, 2Sih April,

anno 1530.

JACOB BOEHME.^

Born 1576. Died 1024.

This celebrated mystic, whose speculations
procured for him, in his own age, the significant
title of ''Philosophiis Teutoniciis,'" appears in
strong contrast with the great Reformer by
whose side he is placed in these pages.f He
may be regarded as the antipodes of Luther in
all the leading tendencies of his mind. Lu-
ther's fame rests on his character, — that of
Boehme is derived from his thought. The one
was a man of action, with an eye to practical
effect in all that he wrote and did ; the other
was a quietist, whose spirit reposed with intense
inwardness on itself, and who knew no world
but that of his own dreams. Luther sought to
ground a popular theology, Boehme strove to
penetrate the deepest mysteries of Being. Lu-
ther aimed at what was needful or profitable
for the daily use and conduct of life, Boehme
aspired to the highest truth. The one laboured
to instruct the masses, the other to instruct
himself. The former had his sphere in the
actual, the other in the absolute. They relate
to each other as Paul and John.

Boehme, like Luther, was a son of the people.
His birthplace was Alt Seidenberg, in Lower
Lusatia, near Gorlitz, where he afl;erward
practised his craft. His parents were peasants
of the poorest sort ; his calling that of shoe-
maker. Born to narrow fortunes and humble
hopes, the shoemaker of Gorlitz, like his Eng-
lish fellow-craftsman, the shoemaker of Leices-
ter, was "one of those to whom under ruder or
purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is
pleased to manifest itself, and across all the
hulls of ignorance and earthly degradation,
shine through, in unspeakable awfulness, in
unspeakable beauty, on their souls."| He re-

* Called by English writers, Behmen. This corruption
seems past recovery.

t Although placed by his side, in accordance with the
plan of this work, Boehme is more than half a century
removed from Luther in chronological order. The in-
terval between them is far from being a blank in the
literary history of Germany. It contains many names of
note ; — among which those of Zwingli, Ulrich von Hutten,
Sebastian Frank, and Johann Fischart, would claim a
distinguished place in a complete survey of German lite-
rature,—but none wliich properly come within the scope
of this Collection.
I Carlyle.

ceived no instruction from books until his
eleventh year, and then, from no other but
the bible, the ability to read which, was the
extent of his schooling. But, before this, he
had received instruction of a different sort,
while tending cattle in the fields.

"His daily teachers had been woods and rills.
The silence that ia in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

And there the God who delights to pour out
his Spirit in vessels of this quality, — " Der stets
den Schdfern gncidig sich bewies," — drew
near to his soul in the eternal melodies of
Nature. Established m his calling at Gorlitz,
" sitting in his stall, working on tanned hides,
amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles,
and a nameless heap of rubbish," he continued
to see visions and to dream dreams, and be-
lieved himself the recipient and medium of
Divine revelations. At three different times,
accordino- to his own account, he was environed
with supernatural light, which attended him,
in one instance, for seven successive days.
" Replenished with heavenly knowledge," he
went out into the fields, and "viewing the
herbs and the grass, he saw into their essences
and properties, which were discovered to him
by their lineaments, figures, and signatures."*
The first reflection of this illumination was the
"Aurora," or "The Morning-redness in the
East," which he wrote with no view to publi-
cation, but merely by way of record and mem-
orandum,— " that the mysteries revealed to hhn
might not pass through him as a stream." It
became public without his consent, and was
seized and condemned as heretical by the
Senate of Gorlitz, at the instigation of a clerical
persecutor. The author was admonished to
write no more books, but to confine himself to
his proper calling. As if the proverb, "iVe
sutor,''^ &c., had been made expressly for him,
Boehme meekly promised obedience, not doubt-
ing, in his simplicity, that he had committed

* See "Jacob Behmen's Theosophick Philosophy, un-
folded in divers Considerations and Demonstrations, by
Edward Taylor. With a short account of the life of Jacob
Behmen." London, 1G91.

36

JACOB BOEHME.

an error. A silence of seven years ensued. At
the expiration of this term, having meanwhile
removed from Gorlitz to Dresden, and expe-
riencing new motions of the Spirit, he no longer
hesitated to write and to publish. He composed,
in rapid succession, a large number of works,
in which he endeavors to communicate his
revelations; struggling painfully with want of
culture and of language, in his attempts to
express ideas so far beyond the range of that
experience which had furnished the only dialect
he knew. Latin words and scientific terms,
picked up in conversation with scholars, without
any clear understanding of their import, are
brought in to eke out his slender vocabulary ;
and serve only to enhance the obscurity, by the
unusual and illegitimate sense in which they
are employed. "Art," he says, "hath not
written here, neither was there any time to
consider how to set it punctually down, accord-
ino- to the riffht understanding of the letters,
but all was ordered according to the direction
of the Spirit, which often went in haste. And
though I could have written in a more accurate,
fair, and plain manner, yet the reason was this,
that the burning fire did often force forward
with speed, and the hand and pen must hasten
directly after it, for it cometh and goeth as a
sudden shower." — "I can write nothing of my-
self, but as a child which neither knoweth nor
understandeth, but only that which the Lord
vouchsafeth to know in me."

Never, since the days of the Apostles, has
such defective scholarship been united with
such intellectual fecundity and such important
results. Jacob Boehme has been a guide and a
prophet to men of the profoundest intellect, of
the most exalted station, and the most distin-
guished piety. Religious sects have been
founded on his doctrine, and called by his name.
William Law, the most devout of English
mystics, was his disciple, and published an
English edition of his works. Schelling, the
most cultivated of German Transcendentalists,
author of the " Philosophy of Identity," bears
witness to the depth and wealth of his intuitive
wisdom, and reflects it in his Ontology. Goethe,
in his youthful speculations, seems to have
borrowed from him the leading idea of his cos-
mogony.* King Charles L of England is said

* The idea tliat the material universe was created out
of the ruins of a fallen, spiritual world. See "Aus niei-
nem Leben," Book VIII.

to have sent a special messenger to Gorlitz to
learn of Boehme, and, after reading, in the
English, the "Answers to the forly questions of
the soul," to have declared, that " if, as he had
been informed, the author was no scholar, it
was evident that the Holy Ghost yet dwelled
in men."

It is not easy to collect the true form of
Boehme's philosophy out of the thick obscurity
of his writings. And it is more difficult still,
to separate the pure idea from the form, in a
system so complicated with Christian mythology
and Christian dogmatics. One knows not how
much or how little may be intended by the
theological phraseology in which the author has
clothed his speculations, where biblical terms
are often so warped from their literal import.
But if we divide the various systems of philoso-
phy, according to their ontological characteris-
tics, into three classes; viz: the Magian or
Dualistic, — the Unitarian, with its numberless
varieties, theistic, atheistic, and pantheistic,
from Anaximander to Spinoza, — and, thirdly,
the Platonic or Trinitarian ; — the speculations
of Boehme will be found in the last of these
divisions. He belongs to the Platonic family
of philosophers, by virtue of the triune nature
which he ascribes to Being. His system*
supposes three Principles, in which all Being
is comprised. The first Principle, or the Fa-
ther,— " the eternal Darkness," like the ■to sv of
the Platonic Trinity, is destitute of intelligence
in itself (aXoyoj), although the Father of intelli-
ffence. It is not so much God as the source of
God. " Fons deitatis.''^ From this first Prin-
ciple proceeds, by eternal generation, the second
Principle, the Son, " the eternal Light." And
from these two proceeds, by eternal generation,
the third, "the Outbirth," which is the imme-
diate cause of the material creation. These
three Principles are undivided in God; but,
through the fall of Lucifer and his angels, they
have become separated in Nature and in man.
Man, in his natural state, partakes of the first
Principle, and of the life which proceeds from
the third. He becomes possessed of the second
only by regeneration in Christ. Furthermore,
these three Principles are manifested in seven
elements or "Fountain Spirits," as they are
denominated by Boehme. The first is called

* For an account of this system, see "A Compendious
View of the Grounds of the Teutonic Philosophy, pub-
lished by a gentleman retired from business." London,
1770.

JACOB BOEHME.

37

Astringency ; the second, Attraction ; the third,
Anguish ; the fourtli, Heat. These four con-
stitute the first Principle. The fitlli is Light ;
the sixth, Sound. These two constitute the
second Principle. The seventh is the Body
generated by the other six, in which they live
and work, and which represents the third
Principle.

A full account of this system would far
exceed the limits and design of this sketch.
The points which have been mentioned are
those which seemed to be most characteristic
and fundamental, as well as most necessary for
the richt understanding of the extracts given

below. As to the practical part of Boehme's
doctrine, it may be summed up in his own
words, — said to have been written in an album
— which contain, in fact, the substance of all
practical philosophy.

" Wem Zcit ist wie die Ewigkeit
Und Ewigkeit is wie die Zeil
Der ist befreit von allem Streit,"*

When he felt himself seized with what he
supposed to be his last sickness, he caused
himself to be removed to his old residence,
Gorlitz, and having, as it is said, predicted the
hour of his death, departed, saying, " Now I go
hence into Paradise."

TO THE
READER OF THESE WRITINGS.*

It is written, "The natural man nnderstand-
etli not the things of the Spirit, nor the mysteries
of the kingdom of God, they are foolishness unto
him, neither can he know them :" therefore I
admonish and exhort the Christian lover of
mysteries, if he will study these high writings,
and read, search, and understand them, that he
do not read them outwardly only, with sharp
speculation and reasoning ; for in so doing, he
shall remain in the outward, imaginary ground
only, and obtain no more than a counterfeited
colour or feigned shadow of them.

For a man's own reason, without the light of
God, cannot come into the ground of them, it is
impossible ; for let his wit be never so subtil, it
apprehends spiritual things but, as it were, the
shadow in a glass. * • * * *

Now if any would search the divine ground,
that is, the divine Revelation, or manifestation,
that God has been pleased to make of himself,
he must first consider with himself, for what
end he desires to know such things, whether he
desires to practise that which he might obtain,
and bestow it to the glory of God, and the wel-
fare of his neighbour ; also whether he desires
to die to earthliness, and to his own will, and
to live in that which he seeks and desires, and
to be one spirit with it.

If he have not a purpose, that, if God should
reveal himself and his mysteries to him, he
would be one spirit and have one will with
God, and wholly resign and yield himself up to
him, that God"s Spirit may do what he pleases
with him, and by him, and that God may be his
knowledge, will and working ; he is not yet fit
for such knowledge and understanding.

For there are many that seek mysteries and
hidden knowledge, merely that they may be
respected and highly esteemed by the world,

* From the "Compendious View of the grounds of the
Teutonic Philosophy."

and for their own gain and profit ; but they at-
tain not this ground, " where the Spirit searches
all things, even the deep things of God."

It must be a totally resigned and yielded
will, in which God himself searches and works,
and which continually pierces into God, in
yielding and resigned humility, seeking nothing
but his eternal native country, and to do his
neighbour service ; and then it may be attained.
He must begin with effectual repentance and
amendment, and with prayer that his under-
standing may be opened from within; for then
the inward spirit will bring itself into the out-
ward understanding.

But when he reads such writings and yet
cannot understand them, he must not presently
throw them away, and think it is impossible to
understand them ; no, but he must turn his mind
to God, beseeching him for grace and under-
standing, and read again, and then he shall see
more and more in them, till at length he be
drawn, by the power of God. into the very depth
itself, and so come into the supernatural and
supersensual ground, namely, into the eternal
unity of God, where he shall hear unspeakable
and effectual words of God, which will bring
him back and outward again (by the divine ef-
fluence) to the very grossest and meanest matter
of the earth, and afterward back and inwards
to God again; then it is that the Spirit of God
searches all things with him, and by him, and

so he is rightly taught and driven by God.
«•» ****#

Of God and the Divine Nature.

The soul, which has its original out of God's
first principle in creation, and was breathed
from God into man in the third principle, (that
is, into the sidereal and elementary birth,) is

* To whom time is as eternity,
And eternity as time,
He is freed from all strife.
4

~ O*?-^ *?A>

38

JACOB BOEHME.

capable of seeing further than any other crea-
ture into the first principle of God, out of and
in and from the essence of which it proceeded.
And tliis is not marvellous, for it does but be-
hold itself in the rising of its birth, out of which
it came originally, and, by the power of its light,
can see the whole depth of the Father in the
first principle, by which he manifested himself
in creation.

This the devils also see in a degree ; for they
also are out of the same first principle, they also
wish that they might not see nor feel it ; but it
is their own fault that they separated themselves
from the second principle, which is called, and
is God, one in essence and threefold in personal
distinction, which is shut up to them.

When I consider tvhat God is, then I say, He
is the One! in reference to the creature, as an
eternal nothing. He has neither foundation, be-
ginning nor abode ; he needs not either space or
place ; he begetteth himself in himself, from eter-
nity to eternity ; and the outgoing out of the will
in itself is God.

He is neither like or resembleth any thing,
and has no i^eculiar place where he dwells;
the true heaven where God dwells is all over and in
all places, for wheresoever he ivas before the creation,
there he is still, namely, in himself, the Essence of
all essences; all is generated from him, and is

originally from him.

********

God, without nature and creature, has no
name, but is called only the eternal Good, that
is, the eternal One! the Profundity of all beings!
There is no place found for him, therefore can
no creature rightly name him: for all names
stand in the formed word of power, but God is,
himself, the root of all power, without beginning
and name ; therefore said he to Jacob, " Where-
fore askest thou what is my name V
********

Of God's first manifestatioit of himself in

THE ThINITT.

God is the will of the wisdom ; the wisdom
is his manifestation.

In this eternal generation we are to under-
stand three things; namely, 1. An eternal will.
2. An eternal mind of the will. 3. The egress,
efflux, or effluence from the will and mind,
which is a spirit of the will and mind.

The will is the Father : the mind is the con-
ceived comprehension, or receptacle of the will,
or the centre to something; and it is the will's
heart, that is the Son of God ; and the egress of
the will and mind is the power and spirit.

And as we perceive that in this world there
is fire, air, water, and earth, also the sun and
the stars, and therein consist all the things of
this world ; so you may conceive, by way of
similitude, that the Father is the fire of the
whole, holy, constellations, and that the Son,

namely, his heart, is the sun which sets all the

constellations in a light, pleasant habitation ;

and that the Holy Ghost is the air of the life,

without which neither sun nor constellation

would subsist.

«#**» * * *

Of eternal nature after the fall of Luci-
fer, AND OF THE CREATION OF THIS WORLD,
AND OF MAN.

Reader, understand and consider my writings
aright. We have no power or ability to speak
of the birth of the Deity, for it never had any
beginning from all eternity; but we have power
to speak of God our Father, what he is, and how
the eternal geniture is, and of the nativity, birth,
and working of nature.

And though it is not very good for us to know
the austere, earnest, strong, fierce, severe, and
original birth of nature, as it came to be sepa-
rated, and first ma^iifested by the apostasy of
Lucifer, and into the knowledge, feeling, and
comprehensibility of which our first parents
brought upon themselves, and upon us their
posterity, through the poisoning venom and in-
fection they received, by the instigation and de-
ceit of the devil ; yet we have very great need
of this knowledge, that we thereby may learn
to know the devil, who dwells in the most
strong, severe, and cruel birth of all, and to
know our own enemy, SELF, which our first
parents awakened and roused up, and we carry

within us, and which we ourselves now are.

* » » * * * * *

I know very well, and my spirit and mind
shows me, that many will be offended at the
simplicity and meanness of the author, for offer-
ing to write of such high things, and will think
he has no authority to do it, and that he sins,
and runs contrary to God and His will, in pre-
suming, being but a man, to go about to speak
and say what God is. For it is lamentable,
that, since the fall of Adam, we should be so
continually cheated by the devil, as to think
that we are not the children of God, nor of his
essence, or offspring.

Your monstrous, outward, bestial form or
shape indeed is not God, nor of his essence; but
the hidden man, which is the soul, is the proper
essence of God, forasmuch as the love in the
light of God, is sprung up in your centre, out of
which the Holy Ghost proceeds, and wherein
the second principle of God consists. How
then should you not have power and authority
to speak of God, who is your Father, of whose
essence you (the regenerated) are, as a child is
the Father's own substance ? The Father is
the eternal power, or virtue ; the Son is the
heart and light continuing eternally in the Fa-
ther; and all regenerated souls continue in the
Father and the Son ; and now seeing the Holy
Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son,
the eternal power of the Father is in you, and

the eternal light of the Son shines in you.
********

JACOB BOEHME.

39

If you lift up your thoughts and minds, and
ride upon the chariot of the soul, (as is before-
mentioned,) and look upon yourself, and all
creatures, and consider how the birth of life in
you takes its original, and what the light of your
life is, whereby you can behold the sun, and
also look with your imagination beyond the sun
into a vast space to which the eyes of your
body cannot reach, and then consider what the
cause might be that you are more rational than
the other creatures, seeing you can, by the ope-
rations of your mind, search into every thing;
you will, if you be born of God, attain to what
God and the eternal birth is; for you will see,
feel, and find, that all creation must yet have a
higher root, from whence it proceeded, which
is not visible, but hidden. Now if you farther
consider what preserveth all thus, and whence
it is, then you will find the Eternal that has
no beginning, the Original of the eternal princi-
ple, namely, the eternal, indissoluble band of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And then, secondly,
you will see the separation ; in that the mate-
rial world, with the stars and elements, are out
of the first principle of creation, which contains
the outward and third principle of this world.
For you will find in the elementary kingdom
or dominion, a cause in every thing wherefore
it generates and moves as it does ; but you
will not find the first cause whence it is so;
and that therefore there must be two several
principles, for you find in the visible things a
corruptibility, and perceive that they must have
a beginning, because they have an end, and
these two jjrinciples are the first and third.

You find in all things a glorious power and
virtue, which is the life growing and springing
of every thing, and that therein lies its beauty
and pleasant welfare. Now look upon an Vierb
or plant, and consider what is its life which
makes it grow, and you shall find in the ori-
ginal, harshness, bitterness, fire, and water,
whence proceeds the pleasant smell and colours,
for if it be severed froin its own mother that gene-
rated it at the beginning, then it remains dead.

Thus you see that there is an eternal root
which affords this, and must be a principle,
whi'^h the stock itself is not, and that principle
has its original from the light of nature. * *

1* "F T^ SfC •!• *!p t'* •n

Bat what do you think was before the times
of the creating of this world? For out of that
proceeded the root of this earth and stones, as
also the stars and elements. But of what con-
sists the rooti You will find therein nothing
else but bitterness, harshness, astringent sour-
ness and fire, and these are but one thing,
namely, the pure, eternal element, and from
which all outward, natural things were gene-
rated after the fall of Lucifer; for, before his
fall, there was but one pure element Now in
these forms you cannot find God ; the pure Deity
being incomprehensible, unperceivable, al-
mighty, and all powerful. Where is it then
men may find God ?

Here open your noble mind, and search fur-
ther. For seeing God is only good, whence
comes the evil f And seeing also that he alone
is the life, and the light, and the holy power,
as is undeniably true, whence comes the anger
of God 1 Whence comes the devil, and his
evil will? And whence has hell-fire its ori-
ginal? Seeing there was nothing before God
manifested himself in creation, but only God,
who was, and is a Spirit, and continues so in
eternity. Whence then is the first matter of
evil? Here blind reason gives this judgment,
that there must needs have been in the spirit
of God, a will to generate the source and foun-
tain of anger and evil.

But the Scripture says, the devil was created
a holy angel; and it further says, "Thou art not
a God that wills evil ;" and, by Ezekiel, God
declares, " that as sure as he lives, he wills not
the death of a sinner;" and this is testified by
God's earnest and severe punishing of the devil,
and of all sinners, that he is not pleased with
death.

What then is the first matter of evil in the
devil ? And what moved him to anger, seeing
he was created out of the original, eternal Spirit
of God? Or whence is the original of evil,
and of hell, wherein the devils shall remain
forever, when this world, with the stars, ele-
ments, earth, and stones, shall jierish in the end
of time?

Beloved Reader, open the eyes of your mind
here, and know, that no other anguish or source
of punishment will spring up in Lucifer than
his own quality, or working property ; for that
is his hell which he himself formed; and be-
cause the light of God is his eternal shame,
therefore is he God's enemy, because he is no
more in the light of God.

Now, nothing can be here produced by rea-
son, that God should ever have used any matter
out of which to create the devil, for then the
devil might justify himself, that he was made
evil, and created of evil matter. But God cre-
ated him out of nothing but merely and entirely
out of his own divine essence, as well as the
other angels; as it is written, "Through him
and in him are all things." And his only is the
kingdom, the power and the glory ; and all is
in him, as the Holy Scriptures witness. And
if it were not thus, no sin could be imputed to
the devil, nor to men, if they were not eternal,
and had their being out of God himself.
****** **

If, therefore, you will speak or think of God,
you must consider that he is All. * *

And seeing that he himself witnesses, that
his is the kingdom and the power, from eternity
to eternity; and that he calls himself Father,
(and the Son, the Second Person in the Trinity,
begotten of his Father,) therefore we must seek
for him in the original of his manifesting him-
self in the tri-vme One ; namely, Father, Son,
and Spirit ; from whom all creation proceeded ;

40

JACOB BOEHME.

and we can say no otherwise, but that tlie first
principle in creation is God the Father himself,
as the source, or fountain of life.

Yet there is found in the original of life tlie
most fierce and strong birth, namely, harshness,
bitterness, anguish, and fire ; of which we can-
not say that it is God ; and yet is the most in-
ward first source of all light, and that is in God
the Father; according to which he calls him-
self an angry, zealous, or jealous God, and a
consuming fire. And this source is the first
principle, and that is God the Father in the ori-
ginality, or first manifestation of himself, at the
beginning in creation.
********

And in this first principle, prince Lucifer,
at the extinguishing in himself the light of the
second principle, continued ; and is ever the
same abyss of hell; wherein the soul also con-
tinues which extinguishes that light which shines
from the heart of God, (into every man that
cometh into the world,) being then separated
from the second principle. For which cause
also, at the end of time, there will be a separa-
tion or parting asunder of the saints of light
from the damned, whose source of life will be
without the light of God, and the working foun-
tain of their condition as a boiling, springing
torment.

T* * ^ T^ ^ 'T* ^ ^fT

I will now write of the second principle, of
the clear, jiure Deity ; namely, of the heart of
God, that is, the power, glory, or lustre of God
tlie Father, in the Son. In the first principle, I
have mentioned harshness, bitterness, anguish,
and fire, yet they are not separate but one only
thing, and they generate one another in the first
source of all creation. And if now the second
principle did not break forth, and spring up in
the birth of the Son, then the Father would be
a dark valley ; and the Son, who is the heart,
the love, the brightness, and the sweet rejoicing
of the Father (in whom the Father is well
pleased) opens another principle.

This is now what the evangelist John says,
chap. 1, "In the beginning was the word; and
the word was with God ; and the word was
God. The same was in the beginning with
God. All things were made by him, and with-
out him was not anything made. In him was
life." And he is another person than the Fa-
ther, for in his centre there is nothing else but
mere joy, love and pleasure. * * *

The evangelist says further, "And the life
was the light of men." Here, O man, take now
this light of life, which was in the word and is
eternal ; and behold the Being of all beings, and
especially thyself; seeing thou art an image,
life, and derive thy being of the unsearchable
God ; and a likeness as to him. Here consider
time and eternity ; heaven and hell ; this world ;
light and darkness ; pain, and the source ; life
and death. Here examine thyself, whether
thou hast the light and life of the Word in thee ;
so shalt thou be able to see and understand all

things : for thy life was in the word, and was
made manifest in the image which God created ;
it was breathed into it from the Spirit of the
Word. Now lift up thy understanding in the
light of thy life ; and behold the formed Word !
Consider its generation, for all is manifest in the
light of life.

Although here the tongue of man cannot utter,
declare, express nor fathom this great depth,
where there is neither number nor end ; yet we
have power to speak thereof, as children talk
of their father.

Now being to speak of the holy Trinity, we
must, first, say that there is one God, and he is
called God the Father and Creator of all things,
who is almighty, and all in all; whose are all
things, and in whom and from whom all things
proceed, and in whom they remain eternally.
And then we say, that he is three in persons,
and has, from eternity, generated his Son out
of himself, who is his heart, light and love : and
yet they are not two, but one eternal essence.
And further we say, the Scripture tells us that
there is a Holy Ghost, which proceeds from the
Father and the Son, and there is but one es-
sence in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

But the Holy Ghost is not known or mani-
fested in the original of the Father before the
light, or son [break forth] but when the soft
fountain springs uf) in the light, then he goes
forth as a strong almighty spirit in great joy
from the pleasant source of water and of the
light ; and he makes the forming [shaping,
figuring] and images [or species], and he is the
centre in all created essences ; in which centre
the light of life, in the light of the son or heart
of* the father, takes its original. And the Holy
Ghost is a several person, because he proceeds
[as a living power and virtue] from the Father
and the Son; and confirms the birth, g^enerating
or working of the holy Trinity.
********

Thus God is one only undivided essence, and
yet threefold in personal distinction, one God,
one Will, one heart, one desire, one pleasure,
one beauty, one almightiness, one fulness of all
things, neither beginning nor ending : for if I
should go about to seek for the beginning or
ending of a small dot, or punctum, or of a per-
fect circle, I should be confounded.

And although I have written here of the
springing of the second principle, and the birth
of the divine essence in the Trinity, as if it took
a beginning, yet you must not understand it as
having any beginning, for the eternal manifes-
tation of the pure Deity is thus, without. begin-
ning or end ; and that in the originalness in
creation : for I am permitted to write as far as
of the originalness, to the end that man might
learn to know himself, what he is, and what
God in the Triune One, heaven, angels, devils,
and hell are. And also what the wrath of God
and hell fire is, by the extinguishment of the
divine light.

JACOB BOEHME.

41

Of the creation of Akgels, and of Lucifeh;
deschibing how he was in the angeli-
cal form, and how he is now in his own
phol-er form, bt his rejecting, and there-
by extinguishing, the divine light of
the second principle in himself.

Behold, 0 child of man, all the angels were
created in the first principle, and by the flowing
forth of the Holy Spirit were formed, and bodied
in a true angelical and spiritual nranner, and
enlightened from the light of God, that they
might increase the paradisical joy, and abide
therein eternally; 'but being they were to abide
eternally, they must be formed out of the first
principle which is an indissoluble band ;' and
they were to look upon the heart or Son of God,
to receive his light, and to feed upon the word,
which food was to be their holy preservation,
and to keep their image clear and light ; even
as the heart or Son of God in the second prin-
ciple, manifests and enlightens the Father,
namely, the first principle ; and in those two
principles the divine power, the pure elements,
paradise, and kingdom of heaven spring up.

Thus it is with those angels that continued
in the kingdom of heaven in the first paradise;
they stand in the first j)rinciple in the indisso-
luble band, enlightened by the Son in the second
principle ; their food is the divine word ; and
their thoughts and mind is in the will of the
Trinity in the Deity. The confirming and es-
tablishing of their life, will, and doings, is the
power of the Holy Ghost: whatever the Holy
Spirit does in the regenerating of paradise, and
the holy wonders, the angels rejoice at, and sing
the joyful Hallelujahs of Paradise concerning
the pleasant saving and eternal birth. All they
do is an increase of their heavenly joy, delight,
and pleasure in the heart or Son of God; and
they sport in holy obedience in the will of the
eternal Father; and to this end their God cre-
ated them : that he might be manifested, and
rejoice in his creatures, and his creatures in him ;
so that there might be an eternal sport of love,
in the centre of the multiplying of the pure
eternal nature in the indissoluble eternal band.

But this sport of love was spoiled by Lucifer
himself, who is so called, because of the extin-
guishment of the light of the Son of God in him,
and his being cast out of his throne.

DESCRIBING WHAT HE THEN WAS, AND ALSO
WHAT HE NOW IS.

He was the most glorious prince in heaven,
and king over many legions of angels, and had
he introduced his will into the divine meekness,
and the light of the Son of God, and continued
in the harmony wherein God had created him,
then he would have stood, and nothing could
have cast him out of the light. For he, as well
as the other angels, was created of the pure
eternal nature, out of the indissoluble band, and
stood in the first Paradise. He felt and saw
the generation of the holy Deity in the birth of
F

the second principle, namely, of the heart or Son
of God, and the outflowing of the Holy Ghost;
his food was of the word of the Lord, and therein
he should have continued an angel of light.

But he saw his own great beauty and glory,
and that he was a prince standing jn the first
principle, and in his own desire went into the
centre, and would himself be God. He despised
the birth of the Son and heart of God, and the
soft and very lovely influence, working, and
qualification thereof. He entered with his will
into SELF, and meant to be a very potent and
terrible Lord in the first principle, and would
work in the strength of the fire, in the centre of
nature ; he therefore could no longer be fed from
the word of the Lord, and so his light went out
by the heart or Son of God departing from him ;
for thereby the second principle was shut up to
him; and presently he became loathsome in
Paradise, and was cast out with all his legions
that stuck to and depended upon him.

And so he lost God, the kingdom of heaven,
and all paradisical knowledge, pleasure and
joy; he also presently lost the image of God,
and the confirmation of the Holy Ghost ; for be-
cause he despised the second principle, wherein
he was an angel and image of God, all heavenly
things departed from him, and he fell into the
dark vale, or valley of darkness, and could no
more raise his imagination up into God, but re-
mained in the anguishes of the first four forms
of the original of nature.

For he is always shut up in the first principle,
(as in the eternal death,) and yet he raises him-
self up continually, thinking to reach the heart
of God, and to domineer over it; for his bitter
sting climbs up eternally in the source or root
of the fire, and afibrds him a proud will to have
all at his pleasure, but he attains nothing. His
food is the source or fountain of poison, namely,
the brimstone spirit: his refreshing is the eternal
cold fire : he has an eternal hunger in the bit-
terness ; an eternal thirst in the source of the
fire. His climbing up is his fall, and the more
he climbs up in his will the greater is his fall :
as one standing upon a high clift would cast
himself down into a bottomless pit, he looks still
further, and he falls in further and further, and
yet can find no ground.

Thus he is an eternal enemy to the heart or
Son of God, and to all the holy angels, and he
cannot now frame any other will in himself

His angels or devils are of very many several
sorts; for, at the time of Lucifer's creation, he
stood in the kingdom of heaven in the point,
locus, or place, where the Holy Ghost in the
birth of the heart of God in Paradise, did open
infinite and innumerable centres in the eternal
birth of pure eternal nature; and therefore their
quality was also manifold, and all should have
been and continued angels of God, if Lucifer
had not corrupted and thereby destroyed them :
and so now every one in his fall continues in
his own essences, excluded from the light of the
second principle, which they extinguished in
4*

42

JACOB BOEHME.

themselves : and so it is with the soul of man,
when it rejects the light of God, and it goes out
of that soul.

Of the third piiijiciple, or cheatioic of the
matehial world, with the stabs and ele-
ments;" wherein the first and second
principle is more c learlt .understood.

The eternal and indissoluble band, which is
the first principle wherein the essence of all
essences stands, is not easily nor in haste to be
understood ; therefore it is necessary that the
desirous reader should the more earnestly con-
sider himself what he is, and whence his rea-
son, his inward senses, and thoughts do pro-
ceed, for therein he finds the similitude of God,
especially if he considers and meditates what
his soul is, which is an eternal, incorruptible
spirit.

For if the reader be born of God in true re-
signation, there is no nearer way for him to
come to the knowledge of the third principle,
than by considering the new birth, how the
soul is new born by the love of God in the light,
and how it is translated out of darkness into the
light by a second birth. And now every one
finds by experience, that falls into the w^rath of
God, and whereof there are terrible examples,
that the sonl must endure uneasiness and tor-
ment in itself, in the birth of its own life, so
long as it is in the wrath of God ; and then if it
be born again, there is great exulting joy arises
in it; and thus there is found very clearly and
plainly two f)rinciples ; also God, Paradise and
the kingdom of heaven.

For you find in the root of the original of the
spirit of the soul, the most inimicitious, irksome
source, torment, or working property, wherein
the soul without the light of God is like all de-
vils, being an enmity in itself, striving against
God and goodness, and climbing up with pride
in the strength of the fire, in a bitter, fierce, ma-
licious wrathfulness against God, against heaven,
against all creatures in the light of the second
principle, and also against all creatures in the
third principle of this world, setting up them-
selves alone.

Now the Scripture witnesses throughout, and
the new-born man finds it so, that when the
soul is new born in the light of God, then it is
quite otherwise, and contrary to what it was
before. It finds itself very humble, meek, cour-
teous, and pleasant; it readily bears all manner
of crosses and persecution; it turns the outward
body from out of the way of the wicked ; it re-
gards no reproach, disgrace or scorn, put upon
it from the devil or man; it places its confi-
dence, refuge and love in the heart or Son of
God ; it is fed by the word of God, and cannot
be hurt or so much as touched by the devil ; for
although it is in its own substance, and stands
in the first principle in the indissoluble band,
it is enlightened with the light of God in the
Son or second principle, and the Holy Ghost
(who goes forth out of the eternal birth or gene-

ration of the Father, in the light of the heart or

Son of God) goes in it, and establishes it the

child of God ; therefore all that it does, living

in the light of God, is done in the love of God ;

and the devil cannot see that soul, for the second

principle, in which it then lives, and in which

God, and the kingdom of heaven is, as also the

angels and Paradise, is shut up from him, and

he cannot get to it. * * * * *

»*** ****

Therefore, 0 man, consider with thyself,
where thou art ; namely, on one part, [that is,
thy body and outward carcass of clay, thou art
a guest for awhile in this outward world, travel-
ling in the vanity of time] under the influence
of the stars, and four elements ; one other part,
[namely, thy soul in its own self and creaturely
being, that is, in its fallen state, without the
divine light or regeneration] in the dark world
among the devils ; and as to the third part,
[namely, thy divine image and spirit of love, in
the eternal light] in the divine power in heaven :
that property which is master in thee, its servant
thou art; prank and vapour as stately and glo-
riously as thou wilt in the sun's light, yet tliy
fountain shall be made manifest to thee.

Of Paradise.

Moses says, that, when God had made man,
he planted a garden in Eden, and there he
put man, to till and keep the same ; and caused
all manner of fruits to grow, pleasant for the
sight and good for food ; and planted the tree
of life also, and the tree of knowledge of good
and evil in the midst.

Here lies the veil before the face of Moses,
in that he had a bright shining countenance,
that sinful Israel cannot look him in the face;
for the man of vanity is not worthy to know
what Paradise is; and albeit it be given us to
know it according to the inward, hidden man,
yet by this description we shall remain as dumb
to the beast, but yet be sufficiently understood
by our fellow scholars in the school of the great
master.

Poor reason, which is gone forth with Adam
out of Paradise, asks where is Paradise to be
had or found ? Is it far ofi'or near? Or, when
the souls go into Paradise, whither do they go ?
Is it in the place of this world, or without the
place of this world above the stars? where is
it that God dwells with the angels? and where
is that desirable native country where there is
no death ? Being there is no sun nor stars in
it, therefore it cannot be in this world, or else
it would have been found long ago.

Beloved reason ; one cannot lend a key to
another to unlock this withal ; and if any have
a key, he cannot open it to another, as antichrist
boasts that he has the keys of heaven and hell ;
it is true, a man may have the keys of both in
this life time, but he cannot open with them for
any body else ; every one must unlock it with
his own key, or else he cannot enter therein ;
for the Holy Ghost is the key, and when any

JACOB BOEHME.

43

one has that key, then he may go both in and
out.

Paradise was the heavenly essentiality of the
second principle. It budded in the beginning
of the world through the earthly essentiality, as
the eternity is in the time, and the divine power
is through all things ; and yet is neither com-
prehended or understood of any earthly thing
in self-hood.

In Paradise the essence of the divine world
penetrated the essence of time, as the sun pene-
trates the fruit upon a tree, and effectually works
in it into a pleasantness, that it is lovely to look
upon and good to eat; the like we are to un-
derstand of the garden of Eden.

The garden Eden was a place upon the earth
where man was tempted ; and the Paradise
was in heaven, and yet was in the garden Eden ;
for as Adam before his sleep, and before his
Eve was made out of him, was, as to his inward
man, in heaven, and, as to the outward, iipon
the earth ; and as the inward, holy man pene-
trated the outward, as a fire through heats an
iron, so also the heavenly power out of the pure,
eternal element penetrated the four elements,
and sprang through the earth, and bare fruits,
which were heavenly and earthly, and were
qualified, sweetly tempered of the divine power,
and the vanity in the fruit was held as it were
swallowed up, as the day hides the night, and
holds it captive in itself, that it is not knowa
and manifest.

The whole world would have been a mere
Paradise if Lucifer had not corrupted it, who
was in the beginning of his creation an hierarch
in the place of this world ; but seeing God knew
that Adam would fall, therefore Paradise sprang
forth and budded only in one certain place, to
introduce and confirm man in his obedience
therein. God nevertheless saw he would de-
part thence, whom he would again introduce
thereinto by Christ, and establish him anew in
Christ to eternity in Paradise, therefore God
promised to regenerate it anew in Christ, in the
Spirit of Christ in the human property.

There is nothing that is nearer you, than hea-
ven, Paradise, and hell ; unto which of them you
are inclined, and to which of them you tend or
walk, to that in this life-time you are most near.
You are between both ; and there is a birth between
each of them. You stand in this world between
both the gates, and you have both the births in
you. God beckons to you in one gate, and calls
you ; the devil beckons you in the other gate and
calls you ; with whom you go, with him you enter
in. The devil has in his hand, power, honour,
pleasure, and worldly joy ; and the root of these
is death and hell-fire. On the contrary, God
has in his hand, crosses, persecution, misery,
poverty, ignominy, and sorrow; and the root of
these is a fire also, but in the fire there is a light,
and in the light the virtue, and in the virtue the
Paradise; and in the Paradise are the angels,
and among the angels, joy. The gross fleshly
eyes cannot behold it, because they are from the

third principle, and see only by the splendour
of the sun ; but when the Holy Ghost comes
into the soul, then he regenerates it anew in
God, and then it becomes a paradisical child,
who gets the key of Paradise, and that soul
sees into the midst thereof

But the gross body cannot see into it, because
it belongs not to Paradise ; it belongs to the
earth, and must putrefy and rot, and rise in a
new virtue and power in Christ, at the end of
days; and then it may also be in Paradise, and
not before; it must lay off the third principle,
namely, this skin or covering which father Adam
and mother Eve got into, and in which they
supposed they should be wise by wearing all
the three principles manifested on them. Oh !
that they had preferred the wearing two of the
principles hidden in them, and had continued
in the principle of light, it had been good for us.
But of this I purpose to speak hereafter when I
treat about the fall.

Thus now in the essence of all essences, there
are three several distinct properties, with one
source or property far from one another, yet
not parted asunder, but are in one another as
one only essence; nevertheless the one does
not comprehend the other, as in the three ele-
ments, fire, air, water ; all three are in one
another, but neither of them comprehend the
other. And as one element generates another
and yet is not of the essence, source, or property
thereof; so the three principles are in one an-
other, and one generates the other; and yet
none of them all comprehends the other, nor is
any of them the essence or substance of the
other.

The third principle, namely, this material
world, shall pass away and go into its ether, and
then the shadow of all creatures remain, also
of all growing things [vegetables and fruits]
and of all that ever came to light; as also the
shadow and figure of all words and works ; and
that incomprehensibly, like a nothing or shadow
in respect of the light, and after the end of time
there will be nothing but light and darkness;
where the source or property remain in each
of them as it has been from eternity, and the
one shall not comprehend the other.

Yet whether God will create more after this
world's time, that my spirit doth not know; for
it apprehends no farther than what is in its
centre wherein it lives, and in which the Para-
dise and the kingdom of heaven stands.

CONCERNING THE SUPERSENSUAL
LIFE.*

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE. FROM THE SIXTH
BOOK OF THE WORK ENTITLED •' THE WAY TO CHRIST."

1. The Disciple said to the Master: How

♦Translated from tlie Extract in Kiinzel's " Drei Bii-
cher Deutseher Prosa."

44

JACOB BOEHME.

may I attain to tlie supersensual life, that I may
see God and hear him speak ?

The iNIaster said : If thou canst raise thyself
for a moment thither, where no creature dwell-
eth, thou shalt hear what God saith.

2. The Disciple said : Is that near or far?
The Waster said : It is in thee, and if thou

canst be silent and cease, for an hour, from all
thy willing and brooding, thou shalt hear un-
speakable words of God.

3. The Disciple said : How may I hear, if I
cease from all willing and brooding ■?

The Master said : If thou wilt cease from all
brooding and willing of thine own, then the
eternal Hearing and Seeing and Speaking shall
be revealed in thee, and shall discern God
through thee. Thine own hearing and willing
and seeing hinders thee, that thou canst not see
nor hear God.

4. The Disciple said : Wherewith shall I hear
and see God, seeing he is above nature and
creature?

The Master said : If thou keepest silence, thou
art what God was before nature and the creature,
and out of which he made thy nature and
creature. Then shalt thou hear and see with
that wherewith God, in thee, saw and heard,
before thine own willing and seeing and hearing
did begin.

5. The Disciple said : What doth hinder me
that I cannot attain thereunto?

The Master said : Thine own willing and
hearing and seeing, and because tliou dost strive
against that whence thou hast proceeded. With
thine own will thou separatest thyself from
God"s willing, and with thine own seeing thou
seest only in thy willing. And thy willing
stoppeth thine hearing with the obstinate con-
cupiscence of earthly, natural things, and leadeth
thee into a pit, and overshadoweth thee with
that which thou desirest, so that thou canst not
attain to the supernatural, supersensual.

0. The Disciple said: Seeing I am in nature,
how can I pass through nature into the super-
sensual deep, without destroying nature?

The Master said: To that end three things
are requisite. The first is, that thou shouldst
surrender thy will unto God and let thyself
down into the deeps of his mercy. The second
is, that thou shouldst hate thine own will, and
not do that whereunto thy will impelleth thee.
The third is, that thou shouldst bring thyself
into subjection to the Cross, that thou mayest be
able to bear the assaults of nature and creature.
If thou doest this, God will in-speak into thee,
and will lead thy passive will into himself, —
into the supernatural deep, and thou shalt hear
what the Lord speaketh in thee.

7. The Disciple said : It were necessary that
I should quit the world and my life, in order to
do this.

The Master said : If thou leave the world,
thou wilt come into that ^vhereof the world is
made. And if thou losest thy life, and comest
into impotence of thine own faculty, then shall

thy life be in that, for the sake of which thou
didst leave thy life, — that is in God, whence it
came into the body.

8. The Disciple said : God has created man
in the life of nature, that he may have dominion
over all creatures upon the earth, and be lord
of everything in this world. Therefore, surely,
he ought to possess it for his own.

The Master said: If, in the outward alone,
thou governest all animals, then thou art with
thy will and thy government according to the
manner of beasts, and exercisest only a symbo-
lical and perishable dominion, and bringest thy
desire into the beastly Essence wherewith thou
wilt become infected and entangled, and acquire
the nature of a beast. But if thou hast left the
symbolical way, thou shalt stand in the super-
symbolical and shalt reign over all creatures, in
the ground out of which they were created.
And then nothing upon earth shall harm thee,
for thou wilt liave relations with all things, and
nothing will be foreign from thee.

CONCERNING THE BLESSING OF GOD
IN THE GOODS OF THIS WORLD.*

FROM THE WORK ENTITLED "THE THREEFOLD LIFE OF MAN."

Man has free permission to disport himself,
on the earth, in whatsoever employment he will.
Do what he will, everything stands in the mira-
culous power of God. A swineherd is as dear
to him as a Doctor, so he be pious and confide
purely in God"s will. The simple is as useful
to him 'as the wise. For with the wise man
he rules, and with the simple he builds. Both
are equally instruments of his wondrous deeds.
Each has his calling wherein he passeth his
time ; and all are equal before him. * * *

* * * As the flowers of the earth do not
envy one another, although one is more bjeauti-
ful and more powerful than another, but all, in
a friendly manner, stand side by side, and each
rejoices in the other's virtue; — and, as a physi-
cian mingles together various kinds of herbs of
which each gives forth its power and its virtue
and all minister unto the sick; — so, likewise,
do we all please God, as many of us as enter
into his will. We all stand together in his field.
And as thorns and thistles spring forth from the
ground and choke and devour many a good herb
and flower ; so, likewise, is the godless who
trusteth not in God, but buildeth upon himself,
and thinketh : "I have my God in my box, I
will hoard and leave great treasures to my chil-
dren, that they also may sit in the place of mine
honour; that is the true way;" — and therewith
rendeth many a heart that it also waxeth care-
less and thinketh that is the right way to hap-
piness ; that a man possess riches, and power
and honour, he hath happiness. Ye1\ if vi^e

* From the above-mentioned work of Kiinzel

JACOB BOEHME.

45

consider it, it happeneth to one as to another;
and the poor soul is none the less lost. For the
rich man's dainties taste no better to him than
the hungry man"s morsel of bread. Everywhere
there is care, grief, fear, sickness, and, at last,
death. It is all a fighting with shadows, in this
world. The mighty sitteth in the dominion of
the spirit of this world, and he that feareth God
sitteth in the dominion of divine power and
wisdom. The dominion of this world endeth
with the body, but the dominion in the Spirit
of God endureth forever.

OF TRUE RESIGNATION.*

If we would inherit the filiation, we must
also put on the new man, which can inherit
the filiation, which is like the Deity. God w^ill
have no sinner in heaven, but such as are born
anew, and become children, who have put on
heaven.

A man must wrestle so long, until the dark
centre that is shut up so close, break open, and
the spark in the centre kindle, and from thence
immediately the noble lily, twig and branch,
sprouts, as from the divine grain of mustard-
seed, as Christ says. A man must pray ear-
nestly, with great humility, and for a while
become a fool in his own reason, and see him-
self as void of understanding thereon, until
Christ be formed in this new incarnation.

And then when Christ is born, Herod is ready
to kill the child ; which he seeks to do out-
wardly by persecutions, and inwardly by tempt-
ations, to try whether this lily branch will be
strong enough to destroy the kingdom of the
Devil, which is made manifest in the flesh.

Then the destroyer of the serpent is brought
into the wilderness, after he is baptized with
the Holy Spirit, and tempted and tried whether
he will continue in resignation in the will of
God : he must stand so fast, that if need re-
quire, he would leave all earthly things, and
even the outward life, to be a child of God.

No temporal honor must be preferred before
the filiation, but he must with his will leave
and forsake it all, and not account it his own,
but esteem himself as a servant in it only, in
obedience to his master ; he must leave all
worldly property. We do not mean that he
may not have, or possess anything ; but his
heart must forsake it, and not bring his will
into it, nor count it his own ; if he sets his heart
upon it, he has no power to serve them that
stand in need, with it.

Self serves only that which is temporary ;
but resignation has rule over all that is under

* From " the Way to Christ.'

it. Self must do what the Devil will have it
to do in fleshly voluptuousness and pride of
life ; but resignation treads it under the feet of
the mind. Self despises that which is lowly
and simple ; but resignation sits down with the
lowly in the dust : it says, I will be simple in
myself, and understand nothing, lest my under-
standing should exalt itself, and sin. I will lie
down in the courts of my God, at his feet, that I
may serve the Lord in that which he commands
me. I will know nothing of myself that the
commandment of the Lord may lead and guide
me, and that I may only do what God doth
through me, and will have done by me : I will
sleep until the Lord awaken me with his spi-
rit ; and if he will not, then will I cry out eter-
nally in him in silence, and wait his commands.

Beloved Brethren, men boast much now-a-
days of Faith, but where is that faith? The
modern faith is but the history. Where is that
child that believes that Jesus is born ? If that
child were in being, and did believe that Jesus
is born, it would also draw near to the sweet
child Jesus, and receive him, and nurse him.

Alas ! the faith now-a-days is but historical,
and a mere knowledge of the story that the
Jews killed him, that he left this world, that
he is not king on earth in the animal man, but
that men may do as they list, and need not die
from sin, and their evil lusts ; all this the wicked
child self-rejoices in, that it may fatten the Devil
by living deliciously.

This shows that true faith was never weaker
since Christ's time than it now is ; when, never-
theless, the world cries aloud, and says, we
have found the true faith, and contend about a
child, so that there was never worse contention
since men were on earth.

If thou have that new-born child which was
lost and is found again, then let it be seen in
power and virtue, and let us openly see the
sweet child Jesus brought forth by thee, and
that thou art his nurse ; if not, then the children
in Christ will say, thou hast found nothing but
the history, namely, the cradle of the child.

Beloved Brethren, this is a time of seeking
and of finding : it is a time of earnestness ;
whom it touches, it touches home: he that
watches shall hear and see it; but he that
sleeps in sin, and says in the fat days of his
voluptuousness, all is peace and quiet, we hear
no sound from the Lord ; he shall be blind.
But the voice of the Lord has sounded in all
the ends of the earth, and in the trouble that
is upon the face of the earth a smoke arises,
and in the midst of the smoke there is a great
brightness in the divine light that is in the
children of God. Hallelujah. Amen. Shout
unto the Lord in Sion, for all mountains and
hills are full of his glory: he flourishes like a
green branch, and who shall hinder it?

ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA.

Boro 1642. Died 1709.

This celebrated ecclesiastic — the most popu-
lar preacher of his day, was descended from
noble ancestors, and bore the family name of
Ulrich Megerle. His parents, Jacob and Ve-
rona Meo-erle, resided at Krdhenhennstelten, a
village near the city of Moskirch, in Suabia.
He distinguished himself in early youth by his
industry and talents, and an ardent thirst for
knowledge. He received a classical education
at the Latin schools at Moskirch, Ingolstadt
and Salzburg. In his eighteenth year he en-
tered the order of the barefooted Augustine
monks, at Mariabrunn, and studied philosophy
and theology in a convent of that order at Vi-
enna. Two years later, having been conse-
crated priest and made doctor of theology, he
went as holiday - preacher to the convent of
Taxa, near Dachau, in Bavaria. From there
he returned to Vienna, where he soon acquired
an extended fame by his popular eloquence.
In 1669 he was made imperial court-preacher
by Leopold I., an office which he filled with
general acceptance for twenty years. During
this time he rose from grade to grade in his
order, and became successively provincial pro-
curator, lector, pater spiritualis, prior and defi-
nitor of his province. As prior, he attended
the meeting of the general chapter of his order,
in Rome, 1689, preached there several times
with great applause, and was presented by
pope Innocent XI. with a consecrated cross.

As definitor, he contributed greatly to the im-
provement of several of the convents of his
order. He died at Vienna, December 1st, 1709,
in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

As a pulpit-orator. Pater Abraham a Sancta
Clara was distinguished by a broad humor, in
which he resembles some of his contemporaries
in the English and Scottish churches. By
Protestants he was, for a long time, considered
as a mere clerical zany, or spiritual buffoon.
But he glowed with a genuine enthusiasm for
virtue and religion, was deeply convinced of
the truth of what he taught, and possessed a
profound knowledge of man and the world,
sound practical morality, a complete mastery
of his native language, great affluence of ima-
gination, a brilliant wit, an animated delivery,
and an excoriating satire. On the other hand,
his characteristic faults were utter want of
taste, a perpetual striving after effect, delight
in puns and antitheses, a fondness for the bi-
zarre, and a style which, though suited to hi-s
peculiar manner, is altogether beneath the dig-
nity of his subject. He was an orator for the
people in the full sense of the word, and al-
though beyond his age in many respects, con-
formed himself to the tastes and habits of the
times. He was devoted to his order, which he
served with great fidelity and beneficent effect
during the whole of his active life.

ON ENVY.

FROM A WORK ENTITLED "JUDAS THE AKCH VILLAIH."

I HATE always heard indeed that:
As the bell is, so it dingeth,
As tlie singer, so he singeth.
As the spawn is, so the fish,
As the cook, so is the dish.
As the cobbler, the shoe will look,
As the writer, so the book.
As the leech is, so the salve,
As the cow, so is the calf.
As the teacher, so the rede.
As the pasture, so the feed.
(46)

As the soil is, so the crop.

As the dancer, so the hop.

As the tree is, so the pear,

As the ma'am, the maidens are.

As the soldier, so the battle,

As the herdsman, so the cattle.

As the lord, the servants be.

As the parent, the progeny.
I have always heard, have always read, have
always written, have always said that these
things are so; but now I perceive that not al-
ways as the parents are, so is the progeny.
Adam a good father ; Cain, his son, an arch
villain; Noah, the father, a saint; Ham, the
son, a scamp ; Abraham, the father, God-blessed ;

ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA.

47

Ishmael, the son, God-cursed ; Isaac, the father,
an angel ; Esau, his son, a devil ; Jacob, the
father, a lamb ; Reuben, the son, a ram ; David,
the father, a friend of God ; Absalom, the son,
a foe of God, &c. Yea, I know and I can show
a lady before whose beauty Helena of Greece
must hide herself, a lady before whose white
face lilies must blush with shame, a lady be-
fO|j-e whose grace of form Spring comes too late
with its decorations, a lady whose countenance
is more sun-bright than the sun, before whose
loveliness the morning-red pales with Avonder ;
and yet this beautiful and elect lady has a daugh-
ter who is to view, like a heap of impurity; for
she is savage as a dung-heap, black as a coal-
heap, inopportune as a funeral-heap, stiff-necked
as a stone-heap, unclean as an ant-heap, ugly
as a dirt-heap, yea as the Devil himself This
most beautiful lady is Virtue, Honour, Science —
everything good ; but the daughter which she
produces is cursed Envy. In the island of
Malta there are no serpents, in Sardinia there
are no wolves, in Germany there are no croco-
diles, in Tuscany there are no ravens, in Hel-
lespontus there are no dogs, in Iceland there is
nothing poisonous, but in the whole world there
is not a place where there is no envy.

Daniel lived at court, and was quite a distin-
guished lord at court ; nay he rose so high that
he was all-potent with King Darius, and that
prince never saw better than when Daniel was
the apple of his eye ; and well shall it be with
every monarch who has such a right hand as
was the faithful Daniel. Nevertheless, this
pious minister experienced, at last, a change in
his king, from the best wine into the sharpest
vinegar. For he commanded by an inhuman
decree that Daniel should be cast into the den
of lions, that those voracious animals might be
gorged with so stately a crumb. But the meat
was too good for such guests. Now I read it in
thy forehead, how thou art tickled with curiosity
to know the crime and misdeed of Daniel. Per-
haps he was untrue to his kingi though truth,
at court, is generally quite genuine and almost
brand-new, because it is so seldom used. Per-
haps he suffered himself to be bribed with de-
narii, and afterwards used spadiiles against his
own king,* whereby he lost his game ? Perhaps
he betrayed the designs and ripe resolves of the
king to the opposite party, and so blabbed
blameably out of school? Perhaps he divided
the king's rents and moneys, as the wolf divided
the sheep 1 The wolf, namely, divided six
sheep with the shepherd, in this way : The first
is mine, the second ouglit to be yours ; but he
took it likewise to himself; the third is mine
again, the fourth, in strict justice, should be
yours; but he took that also, &c.; so that at last
nothing was left to the shepherd. Perhaps
Daniel had been sleepy in his service at court,
and made his appearar.ce only on occasions
when some offices had become vacant? Per-

* An allusion to the game of quadrille, or ombre. Tr.

haps Daniel had shown a friendly rudeness or
a rude friendliness to one or the other of the
court-dames ? Nothing of the kind ! Not at all !
Daniel was a right, upright, well-disposed, just,
intelligent, conscientious minister at court ; not
a guilty but a guiltless, not a blameable but a
blameless servant, and a prophet besides, and
an interpreter of dreams into the bargain, and
a chronicler on the top of that. If so, what was
it then that plunged him into the tyrannous
lions-den? Ask not long! A court-dog bit him,
a court-cat scratched him, a court-arrow pierced
him. He burned his mouth with a court-soup,
he knocked his head against a court-door. Un-
derstand me right ; it was envy among the mi-
nisters and courtiers at court that caused him
to fall. So it happened to Henry, Count of Hol-
stein, at the court of Edward III., king of Eng-
land. So it happened to Belisarius, the great
war-chief, at the court of the emperor Justinian.
So it happened to Aristides, to Scipio, to The-
mistocles, to Tully, to Ef)aniinondas, to Socrates,
to Pompey, to Iphicrates, to Conon, to Chabrias.
But those are all foreign names. So it happened
to many Ferdinands, Henrys, Rudolphs, Casi-
mirs. Philips, Conrads, Wolfgangs, &c., whom
cursed envy plunged into misery. 0, envy! O,
envv J*******
»••»*»»»

Goodly brothers had Joseph. Gen. 37. If
these be brothers, then sloe-bushes maybe called
grape-vines. If these be brothers, then the
wolf may be called the burgomaster of the sheep
Not brothers were they, but brooders of all evil.
When the honest youth, Joseph, out of brotherly
love and sincerity, told them his dream, — of
which it might be easily surmised that it was
no empty vision but a prophecy of his future
good fortune, — they straightway grew pale at
the relation. What ! said they, thou young pi-
geon-bill! wilt thou be a king, and shall thy
fortune mount so high that we shall bow the
knee to thee and serve thee ? Nay, the Devil
bend thy neck, arrogant booby ! &c. They were
so embittered against him that they could not
look upon him. Yea they were driven so far
by damned envy, that they resolved to throttle
this their brother. But let us reason together a
little, ye shepherds ! (although you ought more
properly to have been swine-herds.) Hear me.
Either it is true that your brother is to be king,
or it is not true. If it be not true, then laugh
at the empty dream, and rather banter this
young A. B. C.-smith with brotherly jests. Put
a shepherd's staff in his hand instead of a scep-
tre, and say laughingly, God save your majesty!
&c. But if it is true that he is to be king, then
you ought not to be angry with him on that ac-
count, but rather to rejoice, and to say : So then
Joseph is to be a king! That is the greatest
honour for us, and everlasting renown for our
whole family. Well, we shall no longer wear
our dirty shepherds' knapsacks, but every one
of us will be a gentleman, and how good it will
seem when v/e are called, my lord ! Then, of

48

ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA.

a surety, brother Reuben will be made chief
master of ceremonies , then, certainly, brother
Zebulon will have the situation of president of
the chamber ; brother Issachar cannot fail to
become chief of the kitchen department ; he
loves a good bit, anyhow. Brother Simeon,
without doubt, will be lord chamberlain, for he
knows how to sport the compliments. Think
on me! brother Ashur will be master of the
chase. How he will hunt! Then we will
have a different state of things. Now we must
stuff our hungry stomachs with sour turnips ;
then they will serve up to us other bits. 0, God
grant that our brother may be a king! That is
the kind of talk that Joseph's brothers should
have held. But cursed envy perverted their
understanding, disordered their reason, and they
would rather suffer evil days and laborious days
than to see Joseph exalted to royal dignity. O,
hellish envy! The envious man is contented
with his own poverty if he only sees that his
neighbour is not rich. The envious man finds
satisfaction in his own misery if he only notes
that it is not well with his neighbour. The
envious man complains not of his want of un-
derstanding and his ignorance if he only per-
ceives that his neighbour also hath not much
faculty. The envious man is willing to remain
abject if he only finds that his neighbour does
not rise. The envious man laments not his
mis-shape and his scarecrow face if he only
knows that his neighbour is not fair. 0, cursed
envy ! thou sippest and suckest out of gall, honey,
and out of honey, gall; for thy neighbour's good
is to thee an evil, and thy neighbour's evil is to

thee a good. 0! 0! 0! * * * *

» » » * * * *

The envious are, how are they 1 They are
like muck-chafers, which from the fairest roses
suck only poison, not honey ; so the envious
seek in their object only what is defective, the
good they pass over in silence. The envious
are, how are they 1 They are like files or rasps,
which devour, gnaw, bite and tear other things,
but destroy themselves also thereby. So the
envious seek to injure their neighbour and waste
the health of their own body and soul. The
envious are, how are they"? They are like
wells, which are generally cool when the wea-
ther is warm, and generally warm when the
weather, especially in winter, is cold ; so is it
well with the envious when it is ill with others,
and ill with them when it is well with others.
The envious are, how are they 1 They are like
the thunderbolt which, for the most part, strikes
only lofty edifices, not those which are low ; so
the envious hate those whom God has exalted.
The envious are, how are they ? They are like
the quails. Those evil birds sigh when the sun
rises ; so the envious sigh and are pained when
they see their neighbours rise, and grow in
riches and honour. The envious are, how are
they? They are like a tree beneath which
young trees are growing, but the great tree op-
presses them with its branches, for it cannot

bear that other trees shall grow to equal it. So
the envious labour diligently to prevent that any
one should rise from low to high estate. The
envious are, how are they? They are like men
sick of a fever, to whom sweet food tastes bitter.
Even so nothing more embitters the envious
than when they perceive that their neighbour
enjoys good and sweet fortune. The envious
are, how are they? They are like flies, which
usually plague men there where they are sore
or wounded. So the envious seek only that in
their neighbour which is blameworthy ; what
is virtuous and commendable they freely pass
over in silence. The envious are, how are they?
They are like buckets in a well ; when one
goes down the other mounts, when one goes up
the other descends. So it is well with the en-
vious, and be prospers greatly when he sees
his neighbour fall, and when his neighbour
mounts, the envious is cast down thereby.

0, thou cursed vice ! Thou art a maggot of
the soul; further yet, thou art an imposthume
of the heart; further yet, thou art a pest of the
five senses ; further yet, thou art a poison of the
limbs ; further yet, thou art a dangerous fever
of the blood ; further yet, thou art a giddiness
of the brain ; further yet, thou art a darkness of
the understanding ; further yet, thou art a hang-
man and torturer and tyrant of the human body.
Other vices have a little pleasure and imaginary
delight. The wooing of Bathsheba sugared the
heart of David somewhat. When Herod shared
the board and bed of his brother's wife, he en-
joyed a momentary satisfaction. When Nebu-
chadnezzar set up for a god, and, in his arrogance
and pride, suflered himself to be worshipped ;
the reputation of the thing tickled him a little.
When the rich man gorged himself every day,
his daily gormandizing, no doubt, gave him
pleasure. When Achan made too long fingers
and stumbled over the seventh* commandment,
he enjoyed becoming rich without labour. * *
In short, all other vices have on them and in
them and with them a honey, although in small
weight, but the envious finds nothing but sor-

******
rows. * * *

An envious man may eat what he will and
how he will and when he will and as much as
he will and where he will, he will nevertheless
remain dog-meagre, because everything, with
him, is changed into poison. * * * There-
fore God the Lord himself asked Cain, after he
had washed his hands in his brother's blood :
'^ Quare concidit fades tua?" "Cain, why hath
thy countenance fallen?" The fellow was as
lean as a ramrod ; but there was no other cause
for it than damned envy, which is a poison to
human health.

Of what country the prodigal son was, is not
precisely known ; but I believe he was an Irish-

* The eigluli, according to the division of most Pro-
testant sects. Tr.

ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA.

49

man* What his name was, is not generally-
understood ; but I believe it was Malefacius.
From what place he took his title (seeing he
was a nobleman), has not yet been discovered ;
but I believe it was Maidsberg or Womenham.
What was the device in his coat of arms, no
one has described ; but I believe it was a sow's
stomach in a field vcrd.

This chap travelled with well-larded purse
through various countries and provinces, and
returned no better but rather worse. So it often
happens still, that many a noble youth has his
travels changed to travails. Not seldom also,
he goes forth a good German and returns a bad
Herman.^ What honour or credit is it to the
noble river Danube that it travels through dif-
ferent lands, through Suabia, Bavaria, Austria,
Hungary, and at last unites with a sow 1^ The
pious Jacob saw, in his journey, a ladder to
heaven; but alas! many of our Quality find, in
their journeys, a ladder into hell. If, nowadays,
a man travel not, he is called a Jack-in-the-cor-
ner and one who has set up his rest behind the
stove. But tell me, dear half-Germans ! (for
whole Germans ye have long ceased to be.) Is
it not true ? Ye send your sons out that they
may learn strange vices at great cost in stranger-
lands, when, with far less expense, they might
be acquiring virtues at home. They return with
no more point to them than they went out, ex-
cept that they bring home some new fashion of
point-\a.ce. They return no more gallant, unless
it be that gallant comes from the French galant.
They return more splendidly clad, but good
habits were better than to be finely habited.
New-fashioned hats, new-fashioned periwigs,
new-fashioned collars, new-fashioned coats,
new-fashioned breeches, new-fashioned hose,
new-fashioned shoes, new-fashioned ribbons,
new-fashioned buttons, — also new-fashioned
consciences creep into our beloved Germany
through your travels. Your fool's-frocks change
too with every moon; and soon the tailors will
have to establish a university and take Doctors'
degrees, and afterwards bear the title of Right-
reverend Doctors of fashion.

If I had all the new fashions of coats for four
and twenty years, I would almost make a cur-
tain before the sun with them, so that men
should go about with lanterns in the day-time.
At least, I would undertake to hide all Turkey
with them, so that the Constantinopolitans should
think their Mahomed was playing blind-the-cat
with them. An old witch, at the request of
king Saul, called the prophet Samuel from the
dead, that he might know the result of his arms.

* An uiitranslateahle pun. Irrliinder, literally, err-
lanrier, one who wanders from country to country, a
vagabond. Tr.

t The translator is in doubt as to the meaning of this
qui[). Perhaps Herman stands for the Spanish Hermano;
and the meaning is— a bad brother, a loose companion.

J The river Save, called in Germau Saa, which is the
German for sow. This river joins the Danube between
Semlin and Belgrade. Tr.

o

It will soon come to pass, that people will want
to call from the dead the identical tailor and
master who made the beautiful Esther's gar-
ment, when she was so well-pleasing in the
eyes of Ahasuerus. *****
* * * So the prodigal son learned but little
good in foreign lands. His doing was wooing ;
his thinking was drinking; his Latin was "Pro-
ficiat* his Italian, Brindisi,* his Bohemian,
Sasdravi^ his German, Gesegnet's Gott.* In one
word, he was a goodly fellow always mellow,
a vagrant, a bacchant, an amant, a turbant, a
distillant, &c. Now he had wasted his sub-
stance in foreign provinces and torn his con-
science to tatters as well as his clothes. He
might, with truth, have said to his father what
the brothers of Joseph said, without truth, to
Jacob when they showed him the bloody coat,
^^fera pessima" &c., " an evil beast hath devoured
him." An evil beast devoured the prodigal son;
an evil beast, the golden eagle, an evil beast,
the golden griffin, an evil beast, the golden buck,
an evil beast, the golden bear. These tavern-
beasts reduced the youngster to that condition
that his breeches were as transparent as a
fisherman's net, his stomach shrunk together
like an empty bladder, and the mirror of his
misery was to be seen on the sleeve of his dirty
doublet, &c. And now when the scamp had
got sick of the swine-diet, more wholesome
thoughts came into his mind and he would go
straight home to his old father and seek a favour-
able hearing at his feet; in which he succeeded
according to his wish. And his own father fell
quite lovingly on the neck of the bad vocativo,
for which a rope would have been fitter. Yea,
he was introduced with special joy and jubilee
into the paternal dwelling, sudden preparations
were made for a feast, kitchen and cellar were
put in requisition, and the best and fattest calf
must be killed in a hurry and cooked and
roasted. Away with the rags and tatters ! and
hurrah ! for the velvet coat and the prinked up
hat and a gold ring! Bring on your fiddlers!
allegro !

Meanwhile, the other brother comes home
and hears from afar a fiddling, and a fifing, and
a scraping, and a dancing, and a hopping, and a
shouting, &c. Holloa! he says, what's thaf?
The de-Cil and his grand-mother! What's to pay
now 1 Surely my sister is not having a wedding 1
I heard nothing about any bride when I went
out this morning. While he hovers in these
thoughts, some one reaches him a glass of wine
out of the window and the house-servant runs
toward him with the tidings that his brother,
who fared so ill in foreign parts, was come
home, and he must come in immediately and
sit down to a roast of veal. At this he became
entirely pale with sheer envy, and, while they
waited on his brother in that style, he sat down
before the door of the house and bit his nails,

* Projiciat or prosit, a salutation atdrinking.equivalent
to" Your health." Tr.

5

ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA,

and gnashed his teeth, and scratched his head,
and turned up his nose, and sighed from his
heart, and fasted and tormented himself so with
his envy, that he had well nigh been struck
with apoplexy. 0 fool ! How much better
would it have been, had the gispus gone in and
welcomed his brother home ! And if he had
given him an old felt, it would have done no
harm, seeing he had brought no hat with him.
And if he had sat down to table with him and
helped to make way with the roasted calf, and
pledged him heartily in a few healths, and
hopped about to the voice of the clear-sounding

horns, and worn through a pair of shoe-soles
and half another with dancing, it would have
been much better and God would not have been
so much offended thereat. But with his fasting
and his envy, which tormented him more than
the fiery serpents did the people of Israel, he
deserved hell. In other cases affliction is a
road to heavenly courts, and suffering a way to
eternal joys ; and pains are the outriders of
eternal merriment ; but the torments of the en-
vious fool are the earnest-money of eternal
damnation. ******

****** **

./ ->■

JUSTUS MOSER.

Bom 1720. Died 1794.

The following account of this genial writer
and true-hearted man, as well as the first speci-
men from his writings, is from Mrs. Austin's
German Prose Writers. The other transla-
tions are furnished by a friend.

The writings of Moser are little known in
this country, yet they are distinguished by a
vigorous, homely good sense, a freedom from
all affectation, a knowledge of the condition of
the laboring classes, and a zeal for their im-
provement and happiness, which obtained for
him, not unjustly, the name of the Franklin of
Germany. He was born in 1720, at Osnabruck,
where his father filled high offices under the
government. He early gave proofs of great
talents, which were judiciously cultivated by
his mother. He studied law at Jena and Got-
tingen ; but the open book of human life was
his favorite and most important study. As a
man of business, he was the able and zealous
defender of oppressed innocence, and resisted
alone the arbitrary will of the then ruler of
Osnabriick. The confidence of his country-
men raised him, in 1747, to the honorable post
of " Advocatus PatrijE," and the Landstande
appointed him Secretary and Syndic of the
Order of Knights. His noble character was
put to the test during the troubles of the Seven
years' War, and secured him the respect of
Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick. He was em-
ployed for eight months in London in trans-
acting the affairs of the troops subsidized by-
England, and his residence in that country
added much to his practical experience. He
was for twenty years (during the minority of
the English prince, who, in 1761, was acknow-
ledged protestant bishop and sovereign of Osna-
briick), virtually, though not nominally, chief-
counsellor of the regent. Nothing but Moser's
great talents, knowledge of business, and in-
dustry, united to his unswerving integrity, fair-
ness and disinterestedness, would have enabled
him to steer his course, free from all suspicion
or reproach, between the conflicting interests
of the sovereign and the states, both of whom

he served. For six years he was justiciary of
the criminal court of Osnabruck ; and on his
resignation, was appointed privy referendary
of the government, which post he held till his
death, January 6th, 1794.

Moser's objects in writing were far higher
than the gratification of the vanity, or the ac-
quisition of the fame, of an author ; yet there
is no writer whose works have a more enduring
reputation. They may serve as a model for all
who are inspired with the noble desire of ren-
dering intelligible to the people their own true
interests; — the highest office in which genius,
wit, learning, or eloquence, can ever be em-
ployed.

Gifi;ed in an eminent degree with a sound
mind in a sound body, he devoted both to the
service of his country and of mankind, and he
closed a happy, useful, and honorable life at
the age of 74, " having had much to rejoice,
little to sadden, and nothing to offend him," as
he himself thankfully acknowledged. There
is a beautiful passage in Goethe's life,* of
which I subjoin an abridged translation,

" The little essays or papers of this admirable
man, relating to matters of social and political
interest, had been printed some years before in
the Osnabriick newspaper, and had been point-
ed out to me by Herder, who suffered notiiing
of merit to pass unobserved. Moser's daughter
was now occupied in collecting them.

" They were all conceived in one spirit, and
are all distinguished for their intimate know-
ledge of the condition of the middle and lower
classes, and indeed of the whole fabric of
society. The author, with a perfect freedom
from prejudice, analyzes the relations of the
several classes to each other, and also those
existing between the several towns and villages
of the country. The public revenues and ex-
penditure, the advantages and disadvantages
of the various branches of industry, are brought
distinctly before us, and old times compared
and contrasted with new.

* Dichtung und Wahrheit, book XIII.

(51)

52

MOSER.

" The internal condition of Osnabriick, and
its relation to other countries, particularly Eng-
land, are clearly stated, and practical conse-
quences deduced. Though he calls them ' Pat-
riotic Fantasies,' their contents are in fact true
and practicable.

" And as the whole structure of society rests
on the basis of family, he devotes his especial
attention to tiiat. He treats, seriously or spor-
tively, of the changes in manners and habits,
dress, diet, domestic life, and education. It
would be necessary to make an inventory of
every incident of social life, if we would ex-
haust the subjects which he handles. And how
inimitable is the handling! It is a thorough
man of business speaking to the people in a
weekly paper, in order to render intelligible to
all tlie intentions and projects of a wise and
benevolent government; by no means in a
merely-didactic stylo, but in a variety of forms,
which we might almost call poetical, and which
certainly deserve to be called rhetorical, in the

best sense of the word. He is always master
of his subject, and has the art of giving a lively
color to the most serious ; sometimes assuming
one mask, sometimes another, sometimes speak-
ing in his own person, with a gay and tempered
irony ; vigorous and true, sometimes even rough
and almost coarse, but in every case so appro-
priate, that it is impossible not to admire the
talents, the good sense, the facility, lightness,
taste and originality of the writer. In the
choice of his subjects, his profound knowledge
of them, enlarged views, skilful and appro-
priate handling, deep and yet gay humor, I can
compare him to none but Franklin."

Nothing can be added to this just and beauti-
ful description of Moser's " Patriotische Fan-
tasien." It remains only to say, that his " His-
tory of Osnabriick," is equally remarkable for
the accurate antiquarian knowledge it exhibits.
He left some other works, among which is a
defence of the German language and litera-
ture, in answer to Frederic the Great.

LETTER

FROM AN OLD MARRIED WOMAN TO A SENSITIVE yOUNG LADT.

You do your husband injustice, dear child, if
you think he loves you less than formerly. He
is a man of an ardent, active temper, who loves
labour and exertion, and finds liis pleasure in
them ; and as long as his love for you furnished
him with labour and exertion he was com-
pletely absorbed in it. But this has, of course,
ceased; your reciprocal position, — but by no
means his love, as you imagine, — has changed.

A love which seeks to conquer, and a love
which has conquered, are two totally different-
passions. The one puts on the stretch all the
virtues of the hero ; it excites in. him fear, hope,
desire ; it leads him from triumph to triumph,
and makes him think every foot of ground that
he gains, a kingdom. Hence it keeps alive and
fosters all the active powers of the man who
abandons himself to it. The happy husband
cannot appear like the lover ; he has not like
him to fear, to hope, and to desire; "he has no
longer that charming toil, with all its triumphs,
which he had before, nor can that which he has
already won be a conquest.

You have only, my dear child, to attend to
this most natural and inevitable difference, and
you will see in the whole conduct of your hus-
band, who now finds more pleasure in business
than in your smiles, nothing to offend you. You
wish — do you not? — that he would still sit with
you alone on the mossy bank in front of the
grotto, as he used to do, look in your blue eyes,
and kneel to kiss your pretty hand. You wish

that he would paint to you, in livelier colours
than ever, those delights of love which lovers
know how to describe with so much art and
passion ; that he would lead your imagination
from one rapture to another. My wishes, at
least for the first year after I married my hus-
band, went to nothing short of this. But it will
not do ; — the best husband is also the most use-
ful and active member of society; and when
love no longer demands toil and trouble, — wlien
every triumph is a mere repetition of the last, —
when success has lost something of its value
along with its novelty, — the taste for activity no
longer finds its appropriate food, and turns to
fresh objects of pursuit. The necessity for oc-
cupation and for progress is of the very essence
of our souls ; and if our husbands are guided
by reason in the choice of occupation, we ought
not to pout because they do not sit with us so
often as formerly by tlie silver brook or under
the beech tree. At first I too found it hard to
endure the change. But my husband talked to
me about it with perfect frankness and sincerity.
" The joy with which you receive me,'" said he,
" does not conceal your vexation, and your sad-
dened eye tries in vain to assume a cheerful
look ; I see what you want, — that I would sit
as I used to do on the mossy bank, hang on all
your steps, and live on your breath ; but this is
impossible. I would bring you down from the
toi3 of the church steeple on a rope ladder, at
the peril of my life, if I could obtain you in no
other way ; but now, as I have you fast in my
arms, as all dangers are passed and all obstacles
overcome, my passion can no longer find satis-

MOSER.

53

faction in that way. What has once been sa-
crificed to my self-love, ceases to be a sacrifice.
The spirit of invention, discovery, and conquest,
inlierent in man, demands a new career. Be-
fore I obtained you I used all the virtues I pos-
sessed as steps by which to reach you; but now,
as I have you, I place you at the top of them,
and you are the highest step from which I now
hope to ascend higher."

Little as I relished the notion of the church
tower, or the honour of serving as the highest
step under my husband's feet, time and reflec-
tion on the course of human affairs convinced
me that the thing could not be otherwise. I
therefore turned my active mind, which would
perhaps in time have been tired of tlie mossy
bank, to the domestic business which came
within my department; and when we had both
been busy and bustling in our several ways, and
could tell each other in the evening what we
had been doing, he in the fields, and I in the
house or the garden, we were often more happy
and contented than the most loving couple in
the world.

And, what is best of all, this pleasure has not
left us after thirty years of marriage. We talk
with as much animation as ever of our domestic
affairs; I have learned to know all my hus-
band's tastes, and I relate to him whatever I
think likely to please him out of journals, whe-
ther political or literary ; I recommend books to
him, and lay them before him ; I carry on the
correspondence with our married children, and
often delight him with good news of them and
our little grandchildren. As to his accounts, I
understand them as well as he, and make them
easier to him by having mine of all the yearly
outlay which passes through my hands, ready
and in order ; if necessary, I can send in a state-
ment to the treasury chamber, and my hand
makes as good a figure in our cash-book as his ;
we are accustomed to the same order, we know
the spirit of all our affairs and duties, and we
have one aim and one rule in all our undertakings.

This would never have been the case if we
had played the part of tender lovers after mar-
riage as well as before, and had exhausted our
energies in asseverations of mutual love. We
should perhaps have regarded each other with
ennui, and have soon found the grotto too damp,
the evening air too cool, the noontide too hot,
the morning fatiguing. We should have longed
for visitors, who when they came would not
have been amused, and would have impatiently
awaited the hour of departure, or, if we went
to them, would have wished us away. Spoiled
by efleminate trifling, we should have wanted
to continue to trifle, and to share in pleasures
we could not enjoy ; or have been compelled to
find refuge at the card-table, — the last place at,
which the old can figure with the young.

Do you wish not to fall into this state, my
dear child"? Follow my example, and do not
torment yourself and your excellent husband
with unreasonable exactions. Don't think, how-

ever, that I have entirely renounced the plea-
sure of seeing mine at my feet. Opportunities
for this present themselves far more frec[uently
to those who do not seek, but seem to avoid
them, than to those who allow themselves to be
found on the mossy bank at all times, and as
often as it pleases their lord and master.

I still sometimes sing to my little grandchil-
dren, when they come to see me, a song which,
in the days when his love had still to contend
with all sorts of obstacles, used to throw him
into raptures ; and when the little ones cry,
"Ancora! ancora! grandmamma,' his eyes fill
with tears of joy. I asked him once whether
he would not now think it too dangerous to
bring me down a rope-ladder from the top of
the church steeple, upon which he called out
as vehemently as the children, "0, ancora!
grandmamma, ancora !"

P. S. — One thing, my dear child, I forgot. It
seems to me that you trust too entirely to your
good cause and your good heart, (perhaps, too,
a little to your blue eyes,) and do not deign to
try to attract your husband anew. I fancy you
are, at home, just as you were a week ago, in

society, at our excellent G "s, where I found

you as stiff and silent as if you had met only to
tire each other to death. Did you not observe
how soon I set the whole company in motion 1
This was merely by a few words addressed to
each, on the subject I thought most agreeable or
most flattering to him. After a time the others
began to feel more happy and at their ease, and
we parted in high spirits and good humour.

What I did there, I do daily at home. I try
to make myself and all around me agreeable.
It will not do to leave a man to himself till he
comes to you, to take no pains to attract him, or
to appear before him with a long face. But it
is not so difficult as you think, dear child, to
behave to a husband so that he shall remain
forever in some measure a lover. I am an old
woman, but you can still do what you like; a
word from you at the right time will not fail of
its effect. What need have you to play the suf-
fering virtue ? The tear of a loving girl, says
an old book, is like a dew-drop on the rose ; but
that on the cheek of a wife is a drop of poison
to her husband. Try to appear cheerful and
contented, and your husband will be so ; and
when you have made him happy, you will be-
come so, not in appearance, but in reality.

The skill required is not so great. Nothing
flatters a man so much as the happiness of his
wife; he is always proud of himself as the
source of it. As soon as you are cheerful, you
will be lively and alert, and every moment will
Jifford you an op^iortunity of letting fall an agree-
iibie word. Your education, which gives you
an immense advantage, will greatly assist you ;
and your sensibility will become the noblest
gift that nature has bestowed on you, when it
sliows itself in affectionate assiduity, and stamps
on every action a soft, kind, and tender charac-
ter, instead of wasting itself in secret repinings.
5*

54

MOSER.

HOW TO ATTAIN TO AN ADEQUATE
EXPRESSION OF OUR IDEAS.

Youu complaint, dearest friend, that you can
seldom satisfy yourself perfectly, in expression
and execution, when you attempt to impart
weighty and interesting truth, may, likely
enough, be well founded; but I am not yet con-
vinced, that this arises from any deficiency of
language. All words, especially dead words on
paper, to which indeed the physiognomy is
wanting, to assist expression, are but very im-
perfect signs of our thoughts and feelings, and
we are often more affected by another's silence,
than by the finest written discourse. But these
signs, too, have their accompaniments, to the
feeling and thinking reader ; and as he who
understands music, does not employ the notes
slavishly,* so the reader, who has the necessary
capacity, can, by the help of written words, ac-
company the writer in his elevation, and draw
out of his soul, all that remained behind.

I should rather say, that your thoughts and
feelings were not sufficiently developed, when
you made an attempt to express them. Most
writers content themselves with thinking over
their subject calmly, then forming what they
call a plan, and handling their theme accord-
ingly; or they avail themselves of the heat of
the first impulse ; and their glowing imagina-
tion presents us a fresh painting, often glaring
and powerful enough, and yet the result disap-
points their expectations. But indispensable as
it is, that he, who would express forcibly a
great truth, should revolve it beforehand, order
his expressions, and handle his theme, accord-
ing to its nature, with all energy; this is not yet
the precise method by which we can attain to
a powerful expression of our sentiments.

However evident to me a truth may be, after
I have gained instruction on the subject from
books and my own reflections, and however
well acquainted with it I may seem to myself,
I do not venture to form my plan immediately
and to treat it accordingly. I rather reflect, that
it has innumerable windings and aspects not
directly obvious, and I must first strive to master
as many of these as possible, before I commu-
nicate myself, or consider the plan and expres-
sion. Accordingly, as soon as I feel inspired by
my subject and prepared for utterance, I first
throw all that comes into my mind upon paper.
Another day, if the subject attracts me anew, I
proceed in the same way, and this I repeat so
long as the fire and the impulse last, penetrating
ever deeper into the subject. So soon as I have
put something on paper and relieved the mind
of its first burden, it gradually extends its grasp
and gains new views, which nearer images at
first concealed. The farther it penetrates, and
the more it discovers, the more fiery and pas-
sionate it becomes in behalf of its beloved ob-
ject. It is continually discovering more beauti-

* i. e. with a slavish contineraent to the written signs.
Tr.

ful relations, feels itself lighter and freer in
comparison, gets acquainted and familiar with
all parts, dwells upon and delights in their con-
templation, and does not desist, till the last grace
is bestowed.

And now when I have got so fair, and have
commonly spent many days and nights, — morn-
ing and evening hours, — while I lay down the
pen at the least appearance of languor, I begin,
in the hours of business, to read over what I
have written and to reflect how I shall arrange
my plan. Generally, during this employment,
the best method of arrangement discloses itself,
or if I cannot decide upon it, I lay my paper
aside and wait for a happier hour, which must
come wholly of itself, and does come readily,
after one has once become familiar with a truth.
But the best way of presenting the subject, is
always that, and that only, which grows out of
the subject itself during the process. Thus I
begin to arrange gradually all I have gained in
this way out of my own mind, to strike out
what is not appropriate, and bring every thing
into its place.

Commonly, all that I first set down, comes to
nothing; but there are scattered particulars
which I now find necessary to note, with the
general result. I retain more of the subsequent
efforts in which there is a tendency to greater
precision ; and the final improvements conduce,
for the most part, only to the perspicuity and
ease of my essay. The order or arrangement
of the argiuTient follows of itself, the main
design, and the colouring I leave to the hand
which, without the necessity of special guidance,
paints with power and warmth what the heated
imagination feels with increasfng force.

Yet I will not say, that, in this respect, you
can immediately trust yourself Every principle
has its own place, and it does not operate with
one as with another. Suppose I would prove
to you the doubtful value of previous prepara-
tion, and should begin by saying, " Garrick ad-
mired Clairon, as the greatest actress of France,
but thought it rather small in her, that she could
decide in her own room, in cold blood, upon the
degree of rage to which she would rise, as
Medea." You might easily discern the justness
of the comparison, but not feel all I wish you
to feel in reading it. Garrick never disposed
his parts beforehand; he merely wrought him-
self up into the situation of the person he had
to represent, and then left it to his miglity soul,
to exercise all its art, according to the feeling
of the moment. And so must every one do,
who would conceive forcibly great sentiments.

The colouring is easier when separated froin
the general tone, but, in connexion with it, more
difficult. On this subject, it is not easy to furnish
rules. It is mastered only by attentive observa-
tion of nature, and much experience of what
should be adojited or rejected, expressed strong-
ly or slightly. Subordination in the grouping is
the principal thing, and if you are happy and
accurate in this, the various stand-points, from

MOSER.

55

which your readers will survey your delinea-
tion, deserve only a general consideration.

Among a million of men, there is perhaps not
more than one, who knows how to put his soul
on the stretch so far, that it produces all it is
capable of producing. Great numbers possess
a multitude of impressions, whether from art or
nature, concealed within, without being them-
selves conscious of it. The soul must be placed
in circumstances of emotion, it must be warmed
in order to unfold itself fully, and excited to
enthusiasm in order that it may yield up all
that is in it. Horace recommends wine as a
gentle torture of the soul. Others regard fond-
ness for the subject in hand, as mightier, than
the thirst for discoveries. Every one must
make the experiment for himself. Rousseau
never gave the first movements of his soul. He
who offers these only and nothing more, presents
such truths alone as are common, and known to
all men. He, on the other hand, practised often
ten times over the system, which I have pro-
posed to you, and did not desist, so long as there
was any thing to be drawn forth. When a
great man pursues this course, we may be pretty
certain, he will press farther, than any have
done before him. Whenever you are con-
scious of being stronger in feeling, than in ex-
pression, be assured that your soul is sluggish,
and refuses to bring forth all that is in her.
Assail her, when you feel the time has come,
and compel her to exert herself. All the ideas,
with which she has been at any time impressed,
and those, which she herself has produced un-
consciously from these impressions, must be put
into motion and glow. She must compare, re-
solve, and feel what she could never do without
this stimulus; she must be enamoured and
warmed with her great subject. But where
there is this love for the subject, there needs no
arrangement. Scarcely can one tell when it is
done, how he passed from one point to another.

THE MORAL ADVANTAGES OF PUBLIC
CALAMITIES.

"0, if it were only Easter, if only the long
winter-evenings were over!" said to me last
autumn a tenant, who had not reaped for him-
self, his wife and seven children, so much as
would keep them till Martinmas. The flax he
had sown had not come up, and the last year's
scarcity had already disabled him from paying
his rent.

" Now,'" said I to him yesterday, " Easter is
come and the long winter is over, and I see you
are still alive, with your wife and all your
children. I suppose you have earned your bread
with difficulty, but it could never have tasted
so good, as it has this winter, when it was the
rarest thing you had."

"It was indeed very difficult," he replied,
" you see my house is altogether miserable, my

wife and children naked, and myself enfeebled.
It has been so hard for us. The flax we still
had, was soon spent. A pound of bread cost a
skein, and there were only three who could
spin, and nine who must eat. There was no
work to be had out of the house, and when
Christmas came, our flax was spun and gone.
Ah, thou melancholy Christmas ! — My wife had
already pawned her petticoats and caps ; we
could not go to God's church. There was
nothing besides in the house, on which we
could raise any money, but the cow, I wished
to drive her away to sell, but my wife and
children held her fast embraced, and we all
cried out, and stood so a long sad time. I
walked out at last, for I could no longer endure
my misery. I staid away two hours, that I
might not see my own dying with hunger.
But it was always as if six horses drew me
back ; I must return home. I passed by ari
oven filled with bread ; and want, the sweet
savour and opportunity made me a thief; so
miserable had I become. With this stolen
bread we solemnized our Christmas. But I rose
the next morning before day, took m}^ cow, and
carried her to the man from whom I had stolen
the bread. With a thousand tears I acknow-
ledged to him the deed ; and the man, whom I
had known as hard and avaricious, gave her to
me again and a bushel of rye also. Since then,
my landlord, to whom I am yet in debt for the
past year, and whom I could not have spoken
to before, because he had nothing left himself,
has given me aid. Ah, Sir ! there is still pity
in the world, there are still secret virtues, which
we do not find out till the time of need!"

The last remark of the good man pleased me.
"But what will you do now?' I asked. "I
must now to Holland," said he, "to earn some-
thing to pay my debts. But I have no money
for the journey, and since I have received so
much from all I know, I can apply to nobody,

and so my cow must still " Here he could

say no more for sobbing, and tears rolled down
his sorrowful face. — "And who knows whether
I shall ever return from Holland, since I find
myself so weak after such a wretched winter,
and must make great exertions now, to earn
only so much as I owe for corn and rent."

I provided him for his journey, his main-
tenance, his children ; and now I made haste
to think over the secret virtues, \yhich want
discloses in so many hearts. How great, how
noble, thought I, has many a heart shown it-
self in the present scarcity! What concealed
fountains of virtue have been opened by want,
and how many thanks do we owe to Providence
for these trials.

Prosperous and easy times, long continued,
finally lull men to sleep. The poor man is un-
grateful, because help comes promptly, and
prompt help renders him negligent in his busi-
ness. The philosopher amuses himself with
an ideal world, and the statesman with idle
projects. Mere voluptuous passions arise from

56

MOSER.

repose, and find an easy gratification. The
virtues liold their even way witli the civilities.
Nothing compels feeling and decision. Interest
in the public good slackens, and all goes on so
indirterently well, that even the greatest genius
is only half developed. But if want breaks in,
if peril demands heroes, and a universal call
summons the soul ; if the State is striving against
its downfall ; if its dangers are increasing with
every neglected moment; if the most frightful
crisis can only be diverted by the greatest sacri-
fice; then all is action and greatness; the orator
waxes mighty, the genius surpasses his own
hopes, courage and constancy inspire the friend;
heart and hand open with equal promptitude;
performance follows resolve, and the soul is
astonished at its own powers. It finds in itself
unknown virtues, mounts ever higher, and dis-
cerns from new elevations an ever widening
field of duty. Great things, and things adored
in a state of tranquillity, vanish with its flight;
and man shows himself once more a creature
worthy of the Godhead.

How many seeds of virtue would never
germinate, and how few would ripen, if there
were no want, no adversity ! To how many
nave not their own hearts been revealed by the

sight of a poor man wasting away ! And how^
many a poor man has not been inspired by
hunger, with feeling, gratitude and inclination
for labour, which before he had neglected !
Will not also many of our country-people dis-
cern, better than before, the worth of modera-
tion and frugality? and many have learnt to
do without a multitude of things, which they
formerly thought absolutely necessary? I do
not now refer to the political uses of public
calamities ; that would lead to other considera-
tions. How salutary, how instructive, as well
for the heart as for the understanding, is thus
the present scarcity ! The good Providence
seems to have ordained that this should occur,
at least once, in every generation. Without this
awakening, many would lead a very stupid
life. The more refined part of mankind cer-
tainly take sufficient pains to deserve abundant
chastisement, and — when they do not receive
enough in this way — to torment themselves.
But their sensibility needs but a slight occasion
to call it into action ; and Heaven needs not
punish any land in order to chastise some few
fools. Too great, or too unfeeling, to suffer by
a public calamity, they are left to the martyr-
dom of their own imagination.

S^SsSss

IMMANUEL KANT.

Born 1724. Died 1804.

A SLIGHT acquaintance with the German
literature of the last half-century, discovers the
vast influence, on all its productions, of the
critical and transcendental philosophies. These
terms, which are sometimes confounded, desig-
nate two distinct branches of speculation. The
critical philosophy begins and ends with Kant,
The transcendental, to which it gave birth,
developed itself with various phases in the sys-
tems of those philosophers, who, after him,
attained successively the highest eminence, as
metaphysicians ; particularly, Fichte, Schel-
ling, Hegel. The transcendental philosophy,
although, in one sense, the ofispring of the
critical, differs from it in its positive, system-
atic and constructive character ; whereas, in
the critical, the negative and destructive ten-
dency predominates. Kant has, properly speak-
ing, no system ; he is analytic, not synthetic.
Both these philosopliies, however, are parts of
one movement, and may properly enouo-h be
comprised under one denomination. The term
transcendental, according to the current use,
has this comprehension at present, and is likely
to retain it.

The history of European philosophy exhibits
perhaps no other instance of a movement so
succinct, so defined and complete ; — so epic as
that represented by the four names which have
been mentioned. Kant, the critic, prepares
the way by analyzing our cognitions, and dis-
encumbering the ground of traditionary errors.
Fichte, the idealist, pursues to its last results
the subjective path of pliilosophical inquiry.
Sclielling, the pantheistic realist, takes the
objective direction. Finally, Hegel, the en-
cyclopedist, describes the outermost circle and
lays the ground-plan which embraces and clas-
sifies all branches and topics of philosophy in
one compreliensive system.

To the influence of this philosophy on tlie
national mind, German literature owes some
of its most distinctive features; in particu-
lar, that thoughtful tone and that profound
spirit which so strongly characterize it. If
it be inferior to others in some particu-
lars; if it has less of creative genius and

affluence than the English, less of grace and
plausibility than the French, of artistic perfec-
tion than the Italian, of romantic and popular
interest than the Spanish ; it is superior to all
these in intensity and depth. It presents a
greater amount of ideas in proportion to its
extent, acts more powerfully on the mind in
proportion to the genius embarked in it; has
more of that quality which is called suggestive
than any literature of modern Europe. And
for these properties it is principally indebted to
the efforts and speculations of those great men
who have labored so assiduously to found a
science of absolute truth.*

Immanuel Kant was born at Konigsberg, in
old Prussia, April 22d, 1724. His father pur-
sued the business of a saddler in one of the
suburbs of that city. In his ninth year, he was
put to school at the Collegium Fredericianum,
where he distinguished liimself by his applica-
tion, and laid the foundation of that vast eru-
dition by which he was afterwards disting-uish-
ed. In 1740, he entered the university of his
native city, where he first studied theology,
and afterwards applied himself to philosophy
and the exact sciences. After leaving the
university, he held the office of private tutor
in several families, and resided for nine years
with Count Hullesen of Arnsdorf In 1755,
he returned to Konigsberg, and took the degree
of Master of Arts. For fifteen years he lec-
tured, in connection with the university, on
logic, metaphysics, physics, and mathematics.
In 1770, he was made Professor nrdinarius of
logic and metaphysics; which office he re-
tained till 1794 ; refusing several more lucra-
tive offers from other universities. He died,
February 12th, 1804, in his eightieth year;
having never travelled above seven miles from

* '■ German literature is inextricably interwoven with
German philosophy. There is not a fairy-tale of Tieck,
not a song of Goethe, not a play of Schiller, not a criti-
cism of Schlegel, not a description of Humboldt, in which
this undercurrent is not perceptible. Nay, however para-
doxical it may appear, I will venture to afiirm that Ger-
man rausir, lias received much of its peculiar character
from the same source, that the compositions of Beethoven,
Weber, Spohr. Mendelssohn, are deeply tinctured with
the same spirit."— Jl/rs. Austin.

(57)

58

IM MANUEL KANT.

his native city, but leaving a name which had
traversed the civilized world. Kant remained
\inmarried, but was social in his habits, and a
welcome visiter in the first families of Konig-s-
berg, wlio knew how to prize the greatest in-
tellect of the age. He was an agreeable com-
panion, and entertained his company with
amusing anecdotes, of which he possessed an
inexhaustible store, and which he related in a
very dry manner, with unmoved countenance,
excitinsT jrreat merriment in others. He dressed
with elegance, and was fond of cards ; seldom
passing an evening without a game of I'hombre,
which he considered as the only certain means
of withdrawing his mind from strenuous thought,
and composing himself to rest.

Reichardt, in the "Urania" for 1812, has
given a spirited sketch of his person and habits.
" He was utterly dry in body and mind. More
meagre, nay withered, than his little body, per-
haps none ever existed; colder and more purely
secluded within himself, no sage ever lived.
A high, cheerful brow, a fine nose and bright
clear eyes, distinguished advantageously the
upper part of his countenance. But the lower
part, on the other hand, was the most perfect
expression of coarse sensuality, which showed
itself to excess, especially in eating and drink-
ing. He loved a good table in cheerful com-
pany." " So boundless a memory as Kant pos-
sessed one shall seldom find. His lectures
were rendered exceedingly interesting thereby.
His lectures on physics and physical geography,
in particular, were very instructive and pleas-
ing to young people, by reason of his measure-
less acquaintance with history, travels, biogra-
phy, novels, and all departments which could
furnish materials for enriching and illustrating
those sciences. Although he had his notes be-
fore him, he seldom looked at them, and often
repeated whole columns of names and dates
from memory."

" The life-history of Immanuel Kant," says
Heine, " is difficult to describe. For he had
neither life nor history. He lived a mechanic-
ally regular, almost abstract bachelor-existence,
in a still, retired street of Konigsberg, an an-
cient city on the north-eastern boundary of
Germany. I do not think that the great clock
of the cathedral in that place accomplished its
daily task in a more passionless and regular
manner than its countryman, Immanuel Kant.
Rising, coffee-drinking, writing, reading lec-
tures, dining, walking, — everything had its

set time ; and the neighbours knew with per-
fect accuracy that it was half-past three o'clock,
when Immanuel Kant, in his grey body-coat,
with his rattan in his hand, came out of his
house-door, and bent his steps toward the little
linden-alley which, for his sake, is still called
the philosopher's walk. Eight times he walked
up and down that alley, at all seasons of the
year ; and when the weather was dull, and the
grey clouds portended rain, his servant, old
Lampe, was seen walking behind him with
anxious concern, carrying a long umbrella un-
der his arm, like a picture of providence.

Strange contrast between the outward life
of the man and his destructive, world-to-pieces-
crushing thought ! Truly, if the citizens of
Konigsberg had suspected the entire import of
that thought, they would have felt a far more
shuddering horror for that man than for the
executioner, — an executioner who beheads only
men. But the good people saw in him nothing
more than a professor of philosophy, and when,
at the set time, he passed along, they gave him
friendly greeting, and perhaps set their watches
by him."

His fame, at present, rests chiefly on his la-
bors as a metaphysician. But, in his own day,
he was scarcely less distinguished by his con-
tributions to the exact sciences than by his in-
vestigation of the intellectual powers and the
ideal world. He published important treatises
on various subjects connected with physical
science, of which the most celebrated is the
"Universal Natural History and Theory of the
Heavens." In this work he seems to have an-
ticipated some of the subsequent discoveries in
astronomy. In particular, he conjectured the
existence of another planet beyond Saturn,
more than twenty years before Sir W. Herschel
had discovered the Georgium Sidus. The fol-
lowing is an extract from the passage in which
this conjecture is propounded. " Should there
not be between Saturn, the outermost of the
planets which we know, and the least eccentric
comet, which descends to us from a distance,
perhaps ten times greater, another planet whose
motion approaches more nearly to the cometary
than that of Saturn?" * * * "The law
which determines the relation between the
eccentricity of the planetary orbits and their
distance from the sun supports this conjec-
ture."*

* Mllgemeine JVaturgeschickte und Tlicorie des Himmels.
Erster Theil.

IMMANUEL KANT.

59

Kant's moral character, distinguished for
probity and a high sense of honor, was held in
the highest estimation by his fellow-citizens.

There is an entertaining biography of him
by Borrowsky, a personal friend.

For the following " Remarks" on Kant's phi-
losophy, the editor is indebted to the translator
of the extracts which are given from the " Cri-
tique on tlie Faculty of judging," and the
" Plan for an everlasting peace."*

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

[ly reading Kant's writings, the observation
often forces itself upon us, that the words will
very well bear a construction quite opposite to
that he himself seems to pat upon them; and
we discover that they are equally intelligible
and harmonious from two entirely distinct points
of view. It is true, indeed, of all honest and
thorough discussion of principles, that its appli-
cation is infinitely wider than the particular
intent of the writer. Thus a profound remark
in Morals is equally applicable to Physics, Art,
and Politics. But in Kant, born to represent an
important step in the progress of Modern Philo-
sophy, this double meaning, passing easily into
open contradiction, accompanied too by the most
entire earnestness and strictness of inquiry, is
particularly remarkable, and has given occasion
to much difference of opinion as to the whole
scope and fundamental character of his philo-
sophy.

Thus he is commonly cited as the founder
of iriodern Transcendentalism, which in the
popular estimate is equivalent to Mysticism ;
yet where the aim is rather to find fault than to
understand, it is easy too to make him out a
materialist and a skeptic. This peculiarity,
allied to and resulting from the very nature of
his system, as we shall hereafter see, must be
understood and kept in view in the study of his
writings, and particularly in the Critique of the
Judgment, (from which the longest of our ex-
tracts is taken) ; which it renders one of the
most interesting, but most difficult of his writ-
ings.

Kant's starting-point is altogether with the
Materialists, or as they call themselves of late,
the Common-sense, or Inductive Philosophers.
In common with all the world of his time, and
with most persons of the present day, he as-
sumes that our knowledge is limited, both in
extent and in degree ; that we know in part,
and parts only.

Nevertheless, the fact that we have Expe-
rience, of some kind, whatever be its value,
remains unshaken ; and with this he commences
his examination of our Cognitive Faculty; hav-
ing for his aim to discover, and after the rigidest
scrutiny, set down, as Knowledge, only what
we certainly know ; leaving all that belongs to
Opinion, Faith or Feeling, to stand on its own
basis.

As his Test of Certainty, he appeals directly to
the private intuition, or consciousness, not rely-
ing on Experience, however often repeated ; for,

as he says, this, though it may be amply suffi-
cient for the uses of everyday life, is yet easily
distinguishable from absolute and original cer-
tainty. This latter he calls Knowledge d priori,
by which is to be understood, not a knowledge
preceding Experience, but deriving its support
from something prior to and independent of
Experience. For example, our conception of a
triangle, though suggested by the actual figure,
cannot be derived from it; for there is no perfect
triangle; none perfectly adequate to the con-
ception.

It is obvious that on the strict application of
this test, most of our so-called Knowledge must
take another name ; and the inquiry occurs :
whether there be anything in Experience de-
serving to be called Knowledge.

Kant answers that there is: viz. That in all
our perceptions of outward things, they must
appear as existing in Space and Time. This is
not the result of Experience ; for all Experience
must presu2ipose it ; and whatever validity we
may allow our knowledge of phenomena, of
this at least we are certain, that they can appear
to us only in Space and Time.

These, then, are the forms of our perceptions;
not indicating anything in the nature of the
objects perceived, but mere subjective forms.

Accordingly, he divides Knowledge into two
kinds ; Knowledge of Forms, (subjective Know-
ledge); and Knowledge of subject-matter, (ob-
jective Knowledge) ; and he says that of the
latter we not only have nothing, but cannot
even conceive of the possibility of our ever
having any knowledge of things as they are in
themselves.

It would not be possible for us in the brief
space devoted to this sketch of Kant's philoso-
phy, to give even a general account of his de-
velojiment of his theory of Perception, nor of his
critique of the Understanding. Suffice it to say
that on this principle of the subjectiveness of
all Knowledge, he proceeds to construct a sys-
tem of subjective Knowledge, (Understanding);
embracing, according to him, all our proper
cognitive faculty.

It is evident, however, from what has already
been said, that as Knowledge relates only to
the forms and conditions of Experience, it must
depend entirely upon the i3ossibility of Expe-
rience ; and where this is impossible, Know-
ledge must also be impossible. Now, Kant

* J. Elliot Cabot, Esq.

60

IMMANUEL KANT.

finds certain conceptions in the mind, not only-
unconnected with, but, by their very nature,
transcending all possibility of Experience. For
example, our conceptions of God, Freedom, and
Immortality, to which no possible sensuous ex-
perience can be adequate. Such conceptions
Kant calls Transcendental Ideas; and the faculty
conceiving them. Reason. The Transcendental
Ideas lay claim to absolute certainty and objec-
tivity, without reference to Experience. This
is evidently in contradiction to the theory of
Knowledge according to the Understanding.
Finite perception is deceptive, and must appeal
to Experience as the test of its correctness. The
claims of the Transcendental Ideas to theoretic
Knowledge, therefore, must be considered as an
overweening pretence, and they should rather
be called transcendent, than transcendental.
They cannot give us any information as to the
nature of any object ; but, at most, like empiri-
cal conceptions, declare some law of the subject.
And in support of this he shows that every
Transcendental Idea contains a contradiction;
that is, when we endeavour to give it a theo-
retic application, to declare what it asserts con-
cerning its object, two opposite propositions of
equal apparent truth are the result. Thus our
idea as to the extent of the Universe, — it is
equally easy to maintain that it is infinite, or
that it is finite ; eternal, or having originated in
Time, and so on. And these Antinomies of Pure
Reason, as he calls them, he shows are inherent
in all Ideas.

To the Transcendental Ideas he accordingly
assigns a merely subjective application.

Wherever the Subject and the Object coincide,
there, according to him, is the true province of
the Transcendental Ideas, for then they have
objective validity. Thus in \.he practical Ideas,
as Kant styles them ; for instance the Idea of
Duty; here the conception (Subject) and the
Object, (the course of life to be pursued,) coincide.
So of the idea of God. Considered theoreti-
cally, that is, if we attempt to discover his na-
ture, we are baffled and ftill into contradictions,
from the weakness of human powers; — such
conceptions are transcendent, not transcendental.
But considering God as the foundation of the
moral order of the Universe, of the idea of Duty,
we are in no danger of error, for here both ends
of the problem are within our reach.

Kant's skepticism is therefore wholly theoreti-
cal ; and he consoles himself for the unwelcome
results of his inquiries by the reflection that all
the practical and solid interests of humanity re-
main untouched ; and that only our vain as-
sumption of knowledge, unsuited to our nature
and position, is affected. It is of no importance
whether our notions of God are correct, theoreti-
cally, or not; it is sufficient that we have a sub-
jective (practical) knowledge of him, in the
Idea of Duty.

Kant"s method, as already explained, is em-
pirical, or so to say, narrative. He begins with
certain universally-admitted facts, and proceeds

to examine their consequences and relations, as
they fall under his hand, but without searching
out their foundation or ultimate significance.

Thus he gives us the forms, Space and Time,
as if for aught he knows there may be others
that he has not yet discovered. And he does
not inquire why it is that these and no others
should exist. They stand there without our
knowing whence or how. But if we examine
into their nature we discover them to be essen-
tially connected v/ith the nature of sensuous
Perception ; and they conduct us to new points
of view in relation to Kant's system.

All Knowledge must presuppose some con-
nection between the Subject and the Object;
the mind and the thing; and whichever it may
be that acts on the other, there is at all events
a communication between them. And more-
over this empirical communication must depend
upon an original and essential connection. If
we could imagine two essentially and primarily
distinct kinds of Matter, they could not act upon
each other, nor could there be any communica-
tion between them. For Matter can act or be
acted upon only according to its laws. But the
laws of Matter are its essence, and if they act
according to the same laws they must be iden-
tical. It is necessary, therefore, and an an-
tecedent condition of the perception of things,
that both they and we should be parts of one
identical nature. So too in proceeding beyond
mere sensuous perception, — the abstract rules
formed by the Understanding, e.g. the common
hypotheses in Physics, presuppose a like iden-
tity, for they are formed by generalization, and
this is impossible without at least a dim idea
of a common centre of all things. The reason
why animals, or men reduced to a mere animal
existence, do not generalize nor form rules, ex-
cept to a very limited extent, is that this Idea
is not present in their consciousness, (or only
very dimly,) but exists outside of them, as In-
stinct.

So that the simplest Experience presupposes
an entire continuity throughout the Universe as
its fundamental condhion. This series or con-
tinuity, considered abstractly, is Space. Space
is not the idea, but the abstraction of the material
Universe ; for it belongs to subjective perception
and Understanding, which have nothing to do
with Ideas; but it is a sufficient recognition,
by the sensuous faculty, of what the Reason af-
terwards comes to know as concrete Truth.
Thus we cannot imagine a limitation of Space,
nor of a place where it is not. The edge, or
boundary of Space, or a vacuum where there is
Extension without Space, is an absurdity. And
it is equally impossible to imagine an object not
in Space.

Space is in fact the abstraction of the Infinite
displayed in the Finite. For Matter, though
necessarily connected with and supported by
Spirit, is yet its direct opposite. Every one of
the qualities of Matter is antagonistic to the cor-
responding spiritual quality. Thus Spirit is in-

IMMANUEL KANT.

61

finite and eternal ; Matter finite and transitory.
Or ratlier, Matter, if it could be considered by
itself, would be a mere negation, and is inca-
pable of being expressed without its opposite.
For transience, for example, implies a certain
duration. The material Universe, therefore, is
an embodied contradiction, and Space of course
a mere suspension or abstraction of this. Thus
Space is both the affirmative condition and the
negation of Extension ; for there is no unlimited
Extension, and limitation is equivalent to ne-
gation.

So of Time. It differs from Space only as
quality from quantity ; Intension from E.xten-
sion ; the inward from the outward sense, so
called. As Matter is limited in extent, so also
it is transient in substance ; and as Space con-
tains both extension and limitation, so Time is
embodied Change, i.e. persistence and tran-
sience : we cannot arrest any particle of it, as
the Present, for as we pause, it is already Past.
Every-day experience shows us that our notion
of Time depends upon the number of events
that have successively impressed us and then
given place to others. Amid a rapid succession
of interesting events, a week, when past, seems
a month, and a naonth a year, for we date from
each succeeding event. On the other hand, to
measvire Time for economic purpose, we em-
ploy astronomic changes, since here the succes-
sion is unvarying.

It is the profound remark of an ancient Hin-
doo book, that Time is the connection of Matter
and Spirit. And the same is true of Space.

The interesting point here, and that to which
the preceding inquiries tend, is this : That not
the Transcendental Ideas alone, but the com-
monest and simplest experience must necessa-
rily contain a contradiction, to the Understand-
ing. Time is the contradiction of Eternity, yet
also of the moment, or point in Time ; Space is
the opposition of Unity, yet also of the point
in Space. And it is also very remarkable that
Kant in the table which he gives of the differ-
ent classes of possible judgments, and also in
his table of Categories, or classes under which
all pure conceptions of the Understanding may
be reduced, has in each instance distributed
them under various heads, by threes, of which
two are contraries and the third their result;
without giving any deduction, or reason for so
doing. Thus under the head of Quantity, in
judgment, he gives : Universal, Particular, and
Special ; and under the same head in the Ca-
tegories, he gives: Unity, Multiplicity, and To-
tality; and so on through the whole. The
truth is that each of these classes contains, not
only three kinds of judgment, or of conceptions,
but also the three elements necessary to every
judgment and every conception; viz. the con-
tradiction and its result. Thus if I say : This
paper is white, here we have the general at-
tribute, white, the limitation, to this piece of
paper, (negation of other paper) ; and the re-
sult, this special piece of paper. So of all con-

ceptions, and so of all knowledge ; there is no
possible act of cognition that does not embrace
this element of contradiction. It is the combi-
nation of outside and inside, light and darkness,
extent and limitation, requisite to every sen-
suous impression ; and it is the puzzle in the
highest problems that employ the mind of man.
Thus in Civil Government, the coexistence of
personal freedom, (which supposes each indi-
vidual supreme and unlimited), with Society,
in which he is only a part. So in Religion, the
fierce disputes that have agitated the workl
now for eighteen centuries, arise solely from the
impossibility, and at the same time the ever-re-
curring necessity, of conceiving Man to be at
once human and divine, finite and infinite ;
and the difficulty of reconciling the doctrine of
Immortality and possible perfection, with the
common views of h umanity, on any other ground.
A finite immortal is the most tremendous of
contradictions. This is the cause of the horror
with which the doctrine of the mere humanity
of Jesus Christ is looked upon by most persons.

But these contradictions and these impossi-
bilities are such only to the Understanding ; that
is, the mind employed only with particulars.
The contradiction truly exists in the Universe,
and to him who does not transcend it, does not
see it and its contrary united in an harmonious
synthesis, it is final. But in reality it is super-
ficial, and Reason, or the mind contemplating
things as a Whole, readily resolves it. Then
it is no longer contradiction, but the necessary
organism of the Idea.

Kant, from his point of view, was quite right
in making knowledge subjective only, for he
confines his inquiries as to the Cognitive faculty
entirely to the Understanding, or subjective
Reason, to the very nature of which, this an-
tagonism of the subjective and objective, and
their absolute separation, is altogether essential.

There is another branch of Kant's enquiry,
touched upon in the beginning of these re-
marks, but which our limits forbid our discus-
sing at much length ; leading, however, to the
same point. This is the distinction he makes
between the phenomenon, or appearance of a
thing, and the thing itself, and his doctrine that
we can know nothing of the latter, but that
all our perception and knowledge is confined
to the former. This evidently follows from his
premises.

For if all our intercourse with things is that
of one thing with another, it must evidently be
merely outward, like all relations of things to
each other.

If we bring two bodies together, they touch
only their outer surfaces ; an inward union is
impossible. Modern Chemistry has shown ex-
perimentally that the transformations of Matter
are merely apparent, and consist solely of vari-
ous combinations of the same particles. Bodies
apjparently the most distinct, for example,
starch, gum, sugar, fat, and the woody fibre of
6

62

IMMANUEL KANT.

plants are the same or nearly so, in composi-
tion. For Matter, as has been well said, has
no inside, but only outside, and is capable only
of outward relations.

This Kant shows, psychologically, in our
sensuous perceptions. For what do we after
all mean, when we say we perceive a thing,
for instance a tree? Plainly nothing more than
that we see certain colours and outlines ap-
parently connected and belonging to some
thing.

But whether there is anytliing really existing
in that place, or whether it be only something
within myself, or the effect of another thing,
I cannot (with absolute certainty) tell. For
our senses are our only evidence, and they pre-
tend to nothing more than a perception of ap-
pearances. To another intelligence, or to dif-
ferently constructed senses, the object may ap-
pear quite different. At first sight, indeed,
it might seem that we do entirely rely upon the
report of our senses ; but let any one compare
his knowledge of any outward fact with his
perception of a mathematical truth, and he will
find the former much the weaker. We may
admit the possibility of our being persuaded to
change our notions as to the colour, shape, and
other qualities of any object; but we cannot for
an instant admit the possibility of being con-
vinced that two and two do not make four.
Now evidently there are no degrees of certainty ;
we either know, or we do not know.

Kant accordingly comes to the conclusion
that we cannot, properly speaking, know any-
thing of the real nature or substance of objects:
and that all we can hope to know about them
is their effect upon ourselves ; or at the most,
the forms and rules of this subjective effect.

Nevertheless our claim of objective know-
ledge continues : in spite of the contradiction
of the Understanding, there is an instinctive
feeling that it is not absolute, but only the dif-
ferent sides of one truth. And in truth the
contradiction here too belongs only to the Un-
derstanding, transcending its province. It is
true, that of anything absolutely objective,
really foreign to our nature, we can know
nothing objectively; and more than this, as we
have seen above, we could not have even sub-
jective knowledge of an absolute object; it
would be for us a mere non-entity.

But this antithesis of Subject and Object is
entirely subordinate and belongs wholly to the
Understanding Reflection and consciousness
indeed by nature require it, and depend upon
it; but it is the prerogative of Reason to see
through and reconcile all distinctions and oppo-
sitions, not indeed annihilating them, but ap-
pointing to them their proper sphere.

So that this contradiction to the Understand-
ing is so far from interfering with the validity
of the Transcendental Ideas (conceptions of the
Reason) that it is essential to their nature.
Knowledge is not rendered impossible by it,
but all knowledge, down to the merest sensu-

ous perception, is shown by Kant himself (pro-
perly understood), to contain and require it.

Kant is not the only philosopher who has ar-
rived at these contradictions. They are neces-
sarily present in the Understanding; and in all
empirical philosophy, logically carried out, this
is made evident. The only escape is either in
the feebleness that cannot understand its own
results; or in wilfully ignoring them, which is
the course pursued by Cousin, and more avow-
edly by the "Scotch School."

But the interesting feature in Kant's inquiry,
and diat which gives it its place in the History
of Philosophy, arises from the faithfulness with
which it is made. His rigid and faithful ex-
amination of facts of consciousness brotight him
to principles, wliich his adherence to the com-
mon point of view made him reject or overlook,
but which in fact involved a revolution in Phi-
losophy. His close analysis revealed the con-
tradiction contained in those propositions which
seem most solid and certain to the Understand-
ing, and this showed the true province and the
limitations of this faculty (or rather this direc-
tion of the mind), by pushing to their necessary
consequences the common principles. It is not
sufficient to contradict or refute Error ; it is
requisite moreover to show that it is an em-
bodied self-contradiction and self-refutation, and
to see this the repugnant elements must be dis-
played. It is this dialectic that makes the value
of Kant's Critique, and it is not the less inter-
esting for being unconscious.

Among the extracts we have given from
Kant's writings, that from the Critique of the
Judgment is intended as a specimen of his
method and style in his strictly scientific works.
This book is remarkable as displaying in the
most striking manner the contradiction above
alluded to. Thus in his principle that Beauty
is a subjective fit7iess ; — when it is evident, and
indeed he himself has explained, that fitness
necessarily implies an object, something for
which the thing is fit; and when he speaks of
a "normal regularity without law,'' etc., — here
and throughout we have the material stand-
point, and also the idealistic, to which the
former necessarily leads. This extract may
also serve as a specimen of Kant's scientific
style, which is perfectly uniform throughout his
more important works. Its crabbed, harsh
character, and the frequent use of unusual
words, or at least of words used in unusual
senses, will no doubt excuse us in the eyes of
our readers from giving extracts of sufficient
length, to afford any adequate means of judg-
ing of Kant's general merits as a philosopher.
But what is given may be enough at least to
correct or prevent some false impressions; be-
ing as we have said, as far as it goes, a fair
specimen of the whole.

The other extracts exhibit Kant rather as a
philanthropist and a well-read scholar than as
a philosopher, and both in matter and in style
are much less abstruse and peculiar.

IMMANUEL KANT.

63

FROM THE
CRITIQUE OF THE JUDGMENT.

The domain of our general cognitive faculty
comprehends two provinces, one embracing our
conceptions of Nature, and the other the idea
of Freedom ; for in each of these it has a priori
authority. Philosophy is divided accordingly into
theoretical and practical. * * * The system of
laws, relating to our conceptions of Nature, is
derived from the Understanding, and is theore-
tical. That arising from the idea of Freedom,
is derived from the Reason, and is exclusively
practical. * * * The subject-matter to which
the laws of the cognitive faculty apply, is nothing
else than the aggregate of all objects of possible
experience, considered merely as phenomena.
* * * The provinces of Understanding and
of Reason therefore are different, though their
subject-matter is the same, and they do not in-
terfere with each other 'for this reason,'* that
conceptions relating to Nature give us objects
as present to Perception (^.Anschauung),'^' though
not as the things themselves, but only as phe-
nomena ; tlie idea of Freedom on the other
hand has to do with the thing itself, but not as
an object of sensation. Thus neither can give
a theoretical knowledge of its Object (nor even
of the subject thinking), in its essential nature,
for this would be the Supersensuous ; the idea
of which must indeed be presupposed as the
foundation of the possibility of Experience, but
can never be raised and enlarged into a cogni-
tion. * * * Now, although an impassable
chasm is established between the province of
the conception of Nature (as the Sensuous), and
that of the idea of Freedom (the Supersensuous),
so that no passage is possible from the former
to the latter, as if they were two different
worlds, one of which could have no influence
upon the other; yet there exists an obligation
that the latter should exert an influence over
the former : that is, that the idea of Freedom
should actualize in the sensible world, the end
sought by its laws. It must be conceivable
therefore, that Nature should admit at least the
possibility of a coincidence with the ends to be
accomplished in the sensible world in accord-
ance with the laws of Freedom. There must
therefore be a ground of unity between the
supersensuous foimdation of Nature, with the
principle of Freedom ; and this, though we can
have no 'complete' cognition of it, either theore-
tical or practical, yet makes the transition pos-
sible from the one system of views to the
other. * * * * :}: ^

But among the higher cognitive faculties there
is one that forms a connecting link between the
Understanding and the Reason. This is the

*Tiie words between commas' ' here and elsewhere
are inserted to render tlie sense more clear. Tr.

fl am obliged (reluctantly) to translate Amchauung by
Perception, instead oi Intuition, since by the latter word
we mean an intellectual beholding, which is never Kant's
sense. Tr.

Judgment, concerning which we have reason
(from analogy) to conjecture that it also has, if not
a peculiar province, yet a principle peculiar to
itself, and a priori, though certainly subjective.
* * * For all the faculties or capabilities of
the mind may be reduced to three, wliich are
not farther reducible to any common principle ;
viz : the Cognitive faculty the sentiment of
Pleasure or Pain and Desire. The laws of the
cognitive faculty are given by the Understand-
ing alone, * * * and those of Desire, (as
subject to the idea of Freedom), by the Reason.
Between these lies the sentiment of Pleasure;
as the Judgment between Understanding and
Reason. It is therefore at least to be conjectured,
that the Judgment also must contain an a priori
principle of its own; and as Pleasure or Pain
is necessarily connected with Desire, a transition
must thus be formed between the pure cognitive
faculty, i. e. from the province of Nature, to that
of Freedom ; just as in its logical employment
it renders possible a connection of Understand-
ing with Reason. * * * A reference to this
analogy is familiar even to the common under-
standing, and we often call beautiful objects in
Nature or Art by names which seem to pre-
suppose a moral judgment. We call trees ma-
jestic and splendid; or fields smiling and happy;
— even colours are said to be innocent, modest,
tender, &c. * * * Taste makes possible as
it were the passage from the pleasures of sense
to habitual moral interest, without too abrupt a
transition. *****

Judgment is the faculty of conceiving the
Particular as contained in the Universal. Where
the Universal, (the rule, the principle, the law,)
is given. Judgment, which subordinates the
Particular to it, is determinative. But where the
Particular is given, for which the Universal is
to be sought, it is merely reflective.

The determinative Judgment has only to sub-
ordinate particulars to the general transcenden-
tal laws furnished by the Understanding; the
law is given a priori. But so manifold are the
forms in Nature, the modifications as it were
of the general transcendental principles of Na-
ture, left undetermined by the laws furnished
a priori by the pure Understanding (since these
apjjly only to the possibility of Nature in general,
as percejitible by the senses), that there must
exist for them laws, which indeed as empirical,
maybe accidental to the view oi our understand-
ing, but which, if they are to have the name of
laws, (as the idea of nature demands), must be
considered as necessary, and as proceeding from
a principle of unity among the manifold parti-
culars.

The reflective Judgment, whose province it
is to ascend from the Particular in Nature to
the Universal, is therefore in need of a princi-
ple, and this it cannot derive from Experience,
since its very aim is to establish the unity of all
empirical principles under principles higher
though likewise empirical, and thus to establish
the possibility of a systematic subordination

64

IMMANUEL KANT.

among them. Such a transcendental principle,
the reflective Judgment therefore must give to
itself, and cannot take it from anything else,
(since it would then be determinative) ; nor yet
impose it upon Nature, since all study of the
laws of Nature must conform to Nature, as
something independent of the conditions of re-
flection.

Now as the general laws of Nature* have
their foundation in the Understanding, the prin-
ciple in question can be no other than this,
that the particular, empirical laws (as far as
they are left indeterminate by the general laws,)
are to be considered as so connected together
as if Nature had been subjected to these also,
by an Understanding (though not by ours), so
as to render possible a system of Experience
according to particular natural laws. Not as
if such an Understanding must actually be pos-
tulated, (for it is only the reflective and not the
determinative Judgment that requires this idea
as its principle) — but the reflective faculty pre-
scribes it as a law for itself, and not for Nature.

Now since the conception of an object, as
containing at the same time the reason of the
actual existence of the object, is called the end,
and since the harmony of a particular thing
with that in the nature of things which is pos-
sible only from their ada2:)tation to ends, is called
the fitness of its form, it follows that the princi-
ple of Judgment, as respects the Form of things,
under the laws of Experience, is the fitness of
Nature in her manifold variety. That is, by this
view. Nature is so conceived as if there were
an Understanding that contained a principle of
union among her various empirical laws.

The fitness of Nature, therefore, is a special
conception a priori, having its origin solely in
the reflective Judgment. For we cannot ascribe
to natural objects anything like an aiming of
Nature in them at ends, but only use this con-
ception in aid of our study of Nature in relation
to the connection of Phenomena which is given
by empirical laws. *****

This transcendental conception of a fitness in
Nature belongs neither to our conceptions of
Nature nor to the idea of Freedom, since it at-
tributes nothing to the object (Nature), but only
gives the way in which we must proceed in the
study of the objects in Nature, with a viem to a
complete coherent system of Experience. It is
thus a subjective principle (maxim) of the Judg-
ment; and hence we are rejoiced, as if at a
happy accident, favourable to our endeavours,
(and in fact relieved from a necessity), when
we meet such a systematic unity among merely
empirical laws ; although we must necessarily
presuppose that such a unity exists, without be-
ing able to comprehend or prove it. * *

The Understanding is indeed in possession
of general laws of Nature a priori, without
which Nature could not be an object of Expe-

* Space and Time, the (subjective) conditions of the
existence of Phenomena. Tr.

rience. It is requisite, however, that there
should also exist a certain order in the rules of
Nature that relate to particulars, which are
known to the Understanding only by Expe-
rience, and as far as it is concerned, acciden-
tal.*

These rules, without which there could be
no passing from the general possibility of Expe-
rience to an actual experience, "|' the Understand-
ing must conceive as laws, (i.e. as necessary);
since otherwise they would form no order of
Nature : — though it does not perceive, and may
never comprehend them. So that although the
Understanding can declare nothing a prio7-i as
to the nature of objects, yet in compliance with
these laws of ' particular' Experience, as we call
them, it is necessary to presuppose an a j)riori
principle : — viz. that a cognizable order of Na-
ture under these laws, is possible ; and to lay
this at the foundation of all study of Nature.
As for instance is expressed in the following
propositions •.'That there is in Nature a system
of genera and species comprehensible by us; —
that these approach a common type, so that a
transition from one to the other, and thus to a
higher order, is possible: That though at first it
seems to us unavoidable to suppose, for the spe-
cific variety of effects in Nature, an equal vari-
ety of causes, yet they may perhaps be em-
braced under a few principles, with the disco-
very of which we are to employ ourselves, &c.

This harmony of Nature with our cognitive
faculty is presupposed a priori by the Judgment
as the foundation of its examination of Natiu-e
in her 'particular or' empirical laws. For the
Understanding the objective existence of this har-
mony, is accidental ; — the Judgment alone as-
cribes it to Nature, as 'an adaptation or' fitness
to our cognitive factdty, transcending Experi-
ence. For without presupposing this, we should
have no order of Nature under particular laws,
and hence no clue for experience and inquiry
into these laws in their manifold variety. For
it is easily conceivable, notwithstanding all
the uniformity of Nature in her general laws,
without which ' even' the form of an empirical
cognition would not be possible, that never-
theless, the variety of particular laws and their
effects might be so great that it would be im-
possible for our Understanding to discover in
Nature any compreheusible system of subdivi-
sion into genera and species, by which one
should throw light upon the other, and render
it possible for us to combine so confused (or,

* That is, the Understanding knows only their exist-
ence, and not vilnj they exist, (their principle) : — so that
it cannot pronounce them necessary. Tr.

I The freneral possibility of Experience is given a pri-
ori, in Space and Time ; but in order to have any expe-
rience of an actual thing, there must pre-exist a synthesis
or union of various particulars in a more general whole.
We caiuiot perceive an isolated quality; e.g. colour
without extension, or vice-versa. This union Kant calls
the Unity of Apperception, and declares it to be a neces-
sary antecedent of Experience. Tr.

IMMANUEL KANT.

65

properly speaking, so infinitely complex) a mass
iiuo a coherent experience. » * »

This harmony of Nature, amid the complexity
of her particular laws, with our need of finding
in her, general principles, must, as far as our
faculties reach, be considered accidental, but
yet as a necessary postulate of our Understand-
ing, and hence as a fitness in Nature to the
aim of our Understanding in its striving after
Knowledge. The general laws of the Under-
standing, which are at the same time laws of
Nature, are as necessary to Nature (though
' subjective, or' arising from spontaneity) as the
laws of motion. # » * Bm that the order
of Nature under particular laws in all their
possible variety and dissimilarity, transcending
our powers of comprehension, is yet in reality
fitted to our cognitive faculties, is, so far as we
can see, accidental ; and the discovery of this
order is the business of the Understanding,
which is thus directed to its true function, the
introduction of unity of principle among these
various particular laws. This design the Judg-
ment is forced to ascribe to Nature ; since the
Understanding can furnish no such la\v\ * *

The Judgment is thus in possession of an a
priori principle of the possibility of Nature, but
it is only a subjective one, whereby a law is
prescribed, not to Nature, but to itself in its
study of Nature. This law we may call the law
of Specificaiion in Nature, as to her empirical
laws.

This is not seen a piioi-i in Nature, but postu-
lated, as the principle according to which we
must conceive the subdivision of her general
laws, and the subordination under them of her
particular laws. So that when it is said that
Nature subdivides her general laws according
to a principle of fitness to our cognitive faculty,
* * * we neither give a law to Nature, nor
learn one from her by Exj^erience, though this
may confirm it. For this only is intended; that
however Nature may be constituted as to her
general principles, we must at all events pursue
our study of her empirical laws according to
tliis principle and the maxims founded on it;
since it is only so far as this is done, that we
can proceed in the employment of our Under-
standing in Experience, and the acquisition of
Knowledge.

The attaining of any end is connected with a
feeling of Pleasure, and where the condition of
attaining the end is an a priori notion; (as in
the present case, a principle of the reflective
Judgment), the feeling of Pleasure is placed on
a foundation a priori, and of universal validity.

Now although we do not and cannot trace
the slightest feeling of Pleasure from the coin-
cidence of our perceptions with the laws and
universal ideas of Nature, (the Categories) ;
since the Understanding proceeds without 'con-
scious" aim, by the neces.^ity of its nature; yet
on the other hand the discovery that two or
more apjmrently heterogeneous laws are em-

braced under one common principle, is the oc-
casion of very marked satisfaction, often indeed
of an admiration, which does not cease even
when we are familiar with the object.

It is true 'that in many cases' we no longer
feel any jDleasure to arise from the compre-
hensibility of Nature, and her unity amid the
divisions of genera and species (whereby alone
Experience and knowledge of her particular
laws is possible) ; but it must certainly have
been felt at one time ; and it is only because
the commonest experience would not be pos-
sible without this harmony, that it has gradually
lost itself in the mere cognition, and is no
longer distinguished. * » * On the other
hand, a view of Nature which should declare
at the outset, that at the slightest advance
beyond the commonest experience we should
come upon a heterogeneousness of her laws,
making the combination of jjarticular laws
under general principles of Experience, im-
possible for our Understanding, would be al-
together repulsive to us : for this is opposed
to die principle of the (subjective) harmony of
Nature in her divisions, with the reflective
Judgment.

This postulate of the Judgment however is
so undefined as to the extent to which this
principle of the ideal fitness of Nature to our
cognitive faculty is to be allowed, that if we
should be told that a deeper or wider know-
ledge of Nature from observation must at last
reveal to us a complexity in her laws, not re-
ducible to a single principle by any human im-
derstanding; we should have nothing to ob-
ject: though it is more agreeable to us when
hopes are afforded, that the more we penetrate
into Nature, or become acquainted with out-
ward, as yet unknown laws, the more simple
and consonant we shall find her principles,
amid all the apparent heterogeneousness of her
empirical laws. • • *

THE NOTION OF ADAPTATION IN NATURE, AP-
PLIED TO ESTHETICS.

The merely subjective in the notion of an
object ; i. e. its relation to the Subject, and not
to the thing, forms the (esthetic* character of the
notion; but that which aids, or may be em-
ployed in determining the nature of the thing
as an object of knowledge, is its logical validity.

In the cognition of a sensible object, both
these relations occur. * * * Sensation ex-
presses both the merely subjective in our
notions of outward things, and also their
material (real) principle, whereby their actual
existence is declared. * * * But that sub-
jective element in a notion, which can in no
case form part of a cognition, is the pleasure or
displeasure connected with it. For by pleasure
or the contrary, I know nothing of the object,
though the sentiment may result from a cog-

* jEstlietic with Kant means sensuous; dependent on,
or belonging to the senses. Tr.
6*

06

IMMANUEL KANT.

nition. Now the adaptedncss of a thing, as
given in perception, is no quality of the object,
for that could not be perceived, tliough it may
be inferred from a Icnowledge of the thing. So
that this adaptedness, preceding the cognition,
and not even aiming at knowledge of the ob-
ject, yet still it)imediately connected with its
notion, is that subjective element in the notion,
which cannot form any part of cognition.

The object therefore is said to be adapted,
only because its image ' or notion' is imme-
diately cotmected with the feeling of pleasure;
and the notion 'itself is an tpsthetic notion' as to
the fitness of the object. The only question is
whether such a notion of fitness exists.

When the mere apprehension of the form of
a sensible object, unconnected with any con-
ception or definite Icnowledge, is attended with
pleasure, the notion is thereby referred, not to
the object, but merely to the subject ; * and the
pleasure can express only the harmony of the
object witli the cognitive faculties exercised in
the reflective Judgment; thus a mere subjec-
tive, formal adaptedness of the object. For
such apprehension of forms by the Imagination
can never take place without some comparison
(even though unconscious) on the part of the
reflective Judgment, of the apprehensions with
its faculty of connecting sensations with ideas.

When therefore in this comparison the Imagi-
nation (the faculty of a priori perceptions) is
unexpectedly brought into harmony with the
Understanding (the faculty of conceptions), by
means of the notion of an object, and thereby
a feeling of pleasure awakened ; in such case
there must appear to us to exist a fitness of the
object to the reflective Judgment. This is an
(Esthetic judgment as to the fitness of the object;
neither founding itself upon, nor giving any
concef)tion of the thing itself.

Whenever the form of an object (abstracted
from its material influence upon us, as Sensa-
tion), in merely considering it, without reference
to any conception of its nature, is found by the
Judgment to cause pleasure by its mere image,
this pleasure the Judgment decides to be neces-
sarily connected with the notion ; not merely
for the particular person, but for all. The
object in such case is said to be beautiful; and
the ability to judge by means of this pleasure
(and thus to form judgments of universal
validity), is called Taste. h^ * *

Judgment by means of Taste, is esthetic.

In order to determine whether a thing is
beautiful or not, we do not refer the notion to
its object, through the Understanding (as in
cognition); but to the Subject, and the feeling
of pleasure or displeasure, through the Imagi-
nation. * * * »

All notions may refer to objects, except those
relating to the sentiment of pleasure or dis-
pleasure, for this denotes nothing in the Object,
but only an aflection of the Subject. * * »

An objective fitness can be known only from the
reference of particulars to a certain end, thus
only from a conception 'of the nature of the
object' * * * It is either outward adapted-
ness, i. e. usefulness: or inward adaptedness,
i. e. the perfection of the thing. — That the satis-
faction derived from an object, whence we call
it beautiful, cannot depend on any notion of its
usefulness, is sufficiently evident from what has
been said. For then it would not be a pleasure
derived immediately from the object, which is
the essential condition of a judgment concern-
ing Beauty. But an objective, inward fitness,
i. e. Perfection, comes nearer to the predicate
of Beauty, and it has hence been held by dis-
tinguished philosophers, that Perfection, indis-
tinctly conceived, is synonymous with Beauty. —
It is of the greatest importance in a Critique of
Taste, to determine whether Beauty can be
resolved into the idea of Perfection.

In order to judge of objective fitness, we must
always have the conception of an end, and
where the fitness is not outward, (Usefulness),
but inward ; the conception of an inward end
which shall contain the ground of the inward
possibility of the object. Now as end is some-
thing the idea of which may be considered as
the ground of the possibility of the object itself,
in order to conceive of an objective fitness in a
thing, the conception of what it ought to be must
precede it. * * * The merely formal ele-
ment in the notion of a thing : i. e. the com-
bination of the Manifold into one, (leaving its
nature undetermined), gives of itself no know-
ledge of objective fitness ; since as we abstract
from the particular thing, as an end, (that
which it ought to be), nothing is left but the
subjective fitness of the notions in the mind of
the beholder j * * * but nothing as to the
perfection of any object. * * * Thus, for
example, if I come upon a grassy spot in the
woods, around which the trees stand in a circle,
and do not image to myself any purpose ; (as
for instance, that it might be used for a rustic
dance) ; the mere form will not give me the
least idea of perfection. But to conceive of
formal, objective fitness, without any end pro-
posed ; that is the mere form of a perfection ;
* * * is a complete contradiction.

Now Taste is aesthetic Judgment: i. e. it rests
upon subjective grounds, and cannot have any
conception, (and thtis not that of a particular
end), as its motive. Therefore the idea of
Beauty, as a formal, subjective fitness, by no
means involves any perfection of the thing; and
the distinction between the ideas of the Beauti-
ful and of the Good, (as if they differed only in
logical form, the former merely a confused, the
latter a distinct idea of Perfection), is without
foundation. For then there would be no specific
diflerence between them, and an jesthetic judg-
ment would be at the same time cognitive. * *

But I have already shown that the cesthetic
Judgment is peculiar in this, that it gives no

IMMANUEL KANT.

67

knowledge whatever, (not even confused), of
its Object, * » * but refers the image, wherein
an Object is presented ' to the mind,' merely to
the subject. *****

THE PLEASCRE THAT BETERMIX ES THE ES-
THETIC JUDGMENT, IS ENTIRELY UNCON-
NECTED WITH INTEREST.

Interest is the pleasure that we connect with
the notion that a certain thing exists. It is
therefore constantly connected with Desire ;
which is either its motive, or necessarily con-
nected therewith. Now when it is asked
whether a thing is beautiful or not, we do not
seek to know whether the existence of the thing
can be of any importance to us, or to any one :
but only what is our judgnient respecting it,
apart from the question of its existence'? If any
one ask me whether the palace I see before me,
is beautiful, I may indeed say that I am not
fond of things made only to be stared at; or I
may answer after the manner of the Iroquois
Sachem, who liked nothing in Paris better than
the restaurans ; or I may scold in Rousseau's
style, about the vanity of the great, who waste
the sweat of the jieople on such superfluities;
or finally, I can easily persuade myself that if I
were upon an uninhabited island, without hope
of ever seeing men again, and by my mere wish
could conjure up such a palace, I should never
give myself even this trouble, if I already had
a hut that suited me. All this may be grain ted;
but this is not now the question. The point is
only whether the mere image of the thing in
my mind is accompanied by pleasure ; however
indifferent I may be as to its existence. It is
easy to see that it is what I make out of the
notion within me, and not that wherein I am
dependent on the existence of the object, that
enables me to say that it is beautiful, and to
prove that I have Taste.

Every one must confess that a judgment con-
cerning Beauty, with which the slightest interest
is mingled, is quite partial, and no pure Eesthetic
judgment. We must be altogether disinterested,
and indifferent as to the existence of the thing,
in order to judge in matters of Taste.

We cannot better illustrate this point, (which
is of special imi^ortance), than by contrasting
with the pure, disinterested* pleasure of the
Eesthetic judgment, pleasure that is connected
with interest. *****

THE PLEASURE DERIVED FROM THE AGREE-
ABLE, IS CONNECTED WITH INTEREST.

The Agreeable is that which is pleasing to
the senses, in Sensation. * * * By Sensa-
tion we understand an image received through
the senses, referring to an object; and, to prevent
the continual danger of misunderstanding, we

♦ A judgment as to an object giving Pleasure, may be
entirely disinterested, but yet very interesting: i. e. it does
not found itself upon any interest, but produces it. Such
are all purely moral judgments. * * * *

shall call that which constantly and necessarily
remains subjective, and can in no case con-
stitute a notion of an object, by the customary
name of Feeling.

The green colour of the meadows belongs to
objective sensation, as the perception of a Sen-
sible object ; but the agreeableness of the colour
belongs to subjective Sensation, whereby no
object is given ; i. e. to Feeling. * * *

Now, that my judgment of a thing, declaring
it to be agreeable, expresses an interest in it, is
clear from this, that it excites by means of Sen-
sation, a desire for such things ; hence the plea-
sure presupposes, not a mere judgment con-
cerning it, but a reference of its existence to
my condition, so far as affected by such an
object. * * * It is not mere approbation I
bestow on it, but inclination is excited by it;
and those sensations which are the most vividly
and intensely agreeable, are so far from being
connected with Judgment as to the object of
the sensation, that those who are constantly
bent on enjoyment willingly disclaim all Judg-
ment.

THE PLEASINGNESS OF GOOD IS CONNECTED
WITH INTEREST.

Good is that which is pleasing to us, through
the Reason, by its bare idea. We say that a
thing is good for something, (useful), when it
pleases us as means only; but we call that
good in itself which pleases by itself But in
each is contained the idea of purpose, and thus
the relation of the Reason to a volition, (at least
in possibility) ; consequently, a pleasure at the
existence of an object or an action; i. e. Interest.

In order to pronounce a thing good, I must
know what sort of a thing it is ; that is, I must
have a conception of its nature. Flowers, fan-
ciful pictures, interwoven figures, such as are
called Arabesques, convey no particular idea,
and yet are pleasing. 'On the other hand,' the
pleasure derived from Beauty is necessarily
dependent on the notion of an object, and thus
contains the indication of some conception,
though it does not determine its precise charac-
ter. Herein it is distinguished from the Agree-
able, which rests entirely upon Sensation. * *

The Agreeable and the Good are distinguish-
ed from each other, it is true, in the commonest
experience. We say unhesitatingly of a highly-
seasoned dish, prejjared with every provocative
of appetite, that it is agreeable, and at the same
time that it is not good; since it is pleasing
immediately to the senses, but mediately, i. e.
through a consideration of its consequences, it
is disagreeable. * * * But notwithstanding
this difference, they agree in this, that they are
always connected with an interest in the object;
not only the agreeable, and that which is good
as means, (the Useful), but also absolute and
universal Good, viz : moral Good, which carries
with it the highest interest, since it is the object
of tlie Will, (that is, of Desire, determined by
Reason). But to will anything, and to take

68

IMMANUEL KANT.

pleasure in its existence — tliat is, to take an in-
terest in it, are identical.

COMPARISON OF THK THKEE KINDS OF PLEA-
SURE.

Tlie Agreeable and the Good have each a
reference to Desire, and carry with them, the
one a pathological, the other a pure practical
satisfaction, prod\iced not by the mere notion
of the thing, but by its existence. » * *

' On the contrary,' the fpsthetic Judgment is
purely contemplative ; that is, indifferent to the
existence of the object, and regards only the
relation which the nature of the thing bears to
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. * *

It results, therefore, that Taste is the faculty
of judging of an object or a sentiment, by means
of the pleasure or displeasure arising from it,
unconnected with any interest. The object of
such pleasure is called beautiful.

THE BEAUTIFUL IS THAT WHICH, APART FROM
ANY CONCEPTION, IS CONSIDERED AS AFFORD-
ING PLEASURE TO ALL.

This definition of the Beautiful follows from
the foregoing definition of it as the object of
disinterested pleasure. For, when any one per-
ceives that the pleasure afforded by a thing is
unconnected with interest, that thing he cannot
consider otherwise than as pleasing to all. For
as the pleasure is founded upon no private in-
clination, or consideration of interest, but, on
the contrary, as the mind feels itself entirely
unbiassed in the satisfaction attribitted to the
object, the pleasure cannot depend upon any
private circumstances or conditions ; it must
therefore be considered as founded in an attri-
bute common to all, and a like pleasure must
be presumed to be felt by every one. * *
So that Taste must necessarily be considered
as the power of judging of that by which even
Feeling may be communicated, and thus as
aiding in the accomplishment of what is sought
by every one's natural inclination.

A man left on a desert island would orna-
ment neither his hut nor his person, for himself.
He would not seek for flowers, much less plant
them, for ornament. It is only in society that it
occurs to him to be not only a man, but a man
of Taste, (the commencement of civilization) ;
for as such is one considered who is desirous
of communicating his pleasure to others, and
expert in doing so, and who is not satisfied
with an object unless he can share with others
the pleasure it affords. Hence we expect and
require of every one this regard to universal
communication, as it were from an original
contract dictated by Humanity itself. * * *

Here is a pleasure which, like all pleasure
or displeasure not resulting from the idea of
Freedom, (that is, from the previous determina-
tion of the higher faculty of Desire, by j^ure
Reason), cannot be understood from concep-
tions, as if necessarily connected with the notion
of an object, but only through reflective Percep-

tion ; and thus like all empirical judgments,
can claim no objective necessity, nor a piiori
validity. But the sesthetic judgment, like all
empirical judgments, claims only acquiescence
from every one, which notwithstanding its
essentially accidental nature, it well may. The
only astonishing and remarkable point is, that
it is no empirical conception, but a feeling of
Pleasure, (and thus no conception whatever),
which is to be attributed to everyone, and con-
nected with the notion of the thing, as if it were
a predicate belonging to its cognition. A single
empirical judgment, for example, when we find
a movable drop of water in a rock-crystal,
rightly demands that every one should find it
so, since it is formed according to the universal
conditions of the determinative Judgment, and
the laws of all possible Experience. So he who
feels pleasure in the mere contemplation of tlie
form of an object, without reference to a con-
cejition, properly claims the agreement of all,
although it is a private and empirical judgment,
since the ground of this pleasure is to be sought
in the universal though subjective condition of
reflective judgments. * * * So tliat the
pleasure in an testlietic judgment is dependent
indeed on an empirical )iotion, and cannot be
connected a priori with any conception; (we
cannot determine a priori what will be agreea-
ble to Taste, or the contrary; we must make
the experiment) ; but it is the foundation of the
judgment, since it depends merely upon reflec-
tion and the universal though subjective condi-
tions of the harmony on which all cognition of
objects is founded. *****

We therefore speak of the Beautiful as if
Beauty were something in the nature of the
thing, and as if our Jiulgment were logical, (giv-
ing a knowledge of the object through concep-
tions ' of its nature'); whereas it is only cestliclic,
and contains only a relation of the object to the
subject. And this because the jesthetic judg-
ment herein resembles the logical judgment, that
it may claim universal validity.

This universality, however, cannot be derived
from conceptions, for there is no transition from
conceptions to the feeling of pleasure or dis-
pleasure, except in the purely practical (' moral)
laws ; and these are accompanied by interest,
and thus distinguished from the pure aesthetic
Judgment.

Accordingly the a'Sthetic judgment must con-
tain, together with the consciousness of being
divested of all Interest, a claim to universal
validity, independent of objective universality;
that is, a subjective universality.

COMPARISON OF THE BEAUTIFUL WITH THE
AGREEABLE BY MEANS OF THE ABOVE CRITE-
RION.

As to the Agreeable, it is felt by every one,
that a judgment founded upon his private feel-
ing, and asserting only that the object is pleasing
to him, is confined to himself. Then when a
man says: This Canary wine is pleasant: he

IMMANUEL KANT.

69

will not object if any one correct his expression,
and tell him he should rather say: It is pleasant
to me. * * * To one person the colour of
violet is soft and pleasing, to another dead and
flat. One man is fond of wind - instruments,
another of stringed instruments. To contend
about such things, and to pronounce the judg-
ment of others, differing from our own, incor-
rect, as if there were a logical opposition be-
tween them, would be folly. As to the Agree-
able the maxim holds, therefore, that every one
has a taste of his oivn, in matters of Sense.

As to the Beautiful, however, the case is quite
different. Here it would be absurd for any one
jireteuding to Taste to think to justify himself
by saying that the object, (the building we see,
the garment that person wears, the concert we
listen to, the poem that is to be criticised), is
beautiful to him. For he should not call it beaii,-
tiful, if it pleases him alone. There may be
many things pleasing and attractive to him, but
this is nothing to anyone else: if he declare
anything to be beautiful, he attributes the same
pleasure to others; he judges not for himself
alone, btit for all ; and s^ieaks of Beauty as a
quality of the thing.

We say, tlierefore, the thing is beautiful ; not
expecting the ass6nt of others, from having often
found them to agree with us in opinion, but re-
quiring it. We find fault with men if they judge
otherwise, as wanting in that Taste which
should be an universal attribute.

As to the Beautiful, therefore, we cannot say
that every one has a taste of his own. For this
would be to declare that there is no such thing
as Taste; that is, no sesthetic judgment that can
properly claim the assent of all.

In respect to the Agreeable, there is indeed a
degree of unanimity in men's judgments, in re-
ference to which some are said to have Taste
and others not ; and this not as signifying a per-
fection of the organs of Sense, but of the faculty
of judging as to the Agreeable. Thus one who
knows how to regale his guests with various
luxuries, (agreeable to the different senses,) so
as to please all, is said to have Taste. But the
universality is here only comparative, and thus
this kind of Taste is capable only of general
rules, as being derived from Experience, and
not of universal laws, such as the a3sthetic judg-
ment claims to establish for the Beautiful. * *

It is to be remarked, however, in this place,
that the aesthetic Judgment presupposes nothing
more than a general assent, * * * thus the
possibilily of an sesthetic judgment possessing
universal validity. It does not postulate the as-
sent of every person, (for this belongs only to a
logically universal judgment, which can be sup-
ported by demonstration), but only demands this
assent, as an example of the rule, the confirma-
tion of which is sought, not from conceptions,
but from the agreement 'in feeling' of other
persons. * * * Whether any particular
person who thinks to pronounce an sesthetic
judgment do really judge in accordance with

this principle, may be uncertain; but that he
does refer to it, and therefore that his judgment
is sesthetic, is declared by the use of the word
Beauty. ******

AN aiSTHETIC JUDGMENT, WHEREIN AN OBJECT
IS PRONOUNCED BEAUTIFUL AS CONNECTED
WITH A PARTICULAR IDEA, IS NOT PURE.

There are two kinds of Beauty; Beauty de-
tached (pulchritudo vaga), and Beauty adherent
( pulchritudo adhcerens). The former presupposes
no idea of the object; the latter presupposes an
idea, and an adequate perfection of the thing.
Under the first class are embraced the 'inde-
pendent and' self- subsisting beauties of any
object; the other includes (as dependent and
attached to the idea of some particular thing)
objects conceived to exist for a special end.
The beauty of flowers is free, detached Beauty.
What the flower actually is, only the botanist
knows ; and even he, though he sees in it the
reproductive organ of the plant, yet in judging
of it as an object of Taste, pays no regard to
this natural end. This Judgment, therefore, is
founded upon no perfection of any sort; no in-
ward fitness regulating the management of the
parts. Many birds, such as parrots, humming-
birds, the birds of Paradise, and various sea-
shells, are beautiful in themselves ; not as con-
nected with an object with reference to its de-
sign, but independently and of themselves. So
drawings a la grecque, arabesque borders, &c.,
signify nothing, represent no particular object,
and express no particular idea, but are free,
detached Beauty. So what are called fantasies,
in Music (without theme); indeed all Music
without text inay be considered as of this kind.

In judging of detached Beauty, in its form,
the sesthetic Jitdgment is pure. It presupposes
no idea of a design to be accomplished, which
should be represented by the object; for by this
the freedom of the Imagination, sporting as it
were in contemplation of the object, would
only be restrained. But human Beauty (whether
of a man, a woman, or a child) ; the beauty of
a horse ; of a building (church, palace, arsenal,
or summer-house), presupposes the idea of
design, which determines what the thing should
be; the idea of perfection. It is therefore
merely adherent Beauty. Thus as the con-
nection of the Agreeable (in Sensation), with
Beauty, which properly concerns only Form,
disturbs the purity of the Judgment ; so also
connection with the Good (that is, something for
which the thing, from its design, is good), is
likewise destructive of the purity of the testhetic
Judgment.

'For example' we might add much that is
pleasing when seen by itself, to a building,
were it not that it is intended for a church : it
might ornament a figure to cover it with tracery-
work, and delicate, yet regular lines, as in the
tatooing of the New Zealanders ; were it not
that it is a human being: this countenance
might have much more delicate features, and a

70

IMMANUEL KANT.

softer and more pleasing outline, were it not
intended to represent a man, or indeed a war-
rior. So the pleasure derived from the inward
design of a thing, which determines its precise
character, is founded upon an idea; but that
derived from Beauty is by nature such that it
presupposes no conception, but is connected im-
mediately with the image of the thing.

Now if the aesthetic judgment is made de-
pendent on design, and thus a judgment of the
Reason, it is no longer a pure rcstlietic judg-
ment.

It is true that this advantage is gained by the
connection of rcsthetic with intellectual plea-
sure, that 'the principle of Taste becomes
fixed, and though not universal, yet it is capable
of being subjected, as to certain things, to fixed
rules. These rules, however, are then no longer
rules of Taste, but of a nnion of Taste with
Reason; i. e. the Beautiful with the Good. * *

OF THE IDEAL OF BEAUTT.

As to Taste, ' therefore,' there are no objec-
tive rules * * to determine what is beau-
tiful. For all Judgment from this source is
asthetic, that is, subjective Feeling and not a
conception of any object, that determines it.
To seek a principle of Taste which should
give indefinite conceptions a universal criterion
of the Beautiful, is a fruitless endeavour, since
what is sought is impossible and self-contra-
dictory.

That this feeling (of pleasure or displeasure)
shall be capable of being generally communi-
cated, and this without any conception 'of the
nature of the object;' and the general approxi-
mate agreement of all ages and all nations, in
relation to this feeling, as to certain objects is
the empirical though obscure criterion of Taste,
scarcely reaching to conjecture, which, as so
many examples show us, has a deep-hidden
foundation in the common nature of Man ; in
the common principles of Judgment as to the
Forms under which objects are presented to us.
Hence some products of Taste are considered
as models; not as if Taste could be acquired,
by imitation ; for Taste must be a faculty of the
individual; but he who copies a model, shows
himself expert, as far as he copies correctly;
but Taste involves the power of judging of the
model itself.

From this it follows that the highest model,
the prototype of Taste can be only an Idea,
which every one must awaken in himself * *
An Idea is properly a conception of Reason;
an Ideal is the image of some thing adequate
to the Idea. Each such prototype of Taste
rests indeed upon the vague idea of a maximum
'of Beauty,' but can be reached only by repre-
sentation, and not by conceptions. It is there-
fore more properly called an Ideal ' than an
Idea' of Beauty ; and this, though we may not
possess it, yet we strive to produce within our-
selves. Bat since it depends upon represen-

tation, and not upon conception, it is an Ideal
of the Imagination only ; the Imagination being
the fiiculty of Representation. Now how do
we arrive at this Ideal of Beauty? A priori, or
by Experience 1 And also, what kind of Beauty
is capable of an Ideal ?

It is to be observed in the first place, that the
Beauty for which we are to expect an Ideal, is
not vague, but fixed Beauty, ' controlled by' a
conception of objective fitness. An Ideal there-
fore is not the object of a perfectly pure aesthetic
judgment, but of one partaking in a measme of
the nature of an idea. That is, the principles
by which we judge concerning an Ideal, have
for their foundation some idea of Reason, ac-
cording to definite conceptions, and this idea
determines a priori, the design upon which rests
the possibility of the object. An Ideal of beau-
tiful flowers ; of fine furniture ; of a beautiful
view, is inconceivable. Even indeed as to
Beauty dependent on adaptation to particular
ends, an Ideal is often inconceivable ; for ex-
ample, an Ideal of a beautiful dwelling-house,
of a beautiful tree, garden, &c. ; probably be-
cause the purpose is not sufficiently definite and
fixed by the notion of the thing, and thus the
fitness is almost as ' floating and' unattached to
a 'particular' object, as in the case of vague or
detached Beauty.

Man, as 'a being,' having the end of his ex-
istence within himself, and able to determine
its aims by means of Reason, or, where he is
obliged to take them from the outward world,
yet able to compare them with fundamental
and universal aims, and to form an cesthetic
judgment from the comparison, Man alone can
present an Ideal of Beauty, in like manner as
Humanity alone, among all earthly things, can
afford an Ideal of perfection in him, as In-
telligence. *****

The Ideal of the human form consists in the
expression of the moral nature, without which
it cannot afford a universal and positive pleasure,
(as distinguished from the merely negative satis-
faction of an academically correct representa-
tion). ******

The correctness of such an Ideal of Beauty is
tested in this ; that it permits no intermixture
of sensuous satisfaction with the pleasure de-
rived from the object, and yet excites a strong

interest in it.

***** *

Taking the result of the above investigations,
we find that all depends on the conception of
Taste ; and that this is the faculty of judging
of an object according to the free, yet normal
action of the Imagination. * * * But that
the Imagination should be free, and yet essen-
tially subject to law, that is, that it should con-
tain an autonomy, is a contradiction.

The Understanding alone gives the law. But
if the Imagination is compelled to proceed ac-
cording to a definite law, the product will be
determined as to its Form, according to certain

IMMANUEL KANT.

71

conceptions of the perfection of the thing, and
in this case the pleasure will not be owing to
Beauty, but to Goodness, (to Perfection, though
mere formal Perfection), and the judgment will
be no aesthetic judgment.

It is thus a normal regularity, without law ;
a subjective harmony of the Imagination and
the Understanding, ■without any objective har-
mony, (wherein the notion is referred to a pre-
cise conception of the object) ; and it is thus
alone that the freedom and regularity of the
Understanding can co-exist with the peculiar
nature of an jesthetic judgment.

We find regular, geometrical figures, a circle,
a square, a cube, &c., commonly given by critics
of Taste as the simplest and most undoubted
examples of Beauty; and yet they are called
regular, because they can only be conceived of
as mere representatives of a particular idea,
which prescribes to the figure the law by which
alone it exists. Thus one of the two must be
"wrong; either this judgment of the critics, in
ascribing Beauty to these figures, or ours, which
declares fitness, without conception, essential to
Beauty.

Now it is not necessary to select a man of
taste, in order to discover that greater pleasure
is afforded by the figure of a circle than by a
scrawl, and more in an equilateral and equi-
angular triangle than in one of uneven shape
and as it were deformed. For this requires
only common sense, and not Taste. Where we
find a purpose, for example, to determine the
size of a place, or to make accessible the rela-
tions of the parts to each other and to the whole;
— here regular figures, and those of the simplest
kind are required ; and the pleasure depends
not immediately upon the image of the figure,
but on its applicability to various purposes. A
room whose walls form unequal angles, a
garden of such a shape, in short all disturbance
of symmetry, as well in the forms of animals,
(e. g. to be one-eyed), as of buildings or flower-
beds, is unpleasant, because inappropriate; not
only practically, as relates to a particular use
of these things, but also in judging of them ge-
nerally, as adapted to various purposes. This
is not the case with the a3sthetic judgment,
which if pure, unites pleasure or displeasure
with the mere view of the object, inmiediately,
without reference to any employment or end.
* * * All stiff regularity, approaching the
mathematical, is unpleasant, from its affording
no continued exercise of the perceptive powers;
and where neither knowledge nor a special end
is sought, it is tedious. On the other hand what-
ever affords a ready and agreeable exercise to
the Imagination, is always new, and we do not
tire of beholding it.

Marsden, in his description of Sumatra, makes
the remark that in this island the wild beauties
of Nature everywhere surround the beholder,
and thus have little attraction for him ; whereas
a pepper-garden, where the poles upon which

this plant climbs, form parallel lines of alleys,
had a great charm for him when he came upon
it in the midst of the forest; and he concludes
from this that the apparently lawless beauty of
the wilderness is pleasing only as variety, to
one who has become tired of regularity.

But he would have only to make the experi-
ment of spending a day in his pepper-garden,
to see that when the Understanding has satis-
fied the craving for order which everywhere
accompanies it, the object is no longer interest
ing, but on the contrary imposes an irksome
restraint upon the Imagination ; whereas the
profusion of Nature, lavish even to extravagance
in that country, where it is subjected to no rules
of art, would afford constant nourishment to his
taste.

Thus the song of birds, irreducible to any
musical rules, seems to have more freedom, and
thus to offer more to the Taste, than even the
human voice, though exercised according to all
the rules of Music. For we sooner tire of the
latter, if often and long repeated. * * *

A distinction is also to be made between
beautiful objects, and beautiful views of objects,
(which may be indistinct, from distance). In
the latter case pleasure seems to arise not so
much from what is seen, as from what we are led
to imagine in the field of view ; that is, from the
fancies with which the mind pleases itself, be-
ing constantly excited by the variety upon which
the eys falls; thus for example in the varying
shapes in a wood-fire, or a murmuring brook;
neither of which are beautiful, but which have
a charm for the imagination, by the excitement
they afford. * * * Yor the Imagination (as
a productive faculty of Cognition), has great
power in creating as it were another Nature,
from the material furnished by actual Nature.
With this we occupy ourselves when 'the world
of experience seems too common-place ; we
re-model it, still indeed according to the laws
of analogy, but also on principles that lie higher
up in the Reason, and whioh are as truly na-
tural to us as those in accordance with which
the Understanding apprehends empirical Na-
ture.

Herein we feel our freedom from the law of
association that attaches to the empirical use of
diis faculty, and according to which indeed Na-
ture furnishes us with material ; but this is
wrought by us into something quite different
and superior to nature. * * *

FROM THE
'^PLAN FOR AN EVERLASTING PEACE."*

Nations, 'considered collectively' as States,
may be judged by the same rules as individuals,
who, in the state of nature (i. e. of independence
of outward laws), are obnoxious to each other
by their mere contiguity, and each of whom

* Zum ewigen Frieden. Konigsberg. 1795.

72

IMMANUEL KANT.

may and ought, for the sake of his own safety,
to demand of the other to enter into a compact
with him, of the nature of a civil government,
whereby each may be secured in his right.
* • * The attachment of savages to their
lawless freedom, 'and their preference of un-
ceasing conflict to submission to the restraint of
laws to be established by themselves — and thus
of insane freedom to that in accordance with
Reason — is looked upon by us witli profound
contempt, and considered as rudeness, want of
civilization, and bestial degradation of huma-
nity. It would seem, therefore, as if cultivated
nations, united into separate States, must hasten
to escape as soon as possible from so degraded
a condition. Instead of this, however, the ma-
jesty of every State (for the majesty of a people
is an absurd expression) is thought to consist
precisely in this, that it is subject to no restraint
from outward laws, and the glory of its chief
magistrate to be, that without exposing himself
to danger, he has many thousands at his com-
mand, ready to be sacrificed for a matter that
does not concern them at all :* and the difier-
ence between the savages of Europe and those
of America consists principally in this, that
whereas many tribes of the latter have been
entirely eaten up by their enemies, the former
know how to make a better use of the conquered
than to feed upon them, and prefer increasing
by them the number of their subjects, and thus
of the imi^lements for yet more extensive wars.

When we consider the depravity of human
nature, which shows itself openly in the uncon-
trolled relations of nations (whilst in the condi-
tion of civil government it is in a great measure
veiled), — it is much to be wondered at that the
word Eight has not as yet been dispensed with,
as pedantic, in military politics, and that no
State has yet dared openly to declare itself for
this opinion. For Hugo Grotius, Puffendorf,
Vattel, &c. (no very comforting counsellors), are
still faithfully cited in justification of warlike
attacks, though their code, whether philosophi-
cal or dijiilomatic, has not and cannot have the
least legal force, since States as such are subject
to no common outward authority; and though
there is no instance where a State has ever
been induced by any arguments armed with the
voices of such mighty men, to desist from its
intention.

This reverence which every State pays (at
least in words) to the idea of Right, proves that
there exists in Man (though as yet undeveloped)
the germ of a more complete mastery over the
evil principle within, and a hope of similar vic-
tory in others. For otherwise States intending
to make war upon each other would never make
use of the word Right, unless it were in mock-
ery, as the Gallic prince, who declared : " That

*Tlius a Bulgarian prince answered the Grecian empe-
ror, vvhn good-naturedly wished to decide their dispute by
a duel :— " A sniitli who has longs will not pull red-hot
iron out of the fire with liis fingers."

it was the preference that Nature has given to
the stronger over the weaker, that the latter
should obey."

The mode by which States maintain their
rights is never legal process, as where an out-
ward tribunal exists, but only War, and this and
its favourable event, Victory, do not decide the
right ; a treaty of peace terminates only the ex-
isting war, and not the state of War, a new pre-
text being easily found. * * * Reason,
' therefore,' from the throne of the supreme moral
authority, entirely condemns War, as a means of
obtaining justice, and on the other hand makes
Peace an immediate duty. But Peace cannot
be made or secured without a compact among
nations. So that a league of a peculiar nature
is demanded, which we may call a league of
Peace (^fwdus pacificum), and which would be
distinguished from a compact of peace (^pactmn
pads), in this, that the object of the latter is to
put an end only to one war, but that of the for-
mer to abolish War forever. * * *

The practicability (objective reality) of this

idea of a Federation, to extend by degrees over

all States, and thus lead to an everlasting Peace,

may be easily shown. For if by good fortune

a mighty and enlightened nation should be able

to form itself into a republic (which from its

nature must be inclined to lasting peace), this

would give a centre for the federative union of

other states, to collect around it, and thus secure

the freedom of each, according to the idea of

international Law, and to spread itself out by

degrees farther and farther by repeated unions

of this kind.
********

The idea of international Law, as a right to
make War, that is, a right to determine what is
just, not by universal laws limiting the freedom
of each, but by one-sided maxims, through force,
— it is utterly without meaning, unless we un-
derstand by it, that it is quite right that men
with such views should perish by inutual anni-
hilation, and thus find everlasting Peace in the
wide grave, that covers all the horror of vio-
lence, together with its authors.

There is no other way in accordance with
Reason, for States to escape from the condition
of lawlessness in their relations to each other,
than by giving up, like private individuals, their
wild (lawless) freedom, and submitting to pub-
lic laws.
********

Since the communion (more or less close)
between the nations of the earth, has extended
so far that an act of injustice done in one part
of the earth is felt in all, the idea of cosmopoli-
tan Law is no fantastic nor exaggerated notion,
but the necessary complement of the unwritten
code, as well of civil as international Law ; ne-
cessary to the public Law of the human race in
general, and thus to eternal Peace, with the ap-
proach of which we can flatter ourselves only
on this condition. *****

If it is our duty ' to strive for' this state of

IMMANUEL KANT.

73

public Law, and if at the same time there is a
well-grounded' hope that it may be actualized,
though only in an infinitely extended approxi-
mation, then an everlasting Peace, to succeed
the hitherto falsely so called treaties of Peace,
(properly truces), is no empty idea, but a pro-
blem to be solved progressively, and continu-
ally approaching the goal, since the periods of
equal progress are, we hope, constantly be-
coming shorter. *****

ox THE GUARAXTT OF AX EVERLASTING PEACE.

This guaranty is given by nothing less than
the great Artist, Nature, (^natura dadala rerurn),
from whose mechanical course the design shines
visibly forth, to produce through the very dis-
sensions of men an involuntary concord. We
give therefore to Nature, considered as the
overpowering influence of a Cause unknown to
us in the laws of its action, the name of Fate ;
but viewing it as adaptation to a design run-
ning through the Universe ; as the recondite
wisdom of a higher Cause whose energy is
directed towards the objective destination* of
the human race, we name it Providence; not,
indeed, that we, properly speaking, know^ or
can even infer it, from these contrivances of
Nature ; but we are obliged to suppose it, to
form any conception of their possibility, accord-
ing to the analogy of human contrivances. The
relation, however, and the harmony 'of this
Cause' with the end immediately prescribed to
us by Reason (in Morals) is an idea in theory
transcending our powers, but practically, (for
instance, as to the idea of the duty of Peace,
and the employment of the mechanism of Na-
ture to this end), established, and its reality
well-founded. ******

Before examining farther into the nature of
this guaranty, it will be necessary first to con-
sider the situation in which Nature has placed
the actors in her great theatre, and which
makes the secure establishment of Peace finally
necessary ; and afterwards the manner in which
she brings this about.

The arrangement provided by Nature for
this end consists in this : 1. That she has taken
care that in all parts of the earth, men shall be
able to live ; 2. That she has scattered them,
by means of War, in all direc'.ions, even to the
most inhospitable regions, in order that these
may be peopled ; 3. That, by the same means,
she has compelled them to enter into relations
more or less founded upon Law.

It is admirable that even the cold deserts on
the Arctic Sea produce moss, which the rein-
deer digs from under the snow, to be itself the
food or the steed of the Ostiacs or Samoides ; or
that the salt sand wastes provide the camel,
created as it were for crossing them ; in order
not to leave these regions unoccupied. * * *

* Tliat is, tlie destiny of the race, in History, as dis-
tinguished froin Virtue, the destination of tlie indivi-
dual. Tr.

But ' the inhabitants of these countries' were
driven thither probably by War alone. * * «
Nature, in providing that it should be possible
for man to inhabit every part of the earth, at
the same time despotically willed that they
should inhabit every part, even against their
inclination, and without connecting with this
necessity the moral constraint of an idea of
Duty, but choosing War as the means of ac-
complishing this purpose. Thus we see nations,
the identity of whose language testifies to their
common origin, as the Samoides on the Frozen
Ocean and a nation of similar language a thou-
sand miles distant, on the other side of the
Altai mountains; between whom a different
(Mongolian) nation, an equestrian and warlike
people, has thrust itself, and thus driven one
portion of the tribe to such a distance, into the
njost inhospitable regions, whither they would
certainly never have spread from their own
inclination. So the Fins in the northernmost
parts of Europe, called Laplanders, and the
Hungarians, with whom they are related in
language, are now widely separated by the
Gothic and Sarmatian races that have pene-
trated between them. And what can have
driven the Esquimaux, (a race quite different
from any of the American, and perhaps consist-
ing of ancient European adventurers), into the
North ; and the Pescheras in South America
into Terra del Fuego, except War; of which
Nature avails herself as means of peopling all
parts of the earth i * * * * *

Thus much concerning wliat Nature does for
her own purposes, with the human race, consi-
dered as a race of animals.

Now comes the question, which touches the
most important point in the design of an ever-
lasting Peace. ' What does Nature to this' in-
tent, as to the aim which Man's reason makes
his duty; that is, what does she in furtherance
of his tnoral endeavour ; and how does she gua-
ranty that what JMan mtght to do, but does not,
according to his nature as a free being, he shall
nevertheless do, without prejudice to his free-
dom, by a natural necessity. * * *

When I say of Nature that she imlls this or
that to take place, I mean by this, not that she
makes it our duty, (for this belongs solely to the
free practical Reason), but that she does it her-
self, whether we wish it or not: [fata volentem
ducunt, nolentem trahuntY

1. Even if a nation were not driven by inter-
nal discord to submit to the restraint of public
laws, yet War would accomplish this from with-
out ; for, according to the beforementioned pro-
vision of Nature, every nation finds in its neigh-
bourhood another nation pressing upon it, against
which it must inwardly organize itself into a
State, in order to be prepared for resistance.
Now the republican form of government is the
only one perfectly adapted to the rights of Man,
but also the hardest to establish, and yet more
difficult to preserve. So that many maintain
that it would have to be a commonwealth of
7

74

IMMANUEL KANT.

angels, since men, with their selfish inclinations,
are not capable of so sublime a form of govern-
ment. But here Nature comes to the assistance
of this universal Will, so honoured, but practi-
cally so powerless; and this by means of these
same selfish inclinations. So that it requires
only a good organization of the State, (which
surely is within the power of men), so to array
these forces against each other, that the one
shall prevent or neutralize the evil effect of the
other ; so that the result for the Reason will be
the same as if neither existed. Thus a man,
though not morally good, may be compelled to
be a good citizen. Paradoxical as it may sound,
the problem of civil organization maybe solved
by a nation of devils, provided they have un-
derstanding. It runs thus: — "So to order and
organize a multitude of rational beings, all re-
quiring universal laws for their protection, but
each secretly inclined to make himself an ex-
ception to their operation, that though they con-
flict in their private feeling, yet these feelings
shall so counteract each other that in civil rela-
tions the result will be the same as if they had
no such evil feelings."

Such a problem must be capable of a solution.
For it is not the moral improvement of mankind,
but only the mechanism of Nature, as to which
we inquire how it is to be employed in the af-
fairs of men, so to direct the conflict of hostile
sentiments among a people, that they shall
oblige each other to submit to compulsory laws,
and thus bring about a condition of tranquillity
in which laws are effective. This may be seen
even in actually existing States, though very
imperfectly organized; they approach in out-
ward condition very near to what the idea of
Right commands, though inward morality is
certainly not the cause ; for good government is
not the product of Morality, but, vice-versa, a
good moral development of a nation is to be
expected only from good government.

So that the mechanism of Nature, through
selfish inclinations, which are naturally opposed
to each other in their outward effects also, serves
as an instrument to prepare the way for what
Reason aims at, the law of Right; and thus, as
far as depends on the State, to further and se-
cure inward as well as outward Peace.

We may say, therefore, that Nature impera-
tively demands that the right shall finally pre-
vail. What is neglected at first brings itself
about at last, though with much discomfort. * *
2. The idea of international Law presupposes
a separation of many independent, neighbouring
States, and though this in itself is a state of War
(unless a federative union repress the outbreak
of hoistilities), yet even this is more in accord-
ance with Reason than an amalgamation, by a
power overgrowing the others and passing into
a universal monarchy. For laws are always
weakened in proportion to the increase of the
area of government; and a soulless despotism,
after having rooted out the germs of good, falls
at last into anarchy. Nevertheless it is the de-

sire of eveVy State (or of its rulers) thus to bring
about a state of enduring Peace, by monopolis-
ing, if possible, the government of the whole
world. But Nature will have it otherwise.

She makes use of two means to prevent na-
tions from intermingling, and to separate them :
the difference of Language, and the difference
of Ci-eed, which indeed carries with it an incli-
nation to mutual hatred, and an excuse for War ;
but yet, in the advance of culture, and the gra-
dually increasing friendly intercourse of man-
kind, leads to greater harmony of principles,
and to a peaceful understanding, brought about
and secured, not like the despotism above spoken
of (on the grave of Freedom), by the exhaustion
of all forces, but by their equilibrium amid the
liveliest contention.

3. As Nature wisely separates nations, though
the will of each State, supported too by princi-
ples of international law, would seek for union,
by cunning or violence ; — so on the other hand
she unites nations whom tlie idea of cosmopo-
litan Right would not have protected against
violence and war, by mutual interest.

This is the spirit of Commerce, which cannot
coexist with War, and which, sooner or later,
takes possession of every nation. For as among
all means of influence under the command of
the governing authority of the State, the power
of money is most to be relied on. States are
compelled (not precisely by moral motives) to
encourage Peace; and in whatever quarter of
the world War threatens to break out, to prevent
it by negotiations, as if in constant league to
this end. *******

Thus does Nature guaranty everlasting Peace,
by the very mechanism of human passions ; not
indeed so securely that future Peace can be
(theoretically) prophesied ; but practically she is
successful, and renders it our duty to labour to
bring about this end, as no mere chimera.

SUPPOSED BEGINNING OF THE HISTORY

OF MAN.

To strew conjectures in the mirse of a his-
tory, in order to fill up a gap in the narrative,
may be regarded as allowable ; since that which
went before, as remote cause, and that which
came after, as effect, may furnish a tolerably
safe guide to the discovery of the intermediate
causes, and thus make the transition intelligible.
But to create a history entirely out of conjecture,
seems to be little better than laying the plan of
a novel. Such a history ought not to be called
a conjectural history, but a mere fiction. Never-
theless, that which ought not to be hazarded in
relation to the progressive history of liiunan af-
fairs, may yet be attempted in relation to the
first beginning of the same, so far as that begin-
ning is the work of Nature. For here, it is not
necessary to invent. Experience will suffice,
if we assume, that experience, in the first be-

IMMANUEL KANT.

75

ginning of things, was neither better nor worse
than now, — an assumption which agrees with
the analogy of nature, and has nothing presump-
tuous in it. A history of tlie first unfolding of
freedom from an original capacity in the nature
of man, is something very diflerent from the
history of freedom in its progress, -which can
have no otlier basis than received accounts.

Conjecture, however, must urge no extrava-
gant claims to assent. It must announce itself
not as serious occupation, but only as an exer-
cise permitted to the imagination, under the
guidance of reason, by way of recreation and
mental hygiene. Accordingly, it must not mea-
sure itself with a narrative on the same subject,
which has been proposed and believed as actual
history, and whose evidence depends on far
other grounds than those of natural philosophy.
For this reason, and because I am attempting
here a mere pleasure-excursion, I may count on
the privilege of being allowed to avail myself
of a certain ancient, sacred document, and of
fancying that my excursion made on the wings
of imagination, though not without a guiding
thread deduced by reason from experience, has
hit the exact line which that document histori-
cally describes. The reader will turn over the
leaves of the document (first book of Moses,
from the second to the fourth chapter), and, fol-
lowing step by step, see whether the course
pursued by philosophy according to ideas, coin-
cides with the one which is there indicated.

Not to lose ourselves in merely fantastic con-
jectures, we must begin with that which cannot
be deduced by human reason from antecedent
natural causes, viz. the existence of man. We
must suppose him existing in fnlly developed
stature, in order that he may be independent
of maternal aid. We must suppose a pair, in
order that he may propagate his species ; and
yet but a single pair, in order that war may not
spring up at once, between those who are near
together and yet estranged from each other ;
and that Nature may not be charged, on the
score of various parentage, with having made
no sufficient provision for union, as the chief
end of human destination. For the unity of the
family from which all men were to derive their
origin, was undoubtedly the best means to bring
about this end. I place this pair in a region
secured against the attack of beasts of prey, and
richly furnished by nature with the means of
support ; that is, in a kind of garden, and in a
climate forever genial. Farther still, I contem-
plate them at that period only, at which they
have already made important progress in the
ability to use their powers. I begin therefore
not with the utter rudeness of nature, lest there
should be too many conjectures for the reader,
and too few probabilities, if I were to attempt
to fill up this gap, which probably comprises a
long period of time.

The first man, then, could stand and walk ;
he could speak (Gen. ii. 20.) and even talk, that
is, speak according to connected ideas (v. 23.),

consequently, think. All these faculties he was
forced to acquire for himself, for if they had
been inborn, they would be hereditary, which
is contrary to experience. But I here assume
that he is already possesso^l of these faculties,
and direct my attention exclusively to the deve-
lopment of the moral in his doing and abstain-
ing, which necessarily presupposes the faculties
in question.

At first, the novice is guided solely by in-
stinct, that voice of God which all animals obey.
This allowed him certain articles of food and
forbade others. (Gen. iii. 2. 3.) It is not ne-
cessary however, to suppose, for this purpose, a
special instinct which has since been lost. It
might have been simply the sense of smell, its
relation to the organ of taste, and the known
sympathy of the latter with the instruments of
digestion. Hence a capacity, the like of which
may still be observed, to predict the suitableness
or unsuitableness of any particular species of
food. It is not even necessary to suppose this
sense stronger in the first pair than it is now;
for it is well known what difference exists in
the powers of perception, between those who
are occupied with their senses alone and those
who are occupied, at the same time, with their
thoughts, and thereby diverted from their sensa-
tions.

So long as inexperienced man obeyed this
call of Nature, he found his account in so doing.
Soon, however. Reason began to stir and he
sought to extend his knowledge of the means
of subsistence beyond the bounds of instinct, by
a comparison of that which he had eaten with
that w^hich resembled it, in the judgment of
another sense than the one to which the instinct
attached, — the sense of sight. (Gen. iii. G.)
This experiment might have had a happy issue,
although instinct did not advise, provided it did
not forbid. But it is a property of reason to be
able, with the help of imagination, to elaborate
artificial desires not only without a natural im-
pulse, but even against the impulses of nature.
These desires which, in their first manifesta-
tion, we call wantonness, gradually produce a
whole swarm of unnecessary and even of un-
natural propensities, to which we give the name
of luxury. The occasion of the first defection
from natural instinct, may have been a trifle,
but the consequence of this first experiment
was, that man became conscious of his reason,
as a faculty capable of extension beyond the
limits within which other animals are held ;
and this consequence was of great importance
and had a decisive influence on his way of life.
Although, therefore, it may have been merely a
fruit, the sight of which tempted him to partake
of it by its resemblance to other pleasant fruits,
of which he had already part.•^ken ; yet if we
add the example of an animal to whose nature
such fruit was adapted, whereas it was not
adapted to the nature of man, and, consequently,
forbidden to him by an opposing natural in-
stinct;— this circumstance would give to reason

76

IMMANUEL/ KANT.

the first occasion to practise chicanery with Na-
ture (Gen. iii. 1.) and, in spite of her prohibition,
to make the first experiment of a free clioice ;
which experiment, being the first, probably did
not result according jo expectation. No matter
how insignificant the injury which ensued,
man's eyes were opened by it. (Gen. iii. 7.)
He discovered in himself the capacity to select
his own life-path, instead of being confined to a
given one, like other animals. The momentary
pleasure which the perception of tliis advantage
might awake in liim, must have been followed
immediately by fear and anxiety. Ho\v was
he, who, as yet, knew nothing according to its
hidden qualities and remote effects, — how was
he to proceed with his newly discovered power 1
He stood, as it were, on the brink of an abyss.
From the single objects of his desire, as they
had hitherto been indicated to him by instinct,
he learned their infinity, an infinity in which
he was as yet unprepared to choose. It was
not possible for him however to return from
this state of freedom once tasted, to that of
servitude, or subjection to the law of instinct.

Next to the instinct of nourishment, by which
Nature preserves the individual, the instinct of
sex, by which she provides for the preservation
of the species, is the most important. Reason,
once called into action, began without much
delay to manifest its influence here likewise.
Man soon found that what, with other animals,
is transient and for the most part dependent on
periodical impulse, was capable of being pro-
longed and even increased, in his case, by means
of the imagination, which acts with greater
moderation indeed, but also with greater per-
manence and uniformity, the mere the object is
withdrawn from the senses ; and that, by this
means, the satiety which the satisfaction of a
merely animal desire brings with it, might be
prevented. Accordingly, the fig-leaf (v. 7.)
was the product of a far greater exercise of
reason, than that which appeared in the first
stage of its development. For to render a pro-
pensity more intense and more permanent by
withdrawing the object of it from the senses,
shows a consciousness of some degree of power
of reason over impiulses, and not merely, like
that first step, a capacity to serve them to a
greater or less extent. Denial was the artifice
which led from the joys of mere sensation to
ideal ones, from mere animal desire to love,
and, with love, from the feeling of the merely
agreeable, to the taste for the beautiful, first in
man, and then in nature. Propriety, — the dis-
position to inspire respect in others by the decent
concealment of whatsoever might produce con-
tempt,— as the true foundation of all genuine
social union, gave moreover the first hint to the
cultivation of man, as a moral being. — A small
beginning, but one which makes an epoch, by
giving a new direction to thought, is more im-
portant tlian the whole immeasurable series of
extensions given to culture, in consequence of it.

The third step in the progress of reason, after

it had connected itself with the first felt and
immediate necessities, was the deliberate ex-
pectation of the future. This faculty, by means
of which not only the present life-moment is
enjoyed, but the coming and often far distant
time made present, is the most decisive mark
of the advantage possessed by man in being
able to prepare himself, according to his destina-
tion, for distant ends; but it is also, at the same
time, the most inexhaustible fountain of cares
and troubles, occasioned by the uncertain future,
from which all other animals are freed, (vs.
13 — 19.) The man, who had himself and a
wife, together with future children, to support,
anticipated the ever-growing difficulty of his
labour. The woman anticipated the evils to
which Nature had subjected her sex, and the
added ones which the stronger man would lay
upon her. Both saw with fear, in the back
ground of the picture, after a toilsome life, that
which indeed befalls inevitably all creatures, but
without occasioning them any anxiety, namely,
death. And they seemed to reproach them-
selves for the use of reason which had brought
all these evils upon them, and to count it a
crime. To live in their posterity, who might
experience a liapi^ier lot, and, as members of a
family, lighten the common burden, was, per-
haps, the only consoling prospect which still
sustained them. (Gen. iii. 16 — 20.)

The fourth and last step in the progress of
reason, and that which raised man entirely
above the fellowship of the beasts, was this,
that he comprehended, however, obscurely, that
he is truly the aim of Nat we, and that nothing
which lives upon the earth can rival him in
this. The first time that he said to the sheep :
" that skin which thou wearest. Nature gave
thee not for thine own sake but for mine,'" and
so saying, took it from the animal and put it
upon himself; (v. 21.) he became conscious of
a prerogative which, by virtue of his nature, he
possessed above all other animals. He no longer
regarded these as his associates in creation, but
as means and instruments committed to his will,
for the accomplishment of whatsoever ends he
pleased. This conception includes, thotigh dim-
ly, the converse; viz. that he could not say the
same of his fellowman, but must regard him as
an equal partaker with liimself of the gifts of
Nature. We have here a remote preparative
for those limitations which reason was here-
after to impose upon the will of man in regard
to his fellow, and which are even more neces-
sary than inclination and love, to the constitu-
tion of society.

And thus had man, — in consideration of his
title to be an end unto himself, to be regarded
as such by every other and by none to be used
merely as a means to other ends, — entered into
an equality ivith all rational beings of whatsoever
rank. (Gen. iii. 22.) It is here, and not in the
possession of reason, considered merely as an
instrument for the satisfaction of various pro-
pensities, that we are to look for the ground of

IMMANUEL KANT.

77

tliat unlimited equality of man even with higher
beings, who may be incomparably superior to
him in natural endowments, but no one of whom
has therefore a right to manage and dispose of
him at pleasure. This step in the progress of
reason is therefore simultaneous with the dis-
missal of man from the mother-lap of Nature ;
— a change which was honourable indeed, but
at the same time dangerous, inasmuch as it
drove him forth from the unmolested and safe
condition in which his childhood was nursed,
as it were from a garden which had maintained
him without any care on his part, (v. 23.) and
thrust him into the wide world, where so many
cares and troubles and unknown evils awaited
him. Hereafter, the burdens of life will often
elicit the wish for a paradise — the creature of
his imagination — where he may dream or trifle
away his existence in quiet inactivity and tm-
interrupted peace. But reason, restless and irre-
sistibly impelling him to unfold the capacities
implanted in him, stations itself between him
and that region of imaginary joys, and will not
permit him to return into that condition of rude
simplicity out of which it has drawn him forth.
(v. 24.) It impels him to undergo with patience
the labour which he hates, to chase the gauds
which he despises, and to forget even death so
terrible to him, in the pursuit of those trifles
whose loss is more terrible still.

hemark.

From this sketch of the first history of man it
appears, that his dei^arture from the Paradise
which reason represents as the first residence
of his species, was nothing else than the transi-
tion from the rudeness of a merely animal na-
ture, to humanity, from the leading strings of
instinct to the guidance of reason, — in a word-,
from the guardianship of Nature, to a state of
freedom. Whether man has gained or lost by
this change, can no longer be a question, if we
regard the destination of the species, which con-
sists solely in progress toward perfection ; how-
ever defective may have been the first attempts,
and even a long series of successive attempts to
penetrate to this end. Nevertheless, this course
which, for the species, is a progress from worse
to better, is not exactly such for the individual.
Before reason ■was awakened, there was neither
command nor prohibition, and consequently no
transgression. But when reason began its work,
and, weak as it was, came into collision with
animalism in all its strength, it was unavoida-
ble that evils, and what was worse, with the
grouing cultivation of reason, vices should
arise, which were entirely foreign from the
state of ignorance, and consequently of inno-
cence. The first step out of this state, therefore,
on the moral side, was a Fall; on the physical,
a number of life-ills, hitherto unknown, were
the efi"ect ; consequently, the punishment of that
Fall. So the history of Naturehegins with good,
for it is the ivoi-k of God ; but the history of Free-
dom begins with evil, for it is the work of man.

For the individual who, in the use of his free-
dom, has reference only to himself, the change
was a loss. For Nature, whose aim in relation
to man, is directed to the species, it was a gain.
The former, therefore, has reason to ascribe all
the evils that he suffers, and all the evils that
he does, to his own fault; at the same time,
however, as a member of the whole, (the spe-
cies] he must admire and commend the wisdom
and propriety of the arrangement.

In this way, we may reconcile, with each
other, and with reason, the oft misinterpreted,
and, in appearance, successively conflicting as-
sertions of the celebrated J. J. Rousseau. In
his work on The Influence of the Sciences, and
in that on The Inequality of Men, he very cor-
rectly exhibits the unavoidable contradiction
which exists between culture and the nature
of man, as a physical race of beings, in which
each individual is to fulfil entirely his destina-
tion. But in his ' Emil' and his ' Social Contract'
and other writings, he endeavours to solve the
difficult problem, and to show how culture must
proceed in order to unfold, according to their
destination, the faculties of Humanity as a moral
species, so that there may no longer be any con-
flict between the natural and the moral destina-
tion. From this conflict,* since culture has not

* To mention but a few instances of this conflict be-
tween the effort of Humanity to fulfil its moral destina-
tion on the one hand, and the unchangeable observance
of the laws implanted in man's nature, adapted to a rude
and animal condition on the other hand, I adduce the
following. The epoch of man's majority, i. e. the im-
pulse as well as the capacity to propagate his species, is
set by Nature at the age of sixteen or seventeen years;
an age at which the youth, in a rude state of Nature, be-
comes literally a man; for he possesses then the power
to maintain himself, to beget children, and to maintain
them, together with his wife. The simplicity of his wants
makes this easy. In a state of cultivation, on the other
hand, many means, acquired skill, as well as favourable
external circumstances, are necessary for this purpose ;
so that, civilly, this epoch is deferred, on an average, by
at least ten years. Nature, meanwhile, has not changed
her period of maturity to suit the progress of social re-
finement, but obstinately insists on her own law, which
she has calculated for the preservation of the human
race, as an animal species. Hence arises an unavoidable
conflict between the purposes of Nature and the customs
of Society. The natural man has already attained to
manhood at an age when the civil man is still a youth,
or even a child. For we may call him a child who, on
account of his years, (in a state of civilizationl cannot
even maintain himself, much less his kind; although he
has the impulse and the capacity, and, consequently, the
call of Nature to beget his kind. Assuredly, Nature has
not implanted instincts and capacities in living beings,
merely that they may war against and suppress them.
The tendencies of Nature, therefore, are not designed for
a state of civilization, but solely for the preservation of
the human species as a race of animals. There is an
unavoidable collision between nature and civilization,
in this particular, which only a perfect civil polity — the
highest aim of culture — can do away. At present, the
interval in question (between natural and civil majority)
is usually beset with vices and their consequences, the
manifold evils of humanity.
Another example which proves the truth of the propo.
7*

78

IMMANUEL KANT.

yet rightly commenced, much less completed its
course, according to true principles, educating
alike the man and the citizen, arise all the real
evils which oppress human life, and all the
vices which dishonour it. The propensities
which lead to those vices, and on which the
blame is laid in such cases, are good in them-
selves, and have their end as natural endow-
ments. But these natural endowments, being
calculated for a state of Nature alone, are trench-
ed upon by progressive culture, and, in turn,
re-act upon culture, until perfected Art returns
to Nature again ; which is the final goal in the
moral destination of the human species.

CONCLUSION OF THE HISTOBT.

The beginning of the next period was the
transition of man from an era of peace and ease
to one of labour and discord, as a prelude to
social union. And here again we must make a
great leap, and suppose him at once in posses-
sion of tame animals, and of fruits which he
could multiply by sowing and planting : (Gen.
iv. 2.) although it must have been a long pro-
cess, by which he arrived from the rude life of

sitinn, that Nature has icnplaiited in us two tendencies
to two different ends, viz., of man as an animal and of
man as a moral species, is the Ars longa vita brevis of
Hippocrates. Science and art miylit be carried much far-
ther by a single mind which is made for them, after it
lias once attained the requisite maturity of judgment by
long discipline and acquired knowledge, than by succes-
sive generations of learned men; provided that single
head could live through the whole period, occupied by
those successive generations, with the same youthful
power of iMtellccl. Now Nature has evidently taken her
determination respecting the duration of human life,
from a very diffi:rent point of view than the promotion
of science. For when a man of the happiest intellect
stands on the brink of the greatest discoveries, wliich he
is authorized to expect from his skill and experience, old
age comes in ; he grows dull, and must leave it to another
generation, beginning with the A. B. C, and going over
the whole ground again which he has been over, to add
another siiaii to the progress of culture. Accordingly, the
progress of the human race toward the fulfilment of its
entire destination ajipears to be continually interrupted,
and in continual danger of falling back again into primi-
tive rudeness. And the Grecian philosopher did not com-
plain entirely without cause, when he said "it is a pity
that man must die then when he has just begun to un-
derstand how he ought to live."

We may take, for a third example, the inequality of
the human condition. Not the inequality of natural
endovvmeuts nor of the gifts of Fortune, but that inequa-
lity in universal human rights, concerning which Rous-
seau complains with much truth, but which is inseparable
from culture as long as it proceeds without a plan, as it
must for a long time, and to which Nature certainly did
not destine man, seeing she gave him freedom, and rea-
son to restrain that freedom solely by its own universal
and external legality, which we call civil right. Man
was intended to work his way gradually out of tlie rude-
ness of his natural tendencies, and while he lifts himself
above tliem, nevertheless to take heed that he does not
sin asaiust thein ; a faculty which ho does not acquire till
late, and after many unsuccessful attempts. In the mean-
while. Humanity sighs under various evils which, from
inexperience, it indicts upon itself.

a hunter to the first of these possessions, or from
die irregular digging of roots and gathering of
fruits to the second. At this point, the division
between men who had hitherto lived peaceably
side by side, behoved to begin ; the consequence
of which was the separation of those addicted
to ditlerent modes of life, and their dispersion
over the earth. The life of the shepherd is not
only easy, but affords also the most certain sup-
port, since there can be no want of feed in a
soil which is uninhabited far and wide. On
the other hand, agriculture or planting is very
toilsome, dependent on the uncertainty of the
weather ; consequently insecure, and requiring,
moreover, permanent buildings, ownership of
the soil, and sunicient power to defend it. But
the herdsman hates this property in the soil,
which limits the freedom of his pasturage.
With regard to the first point, the agriculturalist
might seem to envy the herdsman as more
favoured by Heaven than himself (v. 4.) ; in
fact, however, he was much troubled by him as
long as he remained in his neighbourhood ; for
the browsing cattle did not spare his planta-
tions. Since now it was easy for the herdsman,
after the damage which he had caused, to with-
draw himself to a distance and thus escape
reprisals, seeing he left nothing which he could
not as well find everywhere else, it was proba-
bly the husbandman who first used violence
against these trespasses which the herdsman
thought lawful, and who, since the occasion for
these trespasses could never entirely cease, was
compelled, unless he would lose the fruits of
his long diligence, to remove as far as possible
from those who led a nomadic life. (v. 16.)
This separation makes the third epoch.

A soil, on the working and planting of which
(especially with trees), the support of life de-
pends, requires fixed habitations ; and, for the
defence of these against all assaults, a multitude
of men who shall assist each other. Conse-
quently, men addicted to this mode of life, could
no longer disperse by families, but must keep
together and establish villages, (improperly
called cities), in order to protect their property
against hunters or hordes of vagrant herdsmen.
The first necessities of life, the production of
which involved various pursuits (v. 20.), might
now be exchanged, the one for the other. The
necessary consequence of this was culture, and
the beginning of the arts, as well of amusement
as of industry, (vs. 21, 22.) But what is most
important, there was also some arrangement
toward a civil constitution and public justice ;
at first, indeed, with respect only to gross acts
of violence, the avenging of which was now
no longer left to individuals, as in the savage
state, but committed to a legalized power which
kept the whole together ; that is a kind of
Government, beyond v/hich there was no exe-
cutive force (vs. 23, 24.) From this first rude
institution, all human arts, among which that
of society and civil security is the most pro-
fitable, could gradually unfold themselves, the

IMMANUEL KANT.

79

human race multiply, and like swarms of bees
diffuse itself from a common centre, by sending
forth cultivated colonists. With this period,
also, the inequality among men, — that rich foun-
tain of so nnich evil, but also of all good — began
anil rontinued to increase.

So long, indeed, as the nomadic, herd-tending
nations which acknowledge God alone for their
ruler, hovered around the inhabitants of cities,
and the husbandmen, who had a man (magis-
trate) for their master* (vi. 4.), and, being sworn
foes of property in land, assumed a hostile atti-
tude toward them, and were hated by them in
turn, there was continual war between the two,
or, at least, continual danger of war ; and there-
fore both nations could enjoy, internally at least,
the inestimable blessing of freedom. For the
danger of war is even now the only thing that
qualifies Despotism. Wealth is required in
orrler that a State may become a Power; but
without liberty there can be no wealth-pro-
ducing industry. To supply the place of this,
in a poor nation, there must be a general par-
ticipation in the maintenance of the common
weal. And this again cannot exist without a
feeling of liberty.

In time, however, the growing luxury of the
city-dwellers, particularly the art of pleasing,
by which the city women eclipsed the dirty
nymphs of the wilderness, could not but prove
a powerful temptation to those herdsmen to
form connexions with them, and thus to suffer
themselves to be drawn into the splendid misery
of the cities. Then, with the amalgamation of
two once hostile nations, — jjutting an end to all
danger of war, but, at the same time also, to all
liberty, — it came to pass that the despotism of
powerfid tyrants on the one hand, together with
a culture scarcely yet commenced, — soulless
luxury in abject slavery, combined with all the
vices of the savage state — on the other hand
irresistibly diverted the human race from that
progressive cultivation of their capacity for
good, prescribed tp them by Nature, and thereby
rendered them unwortliy of their very exis-
tence, as a species intended to rule over the
earth, and not merely to enjoy as brutes or to
serve as slaves, (v. 17.)

CONCLUDIXG BEJfAHK.

The thinking man feels a sorrow that may
even lead to moral corruption, of which the
thoughtless knows nothing. He feels, namely,
a discontent with that Providence which guides
the course of the world at large, when he re-
flects on the evils which oppress the human
race to so great an extent, and seemingly with-

* The Arabian Bedouins still call themselves chililren
of a former Skeik, the founder of their tribe (as Beni
Aled, &.C.). This personage, however, is by no means
a ruler, and can exercise, of his own will, no authority
over them. For in a nation of herdsmen, as no one
possesses real estate which he would have to leave behind,
any fiiniily that is discontented may easily separate itself
from the tribe, and go to strengthen another.

out the hope of anything better. It is of the
greatest importance, however, to he satisfied with
Providence, notwithstanding it has prescribed to
us a path so full of toil in our earthly world ;
partly that we may still take courage amid our
difliculties; i^artly. lest, in ascribing these evils
to Fate, we forget our own guilt, which perhaps
is the sole cause of them, and so neglect to seek
a remedy for them in self-reformation.

It must be confessed that the greatest evils
which alHict civilized nations arise from W(?r:
not so much indeed from that which actually
is, or has been, as from the never-ending, ever-
increasing preparation for that which is to be.
To this end are applied all the forces of the
State and all the fruits of its culture, which
might be used for still further culture. Free-
dom is, in many points, materially invaded, and
the motherly care of the State for individual
members, changed to requisitions of inexorable
severity; which, nevertheless, are jtistified by
the fear of external danger. But, would this
culture, would the intimate union of the various
classes of the Commonwealth for the mutual
furthering of their prosperity, would the same
population, nay, would that degree of freedom,
which, under very restrictive laws, still exists, —
would they be found, were it not for that respect
for Humanity which the constant dread of war
enforces in the Heads of States 1 Look at
China, which, though she may suffer a sudden
invasion, yet, in consequence of her situation,
has no powerful enemy to fear; and where,
consequently, every trace of freedom is ob-
literated ! In that stage of culture, therefore, at
which the human race at present stands, war
is an indispensable means for the iiromotion of
further culture ; and not till the progress of cul-
ture is completed (God knows when), would a
perpetual peace be salutary for us ; and not till
then would it be possible. Accordingly, so far
as this laoint is concerned, we ourselves are to
blame for the evils of which we so bitterly
complain; and the sacred record is quite right
in representing the amalgamation of nations
into one Community, and their perfect deliver-
ance from external danger, while their culture
has scarcely yet commenced, as a hindrance to
all further culture, and a lajJse into irremediable
corruption.

The second cause of discontent among men
is the order of Nature with respiect to the short-
ness of life. It is true, one must have esti-
mated very erroneously the value of life, to
wish it longer than it actually is ; for that would
be only prolonging a struggle with perpetual
difficulties. On the other hand, however, one
can hardly blame a childish judgment for fear-
ing death without loving life, or for thinking, —
difficult as it may be to spend a single day in
tolerable contentment, — that there are never
days enough in which to repeat the torment.
But when we consider, with how many cares
the means of maintaining so short a life af-
flict us, and how much injustice is perpetrated

80

IMMANUEL KANT.

in the hope of some future, though equally
transient good, it is reasonable to conclude, that,
if men could look forward to a life of eight
hundred years or more, the father would no
longer be secure of his life from the son, the
brother from the brother, friend from friend ;
and that the vices of so long-lived a race would
reach such a height as to render man worthy
of no better fate, than to be swept from the
earth in a general flood, (vs. 12, 13.)

The third wish, or rather empty longing, (for
one is conscious that the object can never be
attained) is the shadow-image of that golden age
so much praised by tlie poets : — a state in which
men are to be freed from all imaginary neces-
sities imposed by luxury, and contented with
the simple wants of Nature ; where there is to
be a perfect equality of condition, everduring
peace ; in a word, the pure enjoyment of a
careless life spent in idle dreaming or in childish
sports. This longing, which makes the Robinson
Crusoes and the voyages to the South Sea Islands
so attractive, illustrates the satiety which the
thinking man experiences in a state of civiliza-
tion, if he seeks its value in enjoyment alone,
and balances the counterweight of indolence,
W'hen admonished by reason to give value to
life, by means of action. The vanity of this
desire of a return to the period of simplicity and
innocence, is abundantly evident, when, from
the above representation of his original condi-
tion, we learn that man could not maintain
himself in it, precisely, because it does not satisfy
hiin ; and that he is still less disposed to return

to it again. So that, after all, the present la-
borious condition is to be regarded as his own
choice.

Such a representation of his history is there-
fore profitable to man, and conducive to his in-
struction and improvement, as showing him that
he must not charge Providence with the evils
which afflict him ; also, that he is not justified
in imi^uting his own crimes to the transgression
of his first Parents, creating an hereditary ten-
dency to similar transgressions in their des-
cendants, (for voluntary actions have nothing
hereditary in them), but that, on the contrary,
he may, with perfect justice, regard their actions
as his own, and, accordingly, take to himself
the whole blame of the evils arising from the
misuse of his reason ; since he cannot but be
conscious that he would have done precisely as
they did, in similar circumstances, and that the
first use which he made of his reason would
have been, — in spite of the admonitions of Na-
ture,—to abuse it. This point of moral evil
being adjusted, those which are strictly physical
will hardly be found to yield a balance in our
favour, if tried by a debt and credit account of
guilt and desert.

And so the result of an attempt to construct
a history of primitive man by the aid of philo-
sophy, is contentment with Providence and the
course of human things on the whole, as pro-
ceeding not from good to bad but from worse
to better. To this process every one, for his
part, is called upon by Nature herself, to con-
tribute according to his power.

::Nr,n/iVEn HY J.SAIfriiN

JOHANN GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING.

Born 1729. Died 1781.

Lessing was the son of a Lutheran Clergy-
man ; his birthplace, Kamentz in Upper Lu-
satia.

Biography, fond to trace tlie promise of future
greatness in childisli caprices, pleases itself
with the circumstance, that at the age of five,
he was unwilling to have his picture taken
otherwise, than with a great pile of books by
his side. So great, it is intimated, was the
child's passion for I,etters !

At the age of twelve he was sent to the
Higli-school at Meissen in Saxony, where he
labored with great diligence and laid the
foundation of his extensive erudition. At
seventeen he entered the university of Leip-
zig, where his parents wished him to study
theology. But following the bent of his own
genius, he studied everything else instead ;
and though a constant hearer of the cele-
brated Ernesti, he otherwise gave no heed to
prepare himself for the sacred office. He felt
the secret ^ Drang, ^ which indicated another
calling, and in fact before he left Leipzig had
already begun his literary career, as a writer
for tlie stage. The Drama was his first love ;
but he did not confine himself to that, nor to
any one province of literature. Indeed there
is scarcely one which his learning and his
genius have not illustrated.

In 1750 he v,^ent to Wittenberg to prosecute
his theological studies in compliance with the
earnest solicitation of his parents. His younger
brother, Johann Gottlieb, was already a student
at this university ; and the two, in conjunction,
published several essays in theology and polite
literature, which procured them much honor
from the Public, and some odium from the
orthodox.

I>essing however did not remain long in
Wittenberg, nor did he ever become a preacher.
He went to Berlin, and lived as author by pro-
fession, in intimate communion Vv'ith Mendels-
sohn, Nicolai, Rammler, and others, supporting
himself by his pen. Some of his principal
works, particularly Emilia Galotti and the Lao-
coon, were published during this period, and

L

while holding the office of secretary to General
Tauenzien, at Breslau. In 1760 he was made
member of the Royal academy of sciences at
Berlin. In 1766 he accepted a situation con-
nected with the theatre at Hamburo-, as thea-
trical critic, and there wrote his Dramaturgie.
In 1770 he was made librarian to the library
at Wolfenbiittel, in the Duchy of Brunswick-
Wolfenbiittel, where, with the exception of a
tour to Italy, made in the company of the here-
ditary Prince of Brunswick, he remained until
his death. Here he published his Nathan the
Wise, and several theological treatises. The
latter involved him in vexatious controversies,
and subjected him to persecutions which em-
bittered the remainder of his days, and, as it is
thought, abridged their term. He died in the
beginning of his fifty-third year; too soon for
the interests of literature, too late for his own
peace.

The life comprehended in this brief outline
was singularly unblessed. Lessing was not
made of the stuff which thrives in the world of
men. He was one of those illstarred geniuses,
who, owing to some fatality or some defect, or,
quite as often perhaps, to some unwonted and
unaccommodating virtue, fail to find an equal
and congenial sphere for the exercise of their
faculties, and are never at one with their
destiny. His erratic course, not wholly free
from folly,* was crossed with frequent vexa-
tions and bitter disappointments. He had the
misfortune, among others, to lose, soon after
marriage, a beloved wife to whom he had been
betrothed for six years. — " Six years," says He-
gelf — "what a long time for a betrothed pair!
and, in this interim, almost nothing but vexation
and suffering through sickness. And then the
duration of the marriage, — only three years !
Who can help thinking, in such a case, of the
vanity of man and his dearest cares 1 Should
we not think that, if a man could know this

*He is accused of having been addicted to games of
hazard.

t " Ueber Lessing's Briefwechsel mit seiner Frau." He-
gel's Vermischte Schriften.

C81)

82

LESSING.

beforehand, lie would prefer an earlier death
than Nature had intended, to such a life"!"

"That a man like Lessnig," says Heine,*
" could never be happy you will easily com-
prehend. Even if he had not loved the truth,
and if he had not everywhere fought for it, of
his own free will, he must nevertheless have
been unhappy, for he was a Genius. They
will pardon thee everything, said lately a sigh-
ing poet; they will pardon thy riches, they
will pardon thy high birth, they will pardon
thy handsome figure, they will even pardon thy
talent, but to genius men are inexorable. There-
fore is the history of great men always a mar-
tyr-legend. If they suffered not for great
Humanity, they suffered for their own great-
ness, for their great manner of being, for their
unphilistine ways, their dissatisfaction with
ostentatious common-place, with the smirking
meanness of their environment ; — a dissatisfac-
tion which naturally drives them into extra-
vagances, e. g. into the play-house, or even
into the gambling-house, as happened to poor
Lessing. *****

It is heart-rending to read in his biography,
how Destiny denied this man every joy, and
how it was not even permitted him to recreate
himself from his daily conflicts, in the peaceful
bosom of a family. Once only. Fortune seemed
disposed to favor him. She gave him a be-
loved wife, a child. But this happiness was
like the sunbeam which gilds the wing of a
passing bird. It passed as soon. The wife
died in giving birth to her first child ; the
child immediately after birth. Concerning the
latter,>he wrote to a friend these horribly witty
words : " My joy was but brief. And I was
unwilling to lose him, — this son. For he had
so much sense ! So much sense ! Do not think
that the few hours of paternity have made me
such an ape of a father. I know what I say.
Was it not a proof of sense, that he came so
unwillingly into the world 1 — that he suspected
mischief so soon 1 Was it not a proof of sense,
that he seized the first opportunity to be off
again 1 — I had hoped, for once, to have some
comfort like other people. But it proved a bad
business for me."

" There was one sorrow of which Lessing
never spoke with his friends ; that was, his
awful loneliness, his spiritual isolation. Some
of his cotemporaries loved him, no one under-

* Salon, vol. ii.

stood him. Mendelssohn, his best friend, de-
fended him with zeal when he was accused of
Spinozism. The zeal and the defence were as
laughable as they were superfluous. Be quiet
in thy grave, old Moses ! thy Lessing, to be
sure, was on the way to this dreadful error,
this pitiable calamity — Spinozism. But the
All-hio-hest, the Father in heaven rescued him,
at the right moment, by death. Be quiet, thy
Lessing was not a Spinozist, as slander would
have it. He died a good deist, like thee and
Nicolai, and Teller, and the Universal Ger-
man Library I"

This life, so unsuccessful, so tragic, in its
personal aspects, was eminently successful in
its fruits. German literature is indebted to
Lessing as scarcely to any other name in its
annals. He has been to it what Luther was
to the language, — the father of a new era and
order of things. That era of the German in-
tellect which has just transpired, that era which
gave to Germany her present intellectual posi-
tion among the nations, and which, through her
influence, has become an era in the progress of
the universal mind, dates from Lessing, its
earliest representative in general literature;
as Kant was its earliest representative in phi-
losophy. He first delivered his countrymen
from the tyranny of French forms, and, placing
before them the true models of all time, parti-
cularly Shakspeare and the Greeks, led them
back to Nature, and, through Nature, to new
creations. Great as a poet, — although his sub-
lime ideal of the poet's function led him to dis-
claim that title, — * he was still greater as a
critic, and, therein, a true son of his country, a

* He thus speaks of himself at the close of the Drama-
turgic: '-I am neither actor nor poet. It is true men
have sometimes done me the honour to rank me in the
latter class. But it is only because they misunderstood
me. They should not infer so liberally from some dra-
matic attempts which I have hazarded. Not every one
who takes the brush in his hand is a painter. The oldest
of those attempts were made at that age when we are
so willing to mistake pleasure and facility for genius.
Whatever is tolerable in the later ones, I am very con-
scious that I owe it wholly and only to criticism. I feel
not in me the living fountain which struggles forth, of
its own force, and, by its own force, shoots up in such
rich, fresh and pure rays. I have to squeeze everything
out of me by pressure and pipes. * * * I have there-
fore always been shamed or vexed, when I have heard or
read anything in dispraise of criticism. It has been said
to stifle genius ; and I had flattered myself that I derived
from it something which approaches very near to Genius.
I am a cripple, and cannot possibly be edified by a philip-
pic against crutches. But, to be sure, as the crutch may
help the lame man to move from place to jilace, but can
never make him a runner, so it is with criticism."

LESSING.

83

genuine representative of the national mind.
Germany has produced no greater critic than
Lessing, And when we say this, we place
him at the head of that " group" in the " Pha-
lanx" of Letters. Herder testifies of him, that
" no modern writer has exercised a greater in-
fluence on Germany, in matters of taste and of
refined and profound judgment on literary sub-
jects." " Lcssing's judgments have, for the
most part, been confirmed by time. What then
seemed sharp, is now thought just; what was
then hard, is now sober truth." I know scarce
any one who could speak of himself, as a writer,
with greater modesty and dignity than Lessing.
And generally, he is, witliout question, in ex-
tent of reading, in critical acumen, and in many-
sided, manly understanding, the fast critic of
Germany."* His dissertation on the Fable is
affirmed by the same author, to be the "most
concise and philosopliic theory concerning any
species of composition, that has been written
since Aristotle."

But Lessing wrought even more powerfully,
by his character and example, as the fearless
advocate of truth, and the uncompromising en-
emy of all narrowness, and false enlightenment,
and pretence, — of all half- culture and half-
truth, — than by his critical theories. This is
Heine's view of him. " Since Luther, Germany
has produced no greater and better man than
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. These two are
our pride and our delight. Like Luther, Les-
sing acted not only by means of certain specific
performances, but by stirring the German na-
tion to its depths, and producing a wholesome
mental commotion with his criticism and his
polemics. He was the living criticism of his
time, and his whole life was polemic. That
criticism made itself felt in the widest domain
of thought and feeling; in religion, in science,
in art. That polemic overcame every adver-
sary, and grew stronger with every victory.
Lessing, according to his own confession, re-
quired such controversy, for the development
of his own mind. He resembled that fabulous
Norman who inherited the talents, knowledge,
and faculties of the men whom he slew in bat-
tle, and, in this way, at last, was endued with
all possible advantages and excellences. It
may be supposed that such a battle - loving
champion must occasion no small noise in Ger-
many, quiet Germany, which, at that time, was

* Herder's Zerstreute Bliitter. II. Th. " Gotthold Epli-
raim Lessing."

more sabbath-still than now-a-days. People*
were confounded at his literary boldness. But
this very quality was of great service to him.
For "oser''^ is the secret of success in literature
as well as in revolutions — and in love. At
Lessing's sword trembled all. No head was
secure from him. * * * Wliom his sword
could not reach, he slew with the arrows of his
wit. * * * Lessing's wit is not like that
Enjouement, that Gaite, those springing saillies
which are known in this country. His wit
was not the little French grey-hound, tliat runs
after its own shadow ; it was more like a great
German cat, that plays with the mouse before
devouring it. * * * Thus, by his contro-
versies, he has rescued many a name from well-
deserved oblivion. Several tiny authors he has,
as it were, spun round with the most genial
ridicule, with the most costly humor; and now
they are preserved to endless ages in liis works,
like insects caught in a piece of amber. Wliile
killing his adversaries, he made them immortal.
Who of us would ever have heard of that Klotz
on whom Lessing has expended so mucli ridi-
cule and acutenessl The rocks which he
hurled upon that poor antiquary, and with
which he crushed him, are now his indestruc-
tible monument.

It is worthy of note that the wittiest man in
Germany was also, at the same time, the most
honest. Nothing can equal his love of truth.
Lessing made not the slightest concession to
falsehood, even when, after the usual fashion
of the worldly wise, he could promote the cause
of Truth by it. He could do everything for the
truth except to lie for it. Whoso thinks, said
he once, to recommend Truth by all sorts of
masks and paints, would fain be her pimp; but
her lover he never was.

To no one is the beautiful saying of BufFon —
" the style is the man" — more applicable than
to Lessing. His manner of writing is entirely
like his character, true, firm, unadorned, beau-
tiful and imposing by its inherent strength.
His style is the style of Roman architecture ;
the greatest solidity with the greatest simpli-
city."

His influence in Theology has been as great,
perhaps, as in Criticism and Art, although less
generally acknowledged, and although most
vehemently resisted at the time. In Theology,
as in every other department, he was a refor-
mer, at war with the prevailing opinions of his
time ; and was persecuted, as only theological

84

LESSING.

reformers are. He published some fragments
of an anonymous skeptic, found in the library
at Wolfenbiittel, containing doubts which Les-
sino- wished to liave solved, but which he was
accused of circulating- with impious designs
ao-ainst the essential truths of Christianity. In
the storm of abuse occasioned by these publica-
tions he appeals from Lutiieran Divines to Lu-
ther himself. "O ! that he could judge me ; —
he whom I would prefer of all others for my
judge ! Luther, thou ! Great misunderstood !
And by none more misunderstood than by those
short-sighted, headstrong men who, with thy
slippers in their hands, saunter screaming or
indifferent along the path prepared by thee.
Thou hast delivered us from the yoke of Tra-
dition : who shall deliver us from the more in-
tolerable yoke of the Letter ! Who shall bring
us at last a Christianity such as thou wouldst
now teach, such as Christ himself would teach !"*
That judgment, in the spirit of Luther, which
he so vainly craved during his life, was libe-
rally accorded to him, by all the best minds of
Germany, after his death ; and by none more
liberally than by Herder, than whom he could
not have wished for himself— among the living
— a fitter judge. " Lessing's last days," says
this writer,! " were destined to be embittered
by a theological controversy from which, if the
Public has not yet derived all the benefit which
he certainly expected and intended, it can
hardly be considered his fault.| He published
the ' Fragments, by an anonymous Author,' re-
lating to the Resurrection and other points of
biblical history. I, who knew Lessing person-
ally, who knew him at the time when the
aboves-mentioned pieces had probably come into
his hands, and, as I now infer from many ex-
pressions of his, were then exercising his mind
intensely ; I, who also heard him converse on
subjects of this kind, and believe myself to be
sufficiently acquainted with his character in
what relates to manly love of truth ; — I am
convinced, for my own part, (for others, I nei-
ther pretend nor care to be,) that he procured
the publication of these pieces solely and purely

* " Durch die Fracmente des Wolfenbiittelischen Un-
genannten veruiilasste Schrifteii."

t Zerstreute Bliitter. 11. " Gottliolil Ephraim Lessing."
I The strictest theologian will scarcely deny at present
that the pulilication of Ilie fragments has been of service.
The surest proof of which is that if they were to appear
now they would scarcely attract the attention which men
then involuntarily bestowed upon them. A sign that
we have advanced.

for the interests of Truth, for the sake of freer
and manly inquiry, examination and confirma-
tion on all sides. He has affirmed this himself
so often, so strongly, so plainly; — the whole
manner in which he published these Fragments,
and, as a layman, gave here and there his
thoughts upon them, sometimes in the way of
refutation ; — Lessing's general character, as it
must have impressed every one who knew him
(and those who did not should be cautious in
their judgment of it) ; — all this is to me a pledge
of his pure philosophical conviction, that hereby
also he should occasion and effect something
useful, to wit, — I repeat it again, — free inves-
tigation of the truth, — of truth so important, as
this history must be to every one who believes
it, or who believes on it. If, of all truths and
histories, this truth and this history alone may
not be investigated, — may not be investigated
in relation to every doubt and every doubter, —
that is not Lessing's fault. But, in our day, no
theologian and no religionist will maintain this.
If we grant this one proposition, — that Truth
must and can be investigated; — that Truth
gains with every free and earnest examination,
precisely in that degree and proportion in wliich
it is cognizable by us, and consequently, only
in such measure binding upon us ; — if we grant
this proposition, which the history of all times,
and religions, and peoples, especially the his-
tory and truth of the Christian religion, wher-
ever it has been questioned and assailed, incon-
trovertibly proves : then Lessing has won. And
then, instead of talking of crooked, malicious,
wicked designs, we should thank hiin that he
has given us occasion for the investigation and
confirmation of the most important truths ; in
short, for triumph.

I thanked him, always,^for making me ac-
quainted with doubts which occupy me and
bring me farther ; which develope thoughts in
me, although not in the smoothest way.
^ * ******

And where art thou now, noble truth-seeker,
truth-perceivcr, truth-defender? What seest,
what discernest thou now 1 Thy first glance
beyond the bounds of this darkness, of this
earth -mist; in what a different, higher light
did it reveal to thee all which thou sawest and
soughtest on earth ! To seek the truth, not to
have discovered it ; to strive for the good, not
to have already embraced all goodness ; — this
was here thy contemplation, thy serious em-

LESSING.

S5

ployment, thy study, thy life. Eye and heart
thou soughtest ever to keep awake and sound ;
and to no vice wast thou so opposed, as to vague,
creeping hypocrisy, to our customary, daily
half-lie and half-truth, to the false politeness
wliich is never lielpful, to dissembling philan-
tiiropy which never desires to be, or can be be-
nehcent ; — but most of all (agreeably to thy
office and vocation) to that wearisome, drowsy,
half-truth which, in all our knowing and learn-
ing, like rust and cancer, gnaws, from early
cliildhood, in human souls. This monster, with
all its frightful brood, thou assailedst like a
hero, and bravely hast thou fought thy fight.
Many passages in thy books, full of pure truth,
full of manly, firm sentiments, full of golden,
eternal goodness and beauty, will encourage,
instruct, confirm, awaken men who, also, like

thee, shall serve the truth entirely ; so long as
truth is truth and the human mind is what it
was created to be ; who shall serve every
truth ; even though, at first, it may seem dread-
ful and hateful ; — persuaded that, in the end, it
will prove, nevertheless, to be wholesome, re-
freshing, beautiful. Wherever thou hast erred,
where thy acuteness and thine ever active,
lively mind lured thee aside into by-ways ; — in
short, where thou wast a man, thou erredst,
assuredly not willingly, and strovest ever to
become a whole man ; a progressive, growing
spirit."

Vitis ut arboribus decori est, ut vitibus uvae,
Tu decus omne tuis : postquam te fata tulere
Ipsa Pales agros, atque ipse reliquit ApoUo.
Spargite humum Ibliis iiiducite fuiitibus umbras,
Et tumulum facite et tumulo superaddite carmen.
" Candidas ignotura miratur lumen Olympi
Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis."

'FROM LAOCOON."*

LAOCOON, OR THE LIMITS OF PAINTING AND POETRY.

PREFACE.

The first one who compared Faulting with
Poetry, was a man of refined feeling, who had
experienced in himself a similar effect from
these two arts. Both, he perceived, represent
absent tilings as present, appearances as reality.
Both deceive, and the deceptions of both give
pleasure.

A second sought to penetrate into the interior
of this pleasure, and discovered that, in both
cases, it flows from the same source. Beauty,
the first notion of which we derive from cor-
poreal objects, has general rules vv^hich will
bear application to various objects, — to actions,
to thoughts, as well as to forms.

A third, who reflected on the value and dis-
tribution of these general rules, observed that
some of them obtain most in Painting, others in
Poetry, and that in regard to one class there-
fore Painting may assist Poetry, in regard to
the other, Poetry Painting — with illustrations
and examples.

The first was the Amateur, the second the
Philosopher, the third the Critic.

* The Laocoon of Lessing is the masterpiece of German
criticism, as his Emilia Galotti is the masterpiece of Ger-
man 'J'ragedy. It unites, with extensive erudition and
rare penetration, a poet's feeling for beauty and art. The
general subject is announced in the preface, the greater
part of which is given above. But, in addition to the
arguments which bear directly on that subject, it contains
many general reflections on art and poetry, of great value.
The brief extract which is here offered, contains Lessing's
answer to the question, why Laocoon does not 'cry,' in
the representation of the sculptor, as well as in that of
the poet?

The two first were not likely to inake a false
use, either of their feelings or their conclusions.
In the observations of the critic, on the other
hand, the principal point is the correctness of
the application to specific eases ; and since
there are fifty witty critics to one of penetra-
tion, it would be a wonder if this application
were always made with that caution which is
necessary to maintain a just balance between
the two arts.

If Apelles and Protogenes, in their lost works
on painting, confirmed and illustrated the rules
of that art by the already established rules of
poetry, we may rest assured that they did it
with that moderation and accuracy with wliich
we still see Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, Quinti-
lian, in their works, apply the principles and
experiences of Painting to Eloquence and Po-
etry. It is the prerogative of the ancients, in
nothing, to have done, either too much or too
little.

But we moderns have thought to surpass
them in many things, by converting their little
pleasure-paths into highways, although the
shorter and safer highways have dwindled, by
that means, into bypaths that lead through wil-
dernesses.

The dazzling antithesis of the Greek Vol-
taire, that painting is silent poetry, and poetry a
speaking picture, would scarcely be found in
any text-book. It was one of those conceits in
which Simonides abounded, in which that por-
tion which is true is so obvious, that men think
they must overlook what is indefinite and false
in them.

The ancients, however, did not overlook it.
On the contrary, while they limited the saying
of Simonides to the effects produced by the two
arts, they did not forget to insist that, notwith-

86

LESSING.

standing the perfect similarity of these effects,
they differed, nevertheless, as well in the ob-
jects as in the manner of their imitation. (TXyj
scat rportotj fiL/j-rjasui^).

But jnst as if no such difference existed, many
of the latest critics have drawn from that coin-
cidence between painting and poetry, the most
crude conclusions. At one time, they force
poetry into the narrow bounds of painting ; at
another, they give to painting the entire dimen-
sions of the wide sphere of poetry. All that is
lawful in the one they concede to the other ; all
that pleases or displeases in the one must needs
be pleasing or displeasing in the other also.
Full of this idea, they pronounce the most shal-
low judgments with the most confident tone.
They treat the differences observed between
the works of a poet and a painter handling the
same theine, as faults which they charge upon
the one or the other, according as their taste
inclines more to the one or the other art.

And this false criticism has, to some extent,
misled the virtuosi themselves. It lias engen-
dered a fondness for sketching in poetry, and
introduced allegory into painting. Men have
attempted to make the former "a speaking
picture," without properly understanding what
Poetry can or ought io paint ; and to make the
latter " a silent poem," not considering in what
degree Painting is capable of expressing univer-
sal conceptions, without departing too far from
lier destination and becoming a kind of arbi-
trary writing.

To counteract this false taste and these un-
founded judgments is the principal design of
the following essays. Their origin is accidental,
and their growth has followed rather the order
of my reading than the methodical development
of general principles. They are, therefore, not
so much a book, as irregular collectanea for a
book.

As I make the "Laocoon" my point of de-
parture, and often recur to it, I have determined
to give it a share in the title.

The universal and principal characteristic of
the Greek master-j^ieces in painting and in
sculpture, according to Herr Winkelmann, is a
noble simplicity and a quiet grandeur, as well
in the attitude as in the expression. " As the
depth of the sea,"' he says, " remains for ever
qtiiet, however the surface may rage, so the ex-
I)ression, in the figures of the Greeks, discovers,
in the midst of passion, a great and calm soul.

" This soul paints itself in the face of the Lao-
coon, and not in the face alone, under the most
vehement suffering. The pain apparent in all
the muscles and sinews of the body, and which,
without considering the face and other parts,
we seem almost to feel ourselves, in the painful
drawing in of the abdomen alone, — this pain, I
say, manifests itself nevertheless with no degree
of violence in the face, or in the whole attitude.

He raises no such fearful cry as Virgil sings of
his Laocoon ; the opening of the mouth does not
permit it; it is rather an anxious and oppressed
sigh, as described by Sadolet. The pain of the
liody and the greatness of the soul are expressed
with equal force in the narrow structure of the
figure, and, as it were, weighed, the one against
the other. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like
the Philoctetes of Sophocles ; his misery touches
our soul, but we wish, at the same time, to re-
semble this great man in his capacity of endur-
ance.

" The expression of so greata soul far transcends
the imitation of mere natural beauty. The artist
must have felt in himself the strength of mind
which he has impressed upon his marble. Greece
possessed artists and philosophers in the same
person, and had more than one Metrodorus.
Wisdom joined hands with Art, and breathed
into her figures a more than common soul, &c."
The observation on which this criticism is
based, that the pain of Laocoon does not show
itself in his countenance with that degree of
vehemence which might be expected from its
intensity, is perfectly correct. Further, it is in-
disputable that, in this very circumstance, in
which a half-critic might judge the artist to
have fallen below Nature and not to have
reached the true pathos of pain, his wisdom is
most conspicuously manifest.

But, in regard to the reason which Herr
Winkelmann assigns for this wisdom, and in
regard to the universality of the rule which he
deduces from this reason, I venture to be of a
different opinion.

I confess, the depreciating side-glance which
he throws at Virgil, first caused me to doubt;
and then the comparison with Philoctetes.

"Laocoon suffers like the Philoctetes of
Sophocles." How does this character suffer?
It is singular that his suffering should have left
such a different impression upon our minds.
The complaints, the screams, the wild execra-
tions with which his pain filled the camp, in-
terrupting the sacrifices and all solemn acts,
sounded not less terribly through the desert
island. They were the cause of his being
banished thither. What tones of impatience,
of misery, of despair ! The poet made the
theatre resound with his imitation of them.

A cry is the natural expression of bodily
pain. Homer's wounded warriors fall, not
seldom, with a cry to the ground. Venus, when
injured, shrieks aloud,* not that she may be
characterized by this cry as the luxurious God-
dess of pleasure, but that Nature may have her
due. For even the iron Mars, when he feels
the lance of Diomed, cries so horribly, "as if
ten thousand mad warriors w^ere shrieking at
once," that both armies are terrified. f Not-
withstanding Homer elevates his heroes so far
above human nature in some things, they al-
ways remain true to it, when it comes to the
feeling of pain or affront, and to the expression

* Ihad, E. V. 343.

t Iliad, ib. 859.

LESSING.

87

of tliat feeling by cries or tears or by railing.
In their deeds they are beings of a higher
order ; but, in their sensations, they are veritable
men.

I know, we more refined Europeans, of a
wiser posterity, understand better how to govern
our mouth and our eyes. Courtesy and grace
forbid cries and tears. The active courage of
the first, rude age of the world has transformed
itself, with us, into a suffering one. Yet even
our ancestors were greater in the latter, than in
the former kind. But our ancestors were bar-
barians. To suppress all pain, to look with
unflinching eye on the stroke of death, to die
laughing under the bites of adders, to mourn
neither one's own sin nor the loss of one's
dearest friend, — these are traits of the old
Northern heroism. Palnatoko gave the citizens
of Joms command, to fear nothing, nor so much
as to name the word fear.

Not so the Greek ! He felt and he feared.
He gave utterance to his pains and his grief
He was not ashamed of any human weakness ;
but he allowed none to withhold him from the
path of honour, or to hinder him in the fulfil-
ment of his duty. What was savageness and
callousness with the barbarians, was, with
him, the result of principle. Heroism, with
him, was like the hidden sparks in the flint,
which sleep peacefully so long as they are not
awakened by external force; and neither take
from the stone its smoothness nor its coldness.
With the barbarian, heroism was a bright, de-
vouring flame which raged without ceasing, de-
stro3Mng or blackening, at least, every other good
quality in his nature. When Homer leads the
Trojans to battle, with wild shouts, and the
Greeks, on the other hand, in resolute silence, —
the commentators remark well, that the poet
intended hereby to describe the former as bar-
barians, and the latter as civilized nations. I
wonder they have not noticed a similar cha-
racteristic contrast in another passage. The
hostile armies have concluded an armistice.
They are occupied with the burning of their
dead, — an employment which does not pass
without hot tears on both sides ; Saxpva ^spixa
Xiovtii. But Priam forbids his Trojans to weep ;
86 .fttt XV3.ULV npiaaoj jUsyaj. He forbids them
to weep, says Madame Dacier, because he fears
that they will make themselves too tender, and
enter the conflict with less courage, on the mor-
row. Good ! but I ask why must Priam alone
fear this? Why does not Agamemnon also
give the same command to his Greeks? The
meaning of the poet lies deeper. He designs
to teach us, that only the civilized Greek can
weep and be brave at the same time ; whereas
the Trojans, in order to be so. must first extin-
guish every feeling of humanity. Nf^fOTco^at
ys (liv abiv xtMiiiv, he makes the intelligent son
of the wise Nestor say. in another place.

It is worthy of note, that among the few
tragedies that have come down to us from
antiquity, there are two in which bodily pain

constitutes not the least part of the misery,
with which the hero suffers. The Philoctetes
and the Dying Hercules. The latter, also, like
the former, is represented by Sophocles as wail-
ing, moaning, weeping, and crying. Thanks
to our decent neighbours, those masters of pro-
priety, a howling Philoctetes, a crying Hercules,
would now be most ridiculous and intolerable
characters on the stage. True, one of their
newest poets* has ventured upon Philoctetes.
But did he dare to show them the true Phi-
loctetes 1

Even a Laocoon is ntimbered among the lost
pieces of Sophocles. Would that Fate had
spared us this Laocoon ! From the very slight
notices of it, which the ancient grammarians
have given, it is impossible to determine liow
the poet handled this subject. But of this I am
sure, that he did not represent Laocoon as more
stoical than Philoctetes and Hercules. Every-
thing stoical is untheatrical, and our comi)as-
sion is always commensurate with the suffer-
ing expressed by the object that interests us.
It is true, if we see that object bear his misery
with a great soul, that greatness of soul will
provoke our admiration. But admiration is a
cold feeling which precludes every warmer
sentiment and every clear representation, with
its vacant stare.

And now I come to my inference. If it is
true that cries, under the infliction of bodily
pain, — more especially, according to the old
Greek view of the subject, — are perfectly con-
sistent with greatness of soul; then the desire
of representing such a soul, cannot be the rea-
son why the artist was nevertheless unwilling
to imitate those cries in his marble. Gn the
contrary, there must be some other reason why,
in this particular, he departs from his rival, the
poet, who expresses these cries with the most
deliberate intention.

n.

Whether it be fable or history, that the first
essay in the plastic arts was made by Love. —
this much is certain, that she was never weary
of guiding the hand of the great, old masters.
For, whereas, at the present day, painting is
pursued, in its whole extent, as that art which
imitates bodies in general, upon surfaces, the
wise Greek confined it within much narrower
limits. He restricted it to the imitation of those
bodies whi-ch are beautiful. Their artists paint-
ed nothing but the beautiful. Even vulgar
beauty, the beauty of inferior orders, was, with
them, only an incidental theme, — their exercise,
their recreation. Their works aimed to please
by the perfection of the object itself. They
M'ere too great to demand of the spectator, that
he should content himself with the mere cold
enjoyment arising from a successful likeness, —
from the contemplation of their o'wn skill.
Nothing in their art was dearer to them, no-

* Chateaubrun.

88

LESSING.

thing seemed to them more noble, than the aim
of the art.

" Who wouUl wish to paint thee, since no one
likes to look upon thee 1"' said the ancient epi-
grammatist,* of a very deformed person. Many
a modern artist would say: "Be thou as de-
formed as it is possible to be ; I will paint thee
notwithstanding. Though no one loves to look
upon thee, yet shall men look with pleasure on
my painting, not because it represents thee, but
as a proof of my art which knows how to copy
such a scarecrow so accurately."

Ti-ue, the propensity to glory in mere skill,
undignified by the worth of its object, is too na-
tural not to have produced, among the Greeks
also, a Pausonius and a Pyreicus. They had
such painters, but they rendered them strict
justice. Pausonius, whose department was be-
low the beauties of ordinary nature, — whose
depraved taste loved best to represent the un-
sightly and defective in the human form, — lived
in the most contemptible poverty. And Pyreicus
who painted barber's-rooms, dirty workshops,
asses and kitchen-herbs, with all the diligence
of a Dutch artist, — as if things of that sort were
so charming and so rare in nature, acquired the
name of Rhyparographer, or painter of filth ;
although the luxurious rich purchased his pic-
tures for their weight in gold, as if to help their
notliingness by this imaginary value. "[■

The magistrates, themselves, did not think it
im worthy their attention, to detain the artist
forcibly within his proper sphere. The law of
the Thebans, which required the imitation of
the beautiful and forbade the imitation of the
deformed, is well known. It was not a law
against bunglers, as it is generally, and even by
Junius himselft considered to be. It condemned
the Greek Ghezzi, — the unworthy artifice of
obtaining a resemblance by exaggerating the
deformities of the originals; in a word, — cari-
cature.

We laugh when we are told that even the
arts were subject to civil laws, with the an-
cients. But we are not always right when we
laugh. Unquestionably, the laws must not
arrogate to themselves any power over the
sciences, for the object of the sciences is truth.
Truth is necessary to the soul, and it is tyranny
to place the slightest restriction on the gratifica-
tion of this essential want. But the object of
the arts, being pleasure, is not indispensable.
Therefore it may well depend on the legislator,
what kind of pleasure he will allow, and in
what degree he will allow it.

The plastic arts especially, besides the in-
evitable influence which they exert on the
character of a nation, are capable of an effect
which demands the close inspection of the Law.
If beautiful men produced beautiful statues,

* Antiochiis. (Antholog. Lib. ii. Cap. iv.)
f Hence Aristotle advises tliat his pictures should not
be shown to young people, that their imagination might
be kept pure from ugly images. Aristot. Polil, L. 8. C. 5.
X De Pictura. vet. lib. ii. cap. iv.

these again reacted upon those ; and the state
was indebted to beautiful statues, among other
causes, for its beautiful men. With us, the
sensitiveness of maternal imagination apjDears
to express itself only in monsters.

From this point of view, I think, I see a truth
in certain ancient traditions which have been
rejected, without qualification, as lies. The
mothers of Aristomenes, of Aristodamas, of
Alexander the Great, of Scipio, of Augustus, of
Galerins, — all dreamed, during their pregnancy,
of serpents. The serpent was a symbol of god-
head, and the beautiful statues and paintings
of Bacchus, of Apollo, of Mercury, of Hercules,
were seldom without a serpent. The honest
women had feasted their eyes on the god, during
the day; and the confounding dream awakened
the image of the beast. Thus I rescue the
dream, and surrender the explanation which
the pride of their sons, and the impudence of
flatterers have made of it. There must have
been some reason why the adulterous fancy
was always a serpent.

But I wander out of my way. I only wished
to establish this point, that with the ancients
beauty was the highest law of the plastic arts.

And, this point establi-shed, it follows neces-
sarily, that everything else, to which the plastic
arts might likewise extend, must yield, alto-
gether, where it was found incompatible with
beauty ; and where it was compatible with
beauty, must, at least, be subordinated to that.

I will go no farther than the expression.
There are passions and degrees of passion
which manifest themselves in the countenance,
by the ugliest distortions, and throw the whole
body into such violent attitudes, that all the
beautiful lines which define it in a state of
rest, are lost. Accordingly, the ancient artists
either abstained altogether from the representa-
tion of these passions ; or they reduced them to
a lower degree, — one in which they are suscep-
tible of some measure of beauty.

Rage and despair disfigured none of their
works. I venture to affirm that they have never
represented a Fury.*

They reduced anger to earnestness. With
the poet, it was the angry Jupiter who hurled
the lightning ; with the artist, it was only the
earnest.

Lamentation was softened into concern. And
where this could not be done, — where lamenta-
tion would have been as belittling as it was
disfiguring, — what did Timanthes in that case?
His picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, —
wherein he apportions to each of the spectators
the degree of sorrow, proper to each, but covers
the face of the father, which should have ex-
hibited the most intense of all; — is well known,
and many handsome things have been said con-
cerning it. One says : " the painter had so ex-
hausted himself in sad countenances, that he

* E.xcept on coins, whose figures belong not to Art, but
to the language of symbols.

LESSING.

89

despaired of his ability to give the father a
sadder one.'"* " He confessed by this," says
another, " that the grief of a father, in such a
case, is beyond all expression. "'j' For my part,
I see here neither the incompetence of the
artist, nor the incompetence of the art. With
the increase of the passion, the traits of coun-
tenance corresponding to that passion are pro-
portionally marked. The highest degree of it
has the most decided expression ; and nothing
in art is easier than to represent what is decided.
But Timanthes knew the limits which the
Graces have assigned to his art. He knew that
the degree of lamentation which became Aga-
memnon, as father, manifests itself in distor-
tions, which are always ugly. He carried the
expression of grief only so far as beauty and
dignity could be combined with it. What was
ugly he would fain have passed over, or would
fain have softened ; but since his composition
did not allow of both, what else remained but
to conceal it? — What he might not paint, he left
to be conjectured. This concealment is a sacri-
fice which the artist made to beauty. It is an
examf)le showing, not how expression may be
carried beyond the bounds of art, but how it
must be made subject to the first law of art, the
law of beauty.

Now, applying this to the Laocoon, we see
clearly the reason which I am seeking. The
master laboured for the highest beauty possible,
under the given conditions of bodily pain. Bodily
pain, in all its deforming vehemence, was in-
compatible with that beauty. It was necessary
therefore, that he should reduce it, — that he
should soften cries into sighs. Not because
crying betrays an ignoble soid, but because it
disfigures the countenance, in a manner which
is disgusting. Do but tear open the mouth of
Laocoon, in imagination, and judge ! Let him
scream and see! Before, it was a creation which
iusioired compassion, because it united pain with
beauty. Now, it has become an unsightly, an
abominable creation, from which we are fain to
turn away our faces, because the sight of pain
awakens displeasure ; and that displeasure is
not converted into the sweet sentiment of pity
by the beauty of the sufi'ering object.

The mere wide opening of the mouth, setting
aside the violent and disgusting derangement
and distortion of the other parts of the counte-
nance, produced by it, — causes, in painting, a
spot and in sculpture, a cavity, which produces
the most disagreeable effect in the world.
Montfaucon discovered little taste when he de-
clared an old, bearded head, with wide, gaping
zuouth, to be a Jupiter delivering an oracle. ^i
Must a god scream when he discloses the fu-
ture f Would an agreeable outline of the mouth
render his speech suspicious? Neither do I
believe Valerius, when he says that Ajax, in the

* Pliny, lib. xxxv. sect. 35.

t Valerius Maximus, lil). viii. cap. 2.

j Antiq. expl. T. I. p. 50.

M

abovementioned picture of Timanthes, is repre-
sented as screaming.* Far inferior masters, and
that too, in times when art had already dege-
nerated, do not let even the wildest barbarians,
when suffering the terrors of death beneath the
sword of the conqueror, open the mouth so wide
as to scream.

It is certain that this reduction of extreme
bodily pain to a lesser degree of feeling was
observable in various ancient works of art. The
suffering Hercules in the poisoned garment, by
an unknown master, was not the Sophoclean
Hercules, who shrieked so dreadfully, that the
Locrian rocks and the Eubcean Cape resounded
with his cries. He was more gloomy than ^vild.
The Philoctetes of Pythagoras Leontinus seemed
to communicate his sufferings to the beholder,
an effect which the slightest touch of the horri-
ble would have prevented.

III.

But, as has been hinted, art, in modern times,
has had its limits greatly enlarged. It is con-
tended that the sphere of its imitations embraces
the whole extent of visible nature, of which the
beautiful is only a small part. Truth and ex-
pression are said to be its first law ; and as
Nature herself always sacrifices beauty to higher
ends, so the artist also is required to subordinate
the beautiful to his general calling, and to pursue
it no further than truth and expression permit.
Enough that by truth and expression, deformi-
ties of Nature are changed into beauties of Art.

Suppose we leave uncontested, for the pre-
sent, the worth or unworthiness of these views,
may there not be other considerations, indepen-
dent of these, which should induce the artist to
set bounds to expression, and not to take it from
the extreme point of the action represented ?

I think that the single moment of time, to
which the material limits of art confine all its
imitations, will lead to such considerations.

Since the artist can use but one moment of
everchanging nature, and the painter, more
especially, can use that moment only from a
sin?;le point of view; and since their works are
made, not to be seen merely, but to be contem-
plated, and to be contemplated repeatedly and
long, it is evident that in the selection of that
single moment and that single point of view,
too much care cannot be had to choose the most
fruitful. But only that is fruitful which gives
the imagination free play. The more we see,
the more we must be able to imagine ; and the
more we imagine, the more we must think we
see. Now, in the whole course of a passion,

* He enumerates the degrees of grief e.\pressed by
Timanthes as follows: — Calchanteiu tristem, moestuni
Ulyssem, clamantem Ajacum, lanientantem Menelaum. —
A screaming Ajax would have been an ugly tigure; and
since Cicero and Quintiliau do not mention it in their
descriptions of this work, I am the rather justified in
regarding it as an addition, with whicii Valerius has
enriched it, out of hisown head,
8*

90

LESSING.

there is no one moment which possesses this
advantage in so slight a degree, as the climax
of that passion. There is nothing beyond it ;
and to exhibit to the eye the uttermost, is to
bmd the wings of Imagination, and to compel
her, since she is unable to exceed the sensible
impression, to occupy herself with feebler
images, below that impression, shunning, as
limitation, the visible fulness expressed. When,
therefore, Laocoon sighs. Imagination can hear
him cry; btU when he cries, she can neither
rise one step above that representation, nor sink
one step below it, without beholding him in a
more tolerable, and, consequently, less interest-
ing condition. She hears him merely groan, or
she sees him already dead.

Further, since this single moment receives
from art an imchangeable duration, it should
express nothing that can be conceived only as
transient. All phenomena to whose essence,
according to our notion, it belongs, to break
forth suddenly, and suddenly to vanish, — to be
what they are for one moment only, — all such
phenomena, whether pleasing or terrible, ac-
quire, through the prolongation given to them
in works of art, so unnatural an aspect, that the
impression is weakened each time we look
upon it, until, at last, the whole subject pro-
duces only shuddering or disgust. La Metrie,
who caused himself to be painted and engraved
as a second Democritns, laughs but the first
time he is seen. If we look at him often, the
philosopher becomes a buffoon, and the laugh
changes to a grin. So of cries. The violent
pain which extorts the cry is either soon re-
lieved, or else it destroys the sulferer. Although,
therefore, a man of the greatest patience and
fortitude may cry, he does not cry unceasingly.
And it is only this appearance of perpetuity in
the materia! imitations of art, that makes his
crying seem like feminine impotence or like
childish petulance. This, at least, the author
of the Laocoon was bound to avoid, even
though the act of crying were not incompatible
with beauty, or though his art would allow him
to express suffering without beauty.

Among ancient painters, Timomachus seems
to have delighted most in scenes of vehement
passion. His raving Ajax and his infanticide
Medea were celebrated paintings. But, from
the descriptions we have of them, it appears
that he well understood and knew how to seize
that point, where the beholder does not so much
see as imagine the uttermost, — that appearance
with which we do not so necessarily connect
the idea of transitoriness, that we are displeased
with the prolongation of it. The Medea he did
not represent at the moment when she is ac-
tually slaying her children, but at the moment
previous to that, when maternal love is yet
contending with jealousy. We foresee the result
of this conffict. We tremble in anticipation of
beholding soon the criifl Medea only, and our
imagination far surpasses all that the painter
could exhibit to us of that dread moment. But

for that very reason, the continued irresolution
of Medea is so far from displeasing, in a work
of art, that we even wish it had been so in
reality, — that the conflict had never been de-
cided, or had been protracted, until time and
reflection should have assuaged the fury of
passion, and secured to the maternal sentiment
the victory. Timomachus earned great and
frequent praises by this proof of wisdom, which
gave him a decided superiority over another
unknown painter, who was foolish enough to
exhibit Medea at the very height of her mad-
ness, and thus to give that fleeting and transient
fit of extreme rage, a permanence which is an
outrage against Nature. A poet who reproaches
him with this want of judgment, says wittily, —
addressing the picture itself, — "Dost thou then
forever thirst after the blood of thy children'?
Is there ever a new Jason, ever a new Creusa
incessantly irritating thee? To the Devil with
thee, then, even in the picture," he adds, full
of disgust.

Of the Raving Ajax of Timomachus, some
judgment may be formed from the account of
Philostratus.* Ajax was not represented in it,
as he storms among the herds, chaining and
slaying oxen and rams instead of men. But
the master exhibits him, on the contrary, as he
sits exhausted there, after these mad exploits,
and revolves the intention of destroying him-
self And that is truly the " raving Ajax," not
because he raves at this moment, but because
it is evident that he has been raving, and be-
cause the extent of his madness is seen most
vividly in the shame and despair which over-
whelm him at the recollection. The storm is
inferred from the wrecks and the corpses which
it has cast upon the strand.

IV.

I review the reasons assigned, why the au-
thor of the Laocoon was obliged to observe a
certain measure in the representation of bodily
pain; and I find that they are all derived from
the peculiar nature of his art, and its necessary
limits and requirements. They will hardly be
found applicable to poetry.

Without inquiring at present, how fiir the
poet can succeed in depicting corporeal beauty,
it is indisputable that, as the whole immea-
surable domain of perfection is open to him, so
the visible form, by means of which perfection
becomes beauty, is only one of the least of
those aids by which he contrives to interest us
in his characters. Oftentimes he neglects this
aid altogether, assured that when his hero has
once obtained our good-will, we shall be so
much occupied with his nobler qualities, that
we shall not think of his personal appearance;
or so won by them, that, if we do think of the
person, we shall give it, of our own accord, a
beautiful, or at least an inditferent look. At all
events, he will not find it necessary to consult

* Vila ApoU. Ub. ii. cap. 22.

LESSING.

91

the eye in each particular trait, which is not
expressly designed for the eye. When Virgil's
Laocoon cries, who considers that a large mouth
is necessary for this purpose, and that a large
mouth is not becoming. Enough that " Clamo-
res horrendos ad sidera tollit" is sublime to the
ear, whatever it may be to the eye. If any
one requires here a beautiful image, he has
entirely missed the impression which the poet
intended.

Again, the poet is not required to concentrate
his sketch into a single moment. He can, if he
pleases, take each action at its origin and carry
it through to its termination. Each of those
variations, which would cost the painter a
separate picture, costs him but a single stroke.
And though this one stroke, in itself consider-
ed, might oftend the imagination of the hearer,
it is so well prepared by what preceded, or so
qualified and compensated by what follows,
that it loses its individuality, and, taken in con-
nection with the rest, produces the most charm-
ing effect. Although, therefore, it were really
unbecoming for a man to cry out in the ex-
tremity of pain; how can this trifling, transient
impropriety injure, in our estimation, one whom
we have already learned to know and to love,
as the most careful of patriots, and the most
devoted of fathers ? We refer his cries, not to
his character, but solely to his intolerable pain.
This is all that we hear in his cries ; and it
was only by means of them, that the poet could
make that pain apparent to his readers.

Who then will reproach himi Who will
not rather confess that, if the artist did well
not to represent Laocoon as crying, the poet
did equally well to let him cry.

FROM "THE EDUCATION OF THE
HUMAN RACE."*

What education is to the individual, revela-
tion is to the whole human race.

Education is a revelation which is made to
the individual ; and revelation is an education
which has taken place and is stil! taking place
with the whole human race.

Whether any advantage may accrue to the
science of education, by considering education
from this point of view, I shall not here inquire.
But unquestionably, it may be of great use in
theology, and may help to resolve many diffi-

* This Essay is considered as one of great importance
in speculative theology. It contains the germ of all that
is most valuable in subsequent speculations on these
subjects. The greater part of it is given above. The
little that has been omitted seemed not to be essential to
the fair presentation of the author's idea. The original
is divided into formal propositions, numbering one hun-
dred. It was thought best to omit the formality of the
numbers in the translation.

culties, to regard revelation as an education of
the human race.

Education gives man nothing which he might
not have had from himself; it only gives him
that, which he might have had from himself,
more rapidly and more easily. So too, revela-
tion gives mankind nothing which the human
reason, left to itself, might not also have at-
tained to ; but it gave (hem and gives them
what is most important, sooner.

And as, in education, it is not a matter of in-
difference, in what order the faculties of man
are unfolded, as education cannot communi-
cate all things at once, — even so God, in his
revelation, has found it necessary to observe a
certain order, a certain measure.

Although the first man had been furnished,
at the outset, with the notion of an only God,
yet this notion, being not an acquired, but an
imparted one, could not possibly continue, in
its purity, for any length of time. As soon as
hutnan reason, left to itself, began to work upon
it, it separated the one Immeasurable into
several Immeasurables, and gave to each of
these parts its own peculiar characteristic.

Thus arose, in a natural way, polytheism and
idolatry. And who knows how many million
years human reason might have wandered
about in these aberrations, notwithstanding
everywhere and at all times, individual men
perceived that they were aberrations ; had it
not pleased God, by a new impulse, to give it
a better direction 1

But since he could not and would not reveal
himself again to each individual, he selected a
single nation for his special training : and that
the most rude and savage of all, in order to
begin with them from the foundation.

This was the Israelitish nation, concerning
which, it is not even known, what kind of
worship they had in Egypt. For slaves so
degraded, as they were, were not allowed to
take part in the worship of the Egyptians ; and
the God of their fathers had become wholly
unknown to them.

Perhaps the Egyptians had expressly forbid-
den them any god or gods, had taught them
to believe that they had no god or gods, that
to have a god or gods was a prerogative of the
superior Egyptians. Perhaps they had taught
them this in order to tyrannize over them with
the greater show of justice. Do not Christians
at the present day pursue very much the same
course with their slaves?

To this rude people, therefore, God caused
himself at first to be proclaimed as the God of
their fathers, in order first to familiarize them
with the idea, that they too had a God of their
own.

By means of the miracles with which he
brought them out of Egypt, he proved himself,
in the next place, a God who was mightier than
all other gods. And while he continued to
manifest himself as the mightiest of all, a dis-
tinction which only one can possess, he accus-

92

LESSING.

tomed tliem gradually to the notion of an only-
God.

But how far was this conception, of an only
God, below the true transcendental idea of
unity, which reason, so long afterward, learned
to deduce, with certainty, from the idea of in-
finity.

The nation was very far from being able to
raise itself to the true conception of the One,
although the more enlightened among the people
had already approximated more or less nearly
to this idea. And this was the true and only
cause why they so often forsook their own, and
thought to find the only, that is, the most power-
ful God, in some other divinity, of another nation.

But what kind of moral training was possible
for a nation so rude, so unskilled in abstract
thought, so completely in its childhood'? Only
such a one as corresponds with the period of
childhood ; an education by means of immediate,
sensual rewards and punishments.

So here again, education and revelation coin-
cide. As yet, God could give his people no
other religion and no other law than one, by the
keeping or transgressing of which, they might
hope to be hapjjy or fear to be wretched, here
on earth. For, as yet, their thoughts extended
no further than the present life. They knew
of no immortality of the soul; they longed for
no future state of being. To have revealed to
them those things to which their reason as yet
was so little adequate, what else would this
have been, on the part of God, but to commit
the fault of the vain pedagogue, who would
rather urge his pupil forward and make a dis-
play of his proficiency, than instruct him tho-
roughly ?

But wherefore, it may be asked, wherefore
this education of so rude a people, with whom
it was necessary to begin thus at the very be-
ginning ? I answer, to the end that individuals
among them might, in process of time, be used,
with so much the greater safety, as educators
of other nations. God educated in them the
future teachers of mankind. This the Jews
became; and only they could become this,^
only men of a nation so trained.

For, further. When the child had grown up,
under blows and aaresses, and was now arrived
to years of discretion, all at once, the Father
sent it abroad. And there, at once, it acknow-
ledged the advantages it had enjoyed without
acknowledging them in its Father's house.

During the time that God had led his chosen
people through all the stages of a childish dis-
cipline, the other nations of the earth had ad-
vanced, in their own way, by the light of rea-
son. Most of them had remained far behind
the chosen people, but some of them had out-
stripped it. And thus it happens with children
vi'ho are suflered to grow up by themselves.
Many remain quite rude, but some cultivate
themselves to an astonishing degree.

But these favoured few prove nothing against
the use and the necessity of education. And

so the few heathen nations which, up to this
period, seemed to have got the start of the cho-
sen people, even in the knowledge of God,
prove nothing against revelation. The child of
education begins with slow but certain steps ;
it is late in overtaking many a more happily
organized child of Nature, but it does overtake
it at last, and, thenceforward, can nevermore
be overtaken by it.

As yet the Jewish nation had worshipped, in
their Jehovah, rather the mightiest than the
wisest of all the gods ; as yet they had feared
him, as a jealous God, rather than loved him.
And this too may serve as a proof, that the con-
ceptions they had formed of their highest and
only God, are not exactly the true conceptions,
those which we ought to have of God. But now
the time had arrived when these conceptions
of theirs were to be enlarged, ennobled, rectified.
For this purpose, God made use of a quite
natural method; — a better and more correct
standard, by which they had now the oppor-
tunity of estimating him.

Hitherto, they had measured him only with
the miserable idols of the small and rude na-
tions, their neighbours, with whom they had
lived in a state of perpetual jealousy : but now,
in their captivity, under the wise Persians, they
began to measure hina with the Being of all
beings, whom a more disciplined reason had
learned to acknowledge and to adore.

Revelation had guided their reason, and now,
all at once, reason threw light upon their reve-
lation.

This was the first mutual service which both
rendered to each other; and so far is this reci-
procal influence from being derogatory to the
author of both, that, without it, one of the two
would be superfluous.

The child, sent into foreign lands, saw other
children, who knew more and behaved better
than himself. Mortified, he asked himself, why
do not I know that too'? Why do not I also
live thus"? Might not this have been taught to
me also in my Father's house 1 Might not I
also have been held to this? Then he looks up
his elementary books once more, with which
he had long been disgusted, for the sake of
casting the blame upon them. But behold! he
recognizes that it is not the fault of the books,
but purely his own fault, that he did not long
ago possess the same knowledge and live in the
same manner.

Thus enlightened respecting their own na-
tional treasures, the Jews returned and became
an entirely ditlerent people, whose first care
was to make this light permanent among them-
selves. Soon there was no more thought of de-
fection or idolatry. For one may become faith-
less to a national god, but never to God, when
once a true knowledge of him has been attained.

Theologians have sought to explain this entire
change of the Jewish people, in different ways.
And one who has well exposed the insufficiency
of these different explanations, assigns, as the

LESSING.

93

true reason of this change, the visible fulfihnent
of the prophecies uttered and written respecting
the Babylonish captivity and the restoration
liom the same. But this reason, too, can be
true only as it supposes more elevated concep-
tions of God, now first attained to. Now, for
the first time, the Jews must have perceived,
that working miracles and foretelling the future
belonged to God alone. Hitherto, they had as-
cribed both to the false idols; and this was the
reason that miracle and prophecy had hitherto
made so feeble and transient an impression on
their minds.

Without doubt, too, the Jews became more
familiar with the doctrine of immortality, under
the Chaldeans and Persians. Tliey obtained a
still more intimate acquaintance with it, in the
schools of the Greek philosophers in Egypt.

But it was not with this doctrine, in their sa-
cred writings, as it was with that of the unity
and the attributes of God. And therefore the
belief in the immortality of the soul, could never
be the belief of the whole people. It was and
continued the belief only of a particular sect.

A preparation for the doctrine of the immor-
tality of the soul may be found in the divine
threat to visit the sins of the fathers upon the
children, to the third and fourth generation.
This accustomed the fathers to live, in imagina-
tion, with their latest posterity, and to feel, in
anticipation, the misery they might bring upon
their innocent heads. An allusion to this doc-
trine is found in whatever would excite curi-
osity and give occasion for questions ; as, for
example, the often recurring phrase, "gathered
to his fathers," as synonymous with dying. An
indication of it is found in whatever contained
a germ from which the unrevealed truth could
be developed. Of this character, was the in-
ference which Christ drew from the expression,
"the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob."
This indication, irideed, seems to me capable
of being developed into a strict demonstration.

In these preparations, allusions, and indi-
cations, consists the positive perfection of an
elementary book. Its negative perfection con-
sists in this, that the way to those truths which
are still kept back, is not closed or obstructed.

But every elementary book is suited only to a
particular age. For the child, that has outgrown
it, to linger over it longer than was intended, is
injurious. For, in order to connect any kind of
use with this detention, it is necessary to sup-
pose more in the book than it actually contains,
to import into it more than it will bear. It is
necessary to seek and to make too many allu-
sions and hints, to shake out*' the allegories too
assiduously, to interpret the examples too mi-
nutely, to press the words too far. In this way,
the child acquires a narrow, perverted, hair-
splitting mind, becomes fond of mystery, super-
stitious, and impatient of everything that is

* i c. As one shakes a vessel or cloth, to empty it com-
pletely of its contents. Tr.

easy and intelligible. This is the way in which
the Rabbins treated their sacred books. This
was the kind of character which they, thereby,
impressed on the mind of their people.

A better teacher must come and snatch the
elementary book, which he has exhausted, out
of the pupil's hands. — Christ came.

God designed to embrace, in one plan of
education, only that portion of the human race,
which was already united in itself, by language,
by action, by government, and by other natural
and pohtical relations. And this portion was
now ripe for the second great step in the pro-
gress of tlieir education. That is, this portion
of mankind had advanced so far in the exercise
of their reason, as to be capable of and to re-
quire nobler and worthier motives for their
moral conduct, than the temporal rewards and
punishments which had guided them hitherto.
The infant becomes a boy. Sweetmeats and
toys give place to the growing desire to be as
free, as honoured and as happy as he sees his
older brothers and sisters.

The better sort among that portion of man-
kind had long been accustomed to be governed
by a shadow of these nobler motives. The
Greek and tlie Roman did everything, that they
might continue to live in the memory of their
fellow-citizens, after death. It was time that
another, actual life, to be expected after this,
should influence their actions. And thus Christ
became the first reliable, practical teacher of
the immortality of the soul.

The first reliable teacher — reliable, on ac-
count of the prophecies which seemed to be
fulfilled in him, on account of the miracles
which he performed, on account of his own
resurrection from the dead, with which he
sealed liis doctrine. Whether we are able, at
this day, to demonstrate this resurrection and
these miracles, I shall leave out of view. I
shall also leave out of view the question, what
was the person of Christ? All this may have
been important to secure the reception of his
doctrine then, but it is no longer so necessary
to the understanding of his doctrine now. The
first practical teacher. For to suppose, to wish,
to believe the immortality of the soul, as a phi-
losojjhical speculation, is one thing ; to conform
one's inward and outward life to it, is another
thing. And this, at least, was first taught by
Christ. For, though it was the belief of many
nations, before him, that evil actions would be
punished in the life to come, it was only those
actions which were injurious to society, and
which therefore had a penalty attached to them
already by society. It was reserved for him
alone to recommend inward purity of heart
with a view to another life.

His disciples faithfully disseminated this doc-
trine. And if they had rendered no other ser-
vice than to procure the more general diffusion,
among various nations, of a truth which Christ
seemed to have designed for the Jews alone,
they ought, even on this account, to be reckoned

94

LESSING.

among the educators and benefactors of the
human race. True, they mingled this one great
doctrine with other doctrines, the truth of which
was less apparent, and the use of which was
less edifying. How could it be otherwise ? Let
us not, therefore, reproach them. Rather let us
seriously inquire whether even these associated
doctrines did not give a new impulse and direc-
tion to human reason.

This much, at least, is matter of experience,
that the books of the New Testament, in which
these doctrines, after some time, found a repo-
sitory, have furnished and still furnish the
second better elementary book for the human
race. For seventeen hundred years they have
occupied the human understanding more than
all other books. More than all other books,
they have enlightened it, even though it were
by means of that light which the human under-
standing itself has carried into it. No other
book could possibly have become so generally
known among different nations. And, unques-
tionably, the converse of such entirely dissimi-
lar modes of thought, with the same book, has
aided the human understanding more than if
each nation had had an elementary book of its
own, peculiar to itself.

Moreover, it was highly essential that each
nation should, for a time, regard this book as
the Non plus ultra of its knowledge. For the
boy, too, must look upon his elementary book,
in this light, at first, that his eagerness to finish
may not hurry him on to things for which he
has laid as yet no sufficient foundation. And,
what is still of the highest imiiortance, beware,
you of superior ability, who stamp and glow
with impatience at the last page of this element-
tary book; beware of betraying to your school-
mates what you suspect, or begin already to
tliscern. Until they have come up with you,
these weaker brethren, rather look back your-
self once more into this elementary book, and
examine if that which you regard as a pecu-
liarity in the method, or as intended to fill up
a gap in the didactic portions, be not something
more than that.

You have seen, in the infancy of mankind, in
the doctrine of the unity of God, that mere
truths of reason are taught, at first, as truths
directly revealed, in order to diffuse them more
rapidly, and to ground them more firmly. You
experience the same thing in the boyhood of
mankind, in the docti-ine of the immortality of
the soul. This doctrine is preached, in the se-
cond, more perfect elementary book, as revela-
tion ; not taught as the result of human reason-
ing. As it no longer needs the Old Testament
to teach the unity of God, and as we gradually
begin to be able to dispense with the aid of the
New, in regard to the doctrine of the iminortal-
ity of the soul, may there not be mirrored there
still other doctrines which it is designed that
we shall wonder at as revelations, until reason
lias learned to deduce them from and to con-
nect them with other established truths'?

For example, the doctrine of the Trinity. What
if this doctrine were designed to guide the human
understanding at last, after numberless aberra-
tions to the right and to the left, to the recogni-
tion of the truth that God cannot be one in the
same sense in which finite things are one, —
that even his unity must be a transcendental
unity, not excluding a kind of plurality? Must
not God at least have the most perfect concep-
tion of himself? i. e. a conception in which
everything is contained, that is contained in
himself. But could everything be contained in
that conception which is contained in himself,
if, of his necessary actuality,* as of his other
qualities, there were merely a conception, a
bare possibility? This possibility exhausts the
essence of his other qualities, but does it also
of his necessary actuality? I think not. Con-
sequently, either God can have no perfect con-
ception of himself, or this perfect conception is
just as necessarily actual, as he is himself My
reflection in the mirror is an empty image of
me, and nothing more ; because it has only that
of me, from which rays of light are thrown
upon the surface of the mirror. But if this
image contained everything, without exception,
that is contained in me, it would no longer be
a mere image, but an actual duplicate of my-
self. If I think I see the same duplication of
the being of God, it is not so much an error of
mine, perhaf)s, as it is the inability of language
to express my conception. This much is indis-
putable, that those who wished to make this
idea popidar, could hardly have chosen a more
appropriate and intelligible expression than that
of a Son whom God generates from all eternity.

And the doctrine of hereditary sin. How,
if everything should convince us, at last, that
man, in the first and lowest stage of his hu-
manity, is not sufficiently master of his actions,
to be capable of obeying a moral law?

And the doctrine of the satisfaction made by
the Son. How, if everything should force us,
at last, to assume that Goil, notwithstanding
that original incapacity of man, chose rather to
give him moral laws and to pardon all trans-
gressions of the same, in consideration of his
Son, that is, in consideration of the self-subsis-
tent extent of all his perfections, before which
and in which, every imperfection of the in-
dividual vanishes; that he chose rather to do
this, I say, than not to give him moral laws,
and thereby to exclude him from that moral
felicity which cannot bo conceived as possible,
without those laws?

Let it not be objected, that this kind of rea-
soning concerning the mysteries of religion is
forbidden. The word mystery signified, in the
first ages of Christianity, something very dif-
ferent from that which we understand by it
now ; and the development of revealed truths
into truths of reason is absolutely necessary, if

* The copy before me has fVirlcsamkeit (activity) which
I lake to be a misprint for Wirklichkeit. Tr.

LESSING.

95

ever men are to be helped by them. At the
time vvhea they were revealed, they weve not
yet truths of reason ; but they were revealed
ill order to become so. They were the Facit,
as it were, which the arithmetical teacher tells
his scholars beforehand, in order that they may
have some regard to it, in their reckoning. If
the scholars were to content themselves with
the Facit announced to them beforehand, they
would never learn to reckon, and so fail to
fulfil the purpose for which tlie good master
gave them a clue in their labours.

And why may we not be guided by a re-
ligion, with whose historical trutli,if you please,
there are so many difficulties, to nearer and
better conceptions of the Divine Being, of our
own nature and our relations to God, concep-
tions to which human reason would never
have attained of itself?

It is not true, that speculations concerning
these things have ever done mischief, or proved
injurious to society. Not the speculations them-
selves, but the folly, the tyranny, of attempting
to suppress them, of not allowing their own
to those who had their own, is liable to this
reproach. On the contrary, tliese speculations,
whatever may be their result in individual
cases, are unquestionably the most fitting exer-
cise of the human understanding, generally, as
long as the human heart, generally, is only
capable, at the utmost, of loving virtue for the
sake of its eternally happy consequences. For,
with this self-interestedness of the human heart,
to exercise the liiunan understanding, also, on
those things only, which concern our bodily
necessities, woulil tend rather to blunt than to
sharpen it. It needs, positively, to be exer-
cised with spiritual objects, if ever it is to
attain its perfect illumination, and produce that
purity of heart which shall make us capable
of loving virtue for its own sake.

Or is the human race destined never to
reach this highest grade of culture and purity?
Never? Let me not imagine this blasphemy,
thou All-good ! Education has its aim, with
the race, not less than with the individual.
That which is educated is educated for some
end. The flattering prospects which are opened
to the youth, the honour and aflluence which
are held up before him, — what are these, but
means by which he is educated to become a
man, a man who, though these prospects of
affluence and honour should fail, shall still be
capable of doing his duty? Is this the aim of
luunau education? And does the Divine educa-
tion fall short of this ? What Art can accom-
plish with the individual, shall not Nature ac-
complish v.'ith the whole? Blasphemy! Blas-
phemy!

No! it will come! it will surely come, the
period of perfection, when, the more convinced
his understanding is of an ever better Future,
the less man will need to borrow from that
Future the motives of his actions ; when he
will choose the good because it is good, and

not because arbitrary rewards are annexed to
it which are only to fix and strengthen his
wandering gaze, at first, until he is able to ap-
preciate the interior and nobler reward of well-
doing. It will surely come, the period of a
new, eternal gospel, which is promised us, even
ill the elementary books of the New Covenant.
Proceed in thine imperceptible course, Eternal
Providence! Only let me not despair of thee,
because imperceptible. Let me not despair of
thee, even though thy steps, to me, should seem
to retrograde. It is not true, that the shortest
way is always a straight one. Thou hast, in
thine eternal course, so much to take along
with thee ! So many sidelong steps to make !
And what if it be now, as good as proved, that
the great, slow wheel which brings the race
nearer to its perfection, is put in motion, only
by smaller, quicker wheels, of which each con-
tributes its part to the same end ?

Not otherwise ! The i>iith, by which the race
attains to its perfection, each individual man —
some earlier, and some later — must first have
gone over. "Must have gone over in one and
the same life? Can he have been a sensual
Jew and a spiritual Christian in the same life?
Can he, in the same life, have overtaken both
these?" Perhaps not! But why may not each
individual man have existed more than once
in this world? Is this hypothesis, therefore, so
ridiculous, because it is the oldest ? because it
is the one which the human understanding im-
mediately hit upon, before it was distracted and
weakened by the sophistry of the schools? Why
may not I, at one time, have accomplished,
already here on earth, all those steps toward
my perfection, which mere temporal rewards
and iDunishments will enable man to accom-
plish; and, at another time, all those, in which
we are so powerfully assisted by the prospect
of eternal compensations? Why should 1 not
return as often as I am able to acquire new
knowledges, new talents? Is it because I carry
away so much, at one time, as to make it not
worth the while to return ? Or, because I for-
get that I have been here before ? It is well
for me that I forget it. The remembrance of
my former states would allow me to make but
a poor use of the present. Besides, what I am
necessitated to forget now, have I forgotten it
forever ? Or because, on this supposition, too
much time would be lost to me? Lost? What
have I then to delay? Is not the whole eternity
mine ?

FABLES.

ZEUS* AND THE SHEEP.

The sheep was doomed to suffer much from
all the animals. She came to Zeus and prayed

* The Father of the Gods is, by German writers, more
often designated by his Greek than by his Latin name.
The translator has tiiuught best to retain tiiis ajiiJellation
where it occurs in the original.

96

LESSING.

him to lighten lier misery. Zeus appeared
willing, and said to the sheep : I see indeed, my
good creature, I have made thee too defenceless.
Now choose in what way I may best remedy
this defect. Shall I furnish thy mouth with ter-
rible teeth and thy feet with claws ?

Ah ! no, said the sheep, I do not wish to have
anything in common with the beasts of prey.

Or, continued Zeus, shall I infuse poison into
tliy spittle 1

Alas ! replied the sheep ; the poisonous ser-
pents are so hated.

What then shall I do? I will plant horns in
thy forehead, and give strength to thy neck.

Not so, kind Father ! I might be disposed to
butt like the he-goat.

And yet, said Zeus, thou must, thyself, be
able to injure others, if others are to beware of
injuring thee.

Must I ? sighed the sheep. 0 ! then, Kind
Father, let me be as I am. For the ability to
injiue will excite, I fear, the desire. And it is
better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.

Zeus blessed the good sheep, and from that
time forth, she forgot to complain.

THE BLIXD HEN'.

A hen which had become blind continued to
scratch for food as she had been used. What
availed it the industrious fool? Another hen,
tliat could see, but wished to spare her tender
feet, never forsook the side of the former,
and without scratching enjoyed the fruit of
scratching. For as often as the blind hen turned
up a corn, the seeing one devoured it.

The laborious German compiles the collectanea
which the witty Frenchman uses.

THE WOLF ON HIS DEATHBED.

A wolf lay at the last gasp, and was review-
ing his past life. It is true, said he, I am a
sinner, but yet, I hope, not one of the greatest.
I have done evil, but I have also done much
good. Once, I remember, a bleating lamb that
liad strayed from the flock, came so near to me,
that I might easily have throttled it; but I did
it no harm. At the same time, I listened with
the most astonishing indifference to the gibes
and scolis of a sheep, although I had nothing to
fear from protecting dogs.

I can testify to all that, said his friend the
fox, who was helping him prepare for death. I
remember perfectly all the circumstances. It
was just at the time when you were so dread-
fully clioked with that bone, which the good-
natured crane afterwards drew out of your
throat.

.ESOP AND THE ASS.

Said the ass to ^sop : The next time you tell
a story about me, let me say something that is
right rational and ingenious.

You something ingenious! said JEsop ; what
propriety would there be in that? Would not the
people say you were the moralist and I the ass?

HEBCULES.

When Hercules was received into heaven he
paid his respects to Juno before all the other
divinities. The whole Heaven and Juno were
astonished. Dost thou show such preference to
thine enemy? Yes, replied Hercules, even to
her. It was her persecution alone, that furnished
the occasion of those exjiloits, with which I have
earned Heaven.

Olympus approved the answer of the new
God, and Juno was reconciled.

THE BOY AND THE SERPENT.

A boy played with a tame serpent. My dear
little animal, said the boy; I would not be so
familiar with thee had not thy poison been
taken froin thee. You serpents are the most
malicious and ungrateful of all animals. I have
read how it fared with a poor countryman who,
in his compassion, took up a serpent, — perhaps
it was one of thy ancestors, — which- he found
half-frozen under a hedge, and put it into his
bosom to warm it. Scarcely had the wicked
creature begun to revive, when it bit its bene-
factor ; and the poor, kind countryman was
doomed to die.

I am amazed, said the serpent. How partial
your historians must be! Ours relate the afiair
very differently. Thy kind man thought tlie
serpent v^as actually frozen, and, because it
was one of the variegated sort, he put it into
his bosom, in order, when he reached home, to
strip off its beautiful skin. Was that right?

Ah ! be still ! replied the boy. When was
there ever an ingrate who did not know how
to justify himself?

True, my son, said his father, wdio had listened
to the conversation. Nevertheless, when you
hear of an extraordinary instance of ingratitude,
be sure to examine carefully all the circum-
stances, before you brand a human being with
so detestable a fault. Real benefactors have
seldom had ungrateful debtors; — no! I will
hope, for the honour of humanity, — never. But
benefactors with petty, interested motives. —
they, my son, deserve to reap ingratitude in-
stead of acknowledgments.

THE YOUNG SWALLOW.

What are you doing there? demanded a
swallow of the busy ants. We are collecting
stores for the winter, was the ready answer.

That is wise, said the swallow; I will do so
too. And immediately she began to carry a
number of dead spiders and flies into her nest.

But to what purpose is that? asked her mother
at last. To what purpose ? Stores for the ugly
winter, dear mother. Do thou gather likewise.
The ants have taught me this providence.

0! leave to earthly ants this small wisdom;
replied the old one. That which befits them,
befits not the nobler swallows. Kind Nature
has destined us for a happier fate. When the
rich Summer is ended, we go hence; we gra-
dually fall asleci^ on our journey, and then

LESSING.

97

warm marshes receive us, where ■we rest with-
out wants, until a new Spring awakens us to a
new life.

THE APE AND THE FOX.

Name to me an animal, though never so skil-
ful, that I cannot imitate! So bragged the ajie
to the fox. But the fox replied: And do thou
name to me an animal so humble as to think of
imitating thee !

Writers of my country! Need I explain my-
self more fully !

ZEUS AND THE HORSE.

Father of beasts and of men ! — so spake the
horse, approaching the throne of Zeus, — I am
said to be one of the most beautiful animals
with which thou hast adorned the world ; and
my self-love leads me to believe it. Neverthe-
less, might not some things in me still be im-
proved 1

And what in thee, thinkest thou, admits of
improvement? Speak! I am open to instruc-
tion, said the indulgent god with a smile.

Perhaps, returned the horse, I should be
fleeter if my legs were taller and thinner. A
long swan -neck would not disfigure me. A
broader breast would add to my strength. And,
since thou hast once for all destined me to bear
thy favourite, man, — the saddle which the well-
meaning rider puts upon me might be created
a part of me.

Good ! replied Zeus, wait a moment. Zeus,
with earnest countenance, pronounced the cre-
ative word. Then flowed life into the dust;
then organized matter combined ; and suddenly
stood before the throne, the ugly camel.

The horse saw, shuddered and trembled with
fear and abhorrence.

Here, said Zeus, are taller and thinner legs ;
here is a long swan -neck; here is a broader
breast; here is the created saddle! Wilt thou,
horse ! that I should transform thee after this
fashion?

The horse still trembled.

Go! continued Zeus. Be instructed, for this
once, without being punished. But to remind
thee, with occasional compunction, of thy pre-
sumption,— do thou, new creation, continue ! —
Zeus cast a preserving glance on the camel ; —
and never shall the horse behold thee without
shuddering.

THE KAVEN.

The fox saw how the raven robbed the altars
of the gods, and lived, like them, upon their
sacrifices. And he thought within himself: I
would like to know, whether the raven par-
takes of the sacrifices because he is a prophetic
bird ; or whether he is considered a prophetic
bird, because he is so bold as to partake of the
sacrifices.

THE EAGLE AND THE FOX.

Be not so proud of thy flight! said the fox to
the eagle. Thou mountest so high into the air

N

for no other purpose but to look farther about
thee for carrion.

So have I known men who became deep-
thinking philosophers, not from love of truth,
but for the sake of lucrative offices of instruction.

THE SWALLOW.

Believe me, friends! the great world is not
for the philosopher, — is not for the poet. Their
real value is not appreciated there ; and often,
alas ! they are weak enough to exchange it for
a far inferior one.

In the earliest times, the swallow was as
tuneful and melodious a bird as the nightingale.
But she soon grew tired of living in the solitary
bushes, heard and admired by no one but the
industrious countryman, and the innocent shep-
herdess. She forsook her humbler friend and
moved into the city. What followed ? Because
the people of the city had no time to listen to
her divine song, she gradually forgot it, and
learned, instead thereof, to — build !

THE RAVEN.

The raven remarked that the eagle sat thirty
days upon her eggs. "And that, undoubtedly,"
said she, " is the reason why the young of the
eagle are so all -seeing and strong. Good! I
will do the same."

And since then, the raven actually sits thirty
days upon her eggs ; but, as yet, she has hatched
nothing but miserable ravens.

THE SPIRIT OF SOLOMON.

An honest old man still bore the burden and
heat of the day. With his own hands he
ploughed his field ; with his own hand he cast
the pure seed into the loosened bosom of the
willing earth.

Suddenly under the broad shadow of a Lin-
den-tree, there stood before him a godlike ap-
parition. The old man was astounded. I am
Solomon, said the phantom, with a voice which
inspired confidence. What dost tlioi; here, old
man ?

If thou art Solomon, replied the old man, how
canst thou ask? In my youth, thou sentest me
to the ant: I considered her ways, I learned
from her to be diligent and to hoard. What I
then learned, I still practise.

Thou hast learned thy lesson but half, re-
turned the Spirit. Go to the ant again ! And
now learn from her, also, to rest in the winter
of thy days, and to enjoy what thou hast ga-
thered !

THE SHEEP.

When Jupiter celebrated his nuptials, and
all the animals brought him gifts, Juno missed
the sheep.

Where is the sheep ? asked the goddess.
Why does the good sheep delay to bring us her
well-meant offering?

The dog took upon himself to reply, and said :
9

98

LESSING.

Be not angry, Goddess ! It is but to-day that I
saw the sheep. She was very sad, and lamented
aloud.

And why grieved the sheep 1 asked the God-
dess, beginning to be moved.

All wretched me ! she said ; I have, at pre-
sent, neither wool nor milk. What shall I bring
to Jupiter? Shall I, I alone, appear empty before
himi Rather will I go and beg the shepherd
to make an offering of me.

At this moment, — together with the prayer
of the shepherd, — the smoke of the offered sheep
ascended to Jupiter through the clouds, — a
sweet- smelling savour. And now had Juno
wept the first tear, if ever tears bedewed im-
mortal eyes.

THE POSSESSOR OF THE BOW.

A man had an excellent bow of ebony, with
which he shot very far and very sure, and which
he valued at a great price. But once, after con-
sidering it attentively, he said: "A little too
rude still ! Your only ornament is your polish.
It is a pity ! However, that can be remedied,"
thought he. " I will go and let a first-rate artist
carve something on the bow." He went, and
the artist carved an entire hunting-scene upon
the bow. And what more fitting for a bow
than a hunting-scene 1

The man was delighted. "You deserve this
embellishment, my beloved bow." So saying
he wished to try it. He drew the string. The
bow broke !

THE AGED WOLF.*

The mischievous wolf had begun to decline
in years, and conceived the conciliating resolu-
tion of living on a good footing with the shep-
herds. Accordingly, he took up his march and
came to the shepherd whose folds were nearest
to his den. Shepherds ! said he, you call me a
blood-thirsty robber, which I really am not. To
be sure, I must hold by your sheep, when I am
hungry; for hunger hurts. Protect me from
hunger ; only give me enough to eat, and you
shall be very well satisfied with me ; for really,
I am the tamest and most gentle of creatures,
when I have had enough to eat.

When you have had enough? Very likely;
replied the shepherd. But when will that be?
You and avarice never have enough. Go your
ways!

* From " The History of the aged Wolf," in seven fa-
bles.—The first fable.

MEKOPS.

I want to ask you something, said a young
eagle to a contemplative and profoundly learned
owl. They say there is a bird called Merops,
who, when he ascends into the air, flies with
the tail first, and with the head turned toward
the earth. Is that true?

No, indeed! answered the owl; it is a silly
invention of man. He may be a Merops him-
self; for he is, all the time, wishing to fly to
heaven, but is not willing, for one moment, to
lose sight of the earth.

THE WASPS.

Foulness and corruption were destroying the
proud fabric of a war-horse which had been
shot beneath its brave rider. Ever-active Na-
ture always employs the ruins of one creation
for the life of another. And so there flew forth
a swarm of young wasps from the fly-blown
carrion. Ah! cried the wasps, what a divine
origin is ours! The most superb horse, the fa-
vourite of Neptune, is our progenitor.

The attentive fabulist heard the strange boast,
and thought of the modern Italians, who con-
ceive themselves to be nothing less than the
descendants of the ancient, immortal Romans,
because they were born among their graves.

THE PEACOCKS AND THE CROW.

A vain crow adorned herself with the feathers
of the richly-tinted peacocks, which they had
shed, and when she thought herself sufficiently
tricked out, mixed boldly with these splendid
birds of Juno. She was recognized, and quickly
the peacocks fell upon her with sharp bills, to
pluck from her the lying bravery.

Cease now! she cried at length, you have
your own again! But the peacocks, who had
observed some of the crow's own shining wing-
feadiers, replied : Be still, miserable fool ! these
too cannot be yours ! And they contiimed to
peck.

EXTRACT

FROM LESSLNG'S THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS.

If God should hold all truth inclosed in his
right hand, and in his left only the ever-active
impulse to the pursuit of truth, although with
the condition that I should always and forever
err ; and should say to me : Choose ! I sliould
fall with submission upon his left hand, and
say : Father, give ! Pure Truth is for Thee alone !

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

Born 1729. Died 1786.

A Jew by birth and conviction, this able
writer and excellent man is celebrated, not
less for the services rendered to his own peo-
ple, his "kinsmen according to the flesh,"
by his labors as a Hebraist and expositor of
Jewish affairs, than for those which literary
Germany associates with his honored name.
No man has done more to soften the rigor of
that hostility which embittered the lot of the
German Israelite, a century ago. Since
Maimonides, no Jewish writer, not excepting
the famous Manasseh Ben Israel, has exerted
a greater influence on the Jewish mind.*
Since Nathaniel, no one has better deserved
the commendation bestowed on that disciple :
"An Israelite, indeed, in whom there is no
guile !" He was one of those who have
wrought even more by what they were than
by what they did. His writings are a valuable
contribution to the literature of his country ;
but his character, as an upright, magnanimous
and religious man, is a legacy to his brethren,
more valuable than his writings, and " richer
than all his tribe."

Mendelssohnf was a native of Dessau. His
father Mendel who taught the Jews' school in
that city was wretchedly poor and could give
him nothing but the Mishna and the Gemarra ;
himself more familiar with Hebrew roots than
with any more substantial nourishment. He
speaks of being roused at three o'clock, A. M.,
in the winter, wrapped in a cloak and carried
to the " seminary," when only seven years
old.

At an early age he fell in with the More
Nebochim, or Guide of the Perplexed, a work
of Maimonides, the intense study of which
made an era in his life ; and that in two ways.
It laid the foundation of his mental culture,
and also of his bodily disease and suffenng.

* I speak only of those whom Israel has acknowledged
and retained. Spinoza, unquestionably the greatest in-
tellect that has sprung from the seed of Abraham since
the di.-ipersion, can hardly be ranked as a Jewish writer.

t The following sketch is taken chiefly from the " Me-
moirs of Moses Mendelssohn, &c.," by M. Samuels.
Second Edition. London, 1827.

" Maimonides," he said, " is the cause of my
deformity,* he spoiled my figure, and ruined
my constitution; but still I doat on him for
many hours of dejection, which he has con-
verted into hours of rapture. And if he has
unwittingly weakened my body, has he not
made ample atonement by invigorating my
soul with his sublime instructions ]"

At fourteen, we find him an adventurer at
Berlin, without the means of procuring a single
meal. In his distress, he applied to Rabbi
Frankel, who had been his teacher at Dessau ;
"and there he happened to meet with Mr.
Hyam Bamberg, a benevolent man, and an
encourager of aspiring young Jews, who al-
lowed him, on the Rabbi's intercession, an
attic to sleep in, and two days' board weekly."
His first object was not to get a living but to
get an education. He had come to Berlin for
this purpose, and to this he devoted several
successive years of intense application, under
all the difficulties and discouragements which
may be supposed to hamper a youth so circum-
stanced ; without teachers, without books, with
seldom enough to satisfy his hunger, and to
whom a belly- full was, as Lamb says, 'a
special Pr.ovidence.' The manner in which
he studied Latin illustrates his indomitable
energy in the pursuit of knowledge. Having
mastered the nouns and the verbs and procured
an old second-liand dictionary, he set himself
to translate into Latin Locke's " Essay on the
Human Understanding," a task which he ac-
tually accomplished, at that early stage of his
progress ; fighting his way through difiiculties,
metaphysical and philological, with a painful
laboriousness unknown, out of Germany, in
modern times.

His only means of support during this
period, in addition to the charity of Herr Bam-
berg, was an occasional grosclien obtained by
copying Hebrew for his old master. He sub-
sisted principally on dry brown bread, and
when purchasing a loaf, " he would notch it,

* Mendelssohn was hump-backed and extremely small
and feeble in person.

(99)

100

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

accordinof to the standard of his means, into
so many meals; never eating according to his
appetite, but according to his finances."

In tiiis way lie spent several years of hard-
ship and suffering, during which, however, he
had by dint of incredible exertions, made him-
self thoroughly acquainted with the principal
languages and the mathematics. But now a
kind Providence brought him acquainted with
a wealthy manufacturer of the Jewish faith,
wlio received him into his house, as the tutor
of liis children, then into his counting-room, as
clerk, and finally into his silk-manufactory,
first as manager, and soon after as partner.
A new tide in his affairs set in with this con-
nection. An immediate support, not ample at
first, but sufficient for his wants, was secured
to him, and he now commenced his career as
an author, devoting his days to business, and
his nights to Letters. About this time, he
became acquainted with Abbt, Nicolai and
Lessing. With the latter, he formed an inti-
mate friendship, from which he derived incal-
culable benefit in the way of literary and
philosophic culture, and which he always re-
garded as among the most fortunate circum-
stances of his life. "Lessing loved Men-
delssohn," says his biographer, " for his excel-
lent heart and highly cultivated understanding,
and Mendelssohn was no less attached to Les-
sing for his inflexible consistency and his tran-
scendent abilities. A union founded on esteem
and friendship was cemented between them,
wliich neither time nor long separation, nothing
indeed but death could dissolve. The noble
monument of their mutual affection, preserved
to posterity in the latter pages of the Morgen-
stunden, will endure as long as virtue and
science are cherished and cultivated among
mankind." Li Lessing, than whom no man
was ever more free from the prejudices of
creed and nation, Mendelssohn found a hearty
sympathy and an effective fellow-laborer in his
various projects for bettering the condition of
the German Jews ; an object, which, then and
at all times, lay nearest his heart. Indeed the
known friendship of so eminent a man for one
of that tribe, in defiance of all the prejudices
of his age, was scarcely less important to the
Jews in general than it was to Mendelssohn
in particular.

One of the first, perhaps the very first lite-
rary effort by which he became distinguished
beyond the pale of his own communion, was

his " Philosophical Dialogues," a work which
owed its origin to the following circumstance.
" Lessing once brought to Mendelssohn a work
written by a celebrated character, to hear his
opinion upon it. Having given it a reading,
he told his friend that he deemed himself a
match for the author, and would refute him.
Nothing could be more welcome to Lessing,
and he strongly encouraged the idea. Ac-
cordingly, Mendelssohn sat down and wrote
his "Philosophical Dialogues," in which he
strictly redeemed his pledge of confuting the
author ; and carried the manuscript to Lessing
for examination. 'When I am at leisure,'
said Lessing, ' I will peruse it.' After a con-
venient interval, he repeated his visit, when
Lessing kept up a miscellaneous conversation,
without once mentioning the manuscript in
question; and tlie other, being too bashful to
put him in mind of it, was obliged to de-
part. The same thing happened at several
subsequent meetings. At last, he mustered
sufficient resolution to inquire after it. Want
of leisure was pleaded as before, but now " he
would certainly read it. Mr. Mendelssohn
might, in the mean while, take yonder small
volume home with hun, and let him know his
opinion of it." On opening it, Mendelssohn
was not a little surprised to see his own Dia-
logues in print. "Put it into your pocket,"
said Lessing, good-naturedly, " and this Mam-
mon along with it. It is what I got for the
copyright; it will be of service to you." He
afterward, at the instigation of Nicolai and
Lessing, collected all his philosophical lucu-
brations, and published them under the title
" Philosophische Schriften." Three editions
of this work which appeared, anonymously at
first, but afterward with the author's name,
were exhausted in a short time.

Through his connection with Herr Bernard,
Mendelssohn soon became rich, as a Jew should
be, and, being rich, he married, as a rich Jew
should do. His wife was a daughter of Abra-
ham Gaitgenheim of Hamburg. By her he had
several children, among them a son wiio gave
rise to one of his most celebrated works —
the " Morgenstiinden,''^ (Morning-hours.) This
book consists of lectures on the existence of
God, — the result of many years' inquiry on that
subject — the original design of which was to
instruct his oldest son, Joseph, his son-in-law
and other Jewish youths in the rudiments of
religion. The lessons were given before the

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

101

hours of business, whence the title Morgen-
stunden. The work is a fragment, the death
of the author arresting its progress soon after
the publication of the first volume.

The most popular of his works and that
which contributed most to his celebrity abroad,
was his Phaedon, a work on the immortality of
the soul, based on Plato's dialogue of that name
— in fact a translation of Plato, with much ad-
ditional matter of his own. In less than two
years it went through three large German edi-
tions and was translated into the English,
French, Dutch, Italian, Danish, and Hebrew.
Mendelssohn's fame was at its height, and zea-
lous Christians were wondering that so enlight-
ened and exemplary a man should retain the faith
of his Fathers, when his peace and religious li-
berty were somewhat rudely assailed — though
with no unkind intentions — by a challenge from
Lavater, who, with an obtuse zeal which knew
no scruple on the score of delicacy, sought to
drag him into theological controversy. The
good Lavater, with all his humanity, was a
little intolerant ki matters of religion. A re-
ligious man and not a Christian by profession,
was an idea for which he could find no room
in his philosophy. It was not enough that Men-
delssohn was all that a Christian should be;
he insisted on a formal and public renunciation
of Judaism in favor of Christianity. In order
to bring about this result, he dedicated to him
his translation of Bonnet's "Inquiry into the
evidences of Christianity," with the request
that he would refute it, in case he should find
the argument untenable ; and that, if it should
seem to him conclusive, he would " do what
policy, love of truth and probity demanded,
what Socrates doubtless would have done, had
lie read the work and found it unanswerable ;"
thus offering him the alternative, either to in-
cur the odium of his own people by formally
abjuring the faith of his Fathers, or to draw
down upon himself the wrath of the Christian
clergy by a public assault on their religion.

To a timid and sensitive nature like Men-
delssohn's, constitutionally averse from all con-
troversy and especially from controversy in
religion, such a challenge was perfectly over-
whelming. Prostrate with ill health at the
time, he suffered intensely from this attempt to
drag him forih from the strict reserve which he
had always maintained on these subjects. But
rallying liimself to reply, he adroitly put by
both horns of the threatened dilemma, in a

letter which satisfied all parties and which
drew from Lavater a public apology and re-
tracttation of his peremptory challenge.

The agitation caused by this transaction
aggravated Mendelssohn's constitutional com-
plaints and brought on a severe sickness which
threatened his life and, for a long time, incapa-
citated him for intellectual labor. After his
recovery, he published his commentary on Ec-
clesiasticus ; soon after, his translation of the
Pentateuch, "a work," says his biographer,
"which forms an epoch in the history of mo-
dern Judaism, and which, for its vast utility
and the immense good it has wrought, entitles
the author to the eternal gratitude of his na-
tion." To this was added a metrical transla-
tion of the psalms. Then followed a work
which excited a good deal of attention in Ger-
many, at the time, entitled " Jerusalem, oder
uber religiose Macht und Judenthum.''''* It
contained a plea for toleration founded on the
principles of the social compact, together with
an able defence of Judaism. It is still the best
treatise on these subjects.

Mendelssohn was doomed to experience an-
other severe trial of his sensibility, in an attack
on his friend Lcssing, by Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi. This eminent author published a
volume of" Letters to Mr. Mendelssohn on the
Doctrine of Spinoza," in which he charged
Lessing with being an "implicit Spinozist."
Mendelssohn endeavored to refute the charge
in a work entitled " Moses Mendelssohn to the
friends of Lessing." The answer was con-
sidered triumphant and drew from Kantf the
remark, " It is Mendelssohn's fault that Jacobi
thinks himself a philosopher."

But the excitement of a controversy so re-
pugnant to his gentle nature, acted fatally on
his long enfeebled constitution and reduced him
to that degree that a trifle sufficed to snap tlie
slender thread which bound him to this world.
Returning from the synagogue one frosty
morning, he took a cold of which he died with-
in four days ; on the 4th January 1786, in his
fifty-eighth year.

"Mendelssohn died as he had lived, calm
and placid, and took an earthly smile with him

* Jerusalem, or on religious power and Judaism.

t Speaking of Kant, it is worthy of note that Mendels-
sohn, in the earlier part of his career, was the successful
competitor of this distincuished philosopher in a contest
for the prize awarded by the Royal Academy of Berlin, to
the best essay on the question: "Are metaphysics sus.
ceptible of mathematical demonstration ?"

9*

102

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

into eternity. When his death became known,
the whole city of Berlin was a scene of un-
feigned sorrow. The citizens of all denomina-
tions looked on his death as a national cala-
mity."

" Mendelssohn was of a short stature, very
thin, and deformed in the back. His com-
plexion was very dark and sallow ; hair black
and curly; nose rather large and aquiline. A
o^entle smile played around his mouth which
was always a little open. Nothing could ex-
ceed the fire of his eyes, and there was so
much kindness, modesty, and benevolence por-
trayed on his countenance that he won every
heart at first sight. His vaulted brow and the
general cast of his features bespoke a vast in-
tellect and a noble heart."

" From sensual gratification he abstained
firmly to the end. It was inconceivable that
the quantity of food to which he restricted him-

self could nourish a human body. Yet Provi-
dence had blessed him with affluence; his
fortune enabled him to live genteelly and keep
a hospitable table ; and it was affecting to see
him press his guests to partake of viands and
liquors which he himself, though never so de-
sirous, durst not venture to taste."

His disinterestedness was without limits and
his beneficence corresiwnded with his means.

Professor Rammler erected to him a monu-
ment with this inscription :

MOSES MENDELSSOHN,

BORN AT DESSAU OF HEBREW PARENTS,

A SASE LIKE SOCRATES,

FAITHFUL TO THE ANCIENT CREED,

TEACHING IMMORTALITY,

HIMSELF IMMORTAL.

Besides the works which have been men-
tioned, he published several others in German
and some in Hebrew.

LETTER TO J. C. LAVATER,*

IN ANSWER TO A CHALLENGE EITHER TO REFUTE BONNET'S EVI-
DENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, OR ELSE TO ADOPT THE CHRISTIAN
RELIGION.

Honoured Philanthropist,

You were pleased to dedicate to me your
translation from the French of Bonnet's Inquiry
into the Evidences of the Christian Religion,
and most publicly and solemnly to conjure me
" to refute that work, in case I should find the
main arguments in support of the facts of Chris-
tianity untenable, or should I find them con-
clusive, to do what policy, love of truth, and
probity bid me, what Socrates would have done
had he read tlie work, and found it unanswer-
able ;" which, I suppose, means, to renounce
the religion of my fathers, and embrace that
which Mr. Bonnet vindicates. Now, were I
ever mean-spirited enough to balance love of
truth and probity against policy, I assure you I
should, in this instance, throw them all three
into the same scale.

I should deem myself beneath a worthy
man's notice, did I not acknowledge, with a
grateful heart, the friendship and kindness you
manifest for me in that dedication, which I am
fully persuaded flowed from a pure sotuce, and
cannot be ascribed to any but benevolent and
philanthropic motives. Yet I must own that it
appeared to me exceedingly strange, and I
should have expected anything rather than a
2:)ublic challenge Irom a man like Lavater.

It seems you still recollect the confidential

* From the " Memoirs of Moses Mendelsisohn," by M.
Samuels. For an account of this correspondence, see the
biographical sketch given above.

conversation I had the pleasure of holding with
yourself and your worthy friends in my apart-
ment. Can you then possibly have forgotten
how frequently I sought to divert the discourse
from religious to more neutral topics, and how
much yourself and your friends had to urge me
before I would venture to deliver my opinion
on a subject of such vital importance 1 If I am
not mistaken, preliminary assurances were even
given that no public use should ever be made of
any remarkable expression that might drop on
the occasion. Be that as it may, I will rather
suppose myself in error than tax you with a
breach of promise. But as I so sedulously
sought to avoid an explanation in my own
apartment amidst a small number of worthy
men, of whose good intentions I had every rea-
son to be persuaded, it might have been reason-
ably inferred that a public one would be ex-
tremely repugnant to my disposition ; and that
I must have inevitably become the more em-
barrassed when the voice demanding it hap-
pened to be entitled to an answer at any rate.
What then, sir, could induce you to single me
thus, against my well-known disinclination, out
of the many, and force me into a public arena
which I so much wished never to have occasion
to enter ? If even you placed my reserve to the
score of mere timidity and bashfulness, these
very foibles vs'ould have deserved the modera-
tion and forbearance of a charitable heart.

But my scruples of engaging in religious con-
troversy never proceeded from timidity or bash-
fulness. Let me assure you that it was not only
from the other day that I began searching into
my religion. No, I became very early sensible
of the duty of putting my actions and opinions

MOSES MENDELSSOHN

103

to a test. That I have from my early youth
devoted my hours of repose and relaxation to
philosophy and the arts and sciences, was done
for the sole purpose of qualifying myself for
this important investigation. What other mo-
tives could I have had? In the situation I was
then in, not the least temporal benefit was to
be expected from the sciences. I knev/ very
well that I had no chance of getting forward in
the world through them. And as to the gra-
tification they might afford me — alas! much
esteemed philanthropist ! — the station allotted
to my brethren in the faith, in civil society, is
so incompatible with the expansion of the mind,
that we certainly do not increase our happiness
by learning to view the rights of humanity
under their true aspect. On this point, too, I
must decline saying any more. He that is ac-
quainted with our condition, and has a human
heart, will here feel more than I dare to ex-
press.

If, after so many years of investigation, the
decision of my mind had not been completely
in favour of my religion, it would infallibly
have become known through my public con-
duct. I do not conceive what should rivet me
to a religion to appearance so excessively se-
vere, and so commonly exploded, if I were not
convinced in my heart of its truth. Let the
result of my investigation have been what it
may, so soon as I discovered the religion of my
fathers not to be the true one, I must of course
have discarded it. Indeed, were I convinced
in my heart of another religion being true, there
could not, in my opinion, be a more flagitious
depravity than to refuse homage to truth, in
defiance of internal evidence. What should
entice me to such depravity 1 Have I not
already declared, that in this instance, policy,
love of truth, and probity, would lead me to
steer the same course?

Were I indiflerent to both religions, or derided
and scorned, in my mind, revelation in general,
I should know well enough what policy sug-_.
gests, when conscience remains neutral. What
is there to deter me? Fear of my brethren in
llie faith ? Their temporal power is too much
curtailed to daunt me. What then? Obstinacy?
Indolence ? A predilection for habitual notions ?
Having devoted the greatest portion of my life
to the investigation, I may be supposed to pos-
sess sufficient good sense not to sacrifice the
fruit of my labours to such frivolities.

Thus you see, sir, that, but for a sincere con-
viction of iny religion, the result of my theologi-
cal investigations would have been sealed by a
public act of mine. Whereas, on the contrary,
they have strengthened me in the faith of my
fathers; still I could wish to move on quietly
without rendering the public an account of the
state of my mind. I do not mean to deny that
I have detected in my religion human additions
and base alloy, which, alas ! but too much tar-
nish its pristine lustre. But where is the friend
of truth that can boast of having found his reli-

gion free from similar corruptions? We all,
who go in search of truth, are annoyed by the
pestilential vapour of hypocrisy and supersti-
tion, and wish we could wipe it off without
defacing what is really good and true. Yet of
the essentials of my religion I am as firmly, as
irrefragably convinced, as you. sir, or Mr. Bon-
net, ever can be of those of yours. And I here-
with declare, in the presence of the God of
truth, your and my creator and supporter, by
whom you have conjured me in your dedica-
tion, that I will adhere to my principles so long
as my entire soul does not assume another na-
ture. My contrariety to your creed, which I
expressed to yourself and to your friends, has
since, in no respect, changed. And as to my
veneration for the moral character of its founder!
had you not omitted the reservations which I so
distinctly annexed to it, I should concede as much
now. We must finish certain inquiries once in
our life, if we wish to proceed further. This, I
may say, I had done, with regard to religion,
several years ago. I read, compared, reflected,
and — made up my mind.

Yet, for what I cared, Judaism might have
been hurled down in evejy polemical compen-
dium, and triumphantly sneered at in every
academic exercise, and I would not have enter-
ed into a dispute about it. Rabbinical scholars,
and rabbinical smatterers, might have grubbed
in obsolete scribblings, which no sensible Jew
reads or knows of, and amused the public with
the most fantastic ideas of Judaism, without so
much as a contradiction on my part. It is by
virtue that I wish to shame the opprobrious
opinion commonly entertained of a Jew, and
not by controversial writings. My religious
tenets, philosophy, station in civil society, all
furnish me with the most cogent reason for
abstaining from theological disputes, and for
treating in my publications of those truths only
which are equally important to all persuasions.

Pursuant to the principles of my religion, I
am not to seek to convert any one who is not
born according to our laws. This proneness to
conversion, the origin of which some would fain
tack on the Jewish religion, is, nevertheless,
diametrically opposed to it. Our rabbins una-
nimously teach, that the written and oral laws,
wl)ich form conjointly our revealed religion, are
obligatory on our nation only. "Moses com-
manded us a law, even the inheritance of the
congregation of Jacob." We believe that all
other nations of the earth have been directed
by God to adhere to the laws of nature, and to
the religion of the patriarchs. Those who regu-
late their lives'according to the precepts of this
religion of nature and of reason, are called vir-
tuous men of other nations, and are the children
of eternal salvation.

Our rabbins are so remote from Proselyto7na-
nia, that they enjoin us to dissuade, by forcible
remonstrances, every one who comes forward
to be converted. We are to lead him to reflect
that, by such a step, he is subjecting himself

104

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

needlessly, to a most onerous burthen; that, in
his present condition, he has only to observe the
precepts of a Noachide, to be saved ; but the
moment he embraces die religion of the Israel-
ites, he subscribes gratuitously to all the rigid
rites of that faith, to which he must then strictly
conform, or await the punishment which the
legislator has denounced on their infraction.
Finally, we are to hold up to him a faithful pic-
ture of the misery, tribulation, and obloquy, in
which the nation is now living, in order to guard
him from a rash act, which he might ultimately
repent:

Thus, you see, the religion of my fathers does
not ivish to be extended. We are not to send
missions to both the Indies, or to Greenland, to
preach our doctrine to those remote people.
The latter, in particular, who, by all accounts,
observe the laws of nature stricter than, alas !
we do, are, in our religious estimation, an envi-
able race. Whoever is not born conformable
to our jaws, has no occasion to live according
to diein. We alone consider ourselves bound
to acknowledge their authority; and this can
give no otTence to our neighbours. Let our no-
tions be held ever so absurd, still there is no
need to cavil about them, and others are cer-
tainly at liberty to question the validity of laws,
to which they are, by our own admission, not
amenable; but whether they are acting manly,
socially, and charitably, in ridiculing these laws,
must be left to dieir consciences. So long as
we do not tamper with their opinions, wrangling
serves no purpose whatsoever.

Suppose there were amongst my contempo-
raries, a Confucius or a Solon, I could, consis-
tently with my religious principles, love and
admire the great man, but I should never hit
on the extravagant idea of converting a Confu-
cius or a Solon. What should I convert him
for ? As he does not belong to the congregation
of Jacob, my religious laws were not legislated
for him ; and on doctrines we should soon come
to an understanding. Do I think there is a
chance of his being saved ? I certainly believe,
that he who leads mankind on to virtue in this
world, cannot be damned in the next. And I
need not now stand in awe of any reverend col-
lege, that would call me to account for this opi-
nion, as the Sorbonne did honest Marmontel.

I am so fortunate, as to count amongst my
friends, many a worthy man, who is not of my
faith. We love each other sincerely, notwith-
standing we presume, or take for granted, that,
in matters of belief, we differ widely in opinion.
I enjoy the delight of their society, which both
improves and solaces me. Never yet has my
heart whispered, " Alas ! for this excellent mdn's
soul !" — He who believes that no salvation is to
be found out of the pale of his own church,
must often feel such sighs rise in his bosom.

It is true, every man is naturally bound to
diffuse knowledge and virtue among his fellow-
creatures, and to eradicate error and prejudice
as much as lies in his power. It might there-

fore be concluded, that it is a duty, publicly to
fling the gauntlet at every religious opinion,
which one deems erroneous. But all prejudices
are not equally noxious. Certainly, there are
some which strike directly at the happiness of
the human race; their effect on morality is ob-
viously deleterious, and we cannot expect even
a casual benefit from them. These must be
unhesitatingly assailed by the philanthropist.
To grapple with them, at once, is indisputably
the best mode, and all delay, from circuitous
measures, unwarrantable. Of this kind are
those errors and prejudices which disturb man's
own, and his fellow-creatures' peace and hap-
piness, and canker, in youth, the germ of bene-
volence and virtue, before it can shoot forth.
Fanaticism, ill-will, and a spirit of persecution,
on the one side, levity. Epicurism, and boasting
infidelity, on the other.

Yet the opinions of my fellow-creatures, erro-
neous as they may appear to my conviction, do
sometimes belong to the higher order of theo-
retical principles, and are too remote from prac-
tice, to become immediately pernicious; they
constitute, however, from their generality, the
basis, on which the people who entertain them
have raised their system of morality and social
order; and so they have casually become of
great importance to that portion of mankind.
To attack such dogmas openly, because they
appear prejudices, would be like sapping the
foundation of an edifice, for the purpose of ex-
amining its soundness and stability, without
first securing the superstructure against a total
downfall. He who values the welfare of man-
kind more than his own fame, will bridle his
tongue on prejudices of this description, and
beware of seeking to reform them prematurely
and precipitately, lest he should overset, what
he thinks a defective theory of morality, before
his fellow-creatures are firm in the perfect one,
which he means to substitute.

Therefore, there is nothing inconsistent in my
thinking myself bound to remain neutral, under
the impression of having detected national pre-
judices and religious errors amongst my fellow-
citizens, — provided these errors and prejudices
do not subvert, directly, either their religion or
the laws of nature, and that they have a ten-
dency to promote, casually, that which is good
and desirable. The morality of our actions,
when founded in error, it is true, scarcely de-
serves that name ; and the advancement of
virtue will be always more efficaciously and
permanently effected through the medium of
truth, where truth is known, than through that
of prejudice or error. But where truth is not
known, where it has not become national, so as
to operate as powerfully on the bulk of the
people as deep-rooted prejudice — there prejudice
will be held almost sacred by every votary of
virtue.

How much more imperative, then, does this
discretion become, when the nation, which, in
our opinion, fosters such prejudices, has rendered

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

105

itself otherwise estimable through wisdom and
virtue, when it contains numbers of eminent
men, who rank with the benefactors of man-
kind ! The human errors of such a noble por-
tion of our species, ought to be deferentially
overlooked by one, who is liable to the same ;
he should dwell on its excellences only, and
not insidiously prowl to pounce upon it, where
he conceives it to be vulnerable.

These are the reasons which my religion and
my philosophy suggest to me, for scrupulously
avoiding polemical controversy. Add to them,
my local relations to my fellow-citizens, and
you cannot but justify me. I am one of an op-
pressed people, who have to supplicate shelter
and protection of the ascendant nations ; and
these boons they do not obtain everywhere, in-
deed nowhere, without more or less of restric-
tion.* Rights granted to every other human
being, my brethren in the faith willingly forego,
contented with being tolerated and protected ;
and they account it no trifling favour, on the
part of the nation, who takes them in on bear-
able terms, since, in some places, even a tem-
porary domicile is denied them. Do the laws of
Zurich allow your circumcised friend to pay you
a visit there 1 No. — What gratitude then do
not my brethren owe to the nation, which in-
cludes them in its general philanthropy, suffer-
ing them, without molestation, to worship the
Supreme Being after the rites of their ancestors?
The government under which I live, leaves
nothing to wish for in this respect; and the
Hebrews should therefore be scrupulous in ab-
staining from reflections on the predominant
religion, or, which is the same thing, in touching
their protectors, where men of virtue are most
tender.

By those principles, I have resolved invaria-
bly to regulate my conduct; unless extraordinary
inducements should compel me to deviate from
them. Private appeals, from men of worth, I
have taken the liberty tacitly to decline. The
importunities of pedants, who arrogated to
themselves the right of worrying me publicly,
on account of my religious principles, I con-
ceived myself justified in treating with con-
tempt. But the solemn conjuration of a Lavater,
demands at any rate this public avowal of my
sentiments: lest too pertinacious a silence should
be construed into disregard, or — into acquies-
cence.

I have read, with attention, your translation
of Bonnet's work. After what I have already
stated, conviction becomes, of course, foreign to
the question: but, even considered abstractedly,
as an apology of the Christian religion, I must
own, it does not appear to me to possess the
merit which you attach to it. I know Mr. Bon-
net from other works, as an excellent author;
but I have read many vindications of the same

* Justice and gratitude require nie to observe, thai this
was written in the middle of the last century. Enlightened
Europe presents in our days, but one state to verify it.
o

religion, I will not only say by English writers,
but by our own German countrymen, which I
thought much more recondite and philosophical
than that by Bonnet, which you are recom-
mending for my conversion. If I am not mis-
taken, most of your friend's hypotheses are even
of German growth ; for the author of the Essai
de Psychologic, to whom Mr. Bonnet cleaves so
firmly, owes almost every thing to German phi-
losophers. In the matter of philosophical prin-
ciples, a German has seldom occasion to borrow
of his neighbours.

Nor are the general reflections premised by
the author, in my judgment, the most profound
part of the work; at least the application and
use which he makes of them, for the vindica-
tion of his religion, appear to me so unstable
and arbitrary, that I scarcely can trace Bonnet
in them. It is unpleasant, that my ojiinion hap-
pens to be so much at variance with yours ; but
I am inclined to think, that Bonnet's internal
conviction, and laudable zeal for his religion,
have given to himself a cogency in his argu-
ments, wliich, for my own part, I cannot dis-
cover in them. The major part of his conse-
quents flow so vaguely from the antecedents,
that I am confident I could vindicate any re-
ligion by the same ratiocination. After all, this
may not be the author's fault; he could have
written for those only who are convinced like
himself, and who read merely to fortify them-
selves in their belief When an author once
agrees with his readers about the result, they
will not fall out about the argument. But at
yon, sir, I may well be astonished ; that you
should deem that work adequate to convince a
man, who, from his principles, cannot but be
prepossessed in favour of its reverse. It was
probably impossible for you to identify the
thoughts of a person, like me, who is not fur-
nished with conviction, but has to seek it. But
if you have done so, and believe, notwithstand-
ing, what you have intimated, that Socrates
himself would have found Mr. Bonnet's argu-
ments unanswerable, one of us is, certainly, a
remarkable instance of the dominion of pre-
judice and education, even over those who go,
with an upright heart, in search of truth.

I have now^ stated to you the reasons why I
so earnestly wish to have no more to do with
religious controversy; but I have given you, at
the same time, to understand that I could, very
easily, bring forward something in refutation of
Mr. Bonnet's work. If you should prove peremp-
tory, I must, lay aside my scruples, and come to
a resolution of publishing, in a counter-inquiry,
my thoughts, both on Mr. Bonnet's work, and on
the cause which he vindicates. But, I hope
you will exonerate me from this irksome task,
and rather give 'me leave to withdraw to that
state of quietude, whicli is more congenial to
my disposition. Place yourself in my situation;
take my view of circumstances, not yours, and
you will no longer strive against my reluctance.
I should be sorry to be led into the temptation

106

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

of breaking through those boundaries, which I
have, after such mature deliberation, marked
out to myself.

I am, with most perfect respect,
yours sincerely,

Moses Mendelssohn.
Berlin, the 12th of December, 1769.

To this Lavater replied in a second Letter,
which gave rise to anotlicr publication on the
part of Mendelssohn, entitled,

SUPPLEMENTARY REMAKK9.

* * * As to what regards Bonnet's
work, I confess, that my judgment on it referred
entirely to the purpose for which it was recom-
mended to me by Mr. Lavater. I might, it is
true, have taken for granted, that it was not at
all Mr. Bonnet's aim to oppugn, by his Liquiry,
any religious persuasion whatsoever, least of all
Judaism; but that he had only the benevolent
intention of leading, by means of a more whole-
some philosophy, back into the paths of truth,
the sceptics and weak in faith of his own
church, who have been deluded by a false
philosophy, to laugh at religion. Providence,
the immortality of the soul, the resurrection,
and retribution, as absurd superstitions. In this
light I should have considered Mr. Bonnet's
work, in order to form a more correct estimate
of its merits.

But the unlucky dedication had at once de-
ranged the proper aspect of things. And as
that was the point from which I started, and
not knowing that the author had disapproved
of the translator's proceeding, I read the whole
performance under the impression, that it was
levelled against myself, and those of my per-
suasion. In this view, then, the use and ap-
plication which Mr. Bonnet makes of philosophi-
cal principles, could not but appear to me loose
and arbitrary ; and I could say, with propriety,
that I was confident I could vindicate, in the
same manner, any religion one pleases. * *
* * * I will mention a single point by way
of illustration.

Mr. Bonnet constitutes miracles the infallible
criterion s of truth ; and maintains that if there
be but credible testimony that a prophet has
wrought miracles, his divine mission is no
longer to be called in question. He then
actually demonstrates, by very sound logic,
that there is nothing impossible in miracles,
and that testimony concerning tliem may be
deserving of credit.

Now, according to my religious theory, mira-
cles are not, indiscriminately, a distinctive mark
of truth ; nor do they yield a moral evidence
of a prophet's divine legation. The public
giving of the law, only, could, according to our
creed, impart satisfactory authenticity ; because
the ambassador had, in this case, no need of
credentials, the divine commission being given

in the hearing of the whole nation. Here no
truths were to be confirmed by actual proceed-
ings, no doctrine by preternatural occurrences,
but it was intended it should be believed, that
the divine manifestation had chosen this very
prophet for its legate, as every individual had
himself heard the nomination. Accordingly,
we read (Exod. xix. 9.), " And the Lord said
unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick
cloud, that the people may hear when I speak
unto thee, and believe thee forever :" (Exod.
iii. 12.) "And this shall be a token unto thee.
When thou hast brought forth the people out
of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this moun-
tain."' Our belief in a revealed religion is,
therefore, not founded in miracles, but on a
public legislation. The precept to hearken to
a wonder-working prophet (Deut. xviii. 15.) is,
as our rabbins teach, a mere implicit law, as
given by the legislator, and quite independent
of the intrinsic evidence of such wonders. So
does a similar law (Deut. xvii. 6.) direct us to
abide, in juridical cases, by the evidence of two
witnesses, though we are not bound to consider
their evidence as infallible. Further informa-
tion on this Jewish elemental law w^ill be
found in Maimonides' Elements of the Law,
chap. 8, 9, 10. And there is an ample illustra-
tion of this passage of Maimonides, in Rabbi
Joseph Albo, Sepher Ikkarim, sect, i., cap. 18.

I also meet with decisive texts in the Old
Testament, and even in the New, showing that
there is nothing extraordinary in enticers and
false prophets performing miracles;* whether
by magic, occult sciences, or by the misapplica-
tion of a gift tndy conferred on theni for proper
purposes, I will not pretend to determine. So
much, however, appears to me incontrovertible,
that, according to the naked text of Scripture,
miracles cannot be taken as absolute criterions
of a divine mission.

I could, therefore, perfectly well maintain
that an argument, founded on the infallibility
of miracles, does not decide any thing against
the believers in my religion, since we do not
acknowledge that infallibility. My Jewish
principles will fully bear me out in the asser-
tion, that I would undertake to vindicate, by
similar reasoning, any religion one pleases ;
because I do not know any religion which has
not signs and miracles to produce ; and surely
every one has a right to place confidence in his
forefathers. All revelation is propagated by
tradition and by monuments. There, I sup-
pose, we agree. But, according to the funda-
mentals of my religion, not miracles only, but

* How are we, for instance, to account for the Egyp-
tian magicians? In the Old Testament (Deut. xiii. a.),
a case is laid down, when we are not to hearken to a
prophet or a dreamer of dreams, even if he give a sign
or a wonder, but put him to death. In the New Testa-
ment, it is distinctly said (Matt. xxiv. 24.), " For there
shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall
show great signs and wonders," &c. Not to mention
other texts.

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

107

a public giving of the law, must be the origin
of tradition.

It will now be seen that the assertion of
mine, which Mr. Lavater calls singular, is not
only compatible with the belief in a revelation,
but that it even emanates from the very ele-
ments of my religion. As an Israelite, I have
argued on Israelitish principles. How could I
have done otherwise, under the impression that
Mr. Bonnet meant to controvert those principles 1
But now that I am aware that this excellent
author's design was to oppugn the unbelievers
of his own church only, and to show them that
the doctrines which they revile, are, by far,
more reconcilable with sound reason than their
own fantastic deliration, many difficulties which
I have met with on reading the German trans-
lation, of course vanish of themselves ; and I
must own, that, so far as its scope goes, the
work is more important, and more worthy
of Mr. Bonnet's pen, than I had, at first, an
idea of.

Vv^^^ifc"*>.''v^***.>».*s,

ON THE SUBLIME AND THE NAIVE IN
POLITE LITERATURE.*

Itr reading Longinus his treatise on the sub-
lime, one cannot but regret that the work of
Csecilius, treating of the same matter, has been
lost. Longinus, it is true, says of him, that " he
merely laboured to give us an idea of the
sublime, by an infinite number of examples, as
if no one knew what it was, but wholly omit-
ted what is most essential, that is, the method
by which we may accustom our minds to a
true elevation." But as Longinus occupied
himself exclusively with the latter, — taking the
former for granted, either as something which
every one, as he thought, must be acquainted
with, or as known to his Terentian, at least,
out of CEEciiius ; we are in want of a very
necessary part of the knowledge of the sublime,
to wit, a lucid explanation of it; and those
translators and commentators of Longinus who
have endeavoured to supply this defect, do not
appear to have been very successful in their
attempts.

Perhaps the idea of the sublime, which, as
Longinus says, constitutes the highest perfec-
tion in writing, may be rerulered somewhat
clearer by the principles which have been
established in the foregoing essaysf on the
nature of the sentiments and on the sources of
the fine arts in general.

We have seen that the strictly beautiful has
its own determinate limits which it may not

* Belles lettres, Schiine Wissenschaften, literally Beauti-
ful sciences. I prefer the above as being more English and
customary, while it answers more exactly to the subject
matter of this treatise. Tr.

t See "Mendelssohn's philosophische Schriften," in
two vols., Berlin, 1777, from which this essay is taken.
Tr.

pass. When the whole extent of the ob-
ject is not taken in by the senses at once, it
ceases to be sensuotisly beautiful and becomes
monstrous or disproportionately great in extension.
The sensation which is then awakened is one
of a mixed character indeed, but one which
has something repulsive for well-educated
minds accustomed to order and symmetry.
The senses discover the boundaries at last, but
cannot, without difficulty, embrace and com-
bine them in one idea.

When the limits of this extension are still
farther removed, they may vanish entirely, at
last, to the senses, and then arises the sensuous
immeasurable. The senses, perceiving some-
thing connected, wander about to discover its
limits and lose themselves in the illimitable.
Thence, as was shown in the first treatise,*
arises, at first, a shuddering which comes over
us, and then something like giddiness which
often obliges us to take our eyes from the
object. The vast ocean, a far extended plain,
the innumerable host of the stars, every height
or depth whose limits are not discoverable, and
other like objects of Nature, which seem im-
measurable to the senses, awaken this kind of
sensation, which, as is there set forth more
minutely, is, in some cases, exceedingly plea-
sant, but, in others, may occasion discomfort.

The artist also avails himself of these sensa-
tions on account of their agreeableness, and
endeavours to produce them by imitation. The
imitation of the sensuous immeasurable is de-
nominated, in general terms, the grand. By this
term is understood not a limited magnitude, but
one which seems to be limitless, and is adapted
to produce an agreeable awe. There is, in art,
a particular method of producing this sensation,
where the immeasurable itself cannot be repre-
sented. It is to repeat, at equal intervals of
time or space, a single impression, unaltered,
uniform, and very often. The senses, in that
case, detect no symmetrical process, no rule of
arrangement from which the end of this repeti-
tion might be inferred ; they are thrown into a
state of restlessness which resembles the awe
produced by the immeasurable. An instance,
in architecture, is a straight colonnade in which
the columns are like and separated from each
other by equal distances. A colonnade of this
kind has something grand which immediately
disappears when the uniformity of the repeti-
tion is interrupted and a prominent contrast
introduced at certain intervals. The monotonous
iteration of a single sound after equal pauses
has the same effect in music, and is used to
express veneration, the terrible, the awful. In
literary composition there are arts of speech
which produce the same effect. Sometimes it
is done by the multiplication of conjunctions, —
of the connecting and :

Und das Geschrei und der todtenden Wuth und
der donnernde Himmel.

* Zusiitze zu den Briefen iiber die Empfindungen, p.
36. Tr,

108

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

So too,

und ist noch und denkt noch und fluchet.

Sometimes too by the multiplication of verbs
or nouns without the connecting and. Longinus
gives an example from Xenophon : They dashed
their shields against each other, they crowded,
they struggled, they slew, they fell. * *

The climax which increases in regular gra-
dations has a similar effect; but this pleases
also for other reasons, which it would be out
of place to enlarge upon here.

As there is an illimitable in extended magni-
tude, whose effects we have just described, so
there is an illimitable in intensity, or vxnextend-
ed magnitude, which produces similar eflects.
Power, genius, virtue, have their unextended
immeasurable, which also awakens a sensation
of awe, and which has at the same time this
advantage, that it does not, by tedious uniform-
ity, terminate at last in satiety and disgust, as
is apt to be the case with the immeasurable in
extension. They are various as they are great,
and, as it was remarked in the passage already
referred to, the sensation which they excite is
unmixed on the jsart of the. object ; and there-
fore it is that the soul affects these with so much
eagerness. We commonly call the intensively
great, powerful ; and the powerful, in its per-
fection, we designate with the special appella-
tion of sublime. We may say then, generally,
that everything which is, or appears immeasur-
able in the degree of its perfection, is called
sublime. We call God the most sublime of be-
ings. We call a truth sublime, which concerns
a very perfect nature, as God, the universe, the
human soul ; which is of immeasurable value
to human kind, or for the discovery of which a
great genius was required. In the fine arts and
in letters, the sensuously perfect representation
of the immeasurable will be grand, powerful or
sublime, according as the magnitude relates to
extension or number, to a degree of strength, or
particularly to a degree of perfection.

The sensation produced by the sublime is a
compound one. The greatness arrests our at-
tention ; and since it is the greatness of perfec-
tion, the soul clings with pleasure to that object,
and all collateral ideas are thrown into obscu-
rity. The illimitableness awakens an agreeable
awe which pervades us wholly, while the va-
riety prevents us from being satiated, and gives
the imagination wings to penetrate farther and
ever farther. All these sensations blend toge-
ther in the soul ; they flow into each other, and
grow to a single sentiment which we call ad-
miration. If, therefore, we wished to describe
the sublime according to its effects, we might
say it is the sensuously perfect in art which is
capable of exciting admiration.

Every perfection which, by its greatness, sur-
passes our ordinary conceptions, which exceeds
the expectation we had of a certain object, or
which outdoes all that we had imagined of per-

fection, is an object of admiration. The deter-
mination of Regulus to return to Carthage, al-
though well advised of the tortures which
awaited him there, is sublime, and excites
admiration, because we had not supposed that
the duty of keeping one's promise, even with
an enemy, could exert such power over the
human heart. The unexpected reconciliation
of Augustus with Cinna, in the celebrated tra-
gedy of Corneille, produces the same effect,
because the character of this prince had pre-
pared us for a very different course of conduct.
In Canute, the mercy shown to Ulfo does not
create so sudden a sensation, because it was
not so unexpected in view of the character of
the ever merciful Canute.

Finally, tlie attributes of the Supreme Being,
as recognized in his works, awaken the most
extatic admiration, because they surpass all that
we can imagine of greatness, perfection, subli-
mity.

Since the great and the sublime are so nearly
related, we see why artists so often maintain
the sublime by means of the great, and, as it
were, by sensible impressions of the great, pre-
pare us for the intellectual conception of the
sublime. They magnify the measure or the
proportions of those things which they desire to
represent as sublime. They make use of a
bright lustre which dazzles by its intensity, or
of an obscurity which causes the boundaries of
objects to disappear, but never of a moderate
light. The image of the sublime is never fully
drawn; single traits are hyperbolically exag-
gerated, and the rest left indefinite, in order
that the imagination may lose itself in their
vastness.

" I stretch my head into the clouds,

My arm into eternity."

We accompany the sublime in poetry with
the great in music, with the artificially immea-
surable in iteration, &c. ; not because all that is
great is also sublime, as is generally supposed,
but because similar sensations mutually support
each other, and because the great is precisely
the same in respect to the external senses, that
the sublime is in relation to the inner sense.
Therefore, the impression on the inner sense
must needs be strengthened when the external
senses are, by means of similar impressions,
attuned in harmony with it.

Admiration in regard to the productions of
the fine arts, as well as the perfection which is
expressed by it, may be of two different kinds.
Either the object to be represeiited possesses in
and of itself qualities which are admirable; in
which case the admiration of the object be-
comes the dominant idea in the soul ; or the
object is not particularly remarkable in and of
itself, but the artist possesses the skill to bring
out its qualities and to place them in an un-
common light ; and then the admiration is di-
rected rather to the imitation than to the arche-
type, rather to the excellences of art than to the
excellences of the object. And as every work

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

109

is an embodying of the perfections of the mas-
ter, so the admiration, in the latter case, regards
more especially the artist and his characteristic
excellences. We admire his great wit, his ge-
nius, his imagination, and other facilities of the
soul which harmonize together for so worthy
an end ; and whose invisible nature he has
found means to manifest in his work. That
which especially pleases us in art, considered
as art, refers to the intellectual endowments of
the artist, which are brought to view in his
works. When these exhibit the marks of genius
or of extraordinary talent, they excite our admi-
ration.

This classification will furnish opportunities
of deciding how far the sublime is compatible
with ornate expression, and in what cases it
rejects such expression. We will begin with
that species in which the admiration arises im-
mediately from the object itself.

Perfections of the external condition are of too
little worth to excite the admiration of a man
of understanding. Hence riches, splendour,
authority and power without merit are justly
excluded from the province of the sublime.

" Those things," says Longinus very strikingly,
"the contempt of which is considered as some-
thing great, can never possess real sitblimity in
themselves." In fact we admire not so much
those who possess great wealth or hold distin-
guished posts of honour, as those who might
have these things, but who, from a noble mag-
nanimity, reject them. Therefore the repre-
sentation of these things in architecture and the
arts of embellishment, where advantages of ex-
ternal condition come into consideration, may
be showy, proud, splendid ; — but true sublimity
is attained only by means of a noble simplicity,
i. e. by the avoidance of all which would seem
to place much value on those advantages. Not
the lavish use of wealth and splendour, but a
wise indifference toward them exalts the soul
and teaches us to know its real dignity. They
must be objects of importance with the spend-
thrift, if he wishes to shine with them.

Physical perfections, as, for example, uncom-
mon strength or bravery, a beautiful form in an
insignificant posture, a beautiful countenance
whose features indicate neither intellect nor
sentiment, an extraordinary nimbleness in the
motions of the limbs without grace or attraction,
&c., may indeed excite a slight degree of admi-
ration, but we are never so charmed as we are
in contemplating great mental perfections. A
great intellect, great and noble sentiments, a
happy imagination combined with penetrating
sagacity, generous and vehement emotions
which rise above the conceptions of ordinary
minds, whether they have a true or only an
apparent good for their object, and, in general,
all great qualities of mind which surprise us
unexpectedly, ravish our soul and lift it, as it
were, above itself. The immeasurably great
which is there implied, and which seems new,
because unsuspected, fixes the attention of the

mind and enfeebles all collateral ideas, uncon-
genial with it, to such an extent that the soul
finds no transition to other objects, but, for
awhile, is lost in wonder. When this inability
to quit the object continues for a time, that state
of mind is called astonishment.

This admiration, however, may be likened
almost to a flash of lightning, which dazzles us
for a moment and disappears, unless its flame
is maintained and nourished by the fire of a
gentle sentiment. When we love the object
which we admire, or when, by undeserved
suffering, it merits our compassion, then admi-
ration alternates with a more affectionate senti-
ment, in our minds ; we wish, we hope, we
fear for the object of our love or of our compas-
sion ; and we admire his great soul which is
raised above hope and fear. When the artist,
by his magic power, can transport us into this
frame of mind, he has reached the summit of
his art, and satisfied art's worthiest aims. It is
a spectacle pleasing to the gods, says an ancient
philosopher, when they behold a good man
struggling with fate, sacrificing everything but
his virtue. Ecce spectaculum dignum, ad quod
respiciat intentus operi suo Deus : ecce par Deo
dignum, vir fortis cum mala fortuna compositus !*

These then are the principal kinds of admi-
ration which flow directly from the object itself
without reference to the perfections of the artist.
We will examine how far external embellish-
ment of expression is compatible with them.

The truly sublime, as has been stated in the
foregoing remarks, occupies the faculties of the
soul to such an extent, that all collateral ideas
connected with it must needs disappear. It is
a sun which shines alone and eclipses all feebler
lights with its splendour. Moreover in the
moment when we perceive the sublime, neither
wit nor imagination can perform their functions,
to turn our thoughts in any other direction ; for
no other similar idea was ever connected in our
mind with the object of admiration, so as to
follow naturally in its own train according to
the laws of the imagination. Whoever doubts
this, let him consider that, according to our ex-
planation, the unexpected, the new is an essen-
tial condition of the sublime. It is this, pre-
cisely, that causes the strong impression which
admiration makes on our minds, and v.-hich is
not unfrequently succeeded by astonishment, or
even by a kind of stupor — a loss of consciousness.

Hence it is evident that excessive ornament
is incompatible with the sublime of the first
class. Any amplification, by means of collate-
ral ideas, is unnatural; for all such ideas are
necessarily thrown, as it were, into the darkest
shade. The analysis of the main idea would
weaken admiration by its slowness ; it would
allow us to feel the sublime only by little and
little. On the other hand, comparisons and
other ornaments of speech are still more out of
place, since wit and imagination, from which

* Seneca, de Providentia, C. II.
10

110

MOSES MENDELSSOHN,

they spring, suspend their functions during the
contemi^lation of the sublime, and allow the
soul the repose which is necessary to dwell on
tliat idea and to think it over in all its grandeur.
The main idea of the sublime is properly that,
" Judicis argutum quoil non furmidat acumen."

We may say of it, volet hoc sub luce videri ;
whereas of collateral ideas it may be said, hoc
amat obscurum. Therefore the artist, in the
representation of this species of the sublime,
should cultivate a naive, inartificial expression,
which leaves the reader or spectator to imagine
more than is said. Nevertheless, the expression
must be derived from actual vision (anschauend),
and if possible refer to particular instances, in
order that the mind of the reader may be
roused and inspired to meditation.

We will illustrate these thoughts by some

examples. This proposition, what God willed,

that came to pass, contains the same lofty idea

which we admire in the well-known "God said.

Let there be light, and there was light." But the

former expression is abstract and therefore not

sufficiently inspired. This sensuous act, " said,"

— this individual object, light, make the idea an

intuition, and give it life. .

Kegres in ipsos imperiura est Jovis
Cuiicta supercibo moventis,

is an unusually sublime conception ; but sub-
stitute mente or vcluntate instead of supercilio,
or regnantis instead of moventis, and a portion
of the sublimity vanishes, because the concrete
ideas are changed to abstract ones. The omni-
potent wink, supercilio, the sensuous action,
moventis, produce in our imagination the sub-
lime image of the Jupiter of Phidias. We see
the omnipotent, if I may use the expression, face
to face, Qui totum nutu tremefacit Olympum.
In tlie following passage of Horace,

Si fractus illabatur orbis
Impavidum ferieut ruina;,

the danger which threatens the wise man is

perfectly painted, while the state, of his soul by

which it is more particularly designed to excite

our admiration, is indicated by only one word,

impavidum. Substitute

Si fractus illabatur orbis,

Justum et tenacem propositi virum

Impavidum fenent ruinse;

and where then is the admired sublimity? The
misplaced circumlocution has detained the im-
patient mind of the spectator, eager for the is-
sue, too long, and sufiered the fire of expectation
to become extinct. The same remark will ap-
ply to the sacred psalmist, in reference to that
l^iassage in which he carried out a similar idea
more worthily perhaps than Horace. " There-
fore will we not fear though the earth be
removed and though the mountains should be
carried into the midst of the sea." The danger,
in this case, is described as minutely, but with
far greater truth than in Horace. But how could
the influence of trust in God be expressed more
simply and artlessly, — " we will not fear" — for
which the Hebrew needs but three syllables.

Observe, by the way, the careful selection of
phrases in both these great' poets, if it may be
allowed us to compare them together. Horace
describes the quality of mind of a Stoic philo-
sopher, whom the thought, that destiny is neces-
sary and immutable, has rendered insensible to
all untoward accidents. He may anticipate
every evil; the ruins of the v^•orld actually smite
him, fcriunt ruina, — but lie is not dismayed.
No calamity can overtake him unprepared. He
has armed himself against every stroke of Fate.
The sacred poet, on the other hand, is speaking
of the state of mind of a good man, who reposes
entirely on God and places his trust in him. He
may be alarmed when sudden danger threatens,
but his thoughts recur to God. Therefore he is
not afraid.

Some objects are, in their nature, so perfect,
so sublime, that they cannot be reached by any
finite thought, nor correctly indicated by any
sign, nor represented as they are by any pic-
tures ; such are God, the universe, eternity, &c.
Here the artist must strain all the powers of his
mind to find the worthiest figures by which
these infinitely sublime ideas may be brought
sensuously before the mind. He may do so the
more safely that the thing signified must always
remain greater than the sign he employs ; and
consequently his expression, however full he
may make it, will always be naive in compari-
son with the thing. The sacred poet sings :

Lord, thy mercy reaches above the heavens,
And thy truth above tlie clouds.
Thy justice is like tlie mountains of God,
And tliy right an unfathomable deep !
* * * * * *

The sublime in sentiment, or the heroic,
which, as we remarked above, is an inferior
variety of the sublime of the first class, consists
in those perfections of the aff"ective powers
which excite admiration. Wlien the hero him-
self is introduced and made to utter such senti-
ments in i^erson, he should express himself as
briefly and as inartificially as possible. A great
soul utters its sentiments gracefully and empha-
tically, but without parade of diction. It argues
greater perfection when our noble sentiments
have become, as it were, a second nature ; when
we think greatly and act greatly without know-
ing it or without making any particular merit
of it. Hence we are pleased with the ernphatic

brevity of the old Horatius, "Qu'il mourut;"

of Brutus in Voltaire, "Brutus I'eut immole" —
and the artless offer of friendship in Corneille,
" soyons amis, Cinna!"

To this class belongs the answer of that Spar-
tan who, when a Persian soldier boasted that
the arrows and javelins of the Persian army
would cover the sun, replied, Then we shall
fight in the shade. The epitaph of Simonides
on the Lacedaemonians, who fell in battle at
Thermopylae, is of the same kind ;

Die hospes Spartae nos te hie vidisse jaeentes
Dum Sanctis patrise le^ibus obsequimur.*

* Cicero. Tuscul. Quajst. L. I.

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

Ill

These patriotic men considered tlieir death as
sufTiciently comjieiisated, if Sparta learned that
they had fallen, while obeying the sacred laws
of their country.

But though the heroic soul is thus immovable
in its sentiments and thus brief and emphatic
in the expression of them, when the determina-
tion has once been formed; it must show itself
rich and inexhaustible in thought, when deli-
berating on its actions, and while yet uncertain
which the path is that virtue prescribes. It
must be neither obstinate nor rash, and, in
doubtful cases, must weigh the reasons for and
against its purposed course with great caution,
before it inclines to one or the other side. Then,
the sublime in sentiment admits of the richest
ornament in expression. All the fire of rhetoric
is brought into requisition, in order to exhibit
the motives, on both sides, in the strongest light.
The undetermined soul wavers as if driven by
w'aves from one side to the other, and carries
the hearer with it in every direction, until it
recognizes the voice of virtue which puts an
end to its irresolution.

Immediately, all doubts are removed, all ob-
stacles overcome, the resolve stands firm and
nothing can cause it to vacillate again.

From the sublime of this last descrii^tion have
arisen the monologues in tragedies, which, in
modern times, since the Chorus is done away,
have come very much into vogue. The mono-
logue of Augustus in tlie tragedy of Cinna, (Act
VI. sc. III.) that of Rodogune in the tragedy of
that name, (Act III. sc. 3.) of Agamemnon in
the tragedy of Iphigenia, (Act IV. sc. 3.) of Cato
in Addison, (Act. V. sc. 1.) of .^neas in the
Dido of Metastasio, (Act. I. sc. 19.) are master-
pieces in their kind. But they are all outdone
by the celebratetl soliloquy of Shakspeare's
Hamlet, Act. III. sc. 2.

Among all the varieties of the sublime, the
sublime of passion, — when the soul is suddenly
stunned with terror, remorse, anger, and des-
pair,— requires the most artless expression. A
mind in comnrotion is occupied singly and alone
with its own passion, and every idea which
would withdraw it from that, is torture to it.
The soul labours under the multitude of con-
ceptions which overwhelm it. In the moment
of vehement emotion they all press forward for
utterance, and since the mouth cannot utter
them all at- once, it hesitates and is scarce able
to pronounce the single words which first oSer
themselves.

What, for example, could Qildipus say, in that
terrible moment when, by the confession of the
ancient servant, the whole mystery was ex-
plained to him, and he felt that the terrible
imprecation which he had pronounced against
the murderer of Laius must fall upon himself]

Wo ! wo ! now all is plain !
Sophocles makes him exclaim. CEdipus, to
whom so many oracles, testimonies and circum-
stances were known in relation to this matter,

which seemed now to contradict each other,
and now to contradict his own consciousness,
perceives at length, with horror, that they per-
fectly agree, and that he is the most miserable
of men. Wo! wo! is the expression of Nature
in the first stupor, the sigh which the wretch
heaves forth when he can find no words. And
the first idea which could arise again in the
soul of CEdipus must needs have reference to
the agreement of the circumstances. " Now all
is clear.''

Seneca, on the contrary, who seems to have
thouglit this much too quiet, makes his QLdipus,
on tlie same occasion, rave after a very dilferent
fashion :

Deldsce tellus tuque tenebraruni poteus
In Tartara una rector umbrarum rape.

One sees that the more foaming the words, the
colder tlie heart ; for we feel that it is the stilted
poet, not the wretched ffidipus whom we hear.

In Shakspeare's Macbeth, Macdutl learns
that Macbeth has seized on his castle and mur-
dered his wife antl children. He falls into a
profound melancholy ; his friend endeavours to
comfort him, but he hears nothing; he is medi-
tating the means of revenge, and breaks forth
at last into those terrible words :

He hath no children !
These few words breathe more vengeance than
could have been expressed in a whole oration.

When Joseph could no longer contain himself
for grief, and had removed all the bystanders,
in order to discover himself to his brethren,
what words should he find to express the con-
dition of his soul? How make known to his
brethren, in one word, that he was the indivi-
dual whom they had abused, but their brother
still ? " / am Joseph" he says ; " doth my Father
yet live?" "And they could not answer him,
for they were troubled at his presence."

Louginus has remarked, that the true sublime
may sometimes be attained by mere silence.
"The sublime." he says, in the ninth division
of his treatise, "is nothing but the echo of a
great mind. And therefore we sometimes ad-
mire the mere musing of a man. even when he
utters no word, like the silence of Ajax in Hell,*
which has in it more sublimity than all which
he could have said." This eloquent silence is
imitated by Virgil, | who says of Dido, when
addressed by .zEneas in the Elysian fields :

nia solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat,
Nee magis incepto vultum sermone movetur
Qaam si dura silex aut stet Marpesia cautes.
1'andem proripuit sese, atque ininiica refugit
In neaius umbriferuni.

Among the moderns, Klopstock has likewise
attempted to make use of this sublime silence,
in that passage where Abdiel is addressed by
the repentant Abaddon, who was his friend
before they fell, with what success I will riot
undertake to say.

Where diis dumb rhetoric, if it may be called

* Odyssee, B. XI. v. 3G3. j jEneid, B. VI. v. 4G9.

112

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

so, is connected with the sublime in passion, at
the right point, it is capable of producing the
most happy effect on the mind of the attentive
spectator. In the Oildipus of Sophocles, (Act
IV. sc. 3.) the Corinthian shepherd says to
ffidipus in the presence of Jocaste that he may
return without fear to Corinth ; that Merope is
not his mother, nor Polybius his father ; that he
himself, the shepherd, had discovered him on
the mountain Cithseron, and brought him from
thence to Corinth. This declaration must needs
strike the mind of Jocaste like a thunderbolt.
She is now fully informed with regard to her
terrible fate. She had caused her son to be
exposed on that very mountain, for fear that he
might some time murder his father Laius ac-
cording to the oracle. OEdipus w^as found on
that mountain, and is now her husband. The
dark sayings of Tiresias and the whole of the
terrible mystery are suddenly made clear to her
soul. But she is dumb. Grief has so stupified
her that she stands there like a pillar. Her
husband and son continues to inquire of the
shepherd. What despair must have shown
itself in her looks during this conversation!
Oildipus, tormented by the most dreadful doubts,
is impelled by his rashness to put a question to
her also. Now she suddenly w^akes from her
death-slumber.

Joe. How, what did he say? For the sake of heaven, if tliou
lovest thyself, cease to inquire farther. I am sufficienlly misera-
ble thus.

(Edip. Be calm ' And though I were descended from three-fold
slaves, it cannot dishonour thee.

Joe. Nevertheless, obey me ! Be entreated ! O do it not !

(Edip. Nay ! 1 must bring the truth to light.

Joe. Ah ! Knowest tliou what weighty reasons I have for pre-
ventiiif? thee 1

(Edip. It is even these secret reasons which double my unea-
siness.

Joe. [aside). Miserable! 0 that thou mightest never learn who
thou art !

(Edip. Bring hither the other shepherd speedily. Let the queen
be ashamed of my condition if she will, and be proud of her own.

Juc. Alas ! alas ! Thou mo.st miserable of aU mortals ! This is
all that 1 have to say to thee. 1 cau endure it no longer. {Exit.)

So speaks the true sublime in passion. The
dumbness of Jocaste, so long as the discourse
was not addressed to her, the wild, despairing
looks, the oppression, the convulsive trembling
in every joint, with which a good actress woukl
accompany this dreadful silence, produce the
utmost terror in the spectators, who are kept in
a state of constant expectation by the impatience
of Qi!dipus, and the near development of the
great mystery. They are not yet indeed fully
informed as to the fate of Jocaste ; but so much
the more terrible are the anticipations to which
her conduct, the responses of the oracles, and
the sayings gf Tiresias, give rise.

At length, she speaks ; but what words ! what
perplexity ! " How 1 What said he ?"' &c. In
departing, she gives us plainly enough to un-
derstand what purpose she nourishes in her
breast, and hastens to execute without wit-
nesses. " This is all that I liave to say to tViee ;
I can endure no longer!" Who does not now

tremble for her life ? Who does not follow her
with tlie eyes, and wish that she might not be
left to herself, in her despair? CEdipus, only,
is too much occupied with himself, and appre-
hends no danger on her part. She departs, and
we learn, in the beginning of the fifth act, that
our fear was but too well founded.

So much for the sublime of the first class, in
which the ground of admiration is to be found
in the object itself, which is brought before us.
Perhaps I have dwelt on it too long; but the
sublime in sentiment required a more detailed
exposition from the circumstance that, among
all the examples of the sublime which Longinus
adduces, there is to be found scarcely one which
can be ranked in this class. I except the case
of the silence of Ajax, which really belongs
here, as also the well-known exclamation of
thathero: "0! Father Zeus! deliver the Greeks
from darkness! Let it be light, that our eyes
may see once more. In the light of day destroy
us, if thou hast so determined !'' — which Longi-
nus quotes in his ninth section.

The secontl class of the sublime is that in
which the admiration is directed rather to the
art of representing than to the representation
itself; and, therefore, as was shown above,
recurs, for the most part, to the genius and the
wonderful abilities of the author. The object
in itself may contain nothing lofty, nothing ex-
traordinary ; but we admire the great talents
of the poet, his happy imagination, his power
of invention, his deep insight into the nature
of things, into characters and passions, and the
noble manner in which he has known how to
express his excellent thoughts. A man rolling
in the agonies of death, on the field of battle,
is not, in itself, a remarkable object. But who
does not admire the genius of a Klopstock in
describing this circumstance. It was a happy
conception, in the outset, — and one which
opened a field for great thoughts, — to place an
atheist instead of an ordinary man in this
situation.

And the victor approaching,

And the rearing steed, and the din of the sounding armour,
And tlie cries and the rage of the slaying and the thundering

heaven
Storms over him. He lies and sinks with cloven head,
Stupid and miconscious among the dead, and thmks he is passing

away.
Again he lifts himself up and still is, and thinks still, and curses,
Because he still is, and spurts with his pale dying fingers
Blood toward heaven ; curses God and would fain yet deny him.

That which the painters call fracas, — the
wild tumult on a field of battle, — which is here
described with admirable traits, throws the
mind of the reader into the utmost commotion.
The raving despair of the atheist, mIio nov/
feels that there is a God, in the midst of this
terrible uproar, attracts our whole attention and
fills us with disgust and amazement. The
horrible, the dreadful assails us on every side.
On all hands we have the sensibly immeasur-
able, which causes a shuddering sensation, one
after another, and, agreeably to the explanation

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

113

given above, maintains the feeling of the
sublime. What a thought,

Curses God and would fain yet deny him I
*****

But there are also some objects entirely de-
void of interest in themselves, which give the
artist not the least advantage and leave it
entirely to the power of his genius, how far
they shall appear sublime to us, i. c, how far
they shall excite our admiration. An example
of this kind is the passage quoted by Longinus
from Demosthenes. "Will ye then — confess to
me — will ye then run back and forth continu-
ally and ask among yourselves what is there
new ■? What can be more new than that one
man from ]\Iacedonia makes war upon all
Greece? Is Philip dead? No, by the Gods!
he is only indisposed. But 0 ! ye Athenians,
what is that to you? Suppose, that which is
human should happen to him ; assuredly you
would make to yourselves another Philip."
What is there great in this passage? What
else awakens the idea of the immeasurable
here, but the wonderful mind of the orator who
knows how to avail himself so felicitously of
the most insignificant circumstances, in order to
give life, emphasis, and inspiration to his dis-
course?

No one is more happy in taking advantage
of the commonest circumstances and making
them sublime, by a fortunate turn, than Shak-
spoare. The effect of this species of the
sublime must necessarily be stronger, the more
unexpectedly it surprises us and the less pre-
pared we were to anticipate such weighty and
tragic consequences from such trivial causes.
I will give one or two examples of this, out of
Hamlet. The king institutes public entertain-
ments in order to dissipate the melancholy of
the prince. Plays are performed. Hamlet has
seen the tragedy of Hecuba. He appears to
be in good humour. The company leaves him ;
and now mark with astonishment the tragic
consequence v/hich Shakspeare knows how to
draw from these trivial common circumstances.
The prince soliloquizes,

0 ! what a rogue and peasant slave am I !

Is it not monstrous that tliis player liere,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force liis soul so to his own conceit.

That from her working all his visage wanned ;

Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,

A broken voice and his wliole function suiting

With forms to his conceit ! And all for nothing !

For Hecuba !

What 's Heculm to him or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her ? Wliat would he do

Had he tlie motive and the cue for passion

That 1 have ?

What a master-trait ! Experience teaches that
persons afflicted with melancholy find unex-
pectedly in every occasion, even in entertain-
ments, a transition to the prevailing idea of
their grief; and the more it is attempted to
divert them from it, the more suddenly they fall
Dack. This experience guided the genius of

Shakspeare wherever he had to depict melan
choly. His Hamlet and his Lear are full of
these unexpected transitions causing terror to
the spectator.

Li the third act, Guildenstern, a former con-
fidant of Hamlet, at the instigation of the king
endeavours to sound him and to ascertain the
secret cause of his melancholy. The prince
detects his purpose and resents it.

Guild. 0, my lord ! if my duty be too bold, my love is too un-
mannerly.

Ham. I do not vyell understand that. Will you play upon this
pipe?

Guild. My lord, I cannot.

Ham. I pray you.

Gitil. Beheve me 1 cannot.

Ham. 1 do beseech you.

GuU. I know no touch of it, my lord.

Ham. 'Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your
finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will
discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

Guil. But these cannot I command to any utterance of har-
mony ; I have not the skill.

Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing do you make
of rne ! You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my
stops ; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of
my compass : and there is much music, excellent voice in this
little organ ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'S blood ! do you
think 1 am easier to be played on than a pipe ! Call me what
instrument you wiU, though you can fret me you cannot play
upon me.

None but Shakspeare must venture to intro-
duce such common matters upon the stage, for
no one but he possesses the art to use them.
Must not the spectator, in this case, be as much
amazed as Guildenstern, who feels the superior
address of the prince, and withdraws, covered
with shame ?

If the artist wishes to give us, in his work, a
clear and sensible proof of those perfections
which he possesses in the highest degree, he
must direct his attention to the highest beauties
which can animate his description. The litde
touches of the pencil, it is true, attest the
finishing hand of the master, his diligence and
his care to please. But it is not in them, cer-
tainly, that we are to look for the sublime which
deserves our ad^Tliration. Admiration is a
tribute which we owe to extraordinary gifts of
mind. These are what we call genius in the
strictest sense. Accordingly, wherever, in a
work of art, there are found sensible marks of
genius, there we are ready to accord to the
artist the admiration which is his due. But the
unimportant adjuncts, the last finish — that
which belongs indeed to the picture, but does
not constitute an essential part of the picture —
exhibits too plainly the diligence and the care
which it has cost the artist; and we are accus-
tomed to deduct so much from genius as we
ascribe to diligence.

It appears then that, in this class of the sub-
lime, the artist is free to use the whole wealth
of his art in order to place in their true light
the beauties which he has introduced by a
happy thought. And herein this kind dis-
tinguishes itself from the former in which the
naive and inartificial mode of treatment is pre-
ferable. Nevertheless, even here, the artist
10*

114

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

must not honour with too much care and labour
those little beauties which perhaps would oc-
cupy minds of a lower order for a long time ;
and he may only then not reject them, when
they offer themselves, as it were, unbidden.

I shall content myself with adducing a single
example. The sacred Psalmist says of the Sun,
(Ps. xix. G.)

" He coiiieth forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber,
And rejoiceth like a hero to run a race."

Both images are uncommonly sublime and in
the last, especially, Hogarth finds a similarity
of thought to the celebrated antique — the Apollo

whom the artist has happily characterized,

as the God of day, by the swiftness with which
he seems to step forth and to shoot his arrows ;

if the arrow can be regarded as intended to

signify the rays of the sun. But these great
beauties, even in tlie hands of so great a master
as Rousseau, if not entirely dissipated, are at
least very much degraded from their sublimity
by too diligent elaboration. . ,

Cet astre ouvre sa carriere

Comme uu Epoux gloneux, »

Qui des I'Aube matinale

De sa couche nuptiale

Sort brillant et radieux. .,;

L' universe u sa presence

Semble sortir du neant. ^ . " ■"

n prend sa course, il s'avance, ■ -

Comme un superb geant.

Here we find eight words of the original text
spread out into nine verses ; but how have they
suflered by this extension! * * *
*******

For the rest, it is evident from our explana-
tion, that this second class of the sublime may I
consist in the thoughts as well as the expression;
and — as it respects the thoughts — in the under-
standing as well as the imagination, in the
creative power, in the comparisons, in striking
sentences, sentiments, descriptions of characters,
passions, the manners of men and objects in
Nature ; — and, as it respects the expression — in
the use of ornate diction, in the choice of epithets
designating the most sensuous qualities, in the
arrangement and connection of words, and final-
ly, in the euphony and harmony of the periods.
For the artist may display his extraordinary
talents by all these beauties.

It will not be necessary to remind the reader
that both kinds of the sublime are often found
united in works of art. In the essay on the first
principles of art it has been already observed,
with respect to imitation, that our pleasure in
a successful likeness of imitative art is far
greater than our pleasure in a form produced
by Nature herself, because in the former case,
the idea of the artist comes in and heightens the
enjoyment. Now tliis is true not only of imita-
tion, but of all beauty, as it was also there
renrarked. They please far more when they
are viewed, at the same time, as expressions of
the perfections of the artist who produced them.
Although he must not seek, of himself, to appear
and to shine, yet there will always remain some

footprints of genius which occasionally betray
him and indicate the giant who stamped them
there. Therefore, in many cases, subjective
sublimity may be united with objective. But
the expression will admit of more or less orna-
ment, according as our admiration is directed
rather to the object itself, or to the skill of the
artist. This must depend, in particular cases,
on the nature of the subject to be handled and
on the design of the artist.

It would be superfluous, moreover, to illustrate
all these remarks with examples, since the
treatise of Longinus, who seems to occupy him-
self singly and exclusively with the second
species of the sublime, is in every one's hands.
My design was merely to make the idea of the
sublime, which is often talked about in connec-
tion with works of the fine arts, a little clearer ;
and I am satisfied if I have not been wholly
unsuccessful m this attempt. I shall content
myself with adding one or two remarks.

Longinus says, in the sevendi division of his
work, " You may be assured, in general, that that
is really beautiful and sublime which pleases
always and all men." Perrault is not satisfied
with this proposition of Longinus, and says of
it, in his answer to the eleventh observation of
Boileau on Longinus, that, according to this pre-
cept, the sublime would be extremely rare, since
men of different age, different education and
mode of life conceive the same thing in very
different ways. It seems to me that Perrault is
right, so far as the sublime of the second class
is concerned. It requires oftentimes a very
deep insight into the mysteries of art, to be able
to admire the talents of the artist. And how
small is the number of the noble ones who pos-
sess this insight! But the sublime in the object,
and, especially, the sublime in sentiment, surely
move men of all classes, as soon as they under-
stand the words by which it is expressed.

Nay, men of ordinary minds, whose feeling
is not entirely perverted, must admire the sub-
lime in sentiment the more, the more it exceeds
their way of thinking and the less they had sup-
posed the human soul to possess such perfec-
tions. It is objected that the most refined critics
have disputed with regard to certain passages,
whether they are to be classed with the sublime.
For example, the passage from the holy scrip-
tures, " God said, Let there be light, and there
was light," belongs unquestionably to the sub-
lime of the first class, and yet its sublimity has
been doubted by many discerning minds. Where
then, in this case, is the agreement which we
are to regard as a criterion of the sublime of the
first class? But let it be considered that the op-
ponents of Longinus have never doubted that
the fact in itself—" God said. Let there be light,
and there was light" — is sublime. Only they
have refused to concede that it was the inten-
tion of the Lawgiver to say something sublime
with these words ; that is, they allowed to this
passage a sublimity of the first class, and only
doubted whether that of the second class could

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

115

be ascribed to it. One sees too, with wonder,
in the controversies respecting this passage, how
little the critics have been willing to under-
stand one another. The one party appeals con-
tinually to the sublimity of the act and the
simplicity of the language, the other party is
silent on this point and speaks only of the pur-
pose of the Lawgiver, who, to speak after the
manner of men, did not assuredly mean in this
passage, to tax his mental faculties to say some-
thing sublime. Had they explained themselves,
the controversy would have been at an end.

Longinus, therefore, is not only right in saying
that what pleases always and all men is really
beautiful and sublime, but, so far as the sublime
of the first class is concerned, we may invert
the proposition and say that the sublime must
always please and please all men. The words
of the Greek critic, which immediately follow,
prove moreover that he is actually speaking of
the sublime of the first class, when he says that
it pleases always and all men, although he has
never expressly pointed out this essential dis-
tinction. He says : " When people of various
tastes, of dissimilar habits, differing in know-
ledge and in years, have been moved by the
same thing, the consent of so many diversities
affords us so much the greater certainty, that
what is so admired must infallibly possess sub-
limity."

For the rest, since the sublime is found only
in connection with great and extraordinary
powers of mind, ordinary wit or the faculty of
seeing, in things that differ, unimportant resem-
blances, is justly excluded, as well from the
sublime of the first, as of the second class.
Pointed antitheses, epigrammatic conceits, far-
fetched and artificial wit, may amuse and en-
tertain us pleasantly enough for a time, but they
can never excite admiration. They may even
hinder it, inasmuch as they are marks of a little
mind which makes an insignificant relation,
discovered by it, a matter of importance. The
smallest soul has something more important to
do, in a moment of strong emotion, than to no-
tice insignificant allusions and relations and to
dwell upon them. Only an indifferent mind
can be so oppressed with ennui as to find en-
tertainment in trifles.

All this, however, applies only to common,
hair-splitting wit. There is a great and noble
kind founded not in empty likenesses and idle
allusions and relations, but in fruitful truths and
often in worthy sentiments. This higher wit
is a fruitful source of the sublime and the ad-
mirable in the fine arts. Even the most vehe-
ment passion does not exclude antitheses which
rest on some important truth or sentiment. The
good writers of antiquity knew only this genuine
species of wit, which entertains, moves and in-
structs at the same time. In the place of this,
some of their followers introduced an empty
shimmer, which rather dazzles than illumines.
The following are examples of sublime
thoughts clothed in wit.

The answer of Alexander when Parmenio
said to him ; " I would accept the offer of Da-
rius if I were Alexander ;" " So would I," re-
plied the prince, " if I were Parmenio."

" He who would fear nothing," says an an-
cient philosopher, "let him learn to fear God."
From this probably arose the sublime verse of
Racine :

Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et n'ai point d 'autre crainte.

Aihalk, Act I. Sc. 1.

Omnia terrarum subacta

Prseter atrocem animuni Catonis. — Horat.

Neque Cato post libertatem visit neque libertas post Catonem.

Senec.

Tout etait Dieu excepts Dieu me me ; et le monJe que Dieu
avail fait pour manifester sa puissance, semhlait etre deveuu un
temple d'ldoles. — Bossuet. Hist. Univ.

Fern unter ihnen hat das menschliche Geschlecht,
Im Hinmiel und im Niclits, em doppelt Biirgerrecht.
Aus ungleich festem Stoff liat Gott es auserlesen,
Halb zu der Ewigkeit, halb aber zum Verweseu.
Zweideutig Mitteldnig von Engeln und von Vieli,
Ks uberlebt sich selbst und stirbt und stirbet nie.

Holler.

• Examples of pathetic or passion-moving anti-
theses : —

How doth the city sit solitary that vpas fuU of people ! The
greatest among the nations, the princess of the provinces is be-
come tributary \—Jerem. Lam. c. i, v. 1.

Anibalem pater fiho meo potui placare. Filium Anibali non

possum. Vultum ipsius Anibalis quern armati exercitus susti-

nere nequeunt, quem horret populus Romanus, — tu sustniebis ?

Deterreri hie sine te potius, quam illic vinoi. Valeant apud

te meae preces, sicut pro te hodie valuerunt. — Tit. Liv. I. 23.

Leve toi trisle objet d'horreur et de tendresse ;
Leve toi cher appui qu'esperait ma vieillesse :
Viens embrasser ton pere ! 11 t'a du condamner,
Mais s'll n'etait Brutus U t'allait pardonner.
Va, ne t'attendris pomt ; sois plus Romain que moi ;
Et que Rome t'admire en se vengeant de toi.

Sruttis, Act V. Sc. 7.

The sublime, in genera], and especially that
of the first class, stands in such close connection
with the naive in expression, as has been al-
ready suggested above, that it may not be un-
suitable to inquire here wherein the naive con-
sists, and how far it may be used in the works
of the fine arts.

We have no German word to denote this pro-
perty. 'Natural,' 'artless,' expresses too little.
Men often, in common life, express themselves
naturally and artlessly without being naive.
'Noble simplicity,' on the other hand, expresses
too much and denotes only a certain species of
the naive. We often say of certain comical
expressions, that they are naive, although they
are anything but noble. We must, therefore,
make use of this outlandish word ; but we will
endeavour to ascertain the idea which is usually
connected with it.

Simplicity is unquestionably a necessary in.
gredient of naivete. As soon as an expression
becomes profound, vivid, highly ornate, naivete
must be altogether denied it; and, so far, the
sublime in expression is opposed to the naive.
But mere simplicity is not enough. Beneath
this simple exterior there must lie a beautiful

116

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

thought, an important truth, a noble sentiment
or passion, which utters itself in an inartificial
manner. A merely simple expression leaves
us unaffected, but when a beautiful thought
dwells, like a lofty soul, in this unadorned body,
our heart is touched with a soft emotion, and
we exclaim with pleasure, How naive ! The
country manners prevalent in our times are ex-
tremely simple; but are they naive like the
manners of the Arcadian shepherds and other
citizens of the golden age, which probably never
existed except in the imagination of the poet?
And what other reason is there for this differ-
ence, but the noble sentiments imputed to the
latter, in addition to their external simplicity?
Perhaps then, we may establish the following
definition : When an object is noble, beautiful,
or is associated with important consequences,
and is indicated by a simple sign, we call the
designation naive.

This definition would be perfectly applicable
to all those cases in which the person, into
whose mouth the naive saying is put, has really
beautiful, noble or significant thoughts, and only
makes use of simple expressions. For example,
Virgil says in his third eclogue,

Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella,
£t fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.

This is uncommonly naive. The hiding of

Galatea appears to be mere innocent sport; but

there is a tender affection at the bottom of it.

She provokes the shepherd by this agreeable

play to pursue her behind the willows. She

could not more happily signify to him her secret

passion.

*******

The epigrammatic inscription on the brazen

cow of Myron,

Herdsman, wherefore liurriest thou

Back so far for me ?

Why thy goad upUftest now

And urgest me to flee ?

I am the artist Myron's cow

And cannot go with thee,

is naive for the same reason ; because, at first
sight, it seems to be a mere narrative, but, in
reality, contains a very flattering compliment to
the artist.

Derision also sometimes assumes the air of
innocent narrative in order to conceal its design,
and thereby to make the satire more biting.
Praise and blame are both the more emphatic,
the less designed and the more accidental they

appear.
*

* * * *

On dit que I'Abhe Roquette
Preclie les sermons d'autrui :

Moi qui scais qu'il les acliete,
Je soutieus qu'ils sont a lui.

Boiteaw.

Huissiers, qu'on fasse sQence!
Dit en tenant audience
Un President de Bauge';
C'est un bruit a tete fendre,

Nous avons deja juge
Dix causes sans les entendre.

.7. B. Rousseau.

Praise sometimes wears the mask of reproach,

and is all the more flattering :

Helas qu'est devenu ce terns, cet heureux temps
Ou les Rois s'honoraient du nom de faineans I

And so, inversely, blame sometimes takes the

guise of eulogy, whereby the irony is rendered

more severe.

*******

La Fontaine loses his benefactress, Madame
de Lasabliere, and meets his friend, M. d'Her-
vart. "My dear La Fontaine," said his honest
friend, " I have heard of the misfortune which
has befallen you. You resided with Madame
de Lasabliere ; she is dead. I wished to pro-
pose to you to come and live with me." "I
was just going there," answered La Fontaine.

Generally, the naive in moral character con-
sists in an external simplicity, which uninten-
tionally discovers internal worth ; in ignorance
of the world's ways ; in unconcern about false
interpretation, in that confiding manner which
is not founded in stupidity and want of ideas,
but in magnanimity, innocence, goodness of
heart, and an amiable persuasion that others
are not worse disposed toward us, than we
are toward them. If, therefore, we regard the
external conduct of men as the sign of their
internal character and worth, the naive, here
too, will require simplicity of expression, toge-
ther v/ith dignity and significance in the thing
expressed.

It is the same with the naive in the human
countenance, which is so essential to the painter
and sculptor. It is always the unstudied, the
artless in exterior, undesignedly evincing inter-
nal excellence. Since the features, the airs and
gestures of men are signs of their propensities
and sentiments; since every feature in the
countenance expresses a propensity, and every
mien an emotion corresponding to it, a naive
character is ascribed to the tout ensemble of all
the features and gestures, when, as it were,
without design, without pretence, without self-
consciousness, they discover a happy and harmo-
nious combination of tendencies and sentiments.
Hence the naive in the character of a child,
when, amidst the otherwise monotonous fea-
tures of a childish face, tender germs of meek-
ness, love, innocence and graciousness appear.

Grace, or elevated beauty in movement, is
also connected with the naive, inasmuch as the
movements which cliarm us are natural, have
an easy flow, and slide gently one into another,
and unintentionally and unconsciously indicate
that the motive forces in the soul, from which
these voluntary motions flow, sport and unfold
themselves in the same unstudied, harmonious,
and artless manner. Hence, the idea of inno-
cence and of moral simplicity is always asso-
ciated with a lofty grace. The more this beauty
of motion is combined with consciousness and
appears to be the work of design, the more it
departs from the naive and acquires a studied
character; and, wrien the accompanying inter-
nal emotions do not agree with it, an affected

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

117

character. Nothing is so disgusting as insipid
naivete, or an outward simplicity which ap-
pears to have designs and makes pretensions.

On the other hand, when simplicity in mo-
tion betrays, at the same time, want of thought
and want of feeling, it is called stupidity; and
when inactivity is added, we have the niais.
In general, then, according to these considera-
tions, it requires, in all cases, an artless external
simplicity, together with internal worth or signi-
licance, to constitute the naive.

There are cases, however, where he who
speaks naively has really nothing more in his
mind than the words he makes use of express,
and consequently discovers, on his part, no
more of internal worth than appears outwardly,
but where the hearers, by means of other cir-
cumstances, are enabled to connect a good deal
more with those words which seem so indif-
ferent, or to draw important consequences from
them.

*******

The well-known passage in Gellert :*■—

" Wliat did you say, Papa ? You made a mistake ;

You said I was only fourteen years old."
"No! fourteen years and seven weeks,"

is uncommonly naive, because the speaker,
(Fiekchen), without perceiving it, betrays the
secret wishes of her heart. She means to set
her father right, to show him that he has mis-
calculated by seven weeks, and, in doing so,
shows how carefully she must have calculated
herself Contrary to her purpose, therefore, she
says more than she meant to say ; and yet we
call her answer naive.

Thus we sometimes, from haste, let fall a
naive word, whereby we betray an imj^ortant
secret.

When this takes place in the heat of passion,
a naive betrayal of the most secret thoughts
may have a very tragic effect. There is a trait
of this kind in the Romeo and Juliet of Herr
Weisse. The Countess Capulet, who is far from
suspecting that her Juliet is in love with Romeo,
but, on the contrary, has reason to suppose that
she hates this Montague, as all her family hate
and prosecute him, because he has killed her
cousin Tybalt, (on account of whose death Juliet
pretends to be inconsolable, while the absence
of Romeo is the real cause of her grief) — this
Countess Capulet comes to cheer her daughter,
and to inform her that the Count of Lodrona
has applied for her hand.

Mad. Capukt. I bring you joyful news, Juliet ; joyful for us
all, especially joyful for you.

Jiihd (qmr.kly). Has Romeo been vaxioneil. — {Frightened).
Alas ! how weak my head is. Is Romeo punished ?

A French writer (Diet. Encycl. Art. Naivete)
makes a distinction, which seems to be war-
ranted by the use of language, between naivete
and a naivete. A naivete, he says, is the name
we give to a thought, a trait of the imagination,

* Fabeln und Erziihlungen, 2 B. s. 115.

a sentiment which escapes us against our will
and may sometimes injure us ; an expression
originating in vivacity, carelessness, inexperi-
ence of the ways of the world. Of this de-
scription is the answer of a wife to her dying
husband, who was designating the person
whom he wished her to marry after his death :
"Take him," said he, "you will be happy with
him!" "Ah, yes," replied she, "I have often
thought of it."

Naivete, on the other hand, is the language
of fine genius and of discerning simplicity. It
is the most simple picture of a refined and in-
genious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in
whom it is not natural.

But, since both kinds of die naive have cer-
tain marks in common, it will be necessary, in
order not to exclude any of diem, to extend our
definition of the naive somewhat. Wjien, by
a simple expression, something is understood
to be designated, which is important in itself
or may have important consequences, whether
it be the design of the speaker to imply more
than he says, or whether without purpose, and,
sometimes, against his purpose, he betrays more
than he says, the expression is called, in each
of these cases, naive.

» » * * *

The efiects of the naive are, first, an agree-
able astonishment, a slight degree of wonder
at the unexpected significance which lay con-
cealed beneath an outward simplicity. We
love to fix our attention on an object which re-
veals to us more and more, the longer we dwell
upon it, which performs, as it were, more than
it seemed to promise. If now, this interior
significance arises from a high degree of per-
fection, there ensnes the feeling of awe which
accompanies the sublime; but combined with
a joyous sensation which approaches very
nearly to laughter. For the simplicity of the
expression forms a kind of contrast with the
importance of the thing signified, or with the
consequences flowing from it, which tempts to
laughter, and the sense of diis contrast, if not
suppressed by stronger sentiments, manifests it-
self in actual laughter. When overpowered by
the sublime, it is no longer laughter, which the
contrast produces, but the trace of a gracious
smile which plays about the lips and loses itself
in lofty admiration. This is always the feeling
which we have when surprised by the naive in
moral character. The man devoid of sentiment,
who judges according to appearance, will not
witness the morally naive without laughing;
for he sees nothing more than the contrast with
the customs of the world which he knows
better, and the strangeness of that too certain
confidence in the goodness of others, which
provokes him to loud laughter. The man of
sensitive heart, on the contrary, sees through to
the inner worth, recognises the m.agnanimity
from which that indecision and seeming strange-
ness spring; and while his lips move them-
selves to laugh, a feeling of awe comes over his

118

MOSES MENDELSSOHN.

heart and resolves the laugh into wondering
meditation. The naive in the features of the
countenance produces a similar effect, only that
the inclination to laugh, in this case, will mani-
fest itself with much weaker indications, be-
cause the contrast here is not so obvious. The
man devoid of sentiment will contemplate it
with indifferent eyes because the air and the
features seem to him unmeaning ; and, with
the more discerning, the contrast produces no
other effect than a gentle opening of the lips
and an almost imperceptible lengthening of the
mouth, which is rather an approval than a
smile.

If the essence of the naive is an evil, — not a
dangerous one, — a w^eakness, an error, a folly
which is not followed by any perceptible mis-
fortune, the naive is merely ludicrous. In this
case, the effect will differ according as the in-
dividual, from whom it comes, intends that
more should be understood than he says, or,
unintentionally, betrays more than he says. In
the former case, he makes us laugh ; in the
latter, he makes himself ridiculous. Of this
examples enough have been given above, and
the application is so easy that we may reason-
ably leave it to the reader.

But when the essence of the naive consists
in actual danger, a misfortune which befalls
some one in whose fate we are interested, the
naive is tragic, and when the danger is a
dreaded consequence of the naive, the effect is
terrible and prostrates every feeling of the
ludicrous. An example of this is the above-

mentioned passage from Romeo and Juliet.
Another, equally striking, is the too ingenuous
confession of Monime in the Mithridates of
Racine ; when this princess suffers herself to
be betrayed into confidential communications
by the wily Mithridates and confesses to him
her love-affairs, but perceives with terror, during
the relation, that Mithridates loses colour and
begins to grow pale with rage.

But when the dreaded evil is not a conse-
quence of the naivete, but is connected with it
in some other way, — as sign with the thing
signified, — the smile which the perception of
the contrast provokes may consist with the sad-
dest emotions. Andromache smiles at the
simple fears of the little Astyanax, and, at the
same time, scalding tears roll down her cheeks.
The whole pit laughs at the innocence of the
little Arabella,* without detriment to the tragic
sensation. Nay, our compassion for these chil-
dren is the more lively, the more they show by
their naive conduct, that they are unconscious
of the misfortune in which they are most nearly
concerned. Whence it is evident, how un-
founded is the opinion of some critics, who
would have all sentiments which contain any
touch of the ludicrous, banished from the tragic
stage.

This matter deserves further discussion, but
it does not belong to the object which I had
proposed to myself.

* An allusion to Lessing's " Miss Sarah Sampson."
Tr.

JOHANN GEORG HAMANN.

Born 1730. Died 17SS.

The "Magus of the North," as he was
pleased to style himself in his contributions to
the periodical literature of his time, is a name
little celebrated beyond the select circle of his
admirers, but greatly honored within that circle.
Hamann was one of those who waken an in-
tense interest in a few, and none at all in the
mass.

A native of Konigsberg, in compliance with
the wishes of his father, he studied theology at
the university in that city. But an impedi-
ment in his speech and a preference for criti-
cism, philology and poetry, induced him to
devote himself principally to those pursuits and
to make the Law his nominal profession. In
1752 he entered the family of the Baroness of
Budberg, in Kurland, as a private tutor ; after-
ward that of General von Witten in the same
capacity, and in 1755 became domesticated
with a merchant in Riga where he grew so
familiar with the business of commerce, that he
undertook a mercantile expedition to Holland
and England. The ill success of this enter-
prise occasioned him deep chagrin, and, while
in London, he resolved on a change of life. He
turned his attention to religion, but without
resuming theology as a profession. He returned
to Riga where he resided a few years, and after-
ward to his native city ; devoting himself to
literary pursuits and particularly to ancient
literature and the Oriental languages. In 1764
he made the tour of Germany and Switzerland,
and went to Warsaw in the capacity of tra-
velling tutor to a nobleman from Kurland. In
1777 he received an appointment under the
Prussian Government to an office connected
with the Customs-department, in Konigsberg.
In 1784 a pension bestowed by a kind patron
gave him a pecuniary independence and the
means of devoting himself entirely to letters.
But, before he could reap the full benefit of
this provision, he was overtaken by death, on a
journey for the benefit of his health, June 21st,
1788.

Hamann is indebted for his reputation to the

testimony of a few names of the highest mark,
such as Herder, Jacobi, Goethe, and Jean Paul,
rather than to any great popularity which his
works have had with the German Public. He
belonged to that class of writers vvho love the
shade and lose more by obscurity than they
gain by originality ; — who repel, by the un-
couth shapes, in which their thoughts are dis-
guised, more readers than they attract by the
rarity and pickedness of the thoughts them-
selves. He is a humorist, but of a sombre
complexion, with a strong dash of cynicism.
At the same time, a deep religious sentiment
pervades his writings which show him to be an
orthodox believer, according to the letter, like
his contemporary — in all else, his antipodes —
Matthias Claudius. " The Kernel of his works,"
says Herder, " contains many seed-corns of
great truths, new observations and the results
of a wonderfully extensive reading ; the shell
is a laborious texture of strong expressions,
allusions and word-flowers. He read much and
with taste {multum et multa), but the balsam-
odors from the ethereal table of the ancients,
mixed with occasional vapors of Gaul and the
steam of British humor, formed a perfect cloud
around him. His observations often combine
a whole view in a single view-point; but let
the reader stand at that view-point, otherwise
he will see everything askew, and common
mould instead of microscopic forests. Every
thought of his is an unstrung pearl; every
thought is wTapped in the very word without
which it could neither have been thought nor
spoken."

" The great Hamann," says Jean Paul, " is
a deep sky full of telescopic stars, with many
a nebula which no eye can xesolve." And
again, "Hamann's style is a river which the
storm drives back toward its source, making it
innavigable for Dutch market-boats."

But the best account of Hamann is that given
by Goethe in his autobiography.*

" Since I was tempted to the Sibylline cha-
racter which I gave to these leaves, as well as

* " Aus meinem Leben." Zwolftes Buch.

(119)

120

HAMANN.

to tlie publication of them, by Hamann, this
seems to me a proper place to speak of that
worthy and influential man, who was to us
then as great a mystery, as he has been to his
country ever since. His " Socratic Memora-
bilia" excited attention and were especially
dear to those who could not adjust themselves
to the dazzling spirit of the times. They
seemed to reveal a deep-thinking, thorough
man, who, while he was well acquainted with
the public world and literature, still held to
something secret and inscrutable, and expressed
himself in a very peculiar way concerning it.
He was regarded indeed, by those who ruled
the literature of the day, as an abstruse enthu-
siast ; but the upstriving youth of the country
yielded itself witliout resistance to his attrac-
tion. Even " the silent in the land,'" as — half
in jest and half in earnest — they were called ;
those pious souls, who without confessing to
any particular communion, formed an invisible
church, turned their attention toward him, and
to my Klettenberg, as well as to her friend
Moser, tlie ' Magus of the North,' was a wel-
come phenomenon. One inclined the rather
to come into relations with him, since it was
understood that, though distressed with tlie
narrowness of domestic circumstances, he could
still maintain this beautiful and lofly way of
thinking. With President von Moser's great
influence, it would have been easy to provide
a tolerable and comfortable existence for a
man of such simple habits. In fact an opening
was made and the mutual understanding and
approximation between them had gone so far,
that Hamann undertook the long journey from
Konigsberg to Darmstadt. But the president
being accidentally absent, that strange indivi-
dual — for what reason, no one knew — imme-
diately returned. Notwithstanding, a friendly
correspondence was still maintained. I possess
to this day two letters of the Konigsberger to
his patron, which bear witness to the wonder-
ful greatness and intensity of tlieir author.

" But so good an understanding was not long
to remain. These pious persons had imagined
him pious too, after their fashion. They had
regarded him with reverence as the 'Magus
of the North,' and supposed that he would al-
ways continue to present a venerable aspect.
But already in his 'Clouds,' an afterpiece to
the ' Socratic Memorabilia,' he had given
some offence; and when, after that, he published
the ' Crusades of a Philologian,' which not

only exhibits on its title-page the goats-profile
of a horned Pan, but on one of the first leaves
of which, also, a large cock, in wood-engraving,
beating time to young cockerels who stand
before iiim with notes in their claws, shows
himself, in the highest degree, ludicrous; —
whereby certain pieces of church-music, not
approved by the author, were intended to be
ridiculed ; — tlien arose, among the well-mean-
ing and persons of delicate feeling, an aversion
which the author was soon made to perceive,
while he, on his part, not edified thereby, with-
drew himself from a nearer connection with
them. ******

" The principle to which the various declara-
tions of Hamann may be reduced, is this : 'All
that man undertakes, whether with word or
deed, or however performed, should be the
result of the union of all his powers; every
partial effort is to be condemned.' A glorious
maxim ! but difficult to observe. With respect
to life and art it may do very well. But in
every communication by word whicli is not
poetical, there is great difficulty in carrying it
out. For the word, in order to express any-
thing, in order to mean anything, must detach
itself, must individuate itself. Man, when he
speaks, must, for the moment, become one-
sided ; there can be no communication, no doc-
trine, without separation. But as Hamann,
once for all, resisted this separation and under-
took to speak as he felt, imagined, thought,
with perfect unity, and demanded the same of
others, he came into collision with his own
style and with all that others might produce.
In order to perform the impossible, he grasps
at all the elements. The deepest, mysterious
intuitions, where Nature and Spirit meet in se-
cret, the illuminating flashes of the understand-
ing which burst forth from such meeting, the sig-
nificant images that hover in those regions, the
sayings of sacred and profane writers crowding
upon him, and whatever else may adjoin itself,
humoristically, hereto, — all this forms the won-
drous whole of his style, of his communications.
Unable to associate with him in the deeps, to
wander with him on the heights, to make our-
selves masters of the forms which float before
him, to discover the sense of a passage, which
is merely indicated, in an infinitely extended
literature ; — it grows ever thicker and darker
around us, the more we study him. And this
darkness will increase with coming years,

HAMANN.

121

because his allusions are directed principally to
certain peculiarities dominant, at the time, in
literature and life. In my collection there are
some of his printed sheets in which he has
cited, with his own hand, in the margin, the
passages to which he alludes. On turning to
those passages, one is met again by an equivo-
cal double-light which is in the highest degree
agreeable; only one must renounce entirely
what is usually called understanding. Such
leaves, therefore, deserve to be called Sibylline,
because one cannot contemplate them in and
for themselves, but must wait for an opportunity
to recur to their oracles. Every time we con-
sult them, we think to find something new,
because the indwelling sense of each passage
touches and moves us in manifold ways.

"Personally, I have never seen him, nor come
into any immediate relation to him through
letters. He seems to me, in the connections
of life and friendship, to have been, in the
highest degree, clear, and to have felt very
correctly the relations of men to each other
and to himself. All the letters that I have
seen of him were admirable and much more
intelligible than his other writings, because

here, the reference to time and circumstances,
as well as to personal relations, was much more
evident. And yet I thought to perceive in
them, that, feeling with the greatest naivete
the superiority of his mental gifts, he always
thought himself a little wiser and more know-
ing than his correspondents, whom he treated
ironically rather than heartily. If this was
true of particular cases only, yet those cases
constituted, for me, the majority, and a reason
for not wishing to come any nearer to him."

The principal works of Hamann are the
"Memorabilia of Socrates," "Golgotha and
Scheblimini," and " Sibylline Leaves by the
Magus of the North." The specimen given
below does not verify the peculiarities men-
tioned in these quotations. It was a youthful
essay which the author was hardly willing to
publish with the rest of his works. It is
given not as a characteristic, but, simply, as
the most intelligible specimen of an author
whom, on account of his peculiar position in
German Literature, it was thought best to
represent in this Collection. The translation
is by an anonymous friend of the editor.

* THE MERCHANT.

FROM HAMANN'S SCHRIFTEN, HERAtrSGEGEBEN VON FRIEDRICH
ROTH. BERUN. BEY O. REIMER. 1821. VOL. I.

Supplement to a translation of Dangeuil's Reraarques
sur les Avantages et les Desavaiitages de la France et de
la Gr. Bretagne, par Rapport au Commerce et au.x autres
Sources de la Puissance, &c.

There are virtues, which originate like colo-
nies, as others seem to be the growth of the
age. Our sensitiveness to what we now name
the world, or honour, would be as incompre-
hensible to the ancients, as it is difficult to the
moderns to imagine a passionate love of coun-
try, or to feel it themselves.

History furnishes most indubitable proofs of
special care taken by the most ancient nations
for the regulation of civil society. Their policy
extended from divine service to the theatre,
dancing and music. Everything was employed
by them as an implement of the government.
One spirit united families, whose activity and
exercise were promoted even by domestic dis-
sensions. This spirit made them fruitful in
projects, and the performance corresponded.

The commonweal seems to have been extin-
guished since the period when, instead of citi-
zens, there were vassals who assumed to be
masters of their own actions and their property,
when they bad paid homage to their chief. To

this chief it was, in part, no longer possible, in
part no longer necessary, to be a father to his
country. In these times, the prince was per
haps an armed Hobbes, or a prototype of Ma-
chiavel, or a Vespasian, niling by tax-gatherers
and vampires ; or the slave of priests. His in-
clinations, his court, and certain classes, took the
place of the public welfare. He imitated those
philosophers who took the earth for the centre
of the universe.

The style of our offices has likewise served
to divert the mind from the common weal. To
seem worthy of a place which can seldom be
the object of the wishes of a rational man, we
bring ourselves betimes into, I know not what,
entanglements. How many submit for the sake
of daily bread, and from the fear of man, to
slavish cringing, and to jierjury !

Aiming at a yearly income and a comfortable
livelihood, zeal to imitate or excel others in a
pageantry of trifles, hence arises the monoi^oly
which every one pursues in his class. The
accumulations of prosperity and avarice dissi-
pate the minds of our youth too much to leave
space enough for great passions and fjower for
great undertakings. How many, besides, find
their fortune already complete, having thought
as little of building it up, as of building up
themselves. One may say, in truth, of places
11

100

X -W *•!

HAMANN.

of honour and estates, tlmt to despise both, we
need only look at their possessors.

Witty minds have not failed to remark, on
the derision expressed by nature, in that she
appoints, on this earth, the cattle in the field to
be more learned than we, and the bird in the
heavens more wise. But has it not been her
intention that man should owe his prerogatives
to the social affections ; should early accustom
himself to reciprocal dependence ; seeing be-
times the impossibility of dispensing with
others ? Wherefore has she sought to compen-
sate death, not by a cold mechanism, but by the
soft and ardent inclination of love ? Wherefore
has her Author provided by laws, that marriage
should spread, and that families, by ingrafting
with families, should form new bonds of friend-
ship ? Wherefore are his goods so differently
appointed to the earth and its dwellers, but to
render them social? The fellowship and ine-
quality of men are also nowise among the pro-
jects of our wit. They are no inventions of
policy, but designs of Providence, wliich, like
all other laws of nature, man has partly misun-
derstood, and partly abused.

Nothing reminds us more impressively of the
advantages of union than the benefits which
flow from commerce in human society. Through
this it is, that that is everywhere, which is any-
where. It satisfies our wants, it prevents satiety
by new desires, and these it allays too. It
maintains peace among nations, and is their
horn of plenty. It furnishes them with arms,
and decides their doubtful fortune. Men labour
for it, and it rewards their diligence with trea-
sures. It enlarges their intercourse, develops
their powers, makes itself not only their wea-
pon, but employs their genius, their courage,
their virtues, their vices. Every harbour, every
canal, every bridge, every floating palace and
army, are its works. Through its influence, the
arts are awakened and extended. Our side-
boards and the toilets of the ladies are adorned
with its gifts. The poisons of our kitchens, and
the antidotes of our physicians pass through its
hands. It atones for frugality by profusion. Its
exercise consists in exact integrity, and from its
gains the patriot distributes prizes, and performs
his vows.

What happy changes may not the world pro-
mise itself from the commercial spirit, now
beginning to prevail, if it should be purified by
insight and noble imf^ulses? Perhaps we may
not vainly flatter ourselves with the hope that,
through its influence, the love of the public
good will be re-established, and the virtues of
the citizen raised from their ashes to their
original splendour.

The demand of commerce for liberty pro-
mises to hasten the happy return of that blessing
to man. The unrestrained energy, the unim-
peded skill of each individual, and all that each
undertakes not at variance with the common
good, will gradually banish that unbridled auda-
city with which every one in our times allows

himself in everything, and aims to make possi-
ble whatever he considers useful to himself
alone.

Inestimable good ! without which men can
neither think nor act, whose loss robs him of
every privilege ! By thee, trade blooms, and
extends through all ranks ! Each resumes his
ancient and natural rights, which we had re-
nounced from servile passions and prejudices!

Holland has, to the advantage of her trade,
abolished tyrannical persecution for .conscience'
sake, and adopted among her fundamental laws
that freedom of opinion which is as reasonable
as it is beneficial. Why should it not tend to
the renown of the Roman tax-gatherers, that
they were the first who concerned themselves
to relieve their countrymen from the blindness
of superstition ?*

The spirit of trade may perhaps abolish in
time the inequality of ranks, and level those
heights, those hills, which vanity and avarice
have thrown up, in order not only to receive
sacrifices thereon, but to control with more ad-
vantage the course of nature. The incapacity
of the idle ceases to be a mark of distinction
gratifying to his pride, where the eflbrt, and
labour, and sweat of contemporaries make their
life costly, and alone claim consideration and
favour. The laurels wither with the decay of
the fathers. Their rest on the bed of honour
has become to us more indifierent than to their
useless posterity, who enjoy the same repose on
the cushions of prosperity and tedium. These
dead are here, to bury completely the glory of
their dead. Trade is, at the same time, the
shovel which stirs the heaped-up gold*like the
corn, and preserves it either for the bosom of
the earth, or for the enjoyment of her children.
Through it, gold is not only increased and made
fruitful, but also useful, and a medium of life
for man. But where it stands highest, the citi-
zen must be most moderate in his gains, since,
were all the world to have enough, none would
have too much or too little.

Men knew formerly very little of the prin-
ciples of trade. It was pursued rudely, and
was so much contemned, as to be left almost
entirely to the Jews. Now, on the other hand,
men have with much sagacity aimed to make
a science of commerce. Although its objects
and ideas are in part arbitrary, and depend on
the imagination ; yet men have attemj^ted to
unite the theory of trade, and its exercise with
as much exactness as the astronomers to found
their reckonings on imaginary lines and hypo-
theses. How much weighty insight, have not
the prince and the people gained besides, by a
thorough examination of the sources of trade 1

* Cicero says, De Nat. Deor. III. 19, that they were the
first who coiisiderfid it absurd to believe those gods who
had been men. Self-interest led them to this rational
conclusion, because the lands consecrated to the Immor-
tals were exempt from ta.xes. WhetJier we have profited
more from distempered and false, or sutTered more from
great and noble views, may be a problem.

HAMANN.

123

That instructive satire on monarchs, which
the inventor of chess, according to the fancy of
a distinguished poet* had in mind, is no longer
a picture of our kings. They have better learned
to appreciate the worth of their subjects. They
now know that the state becomes great, only
when they promote population by abundant
sustenance, regard idleness as an injury to their
violated majesty, punish it with contempt and
hunger, consider it the masterpiece of their
wisdom, to multiply the hands of diligence, as
well as to lighten its labour, and watch over
the education of orphans and foundlings.

The subject has learnt better to understand
and to employ the fruits of the soil and his own
sweat. Philosophy is no longer sculpture.
The scholar is called back from the Spanish
castles of the intellectual world, and from the
shades of the library, to the great theatre of
nature and her doings, to living art, and her
implements, to social employments, and their
moving springs. He is an attentive spectator,
a scholar, an intimate of the peasant, the arti-
san, the merchant, and through universal ob-
servation and research, becomes the helper and
teacher of all.f

When even the common man becomes an
object of importance to the state, because its
strength flows from his preservation, industry,
and increase, then the interest, which the com-
monwealth takes in the industry of every day-
labourer, is sure to instil into him, in time, nobler
sentiments. " If those artisans had known,"
says Plutarch, " that through their labour,
Amphion would surround a city with walls,
or Thales still a tumult of the people, with
what ambition, what delight, had they carved
the lyres of these men V^

Trade has served for a demonstration of all

* No prince this game invented, that will I dare to say,
Too plainly, his own image before him, it doth lay,
For idly while he sitteth, the monarch little knows.
The peasant, whom he vexeth, defendeth his repose.
The sovereign is the queen, to raise and to depress,
And the inglorious king, to all men valueless,
To the high place, he dozing fills, doth owe
The crown, that decks in state his empty brow.

Eegnier lends the last touch to this picture, in his four-
teenth satire.

" Les fous sent aux 6checs les plus proches des Rois."

1 1 appeal merely to that great monument, that has
been raised by two philosophers in France to the glory
of their native land. One cannot refuse admiration to
the Encyclopedia, to which I here refer, on the score of
the mechanic arts. This gigantic work, which appears
to need a Briareus (I know not whether my memory
furnishes me with the right name of the heaven-stormer
with tlie hundred hands), could fall to ;io more capable
and enterprising undertaker, than M. Diderot. Besides
his articles, which do honour to him and the work, I am
delighted to refer to the essay of Boulanger on the com-
pulsory labourers, on the dams and bridges, under the
title Corvee. (Ponto et Chauss6es.)

X In his Essay on the Duty of Philosophers to asso-
ciate with Public Men.

these truths, and the pursuit of it has con-
firmed their force. When, therefore, the de-
ceitful, lying, avaricious disposition of an an-
cient nation* is ascribed to their calling, when
reference is made to a modern country, ren-
dered habitable by skilful industry, and pow-
erful by trade, where the moral virtues, and
the smallest offices of human love are re-
garded as wares; when it is said that with the
art of calculation that resoluteness cannot ex-
ist, by which the renunciation of selfishness,
and magnanimous sentiments are attained, that
attention to trifles limits the circle of mental
vision, and reduces elevation of thought, it is
certainly the duty of the merchant to refute
these charges.

Was it the fault of religion, that in those dark
times of superstition, the spiritual order adopted
a sort of assicwfo-contract,t that the priest car-
ried on a most lucrative stock-jobbing, derived
premiums from the fear of hell, sold the church-
soil to the dead, taxed the early days of mar-
riage, and made a profit on sins, which he for
the most part invented himself?

We laugh at the wise Montaigne, who was
anxious, lest the introduction of powder and
shot should annihilate bravery. Let us feel a
more earnest anxiety for the moral results of
trade. Much pains have been taken certainly
to perfect the science, but perhaps too little
thought has been given to forming the mer-
chant. The spirit of trade should be the spirit
of traders, and their morals, the groundwork
of its reputation. Both should be better en-
couraged by rewards, supported by laws, and
upheld by examples.

" The occupation most useful to society," says
an ancient writer, J "should assuredly be fol-
lowed with emulation, I mean agriculture,
which would prosper greatly, if rewards were
ofl^ered, giving it the preference. The com-
monwealth would hereby gain infinite advan-
tage, the public revenues be increased, and
sobriety be associated with improved industry.
The more assiduous the citizens became in
their occupations, the less would extravagance
prevail. Is a republic favourably situated for
commerce, honours shown to trade would multi-
ply merchants and commodities. If on any
one who discovered a new source of gain, with-
out detriment to the commonwealth, a mark of
honour should be conferred, public spirit would
never be extinguished. In short, were every
one convinced, that rewards would accompany
whatever was done to promote the public good,
this would be a great impulse to discover some-
thing valuable. But the more men have at
heart the general welfare, the more will be

* The Carthaginians, Cicero's second oration against
Rullus.

t A contract between the King of Spain and other
powers for introducing negro-slaves into the Spanish
colonies.

X Xenophon, in the Conversation between Hiero and
Siraonides.

124

HAMANN.

devised and undertaken for its sake." This
rich passage exhausts almost all I could say,
or could wish to say. My readers will there-
fore be content with the gleaning only of a few
remarks.

Our merchants should above all be stimulated
by these considerations, to make their calling,
not merely a gainful trade, but a respected
rank. I remember to have read, that in Guinea,
the merchant is the nobleman, and that he
pursues trade by virtue of his dignity, and
royal privileges. On his elevation to that rank,
the king forbids the waves to injure the new
nobleman, or merchant. This monarch doubt-
less prizes his merchants highly, because from
them comes his greatness, and wonders per-
haps that our kings grant nobility only to
soldiers and courtiers, or even drive a trade
with it, and sell it for ready money.

The nobility of the merchant must not be
confounded with military nobility. The pre-
rogatives of the latter are founded on the cir-
cumstances of the times when it arose. Na-
tions plundered one another, remained nowhere
at home, lived like robbers, or had to defend
themselves against robbers. Kings believed
they could immortalize themselves only by
conquests. These required blood and noble
blood. The military order had consequently
the highest rank, and whoever distinguished
himself in this, was ennobled. The preten-
sions of these heroes were allowed to descend
to their children, that, inflamed by the deeds
of their ancestors, they might make it their
glory, like them, to die. This was an artifice,
to transmit a certain spirit to the children, and
to elevate the military class, which at that time
was the only privileged one. This being the
origin and the purpose of their nobility, those
are the genuine knights, who, born in the
counting-rooms of acquisitiveness instead of
the tent, are trained to be voluptuaries and
cowardly prodigals. They might make use of
their weapons, like the discarded patron of
Venice.*

Our times are no longer warlike and the
deeds of the most renowned heroes,

" From Macedonia's madman to the Swede,"

will appear to us soon like the adventures of
Don Quixote. The nation, which distinguished
itself by the sword to the last, has become
much more honourable and mighty through the
plough. Men no longer desolate other lands by
conquests, but conquer their own by trade. If
war is still carried on, it is as a defence against
jealous rivals, or to establish the balance of
power. We prepare, not now for triumphs,
but to enjoy peace ; and the time is perhaps

* St. Theodore, whose statue is in St. Mark's place,
Jioldins a shield in tlie riglit hand, and a lance in the
left. The Venitians, instead of this martial saint, have
taken St. Mark for their patron since his bones were
brought to the city, by their mercliants. — Amelot de la
Houssage.

near, when the peasant and citizen will en-
noble their class.

The merchant has thus, as it were, taken the
place of the soldier. Does not his rank, conse-
quently, deserve to be elevated by like respect,
and like means ? The profession of arms has
become great through the nobility. Commerce
must become great through merchants, that is,
such merchants, as do not think it necessary to
gain honour by purchased privileges merely,
but place their dignity in the prosperity of
trade, and hold those gains unworthy, which
would poison its sources. To devastate, to de-
stroy, to become rich, this is the only thing, in
which the military spirit of the nobility shows
itself in the mercantile profession.

The rewards, marks of honour, and privileges
of the merchairt must give him in the eyes
of his countrymen a visible distinction, that
continually admonishes him to uphold the flou-
rishing prosperity of the country, which the
soldier must devastate against his own will,
with the same courage, ambition, and elevation
of mind.

Thanks be to the age in which we live! our
merchants need as little to be cheats, as our
nobility ignoramuses. If there are yet among
Christians, persons, whose whole soul is made
up of avarice, who aim to enrich themselves by
usury and deceit, they must not be ennobled.
Besides, what avail them those certificates of
liberality, for which ancestors are assigned them,
but to make them exhibit a ridiculous resem-
blance to that species of mouse whose wings
render his rank among animals ambiguous?

I come to the morals of the mercantile class,
on which depends the pursuit, as well as the
prosperity of trade. Good faith, honesty, love
of the commonwealth, must be here the moving
springs, like diligence in manufactures, work-
shops, and agriculture ; — double objects of equal
elevation, which claim all the care and thought
of the government, because from their union
springs the good of the whole nation.

If the merchants were regarded as mediators
between the different members of the State,*
with how much right would their avocations
become more public and solemn ! The com-
mon weal, as it were, compeirsates them. On
its preservation depend their rank and occu-
pation. It must therefore take more interest
in their condition; but on the other hand, the
merchant should be more mindful of the obliga-
tions they are under to the public, and the con-
sideration they owe it on tliis account.

Public credit is the soul of trade; it rests on
the confidence, which individual citizens ac-
quire through honourable dealing. This sum
of the private credit of numerous citizens of the
same place, taken together, is a deposit, which
should be sacred to all the members of the com-
munity, because it involves in itself the irnme-
diate interest of each member, to support ac-

* Hume's Essays.

HAMANN.

125

cording to his means, the credit of the rest, and
to protect it from all adulteration and diminution.
Whoever brings the public faith under suspicion,
deserves severer punishment than the man who
'robs the public cotTer entrusted to him.

Readiness to pay is a result of the moral cha-
racter of the debtor, which si^eaks well to the
creditor for his wisdom and honesty. This
readiness furnishes not only the best security
for the- gold committCLl to strange hands, but
serves as a pledge against j^ossible misfortunes.
The virtue of a merchant should thus bear the
same relation to his good name, as the ware to
the coin.

But chiefly the merchant presupposes the up-
right citizen, because the welfare of trade must
be often in opposition to his own private advan-
tage. To maintain the former, demands there-
fore sacrifices from the disinterestedness and
self-denial of the latter. Mere rapacity renders
the merchant sharp-sighted to the greatness of
the advantage, without his picturing to himself
the consequences to his fellow-citizens, and to
commerce. He swallows down each bit, and
considers neither the wants of the future nor
the bones with which he will be choked. The
present and the certain prevent his discerning
a greater good, which might compel an expendi-
ture of time, or which he must share with others.
Thus he disregards for the sake of his own ad-
vantage, not only the public revenue, but even
the interests of his own posterity. The stream
may fail, the harbour be destroyed — nothing but
his own loss is of importance in his eyes, and
the profits of a year will be preferred, without a
scruple of conscience, to the gain of a century.

Plato* describes both the riches and the po-
verty of the artisan as the ruin of his profes-
sion. " Is he rich," says he, " think you he will
be anxious about his work? No, he and his
art will be ruined by indolence and neglect.
Is he needy, how can he procure suitable im-
plements? He is clumsy, and leaves behind
him, in his children and apprentices only bun-
glers."' Let us be assured, that the merchant's
love of gain is far more detrimental to the im-
provement of trade. And does not experience
teach us that the very vices, whereby j^roperty
has been or can be acquired, at the same time
destroy its value? The counting-room is a school
of deceit and avarice ; what wonder ? when the
household is a temple of disorder and waste !
The exchange is ashamed of these freebooters,
and the city of their memory. Trade execrates
their oppressions, and the public their profession.

The merchant, on the other hand, who loves
his country, its present and future welfare,^
plants trees that may give shade to his posterity.
He abhors as a theft all gain which is contrary
to the general good of commerce. He seeks by
wise undertakings, to attract to the country new
branches of trade. He supports and upholds
the old, which, if they do not immediately bring

* Republic. B. IV.

him fruit a hundred fold, yet employ the hands
of his fellow-citizens, and with the ruin of which,
numerous other lateral branches would be de-
stroyed. This merchant is no phantom. I
myself know merchants who have greatness
of soul enough to make the expansion of trade,
and not private gain, their ultimate object, who
think not only of its arithmetic, but also of its
morals and its utility. Holland should bore
through her dams, if she had not merchants,
who out of love to her soil, can employ their
millions in a trade which now yields little, or
is indeed the occasion of loss, like the whale-
fishery. The merchant is therefore capable of
great sentiments. To encourage them is worth
the pains.

The green cap, the broken bench formerly
terrified the cheat. Wherein does he now find
his security, but in the defence, which he durst
not stoop to himself, but which is oflered him,
and in the ruin of better citizens. Hope and
compassion, which are left him, inspire bold-
ness, while the final disgrace renders fear and
repentance inactive.

An ancient nation is spoken of,* where the
taste for beauty cost lovers dear. From their
contributions a bridal treasure was collected for
those daughters of the land whom nature had
refused to furnish with recommendations. How
near does not this come to the use, made at pre-
sent, of the virtue of an honourable man ?

If a city contains not more than one upright
citizen, it is on his account the laws were made,
and on his account the magistracy instituted.
Not to accommodate those offenders, who are
studious only to infringe and corrupt justice, are
the laws entrusted to you, fathers of the city!
but to support this honest man, that he may
not be wearied out, terrified, or impeded, that
unhindered, he may do all the good his jiatriotic
soul devises and his magnanimous heart sug-
gests for the benefit of the commonwealth.
Then will his zeal, in gratitude for your support,
find fresh nutriment, and his example become
the pattern and inheritance of his house.

Let us argue from single individuals to whole
families. They are the elements of civil soci-
ety ; consequently, their social influence is in-
disputably greater than men seem to recognise.
The welfare of the community is bound up with
the virtues and vices, the flourishing and decay of
certain families. A single family has often been
sufficient to corrupt the morals of a whole State,
to impress its own form on the mass, or to fix
it there ; to bring certain principles and customs,
on which business depends, into favour or con-
tempt. Mahomet was first the prophet of his
own family, and afterwards of a great people.
Ought not the cares of the magistracy to extend
to the fostering of some families, and the de-
pression of others?

If it is justifiable policy, in opening the view
of a building, that adorns a certain, part of the

* Herodotus, I. 96.
11*

126

HAMANN.

city, to remove a few miserable hovels, if it is
a duty to transfer to the mouth of the stream
such trades as taint the purity of its waters,
and to remove them from the place where it
enters their walls, there is a far more urgent
call on the magistracy, to protect families whose
integrity is exposed to the vexations of envy,
and the rage of wickedness, to uphold them as
the keystone of the laws, and on the other hand, to
watch those whose views spread secret poison
among their fellow-citizens.

The family mania, whose mere name excites
suspicions of an infectious disease, is in our days
greater than ever. The selfishness, which unites
whole families in extorting from the community
the same assistance that relations are obliged
to lend each other, has extended a detrimental
indulgence to the children of great families, to
whom men, in spite of stupidity and worthless-
ness, hardly venture to refuse preferences and
offices any longer, and who, through the base-
ness of their intercessors and patrons, are some-
times placed in a position to justify themselves
again, by the choice of others. Hence those
conspiracies to put down merit, the rewards of
which they seek to marry with their like, in case
of need to disarm the laws, or give their ex-
pounders cunning. Hence those nurseries of
old custonis, to whose service certain houses are
more devoted, than the corporations at Ephesus
to their Diana. To this prevailing evil there
could not be a more forcible check, than through
the family spirit itself, whose application as
much to the public good generally, as to com-
merce in particular, I would here recommend.

The family spirit, of which I speak, deserves
at least more attention, than the author of the
Fable of the Bees claims for a certain portion
of ignorance, which he holds must be main-
tained, in every well-constituted community.
This spirit consists in a remarkable strength of
certain natural gifts or propensities, which
through the impression of domestic example,
and the consequent training, becomes hereditary
and is transmitted. I premise here particularly
a certain amount of social tendencies, and the
seeds of citizen-like virtues, (for why should not
these be capable of imitation and degeneracy,
like other tendencies and dispositions?) an
amount which would enable us to forget our
private good in the public approbation and wel-
fare, to prefer the honour of the order, to which
we devote ourselves, and its social advantages,
above selfpreservation and individual advan-
tage.

It is this family spirit which has built cities,
and through which they subsist. It was doubtless
most active when their foundations were laid
and the walks first marked out. None of those
small communities thought of anything else but
the city ; even when his own house began to
occupy liim, the thouglits of the individual were
far from being directed from the public works to
his own building, but this latter was always sub-
ordinate to the former. The city was completed,

yet was still a subject of discourse ; each was still
occupied in the work undertaken ; one still inquir-
ed of another, what M'as to be supplied and added ?
Children and children's children carried out and
improved the plan which the first founder had
devised. The more distant the times, the more
obscure was the tradition of the value, the na-
ture and the circumstances of an inheritance,
which had cost many generations, and for the
rent of which the care and management should
be undertaken by us. The peril of capital in
hands, which have not earned it, is great. The
zeal, the blessings, the wishes, wherewith the
first founders of our dwelling-places bequeath
them to their latest possessors in spite of their
ingratitude, kindles yet perhaps some sparks in
the souls of a few families, who make known
and reveal to us the spirit of the first benefac-
tors. It is these patriots to whose families
every city should offer the right and honour
of representing those by whom it was built and
founded.

If there are besides, families which have in-
herited from their ancestors the true principles
of trade, and a genuine love of it, these are the
lifeguardsmen, from whose services commerce
receives warinth and splendour. They are to
be regarded as the dam, which gives security to
its course, as the lighthouse, by which the wan-
dering mariner directs his path, and at whose
sight the stranger rejoices. Such families should
not be allowed to go to decay, but rather be
encouraged, distinguished, preferred, so that the
spirit which animates them may be immortal;
for with them trade rises and falls, and under
its ruins they must be buried.

These thoughts have not entered into my

mind by mere accident. They are founded in

some degree on a stray paper, which I had

partly in view, and of which in part this seems

to be written in continuation. The author

would not be injured by a publicity to which

every thing that is found, is exposed. For the

rest, I am as little inclined to gratify the curiosity

of readers by an account of the accident, which

threw this paper into my hands, as to trouble

myself about their conjectures. My view in the

communication of this fragment will be in part

justified by its perusal.

*******

" This family from the grandfather down-
ward, has closely interwoven its own conse-
quence with the good of the community. The
grandfather died and left behind, by will, to
his numerous heirs, some hundred thousands,
which for the extension of commerce, and to
draw the Polish merchandise to Miza, he had
lent to the Poles, according to the wishes of
their kings. The war ruined this scheme. The
son received nothing but the debts of his father,
and carried on likewise an extensive trade.
This man did every thing, although the result
was unfortunate. How much would he not
have undertaken in better circumstances ! In
his civil offices he concerned himself, merely,

HAMANN.

127

for the improvement of general commerce, and
his views were far from being limited to his
own especial benefit. The former, and not the
latter, he regarded as the inheritance of his
family. Careless in his domestic economy, he
was the more zealous to frame for the good
of the city new plans and institutions, which
are yet in existence. He always appealed to the
old laws, and was urgent to be judged thereby.
The word public he uttered with reverence.
He loved the Pole, in spite of all his folly and
levity, because he furnished commodities for
trade, and hated the Englishman, so respectable
as he is otherwise, because he employed his
countrymen as beasts of burden, as carriers to
his customers. He sighed over the existing
decay ; and zeal for the public good at last
destroyed him. He lived like a Roman with
his great deeds, eating roots, and he was proud
to be a citizen. He was called obstinate, but
none presumed to perpetrate any baseness be-
fore his eyes. Whoever knows men, under-
stands their language. An obstinate man means
a man, who can be brought to no conclusion
without reflection, who does not lay aside and
alter the plan, by which he wishes to proceed,
according to the fancy of every one, but con-
tinues true to the precepts of sound reason and
conscience, and is far above the judgments of
complaisant, frivolous people. The children of
this citizen inherited the spirit and the principles
of their father, which perhaps are no longer
suitable to our times. Love for the public good
is their passion ; it gives them penetration and
courage, whereby they are an otFence to those,

who ride in gilt coaches, and adorn themselves
with the spoils of trade. They resist the seduc-
tions of strangers, who come to us as to savages,
to carry on our commerce. If this family wish
to assert the principles of their father, against
their competitors, they are compelled to resolve
on their own ruin. Their plans were well laid,
and aimed likewise at the extension of the
commerce of Poland and Curland, to Holland
and France, for which a good friend sacrificed
himself. Nevertheless, they failed through rivals,
with whom all methods are good, whereby they
can cut rushes for their own roofs, through the
dishonesty of agents, corrupted by the impunity,
— as things go now, — of acting against the laws,
and the shallow ambition of making a fortune
without a good name. Men admire Marius,
sitting on the ruins of Carthage, the greatest of
commercial cities, and amidst its fallen heaps
raising himself above the vicissitudes of his
own destiny. I have not yet forgotten the words
of a dying son of this house, with which he con-
soled his brother, by whom he was honoured
as a second father. They merit to be preserved,
" Who knows, my brother, whether the ruin of
a house like ours may not conduce to general
progress? Men will thereby come to the know-
ledge, how much is due to honourable citizens,
and be warned, not to be so hard with others."
This man felt himself stronger perhaps in cold
blood, than Glover in the midst of his inspira-
tion, when he conceived the noble sentiment,
with which his hero devoted himself and his
handful, exclaiming, " Freedom and my coun-
try !"

CHRISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND.

Born 1733. Died 1S13.

WiELAND was a native of Suabia. His
father, a Lutheran divine, who, at the birth of
this son, resided in Oberholzheim, removed soon
after to Biberach, where Wieland spent his
childish years.

His early education was superintended by
his father in person. At the age of seven he
read Latin. At twelve he gave indications of
his poetic genius in German and Latin verse.
At fourteen he was put to school at Klosterber-
gen, near Magdeburg, where he remained two
years, and then continued his studies under
private instruction at Erfurt. In 1750, he en-
tered the University of Tubingen as a student
of law, but devoted himself chiefly to literary
pursuits. Thence he sent the first cantos of
an epic poem to Bodmer at Zurich, who was
so much struck with this juvenile performance,
that he invited the young poet to reside with
him. He remained in Switzerland eight years,
writing and publishing several minor works.
At the end of this period he returned to Bibe-
rach, where he was made a member of the
Council, and appointed Director of Chancery,
and where he married, in 1765. In 1769, he
was elected Professor of Philosophy at Erfurt,
an office which he retained but three years, and
then accepted an invitation from the Duchess
Amalia, of Weimar, to superintend the educa-
tion of her sons. Wieland had already become
distinguished as an author. His Agathon, his
Musarion, his Don Silvio de Rosalva, had
placed him at the head of the national litera-
ture of that day. His translation of Shakspeare,
the first in tlie German language, had also
been published some time before. With the
leisure of his new office and the security of a
pension for life, he now devoted himself with
increased zeal to literary pursuits. Amidst his
numerous engagements and a constant series
of publications, original and translated, prose
and verse, he undertook the German Mercury,
a monthly periodical, which he edited during
the rest of his life. In 1798, he purchased with
the proceeds of his literary labors an estate at
Osraansstadt, near Weimar, where he intended
to pass the remainder of his days ; but, after

the death of his wife, at the solicitation of the
Duchess, he returned to Weimar, and there
resided until his death, which occurred January
20th, 1813.

In Wieland we notice first his singular fer-
tility. The industry of the man is amazing,
and enlarges our idea of the capabilities of a
human life. His translations from Shakspeare,
Horace, Lucian, Cicero, would alone be suffi-
cient to establish his reputation for literary
diligence. When we add to these some fifty
volumes of original productions, and consider,
moreover, how much of his time was spent in
editorial labors and official duties, we have an
example of productiveness which has few pa-
rallels in the history of letters, and which
places Wieland on a level, in this particular,
with Lope de Vega, Voltaire, and Sir Walter
Scott.

As to quality, it must be confessed that Wie-
land's excellence lies rather in the manner than
in the matter. He is more graceful than ener-
getic, more agreeable than impressive, more
sportive than profound. ' Words that burn' are
not found on his page, nor thoughts that make
one close the book and ponder, and rise up in-
tellectually new-born from the reading. But
then he has charms of manner that lure the
reader on and hold him fast. And when we
speak of him as not profound, we speak in rela-
tion to German standards. Unlike the gener-
ality of his countrymen, he occupied himself
with the show of things rather than their sub-
stance ; with phenomena rather than laws. He
loved to discourse pleasantly, ratlier than to
investigate conscientiously, or to settle accu-
rately. What Goethe says of him is very cha-
racteristic ; that " in all he did he cared less
for a firm footing than for a clever debate."

As a poet, he has been accused of licentious-
ness. Voluptuousness would be a more proper
designation. His poetry is certainly liable to
objection on that score. At the same time, it
is free from coarseness and from all that — in
his own phrase — ' offends against the Graces.'
It should be observed too, that Wieland's life
was pure and exemplary in all respects. Whe-

(128)

WIELAND.

129

ther prose or poetry, his writings are distin-
guished by elegance of style and perfect finish.
He elaborated all that he wrote witli great
care, and declared that he spent one-sixth part
of his time in copying.

His intellectual life is divided into two periods
distinctly marked in his works. He began his
literary career a zealous enthusiast. His first
productions are strongly tinctured with reli-
gion, and treat, in part, of religious subjects.
He afterward became an Epicurean (theoreti-
cally) in morals; a materialist, or common-
sense man, in philosopliy ; placed experience
above faith ; believed in no ideas but those
which are derived through the senses; and good-
humoredly satirized all lofty aspiration, and
everything which leaned, as he thought, to
spiritual excess. It would be difficult to find
another author whose earlier and later produc-
tions exhibit such a contrast as those of Wie-
land.

Bouterwek, in his " History of German Po-
etry and Eloquence," thus characterizes him :
" The names of Klopstock and Wieland denote
opposite extremes. While Klopstock carried
the poetry of the supersensual, in its most so-
lemn earnestness, to excess, Wieland laugh-
ingly turned his back on supersensual things,
and declared war against all extravagance.
His poetry was not meant to be trifling, any
more than his character was trifling; but he
would have it subordinate to a philosophy which
he had learned, in the French school, to regard
as the only sound one. In this way, Wieland
became a philosophical poet of sensualism, such
as Germany had never seen before. But far
from advocating a sensualism wliich degrades
man to a beast, he wished to establish that
form of virtue which, according to the doctrine
of Shaftesbury, he held to be of the same
origin with the love of the beautiful, as the
only true one, in opposition to all which seemed
to him extravagant and fantastic. Conscious
of the strictest purity in liis own morals, he
never doubted that a poet, especially in the
capacity of satirist, might, without scruple,
paint the most voluptuous charms of sense as
seductively as was consistent with the laws of
beauty. Only what offended the Graces — ac-
cording to his principles — was to be strictly
excluded from the domain of poetry. This
ossthetic morality which Wieland introduced
into German literature, operated beneficially as

a counterpoise to the false rigorism by which
criticism in Germany was oppressed."' " Satire
has never contended with such polished wea-
pons, as in Wieland's writings, against that
enthusiasm to which no modern nation is so
much inclined as the German." " With all his
faults and defects, and whatever a one-sided
criticism may bring forward to his disparage-
ment, he is still one of the great poets who are
the pride of German literature." "He had
imbibed so much of the taste of the French,
along with their philosophy, that he bore the
name of the ' German Voltaire' in Germany
and out of Germany. But in all that Voltaire
has written there is not a trace to be found of
Wieland's ideal of moral loveliness. Amonar
Italian poets, Ariosto is the one whose humor
agrees best with Wieland's manner." "His
Muse rather smiled than laughed." "This
inextinguishable cheerfulness, united with such
knowledge of mankind, such refinement of wit
and taste, such fulness of imagination, with so
soft, so luxurious, so apparently careless, and
yet so cultivated a style, is found in no other
poet."

The following extract from Goethe's Eulogy
of Wieland is taken from Mrs. Austin's " Cha-
racteristics of Goethe."

"The effect of Wieland's writings on the
public was uninterrupted and lasting. He edu-
cated his age, and gave a decided impulse to
the taste and to the judgment of his contempo-
raries. And whence proceeded this great in-
fluence which he exercised over the Germans?
It was the consequence of the vigor and frank-
ness of his character. Man and author were,
in him, completely blended; his poetry was
life, his life poetry. Whether in verse or in
prose, he never concealed what was his predo-
minant feeling at the moment, nor what was
his general frame of mind. From the fertility
of his mind flowed the fertility of his pen. I
use the word pen not as a rhetorical phrase ; it
has here a peculiar appropriateness; and if
pious reverence ever hallowed the quill with
which an author wrote his works, assuredly
that which Wieland used was worthy of this
distinction. He wrote everything with his own
hand, and very beautifully ; at once freely and
carefully. He kept what he had written ever
before his eyes, examined, altered, improved
it ; unweariedly cast and recast ; nay, had the
patience, repeatedly, to transcribe whole works
of considerable extent. And this gave his pro-

130

WIELAND.

ductions the delicacy, the elegance, clearness,
the natural grace which cannot be attained by
mere drudgery, but by cheerful, genial atten-
tion to a work already completed.

" Our friend was capable of the highest en-
thusiasm, and, in youth, gave himself completely
up to it. Those glad bright regions of tlie
golden time, that paradise of innocence, he
dwelt in longer than others. His natal roof,
hallowed by the presence of his father, a learn-
ed pastor ; the ancient cloister of Bergen be-
neath its shade of antique times on the shores
of the Elbe, where his pious teacher lived in
patriarchal simplicity; the still monastic Tubin-
gen; the simple dwellings of Switzerland, sur-
rounded by gushing brooks, washed by clear
lakes hemmed in by rocks ; in all he found his
Delphi ; in all, the groves and thickets in which,
even when arrived at manhood, he still revelled.
Amid such scenes he felt the mighty attraction
of the movements which the manly innocence
of the Greeks has bequeathed to us. He lived
in the lofty presence of Cyrus, Araspes and
Panthea. He felt the Platonic spirit move
within him. ***** But, precisely
because he had the good fortune to linger so
long in these higher regions, because he was
permitted so long to regard all that he thought,
felt, imagined and dreamed, as the most abso-
lute reality, was the fruit, which he was at last
compelled to pluck from the tree of knowledge,
the more hitler to him. Who may escape the
conflict with the outer world ? Our friend, like
the rest, was drawn into the strife ; reluctantly
he submitted to be contradicted by life and ex-
perience. And as, after long struggling, he
could not succeed in combining these noble
images with the ordinary world, these high

intents with the necessities of the day, he deter-
mined to accept the actual, as necessary ; and
declared what had hitherto appeared to him
truth, to be fantastic visions. * * * *
He declared war on all that cannot be shown
to exist in reality ; first on Platonic love ; then
on all dogmatizing philosophy, especially the
two extremes — the Stoic and the Pythago-
rean. *=(:** * *

"It has been acutely remarked by some
foreigners that German authors take less heed
of the public than those of other nations ; and
that, therefore, it is easy to discern, in their
writings, the man educating himself, the man
who wants to owe something to himself; and
consequently, to read his character. This was
peculiarly true of Wieland, and it would be the
more interesting to follow his writings and his
life with this view, since suspicions have been
cast upon his character, drawn from these very
writings. Many men still misunderstand him,
because they imagine the many-sided must be
indifferent, the mobile must be infirm and in-
consistent. They do not reflect that character
regards the practical alone. Only in what a
man does, in what he continues to do and per-
sists in doing, can he show character ; and in
this sense, there never was a firmer, more con-
sistent man than Wieland. When he gave
himself up to the variety of his sensations, to
the mobility of his thoughts, and permitted no
single impression to obtain dominion over him,
he showed, by that very process, the firmness
and certainty of his mind. He loved to play
with his conceptions, but never — I take all his
contemporaries to witness — never with his
opinions. And thus he won and retained numer-
ous friends."

PHILOSOPHY CONSIDERED AS THE ART
OF LIFE AND HEALING ART OF THE
SOUL.

Men had lived, and perhaps lived many
thousand years, before one of them hit upon the
thought that life could be an art ; and, in all
probability, every other art, from the arts of
Tubalcain to the art of catching flies, — which
Shah Bahani, a pcritus in arte, assures us, is not
so easy a matter as some people imagine, — had
long been invented, when, at last, the sagacious
Greeks, along with other fine arts and sciences,
invented also this famous art of life, called Phi-
losophy : or, if they did not altogether invent it,

first reduced it to the form of art, and carried it
to a high degree of refinement.

By far the greater part of the children of men
never dreamed that there was such an art.
People lived without knowing how they did it,
very much as Mons. Jourdain in Moliere's
" Citizen Gentleman," had talked prose all his
life, or as we all draw breath, digest, perform
various motions, grow and thrive, without one
in a thousand knowing or desiring to know by
what mechanical laws or by what combination
of causes all these things are done. And in
this thick fog of ignorance innumerable nations
in Asia, Africa, America, and the Islands of the
South Sea, white and olive, yellow-black and

WIELAND.

131

pitch -black, bearded and unbearded, circum-
cised and uncircumcised, tattooed and untat-
tooed, with and without rings through the nose,
from the giants in Patagonia to the dwarfs on
Hudson's Bay, &c. &c., live to this hour. And
not only so, but even of the greatest portion of
the inhabitants of our enlightened Europe, it
may be maintained with truth, that they know
as little about said art of life and that they care
as little about it as the careless people of Ota-
lieite or the half-frozen inhabitants of Terra del
F'uego, who are scarcely more than sea-calves.

The strangest part of this business is, that all
these people, who, according to a very moderate
calculation, constitute nearly the whole human
race, — like their ancestors as far back as Adam
and Eve, who also knew nothing of the afore-
said fine art, — notwithstanding their ignorance,
live away as courageously as if they were
finished masters of it. Nay more, the greater
part of these bunglers get on so well, as it re-
spects all the most essential and important func-
tions of human life, that scarcely one of the
hired masters and professors of the art can hold
a candle to them.

Cicero says somewhere, " Nature is the best
guide of life," which probably means, that Na-
ture shows us best how we may help ourselves
through this earthly state. Further, he says,
" No one can fail who suffers himself to be
guided by her." On this guidance, therefore, it
would seem that men must always have relied.
This same Nature, they thought, which teaches
us to breathe, eat, drink, to move hands and
feet, &c., teaches us also how to use our senses,
our memory, our understanding, and all our
other powers ; teaches us what is fitting and
what is not fitting. It requires only so much
attention as every object enforces of itself, to see
and feel whether it is friendly or hostile. Our
nose and our tongue teach us, without any other
instruction, what fruits, herbs and roots, &c., are
good to eat. At a pinch, hunger teaches the
same, without much circumstance. Nature has
provided for all pressing necessities. Either
the thing which we require exists already ; —
and then we have whatever is needed to seize
and enjoy it ; — or, at least, the materials of it ex-
ist; and then we have just so much understand-
ing, power, and natural dexterity in our mem-
bers, as is necessary to form those materials to
our use and purpose. What does not succeed
the first time, will succeed the tenth or the
twentieth. If two arms are not sufficient, four,
six, eight will accomplish it. Every new trial
adds something to our knowledge of the thing,
and to our faculty. We learn by errors and
failures, and become masters by practice, with-
out perceiving how it has come about. And
this same Nature which carries us so far, always
conceals from us what lies too far to be reached
from the place assigned us; makes us happy
by ignorance, and has given us this beneficent
sluggishness, of which the world-reformers make
so much complaint, for no other purpose but

that the everlasting desire to improve our con-
dition may not cause us to fall from the frying-
pan into the fire, and that we may not fare like
that man who, in order to feel better, physicked
himself to death, and had for his epitaph : Per
star meglio sto qui.

So Nature teaches all men how to live, who
have not run away from the instruction and
discipline of the good Mother. And, in all
this, as you perceive, there is no art. It is Na-
ture herself, bodily. The celebrated Quam
muUis non ego ! of the ancient philosopher is the
native philosophy of all Samoyedes, Laplanders,
Esquimaux, &c. ^a philosophy in which the
New Hollanders or the New Walesmen, as the
honest people must sufier themselves to be
called, according to the arbitrary pleasure of
the gentlemen with the firelocks, who have the
command, appear to have made the greatest
progress. Let no man come and say that such
a life is an oyster-life. Call it, if you please, a
continual childhood ; but honour Nature who
conducts these her children, by the shortest
route, to the beate vivere at which we enlight-
ened people seldom or never arrive, merely on
account of the great multitude of roads which
lead to it.

The wise Theophrastus (not Paracelsus, but
the scholar and successor of tlie divine Aristotle)
lived ninety years, and when he came to die,
he complained against Nature because " she has
given man so little time to live, and because an
honest fellow must die at the very moment
when he has begun to comprehend a little the
art of life." When did ever a New Hollander
make so unreasonable a complaint? When he
has come to be an hundred years old (which is
nothing rare with them), he has lived just one
hundred years, and rises satisfied from the ban-
quet of Nature ; — and truly, a banquet that, in
which Nature furnishes such poor entertain-
ment, that the strictest candidate for canoniza-
tion need not scruple to share it.

But — let me remark in passing — I am very
far from believing that Theophrastus made the
foolish speech which is imputed to him. The
people around his bed did not exactly under-
stand what he said, and then some schoolmaster
came along, a good while after, and tried to
make sense of it, and made nonsense. I would
bet that Theophrastus meant neither more nor
less than this ; that he regretted he had not been
wise enough, sixty or seventy years before, to see
that he might have saved himself the trouble
of studying, as art and science, what Nature
would have taught him far better and more
surely, without study, if he had had the sim-
plicity of mind to heed her instruction. It was
not innocent Nature but his own folly that he
blamed, as most men are wont to do in his case ;
although they might as well let it alone ; for
what is the use of repentance when one has no
time left for amendment?

Notwithstanding all that has been said, it is
by no means my intention to dispute the value,

132

W I E L A N D.

whatever it may be, of the above-mentioned art
of life.

It has somewhere been said, that art is, at
bottom, nothing else than Nature herself, who,
by means of man, as her most perfect instru-
ment, unfolds and brings to perfection under a
different name, what before she had merely
sketched, as it were, or hastily begun. If art
is that, and so far as it is that, it is worthy of
all honour.

Yes, even then, when it merely comes in aid
of enfeebled or corrupted Nature, it is, like the
art of medicine, sometimes beneficial, although
often just as uncertain and just as ineffectual as
that. When Nature no longer suffices for the
support of life, then, to be sure, art must patch
and prop, and plaster and doctor as well as it
can. Or, to speak more correctly, even in this
case, the good,- universal Mother has provided
for her darling child. She has remedies in her
store-chamber for every wound or disease of
the outward or the inward man, so that art
has nothing to do but to observe and to exhibit.
The simpler then the remedies are, the less they
have been tampered with, the better for the
sufferer. And still, the successful issue must be
expected from Nature alone. If she has strength
enough left to raise herself up by the hand of
art, well and good; — if not, then, for art too,
nodiing remains, but to let the sick man die and
to embalm the dead. Art cannot supply the
power of life where it is wanting.

It was long ago that philosophy, on account
of this resemblance to the healing art, received
the name of " medicine for the soul." And
truly, this qualification seems better adapted to
secure its acceptance, than when it claims to
teach us to live according to the rules of art.
For who that has the free use of his natural
powers does not feel that he can live without
iti On the other hand, when it presents itself
only as physician, then the well know that they
have nothing to do with it.

The Indians in the islands of the South sea,
it seems, are unacquainted with medicines.
With them slight wounds or illnesses heal them-
selves; and of great ones they die — as we do.
And as they are so fortunate as to have no idea
of a soul in and of itself, as a man in their ap-
prehension is always a man, made out of one
piece, so they know nothing of particular dis-
eases of the soul ; or if ever they experience
an attack of this kind, the hunger-cure, for
which they have but too frequent opportunity,
is generally the most effectual remedy.

On the other hand, when the progress of
refinement in a nation has gone so far, that
body and soul, instead of being as they should
be one person, are treated as two powers with
different interests, each having its separate
establishment, like naughty husbands and wives ;
what is more natural than, that bad conse-
quences should result from such an ill-starred
union? Man is then no longer that noble being
In whom all is sense and power and soul,

in whom, so to speak, everydiing corporeal is
spiritual, and everything spiritual, corporeal.
He is an unnatural, Centaur-like compound of
animal and spirit, in which the one lives at the
other's expense, in which the animal creates
for itself necessities, the spirit passions, projects
and aims of which the natural man knows
nothing. Each oppresses, drags, worries and
exhausts the other as much as it can, and a
vast number of bodily and mental diseases are
the ultimate fruit of this putting asunder what
God had joined together. In such cases, when
the evil has reached its height, that " medical
art for the soul" may offer its aid with some
degree of success; and either relieve the patient
by purging, bleeding and clysters ; or, at least,
by means of agreeable opiates, procure for him
a delusive rest.

But this art has never yet been found able to
effect a radical cure ; and we may boldly main-
tain, that when a nation has once fallen into
the hands of the two Goddesses of Healing, it is
irrecoverably lost ; not because one must needs
burst with their medicines, but because when-
ever they are resorted to, the evil has already
proceeded too far to admit of entire restoration.
I said Philosophy might the rather maintain
its place, as healing art for the soul, because
then, the well would know that they had no-
thing to do with it. But as all arts love to
make themselves more important than they
are, so this art too has found means to impose
itself upon all the world as indispensable. Like
its sister art, which ministers to the body, it
will not allow any one to be entirely well. Ac-
cording to its doctrine and its ideal of health,
the whole earth is one great lazar-house of
bodily and mental diseases, and there is no
man well enough to dispense with its prescrip-
tions. Happily, this assumption is not conceded
to either of these arts. Nature knows nothing
of ideals. As long as a man feels himself
sound, he has a right to think himself sound ;
and, without troubling himself whether others
object to that view or not, he lives straight for-
ward as a healthy man; and (like Voltaire's
Zadig) reads not a letter of all the learned dis-
sertations, in which gentlemen undertake to
prove it impossible that he should be well.
There are cases, it is true, in which a sick man
is only the more dangerously sick, because un-
conscious of his malady. But these cases are
rare, and cannot deprive the great mass of those
who feel well, of their traditional right to that
feeling.

LETTER TO A YOUNG POET.

Well tlren, my young friend ! No man can
escape his destiny ; and if you too are destined
to the laurel-wreath and the dark cell of the
divine Tasso, or to the spital and the postumous
fame of the Portuguese Camoens, can I, weak
mortal, prevent if?

WIELAND.

133

I have heard your confession and have pon-
dered well the whole case. Your inward voca-
tion seems indeed to admit of no doubt.

Such tension of tlie inner and the outer
senses! All so sharply tuned that the softest
breath of Nature causes the entire organ of the
soul to vibrate harmoniously like an ^olian
harp ; and every sensation gives back, with
heightened beauty and the purest accord, like
a perfect echo, the melody of the object, and
grows ever sweeter as it gradually dies away.

A memory in which nothing is lost, but every-
thing imperceptibly coalesces into that fine,
plastic, half spiritual substance from which
Fancy breathes forth its own new and magical
creations.

An imagination which, by an involuntary,
inward impulse, idealizes each individual ob-
ject, clothes everything abstract in determinate
forms, to the simple sign supplies impercepti-
bly ever the thing itself or an image resembling
it, in short, which embodies all that is spiritual
and purifies and ennobles into spirituality all
that is material.

A warm and tender soul which kindles with
every breath, all nerve, sensation and sym-
pathy; which can imagine nothing dead, no-
tliing unfeeling in Nature, but is ever ready to
imjiart its own excess of life, feeling, passion to
all things about it, ever with the greatest ease
and rapidity to metamorphose others into itself
and itself into others.

A passionate love for the wonderful, the
beautiful and the sublime in the material and
the moral world, a love avowed from earliest
youth and never false to itself

A heart which beats high at every noble deed
and revolts with horror from every bad, coward-
ly and unfeeling one.

Add to all this, together with the most cheer-
ful temperament and quick circulation, an in-
born propensity to refiect, to search within, to
pursue your own thoughts, to rove in a world
of ideas, and, together with the most social dis-
position and the most delicate vivacity of sym-
pathetic inclinations, an ever predominant love
for solitude, for the silence of the forest, for
all that promotes the quiet of the senses, all
that disengages the soul from the burdens by
which it is hampered in its free and peculiar
flight, or that rescues it from the distractions
which interrupt its inward occupations.

To be sure, if all this does not constitute
native endowment for a poet to be, if it is not
sufiicient to assure a youth that — to speak with
the philosopher among the poets — it is the
Muses themselves that have sent him this
beautiful phrenzy, which he can no more shake
off" than Virgil's Cumcean Sibyl can shake off"
the prophetic god — *

Be easy, my friend ! I recognise and reve-
rence the indelible character by which Nature

* Wieland, of all writers, indulges most frequently in
that very convenient figure called aposiopesis by the
rhetoricians, of which the above is a specimen. Tr.

has consecrated you to the priesthood of the
Muses, and since, according to the divine Plato,
it is only necessary that the Muses' fury, in
order to produce the finest eff'ects, should seize
a tender and uncoloured soul, I must be greatly
deceived or you will do honour to the theory
of our philosopher.

I do not consider it exactly an infallible
diagnostic of a genuine inward vocation, — ne-
vertheless it is generally at least the case, — that
an almost irresistible impiUse to the art in
which they are destined to excel manifests
itself in future virtuosi, in poets, painters, &c.,
from their earliest youth. And this sign of
election, my young friend, is also found in
you.

You say, " As far as I can look back into the
first years of my life, I cannot remember the
time when I did not make verses. The inborn
sensibility of my ear to the music of fine verse,
the rapture which dissolved me, when, even
in my boyhood, I declaimed certain passages
in which the versification was particularly
good from ancient or modern poets, especially
from the ./Eneid and Horace's Odes, the often
repetition and dwelling on those lines, on
which, even when I read them to myself, I
know not what internal, spiritual ear feasted,
as on the dying echo of the song of the Muses,
— all this, with me, preceded instruction. And
so it came to pass, that I made all kinds of
verses and observed a number of rules before
I had the least idea — in the way of learned
knowledge — of prosody, rhythm, poetic num-
bers, imitative harmony, and the like. Nothing
could equal my love for the poets, except the
ease with which I understood them, the inter-
est they inspired in me, and the almost ecstatic
rapture in which I continued for hours in the
enjoyment of some particularly beautiful pas-
sage, and the visions which it conjured up in
my soul. With Virgil, Haller, Milton, and the
five first cantos of Klopstock, I forgot eating
and drinking, play, sleep, myself and the
world. I experienced, indeed, from my early
youth, the same opposition from those who had
charge of my education, — whether as a natural
or a hired duty, — which Ovid, Ariosto, Tasso,
and so many other celebrated poets had to con-
tend with. But strong nature prevailed, and
the Genius, or the evil Spirit, as you would
rather call it, that possessed me, was not to
be expelled, neither by fair means nor foul.
Even when I made no verses, my guardians,
the enemies of the Muse, gained nothing. All
the ideas and knowledges with which they
endeavoured to stuff my mind, either fell
through or were transmuted into poetic matter.
Whatever I studied, physics, metaphysics,
ethics, history, politics, — everything, with me,
was converted into epopee and drama. And
while the teacher, with the air of a mystagogue,
was explaining the monadology of Leibnitz,
my imagination was developing the plan of a
poem on the origin of Venus from the foam of
1^

134

W I EL AND.

the sea ; or I was making the statue of Pyg-
malion start into life before my eyes, or I was
explaining to myself how the great principle
of the Orphic cosmogony, Love, like the lyre
of Amphion, could unite the elements into a
world by its attractive energy."

What can I answer, my dear friend, to facts
of such potency? I seem to hear my own his-
tory. All this, word by word, was my own
case, five and thirty years ago: and if, not-
withstanding these plain indications of Nature,
I would still keep you on this side of the dan-
gerous Rubicon, I have at least quite other rea-
sons for so doing than distrust of your talent
and ability.

The very first flowers of the fertile soil
which has fallen to your lot, notwithstanding
you think so modestly of them yourself, would
be sufficient to inspire me with the fairest hopes
respecting you,, and the rather, precisely be-
cause, with so decided a natural vocation and
so much preparatory discipline and years of
study, you are still so little satisfied with your
own productions, and are almost as much
offended by praise which you cannot persuade
yourself that you have merited, as others would
be by the most merited censure. I know no
more decided criterion of true talent, than this
difficulty of satisfying one's self, this unwearied
striving after something higher, this unaffected
contempt of present attainments, compared
with what one trusts hereafter to be, and this
delicate feeling of the beauties in the works of
other men, and of the deficiencies in one's own ;
qualities which I have so often had occasion
to notice in you, and which are so seldom
found in poets, young or old.

Wonder at me as much as you please, my
dear friend ! But it is precisely my well-
grounded conviction that Mother Nature really
designed to make a poet of you, and that, if
you should give yourself up to your inclination,
you would become wholly a poet and therefore
lost for all other modes of life, — it is even this
that makes me tremble for you. Unhappily,
the good mother has thought of everything else
except the one important point, that she ought
to have brought over Plutus to her plan. How
could she forget that poets, no more than birds
of Paradise, can live on fiower-odours ; and
that the very man who has all the elementary
Spirits at his command, and whom it costs but
a stroke of the pen to summon the most splen-
did magic banquet-table out of the ground, is,
of all men in the world, the nearest to starva-
tion, unless by chance some compassionate
Genius (who, however, is not to be counted on)
has provided better for him than Nature, the
Muses, or he himself.

It would be a very different affair, indeed,
if you intended to follow the wise counsel
which Herr Klinggut gives his friend, to pursue
poetry, which he deems to be in every point
of view a very uncertain business, only as a
collateral employment by the side of some

lucrative office or other honest subsistence in

the learned or civil line. * *

» • Ot • •

But the verses, which in that case, are sent
"to Dessau to the press," are of a quality con-
forming ; and it must be confessed that the
poets of narrower income, have, generally,
very different views in regard to this matter.
He who makes verses only then when he
knows of nothing else in God's world to do,
will be just such a kind of poet as one, who
attends to painting only in lost hours, will be a
Raffael.

What I now say is between ourselves. The
Graces forbid that I should deprive the gentle-
men, who know how to spend their waste
hours to so good advantage, of their pastime!
Suffice it that you, my young friend, happily
or unhappily for yourself, are not of this cat-
egory. Your love for the Muse is a serious
passion which must decide the fate of your
life.

Yon will be everywhere — in all the events,
relations, employments, business, sorrows and
joys of your earthly pilgrimage — a poet. You
will always think, feel, speak, act as only a
poet thinks, feels, speaks, acts ; and though, for
ten years in succession, you should not have
made a single verse, yet all that you had seen,
heard, tried, done, and suffered in those ten
years, would either have been poetry or have
been turned to poetry; and at the end of this —
to the Muses, apparently, lost — period of your
life, there would lie more germs and embryos
of poems of all kinds in your soul, than you
would have time to unfold, though you should
reach the age of Bodmer or of Nestor.

But alas! this is not all. You will also com-
mit follies which only a poet can be guilty of.
With the most fortunate head and the best of
hearts, you will stand, every moment, in a false
light before the world ; you will always hear
complaints and reproaches, and still you will
always injure only yourself; and whatever pains
you may take to persuade men that you are a
harmless, innocent, well-meaning being, men
will stare at you as a strange animal, will not
know what to make of your way of thinking
and being, and will entertain, every minute,
serious doubts of your understanding and your
heart.

All this, my beloved, diffuses very unpleasant
consequences over the life of the individual
who is endowed with this admired and des-
pised, envied and hated, flattered and almost
always badly rewarded talent, which gives him
such singular advantages over ordinary men, —
so much power over their imagination, and such
inexhaustible means of helping himself, — in his
own.

The golden Tjj^t j3tcocfaj, the unnoticed, narrow
path through life — the eternal wish of all souls
which are made for the quiet enjoyment of Na-
ture and for living with their own ideas — will
become for you a tree of Tantalus. A hateful

W I E L A N D.

135

celebrity, which you will find it impossible to
escape, will poison your rest and inundate you
with an inexhaustible flood of thousand - fold,
■u^orthless, but all the more troublesome, petty
annoyances, which will not even leave you the
poor illusion of being at least rewarded with
love for the pleasure you have conferred upon
the world.

A love for the Muses, like yours, generally
terminates like the passion of an inexperienced
pair of turtle-dove souls, who, in the place of all
other dower, bring to each other an unbounded
treasure of fondness, and have forgotten all pro-
vision for the necessities of life in the sweet
delusion that love will always be meat and
drink to them. The enchanted lover by the
side of his beloved, is perfectly assured that a
straw-built shed, is a fairy palace ; that, with her
beaming eyes, he needs no light ; in her warm
bosom, no firing; in short, that, in the ocean of
bliss in which his intoxicated soul is rioting,
like the gods in heaven, he needs nothing ex-
cept— that the sweet illusion should last forever.
But this is the very point in which he has reck-
oned without his host.

It has not been considered that hours, days,
months, perhaps whole years will come, in
which fancy, deprived of its magic power, will
deliver us up to the disagreeable feeling of the
present; and that, with its deceitful nature, it
magnifies the evils which oppress us as much,
as, in happy hours, it enhances what is pleasant
in our condition. It has not been taken into the
account, that even if it were according to na-
ture, never to wake of ourselves from the beau-
tiful Endymion-dream in which we have been
lapped, yet the sober people about us would
certainly not fail, either from good will or ill
will to shake and shove us until they had played
us the evil trick which the Corinthian experi-
enced at the hands of his relatives, who drugged
him with hellebore until all the splendid trage-
dies disappeared, which he thought he saw on
the empty boards.

This circumstance alone would be sufficient
to justify all my solicitude regarding the way
of life on which you are about to enter. The
true poet, however rare — according to the afore-
said Herr Klinggut — the louisd'or and the
sugarplums may be with him, yet finds himself
in about the same situation in which a possessor
of the philosopher's stone might be. Both per-
haps— the one with his talisman in his head
and heart, the other with his powder in his
pocket — might be happy, if it were only possible
to conceal their secret from all the world. But
since this is out of the question, they may both
be sure that means enow will be found to make
them pay dearly for the advantage which they
possess over other honest people.

When, my friend, I indulge these fears for
your future happiness, the louis d'or and the
sugarplums are the least that I am thinking of
The latter, with all things thereto pertaining,
confectionary and wines, — all, except the order-

insignia, you will come to taste, it may be. but
too often; and so much money as a poet needs
who lays no claims to a villa like Boileau"s and
Pope's, or even to a Ferney, may also be found.
Horace dined as often as he pleased, at the ta-
bles of the great at Rome, resided as often and
as long as he pleased, in the splendid house of
Maecenas or in his elegant villa at Tibur, had
his own little Sabinum, — knew scarcely any
other plague than those which he had to endure
from authors, from the Public, from his own
celebrity, through the misfortune of being the
first lyric poet of Rome ; and yet he was often
so hard pressed with all this, that, notwithstand-
ing his love for the Muses, he swore he would
be hanged if he had not rather sleep away his
time than to make verses.

Read what this amiable poet — a refined man
of the world, as well as a man of genius and
distinguished acquirements — says in many parts
of his letters, esjiecially in the nineteenth, to
Mfficenas, and in the second of the second book,
to Julius Florus, of the discomforts and plagues
of the poet's calling. And read also, if you
please, the notes of his newest commentator,*
who appears to have understood the author
more clearly and intimately than many others,
for the simple reason, that he had had very
much the same experience himself. Since we
must once for all fulfil our destiny, it is well
at least to know what we have to expect, and
how much or how little we can build on those
receipts which are considered the surest.

Among all the beautiful visions which cheer
and animate a young poet, when he enters on
the long and painful career whose goal so few
of the thousands that run in it ever reach, the
most delightful perhaps is this : ' the hope that
something more than applause, — the empty
digito monstrari et dicier hie est — that the love of
the nation for which he labours, will be the
prize of his unwearied efforts.' Do not, my
friend, flatter yourself with so vain a hope. The
highest on which you can count are moments
of favour, brief effervescences occasioned by the
pleasure which you have conferred upon us in
these moments, and for which it is thought that
you are abundantly recompensed by the conde-
scension which permits itself to be entertained
by you. From the moment that we perceive
or imagine that you are striving for our appro-
bation, we look upon you with the same eyes
with which we regard all other pretenders to
the character oi virtuosi in the entertaining arts,
and you stand, whether you like it or not, on
the same level with jugglers, rope-dancers, and
histrionic performers. All your exertions to at-
tain a high degree of perfection we regard as
simply your duty, and wo unto yon, if you do
not always surpass yourself, or ever hold your-
self at liberty to sleep upon your laurels!

You will not find this thought very encourag-
ing; but I have not yet told you the worst.

* VVieland here refers to himself. Tr.

136

WIELAND.

Your relation to the Public, as poet, is much less
advaiitasreous than if you had the honour to be
a great Kadcnzen-machcr or the Parisian Grand-
Diable. For these arts, every man possesses a
standard of perfection, and can judge, with
more or less correctness, how much is required
to perform this or that miracle. But with the
poetic art the contrary is the case. Among a
thousand readers, scarcely one has a clear and
definite idea of the difRcidties and of the highest
in art. The readers or hearers know whether
the poet interests them or makes them gape.
But that is all. And, since a very indifferent
and a very careless work may have something
interesting as well as a masterpiece, you may
expect that when your work has ceased to be
the curiosity of the fair,* the first novel which
is new, wliich has a little wit, here and there
an astonishment, a pathetic passage, or a slip-
pery picture, will seize the attention of the read-
ing world and displace your work though all
the nine Muses had helped you produce it. Do
not hope, by any strain of your faculties, by any
ideal perfection for which you have striven
with all the powers of your mind, to obtain
what, according to your ideas of art, and with
a fidl consciousness of what you have accoin-
jjlished, seems to you but simple justice. That
you will never obtain ; not because men intend
to deny you justice, but because they have no
conception of all that which it is necessary to
know, in order to render it.

When a poetical work, in addition to all other
essential qualities of a good poem, is what Ho-
race calls totum teres atque rotundum, when, to-
gether with the finest polish, it possesses the
greatest ease, when the language is uniformly
pure, the expression always adequate, the
rhythm always music, when the rhyme always
conies of itself in its proper place witliout be-
ing foreseen, when the whole stands forth as
if cast at one casting or blown with one breath,
and nowhere shows a trace of labour or effort,
it may be set down as certain that such a pro-
duction has cost the poet, whatever his talent,
infinite pains. That lies in the nature of the
case ; and since perhaps there is no European
language in which it is more difficult to com-
pose Ijeautiful verses than in ours, the labour
and the effort required to arrive at any degree
of perfection in such a language must be pro-
portionally greater.

But do not fancy, if ever you should succeed
in producing such a work, that the reader will
give you the least credit for that which you
have performed over and above what was re-
quired. He would have been quite satisfied,
as daily experience shows, with less. Nay,
what is worst of all, this very ease, this smooth-
ness, this roundness which has cost you so
much, and which die occasional but rare con-
noisseur acknowledges with becoming coolness,

* New publications in Germany are generally brought
out at the semi-annual fair of Leipsic. Tr.

will only injure your work with the great mass.
" I suppose it does not cost you the least trouble
to write such verses," is the compliment which
will greet you on every side. And as men are
accustomed to estimate a work in jiroportion to
the apparent difficulty of producing it, so yours
will incur a kind of contempt on account of that
very thing on which you have most congratu-
lated yourself. It will be read perhaps with
more pleasure than many other works of the
same season. But because men think that no
thing is easier than for you to manufacture such
things, you will scarcely have finished one be-
fore people will exj^ect of you another like it,
as if you had done nothing as yet. And if you
are so disobliging or lazy or unfruitful, as not
to fulfil the expectation of your patrons with all
speed, some new fabrication which contains
something to laugh at or to weep at, will take
the attention of the leisure world and the work
on which your whole soul has impressed itself,
the work of your love, of your night watches,
the work for wliich you have summoned all your
powers, on which you have expended all your
talent, all your knowledge of the mysteries of
art, will be confounded with the mushrooms
which spring up in a single night, will be thrown
into a corner, and, in a short time, be as clean
forgotten as if it had never been.

All this, my friend, is something so natural,
such an everyday affair, it has been from the
same causes so universal in all nations, at least
in certain periods, that it would be ridiculous
to complain of it. True, it is not very pleasant
to be surprised with experiences of this kind ;
and, at the moment when this shall happen to
you, you will be more than once tempted to
envy the happiness of every honest Boeotian
who, with just that portion of human sense
which he brought with him, eats his bread in
the sweat of his face, and, for want of the
doubtful advantage of having ten thousand peo-
ple whom he never saw mentioning his name
and undertaking to pass judgment on him and
his merits or demerits, is richly indemnified by
the enjoyment of a life which glides unknown
but peacefully down the stream of time.

I should never have done if I were to reckon
up to you all the varieties of vexation and dis-
comfort which await you on the other side of
the Aganippe, which is the perilous Rubicon for
you. I doubt not that, as to many of them, I
should tell you nodiing but what you knew be-
fore. But do not forget to take into the account
the delicate sensibility and irritability of a poetic
organization. A thousand things which will em-
bitter your life are trifles in themselves consi-
dered ; but for the nervous system, for the
imagination, for the heart of a poet, they will
be heavy sorrows. A single perverse or mali-
cious criticism, one stupid look of a hearer at a
passage which ought to have given him an
electric shock, or the question : " What was
your meaning in that passage ?" at some deli-
cate stroke of irony, will render you insensible

WIELAND.

137

to the approbation of thousands ; and for the
sake of one such citation as you have seen of
some quite virginal stanza of a favourite poem
in a book wliere you certainly did not expect it,
a citation or rather adulteration by some harm-
less academic philosopher, vv^ho wished to honour
the poet, you will wish that you could annihi-
late your best work.

I say nothing of the treatment you have to
expect from others, brothers in art, connoisseurs,
critics, reviewers, &c. You will, if I am not
greatly deceived in yovi, adopt Horace's method
in regard to all gentlemen of this description.
Expect then also Horace's fate ; that is, to be
read with pleasure in secret, to be deluged with
praise to your face, and publicly to be honoured
on every occasion with critical shrugging of the
shoulders, or at best with silence. A common
soldier who by mere dint of talent and merit
should rise to the ofRce of field-marshal, would
be a great rarity. But an author who, without
belonging to a clique, without having made dis-
ciples, without having let his reputation to the
potentates of the Republic of Letters for the
time being, without having adopted young au-
thors in clientele, and so created for himself a
sturdy band of followers who shall be always
ready to attack with foot and fist all who may
have incurred the disfavour of their patron : an
author, I say, who, without all these aids, and,
what must not be forgotten, without being pro-
tected by the segis of golden mediocrity, should
arrive merely by his own merits at the quiet
possession of an undisputed property in fame
and authority with his contemporaries, would
be a still greater rarity. Strange things some-
times happen in this world, and some one may
win the golden prize; but who can calculate
that he shall.be that one?

On the whole, if an extended and decided
fame, and the advantages connected therewith
are the goal for which you run, you may pre-
pare yourself betimes to find every conceivable
hindrance in your way, and at last perhaps to
see people arrive there before you, who, instead
of running in the prescribed path, jump the
barriers, cut across the field, and by a happy
impudence appropriate the prize which they
never could have won in the ordinary course.
"The race is not to the swift," says Solomon,
"nor the battle to the strong, but time and
chance happeneth to all."

You know, my dear friend, how many reasons
I have for feeling the liveliest interest in your
affairs. I see you entering on a path which
probably will not lead you to the temple of For-
tune ; and yet I have not the heart to keep you
back. I myself love the art, to which you are
about to devote yourself with such decided
capacity, too well not to experience a kind of
inward rebuke when seeking to deter you froin
it. And how can I help foreseeing the answer
with which you will beat to the ground at
once all that I can oppose to your resolution'?
Nor is it my design to deter you; I would only
S

compel you, before you choose your part for
ever, to consider the dangers and discomforts
of the path which seems to you so charming.

In Horace's day, poetry chanced to be the
way in which a kind of fortune could be made.
He says it was necessity, which dares every-
thing, that impelled him to make verses.

Ibit eo quo vis, qui zonam perdidit.

With us, I fear, it is just the reverse. The nar-
row path across the Helicon is generally the
direct road into the arms of the beggarly god-
dess whom Horace wished to escape. Perhaps
you may live to witness a hapj^ier day for the
German Muses. Perhaps some other prince is
destined to realize the glory which was despised
by the great king,* who, after forty years laden
with every other kind of fame, in which he had
done nothing for our literature, and was en-
tirely unacquainted with it, finally contented
himself with the merit of publicly upbraiding
us with its barrenness and defects. Perhaps —
but no ! — these hopeful perhapses are after all
very uncertain, and in fact far more improba-
ble than many now dream. Rather therefore
picture to yourself the worst ; and since, in any
case, you have no great talent for the philosophy
of Aristippus, and are not strongly disposed,
whatever the advantages to be gained by it, to
expend much incense on the gods of this world,
or on those who dispense their favours, exa-
mine yourself carefully, whether in the lap of
your beloved Muse you can be happy with a
meal of potatoes and cold water?

And if then, my friend, all things considered,
you are resolved to venture, promise me with
hand and mouth (since I have told you before-
hand the worst that can happen) never in your
life, however it may fare with you, to complain
of the envy of your rivals and guild-brethren,
of the indifference of the great, and the ingrati-
tude of the Public.

Nothing is at once more unjust and more
foolish than to whine because things are as they
have always been, and because the world, in-
stead of revolving around our own dear little
self, in its eternal on-rush takes us along with
it, like imperceptible atoms, without bejng aware
of it.

Mankind around us, from the greatest to the
least, have so much to do with themselves and
their own necessities, so much with their own
plans, wants, passions and the momentary sug-
gestions of the good or evil Demon, which every
one, will he or nill he, must bear on his shoul-
ders, that it is not to be wondered at, if they do
not trouble themselves much about our affairs.
And yet, if you help a man in his need or con-
fer a jileasure upon him when, where, and as
he desires, he will thank you for it sincerely at
the moment. But how can we demand of him
that he should thank us also for unasked and
unavailing services, or that he shall feel obliged

* Frederic II.
12*

Tr.

138

WIELAND.

to us when we have sung his ears full at the
wron" time? How can we demand that other
men, amid the pressure of their business, cares,
dissipations, entertainments, shall attach the
same importance that we do to the art which
we pursue, the objects with which our soul is
filled, the work with which we are occupied
and with which they perhaps do not know
what in God's world to do. How can we
reasonably demand that they should have as
practised an ear for the music of our verses,
that they should notice the finer beauties of a
poetic picture as accurately or estimate them as
highly as if they had made such matters a
special study for many years 1

It lies in the nature of things that much in
works of wit, of taste, of art, must be lost to the
mere amateur. But the Public are not therefore
unjust toward writers of distinguished merit nor
without a feeling of the value of the master-
pieces of the poetic art. See how well every
day manufactures, sine pondere et arte, are re-
ceived, where there is anything in them that
can please. The reading world wishes to be
entertained and amused in a great variety of
ways, and it loves variety so much, that an
author must be altogether insipid who does not
succeed in attracting notice, and in being for a
time at least distinguished among the daily in-
creasing crowd of competitors. Even in the
easiest and most artless kind, — that which has
scarcely anything of poetry, except vividness of
expression and rhyme — wit or humour or the
felicitous ejaculation of a momentary feeling is
enough to make an author beloved and esteemed
by a nation. Let not the fault therefore be in
yourself, my young friend. Deserve public ap-
probation, and it will not be denied you. Spread
all your sails, and, not content with ordinary
prizes, enrich our literature with works which,
instead of entertaining for the moment only,
shall possess themselves of the entire soul of
the reader, bring all his organs of sensation into
play, warm and enchant his imagination with
an unbroken illusion, afford nourishment to his
mind, and to his heart the sweet enjoyment of
its best feelings, — its moral sense, its interest in
others' joys and sorrows, its admiration of all
that is beautiful and great in Humanity. And,
depend upon it, the Public will feel all the gra-
titude for such a work, which you can reason-
ably desire.

I add this clause, because it would be mad-
ness to expect more of men than they can give.
And by what right do authors alone demand
from their nation more justice, more gratitude,
more equality and constancy than any other
man of merit — in whatever category he may be
— can expect from it ?

I have thought this little digression necessary,
that you may not consider that, which I have
now stated merely as fact respecting the dis-
agreeable circumstances in the life of a poet, as
a lamentation wrung from me by the feeling or
the memory of my own experiences. In every

conceivable mode of life and in all conceivable
circumstances, the life of man is compassed
about with manifold actual, imaginary, natural
and self-m.ade plagues ; and in the surprise of
the moment, a very small pain may sometimes
extort from us a loud cry. But who would be
in despair at unavoidable, universal and there-
fore very endurable illsl Quisque suos patimur
manes. It needed no reference to my own case,
in order to speak to you of universal experiences,
common to all times and to all nations where
literature has flourished.

You, my friend, know me well enough to
know that I am satisfied with my lot in every
point of view. From my youth up, I have loved
art more than what is called fame and success;
and always the unadulterated feeling of a few
noble souls, the unexpected kind-hearted thanks
of some brave, upright man, who could have no
private purposes in praising me, have been
more to me than the calm approbation of the
connoisseur or the loud applause of the multi-
tude ; although, in a career of more than thirty
years, these too have not been wanting. But I
should arrogate to myself a merit to which I
have no claim, were I to deny that, after
spending the greater part of my life in the
service of the Muses, I have done more for my-
self than for others. It was the" pure truth —
and will probably remain true to the end of my
tlays — that I said to my Muse, from the fulness
of my heart, more than fifteen years ago, when
living at the farthest extreme of South Germany,
entirely secluded from our Parnassus and with-
out any literary connexions,

If thou pleasest not, if world and connoisseur agree

To disparage thy merit,

Let thy consolation be, in this calamity,

That with sweet pains thou hast conferred much joy on me.

Thou art still, 0 Muse ! the happiness of my life,

And if no one listens to thee, thou smgest to me alone.

I am greatly mistaken if, in the course of
your life, this sentiment does not become your
sentiment also. And so, whichever way your
fate may lead you, I have still this consolation
always, that a fountain of happiness is spring-
ing up within you, which can sweeten every
care of life and double the enjoyment of its
highest pleasures, and which, even when it
begins to fail, will still have a few nectar-drops
left for your .solace, in the days in which we
have no pleasure.

ON THE RELATION OF THE AGREE-
ABLE AND THE BEAUTIFUL TO THE
USEFUL.

BALZ.iC, whose " Letters," once so admired,
would furnish an inexhaustible fund of anti-
theses, concetti and other witticisms for epi-
grammatists by profession, M-as often in the
predicament of saying something very flat when
he imagined that he had said something very
ingenious. Nevertheless, he sometimes made

WIELAND.

139

a good hit, as one who spends his whole life
in chasing after thoughts necessarily must.

In the following passage I am pleased with
the concluding thought, notwithstanding its epi-
grammatic turn, on account of the simplicity
and luminous truth of the image in which it is
clothed. " We must have books," he says, " for
recreation and entertainment, as well as books
for instruction and for business. The former
are agreeable, the latter useful ; and the hmnan
mind requires both. The Canon-law and the
codes of Justinian shall have due honour, and
reign at the universities, but Homer and Virgil
need not therefore be banished. We will cul-
tivate the olive and the vine, but without era-
dicating the myrtle and the rose."

I have two remarks to make, however, re-
specting this passage. In the first place, Balzac
concedes too much to those pedants, who turn
up their noses at the favourites of the Muses
and their works, when he reckons the Homers
and the Virgils among the merely agreeable
writers. Antiquity, more wise in this respect,
thought differently ; and Horace maintains with
good reason, that there is more practical phi-
losophy to be learned from Homer than from
Grantor and Chrysippus.

In the next place, it seems to me on the
whole to indicate rather a mercantile than a
philosophical way of thinking, when people
place the agreeable and the useful in opposition
to each other, and look upon the former with a
kind of contempt in comparison with the latter.

Presuming that what we understand by the
agreeable is something that violates neither
law nor duty nor sound moral sentiment, I
say that the useful, as opposed to the agreeable
and the beautiful, is common to us with the
lowest brute ; and that when we love and
honour that v/hich is useful in this sense, we
do only what the ox and the ass do likewise.
The value of svich utility depends on the greater
or less degree of indispensableness which at-
taches to it. So far therefore as a thing is
necessary to the preservation of the human
species and of civil society, so far it is good
indeed, but not on that account excellent. Ac-
cordingly, we desire the useful, not on its own
account, but only on account of certain advan-
tages which we derive from it. The beautiful
on the other hand we love by virtue of an in-
trinsic superiority of our nature over the merely
animal. For man alone of all animals is
endowed with a delicate feeling for order and
beauty and grace. Hence, he is so much the
more j^erfect, so much the more a man, the
more extended and intense his love for the
beautiful, and the greater the refinement and
accuracy with which, by mere sensation, he
can distinguish different degrees and kinds of
beauty. And therefore, moreover, it is only
the beautiful in art as well as in the mode of
life and in morals, that distinguishes social,
developed, refined man from savages and bar-
barians. Nay, all the arts without exception,

and the sciences too, owe their growth almost
exclusively to this love for the beautiful and
the perfect, inherent in man, and would still
be infinitely removed from that degree of per-
fection to which they have risen in Europe, if
men had attempted to confine them within the
narrow limits of the necessary and the useful,
in the common acceptation of those words.

Socrates did so, and if ever he was mistaken
in anything, it was in this. Keppler and
Newton would never have discovered the laws
of the mundane system, — the noblest product
of human thought, — if, in conformity with his
precepts, they had confined geometry to mere
mensuration, and astronomy to the mere neces-
sities of travel by land and sea, and to the
making of almanacs.

Socrates exhorted painters and sculptors to
combine the agreeable and the beautiful with
the useful ; just as he urged mimic dancers to
ennoble the pleasure which their art was
capable of yielding, and to entertain the heart
together with the senses. According to the
same principle, he behoved to admonish those
labourers who occupy themselves with things
essential, to combine the useful as far as pos-
sible with the beautiful. But to deny the name
of beautiful to everything that is not useful is
to confound ideas.

It is true. Nature herself has established a
relation between the useful, and the beautiful
and graceful. But these are not desirable be-
cause they are useful, but because it is the
nature of man to enjoy a pure satisfaction in
the contemplation of them, a satisfaction
altogether similar to that which we derive
from the contemplation of moral excellence,
and as much a want of rational beings as
food, clothing, shelter, are wants of the animal
man.

I say of the animal man because they are
common to him with all other, or at least, with
most other animals. But neither these animal
necessities, nor the joower and the effort to
satisfy them, constitute him a man. In pro-
viding food, in building his nest, in choosing a
mate, in training his young, in battling with
others who w^ould deprive him of his food, or
take possession of his dwelling, — in all this he
acts, materially considered, as an animal. It
is the way and manner in which man — unless
reduced to the condition of a brute, and kept
therein by cogent, external circumstances — per-
forms these animal functions, that distinguishes
him froin and raises him above all other orders
of animals, and characterizes his humanity.
For this animal that calls itself man, and this
only, possesses an inborn feeling for beauty and
order, possesses a heart disposed to communi-
cation of itself, to sympathy with sorrow and
with joy, and to an infinite diversity of agree-
able and beautiful sentiments. Only this ani-
mal possesses a strong propensity to imitate
and to create, and labours unceasingly to im-
prove what he has invented and made.

140

WIELAND.

All these qualities together distinguish him
essentially from other animals, make him their
lord and master, subject land and sea to his
dominion, and lead him from step to step so
far, that, by the almost unlimited extension of
his artistic powers, he is enabled to transform
Nature herself, and, from the materials which
she furnishes, to create for himself a new
world, more perfectly adapted to his particular
ends.

The first thing, in which man displays this
his superiority, is the refinement and ennobling
of all those wants, impulses and functions
wliich he has in common with other animals.
The time which he requires for this purpose is
not to be considered. Enough that he finally
arrives at that point where he is no longer
necessitated to beg his sustenance from mere
chance, and where the greater certainty of a
richer and better support allows him leisure to
think also of perfecting the other necessities of
life. He invents one art after another, and
each increases the security or the pleasure of
his existence. And so he ascends continually
from the indispensable to the convenient, from
the convenient to the beautiful.

The natural society into which he is born,
combined with the necessity of securing him-
self against the injurious consequences of a too
great extension of the human species, leads him
at last to civil society and civilized niodes of life.
But here too, no sooner has he provided for
the necessary, for the means of internal and
external security, than we find him occupied,
in thousand-fold ways, with beautifying this
his new condition. Imperceptibly small vil-
lages are transformed into large cities, the
abodes of the arts and of commerce, and points
of union for the diflerent nations of the earth.
Man spreads himself ever farther in all senses
and in all directions. Navigation and traffic
multiply relations and pursuits by multiplying
the wants and the goods of life. Wealth and
luxury refine every art whose mother was want
and necessity; leisure, ambition, and public
encouragement promote the growth of the
sciences, which, by the light they difluse over
all the objects of human life, become rich
sources of new advantages and enjoyments.

But in the same proportion in which man
adorns and improves his external condition,
his feeling for the morally beautiful is also un-
folded. He renounces the rude and inhuman
uses of the savage state, he learns to abhor all
violent conduct toward his kind, and accustoms
himself to laws of justice and propriety. The
manifold relations of the social condition un-
fold and determine the ideas of politeness and
etiquette, and the desire of pleasing others and
of gaining their esteem teaches him to restrain
his passions, to conceal liis faults, to turn his
best side out, and to perform whatsoever he
does, in a decent manner. In a word, his
manners improve with the rest of his con-
dition.

Through all these gradations he raises him
self at last to the highest perfection of mind,
possible in this present life, to the great idea
of the whole of which he is a part, to the ideal
of the fair and good, to wisdom and virtue, and
to the worship of the inscrutable, original
Power of Nature, the imiversal Father of
Spirits, to know whose laws and to do them is
his greatest privilege, his first duty and his purest
pleasure.

All this we denominate, with one word, the
progress of Humanity. And now let every one
answer for himself the question, whether man
would have made this progress if that inborn
feeling of the beautiful and the graceful had re-
mained inactive in him? Take from him this,
and all the results of his dormant power, all the
monuments of his greatness, all the riches of
Nature and Art of which he has possessed him-
self, disappear; he relapses into the brutal con-
dition of the inhabitants of New Holland ; and,
with him, Nature herself relapses into savage
and formless chaos.

What are all these steps by which man gra-
dually approaches perfection but successive
embellishments, enrbellishments of his neces-
sities, his mode of living, his habitation, his
apparel, his implements, embellishments of his
mind and heart, his sentiments and passions,
his language, manners, customs, pleasures'?

What a distance from the earliest hovel to a
building of Palladio! From the canoe of a Ca-
rib to a ship of the line ! From the three blocks
by which, in the remotest ages, the BcEotians
represented the three Graces, to the Graces of
Praxiteles! From a village of Hottentots or
wild Indians to a city fike London! From the
ornaments of a woman of New Zealand to the
state-dress of a sultana! From the dialect of
the natives of Otaheite to the languages of Ho-
mer, of Virgil, Tasso, Milton and Voltaire!

What innumerable gradations of embellish-
ment must men and himian things have passed
through before they could overcome this almost
measureless interval!

The desire to beautify and refine, and the
dissatisfaction with the lower grade as soon as
a higher was known, are the true, the only, and
the very simple forces by which man has been
urged onward to the point at which we find
him. All nations which have perfected them-
selves are a proof of this proposition. And if
there are any to be found which, without any
special impediment, physical or moral, have
always remained stationary in the same degree
of imperfection, or which betray an entire want
of those motives to progress, which have been
mentioned, we should have reason to regard
them rather as a particular species of man-like
animals than as actual men of our own race
and kind.

If now, as no one will deny, everything
which tends to perfect man and his condition
deserves the name of useful, where is there any
ground for this hateful antithesis which certain

WIELAND.

141

Ostrogoths still make between the useful and
the beautiful? Probably these people have
never thought what the consequences would
be, if a nation, which has reached a high degree
of refiriement, should banish or let starve its
musicians, its actors, its poets, its painters, and
other artists ; in a word, all who minister in the
kingdom of the Muses and the Graces; — or,
what would be quite as bad, if it should lose its
taste in all these arts.

The loss of things which are incomparably
.'ess important would make a great gap in its
prosperity. If one should reckon up to you
what the consequences would be to the French,
it" only the two little articles, fans and snuff-
boxes, were stricken out from the number of
European necessities, and if you were to con-
sider that these are but two little twigs of the
countless branches of that industry elicited by
the love for playthings and trinkets, wherewith
all the large children in trowsers and long coats
around us are atfected, and if you were to cal-
culate how useful to the world even these tise-
less things are, and were to reflect that the de-
partments of the beautiful and the useful are
not exclusive departments, but are so manifoldly
intertwined with each other that it is impossible
ever to define with certainty and precision their
respective boundaries, in short, that there exists
such an intimate relation between them that
almost all that is useful is or may be made beau-
tiful, and all that is beautiful useful; — if you
were to consider all this, you would —

But there are some people who, like the Ab-
derites, grow no wiser by considering. He
whose head has, once for all, a crook in it, will
never, in his life, be brought to see things as
they are seen by all the rest of the world who
look straight before them.

And then there is still another class of incor-
rigible people who have always been avowed
contemners of the beautiful, not because their
head is placed awry, but because they call no-
thing useful that does not fill their purse. Now,
the trade of a sycophant, a quack, a dealer in
charms, a clipper of ducats, a pimp, a Tartvffe,
is certainly not beautiful; it is therefore per-
fectly natural that this gentry should manifest
on every occasion a profound contempt for that
kind of beauty which yields them nothing. Be-
sides, to how many a blockhead is stupidity
useful ! How many would lose their whole
authority, if those among v.'hom they had won
or stolen it, had taste enough to distinguish the
genuine from the false, the beautiful from the
ugly ! Such persons, to be sure, have weighty,
personal reasons to be enemies of wit and taste.
They are in the condition of the honest fellow
who had married his homely daughter to a blind
man, and was unwilling that his son-in-law
should be couched.

But the rest of us, who can only gain by being
made wiser, — what Abderites we should be if
we suffered ourselves to be persuaded by these
gentlemen who are interested in the matter, to

become blind or to remain blind, in order that
the ugliness of their daughters may not come to
light !

FROM THE DIALOGUES OF THE GODS.*

DIALOGUE VI.

Mercury brings to the banqueting Goils the informa-
tion that they have been formally deposeil in the Roman
Senate — under the government of the Emperor Theodo-
sius the great — Jupiter discusses this event with great
moderation, and reveals to the Gods consoling glimpses
of the Future.

SPEAKERS.

JUPITER, JUNO, APOLLO, MINERVA, TEJfUS, BAC-
CHUS, VESTA, CERES, VICTORIA, aUIRINUS,
SERAPIS, MOMUS AND MERCURY.

Jupiter and Juno, with the other inhabitants of
Olympus, are sitting in an open hall of the Olym-
pian palace, at sundry large tables. Ganymede
and Antinous are pouring out nectar for the gods,
Hebe, for the goddesses. The Muses perform table
music, the Graces and the Hours dance pantomimic
dances; and Jocus, from time to time, provokes the
blessed gods to loud laughter, by his caricatures
and his lazzi. In the moment of the greatest mer-
riment, Mercury comes flying in, in great haste.

Jupiter. You are late, my son ; how you look !
What news do you bring us from below there 1

Venus, to Bacchus. He seems to have a heavy
load of it ; how troubled he looks !

Mercury. The newest that I bring with me is
not very well calculated to enhance the mirth
which, I see, reigns here at this moment.

Jupiter. At least your looks are not. Mercury.
What can have happened so bad as to disturb
even the gods in their enjoyment?

Quirimis. Has an earthqitake destroyed the
Capitol ?

Mercury. That would be a trifling affair.

Ceres. Has a violent eruption of ^tna de-
vastated my beautiful Sicily ?

Bacchus. Or has an untimely frost blighted
the Campanian vines?

Mercury. Trifles ! Trifles !

Jupiter. Well ! Come ! Out with your tale
of wo !

Mercury. It is nothing more than — [He hesi-
tates.)

Jupiter. Do not make me impatient, Hermes !
What is 'nothing more than?'

Mercury. Nothing, Jupiter, but that at Rome
on a motion made in the Senate by the Impe-
rator in his own person, and carried by an
overwhelming majority, you have been porm-

ALLT DEPOSED.

* These dialogues were suggested to Wieland by his
translations of Lucian. Some of them are mere jeux
d'esprit in imitation of that author on whom he had ex-
pended three years" labour. Some have a deeper meaning.
The author says of them, " I do not wish for readers wlio
need to be informed that they have a very serious pur-
pose." Tr.

142

WIELAND.

(^The gods all rise from the table in great com-
motion. Jupiter, u-ho alone remains seated, laugh-
ing.) Is that all? That is what I have been
expecting this long while.

Jill the gods at once. Jupiter deposed! Is it
possible? Jupiter!

Juno. You talk like a crazy man, Mercury. —
jEsculapins, do feel of his pulse!

The gods. Jupiter deposed !

Mercury. As I said, formally and solemnly, by
a great majority of voices, declared to be a man
of straw — what do I say? a man of straw is
something ; — less than a man of straw, a no-
thing; robbed of his temples, his priests, his
dignity as supreme protector of the Roman em-
pire !

Hercules. That is mad news, Mercury! — But,
as true as I am Hercules, (^flourishing his club)
they shall not have done me that for nothing!

Jupiter. Be quiet, Hercules ! — So then, Jujjiter
Optimus Maximus, Caf)itoIinus, Feretrius, Sta-
tor, Lapis, &c. &c., has finished his parti

Mercury. Your statue is thrown down, and
they are now busily employed in demolishing
your temple. The same tragedy is going on in
ail the provinces and corners of the Roman em-
pire. Everywhere legions of goat-bearded, semi-
human beings, with torches and crowbars, ham-
mers, mattocks and axes are falling to work and
destroying with fanatic rage the venerable ob-
jects of the arch-old popular faith.

Serapis. Wo is me ! What will be the fate of
my splendid temple at Alexandria and my su-
perb colossal image ! If the desert of Thebais
spews out but one half of its sacred Satyrs
against them, it is a gone case.

Moiniis. 0 ! you have nothing to fear, Serapis.
Who would dare to touch your image, when it
is an understood thing at Alexandria, tliat, on
the least outrage committed against it by any
sacrilegious hand, heaven and earth will tumble
into ruins and Nature sink back into ancient
chaos?

Quirinus. Only, one cannot always depend on
that sort of tradition, my good Serapis ! It might
happen to yon as it did to the massive-gold
statue of the goddess Anaitis at Zela, with re-
gard to which, it was also believed, that the
first one who offered any violence to it, would
be struck dead on the spot.

Serapis. And what happened to that statue?

Quirinus. When the Triumvir, Antony, had
routed Pharnaces at Zela, the city, together with
the temple of Anaitis, was plundered ; and no
one could tell what had become of the massive-
gold goddess. Some years after, it happened
that Augustus was spending the night at Bono-
nia with one of Antony's veterans. The Impe-
rator was splendidly entertained, and, at table,
the conversation happening to turn on the battle
of Zela and the plunder of the temple of Anai-
tis, he asked his host, as an eyewitness, whether
it was true that the first one who laid hand on
her fell suddenly dead to the ground? — You
behold that rash man before you, said the

veteran, and you are actually supping from a
leg of the goddess. I had the good fortune to
seize upon her first. Anaitis is a very good
person, and I gratefully confess, that I am in-
debted to her for all my wealth.

Serapis. That is poor consolation which you
give me, Quirinus ! If such things are going on
in the world as Mercury reports, I can promise
myself no better fate for my colossus at Alexan-
dria. It is really dreadful that Jupiter can look
so composedly on such enormities!

Jupiter. You would do well, Serapis, if you
would follow my example. For a Divinity of
Pontus, you have enjoyed the honour of being
worshipped from East to West long enough,
and you can hardly expect that your temples
should fare better than mine, or that your colos-
sus should last longer than the god-like master-
piece of Phidias. Surely you do not look to be
the only one that stands upright, when all the
rest of us are fallen.

Momus. Fy ! Fy ! Jupiter, what have you
done with your famous thunderbolts, that you
submit so quietly to your fall ?

Jupiter. If I were not what I am, I should
answer that foolish question with one of them,
witling!

Quirinus to Mercury. You must tell it to me
again. Mercury, before I can believe you. Do
you mean to say then, that my Flamen is
abolished? my temple closed? that my festival
is no longer celebrated? Have the enervated,
slavish, unfeeling Quirites degenerated to this
degree of ingratitude towanl their founder ?

Mercury. I should deceive you, if I were to
give any other account.

Victoria. Then I need not ask what has be-
come of my altar and my statue in the Julian
Curia. The Romans have so long forgotten the
art of conquering, that I find nothing more
natural than that they should not even be able
to bear the presence of my image any longer.
Widi every look which they cast upon it, it
would seem to reproach them with their shame-
ful degeneracy. Victoria has nothing more to
do with Romans whose very name has become
an insult among Barbarians, which ordy blood
can wash out.

Vesta. Under such circumstances they will
be sure not to let the sacred fire burn any longer
in my temple. Heaven ! What will be the
fate of my poor virgins ?

Mercury. 0, they will not touch a hair of
their heads, venerable Vesta ! They will let
them very quietly die of hunger.

Quirinus. How times change ! Formerly, it
was a dreadful misfortune for the whole Roman
Empire, if the sacred fire, on the altar of Vesta,
went out.

Mercury. And now, there would be a deal
more fuss made, if the fire should go out in
some Roman cook's -shop than if the Vestals
should let theirs expire twice every week.

Quirinus. But who then, in future, is to be
the patron and protector of Rome, in my stead ?

W I E L A N D.

143

Mercury. St. Peter with tlie double key has
bespoken this little office for himself.

Quirinus. St. Peter with the double key ! Who
is he?

Mercury. I do not exactly know, myself
Ask Apollo; perhaps he can give you more
information on the subject.

Jtpollo. That is a man, Quirinus, who, in his
successors, will govern half the world for eight
hundred years; although he himself was only
a poor fisherman.

Quirinus. What! Will the world let itself be
governed by fishers ?

Apollo. At least by a certain kind of fishers,
by fishers of men, who with a very ingenious
kind of bow-net, called decretals, will gradually
catch all the nations and iirinces of Europe.
Their commands will be regarded as divine
oracles and a piece of sheep-skin or of paper
sealed with St. Peter's fisher's-ring will have
power to create and depose kings.

Quirinus. This St. Peter, with his double key,
must be a mighty conjuror!

Apollo. Not at all! The strangest and most
miraculous things in the world come about, as
you ought to know by this time, in a very
natural way. The avalanche, which over-
whelms a whole village, was at first a little
snow-ball ; and a stream which bears large
vessels is a gurgling rock-fountain in its origin.
Why may not the successors of a Galilean
fisherman, in a few centuries, become masters
of Rome, and, by means of a new religion,
whose chief jiriests they have constituted them-
selves, and with the aid of an entirely new
morality and system of politics which they
know how to rear upon that religion, become
at last, masters for a time of half the world?
Did you not yourself tend the herds of the King
of Alba, who was a very small potentate, be-
fore you placed yourself at the head of all the
banditti in Latium, and patched together the
little robbers-nest, which, in process of time,
became the capital and queen of the world ?
St. Peter, it is true, made no great figure in his
life-time, but he will see the time when em-
jierors shall hold the stirrups for his successors,
and queens with all humility kiss their feet.

Quirinus. What things one lives to see, when
one is immortal !

Jpollo. To be sure, it requires a good deal
of time and no little art to make that progress
in man-fishing. But the fishes must be stupid
enough, who will let themselves be caught by
them.

Quirinus. Meanwhile, we are and remain all
of us deposed, eh?

Mercury. It seems likely to stop at that, for
the present.

Several gods. Better not be immortal, than
experience such things.

Jupiter. My dear sons, uncles, nephews, and
cousins, all and severally ! I see that you treat
this little revolution, which I have very quietly
seen approaching this long while, more tragi-

cally than the thing is worth. May I ask you
to sit down again in your places, and let us
discuss these matters calmly and candidly over
a glass of nectar. Everything in nature has its
time, everything is liable to change, and so too
are human opinions. They ever change with
circumstances, and if we consider what a dif-
ference only fifty years makes between the
grandsire and the grandson, it really will not
seem strange that the world should appear to
take an entirely new shape in the course of one
thousand or two thousand years. For at bot-
tom it is only in appearance after all. It re-
mains forever the same comedy though with
different masks and names. The foolish peo-
ple there below have practised superstition
with us long enough, and if there are some
among you who thought themselves benefited
by it, I must tell them that they were mistaken.
One would not grudge that mankind should
grow wiser at last, if they can. By heaven!
it were none too soon. But that is not to be
thought of, at present. True, they always flat-
ter themselves that the last folly of which they
have become conscious, is the last they shall
commit. The hope of better times is their
everlasting chimera, by which they are forever
deluded, in order to be forever deluded again ;
because they will never come to understand
that not the time, but their own inborn, in-
curable folly, is the cause why their condition
never improves. For it is, once for all, their
lot not to be able to enjoy anything good with
a pure enjoyment, and to exchange one folly,
of which they have grown weary at last, like
children of a worn-out doll, for a new one,
with which, for the most part, they fare worse
than before. This time, it actually looked as
if they would gain by the exchange, but I knew
them too well not to foresee that they were not
to be helped in this way. For though Wisdom
herself should descend to them, in jierson, and
dwell visibly among them, they would not cease
to hang ribbons and feathers and rags and bells
about her, until they had made a fool of her.
Believe me, Gods, the song of triumph, which
they are raising, at this moment, on account of
the glorious victory they have obtained over
our defenceless statues, is a raven-cry proi'jhetic
of wo to posterity. They think to improve, and
will fall from the frying-pan into the fire. They
are weary of us, they wish to have nothing
more to do with us. So much the worse for
them ! We need them not. If their priests
pronounce us unclean and evil spirits and as-
sure the foolish people that an ever-burning
gulph of brimstone is our dwelling, why need
that trouble us? Of what importance is it to
us, what conceptions half-reasoning creatures
of earth may form of us ? or in what relation
they place themselves to us, and whether they
smoke us with a sickening compound of the
stink of sacrifices and incense, or with hellish
brimstone ? Neither the one nor the other
reaches to us. You say, they do not know us,

144

WIELAND.

wlien they wish to withdraw themselves from
our government. Did they know ns better
while they served us? What the poor people
call their religion is their concern not ours. It
is they alone who gain or lose by ordering their
life rationally or irrationally. And their de-
scendants, when hereafter they shall feel the
consequences of the unwise decrees of their
Valentinians, their Gratiani, and their Theo-
dosii, will find cause enough to regret the un-
wise provisions which will accumulate on their
giddy heads a flood of new and insupportable
evils, of which the world had no conception
as long as it adhered to the old faith or the old
supers^tition. It would be a very diflerent
affair, if they really improved their condition
under the new arrangement ! Who of us would
or could blame them for that? But it is just
the opposite ! They resemble a man, who, for
the sake of driving away some trifling evil
with which he might live to the age of Titho-
nus, suffers ten others, which are ten times
worse, to be fastened upon him. Thus, for
example, they raise a great outcry against our
priests, because they entertained the people,
who are everywhere superstitious and will
always remain so, with dehisions, which how-
ever benefited the State as well as them-
selves. Will their priests do better ? At this
moment they are laying the foundation of a
superstition, which will benefit no one but
themselves, and which, instead of strengthen-
ing the political constitution, will confound and
undermine all human and civil relations, — a
superstition which will lie like lead on their
brains, exclude every sound conception of
things, natural and moral, and, under pretence
of a chimerical perfection, will poison humanity
in every man in the very germ. When the
worst has been said that can be said with
truth of the superstition which has hitherto
fooled the world, men will be forced, here-
after, to confess, that it was far more human,
more innocent, and more beneficial, than the
new one which is substituted in its place. Our
priests were infinitely more harmless than those
to whom they must now yield. They enjoyed
their authority and their income in peace, were
in harmony with every one and assailed no
man's faith. These are greedy of dominion
and intolerant, they persecute one another with
the uttermost rage on account of the most in-
significant verbal subtleties, decide by a majority
of voices what must be thought concerning un-
thinkable things and what must be said con-
cerning unspeakable things, and treat all, who
think or speak otlierwise, as enemies of God
and man. It was a thing scarce heard of for
a thousand years, that the priests of the gods
came into collision with the civil authority, un-
til encroached upon by these raving iconoclasts.
The new priesthood on the contrary, since their
party has been in power, have not ceased to
confound the world. As yet, their pontifis
work under ground, but soon they will grasp

at the sceptres of kings and assume to be vice-
gerents of their God, and under this title arro-
gate to themselves an hitherto unheard of do-
minion over heaven and earth. Our priests
indeed, as was proper, were not very zealous'
promoters — or at least they were not avowed
enemies — of philosophy, from which they had
nothing to fear under the protection of the
laws. Least of all, did they dream of sub-
jecting the thoughts and opinions of men to
their jurisdiction, and of hindering their free
circulatiqii in society. Tlieirs, on the other
hand, who, as long as they were the weaker
party, made so much boast of having Reason
on their side and always placed her in the van,
whenever attacked by ours, — now that she
would only be an hindrance to them, in their
farther operations, — will dismiss her from their
service and will not rest until they have made
all dark around them, until they have with-
drawn from the people all means of enlighten-
ment and stamped the free use of the natural
judgment as the greatest of all crimes. For-
merly, while they lived on alms themselves,
the wealth and decent living of our priests was
an abomination to them; now that they are
driving with full sails, the moderate revenues
of our temples are much too small to satisfy
the necessities of their pride and vanity. Al-
ready their pontiffs at Rome, through the li-
berality of superstitious and wealthy matrons,
whose enthusiastic sentimentality they know
how to avail themselves of in so masterly a
manner, by the most shameless legacy-hunting,
and a thousand other arts of the same sort, have
placed themselves in a condition to surpass the
first persons in the State, in splendor, luxury,
and expense. But all these fountains, although
grown to rivers by ever new accessions, will
not satisfy these insatiable men. They will
invent a thousand unheard of means to tax the
simplicity of rude and deluded men ; even the
sins of the world they will convert to golden
fountains by their magic art, and, to render thesq
fountains more productive, they will invent a
monstrous number of new sins, of which the
Theophrasts and the Epictetusses had no con-
ception.

But why do I speak of all this? What is it
to us what these people do or leave undone, or
how well or ill they avail themselves of their
new dominion over the sickly souls of men who
are enervated and crippled by lust and bondage?
They who deceive the rest are themselves de-
luded. They too know not what they do. But
it becomes us to treat them with indulgence as
diseased and insane, and, without regard to
their gratitude or ingratitude, in future also, still
to confer upon them as much good as their own
folly may yet leave us the opportunity of doing.
The unhappy! Whom but themselves do they
injure, when of their own accord they deprive
themselves of the beneficent influence by which
Athens became the school of wisdom and of
art, and Rome the lawgiver and mistress of the

WIELAND.

145

earth, by which both attained a degree of ctil-
ture to which even the better descendants of the
barbarians, who are now about to divide among
themselves the lands and wealth of these de-
generate Greeks and Romans, will never be
able to rise. For what is to become of men
from whom the Muses and the Graces, Philoso-
phy and all the beautifying arts of life and the
finer enjoyment of life have withdrawn them-
selves, together with the gods, their inventors
and protectors? I foresee with one glance all
the evil that will thrust itself in, in the place of
the good, all the unformed, the perverted, the
monstrous and misshapen that these fanatical
destroyers of the beautiful will rear on the ashes
and the ruins of works of genius, of wisdom and
art, and I am disgusted with the loathsome
spectacle. Away with it! For, so truly as I
am Jupiter Olympius, it shall not always remain
so, although centuries will elapse before Hu-
manity reaches the lowest abyss of its fall, and
centuries more before, with our aid, it works its
way once more above the slime. The time will
come when they will seek us again, invoke our
aid once more, and confess that they are power-
less without us. The time will come when with
unwearying diligence they will drag forth from
the dust once more, or excavate from rubbish
and corruption every ruined or defaced relic
of those works which, by our influence, once
sprung from the mind and hands of our fa-
vourites, and exhaust themselves in vain, with
affected enthusiasm, to imitate those miracles
of genuine inspiration and the actual afflatus of
divine powers.

Apollo. Most surely it will come, Jupiter, that
time ! I see it as if it stood already before me,
in the full glory of the present. They will again
erect our images, will gaze upon them with a
feeling of awe and adoring wonder, will use
them as models for their idols, which had be-
come frights in barbarous hands ; and — 0 ! what
a triumph! their pontiffs themselves will take
pride in erecting the most magnificent temple
to us, under a different name !

Jupiter, (^with a large goblet of nectar in his hand)
Here 's to the Future ! {to Minerva.) My daugh-
ter, we '11 drink to the time when you shall see
all Europe converted into a new Athens, filled
with academical lyceums, and perhaps shall
Viear the voice of philosophy from the midst of
the forests of Germany, more clear and free than
formerly from the halls of Athens and Alexan-
dria.

Minerva, (slightly shaking her head) I am glad.
Father Jupiter, to see you of such good cheer in
view of the present aspects; but you will par-
don me if I believe as little in a new Athens as
in a new Olympus.

Quirinus. {to Mercury) I can't get that Peter
with the double key, who is to be my successor,
out of my head, Mercury ! How is it with that
key? Is it an actual or emblematic, a natural
or a magic key? Where did he get it, and what
will he unlock with it?

T

Mercury. All that I can tell you about it,
Quirinus, is, that with this key he can unlock
Heaven or Tartarus to whom he pleases.

Quirinus. He may unlock Tartarus to whom
he will for all me ; but as to Heaven! — that is
a very difl'erent matter.

Mercury. Indeed, they are preparing to peo-
ple Heaven with such an enormous quantity of
new gods of their sort, that there will hardly be
any room left for us old ones.

Jupiter. Leave that to me, Hermes ! They
could easily deprive us of our temples and ter-
ritories on the earth ; but, in Olympus, we have
been established too long to be crowded out.
For the rest, as a proof of our perfect impar-
tiality, we will concede to the new Romans the
right of aj^otheosis, notwithstanding their inso-
lence, under the same conditions as to the old.
As I understand, most of their candidates who
lay claim to this promotion are not persons of
the best society. Therefore, before we admit
any one, with St. Peter's permission ^ve will
examine him a little. If it shall appear that,
in virtue of his other qualities and merits, he
can maintain his place among us, no objection
shall be made on account of the golden circle
round his head ; and Momus himself shall not
twit him with the miracles which are wrought
with his bones or his wardrobe.

Jimio. You may do as you please with regard
to the men, Jupiter ; but I protest against the
introduction of the ladies.

Venus. There are said to be some very pretty
ones among the number.

Jupiter. We will talk about that when the
case occurs. And now — not a word more de
odiosis ! A fresh cup, Antinous !

DIALOGUE VIII.
jupiTEH, NUMA, afterward ait unknown.*

Jupiter. How happens it, Numa, that we have
not seen you now, for several days, at the table
of the Gods ?

Numa. The accounts which Mercury lately
brought us from Rome left me no rest until I
had seen with my own eyes how matters stood.

Jupiter. And how did you find them ?

Numa. I say it with heavy heart, Jupiter, but
probably I tell you nothing new, when I say
that your authority with mortals appears to be
irrecoverably lost.

Jupiter. Did you not hear what Apollo said
at table the other day ?

Numa. He gave you very distant consolation,
Jupiter ; and even this consolation turns at last
on a verbal quibble. It is just as if a Chaldean
soothsayer had comforted Alexander the Great,
when about to die of a miserable fever at Baby-
lon in the midst of the enjoyment of his con-
quests, with the assurance that two thousand

* He is so still to most persons at the present day, and
he appears here to give some important information re-
specting his true character and aim.
13

146

WIELAND.

years after his death a noble descendant of the
great Witteldnd would wear his picture in a
ring. Such a thought may be very agreeable as
long as one is in good condition ; but it is a poor
indemnification for the loss of the first throne in
the world.

Jupiter. I should have thought, friend Numa,
that your residence in Olympus would have
corrected your notions of such things !

^^unia. I know very well that a decree of the
senate at Rome cannot deprive you of the in-
fluence which you have on. the affairs of the
world below ; but —

Jupiter, (^smiling) Speak out plainly what you
think ! My ear has grown patient of late —
'But' what?

Numa. Your influence, after all, cannot be
very considerable ; or else I cannot conceive
how you could suffer yourself to be deprived of
the divine authority and the high privileges
which you have enjoyed for so many centuries
throughout the Roman world, without so much
as stirring a finger.

Jupiter. I can pardon my Flamen for not
comprehending a thing of this sort; but you,
Numa! —

Auma. To speak candidly, Jupiter, although
I may be considered in some sort the founder
of the old Roman religion, it was never my in-
tention to give more nourishment to the super-
stition of the rude Romans than was absolutely
necessary to polish them. I did not indeed
make any essential change in the service of
those gods which a primeval, popular belief
had long established in the possession of the
public veneration. Nevertheless, it was my aim
to keep the way open, so to speak, to a purer
knowledge of the Supreme Being, and at least
to prevent the coarsest kind of idolatry by not
allowing the Godhead to be represented in the
temples, neither in the likeness of beasts nor
even of men. I regarded even then tlie dif-
ferent persons and names, which the faith of
the forefathers had exalted into gods, either as
symbols of the invisible and unfathomable
arch-Power of Nature, or as men whom the gra-
titude of posterity for great services conferred on
social and civil life, had raised to the rank of
publicly worshipped, guardian spirits.

Jupiter. And ocular evidence has taught you
that you did not err greatly, in this latter notion
at least; although I am not of your opinion as
it regards the images of the gods.

Numa. Had there been Phidiasses and Alka-
menescs in Latium in my day, it is probable that
these artists might have led me too to a difler-
ent way of thinking.

Jupiter. If, then, you have never held us for
anything else than we are, whence your sur-
prise that we are quite willing to let it pass,
when the inhabitants of the earth have also
advanced so far as to regard us in the same
light?

Numa. It may be owing to the habit of living
among you, and of seeing you so long in posses-

sion of the worship of mankind. Both these
circumstances have placed you in a strange kind
of chiaroscuro to my eye, and have given me
imperceptibly, perhaps, too high an opinion of
your nature and dignity. In short, I confess
that it will be difficult for me, Jupiter, to accus-
tom myself to a different way of thinking.

Jupiter. I am half inclined to come forth from
the chiaroscjiro, and to draw away the veil from
the secrets of my family, concerning which so
many excellent people on the earth have cud-
gelled their brains to no purpose.

Numa. I am sure yoit will lose nodiing by it.

Jupiter. One always gains by the truth, friend
Numa! — You know that no one of us. Olym-
pians, long as we have existed and far as our
sight extends, can refer to a time when this im-
measurable whole began to be, whose exist-
ence, on the contrary, is the most convincing
proof that it had no beginning. On the other
hand it may be affirmed with the same cer-
tainty, that, of all its visible parts, no one has
always existed precisely as it is. Thus, for ex-
ample, the earth which we once inhabited has
undergone several great revolutions, of which,
in part, some traces have been preserved by
oral tradition among the oldest nations. Of this
kind is the tradition current among the North-
landers, the Indians and the Egyptians, that
there was a time when the earth was inhabited
by gods. In fact, the inhabitants of the earth in
this first period, if they can be called men, were
a kind of men who would compare with the
present race, as the Olympian Jupiter of Phi-
dias, with the Priapus-images of fig-tree wood
which the country people stick up to protect
their gardens ; so far did they surpass in size
and beauty, bodily strength and nrental powers,
the men of after times. With them and by
means of them, the earth enjoyed a state of per-
fection which was worthy of its then inhabit-
ants. But, in the course of thousands of years,
it has undergone great changes. A part of the
posterity of the first inhabitants degenerated in
the different regions of the earth, over which
their increase compelled them to spread them-
selves. Extraordinary events, earthquakes, vol-
canoes, floods, changed the shape of the planet.
While whole countries were swallowed up in
the ocean, others gradually emerged from the
waves ; but the greater part of the old inhabit-
ants of the earth perished in this fearful revolu-
tion of things. The few who remained, wan-
dered singly, amazed and dispirited, among the
ruins of Nature. Here and there, indeed, acci-
dent brought a Deucalion and a Pyrrha together,
but their descendants soon degenerated, through
want and misery, into beastly savages. Mean-
while, the earth gradually recovered from the
chaotic state which naturally resulted from those
terrible convulsions, and became evermore fitted
for the habitation and subsistence of its new in-
habitants. The new races with which it was
peopled supported themselves scantily with
hunting and fishing, and where these failed,

W I E L A N D.

147

with acorns and other wild fruits. They dwelt,
for the most part, in forests and caves ; and the
most of them were so rude, that they did not
even know the use of fire. Happily, a family
of that first and more perfect race had preserved
itself on the summit of Imaus, with all their
original excellences, and in the enjoyment of
All the advantages derived from the arts and
sciences invented by their ancestors. Necessi-
tated by similar catastrophes to relinquish the
seats of their inheritance, they scattered them-
selves to the east and to the west, and wherever
they came, their arrival was like the appearance
of beneficent gods. For, besides a cultivated
language and gentle manners, they brought all
the arts, of which no trace was to be found
among those wild-animal-men, and the want
of which was the very cause which had de-
graded them to that inhuman animality. You
will comprehend, friend Numa, that they were
received as gods by these wretched creatures,
and that, by all the good which they communi-
cated, by the arts of agriculture, by the breeding
of domestic animals, the planting of fruit trees,
whereby they became creators of a new world,
by the civil societies whose founders, by the cities
whose builders and lawgivers they became, by
the pleasant arts of the Muses, whereby they
diSused milder manners, more refined plea-
sures, and a sweeter enjoyment of life, — you
will comprehend, I say, that by all these bene-
fits they had deserved so well of mankind, that,
after their death, (of which their ascension into
this purer element was the natural consequence)
they came to be honoured as guardian gods by
a grateful posterity. You will further compre-
hend, that they who once conferred so many
and such great benefits on mortals, after their
transition to a higher mode of life, should still
find pleasure in caring for men who had re-
ceived from them all that made them men, and
in general to watch over the preservation of all
that of which they had been, in some sense, the
creators.

Numa. Now, suddenly, everything which,
before, I had seen only as in a mist, is made
clear to me.

Jupiter. And now too, it will be clear to you,
I hope, why I said I was very willing that men
should become sufficiently enlightened to regard
us as nothing more than we actually are. Su-
perstition and priestcraft, powerfully supported
by poets, artists and my tliologians, had gradu-
ally converted the service which was paid us,
and which we accepted, only on account of its
beneficial influence on Humanity, into a mad
idolatry, which neither could nor ought to con-
tinue, which was necessarily undermined by an
ever-growing culture, and like all human things,
must finally fall back into itself. How could I
desire that that should not ensue, which, accord-
ing to the eternal laws of necessity, must needs
ensue?

Numa. But these fanatical innovators are not
contented with merely jiurifying a service so

ancient, and founded on such important bene-
fits; they destroy, they annihilate it! They rob
you of that which they actually owe to you;
and far from reducing the ideas of the nations
respecting the gods of their fathers to the stan-
dard of truth, they carry the madness of their
impious insolence so far as to pronounce you
evil demons and hellish spirits, and to treat you
as such.

Jupiter. Do not be angry, good Numa! Was
I not also forced, while my altars yet smoked,
to endure every coarse and indecent tale with
which the poets entertained their gaping hearers
at my expense 1 What does it signify to me
what is thought or said of me there below,
since the period has once for all arrived, when
the service of Jupiter has ceased to be bene-
ficial to men? Shall I force them with thunder-
bolts to have more respect for me ? Of what
importance can it be to me, whether they assign
Olympus or Tartarus to me for a dwelling?
Am I not secure against all the consequences of
their opinion? Or will Ganymede pour out for
me one cup the less of nectar on their account?

Numa. But it is of importance to them, Jupiter,
not to deprive themselves of all the benefits
which the world has hitherto enjoyed under
your government, by the abandonment of all
communion between themselves and you, into
which they are now suffering themselves to be
betrayed.

Jupiter. I thank you for your good opinion of
my government, friend Pompilius ! There are
certain wise people below there, who do not
think quite so highly of my influence in human
things, and — strictly considered — they may not
be so far out of the way. One cannot do more
for people than they are receptive of. I have
never liked to employ myself with working
miracles, and so every thing goes its natural
course, — mad enough, as you see, and yet, on
the whole, not so bad but that one may get on
with it. And so it will remain for the future,
I think. Whatever I can contribute to the com-
mon good, without sacrificing my repose, I shall
always be pleased to do. But as to playing the
enthusiast and letting myself be crucified for
ingrates and fools — that is not in Jupiter's line,
my good Numa !

The Unknown appears.

Numa. Who may that stranger be, who is
coming towards us yonder? Or are you already
acquainted with him, Jupiter ?

Jupiter. Not that I remember. He has some-
thing in his appearance, which indicates no
common character.

The Unknown. Is it permitted me to take part
in your conversation? I confess, it hath drawn
me hither from a considerable distance.

Jupiter, {^aside') A new kind of magnetism !
(To the unknown.') You know then, already,
whereof we were speaking?

The Unknown. I possess the faculty of being
where I wish to be ; and where two are in-

148

WIELAND.

quiring after truth, I seldom fail, visibly or in-
visibly, to make the third.

Numa. (^shaking Ins head, softly to Jvpitcr) A
queer customer !

Jupiter, (jirithout minding Numa, to the Un-
known) In that case, you are an excellent com-
panion! I rejoice to make your acquaintance.

Numa. (to the Unknown) May I ask your name?
and wlience you come?

The Unknown. Neither the one nor the other
has anything to do with the subject matter
which you were discussing.

Jupiter. We vi^ero speaking merely of facts.
And these, as you know, appear diiferently to
each observer, according to his stand-point and
the quality of his eyes.

The Unknown. And yet each thing can be
seen correctly only from one point of view,

Numa. And that is — ?

The Unkiiown. The centre of the Whole.

Jupiter, [aside, to Numa) In that man there
is either a great deal, or nothing. — (To the Un-
known.) You know the Whole then?

Tlie Unknown. Yes.

Numa. And what do you call its centre ?

The Unknown. Perfection ; from which every-
thing is equally remote and to which everything
approximates.

Numa. And how does each thing appear to
you from this centre?

The Unknown. Not fragmentary, not as it is in
particular places and periods of time, not as it
relates to these or those things, not as it loses or
gains by its immersion in the atmosphere of
human opinions and passions, not as it is falsi-
fied by folly or poisoned by corruption of heart;
but as it relates to the whole, in its beginning,
progress and issue, in all its forms, movements,
operations and consequences; — that is, in the
measure in which it contributes to the eternal
growth of the perfection of the whole.

Jupiter. That is not bad !

Numa. And seen from this point of view,
how do you find the subject of which we were
speaking when you came, — the great cata-
strophe which, in these days, without respect
or mercy, has overthrown everything that, for
so many centuries, was most venerable and
sacred to the human race?

The Unknown. It followed necessarily, for it
had been a long while preparing; and it needs
at last, as you know, but a single blast to over-
throw an old, ill-joined, thoroughly ruinous
fabric, and one, moreover, which was founded
on the sand.

Numa. But it was such a magnificent struc-
ture, so venerable in its antiquity, possessing,
with all its variety, so much simplicity, so bene-
ficent in the protection which Humanity, the
laws, the security of the States enjoyed so
long under its lofty arches! Would it not
have been better to repair than to destroy it?
Our philosophers at Alexandria had formed
such beautiful projects not merely to restore its
former authority but even to give it a far greater

splendour and especially a symmetry, a beauty,
a convenience which it never had before ! It
was a Pantheon of such great extent and such
ingenious construction that all the religions in the
world — even this new one if it would only be
lieaceable — might have found space enough
within its walls.

The Unknown. It is a pity that, with all these
apparent advantages, it was nevertheless built
only on the movable sand ! And as to peace-
ableness ! — how can you expect that, in a matter
of such great importance, truth and delusion
should agree together ?

Numa. That is a very easy matter, if only
mankind will agree among themselves. They
are never more grossly deluded than when they
imagine themselves in exclusive possession of
the truth.

The Unknown. If it is not their destination to
be deceived — and that, surely, you will not
maintain — then it cannot and will not be their
lot to wander forever in error and delusion, like
sheep without a shepherd. Between darkness
and light, twilight and half-light is certainly
better than complete night ! but only as a transi
tion from that to pure all-irradiating daylight.
The day has now dawned, and would you
lament that night and twilight are past?

Jupiter. You love allegory, as I hear, young
man ! I, for my part, love to speak roundly and
plainly. I suppose you mean to say that men
will be made happier by this new order of
things ? I hope they may, but as yet I see very
poor preparations for it.

The Unknown. Without fail the condition of
these poor mortals will be better and infinitely
better. Truth will put them in possession of
that freedom which is the most indispensable
condition of happiness : for truth alone makes
free.

Jupiter. Bravo! I heard that five hundred
years ago in the Stoa at Athens, until I was sick
of it. Propositions of this kind are just as in-
disputable and contribute just as much to the
welfare of the world as the great truth, that
once one is one. As soon as you will bring me
intelligence tliat the foolish people below there
have become better men than their fathers, since
that a great part of them believe differently from
their fathers, I will call you the messenger of
very good tidings.

The Unknown. The corruption of mankind
was so great that even the most extraordinary
provisions could not remedy the evil at once.
But, assuredly, they will grow better when truth
shall have made them free.

Jupiter. I believe so too, but, it seems to me,
that is saying no more than if you should say,
that as soon as all men are wise and good they
will cease to be foolish and perverse ; or that,
when the golden age arrives in which every
man shall have abundance, no one will suff"er
hunger any more.

The Unknown. I see the time actually coming
when all who do not purposely close their

WIELAND.

149

hearts to the truth, will, by means of it, attain
to a perfection of vvhicli your philosophers never
dreamed.

Jupiter. Have you been initiated in the mys-
teries of Eleusisl

The Utiknown. I know them as well as if I
had been.

Jupiter. Then you know what is the ultimate
aim of those mysteries.

The Unknown. To live happily, and to die
with the hope of a better life.

Jupiter. You seem to be a great philanthropist;
do you know anything more salutary for mortals
than this?

The Unknown. Yes.

Jupiter. Let me hear it, if I may ask.

The Unknown. To give them in reality what
those mystagogues at Eleusis promised.

Jupiter. I fear that is more than you or I will
be able to perform.

The Unknoicn. You have never tried, Jupiter.

Jupiter. Who likes to speak of his services?
But you may easily supjDOse that I could not
have attained to the honour which has been
paid me by so many great and powerful nations
for several thousand years, without having
served them to some extent.

The Unknown. That may have been a long
while ago ! He who is unwilling to do more for
man than he can do '■ivithout sacrificing his re-
pose,^ will not accomplish much in their behalf.
I confess, I have laboured sore.

Jupiter. I like you, young man. In your
years this amiable enthusiasm, which sacrifices
itself for others, is a real merit. Who can offer
himself up for mankind without loving them 1
And who can love them without thinking better
of them than they deserve ?

The Unknown. I think neither too well nor
too ill of them. I pity their misery. I see
that they may be helped ; and they shall be
helped.

Jupiter. It is even as I said. You are full of
courage and good-will, but you are still young:
the folly of earth's people has not yet made you
tender. When you are as old as I am, you will
sing a different song!

llie Unknown. You speak as might be ex-
pected of you.

Jupiter. It seems scandalous to you to hear
me talk thus, does it? You have formed a
great and benevolent plan for the good of man-
kind. You burn with the desire to execute it.
You live and have your being in it ; your far-
seeing glance shows you all its advantages ;
your courage swallows up all difficulties; you
have set your existence upon it ; how can you
help believing that it will be accomplished?
But you have to do with men, my sood friend !
Do not be offended, if I speak exactly as I
think: it is the privilege of age and experience.
You seem to me like a tragic poet who under-
takes to perform an excellent piece with no-
thing but crippled, dwarfed, halt and hunch-
backed actors. Once more, my friend, you are

not the first who has undertaken to accomplish
something great with men ; but I tell you that,
as long as they are what they are, all such
attempts will come to nothing.

The Unknown. For that very reason, they
must be made new men.

Jupiter. New men ! (Jaughing) That, indeed!
If you could only do that! But I think I under-
stand you. You mean to remodel them, to give
them a new and better form. The model is
there; you have only to form them after your-
self. But that is not all that is required. Na-
ture must furnish the clay for your creation ;
and you will have to take that as it is. Think
of me, my friend ! You will take all possible
pains with your pottery, and when it comes
out of the furnace, you will see yourself dis-
graced by it.

The Unknotvn. The clay — to continue your
figure — is not so bad in itself, as you think. It
can be purified and made as plastic as I re-
quire it, in order to make new and better men
out of it.

Jupiter. I rejoice to hear it. Have you made
the experiment?

The Unknown. I have.

Jupiter. I mean, on the large scale. For suc-
cess in one piece out of a thousand, does not
decide the matter.

The Unknown, {^after some hesitation) If the
experiment on the large scale has not yet suc-
ceeded according to my mind, I know, at least,
why it could not be otherwise. It will be
better in time.

Jupiter. In time? Yes, to be sure! we always
hope the best from time. And who would un-
dertake anything great without that hope? We
shall see how time will fulfil your expectations.
I can promise you little good for the next thou-
sand years.

The Unknown. You have, I see, a small scale,
old King of Crete ! What are a thousand years,
compared with the period required for the com-
pletion of the great work of making a single
family of good and happy beings out of the
whole human race ?

Jupiter. Ah ! you are right. How many thou-
sand years the Hermetic philosophers have
been labouring on their stone, without complet-
ing it? And what is the undertaking of those
wise masters compared with yours ?

The Unknown. Your jest is unseasonable.
The work which I have undertaken, is just as
possible as that the seed of a cedar should grow
to a great tree ; only that the cedar does not, it
is true, attain its perfection as rapidly as a
poplar.

Jupiter. And you should have as much time
for the accomplishment of your work as you
desire, if it depended only on that. But the
certain and enormous evils, with which man-
kind for so many centuries are to purchase the
hope of an uncertain good, give the thing a
different shape. What shall we think of a
plan intended to benefit the human race, which
13*

150

WIELAND.

so fails in the execution, that a large portion of
the human race, for a period whose duration is
incalculable, are rendered beyond all compari-
son more miserable and (what is worse still)
more depraved in head and heart than they
ever were before? I appeal to ocular evidence,
and yet all that we have witnessed since the
murder of the brave enthusiast, Julian, was but
a small prelude to the immeasurable calamities
which the new hierarchy will bring down on
poor foolish mortals who suffer themselves to
be lured into the unsuspected snare, by every
new song which is piped to them.

The Unknown. All these evils about which
you complain, in the name of Humanity, — you
who formerly took their misery so little to
heart, — are neither the conditions nor the con-
sequences of the great plan of which we speak.
They are the obstacles which oppose it from
without, and with which the light will have to
contend but too long, until it has finally over-
come the darkness. Is it the fault of the wine
when it is spoiled in mouldy vessels? Since
it is the nature of the case, that mankind can
advance in wisdom and goodness, only by im-
perceptible degrees ; since from within and
without such an infinite number of enemies
are labouring against their amendment; since
the difficulties increase with every victory and
even the most eftective measures, from the
mere circumstance that they have to pass
through human heads and to be confided to
human hands, become new obstacles; how can
you be surprised that it is not in my power to
procure for my brethren the happiness which
I have designed for them at a less cost? How
gladly would I have relieved them of all their
misery at once ! But even I can effect nothing
in opposition to the eternal laws of necessity.
Suffice it that the time will come at last. —

Jupiter, (^somewhat vexed) Well then! we will
let it come ; and the poor fools to whom you
are so kindly disposed, must see, meanwhile,
how they can help themselves ! As I said, my
sight does not extend far enough to judge of so
far-looking and complicated a plan as yours.
The best of it is, that we are immortal and
therefore may hope to see the result at last, how-
ever many Platonic ages we have to wait for it.
The Unknown. My plan, great as it is, is at
bottom the simplest in the world. The way
in which I am sure of effecting the general
happiness is the same by which I conduct
each individual to happiness ; and the pledge
of its safety is, that there is no other. For the
resi, I end as I began : it is impossible not to be
deceived, so long as one regards things frag-
mentarily and as they appear in the particular.
They are, in reality, nothing but what they are
in the whole ; and the perfection which unites
all in one, toward which everything tends and
in which everything will finally rest, is the
only view-point from which everything is seen
aright. And herewith, fare ye well! [He
vanishes.")

Numa. (to Jupiter) What say you to this ap-
parition, Jupiter ?

Jupiter. Ask me again fifteen hundred years
hence.

DIALOGUE IX.

JUPITER AND JUNO.

Jupiter, half-sitting, half-rcdining on a couch
strown ivith roses. Juno, sitting at his feet.

Jupiter. And is this all, dear Juno, that you
have to ask of me 1 You might have requested
an impossibility; and to oblige you I would
have attempted to make it possible.

Juno. You are very gallant, Jupiter. I shall
never expect anything unreasonable of you.

Jupiter. The kings and the nobility have al-
ways belonged to your department, and the
least you can expect of my affection is, that I
should leave you unmolested in your own
sphere.

Juno. Nor do my wishes extend any farther
than that. For since I know your present i)rin-
ciples, it would be asking too much to require
that you, for your own part, should take a live-
lier interest in kings.

Jupiter. I perceive you think I incline too
strongly to the side of the people. There may
be some foundation for that opinion ; but in
fact it is only because it has been one of my
first principles of government to take the side
of those who are likely to retain the right at
last. The present time is not favourable to the
' Shepherds of the people.' It is now the people's
turn; and I am afraid, my love, that I am doing
very little for you and your clients, when I
swear to you that I will place no hindrances in
the way of the measures which you shall adopt
for their advantage.

Juno. I trust things have not yet come to diat
pass, that the inhabitants of the earth have only
to imagine that we have no more power over
them, in order to be independent of us.

Jupiter. As I said, you can try. I leave you
perfect freedom ; only I foresee that, as m.atters
stand, you will have but little pleasure in the
result.

Juno. 1 would rather yoti did not foresee that.
If I were suspicious —

Jupiter. That you have always been a little,
lady of my heart! But this time you would do
me injustice. It is my serious intention to keep
my promise to you, and to leave the governing
gentlemen below there to your powerful protec-
tion and — to their fate.

Juno. I confess, Jupiter, I do not exactly un-
derstand how the king of gods and of men can
be so indifferent in the affairs of kings, and,
without moving a finger, can look quietly on
and see his sub-delegates gradually changed into
theatre-princes and card-kings.

Jupiter. It will not come to that so easily, my
dearest.

Juno. It has come to that already in some
places, and it will come to that everywhere at
last, if we fold our hands in our laps any longer.

WIELAND.

151

Jupiter. We shall not assuredly make a man
like Henry IV. of France, or Frederick the only,
out of a king of cards ; and he who lets a king
of cards be made of himself deserves nothing
better.

Juno. That is a mere evasion, sir husband.
You know very well that such kings as you
have named are extremely rare products of
Nature and circumstances; and so much the
better. The kings at bottom are our vicegerents
after all, and for that purpose the ordinary ones
are good enough, provided we do not let them
fall.

Jvpitcr. The compliment which you are pleased
to pay me in those words is not very flattering;
but, basta! We will not enter into any explana-
tion on this subject. I shall not let my vicege-
rents, as you call them, fall, as long as they caa
stand on their own legs. My office is to let no
one be oppressed if I can help it. Only, dear
wife, do not let us forget the great truth, that
kings exist for the sake of the people, and not
the people for the sake of the kings.

Juno. With your permission, sir husband,
that is an old saw, which, like most wise say-
ings of the kind, seems to say a great deal, and
in fact says very little. Kings exist to govern
the people, and the people must let themselves
be governed by them. That is the thing; and
so old Homer, even in his day, understood it,
when he makes the wise Ulysses say to the
stupid populace of the Grecian army : " The
government of many is not good ! Let one only
be ruler, one only be king."* And, that no one
may imagine the sceptre to depend on arbitrary
will, he wisely adds, that it is Jupiter himself
from whose hand kings receive this sign of su-
preme power. This is truth, and I know no
higher.

Jupiter. I am very much obliged to you and
to old Homer! But to speak candidly, what
might pass for true in a certain sense, in those
rude times of the world's first youth, is no longer
so when applied to a people who through ex-
perience and cultivation have reached that
point at last where they are masters of their
own reason, and have grown strong enough to
shake off the yoke of ancient prejudices and
errors. Nations, indeed, have their childhood
as well as individuals; and, as long as they are
ignorant and weak and foolish like children,
they must be treated like children, and govern-
ed by blind obedience to an authority which is
not responsible to them. But nations do not, any
more than individuals, remain children for ever.
It is a crime against Nature to wish to keep
them in perpetual childhood by force or fraud ;
or, as is generally the case, by both. And it is
both folly and crime to treat them as children
still, when they have already ripened into men.
Juno. I willingly concede, Jupiter, that a high
degree of culture requires a different kind of
government from that which is most fitting for

* See Iliad, B. II. vs. 204, 205. Tr.

a people that is yet entirely rude, or that is still
in the first stages of its culture. But all the phi-
losophers of the earth will never cause that ten
millions of men, who together constitute a na-
tion, shall have two millions of Epaminondasses
and Epictetusses at their head; and so the say-
ing of Ulysses will always remain true :

"Truly we cannot all reign, not all be kin^s, we Achaians,
Nor is polycracy good ; let one and one only be ruler.
One only king!"

Jupiter. Granted! Only let every people, when
it has arrived at that point where it can un-
derstand its own rights and calculate its own
powers, for which in fact nothing more is re-
quired than an ordinary share of common sense,
— let every such people have the privilege of
managing its own political institutions, (/jwo
shakes her head.) I mean, they should be allowed
to empower those of their number in whose
judgment and integrity they have most confi-
dence, to adopt such measures as shall hinder
the arbitrary power of the individual and of
the few who know how to possess themselves
of his favour and confidence from doing mis-
chief, from wasting the powers of the state,
corrupting its morals, and making a crime of
wisdom, virtue, and the candour vi^hich says
aloud what it believes to be true ; in short —

Juno. 0 ! you are perfectly right there, Jupi-
ter! Kings must not be suffered to do that.
They must be restrained by religion and laws,
of course ! They must know that they receive
their sceptre from the hands of Jupiter alone.

Jupiter. Dear wife, do not harp upon this
string any more, if I may make the request. I
know best how the matter stands. But suppose
it were as you say, the people would be little
benefited if kings had no one over them beside
me. I should have to remind them of it with
thunder and lightning every moment, or they
would govern exactly as if there were no Jupi-
ter over them, although they should sacrifice
whole hecatombs to me every morning with the
greatest ceremony.

Juno. I do not mean that religion shall be the
only thing which they respect —

Jupiter, (^somewhat passionately^ The worst
kings will always respect us most, — they who
have made the great Ulyssean principle : that
kings have their sceptre from me, one of the
first articles of faith, and thereon grounded a
blind subjection which is made the most sacred
duty of the people.

Juno. But I say that they must govern accord-
ing to laws whose end is the common good.

Jupiter. The common good ! — A beautiful say-
ing! And who shall give them these laws?

Juno. 0! Themis has published them long
ago all over the world ! Where is there a na-
tion so barbarous as not to know the universal
laws of justice and right ?

Jupiter. So innocent as you affect to be, child !
Suppose now kings and their tools, or rather
imperious courtiers and servants and their obe

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WIELAND.

dient instruments the kings, in spite of old
Themis and her antiquated laws, should govern
onlj' according to their own will and pleasure,
and because they have the power and are an-
swerable to no one should do as much evil or —
what is the same thing to the people — should
sutler as much evil to be done as they please ;
How then ?

Juno. That is the very thing that we must
prevent, Jupiter ! Else why are we in the
world ■?

Jupiter. We! Well, to be sure, my darling,
you are right there ! — only that the more rea-
sonable class of men view the thing from an-
other side. We mortals, they think, are after
all the only ones who have suffered under the
former government. We can help ourselves ;
and we will help ourselves. He who trusts
that odiers will do for him that which he can
do for himself, and in the doing of which no
one is so much interested as himself, will al-
ways be poorly served.

Juno. How you talk! If mortals below there
should hear you talk in this way —

Jupiter. We are speaking between ourselves,
child ! If we do not see clearly ! — I do not ob-
ject however tliat all men should know that I,
for my part, always hold with him who does
his duty. I am very willing that jieople should
grow wiser. There was a time when they
showed me unmerited honour. All the mis-
chief that was done by lightning among them
was placed to my account; and dear Heaven
knows what foolish things I often had to hear,
when the lightning struck my own temple or
passed by many rogues to fall on some innocent
person. Now that the brave North American,
Franklin, has invented the lightning-rod, and
since the people know that metals, high trees,
the pinnacles of towers, and things of that sort
are natural conductors of lightning, my thunder-
bolts are ever less feared. But I never think
of being jealous about it.

Juno. We have imperceptibly fallen into a
moralising vein, dear Jupiter!

Jvpiter. And morals, you think, have nothing
to do with politics?

Juno. Not that exactly. But I think that po-
litics have a morals of their own, and that what
is the rule of right for the subjects is not always
so for the monarchs.

Jiipitcr. I remember the time when I thought
so too. It is a very convenient and pleasant
way of thinking for kings ; but times change,
my love !

Juno. If we only remain firm, there is nothing
to fear.

Jupiter. Hear me, Juno! You know that I
possess the privilege of seeing somewhat farther
into the Future than the rest of you. Your con-
fident tone sometimes tempts me to discover to
you more than I had originally intended.

Jutio. And what mystery may that be which
makes you look so serious ?

Jupiter. Everything, dear Juno, is subject to

the eternal law of change. The time has now
arrived for monarchies to cease ; and (i» a loicer
tone) our own tends to its decline as well as the
rest. It is not much to be regretted, for it was
only patchwork after all.

Juno. You speak as in a dream, Jupiter.

Jupiter. First reigned Uranus and Gaia; then
came the kingdom of Saturn ; this gave place to
mine ; and now —

Juno. And now ? You do not mean to abdi-
cate your kingdom in favour of the National
Assembly at Paris, do you ?

Jupiter. And now the kingdom of Nemesis
has come !

Juno. The kingdom of Nemesis'?

Jupiter. The kingdom of Nemesis! So I am
assured by a primeval oracle long forgotten by
gods and men, which Themis uttered while
still in possession of the Delphian soil, and
which I recall again in these days.

"When after long revolving centuries," says
the oracle, '• there shall be a kingdom on the
earth in which the tyranny of kings, the inso-
lence of the great, and the oj^pression of the
people keep equal pace with the cultivation of
all the faculties of Humanity, and both at last
are so near their acme, that in a moment the
eyes of all the oj^pressed are opened and all
arms raised for revenge, then inexorable but
ever just Nemesis, with her diamond bridle in
one hand and her scale which measures with
a hair's breadth exactness in the other, will
descend upon the throne of Olympus to humble
the proud, to exalt the depressed, and to exer-
cise a strict retribution upon every sinner who
has trampled the rights of Humanity under foot,
and who in the intoxication of liis insolence
would acknowledge no other laws than the ex-
travagant demands of his passions and his hu-
mours. Content to reign under her, Jupiter
himself will then be nothing more than the
executor of the laws which she will enact for
the nations of the earth. An age more golden
than the Saturnian will then be diffused among
innumerable generations of better men. Uni-
versal harmony will make one family of them,
and mortality will be the only difference be-
tween the happiness of the inhabitants of earth
and of Olympus."

Juno, (^laughing) That sounds splendidly, Ju-
piter! — And you believe in this fine poetic
dream, and are resolved, as it would seem,
with your hands in your lap, to await its fulfil-
ment ?

Jupiter, (gravely) I am resolved to submit
myself to the only Power which is above me,
and if you would take good advice, you would
follow my example, and quietly let come what
must come at last, though we should all so for-
get ourselves as to attempt to hinder it.

Juno. 0 ! certainly I shall let come what I
can't hinder ! But why therefore remain inac-
tive ? Why divest ourselves, before the time,
of the power which we actually possess, to
oblige an old oracle ? and not rather summon

W I E L A N D.

153

all our powers to restrain the Demon of rebel-
lion and the rage for governing which has taken
possession of the people? I insist on my old
Homeric Oracle : " The government of many is
bad !" Nations must enjoy the privileges of
liberty under a paternal government; nothing
is more reasonable. But they must not attempt
to govern themselves, they must not attempt to
throw otf the indispensable yoke of relations
and duties, and to introduce an equality which
is not in the nature of men or of things, and
which makes the deluded happy in a moment
of intoxication, only to make them more fear-
fully sensible of their actual misery, on awak-
ing.

Jupiter. Be unconcerned, my best of wives !
Nemesis and Themis will know how to reduce

to the right measure what is now too much oi
too little, too rash or too one-sided.

Juno. I am not yet disposed to abdicate my
share in the government of the world to another
I still feel courage in me to preside over my
office myself; and if you always hold with those
who do their duty, I promise myself your ap-
probation. At least I have your word that you
will not labour against me.

Jupiter. And I swear to you by the diamond
bridle of Nemesis, that I will keep it as long as
you are wise enough to bridle yourself. Do as
you think best, but do not compel me to do my
duty, my dear !

Juno, {^embracing him) Let the beautiful Anti-
nous fill you your great cup with nectar, Jupiter ;
and take your ease. You shall be satisfied with me.

JOHANN AUGUST MUSAUS.*

Born 1735. Died 1787.

.ToHANN AuGiisT MusAUS was born in the
year 1735, at Jena, where Jiis father then lield
the office of Judge. Tlie quick talents, and
kind lively temper of the boy, recommended
him to the affection of his uncle, Herr Weisscn-
born, Snperintendent at Allstadt, who took him
to his house, and treated him in all respects
like a son. Johann was then in his ninth year:
a few months afterwards, his uncLe was pro-
moted to the post of General Superintendent at
Eisenach ; a change which did not alter the
domestic condition of the nephew, though it
replaced him in the neighbourhood of his pa-
rents ; for his father had also been transferred
to Eisenach, in the capacit)' of Councillor and
Police Magistrate. With this hospitable rela-
tive he continued till his nineteenth year.

Old Weissenborn had no children of his own,
and he determined that his foster-child should
have a liberal education. In due time he placed
him at the University of Jena, as a student of
theology. It is not likely that the inclinations
of the youth himself had been particularly con-
sulted in this arrangement; nevertheless he
appears to have studied with sufficient dili-
gence ; for in the usual period of three years
and a half, he obtained his degree of Master,
and what was then a proof of more than ordi-
nary merit, was elected a member of the Ger-
man Society. With these titles, and the
groundwork of a solid culture, he returned to
Eisenach, to wait for an appointment in the
Church, of which he was now licentiate.

For several years, though he preached with
ability, and not without approval, no appoint-
ment presented itself; and when at last a
country living in the neighbourhood of Eisenach
was offered him, the people stoutly resisted the
admission of their new pastor, on the ground,
says his Biographer, that " he had once been
seen dancing." It may be, however, that the
Bentence of the peasants was not altogether so
infirm as this its alleged very narrow basis
would betoken : judging from external circum-
stances, it by no means appears that devotion

* From Cariyle's German Romance.

was at any time the chief distinction of the new
candidate; and to a simple rustic flock, his
shining talents, unsupported by zeal, would be
empty and unprofitable, as sounding brass or a
tinkling cymbal. At all events, this hindrance
closed his theoloofical career : it came in grood
season to withdraw him from a calling, in
which, whether willingly or unwillingly adopt-
ed, his history must have been dishonest and
contemptible, and his gifts could never have
availed him.

Musaus had now lost his profession ; but his
resources were not limited to one department
of activity, and he was still young enough to
choose another. His temper was gay and kind-
ly ; his faculties of mind were brilliant, and
had now been improved by years of steady in-
dustry. His residence at Eisenach had not
been spent in scrutinizing the phases of church
preferment, or dancing attendance on patrons
and dignitaries : he had stored his mind with
useful and ornamental knowledge ; and from
his remote watch-tower, his keen eye had dis-
cerned the movements of the world, and firm
judgments of its wisdom and its folly were
gathering form in his thoughts. In his twenty-
fiflh year he became an author ; a satirist, and
what is rarer, a just one. Germany, by the
report of its enemies and lukewarm friends, is
seldom long without some Idol; some author
of superhuman endowments, some system that
promises to renovate the earth, some science
destined to conduct, by a north-west passage,
to universal knowledge. At this period, the
Brazen Image of the day was our English
Richardson: his novels had been translated
into German with unbounded acceptance ;* and
Grandison was figuring in many weak lieads
as the sole model of a true Christian gentle-
man. Musaus published his German Grandi-
son in 1760 ; a work of good omen as a first
attempt, and received with greater favor than
the popularity of its victim seemed to promise.
It co-operated with Time in removing this spi-

*See the Letters of Meta.Klopstock's lady, in Richard-
son's Life and Correspondence.

(154)

MUSAUS.

155

ritual epidemic ; and appears to have survived
its object, for it was reprinted in 1781.

The success of his anonymous parody, how-
ever gratifying to the youthful author, did not
tempt him to disclose his name, and still less
to think of literature as a profession. With his
cool sceptical temper, he was little liable to
over-estimate his talents, or the prizes set up
for them; and he longed much less for a literary
existence than for a civic one. In 1763, his
wish, to a certain extent, was granted : he be-
came Tutor of the Pages in the court of Wei-
mar; which office, after seven punctual and
laborious years, he exchanged for a professor-
ship in the Gymnasium, or public school of the
same town. He had now married ; and amid
the cares and pleasures of providing for a
family, and keeping house like an honest
burgher, the dreams of fame had faded still
farther from his mind. The emoluments of
his post were small ; but his heart was light,
and his mind humble : to increase his income
he gave private lessons in history and the like,
" to young ladies and gentlemen of quality ;"
and for several years took charge of a few
boarders. The names of Wieland and Goethe
had now risen on the world, while his own was
still under the horizon : but this obscurity, en-
joying as he did the kind esteem of all his
many personal acquaintances, he felt to be a
very light evil ; and participated without envy
in whatever entertainment or instruction his
famed contemporaries could afibrd liim. With
literature he still occupied his leisure ; he had
read and reflected much; but for any public
display of his acquirements he was making no
preparation, and feeling no anxiety.

After an interval of nineteen years, the ap-
pearance of a new idol again called forth his
iconoclastic faculty. Lavater had left his
parsonage among the Alps, and set out on a
cruize over Europe, in search of proselytes and
striking physiognomies. His theories, sup-
ported by his personal influence, and the
honest rude ardor of his character, became
the rage in Germany ; and men, women, and
children were immersed in promoting philan-
thropy, and studying the human mind. Where-
upon Musaus grasped his satirical hammer; and
with lusty strokes, defaced and unshrined the
false divinity. His Physiognomical Travels,
which appeared in 1779, is still ranked by the
German critics among the happiest productions

of its kind in their literature ; and still read for
its wit and acuteness, and genial overflowing
humour, though the object it attacked has long
ago become a reminiscence. At the time of its
publication, when everything conspired to give
its qualities their full effect, the applause it
gained was instant and general. The author
had, as in the former case, concealed his name:
but the public curiosity soon penetrated the
secret, which he had now no interest in keep-
ing; and Musaus was forthwith enrolled among
the lights of his day and generation ; and courte-
ous readers crowded to him from far and near,
to see his face, and pay him the tribute of their
admiration. This unlooked-for celebrity he
valued at its just price ; continuing to live as
if it were not; gratified chiefly in his character
of father, at having found an honest way of
improving his domestic circumstances, and en-
larging the comforts of his family. The ground
was now broken, and he was not long in digging
deeper.

The popular traditions of Germany, so nu-
merous and often so impressive, had attracted
his attention ; and their rugged Gothic vigor,
saddened into sternness or venerable grace by
the flight of ages, became dearer to his taste,
as he looked abroad upon the mawkish deluge
of Sentimentality, with which The Sorrows of
Werter had been the innocent signal for a
leerion of imitators to drown the land. The
spirit of German imagination seemed but ill
represented by these tearful persons, who, if
their hearts were full, minded little though
their heads were empty: their spasmodic ten-
derness made no imposing figure beside the
gloomy strength, which might still in frag-
ments be discerned in their distant predecessors.
Of what has been preserved from age to age
by living memory alone, the chance is that it
possesses some intrinsic merit : its very exist-
ence declares it to be adapted to some form of
our common nature, and therefore calculated
more or less to interest all its forms. It struck
Musaus that these rude traditionary fragments
might be worked anew into shape and polish,
and transferred from the hearths of the common
people, to the parlors of the intellectual and
refined. He determined on forming a series of
Volksmdhrchen, or Popular Traditionary Tales ;
a task of more originality and smaller promise
in those days than it would be now. In the
collection of materials, he spared no pains ; and
despised no source of intelligence, however

156

MUSAUS.

mean. He would call children from the street;
become a child along with them, listen to their
nursery tales, and reward his tiny narrators
with a dreyer apiece. Sometimes he assembled
a knot of old women, with their spinning-
wheels, about him ; and amid the hum of their
industrious implements, gathered stories of the
ancient time from the lips of the garrulous
sisterhood. Once his wife had been out pay-
ing visits : on opening the parlor door at her
return, she was met by a villanous cloud of
tobacco-smoke ; and venturing forward through
the haze, she found her husband seated by the
stove, in company with an old soldier, who was
smoking vehemently on his black stump of
pipe, and charming his landlord, between whiffs,
with legendary lore.

The Volksmdhrchen, in five little volumes,
appeared in 1782. They soon rose into favor
with a large class of readers ; and while many
generations of novels have since that time been
ushered into being, and conducted out of it,
they still survive, increasing in popularity ra-
ther than declining. This pre-eminence is
owing less to the ancient materials, than to
the author's way of treating them. The pri-
mitive tradition often serves him only as a
vehicle for interesting description, shrewd sar-
castic speculation, and gay fanciful pleasantry,
extending its allusions over all things past and
present, now rising into comic humor, now
sinking into drollery, often tasteless, strained,
or tawdry, but never dull. The traces of poetry
and earnest imagination, here and there dis-
cernible in the original fiction, he treats with
levity and kind sceptical derision: nothing is
required of the reader but what all readers are
prepared to give. Since the publication of this
work, the subject of popular tradition has been
handled to triteness; Volksmdhrchen have been
written and collected without stint or limit;
and critics, in admitting that Musaus was the
first to open this mine of entertainment, have
lamented the incongruity between his subject
and his style. But the faculty of laughing has
been given to all men, and the feeling of
imaginative beauty has been given only to a
few : the lovers of primeval poetry, in its un-
adulterated state, may censure Musaus; but
they join witn the public at large in reading
him.

This book of Volksmdhrchen established the
character of its author for wit and general

talent, and forms the chief support of his repu
tation with posterity. A few years after, he
again appeared before the public with a humor-
ous performance, entitled. Friend HeMs Ap-
paritions, in the style of Holberg, printed in
1785. Friend Hein is a name under which
Musaus, for what reason his commentator Wie-
land seems unable to inform us, usually personi-
fies Death : the essay itself, which I have never
seen, may be less irreverent and oifensive to
pious feeling than its title indicates, and it is
said to abound with "wit, humor, and know-
ledge of life," as much as any of his former
works. He had also begun a second series of
Tales, under the title of Slraussfedern (Os-
trich-feathers) : but only the first volume had
appeared, when death put a period to his labors.
He had long been in weakly health : often
afflicted with violent Jiead-aches: his disorder
was a polypus of the heart, which cut him off"
on the 28th of October 1787, in the fifty-second
year of his age. The Slraussfedern was com-
pleted by another hand ; and a small volume
of Remains, edited by Kotzebue in 1791, con-
cludes the list of his writings. A simple but
tasteful memorial, we are told, was erected
over his grave by some unknown friend.

Musaus was a practical believer in the Ho-
ratian maxim, Nil admirari: of a jovial heart,
and a penetrating, well-cultivated understand-
ing, he saw things as they were, and had little
disposition or aptitude to invest them with any
colors but their own. Without much eftbrt,
therefore, he stood aloof from every species of
cant; and was the man he thought himself,
and wished others to think iiim. Had his tem-
per been unsocial and melancholic, such a creed
might have rendered him spiteful, narrow, and
selfish : but nature had been kinder to him than
education ; he did not quarrel with the world,
though he saw its barrenness, and knew not
how to make it solemn any more than lovely ;
for his heart was gay and kind, and an imper-
turbable good-humor, more potent than a pano-
ply of brass, defended him from the stings and
arrows of outrageous Fortune to the end of his
pilgrimage. Few laughers have walked so
circumspectly, and acquired or merited so much
affection. By profession a Momus, he looked
upon the world as little else than a boundless
Chase, where the wise were to recreate them-
selves with the hunting of Follies; and perhaps
he is the only satirist on record of whom it can

MUSAUS.

157

be said, that his jesting never cost him a friend.
His humor is, indeed, untinctured with bitter-
ness; sportful, ebullient, and guileless, a-s the
frolics of a child. He could not reverence men ;
but with all their faults he loved them; for
they were his brethren, and their faults were
not clearer to him than his own. He inculcated
or entertained no lofty principles of generosity ;
yet though never rich in purse, he was always
ready to divide his pittance with a needier fel-
low-man. Of vanity, he showed little or none :
in obscurity he was contented ; and when his
honors came, he wore them meekly, and was
the last to see that they were merited. In
society he was courteous and yielding ; a uni-
versal favorite ; in his chosen circle, the most
fascinating of companions. From the slenderest
trifle, he could spin a boundless web of drollery ;
and his brilliant mirth enlivened without wound-
ing. With the foibles of others, he abstained
from meddling; but among his friends, we are
informed, he could for hours keep the table in
a roar, when, with his dry inimitable vein, he
started some banter on himself or his wife,
and, in trustful abandonment, laid the reins on
the neck of his fancy to pursue it. Without
enthusiasm of character, or any pretension to
high or even earnest qualities, he was a well-
conditioned, laughter-loving, kindly man ; led
a gay, jestful life ; conquering by contentment
and mirth of heart, the long series of difficulties
and distresses with which it assailed him ; and
died regretted by his nation, as a forwarder of
harmless pleasure ; and by those that knew him
better, as a truthful, unassuming, affectionate,
and, on the whole, very estimable person.

His intellectual character corresponds with
his moral and social one ; not high or glorious,
but genuine so far as it goes. He does not
approach the first rank of writers; he attempts
not to deal with the deeper feelings of the
heart ; and for instructing the judgment, he
ranks rather as a sound, well-informed, com-
ipon-sense thinker, than as a man of high wis-
dotn or originality. He advanced few new
truths, but he dressed many old ones in sprightly
apparel ; and it ought to be remembered, that
he kept himself unspotted from the errors of
his time ; a merit which posterity is apt to un-
derrate ; for nothing seems more stolid than a
past delusion ; and we forget that delusions,
destined also to be past, are now present with
ourselves, about us and within us, which, were

the task so easy, it is pity that we do not forth-
with convict and cast away, Musaus had a
quick vigorous intellect, a keen eye for the
common forms of the beautiful, a fancy ever
prompt with allusions, and an overflowing store
of sprightly and benignant humor. These na-
tural gifts he had not neglected to cultivate by
study both of books and things ; his reading
distinguishes him even in Germany ; nor does
he bear it about him like an ostentatious burden,
but in the shape of spiritual strength and plenty
derived from it. As an author, his beauties and
defects are numerous and easily discerned. His
style sparkles with metaphors, sometimes just
and beautiful, often new and surprising ; but it
is laborious, unnatural, and diffuse. Of his
humor, his distinguishing gift, it may be re-
marked, that it seems copious rather than fine,
and originates rather in the understanding than
in the character : his heart is not delicate, or
his affections tender ; but he loves the ludicrous
with true passion ; and seeing keenly, if he
feels obtusely, he can choose v/ith sufficient
skill the point of view from which his object
shall appear distorted, as he requires it. This
is the humor of a Swift or a Voltaire, but not
of a Cervantes, or even of a Sterne in his best
passages ; it may produce a Zadig or a Battle
of the Books; but not a Don Quixote or a
Corporal Trim. Musaus is, in fact, no poet ;
he can see, and describe with rich graces what
he sees ; but he is nothing, or very little, of a
maker. His imagination is not powerless : it
is like a bird of feeble wing, which can fly from
tree to tree ; but never soars for a moment into
the aether of Poetry, to bathe in its serene
splendor, with the region of the Actual lying far
below, and brightened into beauty by radiance
not its own. He is a man of fine and varied
talent, but scarcely of any genius.

These characteristics are apparent enough
in his Popular Tales ; they may be traced even
in the few specimens of that work, by which he
is now introduced to the English reader. As
has been already stated, his Volksmdhrchen
exhibit himself much better than his subject.
He is not admitted by his critics to have seized
the finest spirit of this species of fiction, or
turned it to the account of which it is capable
in other hands. Whatever was austere or
earnest, still more, whatever bordered upon
awe or horror, his riant fancy rejected with
aversion : the rigorous moral sometimes hid in
these traditions, the grim lines of primeval feel-
14

15S

MUSAUS.

inor and imaorination to be traced in them, had
no charms for him. These ruins of the remote
time lie has not attempted to complete into a
perfect edifice, according to the first simple
plan ; he has rather pargetted them anew, and
decorated them with the most modern orna-
ments and furniture ; and he introduces his
guests, with a roguish smile at the strange,
antic contrast they are to perceive between the
movables and the apartment. Sometimes he
rises into a flight of simple eloquence, and for
a sentence or two, seems really beautiful and
affecting; but the knave is always laughing in
his sleeve at our credulity, and returns with
double relish to riot at will in his favorite do-
main.

Of the three Tales* here offered to the reader,
nothing need be said in explanation ; for their

whole sicnificance, with all their beauties and

p '_

*0nly one is given in this volume. — Ed.

blemishes, lies very near the surface. I have
selected them, as specimens at once of his man-
ner and his materials, in the hope that, convey-
ing some impression of a gifted and favorite
writer, they may furnish a little entertainment
both to the lovers of intellectual novelty, and
of innocent amusement. To neither can I pro-
mise very much : Musiius is a man of sterling
powers, but no literary monster ; and his Tales,
though smooth and glittering, are cold ; they
have beauty, yet it is the beauty not of living
forms, but of well-proportioned statues. Mean-
while, I have given him as I found him, endea-
voring to copy faithfully; changing nothing,
whether I might think it good or bad, that my
skill enabled me to keep unchanged. With all
drawbacks, I anticipate some favor for him:
but his case admits no pleading; being clear
by its own light, it must stand or fall by a first
judgment, and without the help of advocates.

DUMB LOVE. ; . "

There was once a wealthy merchant, Mel-
chior of Bremen by name, who used to stroke
his beard with a contemptuous grin, when he
heard the Rich Man in the Gospel preached of,
whom, in comparison, he reckoned little better
than a petty shopkeeper. Melchior had money
in such plenty, that he floored his dining-room
all over with a coat of solid dollars. In those
frugal times, as in our own, a certain luxitry
prevailed among the rich ; only then it had a
more substantial shape than now. But though
this pomp of Melchior's was sharply censured
by his fellow-citizens and consorts, it was, in
truth, directed more to trading speculation than
to mere vain-glory. The cunning Brfjmer easily
observed, that those who grudged and blamed
this seeming vanity, would but diffuse the repu-
tation of his wealth, and so increase his credit.
He gained his purpose to the full ; the sleeping
capital of old dollars, so judiciously set up to
public inspection in the parlour, brought interest
a hundred fold, by the silent surety which it
offered for his bargains in every market ; yet,
at last, it became a rock on which the welfare
of his family made shipwreck.

Melchior of Bremen died of a surfeit at a
city-feast, without having time to set his house
in order ; and left all his goods and chattels to
an only son, in the bloom of life, and just arrived
at the years when the laws allowed him to
take possession of his inheritance. Franz Mel-
cherson was a brilliant youth, endued by nature
with the best capacities. His exterior was
gracefully formed, yet firm and sinewy withal ;

his temper was cheery and jovial, as if hung-
beef and old French wine had joined to influ-
ence his formation. On his cheeks bloomed
health ; and from his brown eyes looked mirth-
fulness and love of joy. He was like a marrowy
plant, which needs but water and the poorest
ground to make it grow to strength ; but which,
in too fat a soil, will shoot into luxuriant over-
growth, without fruit or usefulness. The father's
heritage, as often happens, proved the ruin of
the son. Scarce had he felt the joy of being
sole possessor and disposer of a large fortune,
when he set aboiU endeavouring to get rid of it
as of a galling burden ; began to play the Rich
Man in the Gospel to the very letter ; went
clothed in fine apparel, and fared sumptuously
everyday. No feast at the bishoj^'s court could
be compared for pomp and superfluity with his;
and never while the town of Bremen shall en-
dure, will such another public dinner be con-
sumed, as it yearly got from him ; for to every
burgher of the place he gave a Krusel-soup and
a jug of Spanish wine. For this, all people cried :
Long life to him ! and Franz became the hero
of the day.

In this unceasing whirl of joviality, no thought
was cast upon the Balancing of Entries, which,
in those days, was the merchant's vademecum,
though in our times it is going out of fashion,
and for want of it the tongue of the commercial
beam too frequently declines with a magnetic
virtue from the vertical position. Some years
passed on without the joyful Franz's noticing a
diminution in his incomes; for at his fatlier's
death every chest and coffer had been full. The
voracious host of table-friends, the airy company
of jesters, gamesters, parasites, and all who had

MUSAUS.

159

their living by the prodigal son, took special
care to keep reflection at a distance from him ;
they hurried him from one enjoyment to another ;
kept hira constantly in play, lest in some sober
moment Reason might awake, and snatch him
from their plundering claws.

But at last their well of happiness went sud-
denly dry; old Melchior's casks of gold were
now run off even to the lees. One day, Franz
ordered payment of a large account ; his cash-
keeper was not in a state to execute the precept,
and returned it with a protest. This counter-
incident flashed keenly through the soul of
Franz ; yet he felt nothing else but anger and
vexation at his servant, to whose unaccountable
perversity, by no means to his own ill husbandry,
he charged the present disorder in his finances.
Nor did he give himself the trouble to investi-
gate the real condition of the business ; but after
flying to the common Fool's-litany, and thunder-
ing out some scores of curses, he transmitted to
his shoulder-shrugging steward the laconic or-
der : Find means.

Bill-brokers, usurers, and money-changers now
came into play. For high interest, fresh sums
were poured into the empty coffers ; the silver
flooring of the dining-room was then more po-
tent in the eyes of creditors, than in these times
of ours the promissory obligation of the Congress
of America, with the whole thirteen United
States to back it. This palliative succeeded for
a season; but, underhand, the rumour spread
about the town, that the silver flooring had been
privily removed, and a stone one substituted in
its stead. The matter was immediately, by
application of the lenders, legally inquired into,
and discovered to be actually so. Now, it could
not be denied, that a marble-floor, worked into
nice Mosaic, looked much better in a parlour,
than a sheet of dirty, tarnished dollars : the
creditors, however, paid so little reverence to
the proprietor's refinement of taste, that on the
spot they, one and all, demanded payment of
their several moneys; and as this was not com-
plied with, they proceeded to procure an act of
bankruptcy; and Melchior's house, with its ap-
purtenances, offices, gardens, parks, and furni-
ture, were sold by public auction, and their late
owner, who in this extremity had screened
himself from jail by some chicanery of law,
judicially ejected.

It was now too late to moralize on his ab-
surdities, since philosophical reflections could
not alter what was done, and the most whole-
some resolutions would not bring him back his
money. According to the principles of this our
cultivated century, the hero at this juncture
ought to have retired with dignity from the
stage, or in some way terminated his existence ;
to liave entered on his travels into foreign parts,
or opened his carotid artery ; since in his native
town he could live no longer as a man of honour.
Franz neither did the one nor the other. The
qu'en-dira-t-on, which French morality employs
as bit and curb for thoughtlessness and folly,

had never once occurred to the unbridled
squanderer in the days of his profusion, and
his sensibility was still too dull to feel so keenly
the disgrace of his capricious wastefulness. He
was like a toper, who has been in drink, and
on awakening out of his carousal, cannot rightly
understand how niatters are or have been with
him. He lived according to the manner of un-
prospering spendthrifts ; repented not, lamented
not. By good fortune, he had picked some relics
from the wreck; a few small heir-looms of the
family; and these secured him for a time from
absolute starvation.

He engaged a lodging in a remote alley, into
which the sun never shone throughout the year,
except for a few days abotxt the solstice, when
it peeped for a short while over the high roofs.
Here he found the little that his now much-con-
tracted wants required. The frugal kitchen of
his landlord screened him from hunger, the
stove from cold, the roof from rain, the four
walls from wind ; only from the pains of tedium
he could devise no refuge or resource. The
light rabble of parasites had fled away with
his prosperity; and of his former friends there
was now no one that knew him. Reading had
not yet become a necessary of life ; people did
not yet understand the art of killing time by
means of those amusing shapes of fancy which
are wont to lodge in empty heads. There
were yet no sentimental, pedagogic, psychologic,
popular, simple, comic, or moral tales ; no novels
of domestic life, no cloister-stories, no romances
of the middle ages; and of the innumerable
generation of our Henrys, and Adelaides, and
Clitfords, and Emmas, no one had as yet lifted
up its mantua-maker voice, to weary out the
patience of a lazy and discerning public. In
those days, knights were still diligently pricking
round the tilt-yard ; Dietrich of Bern, Hilde-
brand, Seyfried with the Horns, Rennewart the
Strong, were following their snake and dragon
hunt, and killing giants and dwarfs of tvi^elve
men's strength. The venerable epos, Thencr-
dank, was the loftiest ideal of German art and
skill, the latest product of our native wit, but
only for the cultivated minds, the poets and
thinkers of the age. Franz belonged to none
of those classes, and had therefore nothing to
employ himself upon, except that he tuned his
lute, and sometimes twanged a little on it ; then,
by way of variation, took to looking from the
window, and instituted observations on the
weather; out of which, indeed, there came no
inference a whit more edifying than from all
the labours of the most rheumatic meteorologist
of this present age. Meanwhile, his turn for
observation ere long found another sort of
nourishment, by which the vacant space in his
head and heart was at once filled.

In the narrow lane right opposite his win-
dow, dwelt an honest matron, who, in hope of
better times, was earning a painful living by
the long threads, which, assisted by a mar-
vellously fair daughter, she winded daily from

160

MUSAUS.

her spindle. Day after day the couple spun a
length of yarn, with which the whole town of
Bremen, with its walls and trenches, and all its
suburbs, might have been begirt. These two
spinners had not been born for the wheel ; they
were of good descent, and had lived of old in
pleasant affluence. The faiV Meta's father had
once had a ship of his own on the sea, and,
freighting it himself, had yearly sailed to Ant-
werp ; but a heavy storm had sunk the vessel,
" with man and mouse," and a rich cargo, into
the abysses of the ocean, before Meta had
passed the years of her childhood. The mo-
ther, a staid and reasonable woman, bore the
loss of her husband and all her fortune with a
wise composure ; in her need she refused, out
of noble pride, all help from the charitable sym-
pathy of her relations and friends; considering
it as shameful alms, so long as she believed,
that in her own activity she might find a living
by the labour of her hands. She gave up her
large house, and all her costly furniture, to the
rigorous creditors of her ill-fated husband, hired
a little dwelling in the lane, and span fronr
early morning till late night, though the trade
went sore against her, and she often wetted the
thread with her tears. Yet by this diligence
she reached her object, of depending upon no
one, and owing no mortal any obligation. By
and by she trained her growing daughter to the
same employment; and lived so thriftily, that
she laid by a trifle of her gainings, and turned
it to account by carrying on a little trade in
flax.

She, however, nowise purposed to conclude
her life in these poor circumstances; on the
contrary, the honest dame kept up her heart
with happy prospects into the future, and hoped
that she should once more attain a prosperous
situation, and in the autumn of her life enjoy
her woraan's-summer. Nor were these hopes
grounded altogether upon empty dreams of
fancy, but upon a rational and calculated ex-
pectation. She saw her daughter budding up
like a spring rose, no less virtuous and modest
than she was fair ; and with such endowments
of heart and spirit, that the mother felt delight
and comfort in her, and spared the morsel from
her own lips, that nothing might be wanting in
an education suitable to her capacities. For
she thought, that if a maiden could come up to
the sketch which Solomon, the wise friend of
woman, has left of the ideal of a perfect wife,
it could not fail that a pearl of such price would
be sought after, and bidden for, to ornament
some good man's house ; for beauty, combined
with virtue, in the days of Mother Brigitta, were
as important in the eyes of wooers, as, in our
days, birth combined with fortune. Besides,
the number of suitors was in those times greater ;
it was then believed that the wife was the most
essential, not, as in our refined economical
theory, the most superfluous item in the house-
hold. The fair Meta, it is true, bloomed only
like a precious rare flower in the green-house.

not under the gay, free sky ; she lived in
maternal oversight and keeping, sequestered
and still ; was seen in no walk, in no company ;
and scarcely once in the year passed through
the gate of her native town ; all which seemed
utterly to contradict her mother's principle. The
old Lady E of Memel understood it other-
wise, in her time. She sent the itinerant Sophia,
it is clear as day, fronr Memel into Saxony, sim-
ply on a marriage speculation, and attained her
purpose fully. How many hearts did the wan-
dering nymph set on fire, how many suitors
courted her? Had she stayed at home, as a do-
mestic modest maiden, she might have bloomed
away in the remoteness of her virgin cell, with-
out even making a conquest of Kubbuz the
schoolmaster. Other times, other manners.
Daughters with us are a sleeping capital, which
must be put in circulation if it is to yield any
interest; of old, they were kept like thrifty
savings, under lock and key ; yet the bankers
still knew where the treasure lay concealed,
and how it might be come at. Mother Brigitta
steered towards some prosperous son-in-law,
who might lead her back from the Babylonian
captivity of the narrow lane into the land of
superfluity, flowing with milk and honey; and
trusted firmly, that in the urn of Fate, her
daughter's lot would not be coupled with a
blank.

One day, while neighbour Franz was look-
ing from the window, making observations on
the weather, he perceived the charming Meta
coming with her mother from church, whither
she went daily, to attend mass. In the times
of his abundance, the unstable voluptuary had
been blind to the fairer half of the species ; the
finer feelings were still slumbering in his breast;
and all his senses had been overclouded by the
ceaseless tumult of debauchery. But now the
stormy waves of extravagance had subsided ;
and in this deep calm, the smallest breath of
air sufliced to curl the mirror surface of his
soul. He was enchanted by the aspect of this,
the loveliest female figure that had ever flitted
past him. He abandoned from that hour the
barren study of the winds and clouds, and now
instituted quite another set of Observations for
the furtherance of Moral Science, and one
which aff'orded to himself much finer occupa-
tion. He soon extracted from his landlord in-
telligence of this fair neighbour, and learned
most part of what we know already.

Now rose on him the first repentant thought
for his heedless squandering ; there awoke a
secret good-will in his heart to this new ac-
quaintance ; and for her sake he wished that
his paternal inheritance were his own again,
that the lovely Meta might be fitly dowered
with it. His garret in the narrow lane was
now so dear to him, that he would not have
exchanged it with the Schudding itself.*

* One of the largest buildings in Bremen, where the
meetings of the merchants are usually held.

MUSAUS.

161

Throughout the day he stirred not from the
window, watching for an ojjportunity of glan-
cing at the dear maiden ; and when she chanced
to show herself, he felt more rapture in his
soul than did Horrox in his Liverpool Observa-
tory, when he saw, for the first time, Venus
passing over the disk of the Sun.

Unhappily the watchful mother instituted
counter-observations, and ere long discovered
what the lounger on the other side was driving
at; and as Franz, in the capacity of spendthrift,
already stood in very bad esteem with her, this
daily gazing angered her so much, that she
shrouded her lattice as with a cloud, and drew
the curtains close together. Meta had the strict-
est orders not again to appear at the window ;
and when her mother went with her to mass,
she drew a rain-cap over her face, disguised
her like a favourite of the Grand Signior, and
hurried till she turned the corner with her, and
escaped the eyes of the lier-in-wait.

Of Franz, it was not held that penetration
was his master faculty ; but Love awakens all
the talents of the mind. He observed, that by
his imprudent spying, he had betrayed himself;
and he thenceforth retired from the window,
with the resolution not again to look out at it,
though the Venerabile itself were carried by. On
the other hand, he meditated some invention
for proceeding with his observations in a private
manner; and without great labour, his combin-
ing spirit mastered it.

He hired the largest looking-glass that he
could find, and hung it up in his room, with
such an elevation and direction, that he could
distinctly see whatever passed in the dwelling
of his neighbours. Here, as for several days
the watcher did not come to light, the screens
by degrees went asunder; and the broad mirror
now and then could catch the form of the noble
maid, and, to the great refreshment of the vir-
tuoso, cast it truly back. The more deeply love
took root in his heart,* the more widely did his
wishes extend. It now struck him that he ought
to lay his passion open to the fair Meta, and
investigate the corresponding state of lier opi-
nions. The commonest and readiest way which
lovers, under such a constellation of their wishes,
strike into, was in his position inaccessible. In
those modest ages, it was always difficult for
Paladins in love to introduce themselves to
daughters of the family; toilette calls were not
in fashion; trustful interviews t6te-a-tete were
punished by the loss of reputation to the female
sharer; promenades, esplanades, masquerades,
pic-nics, goutes, soupes, and other inventions of
modern wit for forwarding sweet courtship,
had not then been hit upon ; yet, notwithstand-
ing, all things went their course, much as they
do with us. Gossipings, weddings, lykewakes,
were, especially in our Imperial Cities, privi-
leged vehicles for carrying on soft secrets, and
expediting marriage contracts: hence the old

* 'Atto tov hp!fv ip^i-ai tii ip^v.
V

proverb. One ivedding makes a score. But a poor
runagate no man desired to number among his
baptismal relatives; to no nuptial dinner, to no
wake-supper, was he bidden. The by-way of
negotiating, with the woman, with the young
maid, or any other serviceable spirit of a go-be-
tween, was here locked up. Mother Brigitta
had neither maid nor woman ; the flax and
yarn trade passed through no hands but her
own ; and she abode by her daughter as closely
as her shadow.

In these circumstances, it was clearly impos-
sible for neighbour Franz to disclose his heart
to the fair Meta, either verbally or in writing.
Ere long, however, he invented an idiom, which
appeared expressly calculated for the utterance
of the passions. It is true, the honour of the
first invention is not his. Many ages ago, the
sentimental Celadons of Italy and Spain had
taught melting harmonies, in serenades beneath
the balconies of their dames, to speak the lan-
guage of the heart ; and it is said that this me-
lodious i^athos had especial virtue in love mat-
ters; and, by the confession of the ladies, was
more heart-affecting and subduing, than of yore
the oratory of the reverend Chrysostom, or the
pleadings of Demosthenes and Tully. But of
all this the simple Bremer had not heard a syl-
lable; and, consequently, the invention of ex-
pressing his emotions in symphonious notes, and
trilling them to his beloved Meta, was entirely
his own.

In an hour of sentiment, he took his lute : he
did not now tune it merely to accompany his
voice, but drew harmonious melodies from its
strings; and Love, in less than a month, had
changed the musical scraper to a new Amphion.
His first efforts did not seem to have been no-
ticed ; but soon the population of the lane were
all ear, every time the dilettante struck a note.
Mothers hushed their children, fathers drove
the noisy urchins from the doors, and the per-
former had the satisfaction to observe that Meta
herself, with her alabaster hand, would some-
times open the window as he began to prelude.
If he succeeded in enticing her to lend an ear,
his voluntaries whirled along in gay allegro, or
skipped away in mirthful jigs ; but if the turn-
ing of the spindle, or her thrifty mother, kept
her back, a heavy-laden andante rolled over the
bridge of the sighing lute, and expressed, in
languishing modulations, the feeling of sadness
which love-pain poured over his soul.

Meta was no dull scholar; she soon learned
to interpret this expressive speech. She made
various experiments to try whether she had
rightly understood it, and found that she could
govern at her will the dilettante humours of the
unseen lute - twanger ; for your silent modest
maidens, it is well known, have a much sharper
eye than those giddy flighty girls, who hurry
with the levity of butterflies from one object to
another, and take proper heed of none. She
felt her female vanity a little flattered ; and it
pleased her that she had it in her power, by a
14*

162

MUSAUS.

secret magic, to direct the neighbouring lute,
and tune it now to the note of joy, now to the
whimpering moan of grief. Mother Brigitta.
on the other hand, had her head so constantly
employed with lier traffic on the small scale,
that she minded none of these things; and the
sly little daughter took especial care to keep her
in the dark respecting the discovery; and, in-
stigated either by some touch of kindness for
her cooing neighbour, or perhaps by vanity, that
she might show her hermeneutic penetration,
meditated on the means of making some sym-
bolical response to these harmonious apostrophes
to her heart. Slie expressed a wish to have
flower-pots on the outside of the window ; and
to grant her this innocent amusement was a
light thing for the mother, who no longer feared
the coney-catching neighbour, now that she no
longer saw him with her eyes.

Henceforth Meta had a frequent call to tend
her flowers, to water them, to bind them up,
and guard them from approaching storms, and
watch their growth and flourishing. With in-
expressible delight the happy Franz explained
this hieroglyphic altogether in his favour ; and
the speaking lute did not fail to modulate his
glad emotions, through the alley, into the heed-
ful ear of the fair friend of flowers. This, in
her tender virgin heart, worked wonders. She
began to be secretly vexed, when Mother Bri-
gitta, in her wise table-talk, in which at times
she spent an hour chatting with her daughter,
brought their melodious neighbour to her bar,
and called him a losel and a sluggard, or com-
pared him with the Prodigal in the Gospel.
She always took his part; threw the blame of
his ruin on the sorrowful temptations he had
met with ; and accused him of nothing worse
than not having fitly weighed the golden pro-
verb, A penny saved is a penny got. Yet she de-
fended him with cunning prudence ; so that it
rather seemed as if she wished to help the conver-
sation, than took any interest in the thing itself

While Mother Brigitta within her four walls
was inveighing against the luckless spendthrift,
he on his side entertained the kindest feelings
towards her; and was considering diligently
how he might, according to his means, improve
her straitened circumstances, and divide with
her the little that remained to him, and so that
she might never notice that a portion of his pro-
perty had passed over into hers. This pious
outlay, in good truth, was specially intended not
for the mother, but the daughter. Underhand
he had come to know, that the fair Meta had a
hankering for a new gown, which her mother
had excused herself from buying, under pretext
of hard times. Yet he judged quite accurately,
that a present of a piece of stuff, from an un-
known hand, would scarcely be received, or
cut into a dress for JVIeta; and that he should
€poil all, if he stept forth and avowed himself
tlie author of the benefaction. Chance afforded
him an opportunity to realize this purpose in
the way he wished.

Mother Brigitta was complaining to a neigh-
bour, that flax was very dull ; that it cost her
more to purchase than the buyers of it would
repay; and that hence this branch of industry
was nothing better, for the present, than a
withered bough. Eip,ves-dropper Franz did not
need a second telling ; he ran directly to the
goldsmith, sold his mother's ear-rings, bought
some stones of flax, and, by means of a negoti-
atress, whom he gained, had it offered to the
mother for a cheap price. The bargain was
concluded ; and it yielded so richly, that on
All-Saints' day the fair Meta sjjarkled in a
fine new gown. In this decoration she had
such a splendour in her watchful neighbour's
eyes, that he would have overlooked the
Eleven Thousand Virgins, all and sundry, had
it been permitted him to choose a heart's-mate
from among them, and fixed upon the charm-
ing Meta.

But just as he was triumphing in the result
of his innocent deceit, the secret was betrayed.
Mother Brigitta had resolved to do the flax-
retailer, who had brought her that rich gain, a
kindness in her turn; and was treating her
with a well-sugared rice-pap, and a quarter-
stoop of Spanish sack. This dainty set in mo-
tion not only the toothless jaw, but also the
garrulous tongue of the crone : she engaged to
continue the flax-brokerage, should her con-
signer feel inclined, as from good grounds she
guessed he would. One word produced an-
other ; Mother Eve's two daughters searched,
■with the curiosity peculiar to their sex, till at
length the brittle seal of female secresy gave
way. Meta grew pale with affright at the dis-
covery, which would have charmed her, had
her mother not partaken of it. But she knew
her strict ideas of morals and decorum ; and
these gave her doubts about the preservation of
her gown. The serious dame herself was no
less struck at the tidings, and wished, on her
side too, that she alone had got intelligence of
the specific nature of her flax-trade; for she
dreaded that this neighbourly munificence might
make an impression on her daughter's heart,
which would derange her whole calculations.
She resolved, therefore, to root out the still ten-
der germ of this weed, in the very act, from the
maiden heart. The gown, in spite of all the
tears and prayers of its lovely owner, was first
hypothecated, and next day transmitted to the
huckster's shop; the money raised from it, with
the other profits of the flax speculation, accurate-
ly reckoned up, were j^acked together, and un-
der the name of an old debt, returned to " Mr.
Franz Melcherson, in Bremen," by help of the
Hamburg post. The receiver, nothing doubting,
took the little lot of money as an unexpected
blessing; wished that all his father's debtors
would clear off their old scores as conscientious-
ly as this honest unknown person; and had not
the smallest notion of the real position of affairs.
The talking brokeress, of course, was far from
giving him a true disclosure of her blabbing;'

MUSAUS.

163

she merely told him, that Mother Brigitta had
given up her flax-trade.

Meanwhile, the mirror taught him, that the
aspects over the way had altered greatly in a
single night. The flower-pots were entirely
vanished ; and the cloudy veil again obscured
the friendly horizon of the opposite window.
Meta was seldom visible ; and if for a moment,
like the silver moon from among her clouds in
a stormy night, she did appear, her countenance
was troubled, the fire of her eyes was ex-
tinguished, and it seemed to him, that, at times,
with her finger, she pressed away a pearly
tear. This seized him sharply by the heart;
and his lute resounded melancholy sympathy in
soft Lydian mood. He grieved, and meditated
to discover why his love was sad ; but all his
thinking and imagining were vain. After some
days were past, he noticed, to his consternation,
that his dearest piece of furniture, the large
mirror, had become entirely useless. He set
himself one bright morning in his usual nook,
and observed that the clouds over the way had,
like natural fog, entirely dispersed ; a sign which
he at first imputed to a general washing; but
ere long he saw that, in the chamber, all was
waste and empty; his pleasing neighbours had
in silence withdrawn the night before, and
broken up their quarters.

He might now, once more, with the greatest
leisure and convenience, enjoy the free prospect
from his window, without fear of being trouble-
some to any; but for him, it was a dead loss to
miss the kind countenance of his Platonic love.
Mute and stupified, he stood, as of old his fel-
low-craftsman, the harmonious Orpheus, when
the dear shadow of his Eurydice again vanish-
ed down to Orcus ; and if the bedlam humour
of those " noble minds," who raved among us
through the by-gone lustre, but have now like
drones disappeared with the earliest frost, had
then been ripened to existence, this calm of his
would certainly have passed into a sudden hur-
ricane. The least he could have done, would
have been to pull his hair, to trundle himself
about upon the ground, or run his head against
the wall, and break his stove and window. All
this he omitted ; from the very simple cause,
that true love never makes men fools, but ratlrer
is the universal remedy for healing sick minds
of their foolishness, for laying gentle fetters on
extravagance, and guiding youthful giddiness
from the broad way of ruin to the narrow path
of reason; for the rake whom love will not re-
cover, is lost irrecoverably.

When once his spirit had assembled its scat-
tered powers, he set on foot a number of in-
structive meditations on the unexpected pheno-
menon, but too visible in the adjacent horizon.
He readily conceived that he was the lever
which had effected the removal of the wander-
ing colony : his money-letter, the abrupt conclu-
sion of the flax-trade, and the emigration which
had foUoM'ed thereupon, were like reciprocal
exponents to each other, and explained the

whole to him. He perceived that Mother
Brigitta had got round his secrets, and saw from
every circumstance that he was not her hero ;
a discovery which yielded him but little satis-
faction. The symbolic responses of the fair
Meta, with her flower-pots, to his musical pro-
posals of love ; her trouble, and the tear which
he had noticed in her bright eyes shortly before
her departure from the lane, again animated
his hopes, and kept him in good heart. His
first employment was to go in quest, and try to
learn where Mother Brigitta had pitched her
residence, in order to maintain, by some means
or other, his secret understanding with the
daughter. It cost him little toil to find her
abode ; yet he was too modest to shift his own
lodging to her neighbourhood ; but satisfied
himself with spying out the church where she
now attended mass, that he might treat himself
once each day with a glance of his beloved.
He never failed to meet her as she returned,
now here, now there, in some shop or door
which she was passing, and salute her kindly ;
an equivalent for a billet-doux, and productive
of the same effect.

Had not Meta been brought up in a style too
nun-like, and guarded by her rigid mother as a
treasure, from the eyes of thieves, there is little
doubt that neighbour Franz, with his secret
wooing, would have made no great impression
on her heart. But she was at the critical age,
M'hen Mother Nature and Mother Brigitta, with
their wise nurture, were perpetually coming
into collision. The former taught her, by a
secret instinct, the existence of emotions, for
which she had no name, and eulogized them as
the panacea of life ; the latter warned her to
beware of the surprisals of a passion, which
she would not designate by its true title, but
which, as she maintained, was more pernicious
and destructive to young maidens than the
small-pox itself. The former, in the spring of
life, as beseemed the season, enlivened her
heart with a genial warmth ; the latter wished
that it should always be as cold and frosty as
an ice-house. These conflicting pedagogic sys-
tems of the two good mothers, gave the tract-
able heart of the daughter the direction of a
ship, which is steered against the wind, and
follows neither the wind nor the helm, but a
course between the two. She maintained the
modesty and virtue which her education, from
her youth upwards, had impressed upon her;
but her heart continued open to all tender feel-
ings. And as neighbour Franz was the first
youth who had awakened these slumbering
emotions, she took a certain pleasure in him,
which she scarcely owned to herself, but which
any less unexperienced maiden would have re-
cognised as love. It was for this that her de-
parture from the narrow lane had gone so near
her heart ; for this that the little tear had trickled
from her beautiful eyes ; for this that, when the
watchful Franz saluted her as she came from
church, she thanked him so kindly, and grew

164

MUSAUS.

scarlet to the ears. The lovers had in truth
never spoken any word to one another ; but he
understood her, and she him, so perfectly, that
in the most secret interview they could not have
explained themselves more clearly ; and both
contracting parties swore in their silent hearts,
each for himself, under the seal of secresy, the
oath of faithfulness to the other.

In the quarter, where Mother Brigitta had
now settled, there were likewise neighbours,
and among these likewise girl-spiers, whom the
beauty of the charming Meta had not escaped.
Right opposite their dwelling, lived a wealthy
Brewer, whom the wags of the part, as he was
strong in means, had named the Hop-King. He
was a young, stout widower, whoso mourning
year was just concluding, so that now he was
entitled, without offending the precepts of de-
corum, to look about him elsewhere for a new
helpmate to his household. Shortly after the
departure of his whilom wife, he had in secret
entered into an engagement with his Patron
Saint, St. Christopher, to offer him a wax-taper
as long as a hop-pole, and as thick as a mash-
ing-beam, if he would vouchsafe in this second
choice to prosper the desire of his heart.
Scarcely had he seen the dainty Meta, when
he dreamed that St. Christopher looked in ujoon
him, through the window of his bed-room in
the second story.* and demanded payment of
his debt. To the quick widower this seemed
a heavenly call to cast out the net without de-
lay. Early in the morning he sent for the
brokers of the town, and commissioned them
to buy bleached wax ; then decked himself like
a Syndic, and set forth to expedite his marriage
speculation. He had no musical talents, and
in the secret symbolic language of love he was
no better than a blockhead ; but he had a rich
brewery, a solid mortgage on the city-revenues,
a ship on the Weser, and a farm without the
gates. With such recommendations, he might
have reckoned on a prosperous issue to his
courtship, independently of all assistance from
St. Kit, especially as his bride was without
dowry.

According to old use and wont, he went
directly to the master hand, and disclosed to
the mother, in a kind neighbourly way, his
christian intentions towards her virtuous and
honourable daughter. No angel's visit could
have charmed the good lady more than these
glad tidings. She now saw ripening before
her the fruit of her prudent scheme, and the
fLdfilment of her hope again to emerge from
her present poverty into her former abLUidance ;
she blessed the good thought of moving from
the crooked alley, and in the first ebullition of
her joy, as a thousand gay ideas were ranking
themselves up within her soul, she also thought

* St. Christopher never appears to liis favourites, like
the otiier Saints, in a solitary room, encircled with a
glory : there is no room high enough to admit him ; thus
the celestial Son of Anak is obliged to transact all busi-
ness with his wards outside the window.

of neighbour Franz, who had given occasion to
it. Though Franz was not exactly her bosom-
youth, she silently resolved to gladden him, as
the accidental instrument of her rising star,
with some secret gift or other, and by this
means likewise recompense his well-intended
flax-dealing.

In the maternal heart the marriage-articles
were as good as signed ; but decorum did not
permit these rash proceedings in a matter of
such moment. She therefore let the motion lie
ad referendum, to be considered by her daughter
and herself; and appointed a term of eight days,
after which "she hoped she should have it in
her power to give the much-respected suitor a
reply that would satisfy him ;" all which, as the
common manner of proceeding, he took in good
part, and with his usual civilities withdrew.
No sooner had he turned his back, than spin-
ning-wheel and reel, swingling-stake and hat-
chel, without regard being paid to their faithful
services, and without accusation being, lodged
against them, were consigned, like some luck-
less Parliament of Paris, to disgrace, and dis-
missed as useless implements into the lumber-
room. On returning from mass, Meta was
astonished at the sudden catastrophe which had
occurred in the apartment; it was all decked
out as on one of the three high Festivals of the
year. She could not understand how her thrifty
mother, on a work-day, had so neglectfully put
her active hand in her bosom ; but before she
had lime to question the kindly-smiling dame
concerning this reform in household afiairs, she
was favoured by the latter with an explanation
of the riddle. Persuasion rested on Brigitta's
tongue ; and there flowed from her lips a stream
of female eloquence, depicting the oiiered hap-
piness in the liveliest hues which her imagina-
tion could lay on. She expected from the chaste
Meta the blush of soft virgin bashfulness, which
announces the noviciate in love ; and then a
full resignation of herself to the maternal will.
For of old, in proposals of marriage, daughters
were situated as our princesses are still ; they
were not asked about their inchnation, and had
no voice in the selection of their legal helpmate,
save the Yes before the altar.

But Mother Brigitta was in this point widely
mistaken ; the fair Meta did not at the unex-
pected announcement grow red as a rose, but
pale as ashes. An hysterical giddiness swam
over her brain, and she sank fainting in her
mother's arms. When her senses were recalled
by the sprinkling of cold water, and she had in
some degree recovered strength, her eyes over-
flowed with tears, as if a heavy misfortune had
befallen her. From all these symptoms, the
sagacious mother easily perceived that the mar-
riage-trade was not to her taste; at which she
wondered not a little, sparing neither prayers
nor admonitions to her daughter to secure her
happiness by this good match, not flout it from
her by caprice and contradiction. But Meta
could not be persuaded that her happiness de-

MUSAUS.

165

pended on a match to which her heart gave no
assent. The debates between the mother and
the daughter lasted several days, from early-
morning to late night: the term for decision
was approaching ; the sacred taper for St. Chris-
topher, which Og King of Bashan need not
have disdained had it been lit for him as a
marriage torch at his espousals, stood in readi-
ness, all beautifully painted with living flowers
like a many-coloured light, though the Saint had
all the while been so inactive in his client's
cause, that the fair Meta's heart was still bolted
and barred agaiust him fast as ever.

Meanwhile she had bleared her eyes with
weeping, and the maternal rhetoric had worked
so powerfully, tiiat, like a flower in the sultry
heat, she was drooping together, and visibly
fading away. Hidden grief was gnawing at
her heart; she had prescribed herself a rigorous
fast, and for three days no morsel had she eaten,
and with no drop of water moistened her parch-
ed lips. By night sleep never visited her eyes ;
and with all this she grew sick to death, and
began to talk about extreme unction. As the
tender mother saw the pillar of her hope waver-
ing, and bethought herself that she might lose
both capital and interest at once, she found, on
accurate consideration, that it would be more
advisable to let the latter vanish, than to miss
them both ; and with kindly indulgence plied
into the daughter's will. It cost her much con-
straint, indeed, and many hard battles, to turn
away so advantageous an ofier ; yet at last,
according to established order in household
governments, she yielded unconditionally to the
inclination of her child, and remonstrated no
more with her beloved patient on the subject.
As the stout widower announced himself on
the appointed day, in the full trust that his
heavenly deputy had arranged it all according
to his wish, he received, quite unexpectedly, a
negative answer, which, however, was sweet-
ened with such a deal of blandishment, that he
swallowed it like wine-of-wormwood mixed
with sugar. For the rest, he easily accommo-
dated himself to his destiny; and discomposed
himself no more about it, than if some bargain
for a ton of malt had chanced to come to no-
thing. Nor, on the whole, had he any cause to
sorrow without hope. His native town has
never wanted amiable daughters, who come up
to the Solomonic sketch, and are ready to make
perfect spouses ; besides, notwithstanding this
unprospered courtship, he depended with firm
confidence upon his Patron Saint; who in fact
did him such substantial service elsewhere, that
ere a month elapsed, he had planted, with much
pomp, his devoted taper at the friendly shrine.

Mother Brigitta was now fain to recall the
exiled spinning-tackle from its lumber-room,
and again set it in action. All once more went
its usual course. Meta soon bloomed out anew,
was active in business, ^nd diligently went to
mass ; but the mother could not hide her secret
grudging at the failure of her hopes, and the

annihilation of her darling plan ; she was sple-
netic, peevish, and dejected. Her ill-humour
had especially the upper hand that day when
neighbour Hop-King held his nuptials. As the
wedding-company proceeded to the church, with
the town-band bedrumiTiing and becymballing
them in the van, she whimpered and sobbed as
in the evil hour when the Job's-news reached
her, that the wild sea had devoured her hus-
band, with ship and fortune. Meta looked at
the bridal-pomp with great equanimity ; even
the royal ornaments, the jewels in the myrtle-
crown, and the nine strings of true pearls about
the neck of the bride, made no impression on
her peace of mind ; a circumstance in some
degree surprising, since a new Paris cap, or any
other meteor in the gallery of Mode, will so
frequently derange the contentment and domes-
tic peace of an entire parish. Nothing but the
heart-consuming sorrow of her mother discom-
posed her, and overclouded the gay look of her
eyes ; she strove by a thousand caresses and
little attentions to work herself into favour ; and
she so far succeeded that the good lady grew a
little more communicative.

In the evening, when the wedding-dance be-
gan, she said, "Ah, child ! this merry dance it
might have been thy part to lead off". What a
pleasure, hadst thou recompensed thy mother's
care and toil with this joy ! But thou hast
mocked thy happiness, and now I shall never
see the day when I am to attend thee to the
altar." — "Dear mother," answered Meta, "I
confide in Heaven ; and if it is written above
that I am to be led to the altar, you will surely
deck my garland : for when the right wooer
comes, my heart will soon say Yes." — "Child,
for girls without dowry there is no press of
wooers ; they are heavy ware to trade with.
Now-a-days the bachelors are mighty stingy;
they court to be happy, not to make happy.
Besides, thy planet bodes thee no good; thou
wert born in April. Let us see how it is writ-
ten in the Calendar; 'A damsel born in this
month is comely of countenance, slender of
shape, but of changeful humour, has a liking to
men. Should have an eye upon her maiden
garland, and so a laughing wooer come, not
miss her fortune.' Alas, it answers to a hair !
The wooer has been here, comes not again :
thou hast missed him." — " Ah, mother, let the
planet say its pleasure, never mind it; my heart
says to me that I should love and honour the
man who asks me to be his wife: and if I do
not find that man, or he do not seek me, I will
live in good courage by the labour of my hands,
and stand by you, and nurse you in your old
age, as beseems a good davighter. But if the
man of my heart do come, then bless my choice,
that it may be well with your daughter on the
Earth ; and ask not whether he is noble, rich,
or famous, but whether he is good and honest,
whether he loves and is loved." — "Ah, daugh-
ter! Love keeps a sorry kitchen, and feeds one
poorly, along with bread and salt." — " But yet

166

MUSAUS.

Unity and Contentment delight to dwell with
him, and these season bread and salt with the
cheerful enjoyment of our days."

The pregnant subject of bread and salt con-
tinued to be sifted till the night was far spent,
and the last fiddle in the wedding-dance was
resting from its labours. The moderation of the
prudent Meta, who, with youth and beauty on
her side, pretended only to an altogether bounded
happiness, after having turned away an advan-
tageous offer, led the mother to conjecture that
the plan of some such salt-trade might already
have been sketched in the heart of the virgin.
Nor did she fail to guess the trading-partner in
the lane, of whom she never had believed that
he would be the tree for rooting in the lovely
]\Ieta"s heart. She had looked upon him only
as a wild tendril, that stretches out towards
every neighbouring twig, to clamber up by means
of it. This discovery procured her little joy ;
but she gave no hint that she had made it.
Only, in the spirit of her rigorous morality, she
compared a maiden who lets love, before the
l^riestly benediction, nestle in her heart, to a
worm-eaten apple, which is good for the eye,
but no longer for the palate, and is laid upon a
shelf and no more heeded, for the pernicious
worm is eating its internal marrow, and cannot
be dislodged. She now despaired of ever hold-
ing up her head again in Bremen ; submitted
to her fate, and bore in silence what she thought
was now not to be altered.

Meanwhile the rumour of the proud Meta's
having given the rich Hop -King the basket,
spread over the town, atid sounded even into
Franz's garret in the alley. Franz was trans-
ported with joy to hear this tale confirmed ; and
the secret anxiety lest some wealthy rival might
expel him from tlie dear maiden's heart tor-
mented him no more. He was now certain of
his object; and the riddle, which for every one
continued an insoluble problem, had no mystery
for him. Love had already changed a spend-
thrift into a dilettante; but this for a bride-
seeker was the very smallest of recommenda-
tions, a gilt which in those rude times was re-
warded neither with such praise nor with such
pudding, as it is in our luxurious century. The
fine arts were not then children of superfluity,
but of want and necessity. No travelling pro-
fessors were at that time known, save the Prague
students, whose squeaking symphonies solicited
a charitable coin at the doors of the rich. The
beloved maiden's sacrifice was too great to be
repaiil by a serenade. And now the feeling of
his youthful dissipation became a thorn in the
soul of Franz. Many a touching monodrama
did he begin with an 0 and an Ah, besigliing
liis past madness: "Ah, Meta," said he to him-
self, " why did I not know thee sooner ! Thou
hadst been my guardian angel, thou hadst saved
me from destruction. Could I live my lost years
over again, and be what I was, the world were
now Elysium for me, and for thee I would make
it an Eden! Noble maiden, thou sacrifices!

thyself to a wretch, to a beggar, who has nothing
in the world but a heart full of love, and despair
that he can offer thee no happiness such as thou
deservest." Innumerable times, in the parox-
ysms of these pathetic humours, he struck his
brow in fury, with the repentant exclamation :
"0 fool ! O madman! thou art wise too late."

Love, however, did not leave its working
incomplete. It had already brought about a
wholesome fermentation in his spirit, a desire
to put in use his powers and activity, to try if
he might struggle up fronr his present nothing-
ness: it now incited him to the attempt of exe-
cuting these good purposes. Among many spe-
culations he had entertained for the recruiting
of his wrecked finances, the most rational and
promising was this : To run over his father's
ledgers, and there note down any small escheats
which had been marked as lost, with a view
of going through the land, and gleaning, if so
were that a lock of wheat might still be gathered
from these neglected ears. With the produce
of this enterprise, he would then commence
some little traffic, which his fancy soon extended
over all the quarters of the world. Already, in
his mind's eye, he had vessels on the sea, which
were freighted with his property. He proceeded
rapidly to execute his purpose; changed the
last golden fragment of his heritage, his father's
hour-egg,* into money, and bought with it a
riding nag, which was to bear him as a Bremen
merchant out into the wide world.

Yet the parting with his fair Meta went sore
against his heart. " What will she think," said
he to himself, "of this sudden disappearance,
when thou shalt no more meet her in the
church-way? Will she not regard thee as faith-
less, and banish thee from her heart?" This
thought afflicted him exceedingly; and for a
great while he could think of no expedient for
explaining to her his intention. But at last in-
ventive Love suggested the idea of signifying
to her from the pulpit itself his absence and its
purpose. With this view, in the church, which
had already favoured the secret understanding
of the lovers, he bought a Prayer "for a young
Traveller, and the happy arrangement of his
aflairs ;" which was to last, till he should come
again and pay his groschen, for the Thanks-
giving.

At the last meeting, he had dressed himself
as for the road ; he passed quite near his sweet-
heart; saluted her expressively, and with less
reserve than before ; so that she blushed deep-
ly; and Mother Brigitta found opportunity for
various marginal notes, which indicated her
displeasure at the boldness of this ill-bred fop,
in attempting to get speech of her daughter, and
with which she entertained the latter not in the
most pleasant style the live-long day. From
that morning Franz was no more seen in Bre-
men, and the finest pair of eyes within its cir-

♦ The oldest watches, from the shape they had, were
named hour-eggs.

MUSAUS.

167

cuit sought for him in vain. Meta often heard
the Prayer read, but she did not heed it, for her
heart was troubled because her lover had be-
come invisible. This disappearance was inex-
plicable to her; she knew not what to think
of it. After the lapse of some months, when
time had a little softened her secret care, and
she was suffering his absence with a calmer
mind, it happened once, as the last appearance
of her love was hovering upon her fancy, that
this same Prayer struck her as a strange matter.
She coupled one thing with another, she guessed
the true connection of the business, and the
meaning of that notice. And although church
litanies and special prayers have not the repu-
tation of extreme ])otency, and for the worthy
souls that lean on them, are but a supple stafl",
inasmuch as the fire of devotion in the Christian
flock is wont to die out at the end of the sermon ;
yet in the pious Meta's case, the reading of the
last Prayer was the very thing which fanned
that fire into a flame ; and she never neglected,
with her whole heart, to recommend the young
traveller to his guardian angel.

Under this invisible guidance, Franz was
journeying towards Brabant, to call in some
considerable sums that were due him at Ant-
werp. A journey from Bremen to Antwerp, in
the time when road-blockades were still in
fashion, and every landlord thought himself
entitled to plunder any traveller who had pur-
chased no safe-conduct, and to leave him pining
in the ward-room of his tower, was an under-
taking of more peril and difficulty, than in our
days would attend a journey from Bremen to
Kamtschatka : for the Landfried (or Act for sup-
pressing Private Wars), which the Emperor
Maximilian had proclaimed, was in force
through the Empire, rather as a law than an
observance. Nevertheless our solitary traveller
succeeded in arriving at the goal of his pilgrim-
,age, without encountering more than a single
adventure.

Far in the wastes of Westphalia, he rode one
sultry day till nightfall, without reaching any
inn. Towards evening stormy clouds towered
up at the horizon, and a heavy rain wetted him
to the skin. To the fondling, who from his
youth had been accustomed to all possible con-
veniences, this was a heavy matter, and he felt
himself in great embarrassment how in this
condition he should pass the night. To his com-
fort, when the tempest had moved away, he saw
a light in the distance; and soon after, reached
a mean peasant hovel, which afforded him but
little consolation. The house was more like a
cattle-stall, than a human habitation; and the
unfriendly landlord refused him fire and water,
as if he had been an outlaw. For the man was
just about to stretch himself upon the straw
among his steers ; and too tired to relight the
fire on his hearth, for the sake of a stranger.
Franz in his despondency uplifted a mournful
miserere, and cursed the Westphalian steppes
with strong maledictions : but the peasant took

it all in good part; and blew out his light with
great composure, troubling himself no farther
about the stranger; for in the laws of hospitality
he was altogether uniustructcd. But as the
wayfarer, standing at the door, would not cease
to annoy him with his lamentations, he en-
deavoured in a civil way to get rid of him, con-
sented to answer, and said : " Master, if yon
want good entertainment, and would treat your-
self handsomely, you could not find what you
are seeking here. But ride there to the left
hand, through the bushes; a little way behind,
lies the Castle of the valiant Eberhard Bronk-
horst, a knight who lodges every traveller, as a
Hospitaller does the pilgrims from the Holy
Sepulchre. He has just one maggot in his head,
which sometimes twitches and vexes him ; he
lets no traveller depart from him unbasted. If
you do not lose your way, though he may dust
your jacket, you will like your cheer prodigi-
ously."

To buy a mess of pottage, and a stoop of wine,
by surrendering one's ribs to the bastinado, is
in truth no job for every man, though your
spungers and plate-lickers let themselves be
tweaked and snubbed, and from rich artists
willingly endure all kinds of tar-and-feathering,
so their palates be but tickled for the service.
Franz considered for a while, and was unde-
termined what to do ; at last he resolved on
fronting the adventure. " What is it to me,"
said he, "whether my back be broken here on
miserable straw, or by the Ritter Bronkhorst ?
The friction will expel the fever which is com-
ing on, and shake me tightly if I cannot dry my
clothes." He put spurs to his nag, and soon
arrived before a castle-gate of old Gothic archi-
tecture ; knocked pretty plaiidy on the iron door,
and an equally distinct "Who's there?" re-
sounded from within. To the freezing pas-
senger, the long entrance ceremonial of this
door-keeper precognition was as inconvenient,
as are similar delays to travellers who, at bar-
riers and gates of towns, bewail or execrate the
desiDOtism of guards and tollmen. Nevertheless
he must submit to use and wont, and patiently
wait to see whether the philanthropist in the
Castle was disposed that night for cudgelling a
guest, or would choose rather to assign him a
couch under the open canopy.

The possessor of this ancient tower had
served, in his youth, as a stout soldier in the
Emperor's army, under the bold Georg von
Fronsberg, and led a troop of foot against the
Venetians ; had afterwards retired to repose,
and was now living on his property ; where, to
expiate the sins of his campaigns, he employed
himself in doing good works ; in feeding the
hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, lodging
pilgrims, and cudgelling his lodgers out of doors.
For he was a rude wild son of war; and could
not lay aside his martial tone, though he had
lived for many years in silent peace. The
traveller, who had now determined for good
quarters to submit to the custom of the house.

168

MUSAUS.

had not waited long till the bolts and locks be-
gan rattling within, and the creaking gate-leaves
moved asunder, moaning in doleful notes, as if
to warn or to deplore the entering stranger.
Franz felt one cold shudder after the other riui-
ning down his back, as he passed in: neverthe-
less he was handsomely received; some servants
hastened to assist him in dismounting; speedily
unbuckled his luggage, took his steed to the
stable, and its rider to a large well-lighted
chanaber, where their master was in waiting.

The warlike aspect of this athletic gentleman,
— who advanced to meet his guest, and shook
him by the hand so heartily, that he was like
to shout with pain, and bade him welcome
with a Steutor's voice, as if the stranger had
been deaf, and seemed withal to be a person
still in the vigour of life, full of fire and strength,
— put the timorous wanderer into such a terror,
that he could not hide his apprehensions, and
began to tremble over all his body.

" What ails you, my young master," asked the
Hitter, with a voice of thunder, " that you quiver
Hke an aspen leaf, and look as pale as if Death
had you by the throat?"

Franz plucked up a spirit; and considering
that his shoulders had at all events the score to
j)ay. his poltrooiaery passed into a species of
audacity.

"Sir," replied he, "you perceive that the rain
has soaked me, as if 1 had swum across the
Weser. Let me have my clothes dried or
changed ; and get me, by way of luncheon, a
well-spiced aleberry, to drive away the ague-fit
that is quaking through my nerves ; then I shall
come to heart, in some degree."

"Good!" replied the Knight; " demand what
you want ; you are at home here."

Franz made himself be served like a bashaw ;
and having nothing else but currying to expect,
he determined to deserve it ; he bantered and
bullied, in his most itnperious style, the servants
that were waiting on him ; it comes all to one,
thought he, in the long run. "This waistcoat,"
said he, " would go round a tim ; bring me one
that fits a little better : this slipper burns like a
coal against my corns ; pitch it over the lists :
this ruff is stiff as a plank, and throttles me like
a halter ; bring one that is easier, and is not
plastered with starch."

At this Bremish frankness, the landlord, far
from showing any anger, kept inciting his ser-
vants to go briskly through with their commands,
and calling them a pack of blockheads, who
were fit to serve no stranger. The table being
furiiished, the Ritter and his guest sat down to
it, and both heartily enjoyed their aleberry.
The Ritter asked : " Would you have aught
farther, by way of supper]"

"Bring us what you have," said Franz, "that
I may see how your kitchen is provided."

Immediately appeared the Cook, and placed
upon the table a repast with which a duke
might have been satisfied. Franz diligently
fell to, without waiting to be pressed. When

he had satisfied hiir.self: "Your kitchen," said
he, "is not ill-furnished, I perceive; if your
cellar corresponds to it, I shall almost praise
your house-keeping."

Bronkhorst nodded to his Butler, who directly
filled the cup of welcome with common table
wine, tasted, and presented it to his master, and
the latter cleared it at a draught to the health
of his guest. Franz pledged him honestly, and
Bronkhorst asked : " Now, fair sir, what say you
to the wine?"

" I say," answered Franz, " that it is bad, if
it is the best sort in your catacombs ; and good,
if it is your meanest number."

" You are a judge," rejilied the Ritter : " Here,
Butler, bring us of the mother-cask."

The Butler put a stoop upon the table, as a
sample, and Franz having tasted it, said, " Ay,
this is genuine last year's growth ; we will stick
by this?"

The Ritter made a vast pitcher of it be
brought in ; soon drank himself into hilarity
and glee beside his guest ; began to talk of his
campaigns, how he had been encamped against
the Venetians, had broken through their barri-
cado, and butchered the Italian squadrons, like
a flock of sheep. In this narrative he rose into
such a warlike enthusiasm, that he hewed down
bottles and glasses, brandishing the carving-knife
like a lance, and in the fire of action came so
near his messmate with it, that the latter was
in fright for his nose and ears.

It grew late, but no sleep came into the eyes
of the Ritter ; he seemed to be in his proper
element, when he got to speak of his Venetian
campaigns. The vivacity of his narration in-
creased with every cup he emptied ; and Franz
was afraid that this would prove the prologue
to the melodrama, in which he himself was to
play the most interesting part. To learn whe-
ther it was meant that he should lodge within
the Castle, or without, he demanded a bumper
by way of good-night. Now, he thought, his
host would first force him to drink more wine,
and if he refused, would, imder pretext of a
drinking quarrel, send him forth, according to
the custom of the house, with the usual viaticum.
Contrary to his expectation, the request was
granted without remonstrance ; the Ritter in-
stantly cut asunder the thread of his narrative,
and said : "Time will wait on no one ; more of
it to-morrow!"

"Pardon me, Herr Ritter," answered Franz,
"to-morrow by sunrise I must over hill and
dale; I am travelling a far journey to Brabant,
and must not linger here. So let me take leave
of you to-night, that my departure may not dis-
turb you in the morning."

"Do your pleasure," said the Ritter; "but
depart from this you shall not, till I am out of
the feathers, to refresh you with a bit of bread,
and a toothful of Dantzig, then attend you to
the door, and dismiss you according to the
fashion of the house."

Franz needed no interpretation of these

MUSAUS.

169

words. Willingly as he would have excused
his host this last civility, attendance to the door,
the latter seemed determined to abate no whit
of the established ritual. He ordered his ser-
vants to undress the stranger, and put him in
the guest's-bed ; where Franz, once settled on
elastic swan's-down, felt himself extremely
snug, and enjoyed delicious rest; so that ere he
fell asleep, he owned to himself that, for such
royal treatment, a moderate bastinado was not
too dear a price. Soon pleasant dreams came
hovering round his fancy. He found his charm-
ing Meta in a rosy grove, where she was walk-
ing with her mother, plucking flowers. In-
stantly he hid himself behind a thick-leaved
hedge, that the rigorous duenna might not see
him. Again his imagination placed him in the
alley, and by his looking-glass he saw the
snow-white hand of the maiden busied with
her flowers; soon he was sitting with her on
the grass, and longing to declare his heartfelt
love to her, and the bashful shepherd found no
words to do it in. He would have dreamed
till broad mid-day, had he not been roused by
the sonorous voice and clanking spurs of the
Ritter, who, with the earliest dawn, was hold-
ing a review of kitchen and cellar, ordering a
suflicient breakfast to be readied, and placing
every servant at his post, to be at hand when
the guest should awake, to dress him, and wait
upon him.

It cost the hapjiy dreamer no small struggling
to forsake his safe and hospitable bed ; he rolled
to this side and to that; but the pealing voice
of the worshipful Knight came heavy on his
heart; and dally as he might, the sour apple
must at last be bit. So he rose from his down;
and immediately a dozen hands were busy
dressing him. The Ritter led him into the par-
lour, where a small well-furnished table waited
them ; but now, when the hour of reckoning
had arrived, the traveller's appetite was gone.
The host endeavoured to encourage him. "Why
do you not get to ? Come, take somewhat for
the raw foggy morning."

" Herr Ritter," answered Franz, " my stomach
is still too full of your supper ; but my pockets
are empty; these I may fill for the hunger that
is to come."

With this he began stoutly cramming, and
stowed himself with the daintiest and best that
was transportable, till all his pockets were
bursting. Then observing that his horse, well
curried and equipt, was led past, he took a
dram of Dantzig, for good-bye, in the thought
that this would be the watch-word for his host
to catch him by the neck, and exercise his
household privileges.

But, to his astonishment, the Ritter shook him
Kindly by the hand, as at his first entrance,
wished him luck by the way, and the bolted
door was thrown open. He loitered not in
putting spurs to his nag ; and, tip ! tap ! he was
without the gate, and no hair of him harmed.

A heavy stone was lifted from his heart, as
w

he found himself in safety, and saw that he had
got away with a whole skin. He could not un-
derstand how the landlord had trusted him the
shot, which, as he imagined, must have run
pretty high on the chalk ; and he embraced
with warm love the hospitable man, whose
club-law arm he had so much dreaded ; and he
felt a strong desire to search out, at the foun-
tain-head, the reason or unreason of the ill report
which had affrighted him. Accordingly, he
turned his horse, and cantered back. The
Knight was still standing in the gate, and des-
canting with his servants, for the forwarding of
the science of horse-flesh, on the breed, shape,
and character of the nag and his hard pace ; he
supposed the stranger must have missed some-
thing in his travelling gear, and he already
looked askance at his servants for sitch negli-
gence.

" What is it, young master," cried he, " that
makes you turn again, when you were for pro-
ceeding?"

" Ah ! yet a word, valiant Knight," cried the
traveller. "An ill report has gone abroad, that
injures your name and breeding. It is said that
you treat every stranger that calls upon you with
your best; and then, when he leaves you, let
liim feel tlie weight of your strong fists. This
story I have credited, and spared nothing to de-
serve my due from you. I thought within my-
self, His worship will abate me nothing; I will
abate him as little. But now you let me go,
without strife or peril ; and that is what sur-
prises me. Pray, tell me, is there any shadow
of foundation for the thing, or shall I call the
foolish chatter lies next time I hear it ?"

The Ritter answered : " Report has nowise
told you lies ; there is no saying, that circulates
among the people, but contains in it some grain
of truth. Let ine tell you accurately how the
matter stands. I lodge every stranger that comes
beneath my roof, and divide my morsel with
him, for the love of God. But I am a plain
German man, of the old cut and fashion ; speak
as it lies about my heart, and require that my
guest also should be hearty and confiding;
should enjoy with me what I have, and tell
frankly what he wants. Now, there is a sort of
people that vex me with all manner of grimaces ;
that banter me with smirkings, and bows, and
crouchings ; put all their words to the torture ;
make a deal of talk without sense or salt; think
they will cozen me with smooth speeches; be-
have at dirmer as women at a christening. If I
say. Help yourself! out of reverence, they pick
you a fraction from the plate, which I would
not offer to my dog; if I say. Your health! they
scarcely wet their lips from the full cup, as if
they set God's gifts at nought. Now, when the
sorry rabble carry things too far with me, and I
cannot, for the soul of me, know what they
would be at, I get into a rage at last, and use
my household privilege ; catch the noodle by
the spall, thrash him sufficiently, and pack him
out of doors. This is the use and wont with
15

170

MUSAUS.

me, and I do so with every truest that plagues
me with these freaks. But a man of your stamp
is always welcome : you told me plump out in
plain German what you thought, as is the fashion
with the Bremers. Call on me boldly again, if
your road lead you hither. And so, God be with
you."

Franz now moved on, with a joyful humour,
towards Antwerp ; and he wished that he might
everywhere find such a reception as he had met
with from the Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst. On
approaching the ancient Queen of the Flemish
cities, the sail of his hope was swelled by a
propitious breeze. Riches and superfluity met
him in every street; and it seemed as if scarcity
and want had been exiled from the busy town.
In all probability, thought he, there must be
many of my father's debtors who have risen
again, and will gladly make me full payment
whenever I substantiate my claims. After rest-
ing for a while from his fatigues, he set about
obtaining, in the inn where he was quartered,
some preliminary knowledge of the situation of
his debtors.

"How stands it with Peter Martens?'" in-
quired he one day, of his companions at table ;
'•is he still living, and doing much business?"

" Peter Martens is a warm man," answered
one of the party ; " has a brisk commission trade,
and draws good profit from it."

" Is Fabian van Plurs still in good circum-
stances?''

"0 ! there is no end to Fabian's wealth. He
is a Councillor ; his woollen manufactories are
thriving incredibly."

" Has Jonathan Frischkier good custom in his
trade ?"

" Ah ! Jonathan were now a brisk fellow,
had not Kaiser Max let the French chouse him
out of his Princess.* Jonathan had got the
furnishing of the lace for the bride's dress, but
the Kaiser has left poor Frischkier in the
lurch, as the bride has left himself If you have
a fair one, whom you would remember with a
bit of lace, he will give it you at half price."

"Is the firm Op de Btltekant still standing,
or has it sunk?"

"There was a crack in the beams there some
years ago; but the Spanish caravelles have put
a new prop to it, and it now holds fast."

Franz inquired about several other merchants,
who were on his list; found that most of them,
though in his father's time they had " failed,"
were now standing firmly on their legs ; and
inferred from this, that a judicious bankruptcy
had, as from of old, been the wine of future
gains. This intelligence refreshed him mightily :
he hastened to put his documents in order, and
submit them to the proper parties. But with
the Antwerpers, he fared as his itinerating
countrymen do with shopkeepers in the Ger-
man towns ; they find everywhere a friendly
welcome at their first api^earance, but are looked

* Anne of Britanny.

upon with cheerfulness nowhere, when they
come collecting debts. Some would have no-
thing to do with these former sins ; and were
of opinion, that by the tender of the legal five-
per-cent composition, they had been entirely
abolished : it was the creditor's fault if he had
not accepted payment in time. Others could
not recollect any Melchior of Bremen; opened
their Infallible Books, found no debtor-entry
marked for this urdinown name. Others, again,
brought out a strong counter-reckoning ; and
three days had not passed, till Franz was sitting
in the Debtors' Ward, to answer for his father's
credit, not to depart till he had paid the utter-
most farthing.

These were not the best prospects for the
young man, who had set his hope and trust
upon the Antwerp patrons of his fortune, and
now saw the fair soap-bubble vanish quite
away. In his strait confinement, he felt him-
self in the condition of a soul in Purgatory, now
that his skiff had run ashore and gone to pieces,
in the middle of the haven where he thought
to find security. Every thought of Meta was as
a thorn in his heart ; there was now no shadow
of a possibility, that from the whirlpool which
bad sunk him, he could ever rise, and stretch
out his hand to her ; nor, suppose he should get
his head above water, was it in poor Meta's
power to pull him on dry land. He fell into a
sullen desperation ; had no wish but to die
speedily, and give his woes the slip at once;
and, in fact, he did attempt to kill himself by
starvation. But this is a sort of death which is
not at the beck of every one, so ready as the
shrunk Pomponius Atticus found it, when his
digestive apparatus had already struck work.
A sound peptic stomach does not yield so tame-
ly to the precepts of the head or heart. After
the moribund debtor had abstained two days
from food, a ravenous hunger suddenly usurped
the government of his will, and performed, of
its own authority, all the operations which, in
other cases, are directed by the mind. It
ordered his hand to seize the spoon, his mouth
to receive the victual, his inferior maxillary
jaw to get in motion, and itself accomplished
the usual functions of digestion, unordered.
Thus did this last resolve make shipwreck, on
a hard bread-crust; for, in the seven-and-twen-
tieth year of life, it has a heroism connected
with it, which in the seven-and-seventieth is
entirely gone.

At bottom, it was not the object of the bar-
barous Antwerpers to squeeze money I'rora the
pretended debtor, but only to pay him none, as
his demands were not admitted to be liquid.
Whether it were, then, that the public Prayer
in Bremen had in truth a little virtue, or that
the supposed creditors were not desirous of
supporting a superfluous boarder for life, true it
is, that after the lapse of three months, Franz
was delivered from his imprisonment, under
the condition of leaving the city within four-
and-twenty hours, and never again setting footi

MUSAUS.

171

on the soil and territory of Antwerp. At the
same time, he received five crowns for travel-
ling expenses from the faithful hands of Justice,
which had taken charge of his horse and lug-
gage, and conscientiously balanced the produce
of the same against judicial and curatory ex-
penses.

With heavy-laden heart, in the humblest
mood, with his staff in his hand, he left the rich
city, into which he had ridden some time before
with high-soaring hopes. Broken down, and
undetermined what to do, or rather altogether
without thought, he plodded through the streets
to the nearest gate, not minding whither the
road into which chance conducted him might
lead. He saluted no traveller, he asked for no
inn, except when fatigue or hunger forced him
to lift up his eyes, and look around for some
church-spire, or sign of human habitation, when
he needed human aid. Many days he had
wandered on, as if unconsciously ; and a secret
instinct had still, by means of his uncrazed feet,
led him right forward on the way to home ;
when, all at once, he awoke as from an op-
pressive dream, and perceived on what road
he was travelling.

He halted instantly, to consider whether he
should proceed or turn back. Shame and con-
fusion took possession of his soul, when he
thought of skulking about in his native town as
a beggar, branded with the mark of contempt,
and claiming the charitable help of his towns-
men, whom of old he had eclipsed by his
wealth and magnificence. And how in this
form could he present himself before his fair
Meta, without disgracing the choice of her
heart 1 He did not leave his fancy time to finish
this doleful picture ; but wheeled about to take
the other road, as hastily as if he had been
standing even then at the gate of Bremen, and
the ragged apprentices had been assembling to
accompany him with jibes and mockery through
the streets. His purpose was formed ; he would
make for the nearest seaport in the Nether-
lands; engage as a sailor in a Spanish ship, to
work his passage to the new world ; and not
return to his country, till in the Peruvian land
of gold he should have regained the wealth,
which he had squandered so heedlessly, before
he knew the worth of money. In the shaping
of this new plan, it is true, the fair Meta fell so
far into the back -ground, that even to the
sharpest prophetic eye she could only hover as
a faint shadow in the distance ; yet tlie wan-
dering projector pleased himself with thinking
that she was again interwoven with the scheme
of his life; and he took large steps, as if by this
rapidity he meant to reach her so much the
sooner.

Already he was on the Flemish soil once
more ; and found himself at sunset not far from
Rheinberg, in a little hamlet, Rummelsburg hy
name, which has since, in the Thirty Years'
War, been utterly destroyed. A caravan of
carriers from Lyke had already filled the inn,

so that Mine Host had no room left, and re-
ferred him to the next town ; the rather that he
did not draw too flattering a presage, from his
present vagabond physiognomy, and held him
to be a thieves' purveyor, who had views upon
the Lyke carriers. He was forced, notwith-
standing his excessive weariness, to gird him-
self for march, and again to take his bundle on
his back.

As in retiring, he was muttering between his
teeth some bitter complaints and curses of the
Landlord's hardness of heart, the latter seemed
to take some pity on the forlorn wayfarer, and
called after him, from the door : " Stay, neigh-
bour, let me speak to you : if you wish to rest
here, I can accommodate you after all. In that
Castle are empty rooms enow, if they be not
too lonely ; it is not inhabited, and I have got
the keys." Franz accepted the proposal with
joy, praised it as a deed of mercy, and requested
only shelter and a supper, were it in a castle
or a cottage. Mine Host, however, was privily
a rogue, whom it had galled to hear the stranger
drop some half-audible contumelies against him,
and meant to be avenged on him, by a Hob-
goblin that inhabited the old fortress, and had
many long years before expelled the owners.

The Castle lay hard by the hamlet, on a steep
rock, right opposite the inn, from which it was
divided merely by the highway, and a little
gurgling brook. The situation being so agree-
able, the edifice was still kept in repair, and
well provided with all sorts of house-gear; for
it served the owner as a hunting-lodge, where
he frequently caroused all day ; and so soon as
the stars began to twinkle in the sky, retired
with his whole retinue, to escape the mischief
of the Ghost, who rioted about in it the whole
night over, but by day gave no disturbance.
Unpleasant as the owner felt this spoiling of
his mansion by a bugbear, the nocturnal sprite
was not without advantages, for the great
security it gave from thieves. The Count could
have appointed no trustier or more watchful
keeper over the Castle, than this same Spectre,
for the rashest troop of robbers never ventured
to approach its station. Accordingly he knew
of no safer place for laying up his valuables,
than this old tower, in the hamlet of Rummels-
burg, near Rheinberg.

The sunshine had sunk, the dark night was
coming heavily on, when Franz, with a lantern
in his hand, proceeded to the castle-gate, under
the guidance of Mine Host, who carried in his
hand a basket of victuals, with a flask of wine,
which he said should not be marked against
him. He had also taken along with him a
pair of candlesticks, and two wax-lights; for in
the whole Castle there was neither lamp nor
taper, as no one ever staid in it after twilight.
In tlie way, Franz noticed the creaking, heavy-
laden basket, and the wax-lights, which he
thought he should not need, and yet must pay
for. Therefore he said : " What is this super-
fluity and waste, as at a banquet? The light

172

MUSAUS.

in the lantern is enough to see with, till I go to
bed ; and when I awake, the sun will be high
enough, for I am tired completely, and shall
sleep with both eyes."

'•I will not hide from you,'" replied the land-
lord, "that a story runs of there being mischief
in the Castle, and a Goblin that frequents it.
You, however, need not let the thing disturb
yon ; we are near enough, you see, for you to
call us, should you meet with aught unnatural ;
I and my folks will be at your hand in a twink-
ling, to assist you. Down in the house there,
we keep astir all night through, some one is
always moving. I have lived here these thirty
years; yet I cannot say that I have ever seen
aught. If there be now and then a little hurly-
burlying at nights, it is nothing but cats and
martens rummaging about the granary. As a
precaution, I have provided you with candles :
the night is no friend of man ; and the tapers
are consecrated, so that sprites, if there be such
in the Castle, will avoid their shine."

It was no lying in Mine Host to say that he
had never seen anything of spectres in the
Castle ; for by night he had taken special care
not once to set foot in it; and by day, the
Goblin did not come to sight. In the present
case, too, the traitor would not risk himself
across the border. After opening the door, he
handed Franz the basket, directed him what
way to go, and wished him good-night. Franz
entered the lobby without anxiety or fear ; be-
lieving the ghost story to be empty tattle, or a
distorted tradition of some real occurrence in
the place, which idle fancy had shaped into an
unnatLiral adventure. He remembered the stout
Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst, from whose heavy
arm he had apprehended such maltreatment,
and with whom, notwithstanding, he had found
so hospitable a reception. On this ground he
Lad laid it down as a rule deduced from his
travelling experiences, when he heard any com-
mon rumour, to believe exactly the reverse, and
left the grain of truth, which, in the opinion of
the wise Knight, always lies in such reports,
entirely out of sight.

Pursuant to Mine Host's direction, he as-
cended the winding stone stair; and reached a
bolted door, which he opened with his key. A
long dark gallery, where his footsteps resound-
ed, led him into a large hall, and from this, a
side-door, into a suite of apartments, richly pro-
vided with all furniture for decoration or con-
venience. Out of these he chose the room which
had the friendliest aspect, where he found a
well-pillowed bed ; and from the window could
look right down upon the inn, and catch every
loud word that was spoken there. He lit his
wax-tapers, furnished his table, and feasted
with the commodiousness and relish of an
Otaheitean noble. The big-bellied flask was
an antidote to thirst. So long as his teeth were
in full occupation, he had no time to think of
the reported devilry in the Castle. If aught
now and then made a stir in the distance, and

Fear called to him. " Hark ! hark ! There comes
the Goblin;'' Courage answered: "Stuff! It is
cats and martens bickering and caterwauling."
But in the digestive half-hour after meat, when
the sixth sense, that of hunger and thirst, no
longer occupied the soul, she directed her atten-
tion from the other five exclusively upon the
sense of hearing; and already Fear was whis-
pering three timid thoughts into the listener's
ear, before Coinage had time to answer once.

As the first resource, he locked the door, and
bolted it ; made his retreat to the walled seat
in the vault of the window. He opened this,
and to dissipate his thoughts a little, looked out
on the spangled sky, gazed at the corroded
moon, and counted how often the stars snuffed
themselves. On the road beneath him all was
void; and in spite of the pretended nightly
bustle in the inn, the doors were shut, the lights
out, and everything as still as in a sepulchre.
On the other hand, the watchman blew his
horn, making his "List, gentlemen!" sound
over all the hamlet; and for the composure of
the timorous astronomer, who still kept feasting
his eyes on the splendour of the stars, uplifted
a rusty evening-hymn right under his window;
so that Franz might easily have carried on a
conversation with him, which, for the sake of
company, he would willingly have done, had
he in the least expected that the watchman
would make answer to him.

In a populous city, in the middle of a numer-
ous household, where there is a hubbub equal
to that of a bee-hive, it may form a pleasant
entertainment for the thinker to philosophize
on Solitude, to decorate her as the loveliest
playmate of the human spirit, to view her un-
der all her advantageous aspects, and long for
her enjoyment as for hidden treasure. But in
scenes, where she is no exotic, in the isle of
Juan Fernandez, where a solitary eremite,
escaped from shipwreck, lives with her through
long years ; or in the dreary night-time, in a
deep wood, or in an old uninhabited castle,
where empty wails and vaults awaken horror,
and nothing breathes of life, but the moping
owl in the ruinous turret ; there, in good sooth,
she is not the most agreeable companion for the
timid anchorite that has to j^ass his time in her
abode, especially if he is every moment looking
for the entrance of a spectre to augment the
party. In such a case it may easily chance that
a window conversation with the w'atchman
shall afford a richer entertainment for the spirit
and the heart, than a reading of the most attrac-
tive eulogy on solitude. If Ritter Zimmerman
had been in Franz's place, in the castle of
Rummelsburg, on the WestiJhalian marches, he
would doubtless in this position have struck out
the fundamental topics of as interesting a trea-
tise on Society, as, inspired to all appearance by
the irksomeness of some ceremonious assembly,
he has poured out from the fulness of his heart
in praise of Solitude.

Midnight is the hour at which the world of

MUSAUS.

173

spirits acquires activity and life, when hebe-
tated animal nature lies entombed in deep slum-
ber. Franz inclined getting through this critical
hour in sleep rather than awake ; so he closed
his window, went the rounds of his room once
more, spying every nook and crevice, to see
whether all was safe and earthly, snuffed the
lights to make them burn clearer ; and without
undressing or delaying, threw himself upon his
bed, with which his wearied person felt unusual
satisfaction. Yet he could not get asleep so fast
as he wished. A slight palpitation at the heart,
which he ascribed to a tumult in the blood,
arising from the sultriness of the day, kept him
waking for a while ; and he failed not to employ
this respite in offering up such a pithy evening
prayer, as he had not prayed for many years.
This produced the usual effect, that he softly
fell asleep while saying it.

After about an hour, as he supposed, he
started up with a sudden terror ; a thing not at
all surprising when there is tumult in the blood.
He was broad awake : he listened whether all
was quiet, and heard nothing but the clock
strike twelve ; a piece of news which the watch-
man forthwith communicated to the hamlet in
doleful recitative. Franz listened for a while,
turned on the other side, and was again about
to sleep, when he caught, as it were, the sound
of a door grating in the distance, and imme-
diately it shut with a stiffed bang. "Alack!
Alack!" bawled Fright into his ear; "this is
the Ghost in very deed!" — "'Tis nothing but
the wind," said Courage manfully. But quickly
it came nearer, nearer, like the sound of heavy
footsteps. Clink here, clink there, as if a cri-
minal were rattling his irons, or as if the porter
were walking about the Castle with his bunch
of keys. Alas, here was no wind business !
Courage held his peace ; and quaking Fear drove
all the blood to the heart, and made it thump
like a smith's forehammer.

The thing was now beyond jesting. If Fear
would still have let Courage get a word, the
latter would have put the terror-struck watcher
in mind of his subsidiary treaty with Mine Host,
and incited him to claim the stipulated assist-
ance loudly from the window ; but for this there
was a want of proper resolution. The quaking
Franz had recourse to the bed-clothes, the last
fortress of the timorous, and drew them close
over his ears, as Bird Ostrich sticks his head in
the grass, when he can no longer escape the
huntsman. Outside it came along, door up,
door to, with hideous uproar ; and at last it
reached the bed-room. It jerked sharply at the
lock, tried several keys till it found the right
one ; yet the bar still held the door, till a bounce
like a thunderclap made bolt and rivet start,
and' threw it wide open. Now stalked in a
long lean man, with a black beard, in ancient
garb, and with a gloomy countenance, his eye-
brows hanging down in deep earnestness from
his brow. Over his right shoulder he had a
scarlet cloak ; and on his head he wore a peaked

hat. With a heavy step, he walked thrice in
silence up and down the chamber ; looked at
the consecrated tapers, and snuffed them that
they might burn brighter. Then he threw aside
his cloak, girded on a scissor-pottch which he
had under it, produced a set of shaving-tackle,
and immediately began to whet a sharp razor
on the broad strap which he wore at his
girdle.

Franz perspired in mortal agony under his
coverlet ; recommended himself to the keeping
of the Virgin; and anxiously speculated on the
object of this manojuvre, not knowing whether
it was meant for his throat or his beard. To
his comfort, the Goblin poured sosae water from
a silver flask into a basin of silver, and widi his
skinny hand lathered the soap into light foam ;
then set a chair, and beckoned with a solemn
look to the quaking looker-on to come forth from
his recess.

Against so pertinent a sign, remonstrance was
as bootless as it is against the rigorous commands
of the Grand Turk, when he transmits an exiled
vizier to the Angel of Death, the Capichi Bashi
whh the Silken Cord, to take delivery of his
head. The most rational procedure that can
be adopted in this critical case, is to comply
with necessity, put a good face on a bad busi-
ness, and with stoical composure let one's throat
be noosed. Franz honoured the Spectre's order ;
the coverlet began to move, he sprang sharply
from his couch, and took the place pointed out
to him on the seat. However strange this quick
transition from the uttermost terror to the boldest
resolution may appear, I doubt not but Moritz
in his Psychological Journal could explain the
matter till it seemed quite natural.

Immediately the Goblin Barber tied the towel
about his shivering customer ; seized the comb
and scissors, and clipped off his hair and beard.
Then he soaped him scientifically, first the beard,
next the eye-brows, at last the temples and the
hind-head ; and shaved him from throat to nape,
as smooth and bald as a Death's-head. This
operation finished, he washed his head, dried
it clean, made his bow, and buttoned up his
scissor-pouch ; wrapped himself in his scarlet
mantle, and made for departing. The conse-
crated tapers had burnt with an exquisite bright-
ness through the w^hole transaction ; and Franz,
by the light of them, perceived in the mirror
that the shaver had changed him into a Chinese
pagoda. In secret he heartily deplored the loss
of his fair brown locks; yet now took fresh
breath, as he observed that with this sacrifice
the account was settled, and the Ghost had no
more power over him.

So it was in fact; Redcloak went towards
the door, silently as he had entered, without
salutation or good-b'ye ; and seemed entirely the
contrast of his talkative guild -brethren. But
scarcely was he gone three steps, when he
paused, looked round with a mournful expres-
sion at his well -served customer, and stroked
the flat of his hand over his black bushy beard.
15*

174

MUSAUS.

He did the same a second time ; and again, just
as he was in the act of stepping out at the door.
A thought struck Franz that the Spectre wanted
something ; and a rapid combination of ideas
suggested, that perhaps he was expecting the
very service he himself had just performed.

As the Ghost, notwithstanding his rueful look,
seemed more disposed for banter than for se-
riousness, and had played his guest a scurvy
trick, not done him any real injury, the panic
of the latter had now almost subsided. So he
ventured the experiment, and beckoned to the
Ghost to take the seat from which he had him-
self just risen. The Goblin instantly obeyed,
threw off his cloak, laid his barber tackle on the
table, and placed himself in the chair, in the
posture of a man that wishes to be shaved.
Franz carefully observed the same procedure
which the Spectre had observed to him, clipped
his beard with the scissors, cropt away his hair,
lathered his whole scalp, and the Ghost all the
while sat steady as a wig-block. The awkward
journeyman came ill at handling the razor ; he
had never had another in his hand ; and he shore
the beard right against the hair ; whereat the
Goblin made as strange grimaces as Erasmus's
Ape, when imitating its tnaster's shaving. Nor
was the unpractised bungler himself well at
ease, and he thought more than once of the sage
aphorism, What is not thy trade make not thy
business ; yet he struggled through the task, the
best way he could, and scraped the Ghost as
bald as he himself was.

Hitherto the scene between the Spectre and
the traveller had been played pantomimically ;
the action now became dramatic. " Stranger,"
said the Ghost, " accept my thanks for the ser-
vice thou hast done me. By thee I am delivered
fiom the long imprisoumeut, which has chained
me for three hundred years within these walls ;
to which my departed soul was doomed, till a
mortal hand should consent to retaliate on me
what I iiractised on others in my lifetime.

" Know that of old a reckless scorner dwelt
within this tower, who took his sport on priests
as well as laics. Count Hardman, such his
name, was no philanthropist, acknowledged no
superior and no law, but practised vain caprice
and waggery, regarding not the sacredness of
hospitable rights: the wanderer who came be-
neath his roof, the needy man who asked a cha-
ritable alms of him, he never sent away unvi-
sited by wicked joke. I was his Castle Barber,
still a willing instrument, and did whatever
pleased him. Many a pious pilgrim, journeying
past us, I allured with friendly speeches to the
hall ; prepared the bath for him, and when he
thought to take good comfort, shaved him smooth
and bald, and packed him out of doors. Then
would Count Hardman, looking from the win-
dow, see with pleasure how the foxes' whelps
of children gathered from the hamlet to assail
the outcast, and to cry as once their fellows to
Elijah: 'Baldhead! Baldhead !' In this the
scoffer took his pleasure, laughing with a devil-

ish joy, till he would hold his pot-paunch, and
his eyes ran down with water.

"Once came a saintly man, from foreign
lands; he carried, like a penitent, a heavy cross
upon his shoulder, and had stamped five nail-
niarks on his hands, and feet, and side ; upon
his head there was a ring of hair like to the
Crown of Thorns. He called upon us here, re-
questing water for his feet, and a small crust of
bread. Immediately I took him to the bath, to
serve him in my common way ; respected not
the sacred ring, but shore it clean from off him.
Then the pious pilgrim spoke a heavy malison
upon me : ' Know, accursed man, that when
thou diest. Heaven, and Hell, and Purgatory's
iron gate, are shut against thy soul. As goblin
it shall rage within these walls, till unrequired,
unbid, a traveller come and exercise retaliation
on thee.'

"That hour I sickened, and the marrow in
my bones dried up ; I faded like a shadow. My
spirit left the wasted carcase, and was exiled to
this Castle, as the saint had doomed it. In vain
I struggled for deliverance from the torturing
bonds that fettered me to Earth ; for thou must
know, that when the soul forsakes her clay, she
panteth for her place of rest, and this sick long-
ing spins her years to aeons, while in foreign
elements she languishes for home. Now self-
tormenting, I pursued the mournful occupation
I had Ipllowed in my lifetime. Alas! my up-
roar soon made desolate this house ! But seldom
came a pilgrim here to lodge. And though I
treated all like thee, no one would understand
me, and perform, as thou, the service which has
freed my soul from bondage. Henceforth shall
no hobgoblin wander in this Castle ; I return to
my long-wished-for rest. And now, young stran-
ger, once again my thanks, that thou hast loosed
me! Were I keeper of deep-hidden treasures,
they were thine ; but wealth in life was not my
lot, nor in this Castle lies there any cash en-
tombed. Yet mark my counsel. Tarry here
till beard and locks again shall cover chin and
scalp; then turn thee homewards to thy native
town ; and on the Weser-bridge of Bremen, at
the time when day and night in Autumn are
alike, wait for a Friend, who there will meet
thee, who will tell thee what to do, that it be
well with thee on Earth. If from the golden
horn of plenty, blessing and abundance flow to
thee, then think of me ; and ever as the day
thou freedst me from the curse comes round,
cause for my soul's repose three masses to be
said. Now fare thee well. I go, no more re-
turning."*

With these words the Ghost, having by his
copiousness of talk satisfactorily attested his for-
mer existence as court-barber in the Castle of
Rummelsburg, vanished into air, and left his
deliverer full of wonder at the strange ad ven-

* I know not whether the reader has observed that our
Author makes the Spectre speak in iambics, a whim which
here and there conies over him in other tales also. — Wie-
land.

MUSAUS.

175

tnre. He stood for a long while motionless ; in
doubt whether the whole matter had actually
happened, or an unquiet dream had deluded
his senses ; but his bald head convinced him
that here had been a real occurrence. He re-
turned to bed, and slept, after the fright he had
undergone, till the hour of noon. The treacher-
ous Landlord had been watching since morning,
when the traveller with the scalp was to come
forth, that he might receive him with jibing
speeches under pretext of astonishment at his
nocturnal adventure. But as the stranger loitered
too long, and mid-day was approaching, the
affair became serious; and Mine Host began to
dread that the Goblin might have treated his
guest a little iiarshly, have beaten him to a jelly
perhaps, or so frightened him that he had died
of terror ; and to carry his wanton revenge to
such a length as this liad not been his intention.
He therefore rung his people together, hastened
out with man and maid to the tower, and reach-
ed the door of the apartment where he had
observed the light on the previous evening. He
found an unknown key in the lock; but the door
was barred within, for after the disappearance
of the Goblin, Franz had again secured it. He
knocked with a perturbed violence, till the Se-
ven Sleepers themselves would have awoke at
the din. Franz started up, and thought in his
first confusion that the Ghost was again stand-
ing at the door, to favour him with another call.
But hearing Mine Host's voice, who required
nodiing more but that his guest would give some
sign of life, he gathered himself up and opened
the room.

With seeming horror at the sight of him, Mine
Host, striking his hands together, exclaimed :
"By Heaven and all the saints! Redcloak" (by
this name the Ghost was known among them)
"has been here, and has shaved you bald as a
block! Now, it is clear as day that the old story
is no fable. But tell me how looked the Goblin :
what did he say to you? what did he do?"

Franz, who had now seen through the ques-
tioner, made answer: "The Goblin looked like
a man in a red cloak; what he did is not hidden
from you, and what he said I well remember:
' Stranger,' said he, ' trust no innkeeper who is
a Turk in grain. What would befall thee liere
he knew. Be wise and happy. I withdraw
from this my ancient dwelling, for my time is
run. Henceforth no goblin riots here; I now
become a silent Incubus, to j)lague the Landlord ;
nip him, tweak him, harass him, unless the
Turk do expiate his sin; do freely give thee
prog and lodging till brown locks again shall
cluster round thy head."*

The Landlord shuddered at these words, cut
a large cross in the air before him, vowed by
the Holy Virgin to give the traveller free board
so long as he liked to continue, led him over to
his house, and treated liim with the best. By

* Here, too, on the spectre's score, Franz makes extem-
pore iambics. — Wieland.

this adventure, Franz had well nigh got the re-
putation of a conjurer, as the spirit thenceforth
never once showed face. He often passed the
night in the tower ; and a desperado of the vil-
lage once kept him company, without having
beard or scalp disturbed. The owner of the
place, having learned that Redcloak no longer
walked in Rummelsburg, was, of course, de-
lighted at the news, and ordered that the stran-
ger, who, as he supposed, had laid him, should
be well taken care of

By the time when the clusters were beginning
to be coloured on the vine, and the advancing
autumn reddened the apples, Franz's brown
locks were again curling over his temples, and
he girded up his knapsack; for all his thoughts
and meditations were turned ui)on tile Weser-
bridge, to seek the Friend, who, at the behest
of the Goblin Barber, was to direct him how to
make his fortune. When about taking leave of
Mine Host, that charitable person led from his
stable a horse well saddled and equipt, which
the owner of the Castle had presented to the
stranger, for having made his house again habit-
able ; nor had the Count forgot to send a suffi-
cient purse along with it, to bear its travelling
charges; and so Franz came riding back into
his native city, brisk aiid light of heart, as he
had ridden out of it twelve months ago. He
sought out his old quarters in the alley, but
kept himself quite still and retired ; only in-
quiring underhand how matters stood with the
fair Meta, whether she was still alive and uu-
wedded. To this inquiry he received a satis-
factory answer, and contented himself with it
in the meanwhile; for, till his fate were de-
cided, he would not risk appearing in her sight,
or making known to her his arrival in Bremen.

With imspeakable longing, he waited the
equinox ; his impatience made every interven-
ing day a year. At last the long-wished-for term
appeared. The night before, he could not close
an eye, for thinking of the wonders that were
coming. The blood was whirling and beating
in his arteries, as it had done at the Castle of
Rummelsburg, when he lay in expectation of
his spectre visitant. To be siu'e of not missing
his expected Friend, he rose by day-break, and
proceeded with the earliest dawn to the Weser-
bridge, which as yet stood empty, and untrod
by passengers. He walked along it several
times in solitude, with that presentiment of
coming gladness, which includes in it the real
enjoyment of all terrestrial felicity; for it is not
the attainment of our wishes, but the undoubted
hope of attaining them, which offers to the
human soul the full measure of highest and
most heart-felt satisfaction. He formed many
projects as to how he should present himself to
his beloved Meta, when his looked-for happi-
ness should have arrived ; whether it would be
better to appear before her in full splendour, or
to mount from his former darkness with the
first gleam of morning radiance, and discover
to her by degrees the change in his condition.

176

MUSAUS.

Curiosity, moreover, put a thousand questions
to Reason in regard to the adventure. Who can
the Friend be that is to meet me on the Weser-
bridge? Will it be one of my old acquaintances,
by whom, since my ruin, I have been entirely
forgotten? How will he pave the way to me
for happiness? And will this way be short or
long, easy or toilsome ? To the whole of which
Reason, in spite of all her thinking and specu-
lating, answered not a word.

In about an hour, the Bridge began to get
awake ; there was riding, driving, walking to
and fro on it; and much commercial ware
passing this way and that. The usual day-
guard of beggars and importunate persons also
by degrees took up this post, so favourable for
their trade, to levy contributions on the public
benevolence ; for of poor-houses and work-
houses, the wisdom of the legislature had as
yet formed no scheme. The first of the tatter-
ed cohort that applied for alms to the jovial
promenader, from whose eyes gay hope laughed
forth, was a discharged soldier, provided with
the military badge of a timber leg, which had
been lent him, seeing he liad fought so stoutly
in former days for his native country, as the
recompense of his valour, with the privilege of
begging where he pleased ; and who now, in
the capacity of physiognomist, pursued the
study of man upon the Weser-bridge, with such
success, that he very seldom failed in his at-
tempts for charity. Nor did his exploratory
glance in anywise mislead him in the present
instance ; for Franz, in the joy of his heart,
threw a white engelgroschen into the cripple's
hat.

During the morning hours, when none but
the laborious artisan is busy, and the more
exalted townsman still lies in sluggish rest, he
scarcely looked fpr his promised Friend ; he
expected him in the higher classes, and took
little notice of the present passengers. About
the council-hour, however, when the Proceres
of Bremen were driving past to the hall, in
their gorgeous robes of office, and about ex-
change-time, he was all eye and ear ; he spied
the passengers from afar ; and when a right
man came along the bridge, his blood began to
flutter, and he thought here was the creator of
his fortune. Meanwhile hour after hour passed
on ; the sun rose high ; ere long the noontide
brought a pause in business ; the rushing crowd
faded away ; and still the expected Friend ap-
peared not. Franz now walked up and down
the Bridge quite alone ; had no society in view
but the beggars, who were serving out their
cold collations, without moving from the place.
He made no scruple to do the same ; and, not
being furnished with provisions, he purchased
some fruit, and took his dinner inter ambulan-
dum.

The whole club that was dining on the
Weser-bridge had remarked the young man,
watching here from early morning till noon,
without addressing any one, or doing any sort

of business. They held him to be a lounger;
and though all of them had tasted his bounty,
he did not escape their critical remarks. In
jest, they had named him the Bridge-bailiff.
The physiognomist with the timber-toe, how-
ever, noticed that his countenance was not now
so gay as in the morning; he appeared to be
reflecting earnestly on something; he had drawn
his hat close over his face ; his movement was
slow and thoughtful ; he had nibbled at an ap-
ple-rind for some time, without seeming to be
conscious that he was doing so. From this ap-
pearance of afl'airs, the man-spier thought he
might extract some profit; therefore he put his
wooden and his living leg in motion, and stilted
off to the other end of the Bridge, and lay in
wait for the thinker, that he might assail him,
under the appearance of a new arrival, for a
fresh alms. This invention prospered to the
full : the musing philosopher gave no heed to
the mendicant, put his hand into his pocket
mechanically, and threw a six-groat piece into
the fellow's hat, to be rid of him.

In the afternoon, a thousand new faces once
more came abroad. The watcher was now
tired of his unknown Friend's delaying, yet
hope still kept his attention on the stretch. He
stept into the view of every passenger, hoped
that one of them would clasp him in his arms ;
but all proceeded coldly on their way ; the most
did not observe him at all, and few returned
his salute with a slight nod. The sun was
already verging to decline, the shadows were
becoming longer, the crowd ujjon the Bridge
diminished; and the beggar-piquet by degrees
drew back into their barracks in the Matten-
burg. A deep sadness sank upon the hopeless
Franz, when he saw his expectation mocked,
and the lordly prospect which had lain before
him in the morning, vanish from his eyes at
evening. He fell into a sort of sulky despera-
tion; was on the point of springing over the
parapet, and dashing himself down from the
Bridge into the river. But the thought of Meta
kept him back, and induced him to postpone
his purpose till he had seen her yet once more.
He resolved to watch next day when she should
go to church, for the last time to drink delight
from her looks, and then forthwith to still his
warm love for ever in the cold stream of the
Weser.

While about to leave the Bridge, he was met
by the invalided pikeman with the wooden leg,
who, for pastime, had been making many
speculations as to what could be the young
man's object, that had made him watch upon
the Bridge from dawn to darkness. He him-
self had lingered beyond his usual time, that he
might wait him out ; but as the matter hung too
long upon the pegs, curiosity incited him to turn
to the youth himself, and question him respect-
ing it.

" No oflTence, young gentleman," said he :
"allow me to ask you a question.''

FraiiZ, who was not in a very talking humour,

MUSAUS.

177

and was now meeting, from the mouth of a
cripple, tlie address which he had looked for
with snch longing from a friend, answered
rather testily: "Well, then, what is iti Speak,
old graybeard !"

" We two," said the other, " were the first
upon the Bridge to-day, and now, you see, we
are the last. As to me and others of my kidney,
it is our vocation brings us hither, our trade of
ahns-gathering ; but for you, in sooth you are
not of our guild ; yet you have watched here
the whole blessed day. Now I pray you, tell
me, if it is not a secret, what it is that brings
you hither ; or what stone is lying on your heart,
that yon wished to roll away."

" What good were it to thee, old blade," said
Franz, bitterly, " to know where the shoe pinches
me, or what concern is lying on my heart? It
will give thee small care."

" Sir, I have a kind wish towards you, be-
cause you opened your hand to me, and twice
gave me alms, for which God reward you; but
your countenance at night was not so cheerful
as in the morning, and that grieves my heart."

The kindly sympathy of this old warrior
pleased the misanthrope, so that he willingly
pursued the conversation.

" Why, then," answered he, " if thou wouldst
know what has made me battle here all day
with tedium, thou must understand that I was
waiting for a Friend, who appointed me hither,
and now leaves me to expect in vain."

"Under favour," answered Timbertoe, "if I
might speak my mind, this Friend of yours, be he
who he like, is little better than a rogue, to lead
you such a dance. If he treated me so, by my
faith, his crown should get acquainted with my
crutch next time we met. If he could not keep
his word, he should liave let you know, and not
bamboozled you as if you were a child."

" Yet I cannot altogether blame this Friend,"
said Franz, " for being absent : lie did not pro-
mise ; it was but a dream that told me I should
meet him here."

The goblin tale was too long for him to tell,
so he veiled it under cover of a dream.

"Ah! that is another story," said the beggar;
" if you build on dreams, it is little wonder that
your hope deceives you. I myself have dream-
ed much foolish stuff in my time; but I was
never such a madman as to heed it. Had I all
the treasures that have been allotted to me in
dreams, I might buy the city of Bremen, were
it sold by auction. But I never credited a jot
of them, or stirred band or foot to prove their
worth or worthlessness : I knew well it would
be lost. Ha ! I must really laugh in your face,
to think that on the order of an empty dream,
you have squandered a fair day of your life,
whicli you might have spent better at a merry
banquet."

"The issue shows that thou art right, old
man, and that dreams many times deceive.
But," continued Franz, defensively, "I dreamed
so vividly and circumstantially, above three

months ago, that on this very day, in this very
place, I should meet a Friend, who would tell
me things of the deepest importance, that it
was well worth while to come and see if it would
come to pass,"

"0, as for vividness," said Timbertoe, "no
man can dream more vividly than I. There is
one dream I had, which I shall never in my
life forget. I dreamed, who knows how many
years ago, that my Guardian Angel stood before
my bed in the figure of a youth, with golden
hair, and two silver wings on his back, and said
to me: 'Berthold, listen to the words of my
mouth, that none of them be lost from thy lieart.
There is a treasure appointed thee, which thou
shalt dig, to comfort thy heart withal for the re-
maining days of thy life. To-morrow, about
evening, when the sun is going down, take spade
and shovel on thy shoulder ; go forth from the
Mattenburg on the right, across the Tieber, by
the Balkenbrucke, past the Cloister of St. John's,
and on to the Great Roland.* Then take thy
way over the Court of the Cathedral, through
the Schiisselkorb, till thou arrive without the
city at a garden, which has this mark, that a
stair of three stone steps leads down from the
highway to its gate. Wait by a side, in secret,
till the sickle of the moon shall shine on thee,
then push with the strength of a man against
the weak-barred gate, which will resist thee
little. Enter boldly into the garden, and turn
tliee to the vine trellices which overhang the
covered-walk ; behind this, on the left, a tall
apple-tree overtops the lowly shrubs. Go to the
trunk of this tree, thy face turned right against
the moon : look tlyree ells before thee on the
ground, thou shalt see two cinnamon-rose bushes ;
there strike in, and dig three spans deep, till
thou find a stone plate ; under this lies the trea-
sure, buried in an iron chest, full of money, and
money's worth. Though the chest be heavy and
clumsy, avoid not die labour of lifting it from
its bed ; it will reward thy trouble well, if thou
seek the key which lies hid beneath it.' "

In astonishment at what he heard, Franz
stared and gazed upon the dreamer, and could
not have concealed his amazement, had not the
dusk of night been on his side. By every mark
in the description, he had recognized his own
garden, left him by his father. It had been the
good man's hobby in his life ; but on this ac-
count had little pleased his son ; according to
the rule that son and father seldom sympathize
in their favourite pursuit, unless indeed it be a
vice, in which case, as the adage runs, the apple
often falls at no great distance from the trunk.
Father Melchior had himself laid out this gar-

* The rude figure of a man in armour, usually erected
in the public square, or marketplace of old German
towns, is called the Rolandsiiule, or Rutlandsdule, from
its supposed reference to Roland the famous Peer of
Charlemagne. The proper and ancient name, it seems,
is Rugelandsiiule, or Pillar of Judgment ; and the stone
indicated, of old, that the town possessed an independent
jurisdiction.— £(Z.

178

MUSAUS.

den, altogether to his own taste, in a style as
wonderful and varied as that of his great-great-
grandson, who has immortalized his paradise
by an original descrijstion in Hirschfcldts Garden-
Calendar. He had not, it is true, set up in it
any painted menagerie for the deception of the
eye ; but he kej)t a very large one, notwithstand-
ing, of springing-horses, winged-lions, eagles,
griffins, unicorns, and other wondrous beasts,
all stamped on pure gold, which he carefully
concealed from every eye, and had hid in their
iron case beneath the ground. This paternal
Tempe the wasteful son, in the days of his ex-
travagance, had sold for an old song.

To Franz, the pikeman had at once become
extremely interesting, as he perceived that this
was the very Friend, to whom the Goblin in
the Castle of Rummelsburg had consigned him.
Gladly could he have embraced the veteran,
and in the llrst rapture called him friend and
father : but he restrained liimself, and found it
more advisable to keep his thoughts about this
piece of news to himself. So he said : " Well,
this is what I call a circumstantial dream. But
what didst thou do, old master, in the morning,
on awakening? Didst thou not follow whither
thy Guardian Angel beckoned thee ?"'

" Pooh," said the dreamer, " why should I
toil, and have my labour for my pains? It was
nothing, after all, but a mere dream. If my
Guardian Angel had a fancy for appearing to
me, I have had enow of sleepless nights in my
time, when he might have found me waking.
But he takes little charge of me, I think, else I
should not, to his shame, be going hitching here
on a wooden leg."

Franz took out the last piece of silver he had
on him: "There," said he, "old father, take
this other gift from me, to get thee a pint of
wine for evening-cup ; thy talk has scared away
my ill humour. Neglect not diligently to fre-
quent this Bridge ; we shall see each other here,
I hope, again."

The lame old man had not gathered so rich a
stock of alms for many a day, as he was now
possessed of j he blessed his benefactor for his
kindness, hopped away into a drinking-shop, to
do himself a good turn; while Franz, enlivened
with new hope, hastened off to his lodging in
the alley.

Next day he got in readiness everything that
is required for treasure-digging. The unessential
equipments, conjurations, magic-fornmlas, magic-
girdles, hieroglyphic characters, and such like,
were entirely wanting : but these are not indis-
pensable, provided there be no failure in the
three main requisites : shovel, spade, and before
all — a treasure under ground. The necessary
implements he carried to the place a little be-
fore sunset, and hid them for the meanwhile in.
a hedge ; and as to the treasure itself, he had
the firm conviction that the Goblin in the Castle,
and the Friend on the Bridge, would prove no
liars to him. With longing impatience he ex-
pected the rising of the moon ; and no sooner

did she stretch her silver horns over the bushes,
than he briskly set to work, observing exactly
everything the Invalid had taught him; and
happily accomplished the raising of the trea-
sure, without meeting any adventure in the pro-
cess, without any black dog having frightened
him, or any bluish flame having lighted him to
the spot.

Father Melchior, in providently burying this
penny for a rainy day, had nowise meant that
his son should be deprived of so considerable a
part of his inheritance. The mistake lay in this,
that Death had escorted the testator out of the
world in another way than said testator had
expected. He had been completely convinced,
that he should take his journey, old and full of
days, after regulating his temporal concerns
with all the formalities of an ordinary sick-bed ;
for so it had been prophesied to him in his
youth. In consequence he purposed, when,
according to the usage of the Church, extreme
unction should have been dispensed to him, to
call his beloved son to his bed-side, having pre-
viously dismissed all bystanders ; there to give
him the paternal blessing, and by way of fare-
\vell memorial direct him to this treasure buried
in the garden. All this, too, would have hap-
pened in just order, if the light of the good old
man had departed, like that of a wick whose
oil is done; but as Death had privily snuffed
him out at a feast, he undesignedly took along
with him his Mammon secret to the grave ; and
almost as many fortunate concurrences were
required before the secreted patrimony could
arrive at the proper heir, as if it had been for-
warded to its address by the hand of Justice
itself.

With immeasurable joy the treasure-digger
took possession of the shapeless Spanish pieces,
which, with a vast multitude of other finer
coins, the iron chest had faithfully preserved.
When the first intoxication of delight had in
some degree evaporated, he bethought him how
the treasure was to be transported, safe and
unobserved, into the narrow alley. The burden
was too heavy to be carried without help ; thus,
with the possession of riches, all the cares at-
tendant on them were awakened. The new
Crffisus found no belter plan, than to entrust his
capital to the hollow trunk of a tree that stood
behind the garden, in a meadow : the empty
chest he again buried under the rose-bush, and
smoothed the jilace as well as possible. In the
space of three days, the treasure had been faith-
fully transmitted by instalments from the hollow
tree into the narrow alley; and now the owner
of it thought he might with honour lay aside his
strict incognito. He dressed himself with the
finest; had his Prayer displaced from the church ;
and required, instead of it, " a Christian Thanks-
giving for a Traveller, on returning to his native
town, after happily arranging his affairs." He
hid himself in a corner of the church, where he
could observe the fair Meta, without himself
being seen; he turned not his eye from the

MUSAUS.

179

maiden, and drank from her looks the actual
rapture, which in foretaste had restrained him
from the break-neck somerset on the Bridge of
the Weser. When the Thanksgiving came in
hand, a glad sympathy shone forth from all her
features, and the cheeks of the virgin glowed
with joy. The customary greeting on the way
homewards was so full of emphasis, that even
to the third party who had noticed them, it
would have been intelligible.

Franz now appeared once more on the Ex-
change ; began a branch of trade, which in a
few weeks extended to the great scale; and as
his wealth became daily more apparent. Neigh-
bour Grudge, the scandal-chewer, was obliged
to conclude, that in the cashing of his old debts,
he must have had more luck than sense. He
hired a large house, fronting the Roland, in the
Market-place ; engaged clerks and warehouse-
men, and carried on his trade unweariedly.
Now the sorrowful populace of parasites again
diligently handled the knocker of his door ; ap-
peared in crowds, and suflbcated him with
assurances of friendship, and joy-wishings on
his fresh prosperity ; imagined they should once
more catch him in their robber claws. But ex-
perience had taught him wisdom ; he paid them
in their own coin, feasted their false friendship
on smooth words, and dismissed them with
fasting stomachs ; which sovereign means for
scaring off the cumbersome brood of pickthanks
and toad-eaters, produced the intended effect,
that they betook themselves elsewhither.

In Bremen, the remounting Melcherson had
become the story of the day; the fortune which
in some inexplicable manner he had realized,
as was supposed, in foreign parts, was the sub-
ject-matter of all conversations at formal din-
ners, in the Courts of Justice, and at the Ex-
change. But in proportion as the fame of his
fortune and affluence increased, the contented-
ness and peace of mind of the fair Meta dimin-
ished. The friend in petto was now, in her
opinion, well qualified to speak a plain word.
Yet still his Love continued Dumb ; and except
the greeting on the way from cliurch, he gave
no tidings of himself Even this sort of visit
was becoming rarer ; and such asjiects were
the sign not of warm, but of cold weather in
the atmosphere of Love. Jealousy,* the baleful
Harpy, fluttered round her little room by night,
and when sleep was closing her blue eyes,
croaked many a dolorous presage into the ear
of the re-awakened Meta. " Forego the flatter-
ing hope of binding an inconstant heart, which,
like a feather, is the sport of every wind. He
loved thee, and was faithful to thee, while his
lot was as thy own : like only draws to like.
Now a propitious destiny exalts the Changeful
far above thee. Ah ! now he scorns the truest
thoughts in mean apparel, now that pomp, and
wealth, and splendour dazzle him once more ;

* Jealousy, loo, (at bottom a very sad spectre, but not
here introduced as oue), now croaks in iambics, as the
Goblin Barber lately spoke in Ihem.— l-Vieland,

and courts, who knows what haughty fair one
that disdained him when he lay among the
pots, and now with siren call allures him back
to her. Perhaps her cozening voice has turned
him from thee, speaking with false words : 'For
thee, God's garden blossoms in thy native town :
friend, thou hast now thy choice of all our
maidens ; choose with prudence, not by the eye
alone. Of girls are many, and of fathers many,
who in secret lie in wait for thee; none will
withhold his darling daughter. Take happiness
and honour with the fairest; likewise birth and
fortune. The councillor dignity awaits thee,
where vote of friends is potent in the city.' "

These suggestions of Jealousy disturbed and
tormented her heart without ceasing : she re-
viewed her fair contemporaries in Bremen,
estimated the ratio of so many splendid matches
to herself and her circumstances; and the re-
sult was far from favourable. The first tidings
of her lover's change of situation had in secret
charmed her; not in the selfish view of be-
coming participatress in a large fortune ; but
for her mother's sake, who had abdicated all
hopes of earthly happiness, ever since the mar-
riage project with neighbour Hop-King had
made shipwreck. But now poor Meta wished
that Heaven had not heard the Prayer of the
Church, or granted to the traveller any such
abundance of success ; but ralher kept him by
the bread and salt, which he would willingly
have shared with her.

The fair half of the species are by no means
calculated to conceal an inward care : Mother
Brigitta soon observed the trouble of her
daughter; and without the use of any great
penetration, likewise guessed its cause. The
talk about the re-ascending star of her former
flax-negotiator, who was now celebrated as the
pattern of an orderly, judicious, active trades-
man, had not escaped her, any more than the
feeling of the good Meta towards him ; and it
was her opinion, that if he loved in earnest, it
was needless to hang off so long, without ex-
plaining what he meant. Yet out of tender-
ness to her daughter, she let no hint of this dis-
covery escape her; till at length poor Meta's
heart became so full, that of her own accord
she made her mother the confident of her sor-
row, and disclosed to her its true origin. The
shrewd old lady learned little more by this dis-
closure than she knew already. But it afforded
opportunity to mother and daughter for a full,
fair, and free discussion of this delicate affair.
Brigitta made her no reproaches on the subject;
she believed that what was done could not be
undone ; and directed all her eloquence to
strengthen and encourage the dejected Meta to
bear the failure of her hopes with a steadfast
mind.

With this view, she spelt out to her the ex-
tremely reasonable moral a, b, ab ; discoursing
thus: "My child, thou hast already said a, thou
must now say b too; thou hast scorned thy for-
tune when it sought thee, now thou must sub

180

MUSAUS.

mit when it will meet thee no longer. Ex-
perience has taught me, that the most confident
Hope is the first to deceive us. Therefore, fol-
low my example; abandon the fair cozener
utterly, and thy peace of mind will no longer
be disturbed by her. Count not on any im-
provement of thy fate ; and thou wilt grow con-
tented with thy present situation. Honour the
spinning-wheel, which supports thee: what are
fortune and riches to thee, when thou canst do
without them V

Close on this stout oration followed a loud
humming symphony of snap-reel and spinning-
wheel, to make up for the time lost in speaking.
Mother Brigitta was in truth philosophising
from the heart. After her scheme for the
restoration of her former afliuence had gone to
ruin, she had so simplified the plan of her life,
that Fate could not perplex it any more. But
Metawas still far from this philosophical centre
of indiflerence ; and hence this doctrine, con-
solation, and encouragement, aflected her quite
otherwise than had been intended : the con-
scientious daughter now looked upon herself as
the destroyer of her mother's fair hopes, and
suflered from her own mind a thousand re-
23roaches for this fault. Though she had never
adopted the maternal scheme of marriage, and
had reckoned only upon bread and salt in her
future wedlock ; yet, on hearing of her lover's
riches and spreading commerce, her diet-project
had directly mounted to six plates ; and it de-
lighted her to think, that by her choice she
should still realize her good mother's wish, and
see her once more planted in her previous
abundance.

This fair dream now vanished by degrees,
as Franz continued silent. To make matters
worse, there spread a- rumour over all the city,
that he was furnishing his house in the most
splendid fashion for his marriage with a rich
Antwerp lady, who was already on her way to
Bremen. This Job's-news drove the lovely
maiden from her last defence", she passed on
the apostate sentence of banishment from her
heart: and vowed from that hour never more
to think of him ; and as she did so, wetted the
twining thread with her tears.

In a heavy hour she was breaking this vow,
and thinking, against her will, of the faithless
lover : for she had just spun off a rock of flax;
and there was an old rhyme which had been
taught her by her mother for encouragement to

diligence :

Spin, (laughterkin, spin.
Thy sweetlieart 's witlun !

which she always recollected when her rock
was done ; and along with it the memory of
the Deceitful necessarily occurred to her. In
this heavy hour, a finger rapped with a most
dainty patter at the door. Mother Brigitta look-
ed forth : the sweetheart was without. And
who could it be'! Who else but neighbour
Franz, from the alley? He had decked himself
with a gallant wooing-suit; and his well-dress-

ed, thick brown locks shook forth perfume.
This stately decoration boded, at all events,
something else than flax-dealing. Mother Bri-
gitta started in alarm : she tried to speak, but
words failed her. Meta rose in trepidation
from her seat, blushed like a purple rose, and
was silent. Franz, however, had the power of
utterance; to the soft fl(/«gfo which he had in
former days trilled forth to her, he now ap-
pended a suitable text, and explained his dumb
love in clear words. Thereupon he made
solemn application for her to the mother ; jus-
tifying his proposal by the statement, that the
preparations in his house had been )neant for
the reception of a bride, and that this bride was
the charming Meta.

The pointed old lady, having brought her
feelings once more into equilibrium, was for
protracting the affair to the customary term of
eight days for deliberation ; though joyful tears
were running down her cheeks, presaging no
impediment on her side, but rather answer of
approval. Franz, however, was so pressing in
his suit, that she fell upon a middle path be-
tween the wooer's ardour and maternal use and
wont, and empowered the gentle Meta to de-
cide in the aflair according to her own good
judgment. In the virgin heart there had occur-
red, since Franz's entrance, an important revo-
lution. His presence here was the most speak-
ing proof of his innocence ; and as, in the course
of conversation, it distinctly came to light, that
his apparent coldness had been nothing else
than zeal and diligence in putting his commer-
cial aff'airs in order, and preparing what was
necessary for the coming nuptials, it followed
that the secret reconciliation would proceed
forthwith without any stone of stumbling in its
way. She acted with the outlaw, as Mother
Brigitta with her disposted spinning gear, or the
First-born Son of the Church with an exiled
Parliament ; recalled him with honour to her
high-beating heart, and reinstated him in all his
former rights and privileges there. The decisive
three-lettered little word, that ratifies the happi-
ness of love, came gliding with such unspeak-
able grace from her soft lips, that the answered
lover could not helj) receiving it with a warm
melting kiss.

The tender pair had now time and opportu-
nity for deciphering all the hieroglyphics of their
mysterious love ; which afforded the most plea-
sant conversation that ever two lovers carried
on. They found, what our commentators ought
to pray for, that they had always understood
and interpreted the text aright, without once
missing the true sense of their reciprocal pro-
ceedings. It cost the delighted bridegroom al-
most as great an effort to part from his charming
bride, as on the day when he set out on his cru-
sade to Antwerp. However, he had an impor-
tant walk to take; so at last it became time to
withdraw.

This walk was directed to the Weser-bridge,
to find Tirabertoe, whom he had not forgotten,

MUSAUS.

181

though he had long delayed to keep his word
to him. Sharply as the physiognomist, ever
since his interview with the open-handed
Bridge-bailiff, had been on the outlook, he could
never catch a glimpse of him among the pas-
sengers, although a second visit had been faith-
fully promised. Yet the figure of his benefactor
had not vanished from his memory. The mo-
ment he perceived the fair -apparelled youth
from a distance, he stilted towards him, and
gave him kindly welcome. Franz answered
his salutation, and said : " Friend, canst thou
take a walk with me into the Neustadt, to trans-
act a small affair? Thy trouble shall not be
unpaid.''

"Ah! why not?" replied the old blade;
" though I have a wooden leg, I can step you
with it as stoutly as the lame dwarf that crept
round the city-common ;* for the \vooden leg,
you mvist know, has this good property, it never
tires. But excuse me a little while till Gray-
cloak is come: he never misses to pass along
the Bridge between liay and night.''

" What of Graycloak V inquired Franz : " let
me know about him."

" Graycloak brings me daily about nightfall a
silver groschen, I know not from whom. It is
of no use prying into tilings, so I never mind.
Sometimes it occurs to me Graycloak must be
the devil, and means to buy my soul with the
money. But, devil or no devil, what care I?
I did not strike him on the bargain, so it cannot
hold.''

" I should not wonder," answered Franz, with
a smile, "if Graycloak were a piece of a knave.
But do thou follow me : the silver groschen shall
not fail thee."

Timbertoe set forth, hitched on briskly after
his guide, who conducted him up one street
and down another, to a distant quarter of the
city, near the wall ; then halted before a neat
little new-built house, and knocked at the door.
When it was opened : " Friend," said he, " thou
madest one evening of my life cheerful; it is
just that I should make the evening of thy life
cheerful also. This liouse, with its appurte-

* There is an old tradition, that a neighbouring Coun-
tess promised in jest to give the Bretners as much land as
a cripple, who was just asking her for alms, would creep
round in a day. They took her at her word; and the
cripple crawled so well, that the town obtained this large
common by means of him.

nances, and the garden where it stands, are
thine ; kitchen and cellar are full ; an attendant
is appointed to wait upon thee ; and the silver
groschen, over and above, thou wilt find every
noon lying under thy plate. Nor will I hide
from thee that Graycloak was my servant, whom
I sent to give thee daily an honourable alms,
till I had got this house made ready for thee.
If thou like, thou mayest reckon me thy proper
Guardian Angel, since the other has not acted
to thy satisfaction."

He then led the old man into his dwelling,
where the table was standing covered, and
everything arranged for his convenience and
comfortable living. The grayhead was so as-
tonished at his fortune, that he could not un-
derstand or even believe it. That a rich man
should take such pity on a poor one, was incom-
prehensible : he felt disposed to take the whole
affair for magic or jugglery, till Franz removed
his doubts. A stream of thankful tears flowed
down the old man's cheeks ; and his benefactor,
satisfied with this, did not wait till he should
recover from his amazement and thank him in
words, but, after doing this angel-message, va-
nished from the old man's eyes, as angels are
wont ; and left him to piece together the affair
as he best could.

Next morning, in the habitation of the lovely
Meta, all was as a fair. Franz despatched to
her a crowd of merchants, jewellers, milliners,
lace-dealers, tailors, sutors, and semstresses, in
part to offer her all sorts of wares, in part their
own good services. She passed the whole day
in choosing stuffs, laces, and other requisites for
the condition of a bride, or being measured for
her various new apparel. The dimensions of
her dainty foot, her beautifully-formed arm, and
her slim waist, were as often and as carefully
meted, as if some skilful statuary had been tak-
ing from her the model for a Goddess of Love.
Meanwhile, the bridegroom went to appoint the
bans; atrd before three weeks were past, he led
his bride to the altar, with a solemnity by which
even the gorgeous wedding-pomp of the Hop-
King was eclipsed. Mother Brigitta had the
happiness of twisting the bridal-garland for her
virtuous Meta ; she completely attained her wish
of spending her woinan's-summer in propitious
affluence ; and deserved this satisfaction, as a
recompense for one praiseworthy quality which
she possessed : She was the most tolerable mo-
ther-in-law that has ever been discovered.

16

MATTHIAS CLAUDIUS.

Born 1740. Died 1S15.

This writer, better known in Germany by
the assumed name of Asmics, is not usually
numbered with the Classics of his country, but
enjoyed a wider popularity than many who are
so ranked. He is eminently a writer of and for
the people, and would seem in some cases to
affect a certain "Jack Downing" rudeness for
the sake of rendering himself acceptable to un-
cultivated readers. But this sort of petulance,
with him, never degenerates into gross vul-
garity ; and though we feel the want of refine-
ment in all his productions, he never positively
disgusts. The coarseness is in the manner,
never in the thought. For the rest, he is tho-
roughly healthy, and acts with tonic effect on
mind and heart. He is a humorist, never grace-
ful, but always genial, hearty, downright. He
resembles Jean Paul in childlike freshness of
feeling and nobility of sentiment; and com-
mends himself ' to every man's conscience' by
the pure morality and moral purpose which
pervade his writings; as also by his independent

confession and defence of the popular religion,
in a period of which Tieck says, that religion
was then a contraband article in literature, and
was pardoned in Asmus only on account of his
genuine Germanism. • , •

He was born at Reinfeld in Holstein, studied
at Jena, and spent the greater part of his life
as private citizen at Wandsbeck, where, under
the name of Asmus, he wrote for the Wands-
becker Bote, (Wandsbeck Messenger). In 1776,
he received the appointment of " Upper Land-
Commissioner" at Darmstadt, where he was
expected to edit a popular newspaper. But not
liking tlie situation he resigned it the following
year, and returned to Wandsbeck. In 1778,
he was made first inspector of the Schleswig-
Holstein bank at Altona, with the privilege of
residing at Wandsbeck. He died, aged seventy-
five, at the house of his son-in-law, the book-
seller Friedrich Perthes: Hamburg, January
21st, 1815.

DEDICATION TO FRIEND HAIN.

I HATE the honour, Sir, to be acquainted with
Mister, your brother ; he is my good friend and
patron. I have also, it may be, other introduc-
tions to you ; but I think it best to come to you
directly, in person. You are not in favour of
introductions, and are not used to make many
compliments.

I am told there are people — they are called
men of strong minds — who never, in their life,
have troubled themselves about Haiti; and who,
behind his back, even mock at him and his thin
legs. I am not a man of strong mind. To tell
the truth, my blood runs cold whenever I look
at you. Sir. And yet I am willing to believe
that you are a good man, when one is sufficiently
acquainted with you ; and yet I seem to have a
kind of home-sickness and longing after thee,
thou old porter, Ruprecht, — that thou mayest
one day come and loose my girdle and lay me
safely to rest in the place appointed, in expecta-
tion of better times.

* Death. Tr.

Here I 've been writing a little book, and I
bring it to you. It 's poetry and prose. Don't
know whether you are fond of poems. Should
hardly think you were, since, as a general thing,
you don't like jokes, and the times are past
when poems were anything more than jokes.
There are some things in the book which I hope
will not be wholly displeasing to you. The
greater part is mere setting, and trifling enter-
tainment. Do what you please with it.

Your hand, dear Haiti! And when you draw
near at last, be not too hard upon me and my
friends.

ADVERTISEMENT FOR SUBSCRIBERS.

I AM going to collect my works, like other
folks, and publish them. No one has asked me
to do so, it is true, as is sometimes the case ; and
I know better than any benevolent reader, how
little would be lost if my works should remain
as unknown as I am myself But then sub-
scribing and publishing is so nice, and such a

(182)

CLAUDIUS.

183

pleasure and honour for me and my old aunt!
Besides, it is every man's own choice whether
he will subscribe or not. Therefore, I mean to
publish them with the title, " Asnms omnia sua
secum portans, or Complete works of the Wands-
beck Carrier."' • » • * »

I meant, at first, to have the portraits of all
the subscribers engraved in the frontispiece.
But they told me that would be inconvenient ;
so I gave it up. * * * • *

Finally, benevolent readers know, from the
Gbttinger Musen-Almanach, where I sometimes
give myself another name, and particularly from
the Wandsbeck Carrier, what they are to expect;
and it is not my fault if any one subscribes and
afterwards is dissatisfied.

Nov. Sth, 1774. AsMus.

SPECULATIONS ON NEW- YEARS' DAY.

A HAPPT new year ! A happy new year to
my dear country, the land of old integrity and
truth! A happy new year to friends and ene-
mies, Christians and Turks, Hottentots' and
Cannibals ! To all on whom God permits his
sun to rise and his rain to fall ! Also to the poor
negro slaves who have to work all day in the
hot sun. It 's wholly a glorious day, — the new-
years' day ! At other times, I can bear that a
man should be a little bit patriotic, and not make
court to other nations. True, one must not speak
evil of any nation. The wiser part are, every-
where, silent; and who would revile a whole
nation for the sake of the loud ones? As I said,
I can bear at other times, that a man should be
a little patriotic ; but on new-year's day my
patriotism is dead as a mouse ; and it seems to
me on that day as if we were all brothers, and
had one Father who is in heaven; as if all the
goods of the world were water which God has
created for all men, as I once heard it said, &c.

And so I am accustomed, every new-years'
morning, to sit down on a stone by the way-
side, to scratch with my staff" in the sand before
me, and to think of this and of that. Not of my
readers. I hold them in all honour ; but on new-
years" morning, on the stone by the way-side, I
think not of them ; but I sit there and think that
during the past year I saw the sun rise so often,
and the moon, — that I saw so many rainbows
and flowers, and breathed the air so often, and
drank from the brook, — and then I do not like
to look up, and I take, with both hands, my cap
from my head and look into that.

Then I diink also of my acquaintance who
have died during the year; and how they can
talk now widi Socrates and Numa, and other
men of whom I have heard so much good, and
with John Huss. And then it seems as if graves
opened round about me, and shadows with bald
crowns and long gray beards came out of them
and shook the dust out of their beards. That
must be the work of the '■ Everlasting Hwnts-

man," who has his doings about the twelfth.
The old pious long-beards would fain sleep.
But a glad new year to your memory and to the
ashes in your graves ! !

THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER.

FIRST AND SECOND PART. LEIPZIG. 1774.

Don't know whether it 's history or poetry.
It is all very natural, and has a way of drawing
the tears from one"s head right movingly. Well,
love is a strange thing! It will not be played
with like a bird. I know it, how it goes through
body and life, and beats and rages in every vein,
and plays tricks with the head and reason.

Poor Werther ! He had else such fine con-
ceits and thoughts. Had he but taken a journey
to Paris or to Pekin! But no! He would not
leave the fire and the spit, and went round and
round it till he went to pieces.

And there "s the misery, that one can have
such talents and gifts, and yet be so weak.
Therefore they ought to make a turf-seat by his
grave under the Linden-tree by the church-yard
wall, that one might sit down upon it and lay
his head in his hand, and weep over human
weakness. But when thou hast finished weep-
ing, good gentle youth! when thou hast finished
weeping, lift up thy head with joy, and place
thy hand against thy side! For there is such a
thing as Virtue. That too goes through body
and life, and beats and rages in every vein. She
is said not to be attainable without much earnest-
ness and conflict, and therefore not to be much
known or loved. But he who has her has a rich
reward in sunshine and frost and rain, and
when Friend Haiti comes with his scythe.

ON PRAYER.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER " TO MY FRIEND ANDREW."
* * * * * * *

To distort one's eyes in prayer does not seem
to me necessary; I hold it better to be natural.
But then one must not blame a man on that ac-
count, provided he is no hypocrite. But that a
man should make himself great and broad in
prayer, — that, it seems to me, deserves reproach,
and is not to be endured. One may have cou-
rage and confidence, but he must not be con-
ceited and wise in his own conceit; for if one
knows how to counsel and help himself, the
shortest way is to do it. Folding the hands is a
fine external decorum, and looks as if one sur-
rendered himself without capitulation, and laid
down his arms. But the inward, secret yearning,
billow-heaving, and wishing of the heart, — that,
in my opinion, is the chief thing in prayer; and
therefore I cannot understand what people mean
wild will not have us pray. It is just as if they
said one should not wish, or one should have no

184

CLAUDIUS.

beard and no ears. That must be a blockhead
of a boy who sViould have nothing to ask of his
father, and who shoukl deliberate the whole
day whether he will let it come to that extre-
mity. When the wish within you concerns you
nearly, Andrew, and is of a warm complexion,
it will not question long; it will overpower you
like a strong and armed man. It will just hurry
on a few rags of words, and knock at the door
of heaven. ******

-I* T^ T* 'I^ T^ t'- "I"

Whether the prayer of a moved soul can ac-
complish and effect anything, or whether the
Nexus Rerum does not allow of that, as some
learned gentlemen think — on that point I shall
enter into no controversy. I have great respect
for the Nexus Rerum, but I cannot help thinking
of Samson who left the Nexus of the gate-leaves
uninjured and carried the whole gate, as every
one knows, to the top of the hill. And, in short,
Andrew, I believe that the rain comes when it
is dry, and that the heart does not cry in vain
after fresh water, if we pray aright and are
rightly disposed.

" Our Father" is once for all the best prayer,
for you know who made it. But no man on
God's earth can pray it after him, precisely as
he meant it. We cripple it with a distant imita-
tion ; and each more miserably than the other.
But that matters not, Andrew, if we only mean
w^ell; the dear God must do the best part at
any rate, and he knows how it ought to be.
Because you desire it, I will tell you sincerely
how I manage with " Onr Father." But it seems
to me a very poor way, and I would gladly be
taught a better.

Do you see, when I am going to pray, I think
first of my late father, how he was so good and
loved so well to give to me. And then I picture
to myself the whole world as my Father's house,
and all the people in Europe, Asia, Africa and
America, are then, in my thoughts, my brothers
and sisters ; and God is sitting in heaven on a
golden chair, and has his right hand stretched
out over the sea to the end of the world, and
his left full of blessing and good ; and all around
the mountain-tops smoke — and then I begin: —

Our Father who art in heaven.
Hallowed be thy name.

Here I am already at fault. The Jews are
said to have known special mysteries respect-
ing the name of God. But I let all that be, and
only wish that the thought of God and every
trace by which we can recognise him, may be
great and holy above all things, to me and all
men.

Thy kingdom come.

Here I think of myself, how it drives hither
and thither within me, and now this governs
and now that ; and that all is sorrow of heart
and I can light on no green branch. And then
I think how good it would be for me, if God
would put an end to all discord and govern me
himself.

Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth.

Here I picture to myself heaven and the holy
angels who do his will with joy, and no sorrow
touches them, and they know not what to do
for love and blessedness, and frolic night and
day; and then I think: if it were only so here
on the earth !

Give us this day our daily bread.

Everybody knows what daily bread means,
and that one must eat as long as one is in the
world, and also that it tastes good. I think of
that. Perhaps too, my children occur to me,
how they love to eat and are so lively and joyful
at table. And then I pray that the dear God
would only give us something to eat.

Forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors.

It hurts when one receives an affront ; and
revenge is sweet to man. It seems so to me,
too, and my inclination leads that way. But
then the wicked servant in the gospel passes
before my eyes and i:ny heart fails, and I resolve
that I will forgive my fellow-servant and not
say a word to him about the hundred pence.

.Rnd lead us not into temptation.

Here I think of various instances where peo-
ple, in such and such circumstances, have stray-
ed from the good and have fallen ; and that it
would be no better with me.

Bid deliver us from evil.

Here I still think of temptations and that man
is so easily seduced and may stray from the
straight path. But at the same time 1 think of
all the troubles of life, of consumption and old
age, of the pains of child-birth, of gangrene and
insanity and the thousand-fold misery and heart-
sorrow that is in the world and that plagues and
tortures poor mortals, and there is none to help.
And you will find, Andrew ! if tears have not
come before, they will be sure to come here ;
and one can feel such a hearty yearning to be
away and can be so sad and cast down in one's
self, as if there were really no help at all. But
then one must pluck up courage again, lay the
hand upon the mouth and continue, as it were,
in triumph :

For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the
glory forever. Amen.

A CORRESPONDENCE

BETWEEN ME AND MY COUSIN BESPECTINO ORTHODOXY AND IM-
PROVEMENTS IN BEUGION.

Highly Lamed,

Highly to be honoured Mr. Cousin, —
I have heard, for some time past, so much
about the religion of reason and the religion of
the bible, about orthodox and philosophical
Theologians, that my head turns round, and I
know no longer who is right and who is wrong.

CLAUDIUS.

185

To mend religion with reason, — that, to be sure,
seems to me as if I should undertake to correct
the sun by my old wooden house-clock. But,
on the other hand, philosophy seems to me a
good thing, too; and much that is objected to
the orthodox strikes me as true. Mr. Cousin
will do me a real favour, if he will expound
this matter to me. Especially whether phi-
losophy is a broom to sweep the filth out of the
temple ; and whether I must take my hat off
M'ith a more j^rofound reverence to an orthodox
or to a philosophical Herr Pastor.

I have the honour to remain with special
esteem,

My highly larned,

Highly to be honoured Mr. Cousin's
obedient servant and Cousin,

ASMCS.

Answer.

Dear Cousin, —

Philosophy is good and people are ■wrong
who treat it with scorn. But revelation relates
to philosophy, not as more and less but as
heaven and earth, ujiper and under. I cannot
explain it to you better than by the chart which
you once made of the pond behind your late
father's garden. You used to be fond of sailing
on the pond, cousin, and so you had constructed,
with your own hand, a chart of all the depths
and shallows of the pond ; and according to
that you sailed about, and it answered very
well. But if now a whirlwind, or the Queen
of Otaheite, or a water-spout had taken you,
with your boat and your chart, and had set you
down in the midst of the ocean, Cousin, and
you had attempted to sail there too by your
chart, it would not have answered. The fault
is not in the chart; it was a very good chart for
the pond ; but the pond is not the ocean, you
see. Here you would have to make another
chart; but that other chart would remain, for
the most part, blank, because the sand-banks
here lie very deep. And, Cousin, sail away
there without fear ; you may meet with sea-
wonders, but you will not run ashore.

Hence, you may judge, yourself, how far phi-
losophy is a broom to sweep the cobwebs from
the temple. In a certain sense, it may be such
a broom. Or you may call it a hare's foot to
brush the dust from the sacred statues. But
whoso should undertake therewith to carve and
whittle at the statues himself, — look you! he
expects more of the hare's foot than it is equal
to. And that is highly ridiculous and a scandal
to behold.

*******

That Christianity is to level all heights, that
it is not merely, like virtue, to modify and regu-
late, but, like corruption, to carry away every
peculiar form and beauty, in order that some-
thing new may be born out of it: that, indeed,
will not appear to Reason. Nor need it, if only
it be true. When Abraliam was commanded
to leave his country and his kindred and his
y

father's house and to go out into a country which
was afterward to be made known to him, do
you not think that his natural feeling rebelled
and that Reason had all sorts of well-grounded
scruples and stately doubts to oppose to such a
journey? But Abraham believed the word and
went out. And there is and was no other way.
For he could not see the promised land from
Haran ; and " Niebuhr's Travels" was not pub-
lished then. If Abraham had debated the
matter with his reason, he would certainly have
remained in his country and with his kindred
and would have taken his ease. The promised
land would have lost nothing, in that case ; but
he would not have entered it. See, Cousin, so
it is, and so it stands in the Bible.

Since then, the sacred statues cannot be re-
stored by the help of Reason, it is patriotic, in
a high sense of the word, to leave the ancient
form uninjured and to let one's-self be slain for
a tittle of the Law. And if that is what is
meant by an orthodox Herr Pastor, you cannot
bow too low to such an one. But they call
other things orthodox, besides that.

Now farewell, dear Cousin, and wish for
peace. But, for the rest, do not let the strife
and the field-cry harm a hair of your head ; and
use religion more wisely than they. Touching
that matter, I have Potiphar's wife before my
eyes. You know the Potiphar? That sanguine
and rheumatic person seized the mantle, and
Joseph fled. Regarding the point saillant, the
spirit of religion, it is idle to dispute ; because,
according to the Scripture, no one knows that
but he who receives it ; and then there is no
time to doubt and to dispute.

To sum up all, Cousin, Truth is a giant who
lies by the wayside and sleeps. They who
pass by, see well his giant form, but him they
see not, and in vain they lay the finger of their
vanity on the-nose of their reason. When he
puts off the veil, then you will see his face.
Until then, our consolation must be that he is
under the veil. And do you go reverently and
tremblingly by; and be not over wise, dear
Cousin, &c.

ON KLOPSTOCK'S ODES.*

No, they're not verses; verses must rhyme
together, — that's what Master Ahrens used to
tell us at school. He would set me before him
when he said so, and pull me by the ears, and
say : Here an ear, and there an ear, — that rhymes,
and so must verses. — And then, too, I can read
a matter of two hundred verses an hour, and
very often it affects me no more than wading
through the water: the rhymes, too, play about
one's head, as the waves do about one's heels;
but here I can't stir from the spot, and it seems
as if all the time shapes were putting themselves
in my way, that I have seen before in dreams.

* Translated by Rev. C. T. Brooks.
16*

186

CLAUDIUS.

To be sure, it 's printed like verse, and there 's
a deal of melody and harmony in it, and yet it
can't be verse, anyhow. Some time I 'II ask

cousin about it.

Cousin says they are verses, too, and that al-
most every verse is a bold steed with free neck,
that scents the warm-seated rider afar off and
neighs inspiration. I had understood from
Master Ahrens that verses were a sort of sound-
ing, foamy substance, that must rhyme ; but Herr
Ahrens ! Herr Ahrens ! you have operated on my
eye-teeth there. Cousin says it must not foam at
all, but must be clear as a dew-drop, and pene-
trating as a sigh of love, and that in this dewy
clearness and in warm-breathing tenderness lies
the whole merit of modern poetry. He took
the book out of my hand, and read (page 41)
from the piece called " The Comforter."

"Does that foam, cousin? How do you feel
under it?'" — How do I feel? It stirs up a Hal-
lelujah in me, too, but I daren't express it, be-
cause I 'm such a common churl ; I could pluck
the stars from heaven and strew them at the
Comforter's feet, and then sink into the earth.
That s how I feel ! " Bravo ! cousin ! Those
must be verses, that infect you with such an
itching to pluck the stars. Read the book
through; you'll relish it, and for the rest, don't
be ashamed of the Hallelujah that stirs in you.
Common ! what 's common ? With odes there 's
no respect of persons ; you or a king, one 's
as good as t" other ! And, cousin, let me tell
you, the fairest seraph, in the dreadful solemn
pomp of his six wings, is only a poor vulgar
churl in the sight of God ! But, as I said, read
the book through.'' — Have read it, and now I '11
tell you how it went with me. When you read
one of the pieces for the first time, you come
out of the bright day into a glimmering chamber
full of paintings; at first you see little or no-
thing, but when you have been there a while,
by-and-bye the paintings begin to be visible and
to take right hold of you, and then you shut-to
the door and lock yourself in, and walk up and
down, and find yourself mightily quickened
with the pictures, and the rose-clouds, and fine
rainbows, and light Graces with soft sensibility
in their looks, and all that. Here and there
I 've hit upon passages, where I felt quite giddy,
and it seemed just as if an eagle set out to fly
right up to heaven, and now had got so high,
that you could only see motion, but couldn't tell
whether the eagle made it or whether it was
oidy a lusus acris, a play of the air. Then I like
to put the book down, and take a whiff with
Uncle Toby.

About the dove-tailing
these Odes, I 've often had
about the metre, and I
there 's some special trick
understood it right. The
in all the Odes ; not at all
roaring of a storm tlirou
others soft as the moon
sky ; and this don't seem
dentally either.

of the words, too, in
my own notions, and
d be willing to bet,
there, too, if one only
metre isn't the same
; in some it 's like the
gh a great forest, in
walking through the
to have come so acci-

THE EAULT GHATES.

" All hail to thee, silvery moon,
Lovely, lonely companion of night !

Dost thou llee ? H;iste thee not ; linger, friend of thought 1
Lo, she abides ! 't was the cloud, only, swept by.

" Naught but the waking of May
Sweeter is than the summer night.
When the dew, pure as light, tricl<les from his locks,
And o'er the brow of the hill redly he cUrabs.

" Ye nobler ones, ah, even now
Sober moss on your grave-stones grows.
Oh how blest was I once, when with you I saw
Redden the dawn of the day, ghmmer the night !"

There — I should like to have made that, or,
at least, to be sleeping with the rest of 'em under
a stone all overgrown with " sober moss," and
hear, overhead, such a sigh from a good youth,
whom in life I had held dear. My handful of
dust would stir in the grave, and my shade
would come up through the moss to the good
youth, give him a hearty grip of the paw, and
smack awhile at his neck in the moonshine.

And then the Titles over the pieces ! yes, they
are always so short and well given, and a good
title over a piece is like a good face to a man.
The Dedication, too, is brave — "To Bernstorf,"
and nothing more. And in fact what use of
such a long talk about Moecenas and grace and
gracious? The great man don't relish it, and
it eats up the little one's stomach.

On the whole this book has shed me a real
light on Herr Ahrens and verse-making. I figure
the poet to myself as a noble, tender-hearted
youth, who at certain hours grows as plethoric-
ally desperate, as when one of us is ridden by
the nightmare, and then comes on a fever which
makes the fine, tender-hearted youth hot and
sick, until the materia peccans secretes itself in
the shape of an ode, elegy, or something of the
sort; and whoever comes near him, catches the
infection:

Braga comes down through the oak foliage to
impregnate the soul of the patriot-poet, that it
may bring to light in its time a ripe and vigor-
ous fruit; but he who is wanton and flirts with
foreigners, lays wind eggs.

The author is said to be one Klopstock;-^
should like right well to see him some day.

JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER

Born 1741. Died 1801.

Switzerland comes in for a share in the
literary honors of Germany, whose language
extends beyond the Rhine, and whose litera-
ture rejoices in the contributions of such men
as Bodmer, Gessner, Lavater, von Zimmerman,
von Salis, Pestalozzi.

Among these, the name of Lavater stands
first in cosmopolitan significance, denoting one
of the most remarkable men of his time ; wor-
shipped by one-half the world, and flouted by
the other ; a man in whom strength and weak-
ness, depth and simplicity, liberality and nar-
rowness were singularly blended. On the
whiole, an original mind and a true philosopher.
His physiognomical essays, by which he is
principally known at the present day, consti-
tute but a small part of his literary labors. He
wrote with acceptance on a great variety of
subjects, and on none more efifectively than on
questions of theology. He was also a maker
of poems. Among those who knew him best,
he was distinguished more by his moral traits
than by his intellectual gifts ; by his purity of
heart, his deep humility, his fervent piety, his
Christian charity and zeal for mankind. A
more thoroughly good man the annals of litera-
ture do not exhibit, nor a more devoted Chris-
tian.

Lavater* was born at Zurich, on the 14th
November, 1741. His father, Henry Lavater,
was Doctor of Medicine, and Member of the
Government of Zurich ; a man of universally
acknowledged integrity, of unwearied applica-
tion, and a sound understanding ; an excellent
economist. His mother, whose maiden name
was Regula Escher, was a woman of marked
character and extraordinary gifts. Whatever
of genius he inherited, must have come from
that side of the house.

His childhood promised poorly. He repre-
sents himself as excelling, at that period, in
nothing but awkwardness and stupidity ; " any-
thing but apt to learn, very inattentive, change-
ful, impatient, pettish, thoughtless, and simple.

* The following sketch is taken principally from the
Memoir, by-Tliomas Holcroft, preflsed to liis translation
of Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy. There is a bio-
graphy of him, by his son-in-law, G. Gessner.

The slightest tendency to pleasantry or wit
was never discovered in me. I recollect how
much I suffered, at this early period of my life,
from timidity and bashfulness. I observed and
felt, but could never communicate my feelings
and observations ; or if I attempted such a conv
munication, the manner in which I did it was
so absurd and drew upon me so much ridicule,
that I soon found myself incapable of uttering
another word."

His imagination appears to have been, at this
season, the most active of his mental powers.
" My imagination was continually at work to
conceive and plan what might appear uncom-
mon and extraordinary. Every building ap-
peared to me too small, every tower too low,
every animal too diminutive." * *
" My indefatigably inventive imagination was
frequently occupied with two singular subjects,
— with framing plans for impenetrable prisons,
and with the idea of becoming the chief of a
troop of banditti. In the latter case, however,
it is to be understood that not the least tincture
of cruelty or violence entered into my thoughts.
I meant neither to murder nor distress; my
timid and good heart shuddered at such an
idea. But to steal with ingenious artifice and
then bestow the stolen property with similar
adroitness and privacy on another who might
want it more ; to do no serious injury, but to
produce extraordinary clianges and visible ef-
fects, while I myself remained invisible, was
one of my favorite conceptions." Notwith-
standing these mental vagaries, his religious
feelings were early developed and very intense.
He was, through life, a firm believer in the
power of faith and the immediate, objective
efficacy of prayer, of which he conceived him-
self to have had extraordinary personal ex-
perience. " It is scarcely possible to conceive
the strength of my faith in these years, when
I was in difficulty and trouble. If I could
pray, it seemed to me that I had already ob-
tained the object of my prayer. Once, when
I had given in a Latin exercise on which much
depended, I recollected, after it was in the
hands of the master, that I had written relata

(187)

188

LAVATER.

instead of revelata. Can there be a stronger
proof of the simplicity and strength of my
childish faith than that I prayed to God that
he would correct the word and write ve above
it with black ink^ The ve was written above
in another hand with black ink, somewhat
blacker than mine, and my exercise was ad-
judged faultless. I believe the correction was
made by the master, from the partial kindness
he entertained for me, and I think it was
anxiety and presentiment on my part which
assumed the form of prayer."

While at school in Zurich, he conceived the
idea of being a minister of the gospel. It was
suffo-ested to him in the following manner:
" Mr. Caspar Ulrich, minister at Fraumunster,
and one of the superintendents of the gym-
nasium or college, came one day into the school
and exclaimed among the scholars, "Which
of you will be a minister f ' Young Lavater,
without ever having thought of such a thing
before, cried out so hastily and loudly that all
his companions burst out into a loud laugh, " I !
I!" He answered thus without any considera-
tion, or inclination. But scarcely had the word
passed his lips when he began to feel a desire
which soon became a wish, and that wish a
firm resolution." ' ;

In 1755, Lavater left the grammar-school
and entered the college in his native city,
where he contracted an intimate friendship
with Fuseli, afterwards so celebrated as a
painter. In 1759 he was received into the
theological class under Zimmerman, professor
of divinity; and in 1762, was ordained a
minister.

About this time, he distinguished himself, as
a friend of the oppressed, by his efforts, in con-
junction with his friends Fuseli and Pestalozzi,
to bring to justice the bailiff of Griiningen, one
of the bailiwicks of Zurich ; Felix Grebel, a
man "who grossly abused his authority as a
magistrate and was notoriously guilty of acts
of oppression and extortion, but whose victims
being poor, dared not complain to the magis-
trates of Zurich, because the burgo-master
was father-in-law of the delinquent."

In June, 1766, he married Miss Anna Schinz,
the daughter of a respectable merchant, who
held an office in the civil magistracy. The
following year, he published his Swiss Songs
which passed through a greater number of
editions than any other of his numerous works.

In 1769 he was appointed deacon and
preacher to the orphan-house at Zurich. In
this situation he was unwearied in acts of
benevolence. In the great dearth which oc-
curred in Switzerland, in the years 1770 and
1771, a large portion of his own small income
was given in charity, which, with his personal
applications at the houses of the rich, caused
him to be long remembered as the benefactor
of the poor.

His first work on physiognomy was publish-
ed in 1772; in 1775 the first volume of his
celebrated Physiognomical Fragments for the
Promotion of the Knowledge and Love of Man-
kind. ■ In 1775 Lavater was made pastor or
first preacher to the orphan-house, and, ten
years after, pastor of the church of St. Peter,
which office he held till his death.

When the French took possession of Switzer-
land in 1798, he protested against their ravages
in a publication addressed to the Directory,
entitled, " Words of a free Switzer to the
Great Nation," which gained him the applause
of Europe for its high-toned courage. The
following year, he was seized and carried
prisoner to Basel, on the charge of a con-
spiracy against the French, but was released,
after a confinement of several weeks, for want
of evidence.

In September, 1799, he received a gun-shot
wound from a French soldier while standing
before his door, which, though it healed for a
while, proved ultimately fatal. The last year
of his life was one of great bodily suffering
occasioned by his wound which he bore with
admirable patience, praying for the man who
had wounded him, " that he might never sufter
the pains he had caused him to endure." In
the intervals of suffering his mental activity
continued unabated, and several small works
were published, during this period. On one
occasion, he caused himself to be carried to
church and addressed an affectionate farewell
exhortation to his beloved flock.

About a fortnight before his death, he finished
his last literary production, which was a poem (!)
written with great spirit, and entitled " Zurich
at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century."
On the last of December he was so much e.x-
hausted that what he said could only be heard
by applying the ear to his lips. Yet even in
this condition he dictated some verses (German
hexameters) for his colleague to read to his

LAVATER.

189

congregation on the morning of the new year's
day.

He died Friday, January 2d, 1801.

As a physiognomist, the character to which
he is principally indebted for his fame, Lavater
has shown himself an original observer, and
may even claim to be called, in some sense, a
discoverer. He differed from all who had pre-
ceded him in this science, in directing his at-
tention rather to the firm and stationary — " the
defined and definable" — parts of the counte-
nance than to those which are movable and
accidental. He distinguished between what is
superficial in the character, — the passions and
accidental determinations of the individual, —
and the original self. The former he supposed
to be indicated by the movable and muscular
parts of the countenance, the latter by the firm
and bony. In order to form an opinion of the
character from the face, he required to see the
face at rest, — in sleep or in an unconscious
state. "The greater part of the physiogno-
mists," he says, " speak only of tlie passions, or
rather of the exterior signs of the passions, and
the expression of them in tlie muscles. But
these exterior signs are only transient circum-
stances, which are easily discoverable. It has
therefore always been my object to consider the
general and fundamental character of the man,
from which, according to the state of his exte-
rior circumstances and relations, all his passions
arise as from a root."*

The following anecdote is related by his son-
in-law, G. Gessner, as an instance of his prac-
tical skill in this science. " A person to whom
he was an entire stranger was once announced
and introduced to him as a visitor. The first
idea that rose in his mind, the moment he saw
him, was: ' This man is a murderer.' He how-
ever immediately suppressed the thought as
unjustifiably hasty and severe, and conversed
with the person with his accustomed civility.
The cultivated understanding, extensive infor-
mation and ease of manner which he discovered
in his visitor, inspired him with the highest re-
spect for his intellectual endowments ; and his
esteem for these, added to his natural candor
and benevolence, induced him to disregard the
unfavorable impression he had received from
his first appearance, with respect to his moral

* Prom a conversation with the Emperor Joseph II.,
quoted by Holcroft.

character. The next day he dined with him
by invitation ; but soon after it was known that
this accomplished gentleman was one of the
assassins of the late king of Sweden ; and he
found it advisable to leave the country as soon
as possible."

The following extracts from Goethe's remi-
niscences of Lavater, contained in the " Dicht-
ung und Wahrheit," give us the reflection of
his personality in a mind of a very different
order from his own.

" Not long after this, I came into connection
with Lavater also. Tlie ' Letter of a Pastor
to his Colleagues'* had been very luminous to
him, in passages ; for there was much in it that
fully coincided with his own sentiments. With
his ceaseless driving, our correspondence soon
became very brisk. He was just making ear-
nest preparations for his larger Physiognomik.
He called upon everybody to send him draw-
ings, profiles, but especially pictures of Christ;
and although what I could render in this way
amounted to almost nothing, he insisted upon
it, once for all, that he would have a Saviour
drawn according to my conception of him.
Such requisitions of the impossible gave rise to
many jests, and I imew no other way of defend-
ing myself against his peculiarities but by turn-
ing out my own." * * * "He had com-
missioned a not unskilful painter in Frankfort
to send him the profiles of several individuals
whom he mentioned. The sender allowed
himself the jest of sending Bahrdt's portrait at
first, instead of mine ; whereupon came back a
pleasant indeed, but a thundering epistle, with
all sorts of trumps and asseverations that this
could not be my picture, and with whatever else
Lavater, on such an occasion, might have to
say in confirmation of his physiognomical doc-
trine." "The idea of humanity which had
formed itself in him from his own humanity
was so intimately connected with the concep-
tion of Christ, which he carried living within
him, that it was inconceivable to liim, how a
man could live and breathe without being a
Christian." " One must either be a Christian
witli him, a Christian after his sort, or one must
draw him over to one's self, and convince him,
too, of the trutli of that in which one found re-
pose. This requisition, so immediately opposed
to the liberal, cosmopolitan feeling to which I
gradually confessed myself, had not the best

* One of Goethe's youthful productions.

190

LAVATER.

effect with me. All attempts at conversion,
when they are unsuccessful, render the intended
proselyte obstinate and hardened ; and this was
my case ; the rather when Lavater came for-
ward at last with the hard dilemma ; ' Either
Christian or atheist' I replied to this, that if
he would not leave me my Christianity, as I
had hitherto clierished it, I could perhaps make
up my mind to atheism ; especially, since I saw
that no one knew exactly what was meant by
either."

" Our first meeting was hearty; we embraced
in the most friendly manner, and I immediately
found him as he had been represented to me in
so many pictures. An individual, unique, dis-
tinguished in a way which has not been seen
and will not be seen again, I saw living and
effective before me. He, on the contrary, be-
trayed in the first moment, by sundry singular
exclamations, that he had expected me other-
wise. Whereupon I told him, agreeably to my
inborn and incultivated realism, that since God
and Nature had once for all been pleased to
make me so, we too would content ourselves
with tliat. Now, the most important points
upon which we had been least able to agree in
our letters, came indeed into immediate discus-
sion ; but space was not allowed us for a tho-
rough treatment of them, and I experienced
what had never occurred to me before.

" We others, when we wished to discuss mat-
ters of the mind and heart, were accustomed to
withdraw ourselves from the crowd, and even
from society; because, with the manifold ways
of thinking and different stages of culture, it is
difficult to come to an understanding even with
a few. But Lavater was of quite a different
mind. He loved to extend his operations far
and wide. He was never at home but in the
congregation, for the instruction and entertain-
ment of which he had a special talent, based
on his great physiognomical gift. To him was
given a correct discernment of persons and of
spirits ; so that he saw in each one quickly what
was the probable state of his mind." "The
profound meekness of his look, the determined
loveliness of his lips, even his true-hearted
Swiss dialect which sounded through his High
German, — and how much else that distinguish-
ed him — imparted to every one with whom he
conversed the most agreeable repose of mind.
Even his somewhat forward bending position
of the body — a consequence of his flat chest —
contributed not a little to equalize the prepon-

derance of his presence with the rest of the
company.

"Toward assumption and conceit he knew
how to bear himself very quietly and dexter-
ously. For while he seemed to evade, he turned
forth suddenly some great view, which the nar-
row-minded opponent could never have thought
of, like a diamond shield ; and yet knew then
how to temper the light which flashed from it
so agreeably, that men of this kind generally
felt themselves instructed and convinced, at
least in his presence. Perhaps the impression
may have continued with many ; for selfish men
may be good too, at the same time. All that is
required is that the hard shell which encloses
the fruitful kernel should be dissolved by a gen-
tle influence."

" For me the intercourse with Lavater was
highly important and instructive." " Very re-
markable and rich in results for me were the
conversations of Lavater with the Fraulein von
Klettenberg. Here now stood two decided
Christians over against each other, and it was
plain to see how the same confession changes
its aspect with the sentiments of different indi-
viduals,"— "how men and women need a dif-
ferent Savior. Fraulein von Klettenberg related
to her's, as to a lover to whom one yields one-
self unconditionally." " Lavater, on the other
hand, treated his as a friend whom one emulates
without envy, and full of love."

"Notwithstanding the religious and moral,
but by no means anxious tendency of his mind,
he was not insensible when the spirits were
stimulated to cheerfulness and mirth by the
events of life. He was sympathizing, ingenious
and witty, and loved the same in others, pro-
vided it remained within the bounds which his
delicate feelings prescribed to him. If one
ventured beyond these, he used to pat him on
the shoulder, and call the offender to order
with a true-hearted " Behave now !"*

" One became virginal by his side, in order
not to touch him with anything disgusting."

" Lavater's mind was altogether imposing.
In his neighborhood one could not resist a de-
cided influence."

"He who feels a synthesis right pregnant
within himself, has properly the right to ana-
lyze ; because, in external particulars, he proves
and legitimates his inward whole. Of Lavater's
manner of proceeding in this matter be one only

* " Bisch guet" " be good." Swiss dialect.

LAVATER.

191

example given. Sundays, after the sermon, he
was required, as minister, to present the short-
handled velvet bag to each one who came out,
and to receive the alms with a blessing. Now
he would impose it upon himself e. g. this Sun-
day, to look no one in the face, but only to
watch the hands, and to interpret to himself
their form. And not only the form of the fingers,
but their expression in dropping the gift, did
not escape his attention ; and he had much to
communicate to me about it afterward. How
instructive and stimulating must such commu-
nications be to me who was also on the way to
qualify myself for a painter of men !"

"Lavater's mind inclined strictly to realism.
He knew nothing ideal, except under a moral
form. If we hold fast this idea, we shall best

understand a rare and singular man." " Scarcely
ever was there one more passionately concerned
to be rightly known than he ; and it was this,
especially, wliich qualified him for a teacher."

" The realization of the person of Christ was
his favourite object."

" Every talent, wliich is founded in a decided
natural tendency, appears to us to have some-
thing magical, because we cannot classify it or
its effects, under an idea. And, really, Lava-
ter's insight into individual men transcended
all ideas. It was astounding to hear him, when
he spoke confidentially of this or that person ;
nay, it was fearful to live in the vicinity of a
man by whom every limit, with which Nature
has been pleased to limit us individuals, was
clearly perceived !"

ON THE NATURE OF MAN, WHICH IS
THE FOUNDATION OF THE SCIENCE
OF PHYSIOGNOMY.

Of all earthly creatures man is the most per-
fect, the most imbued with the principles of
life.

Each particle of matter is an immensity ; each
leaf a world ; each insect an inexplicable com-
pendium. Who then shall enumerate the grada-
tions between insect and man ? In him all the
powers of nature are united. He is the essence
of creation. The son of earth, he is the earth's
lord ; the summary and central point of all exist-
ence, of all powers, and of all life, on that earth
which he inhabits.

Of all organized beings with which we are
acquainted, man alone excepted, there are none
in which are sa wonderfully united the three
different kinds of life, the animal, the intellectual,
and the moral. Each of these lives is the com-
pendium of various faculties, most wonderfully
compounded and harmonized.

To know, to desire, to act, or accurately to
observe and meditate ; to perceive and to wish ;
to possess the powers of motion and of resist-
ance ; these combined, constitute man an animal,
intellectual, and moral being.

Man, endowed with these faculties, with this
triple life, is in himself the most worthy subject
of observation, as he likewise is himself the
most worthy observer. Under whatever point
of view he may be considered, what is more
worthy of contemplation than himself; In him
each species of life is conspicuous ; yet never
can his properties be wholly known, except by
the aid of his external form, his body, his super-
ficies. How sjiiritual, how incorporeal soever,
his internal essence may be, still is he only visi-
ble and conceivable from the harmony of his
constituent parts. From these he is inseparable.

He exists and moves in the body he inhabits,
as in his element. This material man must be-
come the subject of observation. All the know-
ledge we can obtain of man must be gained
through the medium of our senses.

This threefold life, which man cannot be de-
nied to possess, necessarily first becomes the
subject of disquisition and research, as it pre-
sents itself in the form of body, and in such of
his faculties as are apparent to sense.

There is no object in nature, the properties
and powers of which can be manifest to us in
any other manner than by such external ap-
pearances as affect the senses. By these all
beings are characterized. They are the founda-
tions of all human knowledge. Man must
wander in the darkest ignorance, equally with
respect to himself and the objects that surround
him, did he not become acquainted with their
properties and powers by the aid of their ex-
ternals ; and had not each object a character
peculiar to its nature and essence, which ac-
quaints us with what it is, and enables us to
distinguish it from what it is not.

All bodies which we survey appear to sight
under a certain form and superficies. We bo-
hold those outlines traced which are the result
of their organization. I hope I shall be pardoned
the repetition of such commonplace truths, since
on these are built the science of physiognomy,
or the proper study of man. However true these
axioms, with respect to visible objects, and par-
ticularly to organized bodies, they are still more
extensively true when applied to man, and his
nature. The organization of man peculiarly
distinguishes him from all other earthly beings ;
and his physiognomy, that is to say, the superfi-
cies and outlines of this organization, show him
to be infinitely superior to all those visible be-
ings by which he is surrounded.

We are unacquainted with any form equally

192

LAVATER.

noble, equall}'' majestic, with that of man, and
in which so many kinds of life, so many powers,
so many virtues of action and motion, unite, as
in a central point. With firm step he advances
over the earth's surface, and with erect body
raises his head toward heaven. He looks for-
ward to infinitude; he acts with facility, and
swiftness inconceivable, and his motions are
the most immediate and the most varied. By
whom may their varieties be enimierated? He
can at once both suffer and perform infinitely
more than any other creature. He unites flexi-
bility and fortitude, strength and dexterity, acti-
vity and rest. Of all creatures he can the soonest
yield, and the longest resist. None resemble
him in the variety and harmony of his powers.
His faculties, like his form, are peculiar to liim-
self

How much nobler, more astonishing, and more
attractive will this form become, when we dis-
cover that it is itself the interpreter of all the
high powers it possesses, active and passive !
Only in those parts in which animal strength
and properties reside does it resemble animals.
But how much is it exalted above the brute in
those parts in which are the powers of superior
origin, the powers of mind, of motion !

The form and proportion of man, his superior
height, capable of so many changes, and such
variety of motion, prove to the unprejudiced
observer his supereminent strength, and asto-
nishing facility of action. The high excellence
and physiological unity of human nature are
visible at the first glance. The head, especially
the face, and the formation of the firm parts,
compared to the firm parts of other animals,
convince the accurate observer, who is capable
of investigating truth, of the greatness and su-
periority of his intellectual qualities. The eye,
the look, the cheeks, the mouth, the forehead,
whetlier considered in a state of entire rest or
during their innumerable varieties of motion,
in fine, all that is understood by physiognomy,
is the most expressive, the most convincing
picture of interior sensation, desires, passions,
will, and of all those properties whicli so much
exalt moral above animal life.

Although the physiological, intellectual, and
moral life of man, with all their subordinate
powers and their constituent parts, so eminently
unite in one being; although these tl^-ee kinds
of life do not, like three distinct families, reside
in separate parts, or stories of the body ; but co-
exist in one point, and by their combination
form one whole; yet is it plain that each of
these powers of life has its peculiar station,
where it more especially unfolds itself, and acts.

It is beyond contradiction evident that, lliough
physiological or animal life displays itself
through all the body, and especially through all
the animal parts, yet does it act most conspicu-
ously in the arm, from the shoulder to the ends
of the fingers.

It is equally clear that intellectual life, or the
powers of the understanding and the mind,

make themselves most apparent in the circum-
ference and form of the solid parts of the head,
especially the forehead ; though they will dis-
cover themselves to an attentive and accurate
eye in every part and point of the human body,
by the congeniality and harmony of the various
parts, as will be frequently noticed in the course
of this work. Is there any occasion to prove
that the power of thinking resides neither in the
foot, in the hand, nor in the back; but in the
head, and its internal parts'?

The moral life of man, particularly, reveals
itself in the lines, marks, and transitions of the
countenance. His moral powers and desires,
his irritability, sympathy, and antipathy; his
facility of attracting or repelling the objects that
surround him ; these are all summed up in, and
painted upon, his countenance when at rest.
When any passion is called into action, such
passion is depicted by the motion of the irlus-
cles, and these motions are accompanied by a
strong palpitation of the heart. If the counte-
nance be tranquil, it always denotes tranquillity
in the region of the heart and breast.

This threefold life of man, so intimately in-
terwoven tln-ough his frame, is still capable of
being stitdied in its different appropriate parts;
and did we live in a less depraved world we
should find sufficient data for the science of
physiognomy.

The animal life, the lowest and most earthly,
would discover itself from the rim of the belly
to the organs of generation, which would become
its central or focal point. The middle or moral
life would be seated in the breast, and the heart
would be its central point. The intellectual
life, which of the three is supreme, would reside
in the head, and have the eye for its centre. If
we take the countenance as the representative
and epitome of the three divisions, then will the
forehead, to the eyebrows, be the mirror, or
image, of the understanding ; the nose and
cheeks the image of the moual and sensitive
life ; and the mouth and chin the image of the
animal life; while the eye will be to the whole
as its summary and centre. I may also add
that the closed mouth at the moment of most
perfect tranquillity is the central point of the
radii of the countenance. It cannot however
too often be repeated that these three lives, by
their intimate connection with each other, are
all, and each, expressed in every part of the
body.

What M'e have hitherto said is so clear, so
well known, so universal, that we should blush
to insist upon such common-place truths, were
they not, first, the foundation on which we must
build all we have to propose; and, again, had
not these truths (can it be believed by futurity?)
in this our age been so many thousand times
mistaken and contested, with the most incon-
ceivable affectation.

The science of physiognomy, whether under-
stood in the most enlarged or most confined
sense, indubitably depends on these general and

LAVATER.

193

incontrovertible principles; yet, incontrovertible
as they are, they have not been vi^ithout their
opponents. Men pretend to doubt of the most
striking, the most convincing, the most self-evi-
dent truths; although, were these destroyed,
neither truth nor knowledge would remain.
They do not profess to doubt concerning the
physiognomy of other natural objects, yet do
they doubt the physiognomy of human nature ;
the first object, the most worthy of contempla-
tion, and the most animated which the realms
of nature contain.

or THE TRUTH OF PHTSIOGNOMT.

All countenances, all forms, all created beings,
are not only different from each other in their
classes, races, and kinds, but are also individu-
ally distinct.

Each being differs from every other being of
its species. However generally known, it is a
truth the most important to our purpose, and
necessary to repeat, that, " There is no rose per-
fectly similar to another rose, r\6 egg to an egg,
no eel to an eel, no lion to a lion, no eagle to an
eagle, no man to a man." ; •

Confining this proposition to man only, it is
the first, the most jjrofound, most secure, and
unshaken foundation-stone of physiognomy that,
however intimate the analogy and similarity of
the innumerable forms of men, no two men can
be found who, brought together, and accurately
compared, will not appear to be very remark-
ably different.

Nor is it less incontrovertible that it is equally
impossible to find two minds, as two counte-
nances, which jjerfectly resemble each other.

This consideration alone will be sufficient to
make it received as a truth, not requiring farther
demonstration, that there must be a certain na-
tive analogy between the external varieties of
the countenance and form, and the internal va-
rieties of the mind. Shall it be denied that this
acknowledged internal variety among all men
is the cause of the external variety of their forms
and countenances ? Shall it be affirmed that
the mind does not influence the body, or that
the body does not influence the mind?

Anger renders the muscles protuberant; and
shall not therefore an angry mind and protube-
rant muscles be considered as cause and effect?
After repeated observation that an active and
vivid eye and an active and acute wit are fre-
quently found in the same person, shall it be
supposed that there is no relation between the
active eye and the active mind? Is this the
effect of accident? Of accident! Ought it not
rather to be considered as sympathy, an inter-
changeable and instantaneous efi'ect, when we
perceive that, at the very moment the under-
standing is most acute and penetrating and the
wit the most lively, the motion and fire of the
eye undergo, at that moment, the most visible
change ?

Shall the open, friendly, and unsuspecting
eye and the open, friendly,, and unsuspecting

z

heart be united in a thousand instances, and
shall we say the one is not the cause, the other
the effect?

Shall nature discover wisdom and order in
all things ; shall corresponding causes and ef-
fects be everywhere united ; shall this be the
most clear, the most indubitable of truths ; and
in the first, the most noble of the works of na-
ture, shall she act arbitrarily, without design,
without law? The human countenance, that
mirror of the Divinity, that noblest of the works
of the Creator, — shall not motive and action,
shall not the correspondence between the inte-
rior and the exterior, the visible and the invisi-
ble, the cause and the effect, be there apparent?

Yet this is all denied by those who oppose
the truth of the science of physiognomy.

Truth, according to them, is ever at variance
whh itself. Eternal order is degraded to a jug-
gler, whose purpose it is to deceive.

Calm reason revolts at the supposition that
Newton or Leibnitz ever could have the coun-
tenance and appearance of an idiot, incapable
of a firm step, a meditating eye ; of compre-
hending the least difficult of abstract proposi-
tions, or of expressing himself so as to be un-
derstood ; that one of these in the brain of a
Laplander conceived his Theodica; and that
the other in the head of an Esquimaux, who
wants the power to number farther than six,
and affirms all beyond to be innumerable, had
dissected the rays of light, and weighed worlds.

Calm reason revolts when it is asserted that the
strong man may appear perfectly like the weak,
the man in full health like another in the last
stage of a consumption, or that the rash and
irascible may resemble the cold and phlegmatic.
It revolts to hear it affirmed that joy and grief,
pleasure and pain, love and hatred, all exhibit
themselves under the same traits; that is to
say, under no traits whatever, on the exterior
of man. Yet such are the assertions of those
who maintain physiognomy to be a chimerical
science. They overturn all that order and com-
bination by which eternal wisdom so highly
astonishes and delights the understanding. It
caiuiot be too emphatically repeated, that blind
chance and arbitrary disorder constitute the
philosophy of fools ; and that they are the bane
of natural knowledge, philosophy and religion.
Entirely to banish such a system is the duty of
the true inquirer, the sage, and the divine.

All men, (this is indisputable), absolutely all
men, estimate all things whatever by their
physiognomy, their exterior, temporary superfi-
cies. By viewing these on every occasion, they
draw their conclusions concerning their internal
properties.

What merchant, if he be unacquainted with
the person of whom he purchases, does not
estimate his wares by the physiognomy or ap-
pearance of those wares? If he purchase of a
distant correspondent, what other means does
he itse in judging whether they are or are not
equal to his expectation ? Is not his judgment

17

194

LAVATER.

determined by the colour, the fineness, the su-
perficies, the exterior, the physiognomy ? Does
he not judge money by its physiognomy? Why
does he take one guinea and reject another ?
Why weigh a third in his hand? Does he not
determine according to its colour, or impression;
its outside, its physiognomy ? If a stranger
enter his shop, as a buyer or seller, will he not
observe him? Will he not draw conclusions
from his countenance? Will he not, almost
before he is out of hearing, pronounce some
opinion upon him, and say : ' This man has an
honest look,' 'That man has a pleasing, or for-
bidding, countenance?' What is it to the pur-
pose whether his judgment be right or wrong?
He judges. Though not wholly, he depends in
part upon the exterior form, and thence draws
inferences concerning the mind.

How does the farmer, walking through his
grounds, regulate his future expectations by the
colour, the size, the growth, the exterior ; that is
to say, by the physiognomy of the bloom, the
stalk, or the ear, of his corn ; the stem, and
shoots of his vine-tree ? ' This ear of corn is
blighted,' 'That wood is full of sap; this will
grow, that not,' affirms he, at the first or second
glance. 'Though these vine-shoots look well,
they will bear but few grapes.' And where-
fore ? • He remarks, in their appearance, as the
physiognomist in the countenances of shallow
men, the want of native energy. Does not he
judge by the exterior?

Does not the physician pay more attention to
the physiognomy of the sick than to all the ac-
counts that are brought him concerning his
patient? Zimmermann, among the living, may
be brought as a proof of the great perfection at
which this kind of judgment has arrived ; and
among the dead, Kempf, whose son has written
a treatise on Temperament.

Tlie painter Yet of him I will say no-
thing ; his art too evidently reproves the childish
and arrogant prejudices of those who pretend to
disbelieve physiognomy.

The traveller, the philanthropist, the misan-
thrope, the lover, (and who not?) all act ac-
cording to their feelings and decisions, true or
false, confused or clear, concerning physiognomy.
These feelings, these decisions, excite compas-
sion, disgust, joy, love, hatred, suspicion, confi-
dence, reserve, or benevolence.

Do we not daily judge of the sky by its phy-
siognomy? No food, not a glass of wine or
beer, not a cup of coffee or tea, comes to table,
which is not judged by its physiognomy, its ex-
terior, and of which we do not thence deduce
some conclusion respecting its interior, good or
bad properties.

Is not all nature physiognomy, superficies
and contents; body, and spirit; exterior effect
and internal power; invisible beginning and
visible ending?

\: What knowledge is there, of which man is
capable, that is not founded on the exterior ;
the relation that exists between visible and

invisible, the perceptible and the impercepti-
ble?

Physiognomy, whether understood in its most
extensive or confined signification, is the origin
of all human decisions, efforts, actions, expecta-
tions, fears, and hopes ; of all pleasing and un-
pleasing sensations, which are occasioned by
external objects.

From the cradle to the grave, in all conditions
and ages, throughout all nations, from Adam to
the last existing man, from the worm we tread
on to the most sublime of philosophers, (and
why not to the angel, why not to the Mediator
Christ?) physiognomy is the origin of all we do
and suffer.

Each insect is acquainted with its friend and
its foe ; each child loves and fears, altliough it
knows not why. Physiognomy is the cause ;
nor is there a man to be found on earth who is
not daily influenced by physiognomy; not a
man who cannot figure to himself a countenance
which shall to him appear exceedingly lovely,
or exceedingly hateful; not a man who does
not more or less, the first time he is in company
with a stranger, observe, estimate, compare,
and judge him, according to appearances, al-
though he might never have heard of the word
or thing called physiognomy ; not a man who
does not judge of all things that pass through
his hands, by their physiognomy ; that is, of
their internal worth by their external appear-
ance.

The art of dissimulation itself, which is ad-
duced as so insuperable an objection to the truth
of physiognomy, is founded on physiognomy.
Why does the hypocrite assume the appearance
of an honest man, but because that he is con-
vinced, though not perhaps from any systematic
reflection, that all eyes are acquainted with the
characteristic marks of honesty.

What judge, wise or unwise, whether he con-
fess or deny the fact, does not sometimes in this
sense decide from appearances? Who can, is,
or ought to be, absolutely indifferent to the
exterior of persons brought before him to be
judged?* What king would choose a minister
without examining his exterior, secretly at least,
and to a certain extent? An officer will not
enlist a soldier without thus examining his ap-
pearance, his height out of the question. What
master or mistress of a family will choose a ser-
vant without considering the exterior ; no matter
whether their judgment be or be not just, or
whether it be exercised unconsciously ?

I am wearied of citing instances so numerous,
and so continually before our eyes, to prove that
men, tacitly and unanimously, confess the influ-
ence which physiognomy has over their sensa-
tions and actions. I feel disgust at being obliged
to write thus, in order to convince the learned

* Franci5cus Valesius says— Sed le^'ibus etiam civilibus,
in quibiis iniquum sit censere esse aliquid futile aut va-
riuin, cautiun est ; ut si duo lioiniiies inciderent in crimi-
nis suspicionera, is priinum torquealur qui sit aspectu
deformior. ■

LAVATER.

195

of truths with which every child is or may be
acquainted.

He that hath eyes to see, let him see ; but
should the light, by being brought too close to
his eyes, produce phrenzy, he may burn him-
self by endeavouring to extinguish the torch of
truth. I use such expressions unwillingly, but
I dare do my duty, and my duty is boldly to
declare that I believe myself certain of what I
now and hereafter shall atfirm ; and that I think
myself capable of convincing all real lovers of
truth, by principles which are in themselves in-
controvertible. It is also necessary to confute
the pretensions of certain literary despots, and
to compel them to be more cautious in their
decisions. It is therefore proved, not because
I say it, but because it is an eternal and mani-
fest truth, and would have been equally truth,
had it never been said, that, whether they are
or are not sensible of it, all men are daily in-
fluenced by physiognomy ; that, as Sultzer has
affirmed, every man, consciously or inconscious-
ly, understands something of physiognomy ; nay,
that there is not a living being that does not,
at least after its manner, draw some inferences
from the external to the internal ; that does
not judge concerning that which is not, by that
which is, apparent to the senses.

This universal, though tacit confession, that
the exterior, the visible, the superficies of ob-
jects, indicates their nature, their properties,
and that every outward sign is the symbol of
some inherent quality, I hold to be equally
certain and important to the science of physi-
ognomy.

I must once more repeat, when each apple,
each apricot, has a physiognomy peculiar to
itself, shall man, the lord of earth, have none 1
The most simple and inanimate object has its
characteristic exterior, by which it is not only
distinguished as a species, but individually;
and shall the first, noblest, best harmonized,
and most beauteous of beings be denied all
characteristic.

But whatever may be objected against the
truth and certainty of the science of physiog-
nomy, by the most illiterate, or the most learn-
ed ; how much soever he who openly professes
faith in this science, may be subject to ridicule,
to philosophic pity and contempt; it still cannot
be contested that there is no object, tlius con-
sidered, more important, more worthy of obser-
vation, more interesting than man, nor any
occupation superior to that of disclosing the
beauties and perfections of human nature.

Such were my opinions six or eight years
ago. Will it in the next century be believed
that it is still, at this time, necessary to repeat
these things ; or that numerous obscure witlings
continue to treat with ridicule and contempt
the general feelings of mankind, and observa-
tions which not only may be, but are demon-
strated ; and that they act thus without having
refuted any one of the principles at which they
laugh ; yet that they are, notwithstanding, con-

tinually repeating the words, philosophy and
enlightened age?

OF THE UNITERSALITT OF PHTSIOGNOMONICAL
SENSATION.

By physiognomonical sensation, I here un-
derstand " those feelings which are produced
at beholding certain countenances, and the con-
jectures concerning the qiialities of the mind,
which are produced by the state of such coun-
tenances, or of their portraits drawn or paint-
ed."

This sensation is very universal ; that is to
say, as certainly as eyes are in any man or any
animal, so certainly are they accompanied by
physiognomonical sensations. DitTerent sensa-
tions are produced in each by the difierent
forms that present themselves.

Exactly similar sensations cannot be gene-
rated by forms that are in themselves dif-
ferent.

Various as the impressions may be which the
same object makes on various spectators, and
opposite as the judgments which may be pro-
nounced on one and the same form, yet there
are certain extremes, certain forms, physiogno-
mies, figures, and lineaments, concerning which
all, who are not idiots, will agree in their opin-
ions. So will men be various in their decisions
concerning certain portraits, yet will be unani-
mous concerning certain others; will say, "this
is so like it absolutely breathes,"' or, " this is
totally unlike." Of the numerous proofs wliich
might be adduced of the imiversality of phy-
siognomonical sensation, it is only necessary to
select a few, to demonstrate the fact.

I shall not here repeat what I have already
noticed, on the instantaneous judgment which
all men give, when viewing exterior forms. I
shall only observe that, let any person, but for
two days, remark all that he hears or reads,
among men, and he will everywhere hear and
read, even from the very adversaries of phy-
siognomy, physiognomonical judgments concern-
ing men ; will continually hear expressions like
these: "You might have read it in his eyes,"
" The look of the man is enough," " He has
an honest countenance," " His manner sets
every person at his ease," "He has evil eyes,"
"You read honesty in his looks," " He has an
unhealthy countenance," " I will trust him for
his honest face," " Should he deceive me, I
will never trust man more," "That man has
an open countenance," "I suspect that insi-
dious smile," "He cannot look any person in
the face." The very judgments that should
seem to militate against the science are but
exceptions which confirm the universality of
physiognomonical sensation. "His appearance
is against him," "This is what I could not
have read in his countenance," " He is better
or worse than his countenance bespeaks."

If we observe mankind, from the most finish-
ed courtier, to ^he lowest of the vulgar, and
listen to the remarks they make on each other,

196

LAVATER,

we shall be astonished to find liow many of
tliein are entirely physiognonionical.

I have lately had such frequent occasion of
observing this among people vv'ho do not know
that I have published any such work as the
present, people, who perhaps never heard the
word physiognomy, that I am willing, at any
time, to risk my veracity on the proof that all
men, unconsciously, more or lees, are guided by
physiogaomonical sensation.

Another, no less convincing, though not suf-
ficiently noticed, proof of the universality of
physiognomonical sensation, that is to say, of
the confused feeling of the agreement between
the internal character and the external form, is
the number of physiognomonical terms to be
found in all languages, and among all nations ;
or, in other words, the number of moral terms,
which, in reality, are all physiognomonical ; but
this is a subject that deserves a separate trea-
tise. How important would such a treatise be
in extending the knowledge of languages, and
determining the precise meaning of words!
How new! How interesting!

Here I might adduce physiognomonical pro-
verbs ; but I have neither sufficient learning nor
leisure to cite them from all languages, so as
properly to elucidate the subject. To this might
be added the numerous physiognomonical traits,
characters, and descriptions, which are so fre-
quent in the writings of the greatest poets, and
which so much delight all readers of taste,
sensibility, knowledge of human nature, and
philanthropy.

Physiognomonical sensation is not only pro-
duceil by the sight of man, but also by that
of paintings, drawings, shades, and outlines.
Scarcely is there a man in a thousand who, if
such sketches were shown him, would not of
himself form some judgment concerning them,
or, at least, who would not readily attend to the
judgment formed by others.

ON FREEDOM AND NECESSITY.

My opinion, on this profound and important
question, is, that man is as free as the bird in
the cage ; he has a determinate space for action
and sensation, beyond which he cannot pass.
As each man has a particular circumference of
body, so has he likewise a certain sphere of
action. One of the unpardonable sins of Hel-
vetius, against reason and experience, is, that
he has assigned to education the sole power of
forming, or deforming the mind. I doubt if any
philosopher of the present century has imposed
any doctrine upon the world so insulting to
common sense. Can it be denied that certain
minds, certain frames, are by nature capable, or in-
capable, of certain sensations, talents, and actions?

To force a man to think and feel like me, is
equal to forcing him to have my exact forehead
and nose; or to impart unto the eagle the slow-
ness of the snail, and to the snail the swiftness
of the eagle : yet this is the philosophy of our
modern wits.

Each individual can but what he can, is but
what he is. He may arrive at, but cannot ex-
ceed, a certain degree of perfection, wliioh
scourging, even to death itself, cannot make
him surpass. Each man must give his own
standard. We must determine what his pow-
ers are, and not imagine what the powers of
another might eflect in a similar situation.

When, oh ! men and brethren, children of the
common Father, when will you begin to judge
each other justly 1 When will you cease to re-
quire, to force, from the man of sensibility the
abstraction of the cold and phlegmatic ; or from
the cold and phlegmatic the enthusiasm of the
man of sensibility? When cease to require
nectarines from an apple-tree, or figs from the
vine ■? Man is man, nor can wishes make him an
angel; and each man is an individual self, with
as little ability to become another self as to be-
come an angel. So far as my own sphere ex-
tends, I am free ; within that circle I can act. I,
to whom one talent only has been intrusted,
cannot act like him who has two. My talent,
however, may be well or ill employed. A cer-
tain quantity of power is bestowed on me,
which I may use, and by use increase, by
want of use diminish, and by misuse totally
lose. But I never can perform, with this quan-
tity of power, what might be performed with a
double portion, equally well applied. Industry
may make near approaches to ingenuity, and
ingenuity to genius, wanting exercise, or oppor-
tunity of unfolding itself, or rather may seem
to make these approaches; but never can indus-
try supply total absence of genius or ingenuity.
Each must remain what he is, nor can he extend
or enlarge himself beyond a certain size; each
man is a sovereign prince, but, whether small
or great, only in his own principality. This he
may cultivate so as to produce fruits equal to
one twice as large, that shall be left half uncul-
tivated. But, though he cannot extend his prin-
cipality, yet, having cultivated it well, the IokI
of his neighbours may add that as a gift. Such
being freedom and necessity, it ought to render
each man humble yet ardent, modest yet active.
Hitherto and no farther. Truth, physiognomy,
and the voice of God, proclaim aloud to man.
Be what thou art, and become ivhat thou canst.

The character and countenance of every man
may suffer astonishing changes; yet only to a
certain extent. Each has room sufficient: the
least has a large and good field, which he may
cultivate, according to the soil ; but he can only
sow such seed as he has, nor can he cultivate
any other field than that on which he is sta-
tioned. In the mansion of God, there are, to
his glory, vessels of wood, of silver, and of gold.
All are serviceable, all profitable, all capable of
divine uses, all the instruments of God : but the
wood continues wood, the silver, silver, the gold,
gold. Though the golden should remain unused,
still tJiey are gold. The wooden may be made
more serviceable than the golden, but they con-
tinue wood. No addition, no constraint, no

LAVATER.

197

efl'oit of the mind, can give to man another na-
ture. Let each be what he is, so will he be
sufficiently _ good, for man himself, and God.
The violin cannot have the sound of the flute,
nor the trumpet of the drum. But the violin,
differently strung, differently fingered, and dif-
ferently bowed, may produce an infinite variety
of sounds, though not the sound of the flute.
Equally incapable is the drum to produce the
sound of the trumpet, although the drum be
capable of infinite variety.

I cannot write well with a bad pen, but with
a good one I can write both well and ill. Being
foolish I cannot spealc wisely, but I may speak
foolishly although wise. He who nothing pos-
sesses, can nothing give ; but, having, he may
give, or he may refrain. Though, with a thou-
sand florins, I cannot buy all I wish, yet am I
at liberty to choose, among numberless things,
any whose value does not exceed that sum. In
like manner am I free, and not free. The sum
of my powers, the degree of my activity or in-
activity, depend on my internal and external
organization ; on incidents, incitements, men,
books, good or ill fortune, and the use I may
make of the quantity of power I possess. " It is
not of him that willeth, or of him that runneth,
but of God that showeth mercy. Nor may the
vessel say to the potter. Why hast thou made me
thus? But the righteous lord reapeth not where
he hath not sowed, nor gathereth where he hath
not strewed. Yet, with justice, he demandeth
five other talents from him who received five,
two from him who received two, and one from
him who received one."

OF THE UNIVERSAL EXCELLENCE OF THE FORM
OF MAN.

The title of this fragment is expressive of the
contents, or rather of the very soul, of the whole
work ; therefore, what I may here say, in a
separate section, may be accounted as nothing ;
yet how vast a subject of meditation may it
afford to man !

Each creature is indispensable in the immen-
sity of the creations of God; but each creature
does not know it is thus indispensable. Man
alone, of all earth's creatures, rejoices in his
indispensability.

No man can render any other man dispensa-
ble. The place of no man can be supplied by
another.

This belief of the indispensability, and indi-
viduality, of all men, and in our own metaphy-
sical indispensability and individuality, is, again,
one of the unacknowledged, the noble fruits of
physiognomy; a fruit pregnant with seeds most
precious, whence shall spring lenity and love !
Oh! may posterity behold them flourish; may
future ages repose under their shade! The
worst, the most deformed, the most corrupt of
men, is still indispensable in this world of God,
and is more or less capable of knowing his own
individuality, and unsuppliable indispensability.
The wickedest, the most deformed of men, is

still more noble than the most beauteous, most
perfect animal. — Contemplate, oh man! what
thy nature is, not what it might be, not what is
wanting. Humanity, amid all its distortions, will
ever remain wondrous humanity!

Incessantly might I repeat doctrines like this!
— Art thou better, more beauteous, nobler, than
many others of thy fellow -creatures? If so,
rejoice, and ascribe it not to thyself, but to him
who, from the same clay, formed one vessel for
honour, another for dishonour ; to him who,
without thy advice, without thy prayer, without
any desert of thine, caused thee to be what thou
art.

Yea, to Him ! — "For what hast thou, oh man,
that thou didst not receive ? Now if thou didst
receive, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst
not received ?" " Can the eye say to the hand,
I have no need of thee 1" "He that op-
presseth the poor, reproacheth his Maker."
" God hath made of one blood all nations of
men."

Who feels, more deeply, more internally, al!
these divine truths than the physiognomist?
The true physiognomist, who is not merely a
man of literature, a reader, an author, but — a
man.

Yes, I own, the most humane physiognomist,
he who so eagerly searches for whatever is good,
beautiful, and noble in nature, who delights in
the Ideal, who duly exercises, nourishes, refines
his taste, with humanity more improved, more
perfect, more holy, even he is in frequent dan-
ger, at least is frequently tempted to turn from
the common herd of depraved men ; from the
deformed, the foolish, the apes, the hypocrites,
the vulgar of mankind ; in danger of forgetting
that the misshapen forms, these apes, these hy-
pocrites, also are men ; and that, notwithstand-
ing all his imagined or his real excellence, all
his noble feelings, the purity of his views, (and
who has cause to boast of these?) all the firm-
ness, the soundness, of his reason, the feelings
of his heart, the powers with which he is en-
dowed, although he may appear to have ap-
proached the sublime ideal of Grecian art, still
he is, very probably, from his own moral defects,
in the eyes of superior beings, in the eyes of his
much more righteous brother, as distorted as the
most ridiculous, most dejiraved, moral or physi-
cal monster appears to be in his eyes.

Liable as we are to forget this, to be reminded
thereof is necessary, both to the writer and the
reader of this work. Forget not that even the wisest
of men are men. Forget not how much positive
good may be found, even in the worst ; and that
they are as necessary, as good in their place, as
thou art. Are they not equally indispensable,
equally unsuppliable ? They possess not, either
in mind or body, the smallest thing exactly as
thou dost. Each is wholly and in every part
as individual as thou art.

Consider each as if he were single in the
universe. Then wilt thou discover powers
and excellencies in him which, abstractedly of
17*

198

LAVATER,

comparison, deserve all attention and admi-
ration.

Compare liim, afterward, with others ; his
similarity, his dissimilarity, to so many of his
fellow-creatures. How must this awaken thy
amazement! How wilt thou value the indivi-
duality, the indispensability of his being! How
wilt thou wonder at the harmony of his parts,
each contributing to form one whole, at their
relation, the relation of his million-fold indivi-
duality, to such a multitude of other individuals !
Yes! We woruler and adore the so simple yet
so infinitely varied expression of almighty
power inconceivable, so esj^ecially and so glo-
riously revealed in the nature of man.

No man ceases to be a man, how low soever
he may sink beneath the dignity of human na-
ture. Not being beast, he still is capable of
amendment, of approaching perfection. The
worst of faces still is a human face. Humanity
ever continues the honour and ornament of man.

It is as impossible for a brute animal to be-
come man, although he may, in many actions,
approach, or almost surpass him, as for man to
become a brute, although many men indulge
themselves in actions which we cannot view in
brutes without abhorrence.

But the very capacity of voluntarily debasing
himself in appearance, even below brutality, is
tiie honour and privilege of man. This very
capacity of imitating all things by an act of his
will, and the power of his understanding, — this
very capacity man only has, beasts have not.
The countenances of beasts are not susceptible
of any remarkable deterioration, nor are they
capable of any remarkable amelioration, or
beautifying. The worst of the countenances of
men may be still more debased, but they may,
also, to a certain degree, be improved and en-
nobled.

The degree of perfection or degradation, of
whicli man is capable, cannot be described.

For this reason, the worst countenance has a
well-founded claim to the notice, esteem, and
hope of all good men.

Again ; in every human countenance, how-
ever debased, humanity still is visible, that is,
the image of the Deity.

I have seen the worst of men, in their worst
of moments, yet could not all their vice, blas-
phemy, and oppression of guilt, extinguish the
light of good that shone in their countenances ;
the spirit of humanity, the ineffaceable traits of
internal, eternal perfectibility. — The sinner we
would exterminate, the man we must embrace.

Oh physiognomy ! What a pledge art thou
of the everlasting clemency of God toward man !

Therefore, inquire into nature, inquire what
actually is. — Therefore, O man, be man, in all thy
researches; form not to thyself ideal beings, for
thy standard of comparison.

Wherever power is, there is subject of admi-
ration; and human, or, if so you would rather,
divine power, is in all men. Man is a part of
the family of men ; thou art man, and every

other man is a branch of the same tree, a mem-
ber of the same body, is what thou art, and is
more deserving regard than if he were perfectly
similar, had exactly the same goodness, the
same degree of worth thou hast; for he would
then no longer be the single, indispensable, un-
suppliable individual which he now is. — Oh
man ! Rejoice with whatever rejoices in its ex-
istence, and contemn no being whom God doth
not contemn.

OF THE COXGENIALITr OF THE HUMAJf FOKM.

In organization nature continually acts from
within outwards, from the centre to the cir-
cumference. The same vital powers that make
the heart beat give the finger motion ; that
which roofs the scull arches the finger-nail. Art
is at variance with itself; not so nature. Her
creation is progressive. From the head to the
back, from the shoulder to the arm, from the arm
to the hand, from the hand to the finger, from
the root to the stem, the stem to the branch, the
branch to the twig, the twig to the blossom and
fruit, each depends on the other, and all on the
root; each is similar in nature and form. No
apple of one branch can, with all its properties,
be the apple of another; not to say another tree.
There is a determinate efl^ect of a determinate
power. Through all nature each determinate
power is productive only of such and such deter-
minate effects. The finger of one body is not
adapted to the hand of another body. Each part
of an organized body is an image of the whole,
has the character of the whole. The blood in
the extremity of the finger has the character of
the blood in the heart. The same congeniality
is found in the nerves, in the bones. One spirit
lives in all. Each member of the body is in
proportion to that whole of which it is a part.
As from the length of the smallest member, the
smallest joint of the finger, the proportion of the
whole, the length and breadth of the body may
be found, so also may the form of the whole
from the form of each single part. When the
head is long, all is long, or round when the head
is round, and square when it is square. One
form, one mind, one root, appertain to all.
Therefore is each organized body so much a
whole that, witliout discord, destruction, or de-
formity, nothing can be added or diminished.
Every thing in man is progressive, every thing
congenial ; form, stature, complexion, hair, skin,
veins, nerves, bones, voice, walk, manner, style,
passion, love, hatred. One and the same spirit
is manifest in all. He has a determinate sphere
in which his powers and sensations are allowed,
within which they may be freely exercised, but
beyond which he cannot pass. Each counte-
nance is, indeed, subject to momentary change,
though not perceptible, even in its solid parts ;
but these changes are all proportionate; each
is measured, each proper and peculiar to the
countenance in whicli it takes place. The ca-
pability of change is limited. Even that which
is affected, assumed, imitated, heterogeneous,

LAVATER.

199

still lias the properties of the individual, origi-
nating in the nature of the whole, and is so de-
finite that it is only possible in this, but in no
other, being.

I almost blush to repeat this in the present
age. Posterity! what wilt thou think to see
me obliged so often to demonstrate to pretended
sages that nature makes no emendations'? She
labours from one to all. Hers is not disjointed
organization ; not mosaic work. The more of
the mosaic there is in the works of artists, ora-
tors, or poets, the less are they natural ; the less
do they resemble the copious streams of the
fountain, the stem extending itself to the re-
motest branch.

The more there is of progression, the more is
there of truth, power, and nature ; the more ex-
tensive, general, durable, and noble is the effect.
The designs of nature are the designs of a mo-
ment. One form, one spirit, appears through
the whole. Thus nature forms her least plant,
and thus her most exalted man. I shall have
effected nothing by my physiognomonical la-
bours if I am not able to destroy the opinion,
so tasteless, so unworthy of the age, so opposite
to all sound philosophy, that nature patches up
the features of various countenances, in order to
make one perfect countenance; and I shall
think them well rewarded if the congeniality,
uniformity, and agreement of human organiza-
tion be so demonstrated that he who shall deny
it will be declared to deny the light of the sun
at noon-day.

The human body is a plant; each part has
the character of the stem. Sutler me to repeat
this continually, since this most evident of all
things is continually controverted, among all
ranks of men, in words, deeds, books, and works
of art.

Therefore it is that I find the greatest incon-
gruities in the heads of the greatest masters. I
kno\v no painter of whom I can say he has
thoroughly studied the harmony of the human
outline, not even Poussin; no, not even Raphael
himself. Let any one class the forms of their
countenances, and compare them with the forms
of nature; let him, for instance, draw the out-
lines of their foreheads, and endeavour to find
similar outlines in nature, and he will find in-
congruities which could not have been expected
in such great masters.

Excepting the too great length and extent,
particularly of his human figures, Chodowiecki,
perhaps, had the most exact feeling of congeni-
ality, in caricature ; that is to say, of the relative
propriety of the deformed, the humorous, or
other characteristical members and features ; for
as there is conformity and congeniality in the
beautiful, so is there also in the deformed.
Every cripple has the distortion peculiar to
himself, the effects of which are extended to his
whole body. In like manner the evil actions
of the evil, and the good actions of the good,
have a conformity of character, at least they are
all tinged with this conformity of character.

Little as this seems to be remarked by poets
and painters, still is it the foundation of their
art, for wherever emendation is visible, there
admiration is at an end. Why has no painter
yet been pleased to place the blue eye beside
the brown one? Yet, absurd as this would be,
no less absurd are the incongruities continually
encountered by the physiognomonical eye; — the
nose of Venus on the head of a Madonna. I have
been assured by a man of fashion, that at a mas-
querade he, with only the aid of an artificial nose,
entirely concealed himself from the knowledge
of all his acquaintance. So much does nature
reject what does not appertain to herself.

To render this indisputable, let a number of
shades be taken and classed according to the
foreheads. We shall show, in its place, that all
real and joossible human foreheads may be
classed under certain signs, and that their classes
are not innumerable. Let him next class the
noses, then the chins ; then let him compare the
signs of the noses and foreheads, and he will
find certain noses are never found with certain
foreheads; and, on the contrary, other certain
foreheads are always accompanied by a certain
kind of noses, and that the same observation is
true with respect to every other feature of the
face, unless the movable features should have
something acquired which is not the work of
the first formation and productive power of na-
ture, but of art, of accident, of constraint. Ex-
periment will render this indisputable. As a
preliminary amusement for the inquiring reader,
I will add what follows.

" Among a hundred profiles with circular fore-
heads, I have never yet met with one Roman
nose. In a hundred other square foreheads I
have scarcely found one in which there were
not cavities and prominences. I never yet saw
a perpendicular forehead, with strongly arched
features, in the lower part of the countenance,
the double chin excepted.

I meet no strong-bowed eyebrows combined
with bony, perpendicular countenances.

Wherever the forehead is projecting, so, in
general, are the under lips, children excepted.

I have never seen gently arched yet much
retreating foreheads combined with a short
snub nose, which in profile is sharp and
sunken.

A visible nearness of the nose to the eye is
always attended by a visible wideness between
the nose and mouth.

A long covering of the teetli, or, in other
words, a long space between the nose and mouth,
always indicates small upper lips. Length of
form and face is generally attended by well-
drawn, fleshy lips. I have many further obser-
vations in reserve on this subject, which are
withheld only till further confirmation and pre-
cision are obtained. I shall produce but one
more example, which will convince all, who
possess acute physiognomonical sensation, how
great is the harmony of all nature's forms, and
how much she hates the incongruous.

200

LAVATER.

Take two, three, or four shades of men, re-
markable for understanding, join the features so
artificially that no defect shall appear, as far as
relates to the act of joining ; that is, take tlie
forehead of one, add the nose of a second, the
mouth of a third, the chin of a fourth, and the
result of this combination of the signs of wisdom
shall be folly. Folly is perhaps nothing more
than the annexation of some heterogeneous ad-
dition.— 'But let these four wise countenances
be supposed congruous V — Let them so be sup-
posed, or as nearly so as possible, still their
combination will produce the signs of folly.

Those, therefore, who maintain that conclu-
sions cannot be drawn from a part, from a single
section of the profile, to the whole, would be
perfectly right if unarbitrary nature patched up
countenances like arbitrary art ; but so she does
not. Indeed when a man, being born with un-
derstanding, becomes a fool, there an expression
of heterogeneousness is the consequence. Either
the lower part of the countenance extends itself,
or the eyes acquire a direction not conformable
to the forehead, the mouth cannot remain closed,
or the features of the countenance in some other
manner, lose their consistency. All becomes
discord ; and folly, in such a countenance, is
very manifest. If the forehead be seen alone,
it can only be said: " So much can or could, this
countenance, by nature, unimpeded by acci-
dent." But if the whole be seen, the past and
present general character may be determined.

Let him who would study physiognomy, study
the relation of the constituent parts of the coun-
tenance ; not having studied these he has studied
nothing.

He, and he alone, is an accurate physiogno-
mist, has the true spirit of physiognomy, who
possesses sense, feeling, and sympathetic per-
ception of the congeniality and harmony of na-
ture ; and who hath a similar sense and feeling
for all emendations and additions of art and
constraint. He is no physiognomist wlio doubts
of the propriety, simplicity, and harmony of na-
ture ; or who has not this physiognomical essen-
tial ; who supposes nature selects members to
form a whole, as a compositor in a printing-
house takes letters to make up a word ; who can
suppose the works of nature are the patchwork
of a harlequin jacket. Not so is the most insigni-
ficant of insects compounded, much less the most
perfect of organized beings, man. He breathes
not the breath of wisdom who doubts of this
progression, continuity, and simplicity of the
structures of nature. He wants a general feel-
ing for the works of nature, consequently of art,
tlie imitator of nature. I shall be pardoned this
warmth. It is necessary. The consequences
are infinite, and extend to all things. He has
the master-key of truth who has this sensation
of the congeniality of nature, and by necessary
induction of the human form.

All imperfection in works of art, productions
of the mind, moral actions, errors in judgment;
all scepticism, infidelity, and ridicule of reli-

gion, naturally originate in the want of this
knowledge and perception. He soars above all
doubt of the Divinity and Christ who hath them,
and who is conscious of this congeniality. He
also, who at first sight thoroughly perceives the
congeniality of the human form, and feels that
from the want of this congeniality arises the
difference observed between the works of na-
ture and of art, is superior to all doubt con-
cerning the truth and divinity of the human
countenance.

Those who have this sense, this feeling, call
it what you please, will attribute that only, and
nothing more, to each countenance which it is
capable of receiving. They will consider each
aocordmg to its kind, and will as little seek to
add a heterogeneous character as a heteroge-
neous nose to the face. Such will only unfold
what nature is desirous of unfolding, give what
nature is capable of receiving, and take away
that with which nature would only be encum-
bered. They will perceive any discordant trait
of character, when it makes its appearance in
the child, pupil, friend, or wife, and will en-
deavour to restore the original congeniality, the
equilibrium of character and impulse, by acting
upon the still remaining harmony, by co-operat-
ing with the yet unimpaired essential powers
They will consider each sin, each vice, as de-
structive of this harmony; will feel how much
each departure from truth in the human form,
at least to eyes more penetrating than human
eyes are, must distort, be manifest, and become
displeasing to the Creator by rendering it unlike
his image. Who, therefore, can judge better of
the works and actions of man, who less offend,
or be offended, who more clearly develope
cause and effect, than the physiognomist, pos-
sessed of a full p)ortion of this knowledge and
perception 1

RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN PARENTS AND CHIL-
DREN.

The resemblance between parents and chil-
dren is very commonly remarkable.

Family physiognomy is as undeniable as na-
tional. To doubt this is to doubt what is self-
evident; to wish to interpret it is to wish to
explore the inexplicable secret of existence.
Striking and frequent as the resemblance be-
tween parents and children is, yet have the
relations between the characters and counten-
ances of families never been investigated. No
one has, to my knowledge, made any regular
observations on this subject. I must also con-
fess that I have myself made but few, with
that circumstantial attention which is necessary.
All I have to remark is what follows.

When the father is somewhat stupid, and
the mother strikingly the reverse, then will
most of the children be endued with extraordi-
nary understanding.

When the father is good, truly good, the chil-
dren will in general be well disposed; at least
most of them will be benevolent.

LAVATER.

201

The son appears most to inherit moral good-
ness from the good father, and intelligence from
the intelligent mother ; the daughter to partake
of the character of the mother.

If we wish to find the most certain marks of
resemblance between parents and children, they
should be observed within an hour or two after
birth. We may then perceive whom the child
most resembles in its formation. The most
essential resemblance is usually afterwards lost,
and does not, perhai^s, appear for many years;
or not till after death.

When children, as they increase in years,
visibly increase in the resemblance of form
and features to their parents, we cannot doubt
that there is an increasing resemblance of cha-
racter. Howmuchsoever the characters of chil-
dren may appear unlike those of the parents
they resemble, yet will this dissimilarity be
found to originate in external circumstances,
and the variety of these must be great indeed,
if the difference of character be not, at length,
overjiowered by the resemblance of form.

From the strongly delineated fatlier, I be-
lieve, the firmness and the kind (I do not say
the form, but the kind) of bones and muscles
is derived; and from the strongly delineated
mother the kind of nerves and form of the coun-
tenance ; if the imagination and love of the
mother have not fixed themselves too deeply in
the countenance of the man.

Certain forms of countenance in children
appear for a time undecided whether they shall
take the resemblance of the father or of the
mother ; in which case I will grant that exter-
nal circumstances, preponderating love for the
father or mother, or a greater degree of inter-
coarse with either, may influence the form.

We sometimes see children who long retain
a remarkable resemblance to the father, but, at
length, change and become more like the mo-
ther.

I undertake not to expound the least of the
difficulties that occur on this subject, but the
most modest philosophy may be permitted to
compare uncommon cases with those which are
known, even though they too should be inex-
plicable ; and this I believe is all that philosophy
can and ought to do.

We know that all longing, or mother-marks,
and whatever may be considered as of the
same nature, which is much, do not proceed
from the father, but from the imagination of the
mother. We also know that children most re-
semble the father only when the mother has a
very lively imagination, and love for, or fear of,
the husband; therefore, as has been before ob-
served, it appears tliat the matter and quantum
of the power and of the life, proceed from the
father ; and from the imagination of the mother
sensibility, the kind of nerves, the form, and
the outward appearance.

If, therefore, in a certain decisive moment,
the imagination of the mother should suddenly
pass from the image of her husband to her own
2a

image, it might, perhaps, occasion a resemblance
of the child, first to the father, and, afterward,
to the mother.

There are certain forms and features of -coun-
tenance which are long propagated, and others
which as suddenly disappear. Tlie beautiful
and the deformed (I do not say forms of coun-
tenance, but what is generally supposed to be
beauty and deformity) are not the most easily
propagated ; neither are the middling and in-
significant ; but the great and the minute are
easily inherited, and of long duration.

Parents with small noses may have children
with the largest and strongest defined ; but the
father or mother seldom, on the contrary, have
a very strong, that is to say, large-boned nose,
which is not communicated, at least to one of
their children, and which does not remain in
the family, especially when it is in the female
line. It may seem to have been lost for many
years, but, soon or late, will again make its ap-
pearance, and its resemblance to the original
will be particularly visible a day or two after
death.

If the eyes of the mother have any extraor-
dinary vivacity, there is almost a certainty that
these eyes will become hereditary ; for the
imagination of the mother is delighted with
nothing so much as with the beauty of her own
eyes. Physiognomonical sensation has been,
hitherto, much more generally directed to the
eyes than to the nose and form of the face ;
but, if women should once be induced to ex-
amine the nose, and form of the face, as as-
siduously as they have dorje their eyes, it is to
be expected that the former will be no less
strikingly hereditary than the latter.

Short and well-arched foreheads are easy of
inheritance, but not of long duration ; and here
the proverb is applicable. Quod cito fit, cito perit.
(Soon got, soon gone.)

It is equally certain and inexplicable, that
some remarkable physiognomies, of the most
fruitful persons, have been wholly lost to their
posterity ; and it is as certain and inexplicable
that others are never lost.

Nor is it less remarkable that certain strong
countenances, of the father or mother, disappear
in the children and revive fully in the grand-
children.

As a proof of the power of the imagination
of the mother, we sometimes see that a woman
shall have children by her second husband
that shall resemble the first, at least in the
general appearance. The Italians, however,
are manifestly too extravagant when they sup-
pose children that strongly resemble their father
are base born. They say that the imagination of
the mother, during the commission of a crime so
shameful, is wholly occupied with the possibility
of surprise by, and of course with the image of,
her husband. But, were this fear so to act, the
form of the children must not only have the
very image of the father, but also his appearance
of rage and revenge ; without which, the adulter-

202

LAVATER.

ous wife could not imagine the being surprised
by, or image of, her husband. It is this ap-
pearance, this rage, that she fears, and not tlie
man.

Natural children generally resemble one of
their jiarents more than the legitimate.

The more there is of individual love, of pure,
faithful, mild affection ; the more this love is
reciprocal, and vmconstrained, between the
father and mother, which reciprocal love and
all'ection implies a certain degree of imagi-
nation, and tlie capacity of receiving impres-
sions, the more will the countenances of the
children appear to be composed of the features
of the parents.

The sanguine of all the temperaments is the
most easily inherited and with it, volatility;
which, when once introduced, will require
great exertion and sutfering for its extermina-
tion.

The natural timidity of the mother may
easily communicate the melancholy tempera-
ment of the father. Be it understood that this
is easy, if, in the decisive moment, the mother
be suddenly seized by some predominant fear ;
and that it is less communicable when the fear
is less hasty, and more reflective. Thus we
find those mothers, who, during the whole time
of their pregnancy, are most in dread of pro-
ducing monstrous, or marked children, because
they remember to have seen objects that ex-
cited abhorrence, generally have the best form-
ed, and freest from marks ; for the fear, though
real, was the fear of reflection, and not the sud-
den effect of an object exciting abhorrence,
rising instantaneously to sight.

Wlien both f)arents have given a deep root
to the choleric temperament in a family, it may
probably be some centuries before it be again
moderated. Phlegm is not so easily inherited,
even though both father and mother should be
phlegmatic, for there are certain moments of
life when the phlegmatic acts with its whole
powers, although it acts thus but rarely, and
these moments may, and must, have their ef-
fects ; but nothing appears more easy of in-
heritance than activity and industry, when these
have their origin in organization, and the neces-
sity of producing alteration. It will be long
before an industrious couple, to whom not only
a livelihood, but business is, in itself, necessary,
shall not have a single descendant with the like
quality of industry, as such mothers are gene-
rally prolific.

OBSEllVATIONS ON THE DUNG AND THE BEAD.

I have seen one man of fifty, another of
seventy years of age, who during life appeared
not to have the least resemblance to their sons,
and whose countenances seemed to be of a
quite diiferent class ; yet, the second day after
death, the profile of the one had a striking re-
semblance to the profile of his eldest, and that
of the other, to the profile of his third son;
stronger, indeed, and as a painter would say,

harder. On the third day, a part of the resem-
blance disappeared.

Of the many dead persons I have seen, 1
have uniformly observed that sixteen, eighteen,
or twenty-four hours, after death (according to
the disease), they have had a more beautiful
form, better defined, more proportionate, har-
monized, homogeneous, more noble, more ex-
alted, than they ever had during life.

May there not be, thought I, in all men an
original physiognomy, subject to be disturbed by
the ebb and flow of accident and passion, and
is not this restored by the calm of death, as
troubled waters, being again left at rest, be-
come clear ?

Among the dying, I have observed some who
have been the reverse of noble or great during
life, and who, some hours before their death, or
perhaps some moments (one was in a delirium),
have shown an inexpressible ennobling of the
countenance. Everybody saw a new man;
colouring, drawing, and grace, all was new, all
bright, as the morning ; heavenly ; beyond ex-
pression, noble, and exalted ; the most inatten-
tive must see, the most insensible feel, the image
of God. I saw it break forth and shine through
the ruins of corruption, was obliged to turn
aside in silence and adore. Yes, glorious Gotl !
still art thou there, in the weakest, most fallible
men ! .

OF THE INFLTTENCE OF COUNTENANCE ON
COUNTENANCE.

As the gestures of our friends and intimates
often become our own, so, in like manner, does
their appearance. Whatever we love we would
assimilate to ourselves; and whatever, in the
circle of affection, does not change us into
itself, that we change, as far as may be, into
ourselves.

All things act upon us, and we act upon all
things ; but nothing has so much influence as
what we love ; and among all objects of afiec-
tion, nothing acts so forcibly as the countenance
of man. Its conformity to our countenance
makes it most worthy our affection. How could
it act upon, how attract our attention, had it not
some marks, discoverable or undiscoverable,
similar to, at least of the same kind with, the
form and features of our own countenance 1

Without, however, wishing farther to pene-
trate what is impenetrable, or to define what is
inscrutable, the fact is indubitable that counte-
nances attract countenances, and also that coun-
tenances repel countenances ; that similarity of
features between two sympathetic and affec-
tionate men increases with the development,
and mutual communication, of their peculiar,
individual, sensations. The reflection, if I may
so say, of the person beloved, remains upon the
countenance of the aflectionate.

The resemblance frequently exists only in a
single point, — in the character of mind and
countenance.

LAVATER.

203

A resemblance in the system of the bones
presupposes a resemblance of the nerves and
muscles.

Dissimilar education may aifect the latter so
much that the point of attraction may be invisi-
ble to unphysiognomonical eyes. — Suffer the two
resembling forms to approach, and they will
reciprocally attract and repel each other ; re-
move every intervening obstacle, and nature
will soon prevail. They will recognize each
other, and rejoice in the flesh of their flesh,
and the bone of their bone; with hasty steps
will proceed to assimilate. Countenances, also,
which are very different from each other, may
communicate, attract, and acquire resemblance:
nay, their likeness may become more striking
than that of the former, if they happen to be
more flexible, more capable, and to have greater
sensibility.

This resemblance of features, in consecj^uence
of mutual affection, is ever the result of internal
nature and organization, therefore of the cha-
racter of the i^ersons. It ever has its foundation
in a preceding, jierhaps imperceptible resem-
blance, which might never have been animated,
or suspected, had it not been set in motion by
the presence of the sympathetic being.

It would be of infinite importance to give the
characters of those countenances which most
easily receive and communicate resemblance.
It cannot but be known that there are counte-
nances which attract all, others that repel all,
and a third kind which are indifferent. The
all -repelling render the ignoble countenances,
over which they have continued influence, more
ignoble. The indifferent allows no change. The
all-attracting either receive, give, or recijirocally
give and receive. The first change a little, the
second more, the third most. "These are the
souls," says Hemsterhuys the younger, " which
happily, or unhappily, add the most exquisite
discernment to that excessive internal elasticity
which occasions them to wish and feel immo-
derately; that is to say, the souls which are so
modified, or situated, that their attractive force
meets the fewest obstacles in its progress."

It would be of the utmost importance to study
this influence of countenance, this intercourse
of mind. I have found the progress of resem-
blance most remarkable when two persons, the
one richly communicative, the other apt to re-
ceive, have lived a considerable time together,
without foreign intervention ; when he who gave
had given all, or he who received could receive
no more, physiognomonical resemblance, if I so
dare say, had attained its punctum saturationis.
It was incapable of farther increase.

A word here to thee, youth, irritable and easy
to be won. Oh ! pause, consider, throw not thy-
self too hastily into the arms of a friend un-
tried. A gleam of sympathy and resemblance
may easily deceive thee. If the man who is thy
second self have not yet appeared, be not rash;
thou shalt find him at the appointed hour. Be-
ing found, he will attract thee to himself, will

give and receive whatever is communicable.
The ardour of his eyes will nurture thine, and
the gentleness of his voice will temper thy too
piercing tones. His love will shine in thy coun-
tenance, and his image will ajipear in thee.
Thou wilt become what he is, and yet remain
what thou art. Aflection will make qualities in
him visible to thee which never could be seen
by an uninterested eye. This capability of re-
marking, of feeling what there is of divine in
him, is a power which will make thy counte-
nance assume his resemblance.

ON THE IXFLUENCE OF THE IMAGINATION ON
THE COUNTENANCE.

A word only, on a subject concerning which
volumes might be written, for it is a subject I
must not leave wholly in silence. The little,
the nothing, I have to say upon it, can only act
as an inducement to deeper meditation on a
theme so profound.

Imagination acts upon our own countenance,
rendering it in some measure resembling the
beloved or hated image, which is living, pre-
sent, and fleeting before us, and is within the
circle of our immediate activity. If a man,
deeply in love, and supposing himself alone,
were ruminating on his beloved mistress, to
whom his imagination might lend charms,
which, if present, he would be unable to dis-
cover,— were such a man observed by a person
of penetration, it is i^robable that traits of the
mistress might be seen in the countenance of
this meditating lover. So might, in the cruel
features of revenge, the features of the enemy
be read, whom imagination represents as pre-
sent. And thus is the countenance a picture of
the characteristic features of all persons ex-
ceedingly loved or hated. It is possible that an
eye less penetrating than that of an angel may
read the image of the Creator in the countenance
of a truly pious person. He who languishes after
Christ, the more lively, the more distinctly, the
more sublimely, he represents to himself the
very presence and image of Christ, the greater
resemblance will his own countenance take of
this image. The image of imagination often
acts more effectually than the real presence;
and whoever has seen him of whom we speak,
the great HIM, though it were but an instanta-
neous glimpse. Oh! how incessantly will the
imagination reproduce his image in the coun-
tenance !

Our imagination also acts upon other counte-
nances. The imagination of the mother acts
upon the child. Hence men have long attempted
to influence the imagination for the production
of beautiful children. In my opinion, however,
it is not so much the beauty of surrounding
forms as the interest taken concerning forms, in
certain moments ; and here, again, it is not so
much the imagination that acts as the spirit, that
being only the organ of the spirit. Thus it is
true that it is the spirit that quickeneih. ike flesh
and the image of the flesh, .merely considered

204

LAVATER.

as such, profiteth nothing. A look of love, from
the sanctuary of the soul, has, certainly, greater
forming powers than hours of deliberate con-
templation of the most beautiful images. This
forming look, if so I may call it, can as little be
premeditatedly given as any other naturally
beautiful form can be imparted by a studious
conte'mi)lation in the looking-glass. All that
creates and is profoundly active in the inner
man, must be internal, and be communicated
from aljove; as I believe it suffers itself not to
be occasioned, at least not by forethought, cir-
cumspection, or wisdom in the agent to produce
such effects. Beautiful forms, or abortions, are
neither of them the work of art or study, but of
intervening causes, of the quick-guiding provi-
dence, the predetermining God.

Instead of the senses, endeavour to act upon
affection. If thou canst but incite love, it will
of itself seek and find the powers of creation.
But this very love must itself be innate before
it can be awakened. Perhaps, however, the
moment of this awakening is not in our power;
and, therefore, to those who would, by plan and
method, effect that which is in itself so extraor-
dinary, and imagine they have had I know not
what wise and physiological circumspection
when they first awaken love, I might exclaim
in the words of the enraptured singer : " I charge
you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes
and the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up
nor awake my love till he please." — Here, be-
hold thy forming Genius. — " Behold he cometh,
leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the
hills, like a young hart." (Song of Sol. chap. ii.
7, 8, 9.)

Moments unforeseen, rapid as the lightning,
in my opinion, form and deform. Creation, of
whatever kind, is momentaneous: the develop-
ment, nutriment, change, improving, injuring, is
the work of time, art, industry, and education.
Creative power suffers not itself to be studied.
Creation cannot be meditated. Masks may be
moulded, but living essence, within and without
resembling itself, the image of God, must be
created, born, "not of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God."

MALE AND FEMALE.

In general (for I neither can nor will state
anything but what is most known) how much
more pure, tender, delicate, irritable, atfection-
ate, flexible, and patient, is woman than man !

The primary matter of which she is con-
stituted api^cars to be more flexible, irritable,
and elastic than that of man.

Women are formed to maternal mildness, and
affection ; all their organs are tender, yielding,
easily wounded, sensible, and receptible.

Among a thousand females there is scarcely
one without the genuine feminine signs; the
flexible, the round, and the irritable.

They are the counterpart of man, taken out
of man, to be subject to man; to comfort him
like angels, and to lighten his cares. " She shall

be saved in child-bearing, if they continue in
faith, and charity, and holiness, with sobriety."
(1 Tim. ii. 15.)

This tenderness, this sensibility, this light
texture of their fibres and organs, this volatility
of feeling renders them so easy to guide and
to tempt; so ready to submit to the enter-
prise and power of the man; but more power-
ful through the aid of their charms than man,
with all his strength. The man was not first
tempted, but the woman, afterward the man
by the woman.

But, not only easily to be tempted, she is ca-
pable of being formed to the purest, noblest,
most seraphic virtue; to everything wliich can
deserve praise or affection.

Highly sensible of purity, beauty, and sym-
metry, she does not always take time to reflect
on internal life, internal death, internal corrup-
tion. "The woman saw that the tree was good
for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, and
she took of the fruit thereof" (Gen. iii. 6.)

The female thinks not profoundly ; profound
thought is the power of the man.

Women feel more. Sensibility is the power
of woman.

They often rule more effectually, more sove-
reignly, than man. They rule with tender looks,
tears, and sighs ; but not with passion and
threats; for if, or when, they so rule, they are
no longer women, but abortions.

They are capable of the sweetest sensibility,
the most profound emotion, the utmost humility,
and the excess of enthusiasm.

In their countenance are the signs of sanctity
and inviolability, which every feeling man ho-
nours, and the effects of which are often mira-
culous.

Therefore, by the irritability of their nerves,
their incapacity for deep inquiry and firm deci-
sion, they may easily, from their extreme sensi-
bility, become the most irreclaimable, the most
rapturous enthusiasts.

Their love, strong and rooted as it is, is very
changeable ; their hatred almost incurable, and
only to be eflaced by continued and artful flat-
tery. Men are most profound ; women are
more sublime.

Men most embrace the whole ; womicn re-
mark individually, and take more delight in
selecting the minutire which form the whole.
Man hears the bursting thunder, views the de-
structive bolt with serene aspect, and stands
erect amidst the fearful majesty of the stream-
ing clouds.

Woman trembles at the lightning, and the
voice of distant thunder; and shrinks into her-
self, or sinks into the arms of man.

Man receives a ray of light single, woman
delights to view it through a prism, in all its
dazzling colours. She contemplates the rain-
bow as the promise of peace ; he extends his
inquiring eye over the whole horizon.

Woman laughs, man smiles ; woman weeps,

LAVATER.

205

man remains silent. Woman is in anguish
when man weeps, and in despair when man is
in anguish ; yet has she often more faith than
man.

Man without religion is a diseased creature,
who would persuade himself he is well and
needs not a physician; but woman without re-
ligion is raging and monstrous.

A woman with a beard is not so disgusting
as a woman who acts the free-thinker ; her sex is
formed for piety and religion ; to women Christ
first appeared ; but he was obliged to prevent
them from too ardently and too hastily em-
bracing him. — Touch me not. They are prompt
to receive and seize novelty, and become its
enthusiasts.

The whole world is forgotten in the emotion
causeil by the presence and proximity of him
they love.

They sink into the most incurable melan-
choly, as they also rise to the most enraptured
heights.

The feelings of the man are more imagina-
tion ; those of the female more heart.

When communicative, they are more commu-
nicative than man ; when secret, more secret.

In general they are more patient, long-suffer-
ing, credulous, benevolent, and modest.

Woman is not a foundation on which to build.
She is the gold, silver, precious stones, wood,
hay, stubble (1 Cor. iii. 12); the materials for
building on the male foundation. She is the
leaven, or, more expressively, the oil to the vine-
gar of man ; the second part of the book of man.

Mail, singly, is but half man; at least but
half human, — a king without a kingdom. Wo-

man, v/ho feels properly what she is, whether
still or in motion, rests upon the man ; nor is
man what he may and ought to be but in con-
junction with woman. Therefore, " It is not
good that man should be alone, but that he
should leave father and mother and cleave to
his wife, and they two shall be one flesh."

A WORD ON THE PHTSIOGSOMICAI, HELATION OF
THE SEXES.

Man is the most firm — woman the most flex-
ible.

]Man is the straightest — woman the most
bending.

Man stands steadfast — woman gently trips.

Man surveys and observes — woman glances
and feels.

Man is serious — woman is gay.

Man is the tallest and broadest — woman less
and taper.

Man is rough and hard — woman smooth and
soft.

Man is brown — woman is fair.

Man is wrinkly — woman less so.

The hair of man is more strong and short —
of woman longer and more pliant.

The eyebrows of man are compressed — of
woman less frowning.

Man has most convex lines — woman most
concave.

Man has most straight lines ^ woman most
curved.

The countenance of man, taken in profile, is
more seldom perpendicular than that of the
woman.

Man is most angular — woman most round.

18

FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBI.

B-Jrn 1743. Diea 1S19.

A DEVOUT soul, a penetrating intellect, — poet
and philosoplier in one. Jacobi has been called, by
some, the " German Plato," in honour of the high
religious tone which characterizes his writings.
Born at Diisseldorf, son of a merchant, he
was early devoted to the same calling by his
father, who sent him to Frankfort to be trained
for the counting-room and the exciiange. Here
his pious spirit and studious habits drew upon
him the ridicule of his companions, and fore-
told the future man. From Frankfort he went
to Geneva, where he addicted himself to lite-
rary pursuits, and particularly to the French
language and literature, while prosecuting the
mercantile training which his father had marked
out for him. After a residence of three years
in tliis place, he returned to Diisseldorf and en-
tered his father's establishment, whose business
he conducted faithfully, though reluctantly, for
several years. It was at this period that he mar-
ried Betty von Clermont, a lady of Aix-la-Cha-
pelle, who brought him wealth, together with
great personal and mental attractions. A pre-
ponderating taste for letters, and an appointment
under Government, which he received through
his friend and patron Count von Goltstein, in-
duced him to abandon his commercial engage-
ments ; and in 1779 he received a call, as Privy
Councillor, to Miinchen. But his exposure of tlie
abuses of the Bavarian system of customs v/as
attended with consequences which rendered
that post uncomfortable, and he retired to Pem-
pelfort, an estate which he had purchased in
the neighbourhood of Diisseldorf He here
applied himself with exclusive devotion to litera-
ture, and some of his best productions were
written during this period. Tlie death of his
beautiful and accomplished wife, of whom
Goethe speaks so enthusiastically in his me-
moirs, threw a gloom over this otherwise so
happy interspace of private life. He still con-
tinued his establishment at Pempelfort, with the
aid of the two maiden sisters so wittily cele-
brated by Fran von Arnim, until the progress
of the French revolution, wliose consequences
jegan to be felt in that region, impelled him to
move to the province of Holstein, the native

country of his father. He resided for some
time at Eutin, in this district, and in 1601
visited Paris. In 1S04 he was invited to the
newly-formed Academy of Sciences at Munich,
of which he was afterwards made president.
He w^as the rather induced to accept this invi-
tation on account of the loss of a considerable
part of his property by tiie misfortunes of his
brother-in-law. At the age of seventy he re-
signed tliis office, the salary of which was con-
tinued to him during the remainder of liis life.
He died, March 10th, 1819.

Jacobi is ranked, and justly, among the phi-
losophers of modern Germany, although his
philosophy, far from shaping itself into a sys-
tem, denies,— and that denial may be regarded
as one of its leading characteristics, — on philo-
sophical grounds, the possibility of a system,
and maintains, that any system of philosophy
carried to its legitimate -results must lead to
fanaticism. He vindicated the " afective" part
of man's nature, which the Kantian exaltation
of pure reason had seemed to disparage, at
least to neglect, and gave to feeling* its due
place and authority as a medium and interpreter
of truth. Kant had shown the impossibility of
absolute knowledge. Jacobi went farther, and
maintained that the knowledge of the impossi-
bility of absolute knowledge is also not absolute,
as Kant had seemed to represent it ; — that we
have but an imperfect understanding of our
own ignorance. He differed from contempo-
rary philosophers, in being a devout believer in
revelation, — in tlie Christian revelation. The
gospel was to him the test and criterion of all
truth. For the rest, he was an eclectic, and
welcomed light from whatsoever quarter it
came. In philosophical insight he is surpassed
by none, and though his fixed idea of the
impossibility of a systematic philosophy may
have somewhat vitiated his view of existing
philosophies, his criticisms on some of them
are among the best that have been essayed.

* Closely connected with this merit, is the distinction
between reason and tlie understanding, now so widely
accepted, whicli Jacobi was the first to point out, or, at
least, to make prominent,

(206)

JACOBI.

207

As a writer of German, in the opinion of the
author of this essay, lie handles the language
more skilfully than any of his contemporaries,
Goetiie only excepted. Many are more elo-
quent, but none (of the old school) possess his
ease and grace. Some of the later writers,
for example Heine, surpass him in this parti-
cular; but German rhetoric has undergone a
great change for the better during the last
thirty years. Of German philosophers, he is
the least obscure, and the one whose writings,
if translated, would prove most acceptable to
the English mind.

His principal works are, " Woldemar" and
"Alwill's Correspondence," two philosophical
novels, " Letters on Spinoza," " Of Divine
things and the revelation of them," " Letter to
Fichte," " David Hume on faith, or Idealism and
Realism."

On the whole, as Wieland has been denomi-
nated the Frenchman among German writers,
so, and with greater justice, Jacobi may be
termed English-German. Li his strong prac-
tical tendency, and especially in his cautious,
unscientific, but severely critical, not profound,
but acute and ecclesiastical - mercantile way
of judging philosophical questions, he manifests
an affinity with tiie English mind which is not
to be found, to the same extent, in any of his
countrymen.

This is Mrs. Austin's view of him. " As a
writer of fiction, he is distinguished for vigor-
ous painting, admirable delineation of nature
and the human heart, warmth and depth of
feeling, and a lively, bold, yet correct, turn of
expression. As a philosopher, he is admired
lor his rare depth of thought, (!) for the fervor
of his religious feelings, and the originality and
beauty of his style. At the same time, there
are few authors concerning whom opinions vary
more than concerning Jacobi. It seems as if
his works of imagination injured him with the
philosophers, and his philosophy with the poets.

" Jacobi's polemical merits were great. He
pointed out the chasms, the unconnectedness,
and the mischievous results of the prevalent
opinions with critical acuteness, and with all
the eloquence of a just aversion. With his
peculiar modes of thinking, it was natural that
he should not become the disciple of any other
philosopher, and that he should come into con-
flict alternately with the dogmatic Mendels-
sohn, the critical Kant, the idealistical Fichte,

and the pantheistical Schelling,* against the
latter of whom, indeed, he expressed himself
with too much bitterness. Jacobi's place among
the pure searchers after truth must, however,
remain for ever uncontested ; and his character
is rich in all that can attract the wise and
good."t

Bouterwek, one of the most capable and ju-
dicious critics of Germany, characterizes Ja-
cobi as follows': —

" This writer docs not belong to the perfectly
correct stylists, whose greatest merit, however,
oflen consists merely in elegant phrases and
turns of expression. But, like Herder and
Johannes Miiller, he towers above all other
German prosaists of his age in the powerful
and original manner in which he expresses his
thoughts. His style is the true image of his
mind. ******

" The supreme want of his heart was religion,
but a religion which should consist with reason.
By a severe criticism of the various metaphysi-
cal systems he had satisfied himself that no
religious truth is susceptible of metaphysical
demonstration ; but also that Reason, by means
of which man becomes capable of the idea of
truth, is a higher principle in our mind than
the mere understanding which forms general
conceptions and combines them in judgments
from which we draw conclusions. Reason, ac-
cording to his view, included that same element
o^ feeling, of which he could not divest himself
in his search after pure truth. Nevertheless,
there never perhaps was an understanding more
clear and incorruptible than his. * * * *

" Jacobi's style is not laconic but pregnant.
Every principal word has a deeply considered
and sharply determined signification. Notwith-
standing its easy and graceful turns, it exhibits
no trace of flightiness. Not unfrequently it
possesses a very agreeable rotundity. In his
syntax he allows himself some liberties which
are not common, but which have already been
imitated by other writers, and which promote
distinctness and force of expression. That
Jacobi, ever intent on the most fitting expres-
sion, should have discovered in the German
language some turns peculiar to it and hitherto
little used, is the more remarkable, since, like
Johannes Miiller, he had received, in his youth,
a part of his education in Geneva, and had

* See the "Conversations-Lexicon." Art. Jacobi. Ed.
t Mrs. Austin's "German Prose Writers."

208

JACOBI.

become master of the French language as no
philosophical writer in Germany, beside him-
self, is known to have been, since Leibnitz."*

What Goethe thougiit and hoped of Jacobi
when both were young, may be seen from the
following account which he gives of their meet-
ing:

"Although the poetical mode of presentation
occupied me chiefly and was properly congenial
with my nature, yet reflections on subjects of
every kind were not strange to me, and Jacobi's
original and constitutional direction toward the
inscrutable, was, in the highest degree, wel-
come and genial. Here, there was no contro-
versy— neither a Christian one, as with Lavater,
nor a didactic one, as with Basedow. The
thoughts which Jacobi communicated to me
sprung immediately from his feelings; and how
peculiarly was I penetrated when, with un-
conditioned confidence, he hid not from me
tlie deepest demands of his soul ! From so
wondrous a combination of want, passion and
ideas, there could arise, for me also, only fore-
feelings of that whicli perhaps would be clearer
to me at some future time. Happily I too had
— if not cultivated — yet worked my nature on
this side, and had received into myself the be-
ing and the way-of-th inking of an extraordinary
man, imperfectly indeed, and as it were sur-
reptitiously; but I was already experiencing
therefrom the most important consequences.
This mind which wrought so decidedly upon
me, and which was t'o have so great an influ-
ence upon my whole way of thinking, was
Spinoza. Namely, after I had looked about in
all the world in vain for some means of form-
ing my strange nature, I chanced at last on
that man's "Ethics." Of what I may have
read for myself out of that work, or of what I
may have read into it, I can give no account.
Enough, I found here a sedative for my passions ;
a large and free view of the sensual and moral
world seemed to open itself before me. But
what especially chained me to him, was the
boundless disinterestedness which shone forth
from every proposition. That wonderful word :
" Whoso loveth God aright, must not demand
that God should love him in return," with all
the premises on which it rests, and all the con-
sequences that flow from it, filled entirely my
meditation. To be disinterested in all, and

* Bouterwek's " Oeschichte der Poesie und Bcrcdsam-
keit," quoted by Wolff.

most disinterested in love and friendship, was
my highest joy, my maxim, my exercise ; so
that that petulant later saying : " If I love thee,
wliat's that to thee," is spoken from my very
heart. For the rest, here also let it not be
overlooked, that the most intimate connections
spring from opposition. The all-composing
quietism of Spinoza contrasted with my all-
upstirring endeavor ; his mathematical method
was the antagonist to my poetical way of feel-
ing and presenting; and precisely that ruled
mode of treatment, which was thought not
suitable to moral subjects, made me his pas-
sionate disciple, his most decided adorer. Mind
and heart, understanding and sentiment, sought
each otiier with necessary, elective affinity ;
and by this means a union of the most dissimi-
lar natures was brought about.

" All this was still in the first stage of action
and reaction, fermenting and seething. Fred.
Jacobi, the first one whom I permitted to look
into this chaos, he, whose nature was also
laboring in the deepest, heartily accepted my
confidence, returned it, and sought to guide me
into his way of thinking. He too felt an un-
speakable spiritual want ; he too would not
have it silenced by foreign aid, but satisfied by
development and light from within. What he
imparted to me of the state of his mind T could
not comprehend, the rather because I could
form no conception of my own. But he, who
had advanced so far before me in philosophical
thinking and even in the study of Spinoza, en-
deavored to guide and enlighten my dark
striving. Such a pure, spiritual affinity, was
new to me, and awakened a passionate longing
for further communication. At night, after we
had already parted and withdrawn into our
sleeping-apartments, I would seek him again.
The moonshine trembled on the broad Rhine ;
and we, standing at the window, revelled in
the fulness of reciprocal giving and receiving
which swells forth so richly in that glorious
period of development. * * * *

** * **%**

" Then, when I returned to my friend Jacobi,
I enjoyed the rapturous feeling of a union
through the innermost mind. We were both
animated by the liveliest hope of a common
activity. I vehemently urged him to set forth
vigorously, in some form or other, all that was
moving and working within him. It was the
means by which I had extricated myself from

JACOBI.

209

so many perplexities, and I hoped that it would
prove effectual with him also. He delayed not
to seize it with spirit ; and how much that is
good, beautiful and heart-rejoicing has he not
produced !

" And so we parted, at last, with the blessed

feeling of eternal union, without any fore-feel-
ing that our striving would take opposite direc-
tions, as, in the course of life, was but too
manifest."*

* " Aus meinem Ltien." Part third. Book fourteenth.

FROM THE "FLYING LEAVES."

]\Ir aim is not to help the reader while away
the time, but rather to aid those to whom, as to
me, the time is already too fleeting.

I can live in harmony with every one who
lives in harmony with himself.

What dost thou call a beautiful soul 1 Thou
callest a beautiful soul one that is quick to per-
ceive the good, that gives it due prominence and
holds it immovably fast.

It is absurd for a man to say that he hates
and despises men, but loves and honours Hu-
manity. A general without a particular, a
Humanity worthy of honour and love without
men who are worthy of honour and love, is a
fiction of the brain, a thing that has no exist-
ence.

It is the custom of virtue to note the failings
of distinguished men not otherwise than with a
certain timidity and shame. It is the custom
of vice to cover impudence with the appellation
of love of truth.

To lay aside all prejudices is to lay aside all
principles. He who is destitute of principles
is governed, theoretically and practically, by
whims.

I\Ian, according to Moses, was created last ; all
the varieties of irrational animals were created
before him. This order is still repeated in each
individual man. He follows first the animal, the
coarser propensities,— coarse, animal pleasure;
but he is created for immortality, and can find
the way to immortality. But he can also become
more beastly than a beast, and use the means
of immortality in such a way as to become
more mortal, — as to draw upon himself suffer-
ings and diseases from which the brute is free.
He can " with the armour of light extend the
kingdom of darkness and of barbarism." Herder,
in his ^'-Aelteste Urkundc,'" remarks that Adam,
after the Fall, clothed himself in the life of ani-
mals. Man is guided by propensities, and all
his propensities belong to his nature. But the
propensity which makes him man, which dis-
tinguishes him, is the true life-propensity proper
to his species, — the propensity to a higher life.

2b

Even in the mere faculty of perception, which
may be regarded as opposed to the faculty of
sensation, this propensity appears. For the
faculty of perception, the power of projecting
objects out of himself, of raising himself above
them in order to contemplate them, is objective,
and is the foundation of the regal dignity of
man. It strikes tlie first spark of a love which
differs so widely from what we call lust that it
is capable of resisting and overcoming that lust.
The earnest observer finds everywhere, from
first to last, the same economy. But the inner-
most essence of the purely human propensity, —
as the proper seat of liberty, as the mystery of
substance, — is inscrutable for us.

There is no one thing in the world for which
we can conceive an interest and a love that
shall endure forever. Therefore fidelity is re-
quired of us, and a firm intent which the soul
must be able to create for itself. He who learns
this acquires freedom ; acquires something of
that great property, the property of having life
in himself, which is the true philosopher's stone.

The secret of the moral sense and feeling is
the secret of everlasting life, in contradistinction
to our present existence, which is fleeting how-
ever we may strive against it, and leads to
death. In moral feeling there is a presentiment
of eternity. I know nothing sublimer and pro-
founder than the saying of the New Testament,
" Our life is hid in Christ (the God-man) with
God."' Unquestionably, our life, if there is any
true life in us, is hidden deep within us. Never-
theless it commands, apodictically,* its own
preservation; commands that we bring it forth
to the light. Faith and experience, therefore,
are the only way by which we can arrive at
the knowledge of the truth. True, it is a mys-
tic, and to brutalism altogether intolerable, way.
We must be able to inflict pain upon ourselves
if we would attain to virtue and honour. Cou-
rage, resolution, is, above all things, necessary
to man.

What is it that we admire in a Bayard, a
Montrose, a Ruyter, a Douglas, in the friends of
Cimon, who offered themselves up at Tanagra?
We admire this in them, that they did not doat
on the body but lived exclusively the life of the

* Jlpodiktisch, equivalent to absolutely ; from the Greek
a-nohiKvvm, to demonstrate ; also, to appoint, to require
by law. Tr.

18*

210

JACOBI.

soul. They were not what accident would
Hiiake of them, but what they themselves had
resolved to be. He to whom the law, which he
is to follow, does not stand forth as a God, has
only a dead letter which cannot possibly quicken
him.

Every aptitude to an end is a virtue. The
inquiry after the highest virtue is an inquiry
after the highest end. The rank of the virtues
must therefore be determined according to the
rank of the ends. To discover the system of
ends it is necessary to ascertain what is the des-
tination of man, his highest and ultimate aim.

The wise man is known by the choice of the
ends which he proposes to himself; the prudent
man is known by the choice of the means by
which he attains his ends, whether they be wise
or unwise. But how are the ends themselves
to be known 1 Is the choice of the wisest to
decide ? Then we cannot say, as we have just
sa,id, that the wise man is known by his ends.
Semper idem vellc atque idem nolle. But what
is tliis one, and the same which is to be always
willed ? It is the glory of God.

It is agreeable to the dignity of man to hold
his passions in subjection, to govern them.
But the feeling of dignity does not consist in
the governing as such, but in that whereby we
govern, in the consciousness of a higher destina-
tion. Man knows a higher good; this it is that
overcomes, not his will.

Every activity jiroposes to itself a passivity,
every labour enjoyment. But every enjoyment
jiresupposes a want; when that is satisfied, the
enjoyment ends. AH pleasure is necessarily
transient.

We enjoy ourself, however, only in our work,
in our doing, and our best enjoyment is our best
doing. ■

Man imputes to himself the ability to be con-
stant by his own projjer force, and places his
honour in that ability. A man of his word, and
a man of honor are synonymous terms. He
who can embrace a purpose and persist in it,
who can act from a resolve, unsupported by
present inclination, nay, even in opposition to
present inclination, emotion, or passion, of him
we say, " he has character," " he is a man." We
despise the man who is always only what
things, accidents, circumstances, make of him ;
the fickle, the inconstant, the wavering. We
honour him who can resist objects and the im-
pressions which they make upon him, who
knows how to maintain his self in the iace of
them, who lets himself be instructed but not
changed by them.

To believe in humanity, to trust a friend un-
conditionally, we call great and noble. Want
of faith, doubt, suspicion, have something little,

ignoble ; they originate in fear. A noble and
courageous mind then believes and confides. It
believes and confides not because it is a good
calculator ; its faith, its confidence, is power of
feeling, not a cold exercise of the understanding.
On the contrary, this power is opposed to the
understanding inasmuch as it raises itself above
it.

When man abides in the creature, he sinks
behind and before into nothing.

When feeling and sentiment vanish, words
and ceremonies remain and make themselves
important.

Where morals are, there reason reigns over
sense. And, vice versa, where reason begins
to obtain the ascendency over sense, there morals
arise.

The first step in the corruption of morals is
no longer to regard public opinion ; the last step
is tlie absence of public opinion. Every one
does, then, what pleases him ; to every one it
seems right to follow his own lusts. Morals
have ceased from the land.

Have not all virtues sprung up before they
had either name or precept? The book of life
must be written before an index can be affixed
to it. Our moral philosophies are such indexes
made after the book; and they are generally
made by men who understand nothing of the
book. Others, who also understand nothing of
it, think that the index is the basis of the book,
and the art of referring to it the true art of life.
But they always refer to it for others, not for
themselves. . ■ ,

Life is not a particular form of body, but the
body is a jjarticular form of life. The body
relates to the soul as the word to the thought.

The essence of reason consists in self-percep-
tion. It returns into self. That which it per-
ceives, so far as it is conditioned by sense, it
calls nature. That which it perceives, so far
as it is not conditioned by sense, it calls the
Divine Being.

True enlightenment is that which teaches
man that he is a law to himself. True culture
is that which accustoms him to obey this law
without regard to reward and punishment.

In an age in which the good and the true are
considered as two different and often conflict-
ing things, every thing must conflict.

All laws, considered in the origin of their
power, are despotic. Sic volo sic jubeo. Laws
of the will are not laws which the will receives,
but laws which the will gives. There is no-
thing above the will ; in it is original life. How
should a law be able to produce a will 1 Where

JACOJBI.

211

this seems to be the case, a law-giving will is
already presupposed, which, in that particular
instance, appears as executive power.

" Peace is the masterpiece of reason," says
Joliann Miiller. This is true, not only in re-
gard to civil polity, but in every regard.

It is not truth, justice, liberty, which men
seek; they seek only themselves. And O! that
they knew how to seek themselves aright!

What have not men tried and applied in
order to guaranty to each other reciprocally,
their identity, — the being and enduring of their
I. All civil order has this for its first and last
object, that the will of to-day may be valid also
to-morrow. Hence, religion has been held so
sacred among all nations. They fixed by means
of it the change ahleness of their nature.

He who cannot help himself seeks protection
from others in return for service, subjection, all
kinds of acknowledgment. Thus arose magis-
trates, judges, Isaders. Right was sought first
with the stronger ; he helped to find it. The
first natural potentates were fathers, afterwards
patriarchs, — the patricians in Rome, later, free-
holders. He who could help himself was more
highly esteemed than he who was forced to
seek help from others. Hence, it has come to
pass that down to the present day, men boast
more of strength than of justice, for justice
makes equal.

So soon as man begins to believe in others no
more than he believes in himself, all Gouverne-
mcnt de confiance is at an end.

The aim of civil polities, so far as they are
grounded in reason, is to give to pure, practical
reason a body. Systems of ethics alone cannot
do that. Reason must be expressed outwardly,
embodied in external institutions, which serve,
as far as possible, to supply the place of peculiar
power, — its self-existence

Man esteems human feelings higher than the
express laws by which it is intended to govern
those feelings. He makes the love of parents,
of children, tlie love of friends, fidelity, com-
passion, the basis of all duties; not only tole-
rating exceptions from the law on their account,
but even reproving the strength of mind which
exalts itself above every feeling by means of
ideas.

As a counteriance is made beautiful by the
soul's shining through it, so the world is beauti-
ful by the shining through it of a God.

As my own self is present to me in an in-
comj)rehensible manner, so God is present to
me likewise, in au incomprehensible man-
ner.

Instinct harmonizes the interior of animals.
Religion the interior of man.

Through the dark of world-events there
sometimes dart lightnings which tear asimder
the clouds and discover heaven, the dwelling
of God. In the heart of man, in his spirit,
these lightnings are kindled and shoot upward.

Man as a finite being must everywhere make
nature — finiteuess — his foundation. He would
not free himself from nature, but free his nature,
or at least endue it with freedom.

Certain as it is that we live in time as our
element, and cannot, for a moment, imagine
ourselves out of time, without likewise ima-
gining the cessation of our being ; we can as
little conceive ourselves as children of time
and our existence as given in time alone. On
the contrary, we have a niost intense conscious-
ness of something beyond time. In ourselves
we call it self, out of ourselves, God ; but that
which is in time ^ve call nature or the perish-
able. Every perishable is given in an imperish-
able, and presupposes it, or it could not be.
We live thereby that we continually interrupt
eternity and make a beginning and an end.

Nothing terrifies man so much, nothing brings
such gloom over his spirit, as when, to his ap-
prehension, God vanishes out of Nature, as
when God hides his face from him, as when
design, wisdom, goodness, do not appear to rule
in Nature, but only blind necessity or senseless
chance.

As man instinctively interprets the features,
gestures, and accents of his fellow-men, and
thus attains to language, even so he interprets
Nature instinctively also. As men originally
communicate, and understand one another by
expressions of their interior which have been
implanted by nature, not invented by them-
selves, so God communicates with the human,
race through his creation. Out of the natural
language between man and man there arises
an artificial one of arbitrary signs; and man
can so abuse this art, as by means of it to de-
ceive himself with regard to the original design.
So it is with religion which degenerates, in his
hands, into empty ceremonies, and at last into
irreligion.

Without religion, whither will ye flee for
safety, in a world full of death, full of pains,
full of warring passions? Envy with its com-
panions, slander and malice, assail you in every
situation, so soon as ye begin to take comfort in
it, so soon as ye begin, in any way, to distin-
guish yourselves in it. Wherever ye flee, in-
justice and wickedness are the stronger. Neither
are ye true to yourselves ; no inclination, no
purpose, no living and strengthening ti;ought
can ye hold fast at will. Ye summon in vain

212

JACOBI.

all the powers and faculties of the understand-
ing. The understanding can only elaborate, its
deliberative will can only unite here and sepa-
rate there what already is. What comfort,
therefore, unless the spirit can lift itself up to
something unchangeable, to something eternal?
unless it can embrace a faith which shall over-
come the world ? Perfect blessedness is no-
where, and nowhere would there be consola-
tion even, if religion were not. Everywhere
man must help himself with something. One
grasps at honour, another at pleasure, and de-
stroys his inner life. Religion only can purify
and deliver it.

Man is unceasingly employed in raising him-
self from the stuff to the form, from the actual
to the possible, from the world to God.

It is impossible to be a hero in any thing un-
less one is first a hero in faith.

The characteristic sign of genius is to forget
one's self by living in an idea. Life in an idea
must entirely swallow up the proper, natural
life. . ■ ■

As long as man forgets more slowly than he
learns, he advances. He ceases to advance, and
retrogrades, when he forgets sooner and more
than he can learn. >

With the approach of old age I experienced,
as never before, that the living spirit in man is
every thing, his knowledge nothing.

In love we exert ourselves to be all that we
can be, in the presence of the beloved object.
Through that we become acquainted with the
feeling of shame for ourselves in the highest
degree. In ordinary intimacies, the reverse is
found ; they help us to be less ashamed of our-
selves ; they put us at our ease ; we relax in
our intercourse with the friend, and precisely
in his presence are the least that we can be.

Unwillingly I assail, unwillingly I refute, not
only because I know from experience how little
truth is benefited thereby, but because the na-
ture of human knowledge itself convinces me
of the same thing. Before I can expose an er-
ror, I must be able to demonstrate the truth
which contradicts that error. Error in itself
is always invisible ; its nature is absence of
light.

That which is written in the taste of the times
needs no justification. Agreement supplies the
place of proofs ; whereas the most profound ojJ-
position awakens only anger.

Only those thoughts which the most profound
earnestness has produced and perfected, take a
cheerful form. They make a man joyful. This
is the secret of the Socratic irony. And hence

it is that the taste for genuine Socratic irony is
so rare.

A man of taste is one who feels the beautiful
immediately; who derives the feeling of the
beautiful immediately from the beautiful. Any
one who possesses a considerable degree of sa-
gacity and understanding may judge very cor-
rectly, up to a certain point, in accordance with
a received model; he may decide for others
whether a given work of art is beautiful or not;
he may determine the why and the degree of
its beauty. But because he can do this, he is
not therefore a man of taste, and not unfre-
quently he is guilty of gross error. The beau-
tiful has this in common with all original (na-
ture) that it is recognised without a mark. It
is, and manifests itself; it may be indicated but
not demonstrated.

We exhaust ourselves in the generation of our
intellectual oflspring. We weaken the power
of representation in ourselves by representing
for others ; so that, in a strict sense, we give
forth truth. What we comnlunicate, (make
common) of that we lose the proper possession.
***** We forget while
teaching others, and, with our disciples, we be-
come our own disciples by being obliged to
stoop to them. It may come to pass, that one
shall believe only that which one can succeed
in imparting to others. All this, however, is
true only of those labours in which truths are eli-
cited from the innermost soul. In all other
cases the "docendo discimus" holds good.

It happens to us with ideas* as with money.
The general sign is metamorphosed, in our im-
agination, into the thing itself; we prefer it to
that, the seemingly universal medium to each
particular end.j"

Avarice is a root of all evil.

We make ourselves giddy and sink down into
the centre of nothing, i. e. of positive falsehood,
when we undertake to restore from the under-
standing that which has perished as a feeling
from the heart.

Our mundane system is said to be composed
of the ruins of a sun. The dissecting, divelling
understanding, when it attempts to create, de-
vises only ruins. Man must annihilate a portion
of every knowledge in order to grasp it, for he

* ' Begriffe.n' Conceptions, perhaps, is a more lite-
ral rendering; concipio, cum-capio, that which is taken
togethtr in one act of the inind. Begreifen is to grasp to
take in, but begriff, as now used, lies between conception
and idea: more objective than the former, more subjec-
tive than the latter, in its original acceptation. Tr.

t Coleridge says, somewhere, that our conceptions may
be so adequate as to preclude the desire of realizing them.
This I take to be the sense of the above; this is that in-
tellectual avarice which contents itself with the means,
the representative of values, without attempting to re-
alize them in action. Tr.

JACOBI.

213

can grasp only with his conception ; he possesses
the thing only so far as he knows how to bring
it under a word.

Every mediate designation must have been
preceded by an immediate, every artificial by a
natural. The more mediated our designation
becomes, the more artificial our language, the
more confused and dim our conceptions of the
truth.

All philosophising is only a more extended
fathoming of the invention of language.

There is often such a silence in me, so pro-
found a meditation, that I cannot express how
distracted seem to me all men whom I see be-
fore me. No one listens.

In nature, and, in general, in the actual, the
true, everything is positive. In the understand-
ing and its possibility, everything is negative.
For, in the understanding, everything sta7ids un-
der conceptions, and the most comprehensive
are generally the most empty. At whatsoever
the understanding aims, the white which it seeks
to hit is nihility, or the All-mi«MS diversity, indi-
viduality, personality.

Because man falls into self-contradiction, there-
fore he philosophises. In innumerable ways
he loses the connection of his truths, i. e. they
come into collision with each other, they mutu-
ally cancel each other. Here comes in the right
of the stronger. Which is the more, the most
positive? that is the controversy. To one man
this seems most positive, to another that. Nay,
in the same individual this may be most posi-
tive to-day, to-morrow that When this happens
frequently, the whole understanding of the man
becomes confused; it finds nowhere a steady
hold.

It is a strange pretence, that we seek truth
disinterestedly. Man seeks it disinterestedly
just as we may say of the brute that it seeks its
food disinterestedly, solely in obedience to an
instinct. Man seeks truth because untruth kills
him, and because he seeks a foundation for his
best feelings and wishes ; he longs for the foun-
tain of the good, the beautiful, of truth and life.

What do we mean when we say that truth
should be sought for its own sake, and that we
should sacrifice everything to that? Is it a com-
mand of instinct, or do I see something for which
I strive 1 The aim of philosophy, it is said, is
to understand ourselves. So it appears in re-
flection ; but its origin is, that contradiction has
arisen within us, that we see double, that a truth
was taken from us which we are desirous of
possessing again. We are looking round after
the truth that has flown. There is, originally,
no mere inconsiderate curiosity ; but there is an
original interest. We find ourselves in the truth,

and only by degrees do we become aware that
we did not possess it entire.

Of those who boast that they seek truth fin-
its own sake, the greater part are seeking only
a system, and when they have found one, no
matter what one, they are satisfied.

Reason is the consciousness of the spirit. He
who loses reason loses himself, his self-con-
sciousness, his proper being and persistence, his
person. Personality is inseparable from reason,
reason from personality. * * * *

Reason also is necessarily connected with liberty,
and the consciousness of personality is the conscious-
ness of liberty.

He who philosophises for himself meets, at
every step, with difllculties, of which he who
philosophises for a school experiences nothing.

In my younger days it stood thus with me in
regard to philosophy. I seemed to myself to be
heir to immeasurable riches, and only some un-
important lawsuits and some unmeaning for-
malities seemed to hinder me from taking full
possession of my inheritance. The suits, while
joending, grew to be important. At last, it ap-
peared that I had inherited nothing but lawsuits,
and that the whole bequest was in insolvent
hands.

Some men have, so to speak, only examples
in their head, others have laws likewise. Vi-
gorous reasoning is shown in finding laws for
examples and examples for laws. The eye of
the understanding contracts itself, as it were, in
forming conceptions, and expands in applying
them. The merely book-learned have, for the
most part, very narrow minds, and so too have
the merely mechanically practical.

Philosophy is an internal life. A philosophi-
cal life is a collected life. By means of true
philosophy the soul becomes still, and, at last,
devout.

Philosophising is striving to sail up the stream
of being and of knowing, to its source.

In regard to the ultimate objects of human
contemplation, the most common conceptions
are the truest. After pondering till we are
weary, we are forced to return to them at last,
and to allow the truth of the saying, that to
children and to men of simple vmderstandings
are revealed the things which are hidden from
the wise.

I have been young and now I am old, and I
bear my testimony that I have never found tho-
rough, pervading, enduring morality with any
but such as feared God, — not in the modern
sense, but in the old child-like way. And only
with such too, have I found a rejoicing in life, —

214

JACOBI.

a hearty, victorious cheerfulness of so distin-
guished a kind, that no other is to be compared
with it.

I too believe on account of miracles; namely,
on account of the miracle of liberty, which is a
continuous miracle, and has much analogy with
the miracle on which Christendom is founded, —
the reception of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

To be free and to be a spirit are one and the
same. Where spirit is, there is invention, cre-
ative power, originality, self-existence.

Every great example takes hold of us with
the authority of a miracle, and says to us: If ye
had but faith, ye should also be able to do the
things which I do.

Love, admiration, reverence, are the founda-
tion of all morality. We feel ourselves as cause,
as person, and so personify everything, — streams,
winds, storms, trees, — whatever stirs and bene-
fits or harms us. Whatever we know or judge
of the internal powers of things, we know and
judge by sympathy, by presentiment. Every
man has his own individual universe. The
more he is able to transport himself into other
things, to live the life of those things, to unite
his life with theirs, the greater his being becomes.

The best thing in being man, after all, is that
the good which we have enjoyed does not perish
from us, — that it establishes itself within and
around us, propagates itself, multiplies ; and that
thus we acquire ever more power for greater
enjoyment.

To embrace an object in such a way as to see
nothing beyond it, — there is no other way to be
a hero.

I have all reverence for principles which
grow out of sentiments, Ijut as to sentiments
which grow out of principles, you shall scarcely
build a house of cards thereon.

The first and necessary condition of morality
— the power of acting in obedience to laws — is
easily confounded with morality itself, which
consists in a longing after something higher.

To perform noble and beautiful acts is natural
to man ; it is easy for him, he finds immediate
impulses to such acts in himself. On the other
hand, virtue, wliich, in the proper sense, is
founded on self-denial, is everywhere difficult.
To virtue he must accustom himself with great
labour, and laboriously suffer the habit to be
formed in him. Nevertheless Nature has im-
planted magnanimity in him, thereby indicating
a power of self-control in his mind, which acts
previous to all deliberation.

Most men can get accustomed to diligence
and obedience ; and the whole budget of ideas
and sentiments by which it is proposed to con-

trol or regulate the animal propensities, amounts
to nothing in comparison with acquired skill in
work and the love of work which grows out of it.

It is never too late with us, so long as we are
still aware of- our faults and bear them impa-
tiently,— so long as noble propensities, greedy
of conquest, stir within us.

How happy you are, said I to L., in possess-
ing so much freedom of will ! While I said this,
it struck me with new force that we place that
which we call freedom of will, not so much in
the power of choice, as iu the power of execut-
ing our volitions. , ; ,

The strongest passion in man is ambition.
That which satisfies a true ambition promotes
the love of God, and leads us nearer to the
knowledge of Him.

It is sometimes necessary to let five be even.*
I have all my life practised this doctrine, more
than I ought, from natural facility of temper.
But then I have never been able to prevail on
myself, while letting five be even, to maintain
solemnly that there is no such thing as even, or
that five is the law of the even.

The Athenians, on the day after the assassi-
nation of Archias, sent to the Thebans, whom
Pelopidas had set free, five thousand men, as
auxiliaries against the Lacedtemonians. We
often find this among the Greeks, that they re-
garded no danger in actions which honour and
propriety demanded of them. Wisdom and
prudence, with them, were very different things.
With all the faults and vices of these people,
there lived in them something of genuine free-
dom, which impelled them, strengthened them,
and gave to their courage a sublime character,
entirely wanting to the courage of the moderns.
It stood very clear before their eyes that man
has a better soul and that this better soul should
hold the lower in subjection.

The greater a man's ability to act for distant
ends, the stronger his mind.

Man cannot reform himself in detail, nor, in
general, can he keep his promises to himself, for
he himself is the sport of passions, and only the
law above him is constant. That he can ac-
knowledge this law. subject himself to its dis-
cipline, iri fine, appropriate to himself the love
of it and make it a part of his character, —
therein consists his dignity. And the character
of the righteous man is no other than this. It
is folly to build upon a man who has only dis-
position (though it were the very best) without
principles whereby to guide this disposition and
to govern himself.

* * * * * * *

* A proverbial expression signifying that one must not
bf too strict in a given case,— must let a thing pass. Tr.

JACOBI.

215

We always live prospectively, never retro-
spectively, and there is no abiding moment.
Therefore let us seek internal peace, before all
things, and sacrifice everything to that. Every
lot is tolerable ; only dissatisfaction with our-
selves is not tolerable ; and there is a degree
of remorse from which there is no deliverance.

We may surrender ourselves without danger
to impressions made by Nature, also to impres-
sions made by men. Call it enthusiasm, call it
fanaticism, provided our feeling is only the re-
sult'of an actual relation, there is no harm to be
feared. But as soon as we attempt to perpetuate
the feeling beyond its natural duration, as soon
as we take pains to imitate it, and lastly, when
we even go so far as to endeavour to awaken
the feelings of others in ourselves, we are in
the way of self-delusion and hypocrisy.

Mankind are forever employed in giving their
unreason a difl'erent shape, and each time they
persuade themselves that they have converted
it into reason. They fall out of one superstition
into another, and with every new start, they
think they have gained in the knowledge of
truth. It is error itself which continually drives
them before it, while they think they are fiying
from it of their own accord. But it is contrary
to the nature of error to drive men to the truth.
The truth is altogether internal, and he who
possesses it is in danger of losing it when he
attempts to make it external, when he regards
that which he has made external as the truth
itself For truth is not this or that opinion, but
an insight which is elevated above every
pecvdiar opinion.

Although man daily detects himself in mis-
taking the symptoms of an event for its cause,
he continually commits the same error anew,
and will rather help himself with the most
absurd explanations, than be contented witli a
thorough account of the matter. For example,
nothing lies more plain before his eyes than
that no individual can originate from mere com-
position, and yet the materialist will rather sup-
pose that this may take place in some incom-
prehensible way, than assume the incompre-
hensible directly and at once. His soul assures
him with all its power and with a distinctness
which exceeds all other distinctness, that the
will is before the deed, life before food, but he
reasons out the reverse.

When we call the system of the heavens a
mechanism, we no longer wonder at that me-
chanism, but we wonder at a Newton, a Kep-
ler, who with their intellect could explore it,
and unfold it to us. Bat if we enter into the
understanding of these great men, we no longer
wonder even at that; the mechanism of its re-
flective action becomes intelligible to us, and
that which we can thoroughly understand, that
which follows from necessity, we cannot won-

der at. At the utmost, we contemplate it with
astonishment, as we contemplate a lofty moun-
tain, or the boundless ocean. We can truly
wonder, only at that which is a wonder (a
miracle), or which seems to us such. The
wonder-working from love is God ; the wonder-
working from malice is Satan. The brute can
be astonished with terror or with joy, man
alone can wonder.

The truly good can be preserved only by
means of itself, and all eflbrts to preserve it by
means of anything formal or external to itself,
— with whatsoever kind of sugar or salt, — are
vain.

Human reason is the symptom of the highest
life that we know. But it has not its life in
itself, it must receive it at every moment. Life
is not in it, but it is in life. What life is, — its
source and nature. — is for us the deepest mys-
tery.

Man's light is in the impulse of elevation to
something higher. Not because I raise myself
above something, but because I raise myself to
something, do I approve myself.

I know no deeper philosophy than that of
Paul in the seventh chai^ter of his epistle to the
Romans. In the merely natural man dwells
sin. Regeneration is the basis of Christianity.
He who banishes the doctrine of Grace from
the bible, abolishes the whole bible.

" In the beginning was the Word ;" means,
the will was before the deed, the end before
the means, the design before the act, the soul
before the body, the form before the formless,
life before death.

It is ever beneath the dignity of man to give
laws, merely as the stronger, and to rejoice in
the pressure which he exercises like a sense-
less block, by mere bulk, as if it were a living
force.

The actual right of the stronger consists only
in his being able to possess himself of the will
of the less strong. It is with this just as it is
with the ruling thoughts and sentiments in our
soul.

True, the strongest is always king, not the
strongest to subject the will of all to himself so
that they shall do his will though contrary to
their own, but the strongest to execute their
will, to act in conformity with it.

Men will always act according to their pas-
sions. Therefore the best government is that
which inspires the nobler passions and destroys
the meaner.

The written, actual laws have grown out of

216

JACOBI.

customs, which customs have no other origin
than the natural inclinations and propensities
of men who have united themselves in a cer-
tain body. Thus justice arose. If we were to
take away from the law all that has grown up
freely and naturally, there would be little good
and much evil left. That which still holds
society together and makes life tolerable is the
work of liberty and Nature.

Despotism is easier than liberty, as vice is
easier than virtue.

Justice is the freedom of those who are equal.
Injustice is the freedom of those who are un-
equal.

It is impossible to diminish poverty by the
multiplication of goods ; for manage as we may,
misery and suffering will always cleave to the
border of superfluity.

JManage a mad-house as you will, you never
can make a rational community of it. * * »
It seems to me as if I should go mad myself
when I hear those who only lust after the fruits
of slavery raving about freedom.

As history is generally written, it is far from
giving us a more accurate knowledge of man.
On the contrary, it only makes him more unin-
telligible. And yet the true aim of the historian
should be, so to represent the different modes
of being which are natural to man, that we shall
recognise them as natural.

The inventions and experiences of so many
ages and nations have only, as.it were, fastened
themselves upon us. We have adopted them
hastily, on account of certain prominent advan-
tages, without investigating them in their origin
and their consequences.

We cannot return to the old forms, and ought
not to endeavour to do so, but we can return to
the sentiments connected with those forms; and
they lie very near us.

Nothing tends more to bring confusion and
death into arts and morals, than when men
blindly transfer the experience of one age to
another.

It is a consequence of civilization, that man
can produce without invention, know without
insight. So far, civilization makes man mecha-
nical. It is to be observed, however, that while
it kills him a parte post, it may perhaps quicken
him in the same degree, a parte ante.

" Mon ame active a besoin d"aliment." (Mem.
d'Hipp. Clairon.) How ridiculous the requisi-
tion of those boastful philosophers, that man
should desi)ise all enjoyment! This being, so
through and tluough necessitous, is to be blessed

in himself alone, in his action, in his striving
after nothing! Everything in us is to be con-
trary to nature, contempt of nature !

That which man seeks, which everywhere
guides him, — yea! enlightens him even, is joy.
Let him, it is said, seek joy in himself; that is
constant, for his self can never desert him.
False ! The I of to-day is not the I of yester-
day. The two are often so different that the
one knows not how to find itself in the other.
His empty form is pure nothing, and the per-
manent (that in him which is not form) is
wholly unknown to him. He seeks himself
everywhere in Nature, and finds himself not.
That which he took for himself is only the re-
flection of something else. That something
vanished ; it was perishable, and he sank back
into his own nothingness.

Man is a struggling creature. He feels in
time, which never stands still, which has no
proper moment. What is the present? An
appearance compounded of the past and the
future. And yet wise men have reproved man
for forgetting the present, for dreaming away
his life with hopes, and fondly sacrificing to
them all actual enjoyment. Tell me, ye sages!
whoso strives for show-gooJ, — is he not deluded
as well when he seizes it as when he only pur-
sues it? Where is he among your disciples
who has ever found peace and blessedness in
what you call the present? A thing of the
future is man, and strive he must without
ceasing. Bat in the path of the true good, toge-
ther with the joys of hope, he finds also the
repose of enjoyment. Created for eternity, but
created out of finite nature. Seize the Proteus
which, — terrified by its changing forms, — thou
hast so often let slip from thy hands ; seize it
and let it not go ; for under every one of its
forms lies the true, the projjhetic, the divine.

Better make use of an asses' bridge than never
be able to stir from the spot. Everything good
has come to us in this way, and wo unto us
should the bridge no longer hold !

In one thing men of all ages are alike; they
have believed obstinately in themselves.

When we lose our faith in persons, we lose
still more our faith in generalities.

The most universal rule that I know for tlie
writer and also for the artist, is that his expres-
sion be always beneath the thing which he re-
presents. I hold this to be the true secret of
mind and of power.

True attention is the product of love.

Without repose of soul, nothing great is pro-
duced. When little passions are tugging at a
man he can produce only little things, and that

JACOBI.

217

only at intervals. Even wliere strong passion
brings great things to pass, there is a kind of
repose in the soul. Everything is concentrated
upon tliat one, and the soul reposes on that
(central) point.

Nothing is more ruinous for a man than when
he is mighty enough in any part, to right him-
self without right.

Is it supposed that liberty consists in the
faculty of choosing opposite things? Only on
that ground, and so far forth as we are able to
do that, we are not free. Because the evening
robs us of feelings, resolutions, views which we
had in the morning; because we cannot hold
fast our own wishes, our character, our person ;
because rain and sunshine, health and sickness,
change us through and through ; therefore we
complain of bondage. If man were always of
the same mind, his reason would keep its even
course, and it would never occur to him that he
was not free.

By every sensible impression we are divorced
from ourselves, and never are we divorced from
ourselves by free activity.

Where does Nature end? There where free-
dom begins. It is precisely this end that I seek.
I follow after miracles as others follow after the
science which abolishes miracles. He who
makes an end of miracles is not my friend.

The true and the good resemble gold. Gold
seldom appears obvious and solid, but it per-
vades invisibly the bodies that contain it.

The French rulers have too high an opinion
of man's powers, and too low an opinion of his
destination, which makes a strange, repulsive
contrast.

No tradition assigns a beginning to justice,
but only to injustice. Before the silver, the
brazen, the iron age, there was a golden; man
was at peace with himself. All governments
are, to a certain extent, a treaty with the De-
vil.

We may have a perfect insight as to how it
has come to pass, that in the same field where,
a thousand years ago, justice was sown, nothing
now springs from the same seed but tares,
without being able, by means of this insight, to
help the evil. What is to be done in this ne-
cessity? Burke's answer to this question is —
" What necessity commands."

It is an indispensable condition of a morality
tliat is to be efiicient, to believe in a higher
order of things, of which the common and visi-
ble is an heterogeneous part, that must assimi-
late itself to the higher. Both together must
constitute but one kingdom, but one creation.
2 c

Are not understanding and reason organs of
one and die same being? Assuredly. By means
of the one the created, — Nature or the creature,
— is unfolded to man ; by means of the other,
the Creator. In the consciousness of man that
he is creature, but God's creature, understand-
ing and reason are connected togedier in him.
Humanity is destroyed by the separation of the
one from the other. Without religion, man be-
comes a beast; without humanity, a visionary.

A want which can attain to its satisfaction,
that is, to a feeling of the good, is no evil, but a
stimulus which quickens. As the wants of a
being, so is the being itself, and the M-orth of
its life.

To philosophize is to recollect ourselves on
all sides. We defend ourselves against the
contradiction which threatens to destroy die
unity of our consciousness, (our personality),
which threatens to kill us. He who would re-
collect himself outside of sense, outside of all
feeling, of all conception, by mere thinking as
such, becomes mad.

Yesterday I despatched my answer to Kant,
wherein I expressed my conviction Uiat even
the knowledge of our ignorance is patch-work.
Three days I had plagued myself with this let-
ter. I was tired, out of humour. My sisters
came and begged me to read them something.
They were not well, and I could not refuse their
request. I asked, what? A portion of StoU-
berg's Sophocles? Without inward vocation or
predilection I began to read the first piece in the
second volume, the Ajax. And yet I scarce re-
member, in all my life, to have been so taken,
so carried away by any reading, so wondrously
filled with thoughts and feelings.

You know how strange and disagreeable the
subject of this piece. Ajax sitting upon the
slaughtered cattle presents a half-sickening, half-
repellent spectacle. Minerva, who first appears,
goddess of wisdom as she is, says many insipid
things ; and yet what an impression she imme-
diately makes in her second dialogue with Ulys-
ses, after Ajax has appeared in his madness!
The insipid babbler becomes a celestial being
the moment she says :

"Odysseus, seest thou now how great tlie power
Is of the Gods ? Was e'er a wiser man
Than he ? or furnished more for uoble deeds?"

And Ulysses atiswers :

" More than at him, I look upon myself
And see that we, we mortjls, all who hve
Are visionary forms and sliadows."

And then the Chorus and Tekmessa, and
Ajax himself!

When, in connection widi this sublime poem,
we happen to think of the decent, probable, re-
gular, dramas of the French, why are we seized
with such disgust at those products of art which
lay claim to faultlessness on the score of reason?
Why does their art so fall to the ground beforo
19

218

JACOBI.

the art of tlie Greeks? It falls to the ground
because the Greek is a true poet, because he is
a Seer. " Tliou art the mouth of Truth," we say
to the Greek. "Thou givest to us again that
which hath appeared to thyself'' The other has
only uncertain traditions, and gives us, out of
them, only what seems to him probable.

Fulness of human sense ! Yes ! thou art ex-
alted far above thine inflated substitute, abstrac-
tion! Alas for the pure cognition which is only
skin and skeleton, without bowels, without soul !
"Who knoweth the things of a man save the
spirit of man which is in him ?" Fountain of
all certainty! thou art and I am! And I begin
to doubt that I am, when I listen to you, ye law-
givers of reason ! ye creators of a pure philoso-
phy !

It belongs to the nature of man not to be able
to imagine an end, that is, not to be able to ima-
gine a getiuine whole. Because he cannot ima-
gine an end, he deludes himself with the notion
that he can imagine the infinite, as something
positive.

The respect for science, as such, is entirely
the same with that which men have for pro-
perty, and for that which secures to them its
possession. Science incorporates the true, gives
it a visible, serviceable body which eats and
drinks, and renders services in return. Then,
the living and philosophical in the sciences gra-
dually dies out ; the spirit which acquired them
has vanished; the gatherer is followed by a
spendthrift.

The natural striving of man to arrive at a
perfect understanding of himself has much ana-
logy with the wish to be as happy, according to
the vulgar expression, "as a king;" that is, to
be in possession of all the means of satisfying
one's appetites and passions. The thoughtless
dream of a condition in which there is nothing
but joy and delight. But man can thrive only
in want, in labour, and in dangers. And as to
his mind, if that is to prosper, it must be con-
scious of a constant progress from one degree
of clearness to another.

From the sensuous, however we inay refine
it, we cannot derive that which must be appre-
hended immediately by the spirit. When the
process of abstraction from the sensuous is com-
plete there remains = 0, and not the absolute,
fair, and good, and true. Therefore we know
nothing of an absolute fair and good and true,
and nothing of God unless we possess a higher
faculty for the perception of truth than the senses
and the thinking power.

All my convictions rest on the single one of
ihe liberty of man. This idea is peculiar to
me, and distinguishes my philosophy (if men
choose to honour a system of faith with that
name,) from all that have preceded it.

It is much more dangerous, and a much
greater evil to abrogate conscience with law
and letter, than the reverse.

«

If we must be the victims either of feelings
and inclinations, or of words and death, I would
much sooner make up my mind to the former.

An elevation above sensual appetites and in-
clinations, without a whither, (a definite direc-
tion,) is an empty elevation ; and a blind law
is no better than a blind impulse. It is with
morality as it is with the self-love of man;
without given impulses, inclinations, and pas-
sions, they can neither of them become appa-
rent, or have an application.

" Is there a progress of humanity in the good
and in light ?'' If by good and light we under-
stand what the sublimest philosophers of anti-
quity, Pythagoras and Plato, understood by these
terms, then it is my decided opinion that there
is no such progress of humanity. I even main-
tain that these men would not have deserved
the name of divine, and that they must have
had a very imperfect knowledge of their busi-
ness, if they supposed that by means of civil
institutions, of modes of education, by means
of scholastic exercise and practice, they could
establish a kind of learning by rote of the in-
ternal;* tliat they could gently and gradually, by
means of deejD-planned mechanism, make wis-
dom and virtue, and their daughter, liberty, the
habit of a nation, nay, of the world ; so that
men should tlienceforth not only be able to pre-
fer, but should actually and universally prefer
that liajipiness which is a j)roperty of the per-
son, a quality of the mind, to that which depends
on external things, and is a mere state of sen-
sual enjoyment. Folly, vice, servitude, and,
with the last, every evil, may be introduced ;
not virtue and liberty. Health is not contagious
like the plague and the yellow fever. Neither
can it be elaborated by art, still less created;
for it is original and comes from the mother's
womb, firmer or weaker, more perfect or less
perfect.

If reason possessed power, says a profound
writer, as she possesses authority, justice and
peace would everywhere rule. Bat nov.', with
her dwells only right ; elsewhere, M'ith sensual
appetite, desire, passion, strength.

On account of this disproportion, mankind
have divided themselves into two parties. The
one — the earliest in its origin — cast about for
means to bring force on the side of right. They
invented wisely and also experimented success-
fully, but never with permanent results. All
their undertakings proved failures, more or less,
in the end, and dispersion ensued. But unde-
stroyed and indestructible, — however frequently

* Auswendig lernen des inwendigen : literally, an ex-
ternal learning of the internal.

JACOBI.

219

and strangely they have been scattered and may
be again in time to come, — they steadfastly per-
severe and will persevere in their intent. No
one, not even from their ovi^n midst, knows their
present strength or weakness.

The other party, likewise dissatisfied with
this twofold dominion in man, and desirous of
putting an end to the schism, — after mature
consideration of the hindrances which had
caused the shipwreck of all the undertakings of
the former, — hit upon the thought of an entirely
opposite method. Instead of endeavouring to
bring over force to the side of the right, they
sought to bring over right to the side of force.
They sought not to make the rational strong,
but to make the strong rational. They accused
the former system of hostility to Nature, of aim-
ing at oppression and tyrannous despotism. On
the other hand, they boasted that their own was
in harmony with Nature, and, at the same time,
did not conflict with Reason; that it only de-
sired a good understanding between the two.
Their plan was this. The whole gigantic pro-
geny of sense, the lusts and passions should
quietly come together, and consult among them-
selves what was best. The best was imion.
But, it was agreed, they would never be able to
realize this union until they had put an end to
the controversy with Reason, who dwelt toge-
tlier with them in their common country, the
human mind. Experience had shown that she
was never to be quite overpowered and entirely
cast out. This, in fact, was no misfortune, since
the senses could so easily make peace with
Reason and then employ her to their own ad-
vantage, nay, make her entirely their own. The
way to do this, was the establishment of a com-
munity, the plan of which might, without hesi-
tation, be left to Reason to draw up. For, it
was argued, Reason desires justice only for the
sake of the common good, in other words, she
desires only that each one should have his own ;
the individual she does not regard nor care for.
Neither does she regard herself; — that is the
property or vice only of that which is an indi-
vidual, a person, a self. Reason has nothing of
this sort, nor indeed, of genuine reality. There-
fore, it was agreed, they could boldly rely on
the impartiality of Reason, and not only conlide
to her, unconditionally, the organization of the
commonweal to be established in connection
with her, but even allot to her the dignity of the
chief magistracy therein ; — an office like the royal
one in Sparta. An Ephorate* might be esta-
blished in connection therewith, and committed
to the jurisdiction of the understanding. The
people had elected Reason and placed her over
them, simply and solely that she should main-
tain order and harmony in their midst ; she be-
longed to the commonweal, not the common-
weal to her; the collective will was the true

* The office of the Ephori. E^opoi— a department of the
Spartan Government. The word signifies properly, in-
spectors, from £71 ( and opaui. Tr.

sovereign from whom Reason derived her royal
title and the autViority connected with it, merely
as a fief. Should she ever forget this, assume
independent powers, and attempt to exalt her
nominal authority above the true, then the
Ephorate must immediately come to the rescue
and resist such attempt. They could place the
utmost reliance on the watchfulness of the un-
derstanding, in this matter, because the under-
standing is thoroughly and altogether a man of
the people.

The two systems which are here presented
may be compared, — as formerly the systems of
Idealism and Realism were compared, — with
the two opposite astronomical systems of Pto-
lemy and Copernicus. Only the order of time,
in this case, must be reversed ; the latter must
be considered as the elder, the former as the
younger.

What history is not richer — does not contain
far more than they by whom it is enacted, the
present witnesses, see, experience and know ?
What mortal understandeth his way ?

"Tous les gouts sont pour moi respectable,"
says Voltaire in a frivolous poem. I can adopt
that saying of his, as a philosopher, and only
require that every one should confess his taste
clearly and distinctly. There are but two phi-
losophies essentially distinct from each other.
I will call them Platonism and Spinozism. Be-
tween these two spirits we may choose ; that is,
we may be taken with the one or the other, so
that we shall attach ourselves to that alone, and
be forced to regard that alone as the spirit of
truth. It is the whole disposition of the man
that must decide here. It is impossible to divide
the heart between the two, still more impossible
to unite them. Where there is the appearance
of the latter, there language deceives, there is
double-tonguedness.

Every man has some kind of religion ; that is,
a supreme truth by which he measures all his
judgments, — a supreme will by which he mea-
sures all his endeavours ; — these every one has
who is at one with himself, who is everywhere
decidedly the same. But the worth of such a
religion, and the honour due to it, and to him
who has become one with it, cannot be deter-
mined by its amount. Its quality alone decides
and gives to one conviction, to one love or
friendship, a higher value than to another.

At bottom every religion is anti- christian
which makes the form the thing, the letter the
substance. Such a materialistic religion, in or-
der to be at all consistent, ought to maintain a
material infallibility. * » * * *

There are but two religions, Christianity and
paganism, the worship of God and idolatry.
A third between these two is not possible.
Where idolatry ends, there Christianity begins,

220

JACOBI.

and where idolatry begins, there Christianity-
ends. Thus the apparent contradiction is done
away between the two propositions ; — " Whoso
is not against me is for nie ;" and " whoso is
not for me is against me."

As all men are, by nature, liars, so all men
are also, by nature, idolaters, — drawn to the
visible and averse from the invisible. Hamann
called the body the first-born, because God first
made a clod of earth, and then breathed into it
a breath of life. The formation of the earth-
clod and the spirit are both of God, but only the
spirit is from God ; and only on account of the
sjjirit is man said to be made after the likeness
of God.

Since man cannot do without the letter, —
images and parables, — no more than he can
dispense witli time, which is incidental to the
finite, although bodi shall cease, I honour the
letter, so long as there is a breath of life in it,
for that breath's sake.

LEARNED SOCIETIES — THEIR SPIRIT
AND ALM.

A DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED AT THE rUBLIC RE-OPENING OF THE
ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT MUENCHEN. 1807.

"E pur si move."' — Galilei.

The most ancient of those academies which
have become celebrated in Europe have grown
out of voluntary associations of learned men,
mutually attracted to each other by an equal
desire for knowledge. The growth of science,
the promotion of it by reciprocal aid, by col-
lective diligence, by friendly emulation, was the
design of their union.

So pure and vigorous a beginning could not
but be attended with success. It surpassed
every expectation ; it became famous ; it threw
an astounding lustre far into the distance.

This lustre stimulated and awakened the de-
sire of imitation. It was attempted to produce
the like, to elaborate by artificial means what is
least capable of being so elaborated, the spirit
of incpiiry, particularly of invention, without
that holy tlame which kindles the soul and
causes it to strive with ardour, to struggle un-
ceasingly for the knowledge of the truth, for
virtue, for science and wisdom, as for ultimate
and supreme ends which will not suffer them-
selves to be subordinated to any other. The
love of imitation had other aims which were
higher in its estimation, to which science and
wisdom were to be subservient, and for whose
sake alone they were to exist. This was to
change wisdom into folly, to rob science of its
proper life, to sever it from its own in order to
make it produce from a foreign root such fruits
as were desired.

The necessary consequence ensued. Never-
theless, imitation succeeded here and there in

producing a sufllcient illusion. Occasionally
even, something praiseworthy was brought to
pass ; but no genuine tree of knowledge and of
life. The results produced were plants resem-
bling the chemical silver tree or tree of Diana;
wonderful enougli and often right pleasant to
behold ; only that interior life and the power
of propagation were wanting.

The Bavarian Academy of Sciences, although
one of the later born, in fact, the youngest of all,
may boast an equality with those ancient ones
as it regards the purity of its origin. It was
founded in silence by two noble men, von Lin-
brun and Lori. These men conceived the pur-
pose of establishing in Miinchen a learned so-
ciety which should draw to itself the best heads,
not only in Bavaria, but in all South Germany.
They had been impelled to this enterprise by
serious considerations of the disproportion in
the state of the sciences, the arts and intellec-
tual culture generally, between North and South
Germany, and of the consequences flowing from
the ditference which was manifested here.
They had observed how strikingly the progress
of the one and the stationary character of the
other were depicted in the whole social condi-
tion of the nations inhabiting the one and the
other region; and how they were every day
becoming more visible and more sensible. The
nature of diis ditference may be found described
with fidelity and truth by Loreng Westenrieder
in the first part of tlie history of the Bavarian
Academy of Sciences, pp. 3 — 9. * » * *

The abovementioned excellent men, Linbrun
and Lori, confided the noble wish, which made
their own breast too narrow for them, to a Caw
friends who gave their assent and united them-
selves with them. The first meeting was held in
the house of Herr von Linbrun, Oct. 12th, 1758.

The undertaking of these few men, banded
together for the noblest purposes, was concealed
at first with the greatest care. Nor did they
venture to appear openly until, proceeding with
the utmost caution, they had associated with
themselves men of distinguished reputation or
of great authority, in their- own country and
elsewhere. They knew what hindrances would
even now interfere with the fulfilment of their
wish to convert their enterprise into a public
institution, and they overcame them by pru-
dence. They carefully abstained from giving
utterance to their higher aims, and only directed
attention to those advantages of such an institu-
tion, by which even vulgar souls may be im-
pressed and won. " They abstained" — it is ver-
bally recorded in the history of the Bavarian
Academy of Sciences — "from the mention of
those things against which difficulties and ob-
jections might be raised, and spoke only of the
use and the reputation of the thing."

Such a servile form has the best, the highest
and the most venerable ever and everywhere
been forced to assume, in order to gain admis-
sion and to pass for something in civil society.
Ignorance, says Fonlenelle, in his immortal

JACOBI.

221

history of the Parisian Academy of Sciences,
affects to regard as useless that of which it has
no knowledge. It revenges itself in this way.
It says : ' Have we not our own moon to illu-
mine our own nights ? Of what use is it to
know that the planet Jupiter has four? To
what purpose so many observations, so many
laborious calculations to determine their course
with precision'? We shall see none the clearer
for them ; and Nature, who placed these little
stars so far from our eyes, appears not to have
made them for us.'* And yet those four moons
of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye, have been
of far greater use to us than our own moon which
shines so brightly. Only since our acquaintance
with them have Geography and Navigation been
enabled to make important advances ; incom-
I)arably better maps and charts have been pro-
duced ; and, by means of the latter especially, the
lives of innumerable seamen have been saved.

This example of the satellites of Jupiter is
only one out of many which might be adduced,
of the use of astronomical labours, and in jus-
tification of the great outlays of every kind
which this science demands. But the mass of
the high and low know nothing of the satellites
of Jupiter; at the utmost, they have a dim
and confused knowledge of them. Still less do
they know of the connection of these satellites
with Navigation. In fact, they have scarce
heard the report of the perfection to which that
science has arrived, within a short time.

Fontenelle then adds a great mmiber of ex-
amples in illustration of the advantages which
the diligence of a few men, devoted to the
sciences, has conferred upon all classes of
human society. Men enjoy these really count-
less advantages without considering their origin,
without considering the way by which they
have reached us. No one considers how much
there was to be invented here ; and few per-
haps are competent even to imagine the powers
of mind which must have been brought into
action, in each one of these inveiitions, in order
to originate or to complete them. But it ought
to be remembered, that the innumerable jiro-
cesses which we now universally perform with
unthinking facility, could not be performed in
this way, unless thought, — unless the most stre-
nuous efforts of reflection, — had preceded them.
This antecedent living agency now manifests
itself, embodied in serviceable manipulations,
in mere acquired mechanical facilities, in life-
less instruments and machines. With these
latter the spirit created for itself, — produced
with free activity out of senseless matter, — un-
feeling, dumb and deaf menials, the most per-
fect, because they are entirely destitute of voli-
tion, and never fail nor err. Thus, every work-
shop of mechanics and artiflcers announces to

* More remarkable still, is another similar example. A
Parisian lady of rank understood perfectly the use of the
moon, " because it illumines our nights." But why the
sun should appear in the heavens, in broad daylight, she
could not comprehend.

him that gives heed, a mind that has become
invisible, which here wrought and bequeathed,
and departed after it had fulfilled its task: an-
nounces it without words ; silently represents
that infinitely self-multiplying power of inven-
tion, which must throw every one, who is capa-
ble of apprehending what is admirable, into
thoughtful astonishment.

Nevertheless, however exalted beyond con-
tradiction the truth just propounded, however
unquestionable the manifold use which the hu-
man race has derived for the ordinary pur-
poses of life from the progress of science, it is
equally certain and undeniable, on the other
hand, that science in its origin and progress
had, immediately in view, not that use, but
solely and singly itself and its own extension.
The impulse which seeks knowledge and in-
sight has this in common with the impulse which
seeks enjoyment, happiness, the sustenance of
life : that it seeks its object simply for the object's
sake, as ultimate end, not as means to other
ends. It springs directly from the spirit of man;
it is one of its peculiar powers and virtues,
similar to that other sacred power of our spirit
which produces those human qualities which
we call virtuous qualities, and — in consideration
of their immediate origin — virtues, such as cou-
rage, magnanimity, justice, general benevolence.

With respect to life and happiness, no one
doubts that these are desired for their own
sakes, and he who should propose the question,
what are they good for, would only provoke
our laughter. Of science, on the other hand,
and of virtue, it is almost universally assumed,
that they have a reason, a use, an end, beyond
themselves, by which diey first become desira-
ble. They are supposed to have been arbitra-
rily invented to serve an arbitrary purpose.
That virtue and knowledge belong to the being
of man, that they unfold diemselves necessa-
rily out of that being, and with it, like language,
without which men are not and never were;
that where virtue, knowledge, and their begin-
ning, the significant word, the intelligible speech,
should be wanting, there all humanity would be
also wanting, and the mere animal present it-
self instead ; this the vulgar souls, who know
only wants of the body, and none of the spirit,
will never comprehentl. These men, all earth,
unconscious of any immediate instinct, except
that which man has in common with the brute,
the instinct of desire, of pleasure, of sensual
enjoyment, have ever the objects of that instinct
alone and unchangeably in view, as last and
highest ends. Only that appears to them real,
approved, and good, in respect to man, which is
found substantiated in the sounder animal, and
may be demonstrated from that, as the only re-
vealer of unadulterated, pure truth. Whatso-
ever is more than that, is, to them, of evil. Still,
they tolerate science, and even acknowledge
that it deserves the support and encouragement
of the State, provided it conforms itself to the
State, and does not aspire beyond the state of
19 »

222

JACOBI.

bondage for which it was born. Any other
science, that which would be an end unto itself,
and assumes to be free-born, they will not ac-
knowledge. They despise the fool, hate her,
and persecute her for her pride"s sake. No effort
of the mind, no pursuit, shall be cherished, pro-
moted, and rewarded, which cannot demonstrate
its immediate utility in relation to ordinary life.
Every science, and every tine art, must carry on,
or at least assist in carrying on, some honest
handicraft, and derive all its worth and all its
dignity from its aptitude for this handicraft, or
for some manual use. Each must declare what
guild or what trade it belongs to, and be able
also to demonstrate that belonging. They main-
tain that every science or art which cannot
comply with this requisiiion ought to be banished
from the country as a breadless art. Not to be-
long to the productive class, which is otherwise
considered as a mark of nobility, is thought to
render science ignoble, and to fix upon her the
rej^roach of idleness.

These principles and demands of the com-
mon mind must appear ridiculous, and, in the
highest degree, absurd to those who are at
all acquainted with the history of human in-
ventions, even supposing they were not other-
wise disinclined to the common way of thinking
on this subject. The history of inventions proves
that the most important and the most useful of
them have been a secondary and unexpected
result of those etlbrts of mind from which this
precise gain could nowise have been anticipated.
"When, in the seventeenth century, the greatest
geometricians employed themselves in investi-
gating the nature of a new curve, which they
called the cycloid, they had no other interest in
that investigation than that of mere speculation
and the ambition of discovering theorems, each
more difficult than the former. None of these
men had the most distant idea that they were
exerting themselves for the general good. But
afterward, when the nature of the cycloid had
been thoroughly ascertained, it was found that,
by means of this knowledge, the greatest possi-
ble perfection could be given to the pendulum,
and tlie utmost precision introduced into the
measurement of time.""*

It would be superfluous to accumulate in-
stances of this sort, since it lies in the nature of
the thing, that the practical application must
needs be subsequent to the scientific discovery.
Every useful invention has compounded itself,
as it were, out of several discoveries, observa-
tions, propositions, which had no probable rela-
tion to each other, which, in point of time,
were often far distant from each other, and
which belonged to men of the most diff"erent
characters, views, and pursuits. "The conflu-
ence of several truths," remarks the sagacious
Fontenelle, " even of the most abstract, almost
always produces a useful application, which
2ould not have been anticipated, because the

* Pref. cie Thisi. de Tacademie Royale de sciences.

combination was necessary to produce it. The
ancients were acquainted with the magnet, but
they had observed only its power of attracting
iron. It needed but one experience more, and
they would have discovered its polar tenden-
cies, and the inestimable prize of the compass
would have been theirs. Had they devoted a
little more time and attention to a curiosity ap-
parently useless and unprofitable, the hidden
utility would have revealed itself to them. No
human imagination was competent to presup-
pose the invention of the telescope and the mi-
croscope, with which a new eye was given to
man for two worlds at once, the sublime world
of the immeasurably great, and the still move
wonderful one, it may be, of the immeasurably
little. It was necessary that mathematics should
enrich itself through a series of centuries with
ever greater discoveries, before a Johannes Kep-
ler could appear with his dioptrics, and bring
the invention of the astronomical sight-instru-
ment to light."'

The result of all these considerations is, that
governments, in the formal institution of learned
societies, may indeed have respect to the benefits
which such societies will confer on the common
weal, and may make those benefits their aim, but
never, on that account, should thus make utility
a condition of science, and demand that this shall
be its only object. A government which should
do this would betray a want of insight into the
nature of science, and would require the im-
possible. Still more incompatible with the na-
ture of science would be the attempt to make
it, any where, national or even provincial. There
may be economical societies of this kind, which
should, in each case, derive their names from
the material want which led to their institution ;
fruit-growing, wood-saving, coal or turf-finding,
bog-draining societies. But academies of sciences,
which are merely national, or provincial, or
economical, there cannot be.

It is by no means intended, however, in what
has now been said, that scientific men, who feel
a special impulse to employ themselves with
objects of immediate utility, and to apply their
scientific acquirements to those objects, like Du-
hamel du Monceau, Daubenton, and otliers, men
who have rendered equal services to science
and to their country, that such men should be
excluded from an academy of sciences, or that,
as members of such an academy, they should
not hand in essays on national and j^rovincial
objects, and lay them before the society for ex-
amination. How many invaluable disquisitions
of this kind are found in the annals of the
French and other academies of sciences ! But
such productions should ever bear on their face
the stamp of science; they should spring fron..
the spirit of science, and be filled with it.

Even Colbert, when he founded the academy
of sciences at Paris, more than a hundred years
ago, planted himself on that higher stand-point,
from which the immediate dignity of science is
recognised in its whole extent, together with its

JACOBI.

223

indirect worth, I mean its utility, and it would
be disreputable now to choose a lower one.
" The penetrating mind of Colbert,"' says a judi-
cious modern historian, "did not fail to perceive
the close connection which exists between the
sciences and the arts, and between the fine arts
and the mechanical. He felt the necessity of
perfecting the theories of mathematics, of astro-
nomy, and of physics, in order to effect a mani-
fold application of their principles. He had
perceived that the progress of the mechanical
arts presupposes the development of good taste,
and that taste requires models and patterns for
comparison. The academies of painting, of
sculpture, of architecture, and of music, sprung
up and yielded a flattering compensation to the
masters of art, encouragement to the pupils, to
all the citizens of the State instruction and ex-
amples. The beautiful had its temple, its ser-
vice, its priests, as Truth had hers. Colbert's
administration was wise. He had no occasion
to fear the progress and ditfusion of right views.
Far from shunning men of learning and intel-
lect, he attracted, he gathered them around him;
lie freed them from the cares of subsistence.
Even foreigners experienced his favour, and
many were first made known to their own
country by the distinction so unexpectedly ac-
corded to them by France."*

Although France, at the time when the
academy exclusively devoted to mathematical
and physical science was established, could
exhibit a considerable number of important
men who were qualified to come forward as
members of this society and to give it authority,
yet Colbert spared no expense in drawing to
Paris learned men of other countries who might
give to the new Institute still greater strength
and splendour. Romer was summoned from
Denmark, Cassini from Italy, Huyghens from
Holland. Attracted by large emoluments they
exchanged their native country for France.
Other distinguished men in all parts of Europe
were induced to take part in the new Institute,
at least as foreign members. Others still, at
home and abroad, who could not enter as fel-
low-labourers in any of the departments of the
Academy of Sciences at Paris, but who other-
wise possessed acknowledged merit and had
made themselves a name as men of learning,
received pensions, distinctions, gifts, without
any requisition being made of them in return.
Everywhere appeared the lofty ambition of the
minister and of his king, — who in many respects
was really and truly great-minded, — to manifest
a wise disinterestedness and to make it promi-
nent. They wished to encourage and reward,
and in doing this, they attained also all those
")ther ends, the pursuit of which, by any other
method, will always be a vain undertaking.

A wise Government, and one of large views,
establishes academies to efiect what can only

* Tableau des revolutions du systeme politique de
I'Europe depuis la fin du XV. Siecle par Frederic Ancil-
Ion.— T. iv. p. 115, 204.

be effected by means of such institutions, — a
collective force which shall accomplish and
produce what disconnected individual powers,
although of the greatest possible efficacy in
themselves, would never be able to accomplish
and produce. To this end it collects together a
number of learned and judicious men thorough-
ly versed in their respective arts ; vmites them
in an association, and provides this association
with all the aids, stores, and instnmients,
which are necessary for their dilferent pursuits.
Through the union of the members of such a
society in one place, the most rapid and mani-
fold communication is rendered possible among
them ; and to make this communication more cer-
tain, regular meetings are appointed. Sciences,
which thought themselves strangers to each
other, now learn their near and nearer relations ;
onesidedness disappears; reciprocal action, mu-
tual influence,an da scientific common-spirit arise.

Where the seat of a learned society of this
description is at the same time the seat of go-
vernment and the metropolis of the land, the
advantages are still greater. Scientific intuition
and the insight of experience impart themselves
mutually, they interpenetrate each other; light
gains new life, life new light; every sphere of
vision is enlarged, every faculty is enhanced.

Even men of the world in the distinctive
sense of that phrase, I mean those who claim
to be exclusively such, who pride themselves
thereon, as the highest boast, — even they are
singly seized, changed and ennobled by instruc-
tion. They feel that they must relax some-
thing of the law of pure ignorance and solemn
idleness, the strict and assiduous observance of
which converts them into the most extraordi-
nary kind of pedants; since the prerogative-
maxim, '■'■the more worthless the mwe icorthy" dies
of its own meaning, the moment it is distinctly
pronounced. Be it that this maxim refuses to
be so expressed and understood, let it seek
palliation and pretexts, it only renders itself
more hateful by its pains ; it only accelerates
its own downfal ; in which downfal its whole
aristocratic connection are inevitably involved.

To this connection belong especially the fol-
lowing assertions :

The assertion, that a living, far-reaching in-
tuition, an intuition which affects the great, the
universal, is incompatible with thorough know-
ledge and perfectly accurate conceptions, — al-
together incompatible with true and genuine
learning and science ; on the contrary, that it is
compatible only with very general and loose
sketches of the understanding drawn from ap-
pearances alone ;

The assertion, that you must guard against
principles, because principles lead to systems,
and all systems are false ;

The assertion, that only the old method (rou-
tine) which arrogates to itself the honoured
title of experience, guides in the right path, and
that in order not to stray from that path, it is
necessary to follow that guide in all cases.

224

JACOBI.

Llirully, and that yon must never use your own
eyes fur the sake of finding it;

The twin assertion, that you must distrust
reason which only hatches mistaken theories,
and always hold by the posilive ; by this posi-
tive we are to understand either a tradition
which has become senseless and absurd by the
change of times, or new- and purely arbitrary
arrangements ;*

Finally, the assertion, which expresses the
whole at once, that theoretical shallowness is the
condilioii of practical excellence.

Not so did the truly great men of the world,
of ancient, middle and modern times, contend.
While earning the gratitude and admiration
of posterity even more than of their contempo-
raries, they remembered well the source from
which those ])qvvers that enabled them to be-
come £0 mighty, so prominent, and so glorious,
had flowed; and not only did they contiuue to
draw from it, but they sought to render it more
accessible, and especially more copious, so that,
by channels and pipes, it might be conducted in
all directions, for the use of the multitude. They
all loved the sciences, sought the intercourse of
the learned, and, with their counsel and aid, ac-
complished the most important and difficult un-
dertakings. Several of these statesmen and men
of the world were scientific men in the more
])roper and strict acceptation, — men of learning
in the most comprehensive sense of the word.

History names to us, as belonging to this latter
class, among the ancient Greeks, a Charaondas,
Archytas, Zaleucus; a Dion, Epaminondas, Pe-
ricles and Xenophon^ a Phoeion and Demetrius
of Phalera, together with many others. The
Macedonian Alexander himself may be reckoned
in this enumeration ; after him, the first Ptole-
mies and their competitors, the kings of Per-
gamus.

Among the Romans — (I omit the first kings,
a Numa, Servius Tullius, Tarquinius Priscus;
as, in speaking of the Greeks, I omitted their
eldest philosophers, who were all rulers, kings,
princes and statesmen) — history names to us,
as active friends and promoters of science, in
the time of the Republic, a Scipio, LlcHus, Lu-
cuUus, Asinius Pollio (founder of the first public
library at Rome), Cato, Brutus, Cicero, Jidius
Casar.

The last in this catalogue, unquestionably the
greatest statesman and military hero of them
all, was also the most thorough scholar, the
deepest and most comprehensive thinker of
tliem all ; although he himself gave Cicero the
preference, in this respect, of whom he said that
he had won for himself a crown of laurel wliich
was more honourable tlian all triumphs; since
it was greater glory to have extended the limits

* The warning of Tertullian, that tradition nailed Ood
fiim.trff IB the cross, has heen elsewhere quoted by the
author of this essay. This Fathpf of the Cliurch, on the
same occnsion, makes the important remark: Doniinus
uoster, Jesus Christus veritaUm se iion consuetudincm
cognominavit.

of Roman learning than to have extended the
limits of the Roman territory. The emendation
of the calendar, which he undertook wdth the
Alexandrian astronomer, Sosigenes, his deter-
mination and division of the year, which, with
some corrections since added, obtains to this day
and continues to bear the name of its author, —
these are sufficiently notorious. An ever-active
military life, full of dangers and exploits, did
not prevent him from writing philosophical,
grammatical, and {jolitical works, besides his
incomparable history of the Gallic war. It was
because he could comprehend and penetrate
with philosophic eye the connection of the ages,
that he knew how to rule his own. He who
wants the former, — the power of vision and the
practice requisite for such insight, — will assur-
edly never succeed in the latter. His age will
overcome him and make him a laughing-stock,
with all his plans and labours. Not seeing
what is, he will imagine himself to see with
the greatest clearness what is not ; everywhere
he will see, as well in his fears as in his hopes
and trusts. Such a one may have read all the
books of history from the beginning of the world,
and know them by heart ; the great book of the
world is still a closed book to him. He has
never learired what occasioned the appearance
of each particular crisis — the present among the
rest — at that particular time when it appeared.
This intuition which comprehends, at the same
time, with a clear distinction, that which works
by necessity and that which works with freedom,
is the philosophic spirit itself, which, as some-
thing divine, alone possesses genuine power.
That which exists merely as a consequence of
the times, works on necessarily and blindly; its
action is wholly eartlily, and mere bondage.
That which works with freedotn interrupts the
times, changes them for centuries to come, en-
ligiitens, ennobles, sets free.

Obviously to the dullest sense, the history of
Rome under the emperors illustrates the close
connection between the welfare of science and
the welfare of the State. Along the whole series
of the Ccesars, we find the one and the other
always on the same level, now higher, now
lower. Who does not know the history of the
first four successors of Augustus ? Exactly in
proportion as any one of these rulers showed
himself more unworthy of the throne, more in-
human, foolish, mad than another, were the
sciences at Rome neglected, persecuted, banished
the kingdom. Under the reign of Vespasian,
beneficent as it was glorious, and under his suc-
cessor Titus, art and science revived; they were
promoted, rewarded. Quinclilian and the elder
Pliny illustrated this period. Then followed
the cruel Doniitian. This man hoped to be able,
together with the sciences and arts, to abolish
from the foundation whatever ennobles and ex-
alts the human soul. Not without reason, had
he succeeded! Men of lofty purpose were no
more to be ; nothing venerable, says Tacitus, was
permitted anywhere to spring up and show it-

JACOBI.

225

self. But in vain did lie oppress and banish all
the friends of the good and the tnie. His threats
and his ravings were insufficient to prevent a
multitude of noble youths from wandering to
Bithynia to behold the example and to hear the
wisdom of Epietetus. Exile and the sword had
still spared many, out of the midst of whom,
after the fall of the tyrant, a Nerva and a Trajan
came forth to heal the wounds of Humanity
once more.

After Domitian, five excellent rulers in turn
ascended the throne. Then began, with Corn-
modus, a new series of monsters, who trode in
the steps of the Tiberii and the Neros, who pur-
posely imitated, and in the variety of their vices
and enormities, exceeded them ; and still adopt-
ed the name of Antonine. — At length there ap-
peared once more a man who was worthy to
bear this great name ; and he refused to assume
it. This was the youth Alexander Severus. I
should perish, said he, beneath the weight of a
name which was borne by Pius and Marcus.
Of the thirteen years' reign of this youth it has
been justly said, that it might serve hoary heads
for a model. With this great and good prince,
the sun rose for the last time on the sciences
and virtues and all good order. He died, and
day returned not again to Rome. With the
death of Philosophy (how could it be otherwise?)
her daughter Jurisprudence also perished. Rea-
son itself seemed to be extinguished. All was
darkness and chaos. Barbarism triumphed in
a twofold form, and, with Ijlended savageness
and degeneracy, produced a state of things never
before experienced by man.

But that which works only destructively has
its limit where its action must cease, and give
place to a new and opposite principle, — a cre-
ative, a forming and reforming power. The
destructive is not from the beginning, but the
creative. Tiiis alone is eternal ; its forces wax
not old.

And so, in this case also, after a long night a
new dawn began to break. He who introduced
it was the same great individual with whom
the German empire begins.

In his prosperous expedition against the Lon-
gobardi in Italy, Charlemagne became acquaint-
ed with the great spirit of antiquity, through its
ruins: and his heart kindled for the revival of
the sciences and arts throughout the whole ex-
tent of his dominions. He called Alcuin and
other learned men and lovers of science, to his
court. These established there a peculiar asso-
ciation, of which Charlemagne himself was a
member, and gave it the name of Academy.
Thus originated the first European learned So-
ciety. Alcuin appears, for a long time, to have
been its head. Among its members were num-
bered, besides the emperor himself, and his fa-
inous chancellor, Eginhard, — the archbishop of
Mayence, Riculph ; farther, Theodulph, Angil-
bert and others. The numerous progeny of this
institute shed their lustre over the whole of the
ninth century.

2d

That Charlemagne did not gather learned
men around him merely because, with his fiery
zeal for knowledge, their conversation must
needs be dear to him; but that the education
of the whole people, the ennobling of the na-
tional character, lay near his heart, is proved
by the comprehensive provisions for public in-
struction which he made, and of which he is
properly the founder. "With him,"' says Hege-
wisch very justly, "began the first transition of
the Germans from merely sensuous activity to
activity of mind."

If his plan were to succeed, it must begin wilh
those who immediately surrounded the throne.
On that account, Charlemagne founded the Aca-
demy at his court, and, by the powerful influ-
ence of his example, set in motion every mind
that Nature had endowed with any degree of
talent. No longer might the great look with
contempt upon every species of intellectual em-
ployment, even to reading and writing ; unless
they were willing to see those whom they de-
spised for their want of birth, exalted above
them and enjoying exclusive favour. By this
means, Charlemagne, in a few years, procured
for himself able assistants and zealous partici-
pators in his lofty schemes.

He then went a step farther and ordered
schools to be established in connection with
every convent and every cathedral ; and, what
was most important, they were so arranged as
to be useful not only in the education of those
who devoted themselves to the clerical office,
but also in the education of the laity, especially
those of rank. For the benefit of the common
people, and of those country-priests who M^ere
not sufficiently instructed, he caused passages
to be collected from the Fathers, translated into
the German, and read by the priests to the peo-
ple on Sundays and pmblic festivals of the
Church.

From no one of the edicts of this truly great
man, who wished not only to command but to
rule, does his straight-forward and jirofound
sense, his penetrating intellect, shine forth more
conspicuously than from that just mentioned.
He understood the direction which enlighten-
ment must take, in order that it may be true
and entirely sound.

Unfortunately, this great Reformer was, at
the same time, a conqueror, and thought it ne-
cessary to convert obstinate pagans with the
sword. Thus it came to pass, that he laboured
against himself, and that what he planted did
not attain sufficient strength. The schools which
he established continued indeed; they even
multiplied with the spread of Christendom and
the wants of a more numerous clergy which
that spread occasioned. But now, in the supply
of these wants, everything else was forgotten.
The schools educated only priests, and imparted
to them only, in a very imperfect manner, what
was absolutely essential to their calling. The
most profound an<l pernicious ignorance pre-
vailed. Hierarchy and feudal anarchy reached

226

JACOBI.

tlie summit of their power. State and Church
ran wild ; that epoch began which properly
bears the name of the middle ages.

Towards the middle of this period, at the be-
ginning of the thirteenth century, those four-
limbed bodies for teaching and learning were
formed, whose offspring to this day bear the
barbarous name of Universities. With these, —
with the unlimited power of scholasticism, which
then culminated, — with the Dominicans and
Franciscans, — the eclipse of Reason became
central. Knowledge of the languages and an-
cient literature fell into utter contempt. They
who occupied themselves with these in any
degree were derided as dullards. Neverthe-
less, all this while, and through the whole me-
dieval period, instruction, by way of preparation,
in the seven liberal arts, as they were called,
continued; and to this institution — to the pre-
paratory schools — it is chiefly owing, that an-
cient literature did not pass into entire oblivion,
and that the possibility remained of a return to
the beautiful, the great and the true which had
vanished with the fore-world.

It is very remarkable that though important
progress was made in some departments of
science during the middle ages — as in geometry
and arithmetic with Gerbert, in natural science
with Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon; — and
even though other branches of human know-
ledge unfolded themselves as new instincts, and
introduced learned occupations even among the
laity, — as jurisprudence and medicine which
arose at the same time, toward the end of the
eleventh century, — the former at Bologna, the
latter at Salerno : — that notwithstanding these
onward movements and the mighty impulse given
to the thinking faculty by scholastic studies, the
culture of reason, in its proper sense, did not arise
or come to view. It arose first with the revival
of ancient literature, and made mighty progress
when, in Italy, through the instrumentality of
Cosmo de Medicis, that Platonic Academy, cele-
brated not only in the atmals of the learned, but
in the history of the world, was formed, and,
ahnost contemporary with it, a similar learned
society in Germany, under the patronage of
John of Dalburg, which called itself the Rhe-
nish, and which proved even more fruitful than
that of Florence.

Heeren remarks of the Florentine Institute,
that " in an age when the institutions for the
promotion of the sciences were all, as yet, under
the control of the convents or of certain corpora-
tions, Cosmo, in his Platonic Academy, exhi-
bited the first model of a free union for scientific
culture, of which the many subsequent institu-
tions of this kind were imitations, bearing the
name (academies) without, for the most part,
inheriting their spirit."*

Of the Rhenish Institute, Hegewisch says,
after remarking that nothing of the kind had
ever been seen in Germany before, except once
at the court of Charlemagne : " so far as we are

* Gesch. des Stiidiuras der classischen Lit. B. II. par. 20.

acquainted with this association, it was estab-
lislied precisely on that footing which seems
most suitable for literary societies. The only
bond which united the members, was mutual
friendship originating in a common desire of
being useful, and founded on reciprocal esteem.
Among the members of this society were the
Freiherr von Dalburg, afterward Bishop of
Worms, the friend of Conrad Celtes, of Rudolph
Agricola, of Johann Reuchlin, and of every
man who, by virtue of distinguished talents,
merited a place by the side of these ; Wilibald
Birkhaimer. who, as a statesman, a soldier, and
an elegant writer, was an extraordinary pheno-
menon in Germany at that time ; together with
many others distinguished partly by their rank
and station, and partly by their learning and
talents.'*

What made the preceding centuries so dark
and ever darker is sufficiently notorious, after
the labours of so many excellent men devoted
to the illustration of this subject. Ignorance and
barbarism grew in proportion as hierarchy and
feudalism reared their summits over against
each other, and wrought together, without con-
cert, in the destruction of all true civil power.

This form of government could not reform it-
self, (as, in fact, no one has yet done ; evil, in
and of itself, can only grow worse continually;)
it had to go down, and a new one to arise in its
stead. This took place after a series of events,
— crusades, and extended navigation, with all
which they brought in their train, — had enlarged
the sphere of vision of the nations, and given
them the courage and the capacity to assert the
feeling, common to all men, of self-propertyf
against spiritual and personal tyranny. There
arose a numerous class who, by virtue of their
education, by their mode of living, their investi-
gations and experiences, had attained to very
diflerent views of the world and man, and to
quite other criteria of the know-worthy and the
true, than those which the schools and the lec-
ture-rooms of the time could furnish. t This
class, or rather the taste for the good and the
true, which had sprung from an understanding
of the really useful, of that which benefits man-
kind in general, gained the ascendancy. The
native oppressors and devastators of Ausonia
disappeared, and citizen-princes arose in their
place. The age of the Medicis began, and, at
Florence, that Academy mentioned above, which
numbered among its most active members and
promoters, a Duke Frederic of Urbino, and the
celebrated King Mathias Corvinus of Hungary.
The inspiration of Italy passed over to Ger-
many, but with this difference, that whereas
there, citizen-scholars became princes, here, on
the other hand, princes, and the companions of
princes, became scholars, or, at least, friends,

* Allgemeine Uebersiclit der deutsch. Kulturgeschichte.
S. 189. 191. 192.

t Selbst angehorigkeit—lhe belonging to one's self.

X Gescliichte der Kiinste und Wissenscliaften, v. Buhle.
Abt. vi. B. 2. Absch. I.

JACOBI.

227

lovers, and promoters of science. Who has not
heard, in this connection, the names of Frederic
the Wise of Saxony, of Philip of the Palatinate,
of the Dukes Eberhard and Ulrich of Witten-
berg, of Johannes von Dalburg, of Count INIo-
ritz von Sfiiegelberg, of Rudoljih von Lange,
and their pupils, Hermann von Nuenar and
Honnann von dem Busche, above all, of Ulrich
von Hutten 1

Contemporary with these excellent men were
the three patriarchs of German humanities,*
Rudolph Agricola. Johann Reuchlin, and Conrad
Celtes. The series of excellent writers who
appeared in our country in the sixteenth cen-
tury are to be regarded as the descendants of
these. Yet they were not schoolmen, but only
transient teachers, for a longer or shorter period,
in universities, and belonged rather, especially
the two former, to the great world and the life
of affairs. To them chiefly it is to be ascribed,
that classic literature, and with it philosophy
and history, gained currency among the higher
classes also, and were introduced at courts. On
the other hand, they, for their part, received a
kind of culture which is gained only by inter-
course with the actual world, by i)articipation
iu its affairs, and by intimate acquaintance with
the principal conductors of those affairs ; by
mutual influence, action and reaction. Neither
science nor government can thrive without some
reciprocal action of this sort. For how can ig-
norance rule wisely, or even execute successfully
its unwise plans? How can it preserve its au-
lliority, without which there is no true and en-
during power in governments? And, on the
other hand, how could science and wisdom
inal;e their dignity and their authority immedi-
ately felt? make it that which proves itself,
universally, the stronger? Neither is compati-
ble with the nature of man. Tlierefore let
strength cleave to wisdom and wisdom to
strength.

No one will question that the vast change
which took place with the nations of Europe in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and which
has now been sketched with few strokes, was
a change which ennobled humanity throughout
this quarter of the globe, a real and general im-
provemeat of the human condition. It may be
asked, however, with respect to the farther pro-
gress which has been making, for more than
three centuries, in the same direction, or at least
apparently in the same direction, whether this
progress, the reality of which cannot be disputed,
has been a progress toward a better and ever
belter? Consequently, whether humanity, in
this age, may boast itself and rejoice to have
drawn much nearer to the great end of the
race, inward and outward peace, by universal
and sure knowledge of the know-worthy, by
vmiversal and firm possession of the have-

* Der dcutschen humanisten, i. e. of those who, in
Germany, cultivated tlie " humanities," as they are called.

worthy, than our fathers were three hundred
years ago ?

This question, in order to be satisfactorily an-
swered, must be put on higher grounds and in
a form which concerns human nature in general.
The problem would then read thus : Has the
human race an attainable goal here on earth?
And, if there is such a goal, is the whole race
approaching it gradually, by different, and even
apparently opposite paths? Or may single na-
tions, at least, be moving toward it, by a con-
tinued approximation, until somewhere, at last,
it is reached ?

All the animal races have a goal which they
may attain to. The tendency of each one is ful-
filled, entirely satisfied ; it completes its course,
lives out its life. Not so man. He is a yonder-
sided being. His senses and his understanding
he has in common with the brute. Reason be-
longs to him alone. By means of that, he is
made capable of a God and of virtue, of the
beautiful, the good, the sublime. His instinct is
religion.

The faculties which man possesses in com-
mon with the lower animals, he can use, culti-
vate, and apply in an infinitely greater variety
of w-ays than they; and, with his more cunning
understanding, which, as mere understanding,
he owes, after all, only to a richer and more ar-
tificial organization, he may advance to such an
extent that, compared with his speechless bro-
thers, even on this stage, he shall be capable of
seeming an essentially dilferent being from
them, living and free, endued w ith a creative
sjiirit, a self-existing being.

But let us not forget to notice that the pro-
gress which man makes with the mere under-
standing, which necessarily relates to objects of
sense alone, is, to say the least, indifferent in re-
sj)ect to reason, i. e. the cultivation of genuine
humanity, of that wliich, exclusively and alone,
makes man man. That is to say, the progress
may be, and, in the beginning, always is, of such
a nature as to prepare the way for the influence
of true humanity, as to accompany and to pro-
mote it. But it may also acquire such a charac-
ter, and has hitherto, in the most diverse ways,
always acquired it, as to produce a strikingly
opposite effect ; as to destroy humanity, to sup-
press reason, and crowd everything divine out
of the human breast.

The fact is but too evident, that a people may
be admirably skilled in the arts, possess a many-
sided culture, and even exhibit, outwardly, the
most refined morals, and yet, at the same time,
be inwardly, in the highest degree, corrupt,
deeply immoral, God-forgetting, on the whole,
destitute of all virtue.

Impressed with this truth, which the past asid
the present alike universally confirm, that a cidture
relating to the sensual life alone, far from aiding
humanity by its progress, oppresses and corrupts
it in its innermost being, and, in spite of all our
refinement and affluence, makes us, in trutli,
only worse aird more miserable animals, — deeply

228

JACOB!.

impressed with this truth. Rousseau wished, in
order to get rid of our understanding which in-
vents sciences, arts, and laws, to our undoing,
that we might, renouncing our reason also, (in
his zeal he Ibrgot this part of our nature,) return
to the forest, become four-footed and innocent
once more, if this were only practicable nov/.

This fiery orator, and all who, since him,
have handled the same subject, themselves saw
by the liglit of the understanding only ; and
so the solution of this knot must needs be an
impossibility for them. If reason, they main-
tained, is incapable of producing a ' heaven-on-
earth,' she is deserving of no particular regard,
at least, is not worth all the fuss which has
hitherto been made about her. Others, who
wished to preserve the authority of that which
they denominated reason, contended that the
heaven-on-carth would come, and that so soon
as — no other should be talked of. The unphi-
losophical mocked at this, and, without waiting
for that which reason might accomplish at some
future period, they made their heaven-on-earth,
as well as they could, on the spot. The philo-
so])hers, in silence, did the same.

The true word of this enigma, or its solution,
is a yes and a no at the same time, — both equal
in force, both equal in right, and of such a cha-
racter, that the negation does not cancel the
affirmation, nor the affirmation the negation, but
both maintain themselves over against each
other, and are mutually balanced.

When the faculty of desire has given the
ends, the understanding assists to find the means
necessary to the attainment of those ends. It
distinguishes, combines, arranges, weighs, and
considers. It calms the mind to prudence.
But it is incapable of generating ends — original
ends — out of itself. These all spring from sen-
sual or supersensual, corporeal or spiritual
wants. In and with those, works the under-
standing, in and with these. Reason.

It is a truth old as the human species, that
sense and reason are in continual conflict with
each oilier, that now one and now the other is
in the ascendancy. Herein is manifested the
discord of man with himself, caused by two
propensities essentially diflerent in their de-
mands, and often diametrically opposite in their
operation. One of these propensities produces
the practical understanding, the other practical
Reason.

There can be no dispute as to which of these
propensities deserves, absolutely and always,
the preference and the supremacy. No one
denies that the highest authority belongs to
Reason, and that unconditional obedience is due
to her precepts.

Understan<liiig may exist in the highest de-
gree, even where the most profligate aims are
manifest. It executes with equal assiduity the
best and the worst. Of itself, it knows not
what is good or bad, but only what is more or
less. It can only mete according to a given
measure ; it can only deliberate, not subordi-

nate ;* it can only number, compute, calculate.
To make out a first cause or an idtimate aim,
lies entirely beyond its sphere.

" What is good." says the v.'ise man of
Stagira, "is so by the inherent power of the
object; and life itself is a good, only because
we learn what is good, by means of it."' Rea-
son alone makes known to us what is good in
itself. Reason is the faculty of proposing to
ourselves the highest. As such, it stood with
the ancients, under the title of Wisdom, at the
head of the virtues ; it arranged them, it had
invented them. Prudence is the virtue of the
understanding. That iiiculty discovers and re-
veals what is serviceable, unconcerned as to the
worth of the end, whether good or bad.

"If Reason had the power as she has the
authority," says a iirofound English thinker,!
"Justice and Peace, the Good and the Beautiful
would everywhere reign supreme." But now
she has only right on her side; strength dwells
elsewhere, witli sensual desire, with the appe-
tites and passions. This disproportion cannot
be universally abolished, but the nobler or the
ignobler may obtain more or less the ascen-
dancy, and the times, accordingly, be better or
worse.

Only that — according to the definition of one
of our most acute and noble thinkers — deserves
to be called a better age,in which human nature
in a state of the most active self-development,
although defective in some points, yet, on the
whole, harmonious, has distinguished itself by
nobleness of sentiment and energy of mind in
entire nations ; in which a noble and difficult
aim was clearly discerned and boldly and stead-
fastly pursued. The value of an age, therefore,
is not to be estimated by the bloom of the arts,
or by the multitude of learned acquirements,
by which particular classes of cidtivated indi-
viduals may be distinguished; not by the pow-
ers and deeds of single, celebrated men, nor by
the predominance of a so called enlightenment,
in the best sense of the word ; seeing that the
faculty of moral self-determination is cultivated
less by instruction than by living example, and,
in an enervated century, all moral doctrines,
although they may take root in the understand-
ing, act but feebly on the character. Least of
all, is the value of an age to be estimated by
the standard of public self-content, which is
generally considered a less fallible one; since
man may easily sink so low that the manner of
his well-being shall concern him but little, if
only, on the whole, he is tolerably well. Let it
first be ascertained what kind of well-being the
people enjoy. Enjoyment is stimulating and
honourable, only as a consequence of true self-
development; and the real happiness of man,

* The epigrammatic force of the German is lost in this
translation of the phrase, nur ucber: nicht uiiterlcgen, i.
0., only overlay, not underlay. But the rendering, it is
believed, is otherwise exact. Tr.

t Joseph Butler.

JACOBI.

229

which, at bottom, we all crave, is a noble hap-
piness*

Tried by these principles, the age in which
we live, can hardly receive the testimony that
it belongs to the better sort.

Means we have, as no generation ever had
before us. But with this wealth of means what
ends do we attain? What ends do we propose
to ourselves ? We are full of science, and are
daily inventing new arts, but men, such as the
ancient, and even the middle times — such as
the fifteenth and sixteenth century produced,
are proportionally rare among us. Our pride is
to be able to dispense with such powers and
virtues. So Pericles of old pronounced his
Athenians happy, in that they had no need to
be Spartans in virtue. f As, in the earliest
times, men were at pains to subdue wild beasts,
and to impart to the beasts which they sub-
dued, habits contrary to their instincts; so, in
later times, an entire, degenerate Humanity
strives to subdue true humanity, wherever it is
still active, to bring it beneath the power of a
cultivated animalism which deems itself su-
perior, to suppress or to pervert, on all sides,
the higher instinct, so that, of all which has
ever borne the name of virtue, there shall be
nothing left but so called utilities, whicli may
also be applied to vicious ends. To this class
belong courage, industry, moderation, obedience,
to which men may actually, to a certain extent,
be merely trained, as we train animals. This
is the true pedagogic of our time, the only one
which the time esteems. It shows itself inex-
haustible in devising new methods to attain
the abovementioned end, — to separate what is
merely useful in virtue from virtue itself, and
to make it a matter of public opinion, that
naked virtue, which would be estimated, not by
what it fetches, but by what it costs, sliould be
sent to the mad-house. And thus we become
every day more intelligent, t more ingenious,
and, in the same proportion, more irrational. §
Individually and in the mass, — nationally, — we
have become more devoid of reason.

" Egoism and rage for enjoyment on principle,"
says the writer just quoted, " under the name
of sound philosophy, destroy the fairest relations
of life. The flattering happiness-doctrine, by
which it was proposed at first to dam the stream
of passion, has long since become a frail skiff,
which follows the current. The more earnest
and exalted morality which insjoires man with
a consciousness of his dignity, has become too
strange and too high for the people. They can-
not comprehend it. Man, in general, is consci-
entious, in lire strictest sense, only then, when,
in secret also, he feels the necessity of shame,

* See, Die goldeneii Jahrhunderte, v. Fr. Boutervvck.
Neues .Mviseum der I'liil. uiid Lit. Band I. Heft 2.

t Thucydides, ii. 34-39.

X Versliindig .

§ Unvcrn'unfiig. — Observe all along the distinction, no-
where so proiniiient as with Jacobi, between the under-
standing and the reason. Tr.

before another than himself The belief in that
other, has been, for centuries, by instruction and
tradition, identified with attachment to a church.
The inconsiderate cry of enlightenment has torn
the people away from the Church, and Con-
science is left without house or home. And
now one party thirsts, for sweet pleasure, to
drain the cup of life to the dregs, and the other
party crawls back to the cross in the literal sense
of these words. Amid this disgusting (we may
call it) opposition between a reviving priestcraft
and a happiness-theory which knows not God,
a generation is growing up whose destiny no
philosophy can control. It would need no ex-
traordinary occurrences to deliver up this gene-
ration to a new Mohammed. For it needs but
few syllogisms now-a-days, to rob men of the
principles of their 'human understanding,' as
they call it. Popular enlightenment among us
is unnaturally advanced. Its unnatural begin-
ning and progress portend its natural termina-
tion. Posterity will not wonder if, in the desert
of unbelief, men raise serpents and pray to
golden calves once more ; and if, in this ser-
pent-and -calf- service, philosophers tend the
altars.''

Remarkable signs exhibit themselves. But
twenty years ago, all shallow heads were agreed
with Voltaire, Helvetius, Diderot, and their dis-
ciples, that philosophy and every method of
cultivating and diffusing it, were good and
wholesome. Now, all shallow heads are equally
unanimous in the contrary opinion. All philo-
sophising is affirmed to be useless and even
pernicious. They became convinced, by an
extraordinary event, that egoism cannot be made
just, at least, not in the gross, in the way which
their teachers had affirmed. They became
convinced that a pure democracy of mere appe-
tites and passions, however organized, can never
become a kingdom of happiness and peace
Hence they concluded (for the principle of ego-
ism, as the only true princij)le, they once for
all, could not let go) that it is better to renounce
all hope of justice, to give up Humanity, and
to abandon everything to Chance.

Far be it from us to concur with them. A
loud appeal against them to the genius of Hu-
manity, is the duty of every noble-minded man.
We need heroes of humanity; and they will
appear, as they have hitherto appeared in every
case in which the highest necessity demanded
them. As to the how and the when, let no one
ask. Let each one perform, in his place, what
the better, the reliable sj^irit within him enjoins.

This spirit, as it is its own highest end, so it
is its own only means. Against the power
thereof no other power may stand. It will
pierce through and overcome.

It is impossible that a pure and clear under-
standing should be incompatible with an ele-
vated reason. Rather, when used aright, they
must mutually promote each other. There can
be no bad use of the reasoii. And even of the
understanding, there can only then be a bad
20

230

JACOBI.

use, when that faculty is already, in part, sub-
jugated, and, in the same measure, eclipsed by
the senses which it was ordained to rule. Only
then will it prove itself hostile to reason, — place
itself as a dark body before the sun of the spirit
and intercept its rays. Its self-eclipses are not
to be likened to the eclipses of the moon, in re-
lation to which Thucydides says; "that the
Greeks of his day had long since ceased to be
afraid of eclipses of the sun, but that eclipses of
the moon still excited their alarm." They did
not comprehend how a body could stand in its
own light.

It is plain, to him who reflects, in what way
these general considerations connect themselves
with what was said above, concerning learned
societies of old and recent time, and what bear-
in'4 they have on the new dedication of the
Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences. They
came unsought. Dulness and narrowness can-
not comprehend the design of these intellectual
alliances. With bold assumption, they pronounce
judgment upon them, or ask for results of im-
mediate utility. These our Academy indeed, as
the Keeper of the scientific (and what splendid !)
treasures and collections of our illustrious mo-
narch and of this kingdom, (a beautiful addition
to its destination, which hitherto no other aca-
demy in the world has possessed, to this extent)
can point to with serene brow ; but they are not
the only thing that gives value to this fair circle
of the priests of humanity. The high ancestors

of our Maximilian Joseph founded this Institute
and made its conduct their care. The Genius
of this kingdom would have mourned if our age
had suffered it to become extinct. This was
not to be apprehended. The lofty prince whom,
with joy and triumph, we call ottrs, — whom,
with full heart, we call the king ; he who, in all
ways, blesses liis people, is willing also to in-
crease their fame by helping to preserve to them
so sacred an inheritance, by furnishing it anew,
by enlarging its powers, by increasing its splen-
dor.

Those who conclude, this day, the renewed
alliance of truth and wisdom, are justly inspired
with the hope of something better, and with
courage to promote it. "^» institution of peace,
and for the mediation of the antagonistic in lime,
by science,''* has been founded. It is allowed
us to speak freely of the advantages, but also of
the defects of the time. Whatever it possesses
that is costly and excellent in relation to science
and art, is presented to us, in rich abundance,
by royal liberality. To contribute something
toward the promotion of the highest, and of
whatsoever is wanting to the time, shall be
the unalterable aim of our most zealous en-
deavours.

Blessings on the best of kings, who called this
union into being, and who will foster and pre-
serve it!

* Excellent words of Schelling.

>] £, S 3&

JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER.

Born 1744. Died 1S03.

This honored name, than which Germany
has few more prized, represents a wide range
of intellect, and covers a large space in the
national literature. Herder is a literature in
himself, including theology, philosophy, history,
criticism, poetry ; all the various departments
of literary effort, and approved in all. He sur-
passes all his contemporaries in breadth, and
most of them in depth. Such union of breadth
and depth has seldom been seen. To him may
be ascribed the epithet "myriad-minded." He
towers above the ordinary level of humanity,
not, like most great men, in a single peak, but
with a many-headed elevation; a vast moun-
tain-range whose highest summits mingle with
the skies ; whose sunny slopes are covered with
luxurious vegetation; whose secret valleys are
haunted by the Muse of Romance, and beneath
whose surface are mines of gold.

Had Herder possessed the element of form in
any degree proportioned to the sumless wealth
of his intellect and his all-sided culture, he
would have been the first poet, not of Germany
only, but of his age, of any age. There lay his
defect. He was no artist. Like king David,
he collected materials from the ends of the
earth, but it was not given to him to rear a
temple therewith. With all his voluminous-
ness he has left no perfect work. Even his
" Ideas toward a philosophy of the history of
Humanity" is fragmentary, as the name im-
ports.

Herder was born at Mohrnngen in East
Prussia, where his father was Cantor* of the
church and usher in a female seminary. His
early education v.ms better adapted to make
him a good man than a brilliant scholar, being
confined to tlie reading of the bible and the
hymn-book. Other books, which his thirst for
knowledge constrained him to seek, he was
obliged to read by stealth; and it is related
that he used to climb a tree and la<h himself
with a leathern strj^ to one of the branches for
this purpose.

* All otfict^ in the Lutheran Church, of whicli the prin-
cipal duty is that of precentor — whence the name.

He learned to write, and the beauty of his
chirography procured him a patron in Trescho,
a clergyman who employed him as amanuensis,
and permitted him to share the instruction of
his sons in the Latin and Greek languages.
The intense application with which he devoted
himself to the pursuit of knowledge brought on
a disease of the eyes, from which he never en-
tirely recovered. A Russian surgeon who had
afforded him temporary relief, and who was
then a visiter in the house of Trescho, per-
suaded him to study surgery in St. Petersburg,
and offered not only to pay his expenses thither,
but to give him gratuitous instruction. But at
Konigsberg, on tlieir way, Herder was so over-
come by the sight of a dissection which he
witnessed, that he abandoned this project, and
turned his attention to theology. He remained
in Konigsberg for this purpose, supporting him-
self, as a private instructor, while pursuing his
studies at the university. He there formed an
acquaintance with Hamann and with Kant.

In 1765, he was appointed teacher and
preacher at the Cathedral school at Riga,
where he kindled the enthusiastic devotion
of his hearers and pupils by his word and his
writings. For here commenced his career as
an author. In 1768, he declined a call to St.
Petersburg as inspector of the St. Peter's school
in that city, and accepted the office of travel-
ling chaplain to the prince of Holstein-Eutin,
In this capacity he travelled through Germany
as far as Strassburg, where he was induced to
resign his office on account of his eyes, which
began to trouble him again, and to undergo an
operation which detained him for a long while
in that city. Here he became acquainted with
Goethe, who was then a student of Law at
Strassburg, Goethe attributes great value to
this acquaintance in his auto-biography, and
makes much of Herder's influence on his mind
and character at that forming period of his life.
"I might count myself fortunate," he says,
"that by an unexpected acquaintance, what-
ever of self-complacency, of self-mirroring, of
vanity, pride, and highmindedness might slum-

(231)

232

HERDER.

ber or work in me, was subjected to a very
severe trial wiiicli was unique in its kind, by
no means proportionate to tlie time, but so much
tlie more penetrating and sensible.

" For the most significant occurrence and that
wliich was to liave the most important conse-
quences for me, was an acquaintance and a
consequent nearer connection with Herder. He
had accompanied the prince of Holstein-Eutin,
who was afflicted with melancholy, in his tra-
vels, and liad come with him as far as Strass-
burg. Our society, as soon as they were aware
of his presence, felt an earnest desire to ap-
proach him, and this gratification happened to
me first in a quite unexpected and accidental
manner. I had gone to the hotel ' Zum
Geist,'' to visit I know not what distinguished
stranger. At the foot of tlie stairs I met a man
who was also on the point of ascending, and
whom I might have taken for a clergyman.
His powdered hair was rolled up into a round
lock; a black dress likewise distinguished him,
but still more a long black silk mantle, the end
of which he had gathered together and thrust
into his pocket. This somewhat striking, but,
on the whole, gentlemanly and agreeable ap-
pearance, of which I had already heard speak,
left me no doubt that he was the celebrated
arrival, and my address must have convinced
him at once that I knew who he was. He
asked my name, which could be of no import-
ance to him; but my frankness appeared to
please him, for he responded to it with great
kindness, and, as we ascended the stairs toge-
ther, showed himself ready at once for a lively
communication. It has escaped me whom we
then visited. Enough, at parting, I begged
permission to call upon him at his lodgings,
which he accorded to me in a manner suffi-
ciently friendly. I did not fail to avail myself
repeatedly of this permission, and was more and
more attracted by him. He had somewhat
gentle in his carriage that was exceedingly
fitting and graceful, without being exactly
adrett ; a round face, a significant brow, a
somewhat blunt nose, a somewhat prominent
but highly individual, agreeable, amiable mouth;
under black eyebrows a pair of coal-black eyes
which did not fail of their effect, although one
of them was wont to be red and inflamed. By
manifold questions he sought to make himself
acquainted with me and my condition, and his
power of attraction operated ever more strongly

upon me. I was generally of a confiding na-
ture, and for him, especially, I had no secret.
But it was not long before the repellent pulse
of his nature came in and occasioned me no
little discomfort. ********

"Herder had now separated himself from the
prince and removed to quarters of his own, re-
solved to submit himself to an operation by
Lobstein. Here I found the benefit of those
exercises by wliicli I had endeavored to blunt
my sensitiveness. I was able to assist at the
operation, and, in various ways, to be helpful
and serviceable to so worthy a man. I had
every reason to admire his great fortitude and
patience ; for neither under tlie various wounds
inflicted by the surgeon, nor under tlie oft-re-
peated, painful bandage, did he manifest the
least vexation ; and he appeared to be the one
among us who suffered the least. But then, in
the intervals, we had to bear in various ways
the mutations of his humor.' * * * » »

" Herder could be most sweetly engaging and
genial ; but he could as easily also turn forth a
vexatious side. All men indeed have this at-
traction and repulsion according to their nature,
— some more, some less, — some in slower, some
in quicker pulses. Few can really overcome
their peculiarity in this regard, although many
appear to do so. In the case of Herder, the
overweight of his contrary, bitter, biting humor
was unquestionably owing to his malady and
the sufferings which arose from it. This case
often occurs in life, and we do not sufficiently
consider the moral effects of diseased condi-
tions, and therefore judge many characters
very unjustly, because we regard all men as
healthy, and require of them that they shall
conduct themselves accordingly.

" During the whole time of this cure, I visited
Herder morning and evening; I also remained
with him sometimes the whole day, and accus-
tomed myself in a short time to his chiding and
fault-finding, the rather that I learned every
day to estimate more highly his great and
beautiful qualities, his extended knowledge,
and liis deep insiglit. The influence of this
goodnatured grumbler was great and important.
He was five years older than I, which makes a
great diflference in our younger days, and since
I acknowledged him for v^at he was, since I
knew how to value what he had already pro-
duced, he necessarily acquired a great supe-
riority over me. But the relation was not an

HERDER.

233

agreeable one. Older people with whom I had
hitherto conversed had spared me while endea-
voring to educate me ; perhaps they had spoiled
me by their yieldingness ; but no approbation
was ever to be had from Herder, whatever pains
one might take to obtain it. While, therefore,
on the one hand, my great attachment and re-
verence for him, and on the other, the discom-
fort which he awakened in me for ever con-
tended together, there arose in me a contradic-
tion, the first in its kind I had ever experienced.
As his conversations were always significant,
whether asking or answering, or in whatever
way he imparted himself, it could not fail that
I should be daily and hourly led on by him to
new views. *««***

During so vexatious and painful a cure, our
Herder lost nothing of his vivacity, but tliat
vivacity grew ever less beneficent. He could
not write a note containing a request, without
spicing it with some kind of jeer. Thus, for
example, he wrote to me once :

" If the epistles of Brutus thou hast in Cicero's Letters,
Thou whom, from well-polished shelves, the school-conso-

lers^the classics
Comfort in splendid editions; but outwardly rather than

mly ;— >

Thou who from Gods or from Goths, oi^, it may be, from

mud* art descended,
Goetlie send tliem to me."

To be sure, it was not handsome that he al-
lowed himself this jest with my name ; for the
proper name of a man is not like a cloak which
merely hangs round him, and at which one can
pluck and twitch, but a close-fitting garment ;
nay, it is something which grows to him like
the skin itself, and which cannot be scratched
or wounded without injury to himself.

On the other hand, the preceding reproof was
better founded. I had taken the authors which
I liad received in exchange from Langer, toge-
ther with some beautiful editions out of my
father's collection, with me to Strassburg, and
arranged them in a neat book-case with the
best intention to use them. But how should
the time which was broken into fragments by a
hundred difl^rent kinds of activity, suffice for
this] Herder, who was a great observer of
books, because he needed them every moment,
noticed my beautiful collection on his first visit;
but he noticed too, that I made no use of it ;
wherefore, as the greatest enemy of all seem-
ing and ostentation, he used with every occa-
sion to twit me on that point. * * *

* " Von Oiiitern von Oothen oiler von Kolhe ;' puns on
Goethe's name. — Ed.

2e

Of such jests, more or less gay or abstruse,
lively or bitter, I might mention many. They
did not vex me, but they were unpleasant. But
as I knew how to value whatever contributed
to my education, and since I had sacrificed
many of my earlier opinions and inclinations, I
soon adjusted myself thereto, and only endea-
voured, so far as it was possible for me from
my then point of view, to separate just reproof
from unjust invective. And so not a day passed
that was not most fruitfully instructive for
me. ****** *

********

After the cure had been protracted beyond
all reasonable bounds, and Lobstein began to
waver and to repeat himself in his treatment,
our whole relation was overcast. Herder be-
came impatient and out of humor ; he could
not succeed in continuing his activity as here-
tofore, and he was obliged to restrain himself,
the rather that the blame of the unsuccessful
chirurgical undertaking was imputed to his too
great intellectual activity, and his uninter-
rupted, lively and even merry intercourse with
us. In short, after so much torture and suffer-
ing, the artificial lachrymal duct would not
form, and the desired communication could not
be brought about. It was found necessary to
let the wound heal in order that the evil might
not grow worse. If, during the operation, we
were compelled to admire Herder's fortitude
under such pains, his melancholy, nay, grim
resignation to the idea of being obliged to bear
such a blemish througli life, had in it something
sublime, whereby he secured to himself forever
the veneration of those who saw him and loved
him. This misfortune, wliich disfigured so sig-
nificant a face, could not but be the more vexa-
tious from the circumstance, that he had be-
come acquainted with and had won the affec-
tions of a distinguished lady in Darmstadt. It
was chiefly on this account that he had sub-
mitted to that cure, in order, on his return, to
appear more free, more joyful, and with im-
proved looks before his half-betrothed, and to
connect himself more surely and inseparably
with her."*

In 1770, Herder received a call to Biicke-
burg as superintendant, court-preacher, and
member of the consistory. There he became
the confidential friend of Count Wilhelni, of
Schaumburg-Lippe and his wife, and added to

* Aus meinem Leben. Part 2J. Book 10th.
20*

23-1

HERDER.

his literary fame by several important publica-
tions. In 1775, he was invited to a professor-
ship of theology in Gottingen ; but objections
having been raised on the score of questionable
orthodoxy, he accepted a call whicli came to
him from Weimar to fill the offices of court-
preacher, of general superintendent, and coun-
sellor of the upper Consistory in that Electorate.
Here he remained daring the rest of his life,
and by his fame as pulpit-orator, by his services
as superintendent of the schools, and zealous
promoter of all good works, by the establish-
ment of a seminary for teachers, by the reforms
which he introduced into the liturgy and the
catechetical instruction, he endeared himself
alike to prince and people. In 1789, he was
made vice-president, in ISOl, president of the
upper Consistory. At the same time he received
from the Elector of Bavaria the diploma of no-
bility.

He died, December 18tli, 1803, in the sixtieth
year of his age. His remains were deposited
in the vault of the city-church, and, in 1819,
a monument of cast-iron was erected over them,
•which expressed the characteristic aspirations
of his soul with the brief inscription, Licht,
Jjiebe, Leheny*

The highest panegyric on Herder is that
pronounced by his true friend and fervent ad-
mirer, Jean Paul, in his Vorschule der JEslhetik.
" That noble spirit was misunderstood by op-
posite times and parties, yet not entirely with-
out fault of his own. For he had the fault,
that he was no star of first or of any other
magnitude, but a clump of stars out of which
each one spells a constellation to please him-
self; one man a pair of scales, or the constella-
tion of Autumn ; another, a crab, or the constel-
lation of Summer, and so on. Men, with powers
of various kinds, are always misunderstood ;
those with powers of only one kind, seldom.
The former come in contact with all, both like
and unlike ; the latter only with their like. * *
" Born, as it were, with a love-potion of fervid
passion for nature, like a Brahmin, with the
lofty Spinozism of the heart, he cherished and
held fast to his heart every animalcule and
every blossom. A travelling-carriage driven
through greening life was his sun-chariot, and
only under the free heaven, as also at the sound
of music, would his heart, like a flower, with a
right, wide-cheered expansion, unfold.

* " Li;;lil, Love, Life-." See Wolffs Encyclopedia of
German literature.

* * * I can say but little
him, and insufficient at best. A man

about

who could be resolved into words must be an
e very-day man. The star-heaven no star-map
paints, altliough painting may represent a \a.\\<\-
scape. '■ .. 1= 7= -^ 1-

" So this beloved spirit resembled the swans
which, in the harsh season of the year, keep
the waters open by their motion.

:(: * * *****

" I have not yet spoken the fullest word con-
cerning him. If he was no poet, as he often,
indeed, tliought of himself, and also of otiier
very celebrated people, standing, as lie did,
close by the Homeric and Shakspearian stand-
ard;— then he was merely something better,
namely, a poem, an Indian-Greek epos made by
some purest God. * * * *

" But how shall I analyze it? since in his beau-
tiful soul, precisely as in a poem, everytliing
coalesced, and the good, the true, the beautiful,
constituted an inseparable triunity. Greece
was to him the highest, and, however universal
too his epic - cosmopolitan taste, praising and
acknowledging — even the style of his Hamann
—he still clung most intensely, like a much- wan-
dered Odysseus after his return from all blos-
som lands, to his Greek home. He and Goethe
only (each after his own fashion) are our resto-
rers, or Wmkelmanns of singing Greece, whose
Philomel-tongue not all the prosers of foregone
centuries had been able to loose.

Herder was, as it were, a Greek composition
after the life. Poetry was not merely a hori-
zon-appendix to his life, — as one often sees, in
bad weather, a pile of rainbow-coloured clouds
in the horizon, — but it rose shining, like a free,
light rainbow, over the tliick atmosphere of life,
and spanned it as a heaven's-gate. Hence his
Greek veneration for all the stages of life, his
adjusting, epic manner in all his works, which,
like a philosopliical epos, brings all times,
forms, people, spirits, as with the great hand of
a god, impartially before the secular eye that
measures years only by centuries, and so pro-
vides for them the widest arena. Hence his
Greek disgust at every preponderance of the
scale to one or the other side. Many storm-
and-rack poems* could aggravate his mental
torture into a bodily one. *He wished to see
the sacrifices of poesy as fair and undefiled as
the thunder of heaven permits to scathed jiu-

* His soiil-words first reclaimed the author from the
youthful confounding of force with beauty.

HERDER.

235

manity. Therefore, like a Grecian poem, he
often drew, by mere dint of jest, around every
fairest sentiment, — e. g. pathos, — an early boun-
dary-line of beauty. Only men of shallow sen-
timents revel in them ; those of more profound
sensibility shun their despotism, and, therefore,
have the appearance of coldness. A great
poetical soul can more easily be anything else
on the earth than happy, for man has something
of the Lavatere-]y]s.iit, which, for years, defies
every winter, but grows tender and perishes as
soon as it bears flowers. True, the poet is an
eternal youth, and the dew of the morning lies
upon him his whole life-day long ; but without
sun the drops are dim and cold.

" Few minds are learned after the same grand
fashion as he. The greater part pursue only
the rare, the least known in any science. He,
on the contrary, received only the great streams,
but those of all sciences, into his heaven-mirror-
ing ocean, which, resolving, impressed upon them
its own motion from west to east. Many are
clasped by their learning as by a withering ivy,
but he as by a grape-vine. Everywhere — or-
ganically poetizing — to appropriate to himself
the opposite, was his character ; and around the
dry kernel-house of a Lambert he wove a sweet
fruit-hull. Thus he combined the boldest free-
dom of philosophy, concerning Nature and God,
with the most pious faith, a faith extending
even to presentiments. Thus he exhibited the
Greek humanity, to which he restored the name,
in the most tender regard for all purely human
relations, and in his Lutheran indignation
against all whereby they were poisoned, how-
ever sanctioned by Church and State. He was
a fort overgrown with flowers, a Northern oak
whose branches were sensitive plants. How
gloriously irreconcilable he burned against every
creeping soul, against all looseness and self-
contradiction, dishonesty, and poetical slime-
softness ; as also against German critical rude-
ness and all sceptres in paws; and how he
exorcised the serpents of his time ! But would
you hear the softest of voices, it was his in love
— whether for a child or a poem, or for music —
or in mercy for the weak. He resembled his
friend Hamann, who was at once a hero and a
child; who, like an electrized person in the
dark, stood harmless, with a glory encircling
his head, until a touch drew the lightning from
him.

'* When he painted his Hamann as an angry

prophet, as a demoniacal spirit, and even placed
him above himself, (although Hamann was less
Grecian and mobile, light-blooming and mi-
nutely organized,) and when we heard with
grief that his true world and friendship' s-island
were merged in that writer's tomb, we became
aware, from his longing, that, inwardly, he
judged the age (according to his highest ideal)
more severely than he outwardly appeared to
do, with his toleration and his all-sidedness.
Therefore there pervades his works a secret,
now Socratic, now Horatian irony, which only
those who knew him understand. Altogether,
he was little weighed and little estimated ; and
only in particulars, not in the whole. That
task remains for the diamond-scales of posterity,
into which none of the flint-stones shall come,
with which the rude prosaists, and ruder Kant-
ians, and rude poeticians* would half stone
and half enlighten him.f

"The good spirit gave and suffered much.
Two sayings of his, though unmeaning to
others, remain to me always for contemplation.
One was what he once said to me, with a me-
lancholy feeling of the coldness and barrenness
of the times, upon a Sunday amid the ringing
of the near church-bells, whose tones flowed
down to us as out of the old centuries: that he
wished he had been born in the middle ages.
The other, very diiferent, was : that he wished
to behold an apparition, and that he felt nothing
and had no presentiment of the usual fear of
ghosts. O, the pure soul, of spirit-kin ! To
him this was possible, poetical as he was, and
although such natures usually shudder most at
the long, silent veils which pass and rest behind
death, — for he himself was a spiritual appa-
rition to the earth, and never forgot his own
kingdom. His life was a shining exception to
ofttimes tainted geniality ; he sacrificed, like
the ancient priests, even at the altar of the
Muses, only with white garments.

" He seems to me now, — much as Death usu-
ally litis men up into a holy transfiguration, — in
his present distance and elevation, no more shin-
ing than formerly, l)y my side, here below. I ima-
gine him yonder, behind the stars, precisely in
his right place, and but little changed, his griefs
excepted. Well then ! celebrate right festively
yonder thy harvest-feast, thou pure, thou spirit-

* Poetiker. This word means neitlier poets nor poetas-
ters, but men who theorize on the subject of poetry. Tr.
t In London transparent flints are ground into lenses.

•236

HERDER.

friend ! May tliy coronal of heavy wheat-ears
blossom on thy head into alight flower-chaplel!
Thou sun-flower transplanted to thy sun at last !
"In his song to the night he says to his
sleeping body :

Slumber well, meanwliile, thou sluggish IjurJcn
Of my eartlily walk. Her mantle
Over tliee spreads the Night, anil her lamps
Burn ahuve thee m the holy pavilion.

Otherwise now and colder stands the star-night
above his mould. Alas ! he who only read him
has scarcely lost him ; but he wlio knew and
loved him is not to be consoled any more by his
immortality, but only by the immortality of the
human soul. If there were no such immortality,
if our whole life here is only an evening twilight
preceding the night, not a morning twilight;
if the lofty mind is also let down after the body
by coffin-ropes into the pit : O ! then I know
not why we should not, at the graves of great

men, do from despair what the ancient savage
nations did from hope, that is, throw ourselves
after them into the pit, as those people did into
the tombs of their princes, so tiiat tlie foolish,
violent heart that will obstinately beat for some-
thing divine and eternal, may be choked at
once. ******0!l well know
that he tolerated such griefs least of all. He
would point now to the glittering stars of
spring, above which he now dwells ; he would
beckon to us to listen to the nightingales which
now sinsr to us and not to him ; and he would
be more moved than he seemed to be. * *
^ ***** *

We will now love that great soul together, and
if, at times, we are moved too painfully by his
memory, we will read over again all whereby
he made known to us the immortal and divine,
. and himself." .

LOVE AND SELF.

AN APPENDIX TO THE LETTER OF HERR HEMSTERHUIS, ON DESIRE.

It is a beautiful legend of the most ancient
poetry ; that Love drew forth the world from
chaos and bound the creatures reciprocally to
each other with the bands of desire and long-
ing; that, by these tender ties, she keeps all
things in order and leads all to the One, — the
great fountain of all light, as of all love. How-
ever various the names and garbs under which
this poetical system has been presented, we re-
cognise in all this general truth ; that love
unites and that hate divides; that all enjoyment
of gods and of men consists in the love and
union of homogeneous things; but, that longing
and desire are, as it were, the bride-maids of
Love, — the strong, yet tender arms, which in-
duce and prepare all enjoyment, nay more,
which confer in themselves the greatest enjoy-
ment, by anticijjation.

Soon, however, another side of this system
became apparent, viz. : that this love has liniits,
and that a perfect union of beings in our uni-
verse is seldom or never known ; tliat, there-
fore, the bands of this union, desire and long-
ing, must often relax in the moment of the
greatest strain, and yield, too often, alas ! weari-
ness and satiety instead of enjoyment. It was
soon perceived, that, iu this law, also, there was
wisdom ; since the Creator, by this means, has
provided as carefully for the firm persistence
of individual beings, as, by means of love and
longing, he has provided for the union and kind-
ly co-presence of many. It was seen that both
these forces, which are, in the spiritual world,
what attraction and repulsion are in the cor-
poreal, are requisite to the preservation and

firm tenure of the universe. And I believe it
was Empedocles who first made Hatred and
Love delineators of the outline of all beings.*
" By Hatred," he says, " things are separated, and
each individual remains what it is ; by Love
they are united and connect themselves one
with another,"' That is, as far as they can be
united. For even Love, according to the Greeks,
is ruled by Fate; and Necessity, the oldest of the
gods, is mightier than Love. According to
Plato's idea, the latter was born of Need and
Superfluity, in the gardens of Jupiter. Accord-
ingly, she partakes of the nature of both, and
is always dependent on her parents.

I fancy it will not be unpleasant to follow
this double walk ; the rather, that Herr Hern-
sterhuis has led us very agreeably on one side,
reserving to himself the other for another trea-
tise ; which, however, he has not yet written,
or which I have not yet seen^

That love unites the different beings, and that
all desire is only a striving after this union, as
the only possible enjoyment of beings now
separated, — this our author has proved with such
exquisite examples, that too copious additions
on this point would be a useless superfluity.
Every craving for sensual and spiritual enjoy-
ment, all desire of friendship and of love,
thirsts after union with the object affected, be-
cause it forefeels, in that object, a new and
delightful enjoyment of its own reality. The
Godhead has wisely and kindly onlained that
we shall be sensible of our existence, not iu
ourselves, but only by reaction, as it were, iu
some object witliout us ; after which, accord-

* Kv Sc KOTii) Staftofxpa /cat avii^a iravra ircXovrai
Xvv iotjiti ev tpiXoTr/TL Kai aWtiXoiffi rroSctTai
Kk t(i)v yap iravr' oaa 17V o(jija rt tan Kat tarai.

HERDER.

237

ingly, we strive, for which we live, in which
we have a double and manifold existence. The
multitude of attractive objects with which Na-
ture lias surrounded us, have, therefore, been
placed by her at such various distances, and
endowed with such various kinds and degrees
of attraction, as to produce in us a rich and
delicate concert of sensations, of various tones
and modes; and to make our heart and life, as
it were, a Harmonica of desire, the artistic image
of an ever purei", insatiable, eternal longing.

Coarse, sensual enjoyment converts the object
which we craved, into itself, and destroys it.
It is vivid, therefore, for, in it there is a perfect
union ; but it is, likewise, coarse and transient.
There are those who enjoy only with the tongue.
Hence, in common life, the word taste* is gene-
rally used in reference to this sense. Enjoy-
ment, in this case, is a union, — that is, a solution
of the finest juices. But it also ends with this,
for the object is devoured, destroyed. In a cer-
tain sense, therefore, the finest enjoyment, here
too, precedes the enjoyment. Tlie craving for
a beautiful fruit is pleasanter than the fruit it-
self The eye excites the most agreeable sen-
sation in the tongue. "Voluptatem prtesagit
multa cupido." Thus it is with the enjoyment
of odors, and even of tones. We draw them
into ourselves; we drink the stream of their
delight with long draughts. And only then, do
we say that we enjoy music, when it dissolves
the heart and becomes one with the inward
music of our sensations. The stream of melody,
fine as it is, is nevertheless devoured. It con-
tinues to exist only in the harmonious effects,^
the pleasantvibrations which it produced in us.

The more sph-itual our enjoyment, the more
permanent it is ; the more permanent its object
without us. But let us also add, the weaker it
is ; for the object is and remains without us ;
and only in its image, that is, — slightly or not
all, — becomes one with us. The eye is never
wearied with seeing: for how little does the
heart receive with the sight! How little can
the mere light-ray contribute to the most intense
enjoyment! * * * * *

*******

Indeed, the virtuosi in regard to this organ —
those who have cultivated their vision to a
luxurious enjoyment — appear to be sensible of
this. How do they seek to animate the object
before them ! They hunt after every impres-
sion of light and shade, of colour, form, ges-
ture; in order to feel and grope out the spirit
of the author, if they are artists, or the objects
themselves, if they live in these, although it is
a mere apparition which they have before them.
Here again, the enjoyment consists in the con-
ceit of a union. A feeble conceit, but a happy
one! The eye does not destroy the essence of
the beloved object, only because it cannot incor-
porate the same with itself If this object seems
to the deluded a fountain of inexhaustible

* In German, geniessen, literally, to enjoy.

charms, it is well for him, the blissfully de-
luded, who enjoys it. He draws forever, and
never exhausts, because he can draw no perfect
and intense draught. The beloved images flee
before him and are still present to him. He
lives in the sweet dream of a visible, intellec-
tual phantom.

Imperceptibly, we have come upon that form
of enjoyment, which, apparently, is the most
enduring, but which, also, is the least satisfac-
tory to our mortal nature, — the ideal fruition of
corporeal beauty, — or, as it is called by enthu-
siasts, the enjoyment of Platonic love. The
name of Plato is improperly applied to it; for
he is speaking of intellectual Ideas, to be
enjoyed by the intellect, and which cannot be
enjoyed in any other way ; and not of a mad
spiritualizing of the corporeal, which often ends
in a too coarse corporeity. That this is not a
spiritual fruition, is evident from the fact that it
destroys the body without satisfying the mind.
It sins against the nervous fluid, as the passion
of love, when of too coarse a character, sins
against flesh and blood. It shows itself herein,
not to be genuine enjoyment, — a happy contem-
plation of that kind, in which the beloved ob-
ject becomes one with ourselves. How can
that which is corporeal become one with pure
spirit? Two things, that, properly speaking,
have nothing in common, and could only be
combined, in the beginning, as the Greeks
fabled, by a kind of voluntary intoxication.
The mind can enjoy spiritual qualities and ob-
jects. Its union with these is pure and so calm
as that ancient Hymn makes God say: "^11 is
mine, for I have it in me!" A possession and a
fruition of which the soul is capable only in
respect to the purest objects. Then it hovers
and tastes like a beautiful butterfly which enjoys
the flower without destroying it. Where it
enjoys as a caterpillar, it devours, alas ! leaf and
flower.

We begin then to speak of the more genuine
kinds of spiritual longing, — Friendship and Love.
After what Hemsterhuis has told us of these, I
shall add but a few traits.

The image of Friendship employed by the
ancients, — two hands joined together, — appears
to me the most fitting symbol of its union, its
aim, and its enjoyment. More significant than
tlie two according instruments. These express
only companionship, which is far from being
friendship. A comiDanionable man is easy and
well disposed. He adapts himself easily to
every company, and every company adapts it-
self easily to him. He oppresses no one with
his presence, he crowds no one ; and therefore
every one likes to be with him. In a certain
degree, one is even intimate with him, because
one feels that there is no mischief in the man.
Characters of this sort are good for daily inter-
course. But Friendship! what a difl^erent, sacred
band is that! It unites hearts and hands in one
common aim; and where that aim is obvious,
where it is continuous, requiring exertion, where

238

HERDER.

it lies among or behind dangers ; there, tlie band
of friendship is often so strict, so firm and
hearty, tliat nothing but death has power to
separate it. The plialanx of Greek friends in
battle, who all conquered or died as cue man, —
those bright twin stars of friendship, which, in
all nations, Hebrews and Greeks, Scythians and
savages, shine forth from the night of ages, and
are so grateful to the heart of man, — what made
them friends'? A common aim united them;
danger drew the knot; tried faith, continuous,
growing zeal, glorious labour, common enjoyment
of that labour; — finally, necessity and death,
made that knot indissoluble.

How truly said one, of his friend : "Thy love
to me surpassed the love of women!" Creation
knows nothing nobler than two voluntarily and
indissolubly united hands, — two hearts and lives
that have voluntarily become one. It matters
not, whether these two hands are male or fe-
male, or of both sexes. It is a proud but irra-
tional prejudice on the part of men, that only
they are capable of friendship. Woman is often
tenderer, truer, firmer, more golden-pure in that
relation, than many a weak, unfeeling, impure,
masculine soul. Where there is want of truth,
where there is vanity, rivalry, heedlessness,
there, friendship, in either sex, is impossible.
Marriage, likewise, should be friendship; and
wo! if it is not, if it is only love and desire.
To a noble woman, it is sweet to sutler for her
husband, as well as to rejoice with him, to
feel that she is honoured, esteemed and happy
in him and he in her. The common education
of their children is the beautiful, leading aim
of their friendship, wliich sweetly rewards them
both, even in gray old age. They stand there,
and will continue to stand like two trees with
branches interlocked, begirt with a garland of
youthful green, — saplings and twigs. In all
cases, a life, in common, is the marrow of true
friendship. Mutual unlocking and sharing of
hearts, intense joy in each other, sympathy in
each other's suflerings, counsel, consolation, ef-
fort, mutual aid, — these are its diagnostics, its
delights, its interior recompense. What delicate
secrets in friendship ! Refinements of feeling,
as if the soul of the one were directly conscious
of the soul of the other, and, anticipating, dis-
cerned the thoughts of that soul as clearly as its
own! And, assuredly, the soul has sometimes
power thus to discern thoughts and to dwell
immediately and intimately in the heart of an-
other. There are moments of sympathy, even
in thoughts, wiiliout the slightest external occa-
sion, which indeed no psychology can explain,
but which experience teaches and confirms.
There are mutual, simultaneous recollections of
one anoilier — even at a distance — on the part
of absent friends, which are often of the most
wonderful, overpowering kind. And indeed,
if ever the soul possesses the mysterious power
to act directly, without organs, on another soul,
where would such action be more natural than
ill the case of friends ? This relation is purer,

and therefore, assuredly, mightier also than
love. For if love will lift itself up to the strength
and duration of eternity, it must first purify it-
self from coarse sensuality, and become true and
genuine friendship. How seldom does it arrive
at tins! It destroys itself or destroys its object
with penetrating, devouring flames; and both
the loving and the loved lie there, as it were, a
heap of ashes. But the glow of friendship is
pure, refreshing, human warmth. The two
flames upon one altar play into each other, and
frolicking, lift and bear one another aloft, and
often, in the melancholy hour of separation, they
soar rejoicing, and united, and victorious, up-
ward to the land of the purest union, of truest,
inseparable friendship.

May the reader pardon the explicitness with
which I have handled this point! Since I look
upon it as the true, singular, and most beautiful
union of souls, and therefore also, as the noblest
and sweetest enjoyment of which humanity is
capable, to which even love itself is subservi-
ent;— since there are so many degrees of friend-
ship, from easy companionship, to the most sub-
lime, silent, enduring sacrifice, whicii, to be sure,
has been the portion only of the most select
souls, and only in very rare circumstances and
combinations; but which is to be regarded in
such instances as the highest privilege, the genu-
ine antepast of a future, higher existence; —
briefly, since, in friendship, there is union, al-
most without organs, pure, perfect and ever-
growing;— therefore, as it seems to me, it is also
the highest point of all desire, and, precisely, in
seasons of the greatest strain and pressure, be-
comes the purest joy of earth. Here operates
the genuine magnetism of human souls, and we
know that the magnet attracts the more power-
fully the more it is exercised. Unused, it is dead.
Without confidence and trutli severely tried, no
friendship, no interchange of hearts is i^ossible.

But Nature saw that this pure, heavenly flame
is, for the most part, for us on the earth, too re-
fined. Therefore she clothed it in earthly, sen-
sible charms ; and so Venus Urania appeared
as — Aphrodite. Love was intended to invite
us to friendship. Love is to become, itself, the
most intense friendship.

I find its highest degree of rapture not there
where, as Herr Hemsterhuis says. Nature de-
ludes us with an instant of earthly union, (an
instant whicli loses itself in mere surrounding
want,) but in the first happy discovery, — in that
moment, beyond all description sweet, when
the beloved two become aware that they love,
and tell each other so, with such certainty and
sweet consent, however imperfect and involun-
tary the confession. Why must I use the word,
'tell.' How poor! What can the dead tongue, —
what can pining language say, when even the
soul-enkindled, fiery glance drops it wings and
veils its glory? If there is a moment of hea-
venly rapture, and a pure union of embodied
beings here on earth, it is this. So unlike that
whicli pining enjoyment allows us! I know

HERDER.

239

not what mythology of some Asiatic nation it is,
whicli divides its periods of higliest antiquity
according to the manner in which men, wliile
as yet they were paradisaical spirits, loved each
other. At first, for many thousands of years,
with looks; afterwards, with a kiss — a mere
toucli ; — until, at last, in the course of long ages,
they gradually degenerated into lower forms of
enjoyment. That moment of spiritual recogni-
tion, that betraying of the soul by a look, trans-
ports us as it were into those primeval times,
and, with them, into the joys of Paradise. Then
we enjoy, with a retrospective sentiment, what
we had so long sought and did not dare to con-
fess to ourselves. Then too we enjoy prospect-
ively the delights of the future. — not with pre-
sentiment merely, hut with possession. Yes!
if one may say so, with more than possession.
The future can only unfold, Seldom add. Often
it detracts, and diminishes, with every enjoy-
ment, the belief in enjoyment. That first mo-
ment, is when Psyche first beholds the god of
love, whom, veiled, she had so long loved. Ah!
why, unhappy one ! didst thou let the spark
fall, and thereby terminate, for so long a period,
all thy joys?

Certain it is, that those souls which are created
for the truest, purest, noblest love, fear this mo-
ment of betrayal as their worst foe, and defer it
with the utmost shyness. The female sex which,
in all matters of love, is more delicate than ours,
feels how much its flame loses with every en-
joyment, and how, contrary to the nature of all
other flames, it goes out when it breaks forth,
and with every manifestation, weakens its inte-
rior force and blessedness. Sliy and holy, they
seek, therefore, to preserve the secret in the
heart of the lover himself, as soon as it is made
certain. And nothing is more easily made cer-
tain than this. The secret is profaned, as it
•were, if it but touch the lips. It dies, in a mea-
sure, with the first kiss, with the first sigh. But
since we are, once for all, bodies, Psyche, as the
ancient fable teaches, must lose her celestial
wings, with her first descent into matter. Is it
strange that she should endeavor so long, and
with so much pains, to delude herself with the
belief, that she loves^iot the body, but only that
which is connatural with herself, — the soul of
the beloved ? It is, as if she were ashamed of
her degradation, and prophesied the brief dura-
tion of the pleasure whicli she seeks. How does
she accordingly disguise that pleasure! In the
kiss, she seeks only a union of souls, as sings the
love-breathing poem below.*

* Diim semihiiico suavio
Meuiii puelliun suavior,
Dulceiiique tloreiii spiritiis
Duco ex aperto traiiiite ;

Aniiiia tunc, iEora et saucia,
Ciicurrit ail labias milii,
Orisqiie rictuin pervium
Et labra piieri iiiollia,
lUinata itineri transitu.s,
Vl traiisiliret nititur.

Long passages in the fourth book of Lucretius
describe this striving, this vain and ever unsa-
tisfied striving after a union of beings, so em
piratically, so philosophically and powerfully, as
if Lucretius had written to illustrate the system
of our author, or as if the latter had taken his
system of love and enjoyment fronr the former.

It is fortunate that Nature coupled this decep-
tive phantom of intimate union, on the spiritual
side, with friendship ; and, on the side of the
body, with an electric spark of her omnipotence,
by which, from a union, incomprehensible to
us, of two beings, a third is produced ; — as it
were a creation of love, of desire and unsatis-
fied longing. And so the fiery chain trails itself
along. There is added to it, between need and
excess, a new link, in which is propagated the
kindling spark of desire. I remark in general,
that the Creator has left no degree of union,
among the creatures of his Nature, without fruit.
The first degree of sensual enjoyment, which
the very infant sucks in, yields us life-saj'). It
elaborates for us a nobler material out of a
poorer. The finer the organ, the more spiritual
the offspring of its conception. Odors strengthen
and refresh the soul. Music comforts and soothes
the heart with celestial drink. Pictures — "Si-
mulacra pabula amoris'^ — bring thoughts to the
mind, more delicate than their own material.
And finally. Friendship and Love — the one the
marriage of spirits, the other of bodies — ofier us
a cup of enjoyment, wreathed with the fairest
fruits. Friendship awakens noble sentiments,
aspirations, deeds. Love, like the divine spring-
sun, quickens the tender, motherly vine with
foliage and fruits. In it is laid the creative
power of the first Cause.

It would seem also that Nature has taken
care to replace and requite the brief and fleet-
ing enjoyment of love, with a dower direct from
her own bosom, by which it was designed that
the humblest living creature should be honoured
with a spark of the Godhead. That is, parental
affection, the love of Father and Mother. This
love is divine, for it is disinterested and often
without return. It is heavenly, for it is capable
of being shared among many, and still remains
entire, undivided, and without envy. Finally,
it is infinite and eternal, for it vanquishes love
and death. Detestable is the mother who pre-
fers her lover to her child. The very beasts
shame her. They have often died joyfully for
their young. ******
Maternal tenderness is the pledge of love with
which Nature, as it were out of her own heart,
has requited the mother's pains. Nothing sur-
passes the anxiety with which the mother seeks

Turn, si mora; quid plusculae
Fuisset in coitu osciili,
Amoris igne percita,
Transisset et me linqueret;
Et inira prorsum res foret,
Ut ad me tierem mortuiis,
Ad puerum ut iutus viverem.

Aul: Cell: L. XIX. Cap. 11

240

HERDER.

a lost child, and nothing can equal the joy with
which, alter long seeking, after many years' se-
paration, she finds it again, and embraces it as
if new-born. The craving of a mother after
chiklren is the most beautilul form of longing
which lay in the girdle of Love ; — out of which
that girdle seems to be wholly woven in pure
female hearts. They are the priestesses at the
sacred fire of Vesta ; and wo to the despicable
creature that glows with another flame instead
of this ! Only the point of his arrow has Cupid
anointed with desire.* Alas! if the whole ar-
low glows with it.

From the tender, divine, eternal love of the
parent, to whom can I ascend but to Tlieel
great universal Mother ! Tender, highest Fa-
ther! My language has no name for the feeling
with which Thou hast established Thyself in
every creature, in every nerve and corner of
each beating heart, and hast given to each its
own joys, immeasurable, inexplicable, insensible
to every other. Thy whole creation is a weft
which Power drew forth out of nothing, of which
Wisdom laid the warp, and in which Love in-
wrought its tliousandlbld figures rich in signifi-
cance and love. Who shall not love Thee, there-
fore, since every creature draws but to thee,
points but to thee? And who can love Thee as
he ought, seeing he is overwhelmed in the ocean
of thyf thoughts and fore-reaching sensations ;
and even, regarding himself alone, sinks down
into the deepest deep ? ' Thou sharest the fate
of all parents, — more loving than loved. But
Thou art exalted above all others in this, tiiat
Thou thyself hast created in me the longing
after Thee, and canst lead me ever nearer to
Thyself by the bands of knowledge and of love.
Thou wilt and must do this; my whole heart
declares it. For the little spark of knowledge
and of love that is in me is only an off-glance
of thine infinite fiaine. Therefore must Tliou
know and name and seek and love me a thou-
sand-fold more intensely than I can name and
seek Thee. And this eternal drawing of thy
heart to mine is, to me, an implanted voucher
of my undying inclination to Thee, and of an
ever-growing enjoyment of Thee.

But how is the Eternal enjoyed "? By contem-
plation or by sensation? Our author has a hard
remark about enthusiasts, which, if carefully
examined, might prove alas! too true. It is a
general experience that, in all cases of enthu-
siasm, women have been implicated. Often,
the men have only caught the infection from
the women, who, it was said, had borne them
anew. The women were a kind of mediators
of the Godhead to the men. And how they
conceived of the Godhead, especially the human
God, and with what feeling they embraced him,
is known to theVvorld, from many writings and
letters. The fainting which the holy Theresa
experienced before the altar, when the celestial

* Xpicra^ atpvKTov oi^ov i/iff)y. Euripides.
t i. e. Inspired by tliee. Tr.

Cujiid touched her heart, considered in relation
to the body alone, could hardly have diflered
from every other faintness caused by love. For
love is the same in its action on the vital fluids
of the body, whatever may be its object. In all
sentiments of this kind, the greatest caution is
necessary, even to the most innocent. Even
upon the stream of divine love, the heart re-
mains a human heart still. All mediatresses,
even though it were the Mother of God, are
dangerous. And so, to the female heart, all
earthly mediators may become dangerous ; and
the heavenly mediator likewise, if too sensually
felt. God requires to be loved with the whole
soul and all its powers, but not with the effer-
vescence of the nervous fluid, in a diseased,
epileptic body.

We come natitrally to the limits which iiave
been set to love and longing, in every enjoyment
here below. These are not merely, as Herr
Hemsterhuis seems to think, our organs ; but, as
he himself discovers, at last, our isolalvd indivi-
dual existence. He likens that property of the
soul, which resists coannixture with other be-
ings, to the vis incrtice in matter. And, assuredly,
this power of inaction must be something dif-
ferent and more than the great mass of mecha-
nical philosophers know or say about it. The
words themselves, — Power and Inaction, — relate
to each other like Bewegung (motion) and Grund
(stationary ground) in the word Bcivegungsgriiiide
(motives). Moreover, Leibnitz and all the better
class of thinkers have hazarded conjectures re-
lative to the interior constitution of matter, to
which I would fain hojie for a pleasant addition
in the promised observations of Herr Hemster-
huis. For the present, we will leave this re-
semblance where it is, and consider the limits
which have been set to desire in the soul, by
the nature of the soul itself. We are indiviilual
beings, and must continue so, unless, in the pur-
suit of enjoyment, we abandon the ground of
all enjoyment — our own consciousness — and are
willing to lose ourselves, in order to find our-
selves again, in another being, that, after all,
is not and never can be, our self Even if I
should lose myself in Deity, as mysticism re-
quires, without any further feeling or conscious-
ness of myself; it would no longer be I that
enjoyed. The Godhead would have swallowed
me up, and would enjoy in my stead. How
well has Providence contrived, therefore, in
awakening the music of our sensations gradually
in various tones and modes; now exciting de-
sire, now checking it, exercising it here actively,
there passively, and ever, after the most honey-
ed enjoyment, throwing us back upon our poor
self, as if saying to us, ' Thou art but a limited
individual creation. Thou thirstest after per-
fection, but findest it not. Do not pine at the
fountain of this one enjoyment, but gather thy-
self uj) and strive for something further.'

Let us look at this in some of the most striking
proofs and examples.

All robber-like enjoyment, all enjoyment which

HERDER.

241

destroj'^s its object, is given us merely as a want
by the hand of Necessity. It uses itself up and
dies in itself. Man is a tyrant in the universe,
but liow goon is even this little tyrant satiated
with plunder, if he keeps within the bounds of
nature ! Every sensual enjoyment is, strictly,
but a modified necessity. Where mutual de-
struction ends, there, first, begins a freer, finer en-
joyment,— a joyful consorting together of several
beings who mutually seek and love each other.
A tyrant who would be all in himself, who
would devour all, as Saturn devours his chil-
dren, is capable neither of friendship nor of
love, not even of paternal affection. He op-
presses and suppresses. Nothing can grow by
his side, much less together with him, in a com-
mon crown.

Wliere several beings are in pleasant juxta-
position, and wish mutually to enjoy one another,
it is evident that no one of them must aim at
individual, peculiar, consequently, not at the
highest enjoyment: otherwise he destroys all
around him. He must give and take, suffer and
act, attract toward himself and gently impart of
Limself. This, indeed, makes every enjoyment
imperfect; nevertheless, it is the true tact and
the very pulse of life ; — the modulation and eco-
nomy of desire, of love, and of all the sweets
of longirig. Here I direct attention to the beau-
tiful wisdom of Nature, who, with sexes, mo-
ments, circumstances, ages, situations, has divided
and, as it were, cradled all things in this systole
and diastole of passive and active, giving and
receiving. As yonder in the heavens two lights,
so God has created here on the earth, two sexes
which are designed to afford each other a mu-
tual counterpoise, in the oscillation of feeling.
One supplies to the other what is wanting of
tenderness on the one side, and of strength on
the other. And in the domain of love tender-
ness is mightier than strength. God has indem-
nified and veiled with attractions the weakness
of woman. Where, in compliance with some
necessity, he has departed from the law of
beauty, there he has ffung around her the girdle
of love endowed with Desire, which, as said the
Goddess, " vanquislieth all strength." In friend-
ship also, one party is always the more active,
the other, auxiliary and passive ; one masculine,
the oilier leminine; and often, in tlie inverse
order of the sexes. In this marriage of souls,
a monotone is neither agreeable nor profitable,
nor j)ossible. Consonant tones are required for
the melody of life and enjoyment, not unison.
Otherwise, friendship is soon lost in mere fel-
lowship.

Heni'e it is evident, moreover, that the attrac-
tive power of an individual, human soul neither
ran nor ought to extend itself without limit.
Nature has drawn narrow boundaries around
each individual, and it is the most dangerous of
all dreams to imagine one's self unlimited where
one is limited, to believe one's self the Despot
of the vmiverse when one is living only on single
alms. To embrace the whole creation with love
2f

sounds beautiful, but we must begin with the
individual, with the nearest. And he who can-
not love that, deeply, intensely, entirely, how
should he be able to love that which is remote
and which throws but feeble rays upon him
from a foreign star? How should he be able to
love it with any feeling which deserves the
name of love? The greatest cosmopolites are
generally the neediest beggars, and they who
embrace the entire universe with love, for the
most part, love nothing but their narrow self.

I come to the comparison which Herr H.
makes between the States of Greece and our
own ; in which he seems to reproach the Chris-
tian religion with lessening the interest of its
followers in the transient welfare of the secular
State, through over -much care for the eternal
well-being of the individual. The reproach
would be well founded if the care for the eter-
nal were opposed to the care for the temporal ;
and if a happy State could be anything else than
a collection of happy individuals. It is only a
misunderstood religion, a religion of priests, that
will maintain the former. And with regard to
the latter, the individual can only care for his
own welfare and leave it to him who has con-
trived or who trains the machine, (as Herr
Hemsterhuis himself calls the State,] to care for
the welfare of the whole, according to his good-
will or power. That lawgivers have, almost
uniforiiily, misused the Christian religion and
mixed it up with their barbarous feudal and
knightly institutions, is the crying evil in all
Christian history. But, for this, we are not to
blame the religion, but the coarse hands which
have kneaded it with this heterogeneous politi-
cal dough. Religion, as our author has justly
defined it, is the free relation of the individual
to the Supreme Being. Those who have sought
to honour it with the name of a political ma-
chine, have, more than any others, deformed
and degraded it.

But to our subject! Nature always begins
with the individual, and not till she has adjusted
and satisfied the propensities of the individual,
in his own little circle, does she connect several
together, and arrange their sentiments into a
common weal. The welfare of the State con-
sists of happy families, or else it is an imaginary
quantity. When, in the individual man, sensual
and spiritual joys, friendship and love, parental
affection and personal virtue, are well-ordered
and well-paired, then he is happy in himself
and in others. He cannot, like ocean-slime,
commingle with all ; he cannot love, praise, and
approve all in an equal degree, or change every
mote into a sunbeam, in order to love it as a
sunbeam. In attempting to do this, he injures
the good as well as the bad, and, at last, loses
entirely his judgment and his stand-point. Who-
so cannot repel, neither can he attract. The
two powers are but one pulsation of the soul.

Thus it is with us in this world; and how
will it be, farther on, in our eternal pilgrimage?
It can scarcely be otherwise. The existence of
21

242

HERDER.

others, so for as they are connected with us, by-
love and longuig, rests wholly on our own behig
and consciousness. If we could lose that, we
could have no enjoyment from those. With each
succeeding step, our existence must necessarily
become more free and elTective. Our enjoy-
ments will become less corrupting and destruc-
tive. We shall learn evermore to find pleasure
in giving and in doing, rather than in passive
reception. Nevertheless, it should seem that
the mutual relation which constitutes the sum
of our whole happiness, can never entirely
cease. In order to give, there must always be
objects to receive. In order to act, there must
always be those for whom to act. Friendship
and love can never exist except between beings
mutually free, — consonant,not unison, least of all
identified. And finally, as to the enjoyment of
the Highest, it must always be, as our author
says, '•■hyperbole and asymptote." The hyperbole
forever approaches the asymptote, but never
reaches it. It is our happiness that we can
never lose the conception of our own being and
attain to the infinite one, — that we are God.
We shall always remain creatures, though we
should become the creators of vast worlds. We
shall approach perfection, but never become in-
finitely perfect. The greatest good which God
could bestow on his creatures was, and will be,
their individual existence. It is even through
this that He exists lor them ; and, through this,
he will be to them more and more, from stage
to stage, All, IN ALL.

TITHON AND AURORA.

Although, in general, no epitaph or pane-
gyric uses to notice how long a man has outlived
himself, yet is diis one of the most remarkable
and not infrequent phenomena in the history of
human lives. The earlier the play of the facul-
ties and passions begins, the more impetuously
it is continued, and assailed in various ways by
external accident, the oftener shall one discover
cases of that early exhaustion of die soul, — of
the warrior laid prostrate without death or
wound, — of a manly, and, often even, of a
youthful extreme age. A man may go about for
a long while, with a living body, like the image
of his own funeral monument; his spirit gone
from him, — a shadow and a memory of his
former name. Many causes may contribute to
this early death : qualities of mind and heart,
too great activity and too sluggish patience, re-
laxation as well as over-tension, too rapid pros-
perity and too protracted adversity. For it is a
general truth, that health, cheerfulness, pleasure,
and virtue, are ever the medium between two
extremes. Either on the precipitous or tlie shal-
low shore of the stream, the vessel may be
wrecked. In the middle, it is easy and pleasant
sailing. Many a one has grown old because he
wanted the true interior source of activity. Ho

was a brook that contracts its waters into itself
and soon dries up and shows its melancholy
bed. This one endeavoured to make seeming
supply the place of being. The darkness pass-
ed away, and the glow-worms in the hair glit-
tered as sparkling diamonds no longer. That
one would accomplish by toil and memory,
what intelligence and genius alone can perforin.
The overloaded memory gave way, excessive
labor tired, and the want of tlie essential was
at last painfully apparent. Another, while a
youth, overstrained his nobler powers ; he piled
up mountains of imagination to the skies, and
soon, widiout the lightning of Jupiter, found
under them his grave. Still another, whose
learning and effort had no object but his own
ease, abandone<l learning and eflbrt as soon as
he had obtained Uiat ease, and buried himself
in a blessed decay. Here, one, widiout desert,
has had his brain turned by an unexpected pros-
perity, a too rapidly acquired fame, an unlocked
for success in action. He has no longer any
thought beyond this success. His seductive
goddess, Fortune, has crowned him at once with
laurel, with poplar, and with poppy. He falls
asleep or babbles nonsense in her enervating
lap. There, one of great merit lias sntlered too
long with undeserved misfortune, until his
shoulders are bowed, his breast contracted, his
arm paralysed, and he can no longer stand erect
and recruit himself A thunderbolt from heaven
has stricken the oak even to its root and de-
prived it of the power of life. To this one — a
man of manifold capacity — there was wanting
a capacious breast to despise envy and to wait
for better times. He suflered himself to be
drawn into conflict with it, and the flying eagle
was unworthily vanquished by the viper that
held him in her folds. That one, — a man of
honest industry, — was wanting in intelligence.
His more cunning enemies soon made him
powerless and wretched. And thus it befell
ten other characters, in other situations. Hard
by the theatre of civil life, there is generally a
hospital, and in that the greater part of the
actors gradually lose themselves.

Two things especially contribute to this re-
sult, and they, too, are extremes. In the first
place, the arbitrariness of the ruling great; and,
secondly, a too refined delicacy and carefulness.
As to the former, it is a well-known and ilivorite
saying, that nothing is so troublesome as grati-
tude, nothing so insupportable as continued re-
spect and the daily spectacle of acknowledged
merit. Accordingly, new favor purchases for
itself new gratitude; and creatures whom the
great purposely attract to themselves, — in whom
they even pretend to find gifts and merits which
the gods never gave them, — have, for them, a
peculiar charm, as their own creation. The sap
is wiUidrawn from the old trees that the young
world may bloom and dirive. Whoso, in such
cases, is not greater than he on whom he de-
pends, dies inwardly with self-consuming vexa-
tion. The majestic voice of Philip the second,

HERDER.

243

" Yo el Rey" has slain many a one of this de-
scription. Opposed to this murder of human
merits and powers, there is another, which may-
be termed the most refined species of self-mur-
der. It is the more to be lamented because it
occurs only in the case of the most elect of men ;
suddenly or gradually breaking in pieces their
costly mechanism. Men of extreme delicacy
of feeling have a ' Highest' after which they
strive, — an idea to which they attach themselves
with unspeakable longing, — an ideal perfection
which they pursue with irresistible impulse.
When deprived of this idea, when this fair
image is destroyed before their eyes, the heart
of their flower is broken, and feeble, withered
leaves alone remain. Perhaps, more of the
dead of this description go about in society,
than one might at tirst suppose, because they,
of all men, most carefully conceal their grief,
and hide even from their Iriend the slow poison
of their death, — that sad secret of the heart.
Shakspeare, who depicted all conditions of the
soul, has delineated, also, this epoch of the sink-
ing or confusion of the faculties, in various situa-
tions and characters, with great truth and exact-
ness. One, — perhaps the crown of lamentations
over such a state, — may serve as an example
of all.

0 ! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown !

The courtier's, soldier's, scliolar's eye, tongue, sword,

The expectancy and rose of tiie fair State,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

The observed of all obseivers ! quite, quite down !

• Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

Lil<e sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ;
That unmatched form and stature of blown youth,
Blasted with extasy.

Not only individual persons outlive them-
selves, but much oftener and longer, those poli-
tico-moral persons, so called, — institutions, forms
of polity, classes, corporations. Often, their body
remains, for centuries, as a show, when the soul
of that body has long since fled ; or they creep
about as shadows among living forms. To be
convinced of this, let any one enter a Jewish
synagogue, or read Anquetil's Zend-Avesta, and
the sacred books of the Brahmins. There is no
doubt that all these religious institutions were
once very useful, and that, in every one of these
hidls, lay the germs of a great development.
Time has developed each of them more or less,
— one happily, so that we are disposed perhaps
to look for more in it than was there ; another
imperfectly and feeble; as in the great course
of Nature it will fall out. Nevertheless, every-
thing has its goal, and the Rabbi, the Destur, the
Mobed, — perhaps also the Brahmin, — has, in the
great whole, outlived himself In some regions
of Mahommedanism, something similar is al-
ready reported of the Koran, although that is
the youngest of bibles. And in Cliristendom,
true as its pure fountain streams, with the water
of eternal life, how many a vessel is already
broken that was thought to have exhausted this
fountain! How many a form which still stands
there, had long ago outlived itself! Look at the

Romish Mass ! Listen to many of their litanies
and prayers ! Into what times do they take us
back ! What a strange savor of long-perished
ages ! As, in Religion, the priestly order, so in
other institutions the orders connected with them
follow each its living or its dead. Consider so
many institutions and orders of the middle ages I
Where they could not follow the Genius of opi-
nion and renew their youth with him, they
either remained stationary on the shore or else
the stream bore them lifeless on, until they found
somewhere their place of rest. Even in Cer-
vantes' days the Duke of Bejar would not allow
that Don Quixote should be dedicated to him,
so long as he supposed it to be a serious book
of knight-errantry ; because the taste for such
things had already begun to be ridicnlotis. He
accepted the Dedication gladly when, as the
book was read to him, he discovered its true
character. Time has enacted novels of this
kind with several institutions. The princes and
heroes of Corneille are for the most part insup-
portable to us, and we wonder how other times
could ever put together, believe and admire
such nonsense. Shakspeare's court-scenes seem
to us like Capital and State acts. The knights
of our day are no longer of the ancient order ;
and that kingly word of Louis XIV. : " L'Etat?
c'est moi !"' will ever remain the appropriate
epitaph of that great world-monarch.

" Whatsoever had a birth must die," says the
Brahmin; and diat, which seeks to defer its
downfall by artificial methods, in resorting to
such methods, has already outlived itself In
the early spring, the foliage and grass of the
former year are often still visible ; much of it
has retained its place ; but, in a short time, the
whole is vanished, and a new raiment covers
the trees and the bosom of the earth.

If there is anyUiing in the circle of Humanity
which ought not to outlive itself, it is Science
and Art. The nature of these is eternal, and
they are capable of the purest truth and of infi-
nite extension. And indeed the real essence
of Art and Science never dies, never changes.
But their forms are all the more perishable, as
they appear, above all things, to depend on their
masters and discoverers, — to originate, to flou-
rish, and to perish with them. So long as the
discoverer lives, so long as the master teaches
and directs, men draw living thoughts from his
living fountain. In the second and third gene-
ration, one already wanders through schools that
echo and ape him. The image of the master
stands there dead. His science and his art has
outlived itself, not in his own, but in his suc-
cessors' works.

Travels give us a long catalogue of things
which have thus outlived themselves. Travels
in the history, as well as in the actual inspection
of regions, countries, institutions, persons, classes.
Who that enters an ancient castle, an old-fa-
shioned knightly hall, an archive of old diplo
mas and treaties, of old arms and decorations;

244

HERDER.

old court-houses, churches, convents, palaces and
imperial cities, does not feel himself translated
into a perished century? In a tour through Ger-
many, one often finds, within a circle of a few
miles, the ancient, the middle, the modern and
fttost modern ages together. Here, we breathe
siill the air of the twelfth century; there, we
hear the melodies of the sixteenth, the tenth, the
foiirih. All at once, you enter cabinets which
have been instituted under the luxurious Ducal
Government, — galleries collected under Louis
XIV., and end with institutions which seem to
have been devised for the twentieth century.
Instructive as this chaos may be for the travel-
ler, it would be very confusing and oppressive
for the resident, did not human nature accustom
itself to all things. " Lord, by tliis time he stink-
eth, for he hath been dead four days;" said the
sorrowing sister; one might say, with regard to
many institutions, four centuries, and still they
are not offensive to their brothers and sisters.
These are accustomed to the odor, and find it
nourishing.

Italy seems to me the most instructive theatre
of these life-epochs and world-ages. There,
you can be with Egyptians, Greeks, Romans,
Etruscans, nay. if you please, with Chineses, with
Hindoos, and with the people of JMadagascar !
In Rome, alone, you may follow Paganism from
Romulus to Diocletian, and Christianity from
Constantine to Pius. There, and in the Italian
provinces, you may live at pleasure in the fif-
teenth, the sixteenth, or the eighteenth century.
And if you investigate the monuments of Na-
ture, you will come upon self-survivals which
will take you beyond the bounds of history. It
requires a capacious mind to embrace, to dis-
tinguish, to classify all these scenes. But, to
such a mind, they exhibit a compend of all his-
tory, which floods us, at last, with, I know not,
what pleasing but dissolving melancholy.

The cloud-capt towers, &c. &c.

We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded willi a sleep.

Enough of sleep and of dying out! Let us
now speak of waking and rejuvenescence!
How is this brought about? By Revolution?

I confess that, among the misused words of
our modern, fashionable vocabulary, few are so
displeasing to me as this ; because it has entirely
departed from its original, pure signification,
and carries with it the most mischievous con-
fusion of thought. In astronomy, we call revo-
lution a movement of 411 e great world -bodies
which returns into itself, — determined by mea-
sure, number and forces ; a movement, which
is not only the most peaceful order in itself, but,
in connection with other harmonious powers,
establishes the kingdom of eternal order. Thus
the earth revolves around itself and makes day
and night, and by means of these, arranges and
regulates the sleep and the waking of its crea-
tures, their time for rest and the circle of their

occupations. Thus the earth moves around the
sun and makes the year, and by means of that,
the seasons, and by means of them, the changes
of labour and of mortal enjoyment. The revo-
lution of the moon around our earth gives to the
sea its ebb and flood, determines the periods of
diseases, and perhaps, of the growth of plants.
In this sense it is useful to notice revolutions;
for, in them, we observe a course of affairs
which returns into itself, and, in that course of
things, the laws of a perpetual order. In such
a course there is nothing abrupt, arbitrary, with-
out reason. There is nothing of destruction in
it, but a gently vibrating thread of conservation.
Revolutions of this kind are the dance of the
Hours around the throne of Jupiter. They are
the chaplet of victory on the immortal head of
the god, after the conquest of chaos.

Also, if we draw down this idea of Revolu-
tion from heaven to earth, it can be no other
than the idea of a silent progress of things, of
a re-appearance of certain phenomena, accord-
ing to their peculiar nature, consequently, of the
design of an ever-working Wisdom, Order and
Goodness. In this sense, we speak of the revo-
lutions of arts and sciences, that is, a periodical
return of them, the causes of which, we en-
deavor to investigate in history, and, as it were,
to calcidate astronomically. Thus the Pytha-
goreans spoke of the revolutions of the human
soul, that is, of its periodical return into other
forms. Thus have men investigated the laws
of the revolution of human thoughts ; when
they return from oblivion into remembrance ;
when visions and desires, when activities and
passions which had gone to sleep, reappear
once more. In all these things, it has been at-
tempted to discover the laws of a hidden, silent
order of Nature.

But the meaning of this word has undergone
a detestable change, because, in the barbarous
centuries, men knew of no other revolutions
than conquests, overturns, oppressions, confu-
sions v/ithout motive, aim or order. Then it
was called revolution, when the nethermost
was made uppermost, — when, by the so-called
right of war, a nation lost more or less of its
property, its laws, its goods; or when, by the
right of monarcliy, all those so-called rights
were enforced, which St. Thomas, Machiavel
and Naud6 afterwards collected from actual
events and brought together in one chapter.
Then, finally, it was called a revolution, when
the ministers did what the rulers themselves
would not do; or when, here and there, the
People undertook that which they could rarely
execute so well as kings or ministers. Hence
the numerous Histoires dcs Revolutions, — a kind
of book whose title is all the more popular, that
its contents are, for the most part, unintelligible
or abominable. The notion of an aim or object
was almost lost sight of History became an
exhibition of entanglements without a denoue-
ment. For, after the conclusion of each revolu-
tion, so called, the confusion, in the kingdoms

HERDER.

245

where they occurred, was greater than before.
Revolutions of this sort, whencesoever they
may derive their origin, are signs of barbarism,
of an insolent force, of a mad wilfuhiess.
The more reason and moderation increase
among men, the rarer they will become, uiitil,
at last, they entirely disappear. Then the word
RevoliUion will revert to its j^ure and true mean-
ing. Then it will mean, in history also as
elsewhere, a course of things arranged accord-
ing to laws, — a course of events which peace-
fully returns into itself. In this view alone is
history worth the study; for, as to the revolu-
tions of wild elephants, when they tear up trees
and devastate villages, — from these there is not
much to be learned.

Not to mislead, therefore, with this abused
word, and not to make destructive violence a
medicine for mortal ills, we will keep the path of
healing Nature. Not Revolutions, but Evolutions
are the silent process of the great mother, where-
with she awakens slumbering powers, brings
germs to maturity, gives renewed youth to pre-
mature age, and new life to seeming death.
Let us see what this remedy comprehends, and
how it heals.

If we suppose Nature to have an aim on the
earth, that aim can be no other than the develop-
ment nf her powers in all forms, kinds and ways.
These evolutions proceed slowly, often imper-
ceptibly ; and, for the most part, they appear
periodically. After a night of sleep, follows a
morning of awakening. Under the shade of
the former. Nature had re-collected her powers,
in order to meet the latter with spirit. In the
ages of man, childhood continues long; body
and mind advance with a slow growth, until,
with collected energies, the flower of youth
breaks forth, and the fruit of later years comes
gradually to maturity. Very improperly have
these periods of development been called revo-
lutions. There is nothing here that revolves,
but faculties are evolved, developed. Ever,
the more recondite and deeper-lying come forth
to view, which, without many a preceding one,
could not have been brought into action. There-
fore Nature made periods. She gave the crea-
ture time to recover itself from one exertion
gone through with, in order to begin, with joy,
and to accomplish another and more ditlicult.
For when the plant puts forth a flower, or when
the fruit is forming in it, unquestionably more
inward and finer forces are put in action than
when the sap was entering the stem, and the
lowest leaves were brought forth. In the ordi-
nary course of things, Nature does not leave her
work until all its physical powers have been
brouglit into action ; the innermost, as it were,
turned outward, and the development, which,
at every step, is assisted by a kindly epigenesis,
has become as jjerfect as it could become, un-
der the given conditions.

Men are accustomed to regard each individual
object, and especially each living individual as
an isolated whole; but a nearer view shows it

to be connected with soil, climate, weather;
with the periodical breatli of all Nature ; and
that, according to these, it lasts for a longer or
shorter time, grows early old or easily renews
its youth. Man, a rational, moral and political
creation, lives, by means of these capacities and
powers, in a peculiar and infinitely extended cle-
ment. His reason is connected with the reason
of others, his moral culture with the condttct of
others, his capacity to constitute himself a free
being, — both in himself and in connection with
others, — is so intimately connected with the way
of thinking, the reasonableness, the active enter-
prise of many, that out of this element, he must
needs be like a fish on dry land, or a bird in a
space destitute of air. His best powers die out,
his capacity remains a dead capability; and all
effort, out of time and place, and without the
co-operation of the elements, is like a flower in
the midst of winter. It is Nature that makes
seasons ; it is she that furthers capacities. She
furthers them also in human kind. Individual
men, classes, corporations, whole societies and
nations, can only advance with this stream, they
have done all if they steer wisely upon it. Let
no one think that, if all the regents of the earth
from the proudest Negro King to the mightiest
Khan of the Teirtars should combine to make
to-day yesterday and to hinder forever the pro-
gressive development of the human race, whe-
ther it lead to youth or to old age they could
ever accomplish their aim. This can never be
an aim with wise rulers, simply, because there
is no sense in such fruitless endeavor.

A wise ruler then will always regard himself
as the householder, not as the antagonist of Na-
ture. He will improve every circumstance which
she offers, to the best issues. Here leaves are
falling, there a whole autumn of leaves lie al-
ready in their shrouds. He will not attempt to
restore them again to their former places on
limb and twig. Can he give them back their
former freshness and sap which made them a
living whole with the tree on which they hung?
And if he cannot do this, how then? Will he
crown himself with a withered wreath of dried
leaves, because they were other once than they
are now ? What Nature could not keep, will
the gardener keep it? and that too, not in con-
formity with the ends of Nature, but in direct
opposition to them ? Infinitely more beautiful
the task to follow Nature, to mark her times, to
awaken powers wherever they slumber, to pro-
mote thought, activity, invention, joy and love,
in whatsoever field of useful employment. Ne-
cessity comes at last and compels with iron
sceptre. He who obeys reason and measure
will prevent necessity. Often, he will need
only to beckon with the lily-staff" of Oberon, and
here new flowers will spring instead of the
withered ones, and there, if the blossom-time is
past, nourishing fruits will come to maturity.
He will come to the aid of the young shoot and
take it under his protection against ojipressive
weeds. The old wild tree he will not cut down,
21*

246

HERDER.

but graft more genial fruits upon it, and tlie
rejuvenized tree will wonder, itself, at its nobler
existence. A slight anticipation of this kind, by
which one nation had got the start of another,
has often secured to it, for centuries, unattaina-
ble advantages. England acquired the position
which she now occupies, by a somewhat earlier
adoption and application of certain points of
constitutional finance and commerce, which had
long before germinated in other countries, but
which folly and passion had suppressed. After
many violent revolutions which passed over
her, like bloody thunder-showers, it was given
to the most peaceful and silent revolution, to
awaken a new activity, and thereby to establish,
for centuries, the prosperity of a living constitu-
tion. If in the time of William the Third, she
had attempted to renew the feudal, military and
forest laws of William the Conqueror, where
would she be now ?

All orders and arrangements of society are the
children of Time. This ancient mother produced,
nourished, educated them ; she adorned and
fitted them out ; and after a longer or shorter
term of life, she buries them as she buries and
renews herself Whoever therefore confounds
his own being with the duration of an order or
institution, gives himself unnecessary torment.
That which was before thee, will be behind
thee too, if it is to be. For thine own part, act
understandingly and wisely ; time will proceed
in its great course and accomplish its own. Be
in thine own person more than thine order; and
then, however that may grow old, thou wilt be,
for thyself and for others, always young. Yea,
the darker the night, the brighter shalt thou
beam a star! He who does not raise himself
above the breastwork of his order, is no hero
within it. An order, as such, makes only pup-
pets. Personality makes worth and merit. Tlie
more that idle, dead hull which conceals the
best as well as the poorest kernel falls away,
the more the fair and ripe fruit appears. Assu-
redly, therefore, it is no retrocession, but an
evolution of the times, when the order ceases to
be all, and men demand to see, in each order,
persons, men, active beings. And since, without
a new incursion of barbarism, and with the daily
increasing necessities of Europe, this feeling
must necessarily increase, there remains only
one counsel which can secure each one against
the senescence of his order. Be something in
your order, and then you will be the first to
perceive, to avoid and to amend its defects.
Its old age will appear rejuvenized in you,
precisely because there is something in you
which would grace every form and live in all.

The excellent Paolo Sarpi wrote a treatise,
the title of which attracted me exceedingly :
"How opinions are born and die in us." I was
very curious to become acquainted with its con-
tents. And although I saw from Foscarini's
extract in Grisellini, that it was not likely to
contain what I had supposed, this capital pro-
blem nevertlieless was often in my thoughts.

Man}' are the Avays in which, from earliest
childhood, we arrive at opinions with which
we clothe ourselves, body and soul. Many of
them cleave to us with great tenacity, and the
silliest we generally keep concealed behind our
innermost, ninth skin, where, let no one pre-
sume to touch them ! Unfortunately, however,
Time will touch them, and often with very rude
hands. And he who, in order to save ,l)is life,
that is, his reason, peace and the self-conscious-
ness of internal worth, cannot yield the skin
and hair of his opinions to the meddling Satan,
is in bad hands. For that which is mere opi-
nion, or even false opinion, will assuredly perish
in the fierce fire of purification. But is it not
something better that shall arise in its place 1
Instead of opinions received on authority or
even, as Franklin relates, from politeness, know-
ledge from conviction, reason approved by our
own investigation, and a self-acquired felicity
shall be our portion. The old man in us must
die that a new youth may spring up.

" But how may this be ! Can a man return
into his mother's womb and be born again?"
To this doubt of old Nicodemus, the only an-
swer that can be given is: '■ Palingenesia!' — not
Revolution, but a hajipy Evolution of the faculties
wliich slumber in us, and by means of which
we renew our youth. What we call outliving
ourselves, — that is, a kind of death, — is, with
souls of the better sort but sleep, which precedes
a new waking, a relaxation of the bow which
prepares it for new use. So rests the fallow-
field, in order to produce the more plentifully
hereafter. So dies the tree in wiiUer, that it
may put forth and blossom anew in the spring.
Destiny never forsakes the good, as long as he
does not forsake himself, and ignobly despair
of himself The Genius which seemed to have
departed from him, returns to him again, at the
right moment, bringing new activity, fortune
and joy. Sometimes the Genius comes in the
shape of a friend, sometimes in that of an vm-
expected change of times. Sacrifice to this
Genius even though you see him not! Hope in
back-looking, returning Fortune, even when you
deem her far off! If the left side is sore, lay
yourself on the right; if the storm has bent your
sapling one way, bend it the other way, uruil it
attains, once more, the perpendicular medium.
You have wearied your memory"? Then exercise
your understanding. You have striven too dili-
gently after seeming, and it has deceived you?
Now seek being. That will not deceive. Un-
merited fame has spoiled you ? Thank Heaven
that you are rid of it, and seek, in your own
worth, a fame which cannot be taken away.
Nothing is nobler and more venerable than a
man, who, in spite of fate, perseveres in his
duty, and who, if he is not happy outwardly, at
least deserves to be so. He will certainly be-
come so, at the right season. The Serpent of
time often casts her slough, and brings to the
man in his cave, if not the fabled jewel on
her head and the rose in her mouth, at least

HERDER.

247

medicinal herbs which procure him oblivion of
the past, and restoration to new life.

Philosophy abounds in remedies designed to
console us for misfortunes endured, but unques-
tionably, its best remedy is when it strengthens
lis to bear now misfortunes, and imparts to us a
firm reliance on ourselves. The illusion whioh
weakens the faculties of the soul, comes, for the
most part, from without. But the objects which
environ us are not ourselves. It is sad indeed,
when the situation in which a man is placed, is
so embittered and made so wretched, that he
has no desire to touch one of its grapes or
flowers, because they crumble to ashes in his
hands, like those fruits of Sodom. Nevertheless,
the situation is not himself: let him, like the
tortoise, draw in his limbs and be what he can
and ought. The more he disregards the conse-
quences of his actions, the more repose he has
in action. Thereby the soul grows stronger and
revivifies itself, like an ever-springing fountain.
The fountain does not stop to calculate through
what regions of the earth its stream shall flow,
what foreign matter it shall take in, and where
it shall finally lose itself It flows from its own
fulness, with an irrepressible motion. That
which others show us of ourselves is only ap-
pearance. It has always some foundation, and
is never to be wholly despised ; but it is only
the reflection of our being in them, mirrored
back to us from their own ; often a broken and
dim form, and not our being itself Let the
little insects creep over and around you, and be
at the uttermost pains to make you appear dead ;
they work in their nature. Work you in yours,
and live! In fact, our breast, our character,
keeps us always more and longer upright, than
all the acumen of (he head, than all the cunning
of the mind. In the heart we live, and not in
the thoughts. The opinions of others may be a
favorable or unfavorable wind in our sails. As
the ocean its vessels, so circumstances at one
time may hold us fast, at another may power-
fully further us ; but ship and sail, compass,
helm and oar, are still our own. Never, then,
like old Tithonus, grow gray in the conceit that
your youth has passed away. Rather, with
newly awakened activity, let a new Aurora-
daily spring from your arms.

I ought now to speak to the greater problem,
so peculiarly adapted to our times: Whether
nations, countries, states, must also decline with
old age, or whether they too are capable of a
new youth 1 And by what means that youth
may be renewed 1 On this question there is
great division of opinion, and, as each opinion
knows how to fortify itself with examples from
history, this very difference in the answers is
itself a proof of the indefiniteness of the ques-
tion. What is it that can grow old in a nation,
a country, a state? What, in them, can or ought
to be made young again ? Is it the soul, the
air, the sky? And how are these changed for
the better or worse? Is it the farms, meadows,
forests, salt-springs, mines, trees 1 Or is it the

manner of working them, the profit and the ap-
plication of their products? Is it these alone,
or is it man himself, his race, his manners, his
education and mode of living, his principles and
opinions, his relations and conditions? And
how shall these be changed ? By speeches and
writings, or by institutions and well-directed,
consistent, continued action ? And what object
shall this change accomplish ? Superfluity for
the few, comfort and idleness for the many, or
the happiness of all? And wherein consists
the hapi)iness of all? In arts and sciences?
In seeming or in being? In loquacious enlight-
enment or in genuine culture? All these, and
perhaps other questions, should be considered
with careful reference to place, time and cir-
cumstances, and a comparison with more an-
cient examples and their consequences. And
then, it would probably be found :

1. Tliat land and people never grow old, or
only at a very late period; but that States, as
human institutions, as children of the times, or
even, in many cases, as the mere growth of ac-
cident, have their age and their youth, and, con-
sequently, an ever-progressive, imperceptible
movement toward growth, toward blossoming,
or toward dissolution.

2. That man, often individual men, may re-
tard or promote these periods, nay, that they are
mostly promoted by opposite measures.

3. That when forces are at work, either for
bloom or for dissolution, their progress is rapid,
and everything appears to assimilate itself with
them, until trivial circumstances, — often again,
individual men, — give the stream a different di-
rection ; which new direction, again, is the re-
sult of a living presence, although it sometimes
appears to be the effect of chance.

4. That, finally, in order to forestall those
fearful explosions which are called political re-
volutions, and which ought to be entirely foreign
from the book of human affairs, the State has no
other remedy, but to preserve or to restore the
natural relation, the healthy action of all its
parts, the brisk circulation of its juices, and
must not contend against the nature of things.
Sooner or later the strongest machine must suc-
cumb in that contest; but Nature never grows
old. She only renews her youth periodically,
in all her living forces.

The timid nature of man, always compassed
about ^vith hope and fear, often prophesies dis-
tant evils as near, and calls that death, which is
only a wholesome slumber, a necessary, health-
bringing relaxation. And so it generally de-
ceives itself in its predictions concerrjing lands
and kingdoms. Powers lie dormant which we
do not perceive. Faculties and circumstances
are developing themselves, on which we could
not calculate. But even when our judgment is
true, it usually leans too much to one side. "If
this is to live," we say, "that must die." We
do not consider, whether it may not be possible
that both shall live and act favorably on each
other ?

U8

HERDER.

' The good Bishop Berkeley, who was no poet,
was inspired, by his beneficent zeal for America,
to write the following : * * * *

Westward the star of empire takes its way ;

Tlie fciur first acts already past,
The fifth shall close tlie drama witli the day,

Tmie's noblest offspring is the last*

So prophesied the good-natured Bishop, and
if his spirit could now glance~at yonder up-
striving America, he M-ould perhaps discover,
with that same glance, that, in the arms of the
old Tithon, Europe, also, a new Aurora was
slumbering. Not four, scarcely three acts in the
great drama of this, still youthful, rjuarter of the
globe, are past; and who shall say how many
times yet the old Tithon of the human race may
and will renew his youth upon our earth !

METEMPSYCHOSIS,

IN THREE DIALOGUES.

DIALOGUE I.

CHAHICLES AND THEAGES.

Char. You are just the person I wished to
see, Theages. You will be surprised to find me
in this laboratory of learning.

Theag. What books are tliesel Greek, Latin,
English, even Hebrew ! What are they all
about ? — Metempsychosis. Well ! to be sure, that
is a fertile subject to talk about and to write
about.

Char. Let us talk about it then.

Theag. With all my heart; I have nothing
else to do. An hypothesis so rich and concerning
things so remote ; for and against which so
much may be said, certainly deserves a few
words for and against. But we must first come
to an understanding with ourselves as to the
meaning of metempsychosis. There are three
sorts, an ascending, a descending, and a circular.
Do we understand each other"?

Theag. Perfectly. The ascending is the re-
fining of lower germs of life into higher; as if,
for example, the soul of a plant should become
an animal, the soul of an animal a man, &c.
The descending is the Brahminical hypothesis ;
that good men are rewarded by being changed
into cows, sheep, and white elephants, and the
wicked punished by becoming tigers and swine.
The third or circular is — circular. Which shall
we discuss first?

Theag. Whichever you please. The first or
ascending is very probable, and, if true, destroys
the second and the third. If the upward course
is the law of Nature with all living things, then
nothing can move backward or in a perpetual
circle. Then man too must forward. The chain
cannot break with him — the highest link that
we know. He is a being like all other beings,
and if everything else advances, according to a

* The original gives the entire poem of which the above
is the coucluding stanza, together with a German version
of it.

universal law of Nature, then he too must ad-
vance.

Char. But we are supposing this law of Na-
ture already proved.

Theag. We will not suppose it then. For tlie
present, we will know nothing of the first sort
of metempsychosis; whether, e. g., man was
first a plant, then an animal, and has reached
his present condition by a constant progress.
We will speak only of the second and third
journey, — backwards and round about. We will
inquire whether there are data in nature, expe-
riences of the human species, fore-feelings in our
soul, ideas in God, as far as he is known to us, or
in the general course of the world, which autho-
rize such a supf)osition. Do you trust yourself
to answer that question 1

Char. Almost. And I will begin with the
most intelligible — with the experiences of hu-
man kind. Do you not know great and rare
men who cannot have become what tliey are,
at once, in a single human existence? Who
must have often existed before, in order to have
attained that purity of feeling, that instinctive
impulse for all that is true, beautiful and good;
in short, that elevation and natural supremacy
over all around them ? Do you know none
such ?

Theag. I know none.

Char. Have you never read of such rare,
great, eminent characters ?

Theag. 0 friend, why amuse ourselves with
ranging great men according to uniforms? I
know great men in life and in history, but no
one who must necessarily have been several
times in a human mother's womb, in order to
be the man he is. The greatest men, I have
always found, were the most modest and sin-
cere. They made no mystery of what they
seemed to themselves, of what they once were,
of what they became and how. They did not
throw themselves into mount .^Etna in order to
become gods ; + for the iron sandals will come
to light in time. On the contrary, they confessed
and gave their " Confessions" to the world and
to posterity.

Char. And what did they confess ? Do not
you remember Pythagoras who had been Eu
phorbus? Do you not remember ApoUonius of
Tyana ?

Theag. We will leave these fabulous shades,
and come, if you please, to persons who stand ii
the light. Petrarch's, Cardanus"s, Montaigne's, Lu
ther"s, Rousseau's Confessions, — do they breathe
a syllable of those great, or at least rare men
having been in the world before? of their feeling
that they could not otherwise have become what
they endeavored to be? On the contrary, do they
not candidly confess how they had worked their
way upward, how, with difficulty, they had
raised themselves out of nothing, how they still
felt all manner of faults and weaknesses withia

■f Deus immortalis haberi
Dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus ^Etnara
Insiluit. — Uorat.

HERDER.

249

themselves, and how, carried away thereby,
they would undoubtedly have become bad men
if they had given themselves the reins? You
remember what Socrates said of the physiogno-
mist? And Socrates was certainly very capable
of Pythagorean dreams.

Char. Perhaps, of this Pythagorean dream,
too. But altogether, we know too little about
Socrates from his own mouth; he speaks only
through the mouth of others. Therefore leave
examples, and say : do you not think tliere have
been very few truly great people in the world?

Theag. They vvoukl not be called great, were
there not few of them.

Char. Do you suppose that these great men,
rare as they have been in all centuries, became
what they were and what, in all time, they will
be, by mere industry, by pains-taking of which
every mechanical mind is capable ? or by Na-
ture alone, by a kind of native sense, by an in-
spiration which they did not give to themselves,
which never deserted them, which no one could
imitate, and which every one who attempted to
imitate, failed? They appeared like Genii, they
vanished like Genii, and men could only say :
"tliere he was, there he stood; he is no more;
where is there another like him?'' Is not that
your opinion?

Theag. I need not opine, for all history con-
firms it. But what has this to do with metem-
psychosis ?

Char. Hear me further. Do not these great
cliaracters appear, for the most part, all at once ?
Like a cloud of celestial spirits, they descended
from on high; — like men risen from the dead,
born again, who, after a long night of sleep,
brought back the old time, and stood forth as
youths in new and celestial beauty. Does it
not seem as if the wheel of the times must re-
volve in order to produce the human race anew,
to waken the understanding, to renovate virtue ?
What if these revolutions in the visible world
are, what the name imports, revolutions also in
the invisible, — the spirit-world, — a coming again
of old, noble spirits and races of men?

Theag. That sounds fine. Let us see what
the splendid vision amounts to. That great
spirits are rare, I do not deny. I grant further,
that what they were, they could be by nature
alone, and not by an improbus labor. But this is
no argument for Metempsychosis. Among brutes
also, there are, in every species, large gradations
and diflerences of faculty which only those ob-
serve, who live, as it were, on intimate terms
with that species. Must the souls of these ani-
mals have therefore migrated? Must the more
intelligent dog have been many times a dog, in
order to become what he is? Or is it not rather
evident, that everything depends on happier
organization, a more sprightly genesis, a nobler
lineage, on favorable local circumstances, on
climate, birth, training and hundred-armed ac-
cident, which, with all its ramifications, it is so
difficult to compute and to mould? Now com-
pare brutes with man, a two-stringed fiddle with
2&

the organ! What an infinite diversity must
there not be in the human species, even because
the extent of man's powers is so great, his for-
mation so delicate, his faculties so manifold, the
climate in whicli he lives, the world of circum-
stances which acts upon him so wonderfully
diverse, in short, the litdcs of his chain so com-
mensurable and so incommensurable, as you
please to consider it! What may not man become?
Who has ever determined the goal — so much
and no more? What may not come to pass out
of so great a multitude, in the stream of the
ever-progressive development of the world and
of human kind? Woidd it not be a far greater
wonder, if all men were born blockheads, ilian
that there should be, occasionally, a man of
sense, as is now the case? Shall the electric
spark, in no instance, shine forth pure and
bright? Shall not the gennirje human form
show itself here and there in an army of Zary^.?
What need of goblins and revenanls? since this
nobler form is the true and peculiar form of
humanity, from which we have only degene-
rated, by malformations too easily accounted for.
You might as well maintain that angels embody
themselves in these higher specimens of huma-
nity, or, — if their genius works instinctively, —
that certain animals endowed with certain art-
istic faculties are reproduced in them. I see
not why we must needs disturb the dead and
conjure up the prophet Samuel in his night-
gown, merely that we may say; "I see gods
arise out of the earth." View Humanity hu-
manly, and it will appear human to you. View
individual great men in their organization, their
birth, their education, their place and position,
and you will not need to cross the sea, in quest
of shadows.

Char. But that these rare men should be, for
the most part, cotemporary? —

Theag. Is that your proof, my good metemp-
sychosist? As though a heap of shadows were
blown along, as in Dante's hell, by a gust of
wind ; or as if a troop of giants, as in Bodmer's
Noah, came sailing in a balloon, and were
pleased to alight here ! Consult history, you
will always find that men are awakened by
external causes, that circumstances, a demand,
a want, a reward, called them forth; that emu-
lation stimulated them : that a long series of
errors had just run itself out; that a night of the
ages had past away, and it was time, at last,
that morning should dawn once more. Gene-
rally, there had been so much preparatory labor
and discipline, that these more fortunate men
needed only to profit by the failures and pains
of their ancestors, to attain to honor. After
many dissonances, they hit at last the consonant
points of the cord. — That is all that our eye can
discover from a comparison of periods and of
men. As to groping farther into the invisible
after the finger of the Godhead, and endeavor-
ing to ascertain when and how he causes men
to be born ; — I hold that to be above our sphere.
If we are going to poetise, I can as well derive

250

HERDER.

them from the moon, under certain happy phases,
as by a paUngcnesia from the fore-world, which
does not eliany;e quite so regularly as the moon.

Char. The latter circumstance matters not.
We are as yet far too young in history, we have
experienced too few of those periodical revolu-
tions, to be able to compute them as we do tlie
changes of the moon.

Theag. Then also we are too young to cherish
fictions which we cannot prove, for which all
history furnishes no sure data. Young or old,
the return of the human species must have be-
come perceptible, the ebb and flood of spirits
must have been observed, though only by way
of conjecture. Nay, if with that return, the hu-
man understanding and moral refinement, the
inward activity and elasticity of men be sup-
poseil to increase; heavens! what glorious men
we sljould have, by this time, in those who have
been here ten times before! And where are
th.ese? Where are they, my friend? Tiie wisest,
best and strongest men, — have they lived in
modern times or in antiquity? And how often
have the Homers, the Socrateses, the Pythago-
rases, the Epaminondases, the Scipios appeared
in the world ? to say nothing of their having
grown from century to century. The human
phcenixes have always been rare, and will al-
ways remain so. We need not expect that,
suddenly, with the year 1800, gods will -walk
the earth instead of men, because the revolving
wheel has dried the wet clay and brought the
figures into sliape. Let us therefore leave these
divinations in their proper place, and content
ourselves with being men, such as our forefathers
were, once -baked men, and not sewed up, a
second time, in Jupiter's thigh. Or if, my dear
migrationist, you know any story out of your
prhneval world, which I also remember, bring
it forwards.

Char. You shall have it; only I beg you to
be candid, and not to deny the thoughts and
reminiscences of your youth, especially of your
early, unsophisticated childhood. Have you
never had remembrances of a former state,
which you could find no place for in this life?
In that beautiful period, when the soul is yet a
half-closed bud, have you not seen persons, been
in places, of which you were ready to swear
that you had seen those persons, or had been in
those places before ? And yet it could not have
been in this life, as you can satisfy yourself on
reflection. Whence then are those remini-
scences ? Whence can they be, but from some
former state ? Therefore are they so sweet, so
elevating I The most blessed moments, the
grandest thoughts, are from that source. In our
more ordinary seasons, we look back with asto-
nishment on ourselves, we do not comprehend
ourselves. And such are we ; we who, from a
hundred causes, have sunk so deep and are so
wedded to matter, that but few reminiscences
of so pure a character remain to us. The nobler
class of men who, separated from wine and
meat, lived in perfect simplicity, temperate, and

according to the order of Nature, carried it fur-
ther, no doul)t, than others, as we learn from the
example of Pythagoras of larchas, of ApoUonius
and others, who remembered distinctly wliat
and how many times they had been in the
world before. If we are blind, or can see but
two steps beyond our noses, ought we therefore
to deny that others may see a hundred or a
thousand degrees farther, even to the bottom of
time, into the deep, cool well of the fore-world,
and there discern everything plain and bright
and clear ?

Thcag. You are a true Pythagorean, my friend,
and worthy to attain to the deepest well of the
fore-time; yea! to the original fountain of truth
itself, if men ever arrive tliere. I will freely
confess to you, that those sweet dreams of me-
mory are known to me also, among the expe-
riences of my childhood and youth. I have
been in places and circumstances of which I
could have sworn that I had been in them be-
fore. I have seen persons with whom I seemed
to have lived before; with whom I was, as it
were, on the footing of an old acquaintance.
But may there not be some other cause for such
experiences?

Char. I know of none but the remembrance
of a former state.

Theag. Certainly, of a former state ; only not
beyond this life, and in another body. Have
you never watched yourself, and observed how
the soul is always occupied in secret? bow,
especially, in childhood, it makes plans, com-
bines thoughts, builds bridges, meditates ro-
mances, and repeats all this in dreams, with
the magic colors of the dream-world ? Look at
that child playing and entertaining itself in
silence. He talks with himself; he is in a
dream of vivid images. These images and
thoughts will some time return to him, at a time
when he does not expect it, and no longer re-
members whence they are. They will appear
to him with all the decorations of the scene in
which he first conceived them, or which, it may
be, a youthful dream brought before his mind.
The situation will create a pleasant delusion,
as every retrospect which brings agreeable
images before the mind deludes us. It will be
taken for an inspiration because it actually
comes like an inspiration from another world ;
that is, rich in images and without pains. A
single trait of the present picture will recall it;
a single sound which now touches the soul,
awakens all the slumbering tones of former
times. These are moments of the sweetest
rapture, especially in beautiful, wild, romantic
spots, in moments of pleasant intercourse with
persons who, with an agreeable illusion, unex-
pectedly create in us, or we in them, the feel-
ing, as it were, of an earlier acquaintance : re-
miniscences of paradise, but not of a previous
human life ; the paradise, rather, of youth, of
childhood, or of pleasant dreams which we bad
either sleejiing or waking, and which, in fact,
are the true paradise. The palingencsia is there-

HERDER.

251

fore correct, only not so wonderful as you sup-
pose, but, on the contrary, very natural.

Char. Your explanation is charming, but —

Thcug. I think it will prove convincing, if
we watch ourselves. Do you not think that
man experiences the highest delight and even
a kind of ecstasy, when he beholds a dream,
whichtlie soul had composed out of its dearest
images, suddenly and xuiexpectedly, though only
partially realized 1 Must not the soul welcoriie
such a dream with rapture, and embrace it aS
Adam embraced Eve, when it sees in it the
image of itself, the creation of its sweetest mo-
ments, the fruit of its secret love? Behold,
my friend, hence come those surprises, those
sudden and often so pleasing, so deeply pro-
phetic and powerful sympathies; hence the
divine and divining power of first impressions.
The second impression can never give it. That
only weakens the rapture of the first and de-
composes the picture. As long as the soul
realizes the first dream, it floats, as it were, in
the Elysium of childhood. When the dream is
dissolved, then, alas! the gods have become
men, then we must till the ground and eat our
bread in sorrow and in the sweat of our face.
Observe particularly, that, with well-organized
men, reminiscences of this kind are mostly
beautiful, but wild, romantic, often exaggerated,
precisely like the impressions and feelings of
their youth. Sickly people retain ideas of pain,
weak people feelings of difficulty and trouble —
the reflections of their early impressions. These
feelings return, at certain times, in moments of
weakness, of sudden attack, when the soul is
oft' its guard and gives itself up to involuntary
combinations of thought; they return often;
they become dominant feelings. I could men-
tion striking examples of this, but they would
lead us too far out of the way. Observe people
in love, and insane people, — especially melan-
choly love and mild insanity, — you will see the
power of first impressions, the entire youth of
the soul in every trait of the pictures which
filled their minds; you will hear them in all
the complainings of their aberrations. Nay,
observe your own soul in dreams. There, we
all wander alike. After a certain age, we de-
corate all our dreams with scenes of our youth:
the very persons who appear in them, if they
were our nearest and most beloved, assume
other, and, as it seems, more lovely and roman-
tic forms. In all the fantasies of love the first
impression is the dearest, the most indelible.
In short, we spell together, where we can, an
alphabet out of our youth whose traits are the
most agreeable, the most impressive, the most
familiar to us. Have I satisfied you with my
solution?

Char. Not entirely. Some reminiscences are
so wonderful, so foreign, and, to use your lan-
guage, so incapable of being spelt with the im-
pressions of the youth and childhood of this
life, that —

Thcag. That they necessarily require another

world, a former life ? Well, then, why are you
not true to your own hypothesis ? Why do you
not actually assume another world, a foregone
connection in the world of spirits and of souls,
as Plato fabled, as the old Rabbins and many
nations conceived ? Methinks, if we must dream,
we shall do well to dream the freest of dreams.
Imagine, for example, how once, with your be-
loved in the land of spirits you

" Swarmed unseen, small as a ray of light ;
Think how, upon an orange leaf,
You met for sport and jest ;
In the luxuriou.s lap of young auriculas.
Oft wmged with converse sweet the laggard time."

Why must you make your scene so narrow and
let the soul beg so often and laboriously, in our
poor humanity, the spiritual alms which it
may have far cheaper and all at once if you
send it into the realm of spirits and divest it
entirely of its corporeal nature. Have you never
read letters from the dead to the living?

Char. Many.

Theag. Well, then, you know what freedom
and absence of restraint there is in the kingdom
of spirits. Therefore it is that children love
dreams of this kind so much, because they blend
them with their own dreams, which they seem
to confirm therewith as with traditions from
another world. For myself, though I tolerate
these things in poetry, and once delighted in
them, at my present time of life I am content to
renounce the dream of pre-existence, and to
study my soul in its present bonds, in its poor
actuality.

Char. And what results do yoit draw from
your studies in it?

Thcag. Results? That's more than I know.
But the study itself, it seems to me, is very pro-
fitable, and I wish that we might study our
children for the same purpose.

Char. For what purpose ?

Thcag. To notice their first impressions, the
manner in which their souls are affected by
them, the secret ideas and images with which
they entertain themselves, which they spin and
spin, like a fine invisible web, according to their
own will and pleasure. Have you never ob-
served that children will sometimes, on a sud-
den, give utterance to ideas which make us
wonder how they got possession of them, which
presuppose a long series of other ideas and se-
cret self-communings, which break forth like a
full stream, out of the earth, an infallible sign
that the stream was not produced in a moment
from a few rain-drops, but had long been flow-
ing concealed beneath the ground, and, it may
be, had broken through many a cave, had car-
ried away many a rock, and contracted many
defilements?

Char. And if we do observe this, who can
resist Nature ? Can we arrest the course of
these streams or bring them to light? Can we
change the constitution of the earth and of
human souls according to our pleasure?

Theag. We can in one sense, and in another

252

HERDER.

sense we cannot. We can as far as we ought,
and we ought as far as we caii. If the souls
of our children are dear to us, and we are as
deeply convinced as I am, of the power of first
impressions, ought we not imperceptibly to
guide and to determine these first impressions,
so far as they are in our power? I say, imper-
cefitibly, for else it is all in vain. The soul, in
its most secret operations, bears no restraint, no
mechanical law ; it works freely out of its own
nature; and these first efforts contain the em-
blem of all its future workings through the
whole course of its life. To watch it, therefore,
and, when in pleasant wilds and agreeable
labyrinths it wanders and loses its way, to
guide it in the shape of a bright star, or like
Minerva in Homer, in the form of a foreign tra-
veller,— not teacher or overseer, — in short, as a
certain philosopher desired for his daily por-
tion, to supply to our children joyful morning-
images and youthful pictures, that hereafter at
evening and in old age, they may have glad
reminiscences from the Platonic kingdom of
spirits and may acquire no debasing and terrible
ideas of metempsychosis ; — that I think we can
and ought to do ; although, of course, subject to
the power of fate.

Char. Yes! to be sure, subject to the power
of fate.

Tlieag. For we are not masters of all our
own ideas and impressions, much less of the
impressions of our friends and our children. It
is not we ourselves who have placed our souls
here, much less have we armed their forces against
the universe which streams to them from every
side. There are actually persons who are des-
tined to sorrows and misfortune, for whom early
impressions and ideas, cares and disease have
in a great measure diminished and destroyed
the joy of life. The cup which they are to
drink has been made bitter, or else turbid and
distasteful; for there are evils which cannot be
wholly done away in this life. These persons,
too, must content themselves, meanwhile, to bear
with cheerfulness, at least with equanimity, the
burden which is laid upon them, the insepara-
ble burden of life, and to await in hope another,
freer, better being.

Char. Do you see now how you arrive at my
metempsychosis? Who knows what these peo-
ple may have committed in their former state,
that they are now made so miserable by the
hand of fate and not by their own fault? But
you are preparing to go.

Thcag. It is late. Another time we will
begin where we leave off, as is the law of me-
tempsychosis. Sleep well, Charicles, and dream
of the primeval realms of love, and not that
you were once Sejanus or Ravaillac.

Char. In that case it were well that I am no
longer so, and that my evil destiny lies already
behind me. Sleep well !

DIALOGUE II.
Charicles. I hope, my friend, to hear you speak

more reasonably to-day on the subject of our
conversation. Yesterday you were somewhat
warm.

Thcages. That depends on what you mean
by ' reasonable" and ' warm.' If equanimity is
shown by investigating, dien I had it yesterday ;
but if you desire that laxity and coldness to
which everything is indifferent —

Char. Not exactly inditferent. To whom can
it be a matter of indifference that poor, vexed
man should find some indemnification for pre-
sent, pressing evils, at least in the beautiful
visions of liope? that he sliould receive some
light concerning God, the world, the course of
fate? Where Seneca's reasons cease, where
even Religion does not explain, but only ties
new knots, there —

Thcag. Charicles, let us not bring religion into
the play, especially in so disparaging manner.
Religion, most surely, knows nothing of metem-
psychosis, but points in quite another direction,
with all its promises, threats, commands, exam-
ples. The wheel of Ixion, the stone of Sisy-
phus, the drawing of the'Danaides — such would
be the eternal revolution of human destiny, not
a comforting, heavenly recompense. In Dante's
hell, the hypocrites walk with leaden mantles
and averted, backward-looking-face, in a perpe-
tual circle ; they go forever and never move
from the spot, and forever look behind them
with their twisted necks.

Char. But, my friend, do you also look back
calmly, a few moments. How many wretches
are there behind you, who have not deserved to
fall so low, who, therefore, must rise higher in
this life in order to reconcile us, in some degree,
with Divine justice and mercy.

Thcag. To reconcile? You would then be an
eneniy of God, if tliere be no migration of souls
in the circulations of Humanity? You must
needs deny his justice and paternal goodness, if
he did not perinit you to return to this earth
again and again ? For myself, I confess I am
heartily satisfied with having been once on the
earth and lived my life, as man. For at best,
says one of the eldest sages, it is " labor and
sorrow:"' and that is its everlasting circle.
" Man who is born of woman is of few days and
full of trouble. He cometh forth as a flower
and is cut down ; he fleeth also as a shadow
and continueth not." That is his destiny.

Char. A sad destiny !

Theag. Sad or consoling, — enough, it is his
destiny. When you look at human life in all
its connections, does not everything -within you
seem to cry aloud : " God be praised ! I am to
be lived but once." The morning of our days,
how soon past! The bud of our earthly being
how soon withered! Now the day gets sultry,
weariness of life succeeds ; gradually the evening
draws nigh, and the sun goes down. Man fades
as he bloomed, he forgets his own thoughts, he
distrusts his own powers, he dies before he dies,
and rejoices to find his grave. This is the un-
changeable circle of the days and seasons, of

HERDER.

253

the life-period and human ages on our earth.
And yon would have the wretch tread this circle
a thousand times when he rejoices to have trod-
den it but once ! You would have Nature, like
Penelope, forever weave her web and weave it
anew, only to destroy it again. Unfortunate
Humanity with all its talents, hopes and powers !
Weak-minded Penelope! — for whose under-
standing at least I would not be a suitor.

Char. But, my friend, lias not the tree, the
flower, the day, the same destiny 1 and do they
not return too? It appears to be the law of
Nature; why should weak, proud man alone
resist if?

Theag. Truly, he would be weak and proud,
to resist it as a tree, as a flower, or as the day;
but he is neither of the three ; and furthermore
these three do not return. The tree stands rooted
in the earth, and if it has, as I doubt not, a life,
it is only the first germ of an inferior kind of
life. This, it is a great while in working out,
and must remain long in its place. Every year
is to it but one day ; the spring its morning, the
winter its sleep. It must endure, produce many
leaves, blossoms and fruits which serve the air,
animals, man, — the whole superior creation.
Then it gradually grows old and dies. That
wliich now shoots forth around it, is not itself
but its offspring. What has become of its life-
power and life-breath, in odors, blossoms, leaves,
fruits, we know or do not know. Our glance
cannot and must not penetrate the kingdom of
productive powers. The tree, then, does not
come within your palingenesia ; it does not mi-
grate, but lives out its life, as a world of change-
able, unreturniiig leaves, blossoms and fruits.
The same of the flower. And the simile of
the day, which certainly never returns, was, un-
doubtedly, meant only as a simile. You are,
therefore, entirely without example in the order
of nature. And do you think that man, man
alone, is to be this example of an Ixionic-Tan-
talistic-Danaidal destiny? an example without
example, nay, almost without design?

Char. Not entirely without design. He would
learn the science of life in the only way in which
it can be learned ; by the most many-sided view
of it, and the most living experience. He would,
therefore, always be tried, purified, refined, con-
firmed ; the thread of his identity would con-
tinue and he would advance, however much he
might seem to move in a circle.

Theag. A slow progress ! in which Fate would
treat us as Phrygians, who are always wise be-
hindhand, and never know how the boy feels
who receives the stripes, until they have re-
ceived them themselves. And to receive these
stripes forever !

Char. Fate will not inflict them without need ;
and since it is once for all established, that we
really and truly know only that which we have
ourselves tried and experienced —

Theag. It seems to me, my friend, that you
abuse the truest of propositions, when you
apply it in that way. I need not try everything

in this world ; else, wo to poor humanity !
What wise man would wish to be inoculated
with the plague in order to ascertain its true
nature 1 What man would wish to be a patri-
cide or a matricide, in order to learn how Nero
or any other monster must have felt? And
what kind of a destiny would that be, which
should find pleasure in making me perform all
sorts of detestable parts, in order to give me the
feeling that I had performed them ? ' You see
what a system it is that can furnish occasion for
all manner of enormities, making the lusts
which the villain feels within himself, his pre-
sent ^destination,' and giving him, when he dies
upon the gallows, the sweet consolation that
"now he has expiated one of his debts; — it
was his destination to tread that path at pre-
sent ; what he has not yet learned and expe-
rienced, he will have time to learn in other sta-
tions."

Char. We will not speak of these abuses.
The best things may be abused, in the worst
manner, by foolish and wicked men. I return
to my question. How will you vindicate the
goodness of God who has made the lot of man
so unequal? Either, the ideas of evil and good,
perfect or imperfect, happy or unhappy, must
be very indifferent to him ; or —

Theag. Or we ought not to measure him by
our petty, narrow, pitiful standard. Who is
happy? Who is unhappy? Is the civilized
man more so than the savage? The slave in
golden, more than the slave in iron chains?
Where, on our earth, dwells perfection ? Where
has it built itself an house ? Are we constituted
its judges? We who live only on the dole of its
grace and mercy? God created -us not to judge
the human species, but to live in it and to re-
joice in our place, and to bless our kind wherever
and as far as we can. He himself has done no
more than, according to his M'isdom, he could; —
than, according to his goodness, he should. He
took counsel of both, and so he created the hu-
man race. Who can ask; "why no higher?"
" why no lower?" Enough, it exists; and let
each one rejoice that he too exists, enjoy his
being, and trust in Him who brought him hither,
that He will also lead him forth and lead him
farther.

Char. So, the inequalities of the human con-
dition, on our earth, find no explanation with
you?

Theag. No other than this: "they lay in the
plan of creation." Our planet, as it is once for
all constituted, was intended to bear what it
can, to produce what it can. Therefore it has
been made a globe with all varieties of climate,
of country, of vegetable, animal, human kinds.
The ladder is erected in both hemispheres, its
rounds are innumerable : where do they termi-
nate ? Through an hundred gates everything
presses into the kingdom of God, and, through
hundred thousand, forth again, in all gradations,
upwards, forwards. Where God shall bless the
poor, merchandised negro? whether in a para-
22

254

HERDER.

dise among the mountains,* or beneath a lazy
bishop's mitre, because he has once ground him-
self weary, — let those decide wlro can. As
diverse as this world is, so diverse will the
future also be. Or if not, — if everything is to
be united by simpler ends and more determinate
magnitudes, — why, so much the better ! Enough,
1 often find happiness here, where I sought it
not ; beauty beneath a covering which seemed
most foreign to it; wisdom and virtue, for the
most part, in rude, despised and undistinguish-
able forms. Precisely, where paint and prink-
ing begin, there truth, justice, happiness cease ;
and shall we let our poor pilgrim migrate to
these gilded pagodas, to lose the truth which
they possess and to excliange inward worth and
wealth for wretched outward tinsel? The more
I learn to know Humanity by other tokens than
tlie cut of the cloak, the more cause I find, even
in this stage of being, to adore Providence with
kneeling reverence. Where we expect the
greatest misery, there dwells often the greatest
happiness. Simplicity is not stupidity, and cun-
ning is neither blessing nor wisdom. I there-
fore still hold with the poet ; — ;• .• j_.

" Wisely doth Destiny its gifts allot ;
To each, fooii, shelter, raiment and what not,
Strength to llie poor and to the weak man, place."

Char. But, my dear friend, you surely know
the law of economy which holds as well in re-
gard to power as to space ? It rules throughout
all Nature. Is it not very probable that the
Deity is guided by it in the propagation and
progress of human soids? He who has not
become ripe in one form of Humanity, is put
into the oven again, and, some time or other,
must be perfected.

Thcag. But suppose he should be burned in
the process? The mould of humanity is so
narrow, the position — whether here or there, in
rags or in purple — has so little to do with the
result, that he who cannot be upright in one
costume, will scarcely be so in another. At all
events, there must be no necessity about it, else
all the morality of free-agency is at an end, and
man is thrown about like a stone, and shoved
hither and thither like a clod of earth. Do you
see where your hypothesis is leading you again?
To a fatal necessity which enfeebles all striving
and aspiration after happiness, beauty, virtue
in every form, under every mask, and binds us
in fetters of blind, obedience to the car of Des-
tiny. But we have been prating long enough
in this narrow room ; and that has made our
conversation assume such a contracted, meta-
physical character. Look at the beautiful,
starry night ! Yonder rises the moon. I pro-
pose, that we should betake ourselves, soul and
body, oat of this metaphysical atmosphere into
free Nature.

* — "Simple Nature to his hope has given
Behind the cloudtopt hill an humbler heaven,
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced
Some happier island on the wal'ry waste."

They went forth and soon the tone of their
conversation was changed. The holy silence
which night spread around them, the bright
celestial luminaries suspended like lamps above
their heads, on the one side some lingering
shimmer of the evening red, on the other the
moon lifting iierself softly from behind the
shadows of the forest: — how does this magnifi-
cent temple exalt, expand, enlarge the soul ! At
such moments, one feels so perfectly the beauty
and the nothingness of earth, and what refresh-
ment God has provided for us on this star, on
which sun and moon, the two fair lights of
heaven, alternating, conduct us through life,
and how low and small and vanishing is this
speck of our earth, compared with the measure-
less splendor and glory of stars, suns and
worlds.

What think you now, said Theages, of your
principium mintini, according to which, you would
be forever knocking about on the earth, chained
to a grain of sand ? Look at the heavens, God's
star-writing, the primeval tradition of our im-
mortality, the luminous chart of our far pil-
grimage! Where does the universe end? And
why do rays come down to us from yonder
farthest star ? Why have there been given to
man the glance and the flaming flight of im-
mortal hopes? Why, when we have been ex-
hausted with the rays of the sun and bound fast
to the dust all the day, does God unveil to us at
night this sublime field of infinite eternal pros-
pects? We stand lost amid the host of the
worlds of God, lost in the abyss of his immen-
sity round about us. And what should bind
my spirit to this weary sand-grain, when my
body, the hull, has sunk into the ground? All
the laws which bind me here, evidently relate
to my body only. That is formed of this earth
and must return to this earth again. The laws
of motion, the pressure of th.e atmosphere, —
everything confines that, and only that, here
below. The spirit once escaped, once rid of
the delicate but strong bands of sense, impulse,
propensity, duty and custom which bind it to
this little sphere of visibility; what earthly
power can hold it longer? What law of Nature
has been discovered which should compel souls
to revolve in this narrow race-course? The
spirit is raised above the bounds of time, it
despises space and the slow movements of
earth. Once disembodied, it is immediately in
its place, its sphere, in the new kingdom to
which it belongs. Perhaps that kingdom is
around us and we perceive it not; jierhaps it
is near us and we know not of it, except in
occasional moments of happy fore-feeling, when
the soul, as it were, attracts it to itself, or it the
soul. Perhaps, too, there are appointed for us
places of rest, regions of preparation, other
worlds in which, — as on a golden heaven-lad-
der— ever lighter, more active and blest, we
may climb upward to the fountain of all light,
ever seeking, never reaching the centre of our
piJgrimage, — the bosom of the Godhead. For

HERDER.

255

we are and must ever be limited, imperfect,
finite beings. But wherever I may be, through
whatever worlds I may be led, I shall remain
forever in the hands of the Father who hath
brought me hither and who calls me further ;
forever in the infinite bosom of God.

I am sorry, said Charicles, to interrupt you in
your contemplations which remove you so far
from our earth ; but do not leave me behind.
Wherever you are free, wise and active, there
is heaven ; and why, then, do you shun and flee
the earth? If you can live more freely, wisely,
happily, in some other human form, and so
ascend continually in your inward condition,
what matters place and scene? Here or there,
God's world is God's world ; one theatre is as
good as another. Our earth too is a star among
stars.

Theag. Well, my friend ; but how far is it
possible to climb in our humanity? Is not its
sphere as narrowly bounded, as dusty and as
filthy as this star itself? The best of hearts is
still but a human heart; body is body and
earthly life is earthly life. The miserable de-
tails of business, the cares of life, so necessary
and yet so unprofitable, still recur. The difler-
ent life-periods, with their changing imperfec-
tions, recur. Even in regard to virtues, the
human race is divided into its two sexes, which
stand over against each other, on one root,
mutually embrace and crown one another, but
can never become one and the same perfection,
in human life. What the one has, is wanting
to the other. What one man has, another man
wants. Birth, station, climate, education, office,
mode of living forever limifr and impede. Man
grows for a few years only, and then stands
still or declines and recedes. If he attempts,
in old age, to appear a youth and to imitate
others, he becomes ridiculous, he becomes
childish. In short, it is a narrow sphere, this
earthly life ; and do what we will, as long as
we are here, it is impossible to escape this nar-
rowness without greater injury and the entire
loss of ourselves. But hereafter, when death
shall burst these bonds, when God shall trans-
plant us like flowers into quite other fields and
surround us with entirely diflerent circumstan-
ces, then. — Have you never experienced, my
friend, what new faculty a new situation gives
to the soul? a faculty, which, in our old corner,
in the stifling atmosphere of old circumstances
and occupations, we had never imagined, had
never supposed ourselves capable of?

Char. Who has not experienced that? From
that very circumstance I drew the refreshing
draught of the Lethe stream with which my
palingenesia has already rejuvenized me, here
on this earth. I feel, as you do, that, in spite
of all our striving and effort, the sphere of
humanity is insurmountable, and that our nature
is circumscribed within fixed limits. Here, on
this earth, no tree reaches to the heavens ; cer-
tain stains, once contracted, all the rivers of the
world cannot wash out; many weaknesses and

imperfections, after a certain length of time,
can scarcely be recognised, much less laid aside.
Often, the coarser are exchanged for the more
refined and more dangerous. All that is true.
Moreover, I see very well, that, in the narrow,
ever repeated circle of earthly life, nothing
superlatively great is to be effected. There is
so inuch useless trouble, and, from renewed
effort, so little of fresh acquisition. The do-
main which you unfold is indeed more exten-
sive, the field to which you invite is infinite, —
the host of all the worlds that lie in my eternal
path toward the Godhead. But, friend, who
shall give me wings for such a flight? It seems,
always, as if something hurled me back to my
earth. It seems to me, as if I had not yet used ,
up that, had not yet made myself sufliiciently
light to ascend higher ; who shall give me wings ?
Thcag. If you will not receive them from the
sacred hand which points thither, then receive
at least some feathers from friendly — from your
friend Newton's hands.
Char. From Newton"s?

Thcag. Even so. The system which he con-
structed out of stars and suns — let that be to
you the fabric of your immortality, of an ever-
during progress and upward flight. Are not all
the planets of our solar system bound to each
other and to their centre or focus, the sun, by
the power of attraction ?
Char. Unquestionably.

Theag. They constitute then a firm, an inde-
structible whole, in which, if anything should
be changed or disturbed, the whole, with its
great harmonies, must suffer and go to ruin.

Char. Precisely so. The planets all relate to
the sun, and the sun, with its forces, its bulk, its
liglit, its warmth and distance, relates to the
planets.

Theag. And yet the planets are only the
staging of the theatre, the dwelling-places of
the creatures, who, on them, revolve around the
infinitely more beautiful Sun of eternal goodness
and truth, in various degrees of removal, with
various eclipses, perihelia and aphelia. Is it
possible that the scenes themselves should be
so closely connected and not the contents of the
scenes, — the play itself? Is it to be supposed,
that the planets are so exactly arranged in rela-
tion to each other and to the Sun, and that the
destiny of those who live in them, and for
wliose sake tliey have been prepared, is not as
closely connected, and more closely, inasmuch
as being is more than costume, matter more than
place, life and subject more than theatre and
stage ? In nature everything is related, — morals
and physics — like body and spirit. Morality is
only a more beautiful physique of the spirit.
Our future destination is a new link in the chain
of our being, which connects itself with the pre-
sent link most minutely and by the most subtile
progression, as our earth is connected with the
sun, and the moon with our earth.

Char. I surmise what you would say, my
friend, but —

256

HERDER.

Thcag. In tliese matters we can do nothing
else but surmise and forebode. And beneath
the silent gaze of the stars, in the face of the
friendly moon, tlie surmises which we send into
that immeasurable distance are so great, so
elevating! Imagine, for a moment, that our
star-fabric is as closely connected in regard to
the moral condition of its inhabitants as it is in
its physical circumstances, — ihat it is a choir of
sisters praising the Creator in various tones and
proportions, but with the harmony of a single
power. Imagine that, from the farthest planet
to the sun, there are gradations of being as of
light, of distance, of masses, of forces, (and no-
thing is more probable) ; imagine the sun to be
the rendezvous of all the beings of the system
which he rules as he is the king of all light, of
all warmth, of all beauty and truth which he
communicates, in various gradations, to the
creatures. Behold here the great ladder by
which all ascend, and the long way which we
have yet to tread, before we arrive at the centre
and father-land of that which, in our star-sys-
tem, we call Truth, Light, Love !

Char. So, then, the farther removed from our
sun, the darker, the coarser'? On the other hand,
the nearer to that body, the brighter, the lighter,
the warmer, the swifter? The beings in Mer-
cury, which is always hidden in the rays of tlie
sun, must indeed differ in their nature from the
sluggish inhabitants of Saturn — those dark Pata-
goiiian giants who scarcely, in thirty years, get
round the sun, and whose night, even with its
five moons, is poorly lighted. Our earth then
woidd occupy a middle station?

Theag. And perhaps that is the very reason
why we are such middling creatures, standing
lialf-way between the dark Saturiiians and the
bright sun -light, the fountain of all truth and
beauty. Our reason is, in fact, but in its first
dawn here ; our freedom' of will, too, and our
moral energy is but so so. It is well, therefore,
that we are not to tarry for ever on this earth-
planet, where, it is most likely, we should never
come to much.

Char. You think, then, that we are destined
to travel through all the planets?

Theag. That I know not. Each planet may
send its inhabitants, who are all, in various de-
grees, aspiring to one Sun, by the shortest route
to that goal, and by such stages and gradations
as the Creator shall judge to be necessary for
them. How if our moon, for example, — and,
if I remember right, Milton so describes her,*
and several Oriental sects have so j)hilosophized
concerning her, — how if our moon should be the
paradise of recreation, where weary pilgrims,
escaped from the mists of this earth-valley, live
in a purer atmosphere, in gardens of peace and
social enjoyment, and prepare themselves for
the contemplation of the higher light toward
which the inhabitants of other planets are also

♦ "Those argent fields, more likely, habitants,
Translated saints or middle spirits hold
Betwixt the angelical and human kind."

travelling? It seems to me as if the moon pro-
mised us this with her calm consoling light, —
as if she shone for no other purpose but to show
us the glory of another world, and to inspire
soft, dewy dreams of amaranthine bowers of
peace, and an indissoluble, blessed friendship.

Char. You dream pleasantly, my friend, in
the face of the moon, and I love to dream with
you. It has often seemed to me too, when
filled with sadness and gentle melancholy at
the remembrance of departed, dearly loved
friends, as if the moon-beams were their lan-
guage, and I could almost hope to see their
shining forms before me, or to feel, gliding
down upon a ray, the kiss of their pure lips on
my soul. But enough of this ! We are both
getting to be fantastic dreamers. Tell me fur-
ther.

Theag. I have no inclination. I lack the blue,
emerald gold-wings to carry you from star to
star, to show you how our sun, too, speeds
round a greater sun, how everything in creation
rejoices in a harmony in which suns and earths
are measured, numbered, weighed as notes, and
doubtless, also, and how much more, the des-
tiny, the life of their inhabitants. 0 ! how great
is the dwelling in which the Creator has placed
me, and O, how fair ! fair by night and by day,
here and yonder, the view of sun, moon and
star ! My course is the path of the All of worlds ;
that uttermost star lights me on my way, and
the harmony of all stars — the music of spiritual
ideas and relations — accompanies me in it. But
ah ! my frienil, all this is only twilight, conceit,
surmise, compared with the infinitely purer and
higher light of the religion of the spirit and the
heart. On this earth everything is rounded with
necessity, and we yearn, with ' the earnest ex-
pectation of the creature,' to be free. We have
within us ideas of love, of friendship, of beauty,
of truth which, here on earth, we know only in
shadows and dream-images, so imperfect, so
often disturbed, deceived, and always incom-
plete! We tliirst for a river of purer joys; and
it seems to me that the hope, the desire itself,
is a sure prophecy of fruition. Take the purest
relations of this world, the joys of a father, a
mother, with what cares are they blended ! with
what pains and inconveniences are they inter-
rupted ; and how^ do they only minister, after
all, to necessity, to a foreign, higher relation !
"In that world," says the scripture, "they nei-
ther marry nor are given in marriage, but are
as the angels of God." There love is freed from
the coarser propensities, there friendship is pure
and without the separations antl burdens of this
earth ; there is more eflective action with happy
and beautiful concord, and a true, eternal aim ;
in fine, throughout, more of truth, of goodness,
of beauty than this earth, even though we should
return to it a Inmdred times, could aflbrd.

" Him, O Parmeno !— liim do I pronounce
The happiest, who when, from sorrow free.
His eyes have seen the things whirli we now see —
This sun, these stars, clouds, moon and fire —

HERDER.

257

Again retunieth thither whence he came.

For wlietlier tluni slialt live an hundred years

Or Live but few, llioii seest Ihi^se, and aught

More beautilul tliau tliese liatli no man seen.

Hcild then this term of life, of which I speak,

But as a market or a caravan,

Where tliere is crowding, stealing, sport, and panis

Enow. The earlier thou departest hence.

The sooner sludt thou find the better hostelry,

If thou the pilgrim's penny— TckWi

Provided hast, and hast no enemy.

Who long delays grows weary of the way

Him overtal(es old age, and many wants

And plagues are his, and many foes.

He dies not happily who lives too long.''*

How then would it be with him who should
tarry here for ever, and again and again return
to this 'market-place'?'

Whether the silence of the night and the
sublime harmony of the stars had reconciled
the systems of the two friends, or whether
Charicles had much to answer, they embraced
and parted in silence. Theages seemed lost in
the infinite blue of heaven and the shining star-
ladder which so many nations, savages and
sages, have denoininated the way of souls. And
truly a more sublime race that, and a richer,
fairer Palingcncsia than, even in its happiest
forms, the needy narrow earth could afford.

" 0 Pater anne aliquas ad ccelum hinc ire putandum est
Sublimes animas '. iterumque ad tarda reverti
Corpora! Qua; lucis miseris tarn du-a cupido!"

DIALOGUE III.

The next morning, as if by appointment,
Theages and Charicles met in a walk of which
both were fond, and where they were accus-
totned often to bathe their souls in the beams
of the rising sun. Both were wrapped in the
silence wliich twilight and waking bring with
them, a holy silence from which the dawning
day gently and gradually rouses us. They left
each other undisturbed. With the blush of the
morning before them and the joyous choir of all
the newly awakened beings around them, they
sat dumb for awhile, until, at last, when the
sun had risen, and the scene became more
animated, Charicles proposed that they should
strike into the neighbouring wood through
which, by a small circuit, they might take their
way home. During the walk he imperceptibly
directed the conversation to yesterday's topic.

Charicles. What did you dream of last night,
Theages? Your visions must have been agree-
able, for you seemed to be entirely lost last
night among the stars and worlds.

Theages. When the sun is in the sky, one
must not relate dreams, Charicles ; then they
lose the accompaniment of scene and decora-
tion. There is a time for everything. See you
not how the sun, with its glory, has veiled the
entire host of those worlds of yesterday, and
how sadly the moon looks in the heavens yon-
iler a pale cloudlet! Probably our conversa-
tion would be like it, if it should attempt to
resume the prophecies of yesterday. There-

* From a fragment of Menander.
2h

fore, Charicles, put out the night-lamp and bring
forward something of a more cheerful character,
wherewith we may strengthen ourselves for the
day.

Char. I think we may resinne our yesterday's
conversation and still attain that end. For, my
friend, I feel now, very plainly, that die morn-
ing and not the evening is the time for discus-
sions which take us back into the childhood of
our race — the early morning of human ideas
and images. Our studied night-wisdom has
dazzled us. Where we should have conjectured,
we asserted ; where we should have thought
humanly, we thought divinely.
Theag. Do you mean me ?
Char. Perhaps a little. For you too, I am
afraid, have been too much exalted by theology
and philosophy, Newton and Christianity. You
would soar to the stars ; but our way at present
is still on the earth; you are a.shamed of your
step-brothers, the brute animals, and would
mount up into the society of beings whom you
have never seen, and perhaps never will see —
the inhabitants of Mercury, of the sun and of
the moon.

Theag. No, I am not ashamed of my half-
brothers, the brutes ; on the contrary, as far as
they are concerned, I am a great advocate of
metempsychosis. I believe, for a certainty, that
they will ascend to a higher grade of being,
and am unable to comprehend how any one can
object to this hypothesis which seems to have
the analogy of the whole creation in its favor.
Char. Now you are in the right way.
Theag. It is the way I have always been in,
as far as this point is concerned. Do not you
remember that you yourself strayed from it yes-
terday ? Do you like yEsop's fables, Charicles?
Char. Very mucli, but what have they to do
with the matter ?

Theag. I regard them as the compass which
shows us our relation to the brutes. Severally
and collectively the animals still play their
fables, ^sop, the great philosopher and mo-
ralist, has only made their play intelligible to
us ; he has made their characters speak to our
comprehension ; for, to their own comprehen-
sion, they speak and act continually. And know
you what is man's part in this progressive fable
of the animals? He is the general jjroposition,
the moral of the fable, the tongue in the balance.
He uses the whole creation, and consequently
the characters of animals. They act before
him, they act for him, and he — thinks. His
' this fable teaches,' he has to repeat every mo-
ment.

Char. And has this anything to do with the
metempsychosis of animals?

Theag. Much, as it seems to me. To make
the brute-fable a man-fable, there wants nothing
but the conclusion, the general proposition, he
doctrine. That brute-character, so determined,
so sure, so rich in art and so instructive, — give
it btU a little spark of that light we call reason
and you have the man. There he is, and he
22*

25S

HERDER.

gathers now instruction, doctrine, art from his
former character as brute. He brings his former
mode of life more or less into consciousness,
and if he chooses, learns wisdom therefrom.
He must learn, as man, to order wisely and well
what, as brute, he can, and likes and wills.
This, methinks, is the anthropogenesia and the
paliiigenesia of brutes into men.

Char. The picture is fine: but the thing? Is
it so certain, Theages, that every man has an
animal character?

Tkeng. If you doubt it, look at the countenances
of men under the influence of passion, of strong
passion ; observe in secret their mode of liie
and the sharply marked traits of their character ;
it shall go hard but you will discover in the for-
mation, the air, the gesture, and still more in the
progressive action of their life, the fox, the wolf,
the cat, the tiger, the dog, the weasel, the vul-
ture, the parrot, with the rest of the honorable
company that came out of Noah's ark.

Char. You jest. I have hitherto considered
the whole hypothesis as a joke, over the dessert,
when we cover our mouths to the nose exclusive,
with the napkin and ask : ' Who was I ? What
beast have I been V

Theag. As things go, it is a joke and must re-
main so. W"ho knows himself to the bottom of
his character? And how should another know
us at a glance, as soon as we cover up the
mouth with our napkin? What would come of
it, if man should set the images of the animals
with which he is daily conversant in his life's-
almanac, and should converse with them in his
own animal character in return? It was de-
signed that we should be men, not animals. The
tongue in the balance is to guide us, and not the
dead weight of character and animal instincts
laid in the scales. The animal-human counte-
nance is human, enlightened. The features are
separated, especially the most characteristic fea-
tures. Forehead, nose, eyes and cheeks are in-
finitely dignified, ennobled, beautiful in man, as
compared with the brute.

Char. Then the animal formation is only the
basis of die human character, which is to be en-
lightened by the light of reason, and systematized,
beautified, and elevated by the moral sentiments
of the human heart? The ground of our capa-
cities and traits, as beings of sense, — the re-
mains of purely sensual faculties, propensities,
and impulses — these are animal, and are after-
ward only polished and regulated by our reason?

Theag. Study men, and you will find abundant
proofs of it. For when we separate the haughty
moral element, we are all pretty much agreed
in our judgment of traits and characters. In na-
ture and in an iEsop's fable, we call a fox a
fox, and not a lion. In human life our judgments
are apt to be confused, as from hundred other
causes, so also from this, that it is -actually the
aim of human culture and the destination of
man to extinguish the animal character and the
animal habits, to a certain extent, and to make
men of us, or, if you will, angels in humanity.

Everyone would fain be thought to have reached
this point himself; but envy and malice love to
find in others the old, rude beast entire, with no
trace of man or angel. Hence it is, that this
hypothesis is so abused, and, at last, falls into
contempt, either because it is misunderstood, or
because it is feared. But, without it, I know
not what is to become of the numerous host of
creatures beneath us — our characteristic and
sensitive half-brothers in field and forest.

Char. What is to become of them? Nothing
different from what they are. They transmi-
grate into new forms of their own species ; they
become finer deer, finer birds.

Theag. Finer tigers, finer apes and wolves,
and at the last day, I suppose, these will be
raised too and accompany us? It is surely not
your serious conviction, my friend, that the in-
nermost creation — the ever-proceeding, new
creation — must needs conform to the classifica-
tions of the late Baron Linne?

Char. Not mine exactly; but our friend Har-
modius would suffer martyrdom for this opinion.

Theag. Well, he would die a very innocent
death then. Our classifications are not so exhaus-
tive as is usually supposed. They exist only
for our senses, for our faculties ; they are not the
muster-rolls by which Nature arranges her crea-
tures,— categories which she has prescribed to
herself in order to keep each creature in its
proper place. See how the different classes of
creation run into each other ! How the organi-
zations ascend and struggle upward from all
points, on all sides ! And then again, what a
close resemblance between them ! Precisely as
if, on all our earth, the form-abounding JMother
had proposed to herself but one type, one proto-
plasma according to which and for which she
formed them all. Know you what that form is?
It is the identical one which man also wears.

Char. It is true; even in the most imperfect
animal, some resemblance to this capital form
of organization is not to be mistaken.

Theag. It is even more evident internally than
it is externally. Even in insects, an analogon
of the human anatomy has been discovered,
though, compared with ours, enveloped and
seemingly disproportionate. The different mem-
bers, and consequently, also, the powers which
work in them, are yet undeveloped, not orga-
nized to our fulness of life. It seems to me that
throughout creation, this finger-mark of Nature
is the Ariadne-thread that conducts us through
the labyrinth of animal forms, ascending and
descending.

But, my friend, we have walked and talked
ourselves tired. Suppose we sit down beneath
these pleasant trees and look at the swan that
rows and glasses himself on yonder shining
surface.

They seated themselves and rested awhile.
The wash of the waves and the whispering
trees agreeably damped their thoughts until, at
last, Charicles resumed the thread of the con-
versation.

HERDER.

259

Char. ***** Tell me,
beloved, something of your day-dreams on the
subjects of which we have been speaking, as
you told me yesterday of your night-dreams.
The sight of this fair river, the sublime silence
cf this forest, methinks, are as favorable to such
imaginings as the starred roof of heaven. Here,
at least, we form, ourselves, a part of the chorus.

Theag. And did we not there, too ? Or are
we not here, also, in the midst of a river of
heaven, a chorus of earthly stars! All the life
of Nature, all the tribes and species of animated
creation — what are they but sparks of tlie God-
head, a harvest of incarnate stars, among which,
the two human sexes stand forth like sun and
moon. We overshine, we dim the other figures,
but, doubtless, we lead them onward in a chorus
invisible to ourselves. 0, friend, that an eye
were given us to trace the shining course of this
divine spark — to see how life flows to life, and
ever refining, impelled through all the veins of
creation, wells up into a purer, higher life ! What
a new city of God, what a creation within crea-
tion should we then behold ! From the first
atom, the most unfruitful dust scarce escaped
from nonentity, through all the varieties of orga-
nization up to that little universe of multiform
life — man, what a shining labyrinth! But the
human understanding- cannot detect it; it sees
things only the outside, it sees only forms, not the
transmigrating, up-striving soulsv- The interior
mechanism of Nature, her living wheels and
breathing forces, these, in their too exceeding
glory, are to us a a!>n<r^ the Kingdom of Night, the
hull and vein of unborn lives self-engendered
in eternal progression.

» * , * * " Ala.s our sight 's so ill

That things which swiftest move, seem to stand still."

I need not veil myself before thee, great Pan !
eternal fountain of life! Thou hast veiled me
within myself Do I know the world of lives
which I call my body ? Doubtless, my too feeble
soul, could she see the countless host which
ministers to her in all degrees and varieties of
animation, M^ould drop her imperial sceptre and
sink from her throne. In my veins, in the mi-
nutest vascules allotted to me, these souls are
pilgriming toward a higher life, as, already,
through so manifold paths and preparations,
they have travelled from all creation into me. I
prepare them for their farther progress, as every-
thing before has prepared them for me. No
destruction, no death is there in creation, but
dissolution, parturition, lustration. So the tree
with its boughs and limbs elaborates the humors
of the earth and the air, the fire of the soil and
the heavens into its own nature — itself and its
children into nobler sap. Its leaves imbibe and
make fruitful. Every leaf is a tree, formed
upon a green plain, in a slender fabric, because
creation had not room to produce them all as
perfect trees. From every bud, therefore, and
every twig she thrusts forth tree-spirits. The
all-bearing Mother clothes herself with green
life ; every flower which unfolds itself is a bride,

every blossoming tree is a great family of lives.
The kingdom of animals — our mute fellow-citi-
zens— destroys thousand forms of inferior kind
in order to animate its own higher forms; and
finally, man, the chief artificer and destroyer in
creation, — he gives life and takes it, he is, with-
out knowing it, the goal of his inferior brethren,
to which, perhaps, they are all imperceptibly
conducted.

Beautiful, floating swan! In what a shining
element thy creator has placed thee to love and
admire thyself! With thy fair, bowed neck, in
the pure, fresh whiteness of innocence, thou
swimmest a queen, a soft splendor-form, on the
clear surface of the waves. Thy world is a
mirror, thy life a decoration and an art. What
will be tliine employment, when, hereafter, in
a human form, thou projectest lines of beauty
and studiest graces in thyself or in nature?

Char. Apropos! my friend, have you ever
read Bishop Berkeley's* novel, " Gaudentio of
Lucca?"'

Theag. I am not acquainted with it.
Char. He has a very pretty idea of metempsy-
chosis, which he ascribes to his Mezzoranians.
He represents them as believing that the souls
of animals covet the habitation of a human body,
and seek, by every means, to steal into it. In this
they succeed so soon as man lets fall the torch
of his reason, and with it, the power of self-
government. Then he becomes revengeful,
cruel, lecherous, avaricious, according as this or
that animal has pursued him, and usurped the
place of his rational soul. Methinks, the alle-
gory is fine.

Theag. As indeed, Berkeley was altogether a
fine and rare man. That way of presenting it,
clothes a truth so beautifidly!

Char. And what think you of the metempsy-
chosis of the Jews, which the Rabbins call Ib-
bur? They say that several souls, human souls,
may adjoin themselves to an individual, and, at
certain times, — when a friendly Spirit sees that
he requires it and God permits, — help, strength
en, inspire him, dwelling with and in him. But
they quit him again, when the business in which
they were to aid him is accomplished, except
in cases where God favors an individual with
this sort of aid to the end of his days.

Theag. "A very pretty fiction! It is founded
in the perception that man acts very unequally
at different times, and in old age, especially,
often sinks far beneath himself. The foreign,
auxiliary spirit has forsaken him, and he sits
there naked with his own. Moreover, the fable
is a beautiful commendation of extraordinary
men ; for what a compliment, to suppose that
the soul of a sage is animated by the soul of an
elder sage, or even by several at once! But
surely you do not regard this beautifid, poetical
invention, as physical historical truth !

Char. Who knows ? The revolution of hu-
man souls has been universally believed by

• So, in the original. Tr.

260

HERDER.

many nations. You remember the question put
to John : Art thou Elias? art thou that prophet?
You know too, who even confirmed this idea,
and said expressly, it is Elias.

Thmg. And you have probably read the
younger Helniont de revolutione animarum? He
lias adduced, in two hundred problems, all the
sayings and all the arguments which can pos-
sibly be urged in favor of the return of souls
into human bodies, according to Jewish ideas.

Char. I must say, I have always liked the
Jewish doctrine of the revolution of souls. Are
you well acquainted with it?

Theag. Pretty well. It asserts that the soul
returns into life twice or thrice — in extraordi-
nary cases oftener — and accomplishes what it
had left unfinished. It supposes that God has
divided the periods of the world's history ac-
cording to these revolutions of souls ; that he
has determined the degrees of light and of twi-
light, of sufiering and of joy ; in fine, the destiny
and the duration of the world in conformity
with them. The first resurrection is a revolu-
tion of these perfected souls, returned into life.
Char. What have you to object to that?
Theag. Nothing, except that I can say nothing
for it ; because the whole is either a poetic fic-
tion or rests in the counsels of God. At any
rate, the {passages which are quoted in favor of
it prove nothing.

Char. And is there no weight in the argu-
ments from reason which are adduced in its
support? For example, that God, who is no
respecter of persons, has shown so much re-
spect for persons during one existence of souls
in diis world; that the Long-suff'ering and the
Just gives every one space and time for repent-
ance ; that the fruition of life has been, to many,
so embittered and so abridged, without any
fault of their own ? You slighted these reasons,
my friend, because, if I may say so, you were
prejudiced against the doctrine. But look at the
thing humanly; consider the fate of the misborn,
the deformed, the poor, the stupid, the crippled,
the fearfully degraded and ill-treated; of young
children who had scarce seen the light and
were forced to depart. Take all this to heart,
and you must either have weak conceptions of
the progress of such people in the world to
come, or they must first have wings made for
them here, that they may learn to soar even at
a distance after others, that tliey may be, in
some measure, indemnified for their unhappy
or unhappily abbreviated existence in this world.
Promotion to a higher, human existence, is
scarcely to be thought of in their case.

Theag. Why not? None can give as God
gives, and no one can indemnify and compen-
sate like God. To all beings he gave their ex-
istence, of his own free love. If some appear
to have been more neglected than others, has
he not places, contrivances, worlds enough,
where, by a single transplantation, he can in-
denniify and compensate a thousand-fold? A
child prematurely removed-^ a youth whose

nature was too delicate, as it were, for the rude
climate of this world — all nations have felt that
such are loved by the gods,* and that they have
transferred the treasured plant into a fairer gar-
den. Or do you suppose that God has no other
spot but this earth ? Must he root up others in
order to make room for these, and let the uptorn
plant wait and wither in the store-chamber of
unborn souls until he can find a place for it?
How many are made happy in another world
by having been unhappy here ! My friend, do
you know Kleist's fable of the maimed crane?

Char. I am not acquainted with it.

Theag. It is one of the finest that was ever
made.

" When Autumn-winds had laic] tlie forest bare
And scattered chrystal rime upon the plain,
There lighted on tlie strand a troop of cranes
Seeking a kinder earth beyond the sea.
Lamed by the fowler's shaft one luckless bird
Sat lone and sad and dumb, nor lent her voice
To swell the jubilee of the exulting host ;
Mocked and contemned— the outcast of her tribe.
Not by nune own fault am I maimed, thought she,
JIusing witlun herself. I served no less than ye
Our Commonwealth. UnjusUy am 1 spurned.
But what shall be my fate whom pain
Hath reft of strength to endure the distant flight ?
Ah, wretched me ! the water soon must prove
My certain grave. Why left he life —
The cruel foe that robbed me of my powers ?
Meanwliile the favoring wind blows fre<h from shore ;
Tlie troop begin, in order due, their march,
And speed with sounding wings, and scream with joy.
Left far behind, that lone one lighted oft
Upon the lotus-leaves which strewed the sea,
And hopeless sighed with grief and bitter pain.
After long rest she saw the better land.
The kinder heaven which sudden healed her wound.
An unknown Providence had been her guide,
While many mockers found a watery grave.
* * * *

Ye whom the heavy hand of dire mischance
Bows to tlie earth, ye innocent who mourn,
Weary of life, despair not of the end.
But dare the necessary journey through.
There is a better land beyond the sea
And ye shall find your heahng and reward."

Char. A beautiful fable for my side, too. Let
us move, my friend, and on the way, you must
allow me a few more questions. How comes
it that the wisest nations of antiquity and those
far removed from each other have believed so
long in the doctrine of trairsmigration, — and
that, too, of the worst kind, — in the return of
human beings, in the doctrine which teaches
that man becomes an animal once more ?

Theag. You have already answered the ques-
tion, Charicles ; it was the childhood of the
world and theAvorld's wisdom respecting human
destiny. With some nations, for example the
Egyptians and Hindoos, and perhaps too with
Pythagoras, it was designed as a moral fable,
representing the doctrine of ecclesiastical pe-
nance in a sensuous and comprehensible form.

Char. A strange ecclesiastical penance, con-
veyed in a fiction !

Theag. To a certain extent, the two (the doc-
trine and the fiction) necessitated each other.

* bv o'i ^£01 <j>L\S(nv diro^vi^aKCi vioi.

HERDER.

261

You know that the wisdom of the most ancient
nations was lodged with the priests. When
they couhl give the rude people no right notions
respecting tiie world to come or had none to
give, was it not well that they should seek to
deter them by a future of sensuous retribution?
"You who are cruel, shall be changed into
tigers, as even now you manifest a tiger-soul.
You who are impure, shall be swine ; you who
are proud, shall be peacocks ; and so you shall
do penance for a long while, until you are found
worthy to resume your desecrated humanity."
These representations, addressed to the senses,
and clothed with the authority of religion,
would, undoubtedly, have a greater effect than
metaphysical subtilties. Each one saw the
nature of the threatened beast and its destiny
before him. The vicious felt the beastly cha-
racter in himself, and nothing was more natural
than that he should fear a corresponding fate,
that is, a real transition into that animal. This
doctrine, once established, might deter from
many vices and lead to many virtues. Who
would not rather be a white elephant than a
swine 1 especially one who viewed the nature
and the fate of animals with the eyes of the
Hindoos and the Egyptians, — with that quiet
familiarity in which the childhood of the world
lived with the brute creation. But you do not
suppose, Charicles, that this doctrine is neces-
sary or fitting for us?

Char. In many cases, a belief in it would be
no evil. If the cruel man, who persecutes a
poor stag to death, were seized, at that moment,
with a lymphatic presentiment: " So will it fare
with thee ; thy soul shall pass into a stag and
be tortured to death ;" fierhaps he might ex-
tinguish the joyless brutality in himself

Theag. I doubt it, my friend, if the immediate
contemplation of the pain is tmable to extinguish
it. For us, it seems to me, this whole doctrine
of transmigration has lost its sting. If I am not
good as man, am I likely to become so as
tiger ? since then, it is my nature to be that
whereinto I am changed. If I am condemned
to eat grass, like an irrational ox, how shall I
begin, in that state, to use my reason better than
I used it while a man. God himself has bound
my eyes and taken from me the light of the
vinderstanding, and how then shall I learn to
see more clearly? If my degradation is to be
mere penance in the eyes of an arbitrary judge,
why, be it so! but reformation — a rational,
mora! reformation in myself, it can never be ;
because, in my degradation, that which alone
could reform me has been taken away. Is one
not rather likely to be embittered against God,
who deprives us of our eyes because we have
not used them aright, and, because we have
not disciplined our heart to right sentiments,
hardens it in the shape of something vicious
and wretched?

Char. There is mucli to be said in relation to
that point ; at any rate, the fiction had its use
as parable for the people.

Theag. Even as parable for the people, the
tale is not suited to our times. It seems to me
that man should learn to look upon himself as
occupying the highest grade, and use his present
existence peremptorily. He must know of no
retreat or by-way where he can bring up what
he has neglected here. At least, the Deity has
referred him to none, jiut Ccesar aut nihil: aut
nunc aut nunquam. Even among the ancients,
all active, noble nations that were not beguiled
by fable- wisdom and the foolish penances of
their priests, have proposed to themselves a no-
bler condition after death, as the goal of their
endeavor. The being 'gathered to one's fa-
thers' of the oriental nations, the Elysium of
the Greeks, the Walhalla of the Norlanders, are
certainly more beautiful views of death than
that of the ox or the cow waiting for the dying
man who holds the cow's tail in his hand ; or
the body of a strange mother into which he
must slip, in order to whimper again as child.

Char. True, they are low ideas that gather
about this hypothesis. But how then could the
wise Pythagoras deem it worthy of being trans-
planted to Europe?

Theag. One brings all sorts of things from
abroad, not only gold and jewels, but also mon-
keys and curiosities. Besides, it is not probable
that Pythagoras made the same use of this doc-
trine that the later false Pythagorean? did. He
too spoke of a Tartarus and an Elysium, like
the other philosophers and poets of Greece.
And, altogether, we know too little of that truly
great man, to be able to judge of his parables
and symbols ; we know him only through the
medium of fable.

And 0 ! my friend, Pythagoras or no Pytha-
goras, what need of all this controversy and
argument, with which we, too, have wasted our
time? Ask your heart and the truth which
dwells there. When you stand before the statue
of a high-hearted Apollo, do you not feel what
you lack of being that form ? Can you ever
attain to it here below, and can your heart ever
rejoice in it, though you should return ten times?
And yet, that was only the idea of an artist, the
happy dream of a mortal, — a dream which our
narrow breast also inclosed. How ! has the
almighty Father no nobler forms for us than
those in which our heart now heaves and groans?
Our language, — all communication of thought, —
what bungling work it is ! Hovering on the tip
of our tongues, between lip and palate, in a few
syllabled tones, our heart, our innermost soul
would communicate itself to another, so that he
shall comprehend us, shall feel the ground of
our innermost being. Vain endeavor ! Wretched
pantomime with a few gestures and vibrations
of air ! The soul lies captive in its dungeon,
bound as with a sevenfold chain, and only
through a strong grating, and only through a
pair of light and air-holes can it breathe and
see. And always it sees the world on one side
only, while there are a million other sides before
us and in us, had we but more and other senses,

262

HERDER.

and could we but exchange this narrow hut of
our body for a freer prospect. And shall we
be fOTever contented with this nook, this dun-
geon ? What wretch, doomed to life-long misery
in this life, confines his wishes to the throwing
off of this world's burden, without the sense or
the hope of requital for his present disappoint-
ment and degradation ? When, even at the
sweetest fountains of friendship and love, we
so often pine, thirsty and sick, seeking union
and finding it not, begging alms from every
earthly object and always poor, always unsatis-
fied; and when we find, at last, that all the
aims and plans of earth are vanity and vanity,
and feel that daily, — what free and noble soul
does not lift itself up and desj^ise everlasting
tabernacles and wanderings in the circle of
earthly deserts.

" The soul longs from her prison-house to come,

And we would seal and sew up, if we could, the womb !

We seek to close and plaister up, by art,

Tlie cracks and breaches of the extended shell.

And in that narrow cell

Would rudely force to dwell

Tlie noble, vigorous bird already wing'd to part."

During these conversations, they had imper-
ceptibly reached the end of the forest. At the
J3st tree Charicles stood still. Before we leave
siiis wood, Theages, said he, I must tell you the

result of our conversations. In all the forms
and conditions of humanity, the cultivation of
our wit, uur sagacity, or other branches of the
human intellect, is of less consequence than the
education of the heart; and that heart is in all
men a human heart. And it may be educated,
to a certain degree, in all the forms and situa-
tions of humanity. As to the extent to which
it has been developed in this situation, and the
way in which Providence may succor the un-
fortunate and the suffering, that I leave to
Heaven, and venture not to make its secret
ways the race-course or the beaten highway of
an hypothesis by which man is to be scared, or
in which the sluggish and the froward shall find
their account. Sacred to me is the saying of the
gospel : "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they
that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
Purification of the heart, the einrobling of the
soul, with all its propensities and cravings, —
this, it seems, to me, is the true palingenesia of
this life, after which, I doubt not, a happy, more
exalted, but yet unknown metempsychosis awaits
us. Herewith I am content, and I thank you
that you have unfolded for me my thoughts.
They embraced each other, and parted.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE,

Born 1749. Died 1832.

The biography of this extraordinary person-
age is yet to be written. His own memoirs,
' Alts meinem Leben\ &c., — comprise but the
first half of that full, rich life, of which the last
half was the fullest, the richest. The materi-
als for a fartiier and complete delineation are
not wanting-,* but the historian who shall col-
lect, and arrange, and reproduce these in a
' Life of Goethe' worthy that name, has not
yet been found. Shall we look to the author
of the 'Life of Schiller' for this service! Or
will Germany herself, out of the countless host
of her literary artificers, furnish the historian
of her own Genius 1

Meanwhile, it is gratifying to learn that the
autobiography is about to be given to the Ame-
rican Pul5lic, in a translation by one of our own
countrymen,! which, if it fairly represents the
original, can hardly fail to be a popular work.
Vmm this they will learn, if they have not
already learned, that Johann Wolfgang v.
Goethe was born at Frankfort on the Mayn, on
the 28th of x-lngust, 1749, at midday, " as the
clock struck twelve ;" that his father was a
wealthy and cultivated Reichsbilrger, wlio
lived much in his Italian reminiscences; that
his maternal grandfather, Johann Wolfgang v.
Textor, was a man of mark, the chief magis-
trate of the Imperial city ; that the experiences
and observations of his boyhood, — house-build-
ing, coronation, the seven years' war, the as-
pects of his native city, arts and trades, boyish
love and shame and disappointment — wrote
imperishable records, materials for future cre-
ations, on the poet's heart ; that, after a various
and careful education at home, he was in due
season matriculated at Leipzig, fell sick and
returned to Frankfort, a confirmed invalid,
much to his father's chagrin ; that he recovered
his health and studied law at Strassburg where
he received the Doctor's degree, and where he

* See the vnliiiiies of Goethe's correspondence with dis-
tingiiislied coteniporaries, published since his death, the
' Tag und Jahres Hefte," and the works of Eckermann,
Falli, V. Miilier, Doring and others.

t I'arke Godwin, Esq. Since the above was written the
work referred to has appeared. See No. LXXV. of Wi-
ley and Putnam's Library of Choice Reading.

diverged into an episode of love and romance
of vviiich the charming Friederike of Sesenheim
was the heroine ; that he began to practise his
profession at Frankfort, but soon slid into lite-
rature, made an era therein, publishing Wer-
ther's Leiden and Goetz von Berlichingen,
and so completed the first phase of his poetic
life. Furthermore, if all the parts of these
memoirs are given, we shall see the poet again
in the character of declared and accepted lover,
— the betrothed of the beautiful Lili ; — since
"it was the strange ordination of the High,
above us ruling, that, in the progress of my
wondrous life-course, I should also experience
the fe'elinors of a betrothed." We shall see
him, next, this cold, impassive, self-sufficing
Goethe, — as he has been depicted, — the man
who lived only for self and Art, — we shall see
him, on the summit of the Alps, turning his
back upon Italy, the land of his youthful dreams,
the pilgrim - goal of the artist, and hastening
home, unable to resist any longer the passion
which drew him back to his beloved :* and that,

* Hear his own account of the matter. " It seems to
me as if man, in such cases, had no power of decision in
himself, but were rather governed and determined by
earlier impressions. Lombardy and Italy lay as some-
thing wholly foreign before me, Germany as something
known and love-worthy, full of friendly, domestic pros-
pects. And— let me confess it— that which had so long
compassed me about, which had borne up my existence,
continued, at this moment also, to be the most indispen-
sable element, out of whose limits I did not trust myself
to pass. A small golden lieart which I had received from
her in the fairest hours, hung still, by the same riband
by which she had fastened it, love-warmed upon my neck.
I seized and kissed it. And here let me insert the poem
occasioned by this circumstance.
"' Memorial thou of a joy whose sound has died away!

Which I yet wear about my neck,

Holdest thou, longer than the soul-band, us two ?

Prolongest thou the brief days of love?

Do I flee, Lili, before thee ? Must I, still led by thy band,

Tlirongh distant vales and forests wander !

Ail Lili's heart could not so quickly

From my heart fall.

Like a bird who breaks his string

And returns to the forest ;

He drajrs — captivity's dishonor, —

A bit of the string still after him.

It is the old, free-boru bird no longer,

He has already been some one's property.'

" I rose quickly that I might get away from the steep
spot, and that the friend storming toward me, with the
knapsack-bearing guide, might not whirl me away with

(263)

264

GOETHE.

after the resolution to separate liimself from
her, wrunji^ from him by his sister, was already
formed or Kjrinin^ within him. We shall see
tliis connection sundered, for reasons which are
not very obvious; but not till after long and
dire struggles through " a cursed state which,
in some respects, might be likened to Hades,"
and a " torture which, even in the remembrance,
is well nigh insupportable." ■

Finally, we shall see him called to the court
of Weimar by tlie hereditary prince, Karl Au-
gust, afterward Grand Duke, tliere to become
the client of a life-long patronage, as honorable
to one party as it was beneficial to both.

Then, we have what may be regarded as the
continuation of these memoirs, in the " llalien-
ische Reise" the " Zweiler rbmischer Aufent-
halt,'^ and the " Campn<rne in Frankreich."
And, be it remarked by tlie way, these are not
the least impressive of Goethe's works. He
maintains, as a writer of travels, the samp rank
which distinguishes him in every species of
composition.

In 1779, Goethe was made Privy Counsellor ;
he received the title of nobility in 1782, tra-
velled in Italy and Sicily, and sojourned in
Rome during the two years from 1786 to 1788 ;
made another visit in 1790 ; and, in 1792 ac-
companied the Grand Duke in the French cam-
paign. In 1806, he married a Miss Vulpius, the
mother of his only surviving child. In 1815,
he was made Prime Minister; and although,
during the last four years of his life, he with-
drew himself from State affairs, lie continued
to labor in his vocation as a poet with unabated
diligence, and apparently witli unabated faculty,
until the hour of his death, wlncli overtook him,
as it were with the pen in his hand, on the 22d
Marcli, 1832, in the eighty-third year of his
age.

There is great satisfaction in contemplating
so complete a life, a life in which the idea and
the task have been so visibly and utterly ful-
filled and accomplished.

At the age of eighty, Goethe often spoke of
his death, and of how it might still be deferred.

him into the steep abyss. I likewise greeted the pious
Pater, and turned myself, without losing a word, toward
the path liy which we had come. A little lingering the
friend fulloweil, and, notwithstanding his love and attach-
ment to me, he remained for awhile some distance be-
hind, until, at last, the glorious waterfall brought us to-
gether again, kept us together, and that, which had once
for all been determined, was also finally accepted as
whoiesome and good." — Jlus meincm Leben.

" Yes !" said he, " we can make head against
him for some time yet. As long as one creates
there can be no room for dying. But yet the
night, the great night will come in which no
man can work." It was about this time that
he lost his only son. " Here then," he writes
to Zeltcr, " can the mighty conception of duty
alone hold us erect. I have no other care but
to keep myself in equipoise ; the body must, the
spirit will : and he who sees a necessary path
prescribed to his will, has no need to ponder
much." Was Goethe wanting in sensibility,
because he did not give himself up to the
lamentation of that loss? " Thus did he shut
up the deepest grief within his breast, and
hastily seized upon a long postponed labor, in
order entirely to lose himself in it. In a fortnight
he had nearly completed the fourth volume of
his Life, when Nature avenged herself for the
violence he had done her. The bursting of a
blood-vessel brought him to the brink of the
grave."*

He entirely recovered himself from this at-
tack, and resumed his task. In the year pre-
cedino- that of his death, he had still to finish
the second part of Faust. God willing, he would
not die till that was accomplished. " He laid it
down as a law to himself, to complete it wor-
thily; and on the day before his last birth-day
he was enabled to announce that the highest
task of his life was completed. He sealed it
under a ten-fold seal, escaped from the congra-
tulations of his friends, and hastened to revisit,
after many years, the scenes of his earliest
cares and .endeavors, as well as of the richest
and happiest hours of his life. He went to
Ilmenau. The deep calm of the woods, the
fresh breath of the hills, breathed new life into
him. With refreshed and invigorated mind he
returned home and felt himself inspired to un-
dertake new observations of Nature. The
Theory of Colors was revised, completed and
confirmed, the nature of the rainbow more ac-
curately examined, and unwearied thought be-
stowed on the spiral tendency of vegetation."*
And when, at last, the brief and painless
sickness which terminated his earthly career
had laid him prostrate, " faithful to his princi-
ples he continued to occupy himself that he
might not give the thmking faculty time to
grow dull and inactive. Even when he had

* Chancellor von Muller, in Mrs. Austin's Characteris-
tics.

GOETHE.

2G5

lost the power of speaking, his hand preserved
the character of his life. Ilis voice was mute,
but he traced characters in the air. And when
his hand sank slowly on his knee, the radiant
star had sunk beneath our horizon."*

The statesman-poet was inhumed with the
pomp befitting his illustrious name. Agreeably
to the wishes of the Grand Duke, who had pre-
ceded him by a few years, his remains were
deposited by the side of that Prince and " the
glorious Schiller," The royal vault of Weimar
holds henceforth the honored frame in which
that life was performed; to the living Weimar
and to us and to all generations belongs " the
absolute total of that life's vast sum."

The first thing that strikes us in the life of
Goethe is the wonderful fortune of the man.
No Genius was ever more favored from witia-
out. Sophocles alone, among the poets of all
generations, may vie with him in this. We
look in vain for another instance of so rich a
nature coupled with so kmd a destiny. It
would seem as if all things had conspired for
once to make a perfect lot ; genius, organiza-
tion, beauty of person, high culture, riches,
rank, renown, length of days. Does the work
performed correspond to the advantages enjoy-
ed ] Does the result justify the partiality of
Fortune 1 — is a question which other ages must
answer.

Goethe's genius is distinguished by its versa-
tility. No other writer has shone with such
various excellence. The two poles of the hu-
man intellect, poetry and science, define the
range of his mind. His writings embrace both
these extremes, and touch almost every topic
of interest between the two. To speak only
of more prominent and unquestioned excel-
lences;— as a lyric poet, he has no equal. And
this will be found, perhaps, in the final judg-
ment, to constitute his chief merit. The union
of perfect finish with perfect freedom ; the
uttermost abandonment of fancy, joined to the
uttermost self-possession of artistic judgment ;
the wild freshness of poetic feeling — the very
breath and aroma of Nature — accompanied by
that profound philosophy which, rather felt than
seen, pervades all his writings; — all this gives
to Goethe's lyrics the highest relish of v/hich
that form of poetry is susceptible. The singular
facility with which these pieces were produced,
resembling improvisation or inspiration rather

* Notes to Mrs. Austin's Characteristics.
2l

than composition, has contributed, in some cases,
no doubt, to enhance their peculiar charm. " I
had come," says he, " to regard the poetic talent
dwelling in me, entirely as nature; the rather
that I was directed to look upon external Na-
ture as its proper subject. The exercise of this
poetic gift might be stimulated and determined
by occasion ; but it flowed forth most joyfully,
most richly, when it came involuntarily or even
against my will. *****

I was so accustomed to say over a song to my-
self without being able to collect it again, that
I sometimes rushed to the desk, and, without
taking time to adjust a sheet that was lying
crosswise, wrote the poem diagonally from be-
ginning to end, without stirring from the spot.
For the same reason, I preferred to use a pencil,
which gives the characters more willingly. For
it had sometimes happened that the scratching
and sputtering of the pen would wake me from
my somnambulistic poetizing, distract my at-
tention, and stifle some small product in the
birth. For such poetry I had a special rever-
ence. My relation to it was something like
that of a hen to the chickens, which, being fully
hatched, she sees cheeping about her. My for-
mer desire to communicate these things only
by reading them aloud, renewed itself agami
To barter them for money seemed to me detest-
able."*

Goethe claims our admiration next, as a
painter of character. Here too, the very highest
rank, second to Shakspeare only, has been as-
sio-ned to him. His characters have the Shak-
spearean merit of being, at the same time,
universal and individual, impersonations of a
general type, and veritable men and women,
such as one might look to meet with, any day
of tlie year, in their respective circles. And
where he transcends the sphere of ordinary
humanity, as in the case of Mignon, he gives
us nothing inconceivable or inconsequent, but
a nature that carries its constitutive law within
itself, which all its movements obey, by which
they are to be interpreted, and by which they
must be judged. His success is greatest in
female character, of which almost every variety
is represented in his works. Running through
the series of those works, we perceive a moral
frradation of female character, from Gretchen
the uncultivated, the unconscious, the betrayed
but still pure, to Makaria, in whom female

* Aus meinem Leben. IVth part.
23

266

GOETHE.

virtue reaches its apotheosis, and whose only
connection with this earth is to counsel and to
bless. As we follow this ascending scale, we
divine a moral purpose in the author, who, with
each new character, has spread before us a dis-
tinct level of human culture, and by successive
attractions has indicated the upward path of
aspiration and self-conquest, by wiiich Humanity
must reach its destination.

Another characteristic excellence of Goethe
is herewith sug-trested, viz : his veneration for
women. This sentiment, with him, was not
chivalry which, in assuming a protective atti-
tude, assumes and emphasizes a weakness in
the female nature, and thus degrades where it
professes, to honor ; and whose very homage,
flintastical and patronizing as it is, contains a
latent irony the more bitter, perhaps, because
unintentional. Goethe's respect for women was
a philosophical appreciation of the real dignity
and unacknowledged riches of the female cha-
racter, coupled with the reverent homage of
the heart for what the understanding so clearly
discerned ; a homage which two such living
examples as the Grand Duchess and the Duchess
Mother of Weimar could not fail to keep in
active exercise. In the extent to which he
carried this appreciation of female excellence
he stands alone ; far in the van of opinion as
yet pronounced. No writer has estimated so
highly, none so truly, the influence of woman
on the social and moral destiny of man. The
saving and benign power of the feminine ele-
ment in human things is made prominent in all
his creations. In some of them it is a cardinal
point. It is the pivot in ' Willielm Meister'
and the climax of 'Faust,' at the close of which
it is announced witli prophetic emphasis, as a
fit conclusion " to the swelling theme :" — " Das
ewig weibliche zielU tins hinan.''

A contemporary remarks in accordance with
this view, that Goethe "always represents the
highest principle in a feminine form." " As in
Faust the purity of Gretchen resisting the de- '
mon always, even after all her faults, is an-
nounced to have saved her soul to heaven ; and,
in the second part, appears not only redeemed
herself, but, by her innocence and foreivinrr
tenderness, hallowed to redeem the beinf who
had injured her ; so, in the JMeister, these wo-
men hover round the narrative, each embodyinof
the spirit of the scene. The frail Philina, grace-
ful though contemptible, represents the degra-

dation incident to leading an exclusively poetic
life. JVlignon, gift divine as ever the Muse be-
stowed on the passionate heart of man, witli her
soft, mysterious inspiration, represents the high
desire that leads to this mistake, as Aurelia the
desire for excitement, Teresa practical wisdom,
gentle tranquillity, which seem most desirable
after the Aurelia glare. Of the "Beautiful
Soul" and Natalia we have already spoken.
The former embodies what was suggested to
Goethe by the most spiritual person he knew
in youth, Fraulein von Klettenberg, over whom,
as he said, in her invalid loneliness, the Holy
Ghost brooded like a dove. Entering on the
Wanderjahre, Wilhelm becomes acquainted
with another woman who seems the comple-
ment of all the former, and represents the idea
which is to mould and to guide him in the reali-
zation of all the past experience. This person,
long before we see her, is announced in various
ways as a ruling power. She is the last hope
in cases of difficulty, and, though an invalid,
and living in absolute retirement, is consulted
by her connections and acquaintance as an un-
erring judge in all their afliairs. All things
tend toward her as a centre; she knows all,
governs all, but never goes forth from herself
Wilhelm at last visits her. He finds her infirm
in body, but equal to all she has to do. Charity
and counsel to men who need her, are her
business ; astronomy her pleasure." * *
* * * * " The apparition of the

celestial Makaria seems to announce the ulti-
mate destiny of the soul of man."*

As a writer of German prose, or, to use a
coinage derived from that language, — as a
stylist, Goethe's pre-eminence is undisputed
and, even by his most determined opponents
and detractors, emphatically affirmed. Menzel,
whose work on German literature suggests the
idea of having been written for the express
purpose of abusing him and one or two others
of like political sentiments, says: "lie could
make everything, even the smallest and mean-
est, delightful by the magic of his representa-
tion." " Goethe possesses in the highest degree
the talent of making his reader an accomplice
— of forcing from him a feeling of approbation.
He carried in his liand the talisman wliich con-
trols all hearts. No poet has so completely
mastered the charm which language possesses.
We cannot guard ourselves against the secret

* Dial. Vol. II. No. 1.

GOETHE.

267

enchantment with which he captivates our in-
most soul and seduces us to the very opposite
of all that we had previously felt and believed."=*=
And yet this author maintains that the writer
who exercised this magic power was destitute
of genius. Tiie more pity for genius, if true !

Goethe's style is a puzzle. It excites our
wonder how language can be so colorless, so
free from mannerism, and, at the same time, so
impressive, so suggestive, so individual. "It
seems quite a simple style," says Carlyle, "re-
markable chiefly for its calmness, its perspicuity,
in short its commonness; and yet it is the most
uncommon of all styles. We feel as if every
one might imitate it, and yet it is inimitable."

His power, as a moral teacher, is not so ge-
nerally understood and acknowledged as the
other qualities which have been mentioned.
Yet there are some by whom it is more strongly
asserted and more deeply felt tlian all the otlier
excellences which have been claimed for him.
There are some who profess to have derived
from him their strongest moral impressions, and
who maintain that, as a teacher of moral truth,
he has been more to them than any other, than
all other writers. Nor will this seem strange,
if we consider what constitutes an effective
moralist, or what it is that gives force to the
statement of moral truth. It is not enthusiasm,
or fine sentiment, or declamation, but the clear
intuition, the veritable experience, the unbiassed
sincerity of a free and commanding mind. A
character distinguished for moral worth is not
necessary for this purpose, nor great activity
of religious sentiment. The saint may instruct
us better than all books by his life, but not
necessarily — because he is a saint — by his
writings. There may be great moral worth
and a great deal of religious sentiment without
that intellectual sincerity which brings us into
immediate contact with the truth, and the want
of which will vitiate the strongest statement.
This sincerity of the intellect is something
very ditlerentfrom conscientiousness. It is seem-
ingly independent of any moral quality except
the single one of courage. It is the rarest at-
tribute in literature. It does not readily com-
bine with natures in which sentiment predomi-
nates. It indicates rather a predominance of
the intellectual. Only once in the tide of time,
was the highest degree of it found united with

* Menzel's German Literature translated by C. C.
Felton.

the highest degree of moral purity and reli-
gious faith. It is the quality most essential in
the communication of moral, as of all other
truth.

We are apt to deceive ourselves as to the
moral value of certain impressions derived from
books. We mistake the transient excitation of
the nobler sentiments produced by eloquent
declamation or by the exhibition of romantic
excellence in works of fiction, — by such cha-
racters, for instance, as the Marquis of Posa in
Don Carlos, — for a genuine renewal of the
moral man. We think we are burnt clean by
the temporary glow into which we are thrown.
The nature of such excitement differs but little
from that produced by alcoholic stimulants,
amid animated discussion and congenial friends.
It is stimulus without nourishment, ebullition
without growth. It has something maudlin. It
acts chiefly on the nerves. Its final effect is
rather to enervate than to educate the soul.
He only instructs who gives me light, who
effects a permanent lodgment, in the mind, of
some essential truth. The effective moralist is
not the enthusiast, but the impartial and clear-
seeinof witness ; not he who declaims most elo-
quently about the truth, but he who makes me
see it ; who gives me a clear intuition of a
moral fact.

Goethe was peculiarly fitted, by habit and
endowment, to be a witness of the truth, so far
as truth is a matter of intellectual discernment.
Not over-scrupulous in his way of life, he prac-
tised the most scrupulous fidelity to himself, as
a seeker of the truth. He gave no license to
his mind. Where he could not or would not
perform, he would know. He wanted not
courage nor candor to see truly in morals and
religion as in everything else. He loved sen-
sual indulgence right well, but he loved truth
more. A man of sincerest intellect, who suf-
fered neither fear nor hope, nor prepossession
of any kind, to come between him and the
light ; with whom to see was the first necessity
of his nature ; to state distinctly to himself and
others what he saw, the next.

Unquestionably, he was no saint. His wildest
admirers have sought no place for him in the
Christian Calendar, though greater sinners than
he may be found in it and among its most
honored names. But neither was he a bad
man in any allowable sense of the word, as
every one must know who considers the moral
conditions on which alone true poetry is possi-

268

GOETHE.

ble. Wherein lie transgressed the social law
and the Christian standard, let judgment be
pronounced without fear or favor. But for
every count on whicli verdict is given, let irre-
fragable testimony be required. Let not the
hero of his time, a hero of the true sort, — one
who labored through life, with whatever judg-
ment or success, to build up and not to destroy,
to lead Humanity onward to the prize of beauty
through the knowledge of the truth, — let not
such a one be surrendered to the scourge of tlie
tongue on grounds of hearsay and fallible in-
ference. Let not a great and illustrious name
be ruthlessly tossed to the dogs and to all the
birds. If the good and evil of his life, the
positive and the negative, were fairly weighed
in the balance together, the result would pro-
bably indicate a higher grade of moral excel-
lence than most of his accusers have attained
to. It is not, however, on the moral character
of the man that any safe judgment as to the
moral character of his writings can be based.
Grant him immoral ; — still his testimony to
moral truth, if sincere, (and no one versed in
his writings can doubt his sincerity), may be all
the more impressive on that account. It is the
testimony of one who was biassed by no pre-
possessions in favor of that to which he testifies,
who took nothing for granted, believed nothing
because it was the general conviction, said no-
thing because it was expected, who would
neither deceive himself nor be deceived by
others. It is the testimony of one who had
seen with his own eyes, and those eyes the
keenest, the most unprejudiced, that ever sought
to penetrate the relations of things ; — who had
experienced with his own heart, and that heart
one to which all experiences were familiar,
which gave itself up without reserve to all the
discipline of life, which had proved all things
and knew and confessed what was good.

In reading Goethe we do not feel, as when
reading Dante or Milton, that we are conversing
with a pure and lofty spirit ; but we do feel
that we are conversing with a competent wit-
ness, or better still, with an incorruptible judge.
Tlie verdict which he will give is a part of his
life. It is a fact in Nature. The fault which
most readers find with his writings is want of
heat. He betrays no passionate interest in any
subject, in any character, and seeks to excite
none in his readers. To stir the blood is not
his aim. Intense emotion he purposely avoids

as incompatible with the higher purposes of
art. There is no gush, no rush, no pouring
forth of a full soul, excepting in his lyric
poems. But what he wants in enthusiasm
he makes up in sincerity and precision. If
there is no declamation, there is also no
cant, no straining, nothing said for effect.
Therefore his words have weight. They
drop like the oracles cf destiny from his
pen. When he states with characteristic
calmness that " only with renunciation, can
life, properly speaking, be said to begin;"
that saying, though it does but repeat in
substance what we had always been told,
has all the freshness of an original discovery.
Tliis sincere word, wrung from the experience
of such a mind, carries with it a deeper convic-
tion than all the arguments and all the decla-
mation that have ever been employed to enforce
the duty of self-denial.

With strong propriety may Goethe be termed
a moral teacher, and the highest rank assigned
to him as such. He will be found, on a careful
study, to have the moral law in view, and to aim
at enforcing it ; even there, where he has been
charged with an immoral tendency; — and no-
where more emphatically, than in the " Elective
Affinities." The imputation cast upon this work
is a specimen of the hasty and superficial manner
in which his writings have been judged. The
aim of the " Elective Affinities" is to illustrate
the ethics of married life, to expose the mischief
of ill-considered and unequal matches, and the
terrible consequences of even mental infidelity
to the marriage vow. He who can read the
book attentively and understandingly, and find
in it any other meaning than this, might dis-
cover a plea for jealousy in Othello, or an apo-
logy for murderous ambition in Macbeth. A
writer, already quoted, has better understood
the worth and purport of this finished work.
" The mental aberrations of the consorts from
their plighted faith, though, in the one case
never indulged, and though, in the other, no
veil of sophistry is cast over the weakness of
passion, but all that is felt, expressed with the
openness of one who desires to legitimate what
he feels, — are punished with terrible griefs and
a fatal catastrophe. Ottilia, that being of ex-
quisite purity, with intellect and character so
harmonized in feminine beauty, as they never
before were found in any portrait of woman
painted by the hand of man, perishes on finding

GOETHE.

269

that she has been breathed upon by unhal-
lowed passion, and led to err, even by her ig-
norant wishes, against what is held sacred.
There is indeed a sadness, as of an irresistible
fatality, brooding over the whole. It seems as
if only a ray of angelic truth could have enabled
these beings to walk in this twilight, at first so
soft and alluring, then deepening into blind
horror. But if no such ray came to prevent
their earthly errors, it seems to point heaven-
ward, in the saintly sweetness of Ottilia. Her
nature, too fair for vice, too finely wrought
even for error, comes lonely, intense and pale,
like the evening star on the cold wintry night.
It tells of otiier worlds, where the meaning of
such passages as this must be read to those
faithful and pure like her, victims perishing in
the green garlands of youth, to atone for the
un worthiness of others. An unspeakable pathos
is felt from the minutest trait in this character,
and deepens with every new study of it. Not
even in Shakspeare, have I so felt the organ-
izing power of Genius. I feel myself familiar-
ized with all beings of her order. I see not
only what she was, but what she might have
been, and live with her in yet untrodden
realms."*

Of Goethe's character, as a statesman and a
citizen, no labored justification will be expected
in a work like this. That he did not use his
powers and influence for revolutionary purposes,
seems to have been the chief cause of the dis-
esteem into which he has fallen with certain
revolutionary spirits of Germany, and of those
aspersions wiiich have acted on public opinion
with us. True, he was decidedly conservative,
so far as State institutions were concerned ; for
he saw little promise for man from measures,
of which all that could with certainty be fore-
seen, was, that they were subversive of present
order and peace. He believed that all which
was wanted, or all which was really desirable,
might be accomplished, with greater certainty,
by the agency of existing institutions.

'■'■ISarre wenn es brennt so losche,
Hal''s gebrannt bau wieder auf?

Heine refers this conduct of Goethe to his pe-
culiar position. " The giant was minister in a
German dwarf- state. He could never move
naturally. They said of the sitting Jupiter of
Phidias at Olympia, that, if he should suddenly
stand up, he would burst the vaulted roof of the

* S. M. Fuller. Dial, ubi supra.

temple. This was precisely the position of
Goethe at Weimar. If he had suddenly started
up from his sitting rest, he would have broken
through the ceiling of the State, or, what is
more likely, he would have broken his own
head against it. The German Jupiter quietly
kept his seat." But in fact he needs no such
apology. The question by which he must be
tried, is not, whether he has adopted this or
that particular method of advancing the inte-
rests of Humanity ; but whetlier he has ad-
vanced the interests of Humanity at all, by any
method whatsoever'! Whether he labored, on
the whole, to make men wiser, better, happier ]
The answer to this question must be sought in
his works. We may demand of a man, that he
should not be indifferent to certain ends ; but
the method we must leave to himself, "It
cannot be too often repeated," says Mrs. Aus-
tin, " that Goethe was not a partisan. That
he was indiflferent to the progress of human
improvement and the sum of human happiness,
as some have maintained, seems to me incre-
dible. Are we justified in accusing him of
apathy and selfishness, because he had a dread
of violent political convulsions'! a distrust of
the efficacy of abrupt changes in the mechanism
of government ! It was not surely indifference
to the welfare of mankind, but that he thought
it a pernicious illusion to look for healing there,
from whence he was convinced no healing
could ever come. His labors for the improve-
ment of the human race were unwearied, calm
and systematic."

With regard to his private character, it
would be easy to accumulate testimony of the
highest authority in favor of those qualities in
which he has been supposed to be most de-
ficient. But for those who have learned to be-
lieve in him for his works' sake, such testimony
would be superfluous; and for those who are,
once for all, determined against him, it would
be unavailing. "Pity, that so few are ac-
quainted with this excellent man in respect of
his heart !" said the meek and pious Stilling,
who could speak from personal experience of
Goethe's worth. That he had faults it needs
no testimony to prove. It may safely be taken
for granted. That he had uncommon faults, or
any which — as things go — might not naturally
be expected from a man of the world : to prove
this, requires more testimony than has yet been
adduced. And so we will dismiss the subject
with his own words: " Life to all of us is suf-
23*

270

GOETHE.

fering ; who save God alone shall call us to our
reckoninn- ] By the failings we recog-nise the
species, by the excellences the individual.
Defects we all have in common, virtues belong
to each severally:" and with these of Wieland,
whicii, though they refer rather to his official
than his private action, are not out of place in
this connection : " If I had cause to be ever so
angry witli Goethe, or to feel ever so much
offended and aggrieved by his conduct; yet,
when I recollect (what no one can know better
tlian I) what incredible services he rendered to
our Sovereign, during the early years of his
reign, with what entire self-forgetfulness he
devoted himself to his service ; how much that
was noble and great that yet slumbered in the
princely youth he first called forth, I could fall
on my knees before him, and praise and wor-
ship our Master Goethe more than for all the
productions of his genius or his intellect."

It is time to conclude this essay, already
drawn out beyond its legitimate bounds. The
general misunderstanding which prevails among

us respecting this hero of modem literature has
caused it to assume a more apologetic character
than its author could wish, than he feels to be
consistent with his own respect for the man.
In a few years, all external testimony as to his
merits or demerits, will have perished from the
earth ; but his works will bear witness of him
when there is no other. These have become
a part of the world. Iphigenia and Tasso are
indestructible possessions of the human mind,
and Faust will endure while the Brocken
stands or the Rhine flows. "In him," says
Fichte, "the noblest blossom of Humanity,
which Nature had put forth but once beneath
the Grecian sky, by one of her miracles was
repeated here in the North. To him it was
given to measure two different epochs of hu-
man culture with all their gradations. And if
our race are destined to ascend to higher de-
grees of excellence, it will not be without hia
co-operation

"*

* Fichte, ueber Oeist und Buchstabe iii der Philosophic,
Philosophisches Journal, vol. IX.

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.

EXTRACT FROM GOETHE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHy.*

Now Herder came, and together with his
great learning, he brought with him many other
assistances, and the later publications besides.
Among tliese he announced to us the Vicar of
Wakefield as an excellent work, with the German
translation of wliich he wished to make us ac-
quainted by reading it aloud to us himself.

His metliod of reading was quite peculiar ;
one who has heard him preach will easily form
an idea of it for himself. He delivered every-
thing, and this romance as well as the rest, in a
serious and simple style, perfectly removed from
all imitative-dramatic representation, and avoid-
ing even that variety which is not only permit-
ted, but even required, in an epical delivery ; I
mean that slight change of voice which sets in
relief what is spoken by the different charac-
ters, and by means of which the interlocutors
are distinguished from the narrator. Without
being monotonous. Herder let everything follow
along in the same tone, just as if nothing of it
was present before him, but all was only his-
torical ; as if the shadows of this poetic crea-
tion did not aflect him in a life-like manner, but
only glided gently by. Yet this manner of de-
livery had an infinite charm in his mouth : for,
as he felt it all most deeply, and knew how to
estimate the variety of such a work, so its whole

* See No. LXXVI. of Wiley and Putnam's Library of
Choice Reading.

merit appeared in perfect purity, and the more
clearly, as you were not disturbed by passages
sharply spoken out, nor interrupted in the feel-
ing which the whole \vas meant to produce.

A Protestant country-clergyman is, perhaps,
the most beautiful subject for a modern idyl ; he
appears, like Melchizedek, as Priest and King
in one person. In the most innocent situation
which can be imagined in the world, that of a
husbandman, he is, for tlie most part, vmited to
his people by similar occupations, as well as by
similar family relationships ; he is a father, a
master of a family, an agriculturist, and thus a
perfect member of the community. On this
pure, beautiful, earthly foundation, reposes his
higher calling; to him is it given to guide men
through life, to take care for their spiritual edu-
cation, to bless them at all the leading epochs
of their existence, to instruct, to strengthen, to
console them, and, if present consolation is not
sufficient, he calls up before them the hope and
firm assurance of a happier future. Imagine to
yourself such a man, with feelings of pure hu-
manity, strong enough not to deviate from them
under any circumstances, and by this already
elevated above the many, of whom one can ex-
pect neither purity nor firmness ; give him the
learning necessary for his office, as well as a
cheerful, equable activity which is even pas-
sionate, for he neglects no moment for doing
good, — and you will have him well endowed.
But at the same time add the necessary limited-
ness, so that he must not only labor on in a small
circle, but may also, perchance, pass over to a

GOETHE.

271

smaller ; grant him good-nature, placability,
resolution, and everything else praiseworthy
that springs from so decided a character, and
over all this a serene condescension and a
smiling forbearance towards his own failings
and those of others : so will j'ou have put
together pretty well the image of our excellent
Wakefield.

The (U'lineation of this character on his course
of life through joys and sorrows, and the ever
increasing interest of the plot, by the combi-
nation of what is quite natural with the strange
and the wonderful, make this romance one of
the best which has ever been written ; besides
this, it has the great superiority of being quite
moral, nay, in a pure sense, Cliristian, for it re-
presents the reward of good intentions and per-
severance in the right, it strengthens an uncon-
ditional confidence in God, and asserts the final
triumph of good over evil, and all this without
a trace of cant or pedantry. The author was
preserved from both of these by an elevation of
mind that shows itself throughout in the form
of irony, by reason of which this little work
must appear to us as wise as it is amiable. The
author. Dr. Goldsmith, has without question great
insight into the moral world, into its strength
and its infirmities ; but at the same time he may
thankfully acknowledge that he is an English-
man,* and reckon highly the advantages which
his country and his nation afibrded him. The
family, with whose delineation he has here
busied himself, stands upon one of the lowest
steps of citizen-comfort, and yet comes in con-
tact with the highest; its narrow circle, which
becomes still more contracted, extends its in-
fluence into the great world through the natural
and common course of things; this little skitF
floats full on the agitated waves of English life,
and in weal or wo it has to expect injury or
help from the vast fleet which sails around it.

I may suppose that my readers know this
work and remember it ; whoever hears it named
for the first time here, as well as he who is in-
duced to read it again, will thank me. For the
former I would merely remark, en passant, that
the Vicar's wife is of that busy, good sort, who
allows herself and family to want for nothing,
but who is also somewhat vain of herself and
family. There are two daughters ; Olivia, hand-
some and more devoted to the exterior, and
Sophia, charming and more given to her inner
self; nor will I omit mentioning an industrious
son, Moses, who is somewhat astringent and
emulous of his Father.

If Herder could be accused of any fault in
his reading aloud, it was impatience ; he did
not wait until the hearer had heard and com-
prehended a certain part of the details, so as to
be able to feel and think correctly about them ;
he would hurry on immediately to see their

* Golilsjiiitli was an Irishman by birth, and received his
education at Dublin, Edinburj;!! and Leyden, and spent
si.t months at Padua, where he is supposed to have taken

his degree. — Trans.

efl^ect, and yet he was displeased with this too
when it manifested itself in us. He blamed the
excess of feeling which overflowed from me at
every step in the story. I felt, like a man, like
a young man ; everything was living, true, and
present before me. He, considering only the
artistic keeping and form, saw clearly, indeed,
that I was overpowered by the subject-matter,
and this he was unwilling to allow. Peglow's
reflections, besides, which were not of the most
refined character, were still worse received; but
he was especially angry at our want of keenness
in not seeing beforeliand the contrasts which
the author often makes use of, and in suff"ering
ourselves to be moved and carried away by
them without remarking the oft-returning art.
Nor would he pardon us for not having seen at
once, or at least suspected from the first, where
Burchell is on the point of discovering himself
by passing over in his narration from the third
to the first person, that he himself was the lord
whom he was talking about ; and when, finally,
we rejoiced like children at the denouement, and
the transformation of the poor, needy wanderer,
into a rich, powerful lord, he immediately re-
called the passage, which, according to the au-
thor's plan, we had overlooked, and then he
read us a powerful lecture on our stupidity. It
will be seen from this that he regarded the
work merely as a production of Art, and re-
quired the same of us who were yet wandering
in that state where it is very allowable to let
works of art atfect us just as if they were pro-
ductions of Namre.

I did not sufler myself to be at all confused
by Herder's invectives; for young people have
the happiness or unhappiness, that, when any-
thing has produced an efl'ect on them, this effect
must be wrought out wiriiin themselves ; from
which much good, as well as much mischief
arises. The above work had i^roduced a great
impression upon me, for which I could not ac-
count. Properly speaking, I felt myself in uni-
son with that ironical tone of mind which ele-
vates itself above every object, above fortune
and misfortune, good and evil, death and life,
and thus attains to the possession of a truly
poetical world. In fact, though I could not be-
come conscious of this until later, it was enough
that it gave me much to do at the moment; but
I could by no means have expected to see my-
self so soon transposed from this fictitious world
into an actual one so similar.

My fellow-boarder, Weyland, who enlivened
his quiet, laborious life, by visiting his friends
and relations in the country, (for he was a na-
tive of Alsace,) did me many services on my
little excursions, by introducing me to different
localities and individuals, sometimes in person,
sometimes by his recommerulations. He had
often spoken to me about a country clergyman
\vho lived near Drusenheim, six leagues from
Strasburg, in possession of a good benefice, with
an intelligent wife and a pair of lovely daugh-
ters. The hospitality and agreeableness of this

272

GOETHE.

family were always highly extolled. It scarcely
needed all this to draw thither a young rider
who had already accustomed himself to spend
all his leisure days and hours on horseback and
in the open air. We decided upon this trip, too,
on which my friend had to promise that, on in-
troducing me, he would say neither good nor ill
of me, but would treat me with general indif-
ference, and would also allow me to make my
appearance clad, if not meanly, yet somewhat
poorly and slovenly. He consented to this, and
promised himself some sport from it.

It is a pardonable whim in men of conse-
quence to place their exterior advantages in
concealment now and then, so as to give the
fairer play to the intrinsic worth of their inner
man. For this reason the incognito of princes,
and the adventures resulting therefrom, are al-
ways highly pleasing; they appear like masked
divinities, who can nobly reckon at double their
value all the good offices shown to them as in-
dividuals, and are able either to make light of
the disagreeable or to avoid it. That Jupiter
should be well pleased in his incognito with
Philemon and Baucis, and Henry the Fourth
with his peasants after a hunting party, is quite
conformable to Nature, and we like it well ; but
that a young man, of no importance or name,
should take it into his head to derive any plea-
sure from, an incognito, might be construed by
many as an unpardonable arrogance. Yet since
the question here is not whether such opinions
and deeds are praiseworthy or blameable, but
how they may have shown themselves and been
liut into execution, we will pardon the young-
ster his self-conceit for this time, for the sake of
our own amusement; and the more so as I must
here affirm, in my excuse, that from youth up, a
love for masquerade had been excited in me
even by my stern father himself.

This time too, partly with my own cast-off
clothes, partly with some borrowed garments
and by the manner of combing my hair, I had,
if not disfigured myself, yet at least botched up
my accoittrements so outlandishly that my friend
could not help laughing along the way, espe-
cially since I knew how to take off to the life
the bearing and gesture of the Luiln Eiders (as
such-looking figures are called) when they sit
on horseback. The fine road, the most splendid
weather, and the neighborhood of the Rhine,
put us in the best humor. We stojiped a mo-
ment in Drusenheim, he to make himself spruce,
aiid I to rehearse the part I was to play, for I
was afraid of speaking now and then out of
character. The country here has the character-
istics of all the open, level parts of Alsace. We
rode by a pleasant foot-path over the meadows,
soon reached Sesenheim, left our horses at the
tavern, and walked leisurely towards the par-
sonage. "Do not be put out," said Wcyland,
showing me the house from a distance, "that it
looks like an old and miserable farm-house; it
is so much the younger inside." We stejiped
into the court-yard ; the whole pleased me well :

for it was just what is called picturesque, and
what had so magically interested me in the
Dutch school of art. The effect which time
produces on all the works of man was strongly
perceptible. House, barn and stable were just
at that point of dilapidation where, in doubtful
hesitation betwixt repairing and rebuilding, men
often neglect the one without being able to ac-
complish the other.

As in the village, so in the court-yard of the
Parsonage, everything was quiet and deserted.
We found the father quite alone, a little man,
wrapped up within himself, but friendly not-
^\■ilhstanding; the family were then in the field.
He bade us welcome, and offered us some re-
freshment, which we declined. My friend hur-
ried away to look after the ladies, and I remained
alone with our host. " Perhaps," said he, " you
are surprised to find me so miserably quartered
in a wealthy village, and with a lucrative bene-
fice ; but," continued he, "it proceeds from irre-
solution. Long since it has been promised me
by the parish, and even by those in higher
places, that the hou-se should be rebuilt; many
plans liave been already drawn, examined and
altered, none of them altogether rejected, and
none carried into execution. This has lasted so
many years, that I scarcely know how to com-
mand my impatience." I answered him what-
ever I thought likely to cherish his hopes, and
encourage him to take up the affair more vigor-
ously. Thereupon he proceeded to describe
familiarly the personages on whom such matters
depend, and although he was no great hand at
the delineation of character, yet I could easily
comprehend how the whole business must have
been delayed. The confidcutialness of the man
was something peculiar ; he talked to me as if he
had known me for ten years, though there was
nothing in his look from which I could have
suspected that he was directing any particular
scrutiny to my character. At last my friend
came in with the mother. She seemed to look
at me with altogether different eyes. Her coun-
tenance was regular, and its expression intelli-
gent; she must have been handsome in her
youth. Her figure was tall and spare, but not
more so than became her years, and when seen
from behind she had yet quite a youthful and
pleasing appearance. The elder daughter then
came bouncing in briskly ; she inquired after
Frederica, just as both the otiiers had also done.
The father assured them that he had not seen
her since all three had gone out together. Tlie
daughter again went out to the door to look for
her sister ; the mother brought us some refresh-
ment, and Weyland continued the conversation
with the old couple, which referred to nothing
but known persons and circumstances ; for it is
usually the case, when acquaintances meet after
some length of time, that they make inquiries
about the members of a large circle, and mutu-
ally give each other information. I listened,
and now learned how much I had to promise
myself from this circle.

GOETHE.

273

The elder daughter again came hastily back
into the room, anxious at not having found her
sister. They felt uneasy about her, and scolded
at this or that bad habit ; only the father said,
very composedly : "Always let her alone ; she
is back again already !'' At this instant, in fact,
she entered the door ; and then truly a most
charming star arose in this terrestrial heaven.
Both daughters still wore nothing but German, as
they used to call it, and this almost obsolete nation-
al costume became Frederica particularly well.
A short, white, full skirt, with a furbelow, not so
long but it left the neatest little foot visible up
to the ankle ; a tight white bodice and a black
tafleta apron, — there she stood, on the boundary
between country beauty and city belle. Slender
and airy, she tripped along as if she had nothing
to carry, and her neck seemed almost too deli-
cate for the luxuriant braids of flaxen hair on
her elegant little head. A free, open glance
beamed from her calm blue eyes, and her pretty
little turned-up nose peered inquiringly into the
air with as much unconcern as if there could be
nothing like care in the world ; her straw hat
dangled on her arm, and thus, at the first glance,
I had the delight of seeing her perfect grace,
and acknowledging her perfect loveliness.

I now began to act my character subduedly,
half ashamed to have played a joke on such
good people, whom I had leisure enough to ob-
serve: for the girls continued the previous con-
versation, and that with feeling and humor.
All the neighbors and connections were again
brought upon the tapis, and to my imagination
there seemed such a swarm of uncles and aunts,
relations, cousins, comers and goers, gossips and
guests, that I thought myself lodged in the live-
liest world possible. AH the members of the
family had spoken some words with me, the
mother looked at me every time she came in or
went out, but Frederica tirst entered into con-
versation with me. and as I took up and glanced
through the music that was lying around, she
asked me if I played also"? When I told her
" Yes," she requested me to perform something ;
but the father would not allow this, for he main-
tained that it was becoming in her to serve her
guest first, with some piece of music or other,
or a song.

She played several things with some execu-
tion, in the style which one usually hears in the
country, and on a harpsichord, too, that the
schoolmaster should have tuned long since, if
he had only had time. She was now to sing a
song also, something of the tender-melancholy ;
but she could not succeed with it. She rose up
and said, smiling, or rather with that touch of
serene joy which ever reposed on her counte-
nance ; " If I sing poorly, I cannot lay the blame
on the harpsichord or the schoolmaster ; but let
us go out of doors, then you shall hear my Alsa-
tain and Swiss songs, they sound much better."

During tea, an idea which had already struck
me before, occupied me to such a degree, that I
became meditative and silent, although the live-
2k

liness of the elder sister, and the gracefulness
of the younger, shook ma often enough out of
my contemplations. My astonishment at find-
ing myself so actually in the Wakefield family
was beyond all expression. The father, indeed,
could not be compared with that excellent man ;
but where will you find his like? On the otlier
hand, all the worth which is peculiar to the
husband there, here appeared in the wife. You
could not see her without at once reverencing
and fearing her. In her we saw the fruits of a
good education ; her demeanor was quiet, easy,
cheerful, and inviting.

If the elder daughter had not the celebrated
beauty of Olivia, yet she possessed a fine figure,
was lively, and rather impetuous ; she every-
where showed herself active, and lent a helping
hand to her mother in all things. It was not
hard to put Frederica in the place of Primrose's
Sophia: for of her diere is little said, we take
it for granted that she is lovely ; and diis girl
was lovely indeed. Now as the same occupa- «
tion and the same general situation, wherever
they can occur, produce similar, if not the same
efi'ects, so here too many things were talked
about and happened which had already taken
place in the Wakefield family. But when a
younger son, long spoken of and impatiently
expected by the father, at last sprang into the
room, and boldly sat himself down by us, taking
but little notice of the guests, I could scarcely
help exclaiming: "Moses, are you here too!"

The conversation at table extended my insight
into this country and family circle, as they chat-
ted about various pleasant incidents which had
happened here and there. Frederica, who sat
next to me, took occasion from that circumstance
to describe to me different localities which it
might be worth my while to visit. As one little
story always calls out another, I was able to
mingle in the conversation the better, and relate
similar incidents, and as, besides this, a good
country wine was by no means spared, I stood
in danger of slipping out of my character, for
which reason my provident friend took advan-
tage of the beautiful moonlight, and proposed a
walk, which was immediately resolved on. He
gave his arm to the elder, I to the younger, and
thus we went through the wide plains, paying
more attention to the heavens above than to the
earth beneath, which lost itself in extension
around us. There was nothing of moonshine
about Frederica's conversation, however ; by
the clearness with which she spoke she turned
night into day, and there was nothing in it which
hinted at or would have excited feeling, only
her expressions addressed themselves more than
ever to ine, while, as I walked by her side, she
represented to me her own situation, as well as
the neighborhood and her acquaintances, just as
I wished to be made acquainted with them ;
then she added that she hoped I would make
no exception, and would visit them again, as all
strangers had willingly done who had once
lodged at the Parsonage.

274

GOETHE.

It was very pleasant to me to listen silently
to the desriiptions which she gave of the little
world in which she moved, and of the persons
whom she particularly valued. She thereby
imiiarted to me a clear, and, at the same time,
such an amiable idea of her .situation, that it had
a very strange effect on me : for I felt at once a
deep regret that I liad not lived with her sooner,
and at the same time a right painful jealous
feeling towards all who had hitherto had the
good fortune to surround her. I also watched
closel}', as if I had had a right to do so, all her
descriptions of men, whether they appeared
under the names of neiglibors, cousins, or fami-
liar friends, and my conjectures inclined now
to one, now to another; but how should I have
discovered anything in my complete ignorance
of all the circumstances? She at last became
more and more talkative, and I constantly more
and more silent. It was so good to listen to her,
and as I heard only her voice, while the out-
lines of her countenance, like the rest of the
world around, floated dimly in the twilight, it
seemed to me as if I could see into her heart,
and that I could not but find it very pure, since
it unbosomed itself to me in such unembarrassed
prattle.

When my companion and I retired to the
guest-chamber which was prepared for us, he,
vvith self-complacency, immediately broke out
into pleasant jesting, and took great credit to
himself for having surprised me so much with
the likeness of the Primrose family. I chimed
in with him, by showing myself thankful.
" Truly," cried he, " the story is all here together.
This family may well be compared to that, and
the gentleman in disguise here, may assume the
honor of jjassing for Mr. Burchell ; moreover,
since scoundrels are not so necessary in every-
day life as in romances, I will for this time un-
dertake the role of the Nephew, and will behave
myself better than he did." However, I imme-
diately changed this conversation, pleasant as it
was to me, and first of all asked him, on his
conscience, if he had not betrayed me? He
answered me "No!" and I ventured to believe
him. They had rather inquired, said he, after
the jovial table-companion who boarded at the
same house with him in Strassburg, and of
whom they had heard all sorts of preposterous
stuff'. I now went to other questions : Had she
ever been in love? Was she now in love?
Was she engaged? He said "No" to them all.
" In truth," replied I, " that such a serenity
should come by nature is inconceivable to me.
If she had loved and lost, and again recovered
herself, or if she was betrothed, in both these
cases I could account for it."

Thus we chatted together till deep in the
night, and I was awake again at the dawn.
My longing to see her once more seemed un-
conquerable ; but M'hile I was dressing I was
horrified at the confounded wardrobe I had so
capriciously selected. The further I advanced
in putting on my clothes, the meaner I seemed

in my own eyes : for everything was calculated
for just that effect. I might perchance have set
my hair to rights ; but when at last I forced my
arms into the borrowed, worn-out grey coat, the
short sleeves of which gave me the most absurd
appearance, I fell decidedly into despair, and
the more so since I could see myself only piece-
meal, in a little looking-glass, and then each
part always looked more ridiculous than the rest.

During this toilette my friend awoke, and
with the satisfaction of a good conscience, and
in the feeling of pleasurable hopes for the day,
he looked out at me from under the quilted silk
coverlet. I had envied his fine clothes for a
long time already, as they hung over the chair,
and had he been of my size, I would have car-
ried them off before his very eyes, dressed my-
self in them, and hurrying into the garden, left
my cursed husks for him ; he would have had
good humor enough to deck himself out in my
clothes, and our tale would have found a merry
ending early in the morning. But that was not
now to be thought of, as little as any other fea-
sible accommodation. To appear again before
Frederica in such a figure that my friend could
give me out as a laborious and accomplished
but poor student of Theology, — before Frederica,
who yesterday evening had spoken so frieiully
to my disguised self, — that was altogether im-
possible. There I stood, vexed and thoughtful,
and summoned up all my power of invention ;
alas ! it deserted me ! But now when he, com-
fortably stretched out in bed, after fixing his
eyes upon me for a while, all at once burst out
into a loud laugh, and exclaimed: "Yes! it is
true, yott do look most confoundedly !" I replied
impetuously: "And I know what I will do.
Good bye, and make my excuses !" " Are you
crazy !" cried he, siiringing out of bed and try-
ing to detain me. But I was already out of the
door, down the stairs, out of the house and yard,
to the tavern ; in an instant my horse was sad-
dled, and I hurried away in mad vexation, gal-
loping towards Drusenheim, dashed through the
l^lace, and still onwards !

As I thought myself by this time in safety, I
began to ride more leisurely, and now first felt
how infinitely against my will I was going away.
But I resigned myself to my fate, recalled to
mind the promenade of yesterday evening with
the greatest calmness, and cherished the secret
hope of seeing her soon again. Yet this quiet
feeling again changed itself into impatience, and
I now determined to ride rapidly into the city,
change my dress, take a good fresh horse, and
then, as my passion made me believe, I could at
all events return before dinner, or, as was more
probable, to the dessert or towards evening, and
beg my forgiveness.

I was just about to put spurs to my horse to
execute this resolve, when another, and, as
seemed to me, a happier thought came into my
head. In the tavern at Drusenheim, the day
before, I had noticed a son of the landlord very
nicely dressed, who, up early to-day and busied

GOETHE.

275

about his rural arrangements, had saluted me
from his court-yard as I rode by. He was of
my size, and had slightly reminded me of my-
self. Thought, done! My horse was hardly
turned around, wlien I found myself in Drusen-
lieim ; I brought hiin into the stable, and made
the fellow my proposal in brief: that he should
lend me his clothes, as I had something merry
on foot at Sesenheim. I had no need to talk
long ; he agreed to the proposition with joy,
and praised me for wishing to make some sport
for the Mamsells ; they were so gallant and good,
especially Mamselle Rica, and the parents, too,
liked to see everything go on merry and pleasant.
He considered me attentively, and as from my
appearance he might have taken me for a poor
starveling, he said: "If you wish to insinuate
yourself into their good graces, this is the right
way." Meanwhile we had already made
rapid advances in our toilette ; he could not
indeed trust me with his holiday clothes on the
strength of mine ; but he was honest-hearted,
and had my horse in his stable. I soon stood
there right trig, threw back my shoulders, and
my friend seemed to contemplate his likeness
with complacency. "Well, Mr. Brother!" said
he, giving me his hand, which I grasped hearti-
ly, " don't come too near my gal, she might mis-
take you !"

My hair, which now had its full growth again,
I could part at top pretty much like his, and as
I looked at him repeatedly, 1 found it comical
to imitate closely his thicker eyebrows, with a
burnt cork, and bring mine nearer together in
the middle, so as with my enigmatical inten-
tions, to make myself an external riddle like-
wise, "Now have you not," said I, as he
handed me his be-ribboned hat, " something or
other to be done at the Parsonage, so that I
may announce myself there in a natural man-
ner ?" "Good!" replied he, "but then you
must wait two hours yet. There is a confine-
ment at our house ; I will offer to take the cake
to the Parson's wife,* and you might carry it
over there. Pride must be paid for, and so
must a joke." — I concluded to wait, but these
two hours were infinitely long, and I was dying
of impatience when the third hour passed by
before the cake came out of the oven. I got it
at last, quite hot, and hastened away with my
credentials in the most beautiful sunshine, ac-
companied for a space by m.y Ditto, who pro-
mised to come after me in the evening and
bring me my clothes, which however, I briskly
declined, and reserved to myself the privilege
of returning him his own when I was done
with them.

I had not skipped far with my present, which
I carried neatly tied up in a napkin, when, in
the distance, I saw my friend approaching with
the two ladies. My heart was uneasy, although
in fact it was unnecessary under this jacket. I
stood still, took breath, and tried to think how I

* The general custom of the country villages in Pro-
testant Germany on such interesting occasions. — Trans.

should begin ; and now I first remarked that the
nature of the ground was very much in my
favor ; for they were walking on the other side
of the brook, which, together with the strips of
meadow through which it ran, kept the two
foot-paths pretty far apart. When they were
just opposite to me, Frederica, who had already
perceived me long before, cried : " George, what
have you got there?" I was clever enough to
cover my face with my hat, which I took off, at
the same time holding up the loaded napkin
high in the air. " A christening-cake !" cried she
at that ; " how does your sister do !" " Gooed,"
said I, for I tried to talk strange, if not exactly
in the Alsatian dialect. " Carry it to the house !"
said the elder, "and if you do not find mother,
give it to the maid ; but wait for us, we will be
back soon, do you hearl" I hastened along my
path in the joyous feeling of the best hope that,
as the beginning was so lucky, all would go oft'
well, and I soon reached the Parsonage. I
found nobody either in the house or the kitchen;
I did not wish to disturb the old gentleman,
whom I might have supposed busy in the study ;
I therefore sat me down on the bench before tlie
door, placed the cake beside me, and pressed
my hat upon my face.

I cannot easily recall more delightful sensa-
tions. To sit here again on this threshokl, over
which, a short time before, I had blundered out
in despair ; to have seen her already, to have
heard her dear voice again so soon after my
chagrin had pictured to me a long separation, to
be expecting every moment herself, and a dis-
covery at which my heart throbbed fast, and yet,
in this ambiguous case, it would be an exposure
without shame ; for from its very beginning it
was a merrier prank than any of tliose they had
laughed at so much yesterday. Love and Ne-
cessity are yet the best masters ; they both
worked together here, and their pupil was not
unworthy of them.

But the maid came stepping out of the barn.
" Now ! did the cake turn out well !" cried she
to me; "how does your sister do?" "All
gooed," said I, and pointed to the cake without
looking up. She took up the napkin and mut-
tered : " Now what's the matter with you to-day
again"? Has little Barbara been looking at some-
body else once more? Don't let us sufler fot
that ! A happy couple you will make, if you
carry on so !" As she spoke pretty loud, the
Parson came to the window and asked : " What's
the matter?" She showed him; I. stood up
and turned myself towards him, but yet kept
the hat over my face. As he spoke rather
kindly to me and had asked me to remain, I
went towards the garden, and was just going in
when the Parson's wife, who was entering the
court-yard gate, called to ine. As the sun shone
right in my face, I once more took advantage of
my hat, and saluted her with a i^Ioughman's
scrape ; but she went into the house after she
had bidden me not go away without eating
something. I now walked up and down in the

276

GOETHE.

garden ; ever)nliing had liitlierto had the best
success, yet I drew a deep breath when I re-
flected tliat tlie young people would soon return.
But the mother unexpectedly stepped up to me,
and was just going to aslc me a question, when
she looked me in the face so that I could not
conceal myself any longer, and the question
stuck in lier mouth. " I was looking for George,"
said she, after a pause, "and whom do I find?
Is it you, young sir ? How many forms have
you, tlien?" "In earnest only one," replied I;
"in sport as many as you like." "Which sport
I will not spoil," smiled she; "go out behind
the garden and into the meadow until it strikes
twelve, then come back, and I will already have
contrived the joke." I did so ; but when I was
outside of the hedge that bounds the village
gardens, and was going into the meadow, I saw
some coimtry people coming along the foot-path
towards me, who embarrassed me. I therefore
turned aside into a little grove which crowned
an elevation near by, in order to conceal myself
there till the appointed time. Yet how strangely
was I surprised when I entered it I for it ap-
peared to be a neatly trimmed place, with
benches, from every one of which could be en-
joyed a fine view of the country. Here was
the village and the church tower, here Dru-
serdieim, and behind it the woody islands of the
Rhine, in tlie opposite direction was the Vosgian
mountain-range, and at last the Minster of Strass-
burg. These different heaven-bright joictures
were surrounded by frames of foliage, so that
one could imagine nothing more joyous and
more pleasing. I sat me down upon one of the
benches, and noticed on the largest tree an ob-
long little board with the inscription: " Frede-
rica's Repose." It never entered into my head
that I could have come to disturb this repose :
for a budding passion has this beauty about it,
that, as it is unconscious of its origin, neither
does it spend any thouglit upon its end, and as
it feels itself glad and cheerful, it can have no
presentiment that it may make mischief too.

Scarcely had I had time to look about me and
lose myself in sweet reveries, when I heard
somebody coming; it was Frederica herself.
" George, what are you doing here ?" she cried
from a distance. " Not George !" cried I, run-
ning towards her, " but one who craves forgive-
ness of you a thousand times." She looked at
me with astonishment, but soon collected her-
self and said, after drawing a deeper breath :
" You abominable fellow, how you frighten
me!" "The first disguise has led me into the
second," exclaimed I; "the former would have
been unpardonable if I had only known in any
manner whom I was going to see, but this one
you will certainly forgive, for it is the form of
a man whom you meet in so friendly a man-
ner." Her pale cheeks had colored up with
the loveliest rosy-red. " You shall not be treat-
ed worse than George, at all events ! But let
us sit down! I confess that the fright has
thrilled through all my limbs." I sat down be-

side her, exceedingly agitated. "We know
everything already from your friend, up to this
morning," said she, "now do you tell me the
rest." I did not suffer her to ask twice, but de-
scribed to her my horror at my yesterday's
figure, and my rushing out of the house, so
comically that she laughed heartily and de-
lightedly; then I went on with what follow-
ed, with all modesty, indeed, yet passionately
enough to have well passed for a declaration
of love in historical form. At last I solemnized
my pleasure at finding her again, by a kiss upon
her hand, which she suffered to remain in mine.
If she had taken upon herself the expense of
the conversation during yesterday evening's
moonlight walk, I now, on my part, richly re-
paid the debt. The pleasure of seeing her
again, and being able to say to her everything
that I had kept back yesterday, was so great,
that, in my eloquence, I did not remark how
meditative and silent she was becoming. Once
more she drew a deeji breath, and over and
over again I begged her forgiveness for the
fright which I had caused her. How long we
may have sat there I know not ; but all at once
■we heard some one call "Rica! Rica!" It was
the voice of her sister. " That will be a jjretty
story to tell," said the dear girl, restored to her
perfect serenity again ; "she is coming hither
from the side next to me," added she, bending
over so as half to conceal me: "turn yourself
away, so that she will not recognize you at
once." The sister came up to the spot, but not
alone ; Weyland was with her, and both, as
soon as they saw us, stood still as if petrified.

If we should all at once see a powerful flame
burst out from a quiet roof, or should meet a
monster whose deformity was at the same time
revolting and fearful, we should not be struck
with such massive astonishment as seizes us,
when, unexpectedly, we see with ovtr own eyes
something we had believed morally impossible.
"What is this?" cried the elder, with the
rapidity of one who is frightened to death :
"What is this? you with George! Hand-in-
hand! How am I to understand this?" — "Dear
sister," replied Frederica, very doubtfully, " the
poor fellow is begging something of me; he has
something to beg of you, too, you must forgive
him beforehand." "I don't understand, — I
don't comprehend — " said her sister, shaking
her head and looking at Weyland, who, in his
quiet way, stood by in perfect tranquillity, and
contemplated the scene without any kind of ex-
pression. Frederica arose and drew me after
her. " No hesitating !" cried she ! " Pardon
begged and granted!" "Now do!" said I, step-
ping pretty near the elder, " I have need of par-
don!" She drew back, gave a loud shriek, and
blushed over and over ; then threw herself
down on the grass, burst into a roar of laughter,
and could not get enough of it. Weyland
smiled as if pleased, and cried: "You are a
rare youth !" Then he shook my hand in his.
He was not usually liberal with his caresses,

GOETHE.

277

but his shake of the hand had something hearty
and enlivening about it; yet he was sparing of
this also.

After taking some time to recover and collect
ourselves, we set out on our return to the village.
On the way I learned how this singular ren-
counter had been occasioned. Frederica had at
last parted from the promenaders to rest herself
in her little nook for a moment before diinier,
and when the other two came back to the house,
the mother had sent them to call Frederica in
the greatest haste, as dinner was ready.

The elder sister manifested the most extrava-
gant delight, and when she learned that the
mother had already discovered the secret, she
exclaimed : " All that is left now is that father,
brother, servant-man and maid, should be cheat-
ed likewise." When we were at the garden-
hedge, Frederica insisted upon going beforehand
into the house with my friend. The maid was
busy in the kitchen-garden, and Olivia (for so I
may be allowed to name the elder sister here),
called out to her: "Here, I have something to
tell you!"' She left me standing by the hedge,
and went towards the maid. I saw that she
was speaking to her very earnestly. Olivia re-
presented to her that George had quarrelled with
Barbara, and seemed desirous of marrying her.
The lass was not displeased at this ; I was now
called, and was to confirm what had been said.
The handsome, stout girl cast down her eyes,
and remained so till I stood quite near before
her. But when, all at once, she looked into the
strange face, she too gave a loud scream and
ran away. Olivia bade me run after her and
hold her fast, so that she should not get into the
house and give the alarm ; while she herself
wished to go and see how it was with her
father. On the way Olivia met the servant-boy,
who was in love with the maid; I had in the
mean time hurried after the maid, and held her
fast. "Only think! what good luck!" cried
Olivia: "it's all over with Barbara, and George
marries Liese." " I have thought he would for
a long while," said the good I'ellow, and stood
there disconsolate.

I had given the maid to understand, that all
we had yet to do was to cheat the father. We
went up to the lad, who turned away and would
have walked off; but Liese took him aside, and
he, too, when he was undeceived, made the
most extraordinary gestures. We went together
to the house. The table was covered, and the
father already in the room. Olivia, who kept
me behind her, stepped to the threshold and
said : " Father, you have no objections to George's
dining with us to-day ? but you must let him
keep his hat on." " With all my heart !" said
the old man, "but why such an unusual thing?
Has he hurt himself?" She led me forward as
I stood, with my hat on. "No!" said she, hand-
ing me into the room, "but he has a bird-cage
under it, and the birds might fly out and make
a deuce of a fuss ; for there are nothing but loose
wild birds there." The father was pleased with

the joke, without precisely knowing what it
meant. At this instant she took off my hat,
made a ploughman's scrape, and required me
to do the same. The old man looked at me,
recognized me, but was not put out of his
priestly self-i^ossession. "Ay, ay, Mr. Canili-
date !" exclaimed he, raising a threatening finger
at me : " You have changed saddles very quickly,
and over-night I have lost an assistant, who
yesterday promised me so faithfully that he
would often mount my pulpit on week-days."
Thereupon he laughed heartily, bade me wel-
come, and we sat down to table. Moses came
in much later ; for, as the youngest and spoiled
child, he had accustomed himself not to hear
the dinner-bell. Besides, he took very little
notice of the company, scarce even when he
contradicted them. In order to make surer of
him, they had placed me, not between the
sisters, but at the end of the table, where George
often used to sit. As he came in at the door,
which was behind me, he slapped me smartly
on the shoulder, and said: "Good dinner to you,
George!" " Many thanks, youngster!" replied
I. The strange voice and the strange face
startled him. "What say you?" cried Olivia:
"does he not look very like his brother?" "Yes,
from behind," replied Moses, who managed to
recover his composure immediately, like other
folk. He did not look at me again, and busied
himself merely with zealously devouring the
dishes, in order to make up for lost time. Then,
too, he thought proper occasionally to find some-
thing for himself to do in the yard and the gar-
den. At the dessert the genuine George came
in, and made the scene still more lively. They
rallied him for his jealousy, and would not
praise him for having gotten himself a rival in
me ; but he was modest and clever enough,
and, ill a half-confused manner, he mixed up
himself, his sweetheart, his ditto, and the Mam-
sells with each other to such a degree, that at
last nobody could tell whom he was talking
about, so that they were glad to give him a
glass of wine and a piece of his own cake to
eat, to keep him quiet.

At table there was some talk about going to
walk ; which however did not suit me very well
in my peasant's clothes. But the ladies, early
on that day already, when they learned who
had run away in such a desperate hurry, had
remembered that a hunting-coat of a cousin of
theirs, in which he used to go sporting when he
■was here, was hanging in a clothes-press. Yet
I declined, apparently with all sorts of jokes,
but with a feeling of secret vanity, not wishing,
as cousin, to disturb the good impression I had
made in the character of peasant. The father
had gone to take his afternoon nap ; the mother,
as always, was busy about her housewifery.
But my friend proposed that I should tell them
some story, to which I immediately agreed. We
repaired to a spacious arbor, and I gave them a
tale which I have since written out under the title
of The New Melusina, (_post, 3 24). It bears about the
24

278

GOETHE.

same relation to The New Paris* as the Youth
bears to the Boy, and I would insert it here,
were I not afraid of injuring, by its outlandish
play of Fancy, the rural reality and simplicity
which agreeably surround us. Enough : I suc-
ceeded in that which rewards the inventors and
narrators of such productions, I succeeded in
awakening curiosity, in fixing the attention, in
inciting them to give over-hasty solutions of im-
penetrable riddles, in deceiving their expecta-
tions, in confusing them by making that wonder-
ful which was merely strange, in arousing sym-
pathy and fear, in making them anxious, in
moving them; and at last, by the inversion of
what was apparently sober earnest into an in-
genious and cheerful jest, this little tale satisfied
the mind, leaving behind it materials for new
images to the imagination, and to the under-
standing for further reflection.

Should any one hereafter road this tale in
print, and doubt whether it could have and pro-
duce such an effect, let him remember that, pro-
perly speaking, man is only intended to have
influence while present. Writing is an abuse
of language, reading silently to one's self is a
pitiful succedaneum of speech. The strongest
influence in a man's power is made by his per-
sonal presence, youth is the most powerful upon
youth, and hence too arise the purest influences.
These are they which enliven the world, and
can perish neither morally nor physically. I
had inherited from my father a certain loqua-
cious fondness for teaching; from my mother
the faculty of representing, clearly and power-
fully, everything that the imagination can pro-
duce or grasp, of giving a freshness to known
stories, of inventing and relating others, and
even making them up as I went along. By my
paternal endowment I was for the most part
rather a bore to the- company : for who likes to
listen to the opinions and sentiments of another,
especially a youth, whose judgment, on account
of his fragmentary experience, seems constantly
insufficient? My mother, on the contrary, had
thoroughly qualified me for social conversations.
For to the imagination even the emptiest tale
has an elevated charm, and even the smallest
quantity of solid matter is thankfully received
by the understanding.

By such recitals, which cost me nothing, I
made myself beloved by children, I excited and
delighted youth, and drew upon me the atten-
tion of older persons. But in society, such as it
commonly is, I was soon obliged to stop these
practices, and I have thereby lost but too much
of the enjoyment of the world and of intellec-
tual improvement ; yet both these parental gifts
accompanied me throughout my whole life,
united with a third, namely, the necessity of ex-
pressing myself figuratively and by comparisons.
In consideration of these peculiarities, Doctor
Gall, a man of as much profundity as acuteness,
discovering them by his Theory, assured me

* See Part First, Book II.— TVans.

that I was properly speaking born for a popular
orator. At this disclosure I was not a little con-
founded : for as I discovered, in my nation, no
opportunity to harangue about anything, it would
follow, if his assertion were well-grounded, that
everything else I could undertake, would have
been, alas, but a mistaken vocation !

FROM THE "ELECTIVE AFFINITIES.'*

PART SECOND. CHATTER THIRTEEKTH.

Ottilia this afternoon had taken a walk to
the lake. She carried the child and read as
she walked, according to her custom. In this
manner she arrived at the oak by the ferry.
The boy had fallen asleep : she seated herself,
laid him down beside her, and contimied her
reading. The book was one of those that draw
to them a tender soul and will not let it go.
She forgot time and the hour, and did not con-
sider that by land it was a long way back to
the new building ; but she sat absorbed in her
book, in herself, so lovely to look upon that the
trees and bushes around should have been ani-
mated and gifted with eyes to admire and de-
light in her. Just then a ruddy gleam of the
sinking sun fell behind her, and gilded her
cheeks and shoulders.

Edward, who had succeeded in making his
way thus far unobserved, finding his park empty
and the region solitary, ventured on still farther.
At last he breaks through the thicket near the
oak, sees Ottilia and she sees him ; he flies to
her and throws himself at her feet. Ai"ter a
long silent pause, in which both seek to collect
themselves, he explains to her in a few words
why and how he had come here; that he had
sent the Major to Charlotte, that their common
fate was at this moment deciding. That he had
never doubted her love, she also certainly never
his — that he now asks her consent.

T* T» "n "iK 'T* 'fS *(*

Ottilia spoke thus in haste. She recalled at
once to mind all that might occur. She was
happy in Edward's presence, but felt that she
must send him away. " I beg, I entreat you,
dearest," she cried, " return and wait for the
Major." " I obey your command," cried Ed-
ward, while he first gazed passionately on her
and then seized her in his arms. She embraced
him with hers, and pressed him most tenderly
to her breast. Hope shot, like a star that falls
from heaven, away over their heads. They
imagined, they believed that they now belonged
to each other ; they exchanged, for the first time,
decided, free kisses, and then, with a violent
and painful effort, tore themselves apart. — The
sun had set, it was growing dusk — and a damp
vapor was rising from the lake. Ottilia stood
perplexed and excited. She looked over toward
the house on the hill, and thought she saw Char-

* Translated by Mr. G. P. Bradford.

GOETHE.

279

lotte's white dress on the balcony. It was a
long way round the lake, and she knew how
impatiently Charlotte was waiting for the child.
She sees the plane trees opposite her ; only a
piece of water separates her from the path that
leads directly up to the building. In her
thoughts, as with her eyes, she has already
crossed. The risk of venturing on the water
with the child vanishes in this extremity. She
hastens to the boat, and does not feel that her
heart beats violently, that her feet totter, and
that her senses threaten to fail her. She springs
into the boat, seizes the oar, and pushes off from
the land. She is obliged to use force, and re-
peat the effort. The boat rocks and glides a
little way out into the lake ; with the child on
her left arm, the book in her left hand, and the
oar in her right, she staggers, loses her foothold,
and falls into the boat. The oar escapes from
her hand on one side, and, in her efforts to re-
cover herself, child and book fall on the other
into the water. She still grasps the child's
clothes ; but the helpless position in which she
lies hinders her from rising herself Her right
hand, which remains free, is not sufficient to
enable her to turn round and raise herself up.
At last, however, she succeeds, draws the child
out of the water, but its eyes are closed, it has
ceased to breathe !

In an instant she recovers entirely her self-
possession, but so much the greater is her pain.
The boat has drifted nearly to the middle of the
lake, the oar is floating far away, she sees no
one on the shore, and indeed what would it
have availed her to see anyone'? Separated
from all, she floats on the faithless, inaccessible
element.

In this emergency she has to look for aid
within herself. Often has she heard of the re-
suscitation of the drowned. On her very birth-
day she had experienced this herself. She strips
the child and dries it with her muslin dress.
She tears open her bosom, and bares it for the
first time to the free heaven ; for the first time
she presses a living being to her pure naked
breast, alas ! no longer a living being ! The
cold limbs of the unfortunate creature chilled
her bosom to her inmost heart. Endless tears
gush from her eyes, and impart a semblance of
life and warmth to the surface of the stiflened

f Ori3'^G T- -T* 'K ^ ^

* * * She does not give over her efforts,
she wraps it in her shawl, and by rubbing,
pressing, breathing on it, by kisses and tears,
she thinks to supply the place of those remedies
that are denied to her, cut off as she is from
communication with others.

All in vain! Motionless the child lies in her
arms, motionless stands the boat on the watery
plain ; but even here her beautiful spirit does
not leave her helpless. She turns toward hea-
ven. Kneeling she sinks down in the boat, and
with both arms raises the stiffened child above
her innocent breast, marble-like in whiteness,
and alas ! in coldness too. With moist eyes she

looks upward and invokes help from thence
where a tender heart hopes to find the greatest
fulness when all else fails.

And not in vain does she turn to the stars,
which already are beginning one by one to
twiidcle forth. A soft wind rises and drives
the boat to the plane-trees.

CHAPTER, FOURTEKNTU.

She hastens to the new building, calls out the
surgeon and gives him the child. The ever-
ready man treats the delicate body with suc-
cessive applications according to the customary
manner. Ottilia assists him in all; she pro-
cures, she fetches, she assumes the care, moving,
indeed, as in another world, for the height of
misery like the highest happiness changes the
face of all things ; and only when, after all
means have been tried, the worthy man shakes
his head, first to her hopeful questions making
no answer, then answering with a whispered
No, she leaves Charlotte's chamber, where all
this had taken place, and hardly has she enter-
ed the parlor, when, unable to reach the sofa,
she falls on her face, exhausted on the floor.

At this moment they hear Charlotte's carriage
drive up to the house. The surgeon earnestly
beseeches the bystanders to remain behind. He
will go to meet her and prepare her for what
has happened ; but already she has entered her
apartment. She finds Ottilia on the floor, and
one of the maids rushes toward her with cries
and tears. The surgeon comes in and she
learns all at once. But how can she, at once,
give up all hope? The experienced, skilful and
wise man begs her only not to see the child ;
and goes away to beguile her with new at-
tempts. She has seated herself on her sofa;
Ottilia still lies on the floor, but raised a little
so that her head lies sunk on Charlotte's knees.
The medical friend goes backward and forward.
He appears to be busied about the child, while
his care in reality is directed to the women. In
this way midnight comes on, the death-stillness
becoming always deeper. Charlotte no longer
conceals from herself that the child can never
be restored to life. She desires to -see it. It
has been wrapt in clean, warm, woollen cloths,
and laid in a basket wliiidi they set by her on
the sofa, — only the little face is uncovered.
Calm and beautiful it lies there.

The news of the melancholy accident had
excited a stir in the village and reached the
inn. The Major had come up to the house by
the well-known way: he went round the house,
and meeting with one of the servants who had
rim out into the out-building to fetch something,
he gained more exact information, — and sent
for the surgeon to come out. The latter came,
astonished at seeing his old patron, informed
him of the present state of things, and under-
took to prepare Charlotte to see him. He went
in, and with this intention began a conversa-
tion by which he led her imagination from one
object to another, until he at last brought before

280

GOETHE.

Charlotte's mind her friend, intimated his cer-
tain sympathy, his nearness to her spirit in his
modes of thinking, and at last his actual near-
ness in jjerson. Enough, she learned that her
friend was at the door, was apprized of all that
had happened, and wished to be admitted.

The Major entered the room. Charlotte
saluted him with a painful smile. He stood
before her. * *• * * Charlotte

pointed to a seat, and thus they sat opposite to
each other in silence, the night through. Ottilia
still lay quietly on Charlotte's knees ; she
breathed softly as she slept or seemed to sleep.

The morning dawned, the light was extin-
guished, and both friends seemed to awake as
from a gloomy dream. Charlotte looked at the
Major, and said, "Explain to me, my friend, by
what providence you came here to take part in
this scene of sorrow V

" This is neither the time nor place,"' said the
IMajor. answering her as she had spoken in a
low. subdued voice, as if they did not wish to
waken Ottilia, " this is neither the time nor place
for reserve, or delicate management in approach-
ing the subject I would speak of The situation
in which I lind you is so awfid that the impor-
tant matter itself, for which I came, loses its
value by side of it." He then acknowledged
to her very calmly and simply the object of his
mission, so far as Edward had part in sending
him, the design of his coming so far as his own
free will, his own interest was concerned. He
presented both with much tenderness and yet
with sincerity. Charlotte listened calmly, and
appeared to be neither sur2:jrised nor dis^^leased
at it.

When the Major had ended, Charlotte re-
plied, and in so low a voice that he was obliged
to move his seat nearer: "I have never before
found myself in circumstances like these ; but
in similar cases, I have always said to myself,
' how will it be on the morrow V I feel truly
and deeply that the fate of several persons lies
in my hands ; and what I have to do is clear to
me and soon explained. I consent to the separa-
tion. I ought to have resolved on it sooner.
By my delay and opposition I have been the
death of the child. There are certain things
which Destiny obstinately determines shall be.
In vain that Reason and Virtue, Duty and all
that is holy throw themselves in the way.
Sometliing shall take place that is right to it,
though it seems not right to us ; and at last it
carries its point let us demean ourselves as we
may. Yet what do I say? Rather will Des-
tiny again bring about my own wish, my own
purpose, against which I inconsiderately acted.
Have I not myself already thought of Ottilia
and Edward together as a most suitable pair?
Have I not even myself sought to bring them
near to each other ? Were not you yourself, my
friend, knowing to this plan? And why could
I not distinguish the caprice of a man from true
love? Why did I accept his hand, when, as a
friend, I might have made him and another

wife happy? And consider, too, this unhappy
slumberer ! I tremble for the moment when
she awakes from her half-death-sleep to con-
sciousness. How shall she live, how shall she
be consoled, if she cannot hope, by her love, to
make good to Edvvard, what she, as the instru-
ment of the strangest destiny, has robbed him
of? And she can restore all to him, by the
fondness, the passion with which she loves
him. Love can bear all, it can do much more,
it can restore all. As for myself, I must not be
considered in the present posture of affairs.

"Retire quietly, my dear Major; say to Ed-
ward that I consent to the separation ; that I
give up the whole matter to him and you to
manage in your own way. That I am uncon-
cerned about my own future condition, and can
be so in every sense. I will sign every paper
which shall be brought to me. Only let it not
be required of me to co-operate, to consider or
advise.''

The Major arose. She reached to him her
hand over Ottilia. He pressed his lips on that
dear hand. " And for myself, what may I hope?"'
he whispered gently.

" Allow me to remain still in your debt for
the answer to that question,"' replied Charlotte :
" we have not deserved to be unhappy ; but
neither have we deserved to be happy together."

Charlotte sat only a few minutes, absorbed in
her reflections after the Major had left her ; for
hardly had he gone when Ottilia raised herself
up with her eyes fixed intently on her friend.
First she raised herself from her lajD, then from
the floor, and stood before Charlotte.

" For the second time," thus began the glo-
rious child, with an invincible, graceful earnest-
ness, "for the second time, I experience the
same thing. You once said to me, 'It often
happens that, at diflerent times in our lives, ^ve
meet with like things, occurring in a similar
M^ay, and always in important moments.' I now
find your remark to be true, and feel impelled
to make a confession to you. Shortly after my
mother"s death, I, then a little child, had moved
my stool to your side, you were sitting on a sofa
as now, my head lay on your knees. I was
neither asleep nor awake, but in a kind of
slumber. I heard, very distinctly, everything
that went on around me, especially everything
that was said ; and yet I could not move myself,
nor speak, nor, even if I had wished it, so much
as signify that I was conscious. At that time
you spoke with a friend about me : you lamented
my lot — in being left behind in the world, a
poor orphan ; you painted my dependent condi-
tion, and how unhappy it might be widi me if
a sjiecial star of good fortune did not rule over
my destiny. I comprehended well and exactly,
perhaps too strictly, all that you appeared to wish
for me, and to demand of me. I made, here-
upon, laws for myself, according to my limited
views. By these I have lived for a long time ;
in conformity with these, what I did or forbore

GOETHE.

281

to do was regulated, at that time when you loved
me and took care of me; when you received
me into your house, and still for some time after.

But I liave wandered away from my path, I
have broken my laws, I have even lost the feel-
ing of them ; and now, after a terrible occur-
rence, you again give me light on my present
situation which is more deplorable than the first.
Resting on your lap, half-lifeless, as from a
strange world, I hear once more your gentle
voice over my ear. I learn the aspect of my
condition; I shudder at myself; but, as at that
time, so now also, in my half-lifeless sleep, I
have marked out for myself my new path. I
have resolved as I then did, and what that reso-
lution is you must learn at once. Edward shall
never be mine. In a fearful way has God
opened my eyes to see in what a crime I am
entangled. I will atone for it : and let no one
think to turn me away from my ptn-pose. Take
then, dearest, your steps accordingly. Recall
the Major; write to him that no steps be taken.
How distressed was I that I could not move nor
stir as he went away. I wished to start up, to
cry out, that you might not allow him to go
a^vay with hopes so pernicious."

Charlotte saw Ottilia's state, she felt it, but
hoped by time and her representations to make
some change in her resolutions. Yet when she
uttered some words that pointed to a future, to
a mitigation of pain, to hope; "No!" cried Ot-
tilia, with exaltation, " seek not to move me, to
delude me : the moment I learn that you have
consented to a separation, I expiate in that same
lake my error, my crime."

CHAPTER FIFTEEIfTH.

While in a happy, peaceful daily intercourse,
relations, friends, household companions, are
wont to discuss what happens, or is to happen,
more than is necessary or reasonable ; while
they repeatedly communicate to each other their
purposes, undertakings, occupations, and without
taking mutual counsel, yet always conduct their
whole course of life as if by mutual advice ;
we find, on the other hand, that in moments of
importance — the very occasions in which it
would seem that the assistance and support of
others are most needed — the individuals draw
back into themselves, strive to transact every-
thing for themselves, to conduct everything in
their own way, and while they conceal from
each other their own individual methods, only
the result, the object, and what is attained, be-
come common property once more.

After so many strange and unhappy events,
a certain silent seriousness came over the two
friends, which manifested itself in a lovely
sparing of one another. Quite silently Charlotte
had sent the child to the Chapel : there it rested
as the first victim of a dark and fearful destiny.

Charlotte turned back as far as was possible

toward life, and here she found that Ottilia had

the first need of her aid. She occupied herself

chiefly with her, without, however suffering it to

2l

be marked. She knew how much the heavenly
child loved Edward ; she had gradually inquired
out the scenes that preceded the fatal accident,
and learned every circtunstance, partly from Ot-
tilia herscU', partly through the letters of the
Major.

Ottilia, on her part, lightened, to a great ex-
tent, Charlotte's momentary life. She was open,
talkative even, but never was the conversation
of the present or of what had so lately happen-
ed. She had always noted, observed — she knew
much — all this now turned to account. She
entertained and diverted Charlotte, who still
cherished in secret the hope of seeing so worthy
a pair united. But it was otherwise with Ottilia
She had discovered to her friend the secret of
her life-course; she was emancipated from her
early narrowness, from servitude. By her re-
pentance, by her resolution, she also felt herself
ireed from the burden of that guilt, that calamity.
She had no longer need to do violence to herself.
She had, in the depths of her heart, pardoned
herself, but only on condition of complete re-
nunciation, and this condition was unalterable
for all the future.

Thus passed some time, and Charlotte felt
how very much the house and park, water, rock
and tree groups, only renewed, daily, painfui
feelings in them both. That the scene must be
changed was but too clear ; in what way to do
this was not so easy to decide. Should the two
women continue together? Edward's earlier
wish seemed to enjoin this ; his explanation, his
threats to make it necessary. But how could it
fail to be seen that both women, with all good-
will, with all reasonableness, found themselves
in a painful relation to each other? Their con-
versation was evasive : often there were some
things they chose but to half understand; but
ofiener an expression was misinterpreted, if not
by the understanding, at least by the feelings.
They feared to wound each other, and this very
fear was the first thing to be wounded and the
first to wound.

Did they wish to change the scene, and, at
the same time, be separated, at least for a while,
from each other, then the old question came
up, where should Ottilia go? That rich and
distinguished family beforementioned had made
fruitless attempts to procure for a very promising
daughter, the heiress of the house, female com-
panions who should serve to amuse her and
excite her emulation. Already on the last visit
of the Baroness, and lately by letters, Charlotte
had been urged to send Ottilia there, and she
now proposed it again. But Ottilia decidedly
refused to go, where she must lind what is
called the great world. "Suffer me, dear aunt,"
said she, "in order that I may not appear nar-
row-minded and wilful, to speak out that which,
in any other case, it would be a duty not to
speak of, but rather to conceal. A person dis-
tinguished by misfortune, even if without any
fault, is marked in a fearful way. His presence
excites in all who see and notice him a kind of
24*

282

GOETHE,

horror. Every one tliinks to see in liim the
dread tiling which has been laid on him. Every
one is curious and anxious at the same time.
In like manner a house, a town in which some-
thing (Ireailful has happened, becomes fearful
to every one who enters it. There the light of
day shines not so clear, and the stars appear to
lose their lustre. How great, and yet excusable
perhaps, is the indiscretion of people towards
such unhappy persons, their foolish obtrusive-
ness and awkward kindness! Pardon me that
I say it; but I suffered incredibly with that poor
maiden when Luciana dragged her out of the
secret chambers of the hou^^c, kindly occupied
herself with her, and, with the best intentions,
wished to force her to play and dance. As the
poor child, growing ever more frightened, fled
and sunk away in a swoon, I caught her in my
arms, the company were terrified and excited,
and every one then first became really curious
about the unhappy creature. I little thought
then that a like fate was in reserve for me ; but
my sympathy, so true and vivid, still survives.
I can now turn the compassion I felt for her
upon myself, and guard myself from giving oc-
casion to such scenes."

"But nowhere, dear ciiild,"" replied Charlotte,
" will you be able to withdraw yourself from
the eyes of men ; we have no cloisters, in which
formerly an asylum for such feelings was to be
found.''

"It is not solitude that constitutes the asylum,
dear aunt,"' answered Ottilia. " The refuge most
to be prized is to be sought there where we can
be active. All expiations, all renunciations are
no way adapted to rescue tts from a fatal, threat-
ening destiny, if it is determined to pursue us.
Only when I am forced, in an idle condition, to
serve as a show to the world, does it disturb
and pain me. But if I am found, cheerfully
occupied with labor, unwearied in my duty,
then can I endure the eyes of all, since I need
not shrink from those of Heaven." "I am much
mistaken,"' replied Charlotte, "if your inclination
does not draw you again to the boarding-school."

"Yes," replied Ottilia, "I do not deny it. I
.magine it to myself a happy destination to
guide others in the common way, when the
path in which we ourselves have been led has
been most uncommon. Do we not in history
see, that those who, on account of great moral
calamities, have withdrawn into the deserts,
have by no means remained concealed and
buried as they hoped. They have been called
back to the world in order to guide the wander-
ing in the right way. And who could do it
better than those already initiated in the error-
paths of life ? They have been called to aid the
unhappy, and who are better fitted for this than
those whom no earthly woes can any longer
reach ?"'

" You choose a singular destination," answer-
ed Chatlottc ; " I will not oppose you ; let it be
so, though only, as I hope, for a short time."

"How very much I have to thank you," said

Ottilia, " that you are willing to allow me to
make this trial, this experience ! If I do not
flatter myself too much, it shall prove good for
me. In that place, I shall be reminded how
many trials I endured there, and how little,
how utterly insignificant they were, in compari-
son with those I was afterwards doomed to ex-
perience. How serenely shall I look upon the
troubles of the young folks, smile at their childish
pains, and guide them with gentle hand through
all their wanderings ! The happy are not fitted
to have charge of the happy, it lies in human
nature always to require more of one's self and
others, the more one has received. Only the
self-recovered unhajipy know how to cherish
for themselves and others the feeling that even
a moderate degree of happiness is to be enjoyed
with rapture."

"Suffer me," said Charlotte, at last, after more
consideration, "to bring forward one more ob-
jection which appears to me the most important.
It relates not to yourself, but to a third person.
The sentiments of the good, sensible, pious as-
sistant are known to you. In the course you
take, you will become every day more valuable
and indispensable to him. As he already feels
that he would not willingly live without you,
so certainly, in future, when he has once be-
come accustomed to your co-operation, he will
no longer be able, without you, to carry on his
affairs. You will thus aid him at first, only to
prove an injury to him afterward."

"Destiny has not dealt gently with me," re-
plied Ottilia, " arid whoso loves me has, perhaps,
nothing better to expect. As our friend is so
good and intelligent, I hope, for this very reason,
that the feeling of a pure relation to me will be
developed in him. He will behold in me a
consecrated person, who, in this way alone,
perhaps, may lioi)e to counterbalance a fearful
evil to herself and others, by devoting herself
to the Holy which, invisibly surrounding us, can
alone i)rotect tis against those terrible powers
that are ever pressing upon us."

CONFESSIONS OF A FAIR SAINT.*

Till my eighth year, I was always a healthy
child ; but of that period I can recollect no more,
than of the day when I was born. About the
beginning of my eighth year, I was seized with
a hemorrhage ; and from that moment my soul
became all feeling, all memory. Tlie smallest
circumstances of that accident are yet before
my eyes, as if they had occurred but yesterday.

During the nine months, which I then spent
patiently upon a sick bed, it appears to me, the
ground-work of ray whole turn of thought was
laid ; for the first means were then afforded to
my spirit of developing itself in its own manner.

I suffered and I loved ; this was the peculiar
form of my heart. In the most violent fits of
* Wilhelm Meister. T. Carlyle's translation.

GOETHE.

283

coughing, in the depressing pains of fever, I lay-
quiet, like a snail drawn back within its house :
the moment I obtained a respite, I wanted to
enjoy something pleasant; and as every other
pleasure was denied me, I endeavored to amuse
myself with the innocent delights of eye and
ear. The people brought me dolls and picture
books ; and whoever chose to sit beside my bed,
was forced to tell me something.

From my mother I rejoiced to hear the Bible
histories : and my father entertained me with
natural curiosities. He had a very pretty cabi-
net, from which he brought me first one drawer
and then another, as occasion served ; showing
me the articles, and pointing out their proper-
ties. Dried plants and insects, with many kinds
of anatomical preparations, such as human skin,
bones, mummies and the like, were in succes-
sion laid upon the sick bed of the little one ; the
birds and animals he killed in hunting were
shown to me before they passed into the kitchen :
and that the Prince of the World might also
have a voice in this assembly, my aunt related
to me love adventures out of fairy tales. All
was accepted, all took root. There were hours,
in which I vividly conversed with the invisible
Power: I can still repeat some verses, which I
then dictated, and my mother wrote.

Frequently I told my father back again, what
I had learned from him. I would scarce take
any physic, without asking where the simples
grew that it was made of, what look they had,
what names they bore. Nor had the stories of
my aunt alighted upon stony ground. I figured
myself out in pretty clothes ; and met the most
delightful princes, who could find no peace or
rest, till they discovered who the unknown
Beauty was. One adventure of this kind with
a charming little angel, dressed in white with
golden wings, who warmly courted me, I dwelt
upon so long, that my imagination painted out
his form till it was almost visible.

After a year, I was pretty well restored to
health ; but nothing of the giddiness of childhood
remained witVi me. I could not play with dolls ;
I longed for beings that were able to return my
love. Dogs, cats and birds, of which my father
kept a great variety, aflbrded me delight: but
what would I have given for such a creature as
my aunt once told me of! It was a lamb, which
a peasant girl took up and nourished in a wood ;
but in the guise of this pretty beast, an en-
chanted prince was hid; who at length appeared
in his native shape, a lovely youth, and recom-
pensed his benefactress by his hand. Such a
lamb as this I would have given the world for.
But none was to be had ; and as everything
about me went along quite naturally and com-
monly, I by degrees abandoned nearly all my
hopes of such a precious treasure. Meanwhile
I comforted myself by reading books, in v/hich
the strangest incidents were represented. Among
them all, my favorite was the Christian German
Hercules; that devout love history was altogether
.n my way. Whenever anything befel his dear

Valiska, and cruel things befel her, he prayed
before he hastened to her aid, and the prayers
were standing there verbatim. My longing after
the Invisible, which I had always dimly felt,
was strengthened Ijy such means : for, in short,
it was ordained that God should also be my
confidant.

As I grew older I continued reading. Heaven
knows what, in a chaotic order. The Roman
Octavia was the book I liked beyond all others.
The persecutions of the first Christians, deco-
rated with the charms of a romance, awoke
the deepest interest in me.

But my inother now began to murmur at my
constant reading; and to humor her, my father
took away my books to-day, but gave them back
to-morrow. She was wise enough to see that
nothing could be done in this way; she next
insisted merely that my Bible should be read
with equal diligence. To this I was not disin-
clined : and I accordingly perused the sacred
volume with a lively interest. Withal my mo-
ther was extremely careful that no books of a
corruptive tendency should come into my hands :
immodest writings I would, of my own accord,
have cast away ; for my princes and my prin-
cesses were all extremely virtuous.

To my mother, and my zeal for knowledge,
it was owing that with all my love of books I
also learned to cook ; for much was to be seen
in cookery. To cut up a hen, a pig, was quite
a feast for me. I used to bring the entrails to
my father, and he talked with me about :hem,
as if I had been a student of anatomy. With
suppressed joy, he would often call me his mis-
fashioned son.

My twelfth year was now behind me. I
learned French, dancing and drawing: I re-
ceived the usual instructions in religion. In the
latter many thoughts and feelings were awak-
ened ; but nothing properly relating to my own
condition. I liked to hear the people speak of
God ; I was proud that I could speak on these
points better than my equals. I zealously read
many books, which put me in a case to talk
about religion ; but it never once occurred to me
to think how matters stood with me, whether
my soul was formed according to these holy pre-
cepts, whether it was like a glass from which
the everlasting sun could be reflected in its
glancing. From the first, I had presupposed all
this.

My French I learned with eagerness. My
teacher was a clever man. He was not a vain
empiric, not a dry grammarian : he had learning,
he had seen the world. Instructing me in lan-
guage, he satisfied my zeal for knowledge in a
thousand ways. I loved him so much, that I
used to wait his coming with a palpitating heart.
Drawing was not hard for me : I would have
made a greater progress, had my teacher been
possessed of head and science; he had only
hands and practice.

Dancing was at first my smallest entertain-
ment: my body was too sensitive for this, and I

284

GOETHE.

learned it only in the company of my sisters.
But our dancing master took a thought of gather-
ing all his scholars, male and female, and giving
them a ball. This event gave dancing quite
another charm for me.

Amid a throng of boys and girls, the most re-
markable were two sons of the Marshal of the
Court. The youngest was of my age, the other
two years older ; they were children of such
beauty, that, according to tlie universal voice,
no one had seen their equals. For my part,
scarcely had I noticed them, when I lost sight
of all the other crowd. From that moment I
began to dance with care, and to wish that I
could dance with grace. How came it, on the
other hand, that these two boys distinguished
me from all the rest? No matter; ere an hour
had passed, we had become the warmest friends;
and our little entertainment did not end, till we
had fixed upon the time and place where we
were next to meet. What a joy for me ! And
how charmed "svas I next morning, when both
of them inquired about my health, each in a
gallant note, accompanied with a nosegay! I
have never since felt as I then did! Compli-
ment was met by compliment; letter answered
letter. The church and the public walks were
grown a rendezvous; our young acquaintances,
in all their little parties, now invited us together;
while, at the same time, we were sly enough to
veil the business from our parents, so that they
could see no more of it than we thought good.

Thus had I at once got a pair of lovers. I
had yet decided upon neither ; they both pleased
me, and we did extremely well together. All
at once, the eldest of the two fell very sick. I
myself had frequently been sick; and thus I
was enabled, by despatching to him many little
dainties and delicacies suited for a sick person,
to afford some solace to the sufferer. His parents
thankfully acknowledged my attention : in com-
pliance with the prayer of their beloved son,
they invited me, with all my sisters, to their
house, so soon as he had risen from his sick bed.
The tenderness, which he displayed on meeting
me, was not the feeling of a child; from that
day I gave the preference to him. He warned
me to keep our secret from his brother; but the
flame could no longer be concealed ; and the
jealousy of the younger completed our romance.
He played us a thousand tricks; eager to anni-
hilate our joys, he but increased the passion he
was seeking to destroy.

At last, then, I had actually found the wished-
for lamb; and this attachment acted on me like
my sickness ; it made me calm, and drew me
back from noisy pleasures. I was solitary, I
was moved ; and thoughts of God again occurred
to me. He was again my conlidant, and I well
remember with what tears I often prayed for
this poor boy, who still continued sickly.

The more childishness there was in this ad-
venture, the more did it contribute to the forming
of my heart. Our French teacher had now
turned us I'rom translating, into daily writing

him some letter of our own invention. I brought
my little history to market, shrouded in the
names of Phyllis and Damon. The old man
soon saw through it; and to render me commu-
nicative, praised my labor very much. I still
waxed bolder; came openly out with the adair,
adhering even in the minute details to truth, I
do not now remember what the passage was at
which he took occasion to remark : '• How pretty,
how natural it is ! But the good Phyllis had
better have a care ; the thing may soon grow
serious.''

It vexed me, that he did not look upon the
matter as already serious ; and I asked him, with
an air of pique, what he meant by serious. He
did not force me to repeat the question ; he ex-
plained himself so clearly, that I scarce could
hide my terror. Yet, as anger came along with
it, as I took it ill that he should entertain such
thoughts, I kept myself composed, I tried to jus-
tify my nymph ; and said with glowing cheeks :
" But, sir, Phyllis is an honorable girl."

He was rogue enough to banter me about my
honorable heroine. While we were speaking
French, he played upon the word honnete, and
hunted the honorableness of Phyllis over all its
meanings. I felt the ridicule of this, and was
extremely puzzled. He, not to frighten me,
broke off; but afterwards he often led the con-
versation to such topics. Plays and little histo-
ries, which I was reading and translating with
him, gave him frequent opportunity to show
how feeble a security our boasted virtue was
against the rules of inclination. I no longer
contradicted him ; but I was in secret scanda-
lized ; and his remarks became a burden to me.

With my worthy Damon, too, I by degrees fell
out of all connection. I'he chicanery of the
younger boy destroyed our intercourse. Soon
after, both these blooming creatures died. I
lamented sore; however, in a short time I
forgot.

But Phyllis rapidly increased in stature ; was
altogether healthy, and began to see the world.
The hereditary Prince now married ; and a short
time after, on his father's death, began his rule.
Court and town were in the liveliest movement:
my curiosity had copious nourishment. There
were plays and balls, with all their usual accom-
l^animents; and though my parents kept retired
as much as possible, they were obliged to show
themselves at court, where I of course was in-
troduced. Strangers were pouring in from every
side ; high company was in every house ; even
to us some cavaliers were recommendetl, others
introduced ; and at my uncle's, men of every
nation might be met witli.

My honest Mentor still continued, in a modest
and yet striking way, to warn me ; and 1 to take
it ill of him in secret. With regard to his asser-
tion, that women under every circumstance were
weak, I did not feel at all convinced ; and here
perhaps I was in the right, and my Mentor in
the wrong ; but he spoke so earnestly, that once
I grew afraid he might be right, and said to him.

GOETHE.

283

with much vivacity: "Since the danger is so
great, and the human heart so weak, I will pray
to God that He may keep me."

This simple answer seemed to please him,
for he praised my purpose ; but on iny side it
was anything but seriously meant. It was in
truth but an empty word ; for my feelings to-
wards the Invisible were almost totally extin-
guished. The hurry and the crowd with which
I was surrounded dissipated my attention, and
carried me along as in a powerful stream.
These were the emptiest years of my life. All
day long to speak of nothing, to have no solid
thought; never to do anything but revel: such
was my employment. On my beloved books I
never once bestowed a thought. The people
whom I lived among had not the slightest tinge
of literature or science: they were German
courtiers ; a class of men at that time altogether
destitute of mental culture.

Such society, it may be thought, must naturally
have led me to the. brink of ruin. I lived away
in mere corporeal cheerfulness; I never took
myself to task, I never prayed, I never thought
about myself or God. Yet I look upon it as a
providential guidance, that none of these many
handsome, rich and well-dressed men could take
my fancy. They were rakes, and did not hide
it; this scared me back: their speech was fre-
quently adorned with double meanings; this
offended me, and made me act with coldness
towards them. Many times their improprieties
surpassed belief; and I did not prevent mj'self
from being rude.

Besides, my ancient counsellor had once in
confidence contrived to tell me, that, with the
greater part of these lewd fellows, health as
well as virtue was in danger. I now shuddered
at the sight of them ; I was afraid, if one of
them in any way approached too near me. I
would not touch their cups or glasses, even the
chairs they had been sitting on. Thus morally
and physically I remained apart from them ; all
the compliments they paid me I haughtily ac-
cepted of, as incense that 'was due.

Among the strangers then resident among us,
there was one young man peculiarly distin-
guished, whom in sport we used to call Narciss.
He had gained a reputation in the diplomatic
line; and among the various changes now oc-
curring at our court, he was in hopes of meeting
with some advantageous place. He soon became
acquainted with my father: his acquirements and
manners opened for him the way to a select
society of most accomplished men. My father
often spoke in praise of him : his figure, which
was very handsome, would have been more
pleasing, had it not been for a certain air of self-
complacency, which breathed from all his car-
riage. I had seen him; I thought well of him ;
but we had never spoken.

At a great ball, where we chanced to be in
company, I danced a minuet along with him ;
but this too passed without results. The more
violent dances, in compliance with my father's

will, who felt anxieties about my health, I was
accustomed to avoid : in the present case, when
these came on, I retired to an adjoining room,
and began to talk with certain of my friends,
elderly ladies, who had set themselves to cards.
Narciss, who had jigged it for a while, at last
came into the room in which I was; and hav-
ing got the better of a bleeding at the nose, that
had overtaken him in dancing, he began to
speak with me about a multitude of things. In
half an hour, the talk had grown so interesting,
that neither of us could endure to think of
dancing any more. We were rallied by our
friends for this ; but we did not let their banter-
ing disturb us. Next evening, we recommenced
our conversation, and were very careful not to
hurt our health.

The acquaintance then was made. Narciss
was often with my sisters and myself; and I
now once more began to reckon over and con-
sider what I knew, what I thought of, what I
had felt, and what I could express myself about
in conversation. My new friend had mingled
in the best society ; besides the department of
history and politics, with every part of which
he was familiar, he had gained extensive lite-
rary knowledge ; there was nothing new that
issued from the press, especially in France, that
he was unacquainted with. He brought or sent
me many a pleasant book ; but this we kept as
secret as forbidden love. Learned women had
been made ridiculous, well-informed women
were with difficulty tolerated ; apparently, be-
cause it would have been uncourtly to put so
many ill-informed gentlemen to shame. Even
my father, much as he delighted in this new
opportunity of cultivating my mind, expressly
stipulated that our literary commerce should re-
main a secret.

Thus our intercourse continued almost for a
year and a day ; and still I could not say that
in any wise Narciss had ever shown me aught
of love or tenderness. He was always com-
plaisant and kind ; but manifested nothing like
attachment: on the contrary, he even seemed to
be in some degree affected by the charms of my
youngest sister, who was then extremely beau-
tiful. In sport, he gave her many little friendly
names, out of foreign tongues; for he could
speak two or three of these extremely well :
and loved to mix their idiomatic phrases with
his German. Such compliments she did not
answer very liberally ; she was entangled in a
different noose ; and being very sharp, while he
was very sensitive, the two were often quarrel-
ling about trifles. With my mother and my
aunt, he kept himself on very pleasant terms ;
and thus by gradual advances, he was grown
to be a member of the family.

Who knows how long we might have lived
in this way, had a curious accident not altered
our relations all at once. My sisters and I were
invited to a certain house, to which we did not
like to go. The company was too mixed ; and
persons of the stupidest if not the rudest stamp

286

GOETHE,

were often to be met with there. Narciss, on
this occasion, was invited also; and on his ac-
count I felt inclined to go, for I was sure of find-
ing one at least with whom I could converse as
I desired. Even at table, we had many things
to suffer ; for several of the gentlemen had drunk
too much : and after rising from it, they insisted
on a game at forfeits. It went on with great
vivacity and tumult. Narciss had lost a for-
feit: they ordered him, by way of penalty, to
whisper something pleasant in the ear of every
member of the company. It seems, he staid too
long beside my neighbor, the lady of a Captain.
The latter on a sudden struck him such a box
with his fist, that the powder flew about my
eyes and blinded me. When I had cleared my
sight, and in some degree recovered from my
terror, I saw that both of them had drawn their
swords. Narciss was bleeding; and the other,
mad with wine and rage and jealousy, could
scarcely be held back by all the company : I
§eized Narciss, led him by the arm up stairs ;
and as I did not think my friend even here in
safety from his frantic enemy, I shut the door
and bolted it.

Neither of us looked upon the wound as seri-
ous ; for a slight cut across the hand was all we
saw. Soon, however, I perceived a stream of
blood running down his back, and a deep wound
appeared upon his head. I now began to be
afraid. I hastened to the lobby, to get help ;
but I could see no person ; every one had staid
below to calm the raving captain. At last a
daughter of the family came skipping up ; her
mirth annoyed me ; she was like to die with
laughing at the bedlam spectacle. I conjured
her for the sake of Heaven to get a surgeon ;
and she, in her wild way, sprang down the
stair to fetch me one herself.

Returning to my wounded friend, I bound
my handkerchief about his hand ; and a neck-
kerchief, that was hanging on the door, about
his head. He was still bleeding copiously: he
now turned pale, and seemed as if he were
about to faint. There was none at hand to aid
me : I very freely put my arm around him ;
patted his cheek, and tried to cheer him up by
little flatteries. It seemed to act upon him like
a spiritual remedy ; he kept his senses, but he
sat as pale as death.

At last the active housewife entered: it is
easy to conceive her terror when she saw my
friend in this predicament, lying in my arms,
and both of us bestreamed with blood. No one
had supposed that he was wounded ; all imagin-
ed I had carried him away in safety.

Now smelling-bottles, wine, and everything
that could support and stimulate, were copi-
ously produced. The surgeon also came ; and
I might easily have been dispensed with. Nar-
ciss, however, held me firmly by the hand; I
would have staid without holding. During the
dressing of his wounds, I continued wetting his
lips with wine; I minded not though all the
company were now about us. The surgeon

having finished, his patient took a mute but
tender leave of me, and was conducted home.
The mistress of the house now led me to her
bed-room : she was forced to strip me alto-
"■ether. * * * No portion of my clothes
could be put on again ; and as the people of the
house were all either less or larger than myself,
I was taken home in a strange disguise. My
parents were, of course, astonished. They felt
exceedingly indignant at my fright, at the
wounds of their friend, at the captain's mad-
ness, at the whole occurrence. A very little
would have made my father send a challenge
to the captain, that he might avenge his friend
without delay. He blamed the gentlemen that
had been there, because they had not punished
such a murderous attempt upon the spot: for it
was but too clear, that the captain, instantly on
striking, had pulled out his sword and wounded
the other from behind. The cut across the hand
had not been given, until Narciss himself was
grasping at his sword. I felt unspeakably
affected and altered : or, how shall I express it?
The passion, which was sleeping at the deepest
bottom of my heart, had at once broken loose,
like a flame on getting air. And if joy and plea-
sure are well suited, for the first producing and
the silent nourishing of love, yet this passion,
bold by nature, is most easily impelled by terror
to decide and to declare itself. My mother
gave some physic to her little flurried daughter,
and made her go to bed. With the earliest
morrow, my father hastened to Narciss, whom
he found lying very sick of a wound fever.

He told me little of what passed between
them, but tried to quiet me about the probable
results of this event. They were now consider-
ing whether an apology should be accepted of,
whether the affair should go beibre a court of
justice, and many other points of that descrip;
tion. I knew my father too well to doubt that
he would be averse to see the matter end with-
out a duel: but I held my peace; for I had
learned from him before, that women should
not meddle in such things. For the rest, it did
not strike me as if anything had passed between
the friends, in which my interests were specially
concerned: but my father soon communicated to
my mother the purport of their further conver-
sation. Narciss, he said, appeared to be exceed-
ingly affected at the help aflbrded by me; had
embraced him, declared himself my debtor for
ever, signified that he desired no happiness ex-
cept what he could share with me, and concluded
by entreating that he might presume to ask my
hand. All this mamma repeated to me, but
subjoined the safe reflection, that "as for what
was said in the first agitation of mind in such a
case, there was little trust to be placed in it."
'•Of course, none,'" I answered with aflected
coldness ; though all the while I was feeling
Heaven knows what and how.

Narciss continued sick for two months ; owing
to the wound in his right hand, he could not
even write. Yet, in the meantime, he showed

GOETHE.

287

nie his regard by the most ohligingc courtesies.
All these unusual attentions 1 combined with
what my moilier had disclosed to me; and con-
stantly my head was full of fancies. The whole
city tallceil of the occurrence. With me they
spoke of it in a peculiar tone ; they drew infer-
ences which, greatly as I struggled to avoid
them, touched me very close. What had for-
merly been habitude and trifling, was now grown
seriousness and inclination. The anxiety in which
I lived was the more violent, the more carefully
I studied to conceal it from every one. The idea
of losing him afl'righted me; the possibility of
any closer union made me tremble. For a half-
prudent girl, there is really something awful in
the thought of marriage.

By such incessant agitations, I was once more
led to recollect myself. The gaudy imagery of
a thoughtless life, which used to hover day and
night before my eyes, was at once blown away.
My sou! again began to wake : but the greatly
interrupted intimacy with my Invisible Friend
was not so easy to renew. We still continued
at a frigid distance: it was again something;
but little to the times of old.

A iluel had been fought, and the captain been
severely wounded, before I ever heard of it.
The public feeling was in all senses strong on
the side of my lover, who at length again ap-
peared upon the scene. But first of all, he came
with his head tied up and his arm in a sling, to
visit us. How my heart beat while he was
there! The whole family was present; general
thanks and compliments were all that passed
on either side ; Narciss, however, found an op-
portunity to show some secret tokens of his love
to me, by which means my inquietude was but
increased. After his recovery, he visited us
throughout the winter on the former footing ;
and in spite of all the soft private marks of ten-
derness, which he contrived to give me, the
whole affair remained unsettled, undiscussed.

In this manner ^vas I kept in constant prac-
tice. I could not trust my thoughts to mortal ;
and from God I was too far removed. Him I
had quite forgot for four wild years : I now
again began at times to think of him ; but our
acquaintance was grown cool ; they were visits
of mere ceremony, which I paid him ; and as,
besides, in paying them, I used to dress myself
in fine apparel, to set before him self-compla-
cently my virtue, honor and superiorities to
others, he did not seem to notice me or know
me in that finery.

A courtier would have been exceedingly dis-
tressed, if the prince who held his fortune in
his hands had treated him in this way: but for
mc I did not sorrow at it. I had what I re-
quired, health and conveniences; if God should
please to think of me, well; if not, I reckoned
I had ilone my duty.

This, in truth, I did not think at that period :
yet it was the true figure of my soul. But, to
change and purify my feelings, preparations
were already made.

The spring came on : Narciss once visited
me, unannounced, and at a time when I hap
pencd to be (]uite alone. He now appeared in
the character of lover; and asked me if I could
bestow on him my heart, and when he should
obtain some lucrative and honorable jjlace,
along with it my hand.

He had been received into our service: but
at first they kept him back, and would not
rapidly promote him, because they dreaded his
ambition. Having some little fortune of his
own, he was left with a slender salary.

Notwithstanding my regard for him, I knew
that he was not a man to treat with altogether
frankly. I drew up, therefore, and referred him
to my father. About my father's mind he did
not seem to doubt ; but wanted previously to be
at one with me, upon the spot. I at last said,
yes; but stipulated as an indispensable condi-
tion that my parents should concur. He then
spoke formally with both of them ; they signified
their satisfaction ; mutual promises were given
on the faith of his advancement, which it was
expected would be speedy. Sisters and aunts
were informed of tliis arrangement, and the
strictest secrecy enjoined on them.

Thus from a lover I had got a bridegroom.
The difi"erence between the two soon showed
itself to be considerable. If any one could
change the lovers of all honorable maidens into
bridegrooms, it would be a kindness to our sex,
even though marriage should not follow the
connection. The love between two persons
does not lessen by the change, but it becomes
more reasonable. Innumerable little follies, all
coquetries and caprices, disappear. If the bride-
groom tells us, that we please him better in a
morning cap than in the finest head-dress, no
discreet young woman will disturb herself about
her hair-dressing; and nothing is more natural
than that he too should think solidly, and rather
wish to form a housewife for himself than a
gaudy doll for others. And thus it is in every
province of the business.

Should a young woman of this kind be fortu-
nate enough to have a bridegroom who possesses
understanding and acquirements, she learns from
him more than universities and foreign lands
can teach. She not only willingly receives in-
struction, when he offers it, but she endeavors
to elicit more and more from him. Love makes
much that was impossible possible. By degrees
too that subjection, so necessary and so graceful
for the female sex, begins : the bridegroom does
not govern like the husband ; he only asks; but
his mistress seeks to notice what he wants, and
to offer it before he asks it.

So did experience teach me what I would
not for much have missed. I was happy ; truly
hapjiy, as woman could be in the world: that
is to say, for a while.

The Serious of my old French teacher now
occurred to me ; as well as the defence, which
I had once suggested in regard to it.

With God i had again become a little more

288

GOETHE.

acquainted. He had given me a bridegroom
whom I loved ; and for this I felt some thank-
fulness. Earthly love itself concentrated my
soul, and jnU its powers in motion; nor did it
contradict my intercourse with God. I naturally
complained to him of what alarmed me : but I
did not perceive that I myself was wishing and
desiring it. In my own eyes, I was strong ; I
did not pray: "Lead us not into temptation!'
My thoughts were far beyond temptation. In
this flimsy tinsel-work of virtue I came to God :
he did not drive me back. On the smallest
movement towards him, he left a soft impres-
sion in my soul ; and this impression caused
me always to return.

Except Narciss, tlie world was altogether
dead to me ; excepting him, there was nothing
in it that had any charm. Even my love for
dress was but the wish to please him: if I kiiew
that he was not to see me, I could spend no
care upon it. I liked to dance; but if he was
not beside me, it seemed as if I could not bear
the motion. At a brilliant festival, if he was
not invited, I could neither take the trouble of
providing new things, nor of putting on the old
according to the mode. To me they were alike
agreeable, or rather I might say, alike burden-
some. I used to reckon such an evening very
fairly spent, when I could join myself to any
ancient card-party, though formerly I was with-
out the smallest taste for such things ; and if
some old acquaintance came and rallied me
about it, I would smile, perhaps for the first
time all that night. So likewise it was with
promenades, and every social entertainment
that can be imagined :

Him liad 1 chosen from all others.
His would I be, ami not another's;
To me his love was all in all.

Thus I was often solitary in the midst of
company; and real solitude was generally ac-
ceptable to me. But my busy soul could neither
sleep nor dream ; I felt and thought, and longed
for the ability to speak about my feelings and
my thoughts with God. From this were feelings
of another sort unfolded ; but they did not con-
tradict the former : my affection to Narciss ac-
corded with the universal scheme of nature ; it
nowhere hindered the performance of a duty.
They did not contradict each other, yet they
were immensely different. Narciss was the
only living form which hovered in my mind,
and to which my love was all directed; but the
oilier feeling was not directed towards any
form, and yet it was unspeakably agreeable. I
no longer have it, I no longer can impart it.

My lover, whom I used to trust with all my
secrets, did not know of this. I soon discovered
that he thought far otherwise: he often gave
me writings, which opposed with light and
heavy weapons all that can be called connection
with the Invisible. I used to read the books,
because they came from him : but at the end, I
knew no word of all that had been argued in
them.

Nor in regard to sciences and knowledge was
there any want of contradiction in our conduct.
He did as all men do, he mocked at learned
women ; and yet he kept continually instructing
me. He used to speak with me on all subjects,
law excepted ; and while constantly procuring
books of every kind for me, he frequently re-
peated the uncertain precept, " That a lady ought
to keep the knowledge she might have, more
secret than tlie Calvinist his creed in Catholic
countries.'' And while I, by natural conse-
quence, endeavored not to show myself more
wise or learned than formerly before the world,
Narciss himself was commonly the first who
yielded to the vanity of speaking about me and
my superiorities.

A nobleman of high repute, and at that time
vaUied for his influence, his talents and accom-
plishments, was living at our Court with great
applause. He bestowed especial notice on
Narciss, whom he kept continually about him.
They had once an argument about the virtue of
women. Narciss repeated to me what had
passed between them ; I was not wanting with
my observations ; and my friend required of
me a written essay on the subject. I could
write French fluently enough ; I laid a good
foundation with my teacher. My correspond-
ence with Narciss ^vas likewise carried on in
French : except in French books, there was then
no elegant instruction to be had. My essay
pleased the Count; I was obliged to let him
have some little songs, which I had lately been
composing. In short, Narciss appeared to revel
without stint in the renown of his beloved: and
the story, to liis great contentment, ended with
a French epistle in heroic verse, which the
Count transmitted to him on departing ; in which
their argument was mentioned, and my friend
reminded of his happiness in being destined,
after all his doid^ts and errors, to learn most
certainly what virtue was, in the arms of a vir-
tuous and charming wife.

He showed this poem first of all to me, and
then to almost every one ; each thinking on the
matter what he pleased. Thus did he act in
several cases ; every stranger, whom he valued,
must be made acquainted in our house.

A noble family was staying for a season in
the place, to profit by the skill of our physician.
In this house too, Narciss was looked on as a
son: he introduced me there; we found among
these worthy persons the most pleasant enter-
tainment for the mind and heart. Even the
common pastimesof society appeared less empty
here than elsewhere. All knew how matters
stood with us : they treated us as circumstances
would allow, and left the main relation unal-
luded to. I mention this one family; because,
in the after period of my life, it had a powerful
influence upon me.

Almost a year of our connection had elapsed;
and along with it, our spring was over. The
summer came, and all grew drier and more
earnest.

GOETHE.

2S9

By several unexpected deaths, some offices
were rendered vacant, which Narciss might
make pretensions to. The instant was at hand,
in which niy whole destiny must be decided ;
and while Narciss and all our friends were
making every effort to efface some impressions,
which obstructed him at Court, and to obtain
for him the wished-for situation, I turned with
my roqncst to my Invisible Friend. I was re-
ceived so kindly, that I gladly came again. I
confessed without disguise my wish that Narciss
might obtain the place: but my prayer was not
importunate ; and I did not require that it should
hajjpen for the sake of my petition.

The place was obtained by a far inferior
competitor. I was dreadfully troubled at this
news ; I hastened to my room, the door of which
I locked behind me. The first fit of grief went
off in a shower of tears; the next thought was,
" Yet it was not by chance that it happened ;''
and instantly I formed the resolution to be well
contented widi it, seeing even this apparent evil
would be for my true advantage. The softest
emotions then pressed in upon me, and divided
all the clouds of sorrow. I felt that, with help
like this, there was nothing one might not en-
dure. At dinner I appeared quite cheerful, to
the great astonishment of all the house.

Narciss had less internal force than I, and I
was called upon to comfort him. In his family,
too, he had many crosses to encounter, some of
■which atflicted him considerably; and, such
true confldence subsisting between us, he in-
trusted me with all. His negotiations for en-
tering on foreign service were not more fortu-
nate ; tbe whole of this I deeply felt on his
account and mine; the whole of it I ultimately
carried to the place, where my petitions had
already been so well received.

The softer these experiences were, the oftener
did I endeavor to renew them; I hopetl conti-
nually to meet with comfort, where I had so
often met widi it. Yet I did not always meet
widi it: I was as one that goes to warm him
in the sunshine, while there is something stand-
ing in the way that makes a shadow. " What
is this?" I asked myself I traced the matter
zealously, and soon perceived that it all de-
pended on the situation of my soul : if this was
not tin-ned in the straightest direction towards
God, I still continued cold; I did not feel his
counter influence; I could obtain no answer.
The second question was: '' What hinders this
direction ■?" Here I was in a wide field ; I per-
plexed myself in an inquiry, which lasted nearly
all the second year of my attachment to Narciss.
I might have ended the investigation sooner ;
for it was not long till I had got upon the proper
trace; but I would not confess it, and I sought
a thousand outlets.

I very soon discovered that the straight direc-
tion of my sou"! was marred by foolish dissipa-
tions, and employment with unworthy things.
The How and the Where were clear enough to
me. Yet by what means could I help myself,
2m

or extricate my mind from the calls of a world
where everything was either cold indilference
or hot insanity? Gladly would I have left things
standing as they were, and lived from day to
day, floating down with the stream, like other
people whom I saw quite happy: but I durst
not; my inmost feelings contradicted me too
often. Yet if I determined to renounce society,
and alter my relations to others, it was not in
my power. I was hemmed in as by a ring
drawn round mc : certain connections I could
not dissolve; and, in the matter, which lay
nearest to my heart, fatalities accumulated and
oppressed me more and more. I often went
to bed with tears; and, after a sleepless night,
arose again with tears: I required some strong
support; and God would not vouchsafe it me,
while I was running with the cap and bells.

I proceeded now to estimate my doings, all
and each ; dancing and play were first put upon
their trial. Never was there anydiing spoken,
thought, or written, for or against these practices,
which I did not examine, talk of, read, weigh,
reject, aggravate, and plague myself about. If I
gave up these habits, I was certain that Narciss
would be oflended ; for he was excessively afraid
of die ridicule, which any look of straight-laced
conscientiousness gives one in the eyes of the
world. And doing what I now looked upon as
folly, noxious folly, out of no taste of my own,
but merely to gratify him, it all grew dreadfully
irksome to me.

Without disagreeable prolixities and repeti-
tions, it is not in my power to represent what
pains I took, in trying so to counteract those oc-
cupations, which distracted my attention and
disturbed my peace of mind, that my heart, in
spite of them, might still be open to the influ-
ences of the Invisible Being. But at last with
pain I was compelled to feel, that in this way
the quarrel could not be composed. For no
sooner had I clothed myself in the garment of
folly, than it came to be something more than
a mask; that foolishness pierced and penetrated
me through and through.

May I here overstep the province of a mere
historical detail, and ofler one or two remarks
on what was then taking place within me?
What could it be, which so changed my tastes
and feelings, that, in my twenty-second year,
nay earlier, I lost all relish for die recreations
with which people of diat age are harmlessly
delighted ? Why were they not harmless for
me ? I may answer. Just because they were
not harmless ; because I was not, like others of
my years, unacquainted with my soul. No! I
knew from experiences, which had reached me
unsought, that there are loftier emotions, which
afford us a contentment such as it is vain to seek
in the amusement of the world; and that in
these higher joys there is also kept a secret trea-
sure for strengthening the spirit in misfortune.

But the pleasures of society, the dissipations
of youth, must needs have had a powerful
charm for me, since it was not in my power to
25

290

GOETHE.

en"a'3-e in tliem williout participation, to act
among tlieni as if they were not there. How
many things coukl I now do, if I lilced, with
entire coldness, wliich tlien dazzled and con-
foimded me, nay threatened to obtain the mas-
tery over me! Here there could no medium be
observed ; pither those delicious amusements, or
my nourishing and quickening internal eiiiotions,
must be given up.

But in my soul, the strife had, without my
own consciousness, already been decided. Even
if there still was anything within me that longed
for earthly pleasures, I was now become unfitted
for enjoying them. Much as a man might
hanker after wine, all desire of drinking would
forsake him, if he should be placed among full
barrels in a cellar, where the foul air was like
to suffocate him. Free air is more than wine :
this I fell but too keenly; and from the first, it
would have cost me little studying to prefer the
good to the delightful, if the fear of losing the
affection of Narciss had not restrained me. But
at last, when after many thousand struggles,
and thoughts coniinually renewed, I began to
cast a steady eye upon the bond v.'hich held me
to him, I discovered that it was but weak, that
it might be torn asunder. I at once perceived
it to be only as a glass bell, wliich shut me up
in the exhausted airless space : One bold stroke
to break the bell in pieces, and tliou art deli-
vered !

No sooner thought than tried. I drew off the
mask, and on all occasions acted as my heart
directed. Narciss I still cordially loved: bat
the thermometer, which formerly had stood in
hot water, was now hanging in the natural air;
it could rise no higher than the warmth of the
atmosphere directed.

Unhappily it cooled very much. Narciss drew
back, and began to assume a distant air: this
was at his option ; but my thermometer de-
scended as he drew back. Our family observed
this ; cjuestioned me, and seemed to be surprised.
I explained to them with stout defiance, that
heretofore 1 had made abundant sacrifices ; that
I was ready, still further and to the end of my
life, to share all crosses that befell him ; but that
I required fidl freedom in my conduct, that my
doings and avoidings must depend upon ray
own conviction; that indeed I would never
bigotedly cleave to my own opinion, but on the
other hand would willingly be reasoned with ;
yet, as it concerned my own happiness, the de-
cision must proceed from myself, and be liable
to no manner of constraint. The greatest phy-
sician could not move me by his reasonings to
take ^n article of food, which perhaps was alto-
gether wholesome and agreeable to many, so
soon as my experience had shown that on all
occasions it was noxious to me ; as I might pro-
duce cotfee for an instance; and just as little,
nay still less, would I have any sort of conduct,
wliich misled me, preached up and demonstrated
upon me as morally profitable.

Having so long prepared myself in silence,

these debates were rather pleasant than vexa-
tious to me. I gave vent td my soul; I felt the
whole worth of my determination. I yielded
not a hair's breadth ; and those to whom I owed
no filial respect were sharply handled and des-
patched. In the family I soon prevailed. My
mother from her youth had entertained these
sentiments, though in her they had never reached
maturity ; for no necessity had pressed upon her,
and exalted her courage to achieve her purpose.
She rejoiced in beholding her silent wishes ful-
filled through me. My younger 'sisters seemed
to join themselves with me ; the second was
attentive and quiet. Our aunt had the most to
object. The arguments, which she employed
appeared to her irrefragable, and they were
irrefragable, being altogether common-place.
At last I was obliged to show her, that she had
no voice in the aflair in any sense ; and after
this, she seldom signified that she persisted in
her views. She was indeed the only person
who observed this passage close at hand, with-
out in some degree experiencing its influence. I
do not calumniate her, when I say that she had
no character, and the most limited ideas.

My father acted altogether in his own way.
He spoke not much, but often, with me on the
matter: his arguments were rational ; and being
his arguments, they could not be impugned. It
was only the deep feeling of my right that gave
me strength to dispute against hiin. But the
scenes soon changed; I was forced to make ap-
peal to his heart. Straitened by his understand-
ing. I came out with the most pathetic pleadings.
I gave free coiu'se to my tongue and to my tears.
I showed him how much I loved Narciss ; how
much constraint I had for two years been en-
during ; how certain I was of being in the right ;
that I was ready to testify that certainty by the
loss of my beloved bridegroom and prospective
happiness ; nay, if it were necessary, by the loss
of all that I possessed on earth ; that I would
rather leave my native country, my parents and
my friends, and beg my bread in foreign lands,
than act against these dictates of my conscience.
He concealed his emotion ; he said nothing on
the subject for a while, and at last he openly
declared in my favor.

During all this time Narciss forbore to visit
us ; and my father now gave up the weekly
club, of which the former was a member. The
business made a noise at court, and in the town.
People talked about it, as is common in such
cases, which the public takes a vehement in-
terest in, because its sentence has usurped an
influence on the resolutions of weak minds. I
knew enough about the world to understand,
that one's conduct is often censured by the very
persons who would have advised it had one
consulted them : and independently of this, with
my internal composure, I should have looked on
all such transitory speculations just as if they
had not been.

On the other hand, I hindered not myself from
yielding to my inclination for Narciss. To me

GOETHE.

291

he had become invisible, and to him my feelings
had not altered. I loved him tenderly; as it
were anew, and much more steadfastly than
formerly. If he chose to leave my conscience
undisturbed, then I was his: wanting this con-
dition, I woiUd have refused a kingdom with
him. For several months, I bore these feelings
and these thoughts about with me ; and finding,
at last, that I was calm and strong enough to go
peacefully and firmly to work, I wrote him a
polite but not a tender note, inquiring why he
never came to see me.

As I knew his manner of avoiding to explain
himself in little matters, but of silently doing
what seemed good to him, I purposely urged
him in the present instance. I got a long, and
as it seemed to me a pitiful reply, in a vague
style and unmeaning phrases, stating, that with-
out a better place, he could not fix himself and
ofler me his hand ; that I best knew how hardly
it had fared with him hitherto; that as he was
afraid lest a fruitless intercourse, so long con-
tinued, might prove hurtful to my reputation, I
would give him leave to continue at his present
distance ; so soon as it was in his power to
make me happy, he would look ujDon the word
which he had given me as sacred.

I answered him upon the spot, that as our in-
tercourse was known to all the world, it might
perhaps be rather late to spare my reputation ;
for wliich, at any rate, my conscience and my
innocence were the surest pledges: however,
that I hereby freely gave him back his word,
and hoped the change would prove a happy one
for him. The same hour I received a short
reply, which was, in all essential particulars,
entirely synonymous with the first. He adhered
to his former statement, that so soon as he ob-
tained a situation, he would ask me if I pleased
to share his fortune with him.

This I interpreted as meaning simply nothing.
I signified to my relations and acquaintances,
that the aflair was altogether settled ; and it
was so actually. Having, nine months after-
wards, obtained the much desired preferment,
he offered me his hand ; but imder the condi-
tion, that as the wife of a man who must keep
house like other people, I should alter my opi-
nions. I returned him many thanks: and hast-
ened with my heart and mind away from this
transaction; as one hastens from the play-house
when the curtain falls. And as he, a short time
afterwards, found a rich and advantageous
match, a thing now easy for him ; and as I now
knew him to be happy in the way he liked, my
own tranquillity was quite complete.

I must not pass in silence the fact, that several
times before he got a place, and after it, there
were respectable projiosals made to me ; which,
however, I declined ■without tha smallest hesi-
tation, much as my father and my mother could
have wished for more compliance on my part.

At length, after a stormy March and April,
the loveliest May weather seemed to be allotted
me. With good health, I enjoyed an inde-

scribable composure of mind : look around mo
as I pleased, my loss appeared a gain to me.
Young and full of sensibility, I thought the uni-
verse a thousand times more beautiful than for-
merly, when I required to have society and
play, that in the fair garden tedium might not
overtake me. And now, as I did not conceal
my piety, I likewise took heart to own my love
for the sciences and arts. I drew, painted,
read ; and found enow of people to support me :
instead of the great world which I had left, or
rather which had left me, a smaller one was
formed about me, which was infinitely richer
and more entertaining. I had a turn for social
life ; and I do not deny that, on giving up my
old acquaintances, I trembled at the thought of
solitude. I now found myself abundantly, per-
haps excessively, indemnified. My acquaint-
ances ere long were very numerous ; not at
home only, but likewise among people at a dis-
tance. My story had been noised abroad ; and
many persons felt a curiosity to see the woman
who had valued God above her bridegroom.
There was a certain pious tone to be observed
at that time generally over Germany. In the
families of several counts and princes, a care
for the welfare of the soul had been awakened.
Nor were there wanting noblemen who showed
a like attention ; while in the inferior classes,
sentiments of this kind were diffused on every
side.

The noble family, whom I made mention of
above, now drew me nearer to them. They
had, in the meanwhile, gathered strength ;
several of their relations having settled in the
town. These estimable persons courted my
familiarity, as I did theirs. They had high con-
nections; I became acquainted, in their house,
with a great part of the j^rinces, counts, and
lords of the Empire. My sentiments were not
concealed from any one ; they might be honored
or be tolerated ; I obtained my object ; none at-
tacked me.

There was yet another way, by which I was
again led back into the world. About this
period, a step-brother of my father, M'ho till now
had never visited the house except in passing,
staid with us for a considerable time. He had
left the service of his court, where he enjoyed
great influence and honor, simply because all
matters were not managed quite according to
his mind. His intellect was just, his character
was rigid. In these points he was very like njy
father ; only the latter had withal a certain touch
of softness, wliich enabled him with greater ease
to yield a little in affairs, and though not to do,
yet to permit, some things against his own con-
viction ; and then to evaporate his anger at them,
either in silence by himself, or in confidence
amid his family. My uncle was a great deal
younger ; and his independence of spirit had
been favored by his outward circumstances.
His mother had been very rich ; and he still
had large possessions to expect from her near
and distant relatives : so he needed no foreign

292

GOETHE.

increase ; whereas my fatlier, with his moilerate
fortutie, was bound to his place by the considera-
tion of his salary.

My uncle had become still more unbending
from domestic sufferings. He had early lost an
amiable wife and a hopeful son; and from that
time, lie appeared to wish to push away from
him everything that did not hang upon his in-
dividual will.

In our family, it was whisiiered now and then
with some complacency, that probably he woidd
not wed again, and so we children might antici-
pate inheriting his foriiuie. I paid small regard
to this ; but the demeanor of the rest was not a
little modified by their hopes. In his own im-
pertiubable firmness of character, my uncle had
grown into the habit of never contradicting any
one in conversation. On the other hand, he lis-
tened with a friendly air to everyone's opiinon;
and would himself elucidate and strengthen it
by instances and reasons of his own. All who
did not know him fancied that he thought as
they did : for he was possessed of a preponde-
rating intellect; and could transport himself into
the mental state of any man, and imitate his
manner of conceiving. With me he did not
prosper quite so well : for here the question was
about emotions, of which he had not any glimpse;
and with whatever tolerance, and sympathy,
and rationality, he spoke about my sentiments,
it was palpable to me that he had not the slight-
est notion of what formed the ground of all my
conduct.

Widi all his secrecy, we by and by found out
the aim of his unusual stay with us. He had,
as we at length discovered, cast his eyes upon
our youngest sister, with the view of giving her
in marriage, and rendering her happy as he
pleased; and certainly considering her personal
and mental attractions, particularly when a
handsome fortune was laid into the scale along
with them, she miglit pretend to the first matches.
His feelings towards me he likewise showed us
l^antomimically, by procuring me a jsost of Cano-
ness, the income of which I very soon began to
draw.

My sister was not so contented with his care
as I. She now disclosed to me a tender secret,
which hitherto she very wisely had kept back ;
fearing, as in truth it happened, that I would by
all means counsel her against connection with
a man who was not suited to her. I did my
utmost, and succeeded. The purpose of my
uncle was too serious and too distinct; the pros-
pect for my sister, with her worldly views, was
too delightful to be thwarted by a passion which
her own understanding disapproved; she mus-
tered force enough to give it up.

On her ceasing to resist the gentle guidance
of my uncle, the foundation of his plan was
quickly laid. She was appointed Maid of Honor
at a neighboring court, where he could commit
her to the oversight and the instructions of a
lady, his friend, who presided there as Gover-
ness with great applause. I accompanied her

to the place of her new abode. Both of us had
reason to be satisfied with the reception which
we met with; and frequently I could not help
in secret smiling at the character, which now
as Canoness, as young and pious Canouess, I
was enacting in the world.

In earlier times, a situation such as this would
have confused me dreadfully; perhaps have
turned my head ; but now, in midst of all the
splendors that surrounded me, I felt extremely
cool. With great quietness, I let them frizzle
me, and deck me ont for hours; and thought no
more of it than that my place required me to
wear that gala livery. In the thronged saloons,
I spoke with all and each, though no shape or
character among them made impression on me.
On returning to my house, nearly all the feeling
I brought back with me was that of tired limbs.
Yet my imderstanding drew advantage from the
multitude of persons whom I saw; and I grew
acquainted with some ladies, patterns of every
virtue, of a noble and good demeanor; par-
ticularly with the Governess, under whom my
sister was to have the happiness of being
formed.

At my return, hower, the consequences of
this journey, in regard to health, were found to
be less favorable. With the greatest temper-
ance, the strictest diet, I had not been as I used
to be, completely mistress of my time and
strength. Food, motion, rising and going to
sleep, dressing and visiting, had not depended,
as at home, on my own conveniency and will.
In the circle of social life, you cannot stop with-
out a breach of courtesy: all that was needful I
had willingly performed ; because I looked upon
it as my duty, because I knew that it would
soon be over, and because I felt myself com-
pletely healthy. Yet this unusual restless life
must have affected me more strongly tlian I was
aware of Scarcely had I reached our house,
and cheered my parents with a comfortable
narrative, when a hemorrhage attacked me,
which, although it was not dangerous or lasting,
yet left a weakness after it iierceptible for many
a day.

Here, then, I had another lesson to repeat. I
did it joyfidly. Nothing bound me to the world;
and I was to be convinced that here the true
good was never to be found : so I waited in the
cheerfuUest and meekest state ; and after having
abdicated life, I was retained in it.

A new trial was awaiting me: my mother
took a painful and oppressive ailment, which
she had to bear five years, before she paid the
debt of nature. All this time we were sharply
proved. Often when her terror grew too strong,
she would make us all be summoned in the
night before her bed, that so at least she might
be busied if not bettered by our presence. The
load grew heavier, nay scarcely to be borne,
when my father too became unwell. From his
youth, he frequently had violent headaches;
which, however, at the longest, never used to
last beyond six-and-thirty hours. But now they

GOETHE.

293

were continual ; and wlien tlicy mounted to a
high degree of" pain, his moaniiigs tore my very
heart. It was in these temijestuous seasons
that I chiefly felt my bodily weakness; because
it kept me from my holiest and dearest duties,
or rendered the perlbrmance of them hard to an
extreme degree.

It was now that I could try whether the path,
which 1 had chosen, was the path of fantasy or
truth ; whedier I had merely thought as others
showed me, or the object of my trust had a
reality. To my unspeakable support, I always
found the latter. The straight direction of my
heart to God, the fellowship of the "Beloved
Ones"* I had sought and found ; and this was
what made all things light to me. As a traveller
in the dark, my soul, when all was pressing on
me from without, hastened to the place of re-
fuge, and never did it return empty.

In later times, some champions of religion,
who seem to be animated more by zeal than
feeling for it, have required of their brethren to
produce examples of prayers actually heard;
apparently, because they wished for seal and
writing, that they might proceed against their
adversaries diplomatically and juridically. How
unknown must the true feeling of the matter be
to tliese persons! how few real experiences can
they themselves have made!

1 can say that I never returned empty, when
in straits and oppression I called on God. This
is saying infinitely much ; more I must not and
cannot say. Important as each experience was
at the critical moment lor myself, the recital of
them would be flat, improbable^ and insignifi-
cant, were I to specify the separate cases. Happy
was I, that a thousand little incidents in combi-
nation proved, as clearly as the drawing of my
breath proved me to be living, that I was not
without God in the world. He was near to me,
I was before him. This is what, with a diligent
avoidance of all theological systematic terms, I
can with the greatest truth declare.

Much do I wish that in those times too I had
been entirely without system. But which of us
arrives early at the happiness of being conscious
of his individual self in its own pure combina-
tion, without extraneous forms 1 I was in earnest
with religion. I timidly trusted in the judgments
of others; I entirely gave in to the Hallean sys-
tem of conversion ; but my nature would by no
means tally with it.

According to this scheme of doctrine, the
alteration of the heart must begin witli a deep
terror on account of sin ; the heart in this agony
must recognise in a less or greater degree the
punishment vidiich it has merited, must get a
foretaste of Hell, and so embitter the delight of
sill. At last it feels a very palpable assurance
of grace ; which, however, in its progress often
fades away, and must again be sought with
earnest prayer.

Of all this no jot occurred with me. When I

* So in the original.— £</.

sought God sincerely, he let himself be found
of me, and did not reproach me about bygone
things. On looking back, I saw well enough
where I had been unworthy, where I still was
so; but the confession of my faults was altoge-
ther without terror. Not for a moment did the
fear of Hell occur to me: nay, tlie very notion
of a wicked S])irit, and a place of punishment
and torment after death, could nowise gain ad-
mission to the circle of my thoughts. I looked
upon the men, who lived without God, whose
hearts were shut against the trust in and the
love of the Invisible, as already so unhappy that
a hell and external pains appeared to promise
rather an alleviation tlian an aggravation of
their misery. I had but to turn my eyes upon
the persons in this world, who in their breasts
gave scope to hateful feelings ; who hardened
their hearts against the Good of whatever kind,
and strove to force the Evil on themselves and
others ; who shut their eyes by day, that so they
might deny the shining of the sun: How imut-
terably wretched did these persons seem to me!
Who could have formed a Hell to make their
situation Vi'orse ?

This mood of mind continued in me, witliout
change, for half a score of years. It nuiintained
itself through many trials; even at the moving
death-bed of my beloved mother. I was frank
enough on this occasion not to hide ray com
fortable frame of mind from certain pious but
rigorously orthodox people ; and I had to suffer
many a friendly admonition on that score. They
reckoned they were just in season for explain-
ing with what earnestness one ought to strive
to lay a right foundation in the days of health
and youth.

In earnestness I too determined not to fail.
For the moment, I allowed myself to be con-
vinced ; and fain would I have grown for life,
distressed and full of fears. But what was my
surprise on finding absolutely that I could not!
When I thought of God, I was cheerful and con-
tented: even at the painful end of my dear mo-
ther, I did not shudder at the thought of death.
Yet I learned many and far other things than
my uncalled teachers thought of, in these solemn
hours.

By degrees I grew to doubt the dictates of so
many famous jjeople, and retained my senti-
ments in silence. A certain lady of my friends,
to whom I had at first disclosed too much, in-
sisted still on interfering with my business.
Of lier too I was forced to rid myself; at last I
firndytold her, that she might spare herself this
labor, as I did not need her counsel ; that I knew
my God, and would have no guide but him.
She felt exceedingly offended ; I believe she
never quite forgave me.

This determination to withdraw from the ad-
vices and the influence of my friends, in spiritual
matters, produced the consequence, that also in
my temporal aflairs I gained sufhcient courage
to obey my own persuasions. But for the assist-
ance of my faithful invisible Leader, I could
25*

294

GOETHE.

not have prospered here. I am still gratefully
astonished at liis wise and happy guidance. No
one knew how matters stood with me; even I
myself did not know.

The thing, the wicked and inexplicable thing,
which separates us from the Being to whom we
owe onr life, and in whom all that deserves the
name of life must find its nourishment; the
thing, which we call Sin, I yet knew nothing of

In my intercourse with my invisible Friend,
I felt the sweetest enjoyment of all my powers.
My desire of constantly enjoying this felicity
was so predominant, that 1 abandoned without
hesitation whatever marred our intercourse ; and
here experience was my surest teacher. But it
was with me as with sick persons, who have
no medicine, and try to help themselves by
diet. Something is accomplished, but far from
enough.

I could not always live in solitude ; though in
it I found the best preservative against the dis-
sijiation of my thoughts. On returning to the
tumult, the impression it jiroduced upon me
was the deeper for my previous loneliness.
My most peculiar advantage lay in this, that
love for quiet was my ruling passion, and that
in the end I still drew back to it. I perceived,
as in a kind of twilight, my weakness and my
misery; and tried to save myself by avoiding
danger and exposure.

For seven years I had used my dietetic
scheme. I held myself not wicked, and I
thought my state desirable. But for some pecu-
liar circumstances and occurrences, I had re-
mained in this position : it was by a curious
path that I got further. Contrary to the advice
of all my friends, I entered on a new connection.
Their objections made me pause at first. I
turned to my invisible Leader, and, as he per-
mitted me, I went forward without fear.

A man of spirit, heart and talents, had bought
a property beside us. Among the strangers
whom I grew acquainted with, were this per-
son and his family. In our manners, domestic
economy and habits, we accorded well ; and
thus we soon approximated to each other.

Philo, as I propose to call him, was already
middle aged : in certain matters he was highly
serviceable to my father, whose strength was
now decaying. He soon became the friend of
the family ; and finding in me, as he was pleased
to say, a person free alike from the extravagance
and emptiness of the great world, and from the
narrowness and aridness of the still world in
the country, he courted intimacy with me, and
ere long we were in one another's confidence.
To me he was very jileasing and useful.

Though I did not feel the smallest inclination
or capacity for mingling in public business, or
seeking any influence on it, yet I liked to hear
about such matters, liked to know whatever
happened far and near. Of worldly things, I
loved to get a clear though unconcerned percep-
tion : feeling, sympathy, affection, I reserved for
God, for my people and my friends.

The latter were, if I may say so, jealous of
Philo, in my new connection with him. In
more than one sense, they were right in warning
me about it. I suifered much in secret; for
even I could not consider their remonstrances
as altogether empty or selfish. I had been ac-
customed, from of old, to give a reason for my
views and conduct ; but in this case my convic-
tion would not follow. I prayed to God, that
here as elsewhere he would warn, restrain and
guide me; and as my heart on this did not dis-
suade me, I went forward on my way with
comfort.

Pliilo on the whole had a remote resemblance
to Narciss ; only a pious education had more
enlivened and concentrated his feelings. He
had less vanity, more character: and, in busi-
ness, if Narciss was delicate, exact, persevering,
indefatigable, the other was clear, sharp, quick
and capable of working with incredible ease.
By means of him, I learned the secret history
of almost every noble personage with whose
exterior I l*ad grown acquainted in society. It
was pleasant for me to behold the tumult, off
my watch-tower, from afar. Philo could now
hide nothing from me: he confided to me by
degrees his own concerns both inward and out-
ward. I was in fear because of him ; for I
foresaw certain circumstances and entangle-
ments ; and the mischief came more speedily
than I had looked for. There were some con-
fessions he had still kept back ; and even at last
he told me only w'hat enabled me to guess the
worst.

What an effect had this upon my heart! I
attained experiences, which to me were alto-
gether new. With infinite sorrow I beheld an
Agathon, who, being educated in the groves of
Delphi, yet owed his school fee, which he was
now obliged to pay with its accumulated in-
terest ; and this Agathon was my especial friend.
My sympathy was lively and complete ; I suf-
fered with him ; both of us were in the strangest
state.

After having long occupied myself with the
temper of his mind, I at last turned round to
contemplate my own. The thought: 'Thou art
no better than he,' rose like a little cloud before
me, and gradually expanded till it darkened all
my soul.

I now not only thought myself no better than
he ; I felt this, and felt it as I should not wish to
do again. Nor was it any transitory mood. For
more than a year, I was constrained to feel that,
if an unseen hand had not restrained me, I
might have become a Girard, a Cartouche, a
Damiens, or any wretch you can suppose. The
tendencies to this I traced too clearly in my
heart. Heavens! what a discovery !

If hitherto I never had been able, in the
faintest degree, to recognise in myself the reality
of sin by experience, its possibility was now
become apparent to me by anticipation, in the
most tremendous manner. And yet I knew not
evil; I but feared it: I felt that I might be

GOETHE.

2V)5

guilty, ami could not accuse myself of bein^

so.

Deeply as I -was convinced that such a tem-
perament of soul, as I now saw mine to be,
could never bo adapted for that union with the
invisible Being, which I hoped for after death ;
I did not, in the smallest, fear that I should
finally be separated from him. With all the
wickedness, which I discovered in my heart, I
still loved Him; I hated what I felt, nay, wished
to hate it still more earnestly; my whole desire
was to be delivered from this sickness, and this
tendency to sickness ; and I was persuaded that
the great Physician would at length vouchsafe
his help.

The sole question was: What medicine will
cure this malady? The practice of virtue?
This I could not for a moment think. For ten
years, I had already practised more than mere
virtue; and the horrors now first discovered
had, all the while, lain hidden at the bottom of
my soul. Might they not have broken out with
me, as they did with David when he looked on
Bathsheba ? Yet was not he a friend of God ;
and was not I assured in my inmost heart that
God was my friend?

Was it then an unavoidable infirmity of hu-
man nature ? Must we just content ourselves
in feeling and acknowledging the sovereignty
of inclination ? And, with the best will, is there
nothing left for us but to abhor the fault we have
committed, and on the like occasion to commit
it again ?

From systems of morality I could obtain no
comfort. Neither their severity, by which they
try to bend our inclinations, nor their attractive-
ness, by which they try to place our inclinations
on the side of virtue, gave me any satisfaction.
The fundamental notions, which I had imbibed
from intercourse with my invisible Friend, were
of far higher value to me.

Once, while I was studying the songs com-
posed by David after that tremendous fall, it
struck me very much that he traced his indwell-
ing corruption even in the substance out of
which he had been shaped ; yet that he wished
to be freed from sin, and that he earnestly en-
treated for a pure heart.

But how was this to be attained ? The answer
from the Scripture I was well aware of: ' That
the blood of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin' was
a Bible truth, which I had long known. But
now for the first time, I observed that as yet I
had never understood this oft-repeated saying.
The questions: Wliat does it mean? How is it
to be? were day and night working out their
answers in me. At last I thought I saw as by
a gleam of light, that what I sought was to be
found in the incarnation of the everlasting Word,
by whom all things, even we ourselves, were
made. That the Eternal descended as an in-
habitant to the depths in which we dwell, which
he surveys and comprehends ; that he passed
through our lot from stage to stage, from concep-
tion and birth to the grave ; that by this mar-

vellous circuit he again mounted to those shining
Heights, whitlier we too must rise in ordei to
be happy: all this was revealed to me, as in a
dav\ning remoteness.

Oh ! Why must we, in speaking of such things,
make use of figures, which can only indicate
external situations! Where is there in His eyes
aught high or deep, aught dark or clear? It is
we only that have an Under and Above, a night
and day. And even for this did He become like
us, since otherwise we could have had no part
in him.

But how shall we obtain a share in this price-
less benefit? 'By faidi,' the l^cripture says.
And what is faith ? To consider the account of
an event as true — what help can this atford me?
I must be enabled to appropriate its effects, its
consequences. This appropriating faith must
be a state of mind peculiar, and to the natural
man, unknown.

' Now, gracious Father, grant me faith !' so
prayed I once in the deepest heaviness of heart.
I was leaning on a little table, where I sat; my
tear-stained countenance was hidden in my
hands. I was now in the condition, in which
we seldom are, but in which we are required to
be, if God is to regard our prayers.

0 that I could but paint what I felt then ! A
sudden force drew my soul to the cross where
Jesus once expired: it was a sudden force, a
pull, I cannot name it otherwise, such as leads
our soul to an absent loved one : an approxima-
tion, which perhaps is far more real and true
than we imagine. So did my soul approach
the Son of Man, who died upon the cross ; and
that instant did I know what faith was.

' This is faith !' said I ; and started up as half
affrighted. I now endeavored to get certain
of my feeling, of my view ; and shortly I be-
came convinced that my spirit had acquired a
power of soaring upwards, which was altogether
new to it.

Words fail us in describing such emotions. I
could most distinctly separate them from all
fantasy: they were entirely without fantasy,
without image ; yet they gave us just the cer-
tainty of their referring to some object, which
our imagination gives us when it paints for us
the features of an absent lover.

When the first rapture was over, I observed
that my present state of soul had formerly been
known to me; only I had never felt it in such
strengdi ; I had never held it fast, never made
it mine. I believe, indeed, diat every human
soul at intervals feels something of it. Doubt-
less it is this which teaches every mortal that
there is a God.

With this power, whicli used to visit me from
time to time, I had hitherto been well content:
and had not, by a singular arrangement of events,
that unexpected sorrow weighed upon me for a
twelvemonth; had not my own ability and
strength on this occasion altogether lost its credit
with me; I perhaps might have been satisfied
with this condition all my days.

296

GOETHE.

But now, since that great moment, I had as it
were got wings. I could mount aloft above
what used to tlireaten me ; as tlie bird can fly
singing and widi ease across the fiercest stream,
while the little dog stands anxiously baying on
the bank.

My joy M-as indescribable ; and though I did
not mention it to any one, my people soon ob-
served an unaccustomed cheerfulness in me, and
could not understand the reason of my joy. Had
I but forever held my peace, and tried to nourish
this serene temper in my soul ! Had I not al-
lowed myself to be misled by circumstances, so
as to reveal my secret! Then might I again
have saved myself a long and tedious circuit.

As in the previous ten years of my Christian
course, this necessary force had not existed in
my soul, I had just been in the case of other
worthy people ; had helped myself by keeping
my fancy always full of images, which had
some reference to God : a practice so far truly
useful ; for noxious images and their baneful
consequences are by that means kept away.
Often too our spirit seizes one or other of these
spiritual images, and mounts with it a little way
upwards ; like a young bird fluttering from twig
to twig.

Images and impressions pointing towards God
are presented to us by the institutions of the
Church, by organs, bells, singing, and particu-
larly by the iDreaching of our pastors. Of these
I used to be unsj^eakably desirous: no weather,
no bodily weakness could keep me back from
church ; the sound of the Sunday bells was the
only tiling that rendered me impatient on a sick
bed. Our head Court chai:ilain, a gifted man, I
heard with great delight: his colleagues too I
liked ; and I could pick the golden ajiple of the
word from the common fruit, with which on
earthen platters it was mingled. With public
ordinances, all sorts of private exercises were
combined ; and these too but nourished fancy
and a finer kind of sense. I was so accustomed
to this track, I reverenced it so much, that even
now no higher one occurred to me. For my
soul has only feelers, and not eyes ; it gropes,
but does not see : Ah ! that it could get eyes and
look !

On this occasion, therefore, I again went with
a longing mind to sermon: but alas, what hap-
pened ! I no longer found what I was wont to
find. These preachers were blunting their teeth
upon the shell, while I enjoyed the kernel. I
soon grew weary of them ; and I had already
been so spoiled, that I could not be content with
the little they aflbrded me. I required images,
I wanted impressions from witliout; and reck-
oned it a pure spiritital desire that I felt.

Pliilo's parents had been in connection with
the Herrnhuther community : in his library were
many writings of Count Zinzendorf 's. He had
spoken with me very candidly and clearly on
the subject more than once ; inviting me to turn
over one or two of these treatises, if it were but
for the sake of studying a psychological pheno-

menon. I looked upon the Count, and those
that followed him, as very heterodox: and so
the Ebersdurf hymn-book, which my friend had
pressed upon me, lay unread.

However, in my total destitution of external
excitements for my soul, I opened up the hymn-
book as it were by chance ; and found in it, to
my astonishment, some songs whicli actually,
though under a fantastic form, appeared to sha-
dow what I felt. The originality and the sim-
plicity of their expression drew me on. It
seemed to be peculiar emotions expressed in a
peculiar way ; no school technology suggested
any notion of formality or common-place. I
was persuaded that these j)eople felt as I did : I
was very happy to lay hold of here and there
a stanza in their songs, to fix it in my memory,
and carry it about with me for days.

Since the moment, when the truth had been
revealed to me, some three months had in this
way passed along. At last I came to the deter-
mination of disclosing everything to Philo, and
asking him to let me have those writings, about
which I ^vas now become immoderately curious.
Accordingly I did so, notwithstanding there was
something in my heart, which earnestly dis-
suaded me.

I circumstantially related to him all the story;
and, as he was a leading person in it, and my
narrative conveyed the sharpest reprimand on
him, he felt surprised and moved to an extreme
degree. He melted into tears. I rejoiced at
this; believing that in his mind also a full and
fundamental change liad taken place.

He provided me with all the writings that I
could require ; and now I had excess of nour-
ishment for my imagination. I made rapid pro-
gress in the Zinzendorfic mode of thought and
speech. And be it not supposed that I am yet
incapable of prizing the peculiar turn and man-
ner of the Count. I willingly do justice to him ;
he is no empty fantast ; he speaks of mighty
truths, and mostly in a bold figurative style ; the
people who despise him know not either how
to value or discriminate his qualities.

At that time I became exceedingly attached
to him. Had I been mistress of myself, I would
certainly have left my friends and country, and
gone to join him. We should infallibly have
understood each other, and should hardly have
agreed together long.

Thanks to my better genius that now kept
me so confined by my domestic duties ! I reck-
oned it a distant journey if I visited the garden.
The charge of my aged weakly father aflbrded
me employment enough, and in hours of recre-
ation I had Fancy to procure me pastime. The
only mortal whom I saw was Philo : he was
higldy valued by my father; but with me, his
intimacy had been cooled a little by the late
explanation. Its influence on him had not pene-.
trated deep ; and as some attempts to talk in
my dialect had not succeeded with him, he
avoided touching on this subject ; and the more
readily, as his extensive knowledge put it always

GOETHE.

297

in his power to introduce new topics in his con-
versation.

I was thus a Herrnhuth sister on my own
footing. I had especially to hide this new turn
of my temper and my inclinations from the
head Court chaplain, whom, as my father con-
fessor, I had much cause to honor; and whose
high merits, liis extreme aversion to the Herrn-
huth community did not diminish in my eyes
even then. Unhappily this worthy person had
to suffer many troubles on account of me and
others.

Several years before he had become acquaint-
ed with an upright pious gentleman, residing in
a distant quarter; and had long continued in
unbroken correspondence with him as with one
who truly sought God. How painful was it to
the spiritual leader, when this gentleman sub-
sequently joined himself to the community of
Herrnhuth, where he lived for a long while !
How delightful, on the other hand, when at
length he quarrelled with the brethren; deter-
mined to settle in our neighborhood ; and seemed
once more to yield himself completely to the
guidance of his ancient friend !

The stranger was presented, as in triumph,
by the upper Pastor to all the chosen lambs of
his fold. To our house alone he was not intro-
duced, because my father did not now see com-
pany. The gentleman obtained no little appro-
bation : he combined the polish of the court
with the winning manner of the Brethren ; and
having also many fine qualities by nature, he
soon became the favorite saint with all who
knew him ; a result at which the chaplain was
exceedingly contented. But, alas ! it was merely
in externals that the gentleman had split with
the community ; in his heart he was yet entirely
a Herrnhuther. He was, in truth, concerned
for the reality of the matter : but yet the gim-
cracks, which the Count had stuck around it,
were at the same time quite adapted to his
taste. Besides he had now become accustomed
to this mode of speaking and conceiving; and
if he had to hide it carefully from his ancient
friend, it but became the more necessary for
him, whenever he could get a knot of trusty
persons round him, to come forth with his cou-
plets, litanies, and little figures ; in which, as
miglit have been supposed, he met with great
applause.

I knew nothing of the whole affair, and daw-
dled forward in my sejiarate path. For a long
tkne, we continued mutually vmknown.

At a leisure hour, I happened once to visit a
lady who was sick. I found several acquaint-
ances along with her; and soon perceived that
my appearance had cut short their conversation.
I affected not to notice anything ; but saw ere
long, with great surprise, some Herrnhuth figures
stuck upon the wall in elegant frames. Quickly
comprehending what had passed before my en-
trance, I expressed my pleasure at the sight in
a few suitable verses.

Conceive the wonder of my friends ! We
2 N

explained ourselves; instantly we were agreed,
and in each otlier's confidence.

I henceforth often sought for opportunities of
going out. Unhappily I found them only once
in three or four weeks: yet I grew acquainted
with our gentleman apostle, and by degrees
with all the body. I visited their meetings,
when I could : with my social disposition, it
was quite delightful for me to communicate to
others, and to hear from them, the feelings
which till now I had conceived and harbored
by myself

But I was not so completely taken with my
friends, as not to see that few of them could
really feel the sense of those affecting words
and emblems; and that from these they drew
as little benefit, as formerly they did from the
symbolic language of the Church. Yet, notwith-
standing, I went on with them, not letting this
disturb me. I thought I was not called to search
and try the hearts of others; even although by
long-continued guiltless exercisings, I had been
prepared for something better. 1 had my share
of profit from our meetings : in speaking, I in-
sisted on attending to the sense and spirit, which,
in things so delicate, is rather apt to be disguised
by words than indicated by them ; and for the
rest I left with silent toleration each to act ac-
cording to his own conviction.

These quiet times of secret social joy were
shortly followed by storms of open bickering
and contradiction; contentions which excited
great commotion, I might almost say occasioned
not a little scandal, in the Court and town.
The period was now arrived when our Chap-
lain, that stout gainsayer of the Herrnhuth Bre-
thren, must discover, to his deep, but I trust,
sanctified humiliation, that his best and once
most zealous hearers were now all leaning to
the side of that Community. He was exces-
sively provoked : in the first moments, he forgot
all moderation : and could not, even if he had
inclined it, afterwards retract. Violent debates
took place ; in which most happily I was not
mentioned ; both as I was but an accidental
member of that hated body; and as our zealous
preacher could not spare my father and my
friend, in certain civic matters. With silent
satisfaction, I continued neutral. It was irksome
to me to converse about such feelings and ob-
jects, even with well affected people, if they
could not penetrate the deepest sense, and lin-
gered merely on the surface. But to strive with
adversaries about things on which even friends
could scarcely understand each other seemed
to me unprofitable, nay pernicious. For I could
soon perceive that many amiable noblemen,
who on this occurrence could not shut their
hearts to enmity and hatred, had very soon
passed over to injustice ; and, in order to defend
an outward form, had almost sacrificed their
most substantial duties.

Greatly as the worthy clergyman might, in
the present case, be wrong; much as others
tried to irritate me at him, I could never hesi-

298

GOETHE.

tate to give him my sincere respect. I knew
liim Well: I could candidly transport myself
into his way of looking at these matters. I have
never seen a man without his weaknesses ; only,
in distinguished men they strike us more. We
wish, and will at all rates have it, that persons
privileged as they are should at the same time
pay no tribute, no tax whatever. I honored him
as a superior man : and hoped to use the influ-
ence of my calm neutrality to bring about, if not
a peace, at least a truce. I know not what my
efl'orts might have done; but God concluded the
aflliir more briefly, and took the Chaplain to
Himself. On his coffin, all wept who lately had
been striving with him about words. His up-
rightness, his fear of God, no one ever had
doubted.

I too was ere long forced to lay aside this
Herrnhuth doll work, which, by means of these
contentions, now appeared before me in a rather
different light. Our uncle had in silence exe-
cuted his intentions with my sister. He off'ered
her a young man of rank and fortune as a bride-
groom ; and showed, by a rich dowry, what
might be expected of himself. My father joy-
fully consented : my sister was free and fore-
warned, she did not hesitate to change her state.
The bridal was appointed at my uncle's castle :
family and friends were all invited ; and we
came in the highest spirits.

For the first time in my life, the aspect of a
house excited admiration in me. I had often
heard of my uncle's taste, of his Italian archi-
tect, of his collections and his library; but, com-
paring this with what I had already seen, I had
formed a very vague and fluctuating picture of
it in my thoughts. Great, accordingly, was my
surprise at the earnest and harmonious impres-
sion which I felt on entering the house, and
which every hall and chamber deepened. If
elsewhere pomp and decoration had but dissi-
pated my attention, I felt here concentrated and
drawn back upon myself In like manner, the
preparatives for these solemnities and festivals
produced a silent pleasure, by their air of dig-
nity and splendor ; and to me it seemed as in-
conceivable, that one man could have invented
and arranged the whole of this as that more
than one could have combined to labor in so
high a sjiirit. Yet withal the landlord and his
people were entirely natural; not a trace of
stifi'ness or of empty form was to be seen.

The wedding itself was managed in a striking
way: an exquisite strain of vocal music came
upon us by surprise ; and the clergyman went
through the ceremony with a singular solemnity.
I was standing by Philo at the time ; and instead
of a congratulation, he whispered in my ear :
" When I saw your sister give away her hand,
I felt as if a streatn of boiling water had been
poured upon me." " Why so ?" I inquired. " It
is always the way with me," said he, "when I
behold two people joined." I laughed at him ;
but I have often since had cause to recollect his
words.

The revel of the party, among whom were
many young people, looked particularly glitter
ing and airy, as everything around us was dig-
nified and serious. The furniture, plate, table
ware, and table ornaments, accorded with the
general whole; and if in other houses, the fur-
nisher and architect seemed to have proceeded
from the same school, it here appeared that both
furnisher and butler had taken lessons from the
architect.

We staid together several days; and our in-
telligent and gifted landlord had variedly pro-
vided for the entertainment of his guests. I did
not in the present case repeat the melancholy
proof, which has so often in my life been forced
upon me, how unhappily a large mixed com-
pany are situated, when, altogether left to them-
selves, they must select the most general and
vapid pastimes, that tlie blockheads of the parly
may not want amusement, however it may fare
with those that are not such.

My vmcle had arranged it altogether differ-
ently. Two or three Marshals, if I may call them
so, had been appointed by him : one of them
had charge of providing entertainment for the
young. Dances, excursions, little games, were
of his invention, and under his direction ; and
as young people take delight in being out of
doors, and do not fear the influences of the air,
the garden and the garden hall had been as-
signed to them ; while some additional pavilions
and galleries had been erected and appended
to the latter, formed of boards and canvas
merely, but in such proportions, so elegant and
noble, they reminded one of nothing else but
stone and marble.

How rare is a festivity, in which the person
who invites the guests feels also tliat it is his
duty to provide for their conveniences and wants
of every kind !

Hunting and card parties, short promenades,
opportunities for trustful private conversations,
were afforded to the elder persons : and who-
ever wished to go earliest to bed was certain to
be lodged the most remote from noise.

By this liappy order, the space in which we
lived appeared to be a little world; and yet,
considered narrowly, the castle was not large:
without an accurate knowledge of it, and with-
out the spirit of its owner, it would have been
impossible to keep so many people in it, and to
quarter each according to his humor.

As the aspect of a well-formed person pleases
us, so also does a fair establishment, by means
of which the presence of a rational intelligent
mind is made apparent to us. We feel a joy in
entering even a cleanly house, though it maybe
tasteless in its structure and its decorations; be-
cause it shows us the presence of a person cul-
tivated in at least one sense. Doubly pleasing
is it, therefore, when, from a human dwelling,
the spirit of a higher though merely sensual cul-
ture speaks to us.

All this was vividly impressed upon my ob-
servation at my uncle's castle. I had heard

GOETHE.

299

and read much of art; Philo, too, was a lover
of pictures, and had a fine collection ; I myself
had often practised drawing ; but I had been
too deeply occupied with my emotions for tast-
ing aught that diil not bear upon the one thing
needful, which alone I was bent on carrying to
perfection ; and besides, such objects of art as
I had seen appeared, like all other worldly ob-
jects, to distract my thoughts. But now for the
first time, outward things had led me back upon
myself: I now first perceived the difference
between the natural charm of the nightingale's
song, and that of a four-voice anthem pealed
from the expressive organs of men.

I did not hide my joy at this discovery from
my uncle; who, when all the rest were settled
at their posts, was wont to come and talk with
me in private. He spoke with great modesty
of what he had produced and made his own;
with great decision, of the views in which it
had been gathered and arranged : and I could
easily observe that he spoke with a forbearance
towards me; seeming, in his usual way, to rate
the excellence, of which he was himself pos-
sessed, below the excellence, which, in my
opinion, was the best and properest.

■'If we can conceive it possible," he once ob-
served, "that the Creator of the world himself
assumed the form of his creature, and lived in
that manner for a time upon the earth, this crea-
ture must appear to us of infinite perfection, be-
cause susceptible of such a combination with
its Maker. Hence, in our idea of man there
can be no inconsistency with our idea of God :
and if we often feel a certain disagreement with
Him, and remoteness from Him, it is but the
more on that account our duty, not like advo-
cates of the wicked Spirit, to keep our eyes con-
tinually upon the nakedness and weakness of
our nature; but rather to seek out every pro-
perty and beauty, by which our pretension to
a similarity with the Divinity may be made
good."

I smiled and answered : " Do not make me
blush, dear uncle, by your complaisance in talk-
ing in my language ! What you have to say is
of such importance to me, that I wish to hear
it in your own most peculiar style ; and then
what parts of it 1 cannot quite apjiropriale, I
will endeavor to translate.'

" I may continue,'' he replied, " in my own
most peculiar way, without any alteration of
my tone. Man's highest merit always is as
much as possible to rule external circumstan-
ces, and as little as possible to let himself be
ruled by them. Life lies before us, as a huge
quarry lies before the architect : he deserves not
the name of architect, except when, out of this
fortuitous mass, he can combine, with the great-
est economy, suitableness and durability, some
form, the pattern of which originated in his
spirit. All things without us, nay, I may add,
all things on us, are mere elements; but deep
within us, lies the creative force, which out of
these can produce what they were meant to be ;

and which leaves us neither sleep nor rest, till
in one way or anodier, without us or on us, this
has been produced. You, my dear niece, have,
it may be, chosen the better part: you have
striven to bring your moral being, your earnest
lovely nature to accordance with itself and with
the Highest; but neither ought we to be blamed,
when we strive to get acquainted with the sen-
tient man in all his comprehensiveness, and to
bring about an active harmony among his pow-
ers.""^

By such discoursing, we in time grew more
familiar; and I begged of him to speak with
me as with himself, omitting every sort of con-
descension. "Do not think," replied my uncle,
" tliat I flatter you, when I commend your mode
of thinking and of acting. I reverence the in-
dividual who understands distinctly what he
wishes ; who unweariedly advances, who knows
the means conducive to his object, and can seize
and use them. How far his object may be great
or little, may merit praise or censure, is the next
consideration with me. Believe me, love, most
part of all the misery and mischief, of all that
is denominated evil, in the world, arises from
the fact that men are too remiss to get a proper
knowledge of their aims, and when they do
know them to work intensely in attaining them.
They seem to me like people who have taken
up a notion, that they must and will erect a
tower, and who yet expend on the foundation
no more stones and labor than would be suf-
ficient for a hut. If you, my friend, whose
highest want it was to perfect and unfold your
moral nature, had, instead of those bold and
noble sacrifices, merely trimmed between your
duties to yourself and to your family, your bride-
groom, or perhaps your husband, you must have
lived in constant contradiction with your feel-
ings, and never could have had a peaceful mo-
ment."

"You employ the word sacrifice," I answered
here ; " and I have often thought that to a higher
purpose, as to a divinity, we otfer up, by way
of sacrifice, a thing of smaller value; feeling,
like persons who should willingly and gladly
bring a favorite lamb to the altar, for the health
of a beloved father."

" Whatever it may be," said he, " reason or
feeling that commands us to give up the one
thing for the other, to choose the one before the
other, decision and perseverance are, in my
opinion, the most noble qualities of man. You
cannot have the ^vare and the money both at
once : and he who always hankers for the ware
without having heart enough to give the money
for it, is no better off than he who repents him
of the purchase when the ware is in his hands.
But I anr far from blaming men on this account :
it is not they who are to blame : it is the ditli-
cult entangled situation they are in ; they know
not how to guide themselves in its perplexities.
Thus, lor instance, you will on the average find
fewer bad economists in the country than in
towns, and fewer again in small towns than in

300

GOETHE.

great; and wliyl Man is intended for a limited
condition ; objects that are simple, near, deter-
minate, lie comprehends, and he becomes ac-
customed to employ such means as are at hand ;
but on entering a wider field, he now knows
neither what he would nor what he should ;
and it amounts to quite the same, whether his
attention is distracted by tlie multitude of ob-
jects, or is overpowered by their inagnitude and
dignity. It is always a misfortune for him,
when he is induced to struggle after anytliing,
with which he cannot join himself by some
regular exertion of his powers.

"Certainly," pursued he, "without earnest-
ness there is nothing to be done in life: yet
among the people whom we name cultivated
men, but little earnestness is to be found : in
labors and employments, in arts, nay, even in
recreations, they proceed, if I may say so, with
a sort of self-defence ; they live, as they read a
heap of newspapers, only to be done with it;
they remind one of that young Englishman at
Rome, who told, with a contented air, one even-
ing in some company, that 'to-ilay he had des-
patched six churches and two galleries.' They
wish to know and learn a multitude of things,
and exactly those with which they have the
least concern ; and they never see that hunger
is not stilled by snapping at the air. When I
become acquainted with a man, my first inquiry
is: With what does he employ himself, and how,
and with what degree of perseverance'? The
ansu er regulates the interest which I shall take
in hun for life."

" My dear uncle," I replied, " you are per-
haps too rigorous; you perhaps withdraw your
helping hand IVom here and there a worthy man
to whom you might be useful."

"Can it be imputed as a fault," said he, "to
one who has so long and vainly labored on them
and about them"? How much we have to sutler
in our youth from men, who think they are in-
viting us to a delightful pleasure party, when
they undertake to introduce us to the Danaides
or .Sysiphns! Heaven be praised! I have rid
myself of these people : if one of them unfor-
tunately comes within my sphere, instantly,
in the politest manner, I compliment him out
again. It is from these people that you hear
the bitterest complaints about the miserable
course of things, the aridity of science, the levity
of artists, the emptiness of poets, and much
more of that sort. They do not recollect that
they, and the many like them, are the very per-
sons who would never read a book, which had
been written just as they require it; that true
poetry is alien to tliem; that even an excellent
work of art can never gain their approbation
save by means of prejudice. But let us now
break off; for this is not tlie time to rail or to
complain.'

He directed my attention to the different pic-
tures, which were fixed upon the wall : my eye
dwelt on those whose look was beautifid or sub-
ject striking. This lie permitted for a while ;

at last he said: "Bestow a little notice on the
spirit, which is manifested in these other works.
Good minds delight to trace the finger of the
Deity in nature: why not likewise pay some
small regartl to the hand of his imitator?" He
then led my observation to some unobtrusive
figures; entleavoring to make me understand,
that it was the history of art alone, which could
give us an idea of the worth and dignity of any
work of art; that we should know the weary
steps of mere handicraft and mechanism, over
which the man of talents has arisen in the
course of centuries, before we can conceive how
it is possible for the man of genius to move with
airy freedom, on the pinnacle whose very aspect
makes us giddy.

With this view, he had formed a beautiful
series of works ; and whilst lie explained it, I
could not help conceiving that I saw before me
a similitude of moral culture. When I expressed
my thoughts to him, he answered : " You are
altogether in the right; and we see from this,
that those do not act properly, who follow moral
cultivation by itself exclusively. On the con-
trary, it will be found that he whose spirit
strives for a development of this kind, has like-
wise every reason, at the same time, to improve
his finer sentient powers, that so he may not
run the risk of sinking from his moral height,
by giving way to the enticements of a lawless
fancy, and degrading his moral nature by allow-
ing it to take delight in tasteless baubles, if not
in something worse."

I did not in the least suspect him of levelling
at me; but I felt myself struck, when I thought
how many insipidities had been among the
songs that used to edify me ; and how little
favor the figin-es, which had joined themselves
to my religious ideas, would have found in the
eyes of my uncle.

Pliilo, in the mean time, had frequently been
busied in the library: he now took me along
with him. We admired the selection as well
as the multitude of books. They had been col-
lected on my uncle's general principle ; there
were none among them to be found but such
as either lead us to correct knowledge, or teach
us right management; such as either give us fit
materials, or further the concordance of our
spirit.

In the course of my life, I had read very
largely; in certain branches, there was scarce
a work unknown to me : the more pleasant
was it for me here, to speak about the general
survey of the whole, and to observe deficien-
cies, where I had formerly seen nothing but a
hampered confusion or a boundless expansion.

Here too we became acquainted with a very
interesting, quiet man. He was a physician
and a naturalist: he seemed rather one of the
Penates than of the inmates. Ho showed us
the museum, which like the library was fixed
in glass cases to the walls of the chamber,
adorning and ennobling the space which it did
not crowd. On this occasion, I recalled with

GOETHE.

301

joy the days of youth, and showed my father
many objects, which he formerly had laid upon
tl;e sick bed of his little child, that had yet
scarcely looked into the world. At the same
time, the Physician, in our present and follow-
ing conversations, did not scruple to avow how
nearly he approximated to me in respect of my
religious sentiments: he warmly praised my
uncle for his tolerance, and his esteem of all
that testified or forwarded the worth and unity
of human nature; admitting also, that he called
for a similar return from others, and was wont
to shun and to condemn nothing else so heartily
as individual darkness and narrowness of mind.
Since the nuptials of my sister, joy had sparkled
in the eyes of our uncle : he often spoke with
nie of what he meant to do for her and for her
children. He had several fine estates; he ma-
naged them himself, and hoped to leave them
in the best condition to his nephews. Regarding
the small estate, on which we were at present
living,heappeared toentertain peculiar thoughts.
" I will leave it to none,"' said he, " but to a per-
son who can understand, and value and enjoy
what it contains, and who feels how loudly every
man of wealth and quality, especially in Ger-
many, is called on to exhibit something like a
model to others."

Most part of his guests were now gone; we
too were making ready for departure, thiidcing
we had seen the final scene of this solemnity;
when his attention in affording us some digni-
fied enjoyment produced a new surprise. We
had mentioned to him the delight which the
chorus of voices, that suddenly commenced with-
out accompaniment of any instrument, had given
us, at my sister's marriage. We hinted, at the
same time, how pleasant it would be were such
a thing repeated ; but he seemed to pay no heed
to us. The livelier, on this account, was our
surprise, when he said one evening : " The music
of the dance has died away; our transitory,
youthful friends have left ns ; the happy pair
themselves have a more serious look than they
had some da3'^s ago : to part at such a time, when
we perhaps shall never meet again, certainly
never without changes, exalts us to a solemn
mood, which I know not how to entertain more
nobly than by the music that some of you were
lately signifying a desire to have repeated."

The chorus, which had in the meanwhile
gathered strength, and by secret practice more
expertness, was accordingly made to sing us a
scries of four and of eight voiced melodies,
which, if I may say so, gave a real foretaste of
bliss. Till then, 1 had only known the pious
mode of singing, as good souls practise it, fre-
quently with hoarse pipes, imagining, like wild
birds, that they are praising God, while they
procure a pleasant feeling to themselves. Or
perhaps I had hearkened to the vain music of
concerts, in which one is at best invited to ad-
mire the talent of the singer^ and very seldom
even to a transient feeling of enjoyment. Now,
nowever, I vvas listening to music, which, as it

originated in the deepest principles of the most
accomplished human beings, was by suitable
and practised organs in harmonious unity made
again to address the deepest and best principles
of man, and to impress him at that moment
with a lively sense of his likeness to the Deity.
They were all devotional songs, in the Latin
language: they sat like jewels in the golden
ring of a polished intellectual conversation; and
without pretending to edify, they elevated me
and made me happy in the most spiritual man-
ner.

At our departure, he presented all of us with
handsome gifts. To me he gave the cross of
my order, more beautifully and artfully worked
and enamelled than I had seen it before. It
was hung upon a large brilliant, by which it was
likewise fastened to the chain, and to which it
gave the aspect of the noblest stone in the cabi-
net of some collector.

My sister with her husband went to their
estates ; the rest of us to our abodes ; appearing
to ourselves, so far as outward circumstances
were concerned, to have returned to quite an
every-day existence. We had been, as it were,
dropped from a palace of the fairies dov/ii upon
the common earth ; and were again obliged to
help ourselves as best we could.

The singular experiences, which this new
circle had afforded, left a fine impression on my
mind. This, however, did not long continue in
its first vivacity ; although my uncle tried to
nourish and renew it, by sending to me certain
of his best and most pleasing works of art;
changing them, from time to time, with others
which I had not seen.

I had been so much accustomed to be busied
with myself, in regulating the concerns of my
heart and temper, and conversing on these
matters with persons of a like mind, that I
could not long study any work of art attentively
without being turned by it back upon myself. I
was used to look upon a picture or a copperplate
merely as upon the letters of a book. Fine print-
ing pleases well : but who would read a book
for the beauty of its printing? In like manner,
I required of each pictorial form tiiat it should
tell me something, should instruct, affect, im-
prove me : and after all my uncle's letters to
expound his works of art, say what he would, I
continued in my former humor.

Yet not only my peculiar disposition, external
incidents and changes in our family still further
drew me back from contemplations of that na-
ture, nay for some time even from myself. I
had to suffer and to do, more than my slender
strength seemed fit for.

My maiden sister had till now been as a
right arm to me. Healthy, vigorous, unspeakably
good-natured, she had managed all the house-
keeping, I myself being busied with the personal
nursing of our aged father. She was seized with
a catarrh, which changed to a disorder in the
lungs : in three weeks she was lying in her
coffin. Her death inflicted wounds on me, the
26

302

GOETHE.

scars of which I am not yet willing to exa-
mine.

I was lying sick before they buried her: the
old ailment in my breast appeared to be awaken-
ing ; I coughed with violence, and was so hoarse
I could not speak beyond a whisper.

My married sister, out of fright and grief, was
biought to bed before her time. Our old father
thought himself at once about to lose his children
and the hope of their posterity : his natural tears
increased nry sorrow ; I prayed to God that he
would give me back a suHerable state of health.
I asked him but to spare my liJe until my father
should be dead. I recovered ; I was what I
reckoned well ; being able to discharge my du-
ties, though with pain.

My sister was again witli child. Many cares,
which in such cases are committed to the mo-
ther, in the present instance fell to me. She
was not altogether happy with her husband ;
this was to be hidden from our father: I was
frequently made judge of their disputes; in
which I could decide with greater safety, as
my brother trusted in me, and the two were
really worthy persons, only each of them, in-
stead of humoring, endeavored to convince the
other; and out of eagerness to live in constant
harmony, they never could agree. I now learn-
ed to mingle seriously in worldly matters, and
to practise what of old I had but sung.

My sister bore a son : the feebleness of my
father did not hinder him from travelling to her.
The sight of the child exceedingly enlivened and
cheered him ; at the christening, contrary to his
custom, he seemed as if inspired ; nay, I might
say like a Genius with two faces. With the one
he looked joyfully forward to those regions
which he soon hoped to enter; with the other,
to the new, hopeful, earthly life, which had
arisen in the boy that was descended from him.
On our journey home, he never tired with talk-
ing to me of the child, its form, its health, and
his wish that the endov.'ments of this new de-
nizen of earth might be cultivated rightly. His
reflections on the subject lasted when we had
arrived at home : it was not till some days
afterwards, that I observed a kind of fever in
hiin ; which displayed itself, without shivering,
in a sort of langiud heat commencing after din-
ner. He did not yield, however ; he went out
as usual in the mornings, faithfully attending to
the duties of his office, till at last continuous
serious symptoms kept him in the house.

I never shall forget with what distinctness,
clearness, and repose of mind, he settled in the
greatest order the concerns of his house, the ar-
rangements of his funeral, as if these had been
the business of some other person.

With a cheerfulness, which he never used to
show, and which now mounted to a lively joy,
he said to me, " Where is the fear of death
which once I felt? Shall I shrink at departing"?
I have a gracious God ; the grave awakes no
terror in me ; I have an eternal life."

To recall the circumstances of his death,

which shortly followed, forms one of the most
pleasing entertainments of my solitude : the
visible workings of a higher Power in that so-
lemn time, no one shall argue from my memory
and my belief.

The death of my beloved father altogether
changed my mode of life. From the strictest
obedience, the narrowest confinement, 1 passed
at once into the greatest freedom; I enjoyed it
like a sort of food from which one has long ab
stained. Formerly I very seldom spent two
hours from home ; now I very seldom lived a
day there. My friends, v, hom I had been allow-
ed to visit but by hurried snatches, wished to
have my company uninterruptedly, as I did to
have theirs. I was often asked to dinner : at
walks and pleasure jaunts I never failed. But
when once the circle had been fairly run, I saw
that the invaluable happiness of liberty consist-
ed, not in doing what one pleases and what
circumstances may invite to, but in being able,
without hindrance or restraint, to do in the
direct way what one regards as right and pro-
per: and in this case, I was old enough to reach
a precious truth, without having smarted for my
ignorance.

One pleasure I could not deny myself: it
was, as soon as might be, to renevv and strengthen
my connection with the Herrnhuth Brethren. I
made haste accordingly to visit one of their
establishments at no great distance : but here I
by no means found what I had been anticipating.
I was frank enough to signify my disappoint-
ment, which they tried to soften by alleging that
the present settlement was nothing to a full and
fitly organized community. This I did not take
upon me to deny ; yet in my thought, the genuine
spirit of the matter should have been displayed
in a small body as well as in a great one.

One of their Bishops who was present, a per-
sonal disciple of the Count, took considerable
pains with me. He spoke English perfectly,
and as I too understood a little of it, he reckoned
this a token that we both belonged to one class :
I however reckoned nothing of tlie kind ; his
conversation did not in the smallest satisfy me.
He had been a cutler ; was a native of Moravia :
his mode of thought still savored of the artisan.
With Herr Von L — , who had been a Major in
the French service, I got upon a better footing;
yet I never could reduce myself to the submis- •
siveness, which he displayed to his superiors;
nay, I felt as if one had given me a box on the
ear, when I saw the Majors wife, and other
women more or less like ladies, take the Bishop's
hand and kiss it. Meanwhile a journey into
Holland was proposed ; which, however, doubt-
less for my good, did not take jilace.

About this time, my sister was delivered of
a daughter ; and now it was the turn of us
women to exult, and to consider how the little
creature should be bred like one of us. The
husband, on the other hand, was not so satisfied,
when in the following year another daughter
saw the light: with his large estates, he wanted

GOETHE.

303

to have boys about him, who in future might
assist him in his management.

My health was feeble; I kept myself in
peace; and observing a quiet mode of life, I
enjoyed a tolerable equability. I was not afraid
of death; nay, I wished to die; yet I seeretly
perceived that God was granting time for me
to prove my soul, and to advance still nearer to
himself hi my many sleepless nights espe-
ciall}', I have at times felt something, which I
cannot undertake to describe.

It was as if my soul were thinking separately
from the body; she looked upon the body as a
foreign substance, as we look upon a garment.
She pictured with extreme vivacity events and
times long past, and felt by means of this, events
that were to follow. Those times are all gone
by; what follows likewise will go by; the body
too will fall to pieces like a vesture ; but I, the
well-known I, I am.

The thought is great, exalted and consoling;
yet an excellent friend, with whom I every day
became more intimate, instructed me to dwell
on it as little as 1 could. This was the Phy-
sician whom I met with in my uncle's house,
and who since then had accurately informed
himself about the temper of my body and my
spirit. He showed me how much these feel-
ings, when wc cherish them within us inde-
pendently of outward objects, tend as it were to
excavate us, and to undermine the whole foun-
dation of our being. "To be active," he would
say, " is the primary vocation of man ; all the
intervals, in which he is obliged to rest, he
should employ in gaining clearer knowledge of
external things, for this will in its turn facilitate
activity."

This friend was acquainted with my custom
of looking on my body as an outward object; he
knew also that 1 pretty well understood my con-
stitution, my disorder, and the medicines of use
for it; nay, that by continual sufferings of jny
own or other people, I had really grown a kind
of half doctor ; he now carried forward my at-
tention from the human body, and the drugs
which act uj^on it, to the kindred objects of crea-
tion : he led me itp and down as in the Paradise
of the first man ; only, if I may continue my
comparison, allowing me to trace in dim re-
moteness the Creator walking in the Garden in
the cool of the evening.

How gladly did I now see God in nature,
when I bore him with such certainty within my
heart! How interesting to me was his handy-
work; how thankful did I feel that he had
pleased to quicken me with the breath of his
mouth !

We again had hopes that my sister would
present us with a boy; her husband waited
anxiously for that event, but did not live to see
it. He died in consequence of an unlucky fall
from horseback; and my sister followed him,
soon after she had brought into the world a
lovely boy. The four orphans they had left I
could not look at but with sadness. So many

healthy people had been called away before
poor sickly me ; might I not also have to witness
blights among these fair and hopeful blossoms?
1 knew the world sufficiently to understand
what dangers threaten the precarious breeding
of a child, especially a child of rank ; and it
seemed to me that since the period of my youth
these dangers had increased. I felt diat weakly
as I was, I could not be of much, perhaps of
any service to the little ones ; and I rejoiced the
more on finding that my uncle, as imleed might
have been looked for, had determined to devote
his whole attention to the education of those
amiable creatures. And this they doubtless
merited in every sense : they were handsome ;
and with great diversities, all promised to be
well conditioned, reasonable persons.

Since my worthy Doctor had suggested it, I
loved to trace out family likenesses among our
relatives and children. My father had carefully
preserved the portraits of his ancestors, and got
his own and those of his descendants drawn by
tolerable masters ; nor had my mother and her
people been forgotten. We accurately knew the
characters of all the family, and as we had
frequently compared them with each other, we
now endeavored to discover in the children the
same peculiarities outward or inward. My
sister's eldest son, we thought, resembled his
paternal grandfather, of whom there M'as a fine
youthful picture in my uncle's collection: he
had been a brave soldier ; and in this point too
the boy took after him, liking arms above all
other things, and busying himself with them
whenever he had opportunity. In paying me a
visit this was constantly remarkable: my father
had possessed a very pretty armory ; and the
boy got neither peace nor rest till I had given
him a pair of pistols and a fowling-piece out of
it, and he had learned the proper way of using
them. At the same time, in his conduct or his
bearing, there was nothing which approached
to rudeness : on the other hand, he was always
meek and sensible.

The eldest daughter had attracted my espe-
cial love ; of which perhaps the reason was
that she resembled me, and of all the four held
closest to me. But I may well admit that the
more closely I observed lier as she grew, the
more she shamed me; I could not look on her
without a sentinsent of admiration; nay, I may
almost say, of reverence. You would scarce
have seen a nobler form, a more peaceful spirit,
an activity so equable and universal. No mo-
ment of her life was she unoccupied ; and eveiV
occupation in her hands grew dignified. All
seemed indilferent to her, so that she could but
accomplish what was proper in the place and
time; and in the same manner, she could pa-
tiently continue unemployed, when there was
nothing to be done. 1'his activity without the
need of occupation I have never elsewhere met
with. In particular her conduct to the suffering
and destitute was from her earliest youth inimi-
table. For my part, I freely confess that I never

304

GOETHE.

Lad the gift myself to make a business of bene-
ficence : I was not niggardly to the poor; nay,
I often gave too largely for my means; yet this
■was little more than buying myself off; and a
person needed to be made for me, if I was to
bestow attention on him. Directly tlie reverse
was the conduct of my niece. I never saw her
give a poor man money ; whatever she obtained
from me for this purpose, she failed not in the
first place to change for some necessary article.
Never did she seem more lovely in my eyes,
than when rummaging my clothes-presses: she
was always sure to light on something which I
did not wear and did not need : and to sew
these old cast articles togetlier, and put them on
some ragged child, she thought her highest hap-
piness.

Her sister's turn of mind appeared already
different: she had much of her mother; she
promised to be soon very elegant and beautiful,
and she now bids fair to keep her promise. She
is greatly taken up with her exterior; from her
earliest years, she could deck herself and bear
herself in a way that struck you. I still remem-
ber with what ecstasy, -when quite a little crea-
ture, she beheld her figure in a mirror, after I
had been obliged to bind on her some precious
pearls, once my mother's, which she had by
chance discovered near me.

In reflecting on these diverse inclinations, it
was pleasant for me to consider how my pro-
perty would, after my decease, be shared among
them, and again called into use by them. I saw
the fowling-pieces of my father once more tra-
velling round the fields upon my nephew's
shoulder, and birds once more falling out from
his hunting-pouch: I saw my whole wardrobe
issuing from the church at the Easter Confirma-
tion, on the persons of tidy little girls ; while
the best pieces of it were employed to decorate
some virtuous burgher maiden on her marriage
day. In furnisliing such children and poor little
girls, Natalia had a singular delight; although,
as I must here remark, she did not show the
smallest love, or if I may say it, smallest need
of a dependence upon any visible or invisible
Being, such as I had manifested in my youth so
strongly.

When I further thought that her younger sis-
ter, on that very day, would wear my jewels
and my pearls at court, I could view with peace
my possessions like my body given back to the
elements.

The children waxed apace: to my comfort,
they arc healthy, handsome, clever creatures.
That my uncle keeps them from me I endure
without repining: when staying in the neighbor-
hood, or even in the town, they seldom see me.

A singular personage, regarded as a French
clergyman, though no one rightly knows his
history, has been intrusted with the oversight
of all the children. He has them taught in va-
rious places ; they are put to board now here
now there.

At first I could perceive no plan whatever in

this mode of education ; till at last the Doctor
told me that the Abbe had convinced my uncle,
that in order to accomplish anything by educa-
tion, we must first become acquainted with the
pupil's tendencies and wishes: that when these
are ascertained, he ought to be transported to a
situation where he may, as speedily as possible,
content tlie former and attain the latter ; and so
if we have been mistaken, may still in time
perceive his error; and at last having found
what suits him, may hold the faster by it, may
the more diligently fashion himself according to
it. I wish this strange experiment may jjros-
per : with such excellent natures it pierhaps is
possible.

But there is one peculiarity in these instruct-
ers, which I never can approve of: they study
to seclude the children from whatever might
awaken them to an acquaintance with them-
selves and with the invisible, sole, faithful Friend.
I often take it badly of my uncle that, on this
account, he looks on me as dangerous for the
little ones. Thus in practice there is no man
tolerant ! Many assure us that they willingly
leave each to take his way; yet all of them en-
deavor to exclude from action every one that
does not think as they do.

This removal of the children troubles me the
more, the more I am convinced of the reality
of my belief. How can it fail to have a heavenly
origin, an actual object, when in practice it is so
effectual 1 Is it not by practice only that we
prove our own existence] Why then, by a like
mode, may we not demonstrate to ourselves the
influence of that Power who gives us all good
things?

That I am still advancing, never retrograding;
that my conduct is approximating more and
more to the image I have formed of perfection ;
that I every day feel more facility in doing what
I reckon proper, even wliile the weakness of
my body hinders me so much : can all this be
accounted for upon the principles of human na-
ture, whose corruption I have seen so clearly?
For me, at least, it cannot.

I scarce remember a command ; to me there
is nothing that assumes the aspect of a law ; it
is an impulse, which leads me, and guides me
always rightly. I freely follow my emotions,
and know as little of constraint as of repentance.
God be praised that I know to whom I owe
this happiness, a,nd that I cannot think of these
advantages without humility! Never shall I
run the risk of growing f)roud of my own abi-
lity and power, having seen so clearly what a
monster might be formed and nursed in every
huinan bosom, did not higher influence restrain
us.

INDENTURE.

FROM THE SAME.

Art is long, life short; judgment diflicnlt,
occasion transient. To act is easy, to think is

GOETHE.

305

hard; to act according to our thought is trouble-
some. PIvery beginning is cheerfid; the thres-
hold is the place of e.xpectation. The boy stands
astonished, liis impressions guide hiin ; he learns
sportfully, seriousness comes on him by sur-
prise. Imitation is born with us; what should
be imitated is not easy to discover. The excel-
lent is rarely found, more rarely valued. The
height charms us, the steps to it do not: with
the summit in our eye, we love to walk along
the plain. It is but a part of art that can be
taught; the artist needs it all. Who knows it
half, s])eaks much and is always wrong; who
knows it wholly, inclines to act and speaks sel-
dom or late. The former have no secrets and
no force; the instruction they can give is like
baked bread, savory and satisfying for a single
day ; but flour cannot be sown, and seed corn
ought not to be ground. Words are good, but
they are not the best. The best is not to be ex-
plained by words. The spirit in which we act
is the highest matter. Action can be understood
and again represented by the spirit alone. No
one knows what he is doing, while he acts
righdy; but of what is wrong we are always
conscious. Whoever works with symbols only
is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There
are many such, and they like to be together.
Their babbling detains the scholar ; their obsti-
nate mediocrity vexes even the best. The in-
struction, which the true artist gives us, opens
up the mind ; for where words fail him, deeds
speak. The true scholar learns from the known
to unfold the unknown, and approaches more
and more to being a master.

THE EXEQUIES OF MIGNON.

FROM THE SAME.

The Abbe called them in the evening to at-
tend the exequies of Mignon. The company
proceeded to the Hall of the Past; they found
it magnificently ornamented and illuminated.
The walls were hung with azure tapestry al-
most from the ceiling to the floor, so that nothing
but the cornices and friezes above and below
were visible. On the four candilabras in the
corners, large wax lights were burning; smaller
lights were in the four smaller candilabras
placed by the sarcophagus in tlie middle. Near
this stood four Boys, dressed in azure with
silver; they had broad fans of ostrich featliers,
which they waved above a figure that was
resting upon the sarcophagus. The company
sat down : two invisible Choruses began in a
soft musical recitative to ask: "Whom bring ye
us to the still dwelling"?" The four Boys replied
witli lovely voices: "'Tis a tired playmate
whom we bring you ; let her rest in your still
dwelling, till the songs of her heavenly sisters
once more awaken her."
2o

CHonus.

"Firstling of youth in our circle, we welcome
thee! With sadness welcome thee! May no
boy, no maiden follow! Let age only, willing
and composed, approach the silent Hall, and in
the solemn company, repose this one dear
child!

BOYS.

Ah ! reluctantly we brought her hither! Ah !
and she is to remain here ! Let us too remain ;
let us weep, let us weep upon her bier!

CHOHUS.

Yet look at tlie strong wings ; look at the
light clear robe! how glitters the golden band
upon her head ! Look at the beautiful, the noble
repose !

BOYS.

Ah! the wings do not raise her; in the frolic
game, her robe flutters to and fro no more ;
when we bound her head with roses, her looks
on us were kmd and friendly.

CHOHUS.

Cast forward the eyes of your spirits ! Awake
in your souls the imaginative power, which
carries Life, the fairest, the highest of earthly
endowments, away beyond the stars.

But ah ! We find her not here ; in the garden
she wanders not; the flowers of the meadow
she plucks no longer. Let us weep, we are
leaving her here! Let us weep and remain
with her!

CHORUS.

Children, turn back into life! Your tears let
the fresh air dry which plays upon the rushing
water. Fly from Night! Day and Pleasure and
Continuance are the lot of the living.

BOYS.

Up! Turn back into life! Let the day give
us labor and pleasure, till the evening brings
us rest, and the nightly sleep refreshes us.

CHOBUS.

Children! Hasten into life ! In the pure gar-
ments of beauty, may Love meet you with
lieavenly looks and with the wreath of im-
mortality !"

The Boys had retired ; the Abbe rose from
his seat, and went behind the bier. " It is the
appointment," said he, " of the Man who pre-
pared this silent abode, that each new tenant
of it shall be introduced with a solemnity.
After him, the builder of this mansion, the
founder of this establishment, we have next
brought a young stranger hither ; and thus al-
ready does this little space contain two altogether
dilTerent victims of the rigorous, arbitrary and
inexorable goddess of Death. By appointed
laws we enter into life ; the days are num-
bered, which make us ripe to see the light; but
26*

306

GOETHE.

for the duration of our life there is no law.
The weakest thread will spin itself to unex-
pected length ; and the strongest is cut suddenly
asunder by the scissors of the Fates, delighting,
as it seems, in contradictions. Of the child,
■whom we have here committed to her linal
rest, wc can say but little. It is still uncertain
whence she came; her parents we know not;
the years of her life we can only conjecture.
Her deep and closely shrouded soul allowed us
scarce to guess at its interior movements ; there
was nothing clear in her, nothing open but her
affection for the man, who had snatched her
from the hands of a barbarian. This impas-
sioned tenderness, this vivid gratitude, appeared
to be the flame, which consumed the oil of her
life: the skill of the physician could not save
that fair life, the most anxious friendship could
not lengthen it. But if art could not stay the
departing spirit, it has done its utmost to pre-
serve the body, and withdraw it from decay. A
balsamic substance has been forced through all
the veins, and now tinges, in the place of blood,
these cheeks too early faded. Come near, my
friends, and view this wonder of art and care!"
He raised the veil : the child was lying in
her angel's dress, as if asleep, in the most soft
and graceful posture. They approaclied it, and
admired this show of life. Wilhelm alone con-
tinued sitting in his place; he was not able to
compose himself: what he felt, he durst not
think ; and every thought seemed ready to
destroy his feeling.

For the sake of the Marchese, the speech had
been pronounced in French. That nobleman
came forward with the rest, and viewed the
figure with attention. The Abbe thus pro-
ceeded. " With a holy confidence, this kind
heart, shut up to men, was continually turned
to its God. Humility, nay an inclination to
abase herself externally, seemed natural to her.
She clave with zeal to the catholic religion, in
which she had been born and educated. Often
she expressed a still wish to sleep on conse-
crated ground : and according to the usage of
the church we have therefore consecrated this
marble coffin, and the little earth, which is
hidden in the cushion that supports her head.
With what ardor did she in her last moments
kiss the image of the Crucified, which stood
beautifully figured, on her tender arm, with
many hundred points !"' So saying, he stripped
up her right sleeve ; and a crucifix, with marks
and letters round it, showed itself in blue upon
the white skin.

The Marchese looked at this with eagerness,
stooping down to view it more intensely. " 0
God!"' cried he, as he stood upright, and raised
his hands to Heaven; "Poor child! Unhappy
niece! Do I meet thee here! What a painful
joy to find thee, whom we had long lost hope
of: to find this dear frame, which we had long
believed the prey of fishes in the ocean, here
preserved, though lifeless! I assist at thy funeral,
splendid in its external circumstances, still more

splendid from the noble persons who attend
thee to thy place of rest. And to these," added
he with a faltering voice, "so soon as I can
speak, I will express my thanks."

Tears hindered him from saying more. By
the pressure of a spring, the Abbe sank the
body into the cavity of the marble. Four Youths,
dressed as the Boys had been, came out from
behind the tapestry; and lifting the heavy,
beautifully ornamented lid upon the coffin, thus
began their song.

THE TOUTHS.

"Well is the treasure now laid up; the fair
image of the Past! Here sleeps it in the marble,
undecaying; in your hearts too it lives, it works.
Travel, travel back into life ! Take along with
you this holy Earnestness; for Earnestness alone
makes life eternity."

The invisible Chorus joined in with the last
words: but no one heard the strengthening
sentiment; all were too much busied with them-
selves, and the emotions, which these wonder-
ful disclosures had excited. The Abbe and
Natalia conducted the Marchese out; Theresa
and Lothario walked by Wilhelm. It was not
till the music had altogether died away, that
their sorrows, thoughts, meditations, curiosity
again fell on them with all their force, and
iTiade them long to be transported back into
that exalting scene.

EXTRACTS

FROM WILHELM MEISTER'S TRAVELS.*

By a short and pleasant road, Wilhelm had
reached the town, to which his letter was di-
rected. He found it gay and well built ; but its
new aspect showed too clearly that not long
before it must have sulTered by a conflagration.
The address of his letter led him into the last
small uninjured portion of the place, to a house
of ancient, earnest architecture, yet well kept,
and of a tidy look. Dim windows, strangely
fashioned, indicated an exhilarating pomp of
colours from within. Nor, in fact, did the inte-
rior fail to correspond with the exterior. In
clean apartments, everywhere stood furniture
which must have served several generations,
intermixed with very little that was new. The
master of the house received our traveller
kindly, in a litde chamber similarly fitted up.
These clocks had already struck the hour of
many a birth and many a death; everything
which met the eye reminded one that the past
might, as it were, be protracted into the present.

The stranger delivered his letter; but the
landlord, without opening it, laid it aside, and
endeavored, in a cheerful conversation, imme-
diately to get acquainted with his guest. They
soon grew confidential; and as Wilhelm, con-
trary to his usual habit, let his eye wander in-
* See Vol. IV. German Romance, by T. Carlj le.

GOETHE.

307

quisitively over the room, the good old man said
to him : " My domestic equipment excites your
attention. You here see how long a thing may
last; and one should make such observations
now and then, by way of counterbalance to so
much in the world that rapidly changes and
passes away. This same tea-kettle served my
parents, and was a witness of our evening fa-
mily assemblages ; this copper fire-screen still
guards me from the fire, which these stout old
tongs still help me to mend ; and so it is with
all throughout. I had it in my power to bestow
my care and industry on many other things, as
I did not occupy myself with changing these
external necessaries, a task which consumes so
many people's time and resources. An affec-
tionate attention to what we possess makes us
rich, for thereby we accumulate a treasure of
remembrances connected with indifferent things.
I knew a young man who got a common pin
from his love, while taking leave of her ; daily
fastened his breast- frill with it, and brought
back this guarded and not unemployed treasure
from, a long journeying of several years. In us
little men, such little things are to be reckoned
virtue."

"Manyaone too," answered Wilhelm, "brings
back, from such long and far travellings, a sharp
pricker in his heart, which he would fain be
quit of"

The old man seemed to know nothing of Le-
nardo's situation, though in the meanwhile he
had opened the letter and read it; for he re-
turned to his former topics.

"Tenacity of our possessions," continued he,
" in many cases gives us the greatest energy.
To this obstinacy in myself I owe the saving of
my house. When the town was on fire, some
people wished to snatch out their goods, and
lodge them here. I forbade this ; bolted my
doors and windows; and turned out, with seve-
ral neighbors, to oppose the flames. Our efforts
succeeded in preserving this summit of the
town. Next morning all was standing here as
you now see it, and as it has stood for almost a
hundred years."

" Yet you will confess," said Wilhelm, " that
no man withstands the change which Time
produces."

"That, in truth!" said the other: "but he
who holds out longest has still done something.
"Yes! even beyond the limits of our being
we are able to maintain and secure ; we trans-
mit discoveries, we hand down sentiments, as
well as property : and as the latter was my
chief province, I have for a long time exercised
the strictest foresight,-iuvented the most pecu-
liar precautions; yet not till lately have I suc-
ceeded in seeing my wish fulfilled.

" Commonly the son disperses what the father
has collected, collects something different, or in
a different way. Yet if we can wait for the
grandson, for the new generation, we find the
same tendencies, the same tastes, again making
their appearance. And so at last, by the care

of our Pedagogic friends, I have found an active
youth, who, if possible, pays more regard to old
possession than even I, and has withal a vehe-
ment attachment to every sort of curiosities.
My decided confidence he gained by the violent
exertions with which he struggled to keep off
the fire from our dwelling. Doubly and trebly
has he merited the treasure which I mean to
leave him: nay, it is already given into his
hands ; and ever since that time our store is in-
creasing in a wonderful way.

" Not all, however, that you see here is ours.
On the contrary, as in the hands of pawnbrokers
you find many a foreign jewel, so widi us I can
show you precious articles, which peojjle, under
the most various circumstances, have deposited
with us, for the sake of better keeping."

Wilhelm recollected the beautiful Box, which,
at any rate, he did not like to carry with him
in his wanderings ; and showed it to his land-
lord. The old man viewed it with attention;
gave the date when it ^vas probably made ; and
showed some similar things. Wilhelm asked
him if he thought it should be opened. The old
man thought not. "I believe, indeed," said Ije,
'^ it could be done without special harm to the
casket; but as you found it in so singular a way,
you must try your luck on it. For if you are
born lucky, and this little box is of any conse-
quence, the key will doubtless by and by be
found, and in the very place where you are
least expecting it."

" There have been such occurrences," said
Wilhelm.

"I have myself experienced such," replied
the old man ; " and here you behold the strangest
of them. Of this ivory crucifix I have had for
thirty years, the body with the head and feet, ,
in one place. For its own nature, as well as
for the glorious art displayed in it, I kept the
figure laid up in my most private drawer : nearly
ten years ago I got the cross belonging to it, with
the inscription ; and was then induced to have
the arms supplied by the best carver of our day.
Far, indeed, was this expert artist from equal-
ling his predecessor ; yet I let his work pass,
more for devout purposes, than for any admira-
tion of its excellence.

"Now, conceive my delight! A little while
ago the original, genuine arms, were sent me,
as you see them here united in the loveliest
harmony ; and I, charmed at so happy a coin-
cidence, cannot help recognising in this crucifix
the fortunes of the Christian religion, which,
often enough dismembered and scattered abroad,
will ever in the end again gather itself together
at the foot of the Cross."

Wilhelm admired the figure, and its strange
combination. /'I will follow your counsel,"
added he ; " let the casket continue locked till
the key of it be found, though it should lie till
the end of my life."

"One who lives long," said the old man,
" sees much collected and much cast asunder."

The young partner in the house now chanced

308

GOETHE.

to enter, and Wilhelm signified bis purpose of
intrusting the Box to tlieir keeping. A large
book was thereupon produced, the deposit in-
scribed in it, with many ceremonies and stipu-
lations ; a receipt granted, which applied in
worils to any bearer, but was only to be honored
on the giving of a certain token agreed upon
with the owner.

So passed their hours in instructive and en-
tertaining conversation, till at last Felix, mounted
on a gay pony, arrived in safety. A groom had
accoin})anied him, and was now for some time
to attend and serve Wilhelm. A letter from
Lenardo, delivered at the same time, complained
that he coidd find no vestige of the Nut-brown
]\Iaid ; and Wilhelm was anew conjured to do
his utmost in searching her out. Wilhelm im-
parted the matter to his landlord. The latter
smiled, and said : " We must certainly make
every exertion, for our friend's sake ; perhaps I
may succeed in learning something of her. As
I keep these old primitive household goods, so
likewise have I kept some old primitive friends.
You tell me that this maiden's father was dis-
tinguished by his piety. The pious have a more
intimate connection with each other than the
wicked; though externally it may not always
prosper so w^ell. By this means I hope to obtain
some traces of what you are sent to seek. But,
as a preparative, do you now pursue the resolu-
tion of placing your Felix among his equals, and
turning him to some fixed department of acti-
vity. Hasten with him to the great Institution.
I will point out the way you must follow in
order to find the Chief, who resides now in one,
now in another division of his Province. You
shall have a letter, with ray best advice and
direction." , - , ■■ - f -. : .

The pilgrims pursuing the way pointed out to
them, had, without ditticulty, reached the limits
of the Province, where they were to see so
many singularities. At tlie very entrance, they
found themselves in a district of extreme fer-
tility; in its soft knolls, favorable to crops ; in
its higher hills, to sheep-husbandry; in its wide
bottoms, to grazing. Harvest was near at hand,
and all was in the richest luxuriance: yet what
most surprised our travellers w^as, that they ob-
served neither men nor women; but in all
quarters, boys and youths engaged in preparing
for a happy harvest, nay already making ar-
rangements for a merry harvest-home. Our tra-
vellers saluted several of them, and inquired
for the Chief, of whose abode, however, they
could gain no intelligence. The address of their
letter was: To the Chief, or the Three. Of this
also the boys could make nothing; however,
they referred the strangers to an Overseer, wdio
was just about mounting his horse to ride oft'.
Our friends disclosed their object to this man;
the frank liveliness of Felix seemed to please
him, and so they all rode along together.

Wilhelm had already noticed, that in the cut

and color of the young people's clothes, a variety
prevailed, which gave the whole tiny popula-
tion a peculiar aspect: he was just about to
question his attendant on this point, when a
still stranger observation forced itself upon him ;
all the children, how employed soever, laid
down their work, and turned with singular, yet
diverse gestures, towards the party riding past
them ; or rather, as it was easy to infer, towards
the Overseer, who was in it. The youngest laid
their arms crosswise over their breasts, and
looked cheerfully up to the sky; those of middle
size held their hands on their backs, and looked
smiling on the ground ; the eldest stood with a
frank and spirited air ; their arms stretched
down, they turned their heads to the right, and
formed themselves into a line; whereas the
others kept separate, each where he chanced
to be.

The riders having stopped and disinoimted
here, as several children, in their various modes,
were standing forth to be inspected by the Over-
seer, Wilhelm asked the meaning of these ges-
tures; but Felix struck in, and cried gaily:
"What posture am I to take, then?"

"Without doubt," said the Overseer, "as the
first posture : The arms over the breast, the face
earnest and cheerful towards the sky."

Felix obeyed, but soon cried : " This is not
much to my taste ; I see nothing up there : does
it last long? But yes!" exclaimed he joyfully,
"yonder are a pair of falcons flying from the
west to the east: that is a good sign too?"

" As thou takest it, as thou behavest," said the
other; "now mingle among them, as they min-
gle." He gave a signal, and the children left
their postures, and again betook them to work,
or sport, as before.

" Are you at liberty," said Wilhelm then, " to
explain this sight which surprises me? I easily
perceive that these positions, these gestures, are
salutations directed to you."

"Just so," replied the Overseer; "salutaiions
which at once indicate in what degree of cul-
ture each of these boys is standing."

"But, can you explain to me the meaning of
this gradation?" inquired Wilhelm; "for that
there is one, is clear enough."

"This belongs to a higher quarter," said the
other: "so much, however, I may tell you, that
these ceremonies are not mere grimaces ; that
on the contrary, the import of them, not the
highest, but still a directing, intelligible import,
is communicated to the children ; while, at the
same time, each is enjoined to retain and con-
sider for himself whatever explanation it has
been thought meet to give him ; they are not
allowed to talk of these things, either to strangers
or among themselves ; and thus their instruc-
tion is modified in many ways. Besides, se-
crecy itself has many advantages; for when
you tell a man at once and straight forward, the
purpose of any object, he fancies there is nothing
in it. Certain secrets, even if known to every
one, men find that they must still reverence by

GOETHE.

309

concealment and silence, for this works on mo-
desty and good morals."

"I understand you," answered Wilhelm:
"why should not the principle which is so ne-
cessary in material things, be applied to spiritual
also? But perhaps, in another point, you can
satisfy my curiosity. The great variety of shape
and color in these children's clothes attracts my
notice ; and yet I do not see ail sorts of colors,
but a few in all their shades, from the lightest
to the deepest. At the same time, I observe that
by this no designation of degrees in age or merit
can be intended; for the oldest and the youngest
boys may be alike both in cut and color, while
those of similar gestures are not similar in
dress."

"On this matter also," said the other, " silence
is prescribed to me : but I am much mistaken,
or you will not leave us without receiving all
the information you desire."

Our party continued following the trace of the
Chief, which they believed themselves to be
upon. But now the strangers could not fail to
notice, with new surprise, that the farther they
advanced into the district, a vocal melody more
and more frequently sounded towards them
from tlie fields. Whatever the boys might be
engaged with, whatever labor they were carry-
ing on, they accompanied it with singing ; and
it seemed as if the songs were specially adapted
to their various sorts of occupation, and in simi-
lar cases, everywhere the same. If there chanced
to be several children in' company, they sang
together in alternating parts. Towards evening,
appeared dancers likewise, whose steps were
enlivened and directed by choruses. Felix
struck in with them, not altogether unsuccess-
fully, from horseback, as he passed ; and Wil-
helm felt gratified in this amusement, which
gave new life to the scene.

"Apparently," he said to his companion,
"you devote considerable care to this branch
of instruction; the accomplishment, otherwise,
could not be so widely dilfused, and so com-
pletely practised."

"We do," replied the other: "on our plan.
Song is the first step in education; all the rest
are connected with it, and attained by means
of it. The simplest enjoyment, as well as tlie
simplest instruction, we enliven and impress by
Song; nay, even what religious and moral
principles we lay before our children, are com-
municated in the way of Song. Other ad-
vantages for the excitement of activity, spon-
taneously arise from this practice; for, in ac-
customing the children to write the tones they
are to utter, in musical characters, and as oc-
casion serves, again to seek these characters in
the lUterance of their own voice ; and besides
this, to subjoin the text below the notes, they
are forced to practise hand, ear, and eye at
once, whereby they acquire the art of penman-
ship sooner than you would expect; and as all
this in the long run is to be eff"ected by copying
precise measurements and accurately settled

numbers, they come to conceive the high value
of Mensuration and Arithmetic much sooner
than in any other way. Among all imagiuablo
things, accordingly, we have selected music as
the element of our teaching; for level roads run
out from music towards every side."

Wilhclin endeavored to obtain still farther
information, and expressed his surprise at hear-
ing no instrumental music : " This is by no means
neglected, here," said the other ; " but practised
in a peculiar district, one of the most pleasant
valleys among the Mountains; and there again
we have arranged it so that the dilferent instru-
ments shall be taught in separate places. The
discords of beginners, in particular, are banished
into certain solitudes, where they can drive no
one to despair ; for you will confess that in
well-regulated civil society, there is scarcely a
more melancholy suffering to be undergone,
than what is forced on us by the neighbourhood
of an incipient player on the flute or violin.

" Our learners, out of a laudable desire to be
troublesome to no one, go forth of their accord,
for a longer or a shorter time, into the wastes;
and strive, in their seclusion, to attain the merit
which shall again admit them into the inhabited
world. Each of them, from time to time, is
allowed to venture an attempt for admission,
and the trial seldom fails of success; for bash-
fulness and modesty, in this, as in all other
parts of our system, we strongly endeavor to
maintain and cherish. That your son has a
good voice, I am glad to observe: all the rest is
managed with so much the greater ease."

They had now reached a place where Felix
was to stop and make trial of its arrangements,
till a formal reception should be granted him.
From a distance, diey had been saluted by a
jocund sound of music; it was a game in which
the boys were, for the present, amusing them-
selves in their hour of play. A general chorus
mounted up ; each individual of a wide circle
striking in at his time, with a joyful, clear, firm
tone, as the sign was given him by the Over-
seer. The latter more than once took the
singers by surprise, when at a signal he sus-
pended the choral song, and called on any
single boy, touching him with his rod, to catch
by himself the expiring tone, and adapt to it a
suitable song, fitted also to the spirit of what
had preceded. Most part showed great dex-
terity; a few, who failed in this feat, willingly
gave in their pledges, without altogether being
laughed at for their ill success. Felix was child
enough to mix among them instantly; and in
his new task he acquitted himself tolerably
well. The First Salutation was then enjoined
on him: he directly laid his hands on his breast,
looked upwards, and truly with so roguish a
countenance, that it was easy to observe no
secret meaning had yet in his mind attached
itself to this posture.

The delightful spot, his kind reception, the

merry playmates, all pleased the boy so well,

I that he felt no very deep sorrow as his father

310

GOETHE.

moved away: the departure of the pony was
perhaps a heavier matter; but he yiekled here
also, on learning that in this circle it could not
possibly be kept; and the Overseer promised
him, in compensation, that he should find an-
other horse, as smart and well-broken, at a
time when he was not expecting it.

As the Chief, it appeared, was not to be come
at, the Overseer turned to Wilhelm and said:
"I must now leave you, to pursue my occupa-
tions ; but first I will bring you to the Three,
who preside over our sacred things. Your letter
is addressed to them likewise, and they together
represent the Chief.'' Wilhelm could have
wislied to gain some previous knowledge of
these sacred things, but his companion answered :
"The Three will doubtless, in return for the
confidence you show in leaving us your son,
disclose to you in their wisdom and fairness
what is most needful for you to learn. The
visible objects of reverence, which I named
sacred things, are collected in this separate
circle; are mixed with nothing, interfered with
by nothing : at certain seasons of the year only
are our pupils admitted here, to be taught in
their various degrees of culture, by historical
and sensible means ; and in these short inter-
vals they carry off a deep enough impression to
sulfice them for a time, during the performance
of their other duties."

Wilhelm had now reached the gate of a
wooded vale, surrounded with high walls : on
a certain sign the little door opened, and a man
of earnest and imposing look received our tra-
veller. The latter found himself in a large
beautifully umbrageous space, decked with the
richest foliage, shaded with trees and bushes of
all sorts; while stately walls and magnificent
buildings were discerned only in glimpses
through this thick natural boscage. A friendly
reception from the Three, who by and by ap-
peared, at last turned into a general conversa-
tion, the substance of which we now present in
an abbreviated shape.

" Since you intrust your son to us," said they,
"it is fair that we admit you to a closer view
of our procedure. Of what is external you have
seen much, that does not bear its meaning on
its front. What part of this do you chiefly wish
to have explained?"

"Dignified, yet singular gestures of salutation
I have noticed, the import of which I would
gladly learn: with you, doubtless, the exterior
has a reference to the interior, and inversely;
let me know what this reference is."

"Well-formed, healthy children," replied the
Three, "bring much into the world along with
them : Nature has given to each whatever he
requires for time and duration ; to unfold this
is our duty; often it unfolds itself better of its
own accord. One thing there is, however, which
no child brings into the world with him ; and
yet it is on this one thing that all depends for
making man in every point a man. If you
can discover it yourself, speak it out." Wil-

helm thought a little while, then shook his
head.

The Three, after a suitable pause, exclaimed :
"Reverence!" Wilhelm seemed to hesitate.
"Reverence!" cried they a second time. "All
want it, perhaps you yourself.

" Three kinds of gestures you have seen ; and
we inculcate a threefold Reverence, which,
when commingled and formed into one whole,
attains its highest force and effect. The first is
Reverence for what is above us. That posture,
the arms crossed over the breast, the look turned
joyfully towards Heaven ; that is what we have
enjoined on young children ; recjuiring from them
thereby a testimony that there is a God above,
who images and reveals himself in parents,
teachers, superiors. Then comes the second,
Reverence for what is under us. Those hands
folded over the back, and, as it were, tied to-
gether, that down-turned, smiling look, announce
that We are to regard the Earth with attention
and cheerfulness : from the bounty of the Earth
we are nourished : the Earth affords unutterable
joys; but disproportionate sorrows she also
brings us. Should one of our children do him-
self external hurt, blameably or blamelessly;
should others hurt him accidentally or purpose-
ly; should dead involuntary matter do him
hurt; then let him well consider it; for such
dangers will attend him all his days. But from
this posture we delay not to free our pupil, the
instant we become convinced that the instruc-
•tion connected with it has produced sufficient
influence on him. Then, on the contrary, we
bid him gather courage, and turning to his com-
rades, range himself along with them. Now,
at last, he stands forth, frank and bold; not self-
ishly isolated ; only in combination with his
equals does he front the world. Farther we
have nothing to add."

"I see a glimpse of it!" said Wilhelm. "Are
not the mass of men so marred and stinted, be-
cause they take pleasure only in the element of
evil-wishing and evil-speaking? Whoever gives
himself to this, soon comes to be indifferent to-
wards God, contemptuous towards the world,
spiteful towards his equals ; and the true, genu-
ine, indispensable sentiment of self-estimation
corrupts into self-conceit and presumption. Al-
low me, however," continued he, " to state one
difficulty. You say that reverence is not natural
to man : now, has not the reverence or fear of
rude people for violent convulsions of Nature,
or other inexplicable, mysteriously -foreboding
occurrences, been heretofore regarded as the
germ out of which a higher feeling, a purer sen-
timent, was by degrees to be developed?"

" Nature is indeed adequate to fear," replied
they; "but to reverence not adequate. Men
fear a known or unknown powerfid being ; the
strong seeks to conquer it, the weak to avoid it;
both endeavor to get quit of it, and feel them-
selves happy when for a short season they have
put it aside, and their nature has in some de-
gree restored itself to freedom and independence.

GOETHE.

311

Tlio natural man repeats this operation millions
of times in the course of his life; from fear he
struggles to freedom ; from freedom he is driven
back to fear, and so makes no advancement.
To fear is easy, but grievous ; to reverence is
difficult, but satisfactory. Man does not will-
ingly submit himself to reverence ; or rather ho
never so submits himself: it is a higher sense,
which must be communicated to his nature ;
which only in some peculiarly favored indivi-
duals unfolds itself spontaneously, who on this
account loo have of old been looked upon as
saints and gods. Here lies the worth, here lies
the business of all true Religions ; whereof there
are likewise only three, according to the objects
towards which they direct our devotion."

The men paused; Wilhelm reflected for a
time in silence; but feeling in himself no pre-
tension to unfold the meaning of these strange
words, he requested the Sages to i)roceed with
their exposition. They immediately complied.
" No religion that grounds itself on fear," said
they, " is regarded among us. With the reve-
rence, to which a man should give dominion in
his mind, he can, in paying honor, keep his own
honor; he is not disunited with himself, as in
the former case. The Religion which depends
on reverence for what is above us, we denomi-
nate the Ethnic; it is the religion of the nations,
and the first happy deliverance from a degrad-
ing fear : all Heathen religions, as we call them,
are of this sort, whatsoever names they may
bear. The Second Religion, which founds it-
self on reverence for what is arottnd us, we de-
nominate the Philosophical ; for the philosopher
stations himself in the middle, and must draw
down to him all that is higher, and up to him
all that is lower, and only in this medium con-
dition does he merit the title of Wise. Here,
as he surveys with clear sight his relation to his
equals, and therefore to the whole human race ;
his relation likewise to all other earthly circum-
stances and arrangements necessary or acci-
dental, he alone, in a cosmic sense, lives in
Truth. But now we have to speak of the Third
Religion, grounded on reverence for what is be-
neath us : this we name the Christian, as in the
Christian religion such a temper is with most
distinctness manifested : it is a last step to which
mankind were fitted and destined to attain.
But what a task was it, not only to be patient
with the Earth, and let it lie beneath us, we
appealing to a higher birth-place; but also to
recognise humility and poverty, mockery and
despite, disgrace and wretchedness, suffering
and death, to recognise these things as divine ;
nay, even on sin and crime to look not as hin-
drances, but to honor and love them as fiu'iher-
ances, of what is holy. Of this, indeed, we find
some traces in all ages: but the trace is not the
goal ; and this being now attained, the human
species cannot retrograde ; and we may say, that
the Christian religion having once appeared
cannot again vanish ; having once assumed its
divine shape, can be subject to no dissolution."

"To which of these religions do you specially
adhere?'' inquired Wilhelm.

"To all the three,'" replied they: "for in their
union they produce what may properly be called
the true religion. Out of those Three Reve-
rences springs the highest reverence, reverence
for one's self, and those again unfold themselves
from this; so that man attains the highest ele-
vation of which ho is capable, that of being jus-
tified in reckoning himself the Best that God
and Nature have produced ; nay, of being able
to continue on this lofty eminence, without being
again by self-conceit and presumption drawn
down from it into the vulgar level."

" Such a confession of faith, developed in this
manner, docs not repulse me," answered Wil-
helm ; " it agrees with much that one hears now
and then in the course of life; only, you unite
what others separate.''

To this they replied : "Our confession has al-
ready been adopted, though unconsciously, by a
great part of the world."

" How, then, and where V said Wilhelm.

"In the Creed!" exclaimed they: "for the
first Article is Ethnic, and belongs to all na-
tions ; the second, Christian, for those struggling
with aflliction and glorified in affliction ; the
third, in fine, teaches an inspired Communion
of Saints, that is, of men in the highest degree
good and wise. And should not therefore the
Three Divine Persons, under the similitudes
and names of which these threefold doctrines
and commands are promulgated, justly be con-
sidered as in the highest sense One!"

"I thank you," said Wilhelm, "for having
pleased to lay all this before me in such clear-
ness and combination, as before a grown-up
person, to whom your three modes of feeling
are not altogether' foreign. And now, when I
reflect that you communicate this high doctrine
to your children, in the first place as a sensible
sign, then, with some symbolical accompani-
ment attached to it, and at last unfold to them
its deepest meaning, I cannot but warmly ap-
prove of your method."

" Right," answered they: "but now we must
show you more, and so convince you the better
that your son is in no bad hands. This, how-
ever, may remain for the morrow : rest and
refresh yourself, diat you may attend us in the
morning, as a man satisfied and unimpeded,
into the interior of our Sanctuary."

At the hand of the Eldest, our friend now
proceeded through a stately portal, into a round,
or rather octagonal hall, so richly decked with
pictures, that it struck him with astonishment
as he entered. All this, he easily conceived,
must have a significant import, though at the
moment he saw not so clearly what it was.
While about to question his gidde on this sub-
ject, the latter invited him to step forward into
a gallery, open on the one side, and stretching
round a spacious gay flowery garden. The

312

GOETHE.

wall, however, not the flowers, attracted the
eyes of the stranger ; it was covered with
paintings, and Williehn could not walk fiir
without observing that the Sacred Books of the
Israelites had furnished the materials for these
figures.

"It is here," said the Eldest, "that we teach
our First Religion, the religion which, for the
sake of brevity, I named the Ethnic. The spirit
of it is to be sought for in the history of the
world; its outward form, in the events of that
liistory. Only in the return of similar destinies
on whole nations, can it properly be appre-
hended.'

"I observe," said Wilhelm, "you have done
the Israelites the honor to select their history as
the groundwork of this delineation, or rather,
you have made it the leading object there."

"As you see," replied tlie Eldest; "for you
M'ill remark, that on the socles and friezes we
have introduced another series of transactions
and occurrences, not so much of a synchronistic,
as of a symphonistic kind ; since, among all na-
tions, we discover records of a similar import,
and grounded on the same facts. Thus you
perceive here, while in the main field of the
picture, Abraham receives a visit from his gods
in the form of fair youths, Apollo, among the
herdsmen of Admetus, is painted above on the
frieze. From which we may learn, that the
gods, when they appear to men, are commonly
unrecognised of them."

The friends walked on. Wilhelm, for the
most part, met with well-known objects, but
they were here exhibited in a livelier and more
expressive manner than he had been used to
see them. On some lew matters he requested
explanation, and at last could not lielp returning
to his former question: Why the Israelitish his-
tory had been chosen in preference to all others'?

The Eldest answered: "Among all Heathen
religions, for such also is the Israelitish, this has
the most distinguished advantages; of which I
shall mention only a few. At the Ethnic judg-
ment-seat, at the judgment-seat of the God of
Nations, it is not asked Whether this is the
best, the most excellent nation, but whether it
lasts, whether it has continued. The Israelitish
people never was good for much, as its own
leaders, judges, rulers, prophets, have a thou-
sand times reproachfully declared; it possesses
few virtues, and most of the faults of other na-
tions: but in cohesion, steadfastness, valor, and
when all this would not serve, in obstinate
toughness, it has no match. It is the most per-
severant nation in the world : it is, it was, and
it will be; to glorify the name of Jehovah,
through all ages. We have set it up, therefore,
as the pattern figure; as the main figure, to
which the others only serve as a frame."

"It becomes not me to dispute with you,"
said Wilhelm, "since you have instruction to
impart. Open to me, therefore, the other ad-
vantages of this people, or rather of its history,
of its reliaion."

"One chief advantage," said the other, is its
excellent collection of Sacred Books. These
stand so happily combined together, that even
out of the most diverse elements, the feeling of
a whole still rises before us. They are com-
plete enough to satisfy ; fragmentary enough to
excite ; barbarous enough to rouse ; tender
enough to appease : and for how many other
contradicting merits might not these Books,
might not this one Book, be praised!"

Tiie series of main figures, as well as their
relations to the smaller which above and below
accompanied them, gave the guest so much to
think of, that he scarcely heard the pertinent
remarks of his gui;le ; who, by what he said,
seemed desirous rather to divert our friend's at-
tention, than to fix it on the paintings. Once,
however, the old man said, on some occasion :
"Another advantage of the Israelitish religion,
I must here mention ; it has not embodied its
god in any form ; and so has left us at liberty
to represent him in a worthy human shape, and
likewise, byway of contrast, to designate Idola-
try by forms of beasts and monsters."

Our friend had now, in his short wandering
through this hall, again brought the spirit of
universal history before his mind; in regard to
the events, he had not failed to meet with
something new. So likewise, by the simultane-
ous presentment of the pictures, by the reflec-
tions of his guide, many new views had' risen
on him; and he could not but rejoice in think-
ing that his Felix was, by so dignified a visible
representation, to seize and appropriate for his
whole life those great, significant, and exern-
jjlary events, as if they had actually been pre-
sent, and transacted beside him. He came at
length to regard the exhibition altogether with
the eyes of the child, and in this point of view
it perfectly contented him. Thus wandering
on, they had now reached the gloomy and per-
plexed periods of the history, the destruction of
the City and the Temple, the murder, exile,
slavery of whole masses of this stiff-necked
people. Its subsequent fortunes were delineated
in a cunning allegorical way; a real historical
delineation of them would have lain without
the limits of true Art.

At this point, the gallery abruptly terminated
in a closed door, and Wilhelm was surprised to
see himself already at the end. " In your his-
torical series," said he, " I find a chasm. You
have destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem, and
dispersed the people ; yet you have not intro-
duced the divine Man who taught there shortly
before ; to whom, shortly before, they would
give no ear."

"To have done this, as you require it, would
have been an error. The life of that divine
Man, whom you allude to, stands in no connec-
tion with the general history of the world in
his time. It was a private life; his teaching
was a teaching for individuals. What has
publicly befallen vast masses of people, and
the minor parts which compose them, belongs

GOETHE.

313

to the general history of the world, to the gene-
ral religion of the world ; the religion we have
named the First. What inwardly befalls in-
dividuals, belongs to the Second religion, the
Philosophical : such a religion was it that Christ
taught and practised, so long as he went about
on Earth. For this reason, the external liere
closes, and I now open to you the internal."

A door went back, and they entered a similar
gallery; where Willielm soon recognised a cor-
responding series of pictures from the New
Testament. They seemed as if by another hand
than the first: all was softer; forms, move-
ments, accompaniments, light, and coloring.

"Here," said the guide, after they had looked
over a few pictures, "you behold neither actions
nor events, but Miracles and Similitudes. There
is here a new world, a new exterior, different
from the former ; and an interior, which was
altogether wanting there. By Miracles and
Similitudes, a new world is opened up. Those
make the common extraordinary, these the ex-
traordinary common."

" You will have the goodness," said Wilhelm,
'■ to explain these few words more minutely ;
for, by my own light, I cannot."

" They have a natural meaning," said the
other, " though a deep one. Examples will
bring it out most easily and soonest. There is
nothing more common and customary than eat-
ing and drinking; but it is extraordinary to
transform a drink into another of more noble
sort ; to multiply a portion of food that it suffice
a multitude. Nothing is more common than
sickness and corporeal diseases ; but to remove,
to mitigate these by spiritual, or spiritual-like
means, is extraordinary ; and even in this lies
the wonder of the Miracle, that the common and
the extraordinary, the possible and the impossi-
ble, become one. With the Similitude again,
with the Parable, the converse is the case : here
it is the sense, the view, the idea, that forms
the high, the unattainable, the extraordinary.
When this embodies itself in a common, cus-
tomary, comprehensible figure, so that it meets
us as if alive, present, actual ; so that we can
seize it, appropriate, retain it, live with it as
with our equal: this is a second sort of miracle,
and is justly placed beside the first sort; nay,
perhaps preferred to it. Here a living-doctrine
is pronounced, a doctrine which can cause no
argument: it is not an opinion about what is
right and wrong; it is Right and Wrong them-
selves, and indisputably."

This part of the gallery was shorter ; indeed
it formed but the fourth part of the circuit en-
closing the interior court. Yet if in the former
part you merely walked along, you here liked
to linger, you here walked to and fro. The ob-
jects were not so striking, not so varied : yet
they invited you the more to penetrate their
deep still meaning. Our two friends, accord-
ingly, turned round at the end of the space,
Wilhelm, at the same time, expressing some
surprise that tliese delineations went no farther

2p

than the Supper, than the scene where the Mas-
ter and his Disciples part. He inquired for the
remaining portion of the history.

" In all sorts of instruction," said the Eldest,
"in all sorts of communication, we are fond of
separating whatever it is possible to separate ;
for by this means alone can the notion of im-
portance and peculiar significance arise in the
young mind. Actual experience of itself min-
gles and mixes all things together : here, accord-
ingly, we have entirely disjoined that sublime
]Man's life from its termination. In life, he ap-
pears as a true Philosoi^her — let not the expres-
sion stagger you — as a wise man in the highest
sense. He stands firm to his point; he goes on
his way inflexibly; and while he exalts the
lower to himself, while he makes the ignorant,
the poor, the sick, partakers of his wisdom, of
his riches, of his strength, he, on the other hand,
in no wise conceals his divine origin ; he dares
to equal himself with God, nay, to declare that
he himself is God. In this manner is he wont,
from youth upwards, to astound his familiar
friends; of these he gains a part to his own
cause; irritates the rest against him ; and shows
to all men, who are aiming at a certain eleva-
tion in doctrine and life, what they have to look
for from the world. And thus, for the noble
portion of mankind, his walk and conversation
are even more instructive and profitable than
his death : for to those trials every one is called,
to this trial but a few. Now, omitting all that
results from this consideration, do but look at
the touching scene of the Last Supper. Here
the Wise Man, as it ever is, leaves those that
are his own utterly orjihaned behind him ; and
while he is careful for the Good, he feeds along
with them a traitor by whom he and the Better
are to be destroyed."

With these words the Eldest opened a door ;
and Wilhelm faltered in surprise, as he found
himself again in the first hall at the entrance.
They had, in the meanwhile, as he now saw,
passed round the whole circuit of the court. " I
hoped," said WilheliTi, '• you were leading me
to the conclusion, and you take me back to the
beginning."

"For the present," said the Eldest, "I can
show you nothing farther: more we do not lay
before our pupils, more we do not explain to
them, than what you have now gone through.
All that is external, worldly, universal, we com-
municate to each from youth upwards; what is
more particularly spiritual and conversant with
tlie heart, to those only who grow up with some
thoughtfulness of temper ; and the rest, which
is opened only once a-year, cannot be imparted
save to those whom we are sending forth as
finished. That last Religion which arises.,fioni
the Reverence of what is beneath us ; that vene-
ration of the contradictory, the hated, the avoid-
ed, we give each of our pupils, in small portions
by way of outfit, along with him into the world,
merely that he may know where more is to be
had, should such a want spring up within him.
27

314

GOETHE.

I invite you to return hither at the end of a year,
to visit our general festival, and see how far
your son is advanced: then shall you be admit-
ted into the Sanctuary of Sorrow."

"Permit me one question," said Wilhelm:
" as you have set up the life of this divine Man
for a j)attern and example, have you likewise
selected his suflerings, his death, as a model of
exalted patience?"

" Undoubtedly we have," replied the Eldest.
"Of this we make no secret; but we draw a
veil over those sufferings, even because we re-
verence them so highly. We hold it a damnable
audacity to bring forth that torturing Cross, and
the Holy One who suffers on it, or to expose
them to the light of the sun, which hid its face
when a reckless world forced such a sight on
it; to take these mysterious secrets, in which
the divine depth of Sorrow lies hid, and play
with them, fondle them, trick them out, and rest
not till the most reverend of all solemnities ap-
pears vulgar and paltry. Let so much, for the
present, suffice to put your mind at peace re-
specting your son ; and to convince you, that on
meeting him again, you will find him trained,
more or less, in one department or another, but
at least in a proper way ; and, at all events, not
wavering, perplexed, and unstable."

Wilhelm still lingered, looking at the pictures
in this entrance-hall, and wishing to get expla-
nation of their meaning. " This, too," said the
Eldest, "we must still owe you for a twelve-
month. The instruction which, in the interim,
we give the children, no stranger is allowed to
witness: then, however, come to us; and you
will hear what our best speakers think it ser-
viceable to make public on these matters."

Shortly after this conversation, a knocking
was Ireard at tlie little gate. The Overseer of
last night announced liimself : he had brought
out Wilhelm's horse ; and so our friend took
leave of the Three; who, as he set out, con-
signed him to the Overseer with these words :
" This man is now numbered among the Trusted,
and thou understandest what thou hast to tell
him in answer to his questions ; for, doubtless,
he still wishes to be informed on much that he
has seen and heard v.'hile liere : purpose and
circumstance are known to thee."

Wilhelm had, in fact, some questions on his
mind ; and tliese he ere long put into words.
As they rode along they were saluted by the
children, as on the preceding evening; but to-
day, though rarely, he now and then observed
a boy who did not pause in his work to salute
the Overseer, but let him pass unheeded. Wil-
helm asked the cause of this, and what such an
exception meant. His companion answered :
" It is full of meaning ; for it is the highest pun-
ishment which we inflict on our pupils ; they
are declared unworthy to sliow reverence, and
obliged to exhibit themselves as rude and un-
cultivated natures : but they do their utmost to
get free of this situation, and in general adapt
themselves with great rapidity to any duty.

Should a young creature, on the other hand, ob-
durately make no attempt at return and amend-
ment, he is then sent back to his parents, with
a brief but pointed statement of his case. Who-
ever cannot suit himself to the regulations, must
leave the district where they are in force."

Another circumstance excited Wilhelm's cu-
riosity to-day, as it had done yesterday: the
variety of color and shape apparent in the dress
of the pupils. Hereby no gradation could be
indicated ; for children who saluted differently,
were sometimes clothed alike ; and others agree-
ing in salutation, ditfered in apparel. Wilhelm
inquired the reason of this seeming contradic-
tion. " It will be explained," said the other,
"when I tell you, that, by this means, we en-
deavor to find out the children's several cha-
racters. With all our general strictness and
regularity, we allow in this point a certain lati-
tude of choice. Within the limits of our own
stores of cloths and garnitures, the pupils are
permitted to select what color they please; and
so likewise within moderate limits, in regard to
shape and cut. Their procedure, in these mat-
ters, we accurately note ; for by the color, we
discover their turn of thinking; by the cut, their
turn of acting. However, a decisive judgment
in this is rendered difficult by one peculiar pro-
jjcrty of human nature, by the tendency to imi-
tate, the inclination to imite with something.
It is very seldom that a pupil fancies any dress
that has not lieen already there ; for most part,
they select something known, something which
they see before their eyes. Yet this also we
find worth observing; by such external circum-
stances, they declare themselves of one parry
or another; they unite with this or that; and
thus some general features of their characters
are indicated ; we perceive whither each tends,
what example he follows.

" We have had cases where the dispositions
of our children verged to generality; where one
fashion threatened to extend over all ; and any
deviation from it to dwindle into the state of an
exception. Such a turn of matters we endeavor
softly to stop : we let our stores ruii out ; this
and that sort of stuff, this and that sort of decora-
tion, is no longer to be liad : we introduce some-
thing new and attractive ; by bright colors and
short smart shape, we allure the lively ; by
grave sliadings, by commodious many-folded
make, the thoughtful ; and thus, by degrees, re-
store the equilibrium.

" For to uniform, we are altogether disin-
clined ; it conceals the character, and, more
than any other species of distortion, withdraws
the peculiarities of children from the eye of
their superiors."

Amid this and other conversation, Wilhelm
reached the border of the Province ; and this at
the point, where, by the direction of his anti-
quarian friend, he was to leave it, to pursue his
next special object.

At jjarting, it was now settled with the Over-
seer, that, after the space of a twelvemonth,

GOETHE.

315

Wilhelm should return, when the grand Trien-
nial Festival was to be celebrated ; on which
occasion all the parents were invited ; and
finished pupils were sent forth into the tasks of
chanceful life. Then, too, so he was informed,
he might visit at his pleasure all the other Dis-
tricts ; where, on peculiar principles, each branch
of education was communicated and reduced to
practice in complete isolation, and with every
furtherance.

That a year must have passed since Wilhelm
lefl the Pedagogic Province, is rendered certain,
by the circumstance, that we now meet him at
the Festival to which he had been invited : but
as our wandering Renunciants sometimes un-
expectedly dive down and vanish from our
sight, and then again emerge into view at a
place where they were not looked for, it cannot
be determined with certainty what track they
have followed in the interim.

Now, however, the Traveller advances from
the side of the plain country into the Pedagogic
Province : he comes over fields and pasturages;
skirts, on the dry lea, many a little freshet; sees
bushy rather than woody hills; a free prospect
on all sides, over a surface but little undulated.
On such tracks, he did not long doubt that he
was in the horse-producing region; and accord-
ingly, he failed not here and there to observe
greater or smaller herds of mares and foals.
But all at once the horizon darkens with a fierce
cloud of dust, which, rapidly swelling nearer
and nearer, covers all the breadth of the space ;
yet at last, rent asunder by a sharp side wind,
is forced to disclose its interior tumult.

At full gallop, rushes forward a vast multi-
tude of these noble animals, guided and held
together by mounted keepers. The monstrous
hurlyburly whirls past the wanderer; a fair boy
among the keepers looks at him with surprise;
pulls in, leaps down, and embraces his father.

Now commences a questioning and answer-
ing: the boy relates that an agricultural life had
not agreed with him ; the harvest-home he had
indeed found delightful, but the subsequent ar-
rangements, the ploughing and digging, by no
means so. This the Superiors remark, and ob-
serve at the same time that he likes to employ
himself with animals ; they direct him to the
useful and necessary domestic breeds ; try him
as a sequestered herdsman and keeper, and at
last promote him to the more lively equestrian
occupation ; where accordingly he now, himself
a young foal, has to watch over foals, and to
forward their good nourishment and training,
imder the oversight of skilful comrades.

Father and son, following the herd, by vari-
ous lone-lying spacious farm-yards, reached the
town or hamlet, near which the great annual
Market was held. * Here rages an incredible
confusion, in which it is hard to determine
whether merchants or wares raise more dust.
From all countries, purchasers assemble here to

procure animals of noble blood and careful
training; all the languages of the Earth, you
would fancy, meet your ear. Amid all this hub-
bub, too, rises the lively sound of powerful wind-
instruments : everything bespeaks motion, vigor,
and life.

The wanderer meets his Overseer of last
year, who presents him to the others: he is even
introduced to one of the Three; and by him,
though only in passing, paternally and expres-
sively saluted.

Wilhelm, here again observing an example
of exclusive culture and life-leading, expresses
a desire to know in what else the pupils are
practised, by v/ay of counterpoise ; that so in
this wild, and, to a certain degree, savage occu-
pation of feeding animals, the youth may not
himself ro'i^ghen into an animal. And, in
answer, he is gratified to learn, that precisely
with this violent and rugged-looking occupation
the softest in the world is united ; the learning
and practising of languages.

"To this," it was said, "we have been in-
duced by the circumstance, that there are youths
from all quarters of the world assembled here :
now to prevent them from uniting, as usually
happens when abroad, into national knots, and
forming exclusive parties, we endeavor by a free
comtnunication of speech to approximate them.
"Indeed, a general acquaintance with lan-
guages is here in some degree rendered neces-
sary; since, in our yearly market -festivals,
every foreigner wishes to converse in his own
tones and idiom ; and, in the course of cheapen-
ing and purchasing, to proceed with all possible
convenience. That no Babylonish confusion of
tongues, however, no corruption of speech, may
arise from this practice, we employ a different
language month by mondi, throughout the year :
according to the maxim, that in learning any-
thing, its first principles alone should be taught
by constraint.

" We look upon our scholars," said the Over-
seer, " as so many swimmers, who, in the ele-
ment which threatened to swallow them, feel
with astonishment that they are lighter, that it
bears and carries them forward : and so it is
with everything that man undertakes.

" However, if any one of our young men show
a special inclination for this or the other lan-
guage, we neglect not, in the midst of this
tumultuous-looking life, which nevertheless of-
fers very many quiet, idly solitary, nay, tedious
hours, to provide for his true and substantial
instruction. Our riding grammarians, among
whom there are even some pedagogues, you
would be surprised to discover among these
bearded and beardless Centaurs. Your Felix
has turned himself to Italian ; and in the mono-
tonous solitude of his herdsman life, you shall
hear him send forth many a dainty song with
proper feeling and taste. Practical activity and
expertness are far more compatible with suf-
ficient intellectual culture, than is generally
supposed."

316

GOETHE.

Each of these districts was celebrating its
peculiar festival ; so the guest was now cou-
dncted to the Instrumental Music department.
This tract, skirted by the level country, began
from its very border to exhibit kind and beauti-
fully changing valleys, little trim woods ; soft
brooks, by the side of which, among the sward,
here and there a mossy crag modestly stood
forth. Scattered, bush-encircled dwellings you
might see on the hill-sides; in soft hollows, the
houses clustered nearer together. Those grace-
fully separated cottages lay so far apart, that
neither tones nor mistones could be heard from
one to the other.

They now approached a wide space, begirt
with buildings and shady trees, where crowded,
man on man, all seemed on the stretch of ex-
pectation and attention. Just as the stranger
entered, there was sent forth from all the in-
struments a grand symphony, the full rich power
and tenderness of which he could not but ad-
mire. Opposite the spacious main orchestra,
was a smaller one, which failed not to attract
his notice : here stood various younger and elder
scholars; each held his instrument in readiness
without playing ; these were they who as yet
could not, or durst not, join in with the whole.
It was interesting to observe how they stood as
it were on the start; and our friend was in-
formed that such a festival seldom passed over,
without some one or other of them suddenly
developing his talent.

As among the instrumental music, singing
was now introduced, no doubt could remain
that this also was favored. To the question,
What other sort of culture was here blended in
kind union with the chief employment, our
wanderer learned in reply, that it was Poetry,
and of the lyrical kind. In this matter, it ap-
peared, their main concern was, that both arts
should be developed each for itself and from
itself, but then also in contrast and combination
with each other. The scholars were first in-
structed in each according to its own limitations ;
then taught how the two reciprocally limit, and
again reciprocally free each other.

To poetical rhythm, the musical artist opposes
mi- isure of tone and movement of tone. But
her • the mastery of Music over Poesy soon
sh<'\vs itself; for if the latter, as is fit and ne-
cessary, keep her quantities never so steadily
in view, still for the musician few syllables are
decidedly short or long ; at his pleasure he can
overset the most conscientious procedure of the
rhythmer, nay, change prose itself into song ;
from which, in truth, the richest possibilities
present themselves ; and the poet would soon
feel himself annihilated, if he could not, on his
own side, by lyrical tenderness and boldness,
inspire the musician with reverence ; and, now
in the softest sequence, now by the most abrupt
transitions, awaken new feelings in the mind.

The singers to be met with here are mostly
poets themselves. Dancing also is taught in its
fundamental principles ; that so all these ac-

complishments may regularly spread themselves
into every district.

The guest, on being led across the next bound-
ary, at once perceived an altogether different
mode of building. The houses were no longer
scattered into separation, no longer in the shape
of cottages : they stood regularly united, beauti-
ful in their exterior, spacious, convenient, and
elegant within ; you here saw an unconfined,
well-built, stately town, corresponding to the
scene it stood in. Here the Plastic Arts, and
the trades akin to them, have their home ; and
a peculiar silence reigns over these spaces.

The plastic artist, it is true, must still figure
himself as standing in relation to all that lives
and moves among men : but his occupation is
solitary ; and yet, by the strangest contradiction,
there is perhaps no other that so decidedly re-
quires a living accompaniment and society.
Now here, in that circle, is each in silence form-
ing shapes that are forever to engage the eyes
of men ; a holiday stillness reigns over the
whole scene ; and did you not here and there
catch the picking of stone-hewers, and the mea-
sured stroke of carpenters, who are now busily
employed in finishing a lordly edifice, the air
were unmoved by any sound.

Our wanderer was struck, moreover, by the
earnestness, the singular rigor with which be-
ginners, as well as more advanced pupils, were
treated ; it seemed as if no one by his own
power and judgment accomplished anything,
but as if a secret spirit, striving towards one
single great aim, pervaded and vivified them
all. Nowhere did you observe a scheme or
sketch ; every stroke was drawn with fore-
thought. As the wanderer inquired of his guide
the reason of this peculiar procedure, he was
told : That Imagination was in itself a vague,
unstable power, which the whole merit of the
plastic artist consisted in more and more deter-
mining, fixing, nay, at last, exalting to visible
presence.

The necessity for sure principles in other arts
was mentioned. "Would the musician," it was
said, " permit his scholar to dash wildly over
the strings, nay, to invent bars and intervals for
himself at his own good pleasure? Here it is
palpable that nothing can be left to the caprice
of the learner : the element he is to work in is
irrevocably given ; the implement he is to wield
is put into his hands ; nay, the very way and
manner of his using it, I mean the changing of
the fingers, he finds prescribed to him ; so or-
dered, that the one part of his hand shall give
place to the other, and each prepare the proper
path for its follower : by such determinate co-
operation only can the impossible at last become
possible.

" But what chiefly vindicates the practice of
strict requisitions, of decided laws, is that ge-
nius, that native talent, is precisely the readiest
to seize them, and yield them willing obedience.
It is only the half- gifted that would wish to
put his own contracted singularity in the place

GOETHE.

317

of the unconditioned whole, and justify his false
attempts under cover of an unconstrainable ori-
ginality anil independence. To this we grant
no currency: we guard our scholars from all
such misconceptions, whereby a large portion
of life, nay, often the whole of life, is apt to be
perplexed and disjointed.

"With genius we love most to be concerned;
for this is animated just by that good spirit of
quickly recognising what is profitable for it.
Genius understands that Art is called Art be-
cause it is not Nature. Genius bends itself to
respect even towards what may be named con-
ventional : for what is this but agreeing, as the
most distinguished men have agreed, to regard
the unalterable, the indispensable as the best?
And does not such submission always turn to
good account?

" Here, too, as in all our departments, to the
great assistance of the teachers, our three Reve-
rences and their signs, with some changes suit-
able to the nature of the main employment,
have been introduced and inculcated."

The wanderer, in his farther survey, was
surprised to observe that the Town seemed still
extending; street unfolding itself from street,
and so offering the most varied prospects. The
exterior of the edifices corresponded to their
destination; they were dignified and stately,
not so much magnificent as beautiful. To the
nobler and more earnest buildings in the centre
of the Town, the more cheerful were harmoni-
ously appended; till farther otit, gay decorated
suburbs, in graceful style, stretched forth into
the country, and at last separated into garden-
houses.

The stranger could not fail to remark, that the
dwellings of the musicians in the preceding dis-
trict were by no means to be compared, in
beauty or size, with the present, which painters,
statuaries, and architects inhabited. He was
told that this arose from the nature of the thing.
The musician, ever shrouded in himself, must
cultivate his inmost being, that so he may turn
it outwards. The sense of the eye he may not
flatter. The eye easily corrupts the judgment
of the ear, and allures the spirit from the inward
to the outward. Inversely, again, the plastic
artist has to live in the external world ; and to
manifest his inward being, as it were uncon-
sciously, in and upon what is outward. Plastic
artists should dwell like kings and gods : how
else are they to build and decorate for kings and
gods 1 They must at last so raise themselves
above the common, that the whole mass of a
people may feel itself ennobled in and by their
works.

Our friend then begged an explanation of
another paradox : Why at this time, so festive,
so enlivening, so tumultuously excited, in the
other regions, the greatest stillness prevailed
here, and all laijors were continued?

"A plastic artist," it was answered, "needs
no festival ; for him the whole year is a festival.
When he has accomplished something excellent,

it stands, as it has long done before his own eye,
now at last before the eye of the world : in his
task he needed no repetition, no new effort, no
fresh success; whereas the musician constantly
afflicts himself with all diis; and to him, there-
fore, the most splendid festival, in the most
numerous assemblage, shoitld not be refused."

" Yet, at such a season," replied Wilhelm,
"something like an exhibition might be desira-
ble ; in which it would be pleasant to inspect
and judge the triennial progress of your best
pupils."

"In other places," it was answered, "an ex-
hibition may be necessary ; with us it is not.
Our whole being and nature is exhibition. Look
round you at these buildings of every sort: all
erected by our pupils ; and this not without
plans, a hundred times talked of and meditated ;
for the builder must not grope and experiment ;
what is to continue standing, must stand rightly,
and satisfy, if not forever, yet at least for a long
space of time. If we cannot help committing
errors, we must build none.

"With statuaries we proceed more laxly,
most so of all with painters ; to both we give
liberty to try this each in his own way. It
stands in their power to select in the interior
or exterior compartments of edifices in public
places, some space which they may incline to
decorate. They give forth their ideas, and if
these are in some degree to be approved of, the
completion of them is permitted, and this in two
ways: either with liberty, sooner or later, to
remove the work,- should it come to displease
the artist; or, with the condition that what is
once set up shall remain unalterable in its
place. Most part choose the first of these offers,
retaining in their own hands this power of re-
moval ; and in the performance, they constantly
avail themselves of the best advice. The second
case occurs seldomer ; and we then observe
that the artist trusts less to himself, holds long
conferences with companions and critics, and
by this means produces works really estimable,
and deserving to endure."

After all this, our Traveller neglected not to
ask : What other species of instruction was com-
bined with the main one here ? and received
for answer, that it was Poetry, and of the Epic
sort.

This to our friend must have seemed a little
singular, when he heard farther that the pupils
were not allowed to read or hear any finished
poems by ancient or modern poets. "We merely
impart to them," it was said, " a series of my-
thuses, traditions, and legends, in the most
laconic form. And now, from the pictorial or
poetic execution of these subjects, we at once
discover the peculiar productive gift of the
genius devoted to the one or the other art. Both
poet and painter thus labor at the same foun-
tain ; and each endeavors to draw off the water
to his own advantage, and attain his own re-
quired objects with it; in which he succeeds
muc^. better, than if he attempted again to
27*

318

GOETHE.

fashion something that has been fashioned al-
ready."'

The Traveller liimself had an opportunity of
seeing how this was accomplished: several
painters were busy in a room ; a gay young
friend was relating with great minuteness a
very simple story ; so that he employed almost
as many words as the others did pencil-strokes,
to comjilete the same exhibition and round it
fully off.

He was told, that in working together the
friends were wont to carry on much pleasant
conversation; and that in this way several im-
provisatori had unfolded their gifts, and suc-
ceeded in exciting great enthusiasm for this
twofold mode of rejjresentatiou.

Our friend now reverted his inquiries to the
subject of plastic art. " You have no exhibi-
tion," said he ; " and therefore, I suppose, give
no prize either "?"'

"No,"' said tlie other, "we do not; but here,
close by, we can show you something which
we reckon more useful."

They entered a large hall, beautifully lighted
from above ; a wide circle of busy artists first
attracted the eye ; and from the midst of these,
rose a colossal group of figures, elevated in the
centre of the place. Male and female forms,_of
gigantic power, in violent postures, reminded
one of that lordly fight between Heroic youths
and Amazons, wherein hate and enmity at last
issue in mutually regretful alliance. This strik-
ingly intertwisted piece of art presented an
equally favorable aspect from every point of its
circuit. In a wide ring round it were many
artists sitting and standing, each occupied in his
own way ; the painter at his easel, the drawer
at his sketch-board ; some were modelling it in
full, others in bas-relief; there were even archi-
tects engaged in planning the pedestal, on which
a similar group, when wrought in marble, was
to be erected. Each individual was proceeding
by his own method in this task : painters and
drawers were bringing out the group to a plain
surface ; careful, however, not to destroy its
figures, but to retain as much of it as possible.
In the same manner were works in bas-relief
going forward. One man only had repeated the
whole group in a miniature scale; and in cer-
tain movements and arrangements of limbs, he
really seemed to have surpassed his model.

And now it came out that this man was the
maker of the model ; who, before working it in
marble, had here submitted his performance
not to a critical, but to a practical tiial ; and by
accurately observing whatever any of his fellow-
artists in his special department and way of
thought might notice, retain or alter in the
group, was purposing, in subsequent considera-
tion, to turn all tliis to his' own profit; so that,
when at length the grand work stood finished
in marble, though undertaken, planned, and
executed by one, it might seem to belong to all.
The greatest silence reigned throughout this
apartment also ; but the Superior raised his

voice, and cried : " Is there any of you, then
who in presence of this stationary work can,
with gifted words, so awaken our imagination,
that all we here see concrete J, shall again be-
come fluid, without losing its character ; and so
convince us, that what our artist has here laid
hold of, was indeed the worthiest?"

Called forth on all sides by name, a fair
youth laid down his work; and as he stept for-
ward, began a quiet speech, seemingly intended
merely to describe the present group of figures;
but ere long he cast himself into the region of
poetry, plunged into the middle of the action,
and ruled this element like a master; by de-
grees, his representation so swelled and mounted
by lordly words and gestures, that the rigid
group seemed actually to move about its axis,
and the number of its figures to be doubled and
trebled. Wilhelm stood enraptured, and at last
exclaimed: "Can we now forbear passing over
into song itself, into rhythmic melody]"

"This I should wish to hinder," said the
Overseer; "for if our excellent statuary will be
candid, he will confess to us that our poet
scarcely pleases him ; and this because their
arts lie in the most opposite regions : on the
other hand, I durst bet, that here and there a
painter has not failed to appropriate some living
touches from the speech.

" A soft kindly song, however, I could wish
our friend to hear : there is one, for instance,
which you sing to an air so lovely and earnest;
it turns on Art in general, and I myself never
listen to it without pleasure."

After a pause, in which they beckoned to
each other, and settled their arrangements by
signs, the following heart and spirit stirring song
resounded in stately melody from all sides :

■ When inventing, when selecting,
' Artist, by thyself oontitiue Ion? :
Wlien some good thou art etfecting,

Haste and see it in the throng.
Here in others look, discover

What thy own life's course has been;
And thy deeds of years past over
In thy fellow man he seen.

The devising, the urutnig.

What and how the forms shall be;
One thing will tlie other lighten,

And at last comes joy to thee !
Wise and true what thou impartest,

Fairly shaped, and softly done :
Thus of old the cunniug artist

Artist-like liis ghny won.

' ; ' I As all Nature's thousand changes
' I But one changeless God proclaim ;

' So in Art's wide kingdoms ranges
I ' ' One sole meaning still the same:

... |,' ; This IS Truth, eternal Reason,

Wliich from Beauty takes its dress,
And serene through time and season,
Stands fur aye in loveliness.

While tlie orator, the singer.

Pour tlieir hearts in rhyme and prose,
'Neath tlie painter's busy finger,

Shall bloom forth Lile's cheerfu. rose;
Girt with sisters ; in the middle.

And with Autumn's fruitage blent,
That of life's mysterious riddle

Some short glimpses may be hent.

GOETHE.

319

Thousanilfolil, and ^raneful, show thou,

Form fioni forms evolving fair ;
And of mail's bright iiiiaKe know thou

That a God once tarried there :
And wiiale'er your tasks or prizes,

Stand as hretliren one and all,
While, like soii^, sweet incense rises

From the altar at your cull.

AH this Wilhelm could not but let pass,
though it must have seemed paradoxical enough ;
and, had he not seen it with his eyes, might
even have appeared impossible. Bat now,
when it was explained and pointed out to him,
openly and freely, and in fair sequence, he
scarcely needed to put any farther question on
the subject. However, he at last addressed his
conductor as follows : " I see here a most pru-
dent provision made for much that is desirable
in life : but tell me farther, which of your
regions exhibits a similar attention to Dramatic
Poetry, and where could I instruct myself in
that matter 1 I have looked round over all your
edifices, and observed none that seemed des-
tined for such an object."

"In reply to this question, we must not hide
from you, that, in our whole Province, there is
no siich edifice to be seen. The drama pre-
supposes the existence of an idle multitude, per-
haps even of a populace ; and no such class
finds harbor with us; for birds of that feather,
w-hen th.ey do not in spleen forsake us of their
own accord, we soon take care to conduct over
the marches. Doubt not, however, that m our
Institutioti, so universal in its character, this
point was carefully meditated: but no region
could be found for the purpose, everywhere
some important scruple came in the way. In-
deed, who among our pupils could readily de-
termine, ^\'ith pretended mirth, or hypocritical
sorrow, to excite in the rest a feeling untrue in
itself, and alien to the moment, for the sake of
calling forth an always dubious satisfaction?
Such juggleries we reckoned in all cases dan-
gerous, and could not reconcile with our earnest
objects."

"It is said, however," answered Wilhelm,
" tlmt this far-stretching art j)rdmotes all the rest,
of whatever sort."

"Nowise," answered the other: "it employs
the rest, but spoils thein. I do not blame a
player for uniting himself with a painter; but
the painter, in sttch society, is lost. Withottt
any conscience, the player will lay hold of
whatever art or life presents him, and use it for
his fugitive objects, indeed with no small profit:
the painter, again, who could wish in return to
extract advantage from the theatre, will con-
stantly find himself a loser by it ; and so also
in the like case will the musician. The com-
bined Arts appear to me like a family of sisters,
of whom the greater part were inclined to good
economy, but one was light-headed, and desirous
to appropriate and squander the whole goods
and chattels of the household. The Theatre is
this wasteful sister : it has an ambiguous origin,

which in no case, whether as art or trade or
amusement, it can wholly conceal."

Wilhelm cast his eyes on the ground with a
deep sigh ; for all that he had enjoyed or suf-
fered on the Stage rose at once before his mind ;
and he blessed the good men who were wise
enough to spare their pupils such pain, and, out
of principle and conviction, to banish such errors
from their sphere.

His attendant, however, did not leave him
long in these meditations, but continued : "As
it is our highest and holiest principle that no
talent, no cajjacity be misdirected, we cannot
hide from ourselves that among so large a nnm-
ber, here and there a mimical gift will some-
times decidedly come to light; exhibiting itself
in an irresistible desire to ape the characters,
forms, movements, speech of others. This we
certainly do not encourage ; but we observe our
pupil strictly, and if he continue faithful to his
nature, then we have already established an in-
tercourse with the great theatres of all nations,
and so thither we send any youth of tried capa-
bility, that, as the duck on the pond, so he on
the boards, may be forthwith conducted, full
speed, to the future quack-quacking, and gibble-
gabbling of his life."

Wilhelm heard this with patience, but only
with half-conviction, perliaps with some spleen:
for so strangely is man tempered, that he may
be persuaded of the worthlessness of any darl-
ing object, may turn away from it, nay, even
execrate it, but yet will not see it treated in this
way by others; and perhaps the Spirit of Con-
tradiction which dwells in all men, never rouses
itself more vehemently and stoutly than in such
cases.

And the Editor of these sheets may himself
confess, that he lets not this strange passage
through his hands without some touch of anger.
Has not he, too, in many senses, expended more
life and faculty than was right on the Theatre?
And would these men convince him that this
has been an unpardonable error, a fruitless
toil?

But we have no time for appending, in
splenetic mood, such remembrances and after-
feeliiigs to the narrative : for our friend now
finds himself agreeably surprised, as one of the
Three, and this a particularly prepossessing one,
again comes before his eyes. Kind, open meek-
ness, announcing the purest peace of soul, came
in its refreshing efiluences along with him.
Trustfully the Wanderer could approach, and
feel his trust returned.

Here he now learned that the Chief w^as at
present in the Sanctuary, instructing, teaching,
blessing; while the Three had separated to visit
all the Regions, and everywhere, after most
thorough information obtained, 'and conferences
with the subordinate Overseers, to forward what
was in progress, to found Mdiat was newly plan-
ned, and thereby faithfully discharge their high
duty.

This same excellent person now gave him a

320

GOETHE.

more comprehensive view of their internal
situation and external connections; explained
to him the mutual influences of one Region on
another ; and also by what steps, after a longer
or a shorter date, a pupil could be transferred
from the one to the other. All this harmonized
completely with what he already knew. At
the same time, he was much gratified by the
description given of his son ; and their farther
plan of education met with his entire approval.

He was now, by the Assistants and Overseer,
invited to a Miners' Festival, which was forth-
with to be celebrated. The ascent of the Moun-
tains was difficult; and Wilhelm fancied he ob-
served that his guide walked even, slower to-
wards evening, as if the darkness had not been
likely to obstruct their path still more. But
when deep night came round them, this enigma
was solved : our Wanderer observed little flames
come glimmering and wavering forth from many
dells and chasms ; gradually stretch themselves
into lines, and roll over the summits of the
mountains. Much kindlier than when a vol-
cano opens, and its belching roar threatens
whole countries with destruction, did this fair
light appear ; and yet, by degrees, it glowed
with new brightness ; grew stronger, broader,
more continuous ; glittered like a stream of
stars, soft and lovely indeed, yet spreading
boldly over all the scene.

After the attendant had a little while enjoyed
the surprise of his guest, for they could clearly
enough observe each other, their faces and forms
as well as their path being illuminated by the
light from the distance — he began: "You see
here, in truth, a curious spectacle : these lights,
which, day and night, the whole year over,
gleam and work under ground, forwarding the
acquisition of concealed and scarcely attainable
treasures ; these now mount and well forth
from their abysses, and gladden the upper night.
Scarcely could one anywhere enjoy so brave a
review, as here, where this most useful occupa-
tion, -which in its subterranean concealment is
dispersed and hidden from the eye, rises before
us in its full completeness, and bespeaks a great
secret combination."

Amid such speeches and thoughts, they had
reached the sjiot where these fire-brooks poured
themselves into a sea of flame, surrounding a
well-lighted insular space. The Wanderer
placed himself in the dazzling circle, within
which, glittering lights by thousands formed an
imposing contrast with the miners, ranked round
it like a dark wall. Forthwith arose the gayest
music, accompanied by becoming songs. Hol-
low masses of rock came forward on machinery,
and opened a resplendent interior to the eye of
the delighted spectator. Mimetic exhibitions,
and whatever else at such a moment can gratify
the multitude, combined with all this at once to
excite and to satisfy a cheerful attention.

But with what astonishment was Wilhelm
filled, when, on being introduced to the Su-
periors, he observed Friend Jarno, in solemn

stately robes, among the number ! " Not in
vain," cried Jarno, " have I changed my former
name with the more expressive title of Montan :
thou findest me here initiated in inountain and
cave ; and now, if questioned, I could disclose
and explain to thee much that a year ago was
still a riddle to mvself"

As Wilhelm, in order to reach any point of
the line marked out by the first Arrow, had to
proceed obliquely through the country, he found
himself necessitated to perform the journey on
foot, leaving his luggage to be carried after him.
For this walk of his, however, he was richly
rewarded; meeting at every step, quite unex-
pectedly, witli loveliest tracts of scenery. They
were of that sort, which the last slope of a
mountain region forms in its meeting with the
plain country; bushy hills, their soft declivities
employed in domestic use ; all level spaces
green ; nowhere aught steep, unfruitful, or un-
ploughed to be noticed. Ere long he reached
the main valley, into which the side -waters
flowed ; and this too was carefully cultivated,
graceful when you looked over it; with taper
trees marking the bends of the river, and of the
brooks which poured into it. On looking at his
map, his indicator, he observed with surprise
that the line drawn for him cut directly through
this valley ; so that, in the first place, he was at
least on the right road.

An old castle, in good repair, and seemingly
built at different periods, stood forth on a bushy
hill ; at the foot of which a gay hamlet stretched
along, with its large inn rising prominent among
the other houses. Hither he proceeded ; and
was received by the landlord kindly enough,
yet with an excuse that he could not be admit-
ted, unless by the permission of a party who
had hired the whole establishment for a time ;
on which account he, the landlord, was under
the necessity of sending all his guests to the
older inn, which lay farther up the hamlet.
After a short conference, the man seemed to
bethink himself, and said : " Indeed there is no
one of them at home even now ; but this is Sa-
turday, and the Bailiff will not fail to be here
soon ; he comes every week to settle the ac-
counts of the last, and make arrangements for
the next. Truly, there is a fair order reigns
among these men, and a pleasure in having to
do with them, though they are strict enough ;
for if they yield one no great profit, it is sure
and constant." He then desired his new guest
to amuse himself in the large upper hall, and
await what farther might occur.

Here Wilhelm, on entering, found a large
clean apartment ; except for benches and tables,
altogether empty. So much the more was he
surprised to see a large tablet inserted above
one of the doors, with these words marked on
it in golden letters, Ubi homines sunt modi sunt ;
which in modern tongue may signify, that where
men combine in society, the way and manner

GOETHE.

321

in which thoy like to be and to continue together
is directly established. This motto made our
Wanderer think ; he took it as a good omen ;
finding here, expressed and confirmed, a prin-
ciple which he had often, in the course of life,
perceived for himself to be furthersome and
reasonable. He had not waited long, when the
Bailiff" made his appearance; who being fore-
warned by the landlord, after a short conversa-
tion, and no very special scrutiny, admitted
Wilhelm on the following terms : To continue
three days ; to participate quietly in whatever
should occur ; and happen what might, to ask
no questions about the reason, and at taking
leave, to ask none about the score. All this our
traveller was obliged to comply with, the deputy
not being allowed to yield in a single point.

The Bailiti' was about retiring, when a sound
of vocal music rolled up the stair: two pretty
young men entered singing; and these the Bail-
iff", by a simple sign, gave to understand that
their guest was accepted. "Without interrupting
their song, they kindly saluted the stranger, and
continued their duet with the finest grace, show-
ing clearly enough that they were well trained,
and complete masters of their art. As Wilhelm
testified the most attentive interest, they paused
and inquired : If in his own pedestrian wan-
derings no song ever occurred to him, which
he went along singing by himself? " A good
voice,"' answered Wilhelm, " Nature has in truth
denied me : yet I often feel as if a secret Genius
were whispering some rhythmic words in my
ear; so that, in walking, I move to musical
measure ; fancying, at the same time, that I
hear low tones, accompanying some song, which,
in one way or another, has pleasantly risen be-
fore me."

" If you recollect such a song, write it down
for us," said they: "We shall see if we have
skill to accompany your singing Demon." He
took a leaf from his note-book, and handed them
the following lines:

From the mountains to the champaign,

By the glens anil liills along,
Conies a rustling- and a tramping,

Comes a motion as of song :
And this mideterinined rovmg

Brings delight, and brings good heed ;
And thy striraig, be 't with Loving,

And thy living, be 't in Deed !

After brief study, there arose at once a gay
marching melody, which, in its repetition and
restriction still stepping forward, hurried on the
hearer with it: he was in doubt whether this
was his own tune, his former theme ; or one
now for the first time so fitted to the words,
that no other movement was conceivable. The
singers had for some time pleasantly proceeded
in this manner, when two stout young fellows
came in, whom, by their accoutrements, you
directly recognised as masons ; two others, who
followed them, being as evidently carpenters.
These four, softly laying down their tools, list-
ened to the music, and soon struck in with sure
and decided voices; so that to the mind it

2a

seemed as if a real wayfaring company were
stepping along over hill and valley; and Wil-
helm thought lie had never heard anything so
graceful, so enlivening to heart and mind. This
enjoyment, however, was to be increased yet
farther, and raised to the highest pitch, by the
entrance of a gigantic figure, mounting the stair
with a hard firm tread, which, with all his ef-
forts, he could scarcely moderate. A heavy-
laden dorsel he directly placed in the corner ;
himself he seated on a bench, which beginning
to creak under his weight, the others laughed,
yet without going wrong in their music. Wil-
helm, however, was exceedingly surprised, when,
with a huge bass voice, this Son of Anak joined
in also. The hall quivered ; and it was to be
observed that in his part he altered the burden,
and sang it thus :

Life 's no resting, but a moving.

Let thy life be deed on deed !

Farther, you covtld very soon perceive that he
was drawing down the time to a slower step,
and forcing the rest to follow him. Of this,
when at last they were satisfied and had con-
cluded, they accused him ; declaring he had
tried to set them wrong.

" Not at all !" cried he : " it is you who tried
to set me wrong; to put me out of my own
step, which must be measured and sure, if I am
to walk with my loading up hill and down dale,
and yet, in the end, arrive at my appointed
hour, to satisfy your wants.

One after the other, these persons now passed
into an adjoining room to the Bailiflf; and Wil-
helm easily observed that they were occupied
in settling accounts ; a point, however, as to
which he was not allowed at present to inquire
farther. Two fair lively boys in the mean-
while entered, and began covering a table in
all speed, moderately furnishing it with meat
and wine ; and the Bailiff", coming out, invited
them all to sit down along with him. The boys
waited ; yet forgot not their own concern, but
enjoyed their share in a standing posture. Wil-
helm recollected witnessing similar scenes
during his abode among the players ; yet the
present company seemed to be of a much more
serious cast; constituted not out of sport, for
show, but with a view to important concerns
of life.

The conversation of the craftsmen with the
Bailiff" added strength to this f!Dnviction. These
fottr active young people, it appeared, were
busy in the neighbourhood, where a violent con-
flagratioii had destroyed the fairest village in
the country ; nor did Wilhelm fail to learn that
the worthy Bailiff" was employed in getting
timber and other building materials ; all which
looked the more enigmatical, as none of these
persons seemed to be resident here, but in all
other points annouticed themselves as transitory
strangers. By way of conclusion to the meal,
St. Christopher, such was the name they gave
the giant, brought out, for good-night, a dainty
glass of wine, which had befdle been set aside :

322

GOETHE.

a gay choral song kept the party still some time
together, after they were out of sight ; and then
Wilholm was at last conducted to a chamber of
the loveliest aspect and situation. The full
moon, enlightening a rich jiiain, was already
up ; and in the bosom of our Wanderer it awoke
remembrances of similar scenes. The spirits
of all dear friends hovered past him : especially
the image of Lenardo rose in him so vividly,
that he might have fancied the man himself
was standing before his eyes. All this had pre-
pared him with its kind influences for nightly
rest; when, on a sudden, there arose a tone of
so strange a nature, that it almost frightened
him. It sounded as from a distance, and yet
seemed to be in the house itself; for the build-
ing quivered many times, and tlie floors rever-
berated when the sound rose to its highest pitch.
Wilhelm, though his ear was usually delicate in
discriminating tones, could make notliing of diis:
he compared it to the droning roar of a huge
organ-pipe, which, for sheer compass, produces
no determinate note. Whether this nocturnal
terror passed away towards morning, or Wil-
helm by degrees became accustomed to the
sound, and no longer heeded it, is difilcult to
discover: at any rate, he fell asleep ; and was
in due time pleasantly awakened by the rising
sun.

Scarcely had one of the boys who ^vere in
waiting brought him breakfast, when a figure
entered, M'hom he had already noticed last
night at supper, without clearly ascertaining
his quality. A well-formed, broad-shouldered,
yet nimble man; who now, by the implements
which he spread out, announced himself as
Barber, and forthwith prepared for performing
his much-desired office on Wilhelm. For the
rest, he was quite silent: and with a light hand
he went through his task, without once having
opened his lips. Wilhelm therefore began, and
said: "Of your art you are completely master;
and I know not that I have ever had a softer
razor on my cheeks: at the same time, how-
ever, you appear to be a strict observer of the
laws of the Society."

Roguishly smiling, laying his finger on his
lips, the taciturn shaver glided through the door.
" By my sooth !" cried Wilhelm after him, " I
think you must be old Redcloak ; if not himself,
at least a descendant of his: it is lucky for you
that you ask no counter service of me; your
turn would have been but sorrily done."

No sooner had this curious personage retired,
than the well-known Bailiff came in, inviting
onr friend to dinner for this day, in words
which sounded pretty strange: the Boxd, so
said the speaker expressly, gave the stranger
welcome; requested his company at dinner;
and took pleasure m the hope of being more
closely connected with him. Inquiries were
then made as to the guest's health, and how he
was contented with his entertainment; to all
which he could only answer in terms of satis-
faction. He would, in truth, have liked much

to ask of this man, as previously of the silent
Barber, some information touching the horrid
sound, which throughout the night had, if not
tormented, at least discomposed him : but,
mindful of his engagement, he forbore all ques-
tions ; hoping that, without importunity, from
the good-will of the Society, or in some other
accidental way, he might be informed according
to his wishes.

Our friend, now when left alone, began to
reflect on the strange person who had sent him
this invitation, and knew not well what to
make of the matter. To designate one or tnore
superiors by a neuter noun, seemed to him a
somewhat precarious mode of speech. For the
rest, there was such a stillness all round, tliat
he could not recollect of ever having passed a
stiller Sunday. He went out of doors; and,
hearing a sound of bells, walked towards the
village. Mass was just over; and among the
villagers and country-people crowding out of
church, he observed three acquaintances of last
night; a mason, a carpenter, and a boy. Farther
on, he met among the Protestant worshippers
the other corresponding three. How the rest
managed their devotion was unlcnown to him:
but so much he thought himself entitled to con-
clude, that in this Society a full religious tolera-
tion was practised.

About midday, at the castle-gate, he was met
by the Bailiff; who then conducted him through
various halls into a large antechamber, and
there desired him to take a seat. Many persons
passed through into an adjoining hall. Those
already known were to be seen among them ;
St. Christopher himself went by: all saluted the
Bailiff and the stranger. But what struck our
friend most in this affair was, that the whole
party seemed to consist of artisans ; all dressed
in the usual fashion, though extremely neat and
clean : a few among the number you might at
most perhaps have reckoned of the clerk
species.

No more guests now making their appear-
ance, the Bailiff led our friend through the
stately door into a spacious hall. Here a table
of immense length had been covered; past the
lower end of which he was conducted, towards
the head, where he saw three persons standing
in a cross direction. But what was his astonish-
ment when he approached, and Lenardo, scarce-
ly yet recognised, fell upon his neck. From this
surprise he had not recovered, when another
person, with no less warmth and vivacity, like-
wise embraced him ; announcing himself as our
strange Friedrich, Natalia's brother. The rap-
ture of these friends diffused itself over all pre-
sent; an exclamation of joy and blessing sounded
along the whole table. But in a moment, the
company being seated, all again became silent;
and the repast, served up with a certain solem-
nity, vi'as enjoyed in like manner.

Towards the conclusion of the ceremony,
Lenardo gave a sign: two singers rose; and
Wilhelm was exceedingly surprised to hear in

GOETHE.

323

this place his yesternight's sopg; which we, for
tlie sake of what follows, shall beg permission
to insert once more.

From the mountains to tlie champaign,

By llie slens and lulls along-,
Comes a nistliut; and a tramping,

Conies a niol ion as of song :
And this iind(^t(;rmined roving

Brings delight, and brings good heed ;
And thy striving, tie't with Loving,

And thy living, be't lu Deed !

Scarcely had this duet, accompanied by a
chorus of agreeable number, approached its
conclusion, when two other singers, on the op-
posite side, started up impetuously; and, with
earnest vehemence, inverted rather than con-
tinued the song; to Wilhelm's astonishment,
proceeding thus :

For the tie is snapt asunder,

Trust and loving hope are fled ;
Can I tell, in fear and wonder,

With what dangers now bested,
I, cut off from friend and brother,

Like the widow in her wo.
With the one and not the other, "

On and on, my way must go ! . ^' ,

The chorus, taking up this strophe, grew
more and more numerous, more and more voci-
ferous ; and yet the voice of St. Christopher,
from the bottom of the table, could still be dis-
tinctly recognised among them. The lamenta-
tion, in the end, rose alinost to be frightful : a
spirit of dispiritment, combining with the skil-
ful execution of the singers, introduced some-
thing unnatural into the whole, so that it pained
our friend, and almost made him shudder. In
truth, they all seemed perfectly of one mind ;
and as if lamenting their own fate on the eve
of a separation. The strange repetitions, the
frequent resuscitation of a fatiguing song, at
length became dangerous in the eyes of the
Bond itself: Lenardo rose, and all instantly sat
down, abruptly breaking off their hymn. The
other, with friendly words, thus began :

" Indeed I cannot blame yott for continually
recalling to your minds the destiny which stands
before us all, that so, at any hour, you may be
ready for it. If aged and life-weary men have
called to their neighbors: Think of dying! we
yotmger and life-loving inen may well keep en-
couraging and reminding one another with the
cheerful words: Think of wandering! Yet,
withal, of a thing which we either voluntarily
undertake, or believe ourselves constrained to,
it were well to speak with cheerfulness and
moderation. You yourselves know best what,
in our situation, is fixed, and what is movable :
let us enjoy the former, too, in sprightly and gay
tones; and to its success be this parting cup
now drunk !" He emptied his glass, and sat
down : the four singers instantly rose, and in
flowing connected tones, thus began :

Keep not standing fix'd and rooted,

Briskly venture, briskly roam.
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,

And stout heart, are still at home.

In each land the sun does visit,

We are gay, whate'er betide :
To give room for waiid'ring is it

That the world wus made so wide.

As the chorus struck in with its repetition
of these lines, Lenardo rose, and with him all
the rest. His nod set the whole company into
singing movement; those at the lower end
marched out, St. Christopher at their head, in
pairs through the hall; and the uplifted wan-
derers' song grew clearer and freer, the farther
they proceeded ; producing at last a particularly
good effect, when, from the terraces of the castle-
garden, you looked down over the broad valley,
in whose fulness and beauty you might well
have liked to lose yourself While the multi-
tude were dispersing this way and that, accord-
ing to their pleasure, Wilhelm was made ac-
quainted with the third Superior. This was
the Amtmann ; by whose kind influence many
favors had been done the Society ; in particular,
the Castle of his patron the Count, situated
aiTiong several families of rank, had been given
up to their use, so long as they might think fit
to tarry here.

Towards evening, while the friends were in
a far-seeing grove, there came a portly figure
over the threshold, whom Wilhelm at once re-
cognised as the Barber of this morning. To a
low mute bow of the man, Lenardo answered :
" You now come, as always, at the right season ;
and will not delay to entertain us with your
talent. I may be allowed," continued he, turn-
ing towards Wilhelm, " to give you some know-
ledge of our Society, the Bond of which I may
flatter myself that I am. No one enters our
circle unless he have some talents to show,
which may contribute to the use or enjoyment
of society in general. This man is an excellent
surgeon ; of his skill as a beard-artist you your-
self can testify : for these reasons, he is no less
welcome than necessary to us. Now, as his
employment usually brings with it a great and
often burdensome garrulity, he has engaged, for
the sake of his own culture, to comply with a
certain condition; as, indeed, every one that
means to live with us must agree to constrain
himself in some particular point, if the greater
freedom be left him in all other points. Ac-
cordingly, our Barber has renounced the use of
his tongue, in so far as aught common or casual
is to be expressed by it: but by this means,
another gift of speech has been unfolded in him,
which acts by forethought, cunningly and plea-
surably ; I mean the gift of narration.

" His life is rich in wonderful experiences,
which he used to split in pieces, babbling of
them at wrong times ; but which he now, con-
strained by silence, repeats and arranges in his
quiet thought. This also his power of imagina-
tion now forwards, lending life and movement
to past occurrences. With no common art and
skill, he can relate to us genuine Antique Tales,
or modern stories of the same fabulous cast ;
thereby, at the right hour afibrdiiig us a moft

324

GOETHE.

j)leasant entertainment, when I loose his tongue
for Inm; which I now do; giving him, at the
same time, this praise, tliat in the considerable
period during which I have known him, he has
never once been guilty of a repetition. I cannot
but hope, that, in the present case, for love and
respect to our dear guest, he will especially dis-
tinguish himself"

A sprightly cheerfulness spread over Red-
cloak's face ; and without delay, he began
speaking as follows.

THE NEW MELUSINA.

" Respected gentlemen ! Being aware that
preliminary speeches and introductions are not
much to your taste, I shall without farther talk
assure you, that in the present instance, I hope
to fulfil your commission moderately well.
From me has many a true history gone forth
already, to the high and universal satisfaction
of hearers : but, to-day I may assert, that I have
one to tell, which far surpasses the former ; and
which, though it happened to me several years
ago, still disquiets tne in recollecting it, nay,
still gives hope of some farther development.

"By way of introduction, let me confess, that
I have not always so arranged my scheme of
life as to be certain of the next period in it, or
even of the next day. In my youth, I was no
first-rate economist; and often found myself in
manifold perplexity. At one time, I undertook
a journey, thinking to derive good profit in the
course of it : but the scale I went upon was too
liberal ; and after having commenced my travel
M'ith Extra-post, and then prosecuted it for a
time in the Diligence, I at last found myself
obliged to front the end of it on foot.

" Like a gay young blade, it had been from
of old my custom, on entering any inn, to look
round for the landlady, or even the cook, and
wheedle myself into favor with her ; whereby,
for most part, my shot was somewhat reduced.

"One night at dusk, as I was entering the
Post-house of a little town, and purposing to set
iibout my customary operations, there came a
fair double-seated coach with four horses, rat-
tling up to the door behind me. I turned round ;
and observed in it a young lady, without maid,
without servants. I hastened to open the car-
riage for her, and to ask if I could help her in
anything. On stepping out, a fair form dis-
played itself; and her lovely countenance, if
you looked at it narrowly, was adorned with a
slight shade of sorrow. I again asked if there
was aught I could do for her. 'O yes!' said
she, 'if you will lift that little Box carefully,
which you will find standing on the seat, and
bring it in : but I beg very much of you to carry
it with all steadiness, and not to move or shake
it in the least.' I took out the Box with great
care ; she shut the coach-door ; we walked up
stairs together, and she told the servants that
she was to stay here for the night.

" We were now 'alone in the chamber : she

desired me to put the Box on the table, which
was standing at the wail; and as, by several
of her movements, I observed that she wished
to be alone, I took my leave, reverently but
warmly kissing her hand.

"'Order supper for us two,' said she then:
and you may well conceive with what pleasure
I executed the commission ; scarcely deigning,
in my pride of heart, to cast even a side-look on
landlady and menials. With impatience I ex-
pected the moment that was to lead me back
to her. Supper was served : we took our seats
opposite each other ; I refreshed my heart, for
the first time during a considerable while, with
a good meal ; and no less with so desirable a
sight beside me ; nay, it seemed as if she were
growing fairer and fairer every moment.

"Her conversation was pleasant; yet she
carefully waived whatever had reference to af-
fection and love. The cloth was removed : I
still lingered, I tried all sorts of manoeuvres to
get near her ; but in vain ; she kept me at my
distance, by a certain dignity which I could not
withstand ; nay, against my will, I had to part
from her at a rather early hour.

" After a night passed in waking or unrestfully
dreaming, I rose early ; inquired whether she
had ordered horses; and learning that she had
not, I walked into the garden, saw her standing
dressed at the window, and hastened up to her.
Here, as she looked so fair, and fairer than ever,
love, roguery, and audacity all at once started
into motion within me : I rushed towards her,
and clasped her in my arms. ' Angelic, irre-
sistible being.' cried I, 'pardon ! but it is impos-
sible— !' With incredible dexterity she whisked
herself out of my arms, and I had not even time
to imprint a kiss on her cheek. ' Forbear such
outbreakings of a sudden foolish passion,' said
she, ' if you would not scare away a happiness
which lies close beside you, but which cannot
be laid hold of till after some trials.'

" ' Ask of me what thou pleasest, angelic spi-
rit!' cried I: 'but do not drive me to despair.'
She answered with a smile : ' If you mean to
devote yourself to my service, hear the terms.
I am come hither to visit a lady of my friends,
and with her I purpose to continue for a time :
in tlie meanwhile, I could wish that my carriage
and this Box were taken forward. Will you
engage with it? You have nothing to do, but
carefully to lift the Box into the carriage and
out ; to sit down beside it, and punctually take
charge that it receive no harm. When you
enter an inn, it is put upon a table, in a chamber
by itself, in which you must neither sit nor
sleep. You lock the chamber -door with this
key, which will open and shut any lock, and
has the peculiar property, that no lock shut by
it can be opened in the interim.'

" I looked at her ; I felt strangely enough at
heart : I promised to do all, if I might hope to
see her soon, and if she would seal this hope to
me with a kiss. She did so ; and from that
moment, I had become entirely her bondman.

GOETHE,

3Q5

I was now to order horses, she said. We set-
tled the way I was to take ; the places where I
was to wait, and expect her. She at last pressed
a purse of gold into my hand, and I pressed my
lips on the fair hand that gave it me. She seemed
moved at parting; and for me, I no longer knew
what I was doing or was to do.

" On my return from giving my orders, I
found the room-door locked. I directly tried
my master-key, and it performed its duty per-
fectly. The door flew up : I found the chamber
empty ; only the Box standing on the table where
I had laid it.

" The carriage drove up : I carried the Box
carefully down with me, and placed it by my
side. The hostess asked: 'Where is the lady,
then V A child answered : ' She is gone into the
town.' I nodded to the people ; and rolled off
in triumph from the door, which I had last
night entered with dusty gaiters. That in my
hours of leisure I diligently meditated on this ad-
venture, counted my money, laid many schemes,
and still now and then kept glancing at the Box,
you will readily imagine. I posted right for-
ward ; passed several stages without alighting ;
and rested not till I had reached a considerable
town, where my fair one had appointed me to
wait. Her commands had been pointedly obey-
ed : the Box always carried to a separate room,
and two wax candles lighted beside it, for such
also had been her order. I would then lock the
chamber ; establish myself in my own, and take
such comfort as the place afforded.

" For a while I was able to employ myself
with thinking of her ; but by degrees the time
began to hang heavy on my hands. I was not
used to live widiout companions : these I soon
found, at tables-d'liote, in coffee-houses, and
public places, altogether to my wish. In such
a mode of living my money began to melt away ;
and one night, it vanished entirely from my
purse, in a fit of passionate gaming, which I
had not had the prudence to abandon. Void of
money ; with the appearance of a rich man, ex-
pecting a heavy bill of charges; uncertain whe-
ther and when my. fair one would again make
her appearance, I felt myself in the deepest
embarrassment. Doubly did I now long for
her ; and believe, that, without her and her gold,
it was quite impossible for me to live.

'' After supper, which I had relished very
little, being forced for this time to consume it in
solitude, I took to walking violentlyup and down
my room : I spoke aloud to myself, cursed my
folly with horrid execrations, threw myself on
the floor, tore my hair, and indeed behaved in
the most outrageous fashion. Suddenly, in the
adjoining chamber where the Box was, I heard
a slight movement, and tlien a soft knocking at
the well-bolted door, which entered from my
apartment. I gather myself, grope for my mas-
ter-key; but the door-leaves fly up of them-
selves; and in the splendor of those burning
wax-lights enters my Beauty. I cast myself at
her feet, kiss her robe, her hands; she raises

me ; I venture not to clasp her, scarcely to look
at her; but candidly and repentantly confess to
her my fault. ' It is pardonable,' said she ;
'only it postpones your happiness and mine.
You must now make another tour into the world,
before we can meet again. Here is more money,'
continued she, ' sufficient if you husband it with
any kind of reason. But as wine and play have
brought you into this perplexity, be on your
guard in future against wine and women, and
let me hope for a glad meeting M'hen the time
comes.'

" She retired over the threshold ; the door-
leaves flew together : I knocked, I entreated ;
but nothing farther stirred. Next morning while
presenting his bill, the waiter smiled, and said :
' So we have found out at last, then, why you
lock your door in so artfid and incomprehensible
a way, that no master-key can open it. We sup-
posed you must have much money and precious
ware laid up by you ; but now we have seen
your treasure walking down stairs ; and in good
truth, it seemed worthy of being well kept.'

"To this I answered nothing; but paid my
reckoning, and mounted with my Box into the
carriage. I again rolled forth into the world,
with the firmest resolution to be heedful in
future of the warning given me by my fair and
mysterious friend. Scarcely, however, had I
once more reached a large town, when forth-
with I got acquainted with certain interesting
ladies, from whom I absolutely could not tear
myself away. They seemed inclined to make
me pay dear for their favor: for while they
still kept me at a certain distance, they led me
into one expense after the other ; and I, being
anxious only to promote their satisfaction, once
more ceased to think of my purse, but paid and
spent straight forward, as occasion needed.
But liow great was my astonishment and joy,
when, after some weeks, I observed that the
fulness of my store was not in the least dimin-
ished, that my purse was still as round and
crammed as ever! Wishing to obtain more
strict knowledge of this pretty quality, I set
myself down to count ; I accurately marked the
sum; and again proceeded in my joyous life as
before. We had no want of excursions by land,
and excursions by water ; of dancing, singing,
and other recreations. But now it required
small attention to observe that the purse was
actually diminishing; as if by my cursed count-
ing, I had robbed it of the property of being
uncountable. However, this gay mode of ex-
istence had been once entered on ; I could not
draw back ; and yet my ready money soon
verged to a close. I execrated my situation ;
upbraided my fair friend, for having so led nje
into temptation; took it as an offence that she
did not again show herself to me ; renounced,
in my spleen, all duties towards her ; and re-
solved to break open the Box, and see if per-
adventure any help might be found there. I
was just about proceeding with my purpose ;
but I put it off till night, that I might go through
28

326

GOETHE.

the business with full composure; and, in the
mean time, I hastened off to a banquet, for
which this was the appointed hour. Here
again we got into a high key; the wine and
trumpet-sounding had flushed me not a little,
when by the most villanous luck it chanced,
that during the dessert, a former friend of my
dearest fair one, returning from a journey, en-
tered unexpectedly, placed himself beside her,
and, without much ceremony, set about assert-
ing his old privileges. Hence, very soon arose
ill-hnmor, quarrelling, and battle : we plucked
out our sjiits ; and I was carried home half-dead
of several wounds.

"The surgeon had bandaged me and gone
away: it was far in the night; my sick-nurse
had fallen asleep ; the door of the side-room
went up ; my fair mysterious friend came in,
and sat down by me on the bed. She asked
how I was : I answered not, for I was faint
and sullen. She continued speaking with much
sympathy : she rubbed my temples with a cer-
tain balsam, whereby I felt myself rapidly and
decidedly strengthened, so strengthened that I
could now get angry and upbraid her. In a
violent speech I threw all the blame of my
misfortune on her; on the 2iassion she had in-
spired me with; on her appearing and vanish-
ing, and the tedium, the longing which in such
a case I could not but feel. I waxed more and
more vehement, as if a fever had been coming
on ; and I swore to her at last, that if she would
not be mine, would not now abide with me and
wed me, I had no wish to live any longer; to
all which I required a peremjDtory answer. As
she lingered and held back with her expla-
nation, I got altogether beside myself, and tore
off my double and triple bandages, in the firm-
est resolution to bleed to death. But what was
my amazement, when I found all my wounds
healed, my skin smooth and entire, and this
fair friend in my arms !

" Henceforth we were the happiest pair in
the world. We both begged pardon of each
other, without either of us rightly knowing
why. She now promised to travel on along
with me : and soon we were sitting side by
side in the carriage; the little Box lying oppo-
site us on the other seat. Of this I had never
spoken to her, nor did I now think of speaking,
though it lay there before our eyes ; and both
of us, by tacit agreement, took charge of it, as
circumstances might require ; I, however, still
carrying it to and from the carriage, and busy-
ing myself, as formerly, with the locking of the
doors.

" So long as aught remained in my purse, I
had continued to ])ay ; but when my cash went
done, I signified the fact to her. ' That is easily
helped," said she, pointing to a couple of little
pouches fixed at the top, to the side of the car-
riage. These I had often observed before, but
never turned to use. She put her hand into the
one, and pulled out some gold pieces, as from
the other some coins of silver j thereby showing

me the possibility of meeting any scale of ex-
penditure, which we might choose to adopt.
And thus we journeyed on from town to town,
from land to land ; contented with each other
and with the world : and I fancied not that she
would again leave me ; the less so, that for
some time she had evidently been as loving
wives wish to be, a circumstance by which our
happiness and mutual affection was increased
still farther. But one morning, alas! she could
not be found : and as my actual residence, with-
out her company, became displeasing, I again
took the road with my Box ; tried the virtue of
the two pouches, and found it still unimpaired.
"My journey proceeded without accident.
But if I had hitherto paid little heed to the
mysteries of my adventure, expecting a natural
solution of the whole, there now occurred some-
thing which threw me into astonishment, into
anxiety, nay, into fear. Being wont, in my im-
patience for change of place, to hurry forward
day and night, it was often my hap to be travel-
ling in the dark; and when the lamps, by any
chance, went out, to be left in utter obscurity.
Once in the dead of such a night. I had fallen
asleep ; and on awakening, I observed the glim-
mer of a light on the covering of my carriage.
I examined this more strictly, and found that it
was issuing from the Box ; in which there seem-
ed to be a chink, as if it had been chapped by
the warm and dry weather of summer, which
was now come on. My thoughts of jewels
again came into my head ; I supposed there
must be some carbuncle lying in the Box, and
this point I forthwith set about investigating. I
postured myself as well as might be, so that my
eye was in immediate contact with the chink.
But how great was my surprise, when a fair
apartment, well-lighted, and furnished with
much taste and even costliness, met my inspec-
tion, just as if I had been looking down through
the opening of a dome into a royal saloon ! A
fire was burning in the grate ; and before it
stood an arm-chair. I held my breath and con-
tinued to observe. And now there entered from
the other side of the apartment a lady with a
book in her hand, whom I at once recognised
for my wife, though her figure was contracted
into the extreme of diminution. She sat down
in the chair by the fire to read; she trimmed
the coals with the most dainty pair of tongs;
and in the course of her movements, I could
clearly perceive that this fairest little creature
was also in the family way. But now I was
obliged to shift my constrained posture a little ;
and the next moment, when I bent down to
look in again, and convince myself that it was
no dream, the light had vanished, and my eye
rested on empty darkness.

" How amazed, nay, terrified I was, you may
easily conceive. I started a thousand thoughts
on this discovery, and in truth could think no-
thing. In the midst of this, I fell asleep ; and
on awakening, I fancied that it must have been
a mere dream: yet I felt myself in some degree

GOETHE.

327

estranged from my fair one ; and though I
watclied over the Box, but so much the more
carefully, I knew not wliether the event of her
reappearance in human size was a tiling which
I should wijh or dread.

"After some time she did in fact reappear:
one evening, in a white robe, she came gliding
in; and as it was just then growing dusky in
my room, slie seemed to me taller than when I
had seen her last: and I remembered having
heard that all beings of the mermaid and
gnome species increased in stature very per-
ceptibly at the fall of night. She flew, as usual,
to my arms ; but I could not with right gladness
press her to my obstructed breast.

" ' My dearest,' said she, ' I now feel by thy
reception of me, what, alas, I already knew too
well. Thou hast seen me in the interim : thou
art acquainted with the state in which, at cer-
tain times, I find myself; thy happiness and
mine is interrupted, nay, it stands on the brink
of being annihilated altogether. I must leave
thee ; and I know not whether I shall ever see
thee again.' Her presence, the grace with
which she spoke, directly banished from my
memory almost every trace of that vision, which
indeed Iiad already hovered before me as Uttle
more than a dream. I addressed her with kind
vivacity, convinced her of my passion, assured
her that I was innocent, that my discovery was
accidental : in short, I so managed it that she
appeared composed, and endeavored to com-
pose me.

"'Try thyself strictly,' said she, 'whether this
discovery has not hurt thy love, whether thou
canst forget that I live in two forms beside thee,
whether the diminution of my being will not
also contract thy affection.'

" I looked at her : she was fairer than ever ;
and I thought within myself: Is it so great a
misfortune, after all, to have a wife who from
time to time becomes a dwarf, so that one can
carry lier about witli him in a casket? Were it
not much M'orse if she became a giantess, and
put her husband in the box? My gaiety of heart
had returned. I would not for the whole world
have let her go. 'Best heart,' said I, 'let us be
and continue ever as we have been. Could
either of us wish to be better? Enjoy thy con-
veniency ; and I promise thee to guard the Box
with so much the more faithfulness. Why
should the prettiest sight I have ever seen in
my life make a bad impression on me ? How
happy would lovers be, could they but procure
such miniature pictures! And after all it was
but a picture, a little sleight-ofhand-deception.
Thou art trying and teasing me: but thou shalt
see how I will stand it.'

"'The matter is more serious than thou
thinkest,' said the fair one: 'however, I am
truly glad to see thee take it so lightly; for
much good may still be awaiting us both. I
will trust in thee ; and for my own part do my
utmost: only promise me that thou wilt never
mention this discovery by way of reproach.

Another prayer likewise I most earnestly make
to thee : Be more than ever on thy guard against
wine and anger.'

" I promised what she required ; I could have
gone on promising to all lengths; but slie her-
self turned aside the conversation; and thence-
forth all proceeded in its former routine. We
had no inducement to alter our place of re-
sidence : the town was large, the society vari-
ous; and the fine season gave rise to many an
excursion, and garden-festival.

"In all such amusements the presence of my
wife was welcome, nay, eagerly desired, by
women as well as men. A kind insinuating
manner, joined with a certain dignity of bearing
secured to her on all hands praise and estima-
tion. Besides, she could play beautifully on the
lute, accompanying it with her voice ; and no
social night could be perfect, unless crowned by
the graces of this talent.

" I will be free to confess that I have never
got much good of music ; on the contrary, it has
always rather had a disagreeable effect on me.
My fair one soon noticed this, and accordingly,
when by ourselves, she never tried to entertain
me by such means : in return, however, she
appeared to indemnify herself while in society,
where indeed she always found a crowd of
admirers.

" And now, why should I deny it, our late
dialogue, in spite of my best intentions, had by
no means sufficed to abolish tlie matter within
me : on the contrary, my temper of mind had
by degrees got into the strangest tune, almost
without my being conscious of it. One night,
in a large company, this hidden grudge broke
loose, and by its consequences produced to my-
self the greatest damage.

" When I look back on it now, I in fact loved
my Beauty far less, after that unlucky discovery:
I was also growing jealous of her; a whim that
had never struck me before. This night at
table, I found myself placed very much to my
mind beside my two neighbours, a couple of
ladies, who, for some time, had appeared to me
very charming. Amid jesting and soft small
talk, I was not sparing of my wine : while, on
the other side, a pair of musical dilletanti had
got hold of my wife, and at last contrived to
lead the company into singing separately, and
by way of chorus. This put me into ill-humor.
The two amateurs appeared to me impertinent;
the singing vexed me; and when, as my turn
came, they even requested a solo-strophe from
me, I grew truly indignant, I emptied my glass,
and set it down again with no soft movement.

"The grace of my two fair neighbours soon
pacified me, indeed ; but there is an evil na-
ture in wrath, when once it is set agoing. It
went on fermenting within me, though all things
were of a kind to induce joy and complaisance.
On the contrary, I waxed more splenetic than
ever when a lute was produced, and my fair
one began fingering it and singing, to the ad-
miration of all the rest. Unhajjpily, a general

328

GOETHE.

silence was requested. So then, I was not even
to talk any more ; and these tones were going
through me like a toothach. Was it any won-
der that, at last, the smallest spark should blow
up the minel

" The songstress had just ended a song amid
the loudest applauses, when she looked over to
me ; and this truly with the most loving face in
the world. Unluckily, its lovingness could not
penetrate so far. She perceived that I had just
gulped down a cup of wine, and was pouring
out a fresh one. With her right forefinger, she
beckoned to me in kind threatening. 'Consider
that it is wine !' said she, not louder than for
myself to hear it. — 'Water is for mermaids !'
cried I. — 'My ladies,' said she to my neighbours,
'crown the cup with all your gracefulness, that
it be not too often emptied.' — 'You will not let
yourself be tutored?' whispered one of them in
my ear. — 'What ails the Dwarf 1' cried I, with
a more violent gesture, in which I overset the
glass. — ' Ah, what you have spilt !' cried the
paragon of women ; at the same time, twanging
her strings, as if to lead back the attention of
the company from this disturbance to herself
Her attempt succeeded ; the more completely
as she rose to her feet, seemingly that she might
play with greater convenience, and in this atti-
tude continued preluding.

"At sight of the red wine running over the
table-cloth, I returned to myself I perceived
the great fault I had been guilty of; and it cut
me through the very heart. Never till now had
music spoken to me : the first verse she sang
was a friendly good-night to the company, here
as they were, as they might still feel themselves
together. With the next verse they became as
if scattered asunder ; each felt himself solitary,
separated, no one could fancy that he was pre-
sent any longer. But what shall I say of the
last verse ? It was directed to me alone ; the
voice of injured Love bidding farewell to Mo-
roseness and Caprice.

"In silence I conducted her home; forebod-
ing no good. Scarcely, however, had we reached
our chamber, when she began to show herself
exceedingly kind and graceful, nay, even ro-
guish; she made me the happiest of all men.

"Ne.xt morning, in high spirits and full of
love, I said to her : ' Thou hast so often sung,
when asked in company; as, for example, thy
touching farewell song last night. Come now,
for my sake, and sing me a dainty gay welcome
to this morning hour, that we may feel as we
were meeting for the first time.'

'"That I may not do, my friend,' said she
seriously. ' The song of last night referred to
our parting, which must now forthwith take
place : for I can only tell thee, the violation of
thy promise and oath will have the worst con-
sequences for us both ; thou hast scoffed away
a great felicity, and I too must renounce my
dearest wishes.'

" As I now pressed and entreated her to ex-
plain herself more clearly, she answered :

' That, alas, I can well do ; for, at all events,
my continuance with thee is over. Hear, then,
what I would rather have concealed to the
latest times. The form, under which thou
sawest me in the Box, is my natural and proper
form : for I am of the race of King Eckwald,
the dread Sovereign of the Dwarfs, concerning
whom authentic History has recorded so much.
Our people are still as of old laborious and busy,
and therefore easy to govern. Thou must not
fancy that the Dwarfs are behindhand in their
manufacturing skill. Swords which followed
the foe, when you cast them after him ; invisible
and mysteriously binding chains; impenetrable
shields, and such like ware, in old times, formed
their staple produce. But now they chiefly em-
ploy themselves with articles of convenience
and ornament; in which truly they surpass all
people of the Earth. I may well say, it would
astonish thee to walk through our workshops
and warehouses. All this would be right and
good, were it not that with the whole nation in
general, but more piarticularly with the royal
family, there is one peculiar circumstance con-
nected.'

She paused for a moment ; and I again begged
farther liglit on these wonderful secrets; which
accordingly she forthwitli proceeded to grant.

" ' It is well known,' said she, ' that God, so
soon as he had created the world, and the ground
was dry, and the mountains were standing
bright and glorious, that God, I say, thereupon,
in the very first place, created the Dwarfs; to
the end, that there might be reasonable beings
also, who, in their passages and chasms, might
contemplate and adore his wonders in the in-
ward parts of the Earth. It is farther well
known, that this little race by degrees became
uplifted in heart, and attempted to acquire the
dominion of the Earth ; for which reason God
then created the Dragons, in order to drive back
the Dvvarfs into their mountains. Now, as the
Dragons themselves were wont to nestle in the
large caverns and clefts, and dwell there ; and
many of them, too, were in the habit of spitting
fire, and working much other mischief, the poor
little Dwarfs were by this means thrown into
exceeding straits and distress, so that not know-
ing what in the world to do, they humbly and
fervently turned to God. and called to him in
prayer, that he would vouchsafe to abolish this
unclean Dragon generation. But though it con-
sisted not with his wisdom to destroy his own
creatures, yet the heavy sufferings of the poor
Dwarfs so moved his compassion, that anon he
created the Giants, ordaining them to fight these
Dragons, and if not root them out, at least lessen
their numbers.

" ' Now, no sooner had the Giants got mode-
rately well through with the Dragons, than their
liearts also began to wax wanton; and, in their
presumption, they practised much tyranny, es-
pecially on the good little Dwarfs, who then
once more in their need turned to the Lord ; -
and he, by the power of his hand, created the

GOETHE.

329

Knights, who were to make war on the Giants
and Dragons, and to live in concord with tire
Dwarfs. Hereby was the work of creation com-
pleted on this side : and it is plain, that hence-
forth Giants and Dragons, as well as Knights
and Dwarfs, have always maintained them-
selves in being. From this, my friend, it will
be clear to thee, that we are of the oldest race
on the Earth; a circumstance which does us
honor, but, at the same time, brings great disad-
vantage along with it.

"^Foras there is nothing in the world that
can endure forever, but all that has once been
great, must become little and fade, it is our lot,
also, that ever since the creation of the world,
we have been waning and growing smaller;
especially the royal family, on whom, by reason
of their pure blood, this destiny presses with the
heaviest force. To remedy this evil, our wise
teachers have many years ago devised the ex-
pedient of sending forth a Princess of the royal
house from time to time into the world, to wed
some honorable Knight, that so the Dwarf pro-
geny may be refected, and saved from entire
decay.'

" Though my fair one related these things
with an air of the utmost sincerity, I looked at
her hesitatingly ; for it seemed as if she meant
to palm some fable on me. As to her own
dainty lineage, I had not the smallest doubt:
but that she should have laid hold of me in
place of a Knight, occasioned some mistrust;
seeing I knew myself too well to suppose that
my ancestors had come into the world by an
immediate act of creation.

" I concealed my wonder and scepticism, and
asked her kindly: 'But tell me, my dear child,
how hast thou attained this large and stately
shape? For I know few women that in rich-
ness of form can compare W'ith thee.' — ' Thou
shalt hear,' replied she. 'It is a settled maxim
in the Council of the Dwarf Kings, that this ex-
traordinary step be forborne as long as it possibly
can ; which, indeed, I cannot but say is quite
natural and proper. Perhaps they might have
lingered still longer, had not my brother, born
after me, come into the world so exceedingly
small, that the nurses actually lost him out of
his swaddling-clothes, and no creature yet knows
whither he is gone. On this occurrence, unex-
ampled in the annals of Dwarfdom, the Sages
were assembled ; and without more ado, the
resolution was taken, and I sent out in quest of
a husband.'

"'The resolution!' exclaimed I : 'that is all
extremely well. One can resolve, one can take
his resolution : but to give a Dwarf this hea-
venly shape, how did your Sages manage that?'

" ' It had been provided for already,' said she,
'by our ancestors. In the royal treasury, lay a
monstrous gold ring. I speak of it as it then
appeared to me, when I saw it in my childhood :
for it was this same ring, which I have here on
my finger. We now went to work as follows :

<' ' I was informed of all that awaited me ;
2r

and instructed what I had to do and to forbear.
A splendid palace, after the pattern of my fa-
ther's favorite summer residence, was then got
ready : a main edifice, wings, and whatever
else you could think of. It stood at the entrance
of a large rock-cleft, which it decorated in the
handsomest style. On the appointed day, our
court moved thither, my parents also and my-
self The army paraded ; and four-and-twenty
priests, not without difficulty, carried on a costly
litter the mysterious ring. It was placed on the
threshold of the building, just within the spot
where you entered. Many ceremonies were
observed ; and after a pathetic farewell, I pro-
ceeded to my task. I stept forward to the ring ;
laid my finger on it ; and that instant, began
perceptibly to wax in stature. In a few mo-
ments I had reached my present size ; and then
I put the ring on my finger. But now, in the
twinkling of an eye, the doors, windows, gates
flapped to ; the wings drew up into the body
of the edifice ; instead of a palace, stood a little
Box beside me; which I forthwith lifted, and
carried off with me ; not without a pleasant
feeling in being so tall and strong, still, indeed,
a dwarf to trees and mountains, to streams and
tracts of land ; yet a giant to grass and herbs ;
and above all, to ants, from whom we Dwarfs,
not being always on the best terms with them,
often sufier considerable annoyance.

" ' How it fared with me on my pilgrimage, I
might tell thee at great length. Suffice it to say,
I tried many ; but no one save thou deemed
worthy of being honored to renovate and per
petuate the line of the glorious Eckwald.'

" In the course of these narrations, my head
had now and then kept wagging, without my-
self having absolutely shaken it. I put several
questions; to which I received no very satisfac-
tory answers; on the contrary, I learned, to my
great affliction, that after what had happened,
she must needs return to her parents. She had
hopes still, she said, of getting back to me : but
for the present, it was indispensably necessary
to present herself at court; as otherwise, both
for her and me, there was nothing but utter
ruin. The purses would soon cease to pay;
and who knew what all would be the conse-
quences ?

"On hearing that our money would run short,
I inquired no farther into consequences : I
shrugged my shoulders ; I was silent, and she
seemed to understand me.

" We now packed up, and got into our car-,
riage ; tlie Box standing opposite us ; in which,
however, I could still see no symptoms of a pa-
lace. In this way we proceeded several stages.
Post-money and drink-money were readily and
richly paid from the pouches to the right and
left; till at last we reached a mountainous dis-
trict; and no sooner had we alighted here, than
my fair one walked forward, directing me to
follow her with the Box. She led me by rather
steep paths to a narrow plot of green ground,
through which a clear brook now gushed in
28*

330

GOETHE.

little falls, now ran in quiet windings. She
pointed to a little knoll; bade me set the Box
down there, then said : 'Farewell! Thou wilt
easily find the way back; remember me; I
hope to see thee again.'

"At this moment, I felt as if I could not leave
her. She was just now in one of her fine days,
or if you will, her fine hours. Alone with so
fair a being, on the green sward, among grass
and flowers, girt in by rocks, waters murmuring
round you, what heart could have remained in-
sensible ! I came forward to seize her hand, to
clasp her in my arms: bitt she motioned me
back ; threatening me, though still kindly enough,
with great danger, if I did not instantly withdraw.

'"Is there no possibility, then,' exclaimed I,
'of my staying with thee, of thy keeping me
beside thee?' These words I uttered with such
rueful tones and gestures, that she seemed
touched by them, and after some thought, con-
fessed to me that a continuance of our imion
was not entirely imj^ossible. Who happier
than I ! My importunity, which increased every
moment, compelled her at last to come out with
her scheme, and inform me that if I too could
resolve on becoming as little as I had once seen
her, I might still remain with her, be admitted
to her house, her kingdom, her family. The
proposal was not altogether to my mind ; yet at
this moment I positively could not tear myself
away; so, having already for a good while been
accustomed to the marvellous, and being at all
times prone to bold enterprises, I closed with
her ofl"er, and said she might do with me as she
pleased.

"I was thereupon directed to hold out the
little finger of my right hand : she placed her
own against it; then with her left hand, she
quite softly pulled the ring from her finger, and
let it run along mine. That instant, I felt a
violent twinge on my finger : the ring shrunk
together, and tortured me horribly. I gave a
loud cry, and caught round me for my fair one,
but she had disappeared. What state of mind
I was in during this moment, I find no words
to express ; so I have nothing more to say, but
that I very soon, in my miniature size, found
myself beside my fair one in a wood of grass-
stalks. The joy of meeting after this short yet
most strange separation, or, if you will, of this
re-union without separation, exceeds all concep-
tion. I fell on her neck ; she replied to my
caresses, and the little i^air was as happy as the
large one.

"With some difficulty, we now mounted a
hill : 1 say difficulty, because the sward had be-
come for us an almost impenetrable forest. Yet
at length we reached a bare space; and how
surprised was I at perceiving there a large
bolted mass ; which, ere long, I could not but
recognise for the Box, in the same state as when
I had set it down.

" ' Go up to it, my friend,' said she, ' and do
but knock with the ring : thou shalt see won-
ders.' I went up accordingly, and no sooner had

I rapped, than I did, in fact, witness the great-
est wonder. Two wings came jutting out; and
at the same time there fell, like scales and
chips, various pieces this way and that; while
doors, windows, colonnades, and all that be-
longs to a complete palace at once came into
view.

" If ever you have seen one of Kontchen's
desks; how, at one pull, a multitude of springs
and latches get in motion, and writing board
and writing materials, letter and money com-
partments, all at once, or in quick succession,
start forward, you will partly conceive how this
palace unfolded itself, into which my sweet
attendant now introduced me. In the large
saloon, I directly recognised the fire-place which
I had formerly seen from above, and the chair
in which she had then been sitting. And on
looking up, I actually fancied I could still see
sometliing of the chink in the dome, through
which I had peeped in. I spare you the de-
scription of the rest: in a word, all was spa-
cious, splendid, and tasteful. Scarcely had I
recovered from my astonishment, when I heard
afar off a sound of military music. My better
half sprang up ; and witli rapture announced
to me the approach of His Majesty her Father.
We stept out to the threshold, and here beheld
a magnificent procession moving towards us,
from a considerable cleft in the rock. Soldiers,
servants, officers of state, and glittering courtiers,
followed in order. At last you observed a
golden throng, and in the midst of it the King
himself. So soon as the whole procession had
drawn up before the palace, the King, with his
nearest retinue, stept forward. His loving
daughter hastened out to him, pulling me along
with her. We threw ourselves at his feet; he
raised me very graciously ; and on coming to
stand before him, I perceived, that in this little
world I was still the most considerable figure.
We proceeded together to the palace ; where
His Majesty, in presence of his whole court,
was pleased to welcome me with a well-studied
oration, in which he expressed his surprise at
finding us here; acknowledged me as his son-
in-law, and appointed the nuptial ceremony to
take place on the morrow.

"A cold sweat went over me as I heard him
speak of marriage : for I dreaded this event
more than music, which otherwise appeared to
me the most hateful thing on Earth. Your
music-makers, I used to say, enjoy at least the
conceit of being in unison with each other, and
working in concord : for when they have tweak-
ed and tuned long enough, grating our ears with
all manner of screeches, they believe in their
hearts that the matter is now adjusted, and one
instrument accurately suited to the other. The
band-master himself is in this happy delusion ;
and so they set forth joyfully, though still tear-
ing our nerves to pieces. In the marriage-state,
even this is not the case : for although it is but
a duet, and you might think two voices, or even
two instruments, might in some degree be at-

GOETHE.

331

tuned to each other, yet this happens very sel-
dom: for while the man gives out one tone, the
wife directly takes a higher one, and the man
again a higher ; and so it rises from the cham-
ber to the choral pitch, and farther and farther,
till at last wind-instruments themselves cannot
reach it. And now, as harmonica] music itself
is an offence to me, it will not be surprising
that disharmonical should be a thing which I
cannot endure.

" Of the festivities in which the day was
spent, I shall and can say nothing: for I paid
small heed to any of them. The sumptuous
victuals, the generous wine, the royal amuse-
ments, I could not relish. I kept thinking and
considering what I was to do. Here, however,
there was but little to be considered. I deter-
mined, once for all, to take myself away, and
hide somewhere. Accordingly, I succeeded in
reaching the chink of a stone, where I entrench-
ed and concealed myself as well as might be.
My first care after this was to get the unhappy
ring off my finger; an enterprise, however,
which would by no means prosper, for on the
contrary, I felt that every pull I gave, the metal
grew straiter and cramped me with violent
pains, which again abated so soon as I desisted
from my purpose.

"Early in the morning I awoke (for my little
person had slept, and very soundly) ; and was
just stepping out to look farther about me, when
I felt a kind of rain coming on. Through the
grass, flowers, and leaves, there fell as it were
something like sand and grit in large quantities ;
but v/hat was my horror when the whole of it
became alive, and an innumerable host of Ants
rushed down on me ! No sooner did they ob-
serve me, than they made an attack on all
sides; and though I defended myself stoutly
and gallantly enough, they at last so hemmed
me in, so nipped and pinched me, that I was
glad to hear them calling to surrender. I sur-
rendered instantly and wholly; whereupon an
Ant of respectable stature approached me with
courtesy, nay, with reverence, and even recom-
mended itself to my good graces. I learned
that the Ants had now become allies of my
father-in-law, and by him been called out in the
present emergency, and commissioned to fetch
me back. Here then was little I in the hands
of creatures still less. I had nothing for it but
looking forward to the marriage ; nay, I must
now thank Heaven, if my father-in-law were
not wroth, if my fair one had not taken the
suUens.

" Let me skip over the whole train of cere-
monies : in a word, we were wedded. Gaily
and joyously as matters went, there were, never-
tlieless, solitary hours, in which you were led
astray into reflection ; and now there happened
to me something which had never happened
before : what, and how, you shall learn.

'■ Everything about me was completely adapt-
ed to my present form and wants; the bottles
and glasses were in a fit ratio to a little toper,

nay, if you will, better measure, in proportion,
than with us. In my tiny palate, the dainty
tidbits tasted excellently ; a kiss from the little
mouth of my spouse was still the most charm-
ing thing in nature ; and 1 will not deny that
novelty made all these circumstances highly
agreeable. Unhaiipily, however, I had not for-
gotten my former situation. I felt within me a
scale of bygone greatness; and it rendered me
restless and cheerless. Now, for the first time,
did I understand what the philosophers might
mean by their Ideal, which they say so plagues
the mind of man. I had an Ideal of myself;
and often in dreams I appeared as a giant. In
short, my wife, my ring, my dwarf figure, and
so many other bonds and restrictions, made me
utterly unhappy, so that I began to think seri-
ously about obtaining my deliverance.

" Being persuaded that the whole magic lay
in the ring, I resolved on filing this asunder.
From the court-jeweller, accordingly, I borrow-
ed some files. By good luck, I was left-handed,
as, indeed, throughout my whole life, I had
never done aught in the right-handed way. I
stood tightly to the work : it was not small : for
the golden hoop, so thin as it appeared, had
grown proportionably thicker in contracting
from its former length. All vacant hours I
privately applied to this task ; and at last, the
metal being nearly through, I was provident
enough to step out of doors. This was a wise
measure : for all at once the golden hoop started
sharply from my finger, and my frame shot aloft
with such violence, that I actually fancied I
should dash against the sky; and, at all events,
I must have bolted through the dome of our
palace ; nay, perhaps, in my new awkward-
ness, have destroyed this summer-residence al-
together.

" Here then was I standing again ; in truth,
so much the larger, but also, as it seemed to me,
so much the more foolish and helpless. On re-
covering from my stupefaction, I observed the
royal strong-box lying near me, which I foimd
to be moderately heavy, as I lifted it, and car-
ried it down the foot-path to the next stage;
where I directly ordered horses, and set forth.
By the road, I soon made trial of the two side-
pouches. Instead of money, which appeared
to be run out, I found a little key : it belonged
to the strong-box, in which I got some moderate
compensation. So long as this held out, I made
use of the carriage : by and by I sold it, and
proceeded by the Diligence. The strong-box,
too, I at length cast from me, having no hope
of its ever filling again. And thus in the end,
though after a considerable circuit, I again re-
turned to the kitchen-hearth, to the landlady
and the cook, where you were first introduced
to me."

WHETIE IS THE TBAITOH ?

"No! No'."' exclaimed he, violently and
hastily rushing into the chamber allotted him,
and setting down his candle : "No ! it is impos-

332

GOETHE.

sible! But whither shall I turni For the first
time I think otherwise than he ; for the first
time, I feel, I wish otherwise. O father! couldst
thou but be present invisibly, couldst thou but
look through and through me, thon wouldst see
that I am still the same, still thy true, obedient,
afl'ectionate son. Yet to say No ! To contradict
my father's dearest, long-cherished wish! How
shall I disclose it? How shall I express it'? No,
I cannot marry Julia! While I speak of it, I
shudder. And how shall I appear before him,
tell him this, him the good, kind father ? He
looks at me with astonishment, without speak-
ing: the prudent, clear-sighted, gifted man, can
find no words. Wo is me ! Ah, I know well
to whom I would confide this pain, this per-
plexity ; who it is I would choose for my ad-
vocate! Before all others, thou, Lucinda ! And
I would first tell thee how I love thee, how I
give myself to thee, and pressingly entreat thee
to speak for me ; and if thou canst love me
again, if thou wilt be mine, to speak for us
both."

To explain this short j)ithy monologue will
require some details.

Professor N. of N. had an only boy of singular
beauty, whom, till the child's eighth year, he
had left entirely iti charge of his wife. This
excellent woman had directed the hours and
days of her son, in living, learning, and all good
behaviour. She died ; and the father instantly
felt, that to prosecute this parental tutelage was
impossible. In their lifetime, all had been har-
mony between the parents : they had labored
for a common aim, had determined in concert
what was next to be done ; and the mother had
not wanted skill to execute wisely, by herself,
what the two had planned together. Double
and treble was now the widower's anxiety, see-
ing, as he could not but daily see, that for the
sons of professors, even in universities, it was
only by a sort of miracle that a happy educa-
tion could be expected.

In this strait he applied to his friend the
Oberamtmann of R., with whom he had already
been treating of plans for a closer alliance be-
tween their families. The Oberamtmann gave
him counsel and assistance : so the son was
established in one of those Institutions, which
still flourish in Germany, and where charge is
taken of the whole man, and body, soul, and
spirit are trained with all attention.

The son was thus provided for ; the father,
however, felt himself very lonely: robbed of
his wife ; shut out from the cheerful j^resence
of the boy, whom he had seen, without etfort of
hi<, growing up in such desirable culture. But
heie again the friendship of the Oberamtmann
served him in good stead : the distance of their
abodes vanished before his affection, his desire
for movement, for diversion of thought. In this
hospitable home the widowed Man of Letters
found, in a family circle motherless like his
own, two beautiful little daughters growing up
in diverse loveliness; a state of things which

more and more confirmed the fathers in their
purpose, in their hope, of one day seeing their
families united in the most joyful bonds.

They lived under the sway of a mild good
Prince : the meritorious Oberamtmann was cer-
tain of his post during life ; and in the appoint-
ment of a successor, his recommendation was
likely to go far. And now, according to the
wise family arrangement, sanctioned also by
the Minister, Lucidor was to train himself for
the important oiTice of his future father-in-law.
This in consequence he did, from step to step.
Nothing was neglected in communicating to
him all sorts of knowledge, in developing in
him all sorts of activity, which the State in any
case requires: practice in rigorous judicial law;
and also in the laxer sort, where prudence and
address find their proper field; foresight for
daily ways and means ; not excluding higher
and more comprehensive views, yet all tending
towards practical life, and so as with effect and
certainty to be employed in its concerns.

With such purposes had Lucidor spent his
school-years : by his father and his patron, he
was now warned to make ready for the uni-
versity. In all departments he already showed
the fairest talents ; and to Nature he was farther
intlebted for the singular happiness of inclining,
out of love for his father, out of respect for his
friend, to turn his capabilities, first from obe-
dience, then from conviction, on that very object
to which he was directed. He was placed in
a foreign university, and here, both by his own
account in his letters, and by the testimony of
his teachers and overseers, he continued walk-
ing in the path that led towards his appointed
goal. It was only objected to him, that in cer-
tain cases he had been too impetuously brave.
The father shook his head at this ; the Ober-
amtmann nodded. Who would not have been
proud of such a son ?

JMeanwhile, the two daughters, Julia and
Lucinda, were waxing in stature and graces.
Julia, the younger, waggish, lovely, unstable,
higlily entertaining; the other difficult to pour-
tray, for, in her sincerity and purity, she repre-
sented all that we prize most in woman. Visits
were paid and repaid ; and, in the Professor's
house, Julia found the most inexhaustible amuse-
ment.

Geography, which he failed not to enliven by
Topography, belonged to his province ; and no
sooner did Julia cast her eyes on any of the
volumes, of which a whole series from Ho-
mann's warehouse were standing there, than
the cities all and sundry had to be mustered,
judged, preferred, or rejected : all havens espe-
cially obtained her favor ; other towns, to acquire
even a slight approval from her, must stand
forth well supplied with steeples, domes, and
minarets.

Julia's father often left her for weeks to the
care of his tried friend. She was actually ad-
vancing in knowledge of her science; and al-
ready the inhabited world, in its main features,

GOETHE.

333

in its chief points and places, stood before her
with some accuracy and distinctness. The
garbs of foreign nations attracted her peculiar
attention ; and often when her foster-father
asked her in jest ; If among the many young
handsome men who were passing to and fro
before her window, there was not some one or
odier whom she liked ? she would answer :
" Yes, indeed, if he do but look odd enough."
And as our young students are seldom behind-
hand in this particular, she had often occasion
to take notice of individuals among them : they
brought to her mind the costume of foreign na-
tions; however, she declared in the end, that
if shewas to bestow her iindivided attention on
anyone, he must be at least a Greek, equipped
in the complete fashion of his coimtry ; on
which account, also, she longed to be at some
Leipzig Fair where, as she understood, such
persons were to be seen walking the streets.

After his dry and often irksome labors, our
Teacher had now no happier moments, than
those he spent in mirthfully instructing her ;
triumphing withal, in secret, that a being_ so
attractive, ever entertaining, ever entertained,
was in the end to be his own daughter. For
the rest, the two fathers had mutually agreed,
that no hint of their purpose should be com-
municated to the girls; from Lucidor, also, it
was kept secret.

Thus had years passed away, as indeed they
very lightly pass ; Lucidor presented himself
completed, having stood all trials to the joy
even of the superior overseers, who wished
nothing more heartily than being able, with a
good conscience, to fulfil the hopes of old,
worthy, favored, and deserving servants.

And so the business had at length by quiet
regular steps come so far, that Lucidor. after
having demeaned himself in subordinate sta-
tions to universal satisfaction, was now to be
placed in a very advantageous post, suitable to
his wishes and merits, and lying just midway
bet%veen the University and the Oberamtman-
sliip.

The father now spoke with his son about
Julia, of whom he had hitherto only hinted, as
about his bride and wife, without any doubt or
condition ; congratulating him on the happiness
of having appropriated such a jewel to himself
The Professor saw in fancy his daughter-in-law
again from time to time in his house ; occupied
with charts, plans, and views of cities : the son
recalled to mind the gay andrnost lovely crea-
ture, who, in times of childhood, had, by her
rogueries as by her kindliness, always delighted
iiim. Lucidor was now to ride over to the
Oberamtmann's, to take a closer view of the
full-grown fair one ; and, for a few weeks, to
surrender himself to the habitudes and fami-
liarity of her househoid. If the young people,
as was to be hoped, should speedily agree, the
Professor wp.s forth vith to appear, that so a
solemn botrothmelit might forever secure the
anticipated happiness.

Lucidor arrives, is received with the friend-
liest welcome ; a chamber is allotted him ; he
arranges himself there, and appears. And now
he finds, besides the members of the family
already known to us, a grown-up son ; misbred
certainly, yet shrewd and good-natured; so that
if you liked to take him as the Jesting Counsel-
lor of the party, he fitted not ill with the rest.
There belonged, moreover, to the house, a very
old, but healthy and gay-hearted man; quiet,
wise, discreet ; completing his life, as it were,
and here and there requiring a little help. Di-
rectly after Lucidor, too, there had arrived an-
other stranger ; no longer young, of an impres-
sive aspect, dignified, thoroughly well-bred, and,
by his acquaintance with the most distant quar-
ters of the world, extremely entertaining. He
was called Antoni.

Julia received her announced bridegroom in
fit order, yet with an excess rather than a defect
of frankness : Lucinda, on the other hand, did
the honors of the house, as her sister did those
of herself. So passed the day ; peculiarly agree-
able to all, only to Lucidor not : he, at all times
silent, had been forced, that he might avoid
sinking dumb entirely, to employ himself in
asking questions ; and in this attitude, no one
appears to advantage.

Throughout he had been absent-minded ; for
at the first glance he had felt, not aversion or
repugnance, yet estrangement, towards Julia :
Lucinda, on the contrary, attracted him, so that
he trembled every time she looked at him with
her full pure peaceful eyes.

Thus hard bested, he reached his chamber
the first night, and gave vent to his heart in that
soliloquy with which we began. But to explain
this sufficiently, to show how the violence of
such an emphatic speech agrees with what we
know of him already, another little statement
will be necessary.

Lucidor was of a deep character ; and for
most part had something else in his mind, than
what the present scene required : hence talk
and social conversation would never prosper
rightly with him ; he felt this, and was wont to
continue silent, except when the topic happened
to be particular on some department which he
had completely studied, and of which, whatever
he needed was at all times ready. Besides this,
in his early years at school, and later at the
university, he had been deceived in friends, and
had wasted the effusions of his heart unhappily;
hence every communication of his feelings
seemed to him a doubtful step, and doubting
destroys all such communication. With his
father he was used to speak only in unison ;
therefore, his full heart poured itself out in mo-
nologues, so soon as he was by himself.

Next morning he had summoned up his reso-
lution ; and yet he almost lost heart and com-
posure again, when Julia met him with still
more friendliness, gaiety, and frankness, than
ever. She had much to ask ; about his journeys
by land and journeys by water ; how, when a

334

GOETHE.

student, with bis knapsack on his back, he had
roamed and chmbed through Switzerland, nay,
crossed the Alps themselves. And now of those
fair islands on the great Southern Lake, she had
much to say ; and then backwards, the Rhine
must be accompanied from his primary origin ;
at first, through most imdelicious regions, and
so downwards through many an alternation, till
at length, between Maynz and Coblenz, you
find it still worth while respectfully to dismiss
the old River from his last confinement, into the
wide world, into the sea.

Lucidor, in the course of this recital, felt him-
self much lightened in heart; he narrated will-
ingly and well, so that Julia at last exclaimed
in rapture: " It is thus that our other self should
be V At which phrase Lucidor again felt
startled and frightened; thinking he saw in it
an allusion to their future pilgrimage in common
through life.

From his narrative duty, however, he was
soon relieved : for the stranger, Antoni, very
speedily overshadowed all mountain streams,
and rocky banks, and rivers whether hemmed
in or left at liberty. Under his guidance you
now went forward to Genoa; Livorno lay at no
great distance ; whatever was most interesting
in the country you took with you as fair spoil ;
Naples, too, was a place you should see before
you died ; and then, in truth, remained Constan-
tinojjle, which also was by no means to be
neglected. Antoni's descriptions of the wide
world carried the imagination of every hearer
along with him, though Antoni himself intro-
duced little fire into the subject. Julia, quite
enraptured, was still nowise satisfied: she longed
for Alexandria, Cairo, and, above all, for the
Pyramids : of which, by the lessons of her in-
tended father-in-law, she had gained some mo-
derate knowledge.

I..ucidor, next night (he had scarcely shut his
door; the candle he had not jout down) ex-
claimed: "Now, bethink thee, then; it is grow-
ing serious! Thou hast studied and meditated
many serious things : what avails thy law-learn-
ing, if thou canst trot act like a man of law 1
View thyself as a delegate, forget thy own feel-
ings, and do what it would behove thee to do
for another. It thickens and closes round me
horribly ! The stranger is plainly come for the
sake of Lucinda; she shows him the fairest,
noblest social and hospitable attentions : that
little fool would run through the world with any
one for anything or nothing. Besides, she is a
wag ; her interest in cities and countries is a
farce, by which she keeps us in silence. But
why do I look at the affair so perplexedly, so
narrowly? Is not the Oberamtmann himself
the most judicious, the clearest, the kindest me-
diator? Thou wilt tell him how thou feelest
and thinkest ; and he will think with thee, if
not likewise feel. With thy father he has all in-
fluence. And is not the one as well as the other
his daughter ? What would this Antoni the
Traveller with Lucinda, who is born for home,

to be happy and to make happy? Let the wa-
vering quicksilver fasten itself to the Wandering
Jew : that will be a right match."

Next morning Lucidor came down, with the
firm purpose of speaking with the father ; and
waiting on him expressly to that end, at the
hour when he knew him to be disengaged.
How great was his vexation, his perplexity, ou
learning that the Oberamtmann had been called
away on business, and was not expected till the
day after the morrow ! Julia, on this occasion,
seemed to be expressly in her travelling fit ; she
kept by the world -wanderer, and, with some
sportive hits at domestic economy, gave up Lu-
cidor to Lucinda. If our friend, viewing this
noble maiden from a certain distance, and under
one general impression, had already, with his
whole heart, loved her, he failed not now in
this nearest nearness to discover with double
and treble vividness in detail, all that had be-
fore as a vv^iole attracted him.

The good old friend of the family now brought
himself forward, in place of the absent father :
he too had lived, had loved ; and was now,
after many hard bufletings and bruises of life,
resting at last, refreshed and cheerful, beside
the friend of his youth. He enlivened the con-
versation ; and especially expatiated on per-
plexities in choice of wives; relating several
remarkable examples of explanations, both in
time and too late. Lucinda appeared in all her
splendor. She admitted: That accident, in all
departments of life, and so likewise in the busi-
ness of marriage, often produced the best result;
yet that it was finer and prouder when one
could say he owed his hapiiiness to himself, to
the silent calm conviction of his heart, to a noble
purpose and a quick determination. Tears stood
in Lucidor's eyes as he ajoplauded this senti-
ment: directly afterwards, the two ladies went
out. The old president liked well to deal in
illustrative histories; and so the conversation
expanded itself into details of pleasant instances,
which however, touched our hero so closely,
that none but a youth of as delicate manners as
his could have refrained from breaking out with
his secret. He did break out, so soon as he was
by himself.

"I have constrained myself!" exclaimed he:
" with such perj^lexities I will not vex my good
father : I have forborne to speak : for I see in
this worthy old man the substitute of both fa-
thers. To him will I speak ; to him disclose
the whole: he will surely bring it about; he
has already almost spoken what I wish. Will
he censure in the individual case what he
praises in general? To-morrow I visit him: I
must give vent to this oppression."'

At breakfast, the old man was not present :
last night he had spoken, it appeared, too much ;
had sat too long, and likewise drunk a drop or
two of wine beyond his custom. Much was
said in his praise ; many anecdotes were re-
lated ; and precisely of such sayings and do-
ings as brought Lucidor to despair for not hav-

GOETHE,

335

ing forthwith applied to him. This unpleasant
feeling was but aggravated, when he learned
that in such attacks of disorder the good old
man would often not make his re-appearance
for a week.

For. social converse, a country residence has
many advantages ; especially when the owners
of it have, for a course of years, been induced,
as thinking and feeling persons, to improve the
natural capabilities of their environs. Such
had been the good fortune of this spot. The
Obcramtmann, at first unwedded, then .in a
long happy marriage, himself a man of fortune,
and occupying a lucrative post, had, according
to his own judgment and perception, according
to the taste of his wife, nay, at last according to
the wishes and whims of his children, laid out
and forwarded many larger and smaller deco-
rations; which by degrees being skilfully con-
nected with plantations and paths, aflbrded to
the promenader a very beautiful, continually
varying, characteristic series of scenes. A pil-
grimage through these, our young hosts now
proposed to their guest; as in general we take
pleasure in showing our improvements to a
stranger, that so what has become habitual in
our eyes, may appear with the charm of novelty
in his, and leave with liim, in permanent re-
membrance, its first favorable impression.

The nearest, as well as the most distant part
of the grounds, was peculiarly appropriate for
modest decorations, and altogether rural indivi-
dualities. Fertile hills alternated with well-
watered meadows ; so that the whole was
visible from time to time, without being flat;
and if the land seemed chiefly devoted to pur-
poses of utility, the graceful, the attractive, was
by no means excluded.

To the dwelling and office-houses were united
various gardens, orchards, and green spaces ;
out of which you imperceptibly passed into a
little wood, with a broad, clear carriage-road
winding up and down through the midst of it.
Here, in a central spot, on the most considerable
elevation, there had been a Hall erected, with
side-chambers entering from it. On coming
through the main-door, you saw in a large
mirror the most favorable prospect which the
country aflbrded ; and were sure to turn round
that instant, to recover yourself on the reality
from the effect of this its unexpected image :
for the approach was artfully enough contrived,
and all that could excite surprise was carefully
hid till the last moment. No one entered but
felt himself pleasurably tempted to turn from
the mirror to Nature, and from Nature to the
mirror.

Once in motion in this fairest, brightest, long-
est day, our party made a spiritual campaign
of it, over and through the whole. Here the
daughters pointed out the evening seat of their
good mother, where a stately box-tree had kept
clear space all round it. A little farther on,
Lucinda's place of morning-prayer was half-
roguishly exhibited by Julia : close to a little

brook, between poplars and alders, with mea-
dows sloping down from it, and fields stretch-
ing upwards. It was indescribably pretty. You
thought you had seen such a spot everywhere,
but nowhere so impressive, and so perfect in
its simplicity. In return for this, the young
master, also half against Julia's will, pointed
out the tiny groves, and child's gardens, which,
close by a snug-lying mill, were now scarcely
discernible : they dated from a time when Julia,
perhaps in her tenth year, had taken it into her
head to become a milleress ; intending, after the
decease of the two old occupants, to assume the
management herself, ar.d choose some brave
niillman for her husband.

"That was at a time,'' cried Julia, " when I
knew nothing of towns lying on rivers, or even
on the sea; nothing of Genoa, of Naples, and
the like. Your worthy father, Lucidor, has con-
verted me ; of late I come seldom hither." She
sat down with a roguish air, on a little bench,
that was now scarcely large enough for her;
under an elder-bough, which had bent deeply
towards the ground: "Fie on this cowering!''
cried she; then started up, and ran off with her
gay brother.

The remaining pair kept up a rational con-
versation ; and in these cases, reason approaches
close to the borders of feeling. Wandering over
changeful, simple natural objects, to contemplate
at leisure how cunning scheming man contrives
to gain some profit from them ; how his percep-
tion of what is laid before him, combining v.'ith
the feeling of his wants, does wonders, first in
rendering the world inhabitable, then in peo-
pling it, and at last in overpeopling it : all this
could here be talked of in detail. Lucinda gave
account of everything ; and, modest as she was,
she could not hide that these pleasant and con-
venient combinations of distant parts by roads,
had been her work, under the proposal, direc-
tion, or favor of her revered mother.

But as the longest day at last bends down to
evening, our j^arty were at last forced to think
of returuing; and while devising some pleasant
circuit, the merry brother proposed that they
should take the short road, though it comraaad-
ed no fine i^rospects, and was even in some
places more difficult to get over. "For," cried
he, "you have preached all day about your de-
corations and reparations, and how you have
improved and beautified the scene for pictorial
eyes and feeling hearts : let me also have my
turn."

Accordingly, they now set forth over ploughed
grounds, by coarse paths, nay, sometimes pick-
ing their way by stepping-stones in boggy
places; till at last they perceived, at some
distance, a pile of machinery towering up in
manifold combination. More closely examined,
it turned out to be a large apparatus for sport
and games, arranged not without judgment, and
in a certain popular spirit. Here, fixed at suit-
able distances, stood a large swing-wheel, on
which the ascending and the descending riders

336

GOETHE.

might still sit horizontally, and at their ease ;
other see-saws, swing-ropes, leaping-poles, bowl-
ing and nine-pins courses, and whatever can be
fancied for variedly and equally employing and
diverting a crowd of people gathered on a large
common. "This,"' cried he, "is my invention,
my decoration ! And though my father found
the money, and a shrewd fellow the brain ne-
cessary for it, yet without me, whom you often
call a person of no judgment, money and brain
would not have come together."

In this cheerful mood, the whole four reached
home by sunset. Antoni also joined tliem ; but
the little Julia, not yet satisfied with this unrest-
ing travel, ordered her coach, and set forth on a
visit to a lady of her friends, in utter despair at
not having seen her for two days. The party
left behind began to feel embarrassed before
they w^ere aware ; it was even mentioned in
words that the father's absence distressed tliem.
The conversation was about to stagnate, when
all at once the madcap sprang from his seat,
and in a few moments returned with a book,
proposing to read to the company. Lucinda
forbore not to inquire how this notion had oc-
curred to him, now for the first time in a twelve-
month. "Everything occurs to me," said he,
" at the proper season : this is more than you
can say for yourself" He read them a series
of genuine Antique Tales; such as lead man
away from himself, flattering his wishes, and
making him forget all those restrictions, between
which, even in the happiest moments, we are
still hemmed in.

"What shall I do now !" cried Lucidor, when
at last he saw himself alone. "The hour presses
on: in Antoni I have no trust; he is an utter
stranger, I know not who he is, how he comes
to be here, nor what he wants; Lucinda seems
to be his object; and if so, what can I expect
of hiral Nothing remains for me but applying
to Lucinda herself: she must know of it, she
before all others. This was my first feeling :
why do we stray into sidepaths and subter-
fuges? My first thought shall be my last, and I
hope to reach my aim."

On Saturday morning, Lucidor, dressed at an
early hour, was walking to and fro in his
chamber; thinking and conning over his pro-
jected address to Lucinda, when he heard a
sort of jestful contention before his door, and the
door itself directly afterwards went up. The
mad younker was shoving in a boy before him,
with coffee and baked ware for the guest; he
himself carried cold meats and wine. " Go
thou foremost," cried the younker : " for the
guest must be first served ; I am used to serve
myself My friend, to-day I am entering some-
what early and tumultuously : but let us take
our breakfast in peace ; then we shall see what
is to be done ; for of our company there is no-
thing to be hoped. The little one is not yet
back from her friend ; they two have to pour
out their hearts together every fortnight, other-
wise the poor dear hearts would burst. On

Saturdays, Lucinda is good for nothing; she
balances her household accounts for my father ;
she would have had me taking share in the con-
cern, but Heaven forbid ! When I know the
price of anything, no morsel of it can I relish.
Guests are expected to-morrow ; the old man
has not yet got refitted ; Antoni is gone to hunt,
we will do the same."

Guns, pouches, and dogs were ready, as our
pair stept down into the court; and now tliey
set forth over field and hill, shooting at best
some leveret or so, and perhaps here and there
a poor indifferent undeserving bird. Meanwhile
tl'iey kept talking of domestic affairs, of the
household and company at present assembled
in it. Antoni was mentioned, and Lucidor failed
not to inquire more narrowly about him. The
gay younker, with some self-complaisance, as-
serted, that strange as the man was, and much
mystery as he made about himself, he, the gay
younker, had already seen through him and
through him. "Without doubt," continued he,
"Antoni is the son of a rich mercantile family,
whose large partnership concern fell to ruin at
the very time when he, in the fidl vigor of
youth, was preparing to take a cheerful and
active hand in their great undertakings, and
withal to share in their abundant profits.
Dashed down from the summit of his hopes, he
gathered himself together, and undertook to
perform for strangers what he was no longer in
a case to perform for his relatives. And so he
travelled through the world; became thoroughly
acquainted with it and its mutual traffickings ;
in the meanwhile, not forgetting his own ad-
vantage. Unwearied diligence and tried fidelity
obtained and secured lor him unbounded con-
fidence from many. Thus in all places he ac-
quired connections and friends; nay, it is easy
to see that his fortune is as widely scattered
abroad as his acquaintance ; and accordingly
his presence is from time to time required in all
quarters of the ■u^orld."

These things the merry younker told in a
more circumstantial and simple style, intro-
ducing many farcical observations, as if he
meant to spin out his story to full length.

"How long, for instance," cried he, "has this
Antoni been connected with my father ! They
think I see nothing, because I trouble myself
about nothing; but for this very reason, I see it
better, as I take no interest in it. To my father
he has intrusted large sums, who again has de-
posited them securely and to advantage. It
was but last night that he gave our old dietetic
friend a casket of jewels; a finer, simpler, cost-
lier piece of ware, I never cast my eyes on,
though I saw this only with a single glance, for
they make a secret of it. Most probably it is to
be consigned to the bride for her pleasure, satis-
faction, and future security. Antoni has set his
heart on Lucinda! Yet when I see them to-
gether, I cannot think it a well-assorted match.
The hop-skip would have suited him better; I
believe, too, she would take him sooner than

GOETHE.

337

the elder would. Many a time, I see her look-
ing over to the old curmudgeon, so gay and
sympathetic, as if she could find in. her heart to
spring into the coach with him, and fly off at
full gallop." Lucidor collected himself: he
knew not what to answer ; all that he heard
obtained liis internal approbation. The younker
proceeded: "All along the girl j.ias had a per-
verted liking for old people : I 'Tjelieve, of a
truth, she would have skipped away and wed-
ded your father, as briskly as she would his
son."

Lucidor followed his companion, over stock
and stone, as it pleased the gay youth to lead
him : both forgot the chase, which at any rate
could not be productive. They called at a
farm-house, where, being hospitably received,
the one friend entertained himself with eating,
drinking, and tattling : the other again plunged
into meditations, and projects for turning this
new discovery to his own profit.

From all these narrations and disclosures,
Lucidor had acquired so much confidence in
Antoni, that immediately on their return he
asked for him, and hastened into the garden,
where he was said to be. In vain ! No soul
was to be seen anywhere. At last he entered
the door of the great Hall ; and strange enough,
the setting sun, reflected from the mirror, so
dazzled him, that he could not recognise the
two persons, who were sitting on the sofa;
though he saw distinctly that it was a lady and
a man, which latter was that instant warmly
kissing the hand of his companion. Ho\v great,
accordingly, was Lucidors astonishment, when,
on recovering his clearness of vision, he beheld
Antoni sitting by Lucinda ! He was like to sink
through the groimd : he stood, however, as if
rooted to the spot ; till Lucinda, in the kindest,
most unembarrassed manner, shiftetl a little to
a side, and invited him to take a seat on her
right hand. Unconsciously he obeyed her, and
while she addressed him, inquiring after his
present day's history, asking pardon for her ab-
sence on domestic engagements, he could scarce-
ly hear her voice. Antoni rose, and took his
leave : Lucinda, resting herself from her toil, as
the others were doing, invited Lucidor to a
short stroll. Walking by her side, he was silent
and embarrassed; she, too, seemed ill at ease:
and had he been in the slightest degree self-
collected, her deefi-drawn breathing must have
disclosed to him that she had heartfelt sighs to
suppress. She at last took her leave, as they ap-
proached the house : he on the other hand
turned round, at first slowly, then at a violent
pace, to the open country. The park was too
narrow for him; he hastened through the fields,
listening only to the voice of his heart, and
without eyes for the beauties of this loveliest
evening. When he found himself alone, and
his feelings were relieving their violence in a
shower of tears, he exclaimed :

"Already in my life, but never with such
^erceness, have I felt the agony which now
2s

makes me altogether wretched : to see the long-
wished-for happiness at length reach me ; hand-
in-hand and arm-in-arm unite with me ; and at
the same moment announce its eternal depar-
ture ! I was sitting by her, I was walking by
her ; her fluttering garment touched me, and I
have lost her ! Reckon it not over, torture not
thy heart with it ; be silent, and determine !"

He laid a prohibition on his lips ; he held his
peace, and planned and meditated, stepping
over field and meadow and bush, not always
by the smoothest paths. Late at night, on re-
turning to his chamber, he gave voice to his
thoughts for a moment, and cried : " To-mor-
row morning I am gone ; another such day I
will not front."

And so, without undressing, he threw him-
self on the bed. Happy, healthy season of
youth ! He was already asleep ; the fatiguing
motion of the day had earned for him the
sweetest. rest. Out of bright morning dreams,
however, the earliest sun awoke him : this was
the longest day in the year ; and for him it
threatened to be too long. If the grace of the
peaceful evening star had passed over him un-
noticed, he felt the awakening beauty of the
morning only to despair. The world was lying
here as glorious as ever ; to his eyes it was still
so; but his soul contradicted it; all this be-
longed to him no longer, he had lost Lucinda.

His travelling-bag was soon packed ; this he
was to leave behind him ; he left no letter with
it; a verbal message in excuse of absence from
dinner, perhajis also from supper, might be left
with the groom, whom at any rate he must
awaken. The groom, however, was awake
already : Lucidor found him in the yard, walk-
ing with large strides before the stable-door.
"You do not mean to ride?" cried the usually
good-natured man, with a tone of some spleen.
" To you I may say it ; but young master is
growing worse and worse. There was he
driving about far and near yesterday ; you
might have thought he would thank God for a
Sunday to rest in. And see, if he does not
come this morning before daybreak, rummages
about in the stable, and while I am getting up,
saddles and bridles your horse, flings himself
on it, and cries : ' Do but consider the good work
I am doing! This beast keeps jogging on at a
staid juridical trot, I must see and rouse him
into a smart life-gallop.' He said something
just so, and other strange speeches besides."

Lucidor was doubly and trebly vexed : he
liked the horse, as corresponding to his own
character, his own mode of life : it grieved him
to figure his good sensible beast in the hands
of a madcap. His plan, too, was overturned;
his purpose of flying to a college friend, with
whom he had lived in cheerful cordial union,
and in this crisis seeking refuge beside him.
His old confidence had been awakened, the in-
tervening miles were not counted ; he had
fancied himself already at the side of his true-
hearted and judicious friend, finding counsel
29

L

338

GOETHE.

and assuagement from his ^\'Ol•ds and looks.
This prospect was now cut off: yet not entirely,
if he could venture with the fresh pedestrian
limbs, which still stood at his command, to set
forth towards the goal.

First of all, accordingly, he struck through
the park; making for the open country, and the
road which was to lead him to his friend. Of
his direction he was not quite certain, w'lien
looking to the left, his eye fell upon the Hermi-
tage, which had hitherto been kept secret from
him ; a strange edifice, rising with grotesque
joinery through bush and tree : and here, to his
extreme astonishment, he observed the good old
man, who for some days had been considered
sick, standing in the gallery under the Chinese
roof, and looking blithely through the soft morn-
ing. The friendliest salutation, the most pres-
sing entreaties -to come up, Lucidor resisted
with excuses and gestures of haste. Nodiing
but sympathy with the good old man, who, has-
tening down witli infirm step, seemed every
moment in danger of falling to the bottom, could
induce him to turn thither, and then suffer him-
self to be conducted up. With surprise he
entered the pretty little hall : it had only three
windows, turned towards the park ; a most
graceful prospect: the other sides were deco-
rated, or rather covered, with hundreds of por-
traits, copperplate, or painted, which were fixed
in a certain order to the wall, and separated by
colored borders and interstices.

" I favor you, my friend, more than I do every
one; this is the sanctuary in which I peacefully
spend my last days. Here I recover myself
from all the mistakes, which society tempts me
to commit: here my dietetic errors are correct-
ed, and my old being is again restored to equi-
librium."

Lucidor looked over the place; and being
well read in history, he easily observed that
an historical taste had presided in its arrange-
ment.

" Above, there, in the frieze," said the old
virtuoso, "you will find the names of distin-
guished men in the primitive ages; then those
of later antiquity ; yet still only their names,
for how they looked would now be difficult to
discover. But here, in the main field, comes
niy own life into play: here are the men whose
names I used to hear mentioned in my boyhood.
For some fifty years or so, the name of a dis-
tinguished man continues in the renaembrance
of the people; then it vanishes, or becomes
fabulous. Though of German parentage, I was
born in Holland ; and for me, William of Oi-ange,
Stadtholder. and King of England, is the patri-
arch of all common great men and heroes.

" Now, close by William, you observe Louis
XIV. as the person who — " How gladly would
Lucidor have cut short the good old man, had
it but been permitteil him, as it is to us the nar-
rators : for the whole late and latest history of
the world seemed impending; as from the por-
traits of Frederick the Great and his generals,

towards which he was glancing, was but too
clearly to be gathered.

And though the kindly young man could not
but respect his old friend's lively sympathy in
these things, or deny that some individual fea-
tures and views in this exhibitory discourse
might be interesting; yet at college he had heard
the late and latest history of Europe already;
and what a man has once heard, he fancies
himself to know forever. Lucidor's thoughts
were wandering far away ; he heard not, he
scarcely saw ; and was just on the ^loint, in spite
of all politeness, of flinging himself out, and
tumbling down the long fatal stair, when a loud
clapiiing of hands was heard from below.

While Lucidor restrained his movement, the
old man looked over through the window, and
a well-known voice resounded from beneath:
" Come down, for Heaven's sake, out of your
historic jjicture gallery, old gentleman ! Con-
clude your fasts and humiliations, and help me
to appease our young friend, when he learns it.
Lucidor's horse I have ridden somewhat hard ;
it has lost a shoe, and I was obliged to leave the
beast beliind me. What will he say ? He is
too absurd, when one behaves absurdly."

"Come up!" said the old man, and turned in
to Lucidor: "Now, what say you?'' Lucidor
was silent, and the wild blade entered. The
discussion of the business lasted long : at length
it was determined to despatch the groom forth-
with, that he might seek the horse and take
charge of it.

Leaving the old man, the two younkers hast-
ened to the house ; Lucidor, not quite unwill-
ingly, submitting to this arrangement. Come
of it what miglit, within these walls the sole
wish of his heart was included. In such des-
p)erate cases, we are, at any rate, cut- off from
the assistance of our free will ; and we feel
ourselves relieved for a moment, when, from
any quarter, direction and constraint takes hold
of us. Yet, on entering his chamber, he found
himself in the sti-angest mood; like a man who,
having just left an apartment of an inn, is forced
to return to it, by the breaking of an axle.

The gay younker fell upon the travelling-bag,
unpacking it all in clue order; especially select-
ing every article of holiday apparel, which,
though only on the travelling scale, was to be
found there. He forced Lucidor to put on fresh
shoes and stockings ; he dressed for him his
clustering brown locks, and decked him at ail
points with his best skill. Then stei'piiig back,
and surveying oin- friend and his own handi-
work, from head to foot, he exclaimed : " Now,
then, my good fellow, you do look like a man
that has some pretensions to pretty damsels;
and serious enough, moreover, to spy about you
for a bride. Wait one moment ! You shall see
how I too ca9 produce myself, when the hour
strikes. This knack I learned from your mili-
tary officers ; the girls are always glancing at
them ; so I likewise have enrolled myself among
a certain Soldiery ; and now they look at me

GOETHE.

339

too, and look again, and no soul of them knows
what to make of it. And so, from this looking
and relooking, from this surprise and attention,
a pretty enough result now and then arises ;
which, though it were not lasting, is worth en-
joying for the moment.

"But, come along, my friend, and do the like
service for me ! When you have seen me case
myself by piecemeal in my equipment, you will
not say that wit and invention have been de-
nied me." He now led his friend through
several long spacious jiassages of the old castle.
"1 have quite nestled myself here," cried he.
" Though I care not for hiding, I like to be
alone ; you can do no good with other people."
They were passing by the office-rooms, just
as a servant came out with a patriarchal writ-
ing-apparatus, black, massive, and complete;
paper, too, was not forgotten.

" I know what is to be blotted here again,"
cried the younker : "go thy ways, and leave
me the key. Take a look of the place, Lucidor ;
it will amuse you till I am dressed. To a friend
of justice, such a spot is not odious, as to a tamer
of horses." And with this, he pushed Lucidor
into the hall of judgment.

Lucidor felt himself directly in a well-known
and friendly element; he thought of the days
when he, fixed down to business, had sat at
such a table ; and listening and writing, had
trained himself to his art. Nor did he fail to
observe, that in this case an old stately domestic
Chapel had, under the change of religious ideas,
been converted to the service of Themis. In
the repositories, he found some titles and acts
already familiar to him : in these very matters
he had co-operated, while laboring in the Capi-
tal. Opening a bundle of papers, there came
into his hands a rescript, which he himself had
dictated ; another, of which he had been the
originator. Hand-writing and paper, signet and
president's signature, everything recalled to him
that season of juridical effort, of youthful hope.
And here, when he looked round, and saw the
Oberamtmann's chair, appointed and intended
for himself; so fair a place, so dignified a circle
of activity, which he was now like to cast away,
and utterly lose, all this oppressed him doubly
and trebly, as the form of Lucinda seemed to
retire from him at the same time.

He turned to go out into the open air, but
found himself a prisoner. His gay friend, heed-
lessly or roguishly, had left the door locked.
Lucidor, however, did not long continue in this
durance ; for the other returned ; apologised for
his oversight, and really called forth good humor
by his singular appearance. A certain audacity
of color and cut in his clothes ^vas softened by
natural taste, as even to tattooed Indians we
refuse not a certain approbation. "To-day,"
cried he, "the tedium of bygone days shall be
made good to us. Worthy friends, merry friends
are come ; pretty girls, roguish and fond ; and
my father, to boot; and wonder on wonder!
your father too. This will be a festival, truly;

they are all assembled for breakfast in the par-
lor."

With Lucidor, at this piece of information, it
was as if ho were looking into deep fog ; all the
figures, known and unknown, which the words
announced to him, assumed a spectral aspect:
yet his resolution, and the consciousness of a
pure heart, sustained him ; and, in a few se-
conds, he felt himself prepared for everything.
He followed his hastening friend with a steady
step, firmly determined to await the issue, be it
what it might; and explain his own purposes,
come what come might.

And yet, at the very threshold of the hall, he
was struck with some alarm. In a large half
circle, ranged round by the windows, he imme-
diately descried his father with the Oberamt-
mann, both splendidly attired. The two sisters,
Antoni, and others known and unknown, he
hurried over with a glance, which was threat-
ening to grow dim. Half wavering, he ap-
proached his father; who bade him welcome
with the utmost kindness, yet in a certain style
of formality which scarcely invited any trustful
application. Standing before so many persons,
he looked round to find a place among them for
the moment : he might have arranged himself
beside Lucinda ; but Julia, contrary to the rigor
of etiquette, made room for him, so that he was
forced to step to her side. Antoni continued
by Lucinda.

At this important moment, Lucidor again felt
as if he were a delegate ; and, steeled by his
whole juridical science, he called u^y in his own
favor the fine maxim : That we should transact
affairs delegated to us by a stranger, as if they
were our own ; why not our own, therefore, in
the same spirit? Well practised in official ora-
tions, he speedily ran over what he had to say.
But the company, ranged in a formal semicircle,
seemed to outflank him. The purport of his
speech he knew well ; the beginning of it he
could not find. At this crisis, he observed on a
table, in the corner, the large ink -glass, and
several clerks sitting round it : the Oberamtmanu
made a movement as if to solicit attention for a
speech; Lucidor wished to anticipate him; and,
at that very moment, Julia pressed his hand.
This threw him out of all self-possession ; con-
vinced him that all was decided, all lost for
him.

With the whole of these negotiations, these
family alliances," with social conventions and
rules of good manners, he had now nothing more
to do: he snatched his hand from Julia's, and
vanished so rapidly from the room, that the
company lost him unawares, and he out of doors
could not find himself again.

Shrinking from the light of day, which shone
down upon him in its highest splendor ; avoid-
ing the eyes of men ; dreading search and pur-
suit, he hurried forwards, and reached the large
garden-hall. Here his knees were like to fail
him ; he rushed in, and threw himself, utterly
comfortless, upon the sofa beneath the mirror.

340

GOETHE.

Amid the polished arrangements of society, to
be caught in such unspeakable perplexity! It
dashed to and fro like waves about him and
within him. His past existence was struggling
with his present: it was a frightful moment.

And so he lay for a time, with his face hid
in the cushion, on which last night Lucinda's
arm had rested. Altogether sunk in his sor-
row, he had heard no footsteps approach ; feel-
ing some one touch him, he started up, and per-
ceived Lucinda standing by his side.

Fancying they had sent her to bring him
back, had commissioned her to lead him with
fit sisterly words into the assemblage to front
his hated doom, he exclaimed: "You they
should not have sent, Lucinda : for it was you
that drove me away. I will not return. Give
me, if you are capable of any pity, jirocure me
convenience and means of flight. For, that you
yourself may testify how impossible it was to
bring me back, listen to the explanation of my
conduct, which to you and all of them must
seem insane. Hear now the oath which I have
sworn in my soul, and which I incessantly re-
peat in words: with you only did I wish to
live: with you to enjoy, to employ my days,
jrom youth to old age, in true honorable union.
And let this be as firm and sure as aught ever
sworn before the altar; this which I now swear,
now when I leave you, the most pitiable of all
men."

He made a movement to glide past her, as
slie stood close before him : but she caught him
softly in her arms. "What is this!" exclaim-
ed he.

"Lucidor!" cried she, "not pitiable as you
think : you are mine, I am yours ; I hold you in
my arms ; delay not to throw your arms about
me. Your father has agreed to all ; Antoni
marries my sister."

In astonishment he recoiled from her: " Can
it be V Lucinda smiled and nodded ; he drew
back from her arms. " Let me view once more,
at a distance, what is to be mine so nearly, so
inseparably." He grasped her liands : " Lu-
cinda, are you mine 1"

She answered : " Well, then, yes," the sweet-
est tears in the truest eyes ; he clasped her to
his breast, and threw his head behind hers; he
hung like a gliipwrecked mariner on the cliffs
of the coast; the ground still shook under him.
And now his enraptured eye, again opening,
liglited on the mirror. He saw her there in his
arms, himself clasped in hers; he looked down,
and again to the image. Such emotions accom-
pany man throughout his life. In the mirror,
also, he beheld the landscape, which last night
had appeared to him so baleful and ominous,
now lying fairer and brighter than ever; and
himself in such a posture, on such a back-
ground! Abundant recompense for all sorrows!
"We are not alone," said Lucinda; and
scarcely had he recovered from his rapture,
when, aUdecked and garlanded, a company of
girls and boys came forward, carrying wreaths

of flowers, and crowding the entrance of the
Hall. " This is not the way," cried Lucinda :
"how prettily it was arranged, and now it is all
running into tumult !" A gay march sounded
from a distance ; and the company were seen
coming on by the large road in stately proces-
sion. Lucidor hesitated to advance towards
them ; only on her arm did he seem certain of
his steps. She stayed beside him, expecting
from moment to moment the solemn scene of
meeting, of thanks for pardon already given.

But by the capricious gods it was otherwise
determined. The gay clanging sound of a pos-
tilion's horn, from the opposite side, seemed to
throw the whole ceremony into rout. " Who
can be coming?" cried Lucinda. The thought
of a strange presence was frightful to Lucidor ;
and the carriage seemed entirely unknown to
him. A double-seated, new, spick-and-span
new travelling chaise! It rolled up to the Hall.
A well-dressed, handsome boy sprang down;
opened the door; but no one dismounted; the
chaise was empty. The boy stept into it ; with
a dexterous touch or two he threw back the
tilts ; and there, in a twinkling, stood the
daintiest vehicle in readiness for the gayest
drive, before the eyes of the whole party, who
were now advancing to the spot. Antoni, out-
hastening the rest, led Julia to the carriage.
"Try if this machine," said he, "will please
you ; if you can sit in it, and over the smoothest
roads, roll through the world beside me: I will
lead you by no other but the smoothest ; and
when a strait comes, we shall know how to
help ourselves. Over the mountains, sumpters
shall carry us, and our coach also."

"You are a dear creature!" cried Julia. The
boy came forward ; and, with the quickness of
a conjurer, exhibited all the conveniences, little
advantages, comforts, and celerities of the whole
light edifice.

" On Earth I have no thanks," cried Julia ;
" but from this little moving Heaven, from this
cloud, into which you raise me, I will heartily
thank you." She had already bounded in,
throwing him kind looks and a kiss of the hand.
" For the present you come not hither ; but there
is another whom I mean to take along with me
in this piroof excursion; he himself has still a
proof to undergo." She called to Lucidor ; who,
just then occupied in mute conversation with
his father and father-in-law, willingly took
refuge in the light vehicle ; feeling an irresist-
ible necessity to dissipate his thoughts in some
way or other, though it were but for a moment.
He placed hiniself beside her ; she directed the
postilion where he was to drive. Instantly
they darted off, enveloped in a cloud of dust ;
and vanished from the eyes of the amazed
spectators.

Julia fixed herself in the corner, as firmly
and commodiously as she could wish. " Now
do you shift into that one too, good brother ; so
that we may look each other rightly in the
face."

GOETHE.

341

Lucidor. You feel my confusion, my embar-
rassment: I am still as if in a dream ; help me
out of it.

Julia. Look at these gay peasants, how kintlly
they salute us! You have never seen the Upper
Hamlet yet, since you came hither. All good
substantial people there, and all thoroughly de-
voted to me. No one of them so rich that you
cannot, by a time, do a little kind service to
him. This road, which we whirl along so
smoothly, is my father's doing ; another of his
benefits to the community.

Lucidor. I believe it, and willingly admit it:
but what have these external things to do with
the perplexity of my internal feelings'?

Julia. Patience a little ! I will show you the
riches of this world and the glory thereof Here
now we are at the top ! Do but look how clear
the level country lies all round us leanin,g
against the mountains! All these villages are
much, much indebted to my father ; to mother
and daughters too. The grounds of yon little
hamlet are the border.

Lucidor. Surely you are in a very strange
mood : you do not seem to be saying what you
meant to say.

Julia. But now look down to the left ; how
beautifully all this unfolds itself! The Church,
widi its high lindens; the Amthaus, with its
poplars, behind the village knoll! Here, too, are
the garden and the park.
The postilion drove faster.
Julia. The Hall up yonder yoti know : it
looks almost as well here, as this scene does
from it. Here, at the tree, we shall stop a mo-
ment: now in this very spot our image is re-
flected in the large mirror; there they see us
full well, but we cannot see ourselves. — Go
along, postilion ! — There, some little while ago,
two people, I believe, were reflected at a
shorter distance ; and, if I am not exceedingly
mistaken, to their great mutual satisfaction.

Lucidor, in ill humor, answered nothing : they
went on for some time in silence, driving very
hard. " Here," said Julia, " the bad road be-
gins : a service left for you to do, some day.
Before we go lower, look down once more. My
mother's boxtree rises with its royal summit
over all the rest. Thoit wilt drive," continued
she to the postilion, "down this rough road ; we
shall take the foot-path through the dale, and so
be sooner at the other side than thou." In dis-
mounting, she cried : " Well, now, you will con-
fess, the Wandering Jew, this restless Antoni
the Traveller, can arrange his pilgrimages pret-
tily enough for himself and his companions : it
is a very beautiful and conmiodious carriage."

And with this she tripped away down hill :
Lucidor followed her, in deep thought ; she
was sitting on a pleasant seat ; it was Luciuda's
little spot. She invited him to sit by her.

Julia. So now we are sitting here, and one is
nothing to the other. Thus it was destined to
be. The little Quicksilver would not suit you.
Love it you could not, it was hateful to you.

Lucidor's astonishment increased.
Julia. But Lucinda, indeed! She is the para-
gon of all perfections ; and the pretty sister was
once for all cast out. I see it, the question
hovers on yonr lips : wlio has told us all so ac-
curately ?

Lucidor. There is treachery in it !
Julia. Yes, truly! There has been a Traitor
at work in the matter.
Lucidor. Name him.

Julia. He is soon unmasked : You ! You have
the praiseworthy or blameworthy custom of
talking to yourself: and now, in the name of
all, I must confess that in turn we have over-
heard you.

Lucidor (starting up). A sorry piece of hospi-
tality, to lay snares for a stranger in this way !

Julia. By no means! We thought not of
watching you, more than any other. But, you
know, your bed stands in the recess of the wall ;
on the opposite side is another alcove, common-
ly employed for laying up household articles.
Hither, some days before, we had shifted our
old man's bed; being anxious about him in his
remote Hermitage : and here, the first night,
you started some such passionate soliloquy,
which he next morning took his opportunity of
rehearsing.

Lucidor had not the heart to interrupt her.
He withdrew.

Julia (rising and following him). What a
service this discovery did us all! For I will
confess, if you were not positively disagreeable,
the situation which awaited me was not by any
means to my mind. To be Frau Oberamt-
mannin, what a dreadful state ! To have a
brave gallant husband, who is to pass judgment
on the people ; and, for sheer judgment, cannot
get to justice ! Who can please neither high nor
low; and, what is worst, not even himself! I
know what my poor mother suffered from the
incorruptibility, the inflexibility of my father.
At last, indeed, but not till her death, a certain
meekness took possession of him: he seemed to
suit himself to the world, to make a truce with
those evils which, till then, he had vainly
striven to conquer.

Lucidor (stopping short; extremely discon-
tented with the incident; vexed at this light
mode of treating it). For the sport of an evening
this might pass ; but to practise such a disgrac-
ing mystification, day and night, against an un-
suspicious stranger, is not pardonable.

Julia. We are all eqttally deep in the crime;
we all hearkened you : yet I alone pay the
penalty of eavesdropping.

Lucidor. All! So much the more unpardon-
able ! And how could you look at me, through-
out the day, without blushing, wtiom at night
you were so contemptuously overreaching 1 But
I see clearly with a glance, that your ariange-
ments by day were planned to make mockery
of me. A fine family ! And where was your
father's love of justice all this while! — And
Lucinda! —

29*

342

GOETHE.

Julia. Ami Lucinda ! What a tone was that !
You meant to say, did not you, How deeply it
grieved your heart to tliink ill of Lucinda, to
rank her in a class with the rest of us ?

Lucidor. I cannot understand Lucinda.

Julia. In other words this pure noble soul,
this peacefully composed nature, benevolence,
goodness itself, this woman as she should be,
unites with a light-minded company, with a
freakish sister, a spoiled brother, and certain
mysterious persons ! That is incomprehensible !

Lucidor. Yes, indeed, it is incomprehensible.

JuJia. Comprehend it then ! Lucinda, like the
rest of us, had her hands bound. Could you
have seen her perplexity, how fain she would
have told you all, how often she was on the
very eve of doing it, you would now love her
doubly and trebly, if indeed true love were not
always tenfold and hundredfold of itself. I can
assure^ you, moreover, that all of us at length
thought the joke too long.

Lucidor. Why did you not end it then ?

Julia. That, too, I must explain. No sooner
had my father got intelligence of your first mo-
nologue, and seen, as was easy to do, that none
of his children would object to such an ex-
change, than he determined on visiting your
father. The importance of the business gave
hiin much anxiety. A father alone can feel
the respect which is due to a father. "He
must be informed of it in the first place," said
mine, "that he may not in the end, when we
are all agreed, be reduced to give a forced and
displeased consent. I know him well : I know
how any thought, any wish, any purpose cleaves
to him ; and I have my own fears about the
issue. Julia, his maps and pictures, he has
long viewed as one thing ; he has it in his eye
to transport all this hither, when the young pair
are once settled here, and his old pupil cannot
change her abode so readily; on us he is to
bestow his holidays; and who knows what
other kind friendly things he has projected? He
must forthwith be informed what a trick Na-
ture has played us, while yet nothing is declared,
nothing is determined." And with this, he
exacted from us all the most solemn promise
that we should observe you, and come what
might, retain you here till his return. How this
return has been protracted ; what art, toil, and
perseverance it lias cost to gain your father's
consent, he himself will inform you. In short,
the business is adjusted ; Lucinda is yours.

And thus had the two promenaders, sharply
removing from their first resting-place, then
pausing by the way, then speaking, and walk-
ing slowly through the green fields, at last
reached the height, where another well-levelled
road receivecTthem. The carriage came whirl-
ing up : Julia in the meanwhile turned her
friend's attention to a strange sight. The whole
machinery, of which her gay brother had brag-
ged so much, was now alive and in motion; the
wheels were already heaving up and down a
multitude of people; the seesaws were flying;

maypoles had their climbers; and many a bold
artful swing and spring over the heads of an
innumerable multitude you might see ventured.
The younker had set all agoing, that so the
guests, after dinner, might have a gay spectacle
awaiting them. "Thou wilt drive through the
Nether Hamlet," cried Julia; "the people wish
me well, and they shall see how well I am
off."

The Hamlet was empty: the young people
had all run to the swings and seesaws ; old
men and women, roused by the driver's horn,
appeared at doors and windows ; every one
gave salutations and blessings, exclaiming : "0
what a lovely pair !"

Julia. There, do you hear 1 We should have
suited well enough together after all ; you may
rue it yet.
« Lucidor. But now, dear sister !

Julia. Ha ! Now dear, when you are rid
of me ?

Lucidor. One single word ! On you rests a
heavy accusation : what did you mean by that
squeeze of the hand, when you knew and felt
my dreadful situation? A thing so radically
wicked I have never met with in my life be-
fore.

Julia. Thank Heaven, we are now quits ;
now all is pardoned. I had no mind for you,
that is certain ; but that you had utterly and ab-
solutely no mind for me, this was a thing which
no young woman could forgive ; and the squeeze
of the hand, observe you. was for the rogue. I
do confess, it was almost too roguish ; and I
forgive myself, because I forgive you ; and so
let all be forgotten and forgiven ! Here is my
hand.

He took it; she cried : "Here we are again!
In our park again ; and so in a trice, we whirl
through the wide world, and back too ; we
shall meet again."

They had reached the garden-hall ; it seemed
empty; the company, tired of waiting, had gone
out to walk. Antoni, however, and Lucinda
came forth. Julia stepping from the carriage
flew to her friend; she thanked him in a cordial
embrace, and restrained not the most joyful
tears. The brave man's cheeks reddened, his
features looked forth unfolded ; his eye glanced
moist; and a fair imposing youth shone through
the veil.

And so both pairs moved off to join the com-
pany, with feelings which the finest dream
could not have given them.

" Thus, my friends,'' said Lenardo, after a
short preamble, " if we survey the most popu-
lous provinces and kingdoms of the firm Earth,
we observe on all sides that wherever an avail-
able soil appears, it is cultivated, planted, shaped,
beautified ; and in the same proportion, coveted,
taken into possession, fortified and defended.
Hereby we bring home to our conceptions the
high worth of property in land ; and are obliged

GOETHE.

343

to consider it as the first and Lest acquirement
that can be allotted to man. And if on closer
inspection we find parental and filial love, the
union of countrymen and townsmen, and there-
fore the universal feeling of patriotism, founded
immediately on this same interest in the soil,
we cannot but regard that seizing and retaining
of Space, in the great or the small scale, as a
thing still more important and venerable. Yes,
Nature herself has so ordered it! A man born
on the glebe comes by habit to belong to it; the
two grow together, and the fairest ties are spun
from their union. Who is there then that would
spitefully disturb this foundation-stone of all
existence ; that would blindly deny the worth
and dignity of such precious and peculiar gifts
of Heaven t

" And yet we may assert, that if what man
possesses is of great worth, what he does and
accomplishes must be of still greater. In a wide
view of things, therefore, we must look on pro-
perty in land as one small part of the possessions
that have been given us. Of these the greatest
and the most precious part consists especially
in what is movable, and in what is gained by a
moving life.

"Towards this quarter, we younger men are
peculiarly constrained to turn ; for though we
had inherited from our fathers the desire of
abiding and continuing, we find ourselves called
by a thousand causes nowise to shut our eyes
against a wider outlook and survey. Let us
hasten, then, to the shore of the Ocean, and con-
vince ourselves what boundless spaces are still
lying open to activity ; and confess that, by the
bare thought of this, we are roused to new vigor.

"Yet not to lose ourselves in these vast ex-
panses, let us direct our attention to the long
and large surface of so many countries and
kingdoms, combined together on the face of the
Earth. Here we behold great tracts of land
tenanted by Nomades ; whose towns are mov-
able, whose life-supporting household goods can
be transferred from place to jDlace. We see
them in the middle of the deserts, on wide green
pasturages, lying as it were at anchor in their
desired haven. Such movement, stich wander-
ing, becomes a habit with them, a necessity ; in
the end they grow to regard the surface of the
world as if it were not bulwarked by mountains,
were not cut asunder by streams. Have we
not seen the North-east flow towards the South-
west, one people driving another before it, and
lordship and property altogether changed?

" From over-populous countries, a similar ca-
lamity may again, in the great circle of vicissi-
tudes, occur more than once. What we have
to dread from foreigners, it may be difficult to
say ; but it is curious enough, that by our own
over-iiopulation, we ourselves are thronging one
another in our own domains, and without wait-
ing to be driven, are driving one another forth,
passing sentence of banishment each against his
fellow.

" Here now is the place and season for giving

scope in our bosoms, without spleen or anger,
to a love of movement; for unfettering that im-
patient wish which excites us to change our
abode. Yet, whatever we may purpose and
intend, let it be accomplished not from passion,
or from any otlier influence of force, but from a
conviction corresponding to the wisest judgment
and deliberation.

" It has been said, and over again said : Where
I am well, is my country! But this consolatory
saw were better worded : Where I am useful,
is my country! At home, you may be useless,
and the fact not instantly observed ; abroad in
the world, the useless man is speedily convicted.
And now, if I say : Let each endeavor every-
where to be of use to himself and others, this is
not a precept, or a counsel, but the utterance of
life itself.

" Cast a glance over tlie terrestrial ball, and
for the present leave the ocean out of sight ; let
not its hurrying fleets distract your thoughts :
but fix your eye on the firm earth, and be amazed
to see how it is overflowed with a swarming
ant tribe, jostling and crossing, and running to
and fro forever ! So was it ordained of the Lord
himself, when, obstructing the Tower of Babel,
he scattered the human race abroad into all the
world. Let us praise his name on this account,
for the blessing has extended to all generations.

" Observe now, and cheerfully, how the young,
on every side, instantly get into movement. As
instruction is not ofl'ered them within doors, and
knocks not at their gates, they hasten forthwith
to those countries and cities whither the call of
science and wisdom allures them. Here, no
sooner have they gained a rapid and scanty
training, than they feel themselves impelled to
look round in the world, whether here and there
some profitable experience, applicable to their
objects, may not be met with and appropriated.
Let these try their fortune ! We turn from them
to those completed and distinguished men, those
noble inquirers into Nature, who wittingly en-
counter every dilTiculty, every peril, that to the
world they may lay the world open, and, through
the most Impassable, pave easy roads.

"But observe also, on beaten highways, how
dust on dust, in long cloudy trains, mounts up,
betokening the track of commodious top-laden
carriages, in which the rich, the noble, and so
many others, are whirled along ; whose varying
purposes and dispositions Yorick has most dain-
tily explained to us.

" These the stout craftsman, on foot, may
cheerily gaze after ; for whom his country has
made it a duty to appropriate foreign skill, and
not till this has been accomplished, to revisit his
paternal hearth. In still greater numbers, do
traffickers and dealers meet us on our road : the
little trader must not neglect, from time to time,
to forsake his shop that he may visit fairs and
markets, may approach the great merchant, and
increase his own small profit, by example and
participation of the boundless. But yet more
restlessly do we descry cruizing on horseback,

344

GOETHE.

singly, on all high and bye ways, that multitude
of persons whose business it is, in lawful wise,
to make forcible pretension to our j)urses. Sam-
ples of all sorts, prize-catalogues, invitations to
purchase, pursue us into town-houses and coun-
try-houses, and wherever we may seek refuge :
diligently they assault us and surprise us ; them-
selves offering the opportunity, which it would
have entered no man's mind to seek. And what
shall I say of that People which, before all others,
arrogates to itself the blessing of perpetual wan-
dering, and by its movable activity contrives to
overreach the resting, and to overstep the walk-
ing ? Of them we must say neither ill nor good ;
no good, because our League stands on its guard
against them ; no ill, because the wanderer,
mindful of reciprocal advantage, is bound to
treat with friendliness whomsoever he may
meet.

" But now, above all, we must mention with
peculiar affection, the whole race of artists ; for
they, too, are thoroughly involved in this uni-
versal movement. Does not the painter wan-
der, with pallet and easel, from face to face ;
and are not his kindred laborers summoned,
now this way, now that, because in all places
there is something to be built and to be fasliion-
ed ? More briskly, however, paces the musician
on his way ; for he peculiarly it is, that for a
new ear has provided new surprise, for a fresh
mind fresh astonishment. Players, too, though
they now despise the cart of Thespis, still rove
about in little choirs; and their moving world,
wherever they appear, is speedily enough built
up. So likewise, individually, renouncing se-
rious profitable engagements, these men delight
to change place with place, according as rising
talents, combined with rising wants, furnish
pretext and occasion. For this success they
commonly prepare themselves, by leaving no
important stage in their native land untrodden.
" Nor let us forget to cast a glance over the
professorial class : these, too, you find in con-
tinual motion, occupying and forsaking one chair
after the other, to scatter richly abroad on every
side the seeds of a hasty culture. More assidu-
ous, however, and of wider aim, are those pious
souls who disperse themselves through all quar-
ters of the world, to bring salvation to their
brethren. Others, on the contrary, are pilgrim-
ing to seek salvation for themselves : they march
in hosts to consecrated, wonder-working places,
there to ask and receive what was denied their
souls at home.

"And if all these sorts of men surprise us
less by their wandering, as for most part, with-
out wandering, the business of their life were
impossible, of those again who dedicate their
diligence to the soil, we should certainly expect
that they, at least, were fixed. By no means !
Even without possession, occupation is con-
ceivable ; and we behold the eager farmer for-
saking the ground which for years has yielded
him profit and enjoyment : impatiently he
searches after similar or greater profit, be it far

or near. Nay, the owner himself will abandon
his new-grubbed clearage so soon as, by his cul-
tivation, he has rendered it commodious for a
less enterprising husbandman : once more he
presses into the wilderness; again makes space
for himself in the forests ; in recompense of that
first toiling, a double and treble space ; on
which also, it may be, he thinks not to con-
tinue.

"There we shall leave him, bickering with
bears and other monsters ; and turn back into
the polished world, where we find the state of
things no whit more stationary. Do but view
any great and regulated kingdom : the ablest
man is also the man who moves the oftenest ;
at the beck of his prince, at the order of his
minister, the Serviceable is transferred from
place to place. To him also our precept will
apply: Everywhere endeavor to be useful,
everywhere you are at home. Yet if we ob-
serve important statesmen leaving, though re-
luctantly, their high stations, we have reason to
deplore their fate; for we can neither recog-
nise them as emigrators nor as migrators : not
as emigrators, because they forego a covetable
situation without any prospect of a better even
seeming to open ; not as migrators, because to
be useful in other places is a fortune seldom
granted them.

"For the soldier, again, a life of peculiar
wandering is appointed ; even in peace, now
this, now that post is intrusted to him ; to fight,
at hand or afar off for his native country, he
must keep himself perjDetually in motion or
readiness to niove ; and not for immediate de-
fence alone, but also to fulfil the remote pur-
poses of nations and rulers, he turns his steps
towards all quarters of the world ; and to few
of his craft is it given to find any resting-place.
And as, in the soldier, courage is his first and
highest quality, so this must always be con-
sidered as united with fidelity; and accord-
ingly we find certain nations, famous for trust-
worthiness, called forth from their home, and
serving spiritual or temporal regents as body-
guards.

"Another class of persons indispensable to
governments, and also of extreme mobility, we
see in those negotiators, who, despatched from
court to court, beleaguer princes and ministers,
and overnet the whole inhabited world with
their invisible threads. Of these men also, no
one is certain of his place for a moment. In
peace, the ablest of them are sent from country
to country ; in war, they march behind the
army when victorious, prepare the way for it
when fugitive ; and thus are they appointed
still to be changing j^lace for place ; on which
account, indeed, they at all times carry with
them a stock of farewell cards.

" If hitherto at every step we have contrived
to do ourselves some honor, declaring as we
have done the most distinguished portion of
active men to be our mates and fellows in
destiny, there now remains for you, my beloved

GOETHE.

345

friends, by way of termination, a glory higher
than all the rest, seeing you find yourselves
united in brotherhood with princes, kings, and
emperors. Think first, with blessings and
reverence, of the imperial wanderer Hadrian,
who on foot, at the head of his army, paced
out the circle of the world which was subject
to him, and thus in very deed took possession
of it. Think then with horror of the Conqueror,
that armed Wanderer, against whom no resist-
ance availed, no wall or bulwark could shelter
harmless nations. In fine, accompany with
honest sympathy those hapless exiled princes,
who, descending from the summit of the height,
cannot even be received into the modest guild
of active wanderers.

" And now while we call forth and illustrate
all this to one another, no narrow despondency,
no passionate perversion can rule over us. The
time is past when people rushed forth at ran-
dom into the wide world : by the labors of
scientific travellers describing wisely and copy-
ing like artists, we have become sufficiently ac-
quainted with the Earth, to know moderately
well what is to be looked for everywhere.

"Yet lor obtaining perfect information an in-
dividual will not suffice. Our Society is found-
ed on the principle that each in his degree, for
his purposes, be thoroughly informed. Has any
one of us some country in his eye, towards
which his wishes are tending, we endeavor to
make clear to him, in special detail, what was
hovering before his imagination as a whole: to
afford each other a survey of the inhabited and
inhabitable world, is a most pleasant and most
profitable kind of conversation.

" Under this aspect, we can look upon our-
selves as members of a Union belonging to the
world. Simple and grand is the thought ; easy
is its execution by understanding and strength.
Unity is all-powerful ; no division, therefore, no
contention among us ! Let a man learn, we say,
to figure himself as without permanent external
relation; let him seek consistency and sequence
not in circumstances but in himself; there will
he find it; there let him cherish and nourish it.
He who devotes himself to the most needful
will in all ca^es advance to his purpose with
greatest certainty: others again, aiming at the
liigher, the more delicate, require greater pru-
dence even in the choice of their path. But let
a man be attempting or treating what he will,
he is not, as an individual, sufficient for him-
self; and to an honest mind, society remains the
higliest want. All serviceable persons ought
to be related with each other, as the building
proprietor looks out for an architect, and the
architect for masons and carpenters.

"How and on what principle this Union of
ours has been fixed and founded, is known to
all. There is no man among us, who at any
moment could not to proper purpose employ his
faculty of action ; who is not assured that in all
places, ■whither cliance, inclination, or even pas-
sion may conduct him, he will be received, em-
2t

ployed, assisted ; nay, in adverse accidents, as
far as possible, refitted and indemnified.

"Two duties we have most rigorously under-
taken : first, to honor every species of religious
worship, for all of them are comprehended
more or less directly in the Creed : secondly, in
like manner to respect all forms of government ;
and since every one of thorn induces and pro-
motes a calculated activity, to labor according
to the wish and will of constituted authorities,
in whatever place it may be our lot to sojourn,
and for whatever time. Finally, we reckon it
our duty, without jiedantry or rigor, to practise
and forward decorum of manners and morals,
as required by that Reverence for ourselves,
which arises from the Three Reverences;
whereto we universally profess our adherence ;
having all had the joy and good fortune, some
of us from youth upwards, to be initiated like-
wise in the higher general Wisdom taught in
certain cases by those venerable men. All this,
in the solemn hour of parting, we have thought
good once more to recount, to unfold, to hear
and acknowledge, as also to seal with a trustful
Farewell.

Keep not standing: fix'J and rooted,

Briskly venture, briskly roam !
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,

And slout heart are still at home.
In each laud the sun does visit,

We are say whate'er betide ;
To give space for wand'rinij is it

Tliat the world was made so wide."

NOVELLE.

FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1832.»

The spacious courts of the Prince's Castle
were still veiled in thick mists of an autumnal
morning; through which veil, meanwhile, as it
melted into clearness, you could more or less
discern the whole Hunter-company, on horse-
back and on foot, all busily astir. The hasty
occupations of the nearest were distinguishable :
there was lengthening, shortening of stirrup-lea-
thers ; there was handing of rifles and shot-
pouches, there was putting of game-bags to
rights ; while the hounds, impatient in their
leashes, threatened to drag their keepers off
with them. Here and there, too, a horse showed
spirit more than enough ; driven on by its fiery
nature, or excited by the spur of its rider, who
even now in the half-dusk could not repress a
certain self-complacent wish to exhibit himself.
All waited however on the Prince, who, taking
leave of his young consort, was now delaying
too long.

United a short while ago, they already felt
the happiness of consentaneous dispositions;
both were of active vivid character ; each will-
ingly participated in the tastes and endeavors
of the other. The Prince's father had already,
in his time, discerned and improved the season

* Translated by Thomas Carlyle.

346

GOETHE.

when it became evident that all members of
the commonwealth should pass their days in
equal industry; should all, in equal working
and producing, each in his kind, first earn and
then enjoy.

How well this had prospered was visible in
these very days, when the head-market was a
holding, -which you might well enough have
named a fair. The Prince yester-even had led
]]is Princess on horseback through the tumult
of the heaped-ui^ wares; and pointed out to her
how on this spot the Mountain region met the
Plain country in profitable barter: he could
here, with the objects before him, awaken her
attention to the various industry of his Land.

If the Prince at this time occupied himself
and his servants almost exclusively with these
pressing concerns, and in particular worked in-
cessantly with his Finance-minister, yet would
the Huntmaster too have his right; on whose
pleading, the temptation could not be resisted
to undertake, in this choice autumn weather, a
Hunt that had already been postponed ; and so
for the household itself, and for the many stran-
ger visitants, prepare a peculiar and singular
festivity.

The Princess staid behind with reluctance :
but it was proposed to push far into the ]\Ioun-
tains, and stir up the peaceable inhabitants of
the forests there with an unexpected invasion.

At parting, her lord failed not to propose a
ride for her, with Fricdrich, the Prince-Uncle,
as escort: "I will leave thee," said he, "our
Honorio too, as Equerry and Page, who will
manage all." In pursuance of which words,
he, in descending, gave to a handsome young
man the needful injunctions ; and soon thereafter
disappeared with guests and train.

The Princess, who had waved her handker-
chief to her husband while still down in the
court, now retired to the back apartments, which
commanded a free prospect towards the Moun-
tains ; and so much the lovelier, as the Castle
itself stood on a sort of elevation, and thus, be-
hind as well as before, afforded manifold mag-
nificent views. She found the fine telescope
still in the position v/here they had left it yes-
tcr-even, when amusing themselves over bush
and hill and forest-summit, with the lofty ruins
of the primeval Stammburg, or Family Tower;
which in the clearness of evening stood out
noteworthy, as at that hour with its great light-
and-shade masses, the best aspect of so venera-
ble a memorial of old time was to be had. This
morning too, with the approximating glasses,
might be beautifully seen the autumnal tinge
of the trees, many in kind and number, which
had struggled up through the masonry unhin-
dered and undisturbed during long years. The
fair dame, however, directed the tube somewhat
lower, to a waste stony flat, over which the
Hunting-train was to pass: she waited the mo-
ment with patience, and was not disappointed:
for with the clearness and magnifying power
of the instrument her glancing eyes plainly dis-

tinguished the Prince and the Head-Equerry ;
nay, she forbore not again to wave her hand-
kerchief, as some momentary pause and looking-
back was fancied perhaps, rather than observed.

Prince-Uncle, Friedrich by name, now with
announcement, entered, attended by his Painter,
who carried a large portfolio under his arm.
"Dear Cousin," said the hale old gentleman,
"we here present you with the Views of the
Stammburg, taken on various sides to show how
the mighty Pile, warred on and warring, has
from old times fronted the year and its weather;
how here and there its wall had to yield, here
and there rush down into waste ruins. How-
ever, we have now done much to make the
wild mass accessible ; for more there wants not
to set every traveller, every visitor, into asto-
nishment, into admiration."

As the Prince now exhibited the separate
leaves, he continued : " Here where, advancing
up the hollow-way, through the outer ring-walls,
you reach the Fortress proper, rises against us a
rock, the firmest of the whole mountain; on
this there stands a tower built, yet when Nature
leaves off, and Art and Handicraft begin, no one
can distinguish. Farther you perceive side-
w^ards walls abutting on it, and donjons terrace-
wise stretching down. But I speak wrong, for
to the eye it is but a wood that encircles that
old summit; these hundred and fifty years no
axe has sounded there, and the massiest stems
have on all sides sprung up: wherever you
press inwards to the walls, the smooth maple,
the rough oak, the taper pine, with trunk and
roots oppose you ; round these we have to wind,
and pick our footsteps with skill. Do but look
how artfully our Master has brought the cha-
racter of it on paper : how the roots and stems,
the species of each distinguishable, twist them-
selves among the masonry, and the huge boughs
come looping through the holes. It is a wilder-
ness like no other ; an accidentally unique lo-
cality, where ancient traces of long- vanished
power of Man, and the ever-living, ever-working
power of Nature show themselves in the most
earnest conflict.'

Exhibiting another leaf, he went on : " What
say you now to the Castle-court, which, become
inaccessible by the falling in of the old gate-
tower, had for immemorial time been trodden
by no foot? We sought to get at it by a side ;
have pierced through walls, blasted vaults asun-
der, and so provided a convenient but secret
way. Inside it needed no clearance; here
stretches a flat rock-summit, smoothed by nature ;
but yet strong trees have in spots found luck
and opportunity for rooting themselves there;
they have softly but decidedly grown up, and
now stretch out their boughs into the galleries
where the knights once walked to and fro; nay,
through the doors and windows into the vaulted
halls; out of which we would not drive them:
they have even got the mastery, and may keep
it. Sweeping away deep strata of leaves, we
have found the notablest place all smoothed,

GOETHE.

347

tlie like of which were perhaps not to be met
with in the world.

"After all this, however, it is still to be re-
marked, and on the spot itself well worth ex-
amining, how on the steps that lead up to the
main tower, a maple has struck root and fa-
shioned itself to a stout tree, so that you can
hardly with difficulty press by it, to mount the
battlements and gaze over the unbounded pros-
pect. Yet here, too, you linger pleased in the
shade; for that tree is it which high over the
whole wondrously lifts itself into the air.

" Let us thank the brave Artist, then, who so
deservingly in various pictures teaches us the
whole, even as if we saw if. he has spent the
fairest hours of the day and of the season there-
in, and for weeks long kept moving about these
scenes. Here in this corner has there for him,
and the warder we gave him, been a little
pleasant dwelling fitted up. You could not
think, my Best, what a lovely outlook into the
country, into court and walls, he has got there.
But now when all is once in outline, so pure, so
characteristic, he may finish it down here at his
ease. With these pictures we will decorate
our garden-hall ; and no one shall recreate his
eyes over our regular parterres, our groves and
shady walks, without wishing himself up there,
to follow, in actual sight of the old and of the
new, of the stubborn, inflexible, indestructible,
and of the fresh, pliant, irresistible, what reflec-
tions and comfiarisons would rise for him."

Honorio entered, with notice that the horses
were brought out; then said the Princess, turn-
ing to the Uncle: "Let us ride up; and you
will show me in reality what you have here set
before me in image. Ever since I came among
you, I have heard of this undertaking; and
should now like of all things to see with my
own eyes what in the narrative seemed impos-
sible, and in the depicting remains improbable."
— " Not yet, my Love," answered the Prince :
" what you here saw is what it can become and
is becoming: for the present much in the enter-
prise stands still amid impediments ; Art must
first be complete, if Nature is not to shame it."
— "Then let us ride at least upwards, were it
only to the foot: I have the greatest wish to-day
to look about me far in the world." — "Altogether
as you will it," replied the Prince. — "Let us
ride through the Town, however," continued
the Lady, "over the great market-place, where
stands the innumerable crowd of booths, look-
ing like a little city, like a camp. It is as if the
wants and occupations of all the families in the
land were turned outwards, assembled in this
centre, and brought into the light of day: for
the attentive observer can descry whatsoever it
is that man performs and needs ; you fancy, for
the moment, there is no money necessary, that
all business could here be managed by barter,
and so at bottom it is. Since the Prince, last
night, set me on these reflections, it is pleasant
to consider how here, where Moimtain and
Plain meet together, both so clearly speak out

what they require and wish. For as the High-
lander can fashion the timber of his woods into
a hundred shapes, and mould his iron for all
manner of uses, so these others from below
come to meet him with most manifold wares,
in which often you can hardly discover the
material or recognise the aim."

"I am aware," answered the Prince, "that
my Nephew turns his utmost care to these
things: for specially, on the present occasion,
this main point comes to be considered, that one
receive more than one give out : which to
manage is, in the long run, the sum of all
Political Economy, as of the smallest private
housekeeping. Pardon me, however, my Best :
I never like to ride through markets; at every
step you are hindered and kept back ; and then
flames up in my imagination the monstrous
misery, which, as it were, burnt itself into my
eyes, when I witnessed one such world of

wares go off" in flre. I had scarcely got to "

'• Let us not lose the bright hours," interrupted
the Princess, for the worthy man had already
more than once afflicted her with the minute
description of that mischance : how he being
on a long journey, resting in the best inn, on the
market-place wliich was just then swarming
with a fair, had gone to bed exceedingly fa-
tigued ; and in the night-time been, by shrieks,
and flames rolling up against his lodging, hide-
ously awakened.

The Princess hastened to mount her favorite
horse : and led, not through the backgate up-
wards, but through the foregate downwards,
her reluctant-willing attendant: for who but
would gladly have ridden by her side, who but
would gladly have followed after her. And so
Honorio too had without regret staid back from
the otherwise so wished-for Hunt, to be exclu-
sively at her service.

As was to be anticipated, they could only
ride through the market step by step; but the
fair Lovely one enlivened every stoppage by
some sprightly remark. " I repeat my lesson of
ye'ster-night," said she, "since Necessity is try-
ing our patience." And in truth, the whole
mass of men so crowded about the riders, that
their progress was slow. The people gazed
with joy at the young dame; and, on so many
smiling countenances, might be read the plea-
sure they felt to see that the first woman in the
land was also the fairest and gracefullest.

Promiscuously mingled stood, Mountaineers,
who had built their still dwellings amid rocks,
firs, and spruces; Lowlanders from hills, mea-
dows, and leas ; craftsmen of the little towns ;
and what else had all assembled there. After
a quiet glance, the Princess remarked to her
attendant, how all these, whencesoever they
came, had taken more stulf than necessary for
their clothes, more cloth and linen, more ribands
for trimming. It is as if the women could not
be bushy enough, the men not pufly enough, to
please themselves.

"We will leave them that," answered the

348

GOETHE.

uncle: "spend his superfluity on what he will,
a man is happy in it; happiest when he there-
witli decks and dizens himself." The fair
dame nodded assent.

So had they by degrees got upon a clear
space, which led out to the suburbs, when, at
the end of many small booths and stands, a
larger edifice of boards showed itself, which
was scarcely glanced at till an ear-lacerating
bellow sounded forth from it. The feeding-
hour of the wild beasts there exhibited seemed
to have come : the Lion let his forest and
desert-voice be heard in all vigor ; the horses
shuddered, and all must remark how, in the
l)eaceful ways and workings of the cultivated
world, the King of the wilderness so fearfully
announced himself. Coming nearer the booth,
you could not overlook the variegated colossal
pictures representing with violent colors and
strong emblems those foreign beasts ; to a sight
of which the peaceful burgher was to be irre-
sistibly enticed. The grim monstrous tiger was
pouncing on a blackamoor, on the point of tear-
ing him in shreds ; a lion stood earnest and
majestic, as if he saw no prey worthy of him ;
other wondrous party-colored creatures, beside
these mighty ones, deserved less attention.

" As we come back," said the Princess, " we
will alight and take a nearer view of these
gentry.'" — "It is strange," observed the Prince,
" that man always seeks excitement by Terror.
Inside, there, the Tiger lies quite quiet in his
cage; and here must he ferociously dart upon
a black, that the people may fancy the like is
to be seen within : of murder and sudden death,
of burning and destruction, there is not enough ;
but ballad-singers must at every corner keep
repeating it. Good man will have himself
frightened a little ; to feel the better, in secret,
how beautiful and laudable it is to draw breath
in freedom."

Whatever of apprehensiveness from such
bugbear images might have remained was soon
all and wholly efi'aced, as, issuing through the
gate, our party entered on the cheerfuUest of
scenes. The road led first up the River, as yet
but a small current, and bearing only light
boats, but which by and by, as a renowned world-
stream, would carry forth its name and waters,
and enliven distant lands. They proceedecl
next through well-cultivated fruit-gardens and
pleasure-grounds, softly ascending; and by de-
grees you could look about you in the now-dis-
closed much-peopled region, till first a thicket,
then a little wood admitted our riders, and the
gracel'ullest localities refreshed and liniitetl their
view. A meadow vale leading upwards, shortly
before mown for the second time, velvet-like to
look upon, watered by a brook rushing out lively
copious at once from the uplands above, received
them as with welcome; and so diey approached
a higher freer station, which, on issuing from
the wood, after a stiff ascent, they gained ; and
could now descry, over new clumps of trees,
the old Castle, the goal of their pilgrimage,

rising in the distance, as pinnacle of the rock
and forest. Backwards, again (for never did
one mount hither without turning round), they
caught, through accidental openings of the high
trees, the Prince's Castle, on the left, lightened
by the morning sun; the well-built higher quar-
ter of the Town softened under light smoke-
clouds ; and so on, rightwards, the luider Town,
the River in several bendings with its meadows
and mills ; on the farther side, an extensive fer-
tile region.

Having satisfied themselves with the pros-
pect, or rather as usually happens when we
look round from so high a station, become
doubly eager for a wider, less limited view, they
rode on, over a broad stony flat, where the
mighty Ruin stood fronting them, as a green-
crowned summit, a few old trees far down
about its foot: they rode along; and so arrived
there, just at the steepest most inaccessible side.
Great rocks jutting out from of old, insensible
of every change, firm, well-founded, stood
clenched together there ; and so it towered up-
wards : what had fallen at intervals lay in huge
plates and fragments confusedly heaped, and
seemed to forbid the boldest any attempt. But
the steep, the precipitous is inviting to youth :
to undertake it, to storm and conquer it, is lor
young limbs an enjoyment. The Princess testi-
fied desire for an attempt ; Honorio was at her
hand j the Prince-Uncle, if easier to satisfy, took
it cheerfully, and would show that he too had
strength ; the horses were to wait below among
the trees ; our climbers make for a certain point,
where a huge projecting rock atlbrds a standing-
room, and a prospect, which indeed is already
passing over into the bird's-eye kind, yet folds
itself together there picturesquely enough.

The sun, almost at its meridian, lent the
clearest light; the Prince's Castle, with its com-
partments, main buildings, wings, domes, and
towers, lay clear and stately; the upper Town
in its whole extent; into the lower also you
could conveniently look, nay, by the telescope
distinguish the booths in the market-place. So
furthersome an instrument Honorio would never
leave behind ; they looked at the River up-
wards and downwards, on this side the moun-
tainous, terrace-like, interrupted expanse, on
that the upswelling, fruitful land, alternating in
level and low hill; places innumerable ; for it
was long customary to dispute how many of
them were here to be seen.

Over the great expanse lay a cheerful still-
ness, as is common at noon ; when, as the
Ancients were wont to say, Pan is asleep, and
all Nature holds her breath not to awaken
him.

'Tt is not the first time," said the Princess,
"that I, on some such high far-seeing spot, have
reflected how Nature all clear looks so pure and
peaceful, and gives you the impression as if
there were nothing contradictory in the world ;
and yet when you return back into the habita-
tion of man, be it lofty or low, wide or narrow,

GOETHE.

349

there is ever somewhat to contend with, to
battle with, to smooth and put to rights."

Honorio who, meanwliile, was looking through
the glass at the Town, exclaimed : "See! see!
There is fire in the market!"' They looked, and
could observe some smoke, the flames were
smothered in the daylight. "The fire spreads!"
cried he, still looking through the glass; the
vuischief indeed now became noticeable to the
good eyes of the Princess; from time to time
you observed a red burst of flame, the smoke
mounted aloft ; and Prince-Uncle said : " Let
us return ; that is not good -. I always feared I
should see that misery a second time." They
descended, got back to their horses. " Ride,"
said the Princess to the Uncle, "fast, but not
without a groom; leave me Honorio, we will
follow without delay." The Uncle felt the
reasonableness, nay necessity of this ; and
started off down the waste stony slope, at the
quickest pace the ground allowed.

As the Princess mounted, Honorio said:
"Please your E.\cellency to ride slow! In the
Town as in the Castle, the fire-apparatus is in
perfect order; the people, in this unexpected
accident, will not lose tlieir presence of mind.
Here, moreover, we have bad ground, little
stones and short grass ; quick riding is unsafe ;
in any case, before we arrive, the fire will be
got under." The Princess did not tliink so ;
she observed the smoke spreailing, she fancied
that she saw a flame flash up, that sire heard
an explosion ; and now in her imagination all
the terrific things awoke, which the worthy
Uncle's rejieated narrative of his experiences in
that market-conflagration had too deeply im-
planted there.

Frightful doubtless had that business been,
alarming and impressive enough to leave be-
hind it, painfully through life long, a boding and
image of its recurrence, when, in the night-
season, on the great booth-covered market-space,
a sudden fire had seized booth after booth, be-
fore the sleepers in these light huts could be
shaken out of deep dreams: the Prince himself,
as a wearied stranger arriving only for rest,
started from his sleep, sprang to the window,
saw all fearfully illuminated ; flame after flame,
from the right, from the left, darting through
each other, rolls quivering towards him. The
houses of the market-place, reddened in the
shine, seemed already glowing, tlireatened every
moment to kindle, and burst fortli in fire : be-
low, the element raged without let; planks
cracked, laths cracked, the canvass flew abroad,
and its dusky fire-peaked tatters whirled them-
selves round and aloft, as if bad spirits, in their
own element, with perpetual cliange of shape,
were, in capricious dance, devouringone another;
and there and yonder would dart up out from
their f)enal fire. And then with wild howls
each saved what was at hand : servants and
masters labored to drag forth bales already
seized by the flames, to snatch away yet some-
what from the burning shelves, and pack it into

the chests, which too tViey must at last leave a
prey to the hastening flame. How many a one
could have prayed but for a moment's pause to
the loud-advancing fire ; as he looked round for
the possibility of some device, and was with
all his possession already seized : on tlie one
side, burnt and glowed already, what on the
other still stood in dark night. Obstinate
characters, will-strong men grimly fronted the
grim foe, and saved inucli, with loss of their
eyebroM's and hair. Alas, all this waste con-
fusion now rose anew before the fair spirit of
the Princess ; the gay morning prospect was all
overclouded, and her eyes darkened ; wood and
meadow had put on a look of strangeness, of
danger.

Entering the peaceful vale, heeding little its
refreshing coolness, they were but a few steps
down from the copious fountain of the brook
which flowed by them, when the Princess
descried, quite down in the thickets, something
singular, which she soon recognised for the
tiger : springing on, as she a short while ago
had seen him painted, he came towards her ;
and this image, added to the frightful ones she
was already busy with, made the strangest im-
pression. " Fly ! your Grace," cried Honorio,
"fly!" She turned Iter horse towards the steep
hill they had just descended. The young man,
rushing on towards the monster, drew his pistol
and fired when he thought himself near enough;
but, alas, without effect; the tiger sprang to a
side, the horse faltered, the provoked wild beast
followed his course, upwards straight after the
Princess. She galloped, what her horse could,
up the steep stony space ; scarcely apprehend-
ing that so delicate a creature, unused to such
exertion, could not hold out. It overdid itself,
driven on by the necessitated Princess; it
stumbled on the loose gravel of the steep, and
again stumbled ; and at last fell, after violent
efforts, powerless to the ground. The fair dame,
resolute and dextrous, failed not instantly to get
upon her feet; the horse too rose, but the tiger
was approaching; though not w-ith vehement
speed; the uneven ground, the sharp stones
seemed to damp his impetuosity; and only
Honorio flying after him, riding with checked
speed along with him, appeared to stimulate
and provoke his force anew. Both runners, at
the same instant, reached the spot where the
Princess was standing by her horse : the Knight
bent himself, fired, and with this second pistol
hit the monster through the head, so that it
rushed down ; and now, stretched out in full
length, first clearly disclosed the might and
terror whereof only the bodily hull was left
lying. Honorio had sprung from his horse ;
was already kneeling on the beast, quenching
its last movements, and held his drawn hanger
in his right hand. The youth was beautiful ;
he had come dashing on as in sports of the
lance and the ring the Princess had often seen
him do. Even so in the riding-course would
his bullet, as he darted by, hit the Turk's-head
30

350

GOETHE.

on the pole, right under the turban in the brow;
even so would he, lightly prancing up, prick his
naked sabre into the fallen mass, and lift it
from the ground. In all such arts he was dex-
trous and felicitous ; both now stood him in
good stead.

"Give him the rest," said the Princess: "I
fear he will hurt you with his claws." — "Par-
don!" answered the youth: "he is already dead
enough ; and I would not hurt the skin, which
next winter shall shine upon your sledge." —
'•Sport not," said the Princess: "whatsoever of
pious feeling dwells in the depth of the heart
unfolds itself in such a moment." — "I too,"
cried Honorio, " was never more pious than
even now ; and therefore do I think of what is
joyfullest; I look at the tiger's fell only as it
can attend you to do you pleasure." — " It would
for ever remind me," said she, "of this fearful
moment." — "Yet is it," replied the youth with
glowing cheeks, " a more harmless spoil than
when the weapons of slain enemi-es are carried
for show before the victor." — "I shall bethink
me, at sight of it, of your boldness and clever-
ness ; and need not add that you may reckon
on my thanks and the Prince's favor for your
life long. But rise ; the beast is clean dead, let
us consider what is next: before all things
rise !" — "As I am once on my knees," replied
the youth, " once in a posture which in other
circumstances would have been forbid, let me
beg at this moment to receive assurance of the
favor, of the grace which you vouchsafe me. I
have already asked so often of your high con-
sort for leave and promotion to go on my travels.
He who has the happiness to sit at your table,
whom you honor with the privilege to entertain
your company, should have seen the world.
Travellers stream in on us from all parts; and
when a town, an important spot in any quarter
of the world comes in course, the question is
sure to be asked of us, were we ever there ?
Nobody allows one sense, till one has seen all
that: it is as if you had to instruct yourself only
for the sake of others."

"Rise!" repeated the Princess : "I were loth
to wish or request aught that went against the
will of my Husband ; however, if I mistake not,
the cause why he has restrained you hitherto
will soon be at an end. His intention was to
see you ripened into a complete self-guided
nobleman, to do yourself and him credit in
foreign parts, as hitherto at court; and I should
think this deed ol yours was as good a recom-
mendatory passport as a young man could wish
for to take abroad with him."

That, instead of a youthful joy, a certain
mournfulness came over his face, the Princess
had not time to observe, nor had he to indulge
his emotion; for, in hot haste, up the steep,
came a woman, with a boy at her hand, straight
to the group so well known to us; and scarcely
had Honorio, bethinking him, arisen, when tliey
howling and shrieking cast themselves on the
carcass; by which action, as well as by their

cleanly decent, yet party-colored and unusual
dress, might be gathered that it was the mistress
of this slain creature, and the black-eyed black-
locked boy, holding a flute in his hand, her son ;
weeping like his mother, less violent but deeply
moved, kneeling beside her.

Now came strong outbreakings of passion
from this woman ; interrupted, indeed, and
pulse-wise; a stream of words, leaping like a
stream in gushes from rock to rock. A natural
language, short and discontinuous, made itself
impressive and pathetic : in vain should we
attempt translating it into our dialects ; the ap-
proximate purportof it we must notomit. "They
have murdered thee, poor beast! murdered
without need! Thou wert tame, and wouldst
fain have laid down at rest and waited our
coming; for thy foot-balls were sore, thy claws
had no force left. The hot sun to ripen them
was wanting. Thou wert the beautiful lest of
thy kind : who ever saw a kingly tiger so glori-
ously stretched out in sleep, as thou here liest,
dead, never to rise more. When thou awokest
in the early dawn of morning, and openedst thy
throat, stretching out thy red tongue, thou wert
as if smiling on us; and even when bellowing,
thou tookest thy food from the hands of a
woman, from the fingers of a child. How long
have we gone with thee on thy journeys ; how
long has thy company been useful and fruitful
to us! To us, to us of a very truth, meat came
from the eater, and sweetness out of the strong.
So will it be no inore. Wo ! wo !"

She had not done lamenting, when over the
smoother part of the Castle JMountain, came
riders rushing down; soon recognised as the
Prince's Hunting-train, himself the foremost.
Following their sport, in the backward hills,
they had observed the fJie-vapors ; and fast
through dale and ravine, as in fierce chase,
taken the shortest path towards this mournful
sign. Galloping along the stony vacancy, they
stopped and stared at sight of the unexpected
group, which in that empty expanse stood out
so markworthy. After the first recognition there
was silence ; some pause of breathing-time ;
and then what the view itself did not impart,
was with brief words explained. So stood the
Prince, contemplating the strange unheard-of
incident; a circle round him of riders, and
followers that had run on foot. Wliat to do was
still undetermined ; the Prince intent on order-
ing, executing, when a man pressed forward
into the circle ; large of stature, party-colored,
wondrously- apparel led, like wife and child.
And now the family in union testified their
sorrow and astonishment. The man, however,
soon restrained himself, bowed in reverent dis-
tance before the Prince, and said: "It is not
the time for lamenting; alas, my lord and
mighty hunter, the lion too is loose, hither to-
wards the mountains is he gone : but spare
him, have mercy that he perish not like this
good beast."

" The Lion !'' said the Prince : " Hast thou the

GOETHE.

351

trane of him ?'' — " Yes, Lord ! A peasant down
there, who had lieedlessly taken shelter on a
tree, directed me fardier up this way, to the left;
but I saw the crowd of men and horses here ;
anxious for tidings of assistance, I hastened
hither." — "So then," commanded the Prince,
"draw to the left, Huntsmen; you will load
your pieces, go softly to work, if you drive him
into the deep woods, it is no matter: but in the
end, good man, we shall be obliged to kill your
animal ; why were you improvident enough to
let him loose?'' — "The fire broke out," replied
he, " we kept quiet and attentive ; it spread fast,
but at a distance from us, we had water enough
for our defence ; but a heap of powder blew
up, and threw the brands on to us, and over our
heads: we were too hasty, and are now ruined
people.'"

The Prince was still busy directing; but for
a moment all seemed to pause, as a man was
observed hastily springing down from the
heights of the old Castle ; whom the troop soon
recognised for the watchman that had been sta-
tioned there to keep the Painter's apartments,
while he lodged there and took charge of the
workmen. He came running, out of breath,
yet in few words soon made known that the
Lion had lain himself down, within the high
ring-wall, in the sunshine, at the foot of a large
beech, and was behaving quite quietly. With
an air of vexation, however, the man concluded :
•' Why did I take my rille to town yesternight,
to have it cleaned ; he had never risen again,
the skin had been mine, and I might all my
life have had the credit of the thing."

The Prince, whom his military experiences
here also stood in stead, for he had before now
been in situations where from various sides in-
evitable evil seemed to threaten, said hereupon :
" What surety do you give me that if we spare
your lion, he will not work destruction among
us, among my people?"

" This woman and this child," answered the
father hastily, " engage to tame him, to keep him
peaceable, till I bring up the cage, and then we
can carry him back unharmed and without
harming any one."

The boy put his flute to his lips ; an instru-
ment of the kind once named soft, or sweet
flutes; short-beaked like pipes: he, who under-
stood the art, could bring out of it the gracefullest
tones. Meanwhile the Prince had inquired of
the watchman how the lion came up. " By the
hollow-way," answered he, •' which is walled
in on both sides, and was formerly the only en-
trance, and is to be the only one still : two foot-
paths, which led in elsewhere, we have so
bl(jcked up and destroyed that no human being,
except by that first narrow passage, can reach
the ]\Iagic Castle which Prince Friedrich's talent
and taste is making of it."

After a little thought, during which the Prince
looked round at the boy, who still continued as
if softly preluding, he turned to Honorio, and
said: "Thou hast done much to-day, complete

thy task. Secure that narrow path ; keep your
rifles in readiness, but do not shoot till the crea-
ture can no otherwise be driven back : in any
case, kindle a fire, which will frighten hiin if
he make downwards. The man and woman
take charge of the rest." Honorio rapidly be-
stirred himself to execute these orders.

The child continued his tune, which was no
tune; a series of notes withijut law, and per-
haps even on that account so heart- touching :
the bystanders seemed as if enchanted by the
movement of a song-like melody, when the fa-
ther with dignified enthusiasm began to speak
in this sort:

" God has given the Prince wisdom, and also
knowledge to discern that all God's works are
wise, each after its kind. Behold the rock, how
he stands fast and stirs not, defies the weather
and the sunshine ; primeval trees adorn his
head, and so crowned he looks abroad; neither
if a mass rush away, will this continue what it
was, but falls broken into many pieces and
covers the side of the descent. But there too
they will not tarry, capriciously they leap far
down, the brook receives them, to the river he
bears them. Not resisting, not contradictory,
angular ; no, smooth and rounded they travel
now quicker on their way, arrive, from river to
river, finally at the ocean, whither march the
giants in hosts, and in the depths whereof
dwarfs are busy.

"But who shall exalt the glory of the Lord,
whom the stars praise from Eternity to Eternity !
Why look ye far into the distance? Consider
here the bee : late at the end of harvest she still
busily gathers, builds her a house, tight of cor-
ner, straight of wall, herself the architect and
mason. Behold the ant: she knows her way,
and loses it not; she piles her a dwelling of
grass-halms, earth-crumbs, and needles of the
fir; she piles it aloft and arches it in; but she
has labored in vain, for the horse stamps, and
scrapes it all in pieces: lo ! he has trodden
down her beams, and scattered her planks ;
impatiently he snorts and cannot rest ; for the
Lord has made the horse comrade of the wind
and companion of the storm, to carry man v/hi-
ther he wills, and woman whither she desires
But in the Wood of Palms arose he, the Lion,
with earnest step traversed the wilderness;
there rules he over all creatures, his might who
shall withstand ? Yet man can tame him ; and
the fiercest of living things has reverence for the
image of God, in which too the angels are made,
who serve the Lord and his servants. For in
the den of Lions Daniel was not afraid : he re-
mained fast and faithful, and the wild bellow-
ing interrupted not his song of praise."

This speech, delivered with expression of a
natural enthusiasm, the child accompanied here
and there with graceful tones ; but now, the
father having ended, he, with clear melodious
voice and skilful passaging, struck up his war-
ble, whereupon the father took the flute, and
gave note in unison, while the child sang :

352

GOETHE.

From the Dens, I, in a deeper,
Prophet's son? of praise can hear ;
Aiisel-liost he hath for lieeper,
i^eeds tlie good man tliere to fear ?

Lion, Lioness, agazing.
Mildly pressing round him came ;
Yea, tliat humble, holy praising,
It hath made them taine.

The father continued accompanying tliis
strophe with his flute ; the mother here and
there touclied in as second voice.

Impressive, however, in a quite peculiar de-
gree, it was, when the child now began to shuffle
the lines of the strophe into other arrangement ;
and thereby if not bring out a new sense, yet
heighten the feeling by leading it into self-ex-
citement :

Angel-host around doth hover, . ' ■
Us in heavenly tones to cheer :

In the dens our head doth cover : ' i

Needs the poor child tliere to fear ? : '

For that humble lioly praising - .

Will permit no evd nigh :
Angels hover, keeping, gazing,
Wlio so safe as 1 ?

Hereupon with emphasis and elevation began
all three :

For til' Eternal rules above us.

Lands and oceans rnles his will ;

Lions even as lambs shall love us, ' > - •

And the proudest waves be still.

Whetted sword to scabbard cleaving,
Faith and Hope victorious see,
Strong, who, loving and believing,
Prays, 0 Lord, to thee.

All were silent, hearing, hearkening; and
only when the tones ceased could you remark
and distinguish the impression they had made.
All was as if appeased ; each affected in his
way. The Prince, as if he now first saw the
misery that a little while ago had threatened
him, looked down on his spouse, who leaning
on him forbore not to draw out the 'little em-
broidered handkerchief, and therewith covered
her eyes. It was blessedness for her to feel her
young bosom relieved from the pressure with
which the preceding minutes had loaded it. A
perfect silence reigned over the crowd; they
seemed to have forgotten the dangers : the con-
flagration below ; and above, the rising up of a
dubiously-reposing Lion.

By a sign to bring the horses, the Prince first
restored the group to motion ; he turned to the
woman, and said: "You think then that, once
find the lion, you could, by your singing, by the
singing of this child, with help of these flute-
tones, appease him, and carry him back to his
prison, milutrt and hurting no one ?'' They an-
swered yes, assuring and affirming; the Castel-
lan was given them as guide. And now the
Prince started off" in all speed with a few ; tlie
Princess followed slower with the rest of the
train ; mother and son, on their side, under con-
duct of the warder, who had got himself a mus-
ket, mounted up the steeper part of the height.

Before the entrance of the hollow-way which
opened their access to the Castle, they found the
hunters busy heaping up dry brushwood, to

have, in any case, a large fire ready for kindling.
"There is no need," said the woman : "it will
all go well and peaceably, without that."

Farther on, sitting oir a wall, his double-barrel
resting in his lap, Honorio appeared; at his
post, as if ready for every occurrence. How
ever, he seemed hardly to notice our party; he
sat as if sunk in deep thoughts, he looked round
like one whose mind was not there. The wo-
man addressed him with a prayer not to let the
fire be lit; he appeared not to heed her words;
she spoke on with vivacity, and cried ; "Hand-
some young man, thou hast killed my tiger, I
do not curse thee ; spare my lion, good young
man, I will bless thee."

Honorio was looking straight out before him,
to where the sun on his course began to sink.
"Thou lookest to the west," cried the woinan ;
"thou dost well, there is much to do there;
hasten, delay not, thou wilt conquer. But first
conquer thyself" At this he appeared to give
a smile; the woman stept on; could not, how-
ever, but look back once more at him : a ruddy
sun was overshining his face ; she thought she
had never seen a handsomer youth.

"If your child," said the warder now, " with
his fluting and singing, can, as you are per-
suaded, entice and pacify the lion, we shall soon
get mastery of him after, for the creature has
lain down quite close to the perforated vaults
through \\'liich, as the main passage was blocked
up with ruins, we had to bore ourselves an en-
trance into the Castle-Court. If the child entice
liim into this latter, I can close the opening with
little difficulty; then the boy, if he like, can
glide out by one of the little spiral stairs he will
find in the corner. We must conceal ourselves;
but I shall so take my place that a rifle-ball can,
at any monrent, help the poor child in case of
extremity."

" All these precautions are unnecessary ; God
and skill, piety and a blessing, must do the
work." — " May be," replied the warder ; " how-
ever, I know my duties. First, I must lead you,
by a difficult path, to the top of the wall, right
opposite the vaults and opening I have men-
tioned : the child may then go down, as into the
arena of the show, and lead away the animal,
if it will follow him." This was done: warder
and mother looked down in concealment, as the
child descending the screw-stairs, showed him-
self in the open space of the Court, and disap-
peared opposite them in the gloomy opening ;
but forthwith gave his flute voice, which by
and by grew weaker, and at last sank dumb.
The pause was bodeful enough ; the old Hunter,
familiar with danger, felt heartsick at the sin-
gular conjuncture ; the mother, however, with
cheerful face, bending over to listen, showed
not the smallest discomposure.

At last the flute was again heard ; the child
stept forth from the cavern with glittering satis-
fied eyes, the lion after him, but slowly, and as
it seemed with difficulty. He showed here and
there desire to lie down ; yet the boy led him

GOETHE.

353

in a half-circle through the few disleaved many-
tiuted trees, till at length, in the last rays of the
sun which poured in through a hole in the
ruins, he set him down, as if transfigured in the
bright red light ; and again commenced his pa-
cifying song, the repetition of which we also
cannot forbear :

Fidm the Dens, I, m a deeper,

Propliel's song of pruise can hear ;

Angul-host he hath for keeper,

Needs the good man there to fear 1

Lion, Lioness, agazins,

Jlildly pressing round liim came ;

Yea, that humble, holy praising,

ll hath made them tame.

Meanwhile the lion had laid itself down quite
close to the child, and lifted its heavy right
fore-paw into liis bosom ; the boy as he sung
gracefully stroked it; but was not long in ob-
serving that a sharp thorn had stuck itself be-
tween the balls. He carefully pulled it out ;
with a smile, took the party-colored silk-hand-
kerchief from his neck, and bound up the fright-
ful paw of the monster; so that his mother for
joy bent herself back with outstretched arms ;
and perhaps, according to custoin, would have
shouted and clapped applause, had not a hard
hand gripe of the warder reminded her that the
danger was not yet over.

Triumphantly the child sang on, having with
a few tones preluded :

For th' Eternal rules above us,

Lands and oceans rules liis will ;

Lions even as lambs shall love us,

And the proudest waves be still.

Wlietted sword to scabbard cleaving,
Faith and Hope victorious see,
Strong, who, loving and believing,
Prays, 0 Lord, to thee.

Were it possible to fancy that in the counte-
nance of so grim a creature, the tyrant of the
woods, the despot of the animal kingdom, an
expression of friendliness, of thankful content-
ment could be traced, then here was such trace-
able ; and truly the child in his illustrated look
had the air as of a mighty triumphant victor ;
the other figure, indeed, not that of one van-
quished, for his strength lay concealed in him:
but yet of one tamed, of one given up to his
own peaceful will. The child fluted_aud sang
on, changing the lines according to his way, and
adding new :

And so to good children bringeth

Blessed Angel help in need ;

Fetters o'er the cruel flingeth,

Worthy art with wings doth speed.

So have tamed, and firmly iron'd

To a poor child's feeble knee,

Him the forest's lordly tyrant,

Song and Piety.

THE TALE.*

In his little Hut, by the great River, which a
heavy rain had swoln to overflowing, lay the

* Translated by Carlyle. The editor has preferred to
publish this " Tale" without the translator's comments.
Whoever is curious to see these, and to have a key to
2U

ancient Ferryman, asleep, wearied by the toil
of the day. In the middle of the night, loud
voices awoke him; he heard that it was travel-
lers wishing to be carried over.

Stepping out, he saw two large Will-o'-wisps,
hovering to and fro on his boat, which lay
moored : they said, they were in violent haste,
and should have been already on the other side.
The old Ferryman made no loitering ; pushed
off, and steered with his usual skill obliquely
through the stream ; while the two strangers
whiifled and hissed together, in an unknown
very rapid tongue, and every now and then
broke out in loud laughter, hopping about, at
one time oit the gunwale and the seats, at an-
other on the bottom of the boat.

"The boat is heeling!" cried the old man;
" if you don't be quiet, it will overset ; be seated,
gentlemen of the wisp !"

At this advice they burst into a fit of laughter,
mocked the old man, and were more unquiet
than ever. He bore their mischief with pa-
tience, and soon reached the farther shore.

"Here is for your labor!" cried the travellers,
and as they shook themselves, a heap of glitter-
ing gold-pieces jingled down into the wet boat.
" For Heaven's sake, what are you about V cried
the old man; "you will ruin me forever! Had
a single piece of gold got into the water, the
stream, which cannot suffer gold, would have
risen in horrid waves, and swallowed both my
skiff and me ; and who knows how it might
have fared with you in that case : here, take
back your gold."

"We can take nothing back, which we have
once shaken from us," said the Lights.

" Then you give me the trouble," said the old
man, stooping down, and gathering the pieces
into his cap, "of raking them together, and car-
rying them ashore, and burying them."

The Lights had leaped from the boat, but the
old man cried: "Stay; where is my fare?"

" If you take no gold, you may work for no-
thing," cried the Will-o'-wisps. — "You must
know that I am only to be paid with fruits of
the earth." — "Fruits of the earth? we despise
them, and have never tasted them." — " And yet
I cannot let you go, till you have promised that
you will deliver me three Cabbages, three Arti-
chokes, and three large Onions.''

The Lights were making off with jests ; but
they felt themselves, in some inexplicable man-
ner, fastened to the ground : it was the unplea-
santest feeling they had ever had. They en-
gaged to pay him his demand as soon as possi-
ble:'he let thein go, and pushed away. He
was gone a good distance, when they called to
him: "Old man! Holla, old man! the main
point is forgotten!" He was off, however, and
did not hear them. He had fallen quietly down
that side of the River, where, in a rocky spot,
which the "water never reached, he meant to

this wondrous production, is referred to "Carlyle's Mis-
cellanies." Boston : James Munroe &. Co. Vol. IV
Appendix.

30*

354

GOETHE.

bury the pernicious gokl. Here, between two
high crag:*, lie found a monstrous chasm ; sliook
the metal into it, and steered back to his cottage.
Now, in this chasm, lay the fair green Snake,
wlio was roused from her sleep by the gold
coming chinking down. No sooner did she fix
her eye on the glittering coins, than she ate
them all up, with the greatest relish, on the
spot ; and carefully picked out such pieces as
were scattered in the chinks of the rock.

Scarcely had she swallowed them, when,
with extreme delight, she began to feel the
metal melting in her inwards, and spreading
all over her body : and soon, to her lively joy,
she observed that she was grown transparent
and luminous. Long ago she had been told that
this was possible ; but now being doubtful
whether such a light could last, her curiosity
and the desire to be secure against the future,
drove her from her cell, that she might see who
it was that had shaken in this precious metal.
She found no one. The more delightful was it
to admire her own appearance, and her grace-
ful brightness, as she crawled along through
roots and bushes, and sjoread outlier light among
the grass. Every leaf seemed of emerald, every
flower was dyed with new glory. It was in
vain that she crossed the solitary thickets ; but
her hopes rose high, when, on reaching the open
country, she perceived from afar a brilliancy
resembling her own. "Shall I find my like at
last, then?" cried she, and hastened to the spot.
The toil of crawling through bog and reeds gave
her little thought ; for though she liked best to
live in dry grassy spots of the mountains, among
the clefts of rocks, and for most part fed on spicy
herbs, and slaked her thirst with mild dew and
fresh spring water, yet for the sake of this dear
gold, and in the hope of this glorious light, she
would have undertaken anything you could
propose to her.

At last, with much fatigue, she reached a wet
rushy spot in the swamp, where our two Will-
o'-wisps were frisking to and fro. She shoved
herself along to them ; saluted them, was happy
to meet such pleasant gentlemen related to her
family. The Lights glided towards her, skipped
up over her, and laughed in their fashion.
"Lady Cousin,'" said they, "you are of the hori-
zontal line, yet what of thaf? It is true we are
related only by the look; for observe you," here
both the Flames, compressing their whole
breadth, made themselves as high and peaked
as possible, "how prettily this taper length be-
seems us gentlemen of the vertical line! Take
it not amiss of us, good Lady; what family can
boast of such a thing? Since there ever was a
Jack-o'-lanthorn in the world, no one of them
has either sat or lain."

The Snake felt exceedingly uncomfortable in
the company of these relations ; for let her hold
her head as high as possible, she found that she
must bend it to the earth again, would she stir
from the spot; and if in the dark thicket she
had been extremely satisfied with her appear-

ance, her splendor in the presence of these
cousins seemed to lessen every moment, nay
she was afraid that at last it would go out en-
tirely.

In this embarrassment she hastily asked: if
the gentlemen could not inform her, whence
the glittering gold came, that had fallen a short
while ago into the cleft of the rock ; her own
opinion was, that it had been a golden shower,
and had trickled down direct from the sky. The
Will-o'-wisps laughed, and shook themselves,
and a multitude of gold-pieces came clinking
down about them. The Snake pushed nimbly
forwards to eat the coin. " Much good may it
do you. Mistress," said the dapper gentlemen :
" we can help you to a little more." They shook
themselves again several times with great quick-
ness, so that the Snake could scarcely gulp the
precious victuals fast enough. Her splendor
visibly began increasing; she was really shin-
ing beautifully, while the Lights had in the
meantime grown rather lean and short of sta-
ture, without however in the smallest losing
their good-humor.

"I am obliged to you for ever," said the Snake,
having got her wind again after the repast,
"ask of me what you will; all that I can I
will do."

"Very good!" cried the Lights. "Then tell
us where the fair Lily dwells? Lead us to the
fair Lily's palace and garden ; and do not lose
a moment, we are dying of impatience to fall
down at her feet."

"This service," said the Snake with a deep
sigh, "I cannot now do for you. 'The fair Lily
dwells, alas, on the other side of the water." —
"Other side of the water? And we have come
across it, this stormy night! How cruel is the
River to divide us! Would it not be possible to
call the old man back?"

" It would be useless," said the Snake ; " for
if you found him ready on the bank, he would
not take you in; he can carry any one to this
side, none to yonder."

" Here is a pretty kettle of fish !" cried the
Lights : " are there no other means of getting
through the water?" — "There are other means,
but not af this moment. I myself could take
you over, gentlemen, but not till noon." — "That
is an hour we do not like to travel in." — "Then
you may go across in tlie evening, on the great
Giant's shadow." — " How is that?" — "The great
Giant lives not far from this ; with his body he
has no power; his hands cannot lift a straw,
his shoulders could not bear a faggot of twigs ;
but with his shadow he has power over much,
nay all. At sunrise and sunset therefore he is
strongest ; so at evening you merely put your-
self upon the back of his shadow, the Giant
walks softly to the bank, and the shadow car-
ries you across the water. But if you please,
about the hour of noon, to be in waiting at that
corner of the wood, where the bushes overhang
the bank, I myself will take you over and pre-
sent you to the fair Lily : or on the other hand,

GOETHE.

355

if you dislike the noontide, you have just to go
at nightfall to that bend of the rocks, and pay
a visit to the Giant; he will certainly receive
you like a gentleman."

With a slight bow, the Flames went off; and
the Snake at bottom was not discontented to get
rid of them ; partly that she might enjoy the
brightness of her own light, partly satisfy a
curiosity with which, for a long time, she had
been agitated in a singular way.

In the chasm, where she often crawled hither
and thither, she had made a strange discovery.
For although in creeping up and down this
abyss, she had never had a ray of light, she
could well enough discriminate the objects in it,
by her sense of touch. Generally she met with
nothing but irregular productions of nature ; at
one time she would wind between the teeth of
large crystals, at another she would feel the
barbs and hairs of native silver, and now and
then carry out with her to the light some strag-
gling jewels. But to her no small wonder, in a
rock which was closed on every side, she had
come on certain objects which betrayed the
shaping hand of man. Smooth walls on which
she could not climb, sharp regular corners, well-
formed pillars ; and what seemed strangest of
all, human figures which she had entwined
more than once, and which appeared to her to
be of brass, or of the finest polished marble.
All these experiences she now wished to com-
bine by the sense of sight, thereby to confirm
what as yet she only guessed. She believed
she could illuminate the whole of the subter-
ranean vault by her own light; and hoped to
get acquainted with these curious things at
once. She hastened back ; and soon found, by
the usual way, the cleft by which she used to
penetrate the Sanctuary.

On reaching the place, she gazed around
with eager curiosity ; and though her shining
could not enlighten every object in the rotund o,
yet those nearest her were plain enough. With
astonishment and reverence she looked up into
a glancing niche, where the image of an august
King stood formed of pure Gold. In size the
figure was beyond the stature of man, but by
its shape it seemed tlie likeness of a little rather
than a tall person. His handsome body W'as
encircled v.'iili an unadorned mantle; and a
garland of oak bound his hair together.

No sooner had the Snake beheld this reverend
figure, than the King began to speak, and asked:
"Whence comest thou ?' — "From the chasms
where the gold dwells," said the Snake. —
"What is grander than gold?" inquired the
King. — " Light," replied the Snake. " What is
more refreshing than light?" said he. — "Speech,"
answered she.

During this conversation, she had squinted to
a side, and in the nearest niche perceived an-
other glorious image. It was a Silver King in
a sitting posture ; his shape was long and rather
languid ; he was covered with a decorated
robe ; crown, girdle, and sceptre were adorned

with precious stones : the cheerfulness of pride
was in his countenance ; he seemed about to
speak, when a vein which ran dimly-colored
over the marble wall, on a sudden became
bright, and diffused a cheerful light throughout
the whole Temple. By this brilliancy the Snake
perceived a third King, made of Brass, and
sitting mighty in shape, leaning on his club,
adorned with a laurel garland, and more like a
rock than a man. She was looking for the
fourth, wliich was standing at the greatest
distance from her ; but the wall opened, while
the glittering vein started and split, as lightning
does, and disappeared.

A Man of middle stature, entering through
the cleft, attracted the attention of the Snake.
He was dressed like a peasant, and carried in
his hand a little Lamp, on whose still flame
you liked to look, and which in a strange man-
ner, without casting any shadow, enlightened
the whole dome.

"Why comest thou, since we have light?"
said the golden King. — " You know that I may
not enlighten what is dark." — "Will my King-
dom end?" said the silver King. — "Late or
never," said the old Man.

With a stronger voice the brazen King began
to ask : " When shall I arise ?" — " Soon," replied
the Man. — "With whom shall I combine?" said
the King. — "With thy elder brothers," said the
Man. — "What will the youngest do?" inquired
the King. — "He will sit down," replied the
Man.

"I am not tired," cried the fourth King, with
a rough faltering voice.

While this speech was going on, the Snake
had glided softly round the temple, viewing
everything ; she was now looking at the fourth
King close by him. He stood leaning on a pil-
lar; his considerable form was heavy rather
than beautiful. But what metal it was made
of could not be determined. Closely inspected,
it seemed a mixture of the three metals which
its brothers had been formed of. But in the
founding, these materials did not seem to have
combined together fully; gold and silver veins
ran irregularly through a brazen mass, and gave
the figure an unpleasant aspect.

Meanwhile the gold King was asking of the
Man, "How many secrets knowest thou?" —
"Three," replied the Man. — "Which is the
most important?" said the silver King. — "The
open one," replied the other. — " Wilt thou open
it to us also?" said the brass King. — " When I
know the fourth," replied the Man. — "What
care I?" grumbled the composite King, in an
under tone.

" I know the fourth," said the Snake ; ap-
proached the old Man, and hissed somewhat in
his ear. "The time is at hand!" cried the old
Man, with a strong voice. The temple re-
echoed, the metal statues sounded ; and that in-
stant the old Man sank away to the westward,
and the Snake to the eastward ; and both of

356

GOETHE.

them passed through the clefts of the rock, with
the greatest speed.

All the passages, through which the old Man
travelled, filled themselves, immediately behind
him, with gold: for his Lamp had the strange
piDjierty of charjging stone into gold, wood into
silver, dead animals into precious stones, and
of annihilating all metals. But to display this
power, it nmst shine alone. If another light
were beside it, the Lamp only cast from it a
pure clear brightness, and all living things were
refreshed by it.

The okl Man entered his cottage, which'was
built on the slope of the hill. He found his
Wife in extreme distress. She was sitting at
the fire weeping, and refusing to be consoled.
" How unhappy am I !" cried she : " Did not I
entreat thee not to go away to-night ?'' — "What
is the matter, then V inquired the husband,
quite composed.

" Scarcely wert thou gone," said she, sobbing,
" when there came two noisy Travellers to the
door : unthinkingly I let them in ; they seemed
to be a couple of genteel, very honorable peo-
ple ; they were dressed in flames, you would
have taken them for Will-o'-wisps. But no
sooner were they in the house, than they began,
like impudent varlets, to compliment me, and
grew so forward that I feel ashamed to think
of it."

" No doubt," said the husband with a smile,
"the gentlemen were jesting: considering thy
age, they might have held by general polite-
ness."

"Age! what age?" cried the Wife: "wilt
thou always be talking of my age 1 How old
am I then? — General politeness! But I know
what I know. Look round there what a face
the walls have; look at the old stones, which I
have not seen these hundretl years; every film
of gold have they licked away, thou couldst not
think how fast; and still they kept assuring me
that it tasted far beyond common gold. Once
they had swept the walls, the fellows seemed
to be in high spirits, and truly in that little
while they had grown much broader and
brighter. They now began to be impertinent
again, they patted me, and called me their
queen, they shook themselves, and a shov.'cr
of gold pieces sprang from them ; see how they
are shining there under the bench! But, ah!
what misery ! Poor Mops ate a coin or two ;
and look, he is lying in the chimney, dead.
Poor Pug ! 0 well-a-day ! I did not see it till
they were gone; else I had never promised to
pay the Ferryman the debt they owe him." —
" What do they owe him ?" said the Man. —
" Three Cabbages," replied the Wife, " three
Artichokes, and three Onions : I engaged to
go when it was day, and take them to the
River."

" Thou mayest do theni that civility," said
the old Man ; " they may chance to be of use
to us again."

" Whether they will be of use to us I know

not ; but they promised and vowed that they
would."

Meantime the fire on the hearth liad burnt
low ; the old Man covered up the embers with
a heap of ashes, and put the glittering gold
pieces aside ; so that his little Lamp now gleam-
ed alone, in the fairest brightness. The walls
again coated themselves with gold, and Mops
changed into the prettiest onyx that could be
imagined. The alternation of the brown and
black in this precious stone made it the most
curious piece of workmanship.

"Take thy basket," said the Man, "and put
the onyx into it ; then take the three Cabbages,
the three Artichokes, and the three Onions;
place them round little Mops, and carry them
to the River. At noon the Snake will take
thee over ; visit the fair Lily, give her the onyx,
she will make it alive by her touch, as by her
touch she kills whatever is alive already. She
will have a true companion in the little dog.
Tell her not to mourn ; her deliverance is near ;
the greatest misfortune she may look upon as
the greatest happiness : for the time is at hand."

The old Woman filled her basket, and set
out as soon as it was day. The rising sun
shone clear from the other side of the River,
which was glittering in the distance ; the old
woman walked with slow stej^s, for the basket
pressed upon her head, and it was not the onyx
that so burdened her. Whatever lifeless thing
she might be carrying, she did not feel the
v/eight of it; on the other hand, in those cases
the basket rose aloft, and hovered along above
her head. But to carry any fresh herbage, or
any little living animal, she found exceedingly
laborious. She had travelled on for some time,
in a sullen humor, when she halted suddenly
in fright, for she had almost trod upon the
Giant's shadow, which was stretching towards
her across the plain. And now, lifting up her
eyes, she saw the monster of a Giant himself,
who had been bathing in the River, and was
just come out, and she knew not how she
should avoid him. The moment he perceived
her, he began saluting her in sport, and the
hands of his shadow soon caught hold of the
basket. With dexterous ease they picked away
from it a Cabbage, an Artichoke, and an Onion,
and brought them to the Giant's mouth, who
then went his way up the River, and let the
Woman go in peace.

She considered whether it would not be bet-
ter to return, and supply from her garden the
pieces she had lost ; and amid these doubts, she
still kept walking on, so that in a little while
she was at the bank of the River. She sat
long waiting for the Ferryman, whom she per-
ceived at last, steering over with a very singular
traveller. A young, noble-looking, handsome
man, whom she could not gaze upon enough,
stept out of the boat.

" What is it you bring?" cried the old man.
" The greens which those two Will-o"-wisps
owe you," said the Woman, pointing to her

GOETHE.

357

ware. As the Ferryman found only two of
each sort, he grew angry, and dpchued he woukl
have none of them. The Woman earnestly
entreated him to take them; told him that she
could not now go liome, and that her burden for
the way which still remained was very heavy.
He stood by his refusal, and assured her that it
did not rest with him. " What belongs to ine,"
said he, "I must leave lying nine hours in a
heap, touching none of it, till I have given the
River its third." After much higgling, the old
man at last replied: "There is still another
way. If you like to pledge yourself to the
River, and declare yourself its debtor, I will
take the six pieces; but there is some risk in
it." — " If I keep my word, I shall run no risk "?"
— "Not the smallest. Put your hand into the
stream," continued he, "and promise that within
four-and-twenty hours you will pay the debt."

The old Woman did so; but what was her
affright, when on drawing out her hand, she
found it black as coal! She loudly scolded the
ohl Ferryman ; declared that her hands had
always been the fairest part of her ; that in
spite of her hard work, she had all along con-
trived to keep these noble members white and
dainty. She looked at tlie hand with indig-
nation, and exclaimed in a despairing tone:
" Worse and worse ! Look, it is vanishing en-
tirely : it is grown far smaller than the other."
"For the present it but seems so," said the
old man; "if you do not keep your word, how-
ever, it may prove so in earnest. The hand
will gradually diminish, and at length disappear
altogether, though you have the use of it as
formerly. Every thing as usual you will be
able to perform with it, only nobody will see
it." — "I had rather that I could not use it, and
no one could observe the want," cried she ;
"but what of that, I will keep my word, and
rid myself of this black skin, and all anxieties
about it." Thereupon she hastily took up her
basket, which mounted of itself over her head,
and hovered free above her in the air, as she
hurried after the Youth, who was walking softly
and thoughtfully down the bank. His noble
form and strange dress had made a deep im-
pression on her.

His breast was covered with a glittering coat
of mail ; in whose wavings might be traced
every motion of his fair body. From his shoul-
ders hung a purple cloak ; around his uncovered
head flowed abundant brown hair in beautiful
locks : his graceful face, and his well-formed
feet were exposed to the scorching of the sun.
With bare soles, he walked composedly over
the hot sand; and a deep inward sorrow seemed
to blunt him against all external things.

The garrulous old Woman tried to lead him
into conversation ; but with his short answers
he gave her small encouragement or informa-
tion ; so that in the end, notwithstanding the
beauty of his eyes, she grew tired of speaking
with him to no purpose, and took leave of him
with these words : " You walk too slow for me,

worthy sir; I must not lose a moment, for I
have to pass the River on the green Snake, and
carry this fine present from my husband to the
fair Lily." So saying she stept faster forward ;
but the fair Youth pushed on with equal speed,
and hastened to keep up with her. " You are
going to the fair Lily !" cried he ; " then our
roads are the same. But what present is this
you are bringing her?"

"Sir," said the Woman, "it is hardly fair,
after so briefly dismissing the questions I put
you, to inquire with such vivacity about my
secrets. But if you like to barter, and tell me
your adventures, I will not conceal from you
how it stands with me and my presents." They
soon made a bargain; the dame disclosed her
circumstances to him ; told the history of the
Pug, and let him see the singular gift.

He lifted his natural curiosity from the basket,
and took Mops, who seemed as if sleeping softly,
into his arms. "Happy beast!" cried he; "thou
wilt be touched by her hands, thou wilt be
made alive by her ; while the living are obliged
to fly from her presence to escape a mournful
doom. Yet why say I mournful ! Is it not far
sadder and more frightful to be injured by her
look, than it would be to die by her hand 1 Be-
hold me," said he to the Woman ; "at my years,
what a miserable fate have I to undergo. This
mail which I have honorably borne in war, this
purple which I sought to merit by a wise reign,
Destiny has left me ; the one as a useless bur-
den, the other as an empty ornament. Crown,
and sceptre, and sword are gone ; and I am as
bare and needy as any other son of earth ; for
so unblessed are her bright eyes, that they take
from every living creature they look on all its
force, and those whom the touch of her hand
does not kill are changed to the state of shadows
wandering alive."

Thus did he continue to bewail, nowise con-
tenting the old Woman's curiosity, who wished
for information not so much of his internal as
of his external situation. She learned neither
the name of his father, nor of his kingdom. He
stroked the hard Mops, whom the sunbeams
and the bosom of the youth liad warmed as if
he had been living. He inquired narrowly
about the man with the Lamp, about the in-
fluences of the sacred light, appearing to expect
much good fr9m it in his melancholy case.

Amid such conversation, they descried from
afar the majestic arch of the Bridge, which ex-
tended from the one bank to the other, glittering
with the strangest colors in the splendors of the
sun. Both were astonished ; for until now they
had never seen this edifice so grand. " How !"
cried the Prince ! " was it not beautiful enough,
as it stood before our eyes, piled out of jasper
and agate 1 Shall we not fear to tread it, now
that it appears combined, in graceful complexity,
of emerald and chrysopras and chrysolite?"
Neither of them knew the alteration that had
taken place upon the Snake : for it was indeed
the Snake, who every day at noon curved her-

358

GOETHE.

self over the River, and stood forth in the form
of a bold-swelling bridge. The travellers stept
upon it with a reverential feeling, and passed
over it in silence.

No sooner had they reached the other shore,
than the bridge began to heave and stir ; in a
little while, it touched the surface of the water,
and the green Snake in her proper form came
gliding after the wanderers. They had scarcely
thanked her for the privilege of crossing on her
back, when they found that, besides them three,
there must be other persons in the company,
whom their eyes could not discern. They heard
a hissing, vi^hich the Snake also answered with
a hissing; they listened, and at length caught
what follows: "We shall first look about us in
the fair Lily's Park," said a pair of alternating
voices ; " and then request you at nightfall, so
soon as we are anywise presentable, to intro-
duce us to this paragon of beauty. At the shore
of the great Lake, you will find us." — "Be it
so," replied the Snake ; and a hissing sound
died away in the air.

Our three travellers now consulted in what
order they should introduce themselves to the
fair Lady; for however many people might be
in her company, they were obliged to enter and
depart singly, under pain of suffering very hard
severities.

The Woman with the metamorphosed Pug in
the basket first approached the garden, looking
round for her Patroness; who was not difficult
to find, being just engaged in singing to her
harp. The finest tones proceeded from her, first
like circles on the surface of the still lake, then
like a light breath they set the grass and the
bushes in motion. Li a green enclosure, under
the shadow of a stately group of many diverse
trees, was she seated ; and again did she en-
chant the eyes, the ear, and the heart of the
woman, who approached with rapture, and
swore within herself that since she saw her
last, the fair one had grown fairer than ever.
With eager gladness from a distance she ex-
pressed her reverence and admiration for the
lovely maiden. "What a happiness to see you,
what a Heaven does your presence spread
around you ! How charmingly the harp is lean-
ing on your bosom, how softly your arms sur-
round it, how it seems as if longing to be near
you, and how it sounds so meekly under the
touch of your slim fingers ! Thrice happy youth,
to whom it were permitted to be there !"

So speaking she approached; the fair Lily
raised her eyes ; let her hands drop from the
harp, and answered: "Trouble me not with
untimely praise ; I feel my misery but the more
deeply. Look here, at my feet lies the poor
Canary-bird, which used so beautifully to ac-
company my singing; it would sit upon my
harp, and was trained not to touch me ; but to-
day, while I, refreshed by sleep, was raising a
peaceful morning hymn, and my little singer
was pouring forth his harmonious tones more
gaily than ever, a Hawk darts over my head;

the poor little creature, in affright, takes refuge
in my bosom, and I feel the last palpitations of
its departing life. The plundering Hawk indeed
was caught by my look, and fluttered fainting
down into the water ; but what can his punish-
ment avail me? my darling is dead, and his
grave will but increase the luournful bushes of
my garden."

"Take courage, fairest Lily!" cried the Wo-
man, wiping off a tear, which the story of the
hapless maiden had called into her eyes; "com-
pose yourself; my old man bids me tell you to
moderate your lamenting, to look upon the
greatest misfortune as a forerunner of the
greatest happiness, for the time is at hand ;
and truly," continued she, "the world is going
strangely on of late. Do but look at my hand,
how black it is! As I live and breathe, it is
grown far smaller: I must hasten, before it
vanish altogether ! Why did I engage to do the
Will-o'-wisps a service, why did I meet the
Giant's shadow, and dip my hand in the River?
Could you not afford me a single cabbage, an
artichoke, and an onion? I would give them
to the River, and my hand were white as
ever, so that I could almost show it with one
of yours.

"Cabbages and onions thou mayest still find;
but artichokes thou wilt search for in vain. No
plant in my garden bears either flowers or fruit;
but every twig that I break, and plant upon the
grave of a favorite, grows green straightway,
and shoots up in fair boughs. All these groups,
these bushes, these groves my hard destiny has
so raised around me. These pines stretching
out like parasols, these obelisks of cypresses,
these colossal oaks and beeches, were all little
twigs planted by my hand, as mournful me-
morials in a soil that otherwise is barren."

To this speech the old Woman had paid little
heed ; she was looking at her hand, which, in
presence of the fair Lily, seemed every moment
growing blacker and smaller. She was about
to snatch her basket and hasten off, when she
noticed that the best part of her errand had
been forgotten. She lifted out the onyx Pug,
and set him down, not far from the fair one, in
the grass. " My husband,'' said she, " sends
you this memorial ; you know that you can
make a jewel live by touching it. This pretty
faithful dog will certainly aflbrd you much en-
joyment; and my grief at losing him is bright-
ened only by the thought that he will be in
your possession."

The fair Lily viewed the dainty creature
with a pleased, and as it seemed, with an asto-
nished look. "Many signs combine," said she,
" that breathe some hope into me : but ah ! is it
not a natural deception which makes us fancy,
when misfortunes crowd upon us, that a better
day is near?

' What can these many signs avail me

My Singer's Death, thy coal-black Hand ?
This Dog of Onyx, that can never fail nie ?
And coming at the Lamp's command !

GOETHE.

359

' From human joys removed forever,

With sorrows compasseil round 1 sit :
Is there a Temple at the River !
Is there a Bridge ? Alas, not yet !' "

The good old dame had listened with impa-
tience to this singing, which the fair Lily ac-
companied widi her harp, in a way that would
have charmed any other. She was on the point
of taking leave, wlien the arrival of the green
Snake again detained her. Tlie Snake had
caught the last lines of the song, and on this
matter forthwith began to speak comfort to the
fair Lily.

"The Prophecy of the Bridge is fulfilled!"
cried the Snake : " you may ask this worthy
dame how royally the arch looks now. What
formerly was untransparent jasper, or agate,
allowing bitt a gleam of light to pass about its
edges, is now become transparent precious
stone. No beryl is so clear, no emerald so
beautiful of hue."

"I wish you joy of it," said Lily; "but you
will pardon me if I regard the prophecy as yet
unaccomplished. The lofty arch of your bridge
can still but admit foot-passengers; and it is
promised us that horses and carriages and tra-
vellers of every sort shall, at the same moment,
cross this bridge in both directions. Is there
not something said, too, about pillars, which are
to arise of themselves from the waters of the
River r-

The old Woman still kept her eyes fixed on
her hand ; she here interrupted their dialogue,
and was taking leave. " Wait a moment," said
the fair Lily, " and carry my little bird with
you. Bid the Lamp change it into topaz; I will
enliven it by my touch ; with your good Mops
it shall form my dearest pastime : but hasten,
hasten; for, at sunset, intolerable putrefaction
will fasten on the hapless bird, and tear asunder
the fair combination of its form forever."

The old Woman laid the little corpse, wrapped
in soft leaves, into her basket, and hastened
away.

"However it may be," said the Snake, re-
commencing their interrupted dialogue, " the
Temple is built."

"But it is not at the River," said the fair one.
" It is yet resting in the depths of the Earth,"
said the Snake; " I have seen the Kings and
conversed with them."

"But when w-ill they arise 1" inquired Lily.
The Snake replied: " I heard resounding in
the Temple these deep words, The titnc is at
hand.'

A pleasing cheerfulness spread over the fair
Lilys face: "'Tis the second time," said she,
" that I have heard these happy words to-day :
when will the day come for me to hear them
thrice V

She rose, and immediately there came a
lovely maiden from the grove, and took away
her liarp. Another followed her, and folded
up the fine-carved ivory stool, on which the fair
one had been sitting, and put the silvery cushion

under her arm. A third then made her ap-
pearance, widi a large parasol worked with
pearls; and looked whether Lily would require
her in walking. These three maidens were
beyond expression beautiful; and yet their
beauty but exalted that oS Lily, for it was plain
to every one that they could never be compared
to her.

Meanwhile the fair one had been looking,
with a satisfied aspect, at the strange onyx
Mops. She bent down, and touched him, and
that instant he started up. Gaily he looked
around, ran hither and thither, and at last, in
his kindest manner, hastened to salute his bene-
factress. She took him in her arms, and pressed
him to her. " Cold as thou art," cried she, " and
though but a half-life works in thee, thou art
welcome to me ; tenderly will I love thee, pret-
tily will I play with thee, softly caress thee, and
firmly press thee to my bosom." She then let
him go, chased him from her, called him back,
and played so daintily with him, and ran about
so gaily and so innocently with him on the
grass, that with new rapture you viewed and
participated in her joy, as a little while ago her
sorrow had attuned every heart to sympathy.

This cheerfulness, these graceful sports were
interrupted by the entrance of the woful Youth.
He stepped forward, in his former guise and
aspect; save that the heat of die day appeared
to have fatigued him still more, and in the pre-
sence of his mistress he grew paler every mo-
ment. He bore upon his hand a Hawk, which
was sitting quiet as a dove, with its body shrunk
and its wings drooping.

"It is not kind in thee," cried Lily to him,
"to bring that hateful thing before my eyes, tlie
monster, which to-day has killed my little
singer."

" Blame not the unhappy bird !" replied the
Youth; "rather blame thyself and thy destiny;
and leave me to keep beside me the companion
of my wo."

Meanwhile Mops ceased not teasing the fair
Lily; and she replied to her transparent favor-
ite, with friendly gestures. She clapped her
hands to scare him off; then ran, to entice him
after her. She tried to get hiin when he fled,
and she chased him away when he attempted
to press near her. The Youth looked on in si-
lence, with increasing anger; but at last, when
she took the odious beast, which seemed to him
unutterably ugly, on her arm, pressed it to her
white bosom, and kissed its black snout with
her heavenly lips, his patience altogether failed
him, and full of desperation he exclaimed :
"Must I, who by abalefid fate exist beside thee,
perhaps to the end, in an absent presence, who
by thee have lost my all, my very self, must I
see before my eyes, that so unnatural a monster
can charm thee into gladness, can awaken thy
attachment, and enjoy thy embrace? Shall I
any longer keep wandering to and fro, measur-
ing my dreary course to that side of the River
and to this 1 No, there is still a spark of the

360

GOETHE.

old lieroic spirit sleeping in my bosom ; let it
start this instant into its expiring flame! If
stones may rest in thy bosom, let me be changed
to stone; if thy touch kills, I will die by thy
hands."

So saying he mada a violent movement; the
Hawk flew from his finger, but he himself
rushed towards the fair one; she held out her
hands to keep him off, and touched him only
the sooner. Consciousness forsook him ; and
she felt with horror the beloved burden lying
on her bosom. With a shriek she started back,
and the gentle youth sank lifeless from her arms
upon the ground.

The misery liad happened ! The sweet Lily
stood motioidess, gazing on the corpse. Her
heart seemed to pause in her bosotn ; and her
eyes were without tears. In vain did Mops
try to gain from her any kindly gesture; with
her friend, the world lor her was all dead as
the grave. Her silent despair did not look round
for help; slie knew not of any help.

On the other hand, the Snake bestirred her-
self the more actively; she seemed to meditate
deliverance ; and in fact her strange movements
served at last to keep away, for a little, the im-
mediate consequences of the mischief. With
her limber body, she formed a wide circle round
the corpse, and seizing the end of her tail be-
tween her teeth, she lay quite still.

Ere long one of Lily's fair waiting-maids ap-
peared ; brought the ivory folding-stool, and
with friendly beckoning constrained her mistress
to sit down on it. Soon afterwards there came
a second ; she had in her hand a fire-colored
veil, with which she rather decorated than con-
cealed the fair Lily's head. The third handed
her the harp, and scarcely had she drawn the
gorgeous instrument towards her, and struck
some tones from its strings, when the first maid
returned with a clear round mirror; took her
station opposite the fair one; caught her looks
in the glass, and threw back to her the loveliest
image that was to be found in nature. Sorrow
heightened her beauty, the veil her charms, the
harp her grace ; and deeply as you wished to
see her moiunful situation altered, not less
deeply did you wish to keep her image, as she
now looked, forever present with you.

With a still look at the mirror, she touched
the harp; now melting tones proceeded from
the strings, now her pain seemed to mount, and
the music in strong notes responded to her wo;
sometimes she opened her lips to sing, but her
voice failed her ; and ere long her sorrow melted
into tears, two maidens caught her helpfully in
their arms, the harp sank from her bosom,
scarcely could the quick servant snatch the in-
strument and carry it aside.

" Who gets us the Man with the Lamp, before
the sun set?'' hissed the Snake, faintly, but au-
dibly: the maids looked at one another, and
Lily's tears fell faster. At this moment came
the Woman with the Basket, panting and alto-
gether breathless. "I am lost, and maimed for

life!'' cried she; "see how my hand is almost
vanished ; neither Ferryman nor Giant would
take me over, because I am the River's debtor;
in vain did I promise hundreds of Cabbages
and hundreds of Onions ; they will take no more
than three ; and no Artichoke is now to be Ibund
in all this quarter."

" Forget your own care," said the Snake, " and
try to bring lielp here ; perhaps it may come to
yourself also. Haste with your utmost speed
to seek the Will-o'-wisps ; it is too light for you
to see them, but perhaps you will hear them
laughing and hopping to and fro. If they be
speedy, they may cross upon the Giant's sha-
dow, and seek the Man with the Lamp and
send him to us."

The Woman hurried olf at her quickest pace,
and the Snake seemed expecting as impatiently
as Lily the return of the Flames. Alas! the
beam of the sinking Sun was already gilding
only the highest summits of the trees, in the
thicket, and long shadows were stretching over
lake and meadow ; the Snake hitched up and
down impatiently, antl Lily dissolved in tears.

In this extreme need, the Snake kept looking
round on all sides ; for she was afraid every
moment that the Sun would set, and corruption
penetrate the magic circle, and the fair youth
immediately moulder away. At last she noticed
sailing high in the air, with purple-red feathers,
the Prince's Hawk, whose breast was catching
the last beams of the Sun. She shook herself
for joy at this good omen ; nor was she deceived ;
for shortly afterwards the Man with the Lamp
was seen gliding towards them across the Lake,
fast and smoothly, as if he had been travelling
on skates.

The Snake did not change her posture ; but
Lily rose and called to him : " What good spirit
sends thee, at the moment when we were de-
siring thee, and needing thee, so much?"

" The spirit of my Lamp," replied the Man,
" has impelled me, and the Hawk has conducted
me. My Lamp sparkles when I am needed,
and I just look about me in the sky for a signal ;
some bird or meteor points to the quarter to-
wards which I am to turn. Be calm, fairest
Maiden I whether I can help I know not ; an
individual helps not, but he who combines him-
self with many at the proper hour. We will
postpone the evil, and keep hoping. Hold thy
circle fast," continued he, turning to the Snake;
then set himself upon a hillock beside her, and
illuminated the dead body. "Bring the little
Bird hither too, and lay it in the circle !" The
maidens took the little corpse from the basket,
which the old Woman had left standing, and
did as he directed.

Meanwhile the Sun had set, and as the dark-
ness increased, not only the Snake and the old
Man's Lamp began shining in their fashion, but
also Lily's veil gave out a soft light, which
gracefully tinged, as with a meek dawning red,
her pale cheeks, and her white robe. The
party looked at one another, silently reflecting j

GOETHE.

361

care and sorrow were mitigated by a sure
hope.

It was no unpleasing entrance, therefore, that
the woman made, attended by the two gay
Flames, which in truth appeared to have been
very lavish in the interim, for they had again
become extremely meager ; yet they only bore
themselves the more prettily for that, towards
Lily and the other ladies. With great tact, and
expressiveness, they said a multitude of rather
common things to these fair persons; and de-
clared themselves particularly ravished by the
charm which the gleaming veil spread over
Lily and her attendant. The ladies modestly
cast down tlicir eyes, and the praise of their
beauty made them really beautiful. All were
peaceful and calm, except the old Woman. In
spite of the assurance of her husband, that her
hand could diminish no fardier, while the Lamp
shone on it, she asserted more than once, that
if things went on thus, before midnight this
noble member would have utterly vanished.

The JNIan with the Lanjp had listened atten-
tively to the conversation of the Lights; and
was gratified that Lily had been cheered, in
some measure, and amused by it. And, in truth,
midnight had arrived they knew not how. The
old Man looked to the stars, and then began
speaking: "We are assembled at the propitious
hour ; let each perform his task, let each do his
duty; and a universal happiness will swallow
up our individual sorrows, as a universal grief
consumes individual joys."

At these words arose a wondrous hubbub;
for all the persons in the party spoke aloud,
each for himself, declaring what they had to
do; only the three maids were silent; one of
them had fallen asleep beside the harp, another
near the parasol, the third by the stool ; and you
could not- blame them much, for it was late.
The Fiery youths, after some passing compli-
ments which they devoted to the waiting-maids,
had tinned their sole attention to the Princess,
as alone worthy of exclusive homage.

" Take the mirror," said the Man to the Hawk ;
"and with tlie first sunbeam illuminate the
three sleepers, and awake them, with light re-
flected from above."

The Snake now began to move ; she loosened
her circle, and rolled slowly, in large rings, for-
ward to the River. The two Will-o'-wisps fol-
lowed with a solemn air ; you would have taken
them for the most serious Flames in nature.
The old Woman and her husband seized the
Basket, whose mild light they had scarcely ob-
served till now ; they lifted it at both sides, and
it grew still larger and more luminous; they
lifted the body of the Youth into it, laying the
Canary-bird upon his breast; the Basket rose
into the air and hovered above the old Woman's
head, and she followed the Will-o'-wisps on
foot. The fair Lily took Mops on her arm, and
followed the Woman ; the Man with the Lamp
concluded die procession, and the scene was
curiously illuminated by these many lights.
2v

But it was with no small wonder that the
party saw, when they approached the River, a
glorious arch mount over it, by which the help-
ful Snake was affording them a glittering path.
If by day they had admired the beautiful trans-
parent precious stones, of which the Bridge
seemed formed ; by night they were astonished
at its gleaming brilliancy. On the upper side
the clear circle marked itself sharp against the
dark sky, but below, vivid beams were darting
to the centre, and exhibiting the airy firmness
of the edifice. The procession slowly moved
across it ; and the Ferryman who saw it from
his hut afar ofT, considered with astonishment
the gleaming circle, and the strange lights which
were passing over it.

No sooner had they reached the other shore,
than the arch began, in its usual way, to swag
up and down, and with a wavy motion to ap-
proach the water. The Snake then came on
land, the Basket placed itself upon the ground,
and the Snake again drew her circle round it.
The old Man stooped towards her, and said ;
"What hast thou resolved on?"

"To sacrifice myself rather than be sacri-
ficed," replied the Snake; "promise me that
thou wilt leave no stone on shore."

The old Man promised ; then addressing
Lily: "Touch the Snake," said he, "with thy
left hand, and thy lover with thy right." Lily
knelt, and touched the Snake, and the Prince's
body. The latter in the instant seemed to come
to life ; he moved in the basket, nay, he raised
himself into a sitting posture ; Lily was about
to clasp him ; but the old Man held her back,
and himself assisted the youth to rise, and led
him forth from the Basket and the circle.

The Prince was standing; the Canary-bird
was fluttering on liis shoulder ; there was life
again in both of them, but the spirit had not
yet returned ; the fair youth's eyes were open,
yet he did not see, at least he seemed to look
on all without participation. Scarcely had their
admiration of this incident a little calmed, when
they observed how strangely it had fared in the
meanwhile with the Snake. Her fair taper
body had crumbled into thousands and tho\i-
sands of shining jewels ; the old Woman reach-
ing at her Basket had chanced to come against
the circle ; and of the shape or structure of the
Snake there was now nothing to be seen, only
a bright ring of luminous jewels was lying in
the grass.

The old Man forthwith set himself to gather
the stones into the basket; a task in which his
wife assisted him. They next carried the
Basket to an elevated point on the bank ; and
here the man threw its whole lading, not with-
out contradiction from the fair one and his wife,
who would gladly have retained some part of
it, down into the River. Like gleaming twink-
ling' stars the stones floated down with the
waves; and you could not say whether they
lost themselves in the distance, or sank to the
bottom.

31

362

GOETHE.

"Gentlemen," said he with the Lamp, in a
respectful tone to the Lights, "I will now show
you the way, and open you the passage; but
you will do us an essential service, if you please
to unbolt the door, by which the Sanctuary must
be entered at present, and which none but you
can unfasten."

The Lights made a stately bow of assent, and
kept their place. The old Man of the Lamp
went foremost into the rock, which opened at
his presence; the Youth followed him, as if
mechanically; silent and uncertain, Lily kept
at some distance i'rom him ; the old Woman
would not be left, and stretched out her hand
that the light of her husband's Lamp might still
fall upon it. The rear was closed by the two
Will-o"-wisps, who bent the peaks of their flames
towards one another, and appeared to be en-
gaged in conversation.

They had not gone far till tlie procession
halted in front of a large brazen door, the leaves
of which were bolted with a golden lock. The
Man now called upon the Lights to advance;
who required small entreaty, and with their
pointed flames soon ate both bar and lock.

The brass gave a loud clang, as the doors
sprang suddenly asunder ; and the stately figures
of the Kings appeared within the Sanctuary,
illuminated by the entering Lights. All bowed
before these dread sovereigns, especially the
Flames made a i^rofusion of the daintiest
reverences.

After a pause, the gold King asked: "Whence
come ye?" — "From the world," said the old
Man. — "Whither go ye?" said the silver King.
— "Into the world;" replied the Man. — "What
would ye with us?" cried the brazen King. —
"Accompany you," replied the Man.

The com^iosite King was about to sjoeak,
when the gold one addressed the Lights, who
had got too near him : " Take yourselves away
from me, my metal was not made for you."
Thereupon they turned to the silver King, and
clasped themselves about him ; and his robe
glittered beautifully in their yellow brightness.
" You are welcome," said he, " but I cannot feed
you ; satisfy yourselves elsewhere, and bring
me your light." They removed; and gliding
past the brazen King w^ho did not seem to
notice them, they fixed on the compounded
King. " Who will govern the world?" cried he
witli a broken voice. — "He who stands upon
his feet," replied the old Man. — "I am he,"
said the mixed King. — " We shall see," replied
the Man : " for the time is at hand."

The fair Lily fell upon tlie old jMan"s neck,
and kissed him cordially. " Holy Sage !" cried
she, "a thousand times I thank thee : for I hear
that fateful word the third time." She had
scarcely spoken, when she clasped the old Man
still faster : for the ground began to move be-
neath them; the Youth and the old Woman
also held by one another ; the Lights alone did
not regard it.

You could feel plainly that the whole Tem-

ple was in motion; as a ship that softly glides
away from the harbor, when her anchors are
lifted; the depths of the Earth seemed to open
for the Building as it went along. It struck on
nothing; no rock came in its way.

For a tew instants, a small rain seemed to
drizzle from the opening of the dome; the old
Man held the fair Lily fast, and said to her:
" We are now beneath the River ; we shall soon
be at the mark." Ere long they thought the
Temple made a halt ; but they were in an error :
it was mounting upwards.

And now a strange uproar rose above their
heads. Planks and beams in disordered com-
bination now came pressing and crashing in, at
the opening of the dome. Lily and the Woman
started to a side; the Man with the Lamp laid
hold of the Youth, and kept standing still. The
little cottage of the Ferryman, for it was this
which the Temple in ascending had severed
from the ground and carried up with it, sank
gradually down, and covered the old Man and
the Youth.

The women screamed aloud, and the Tem-
ple shook, like a ship running unexpectedly
aground. In sorrowful perplexity, the Princess
and her old attendant wandered round the cot-
tage in the dawn ; the door was bolted, and to
iheir knocking, no one answered. They knock-
ed more loudly, and were not a little struck,
when at length the wood began to ring. By
virtue of the Lamp locked up in it, the hut had
been converted Irom the inside to the outside
into solid silver. Ere long too its form changed :
for the noble metal shook aside the accidental
shapes of planks, posts, and beams, and stretch-
ed itself out into a noble case of beaten orna-
mented worlcmanship. Thus a fair little tem-
ple stood erected in the middle of the large
one ; or if you will, an Altar worthy of the
Temple.

By a stair which ascended from within, the
noble Youth now mounted aloft, lighted by the
old man with the Lamp ; and, as it seemed,
supported by another, who advanced in a white
short robe, with a silver rudder in his hand;
and was soon recognised as the Ferryman, the
former possessor of the cottage.

The fair Lily mounted the outer steps, which
led from the floor of the Temple to the Altar;
but she was still obliged to keep herself apart
from her Lover. The old Woman, whose hand
in the absence of the Lamp had grown still
smaller, cried : "Am I then to be unhappy after
all? Among so many miracles, can there be
nothing done to save my hand ?" Her husband
pointed to the open door, and said to her : " See,
the day is breaking; haste, bathe thyself in the
River." — "What an advice!" cried she: "it
will make me all black : it will make me vanish
altogether : for my debt is not yet paid." " Go,"
said the man, " and do as I advise thee ; all
debts are now paid."

The old Woman hastened away; and at that
moment appeared the rising sun, upon the rim

GOETHE.

363

of the dome. The old Man slept between the
Virgin and the Youth, and cried with a loud
voice : " There are three which have rule on
Earth; Wisdom, Appearanfe, and Strength."
At the first word, the gold King rose ; at the
second, the silver one; and at the third, the
brass King slowly rose ; while the mixed King
on a sudden very awkwardly plumped down.

Whoever noticed him could scarcely keep
from laughing, solemn as the moment was: for
he was not sitting, he was not lying, he vras
not leaning, but shapelessly sunk together. __

The Lights, who till now had been employed
upon him, drew to a side ; they appeared, al-
though pale in the morning radiance, yet once
more well-fed, and in good burning condition;
with their peaked tongues, they had dexterously
licked out the gold veins of the colossal figure
to its very heart. The irregular vacuities which
this occasioned had continued empty for a time,
and the figure had maintained its standing pos-
ture. But when at last the very tenderest fila-
ments were eaten out, the image crashed sud-
denly together ; and that, alas, in the very parts
which continue unaltered when one sits down ;
whereas the limbs, which should have bent,
sprawled themselves out unbowed and stiff".
Whoever could not laugh was obliged to turn
away his eyes ; this miserable shape and no-
shape was otiensive to behold.

The Man with the Lamp now led the hand-
some Youth, who still kept gazing vacantly
before him, down from the altar, and straight
to the brazen King. At the feet of this mighty
Potentate, lay a sword in a brazen sheath. The
young man girt it round him. " The sword on
the left, the right free !'' cried the brazen voice.
They next proceeded to the silver King; he
bent his sceptre to the youth ; the latter seized
it with his left hand, and the King in a pleasing
voice, said : " Feed the sheep !'" On turning to
the golden King, he stooped with gestures of
paternal blessing, and pressing his oaken gar-
land on the young man's head, said : " Under-
stand what is highest!"

During this progress, the old Man had care-
fully observed the Prince. After girding on the
sword, his breast swelled, his arms waved, and
bis feet trod firmer ; when he took the sceptre
in his hand, his strength appeared to soften, and
by an unspeakable charm to become still more
subduing; but as the oaken garland came to
deck his hair, his features kindled, his eyes
gleamed with inexpressible spirit, and the first
word of his mouth was '• Lily !"

"Dearest Lily!" cried he, hastening up the
silver stairs to her, for she had viewed his pro-
gress from the pinnacle of the altar; "Dearest
Lily! what more precious can a man, equipt
witli all, desire for himself than innocence and
the still afl'ection which thy bosom brings me ■?
0 my friend !" continued he, turning to the old
Man, and looking at the three statues ; "glorious
and secure is the kingdom of our fathers ; but
thou hast forgotten the fourth power, which

rules the world, earlier, more universally, more
certainly, the power of Love." With these
words, he fell upon the lovely maiden's neck;
she had cast away her veil, and her cheeks
were tinged with the fairest, most imperishable
red.

Here the old Man said, with a smile : " Love
does not rule ; but it trains, and that is more."

Amid this solemnity, this happiness and rap-
ture, no one had observed that it was now broad
day; and all at once, on looking through the
open portal, a crowd of altogether unexpected
objects met the eye. A large space surrounded
with pillars formed the fore-court, at the end of
which was seen a broad and stately Bridge
stretching with many arches across the River.
It was furnished, on both sides, with commodi-
ous and magnificent colonnades for foot-travel-
lers, many thousands of whom were already
there, busily passing this way or that. The
broad pavement in the centre was thronged
with herds and mules, with horsemen and car-
riages, flowing like two streams, on their several
sides, and neither interrupting the other. All
admired the splendor and convenience of the
structure ; and the new King and his Spouse
were delighted with the motion and activity of
this great people, as they were already happy
in their own mutual love.

" Remember the Snake in honor," said the
man with the Lamp ; " thou owest her thy life,
thy people owe her the Bridge, by which these
neighboring banks are now animated and com-
bined into one land. Those swimming and
shining jewels, the remains of her sacrificed
body, are the piers of this royal bridge ; upon
these she has built and will maintain herself."

The party were about to ask some explana-
tion of this strange mystery, when there entered
four lovely maidens at the portal of the Temple.
By the Harp, the Parasol, and the folding Stool,
it was not difficult to recognise the waiting-
maids of Lily; but the fourth, more beautiful
than any of the rest, was an unknown fair one,
and in sisterly sportfulness she hastened with
them through the Temple, and mounted the
steps of the Altar.

" Wilt thou have better trust in me another
time, good wife?"' said the man with the Lamp
to the fair one: "Well for thee, and every living
thing that bathes this morning in the River!'

The renewed and beautified old Woman, of
whose former shape no trace remained, em-
braced with young eager arms the man with
the Lamp, who kindly received her caresses.
•'If I am too old for thee,"' said he, smiling,
" thou mayest choose another husband to-day ;
from this hour no marriage is of force, which is
not contracted anew."

"Dost thou not know, then," answered she,
"that thou too art grown younger ?"' — "It de-
lights me if to thy young eyes I seem a hand-
some youth : I take thy hand anew, and am
well content to live with thee another thousand
years."

364

GOETHE.

The Queen welcomed her new friend, and
went down with her into the interior of the
altar, while the King stood between his two
men, looking towards the bridge, and atten-
tively contemplating the busy tumult of the
people.

But his satisfaction did not last ; for ere long
he saw an object which excited his displeasure.
The great Giant, who appeared not yet to have
awoke completely from his morning sleep, came
stumbling along the Bridge, producing great
confusion all around him. As usual, he had
risen stupified with sleep, and had meant to
bathe in the well-known bay of the River: in-
stead of which he found firm land, and plunged
upon the broad pavement of the Bridge. Yet
although he reeled into the midst of men and
cattle in the clumsiest way, his presence, won-
dered at by all, was felt by none ; but as the
sunshine came into his eyes, and he raised his
hands to rub thenii the shadows of his monstrous
fists moved to and fro behind him with such
force and awkwardness, that men and beasts
were heaped together in great masses, were
hurt by such rude contact, and in danger of be-
ing pitched into the River.

The King, as he saw this mischief, grasped
with an involuntary movement at his sword ;
but he bethought himself, and looked calmly at
his sceptre, then at the Lamp and the Rudder
of his attendants. " I guess thy thoughts," said
the man with the Lamp ; "but we and our gifts
are powerless against this powerless monster.
Be calm ! He is doing hurt for the last time, and
happily his shadow is not turned to us."

Meanwhile the Giant was approaching nearer ;
in astonishment at what he saw with open eyes,
he had dropt his hands ; he was now doing no
injury, and came staring and agape into the
forecourt.

He was walking straight to the door of the
Temple, when all at once in the middle of the
court, he halted, and was fixed to the ground.
He stood there like a strong colossal statue, of
reddish glittering stone, and his shadow pointed
out the hours, which were marked in a circle
on the floor around him, not in numbers, but in
noble and expressive emblems.

Much delighted was the King to see the
monster's shadow turned to some useful pur-
pose ; much astonished was the Queen ; who,
on mounting from within the Altar, decked in

royal pomp with her virgins, first noticed the
huge figure, which almost closed the prospect
from the Temple to the Bridge.

Meanwhile the people had crowded after the
Giant, as he ceased to move; they were walk-
ing round him, wondering at his metamorphosis.
From him they turned to the Temple, which
they now first appeared to notice, and pressed
towards the door.

At this instant the Hawk with the mirror
soared aloft above the dome ; caught the light
of the sun, and reflected it upon the group,
wliich was standing on the altar. The King,
the Queen, and their attendants, in the dusky
concave of the Temple, seemed illuminated by
a heavenly splendor, and the people fell upon
their faces. When the crowd had recovered
and risen, the King with his followers had
descended into the Altar, to proceed by secret
passages into his palace ; and the multitude
dispersed about the Temple to content their
curiosity. The three Kings that were standing
erect they viewed with astonishment and re-
verence; but the more eager were they to dis-
cover what mass it could be that was hid behind
the hangings, in the fourth niche ; for by some
hand or another, charitable decency had spread
over the resting-place of the Fallen King a
gorgeous curtain, which no eye can penetrate,
and no hand may dare to draw aside.

The people would have found no end to their
gazing and their admiration, and the crowding
multitude would have even suffocated one an-
other in the Temple, had not their attention
been again attracted to the open space.

Unexpectedly some gold-pieces, as if falling
from the air, came tinkling down upon the
marble flags; the nearest passers-by rushed
thither to pick them up ; the wonder was re-
peated several times, now here, now there. It
is easy to conceive that the shower proceeded
from our two retiring Flames, who wished to
have a little sport here once more, and were
thus gaily spending, ere they went away, the
gold which they had licked from the members
of the sunken King. The people still ran eagerly
about, pressing and pulling one another, even
when the gold had ceased to fall. At length
they gradually dispersed, and went their way;
and to the present hour the Bridge is swarm-
ing with travellers, and the Temple is the most
frequented on the whole Earth.

■ ■NT£D liY^.OFAFF

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER.

Born 1759. Died 1805.

The life and character of this most popular
of German writers have been made familiar to
the English and American Public by Mr. Car-
lyle's excellent biography, republislied in this
country several years since, and still the best,
if not the only one, in the English language.
It has the credit of having been translated into
German at the solicitation of his late Excel-
lency, von Goethe. To this everywhere acces-
sible and everywhere satisfactory work the
reader is referred for a fuller account of Schil-
ler than is compatible with the scope of the
present publication. For readers of German,
there is Boring's well-known work, and later
and better, Schiller^s Leben, &c., by Frau von
Wohogen, sister-in-law of the poet.

A very brief notice must suffice for these
pages. Schiller was a native of Marburg, in
the duchy of Wiirtemberg. His father, Johann
Caspar Schiller, a military officer in the service
of the Duke, was piously solicitous to procure
for his son the best education which his cir-
cumstances would allow. For this purpose he
was first placed under the tuition of a private
instructer, a clergyman by the name" of Moser,
and afterward sent to the Latin school at Lud-
wigsburg. It was the wish of his parents —
and his own choice, as he ripened toward man-
hood, coincided with theirs — that he should
become a divine ; but the offer of the Duke and
the preference shown to the sons of military
officers at the new seminary established by him
at Stuttgard, induced them to place him at that
institution, where his studies assumed a dif-
ferent direction, and where, after devoting him-
self awhile to law, he finally settled upon me-
dicine.

The six years spent at this institution are
represented as the most wretched of his life.
"The Stuttgart system of education," says his
biographer, "seems to have been formed on the
principle, not of cherishing and correcting na-
ture, but of rooting it out and supplying its
place with something better. The process of
teaching and living was conducted with the
stiff formality of military drilling. Everything

went on by statute and ordinance ; there was
no scope for the exercise of freewill, no allow-
ance for the varieties of original structure. A
scholar might possess what instincts or capa-
cities he pleased, the 'regulations of the school'
took no account of this ; he must fit himself
into the common mould which, like the old
giant's bed, stood there appointed by superior
authority to be filled alike by the great and the
little. The same strict and narrow course of
reading and composition was marked out for
each beforehand, and it was by stealth if he
read or wrote anything beside." * * * *
" The pupils were kept apart from the conver-
sation or sight of any person but their teachers;
none ever got beyond the precincts of despotism
to snatch even a fearful joy. Their very amuse-
ments proceeded by word of command."

This sort of discipline was ill adapted to
educate a poet. Some natures would have
been utterly perverted or crushed by it. In
Schiller it produced an intense inwardness.
His soul was thrust back within itself, and
found refuge in the world of ideas from the hard
formalities of his scholastic life. This effect
was both a benefit and an evil. It is impossible
to say whether, on the whole, he gained or
lost by it. On the one hand, it stimulated his
productiveness and was probably the chief and
immediate cause of his literary efforts ; and on
the other hand, it gave his poetry that sub-
jective character, the excess of which is its
great defect. Perhaps, a more genial nurture
would have corrected this error by awakening
an interest in actual life ; and perhaps too,
such a nurture might have given his faculties
a different direction and letl the poet undeve-
loped. It is doubtful if any training could have
supplied that intimate communication with ex-
ternal nature, that eye for forms, that love of
things, that sunny realism which constitutes so
essential a qualification of the true poet, and
which seems to be a natural endowment, unat-
tainable and inimitable.

In 1780 Schiller, having completed his me-
dical studies, was appointed surgeon to the
31 * (365)

366

SCHILLER.

regiment Aiige, in the Wurtemberg army. In
1781 he published his " Robbers," composed, it
is said, some years before, at the age of nine-
teen, but concealed, for fear of offence, until he
had completed his studies. This juvenile effort
is, in every point of view, a wonderful produc-
tion. Considered as a specimen of precocious
genius, it is one of the most remarkable extant.
Moreover, it stands decidedly at the head of that
class of writings to which it belongs, — a class
characterized by stormy force and passionate
extravagance of sentiment and diction, "a
savageness of unreclaimed blood." The " Sa-
tanic school" it is denominated by Mr. Carlyle.
Most of Byron's works rank in this rubric.
Even the " Sorrows of Werter," though with
some latitude of interpretation, has been thus
classed. Schiller's drama stands pre-eminent
among works of this description, surpassing
everything of the sort in that peculiar power
of fervid declamation which constitutes one of
its distinguishing features. The "Corsair" and
"Giaour" are milk-and-water idyls compared
with it. The " Robbers" forms an era in litera-
ture. It was soon translated into most of the
languages of Europe, and everywhere wel-
comed as the word which all men were wait-
ing to hear. Not only did the pent volcano in
the author's own breast find vent in those
" power-words," but he appeared as the spokes-
man of his time, — the voice of that muttered
uneasiness and impatience of existing institu-
tions which marked the epoch immediately
nreceding the French revolution. In strong
and terrible accents it spoke the hoarded wrath
of long centuries of misrule and oppression. It
was an angry scream which pierced every soul
from the Rhine to the Baltic, and startled the
eagles of dominion on their ancient sceptres, —
a prophecy of tliat tempest which soon after
burst upon the world and changed the face of
empires. Popular as it was with the young,
and on the stage, it is doubtful if the real merits
of the "Robbers," to this day, have been duly
appreciated by the critics. Its extravagances
and puerilities, unhappily but too prominent,
have thrown a shade over its great excellences
and biassed the judgment of mature and less
inflammable readers. It is not, as sometimes
represented, a mere farrago of power-words
and rodomontade. It is far more than that. It
is a genuine work of genius, a work unsur-
passed, with the exception of Faust, by any-
thing since Shakspeare, in unaginative power,

in the vivid delineation of vice and passion, and
in tragic interest. Schiller has produced many
things far superior to the " Robbers," as works
of art, but nothing that equals it in vigor and
effect. The promise implied in this first effort,
which the author himself has stigmatised as a
"monster born of the unnatural union of Genius
with Thraldom," was never quite realized in
his subsequent productions.

Meanwhile the publication of this tragedy
was attended with some disagreeable conse-
quences to the author. He drew down upon
himself the wrath of the people of the Grisons
by an offensive allusion, aspersing the reputa-
tion of that district ; he incurred the suspicion
of the Grand Duke by becoming an author, as
well as by the specific character of his drama ;
and finally subjected himself to repeated arrests
for going to Manheim "without leave" to wit-
ness its performance at the theatre in that city.
The result was that Schiller made his escape
from surgery and persecution at Stuttgart and
fled to Manheim, where he found a temporary
support by writing for the stage. After a short
residence in this city he went to Mayence,
then to Dresden, then to Leipzig. He also
resided for a while at the estate of the Frau
von Wolzogen. In 1784 he was made Counsel-
lor by the Duke of Weimar, and in 1787 took
up his residence in that city. Here, after some
hesitation and coyness, and overcoming of pre-
judice on both sides, he became acquainted
and finally intimate with Goethe, whose nature,
in most respects the antipodes of his own, acted
with decisive effect on Schiller's genius and
destiny. Indeed, his acquaintance with Goethe
seems to have been the most powerful influence
to which his riper years were subjected. Goethe
has given an account of the formation of this
acquaintance, from which it appears how diffi-
cult it was for these two spirits, the idealist
and the realist, — each so determined in his
way, — to amalgamate or even to converse.
The unbroken friendship subsisting between
them for nearly twenty years, is a rare and
beautiful passage in literary history, and highly
creditable to both parties. In Goethe it re-
quired a severe struggle with fixed views and
purposes, and some magnanimity, to make the
first advances to the young poet whom, on his
return from Italy, he found in full possession
of the popular ear and heart, and threatening
to re-induce a style and tendency which he,
for his part, had laid aside with the crudities

SCHILLER.

3G7

of his youth, and was every way endeavoring
to counteract and supplant. Schiller himself
thought they should never come together, and
writes thus of their first interview : " Though
it did not at all diminish the idea, great as it
was, which I had previously formed of Goethe,
I doubt if we shall ever come into close com-
munication with each other. Much that still
interests me has already had its epoch with
him; his whole nature is from its very origin
otherwise constructed than mine ; his world is
not my world, our modes of conceiving things
appear to be essentially diflerent." Goethe, on
the other hand, relates that Schiller during
this interview, in which the conversation
turned on the metamorphosis of plants, said
many things which pained him excessively,
but that he determined to take no notice of
them, and to discover, if possible, something
which was common to both, and which might
serve as the basis of an harmonious relation.
Long after Schiller's death he remarks of their
intimacy : " There was something providential
in my connection with Schiller ; it might have
happened earlier or later without so much
significance; but that it should occur just at
this time, when I had my Italian journey be-
hind me, and Schiller began to be weary of
his philosophical speculations, led to very im-
portant consequences for both." Mr. Carlyle
remarks: "If we regard the relative situation
of the parties, and their conduct in this matter,
we must recognise in both of them no little
social virtue, at all events, a deep disinterested
love of worth. In the case of Goethe, more
especially, who, as the elder and every way
greater of the two, has little to expect in com-
parison with what he gives, this friendly union,
had we space to explain its nature and progress,
would give new proof that, as poor Jung Stil-
ling also experienced, ' the man's heart which
few know, is as true and noble as his genius
which all know.' "

In 1769 Schiller was made, through the me-
diation of Goethe, Professor extraordinary of
philosophy at Jena, and, the year following,
was married to Fraulein von Lengefeld. In
1791 he was attacked with a violent disease
of the chest, which, for a long while, incapa-
citated him for literary and professional labor.
During this interval, he received from the
hereditary Prince of Denmark and Count von
Schiramelman, a pension of one thousand rix
dollars for three years. After his recovery he

applied himself with renewed and suicidal
devotion to his former pursuits, compelling
himself to labor oftentimes, when nature was
unequal to tiie cftbrt, and seconding nature
with stimulants. " His intolerance of inter-
ruption," says his biographer, " first put him on
the plan of studying by night; an alluring but
pernicious practice which began at Dresden
and was never afterwards given up." * * *
"During summer, his place of study was in
a garden, which he at length purchased, in
the suburbs of Jena." * * * In this garden
" Schiller built himself a small house with a
single chamber. It was his favorite abode
during the hours of composition ; a great part
of the works he then vvrote were written here."

* * * " On sitting down to his desk at night
he was wont to keep some strong coflee or
wine-chocolate, but more frequently a flask of
old Rhenish or Champagne standing by him,
that he might repair the exhaustion of nature."

* * * " Xn winter he was to be found at his
desk till four or even five o'clock in the morn-
ino-, in summer till towards three. He then
went to bed, from which he seldom rose till nine
or ten." As might be expected, this insane and
ruinous mode of life soon used up the feeble
remains of a constitution originally slender, and
long impaired by disease. The only wonder is,
that nature endured the outrage so long.
Goethe says: "This habit not only injured his
health but also his productions : the faults
which some wise heads find in his works, pro-
ceed, I think, from this source. All the pas-
sages which they blame may be styled patho-
logical passages; for they were written on
those days when he had not strength to do his
best."

In 1801, by the advice of his physician, he
removed from Jena to Weimar, where he re-
sided until his death. The Grand Duke allowed
him a pension of a thousand dollars yearly,
and offered to give him twice as much, in case
he should be hindered by sickness. Schiller
declined this last offer and never availed him-
self of it. "I have talents," said he, "and must
help myself." His chief income was derived
from his works, and he compelled himself to
write two dramas yearly, to meet the growing
expenses of his family. In 1802 he was en-
nobled by the emperor of Germany. He had
previously received the rights of citizenship
from the French Republic, at the commence-
ment of the Revolution.

368

SCHILLER.

After attending a representation of his own
"Tell" at Berlin, where he was received with
great honor, he died at Weimar, May 19th,
1805, in his forty-seventh year ; having, in the
lano-uac-e of Goethe, " sacrificed life to the de-
lineation of life."* --

The forty years which have elapsed since
his death have not diminished the estima-
tion in which Schiller is held by his country-
men. He is still the most popular of German
writers. Goethe, indeed, is preferred by men
of the highest culture ; Goethe is the prophet
of the philosophical and profound; but Schiller
is the poet of the people, and, in all probability,
will long continue to hold the supreme rank in
the popular estimation. In a great measure,
this popularity is owing to intrinsic merit.
Schiller's excellences are perfectly intelligible ;
they commend themselves at first sight; they
lie on the surface. Not that he lacks profound-
ness; but he does not, like so many of his
countrymen, court obscurity ; he does not hide
a second meaning behind the first; there is
nothing esoteric in his writings; he never
enigmatizes. Goethe maintained that a perfect
work of art must leave something to conjec-
ture. This was not Schiller's theory of art.
At least, it was not his practice. Though emi-
nently reflective, he is perfectly transparent.
In part, however, the popularity of Schiller
may be ascribed to the zeal with which, in
early life, he advocated the cause of liberty;
and another reason still, is the dramatic form
which his genius assumed at the outset, and
the wide circulation and commanding emphasis
given to his writings by theatrical exhibition.
The dramatic poet possesses a great advantage,
in this respect, over other authors. "In the
first place, it is evident," says Jean Paul, "how
far one of the latter class, with his scattered
recluse-readers, honored but little, and that only
by cultivated men, read perhaps twice in suc-
cession, but not heard forty times in succession;
— it is evident, I say, how far such an Irus in
fame, such a John Lackland falls below the
stage-poet, who not only wears these laurel-
gleanings upon his head, but adds to them the
rich harvest, that prince and chimney-sweep,

*" He liail," says Goethe, "an awful progressiveness.
When I hail been a week withoul seeing him, I was amazed
and knew not where to take hold of him, and found him
already advanced again. And so he went ever forward
for forty-six years. Then, indeed, he had gone far
enough."

and every generation and every age get his
thoughts into their heads and his name into
their mouths ; that often the most miserable
market- towns, whenever a more miserable
strolling actor's company moves into them,
harness themselves to the triumphal car in
which such a writer is borne." * * * "There
are a hundred other advantages which, by the
figure of permission {figura prtBteritionis), I
might mention, but which I prefer to omit;
this, e. g., that a dramatic author (and often-
times he is present and hears it all) employs,
as it were, a whole corporation of hands in his
service ; * * * furthermore, that he is
learned by heart, not only by the actors, but,
after many repetitions, by the hearers also, and
is continually praised anew in all the standing
though tedious theatrical notices of the daily
and monthly journals." * * * » Hence we
may explain the fact, that our cold Germany
has exerted itself so much and so well for

Schiller and so little for Herder."* No

writer of any nation, at present, fills so large a
place in the mind of his country, or exercises
such fascination over it, as Schiller. Scarcely
less read than Scott, he is far more deeply
loved, — loved with the passionate interest
which attaches to a great unfinished life ; with
that yearning which follows a beautiful spirit
too soon withdrawn from the earth. To him
belongs the peculiar charm which made Byron,
for a while, the idol of the young; but without
the moral abatements so lamentable in his
case, — the charm of intensity. Add to this the
feminine delicacy of Racine, the masculine sin-
cerity, if not the austere sanctity, of Milton,
the soaring mind of Tasso, the studied elegance
of Virgil, the tragic seriousness of Euripides:
all these combine to render Schiller not only
the favorite of his own nation, but the delight
of the world. Frederic Schlegel characterizes
him as " the true founder of the German dra-
ma," the man who gave it " its proper sphere
and its most happy form."f The most elaborate
eulogy of Schiller is that of Menzel, in his
survey of German literature, in which the poet
is not inaptly compared to Raphael. Mr. Long-
fellow has cited this full-mouthed panegyric in
the notice of Schiller contained in "The Poets
and Poetry of Europe." For this reason, it was
thought best to omit it here and to substitute

♦From "Katienherger^s Badereise."

t Lectures on the History of Literature, vol. ii.

SCHILLER.

3G9

instead the more discriminating-, if less lauda-
tory criticism of Mr. Carlyle.*

"From many indications, we can perceive
that to Schiller the task of the Poet appeared
of far weiglitier import to mankind in these
times than that of any other man whatever.
It seemed to him that he was "casting his
bread upon the waters, and would find it after
many days;" that when the noise of all conju-
rors, and demagogues, and political reformers
had quite died away, some tone of heavenly
wisdom that had dwelt even in him might still
linger among men, and be acknowledged as
heavenly and priceless, whether as his or not ;
whereby, though dead, he would yet speak, and
his spirit would live throughout all generations,
when the syllables that once forited his name
had passed into forgetfulness forever. We are
told, "he was in the highest degree philan-
thropic and humane; and often said that he
had no deeper wish than to know all men hap-
py." What was still more, he strove, in his
public and private capacity, to do his utmost
for that end. Honest, merciful, disinterested,
he is at all times found : and for the great duty
laid on him no man was ever more unweariedly
ardent. It was 'his evening song and his
morning prayer.' He lived for it ; and he died
for it ; ' sacrificing,' in the words of Goethe,
' his Life itself to this delineating of Life.' In
collision with his fellow-men, — for with him as
with others this also was a part of his relation
to society, — we find him no less noble than in
friendly union with them. He mingles in none
of the controversies of the time; or only like a
god in the battles of men. In his conduct to-
wards inferiors, even ill-intentioned and mean
inferiors, there is everywhere a true, dignified,
patrician spirit. Ever witnessing, and inwardly
lamenting, the baseness of vulgar Literature in
his day, he makes no clamorous attacks on it;
alludes to it only from afar: as in Milton's
writings, so in his, few of his contemporaries
are named, or hinted at; it was not with men,
but with tilings that he had a warfare. In a
word, we can say of Schiller, what can be said
only of few in any country or time : He was a
hiirh ministerinfif servant at Trutli's altar ; and
bore him worthily of the office he held. Let
this, and that it was even in our age, be forever
remembered to his praise.

" Schiller's intellectual character has, as in-

* From " Carlyle's Miscellanies." Boston, James Mun-
roe and Co., vol. ii.

2 w

deed is always the case, an accurate conformity
with his moral one. Here too he is simple in
his excellence ; lofty rather than expansive or
varied ; pure, divinely ardent rather than great.
A noble sensibility, the truest sympathy with
Nature, in all forms, animates him ; yet scarcely
any creative gift altogether commensurate with
this. If to his mind's eye all forms of Nature
have a meaning and beauty, it is only under a
few forms, chiefly of the severe or pathetic
kind, that he can body forth this meaning, can
represent as a Poet what as a Thinker he dis-
cerns and loves. We might say, his music is
true spheral music ; yet only with few tones,
in simple modulation ; no full choral harmony
is to be heard in it. That Schiller, at least in
his later years, attained a genuine poetic style,
and dwelt, more or less, in the perennial regions
of his Art, no one will deny : yet still his poetry
shows rather like a partial than a universal
gift; the labored product of certain faculties
rather than the spontaneous product of his
whole nature. At the summit of the pyre,
there is indeed white flame ; but the materials
are not all in flame, perhaps not all ignited.
Nay, often it seems to us, as if poetry were, on
the whole, not his essential gift ; as if his genius
were reflective in a still higher degree than
creative ; philosophical and oratorical rather
than poetic. To the last, there is a stiffness in
him, a certain itifusibility. His genius is not
an iEolian harp, for the common wind to play
with, and make wild, free melody ; but a sci-
entific harmonica, that being artfully touched
will yield rich notes, though in limited mea-
sure. It may be, indeed, or rather it is highly
probable, that of the gifts which lay in him
only a small portion was unfolded : for we are
to recollect that nothing came to him without
a strenuous effort ; and that he was called away
at middle age. At all events, here as we find
him we should say, that of all his endowments
tlie most perfect is understanding. Accurate,
thorough insight is a quality we miss in none
of his productions, whatever else may be want-
ing. He lias an intellectual vision, clear, wide,
piercing, methodical, — a truly pliilosophic eye.
Yet in regard to this also it is to be remarked,
that the same simplicity, the same want of uni-
versality again displays itself. He looks aloft
rather tiian around. It is in high, far-seeing
piulosophic views that he delights ; in specu-
lations on Art,— on the dignity and destiny of
Man, rather than on the common doings and

370

SCHILLER.

interests of Men. Nevertheless these latter,
mean as they seem, are boundless in signifi-
cance ; for every the poorest aspect of Nature,
especially of living Nature, is a type and mani-
festation of the invisible spirit that works in
Nature. There is pi-operly no object trivial
or insignificant: but every finite thing, could
we look well, is as a window, through which
solemn vistas are opened into Infinitude itself
But neither as a Poet nor as a Thinker, neither
in delineation nor in exposition and discussion,
docs Schiller more than glance at such objects.
For the most part, the Conmion is to him still
the Common, or is idealized, rather as it were
by mechanical art than by inspiration : not
by deeper poetic or philosophic inspection, dis-
closing new beauty in its every-day features,
but rather by deducting these, by casting them
aside, and dwelling on what brighter features
may remain in it. Herein Schiller, as, indeed,
himself was modestly aware, differs essentially
from most great poets; and from none more
than from his great contemporary, Goethe.
Sucli intellectual preeminence as this, valuable
though it be, is the easiest and the least valu-
able ; a preeminence that indeed captivates the
general eye, but may, after all, have little in-
trinsic grandeur. Less in rising into lofty ab-
stractions lies the difficulty, than in seeing well
and lovingly the complexities of what is at
hand. He is wise who can instruct us and
assist us in the business of daily virtuous living ;
he who trams us to see old truth under Aca-
demic formularies may be wise or not as it
chances; but we love to see Wisdom in unpre-
tending forms, to recognise her royal features
under week-day vesture. — There may be more
true spiritual force in a Proverb than in a phi-
losophical system. A King in the midst of his
body-guards, with all his trumpets, war-horses,
and gilt standard-bearers, will look great though
he be little ; but only some Roman Cams can
give audience to satrap - ambassadors, while
seated on the ground, with a woollen cap, and
supping on boiled peas, like a common soldier.
" In all Schiller's earlier writings, nay, more
or less, in the whole of his writings, this aris-
tocratic fastidiousness, this comparatively bar-
ren elevation, appears as a leading character-
istic. In speculation he is either altogether
abstract and systematic, or he dwells on old,
conventionally -noble themes; never looking
aijroad, over the many-colored stream of life,
to elucidate and ennoble it ; or only lookmg on

it, so to speak, from a college window. The
philosophy even of his Histories, for example,
founds itself mainly on the perfectibility of man,
the effect of constitutions, of religions, and other
such high, purely scientific objects. In his
Poetry we have a similar manifestation. The
interest turns on prescribed, old-established
matters, common love mania, passionate great-
ness, enthusiasm for liberty, and the like. This,
even in Don Karlos, a work of what may be
called his transition-period, the turning-point
between his earlier and his later period, where
we still find Posa, the favorite hero, ' towering
aloft, far-shining, clear and cold, as a sea bea-
con.' In afi;er years, Schiller himself saw well
that the greatest lay not here. With unwea-
ried effort he strove to lower and to widen his
sphere, and not without success, as many of his
Poems testify ; for example, the Lied der
Glocke (Song of the Bell), every way a noble
composition ; and, in a still higher degree, the
tragedy of Wilhelm Tell, the last, and, so far
as spirit and style are concerned, the best of
all his dramas.

" Closely connected with this imperfection,
both as cause and as consequence, is Schiller's
singular want of Humor. Humor is properly
the exponent of low things; that which first
renders them poetical to tlie mind. The man
of Humor sees common life, even mean life,
under the new light of sportfulness and love ;
whatever has existence has a charm for him.
Humor has justly been regarded as the finest
perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it,
be his other gifts what they may, has only half
a mind ; an eye for what is above him, not for
what is about him or below him. Now, among
all writers of any real poetic genius, we cannot
recollect one who, in this respect, exhibits such
total deficiency as Schiller. In his whole writ-
ings there is scarcely any vestige of it, scarcely
any attempt that way. His nature was without
Humor ; and he had too true a feeling to adopt
any counterfeit in its stead. Thus no drollery
or caricature, still less any barren mockery,
which, in the hundred cases, are all that we
find passing current as Humor, discover them-
selves in Schiller. His works are full of la-
bored earnestness; he is the gravest of all
writers. Some of his critical discussions, es-
pecially in the Aesthetische Briefe, where he
desiarnates the ultimate height of man's culture
by the title of Spieltrieb (literally, sport- im-
pulse), prove that he knew what Humor was,

SCHILLER.

371

and how essential ; as indeed, to his intellect,
all forms of excellence, even the most alien to
his own, were painted with a wonderful fidelity.
Nevertheless, he himself attains not that height j
which he saw so clearly ; to the last the Spiel-
trieb could be little more than a theory with
him. With the single exception of Wallen-
steiii's Lager, where, too, the Humor, if it be
such, is not deep, his other attempts at mirth,
fortunately very few, are of the heaviest. A
rigid intensity, a serious enthusiastic ardor,
majesty rather than grace, still more than
lightness or sportfulness, characterizes him.
Wit he had, such wit as keen intellectual in-
sight can give ; yet even of this no large en-
dowment. Perhaps he was too honest, too
sincere, for the exercise of wit ; too intent on
the deeper relations of things to note their
more transient collisions. Besides, he dealt in
Affirmation, and not in Negation ; in which
last, it has been said, the material of wit chiefly
lies.

" These observations are to point out for us
the special department and limits of Schiller's
excellence ; nowise to call in question its reality.
Of his noble sense for Truth, both in specula-
tion and in action ; of his deep, genial insight
into nature ; and the living harmony in which
he renders back what is highest and grandest
in Nature, no reader of his works need be re-
minded. In whatever belongs to the pathetic,
the heroic, the tragically elevating, Schiller is
at home, a master ; nay perhaps the greatest
of all late poets. To the assiduous student,
moreover, much that lay in Schiller, but was
never worked into shape, will become partially
visible : deep, inexhaustible mines of thought
and feeling : a whole world of gifts, the finest
produce of which was but beginning to be real-
ized. To his high-minded, unwearied efforts,
what was impossible, had length of years been
granted him ! There is a tone in some of his
later pieces, which here and there breathes of
the very highest region of Art. Nor are the
natural or accidental defects we have noticed
in his genius, even as it stands, such as to ex-
clude him from the rank of great Poets. Poets
whom the whole world reckons great, have,
more than once, exhibited the like. Milton,
for example, shares most of them with him:
like Schiller he dwells, with full power, only
in the high and earnest; in all other provinces
exhibiting a certain inaptitude, a certain ele-
phantine unpliancy: he too has little Humor;

his coarse invective has in it contemptuous
emphasis enough, yet scarcely any graceful
sport. Indeed, on the positive side also, these
two worthies are not without a resemblance.
Under far other circumstances, with less mas-
siveness, and vehement strength of soul, there
is in Schiller the same intensity ; the same
concentration, and towards similar objects, to-
wards whatever is sublime in Nature and in
Art, which sublimities they both, each in his
several way, worship with undivided heart.
There is not in Schiller's nature the same rich
complexity of rhythm, as in Milton's, with its
depths of linked sweetness; yet in Schiller too
there is something of the same pure, swelling
force, some tone which, like Milton's, is deep,
majestic, solemn.

" It was as a Dramatic Author that Schiller
distinguished himself to the world : yet often
we feel as if chance rather than a natural ten-
dency had led him into this province ; as if his
talent were essentially, in a certain style, ly-
rical, perhaps even epic, rather than dramatic.
He dwelt within himself, and could not without
effort, and then only within a certain range,
body forth other forms of being. Nay, much
of what is called his poetry seems to us, as
hinted above, oratorical rather than poetical ;
his first bias might have led him to be a speaker,
rather than a singer. Nevertheless, a pure
fire dwelt deep in his soul ; and only in Poetry,
of one or the other kind, could this find utter-
ance. The rest of his nature, at the same
time, has a certain prosaic rigor: so that not
without strenuous and complex endeavors, long
persisted in, could its poetic quality evolve it-
self. Quite pure, and as the all-sovereign ele-
ment, it perhaps never did evolve itself; and
among such complex endeavors, a small ac-
cident might influence large portions in its

course. Of Schiller's Philosophic talent,

still more of the results he had arrived at in
philosophy, there were much to be said and
thought, which we must not enter upon here.
As hinted above, his primary endowment seems
to us fully as much philosophical as poetical ;
his intellect, at all events, is peculiarly of that
character ; strong, penetrating, yet systematic
and scholastic, rather than intuitive ; and ma-
nifesting this tendency both in the objects it
treats, and in its mode of treating them. The
transcendental Philosophy, which arose in Schil-
ler's busiest era, could not remain without in-
fluence on him : he had carefully studied Kant's

L

372

SCHILLER.

system, and appears to have not only admitted
but zealously appropriated its fundamental doc-
trines; remoulding them, however, into his
own peculiar forms, so that they seem no longer
borrowed, but permanently acquired ; not less
Schiller's than Kant's. Some, perhaps little
aware of his natural wants and tendencies, are
of opinion that these speculations did not profit

him.

" Among younger students of German Lite-
rature, the question often arises, and is warmly
mooted : whether Schiller or Goethe is the
greater Poet ] Of tins question we must be
allowed to say that it seems rather a slender
one, and for two reasons. First, because Schil-
ler and Goethe are of totally dissimilar endow-
ments and endeavors, in regard to all matters
intellectual, and cannot well be compared to-
gether as Poets. Secondly, because if the
que.stion mean to ask, which Poet is on the
whole the rarer and more excellent, as probably
it does, it must be considered as long ago abun-
dantly answered. To the clear-sighted and
modest Schiller, above all, such a question
v/ould have appeared surprising : No one knew
better than hnnself, that as Goethe was a born
Poet, so he was in a great part a made Poet ;
that as the one spirit was intuitive, all-embrac-
ing, instinct with melody, so the other was
scholastic, divisive, only partially and as it were
artificially melodious. Besides, Goethe has
lived to perfect his natural gift, which the less
happy Schiller was not permitted to do. The

former accordingly is the national Poet; the
latter is not and never could have been. We
once heard a German remark, that readers to
their twenty-fifth year usually preferred Schil-
ler ; after their twenty-fifth year, Goethe. This
probably was no unfair illustration of the ques-
tion. Schiller can seem higher than Goethe
only because he is narrower. Thus to unprac-
tised eyes, a Peak of Teneriffe, nay, a Strass-
burg Minster, when we stand on it, may seem
higher than a Chimborazo ; because the former
rise abruptly, without abutment or environment ;
the latter rises gradually, carrying half a world
aloft with it ; and only the deeper azure of the
heavens, the widened horizon, the ' eternal
sunshine' disclose to the geographer that the
'Region of Change' lies far below him.

"However, let us notdivide these two Friends,
who in life were so benignantly united. With-
out asserting for Schiller any claim that even
enemies can dispute, enough will remain for
him. We may say that, as a Poet and Thinker,
he attains to a perennial Truth, and ranks
among the noblest productions of his century
and nation. Goethe may continue the German
Poet, but neither through long generations can
Schiller be forgotten."

As, of all German writers, Schiller is per-
haps the best known, or least misunderstood,
among us ; as he has rank as poet rather than
prose-writer, the following essay must suffice
for the present collection.

UPON NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL
POETRY.*

Thkhe are moments in our life when we feel
a kind of love and tender respect for Nature in
plants, minerals, animals, landscapes, and for
liumaii nature in children, in the manners of
rustics and of the primitive times : not on ac-
count of its sensuous interest, nor because it
satisfies our intellect or taste, for the opposite
may often occur with both, but solely because it
is Nature. Every cultivated man, not entirely
deficient in feeling, is sensible of this, when he
walks in the open air, or is living in the coun-
try, or lingers near the monuments of past
time ■. in short, when he is overtaken, in the midst
of artificial relations and situations, by the sim-
plicity of nature. It is this interest, often
amounting to a want, which underlies many of
* Translated by Rev. J. Weiss.

our passions for flowers and creatures, for sim-
ple gardens, for walks, ibr the country and its
inhabitants, for many products of distant an-
tiquity, and the like. But this presupposes that
neither affectation nor an otherwise accidental
interest comes into play. Then this kind of
interest in nature occurs only nnder two con-
ditions. In the first place it is absolutely neces-
sary, that the object which excites it should be
Nature, or taken for such by us: secondly, that,
in the widest signification of the term, it should
be naive, that is, that nature should stand in con-
trast with art, and rebuke it. Nature becomes
naive as soon as these two conditions are com-
bined.

From this point of view nature becomes for
us nothing more nor less than independent
Being, the persistence of things by themselves,
existence according to peculiar and immutable
laws.

SCHILLER.

373

This conception is absolutely prerequisite, if
we would take interest in like phenomena.
Could one, with the coinpletest deception, give
a- natural look to an artificial flower, or carry
the imitation of naive manners to the highest
point of illusion, the discovery that it was all
imitation would entirely destroy the feeling of
which we speak* Whence it is clear that this
kind of pleasure in nature is moral and not
aesthetic : for it is mediated by an idea, and is
not created by direct contemplation. Besides
which, it is by no means directed towards
beauty of form. For instance : what attraction
would a colorless flower, a fountain, a mossy
stone, the twitter of birds, the humming of bees,
have for us in themselves? What could give
tliem a claim to our love? We do not love the
objects themselves, but the ideas they represent.
We love in each of them the still, creative life,
the tranquil production out of itself, existence
according to its own laws, eternal unity with
itself.

They are what we were ; they are what we
again should'be. Like them, we were Nature ;
and our culture ought to lead us back to Nature,
by the path of reason and freedom. Then they
are at the same lime the repres»«itation of our
lost childhood, which forever remains the dear-
est to us : hence, they fill us with a certain sad-
ness; and at the same time the representation
of our loftiest completion in the ideal : hence,
they give us a sublime emotion.

But their completeness is not their merit,
since it is not the work of their own choice.
They secure for us, then, this entirely peculiar
pleasure, that without making us ashamed, they
are our model. Tliey surround us, as a con-
tinual divine manifestation, but more refreshing
tlian dazzling. What makes their character
complete is exactly that in which our own is
deficient: what distinguishes us from them is
exactly that of divinity in which they fail. We
are free, and they are necessary : we alter, they
remain one. But the divine or the ideal ob-
tains, only when the differences are blended,
when the will follows freely the law of neces-
sity, and the reason maintains its sway through
every change of fancy. Then we forever per-
ceive in them that which we lack, but for which
we are invited to strive, and to which, even
though we never attain it, we may yet hope to
approximate in an infinite progression. We
perceive in ourselves a superiority, which they

* Kant, the first to my knowledge who directed reflec-
tion e.xpressly towards this phenomenon, remarks, that
if we heard a man imitate with complete success the
note of a nightingale, and yielded to tlie impression with
profound emotion, all our pleasure would vanish with
the dissipation of this illusion. See the chapter in the
Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, upon Intellectual interest
in the beautiful. Whoever has learneil to admire the
autlior only as a great thinker, will here be delighted to
meet with a trace of his heart; and to be convinced,
by the discovery, of his fitness for this lofty vocation,
which unquestionably demands the union of both those
qualities.

lack, but which they can either never share,
like the senseless creation, or only as they pro-
ceed in our path, like the state of childhood.
Hence, as idea, they create for us the sweetest
enjoyment of our manhood, although they must
of necessity humiliate us with respect to each
determinate condition of our manhood.

As this interest for nature is based upon an
idea, it can be shown only in dispositions sus-
ceptible of ideas, that is, in moral ones. By far
the majority of men only aflect it; and the uni-
versality of this sentimental taste in our times,
which displays itself, especially since the ap-
pearance of certain A\'ritings, in affected travels,
gardens of like sort, walks and other fondnesses
of the kind, is no proof at all for the univer-
sality of the true sentiment. Yet Nature v.'ill
always exert something of this influence upon
the most insensible, since for that the com-
mon bias of all men to the moral is adequate ;
and all of us without distinction, however
great a disproportion there may be between
our acts and the simplicity and truth of Na-
ture, are compelled to that in idea. This sen-
timent for Nature and incitement from objects
standing in a close relation with us, — as for
example, children and childlike people, — and
bringing nearer to us both self- retrospection
and our own unnature, is especially strong and
universal. It is erroneous to suppose, that it is
only the appearance of helplessness which
makes us, at certain times, linger with so much
emotion near children. Perhaps that may be
the case with some, who are wont to feel, in the
presence of weakness, nothing but their own
superiority. But the feeling of which I speak
occurring only in entirely moral dispositions,
and not to be confounded with that excited by
the playful activity of children, is rather hu-
miliating than gratifying to self-love; and in-
deed if any superiority is noticeable at all, it is
by no means on our side. We experience emo-
tion, not while we look down upon the child
from the height of our power and perfection,
but while we look up, out of the limitation of
our condition which is inseparable from the
definite mode to which we have attained, at the
child's boundless determinableness and its perfect
innocence. And, at such a moment, our feeling
is too plainly mingled with a certain sadness,
to allow us to mistake its source. The child
represents the bias and determination, we repre-
sent the fulfilment, which forever remains in-
finitely far behind the former. Hence the child
is an actualization of the ideal, not indeed of
one fulfilled, but of one proposed; and so it is
by no means the appearance of its neediness
and limits which moves us, but, on the con
trary, the appearance of its free and pure power,
its integrity, its infinity. For this reason, a child
will be a holy object to the man of morality
and feeling, that is, an object which, by the
magnitude of an idea, abolishes every actual
magnitude, and which wins again in rich mea-
sure from the estimation of tlie reason all that
32

374

SCHILLER.

it may lose in the estimation of the under-
standing.

Out of this very contradiction between the
judgment of the reason and of the understand-
ing, proceeds the entirely peculiar phenomenon
of mixed feeling, which a naive disposition ex-
cites in us. It unites childlike with childish sim-
plicity. By the latter, it gives the understand-
ing an idea of weakness, and produces that
laughter by which we make known our (theo-
retic) superiority. But as soon as we have
reason to believe that childish simplicity is
at the same time childlike, and that conse-
quently its source is not folly, or imbecility, but
a loftier (^practical') strength, a heart full of in-
nocence and truth, which makes ashamed, by
its internal greatness, the mediation of art, —
then that triumph of the understanding is over,
and a jest at simpleness passes over into admi-
ration of simplicity. We feel ourselves com-
pelled to respect the object at which we pre-
viously laughed, and, while casting a look into
ourselves, to lament that we are not like it.
Thus arises the entirely peculiar appearance
of a feeling, in which are blended gay derision,
reverence and sadness.* The Naive demands,

* Kant, in a note to the Analysis of tiie Sublime
(Critique of Aesth. Judg., p. 225, 1st Ed.), in like manner
distinguishe.s this three-fold composition in the percep-
tion of the Naive, hut he gives another explanation of
it. " Something of both (the animal feeling of pleasure,
and the spiritual feeling of respect) united, is found in
naivete, which is the outbreak of the originally natural
uprightness of humanity against the art of dissimula-
tion become a second nature. We laugh at the simplicity
which does not yet understand how to dissimulate, and
still we enjoy that natural simplicity which disappoints
such arts. If we expected the every-day style of an af-
fected expression that is prudently established upon
aesthetic show, behold, it is unsophisticated, blameless
nature, which we were not at all prepared to meet, and
which, it would seem, was not meant to be exposed.
And because the aesthetic, but false, show, which com-
monly counts for much in our judgment, here suddenly
vanishes, and because, so to speak, our waggery is ex-
posed, this brings out in two opposite directions, a men-
tal agitation, which at the same time gives the body a
salutary shaking. But because something, which is in-
finitely better than all assumed style, that is, mental sin-
cerity (at least the tendency thereto), is not yet entirely
extinguished in human nature,— this it is which mingles
seriousness and regard in this play of the judgment. But
since the phenomenon lasts only for a little while, and
the veil of dissimulation is soon again drawn before it,
a regret, which is an emotion of tenderness, mingles also
with our feeling; and it does not refuse to unite as play
with a hearty laugh, at the same time relieving the em-
barrassment of the person who is the object of it, because
he has not yet learned the way of the world." I must
confess the explanation does not entirely satisfy me, and
particularly for this rea.^on, that it asserts something of
the Naive in general, which is chiefly true of one species,
the Naive of surprise, of which I shall afterwards speak.
It certainly excites laughter, when anybody exposes him-
self by naivete ; and in many cases this laughter may re-
sult from a previous expectation w iiich is resolved into
nothing. But also naivete of ihe noblest kind, the Naive
of disposition, always excites a smile, which can hardly
have for its cause an expectation resolved into nothing ;

that Nature should bear away the victory over
Art,* whether it happen without the knowledge
and will of the person, or with his full con-
sciousness. In the first case it is the Naive of
Surprise, and delights: in the other case it is
the Naive of Disposition, and moves.

In the Naive of surprise, the person must be
morally able to deny nature ; in the Naive of
disposition he need not be so, and yet, if it would
afl'ect us as naivete, we need not imagine him
as physically unable to do so. Hence the talk
and actions of children give us the pure im-
pression of naivete, only so long as we do not
remember their incapacity for art, but merely
regard the contrast of their naturalness with the
art in us. A childishness, where it is no longer
expected, is Naive, and therefore that cannot be
ascribed, in strictness of meaning, to actual
childhood.

But in the cases, both of Naivete of Surprise
and that of Disposition, nature must be right, but
art be wrong.

The conception of the Naive is only coni-
pleted by this final definition. Feeling is also
nature, and the rule of propriety is something
artificial ; but yet the victory of feeling over
propriety is nothing less than naive. If, on the
other hand, the same feeling overcomes artifice,
false propriety, dissimulation, we do not hesi-
tate to call that naive. "|- It is necessary, then,
that nature should triumph over art, not as a
dynamic magnitude, by its blind force, but as a
moral magnitude, by its form. The impropriety,
and not the insufficing of art, inust have afforded
the victory to nature ; for nothing whicli results

but it is generally to be explained only by the contrast
of a certain demeanor with the once assumed and ex-
pected forms. I also doubt, whether the pity, which is
blended in our feeling at the Naive of the latter kind,
relates to the naive person, and not rather to ourselves,
or rather to mankind in general, of whose deterioration
we are reminded by such a circumstance. It is too
plainly a moral sadness, whicli must have a nobler object
than the physical w'eakness with which sincerity is
threatened in the customary routine of life; and this
object cannot well be other than the decay of truth and
simplicity in humanity.

* Perhaps I should briefly say ; truth over Dissimula-
tion. But the idea of the Naive appears to me to include
still something more, while the simplicity which prevails
over artifice, and the natural freedom which conquers
stiffness and constraint, excite in us a similar percep-
tion.

t A child is ill bred, if it resists the precepts of a good
education from desire, caprice or passion : but it is naive,
if it releases itself by virtue of a free and healthy nature,
from the mannerism of an unwise education, from the
stiff postures of the dancing-master, and the like. The
same also occurs %vith that loosely defined naivete which
results from the transmission of humanity to the irra-
tional. If tlie w-eeds got the upper hand in a badly kept
garden, no one would find the appearance naive; but
there is something positively naive when the /ree growth
of outspreading branches destroys the laborious work of
the shears in a French garden. And so it is not at all
naive when a trained horse repeats his lesson badly out
of natural fatness, hut there is something naive when he
forgets it out of natural freedom.

SCHILLER.

375

from deficiency cnn command respect. It is
true, that in the Naive of Surprise, it is always
the overphis of feelini; and a deficiency of re-
straint which causes nature to be recognized:
but this deficiency and that overplus by no
means create the Naive, for they only aflbrd an
opportunity for nature to follow unimpeded its
moral capacity, that is, the law of harmony.

The Naive of Surprise can only appertain to
man, and to man alone, in so far as at that mo-
ment he is no longer pure and innocent nature.
It i)resu[)poses a will which does not harmonize
with that which nature does spontaneously.
Such a person, if rendered conscious of it, will
be frightened at himself: on the contrary, he
who is naive by Disposition, will be surprised at
men and at their astonishment. Then, as the
truth does not here recognize the personal and
moral character, but only the natural character
released by feeling, so we attribute no merit to
the man for his uprightness, and our laughter,
which is restrained by no i^ersonal veneration
for him, is merited sport. But as here also it
is the uprightness of nature which breaks through
the veil of falseness, a satisfaction of a higher
kind unites with the mischievous pleasure at
having surprised a man. For nature, in oppo-
sition to artifice, and truth, in opposition to de-
ception, must always excite respect. We feel,
then, in the naive of surprise also, an actual
moral pleasure, though not from a moral cha-
racter.*

It is true, we always respect nature in the
naive of surprise, since we must respect the
truth. On the contrary, we respect the person
in the naive of disposition, and then we enjoy
not only a moral pleasure, but also at a moral
object. In the one as in the other case nature
is right, so that she speaks the truth : but in the
latter case nature is not only right, but the per-
son is also worthy of respect. In the first case
the uprightness of nature always redounds to
the shame of the person, because it is involun-
tary; in the second it always redounds to his
merit, even supposing that he incurs odium by
what it expresses.

We ascribe a naive disposition to a man, if,
in his judgments of things, he overlooks their
artificial and forced relations, and adheres only
to simple nature. We demand from him all
the judgments that can be made within the
limits of healthy nature; and we completely

* As the naive depends only upon the form in which
soinething is said or done, this property disappears, as
soon as the thing itself, either throuj^h its causes or
throush its effects, makes a preponderating or indeed
contradictory impression. By naivete of this kind even
a crime can be detected, but then we liave neither the
quiet nor the leisure to direct our attention to the form
of the detection : and aversion for the personal chararter
absorbs all our satisfaction at the nature. And as a re-
volted feeling steals the moral pleasure at the upright-
ness of nature, as soon as naivete gives knowledge of a
crime, just so does an excited compassion destroy our
mischievous pleasure, as soon as we see anybody placed
in peril by his naivete.

discharge him only from that Miiich presup-
poses a separation from, at lea^t a knowledge
of, nature, whether in feeling or in thought.

If a father tells his child, that this or that
man is pining in poverty, and the child hastens
to carry to the man his father's purse of gold,
the action is naive, for healthy nature acts out
of the child: and it would be perfectly right so
to proceed in a world where healthy nature
rules. He only regards the need and the nearest
method of satisfying it: such an extension of
the right of property, whereby a part of huma-
nity are left to perish, is not founded in simple
nature. The action of the child, then, is a re-
buke of the actual world, and our heart also
confesses it by the satisfaction which the action
causes it to feel.

If a inan without knowledge of the world,
but otherwise of good capacity, confesses his
secrets to another, who betrays him, — but who
knows how to artfully dissimulate, — and by
this very candor lends him the means of doing
him an injury, we find it naive. We laugh at
him, but yet we cannot resist for that reason
highly prizing hiin. For his confidence in the
other results from the honesty of his own inten-
tions : at least he is naive only so far as that is
the case.

Hence the naive of reflection can never be a
property of corrupted men, but can only belong
to children and men with childlike dispositions.
The latter often act and think naively in the
most artificial relations of the great world. Out
of their own fine humanity they forget that they
have to do with a corrupted world, and they
demean themselves at the courts of kings with
an ingenuous innocence only to be found among
a race of shepherds.

Now it is not so easy always correctly to dis-
tinguish childish from childlike innocence, since
there are actions which waver between the ex-
treme limits of both, and which actually leave
us in doubt, whether we ought to laugh at sim-
pleness or reverence a noble simplicity. A very
remarkable instance of this kind is found in the
political history of Pope Adrian VI., which
SchrOekh has described for us with the thorough-
ness and pragmatic truth peculiar to himself
This Pope, a Netherlander by birth, adminis-
tered the pontificate at a critical moment for the
hierarchy, when an embittered party exposed
without mercy the weak points in the Roman
church, and the adverse party was deeply in-
terested to conceal them. What the truly naive
character, if such a one ever strayed into the
holy chair of Peter, would have to do in this
case, is not the question : but rather, how far
such a naivete of disposition might be compati-
ble with the function of a Pope. This, by the
way, was something which by no means ^em-
barrassed the predecessors and ibilowers of
Adrian. With perfect uniformity they adhered
to the Romish system once for all accepted, no-
where to concede anything. But Adrian really
had the simple character of his nation and the

376

SCHILLER.

innocence of his former rank. He was elevated
from the narrow sphere of the student to his
exalted post, and had never been false to the
simplicity of that character on the eminence of
his new dignity. The abuses in the church
disturbed him, and he was much too honest
openly to dissimulate his private convictions.
In conformity to such a mood he suffered him-
self, in the instruction with which he furnished
liis legate to Germany, to fall into confessions,
before unheard of from any pope, and to flatly
impugn the principles of this court. Among
other things it says: "We know well that for
many years past much that is odious has been
perpetrated in this holy chair : no wonder if the
sickness has been transmitted from the head to
the members, from the Pope to the prelates.
We have all fallen away, and for a long time
past there has not been one of us who has done
a good thing, no, not one." Again, elsewhere,
he enjoins the legate to declare in his name,
" that he, Adrian, cannot be blamed on account
of that which happened through former popes,
and that such excesses had always displeased
him, even when he filled an inferior station," &c.
We can easily imagine what reception the Ro-
man clerisy gave to such naivete on the part of
the Pope. The least which they imputed to
him was that he had betrayed the church to the
lieretics. Now this highly impolitic measure
of the Pope would compel our whole respect
and admiration, if we could only be convinced
that he was actually naive, that is, that he had
been forced to it only through the natural truth
of his character, without any regard to the pos-
sible consequences, and that he would have
done it none the less if he had anticipated the
whole extent of its unseemliness. But we have
some grounds for believing, that he did not
deem this step so very impolitic, and in his in-
nocence went so far as to hope, that he might
gain a very important advantage for the church
by his condescension toward the opposition.
He not only presumed that as an honest man
he ought to take this step, but to be able also as
Pope to justify it: and while he forgot, that the
most artificial of all structures could actually be
sustained by a systematic denial of the truth, he
committed the unpardonable error of using pre-
cepts in a position completely the reverse of
those natural relations in which they might
liave been valid. This certainly modifies our
judgment seriously : and although we cannot
withhold our respect from the honesty of heart,
out of which that action flowed, it is not a little
weakened by the reflection, that nature had in
art, and the heart in the head, a feeble rival.

That is not a true genius which is not naive.
Nothing but its naivete makes it genius ; and
what it is in taste and intellect, it cannot con-
tradict in its morality. Unacquainted with rules,
the crutches of weakness and the taskmasters
of perversity, guided only by nature or by in-
stinct, its guardian angel, it passes tranquilly
and safely through all the snares of a vicious

taste, in which the pseudo-genius is inevitably
caught, unless it is acute enough to anticipate
them from afiir. It is only granted to genius to
be always at home beyond the limits of the
familiar, and to extend, without transgressing,
nature. It is true the greatest genius now and
then commits the latter fault, but only because
it also lias its moments of fantasy, when pro-
tecting nature leaves it: only because the force
of example wins it, or the corrupt taste of its
age seduces it.

Genius must solve the most complicated
problems with unpretending simplicity and
skill. The egg of Columbus is a sample of
every method of true spirit. It legitimates itself
as genius only by triumphing through simplicity
over the most factitious art. It proceeds not
according to familiar principles, but by impulses
and feelings. But its impulses are suggestions
of a god, — all which healthy nature does, is
divine, — and its feelings are laws for all ages
and for every race of men.

The childlike character which genius stamps
upon its works, it also manifests in its manners
and its private life. It is chaste, because nature
is always so : but it is not decent, because de-
cency is only native to depravity. It is intel-
ligent, for nature can never be the opposite ;
but it is not cunning, for only art can be so. It
is true to its character and its inclinations, but
not so much because it has principles, as be-
cause nature always returns through every
vacillation to its first position, always restores
the old necessity. It is modest, even bashful,
because genius itself is always a mystery, but
it is not anxious, because it does not know the
perils of the road on which it travels. We
know little of the private life of the greatest
geniuses, but even that little which has been
preserved, for example, concerning Sophocles,
Archimedes, Hippocrates, among tlie ancients,
and Ariosto, Dante and Tasso, Raphael, Albert
Diirer, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Fielding, Sterne,
and others of modern times, confirms this asser-
tion.

And even, a fact which seems to present far
greater difficulty, the great statesman and gene-
ral will exhibit a naive character, as soon as
their genius makes them great. Among the an-
cients, I will only here allude to Epaminondas
and Julius Caesar, and to Henry IV. of France,
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and Peter the
Great, among the moderns. The Duke of Marl-
borough, Turenne, Vendorae, all display this
character. And in the other sex, nature has in-
dicated her highest perfection of naivete. Fe-
minine coquetry strives for nothing so much as
for the appearance of naivete : proof enough, if
we had no other, that the chief power of the
sex rests upon this quality. But since the pre-
valent principles of female education are in
lasting opposition to this character, it is as hard
for the woman morally, as for the man intel-
lectually, to maintain that noble gift of nature
with the advantages bestowed by generous cul-

SCHILLER.

377

t'lre. The woman wlio unites this naivete of
manners with a demeanor appropriate to the
world, merits our reverence as nnich as the
scholar who combines a genial freedom of
thought with all the severity of the schools.

A naive expression necessarily flows out of
naive reflection, both in words and gestures:
and it is the most important element of grace.
Genius expresses thus naively its sublimest and
deepest thoughts : they are oracles from the
mouth of a chikl. While common sense, always
alraid of error, nails its words and conceptions
upon the cross of logic and grammar, while it is
hard and stifl" in order to be definite, multiplies
words lest it say too much, and prefers to ex-
tract all the Ibrce and keenness from its thought,
from dread of being inconsiderate, Genius,
with a single happy dash of the pencil, gives
to its thought a firm, forever definite and yet
flowing outline. If, on the one hand, the symbol
and the thing symbolized remain forever foreign
and heterogeneous, on the other, the speech
issues from tlie thought as by an inward neces-
sity, and is so entirely one with it, that the
spirit seems exposed even under its material
veil. In composiiion, it is expression of this
kind, where the symbol entirely vanishes in
the thing symbolized, and where the language
still leaves the thought which it expressed
naked, while another never can present with-
out at the same time concealing it, that we
style by eminence spirited and genial.

Innocence of heart expresses itself freely and
naturally in daily life, like genius in its works of
thought. It is notorious that in social life a man
eschews simplicity and severe integrity of ex-
pression in the same proportion as he lacks
purity of intention : and where ofl^ence is so
readily incurred, and the imagination so easily
corrupted, a constrained demeanor is a necessity.
Without being false, we often say what we do
not think: we invent circumlocutions in order
to say things which can otfend only a sickly
vanity, or injure only a corrupt imagination.
An ignorance of these conventional laws, united
with natural uprightness, which despises every
labyrinth and show of falsehood (and not rude-
ness, which only rejects those laws because
they incommode it), creates a naivete of expres-
sion in intercourse, which consists in calling
things, which we either may not designate at
all or only artfully, by their right names and in
the curtpst way. The customary expressions
of children are of this kind. They create
laughter from their contrast with our customs ;
and yet in our hearts we confess that the child
is right.

It is true that, strictly speaking, a naive dis-
position can be attributed to man only as a be-
ing not positively subject to nature, though still
only so far as pure nature really acts in him.
And yet, by an effect of the poetising imagina-
tion, it is often transferred from the rational to
the irrational. Thus we often attribute a naive
character to an animal, a landscape, a building,
2x

and to nature generally, in opposition to the
caprice and fantasy of man. But this always
demands that we should subjectively lend a
will to that which has none, and have regard
to its strict direction according to necessary
laws. Dissatisfaction at our own ill exercised
moral freedom, and at the lack of moral har-
mony in our actions, easily induces that kind
of mood in which we address an irrational
thing as a person, and imagine its eternal uni-
formity a merit, anil envy its tranquil tenor, as
if it really had to struggle with a temptation to
be otherwise. At such a moment it jumps with
our humor to consider our prerogative of reason
an evil and a curse, and to deny justice to our
capacity and destiny, from a vivid sense of the
meagreness of our actual execution.

Then we see in irrational nature only a more
fortunate sister, who remained in the maternal
house, from which we stormed forth into the
distance, in the exuberance of our freedom.
With sorrowful longing we yearn to be back
again, as soon as we begin to feel the oppres-
siveness of culture, and to hear in the foreign
remoteness of art the winning voice of the
mother. While we were only nature's children
we were happy and perfect; we became free,
and ceased to be both. Hence results a two-
fold and very dissimilar longing for nature,
longing for her happiness, longing for her per-
fection. The loss of the former is lamented
only by the sensuous man ; but the moral man
alone can mourn over the loss of the latter.

Ask yourself strictly then, sympathizing friend
of nature, does your indolence pine for her re-
pose? does your offended moral sense desire her
harmony? Ask yourself candidly, does art dis-
gust you, and do you take refuge in the solitude
of inanimate nature from the abuses of society?
do you abhor its privations, its burdens, its dif-
ficulties, or its moral anarchy, its disorders, its
caprice? You must meet the former with joy
and courage, and your compensation must be
the very freedom out of which they flow. You
may well propose the tranquil joy of nature for
your distant goal, but only such as is the prize
of your own worthiness. Then complain no
longer of the hardship of life, of the inequality
of conditions, of the stress of circumstances, of
the insecurity of property, of ingratitude, oppres-
sion, persecution. You must submit to all the
evils of culture with free resignatiot), you must
respect them as the natural conditions of the
only Good : you must lament only over its
wickedness, but not with unmanly tears. Much
rather care to act purely amid those contamina-
tions, freely under that slavery, firmly through that
fickle mutability, loyally through that anarchy.
Do not fear external, but internal confusion :
strive for unity, but seek it not in uniformity:
strive for repose, but through the equipoise, not
through the cessation, of your activity. That
nature, which you begrudge to the irrational,
deserves neither longing nor respect. It lies
behind you: it must forever lie behind you.
32*

378

SCHILLER.

When you ro longer feel the ladder which up-
held you, there remains for you no choice but
to grasp the law with free consciousness and
volition, or else to fall beyond deliverance into
a fathomless abyss.

But if you become consoled for the loss of
nature's happiness, then let her perfection be
your heart's ideal. If you step forth unto her
from your sphere of art, and see her before you
in her great tranquillity, in her naive beauty, in
her childlike innocence and simplicity, linger
before the picture, cherish that feeling: it is
worthy of your noblest manhood. Do not longer
indulge the wish or fancy to exchange with her,
but receive her into yourself, and strive to wed
her infinite superiority to your own infinite pre-
erogative, and create from that union the divine.
Let her encompass you like a tender Idyll, in
which you may always find yourself again out
of the distractions of art, from which you may
gather new courage and confidence for the race,
and kindle afresh in your heart the flame of the
Ideal, which flickers and sinks so soon in the
storms of life.

If we call to mind the beautiful nature which
surrounded the ancient Greeks, if we recollect
how confidingly that people could live under
their fortunate heaven with free nature, how
much nearer their conception, their sentiment,
their manners lay to simple nature, and what a
true reflection of her their works of fancy are, it
must seem strange to observe that we find so few
traces among them of that sentimental interest
with which we moderns can cling to natural
scenes and characters. It is true, the Greek is in
the highest degree strict, true, circumstantial, in
his description of nature, but yet not a whit more
and with no heartier sympathy, than he is also
in the description of an array, a shield, a suit of
armor, a domestic utensil, or of any product of
mechanics. He seems to make no distinction
in his love for the object, between that which
is in itself, and that which is through art and
human will. Nature seems to interest his in-
tellect and curiosity more than his moral sense:
he does not cling to her, as we do, with hearti-
ness, with sensibility, with a sweet sadness.
And even when he personifies and deifies her
single manifestations, and represents their efl"ects
as actions of a free being, he abolishes in her
that tranquil necessity, by which precisely she
is so attractive to us. His impatient fancy bears
him away over her to the drama of human life.
Nothing satisfies him but the free and living,
nothing but characters, actions, fates and man-
ners. And while we, in certain moral moods of
mind, could ^vish to give up the superiority of
our free volition, which causes us so much strife
with ourselves, so much unrest and confusion,
for the choiceless but tranquil necessity of the
irrational, the Greek fancy, precisely the re-
verse, is busy making human nature inchoate
even within the inanimate world, and giving
influence to Will in the province of blind ne-
cessity.

Whence indeed this diversity of spirit? How
comes it that we who are so far surpassed by
the ancients in everything that is nature, can
precisely here honor nature in a higher sense,
cling to her with heartfnlness, and embrace
even the inanimate world with warmest sensi-
bility ■? It is because with us nature has vanished
out of humanity, and we meet her again in her
truth only beyond the latter, in the world of
matter. It is not our greater conformity with
nature, but, quite the contrary, the incongruity
of our relations, conditions and manners, which
impels us to procure in the physical world that
which is hopeless in the moral world, namely,
satisfaction for the growing impulse for truth
and simplicity, which lies incorruptible and in-
efiaceable in all human hearts, like the moral
disposition whence it flows. It is for this reason
that the feeling with which we cling to nature
is so nearly akin to the feeling which laments
the vanished age of childhood and of childlike
innocence. Our childhood is the only unmuti-
lated nature which we still find in cultivated
manhood : then it is no wonder if every vestige
of external nature conducts us back to our child-
hood.

It was very different with the ancient Greeks.*
Their culture had not so far degenerated that
nature was abandoned. The whole structure
of their social life was based upon feelings, and
not upon a composition of art : their mythology
itself was the suggestion of a naive sentiment,
the creation of a joyous fancy, and not of a re-
fining reason, like the religion of later nations.
Then as the Greek had not lost the nature in
humanity, he could not be surprised by her be-
yond the limits of the latter: and so he could
have no pressing necessity for objects in which
he might recover her. In unison with himself,
and happy in the feeling of his humanity, he
fain held silently to that as his maximum, and
approached all else with diflaculty: while we,
not in unison with ourselves, and unhappy in
our experiences of humanity, have no pressing
interest except to escape from it, and to thrust
from our vision a form so unsuccessful.

The feeling to which we here allude, is not
then, that which the ancients had : it is rather
identical with that which we have for the an-

* But with the Greeks only : for just such a lively ani-
mation and such a rich fulness of human life as sur-
rounded the Greek, was requisite, in order to transfer life
into the lifeless also, and to pursue with that zeal the
image of humanity. Ossian's human world, for e.\ample,
was needy and monotonous: the inanimate around him
was great, colossal, mighty. Thus it was imperative,
and maintained its rights over man himself: and hence
inanimate nature (in opposition to man) appears in the
songs of this poet much more as an object of sentiment.
But Ossian too laments a falling away of humanity : and
however small was the circle of his people's culture and
their corruptions, its experience was still lively and im-
pressive enough, to repel the singer, with his tenderness
and purity, back toward the inanimate, and to pour over
his songs that elegiac tone which we find so moving and
attractive.

L

SCHILLER.

379

cients. They perceived imtmally : we perceive
the natural. Without doubt, the feeling wliich
filled Homer's soul when he let his celestial
swineherd entertain Ulysses, was quite different
from that which moved the soul of the young
Werter, when he read the passage after a te-
dious company. Our sentiment for nature is
like the feeling of the invalid for health.

In the same degree that Nature vanished out
of human life as Experience and as tlie (active
and perceptive) Subject, we see her appearing
in the poetic world as Idea and as Object. That
nation which has proceeded farthest both in
unnature and in reflection upon it, must have
been the first to be most strongly moved by the
phenomenon of naivete, and to give to it a name.
This nation, so far as I know, was the French.
But perception of, and interest in, the naive, is
naturally much earlier, and dates from the very
commencement of moral and aesthetic deprava-
tion. This change in the perceptive mode is
extremely striking even so early as Euripides ;
for example, when we compare him with his
predecessors and with iEschylus especially,
and yet that poet was the favorite of his age.
The same revolution is apparent also among
the old historians. Horace, the poet of a culti-
vated and corrupted age, extols tranquil happi-
ness in his Tibur ; and we may designate him
as the true founder of this sentimental school
of poetry, while as a model he has not yet been
surpassed. We also find traces of this percep-
tion in Propertius, Virgil, and others, but few in
Ovid, who lacked heartfulness, and who mourns,
in his Exile at Tomi, the loss of that happiness
which Horace so readily dispenses with in his
Tibur.

Poets are universally, by their very concep-
tion, the guardians of nature. Where they can
no longer be so, and already feel in themselves
the destructive influence of capricious and arti-
ficial forms, or at least have had to struggle with
it, they will then appear as the witnesses and as
the avengers of nature. They will either be, or
they will seek, a lost nature. Thus two very
different schools of poetry arise, which cover
and exhaust the whole province of that art. All
who are really poets, will belong either to the
naive or to the sentimental school, according to
the constitution of the age in which they flou-
rish, or as contingent circumstances affect their
general culture and predominating neutral
tone.

The early poet of a naive and spiritual world,
and he, in an age of artificial culture, who is
nearest to him, is austere and coy, like the
virgin Diana in her forests. With no familiar
manners, he eludes the heart that seeks him,
and the longing that would embrace him. The
homely truthfulness with which he handles an
object often seems like insensibility. The ob-
ject possesses him entirely: his heart does not
lie, like a base metal, just beneath the surface,
but will be sought after in the depths, like gold.
He stands behind his work like the Infinite be-

hind the structure of the world. He is the work
and the work is him. We must first be unwor-
thy of the work, or unequal to it, or weary, only
to ask for him.

So appears, for example, Homer among the
ancients and Shakspeare among the moderns :
two very different natures, separated by the
immeasurable lapse of ages, but in this particu-
lar characteristic completely one. When I first
became acquainted with the latter poet, at a
very early age, I was troubled at the coldness,
the insensibility, which permitted him to jest in
the deepest pathos, to disturb with a clown the
heart-rending scenes in Hamlet, King Lear,
Macbeth, and odiers, which now held him fast
where my feelings hurried on, and now coldly
hastened forward where the heart would so
willingly have rested. Led by acquaintance
with the later writers, to seek for the poet in
the work, to meet his heart, to reflect familiarly
with him concerning his object, in short, to con-
template the object in the subject, — it was into-
lerable to me that the jioet would nowhere suf-
fer contact, and never deign to talk with me.
And for many years he had all my reverence
and my study too, before I learned to win his
personality. I was yet incapable of under-
standing nature at first hand. I could only
tolerate her image reflected through the intel-
lect and adjusted by the rules; and the senti-
mental poets both of the Frencli and Germans,
from 1750 to 1780, were just the proper subjects
for that end. But I am not asliamed of this
puerile judgment, since the mature critic jiassed
a similar one, and was naive enough to i)ublish
it to the ^vorld.

The same thing happened to me with respect
• to Homer, also, whom I knew at a still later
period. I remember now the remarkable place
in the sixth book of the Iliad, where Glaucus
and Diomed attack each other, and after one
recognises the other as his guest, exchange pre-
sents. This affecting picture of the piety with
which the laws of hospitality were observed in
war itself, can be matched with a description
of knightly magnanimity in Ariosto, where two
knights and rivals, Ferran and Rinaldo, the one
a Saracen, the other a Christian, make peace after
being covered with wounds in a violent con-
flict, and mount the same horse in order to seek
and bring back the flying Angelica. Diflerent
as both examples are, they still coincide in the
effect upon our hearts, since both depict the
beautiful triumph of manners over passion, and
afiect us with their naivete of disposition. But
how differently do the poets undertake the
description of this same action. Ariosto, the
citizen of a later age, whose manners had
deteriorated in simplicity, cannot conceal his
own admiration and emotion at the relation of
this event. The feeling of the remoteness of
these manners from those which characterise
his age, overpowers him. He abandons at once
the delineation of the object and appears in his
own person. The beautiful stanzas are well

380

SCHILLER.

known, and liave always excited special admi-
ration :

" O nohle minds, by knights of old possess'd !
Two faitlis Ihey Iviiew, one love their hearts profess'd :
And still tlieir limbs tlie smarting anguish feel
Of strokes inllicted by the hostile steel.
Tlirougli wiiidnig paths and lonely woods they go,
Yet no suspicion their brave bosoms know.
At length the liorse, with double spurring, drew
To where diverging ways appeared m view."

(Hook.)

And now old Homer! Hardly does Diomed
learn from tlie relation of Glaucus, his rival,
that the latter is a guest of his family from the
father's times downward, when he buries his
spear in the ground, talks cordially with him,
and they agree in future to avoid each other
during battle. But hear Homer himself:

" Henceforth let our spears
Avoid each other in tumultuous war ;
For many Trojans and reuown'd alhes
Have I to slay, whom to this arm some god
May bring, or else my speed may overtake ;
And many Greeks there are for thee to slay,
Whome'er thou canst ; Imt let us arms excliange,
Tliat all who see our conference may know
We boast to be liereditary guests.
Tins said, both heroes leaping from their cars, '"

Witli mutual kindness joined tlieir hands and pledged
The faitii of friendsliip !"

A modern poet (at least one who is so in the
moral sense of that word) would have hardly
waited until now, in order to testify his plea-
sure at the action. And we should, the easier
pardon him for it, since our heart also makes a
pause in the reading, and withdraws from the
object, in order to contemplate itself. But no
trace of all this in Homer: he proceeds in his
barren truthfulness, as if he had announced an
every-day atfair, nay, as if he bore no heart in
his bosom :

" Then Satumian love

Exalted Glaucus' liberal mind, who gave

His golden for Tydides' brazen arms.

Although a liundred oxen his were wortli,

And those of Diomed no more than nine."

(Munforils' Translation.)

Poets of this naive kind are properly no
longer in their place in an artificial age. In
fact they are hardly possible there, at least only
if they run wild, and are saved from the crip-
pling influence of their times by a fortunate
destiny. They can never proceed out of society
itself; but they sometimes appear beyond its
limits, yet rather as strangers who astonish us,
and as untamed children of nature who scanda-
lise us. Beneficial as such phenomena are for
the artist who studies them, and for the genuine
connoisseur who knows how to estimate them,
they prosper little on the whole with their
period. The seal of ruler rests upon their
brow; but we prefer to be rocked and carried
by the muses. The Critics, who are the special
hedge-trimmers of taste, hate them as bound-
breakers, and would fain suppress them. For
Homer himself need thank only the power of
more than a Millenium of evidence, for the
toleration of these aesthetic judges: it would
harass them not a little to maintain their rules

against his example, and his reputation against
their rules.

I said that the poet either is nature, or he
will seek her. If the former, he is naive; if the
latter, he is sentiinental.

The i^oetic spirit is immortal and inalienable
in humanity : it cannot fail except simultane-
ously with that and with the poetic inclination.
For when the inan removes himself, by the
freedom of his fancy and his understanding,
from the simplicity, truth, and necessity of
nature, not only the road to her remains forever
open to him, but a mightier and more inde-
structible instinct, the moral, also impels him
constantly back to her; and the poetic capacity
stands in the closest relationship with this very
instinct. That, then, is not also lost together
with natural simplicity, but only operates in
another channel.

Nature is still the only flame which nourishes
the poetic spirit; it creates its whole energy out
of her alone, and speaks to her even in the
artificial man comprised witliin his culture.
Every other mode of operation is foreign to the
poetic spirit; hence, by the way, all so called
works of humor are improperly styled poetic,
although, guided by the reputation of French
literature, we have for a long time confounded
the two qualities. It is still nature, I say, that
even in the artificial conditions of culture, gives
energy to the poetic spirit; only she stands in
a relation to it entirely new.

It is evident that, while man continues to be
pure and not rude nature, he acts as an un-
divided sensuous unity and as a harmonizing
whole. Sense and reason, the receptive and
the creative faculty, are not yet separate in their
operations, much less do they stand in opposi-
tion. The percejitions of the one are not the
formless sport of chance, the ideas of the other
are not the barren play of fancy ; the former
result from the law of necessity, the latter from
reality. When man has passed into the state
of culture, and art has lain her hand upon him,
that sensuous harmony within him is removed,
and he can only express himself as a moral
unity, that is, as striving after unity. The agree-
ment between his perception and reflection,
which took place in the first condition actually,
now exists only ideally. It is no longer in him,
but out of him ; as a thought which has yet to
be realized, and no longer as a fact of his life.
If now we apply the conception of poetry,
which is none other than to give humanity its
completest possible expression, to both the above
conditions, the result is, that in the condition of
natural simplicity, where the man still acts with
all his powers at once as a harmonious unity,
and where therefore the totality of his nature
fully expresses itself in reality, the completest
possible imitation of the actual must make the
poet ; that on the contrary, in the condition of
culture, where that harmonious co-operation of
his whole nature is only an idea, the elevation
of reality to the ideal, or what amounts to the

SCHILLER.

381

same thing, the representation of tho ideal must
make the poet. Ami these are also the two
only possible modes in which the poetic genius
can find expression. They are, as ■we see,
entirely di.sliiict; but there is a higher concep-
tion which comprehends them both, and we
need not be surprised to find this conception
coinciding with the idea of humanity.

This is not the place to pursue farther this
thought, which only a special discussion can
place in its full light. But whoever knows how
to institute a comparison between the ancient
and modern poets*, not only according to acci-
dental forms, but according to the spirit, can
easily be satisfied of its truth. The former affect
us through their nature, through sensuous truth,
through living presence : the latter affect us
through ideas.

Moreover, this path which the modern poets
travel, is the same which man must commonly
pursue, as well in the part as in the whole.
Nature makes him one with himself. Art sepa-
rates and divides him, the Ideal restores his
unity. But since the ideal is an infinity which
man never reaches, the cultivated man can
never become perfect in his mode, as the na-
tural man is able to become in his. Then he
must be infinitely inferior to the la"er in per-
fection, if regard is had only to the relation in
which both stand to their mode and their maxi-
mum. On the contrary, if we compare together
the modes themselves, it is evident that the goal
for which the man strives through culture, is
infinitely superior to that which he attains
tJirough nature. The one then acquires his
value through positive attainment of a finite,
the other desires it through approximation to
an infinite, magnitude. But since the latter has
only degree and progress, the relative worth of
the cultivated man, taken as a whole, is never
determinable, although when partially regarded
he is found in necessary inferiority to him in
whom nature acts in her whole perfection. But
in so far as the final goal of humanity can only
be reached through that progress, and the na-
tural man can only proceed according as he
cultivates himself, and consequently passes over
into the other condition, — there is no question
to which of the two the preference is to be
awarded, with respect to that final goal.

What has here been said of the two distinct
forms of humanity, may also be applied to both
those poetic forms corresponding to them.

For this reason we ought not to compare to-

* Perhaps it is not superfluous to mention, tliat if the
modern poets are here set opposite to the ancient, we
are to understand not so much the difference in time as
the difference in manner. We have also in modern and
even in the latest times, naive poems in all classes, though
no limeer nf a style entirely pure ; and there is no want
of the sentimental among the old Latin, and even Grecian
poets. We frequently find both kinds united, not only in
the same poet, but even in the same work, as for exam-
ple in the Sorrows of Werter. Productions of this kind
Will always have a superior effect.

gethcr ancient and modern — naive and senti-,-
mental — poets, or, if we do, only beneath a
higher conception common to both: for such an
one there really is. For certainly, if we have
once partially abstracted the generic conception
of poetry from the old poets, nothing is easier,
but nothing also is more trivial, than to under-
value the inoderns in comparison. If we only
call that poetry, which has uniformly affected
simple nature in all times, the only result will
be to render dubious the name of poet as ap-
plied to moderns exactly in their highest and
most peculiar beauty, because it is precisely
here that they speak only to the disciple of art,
and have nothing to say to simple nature.* The
richest contents will be empty show, and the
highest flight of poetry will be exaggeration to
him whose mind is. not already prepared to
pass out of reality into the province of ideas.
The M'ish can never occur to a reasonable man,
to set a modern side by side with that in which
Homer is great; and it sounds laughable enough
to hear a Milton or a Klopstock styled the mo-
dern Homer. And just as little would any an-
cient poet, least of all Homer, be able to main-
tain a comparison with the modern poet in his
characteristics. The former, if I may so express
it, is powerful through the art of limitation ; the
latter through the art of illimitation.

And from the fact that the strength of the
ancient artist (for what has here been said of
the poet, can also be applied in general to the
liberal artist, under the restrictions which na-
turally occur) consisted in limitation, we may
explain the high superiority which the plastic
art of antiquity asserts over that of modern
times ; and, in general, the unequal relation of
value in which modern poetry and modern
plastic art stand to both specifes of art in anti-
quity. A work for the eye finds its perfection
only in limitation : a work for the imagination
can also attain it through the unlimited. Hence
a modern's preponderance in ideas helps him
little in plastic works ; he is compelled here to
define in space inost rigidly the image of his
fancy, and consequently to measure himself
with the ancient artist precisely in that quality,
in which the latter holds the indisputable palm.
It is otherwise in poetic works; and though the
ancient poets conquer here also in the simplicity
of their means, and in that which is sensuously

* It became Moliere at any rate, as a naive poet, to
leave to the decision of his maidservant, what should
stand in his comedies and what should be subtracted. It
were to be wished that the masters of the French cothurn
had also tried that test upon their tragedies. But I do
not mean to propose that a similar test should be applied
to the Odes of Klopstock, to the finest passages in the
Messiah, in Paradise Lost, in Nathan the Wise, and
many other pieces. But what do I say ? This test is ac-
tually applied, and Moliere's maid reasons at full sweep,
in our critical libraries, philosophical and literary annals
and travels, upon poetry, art, and the like; only, as is
reasonable, a little more insipidly on German than on
French soil, and in keeping with the style in the ser-
vants'-hall of German literature.

382

SCHILLER.

presentable and corporeal, — the moderns in their
turn leave them behind in profusion of material,
in that which is irrepreseiitable and ineffable,
and in short, in that which we call spirit in a
vV'Ork of art.

As the naive poet follows only simple nature
and perception, and confines himself only to
imitation of reality, he can only hold a single
relation to his subject, and in this respect, he
has no clioiee in his mode of handling. The
different impression of naive poems depends
(presupposing that we abstract all therein which
pertains to ihe contents, and regard that impres-
sion only as the pure effect of the poetic hand-
ling), only, I remark, upon the different de-
gree of one and the same perceptive method.
Even the difference in the external forms can
make no alteration in the quality of that aesthe-
tic impression. Let the form be lyric or epic,
dramatic or descriptive, we may indeed ex-
perience emotions more or less powerful, but
never of different kinds, supposing the contents
abstracted. Our feeling is altogether the same,
composed entirely of one element, so that we
can distinguish in it nothing else. Even the
difference of tongues and times makes no alter-
ation in this respect; for this pure unity of their
origin and their effect is precisely one charac-
teristic of naive poetry.

The case is entirely different with the senti-
mental poet. He reflects upon the impression
which the objects make upon him, and the emo-
tion into which he throws us and is thrown
himself, is only based upon that reflection.

Here the object is related to an idea, and its
poetic power only rests upon that relation.
Hence the sentimental poet is always involved
with two conflicting representations and per-
ceptions, with reality as a limit and with his
idea as the unlimited: and the mingled feeling
which he excites will always betray this two-
fold source.* Since, then, a plurality of princi-
ples here occurs, it depends upon which of the
two predominates in the poet"s perception and
in his representation, and a difference in the
handling is consequently possible. For now
the question arises, whether he will be more
occupied with the real, or more with the ideal,
whether he will treat the former as an object
of aversion, or the latter as an object of inclina-
tion. Then his representation will either be
satirical, or it will be elegiac (in a wider signi-
fication of this vi'ord, hereafter to be explained ).
Every sentimental poet will conform to one of
these two methods of perception.

♦Whoever notices the impression which naive poems
make upon himself, and is able to disconnect therefrom
llie sympathy created by the contents, will find this im-
l)ression, even in very pathetic subject.^, always cheerful,
always pure, always tranquil : while that of sentimental
poems is always somewhat grave and intensive. The
reason is, that while in the case of naive representations,
be the action what it will, we always rejoice at the truth,
at the living presence of the object in our imagination,
and seek nothing more than this, — ni the sentimental,
on the contrary, we have to unite the presentation of the
imagination with an idea of the reason, which always
leaves us irresolute between two different conditions.

JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE,

Born 17C2. Died 1814.

This brave and devoted spirit claims our in-
terest as the impersonation of transcendental
ethics. Among the illustrious four* whose
names are most intimately associated with the
recent movement in German philosophy, his
function is that of moralist; a preacher of
righteousness. As a character, he is incom-
parably the most interesting of them all ; as a
writer, incomparably the most able and im-
pressive. The eloquence of transcendentalism
found in him its highest development.

Fichte recalls more than any modern the
heroes of the Stoa. The stern Promethean vigor
of that ancient school flowers anew in his word
and in his character, which was no less em-
phatic than his word. Goethe, with customary
aptness of characterisation, calls him " one of
the most vigorous personalities"! that ever was
seen. Few philosophers have so honored their
theory with personal illustrations. He carried
his philosophy into life and his life into philoso-
phy, acting as he spoke, from an eminence
above the level of the world. He created for
himself, out of the fruitful bosom of his own
iiiality, a world of his own, — a world of great
tlioughts and lofty aims, in which he had his
being and lived apart from his contemporaries,
even while he mingled with them in the thick-
est tumult of lifer and threw himself with all
his presence into the sore conflict of his time.

In speculation, Fichte was closely and gene-
tically related to Kant. The W issensckaftslehre
would never have been conceived, it is probable,
had not the Kritik der reinen Vernunft pre-
ceded. But he differed from his predecessor in
the practical tendency of his nature ; and this
it is which gives so decided a moral tone and
direction to his philosophy. Kant was satisfied
with the bare contemplation of abstract truth.
Fichte would fain realise the truth in action ;
he would bring it to bear on the civil and social
existence of man, or at least, on his own. He
would make the word flesh in his life. The
one resembled a mountain-lake embosomed in

* Kant, Fichte. Schelling, Hegel.

f Eine der tiiduigsten (doughtiest) Persiinlichkeiten.

deep solitude, which, he who would know it,
must make a special pilgrimage to visit. The
other was like a river, which, springing from
that lake, precipitates itself with passionate
force on the plain below, and then, more calmly,
gathers up its cliannelled waters and hastens
with its full heart to make glad the region
through which it flows. Fichte took a lively
interest in the social and political questions of
the day, and, as far as his function permitted,
an active part in the great movements by which
those questions were tried. He was an apostle
of liberty to his countrymen, and by his ''Reden
an die Deulschen" did much to awaken that
resistance to Napoleon which finally resulted
in their emancipation from his dominion.

Notwithstanding this strong practical bias,
Fichte was a thorough idealist in philosophy.
A more radical and consistent system of ideal-
ism than the Wissenschaftslehre was never
ofifered to the world. What Kant had indicated
critically and negatively, Fichte endeavored to
establish constructively; i. e. the subjective-
ness of all our cognitions and experience. He
reascends the path by which Kant had descend-
ed in his analysis, and taking his stand in the
conscious I, endeavors thence to construct a
world. Nothing exists but the I ; and all our
experience, and the external world, as the ob-
ject of that experience, is a creation of the I,
but a necessary creation. Fichte endeavors to
develop the laws by which this creation pro-
ceeds. The idea of duty in this system is a
creative principle. Beings exist for us only as
we have duties toward them. The fact of
moral obligation is the central fact which de-
termines all things for moral agents.

The system was never popular, as, indeed,
no idealistic system ever was or can be. It
was made the subject of numberless satires, of
which the most remarkable is the Clavis Fich-
tiana of Jean Paul. But Fichte's influence is
independent of his system ; the great thoughts
wiiich he put forth still heave the heart of Ger-
many, and his word is one of the powers which
now mould the world.

(383>

384

FICHTE.

Fichte was the son of a ribbon-manufacturer
at Rammenau, near Bischoffswerda, in Upper
Lusatia. The disting-uished promise of his
childhood procured him a patron in a certain
Herr von Miltitz, and, through him, the means
of education which his father's poverty would
not allow. He was placed at the High School,
Sclmlpforlp, then a Saxon Seminary. He
studied theology successively at Jena, Leipzig,
and Wittenberg. In 1788, he accepted the
office of private tutor to a family in Zurich.
Here he became acquainted with his future
wife and was betrothed. In 1790, he returned
to Leipzig, and devoted himself to study, par-
ticularly the study of the Kantian philosophy.
In 1791, he went to Warsaw in compliance
w^ith an invitation to become a teacher in that
city. But the situation did not please him, and
he soon abandoned it. On his return, he tar-
ried some time in Konigsberg, where he became
acquainted with Kant, and where, with the hope
of making himself better known to that great
philosopher, he published his '■'■ Kritik alter
OJfeiibarung" (criticism of all revelation).
The work was anonymous, and was universally
believed to be Kant's, until he himself pointed
out the true author. Then Fichte's name blos-
somed at once into a wide and brilliant reputa-
tion, as the second great philosopher of Ger-
many ; and in 1794, he was called to succeed
Reinhold in the Professorial chair of Philoso-
phy at Jena. His influence on the students
was great and beneficent, but misunderstand-
ings between him and his colleagues, the charge

of atheism with which it was attempted to pre-
judice the Government against liim, together
with numerous other vexations, induced him to
resign his oflice; and in 1799, he went to Ber-
lin, where he lived for awhile in literary retire-
ment. He was afterwards made Professor of
Philosophy in Erlangen; but the war-troubles
of that stormy period drove him to Konigsberg,
and later to Copenhagen. In 1807, he return-
ed to Berlin once more, and with his "Ad-
dresses to the German Nation," and his lec-
tures, labored intrepidly and indefatigably for
the cause of freedom and German indepen-
dence. In 1809, he was made Professor of
Philosophy at the new University of Berlin, to
which he rendered incalculable service, both as
lecturer and as counsellor in its affairs. During
the " war of liberation," as it is called, he dis-
tinguished himself anew by his courage and
his patriotism, and died January 27th, 1814, of
a fever contracted by assiduous watching at the
sick-bed of his wife, who had contracted the
same by her own ministrations to the sick and
wounded, in a time of general distress.

In the first church-yard from the Oranien-
burg gate, of Berlin, stands a tall obelisk with
this inscription : — ;

THE TEACHERS SHALL SHINE

AS THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE FIRMAMENT J

AND THEY THAT TURN MANY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS

AS THE STARS FOREVER AND ETER.

It marks the grave of Fichte. The faithful
partner of his life sleeps at his feet.

THE DESTINATION OF MAN.

INTRODUCTORY REMARK.

[This work is intended to present, in a popu-
lar form, certain results of the Transcendental
Philosophy, or rather of the last Fichtean modi-
fication of that Philosophy. " Whatever of the
new philosophy is available out of the School,"
says the author iu his preface, " is to constitute
the subject of this work ; presented in that order
iu which it would naturally unfold itself to art-
less reflection." — " The book is not designed for
philosophers by profession, and they will find
nothing in it which has not already been set
forth in the author's previous writings. It was
meant to be intelligible to all readers who are
capable of understanding a book at all. Un-
doubtedly, it will be thought unintelligible by
those who seek for nothing but a repetition, in
a somewhat different order, of phrases which

they have already learned by heart, and who
mistake this act of memory for an act of the
understanding."

The plan of the work is this. The author
supposes a mind, — as yet unversed in metaphy-
sical inquiries, but otherwise cultivated, — just
beginning to speculate on its own nature and
destiny, and the grounds of all being and know-
ing. He follows what he supposes to be the
natural course of such a mind, through three
successive stages, which constitute the three
divisions of the work. The first book is headed,
"Doubt." It leaves the inquirer in a state of
painful conflict between the instinctive belief
of the soul and the fatalistic conclusions to which
his reasonings have brought him. The second
book, entitled " Knowledge," overthrows the
whole fabric of sensible experience, and de-
monstrates that we properly knaw nothing be-
yond our momentary consciousness, and that

FICHTE.

385

consciousness, tlie mere reflection of a reflection,
•'the dream of a tlream." I cannot say: I
UqA, perceive, think ; but only : "there appears
a thought" of somewhat, that I call me, feeling,
peiceivinir, thinking. In short, this stage lands
us i) absolute Pyrrhonism. At the same time,
the author refers us, for our satisfaction, to an-
other "organ" than that of Knowledge. That
other organ, " Faith," furnishes the title and
constitutes the subject of the third book. Faith
rebuilds, on moral grounds, the fabric which
speculation had destroyed. Not speculation,
but action, i« the end of being. The call to act
is instinctive- it is divine. If we accept that
call in faith and obey it, we resolve ourselves
of our doubts, so far as our act extends. We
assure ourselves^ at least, of the topics of action.
Duty restores to as a God, an external world,
our own identity and continuity of being; and
unfolds to us, as individuals and as a race, a
destination worthy all our powers and all our
love.

Thus the inquiry ends by legitimating the
innate convictions of the mind. It reconciles
us to all that is or shall be, as divinely appointed
process and end ; and yields an impregnable
peace, as its practical result. Tr.]

FHOM THE FIRST BOOK.
DOUBT.

Now then, at length, I believe myself ac-
quainted with a good part of the world which
surrounds me! And indeed I have bestowed
sufficient pains and care in becoming so. I
have credited only the consenting testimony of
my senses, and uniform experience. What I
saw I have touched, what I touched I have
analysed. I have repeated my observations
and repeated them again. I have compared
diflerent appearances with each other ; and not
till I had comprehended their precise connec-
tion,— not till I could explain and derive the
one from the other, could calculate beforehand
the result that was to follow, and the observa-
tion of the result corresponded to my calcula-
tion,— have I allowed myself to be satisfied.
Wherefore I am now as sure of the correctness
of this portion of my knowledge, as of my own
existence. I tread with firm step the familiar
sphere of my world, and am ready at any mo-
ment to stake my being and well-being on the
infallibility of my convictions.

But, — what am I myself, and what is my
destination"?

Suj^erfluous question ! It is long ago since
my instruction on this point was brought to a
close. It would require time to repeat to my-
self all that I have heard in detail and learned
and believed respecting it.

And in what way did I arrive at this know-
ledge which I dimly remember to possess ? Did
I, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge,
work my way through uncertainty, through
doubt and contradiction? Did I, when anything
credible off"ered itself, suspend my judgment,
2t

prove what was probable, and prove it again,
illustrate and compare ; until an inward voice,
unmistakeable and irresistible, called to me: It
is so, and only so ! as surely as thou livest and
hast tliy being? No! I remember no such state.
Instruction on those subjects was offered me
before I desired it. I was answered before I
had put the question. I listened because I could
not avoid it. There remained fixed in my me-
mory so much as it pleased Chance to preserve.
Without examination, and without interest, I
let everything be as it was given.

How then can I persuade myself that I pos-
sess, in fact, any knowledge on this subject? If
I can know and be convinced of that alone
which I myself have discovered, — if I am act-
ually acquainted with that only which I myself
have experienced, — then I cannot say, in truth,
that I possess the least knowledge respecting
my own destination. I know only what others
profess to know concerning it ; and all that I
can really affirm is this, that I have heard such
and such things in relation to it.

So then, while I have investigated for my-
self with accurate care the less important, I
have hitherto relied on the care and fidelity of
strangers in regard to the most important. I
have imputed to others an interest in the highest
concerns of Humanity, an earnestness, a preci-
sion which I had by no means discovered in
myself. I have estimated them unspeakably
higher than myself.

Whatever truth they know, from whence
can they know it except from their own reflec-
tion ? And why may not I discover the same
truth by the same reflection, since I avail as
much as they? How have I hitherto underva-
lued and despised myself!

I will that it be so no longer. With this mo-
ment I will enter upon my rights and take pos-
session of the dignity which belongs to me.
Renounced be everything foreign! I will in-
vestigate for myself Be it that secret wishes
as to how the investigation may terminate, — be
it that a fore-loving inclination to certain tenets
stirs within me. I forget and deny it. I will
allow it no influence on the direction of my
thoughts. With severe accuracy I will go to
work. With candor I will confess to myself
the whole. Whatever I find to be truth, how-
ever it may sound, shall be welcome to me. I
will KNOW. With the same certainty with which
I reckon that this ground will bear me when I
tread upon it, that this fire will burn me when
I come in contact with it, I will be able to com-
pute what I am and what I shall be. And if
this shall be found impossible, I will at least
know that it is impossible. And even to this
issue of my investigation I will submit myself,
if it shall discover itself to me as the Truth. — I
hasten to solve the problem which I have pro-
posed to myself.

I seize on-speeding Nature in her flight, ar-
rest her for an instant, fix firmly in my eye the
33

386

FICHTE.

present moment, and reflect upon it ! — upon this
Nature by which my power of thought has
hitlierto been unfolded, and formed for those
concUisioas which are valid in her domain.

I am surrounded by objects which I am con-
strained to regard as wholes, existing for them-
selves, and mutually distinguished from each
other. I see plants, trees, animals. I ascribe,
to each iadividual, qualities and characteristics
by which I distinguish them from each other ;
to this plant such a form, to another a different
one ; to this tree leaves of such a figure, to an-
other tree leaves of a different figure.

Each object has its determinate number of
qualities, none over and none under. To every
question whether it be tliis or that? one who
knows it thoroughly can always answer with a
decisive yes or no, which puts an end to all
vacillation between being and not being. Every-
thing which exists is this something or it is not
this something. It is colored or it is not colored ;
has this hue or has it not, is pleasant to the
taste or unpleasant, is palpable or impalpable,
and so on, indefinitely.

Each object possesses each of these qualities
in a determinate degree. If there is a scale for
a certain quality, and if I can apply that scale,
I shall find a certain measure of that quality
which it does not in the least degree exceed or
fall below. If I measure the height of this tree,
it is determined ; it is not one line higher or
lower than it is. If I consider the green of its
leaves, it is a determined green, not, in the least
degree, darker or brighter, fresher or more faded
than it is ; though I may have neither scale nor
words to define it. If I cast my eye upon this
l)lant, it stands at a certain stage between its
germination and its maturity ; not, in the least
degree, nearer to or farther from either than it
is. Everything that is, is thoroughly deter-
mined ; it is what it is, and absolutely nothing
else.

Bat Nature hurries on with her constant
changes ; and while I speak of the moment on
which I have seized, it is flown, and everything
has changed. And before I had seized it, it
was likewise altogether difl'erent. As it was
when I seized it, it had not always been. It
became such.

Why now and from what cause did it be-
come precisely such as it became"? Why,
among the infinitely various determinations
which Nature is capable of assuming, did she
assume, in this moment, precisely these which
she did assume, and no other?

For this reason : Because they were preceded
by precisely those which did precede them, and
could not have been preceded by any other ;
and because they followed precisely those, and
could not possibly have followed any other. If,
in the preceding moment, anything had been,
in the least degree, other than it was, then, in
the present, also, something would have been
other than it is. And why, in the preceding

moment, was everything such as it was? For
this reason : Because that which preceded ii;
was such as it was. And tliat again dependfd
on the one which went before it, and that again
on its predecessor, and so on, indefinitely up-
ward. Even so, in the next following moment,
Nature will be determined as she will be, be-
cause, in the present, she is determined as she
is. And in this next following moment some-
thing would necessarily be otherwis3 than it
will be, if, in the present, the least thing were
other than it is. And, in the moment which
shall follow that, everything will be such as it
will be, because, in this next fofowing, every-
thing was as it will be. And sc, the successor
of that will depend upon tha!, as itself will
have depended on its anteceiient, and so on,
indefinitely downward.

Nature travels through the infinite series of
her possible determinations without pause ; and
the changes in these determinations are not law-
less, but strictly lawful. Whatever exists in
Nature is necessarily what it is, and it is abso-
lutely impossible that it should be otherwise.
I enter into a complete chain of phenomena, in
which every link is determined by its prede-
cessor, and determines its successor; a fixed
connection of things, in which, from any given
moment, I might discover by mere reflection,
all possible states of the universe, ascending
(a parte ante), if I should explain the given mo-
ment, descending (a parte post), if I should
infer from it: if ascending, I should seek the
causes by which alone it could be what it is :
if descending, I should seek the consequences
which must necessarily flow from it. In every
part I receive the whole, because, it is only by
means of the whole, that each part is what it
is, and by means of that, it is necessarily what
it is. * * * * *

In every moment of her duration. Nature is a
connected whole. In every moment each in-
dividual part of her must be what it is, because,
all the other parts are as they are ; and you could
not move a grain of sand from its place, with-
out producing a change, invisible perhaps to
your eyes, througli all parts of the immeasurable
whole. Every moment of this duration is de-
termined by all the past moments and deter-
inines all the coining moments ; and you can-
not, in the moment that now is, suppose the
position of a grain of sand to be diflerent, with-
out being obliged to suppose the whole past,
indefinitely ascending, and the whole future, in-
definitely descending, to be diflerent. Make
the experiment, if you will, with this grain of
sea-sand, which you behold. Imagine it lying
some paces farther toward the interior. Then,
the storm-wind which drove it hither from the
sea, must have been stronger than it actually
was. But then, too, the preceding weather by
which this storm-wind and the degree of its
strength were determined, must have been
other than it was ; and the weather by which
that, in like manner, was preceded and deter-

FICHTE.

387

mined. And so you have, in an unlimited and
indefinitely ascending series, an entirely dif-
ferent temperature of the air, than that which
actually existed, and an entirely dill'erent cha-
racter of the botlies which influence that tem-
perature and are influenced by it. This tem-
jierature has unquestionably a very decided
influence on the fruitfulness or uiifruitfulness
of countries, and by means of these, and even
immediately, on the duration of human life.
How can you know, — for, since it is not per-
mitted us to penetrate into the interior of Na-
ture, it is sufiicient, here, to indicate possibili-
ties.— how can you know but that, with such a
quality of weather as would have been required
to cast this grain of sand farther inward, one
of your forefathers might have perished with
hunger, or cold, or heat, before he begat the son
from whom you have descended, accordingly,
that you could not be, and that all which you
think to etTect, in the present and for the future,
could not be, because a grain of sand lies in a
diflerent place ?

I myself, with all that I call mine, am a link
in tliis chain of Nature's strict necessity. There
was a time — so others who lived in that time
inform me, and I myself am necessitated, by
reasoning, to suppose such a time, of which I
am not directly conscious, — there was a time in
which as yet I was not, and a moment in which
I began to be. I existed only for others, not yet
for myself. Since then, my self-consciousness
has gradually unfolded itself, and I have dis-
covered in myself certain faculties and dis-
positions, necessities and natural cravings. I
am a determinate existence, which at some time
or other began to be.

I did not originate of myself. It would be
the greatest contradiction to suppose that I was
before I was, in order to bring myself into
being. I became actual, by means of another
power, exterior to myself. And by what other
power but the universal power of Nature,
since I am a part of Nature 1 The time of my
origin, and the qualities with which I originated,
were determined by this universal power of
Nature ; and all the forms, under which these
inborn ground-qualities have since manifested
themselves, and will manifest themselves, so
long as I shall continue to be, are determined
by the same power of Nature. It was impos-
sible that another than me should have origi-
nated in my place. It is impossible that the
being which has so originated, can, in any mo-
ment of his existence, be other than he is and
shall be.

*******

It is true I am conscious of myself, in my in-
nermost being, as self-subsisting and free in
various particulars of my life. But this con-
sciousness may be easily explained by the prin-
ciples which have been established, and be made
to appear perfectly consistent with the conclu-
sions which have just been drawn. My im-
mediate consciousness, — the real apperception,

— does not extend beyond myself and my con-
ditions. I know nothing immediately, except
my own states. Whatever I am enabled to
know, beyond these, I know only by inference,
in the same way in which I have just now in-
ferred original forces in Nature, which, by no
means, come within the circle of my percep-
tions. But I — that which I call me, — my per-
son— am not the man-making power of Nature
itself, but only one of its manifestations. And
only of this manifestation am I consciou.s, as of
myself; not of that power. That is oidy an
inference to which I am led by the necessity of
accounting for my existence. This manifesta-
tion, however, in its proper essence, is indeed
the product of an original and self-subsisting
power ; and must be found such in conscious-
ness. Hence I appear to myself altogether as
a self-subsisting being. For the same reason, I
appear to myself free, in particular passages of
my life, when these passages are manifestations
of that self-subsisting power which has fallen
to my share as an individual. On the other
hand, I appear to myself restrained and limited,
when, owing to a concatenation of external cir-
cumstances, originating in time, — not, however,
lying in the original determination of my in-
dividuality,— I cannot do that which I might
do, so far as my individual capacity is concern-
ed. I appear to myself to be coerced when
this individual capacity is compelled, by a su-
perior power opposed to it, to manifest itself
contrary to its own law.

Give a tree consciousness, and let it grow un-
obstructed, spread forth its boughs and produce
leaves, buds, blossoms, fruits, according to its
kind. It certainly will not feel itself restrain-
ed, because it happens to be a tree, and one of
this particular species, and this particular in-
dividual of that species. It will feel itself free,
because, in all those manifestations, it does
nothing but what its nature requires. It will
not clioose to do anything else, because it can
only choose what that nature requires. But let
its growth be restrained by unfavorable wea-
ther, by want of nourishment, or other causes :
it will feel itself limited and thwarted, because
an impulse, which actually resides in its nature,
is not satisfied. Bind its freely on all sides
striving limbs to a trellis ; force strange shoots
upon it by grafting; and it will feel itself co-
erced in its action. Its limbs indeed continue
to grow, but not in that direction which its
forces would have taken, if left to themselves.
It produces fruits, indeed, but not those which
its original nature required. In my immediate
consciousness I appear to myself free. When I
reflect on the whole of Nature, I find that free-
donr is absolutely impossible. The former
must be subordinated to the latter, for only by
means of the latter can it be explained.

What high satisfaction does this system give
to my understanding! What order, what firm
connection, what an easy oversight does it in-
troduce into all my knowledge. Consciousness,

3S8

FICHTE.

according to this system, is not that stranger in
Nature, whose connection with being is so in-
comprehensible. It is at home tliere, and even
constitutes one of Nature's necessary conditions.
Nature rises gradually in the fixed gradation of
her productions. In rude matter she is simple
being. In organization she returns into herself
in order to act upon herself internally ; — in the
plant to shape herself, in the animal to move
herself, and in man, as her highest masterpiece,
she returns into herself to behold and contem-
plate herself She redoubles herself, as it were,
in him, and from simple being, becomes being
and consciousness in one.

It is easy to explain, in this connexion, how
I should know of my own being and its condi-
tions. My being and knowing have one com-
mon ground, — my nature in general. There is
in me no being which does not know of itself,
for the very reason that it is my being.

In each individual. Nature beholds herself
from a different point of view. I call myself/,
and you you. You call yourself I, and me you.
I am external to you, as you are external to me.
Of that which is external to me, I comprehend
first my nearest limits. You comprehend your
nearest limits. Starting from this point we
proceed, each through the next succeeding links,
and pass on. We describe very different series,
which here and there perhaps intersect each
other, but nowhere run side by side, in the
same direction. All possible individuals, and,
accordingly, all possible view -points of con-
sciousness, become actual. This consciousness
of all individuals combined, constitutes the per-
fected self-consciousness of the universe. And
there is no other : for only in the individual, is
there perfect determinateness and actuality.

The testimony of each individual conscious-
ness is infallible, provided only, it is actually
the consciousness hitherto described. For this
consciousness unfolds itself out of the entire
course of Nature, proceeding according to fixed
laws ; and Nature cannot contradict herself.
Wherever there is a mental representation, there
must be also a being corresponding thereto.
For the representations in the mind are gene-
rated only contemi^oraneously with the being
which corresponds to them. In each individual
his particular consciousness is throughout deter-
mined, for it is a product of his own nature.
No one has other cognitions, or has them in any
other degree of vividness than he actually has.
The contents of his cognitions are determined
Dy the standpoint which he occupies in the
universe. Their clearness and vividness are
determined by the more or less of energy, with
which the power of Humanity can manifest it-
self in his person. Give Nature a single con-
dition of a single person, be it never so insigni-
ficant, the course of a single muscle, the flexure
of a hair, and she would tell you — if she pos-
sessed general consciousness, and could answer

— all the thoughts which this person will think
during the whole period of his conscious exist-
ence.

Equally intelligible, according to this system,
is that well-known phenomenon in our con-
sciousness which we call the will. A volition
is the immediate consciousness of the activity
of our internal powers of Nature. The imme-
diate consciousness of a striving of these powers,
which is not yet effective, because hampered
by opposing powers, is conscious inclination or
desire. The struggle of conflicting powers is
irresolution; the victory gained by one of them,
a resolve of the will. If the endeavoring power
is merely one which is common to us with the
plant or the brute, there has already ensued, in
our inner being, a division and a degradation.
The craving is not consistent with our rank in
the order of things, but beneath it; and may,
with propriety, be called, according to a certain
custom of speech, a low one. If that which
endeavors, is the whole undivided power of our
Humanity, then tiie craving is in harmony with
our nature, and may be called a higher. The
endeavor of this latter power, considered gene-
rally, may properly be termed a moral law.
Its effective action is a virtuous will, and the
act which flows from it, virtue. The triumph
of the former, without harmony with the latter,
is want of virtue. Its victory over the latter,
and against the ojiposition of the latter, is vice.

The power which overcomes, in each case,
overcomes necessarily. Its overweight is de-
termined by the connection of the universe.
Accordingly, the virtue, the want of virtue, the
vice, of each individual, is also irrevocably de-
termined by the same connection. Give Nature
again, the course of a muscle, the flexure of a
hair, in a certain individual, and if she could
think in the whole, and could answer your in-
quiry, she would disclose to you all the good
actions and all the evil actions of his life, from
the beginning to the end. But virtue does not
therefore cease to be virtue, and vice vice. The
virtuous is a noble, the vicious, an ignoble and
abominable nature ; but one which necessarily
flows from the connection of the universe.

There is remorse. It is the consciousness of
the still continuing struggle of Humanity in me,
even after it has been vanquished ; combined
with the unpleasant feeling, that it has been
vanquished. A disquieting, but still a precious
pledge of our nobler nature. From this con-
sciousness of our radical impulse, springs con-
science also, and its greater or less acuteness and
sensitiveness, — down to the absolute want of it,
— in different individuals. The less noble are
incapable of remorse, because Humanity, in
them, has not even power enough to contend
against the lower appetites. Reward and pun-
ishment are the natural consequences of virtue
and vice, which tend to produce new virtue
and new vice. By often and important victo-
ries, namely, our individual power is extended
and confirmed. From want of eflectiveness

FICHTE.

389

and from frequent defeats it becomes weaker
and weaker.

Only the ideas of blame and imputation have
no meaning, except in relation to external jus-
tice. He has incurred blame, and to him his
transgression is imputed, who forces Society to
use external, artificial forces, in order to hinder
the activity of those impulses which are preju-
dicial to the general safety.

My examination is concluded, and my desire
for knowledge satisfied. I know what I am in
general, and wherein consists the essence of
my kind. I am a manifestation, conditioned
by the entire universe, of a self- determining
power of Nature. My particular, personal con-
ditions it is impossible to discover by means of
their causes, for I cannot penetrate into the inte-
rior of Nature. But I become directly conscious
of them in myself I know very well what 1
am at the present moment. I can remember
pretty well what I was formerly, and I shall
certainly experience what I am to be when I
am it.

It cannot occur to me to make any use of this
discovery, in action. For it is not I that act,
but Nature acts in me. I cannot think of un-
dertaking to make myself aught else than I am
destined by Nature to be. For it is not I that
make myself, but Nature that makes me, and
all that I shall be. I may repent and be glad
and make good resolutions, (although strictly
speaking /cannot even do this, since everything
must come to me of itself, if it is destined to
come at all :) but I may be sure that all my re-
pentance and all my resolutions cannot effect
the least alteration in that which I am, once for
all, destined to be. I am subject to the inexo-
rable power of strict Necessity. If that deter-
mines me to be a fool or vicious, without doubt,
I shall be a fool and vicious. If that deter-
mines me to be wise and good, without doubt,
I shall be wise and good. It is not Necessity's
fault or merit, nor mine. Necessity is subject
to its own laws, and I to its. Since I am aware
of this, it will be best for my peace of mind that
I should subordinate my wishes also to this
power, to which my being is, once for all, en-
tirely subject.

O, these opposing wishes ! For why should
I longer conceal the sorrow, the abhorrence, the
terror which has seized my inner man, from
the moment that I perceived how the inquiry
must terminate. I had made a sacred covenant
with myself, that inclination should have no
influence on the direction of my thought; and
indeed I have, consciously, allowed it none.
But shall I not therefore, at the conclusion, con-
fess to myself, that this result contradicts my
deepest, innermost presentiments, wishes, de-
mands 1 And how can I, notwithstanding the
correctness and the trenchant sharpness of the
proofs which appear to me in this deliberation,
believe in an interpretation of my existence

which so decidedly conflicts with the most inti-
mate root of that existence, and with the ends
for whose sake alone I wish to be, and without
which, I count my existence a curse?

Wherefore must my heart sorrow and be rent
for that which so completely satisfies my under-
standing? While nothing in Nature contradicts
itself, is man alone a contradictory being? — or,
perhaps, not man, but only I and those who re-
semble me. Ought I perhaps to have gone on
in the pleasant conceit which environed me,
to have kept within the circle of my being's
immediate consciousness, and never to have
raised the question concerning the grounds of
that being, the answer to which has now ren-
dered me miserable? But if my answer is cor-
rect, I could but raise that question. It was
not I that raised it, but thinking Nature in me.
I was doomed to misery, and I mourn in vain
the lost innocence of my mind, which can never
return.

But courage ! Let everything else forsake me,
if only this forsake me not. For the sake of a
mere preference, however deep in my interior
that preference may lie, and however sacred it
may seem to me, I cannot indeed relinquish
what follows from incontrovertible reasons. But
perhaps I have erred in my investigation. Per-
haps I have but half considered the sources
from which I was compelled to draw in con-
ducting it, and have looked at them only from
one side. I ought to repeat the investigation
from the opposite end, that I may have a point
from which to begin it. What is it then that so
mightily repels and offends me in that decision?
What is it that I wished to find instead of it?
Let me, before all things, make clear to myself
that preference to which I appeal.

That I should be destined to be wise or good,
a fool or vicious, that I should be unable to
effect any change in that destination, that I
should be without merit in the former case, and
without blame in the latter, — this it was that
filled me with loathing and horror. That
ground of my being and of the conditions of
my being external to myself, whose manifesta-
tion, in turn, is determined by other grounds
external to itself, — that it was that so violently
repelled me. That freedom which is not my
own, but belongs to a foreign power without
me, and which, even in that power, is only a
conditioned, only a half-freedom, — that it was
that failed to satisfy me. / myself, that of
which I am conscious as of a self, as of my
own person, and which, in that system, appears
only as the manifestation of a higher power,
I myself would be self-subsisting, I would be
something, not in another and by means of an-
other, but for myself. I would be, in myself,
as such, the ultimate ground of my conditions.
The rank, which, in that system, is occupied by
an original power of Nature, I would occupy,
myself; but with this difference, that the mode
in which I manifest myself, shall not be de-
oq *

390

FICHTE.

termined by foreign powers. I would possess
an inward power peculiar to myself, of mani-
festing myself in an infinite variety of ways,
like those powers of Nature; a power which
should manifest itself exactly as it does, for no
other reason than bccanse it manifests itself thus;
and not, like those powers of Nature, because
it is subject to such or such external conditions.
Where now, according to this my wish, should
be the piroper seat and centre of that peculiar
power of the/.'' Evidently, not in my body, v/hich
I am quite willing should pass — at least so far
as its being is concerned, if not in its ulterior
conditions — for a manifestation of the powers of
Nature ; neither in my sensual appetites, which
I regard as a referring of those powers to my
consciousness : consequently, in my thinking and
willing. I would will with freedom, accord-
ing to a freely proposed aim. And this will,
as absolute, ultimate ground, determined by no
possible higher than itself, should move and
shape, first my body, and then, by means of
tliat, tlie world which surrounds me. My ac-
tive, natural power should be subject only to
my will, and not be put in motion by anything
else but that. So should it be. There should
be a supreme good, according to spiritual laws.
I would be able to seek this with freedom until
I find it, to acknowledge it as such when I have
found it ; and it should be my fault if I found it
not. This supreme good I would be able to
will, simply because I will it; and if I willed
anything else in its stead, it should be my
fault.

*****

Freedom, such as that which has been de-
manded above, is conceivable only in Intelli-
gences ; but without doubt, it is conceivable in
them. On this supposition, also, man as well
as Nature is perfectly intelligible. My body
and my power of operating in the world of the
senses, in this as in the other system, are a
manifestation of limited natural powers ; and
my natural inclinations are the relations of this
manifestation to my consciousness. The mere
cognition of that which exists without my ac-
tion, originates in the same way, on the suppo-
sition of freedom, as in the opposite system ;
and up to this point they both agree. But ac-
cording to that, — and here begins the conflict of
the two systems — according to that, my capacity
of sensuous action continues subject to Nature,
and is still put in motion by the same power
which produced it; and thought has nothing to
do in the matter but to look on. According to
this, on the contrary, this capacity, when once
it exists, is under the dominion of a power
exalted above all Nature, and entirely inde-
pendent of Nature's laws, the power of con-
ceived purposes and of the will. Thought in
this case is not a mere spectator, but itself the
original of the action. There, it is external
powers, invisible to me, which put an end to
my irresolution and limit my activity, as well
as the immediate consciousness of that acti-

vity, my will, to a single point; just as the ac-
tivity of a jilant, undetermined in itself, is
limited. Here, it is I myself, independent and
free from the influence of all external forces,
who put an end to my irresolution and deter-
mine myself by a recognition, freely produced
in myself, of the supreme good.

Which of these two opinions shall I embrace?
Am I free and self-subsisting, or am I nothing
in myself, and merely the apparition of a fo-
reign power ? ■ '. ■ '

The system of liberty satisfies ; the opposite
deadens and annihilates my heart. To stand
there cold and dead, a mere spectator of chang-
ing events, an idle mirror of fleeting forms, —
such an existence is intolerable to me. I scorn
and curse it. I would love, I would lose my-
self in sympathy; I would rejoice and be sad.
* * * I would do everything for the best;
would rejoice in myself when I have done right,
and would sorrow for myself when I have done
wrong. And even this sorrow should be sweet
to me, for it is interest in myself, and pledge of
future amendment. Only in love there is life ;
without it is death and annihilation.

But cold and impertinent the opposite system
steps in and mocks at this love. I am not and
I act not, when I listen to that. The object of
my intensest desire is a phantom of the brain,
a palpably demonstrable, coarse illusion. In-
stead of me there is and acts a foreign, to me
quite unknown power ; and it becomes a mat-
ter of perfect indifl"erence to me how that power
may unfold itself Ashamed I stand there, with
my heartfelt aflection and my good will, and
blush at that which I know to be the best in
me, and for whose sake alone I wish to be,
as it were a laughable folly. My holiest is de-
livered up to mockery. * * * *

* * * Xhe same system, dry and heart-
less, but inexhaustible in explaining, explains
even this, my interest in liberty, my abhorrence
for the opposite opinion. It explains everytliing
which I bring forward against it out of my con-
sciousness ; and as often as I say it is so and so,
it answers me in the same dry and imperturba-
ble manner : " That is precisely what I say too;
and I tell thee, moreover, the reasons why it
must necessarily be so." * * * " Thou ad-
mittest, without controversy, that notwithstand-
ing there is, in the plant, an instinct peculiar to
itself to grow and shape itself, yet the determi-
nate activity of this instinct depends on forces
external to itself Give this plant consciousness
for a moment, and it will feel in itself this in-
stinct to grow, with interest and love. Convince
it by arguments drawn from reason, that this
instinct cannot eflect the least thing for itself,
but that the measure of its manifestation is al-
ways determined by something external to
itself, and perhaps it will talk exactly as thou
hast just been talking. It will behave in a man-

FICHTE.

391

ner which may be pardoned in a plant, but
which is altogether unbecominir in thee, as a
higher product of Nature, capable of embracing
the whole of Nature in thy thought."

What can I object to such representations?
* * * Undecided I cannot remain. All my
peace and all my dignity depends on the an-
swer to this question. Just as impossible is it
for me to come to a decision. I have absolutely
no ground for deciding, one way or the other.

Intolerable state of uncertainty and irresolu-
tion, into which I have been forced by the best
and most courageous resolve of my life ! What
power can deliver me from thee? What power
can deliver me from myself?

FROM THE THIRD BOOK.
FAITH.

* * * II Not merely to know, but to act
according to thy knowledge, is thy destination."
So says the voice which cries to me aloud from
my innermost soul, so soon as I collect and give
heed to myself, for a moment. " Not idly to in-
spect and contemplate thyself, nor to brood over
devout sensations; — no! thou existest to act.
Thine act, and only thine act, determines thy
worth." * ******

* * * Shall I refuse obedience to that in-
ward voice? I will not do it. I will give my-
self voluntarily the determination which that
impulse imputes to me. And I will embrace,
together with this resolution, the thought of its
reality and truth, and of the reality of all that
it presupposes. I will hold to the stand-point
of natural thinking, which this impulse assigns
to me, and renounce all those morbid specula-
tions and refinementsof the understanding which
alone could make me doubt its truth. I under-
stand thee now, sublime Spirit!* I have found
the organ with which I embrace this reality, and
with it, probably, all other reality. Knowledge
is not that organ. No knowledge can ground
and demonstrate itself Every knowledge pre-
supposes a higher as its ground, and this up-
ward process has no end. It is Faith, that vo-
luntary reposing in the view which naturally
presents itself, because it is the only one by
which we can fulfil our destination, — this it is
that first gives assent to knowledge, and exalts
to certainty and conviction what would other-
wise be mere illusion. It is not knowledge, but
a determination of the will to let knowledge
pass for valid. I hold fast, then, forever to this
expression. It is not a mere difference of terms,
but a real deep-grounded distinction, exercising
a very important influence on my whole mental
disposition. All my conviction is only faith,
and is derived from a disposition of the mind,
not from the understanding. * * *

* * * There is only one point to which I
have to direct incessantly all my thoughts:
What I must do, and how I shall most effectu-

* This refers to tlie second Book, which takes the form
of a dialogue between the inquirer and a Spirit.

ally accomplish what is required of me. All
my thinking must have reference to my doing,
— must be considered as means, however re-
mote, to this end. Otherwise, it is an empty,
aimless sport, a waste of time and power, and
perversion of a noble faculty which was given
me for a very different purpose.

I may hope, I may promise myself with cer-
tainty, that when I think after this manner, my
thinking shall be attended with practical results.
Nature, in which I am to act, is not a foreign
being, created without regard to nro. It is fa-
shioned by the laws of my own thought, and
must surely coincide with them. It must be
everywhere transparent, cognisable, permeable
to me, in its innermost recesses. Everywhere
it expresses nothing but relations and references
of myself to myself; and as certainly as I may
hope to know myself, so certainly I may pro-
mise myself that I shall be able to explore that.
Let me but seek what I have to seek, and I shall
find. Let me but inquire whereof I have to in-
quire, and I shall receive answer.

I.

That voice in my interior, which I believe,
and for the sake of which I believe all else that
I believe, commands me not merely to act in
general. That is impossible. All these general
propositions are formed only by my voluntary
attention and reflection directed to various facts;
but they do not express a single fact of them-
selves. This voice of my conscience prescribes
to me with certainty, in each particular situa-
tion of my existence, what I must do and what
I must avoid in that situation. It accompanies
me, if I will but listen to it with attention,
through all the events of my life, and never re-
fuses its reward where I am called to act. It
establishes immediate conviction, and irresisti-
bly compels my assent. It is impossible for me
to contend against it.

To hearken to that voice, honestly and undis-
turbedly, without fear and without useless spe-
culation, to obey it, — this is my sole destination,
this the whole aim of my existence. My life
ceases to be an empty sport, without truth or
meaning. There is something to be done, sim-
ply because it must be done. That that which
conscience demands of me in particular, — of me
who have come into this situation, — may be ful-
filled,— for this purpose alone do I exist. To
perceive it, I have understanding; to do it,
power.

Through these commandments of conscience
alone come truth and reality into my concep-
tions. I cannot refuse attention and obedience
to them, widiout renouncing my destination.

I cannot, therefore, withhold my belief in the
reality which they bring before me, without, at
the same time, denying my destination. It is
absolutely true, without farther examination and
demonstration, — it is the first true, and the
ground of all other truth and certainty, — that I
must obey that voice. Consequently, according

392

FICHTE.

to this way of thinking, everything becomes true
and real for me, which the possibility of such
obedience presupposes.

There hover before me appearances in space,
to wliich I transfer the idea of my own being.
I rei)resent them to myself as beings of my own
kind. Speculation, carried out, has taught me
or will teach ine that these sujiposed rational
beings, without me, are only products of my
own conception; that I am necessitated, once
fur ail, by laws of thought which can be shown
to exist, to represent the idea of myself out of
myself, and that, according to the same laws,
this representation can be transferred only to
certain determinate intuitions. But the voice
of my conscience cries to me : " Whatever these
beings may be in and for themselves, thou shall
treat them as subsisting for themselves, as free,
self-existent beings, entirely independent of
thyself. Take it for granted that they are
capable of proposing to themselves aims inde-
pendently of thee, by themselves alone. Never
disturb the execution of these, their designs, but
further them rather, with all thy might. Re-
spect their liberty. Embrace with love their
objects as thine own.'' So must I act. And
to such action shall, will, and must all my
thinking be directed, if I have but formed the
purpose to obey the voice of my conscience.
Accordingly, I shall ever consider those beings,
as beings subsisting for themselves, and forming
and accomplishing aims independently of me.
From this stand-point, I cannot consider them
in any other light; and the above-mentioned
speculation will vanish like an empty dream.
before my eyes. " I think of them as beings of
my own species i" said I just now j but strictly,
it is not a thought by which they are first repre-
sented to me as such. It is the voice of con-
science ; the command : " here restrain thy
liberty, here suppose and respect foreign aims ;"
this it is which is first translated into the
thought : " here is surely and truly, subsisting
for itself, a being like me." To consider them
otherwise, I must first deny the voice of my
conscience in life, and forget it in speculation.

There hover before me other appearances,
which I do not consider as beings like myself,
but as irrational objects. Speculation finds it
easy to sliow how the conception of such ob-
jects develops itself purely from my power of
conception, and its necessary modes of action.
But I embrace these same things also with
necessity and craving and fruition. It is not the
conception, no, it is hunger and thirst and the
satisfaction of these that makes anything food
and drink to me. Of course, I am constrained
to believe in the reality of that which threatens
my sensuous existence, or which alone can pre-
serve it. Conscience comes in, at once hallow-
ing and limiting this impulse of Nature. "Thou
shalt preserve, exercise and strengthen thyself,
and thy sensuous power : for this sensuous
power forms a part of the calculation, in the
plan of reason. But thou canst preserve it only

by a suitable use, agreeable to the peculiar in-
terior laws of such matters. And beside thy-
self, there are also others like thee, whose pow-
ers are calculated upon like thine own, and who
can be preserved only in the same way. Allow
to them the same use of their portion which it
is commanded thee to make of thine own por-
tion. Respect what comes to them, as their
property. Use what comes to thee in a suit-
able manner, as thy property." So must I act,
and I must think conformably to such action.
Accordingly, I am necessitated to regard these
things as standing under their own natural laws,
independent of me, but which I am capable of
knowing ; that is, to ascribe to them an existence
independent of myself. I am constrained to
believe in such laws, and it becomes my busi-
ness to ascertain them ; and empty speculation
vanishes like mist when the warming sun ap-
pears.

In short, there is for me, in general, no pure,
naked existence, with which I have no concern,
and which I contemplate solely for the sake of
contemplation. Whatever exists for me, exists
only by virtue of its relation to me. But there
is everywhere but one relation to me possible,
and all the rest are but varieties of this ; that
is my destination as a moral agent. My world
is the object and sphere of my duties, and ab-
solutely nothing else. There is no other world,
no other attributes of my world, for me. My
collective capacity, and all finite capacity is in-
sufficient to comprehend any other. Everything
which exists for me forces its existence and its
reality upon me, solely by means of this rela-
tion ; and only by means of this relation, do I
grasp it. There is utterly wanting in me an
organ for any other existence.

To the question, whether then in fact such a
world exists as I represent to myself? I can
answer nothing certain, nothing which is raised
above all doubt, but this: I have assuredly and
truly these definite duties, which represent them-
selves to me as duties toward such and such
persons, concerning such and such objects.
These definite duties I cannot represent to my-
self otherwise, nor can I execute them other-
wise, than as lying within the sphere of such
a world as I conceive. Even he who has
never thought of his moral destination, if any
such there could be, or who, if he has thought
about it generally, has never entertained the
slightest purpose of ever, in the indefinite future,
fulfilling it; even he derives his world of the
senses and his belief in the reality of such a
world, no otherwise than from his idea of a
moral world. If he does not embrace it with
the idea of his duties, he certainly does so with
the requisition of his rights. What he does not
require of himself, he yet requires of others, in
relation to himself; that they treat him with
care and consideration, agreeably to his nature,
not as an irrational thing, but as a free and self-
subsisting being. And so he is constrained, in
order that they may comply with this demand,

FICHTE.

393

to think of them also, as rational, free, and self-
subsisting, and independent of the mere force
of Nature. And even though he should never
propose to himself any other aim in the use and
fruition of the objects which surround him, than
that of enjoying them, he still demands this en-
joyment as a right, of which others must leave
him in undisturbed possession. Accordingly,
he embraces even the irrational world of the
senses with a moral idea. No one who lives a
conscious life can renounce these claims to be
respected as rational and self-subsisting. And
with these claims at least there connects itself
in his soul, a seriousness, an abandonment of
doubt, a belief in reality ; if not with the ac-
knowledgment of a moral law in his interior.
Do but assail him who denies his owri moral
destination and your existence and the exist-
ence of a corporeal world, except in the way
of experiment, to try what speculation can do,
— assail him actively, carry his principles into
life, and act as if he either did not exist, or as
if he were a piece of rude matter, and he will
soon forget the joke ; he will become seriously
angry with you, he will seriously reprove you
for treating him so, and maintain that you ought
not and must not do so to him; and, in this
way, he will practically admit, that you possess
indeed the power of acting upon him, that he
exists, that you exist, and that there exists a
medium through which you ad upon him ; and
that you have at least duties toward him.

Hence it is not the action of supposed objects
without us, which exist for us only, and for
which we exist only, so far as we already know
of liieui, just as little is it an empty fashioning,
by means of our imagination and our think-
ing,— whose products would appear to us as
such, as empty pictures ; — it is not these, but
the necessary faith in our liberty and our power,
in our veritable action and in certain laws of
human action, which serves as the foundation
of all consciousness of a reality without us, a
consciousness which is itself but a belief, since
it rests on a belief, but one which follows ne-
cessarily from that belief. We are compelled
to assume that we act in general, and that we
ought to act in a certain way ; we are compelled
to assume a certain sphere of such action : this
sphere is the truly and actually existing world
as we find jt. And vice versa, this world is ab-
solutely nothing but that sphere, and by no
n\eans extends beyond it. The consciousness
of the ajetual world proceeds from the necessity
of action, and not the reverse, — i. e. the neces-
sity of action from the consciousness of such a
world. The necessity is first not the conscious-
ness ; that is derived. We do not act because
we agnize, but we agnize because we are des-
tined to act. Practical reason is the root of all
reason. The laws of action for rational beings
are immediately certain ; their world is certain,
only because they are certain. Were we to re-
nounce the former, the world, and, with it, we
ourselves, should sink into absolute nothing.
2z

We raise ourselves out of this nothing, and sus-
tain ourselves above this nothing, solely by
means of our morality.

II.

********

When I contemplate the world as it is, inde-
pendently of any injunction, there manifests it-
self in my interior the wish, the longing, no !
not a longing merely, — the absolute demand for
a better world. I cast a glance at the relations
of men to each other and to Nature, at the
weakness of their powers, at the strength of
their appetites and passions. It cries to me
irresistibly from my innermost soul : " thus it
cannot possibly be destined always to remain.
It must, O ! it must all become other and better !"

I can in nowise imagine to myself the present
condition of man as that which is designed to
endure. I cannot imagine it to be his whole
and final destination. If so, then would every-
thing be dream and delusion, and it would not
be worth the trouble to have lived and to have
taken part in this ever-reourring, unproductive
and unmeaning game. Only so far as I can
regard this condition as the means of something
better, as a point of transition to a higher and
more perfect, does it acquire any value for me.
Not on its own account, but on account of some-
thing better for which it prepares the way, can
I bear it, honor it, and joyfully fulfil my part in
it. My mind can find no place, nor rest a mo-
ment, in the present; it is irresistibly repelled y
by it. My wSiole life streams irrepressibly on
toward the future and better.

Am I only to eat and to drink that I may
hunger and thirst again, and again eat and drink,
until the grave, yawning beneath my feet, swal-
lows me up, and I myself spring up as food
from the ground 7 Am I to beget beings like
myself, that they also may eat and drink and
die, and leave behind them beings like them-
selves, who shall do the same that I have done ?
To what purpose this circle which perpetually
returns into itself; this game for ever re-com-
mencing, after the same manner, in which
everything is born but to perish, and perishes
but to be born again as it was ? This monster
which forever devours itself, that it may pro-
duce itself again, and which produces itself that
it may again devour itself?

Never can this be the destination of my being
and of all being. There must be something
which exists because it has been brought forth,
and which now remains and can never be
brought forth again, after it has been brought
forth once. And this, that is permanent, must
beget itself amid the mutations of the perishing,
and continue amid those mutations, and be
borne along unhurt upon the waves of time.

As yet our race wrings with difficulty its sus-
tenance and its continuance from opposing Na-
ture. As yet the larger portion of mankind are
bowed down their whole life long by hard
labor, to procure sustenance for themselves and

394

FICHTE.

the few who think for them. Immortal spirits
are compelled to tix all their thinking and
scheming, and all their eflbrts, on the soil which
bears them nourishment. It often comes to
pass as yet, that when the laborer has ended,
and promises himself, for his pains, the conti-
nuance of his own existence and of those pains ;
that then hostile elements destroy in a moment
what he had been slowly and carefully prepar-
ing for years, and delivers up the industrious
pains-taking man, without any fault of his own,
to hunger and misery. It often comes to pass
as yet, that inundations, storm-winds, volcanoes,
desolate whole countries, and mingle works
which bear the impress of a rational mind, as
well as their authors, with the wild chaos of
death and destruction. Diseases still hurry
men into a premature grave, men in the bloom
of their powers, and children whose existence
passes away without fruit or result. The pes-
tilence still stalks through blooming states, and
leaves the few who escape it, bereaved and
alone, deprived of the accustomed aid of their
companions ; and does all in its power to give
back to the wiklerness the land which the in-
dustry of man had already conquered for its
own.

So it is, but so it cannot surely have been in-
tended always to remain. No work which
bears the impress of reason, and which was
undertaken for the purpose of extending the
dominion of reason, can be utterly lost in the
progress of the times. The sacrifices which
the irregular violence of Nature draws from
reason, must at least weary, satisfy and recon-
cile that violence. The force which has caused
injury by acting without rule, cannot be intended
to do so more in that way, it cannot be destined
to renew itself; it must be used up, from this
time forth and forever, Ijy that one outbreak.
All those outbreaks of rude force, before which
human power vanishes into nothing, — those
desolating hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes,
can be nothing else but the final struggle of the
wild mass against the lawfully progressive, life-
giving, systematic course to which it is com-
pelled, contrary to its own impulse. They can
be nothing but the last concussive strokes in the
formation of our globe, now about to perfect it-
self. That opposition must gradually become
weaker, and at last- exhausted, since, in the
lawful course of things, there can be nothing
that should renew its power. That formation
must at last be perfected, and our destined
abode complete. Nature must gradually come
into a condition in which we can count with
certainty upon her equal step, and in which her
power shall keep unaltered a determinate rela-
tion with that power which is destined to govern
it, that is, the human. So far as this relation
already exists, and the systematic cultivation
of Nature has gained firm footing; the work-
manship of man, by its mere existence and its
effects, independent of any design on the part
of the author, is destined to react upon Nature,

and to represent in her a new and life-giving
principle. Cultivated lands are to quicken and
mitigate the sluggisli, hostile atmosphere of the
eternal forests, wildernesses, and morasses.
Well-ordered and diversified culture is to diffuse
tlirough the air a new principle of life and fruc-
tification ; and tlie sun to send forth its most
animating beams into that atmosphere which
is breathed by a healthy, industrious, and in-
genious people. Science, awakened, at first, by
the pressure of necessity, shall hereafter pene-
trate deliberately and calmly into the unchange-
able laws of Nature, overlook her whole power,
and learn to calculate her possible develop-
ments;— shall form for itself a new Nature in
idea, attach itself closely to the living and ac-
tive, and follow hard upon her footsteps. And
all knowledge which reason has wrung from
Nature, shall be preserved in the course of the
times, and become the foundation of further
knowledge, for the common understanding of
our race. Thus shall Nature become ever more
transparent and penetrable to human percep-
tion, even to its innermost secrets. And human
power, enlightened and ibrtified with its inven-
tions, shall rule her with ease, and peacefully
maintain the conquest once effected. By de-
grees, there shall be needed no greater outlay
of mechanical labor than the human body re-
quires for its development, cultivation and
health. And this labor shall cease to be a bur-
den; for the rational being is not destined to
be a bearer of burdens.

But it is not Nature, it is liberty itself, that
occasions the most numerous and the most fear-
ful disorders among our kind. The direst enemy
of man is man.

It is the destination of our race to unite in one
body, thoroughly acquainted with itself in all
its parts, and imiformly cultivated in all. Na-
ture, and even the passions and vices of man-
kind, have, from the beginning, drifted towards
this goal. A large part of the road which leads
to it is already put behind us, and we may count
with certainty that this goal, which is the con-
dition of further, united progress, will be reached
in due season. Do not ask History whether
mankind, on the whole, have grown more
purely moral! They have grown to extended,
comprehensive, forceful acts of arbitrary will ;
but it was almost a necessity of their condition
that they should direct that will exclusively to
evil.

Neither ask History whether the aesthetic
education and the culture of the understanding,
of the fore-world, concentrated upon a few sin-
gle points, may not have far exceeded, in de-
gree, that of modern times. It might be that
the answer would put us to shame, and that
the human race would appear, in this regard,
not to have advanced, but to have lost ground.

But ask History in what period the existing
culture was most widely diflused and distri-

FICHTE.

395

buted among the greatest number of individu-
als? Undoubtedly, it will be found, that from
the beginning of history down to our own day,
the few light-points of culture have extended
their rays farther and farther from their centres,
have seized one individual after another, and
one people after another; and that this diffusion
of culture is still going on before our eyes.

And diis was the first goal of Humanity, on
its infinite path. Until this is attained, until
the existing culture of an age is diffused over
the whole habitable globe, and our race is made
capable of the most unlimited communication
with itself, one nation, one quarter of the
globe must await the other, on their common
path, and each must bring its centuries of ap-
parent stationariness or retrogradation, as a sa-
crifice to the common bond, for the sake of
which, alone, they themselves exist.

When this first goal shall be attained, when
everything useful that has been discovered at
one end of the earth, shall immediately be made
known and imparted to all, then Humanity,
without interruption, without cessation, and
without retrocession, with united force, and with
one step, shall raise itself up to a degree of cul-
ture which we want power to conceive.

* * * By the institution of this one true
State, and the firm establishment of this internal
peace, external war also, at least with true
States, will, at the same time, be rendered im-
possible. Even for the sake of its own advan-
tage,— in order that no thought of injustice, plun-
der and violence may spring up in its own sub-
jects, and no possible opportunity be afforded
them for any gain, except by labor and indus-
try, in the sphere assigned by law : — every State
must forbid as strictly, must hinder as carefully,
must compensate as exactly, and punish as se-
verely, an injury done to the citizen of a neigh-
bor State, as if it were inflicted upon a fellow-
citizen. This law respecting the security of its
neighbors is necessary to every State which is
not a community of robbers. And herewith the
possibility of every just complaint, of one State
against another, and every case of necessary de-
fence is done away.

There are no necessary, continuous, immedi-
ate relations of States, as such, to each other,
that could engender warfare. As a general rule,
it is only through the relations of single citizens
of one State with the citizens of another, — it is
only in the person of one of its members, that
a State can be injured. But this injury will be
instantly redressed, and the offended State sa-
ti'^fied "^

* * * That a whole nation shotdd deter-
mine, for the sake of plunder, to attack a neigh-
boring country with war, is impossible. Since,
in a State, in which all are equal, the plunder
would not become the booty of a few, but must
be divided equally among all, and so divideJ,
the portion of each individual would never re-

pay him for the trouble of a war. Only, then,
when the advantage to be gained falls to the lot
of a few oppressors, but the disadvantages, the
trouble, the cost fall upon a countless army of
slaves, — only then is a war of plunder possible
or conceivable. Accordingly, these Stales have
no war to fear from States like themselves, but
only from savages or barbarians, tempted to
l)rey by want of skill to enrich themselves by
industry; or from nations of slaves, who are
driven by their masters to plunder, of which
they are to enjoy no part themselves. As to the
first, each single State is undoubtedly superior
to them in strength, by virtue of the arts of cul
ture. As to the last, the common advantage of
all the States will lead them to strengdien them-
selves by union with each other. No free State
can reasonably tolerate, in its immediate vici-
nity, Polities whose rulers find their advantage
in subjecting neighbor nations, and which, there-
fore, by their mere existence, perpetually threat-
en their neighbors' peace. Care for their own
security will oblige all free States to convert all
around them into free States like themselves,
and thus, for the sake of their own well-being,
to extend the dominion of culture to the savages,
and that of liberty to the slave nations round
about them. And so, when once a few free
States have been formed, the empire of culture,
of liberty, and, with that, of universal peace,
will gradually embrace the globe. * * *
* * * In this only true State, all tempta-
tion to evil in general, and even the possibility
of deliberately determining upon an evil act,
will be cut oft", and man be persuaded as pow-
erfully as he can be to direct his will to the
good. There is no man who loves evil because
it is evil. He loves in it only tlie advantages
and enjoyments wiiich it promises, and which,
in the present state of Humanity, it, for the most
part, actually affords. As long as this state
continues, as long as a price is set upon vice, a
thorough reformation of mankind, in the whole,
is scarcely to be hoped for. But in a civil Po-
lity such as it should be, such as reason de-
mands, and such as the thinker easily describes,
although as yet he nowhere finds it, and such
as will necessarily shape itself with the first na-
tion that is truly disenthralled ; — in such a Po-
lity evil will offer no advantages, but, on the
contrary, the most certain disadvantages ; and
the aberration of self love into acts of injustice,
will be suppressed by self-love itself. Accord-
ing to infallible regulations, in such a State, all
taking ad vantage and oppressing of others, every
act of self-aggrandizement at another's expense,
is not only sure to be in vain, — labor lost, — but
it reacts upon the author, and he himself inevi-
tably incurs the evil which he would inflict upon
others. Within his own State and without it,
on the whole face of the earth, he finds no one
whom he can injure with impunity. It is not,
however, to be expected that any one will re-
solve upon evil merely for evil's sake, notwith-
standing he cannot accomplish it, and nothing

396

FICHTE.

but his own injury can result from the attempt.
The use of liberty for evil ends is done away.
Man must either resolve to renounce his liberty
entirely, — to become, with patience, a passive
wheel in the great machine of the whole, — or
he nnist apply his liberty to that which is good.

And thus, then, in a soil so prepared, the
good will easily flourish. When selfish aims
no longer divide mankind, and their powers
can no longer be exercised in destroying one
another in battle, nothing will remain to them
but to turn their united force against the com-
mon and only adversary which yet remains,
resisting, uncultivated Nature. No longer sepa-
rated by private ends, they will necessarily
unite in one common end, and there will grow
up a body everywhere animated by one spirit
and one love. Every disadvantage of the indi-
vidual, since it can no longer be a benefit to any
one, becomes an injury to the whole, and to each
particular member of the same ; and is felt in
each member with equal pain, and with equal
activity redressed. Every advance which one
man makes, human nature, in its entireness,
makes with him.

Here, where the petty, narrow self of the per-
son is already annihilated by the Polity, every
one loves every other one truly, as himself, as
a component part of that great Self which alone
remains to his .love, and of which he is nothing
but a component part, that only through the
Whole can gain or lose. Here the conflict of
evil with good is done away, for no evil can
any longer spring up. The contest of the good
with each other, even concerning the good, va-
nishes, now that it has become easy to them to
love the good for its own sake, and not for their
sakes, as the authors of it; — now that the only
interest they can have is that it come to pass,
that truth be discovered, that the good deed be
executed ; not by whom it is accomplished.
Here every one is prepared to join his power
to that of his neighbor, and to subordinate it to
that of his neighbor. Whoever, in the judgment
of all, sliall accomplish the best, in the best
way, him all will support, and partake with
equal joy in his success.

This is the aim of earthly existence which
Reason sets before us, and for the sure attain-
ment of which, Reason vouches. It is not a
goal for which we are to strive merely that our
faculties may be exercised on great objects, but
which we must relinquish all hope of realizing.
It sliall and must be realized. At some time
or other, this goal must be attained; as surely
as there is a world of the senses, and a race of
reasonable beings in time, for whom no serious
and rational object can be imagined but this,
and whose existence is made intelligible by this
alone. Unless the whole life of man is to be
considered as the sport of an evil Spirit, who
implanted this ineradicable striving after the
imperishable in the breasts of poor wretches,
merely that he might enjoy their ceaseless strug-

gle after that which unceasingly flees from them,
their still repeated grasping after that which
still eludes their grasp, their restless driving
about in an ever -returning circle; — and laugh
at their earnestness in this senseless sport: —
unless the wise man, who must soon see through
this game, and be tired of his own part in it, is
to throw away his life, and the moment of
awakening reason is to be the moment of earthly
death; — that goal must be attained. O! it is
attainable in life and by means of life ; for Rea-
son commands me to live. It is attainable, for
I am.

III.

But how, when it is attained ? when Huma-
nity shall stand at the goal? What then? There
is no higher condition on earth than that. The
generation which first attains to it can do no-
thing farther than to persist in it, and maintain
it with all their powers; die and leave de-
scendants who shall do the same that they have
done, and who, in their turn, shall leave de-
scendants that shall do the same. Humanity
would then stand still in its course. Therefore,
its earthly goal cannot be its highest goal. This
earthly goal is intelligible, and attainable, and
finite. Though we consider the preceding gene-
rations as means of developing the last and per-
fected, still we cannot escape the inquiry of
earnest Reason: "Wherefore then these last?"
Given a human race on the earth, its existence
must indeed be in accordance with Reason, and
not contrary to it. It must become all that it
can become on earth. But why should it exist
at all, this human race? Why might it not as
well have remained in the bosom of Nothing?
Reason is not for the sake of existence, but ex-
istence for the sake of Reason. An existence
.which does not, in itself, satisfy Reason, and
solve all her questions, cannot possibly be the
true one.

Then, too, are the actions commanded by the
voice of Conscience, whose dictates I must not
speculate about, but obey in silence, — are they
actually the means, and the only means, of ac-
complishing the earthly aim of mankind ? That
I cannot refer them to any other object but this,
that I can have no other intent with them, is
unquestionable. But is tliis my intent fulfilled
in every case ? Is nothing more needed but to
will the best, in order that it may be accom-
plished ? Alas! most of our good purposes are,
for this world, entirely lost. And some of them
seem even to have an entirely opposite efiect to
that which was proposed. On the other hand,
the most despicable passions of men, their vices
and their misdeeds, seem often to bring about
the good more surely than the labors of the just
man, who never consents to do evil that good
may come. It would seem that the highest good
of the world grows and thrives quite independ-
ently of all human virtues or vices, according to
laws of its own, by some invisible and unknown
power ; just as the heavenly bodies run through

FICHTE.

397

their appointed course, independently of all liu-
nian effort; and that this power absorbs into its
own higher plan all human designs, whether
good or ill ; and, by its superior strength, appro-
priates what was intended for other purposes
to its own ends.

If, therefore, the attainment of that earthly
goal could be the design of our existence, and
if no farther question concerning it remained to
Reason, that aim, at least, would not be ours,
but the aim of that unknown Power. We know
not at any moment what may promote it. No-
thing would be left us but to supply to that
Power, by our actions, so much material, no
matter what, to work up in its own way, for its
own ends. Our highest wisdom would be, not
to trouble ourselves about things in which we
have no concern ; to live, in each case, as the
fancy takes us, and quietly leave the conse-
quences to that Power. The moral law within
us would be idle and superfluous, and wholly
unsuited to a being that had no higher capacity
and no higher destination. In order to be at
one with ourselves, we should refuse obedience
to the voice of that law, and suppress it as a
perverse and mad enthusiasm.

If the whole design of our existence were to
bring about an earthly condition of our race, all
that v^-ould be required would be some infalli-
ble mechanism to direct our action; and we
need be nothing more than wheels well fitted
to the whole machine. Freedom would then
not only be useless, but a contradictory power ;
and good will would be quite superfluous. The
world, in that case, would be very clumsily
contrived — would proceed to its goal with loss
of power, and by circuitous paths. Rather,
mighty World -Spirit, hadst thou taken from us
this freedom, which, only with difficulty and
by a different arrangement, thou canst fit to thy
plans ; and compelled us at once to act as those
plans require. Thou wouldst then arrive at thy
goal by the shortest road, as the meanest of the
inhabitants of thy worlds can tell thee.

But I am free, and therefore such a concate-
nation of cause and effect, in which freedom is
absolutely superfluous and useless, cannot ex-
haust my whole destination. I must be free ;
for not the mechanical act, but the free deter-
mination of free-will, for the sake of the com-
mand alone, and absolutely, for no other reason,
so says the inward voice of conscience, — this
alone determines our true worth. The band
with which the law binds me is a band for liv-
ing spirits. It scorns to rule over dead mechan-
ism, and applies itself alone to the living and
self-acting. Such obedience it demands. This
obedience cannot be superfluous.

And herewith, the eternal world rises more
brightly before me, and the ground-law of its
order stands cleai before the eye of my mind.
In that world the will, purely and only, as it

lies, locked up from all eyes, in the secret dark
of my soul, is the first link in a chain of conse-
quences which runs through the whole invisible
world of spirits; as in the earthly world the
deed, a certain movement of matter, becomes
the first link in a material chain which extends
through the whole material system. The will
is the working and living principle in the world
of Reason, as motion is the working and living
principle in the world of sense. I stand in the
centre of two opposite worlds, a visible in
which the deed, and an invisible, altogether
incomprehensible, in which the will decides.
I am one of the original forces for both these
worlds. My will is that which embraces both.
This will is in and of itself a constituent portion
of the supersensual world. When I put it in
motion by a resolution, I move and change
something in that world, and my activity flows
on over the whole, and produces something
new and ever-during, which then exists and
needs not to be made anew. This will breaks
forth into a material act, and this act belongs to
the world of the senses, and eflects, in that,
what it can.

Not, when I am divorced from the connection
of the earthly world, do I first gain admission
into that which is above the earth. I am and
live in it already, far more truly than in the
earthly. Even now it is my only firm stand-
point; and the eternal life, which I have long
since taken possession of, is the only reason
why I am willing still to prolong the earthly.
That which they denominate Heaven, lies not
beyond the grave. It is already here, diffused
around our Nature, and its light arises in every
pure heart. My will is mine, and it is the only
thing that is entirely mine, and which depends
entirely upon myself. By it I am already a
citizen of the kingdom of liberty and of self-
active Reason. My conscience, the tie by
which that world holds me unceasingly and
binds me to itself, tells me at every moment
what determination of my will (the only thing
by which, here in the dust, I can lay hold of
that kingdom) is most consonant with its order ;
and it depends entirely upon myself to give
myself the determination enjoined upon me. I
cultivate myself then for this world, and, ac-
cordingly, work in it and for it, while elaborat-
ing one of its members. I pursue in it, and in
it alone, without vacillation or doubt, according
to fixed rules, my aim ; — sure of success, since
there no foreign power opposes my intent.

That our good-will, in and for and through
itself, must have consequences, we know, even
in this life ; for Reason cannot require anything
without a purpose. But what these conse-
quences are, — nay, how it is possible that a mere
will can effect anything, — is a question to which
we cannot even imagine a solution, so long as
we are entangled with this material world;
and it is the part of wisdom not to undertake
34

398

FICHTE.

an inquiry concerning which, we know before-
hand, that it must be unsuccessfuL * *

* * * Xhis then is my whole sublime
destination, my true essence. I am member
of two systems ; a purely spiritual one, in which
1 rlile by pure will alone ; and a sensuous one,
in which I work by my deed. * :j< *

* * * These two systems, the purely spi-
ritual and the sensuous, — which last may con-
sist of an immeasurable series of particular
lives, — exist in me I'roin the moment in which
my active reason is developed, and pursue their
parallel course. The latter system is ordy an
appearance, for me and for those who sliare
with me the same life. The former alone gives
to the latter meaning, and purpose, and value.
I am immortal, imperishable, eternal, so soon
as I form the resolution to obey the law of Rea-
son; and am not first to become so. The super-
sensuous world is not a future world, it is pre-
sent. It never can be more present, at any one
j)oint of finite existence, than at any other point.
After an existence of myriad lives, it cannot be
more present, than at this moment. Other con-
ditions of my sensuous existence are to come;
but these are no more the trtie life, than the
present condition. By means of that resolution,
I lay liold on eternity, and strip ofl' this life in
the dust, and all other sensuous lives that may
await me, and raise myself far above them. I
become to myself the sole fountain of all my
being and of all my phenomena ; and have
henceforth, unconditioned by aught without me,
life in myself My will, which I myself, and
no stranger, fit to the order of that world, is this
fountain of true life and of eternity.

But only my will is this fountain; and only
when I acknowledge this will to be the true
seat of moral excellence, and actually elevate
it to this excellence, do I attain to the certainty
and the possession of that supersensuous world.

****** :jc

Tlie sense by which we lay hold on eternal
life we acquire only by renouncing and offering
fip sense, and the aims of sense, to the law which
claims our will alone, and not our acts ; — by
renouncing it with the conviction that to do so
is reasonable and alone reasonable. With this
renunciation of the earthly, the belief in the
eternal first enters our soul, and stands isolated
there, as the only stay by which we can still
sustain ourselves, when we have relinquished
everything else, as the only animating principle
that still heaves our bosom and still inspires
our life. Well was it said, in the metaphors
of a sacred doctrine, that man must first die to
the world and be born again, in order to enter
into the kingdom of God.

I see, 0! I see now, clear before mine eyes,
the cause of my former heedlessness and blind-
ness concerning spiritual things. Filled with
earthly aims, and lost in them with all my
scheming and striving; put in motion and im-
pelled only by the idea of a result, which is to

be actualized without us, by the desire of such
a result and pleasure in it; — insensible and
dead to the pure impulse of that Reason which
gives the law to itself, which sets before us a
purely spiritual aim, the immortal Psyche re-
mains chained to the earth ; her wings are
bound. Our philosophy becomes the history of
our own heart and life. As we find ourselves,
so we imagine man in general and his destina-
tion. Never impelled by any other motive than
the desire of that which can be realized in this
world, there is no true liberty for us, no liberty
which has the ground of its determination ab-
solutely and entirely in itself. Our liberty, at
the utmost, is that of the self-forming plant; no
higher in its essence, only more curious in its
result; not producing a form of matter with
roots, leaves and blossoms, but a form of mind
with impulses, thoughts, actions. Of the true
liberty we are positively unable to comprehend
anything, because we are not in possession of
it. Whenever we hear it spoken of, we draw
the words down to our own meaning, or briefly
dismiss it with a sneer, as nonsense. With the
knowledge of liberty, the sense of another world
is also lost to us. Everything of this sort floats
by like words which are not addressed to us;
like an ash-grey shadow without color or mean-
ing, which we caimot by any end take hold of
and retain. Without the least interest, we let
everything go as it is stated. Or if ever a ro-
buster zeal impels us to consider it seriously,
we see clearly and can demonstrate that all
those ideas are untenable, hollow visions, which
a man of sense casts from him. And, according
to the premises from which we set out, and
which are taken from our own innermost expe-
rience, we are quite right; and are alike unan-
swerable and unteachable, so long as we remain
what we are. The excellent doctrines which
are current among the people, fortified with
special authority, concerning freedom, duty and
eternal life, change themselves for us into gro-
tesque fables, like those of Tartarus and the
Elysian fields ; although we do not disclose the
true opinion of our hearts, because we think it
more advisable to keep the people in outward
decency by means of these images. Or if we
are less reflective, and ourselves fettered by the
bands of authority, then we sink, ourselves, to
the true plebeian level. We believe that which,
so understood, is foolish fable ; and find, in those
purely spiritual indications, nothing but the
promise of a continuance, to all eternity, of the
same miserable existence which we lead here
below.

To say all in a word : Only through a radi-
cal reformation of my will does a new light
arise upon my being and destination. Without
this, however much I may reflect, and however
distinguished my mental endowments, there is
nothing but darkness in me and around me.
The reformation of the heart alone conducts to
true wisdom. So then, let my whole life stream
incontinently toward this one end !

FICHTE.

399

IV.

My lawful will, simply as such, in and through
itself, must have consequences, certain and
without exception. Every dutiful determina-
tion of my will, although no act should flow
from it, must operate in another, to me incom-
prehensible, world ; and, except this dutiful de-
termination of the will, nothing can take effect
in that world. What do I suppose when I sup-
pose this? What do I take for granted ?

Evidently, a law, a rule absolutely and with-
out exception valid, according to which the du-
tiful will must have consequences. Just as in
the earthly world which environs me, I assume
a law according to which this ball, wlien im-
pelled by my hand with this given force, in this
given direction, must necessarily move in such
a direction, with a determinate measure of ra-
pidity; perhaps impel another ball with this
given degree of force; which other ball then
moves on with a determinate rapidity ; and so
on indefinitely. As in this case, with the mere
direction and movement of my hand, I know
and comprehend all the directions and move-
ments which shall follow it. as certainly as if
they were already present and perceived by
ine ; — even so I comprehend, in my dutiful will,
a series of necessary and infallible consequences
in the spiritual world, as if they were already
present ; — only that I cannot, as in the material
world, determine them; i.e., I merely know
that they shall be, not how they shall be. I sup-
pose a law of the spiritual world, in which my
mere will is one of the moving forces, just as
my hand is one of the moving forces in the ma-
terial world. My firm confidence in the re-
sults of my volition and the thought of a law
of the spiritual world are one and the same
thing; — not two thoughts of which one is the
consequence of the other, but precisely the same
thought. Just as the certainty with which I
count upon a certain motion, and the thought of
a mechanical law of Nature, are the same. The
idea of Laiv expresses generally nothing else
but the fixed, immovable reliance of Reason
on a proposition, and the impossibility of sup-
posing the contrary.

I assume such a law of a spiritual world,
which my own will did not enact, nor the will
of any finite being, nor the will of all finite be-
ings together; but to which my will and the
will of all finite beings is subject.

Agreeably to what has now been advanced,
the law of the supersensuous world should be
a Will.

A Will which acts purely and simply as will,
by its own agency, entirely without any instru-
ment or sensuous medium of its efficacy ; which
is absolutely, in itself, at once action and result;
wliich wills and it is done, which commands
and it stands fast; in which, accordingly, the
demand of reason, to be absolutely free and

self-active, is represented. A Will which is
law in itself; which determines itself, not ac-
cording to humor and caprice, not after pre-
vious deliberation, vacillation and doubt, but
which is forever and unchangeably determined,
and upon which one may reckon with infallible
security ; as the mortal reckons securely on the
laws of his world. A Will in which the law-
ful will of finite beings has inevitable conse-
quences, but only their will, which is immov-
able to everything else, and for which every-
thing else is as though it were not.

That sublime Will, therefore, does not pursue
its course for itself, apart from the rest of Rea-
son's world. There is between Him and all
finite, rational beings, a spiritual band, and him-
self is this spiritual band of Reason's world. I
will purely and decidedly my duty, and He then
wills that I shall succeed, at least in the world
of spirits. Every lawful resolve of the finite
will enters into him, and moves and determines
him — to speak after our fashion — not in conse-
quence of a momentary good pleasure, but in
consequence of the eternal law of his being.

With astounding clearness it now stands be-
fore my soul, the thought which hitherto had
been wrapped in darkness, the thought, that
my will, merely as such, and of itself, has con-
sequences. It has consequences because it is
infallibly and immediately taken knowledge of
by another, related will, which is itself an act,
and the only life-principle of the spiritual world.

In that Will it has its first consequence, and
only through that, in the rest of the spiritual
world which, in all its parts, is but the product
of diat infinite Will.

Thus I flow, — the mortal must speak accord-
ing to his dialect, — thus I flow in upon that Will;
and the voice of conscience in my interior, which,
in every situation of my life, instructs me what
I have to do in that situation, is that by means
of which He, in turn, flows in upon me. That
voice is the oracle from the eternal world,
made sensible by my environment, and trans-
lated, by my reception of it, into my language ;
which annoixnces to me how I must fit myself
to my part in the order of the spiritual world,
or to the infinite Will, which itself is the order
of that spiritual world. I cannot oversee or see
through this spiritual order ; nor need I. I am
only a link in its chain, and can no more judge
of the whole, than a single tone in a song can
judge of the harmony of the whole. But what
I myself should be, in the harmony of Spirits, I
must know ; for only I myself can make myself
that. And it is immediately revealed to me by
a voice which sounds over to me from that
world. Thus I stand in connection with tlie
only being that exists, and partake of its being.
There is nothing truly real, permanent, impe-
rishable in me, but these two ; — the voice of my
conscience and my free obedience. By means
of the first, the spiritual world bows down to
me and embraces me, as one of its members.
By means of the second, I raise myself into this

400

FICHTE.

world, lay hold of it, and work in it. But that
infinite Will is the mediator between it and me;
for, of it and me, himself is the primal fountain.
This is the only true and imperishable, toward
which my soul moves from its inmost depth.
All else is only phenomenon, and vanishes and
returns again, with new seeming.

This Will connects me with itself. The same
connects me with all finite beings of my spe-
cies, and is the universal mediator between us
all. That is the great mystery of the invisible
world, and its ground-law, so far as it is a world,
or system of several individual wills: Union
and direct reciprocal action of several sclf-suhsisting
and independent iviUs among each other. A mys-
tery which, even in the present life, lies clear
before all eyes, without any one's noticing it or
thinking it worthy his admiration. The voice
of Conscience, which enjoins upon each one his
proper duty, is the ray by which we proceed
from the Infinite, and are set forth as individual
particular beings. It defines the boundaries of
our i^ersonality ; it is, therefore, our true origi-
nal constituent, the ground and the stufl' of all
the life which we live.

=f: * * * * ;f: *

That eternal Will, then, is indeed world-cre-
ator, as he alone can be, — in the finite reason.
(The only creation which is needed.) They
who suppose him to build a world out of an
eternal sluggish matter, which world, in that
case, could be nothing else but inert and life-
less, like implements fashioned by human
hands, and not an eternal process of self-deve-
lopment; or who think they can imagine the
going forth of a material something out of no-
thing, know neither the world nor him. If
matter only is something, then there is nowhere
anything, and nowhere, in all eternity, can
anything be. Only Reason is, the infinite, in
itself, the finite in that and by that. Only in
our minds does he create the world ; or, at least,
that from which we unfold it, and that whereby
we unfold it; — the call to duty, and the feel-
ings, perceptions and laws of diought, agreeing
therevvidi. It is his light whereby we see light,
and all that appears to us in that light. In our
minds he is continually fashioning this world,
and interposing in it by interposing in our minds
with the call of duty, whenever another free
agent effects a change therein. In our minds
he maintains this world, and, therewith, our
finite existence, of which alone we are capable,
in that he causes to arise out of our states new
states continually. After he has proved us suf-
ficiently for our next destination, according to
his higher aim, and when we shall have culti-
vated ourselves for the same, he will annihilate
this world for us by what we call deatli, and
introduce us into a new one, the product of
our dutiful action in this. All our life is his
life. We are in his hand, and remain in it, and
no one can pluck us out of it. We are eternal
because He is eternal.

Sublime, living Will! whom no name can
name, and whom no conception can grasp !
well may I raise my mind to thee, for thou and
I are not divided. Thy voice sounds in me, and
mine sounds back, in thee ; and all my thoughts,
if only they are true and good, are thought in
thee. In thee, the incomprehensible, I become
comprehensible to myself, and entirely compre-
hend the world. All the riddles of my exist-
ence are solved, and the most iJcrfect harmony
arises in my mind.

Thou art best apprehended by childlike Sim-
plicity, devoted to thee. To her thou art the
heart-searcher who lookest through her inner-
most; the all -present, faithful witness of her
sentiments, who alone knowest that she meaneth
well, and who alone understandest her, when
misunderstood by all the world. Thou art to
her a Father, whose purposes toward her are
ever kind, and who will oriler everything for
her best good. She submitteth herself wholly,
with body and soul, to thy beneficent decrees.
Do with me as thou wilt, she saith, I Icnow that
it shall be good, so surely as it is thou that dost
it. The speculative understanding, which has
only heard of thee, but has never seen thee,
would teach us to know thy being in itself, and
sets before us an inconsistent monster, which
it gives out for thine image, ridiculous to the
irierely knowing, hateful and detestable to the
wise and good.

I veil my face before thee and lay my hand
upon my mouth. How thou art in thyself, and
how thou ajipearest to thyself, I can never know,
as surely as I can never be thou. After thou-
sand times thousand spirit-lives lived through,
I shall no more be able to comprehend thee
than now, in this hut of earth. That which I
comprehend becomes, by my comprehension of
it, finite; and this can never, by an endless
process of magnifying and exalting, be changed
into infinite. Thou difierest from the finite, not
only in degree but in kind. By that magnifying
process they only make thee a greater and still
greater man, but never God, the Infinite, inca-
pable of measure. *****

* * * I -^yju ,iot attempt that which is
denied to me by my finite nature, and which
could avail me nothing. I desire not to know
how thou art in thyself. But thy relations and
connections with me, the finite, and with all
finite beings, lie open to mine eye, when I be-
come what I should be. They encompass me
with a more luminous clearness than the con-
sciousness of my own being. Thou workest in
me the knowledge of my duty, of my destina-

tion in the series of rational beings

Ho

\v ;

I

know not, and need not to know. Thou know-
est and perceivest what I think and will. How
thou canst know it, — by what act thou bringest
this consciousness to pass, — on that point I
comprehend nothing. Yea! I know very well
that tlie idea of an act, of a special act of con-
sciousness, applies only to me but not to thee,
the Infinite. Thou wiliest, because thou will-

FICHTE.

401

est, that my free obedience shall have conse-
quences in all eternity. The act of thy will I
cannot comprehend. I only know that it is not
like to mine. Thou doest, and thy will itself is
deed. But thy method of action is directly
contrary to that of which, alone, I can form a
conception. Thou livest and art, for thou know-
est, and wiliest, and workest, all present to
finite Reason. But thou art not such as through
all eternity I shall alone be able to conceive of
Being.

In the contemplation of these thy relations to
me, the finite, I will be calm and blessed. I
know immediately, only what I must do. This
will I perform undisturbed and joyful, and
without philosophising. For it is thy voice
which commands me, it is the ordination of the
spiritual world-plan concerning me. And the
power by which I perform it is thy power.
Whatsoever is commanded me by that voice,
whatsoever is accomplished by this power, is
surely and truly good in relation to that plan.
I am calm in all the events of this world, for
they occur in thy world. Nothing can deceive,
or surjirise, or make me afraid, so surely as thou
livest, and I behold thy life. For in thee and
through thee, 0 infinite One ! I behold even my
present world in anoUier light. Nature and
natural consequences in the destinies and ac-
tions of free beings, in view of thee, are empty,
imrneaning words. There is no Nature more.
Thou, thou alone art.

It no longer appears to me the aim of the
present world, that the above-mentioned state
of universal peace among men, and of their un-
conditioned empire over the mechanism of Na-
ture, should be brought about, — merely that it
may exist ; but that it should be brought about
_ by man himself And, since it is calculated for
all, that it should be brought about by all, as
one great, free, moral community. Nothing new
and better for the individual, except through his
dutiful will, nothing new and better for the
community, except through their united, duti-
ful will, is the ground-law of the great moral
kingdom, of which the present life is a part.

The reason why the good-will of the indivi-
dual is so often lost for this world, is that it is
oidy the will of the individual, and that die
will of the majority does not coincide with it.
Therefore, it has no consequences but those
which belong to a future world. Hence, even
the passions and vices of men appear to co-ope-
rate in the promotion of a better state, 7wt in
and for themselves ; — in this sense good can never
come out of evil, — but by furnishing a counter-
poise to opposite vices, and finally annihilating
those vices and themselves, by their preponde-
rance. Oppression could never have gained
the upper hand, unless cowardice, and base-
ness, and mutual distrust had prepared the way
for it. It will continue to increase, vmtil it era-
dicates cowardice and the slavish mind ; and
despair re-awakens the courage that was lost.
Then the two antagonist vices will have de-
3a

stroyed each other, and the noblest in all human
relations, permanent freedom, will have come
forth from them.

The actions of free beings have, strictly speak-
ing, no other consequences than those which
affect odier free beings. For only in such, and
for such, does the world exist ; and that, wherein
all agree, is the world. But they have conse-
quences in free agents only by means of the
infinite Will, by which all individuals exist.
A call, a revelation of that Will to us, is always
a requirement to jierform some particular duty.
Hence, even that which we call evil in the
world, the consequence of the abuse of free-
dom, exists only through Him ; and it exists for
all, for whom it exists, only so far forth as it
imposes duties upon them. Did it not fall
within the eternal plan of our moral education
and the education of our whole race, that pre-
cisely these duties should be laid upon us, they
would not have been imposed ; and that where-
by they are imposed, and which we call evil,
would never have been. In this view, every-
thing which takes place is good, and absolutely
accordant with the best ends. There is but one
world possible, — a thoroughly good one. Every-
thing that occurs in this world, conduces to the
reformation and education of man, and, by
means of that, to the furtherance of his earthly
destination.

It is this higher world-plan that we call Na-
ture, when we say Nature leads men through
want to industry, through the evils of general
disorder to a righteous polity, through the mise-
ries of their perpetual wars to final, ever-during
peace. Tliy will, 0 Infinite! thy providence
alone is this higher Nature. This too is best
understood by artless simplicity, which regards
this life as a place of discipline and education,
as a school for eternity; which, in all the for-
tunes it experiences, the most trivial as well as
the most momentous, beholds thy ordinations
designed for good ; and which firmly believes
that all things will work together for good to
those who love their duty and know thee.

0 ! truly have I spent the former days of my
life in darkness. Truly have I heaped errors
upon errors, and thought myself wise. Now
first I fully understand the doctrine which
seemed so strange to me, out of thy mouth,
wondrous Spirit !* although my understanding
had nothing to oppose to it. For now first I
overlook it, in its whole extent, in its deepest
ground, and in all its consequences.

Man is not a product of the world of sense ;
and the end of his existence can never be at-
tained in that world. His destination lies be-
yond time and space and all that pertains to
sense. He must know what he is and what
he is to make himself As his destination is
sublime, so his thought must be able to lift it-
self up above all the bounds of sense. This

* An allusion to the second book.
34*

402

FICHTE.

must be bis calling. Where bis bfeing is do-
mesticated, there his thought must be domesti-
cated also; and the most truly human view,
that which alone befits him, that in which bis
whole power of thought is represented, is the
view by which be lifts himself above those
limits, by which all that is of the senses is
changed for him into pure nothing, a mere re-
flection of the alone enduring, supersensual, in
mortal eyes.

Many have been elevated to this view witVi-
out scientific thought, simply by their great
heart and their pare moral instinct; because
they lived especially with the heart, and in the
sentiments. They denied, by dieir conduct, the
efficacy and reality of the world of sense ; and
in the shaping of their purposes and measures,
they esteemed as noibiug that, concerning which,
they had not yet learned by thinking, that it is
nothing, even to thought. They who could say,
"our citizenship is in heaven; we have here no
continuing place, but seek one to come;" — they
whose first principle was, to die to the world
and to be born anew, and even here, to enter
into another life, — they, truly, placed not the
slightest value upon all the objects of sense, and
were, to use the language of the School, practi-
cal transcendental Idealists.

Others who, in addition to the sensual acti-
vity which is native to us all, have, by their
thought, confirmed themselves in sense, be-
come implicated, and, as it were, grown toge-
ther with it; — they can raise themselves per-
manently and perfectly above sense only by
continuing and carrying out their thought.
Otherwise, with die purest moral intentions,
they will still be drawn down again by their
understanding; and their whole being will re-
main a continued and insoluble contradiction.
For such, diat philosophy, which I now first
entirely understood, is the power by which
Psyche first strips off her caterpillar-hull, and
unfolds the wings on which she then hovers
above herself, and casts one glance on the slough
she has dropped, thenceforth to live and work
in higher spheres.

Blessed be the hour in which I resolved to
meditate on myself and my destination! All
my questions are solved. I know what I can
know, ailTl I am without anxiety concerning
that which I cannot know. I am satisfied.
There is jierfect harmony and clearness in my
spirit, and a new and more glorious existence
for that spirit begins.

My v/hole, complete destination, I do not
comprehend. What I am called to be and shall
be, surpasses all my thought. A part of this
destination is yet hidden within myself, visible
only to him, the Father of Spirits, to whom it
is committed. I know only* that it is secured
to me, and that it is eternal and glorious as him-
self But that portion of it which is committed
to me, I know. I know it entirely, and it is the
root of all my other knowledge. I know, in

every moment of my life, with certainty, what
I am to do in that moment. And this is my
whole destination, so far as it depends upon
me. From this, since my knowledge goes no
farther, I must not depart. I must not desire
to know anything beyond it. I must stand fast
in this one centre, and take root in it. All my
scheming and striving, and all my faculty, must
be directed to that. My whole existence must
inweave itself with it. * * * *

* * * I raise myself to this stand-point,
and am a new creature. My whole relation to
the existing world is changed. The ties by
which my mind was heretofore bound to this
world, and by whose secret attraction it followed
all the movements of this world, are forever
divided, and I stand free ; myself, my own
world, peaceful and unmoved. No longer
with the heart, with the eye alone, I seize the
objects about me, and, through the eye alone,
am connected with them. And this eye itself,
made clearer by freedom, looks through- error
and deformity to the true and the beautiful ;
as, on the unmoved surface of the water, forms
mirror themselves pure, and with a softened
light.

My mind is forever closed against embarrass-
ment and confusion, against doubt and anxiety;
my heart is forever closed against sorrow, and
remorse, and desire. There is but one thing
that I care to know: What I must do? And
this I know, infallibly, always. Concerning all
beside I know nothing, and I know that I know
nothing; and I root myself fast in this my igno-
rance, and forbear to conjecture, to opine, to
quarrel with myself concerning that of which I
know nothing. No event in this world can
move me to joy, and none to sorrow. Cold and
unmoved I look down upon them all ; for I
know that I cannot interpret one of them, nor
discern its connection with that which is my
only concern. Everything which takes place
belongs to the plan of the eternal world, and is
good in relation to that plan; so much I know.
But what, in that plan, is pure gain, and what
is only meant to remove existing evil, accord-
ingly, what I should most or least rejoice in I
know not. In His world everything succeeds.
This suffices me, and in this faith I stand firm
as a rock. But what in His world is only germ,
what blossom, what the fruit itself, I know not.

The only thing which ca)a interest me is the
progress of reason and virtue in the kingdom
of rational beings ; and that purely for its own
sake, for the sake of the progress. Whether /
am the instrument of this progress or another,
whether it is my act which succeeds or is
thwarted, or whether it is the act of another, is
altogether indifierent to me. I regard myself
in every case but as one of the instruments of a
rational design, and I honor and love myself,
and am interested in myself, only as such ; and
wish the success of my act, only so far as it goes
to accomplish that end. Therefore I regard ali
the events of this world in the same manner :

FICHTE.

403

only with exclusive reference to this one end ;
whether they proceed from me or from another,
whether they relate to me immediately, or to
others. My breast is closed against all vexa-
tion on account of personal mortifications and
affronts ; against all exaltation on account of
personal merits ; for my entire personality has
long since vanished, and been swallowed up in

the contemplation of the end.

*******

Bodily sufferings, pain and sickness, should
such befall me, I cannot avoid to feel, for they
are events of my nature, and I am and remain
nature here below. But they shall not trouble
me. They affect only the Nature, with which
I am, in some strange way, connected ; not
myself, the being which is elevated above all
Nature. The sure end of all pain, and of all
susceptibility of pain, is death ; and of all which
the natural man is accustomed to regard as
evil, this is the least so to me. Indeed, I shall
not die for myself, but only for others, for those
that remain behind, from whose connexion I
am severed. For myself, the hour of death is
the hour of birth to a new and more glorious
life.

Since my heart is thus closed to all desire
for the earthly, since, in fact, I have no longer
any heart for the perishable, the universe ap-
pears to my eye in a transfigured form. The
dead, inert mass which but choked up space
has vanished ; and instead thereof flows, and
waves, and rushes the eternal stream of life, and
power, and deed; — of the original life, of thy
life, O Infinite ! For all life is thy life, and only
the religious eye pierces to the kingdom of veri-
table beauty.

I am related to Thee, and all that I behold
around me is related to me. All is quick, all is
soul, and gazes upon me with bright spirit-eyes,
and speaks in spirit-tones to my heart. Most
diversely sundered and severed, I behold, in
all the forms without me, myself again, and
beam upon myself from them, as the morning
sun, in thousand dew-drops diversely refracted,
glances toward itself

Thy life, as the finite can apprehend it, is a
willing which shapes and represents itself by
means of itself alone. This life, made sensible
in various ways to mortal eyes, flows through
me and from me downward, through the im-
measurable whole of Nature. Here it streams,
as self-creating, self-fashioning matter, through
my veins and muscles, and deposites its fulness
out of me, in the tree, in the plant, in the grass.
One connected stream, drof) by drop, the form-
ing life flovvs in all shapes and on all sides,
wherever my eye can follow it, and looks upon
me, from every point of the universe, with a
different aspect, as the same force which fa-
shions my own body in darkness and in secret.
Yonder it waves free, and leaps and dances as
self-forming motion in the brute ; and, in every
new body, represents itself as another separate,
self-subsisting world ; — the same power which,

invisible to me, stirs and moves in my own
members. All that lives follows this universal
attraction, this one principle of all movement,
which conducts the harmonious shock from one
end of the universe to tlie other. The brute
follows it without freedom. I, from whom, in
the visible world, the movement proceeds,
(without, therefore, originating in me,) follow
it freely.

But pure and holy, and near to thine own es-
sence as aught, to mortal apprehension, can be ;
this thy life flows forth as a band which binds
spirits with spirits in one" as air and ether of
the one world of Reason, inconceivable and in-
comprehensible, and yet lying plainly revealed
to the spiritual eye. Conducted by this light-
stream, thought floats unrestrained and the same
from soul to soul, and returns purer and trans-
figured from the kindred breast. Through this
mystery the individual finds, and understands,
and loves himself only in another ; and every
spirit detaches itself only from other spirits;
and there is no man, but only a Humanity ; —
no isolated thinking, and loving, and hating, but
only a thinking, and loving, and hating in and
through one another. Through this mystery the
affinity of Spirits, in the invisible world, streams
forth into their corporeal nature, and represents
itself in two sexes, which, though every spiritual
band could be severed, are still constrained, as
natural beings, to love each other. It flows forth
into the affection of parents and children, of
brothers and sisters ; as if the souls were sprung
from one blood as well as the bodies; — as if
the minds were branches and blossoms of the
same stem. And from thence it embraces, in
narrower or wider circles, the whole sentient
world. Even the hatred of spirits is grounded
in thirst for love ; and no enmity springs up,
except from friendship denied.

Mine eye discerns this eternal life and motion,
in all the veins of sensible and spiritual Nature,
through what seems to others a dead mass. And
it sees this life forever ascend and grow, and
transfigure itself into a more spiritual expres-
sion of its own nature. The universe is no
longer, to me, that circle which returns into
itself, that game which repeats itself without
ceasing, that monster which devours itself in
order tO reproduce itself, as it was before. It is
spiritualized to my contemplation, and bears the
peculiar impress of the Spirit : continual pro-
gress toward perfection, in a straight line which
stretches into infinity.

The sun rises and sets, the stars vanish and
return again, and all the spheres hold their
cycle-dance. But they never return precisely
such as they disappeared ; and in the shining
fountains of life there is also life and progress.
Every hour which they bring, every morning
and every evening sinks down with new bless-
ings on the world. New life and new love drop
from the spheres, as dew-drops from the cloud,
and embrace Nature, as the cool night embraces
the earth.

404

FICHTE.

All death ia Nature is birth ; and precisely
in dying, the sublimation of life appears most
conspicuous. There is no death-bringing prin-
ciple in Nature, for Nature is only life, through-
out. Not death kills, but the more living life,
which, hidden behind the old, begins and un-
folds itself Death and birth are only the strug-
gle of life with itself to manifest itself in ever
more transfigured form, more like itself

And my death, — can that be anything differ-
ent from this ? I, who am not a mere repre-
sentation and copy of life, but who bear within
myself the original, the alone true, and essential
life ? It is not a possible thought that Nature
should annihilate a life which did not spring
from her ; Nature, which exists only for my
sake, not I for hers.

But even my natural life, even this mere
representation of an inward invisible life to
mortal eyes, Nature cannot annihilate ; other-
wise she must be able to annihilate herself. —
She who exists only for me and for my sake,
and who ceases to exist, if I am not. Even be-
cause she puts me to death she must quicken
me anew. It can only be my higher life, un-
folding itself in her, before which my present
life disappears ; and that which mortals call
death is the visible appearing of a second vivi-
fication. Did no rational being, who has once
beheld its light, perish from the earth, there
would be no reason to expect a new heaven
and a new earth. The only possible aim of
Nature, that of representing and maintaining
Reason, would have been already fulfilled here
below, and her circle would be complete. But
the act by which she puts to death a free, self-
subsisting being, is her solemn, — to all Reason

apparent, — transcending of that act, and of
the entire sphere which she thereby closes.
The apparition of death is the conductor by
which my spiritual eye passes over to the new
life of myself, and of Nature, for me.

Everyone of my kind who passes from earthly
connexions, and who cannot, to my spirit, seem
annihilated, because he is one of my kind, draws
my thought over with him. He still is, and to
him belongs a place.

While we, here below, sorrow for him with
such sorrow as would be felt, if possible, in the
dull kingdom of unconsciousness, when a hu-
man being withdraws himself from thence to
the light of earth's sun ; — while we so mourn,
on yonder side there is joy, because a man is
born into their world ; as we citizens of earth re-
ceive with joy our own. When I, sometime, shall
follow them, there will be joy for me ; for sorrow
remains behind, in the sphere which I quit.

It vanishes and sinks before my gaze, the
world which I so lately admired. With all the
fulness of life, of order, of increase, which I be-
hold in it, it is but the curtain by which an in-
finitely more perfect world is concealed from
me. It is but the germ out of which that infi-
nitely more perfect shall unfold itself My faith
enters behind this curtain, and warms and
quickens this germ. It sees nothing definite,
but expects more than it can grasp here below,
than it will ever be able to grasp in time.

So I live and so I am ; and so I am unchange-
able, firm and complete for all eternity. For
this being is not one which I have received
from without ; it is my own only true being and
essence.

'^.1 V K fr'i 0,

JOHANN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

Born 1763. Died 1825.

Next to Schiller there is no writer whom
Germany cherishes with more enthusiastic at-
tachment than Jean Paul, — so he called him-
self, while living', and is still called since his
death. Confined to a narrower circle than
Schiller, he is even more intensely loved within
that circle than the great dramatist himself;
for he is a writer to be loved, if tolerated.
There is that in him which allows of no indif-
ference. He must either attach or repel.
Where he does not create an irreconcilable
aversion, he binds with indissoluble friendship.
Tiiose who read him much, come into personal
relations with him, and sympathize with him
as with no other. Indeed, there is no other like
him in the Iiistory of literature. He is incom-
mensurable, and refuses to be classed ; com-
bining' the most contradictory characters and
gifts ; the humorist and the prophet ; the wild-
est fun with the steepest elevation of thought
and an infinite pathos; the sharpest satire with
an all-embracing love ; a feeling for all little-
ness and little ones, with the loftiest sentiments
and aspirations ; a prevailing subjectiveness,
with clear and original intuitions of men and
things.

The humorist predominates; and such hu-
mor ! It is not the humor of Cervantes, though
simny and wholesome as his. It is not the
humor of Rabelais, having nothing of the satyr
or the swine ; and yet Rabelais himself is not
more wildly fantastic. It is not the humor of
Swift, though it lacks nothing of his irony ; nor
is it the humor of Sterne, though not less kind
and contemplative, and stuifed with conceits.
It is a hnmor quite his own, " compounded of
many simples and extracted from many ob-
jects." In this, as in other things, he resembles
no one else in the world hut just Jean Paul.
He is Jean Paul, " the only."

He was sumptuously, marvellously endowed,
and if he wanted many essential qualifications
of a great poet, or even of a good writer, there
are others which he possessed in unrivalled
perfection. He has but one rival, and that is
Siiakspeare, in exuberance of fancy. The in-

continent, the inconceivable, the overwhelm-
ing affluence of images and illustrations, is
what first strikes us in his writings. The pa-
ragraph labors and staggers with meanings
and double meanings, and after-thoughts and
side-thoughts, conceits appended to every third
word, and ornaments stuck in, some sufficient-
ly 6izarre, and others of supernal beauty, mak-
ing altogether "a piece of joinery so crossly
indented and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet
so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified
Mosaic," as no other writing can parallel. He
has absolutely no rival in what may be called
the inborn poetry of the heart, that sympathy
and identification of himself with all forms and
ways of being, that secret understanding with
Nature, that profound humanity which, in an
inferior degree, so happily distinguishes Words-
worth among English poets. Some of his
pieces, for example, Fibel and Quintus Fixlein,
constitute a new and higher order of idyl ;
combining tlie subjective piquancy of modern
thought with the classic outwardness of the
ancient model.

In power of imagination, also, he takes rank
among the first. Many of his characters are
wholly new creations, and have an individu-
ality and a self-subsistence which only true
genius can impart. It is in his visions, how-
ever, with which his works abound, that Rich-
ter's imagination is most active, producing an
apocalypse of the most extravagant and un-
heard-of portents, a swarming phantasmagory
of beautiful and terrible apparitions, wjiich
make the application more appropriate to him
than to any other, of those lines which describe
one of his contemporaries:

" Within that mind's abyss profound,
As in some limbo vast,
More shapes and monsters did abound
To set the wondering world asrliast,
Than wave- worn Noah fed or starry Tuscan found."

His faults as a writer are sufficiently promi-
nent, but, for the most part, so blended and
complicated with his peculiar merits, that we
cannot imagine them removed without destroy-
ing some characteristic excellence. An utter

(405)

406

RICHTER.

want of grace and form, an habitual lugging
in of irrelevant learning, an excessive delight
in verbal quibbles and other conceits, obscurity,
constant iteration of one or two types of cha-
racter, exaggeration of one or two features of
society, want of action in his narratives, a su-
perfluity of tears and ecstasies not sufficiently
motived, a passion for extremes — these are
faults which have often been pointed out, and
which his warmest admirers will hardiy deny.
On the other hand, the charge of affectation is
unjust. A mannerist he certainly is, but it is
the mannerism of idiosyncrasy, a bias in the
nature of the man, a kink in his genius, a mag-
got in iiis brain, without which he would not
be Jean Paul.

It is the moral qualities of Richter, far more
than his intellectual, wliich endear him to his
countrymen. To that true and loyal soul the
deep heart of Germany responds with all its
music. So loving, and believing, and hoping,
and aspiring, so innocent of all guile, and free
from all wrath, and bitterness, and evil speak-
ing, so full of all fine sentiments and generous
views, so abounding in compassion for all the
suffering, willing to clasp them all to his great
heart, which throbbed evermore with unebbing
and unspeakable affection for all his kind ; so
devout, and pure, and good ; he commends him-
self not only to his own people, but to humanity
everywhere ; to all that is best in the nature
of man. It is good to converse with him. His
word is sound and sanative, " pure as the heart
of the waters," and '• pure as the marrow of
the earth."

The life's history of Jean Paul is gathered
partly from his autobiography, commenced not
many years before his death, and extending to
his thirteenth year; partly from an appendix
to that beginning by Herr Otto, a friend of the
deceased ; and partly from liis correspondence
with friends and contemporaries. A " Life of
Jean Paul," in 2 vols. 12mo., embodying a
translation of the autobiographical fragment,
and continuing the narrative from the other
sources above mentioned, was published in
Boston,* a iew years since, by a lady who
seems to have spared no pains to make herself
acquainted with her subject. To these two

* Life <if Jean Paul Frederic Richter, compiled from
various sources, together with his autobiography, trans-
lated from the German. Boston: Charles C. Little &
James Brown.

volumes the editor of this work refers with
pleasure, as the best biography of Richter
known to him.

Richter was born at Wunsiedel, in that part
of Germany called the Fichtelgehirge, or Pine-
mountain. His father, then organist and under-
teacher at the gymnasium in that town, was
soon after appointed pastor (Lutheran) of a
church, in the small village of Joditz, and,
some years later, promoted to the larger living
of Schwarzenbach, on the Saale. From his
father Ricliter received his first instruction in
the languages. At sixteen, he was placed at
the gymnasium in Hof, a neighboring small
city. At eighteen, he entered the university
of Leipzig, where he began the study of theo-
logy, but soon gave himself up to general cul-
ture, and began his career as author, with the
publication of the "Greenland Lawsuits." His
father had died meanwhile, and he was thrown
entirely upon himself. His first attempts at
authorship were not successful, his situation
was perplexing, and the future looked grimly
on the penniless youth. " Fortune seemed to
have let loose her bandogs, and hungry Ruin
had him in the wind."* His mother had re-
moved to Hof, her birth-place, and there Jean
Paul joined her, in a house which had but one
apartment, pursuing his studies amid " the jin-
gle of household operations ;" writing books
which would not sell, and tasting all the bit-
terness of extreme penury. " The prisoner's
allowance," he says, " is bread and water, but
I had only the latter." — " Nevertheless, I can-
not help saying to Poverty : Welcome ! so thou
come not at quite too late a time! Wealth
bears heavier on talent than Poverty. Under
gold-mountains and thrones who knows how
many a spiritual giant may lie crushed down
and buried ! When among the flames of youth,
and above all, of liotter powers, the oil of Riches
is also poured in — little will remain of the
phoenix but his ashes; and only a Goethe has
force to keep, even at the sun of good fortune,
his phoenix-wings unsinged."* For ten years
and upwards he fought this fight, during which
time his only support was the money earned
by the occasional but rare admission of one of
his contributions to the public journals. Never-
theless he refused the situation of a private
tutor, determined to succeed as author, or starve
in the attempt. And he triumphed, at last.

* Carlyle's Miscellanies, vol. IL

RICHTER.

407

After repeated failures, the publication of the
" Invisible Lodge," in 1793, brought money,
fame, troops of friends, and, altogether, decided
his future. After the death of his mother, he
resided successively in several different places,
and finally fixed upon Baireuth, in the neigh-
bourliood of the Fichtelgebirge, as his home.
In 1801 he married Caroline Mayer, daughter
of a professor of medicine in Berlin. In 1801
he received from the Prince Primate, Von Dal-
berg, a small pension, which was afterward
paid to him by the King of Bavaria until his

death. In 1824 the failure of his eyesight im-
paired his activity, without arresting it entirely.
lie continued to labor with the help of his ne-
phews, revising his works in order to a uniform
edition, and making the most of his declining
strength, until, for all literary purposes, it failed
him utterly. He died November 14, 1825.
He was buried by torch-light; the unfinished
manuscript of his Selina (a work on immor-
tality) was borne upon his coffin, and Klop-
stock's Ode, " Thou shalt arise, my soul," was
sung by the students of the Gymnasium.

ROME.*

Half an liour after the earthquake the hea-
vens swathed themselves in seas, and dashed
them down in masses and in torrents. The
naked Campagna and heath were covered with
the mantle of rain. Gaspard was silent — the
heavens black — the great thought stood alone
in Albano that he was hastening on toward the
bloody scaffold and the throne-scaffolding of
humanity, the heart of a cold, dead heathen-
wovld, the eternal Rome ; and when he heard,
on the Ponte 3Iolle, that he was now going across
the Tiber, then was it to him as if the past had
risen from the dead, as if the stream of time
ran backward and bore him with it; under the
streams of heaven he heard the seven old
mountain-streams, rushing and roaring, which
once came down from Rome's hills, and, with
seven arms, uphove the world from its founda-
tions. At length the constellation of the moun-
tain city of God, that stood so broad before him,
opened out into distant nights ; cities, with scat-
tered lights, lay up and down, and the bells
(which to his ear were alarm-bells) sounded
out the fourth hourj"j" when the carriage rolled
through the triumphal gate of the city, the Porta
del Popolo ; then the moon rent her black hea-
vens, and poured down out of the cleft clouds
the splendor of a whole sky. There stood the
Egyptian Obelisk of the gateway, high as the
clouds, in the night, and three streets ran gleam-
ing apart. "So," (said Albano to himself, as
they passed through the long Corso to the tenth
ward) "thou art veritably in the camp of the
God of war; here, where he grasped the hilt
of the monstrous war-sword, and with the point
maile the three wounds in three quarters of the
world r' — Rain and splendor gushed through
the vast, broad streets — occasionally he passed
suddenly along by gardens, and into broad city-
deserts and market-places of the past. The
rolling of the chariot amidst the rush and roar
of the rain, resembled the thunder, whose days

* From an unpiihlislied translation (complete) gf"Tfie
Titan" of J. Paul Riclitur, by Rev. C. T. Brooks.
I Ten o'clock.

were once holy to this heroic city, like the
thundering heaven to the thundering earth;
mufHed-up forms, with little lights, stole through
the dark streets ; often there stood a long palace
with colonnades in the light of the moon, often
a solitary gray column, often a single high fir-
tree, or a statue behind cypresses. Once, when
there was neither rain nor moonshine, the car-
riage went round the corner of a .large house,
on whose roof a tall, blooming virgin, with an
uplooking child on her arm, herself directed a
little hand-light, now toward a white statue,
now toward the child, and so, alternately, illu-
minated each. This friendly group made its
way to the very centre of his soul, now so
highly exalted, and brought with it, to him,
many a recollection ; particularly was a Roman
child to him a wholly new and mighty idea.

They alighted at last at the Prince dl Lau-
ria'Si Gaspard's father-in-law and old friend.
* * * Albano, dissatisfied with all, kept his
inspiration sacrificing to the unearthly gods of
the past round about hiin, after the old fashion,
namely, with silence. Well might he, and
could he, have discoursed, but otherwise ; in
odes, with the whole man, with streams which
mount and grow upwards. He looked ever
more and more longingly out of the window at
the moon in the pure rain-blue, and at single
columns of the Forum; out of doors there
gleamed for him the greatest world. — At last
he rose up, indignant and impatient, and stole
down into the glimmering glory, and stepped
before the Forum ; but the moonlit night, that
decoration-painter, which works with irregular
strokes, made almost the very stage of the scene
irrecognisable to him.

What a dreary, broad plain, loftily encom-
passed with ruins, gardens and temples, covered
with prostrate capitals of columns, and with
single, upright pillars, and with trees and a
dumb wilderness ! The heaped-up ashes out
of the emptied urn of Time — and the fiotsherds
of a great world flung around ! He passed by
three temple columns,* which the earth had

* Of Jupiter Tonans.

408

RICHTER.

drawn down into itself even to the breast, and
along through the broad triumphal arch of Sep-
timus Severus ; on the right, stood a chain of
columns without their temple ; on the left, at-
tached to a Christian church, the colonnade of
an ancient heathen temple, deep sunken into
tlie sediment of time ; at last the triumphal arch
of Titus, and before it, in the middle of the
woody wilderness, a fountain gushing into a
granite basin.

He went up to this fountain, in order to sur-
vey the plain, out of which the thunder-mouths
of the earth once arose ; but he went along as
over a burnt-out sun, hung round with dark,
dead earths. " 0 Man, O the dreams of Man !"
something within him unceasingly cried. He
stood on the granite margin, turning toward the
Coliseum, whose mountain ridges of wall stood
high in the moonlight, with the deep gaps which
had been hewn in them by the scythe of Time
— shar^ily stood the rent and ragged arches of
Nero's golden house close by, like murderous
cutlasses. The Palatine Hill lay full of green
gardens, and, in crumbling temple -roofs, the
blooming death- garland of ivy was gnawing,
and living ranunculi still glowed around sunken
capitals. — The fountain murmured babblingly
and forever, and the stars gazed steadfastly
down, with transitory rays, ui^on the still battle-
field, over which the winter of time had passed
without bringing after it a spring — the fiery soul
of the world had flown up, and the cold, crum-
bling giant lay around — torn asunder were the
gigantic spokes of the main-wheel, which once
the very stream of ages drove. And in addition
to all this, the moon shed down her light like
eating silver-water upon the naked columns, and
woidd fain have dissolved the Coliseum and
the temples and all into their own shadows!

Then Albano stretched out his arm into the
air, as if he were giving an embrace and flow-
ing away as in the arms of a stream, and ex-
claimed, "0 ye mighty shades, ye, who once
strove and lived here, ye are looking down from
Heaven, but scornfully, not sadly, for your great
fatherland has died and gone after you ! Ah,
had I, on the insignificant earth, full of old eter-
nity, which you have made great, only done
one action worthy of you! Then v/ere it sweet
to me and allowed me, to open my heart by a
wound, and to mix earthly blooil with the hal-
lowed soil, and, out of the world of graves, to
hasten away to you, eternal and immortal ones!
But I am not worthy of it!'

At this moment there came suddenly along
up the Via sacra, a tall man, deeply enveloped
in a mantle, who drew near the fountain, with-
out lookiug round, threw down his hat, and held
a coal-black, curly, almost perpendicular, hind-
head under the stream of water. But hardly
had he, turning upward, caught a glimpse of
the profile of Albano, absorbed in his fancies,
when he started up, all drii)ping, — stared at the
count — fell into an amazement — direw his arms
high into the air — and said, ^'■Amko?''' — Albano

looked at him. — The stranger said, "Albano!"
" My Dian !" cried Albano ; they clasped each
other passionately and wept for love.

Dian could not comprehend it at all ; he said
in Italian; "But it surely cannot be you, you
look old." He thought he was speaking Ger-
man all the time, till he heard Albano answer
in Italian. Both gave and received only ques-
tions. Albano Ibund the architect merely
browner, but there was the lightning of the
eyes and every faculty in its old glory. With
three words he related to him the journey, and
who the company were. "How does Rome
strike you?" asked Dian, pleasantly. "As life
does," replied Albano, very seriously, " it makes
me too soft and too hard." — "I recognise here
absolutely nothing at all," he continued: "do
those columns belong to the magnificent temple
of Peace?" " No," said Dian, "to the temple
of Concord ; of the other there stands yonder
nothing but the vault." " Where is Saturn's
temple?" asked Albano. "Buried in St. Adri-
an's church;" said Dian, and added hastily,
"close by stand the ten columns of Antonine's
temple ; — over beyond there the baths of Titus
— behind us the Palatine hill, and so on. Now
tell me — !"

They walked up and down the Forum, be-
tween the arches of Titus and Severus. Albano
— especially, near the teacher who, in the days
of childhood, had so often conducted him hither-
ward, — was yet full of the stream which had
swept over the world, and the all -covering
water sunk but slowly. He went on and said,
"to-day, when he beheld the Obelisk, the soft,
tender brightness of the moon had seemed to
him eminently unbecoming for the giant city;
he would rather have seen a sun blazing on its
broad banner ; but now the moon was the pro-
per funeral - torch beside the dead Alexander,
who, at a touch, collapses into a handful of
dust." — "The artist does not get far with feel-
ings of this kind," said Dian, " he must look
upon everlasting beauties on the right hand and
on the left." — " Where," Albano went on ask-
ing, "is the old lake of Curtius — the Rostrum —
the pila Horatia — the temple of Vesta — of Ve-
nus, and of all those solitary columns ?" — " And
where is the marble Forum itself?" said Dian ;
" it lies thirty span deep below our feet." —
"Where is the great, free people, the senate of
kings, the voice of the orators, the procession to
the Capitol ? Buried under the mountain of
potsherds. 0 Dian, how can a man who loses
a father, a beloved, in Rome shed a single tear
or look round him with consternation, when he
comes out here before this battle-field of time,
and looks into the charnel-house of the nations?
Dian, one would wish here an iron heart, for
fate has an iron hand!"

Dian, who nowhere stayed more reluctantly
than upon such tragic clifls, hanging over as it
were into the sea of eternity, almost leaped off
from them with a joke ; like the Greeks, he
blended dances with tragedy ; " Many a thing

RICHTER.

409

is preserved here, friend !" said he : " in Adrian's
church yonder they will still show you the bones
of the three men that walked in the fire."
"That is just the frightful play of destiny," re-
plied Albano, "to occupy the heights of the
mighty ancients with monies shorn down into
slaves."

" The stream of time drives new wheels,"
saiil Dian : " yonder lies Raphael twice buried."*
* * * And so they climbed silently and
speedily over rubbish and torsos of columns,
and neither gave heed to the mighty emotion
of the other.

Rome, like the Creation, is an entire wonder,
which gradually dismembers itself into new
wonders, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, St. Peter's
church, Raphael, &c.

With the passage through the church of St.
Peter, the knight began the noble course through
Immortality. The Princess let herself, by the
tie of Art, be bound to the circle of the men. As
Albano was more smitten with edifices than
with any other work of man ; so did he see from
afar, with holy heart, the long mountain-chain
of Art, which again bore upon itself hills ; so
did he stop before the plain, around which the
enormous colonnades run like Corsos, bearing a
people of statues; — in the centre shoots up the
obelisk, and on its right and left an eternal
fountain, and from the lofty steps, the proud
Chiu-ch of the world, inwardly filled with
churches, rearing upon itself a temple toward
Heaven, looks down upon the earth. — But how
wonderfully, as they drew near, had its columns
and its rocky wall mounted up and flown away
from the vision !

He entered the magic church, which gave the
world blessings, curses, kings and popes, with
the consciousness, that, like the world-edifice, it
was continually enlarging and receding more
and more the longer one remained in it. They
went up to two children of white marble, who
held an incense-muscle-shell of yellow marble;
the children grew by nearness, till they were
giants. At length they stood at the main altar
and its hundred perpetual lamps. What a still-
ness ! Above them the heaven's arch of the
dome, resting on four inner towers ; around them
an over-arched city of four streets in which
stood churches. — The temple became greatest
by walking in it; and when they passed round
one column, there stood a new one before them,
and holy giants gazed earnestly down.

Here was the youth's large heart, after so
long a time, filled. "In no art," said he to his
father, "is the soul so mightily possessed with
the sublime as in architecture ; in every other
the giant stands within and in the depths of the
soul, but here he stands out of and close before
it." Dian, to whom all images were more clear
than abstract ideas, said he was perfectly right.

* The body in the Pantheon, the head in St. Luke's
church.

3b

Fraischddrfer replied, "The sublime also here
lies only in the brain, for the whole church
stands after all in something greater, namely, in
Rome, and under the heavens, in the presence
of which latter, v/e certainly should not feel
anything." He also complained that the place
for the sublime in his head was very much
narrowed by the innumerable volutes and mo-
numents which the temple shut up therein at
the same time with itself" Gaspard, taking
everything in a large sense, remarked, " When the
sublime once really appears, it then, by its very
nature, absorbs and annihilates all little circum-
stantial ornaments." He adduced as evidence
the tower of the Minster,* and Nature itself,
which is not made smaller by its grasses and
villages.

Among so many connoisseurs of art, the Prin-
cess enjoyed in silence.

The ascent of the dome, Gaspard recom-
mended to defer to a dry and cloudless day, in
order that they might behold the queen of the
world, Rome, upon and from the proper throne ;
he therefore proposed, very zealously, the visit-
ing of the Pantheon, because he was eager to
let this follow immediately after the impression
of St. Peter's church. They went thither. How
simply and grandly the hall opens! Eight yel-
low columns sustain its brow, and majestically
as the head of the Homeric Jupiter its temple
arches itself. It is the Rotunda or Pantheon. —
"0 the pigmies," cried Albano, "who would
fain give us new temples ! Raise the old ones
higher out of the rubbish, and then you have
built enough !'"-|- They stepped in ; — there rose
itself around them a holy, simple, free world-
structure, with its heaven-arches soaring and
striving upward, an Odeum of the tones of the
Sphere-music, a world in the world! And
overhead,:^ the eye-socket of the light and of
the sky gleamed down, and the distant rack of
clouds seemed to touch the lofty arch over which
it shot along ! And round about them stood
nothing but the temple-bearers, the columns !
The temple of all gods endured and concealed
the diminutive altars of the later ones.

Gaspard questioned Albano about his impres-
sions. He said he preferred the larger church
of St. Peter. The knight approved, and said
that youth, like nations, always more easily
found and better appreciated the sublime than
the beautiful, and that the spirit of the young
man ripened from strong to beautiful, as the
body of the same ripens from the beautiful into
the strong ; — however, he himself preferred the
Pantheon. " How could the moderns," said the
Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdorfer, " build any-
thing, except some little Bernini's Towers ?"
" That is why," said the offended Provincial
Architect, Dian, (who despised the Counsellor

* Strassburg.

t The liall of the Pantheon seems too low, because a
part of its steps is hidden by the rubbish.

I This opening in the roof is twenty-seven feet in
diameter.

35

41U

RICHTER.

of Arts, because he never made a good figure,
except in the aesthetic hall of judgment as
critic, never in the exhibition-hall as painter),
" we moderns are, without contradiction, stronger
in criticism; though in practice we are, collect-
ively and individually, blockheads."' Bouverot
remarked, the Corinthian columns might be
higher. The Counsellor of Arts said, after all
he knew nothing more like this fine hemisphere
than a much smaller one, which he liad found
in Herculaneum moulded in ashes, of the bosom
of a fair fugitive." The knight laughed, and
Albano turned away in disgust and went to
the Princess.

He asked her for lier opinion about the two
temples. '-Sophocles here, Shakspeare there;
but I comprehend and appreciate Sophocles
more easily,"' she replied, and looked with new
eyes into his new countenance. For the super-
natural illumination through the zenith of Hea-
ven, not througli a liazy horizon, transfigured,
in her eyes, the beautiful and excited counte-
nance of the youth ; and she took for granted
that the saintly halo of the dome must also exalt
her form — when he answered her, " Very good !
Bat in Shakspeare, Sophocles also is contained,
not, however, Shakspeare in Sophocles — and in
Peter"s Church stands Angelo"s Rotunda !"' Just
then the lofty cloud, all at once, as by the blow
of a hand out of the ether, broke in two, and
the ravished Sun, like the eye of a Venus float-
ing through her ancient heavens, — for she once
stood even liere, — looked mildly in from the
upper deep ; then a holy radiance filled the
temple, and burned on the porphyry of the
pavement, and Albano looked around him in
an ecstasy of wonder and delight, and said with
low voice : " How transfigured at this moment
is everything in this sacred place ! Raphael's
spirit comes forth from his grave in this noon-
tide hour, and everything which its reflection
touches, brightens into godlike splendor!" The
Princess looked upon him tenderly, and he
lightly laid his hand upon hers, and said, as one
vanquished, " Sophocles !"

On the next moonlit evening, Gaspard be-
spoke torches, in order that the Coliseum, with
its giant-circle, might tlie first time stand in fire
before them. The knight would fain have gone
around alone with his son dimly through the
dim work, like two spirits of the olden time,
but the Princess forced herself upon him, from
a too lively wish to share with the noble youth
his great moments, and perhaps, in fact, her
heart and his own. Women do not sufiiciently
comprehend that an idea, when it fills and ele-
vates man's mind, shuts it, then, against love,
and crowds out persons; whereas with woman
all ideas easily become human beings.

They passed over the Forum, by the Via
sacra, to the Coliseum, whose lofty, cloven fore-
head looked down pale under the moonlight.
They stood before the gray rock-walls, which
reared themselves on four colonnades one above

another, and the torchlight shot up into the arches
of the arcades, gilding the green shrubbery high
overhead, and deep in the earth had the noble
monster already buried his feet. They stepped
in and ascended the mountain, full of fragments
of rock, from one seat of the spectators to an-
other. Gaspard did not venture to the sixth or
highest, where the men used to stand, but Al-
bano and the Princess did. Then the youth
gazed down over the cliffs, upon the round,
green crater of the burnt-out volcano, which
once swallowed nine thousand beasts at once,
and which quenched itself with human blood.
The lurid glare of the torches penetrated into the
clefts and caverns, and among the foliage of the
ivy and laurel, and among the great shadows
of the moon, which, like recluses, kept them-
selves in cells. Toward the South, where the
streams of centuries and barbarians had stormed
in, stood single columns and bare arcades.
Temples and three palaces had the giant fed
and lined with his limbs, and still, with all
his wounds, he looked out livingly into the
world.

" "What a people !" said Albano. " Here curled
the giant snake five times about Christianity.
Like a smile of scorn lies the moonlight down
below there upon the green arena, where once
stood the Colossus of the Sun-god. The star of
the north* glimmers low through the windows,
and the Serpent and the Bear crouch. What a
world has gone by!" — The Princess answered,
"that twelve thousand prisoners built this the-
atre, and that a great many more had bled
therein." "0! we too have building prisoners,"
said he, " but for fortifications ; and blood, too,
still flows, but with sweat ! No, we have no
present; the past, without it, must bring forth
a future.''

The Princess went to break a laurel-twig and
pluck a blooming wall -flower. Albano sank
away into musing: the autumnal wind of the
past swept over the stubble. On this holy emi-
nence he saw the constellations, Rome's green
hills, the glimmering city, the Pyramid of Ces-
tius, — but all became Past, and on the twelve
hills dwelt, as upon graves, the lofty old spirits,
and looked sternly into the age, as if they were
still its kings and judges.

"This to remember the place and time !'' said
the approaching Princess, handing him the
laurel and the flower. — "Thou mighty One ! a
Coliseum is thy flower-pot; to thee is nothing
too great, and nothing too small !'' said he, and
threw the Princess into considerable confusion,
till she observed that he meant not her, but
nature. His whole being seemed newly and
painfully moved, and, as it were, removed to a
distance : he looked down after his father, and
went to find him ; he looked at him sharply,
and spoke of nothing more this evening.

* The Pole-star, as well as other northern constella-
tions, stands lower in the south.

RICHTER.

411

LEIBGEBER TO SIEBENKAS*

Baireuth, 21st September, 1785.
" Mr dear brother, and cousin, and uncle, and
father, and son, — The two ears and chambers
of your heart, are my whole genealogical tree ;
wherein you resemble Adam, who, when he
went out walking, carried with him the whole
future race of his relations, and his long line of
successors (which even yet is not all drawn out
and unwound), until he became a father, and
his wife bore a child. Would to God I had
been the first Adam ] * * * Siebenkas, I
adjure you, let me follow up this thought as
though I were crazed ; and don't expect another
word in this letter except such as may assist in
painting my portrait as the first father of man-
kind.

" Those scholars misunderstood me greatly
who may suppose that I was to be Adam, be-
cause, according to Puffendorf and many others,
the whole earth would then belong to me of
right, — like a European possession in the India
of the universe, — as my patrimo7iium Petri, Pauli,
JudcB, inasmuch as I, the only Adam and man,
consequently as the first and last universal mo-
narch (though as yet without subjects), could
and might lay claim to the whole earth. The
Pope, as holy father, though not as first father,
may think of such things ; or rather, he did not
think about them centuries ago, when he ap-
pointed himself guardian and heir of all the
lands incorporated into the earth ; nay, and did
not even blush to pile upon his earthly crown
yet two others — a heavenly crown and a crown
of hell.

"How little I desire! My sole motive for
wishing to have been the old and oldest Adam,
is, tliat on my marriage-evening I might have
walked up and down with Eve outside the
espalier of Paradise, in our green honeymoon
aprons and skins, and have held a Hebrew
wedding-oration to the mother of mankind.

"Before I begin my speech, I must preface
with the remark, that before my fall the extra-
ordinarily felicitous idea suggested itself to me
of no(ing down the cream of my omniscience ;
for in my state of innocence, I possessed a know-
ledge of all the arts and sciences, universal as
well as scholastic history, the several penal and
other codres of law, and all the old dead lan-
guages, as well as the living: I was, as it were,
a living Pindus and Pegasus, a movable lodge
of sublime light, a royal literary society, a pocket-
seat of the Muses, and a short golden siede de
Louis XIV. With the understanding I then
possessed, it was therefore less to be wondered
at, than to be considered as a piece of good
luck, that in my leisure moments 1 consigned
the best of my omniscience to fif^per ; so that
when I afterwards fell, and became silly, I had

* From " Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces." Trans-
lated by Edw. Henry Noel. Boston ; James Munroe iSc Co.
1845.

extracts, or a resume, of my former knowledge
at hand, to which I was enabled to refer.

"'Virgin,' thus, beyond the gates of Paradise,
did I begin my discourse; 'Virgin, we are in-
deed the first parents, and have a mind to beget
other parents ; but you think of nothing, as long
as you can only stick your spoon into a forbid-
den mess of sweetmeat.

" ' I, as man and protoplast, reflect and pon-
der ; and to-day, as I walk up and down, I will
be the marriage-priest and preacher (I wish I
had begotten another for this purpose) at our
holy ceremony, and represent to you and my-
self, in a short wedding-discourse, the grounds
of doubt and decision, the rationesdubitandi and
decidendi of the protopla^s, or first married pair
(i. e. myself and thee), in the act of reflecting
and considering ; and, moreover, how they con-
sider, in the first Pars, the grounds and reasons
not to fructify the earth, bat this very day to
emigrate, the one into the old, the other into the
new world ; and, in the second Pars, tlie rea-
sons nevertheless to leave it alone, and to mar-
ry; whereupon a short elench, or ttsws epanor-
thoticus, shall appear and conclude the night.

PAHS I.

"'Pious hearer! such as thou now beholdest
me in my sheep-skin, full of earnest and deep
thought, I am nevertheless full, not so much of
follies as of fools, between whom a wise man
is occasionally inserted by way of a parenthesis.
It is true, I am small of stature,* and the ocean
rose some way above my ankles, and wet my
new wild-beast skin ; but, by heaven ! I walk
up and down here, girded with a seed -bag,
containing the seeds of all nations, and I carry
the repertorium and treasury-chest of the whole
human race, a little world, and an orbis pictus,
before me, as pedlars carry their open ware-
house on their stomach ; for Bonnet, who lives
within irie, when he comes forth, will seat him-
self down at his writing-desk, and show that
all things are comprised one within the other,
one parenthesis or box within the odier ; that
the son is contained in the father, both in the
grandfather, and consequently in the great-
grandfather both the grandfather and his inser-
tions lie waiting ; in the great-great-grandfather
the great-grandfatlier with the insertion of the
insertion, and with all his episodes, and so on.
Are not all religious sects — for I cannot make
myself too intelligible to thee, beloved bride —
incorporated in thy bridegroom here present,
and with the exception of the Preadamites, even
the Adamites,! — all giants, the great Christopher
himself, — the people of all nations, all the ship-
loads of negroes destined for America, and the
red-marked jiackages, among which is the An-

* The French Academician Nicolas Henrion stretched
out Adam to the length of ]23 feet, 9 inches ; Heram, 118
feel, 'J 3-4 inches. The above is related by the Rabbis,
viz., that Adam after the fall ran through the ocean : vide
the 4th Bibl. Disc, of Sauriii.

f The well-known sect which went naked to church.

412

RICHTER.

spach and Baireuth soldiery, bespoken by the
English ? When you contemplate my interior,
Eve, do I not stand before you as a living street
of Jews, a Louvre of governors and kings, all of
whom I can beget if I please, supposing I am
not decided to the contrary by this first Pars ?
You must admire me, though at the same time
you may laugh, if you look at me attentively,
and placing your hand upon my shoulder, just
consider: Here in this man and protoplast lie
side by side, without quarrelling, all the facul-
ties and the whole race of man, — all the schools
of philosophy, sewing- schools, and spinning-
schools ; the best and most ancient princely
houses, though not yet cleanly picked out from
the common ships' companies ; the whole free
imperial order of knighthood, diough still packed
up with tjieir vassals, cottiers, and tenants ;
convents of nuns, bound up with convents of
monks j barracks, and county-deputies, not to
mention the ecclesiastical chapters of provosts,
deacons, priors, sub-priors, and canons! What
a man and Anak ! wilt thou say. Right, dear
one, so I am indeed ! I am, in fact, the nest-
dollar of the whole human cabinet of coins ; the
tribunal of all the courts of justice, which are,
moreover, all full without the absence of a single
member; the living corpus juris of all civilians,
canonists, feudalists, and publicists. Have I
not Meusel's learned Germany, and Jocher's
learned school -lexicon, complete within me?
and, more than that, Jocher and Meusel in per-
son, not to speak cf supplementary volumes?

" ' I should like to show you Cain. Supposing
I am persuaded by the second Pars, he would
be our first seedling and tendril, our prince of
Wales, of Calabria, of Asturia, and of the Bra-
zils. If he were transparent, as I believe, you
would see how every thing fits in him one
within the other, like beer-glasses ; all ecumenic
councils, and inquisitions, and propaganda, and
the devil and his grandmother. But, lovely one,
you did not note down any of your scientia media
before your fall, as I did, and consequently you
gaze into futurity as blind as a beetle ; but I,
who see through it quite clearly, perceive by
my chrestomaUiy that if I really avail myself
of my Blumenbach's nisus formativus, and cast
to-day a few protoplastic glances into the jus
luxandicB coxa, or primes noctis* I shall not beget
ten fools, like another person, but whole bil-
lions of tens, and the units besides, when one
thinks of all the arrant Bohemians, Parisians,
inhabitants of Vienna, Leipzic, Baireuth, Hof,
Dublin, Kuhschnappel (together with their
wives and daughters), who will come into life
through me ; amongst whom there are always
a million for every five hundred who neither
listen to reason nor possess it. Duenna, as yet
you know but little of mankind ; you only know
two, for the snake is not one ; but I know what
I am about, and that with my limbus infantum

♦Literally the "first night," because, according to
many scholars, Eve became the fruit-thief on the very
morning of her creation.

I shall at the same time open a bedlam. By
heaven! I tremble and groan when I take but
a cursory glance between the leaves of the
course of centuries, and see nothing there but
stains of blood and patchwork quodlibetsoi^ Cools ;
when I think of the trouble it will cost before
an age learns to write a legible hand as good
as that of an elephant's trunk or of a minister —
before poor humanity has passed through pre-
paratory schools, and hedge-schools, and private
French governesses, and can enter with honor
the Latin lyceum, royal and Jesuit schools —
before it can attend the fencing school, the
dancing floor, a drawing academy, and a dog-
maticum and clinicimi. The devil ! It makes
me hot only to think of it! It is true nobody
will call you the brood-hen of the future flight
of starlings, the cod-fish spawner, wherein Leu-
enhock counts nine million and a half of stock-
fish eggs; it will not be laid at your door, my
little Eve ; but your husband will bear all the
blame. He ought to have been wiser, people
will say, and rather not have begotten anything
at all than such a rabble as the greater number
of these robbers are ; such, for instance, as the
crowned emperors on the Roman throne, and
also the vicegerents on the Roman chair ; the
former of whom will name themselves after
Antoninus and Ctesar, the latter after Christ and
Peter, and amongst whom may be found some
whose throne is a Liineburgchair of torture for
humanity, and a birth-chair of the scafibld, if it
be not indeed a Place de Greve reversed, serving
at one and the same time as a place of execu-
tion for the mass, and of pleasure for the indi-
vidual.* I shall also have Borgia, Pizarro, St.
Domenico, and Potemkin, brought up against
me ; and even granting that I could free my-
self from the reproach of these black exceptions,
I must nevertheless concede (and anti-Adams
will take hold of it utiliter^ that my descendants
and colonists cannot exist half an hour without
either thinking or committing some folly; that
in their giant war of passions they never esta-
blish a peace, seldom a truce; that the chief
fault of man consists in his having so many
little faults that his conscience scarcely serves
him for anything else but to hate his neighbor,
and to have a morbid sensitiveness for the faults
of others; that he will never part with his evil
habits until he is on his death-bed, alongside
which is pushed a confessional, much as child-
ren are made to go to stool before they are put
to bed ; that he learns and loves the language

* It seems almost emblematic of the incorporation of
the fierce earnest tiger and the playful ape, that the
Place de Greve in Paris is at once the place of e-xecution
for criminals, and the pleasure-ground for the public fes-
tivals ; that on one and the same spot a king's assassin
is torn asunder by horses, and a king's fete is celebrated
by the citizens; and that the fire-wheels of the victims
broken on the wheel and the fire-wheelsof the fire-works
play together in close fellowship. Horrible contrasts!
%vliich we must not accumulate, lest we fall into the
error of those who have given occasion for this rebuke.

RICHTER.

413

of virtue, while he shows enmity to the virtuous
— resembling in this the citizens of London,
who hate the French, while they keep French
masters to learn their language. Eve, Eve!
we shall gain little honor by our marriage.
According to the fundamental text, Adam sig-
nifies red earth ; and verily my cheeks will be
entirely composed thereof, and blush when I
think of the inexpressible and uninterrupted
vanity and self-conceit of our great-grandchild-
ren,— a vanity growing with every century.
No one will pull his own nose but he who
shaves himself; the high nobility will burn the
family -escutcheon at the door of their secret
chambers, and interweave the cruppers of their
horses into their initials ; reviewers will set
themselves above the authors, the latter above
the former ; the Heimlicher von Blaise will
present his hand for the orphan's kiss ; the la-
dies theirs to every one ; and the highest will
kiss the hem of the embroidered garment. Eve,
I had barely finished writing down my pro-
phetic extracts of the world's history up to the
sixth millennary, when you bit into the apple
under the tree ; and I, like an ass, followed
your example, and then everything escaped me.
God knows what may be the semblance of the
male and female fools of the other millennaries.
Virgin ! wilt thou now use the sternocleidomas-
toidcum, as Sommering calls the nod of the head,
and therewith say thy yea, when I ask thee,
Wilt thou have this marriage-preacher to thy
wedded lord and husband f

" ' You will answer, without doubt : We will
at least listen to the second Pars, wherein the
afiair is considered in another point of view j
and truly, pious reader, we had almost forgotten
to proceed to

PAHS II.

and altogether to weigh the grounds which in-
duce protoplasts and first parents to be such,
and to marry, serving Destiny in the capacity
of sewing and spinning machines of linseed and
hemp, of flax and tow, which she may wind in
infinite coils and net-work round the earthly
sphere. My chief motive, and I hope thine
also, is my conception of the last day ; for in
case we two become the entrepreneurs of the
human race, I shall behold all my descendants
steaming up on the last day from the calcined
eartli into the nearest neighboring planet, and
arranging themselves in order for the last re-
view ; and in this blessed harvest of children
and grandchildren I shall meet some who are
gifted with understanding, and with whom one
can exchange a word or two — men whose whole
life passed under a thunder-cloud, and who lost
it in a storm, as, according to the belief of the
Romans, the favorites of the gods were struck
dead by lightning — men who, nevertheless,
neither bound their eyes or their ears in the
tempest. Furthermore, I behold there the four
glorious heathen evangelists, Socrates, Cato,
Epictetus, and Antoninus, who went about to

every house applying their throats, like the
pipes of fire-engines 200 feet in length, to every
damnable conflagration of the passions, and ex-
tinguishing them with the best and purest alpine
water. In short, we shall, if we so please, be
— I the grandpapa, and you the grandmamma,
of the most excellent people. I tell thee, Eve,
it is noted down here in my tracts and collecta-
nea, black upon white, that I shall be the fore-
father, the ancestor, the Bethlehem, and plastic
nature of an Aristotle, a Plato, a Shakspeare,
Newton, Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, and Leibnitz,
besides others who are still cleverer than their
protoplast himself. Eve ! thou acting and im-
portant member of this present fruit -bearing
society, or productive class in the state, consist-
ing of you and the wedding-orator, I swear to
you that I shall enjoy an hour of some blissful
eternities when I stand upon the neighboring
planet, and cast my eyes flightily over the circle
of classic and new-born men, and then kneel
down in rapture upon the satellite, and exclaim,
" Good morning, my children !" '

" Ye Jews formerly had the habit of uttering
an ejaculatory prayer when ye met a wise man ;
but what prayer can I utter long enough, when
I behold at one glance all the wise men and
members of faculties, all of thern, moreover,
my relations, who, in spite of the wolfish hunger
of the passions, yet knew how to renounce the
forbidden apple and pear and ananas, and who,
in their thirst after truth, committed no garden-
robbery from the tree of knowledge, like their
first parents, who seized the forbidden fruit,
though they felt no hunger, and attacked the
tree of knowledge, although they already pos-
sessed all knowledge, excepting that of the
snake's nature. Then I shall rise from the
ground, and rush among the crowd of my de-
scendants, and fall on the bosom of one chosen
one, and throw my arras round him, and say,
' Thou true, good, contented, gentle son, if, in
the second Pars of my wedding -discourse, I
could have shown my Eve, the queen-mother
of the present swarm of bees around us, none
other but thee, sitting in thy breeding-cell, verily
the woman would have taken it to heart, and
listened to reason :' and the true good son art
thou, Siebenkas ; and thou wilt ever lie on the
rough hairy breast of

"Tht Friend."

SECOITD EXTRACT FROJI "FLOWER, FRUIT AND
THORN PIECES."

Man lies under the yoke of a twofold neces-
sity ; that of the day, which he bears without
murmur, and that of the year, which, though
more rare, he cannot endure without wrangling
and complaint. The daily and ever-renewed
necessity is, that no wheat grows in winter;
that we are not gifted with wings, like so many
of the animal tribe ; that we cannot set our foot
upon the ring-shaped mountains of the moon,
and thence gaze on the descending sun glori-
35*

414

RICHTER.

ously illumining the mile-deep abysses. Tlie
yearly and more rare necessity is, that it rains
when the corn is in blossom ; that we cannot
walk conveniently in many a marshy meadow
of earth ; and that occasionally, because of corns
or our want of shoes, we cannot walk at all.
But the yearly necessity is, in fact, as great as
the daily one; and it is just as foolish to resist
and murmur at a paralysis of the limbs, as at
our want of wings. All the past, and this alone
is the subject of our sorrow, is so much a matter
of iron-necessity, that in the eyes of a superior
being it is an equal folly, on the part of an apo-
thecary, whether he complain of his shop hav-
ing been burnt down, or of liis inability to go
botanizing in the moon, though in the phials
there he would find many things which are
wanting in his.

I will here insert a little extra leaf upon the
consolations in our windy, cold, damp life. Let
those who are exceedingly vexed, and almost
inconsolable, at this short digression, seek con-
solation in the

EXTRA LEAF ON CONSOLATIOlf.

A time will come, that is, must come, when
we shall be commanded by morality not only
to cease tormenting others, but also ourselves.
A time must come when man, even on earth,
shall wipe away most of his tears, were it only
from ])ride.

Nature, indeed, draws tears out of the eyes,
and sighs out of the breast, so quickly, that the
wise man can never wholly lay aside the garb
of mourning from his body; but let his soul
wear none. For if it is over a merit to bear a
small suffering with cheerfulness, so must the
calm and patient endurance of the worst be a
merit, and w^ill only differ in being a greater
one ; as the same reason which is valid for the
forgiveness of small injuries is equally valid for
the forgiveness of the greatest.

The first thing that we have to contend
against and despise, in sorrow as 'in anger, is
its iioisonous enervating sweetness, which we
are so loath to exchange for the labor of consol-
ing ourselves, and to drive away by the effort
of reason.

We must not exact of philosophy, that with
one stroke of the pen it shall reverse the trans-
formation of Rubens, who, with one stroke of
his bru^h, changed a laughing child into a
weeping one. It is enough if it change the full-
mourning of the soul into half-mourning; it is
enough if I can say to myself, — I will be con-
tent to endure the sorrow that philosophy has
left me; without it, it would be greater, and
the gnat's bite would be a wasp's sting.

Even physical pain shoots its sparks upon us
out of the electrical condenser of the imagina-
tion. We could endure the most acute pangs
calmly if they only lasted the sixtieth part of a
second ; but, in fact, we never have to endure
an hour of pain, but only a succession of the
sixtieth parts of a second, the sixty beams of

which are collected into the burning focus of a
second, and directed upon our nerves by the
imagination alone. The most painful part of
our bodily pain is that which is bodiless, or
immaterial, namely, our impatience, and the
delusion that it will last forever.

There is many a loss over which we all know
for certain that we shall no longer grieve in
twenty — ten — two years. Why do we not say
to ourselves : I will at once then, to-day, throw
away an opinion which I shall abandon in
twenty years? Why should I be able to aban-
don errors of twenty years' standing, and not
of twenty hours'?

When I awake from a dream which an Ota-
heite has painted for me on the dark ground of
the night, and find the flowery land melted
away, I scarcely sigh, thinking to myself, " It
was only a dream." Why is it that if I had
really possessed this island while awake, and
it had been swallowed up by an earthquake,
why is it that I do not then exclaim, " The
island was only a dream V Wherefore am I
more inconsolable at die loss of a longer dream
than at the loss of a shorter — for that is the dif-
ference ; and why does man find a great loss
less probable and less a matter of necessity,
when it occurs, than a small one 1

The reason is, that every sentiment and every
emotion is mad, and exacts and builds its own
world. A man can vex himself that it is al-
ready, or only, twelve o'clock. What folly!
The mood not only exacts its own world, its
own individual* consciousness, but its owu time.
I beg every one to let his passions, for once,
speak out plainly within himself, and to probe
and question them to the bottom, as to what
they really desire. He will be terror-struck at
the enormity of these hitherto only half-muttered
wishes. Anger wishes that all mankind had
only one neck; love, that it had only one heart;
grief, tv/o tear-glands; and pride, two bent
knees.

When I read in Widman's " Coitrt Chronicle"
of the terrible bloody times of the Thirty Years'
War, and as it were lived them over again ;
when I heard once more the cries of the tor-
tured for help, as they struggled in the Danube-
whirlpools of their age, and again beheld the
clasping of hands, and the delirious wandering
to and fro on the several pillars of the crum-
bling bridges, against which struck foaming
billows and fiercely-driven fields of ice — and
thus reflected, "All the waves have subsided,
the ice has melted, the storm is mute, and the
human beings also with their sighs," I was filled
with a pecuhar melancholy feeling of consola-
tion for all times ; and I asked, "Was and is,
then, this fleeting misery beneath the church-
yard-gate of life, which three steps into the
nearest cavern could put an end to, worth all
this cowardly lamentation "?" Verily, if there
be, as I believe there is, true constancy under

* "Sein eignes ich." Tr.

RICHTER.

415

an eternal sorrow, then is patience under a fleet-
ing one scarcely worthy of the name.

A great and unmerited national calamity
should not humble tis, as the theologians de-
mand, but rather make us proud. When the
long heavy sword of war falls upon humanity,
and when a thousand pale hearts are riven and
bleeding; or when, on a blue serene evening,
the hot smoky cloud of a city, cast on the fune-
real pyre, hangs darkly on the sky, — as though
it were the cloud of ashes of a thousand con-
sumed hearts and joys, — then be thy spirit lifted
up in pride, and let it contemn the tear and
that for which it falls, saying, "Thou art much
too insignificant, thou every-day life, for the in-
consolableness of an immortal, — thou tattered,
misshapen, wholesale existence ! Upon this
sphere, which is rounded with the ashes of
thousands of years, amid the storms of earth,
made up of vapors, it is a disgrace that the sigh
should only be dissipated together with the
bosom that gives it birth, and not sooner; and
that the tear should not perish except with the
eye whence it flows."

But then, moderate thy sublime indignation,
and put this question to thyself: If the hidden
Infinite One, who is encompassed by gleaming
abysses without bounds, and who himself cre-
ates the bounds, were now to lay immensity
open to thy view, and to reveal himself to thee
in his distribution of the suns, the lofty spirits,
the little human hearts, and our days and some
tears therein, — wouldst thou rise up out of thy
dust against him, and say, "Almighty! be other
than Thou art!"

But be one sorrow alone forgiven thee, or
made good to thee — the sorrow for thy dead
ones ; for this sweet sorrow for the lost is itself
but another form of consolation. When the
heart is full of longing for them, it is but an-
other mode of continuing to love them; and we
shed tears as well when we think of their de-
parture, as when we picture to oitrselves our
joyful re-union — and the tears, methinks, difl!er
not.

DREAM.*

The object of this composition must serve as
the excuse of its boldness.

Man denies the existence of God with as little
feeling as most of us grant it. Even in our true
systems, w'e only collect words, counters and
medals, as the avaricious accumulate cabinets
of coins; and it is not until long after, that we
exchange the words for sentiments, our coins
for enjoyments. A man may believe in the
immortality of the soul for twenty years, but
only in the twenty-first, in some great moment,
is he astonished at the rich substance of this
belief, at the warmth of this naphtha-spring.

* From the same.

Even so was I liorror-struck at the poisonous
vapor which meets the heart of one who enters
for the first time into the atheistic seminary, as
though it would suffocate it. It would cause
me less pain to deny immortality than the ex-
istence of the Deity. In the former case, I lose
nothing but a world concealed by a fog; in the
latter case, I lose the present world, namely, its
Sun. The whole spiritual universe is split and
shattered by the hand of Atheism into countless
quicksilver points of individual existences,*
which twinkle, melt into one another, and wan-
der about, meet and part, without unity and
consistency. No one is so much alone in the
universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned
heart, w^liieh has lost the greatest of fathers, he
stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse
of nature, no longer moved or sustained by the
Spirit of the universe, but growing in its grave ;
and he mourns, until he himself crumbles away
from the dead body.

The whole world lies before him like the
great Egyptian sphinx of stone, which is half-
buried in the sand, and the universe is the cold
iron mask of the shapeless eternity.

Another aim of my composition is, to frighten
some of the reading or deep-read professors;
for verily these people, since they have become
day -laborers, after the manner of condemned
criminals, in the waterworks and mining ope-
rations of the critical philosophy, weigh the ex-
istence of God as apathetically and as cokl-
heartedly as though it were a question of the
existence of the kraken or the unicorn.

To others, who are not so far advanced as
these deep-read professors, I may observe, that
it is no inconsistency to unite a belief in immor-
tality with a belief in Atheism ; for the same
necessity which, in this life, threw the bright
dewdrop of my individual existence into a
flower-cup, and beneath a sun, can repeat it in
a second life ; indeed, it is easier to embody me
a second time than the first time.

When we are told in childhood, that at mid-
night, when our sleep reaches near unto the
soul, and even darkens our dreams, the dead
rise out of their sleep and mimic the religious
service of the living in the churches, we shud-
der at death on account of the dead ; and in the
loneliness of night we turn away our gaze from
the long narrow windows of the silent church,
fearing to examine whether their glitter pro-
ceeds from the moonbeams, or not.

Childhood and especially its terrors and rap-
tures once more assume wings and brightness
in our dreams, and play like glow-worms in the
little night of the soul. Crush not these little
fluttering sparks! Leave us even our dark
painful dreams, as relieving middle tints of
reality ! And what could compensate us for
our dreams, which bear us away from beneath
the roar of the waterfall into the mountain-
heights of childhood, where the stream of life,

* German, '' ichs."

416

RICHTER.

yet silent in its little plain, and a mirror of hea-
ven, flowed towards its precipices 1

Once on a summer evening I lay upon a
mountain in the sunshine, and fell asleep ; and
I dreamt that I awoke in the church-yard, hav-
ing been roused by the rattling wheels of the
tower-clock, which struck eleven. I looked for
the sun in the void night-heaven ; for I thought
that it was eclipsed by the moon. All the
graves were unclosed, and the iron doors of the
charnel-house were opened and shut by invisi-
ble hands. Shadows cast by no one flitted
along the walls, and other shadows stalked
erect in the free air. No one slept any longer
in the open coffins but tlie children. A grey,
sultry fog liung suspended in heavy folds in the
heavens, and a gigantic shadow drew it in like
a net, ever nearer, and closer, and hotter. Above
me I heard the distant fall of avalanches ; be-
neath me, the earnest step of an immeasurable
earthquake. The church was heaved up and
down by two incessant discords, which strug-
gled with one another, and in vain sought to
unite in harmony. Sometimes a grey glimmer
flared up on the windows, and, molten by the
glimmer, the iron and lead ran down in streams.
The net of fog and the reeling earth drove me
into the temple, at the door of which brooded
two basilisks with twinkling eyes in two poi-
sonous nests. I passed through unknown sha-
dows, on whom were impressed all the centu-
ries of years. The shadows stood congregated
round the altar ; and in all, the breast throbbed
and trembled in the place of a heart. One
corpse alone, which had just been buried in the
church, lay still upon its pillow, and its breast
heaved not, while upon its smiling countenance
lay a happy dream ; but on the entrance of one
of the living he awoke, and smiled no more.
He opened his closed eyelids with a painful
eflbrt, but within there was no eye ; and in the
sleeping bosom, instead of a heart there was a
wound. He lifted up his hands, and folded
them in prayer ; but the arms lengthened out
and detached themselves from the body, and
the folded hands fell down apart. Aloft, on the
church-dome, stood the dial-plate of Eternity ;
but there was no figure visible upon it, and it
was its own index ; only a black figure pointed
to it, and the dead wished to read the time
upon it.

A lofty, noble form, having the expression of
a never-ending sorrow, now sank down from
above upon the altar, and all the dead ex-
claimed— "Christ! is there no God ?" And he
answered — "There is none !"' The whole sha-
dow of each dead one, and not the breast alone,
now trembled, and one after another was se-
vered by the trembling.

Christ continued : — " I traversed the worlds.
I ascended into the suns, and flew with the
milky ways through the wildernesses of the
heavens ; but there is no God ! I descended as
far as Being throws its shadow, and gazed down
into the abyss, and cried aloud — 'Father, where

art thou V but I heard nothing but the eternal
storm which no one rules; and the beaming
rainbow in the west hung, without a creating
sun, above the abyss, and fell down in drops ;
and when I looked up to the immeasurable
world for the Divine Eye, it glared upon me
from an empty, bottomless socket, and Eternity
lay brooding upon chaos, and gnawed it, and
ruminated it. Cry on, ye discords! cleave the
shadows with your cries; for he is not!"'

The shadows grew pale and melted, as the
white vapor formed by the frost melts and be-
comes a warm breath, and all was void. Then
there arose and came into the temple — a terri-
ble sight for the heart — the dead children who
had awakened in the church-yard, and they
cast themselves before the lofty form upon the
altar, and said, " Jesus ! have we no Father ?"'
and he answered with streaming eyes, "We are
all orphans, I and you ; we are without a Fa-
ther."

Thereupon the discords shrieked more harsh-
ly; the trembling walls of the temple split
asunder, and the temple and the children sunk
down, and the earth and the sun followed, and
the whole immeasurable universe fell rushing
past us ; and aloft uj^on the summit of infinite
Nature stood Christ, and gazed down into the
universe, chequered with thousands of suns, as
into a mine dug out of the Eternal Night,
wherein the suns are the miners' lamps, and
the milky ways the veins of silver.

And when Christ beheld the grinding con-
course of worlds, the torch-dances of the hea-
venly ig-jics/a^wi, and the coral-banks of beating
hearts ; and when he beheld how one sphere
after another poured out its gleaming souls into
the sea of death, as a drop of water strews
gleaming lights upon the waves, sublime, as the
loftiest finite being, he lifted up his eyes to the
Nothingness, and to the empty Immensity, and
said; "Frozen, dumb Nothingness! cold, eternal
Necessity! insane Chance! know ye what is
beneath you? When will ye destroy the build-
ing and me? Chance! knowest thou thyself
when with hurricanes thou wilt march through
the snow-storm of stars and extinguish one sun
after the other, and when the sparkling dew of
the constellations shall cease to glisten as thou
passest by? How lonely is everyone in the
wide charnel of the universe ! I alone am in
company with myself O Father! 0 Father!
where is thine infinite bosom, that I may be at
rest? Alas! if every being is its own father
and creator, why cannot it also be its own de-
stroying angel? * * * Is that a man near
me? Thou poor one! thy little life is the sigh
of Nature, or only its echo. A concave mirror
throws its beams upon the dust-clouds composed
of the ashes of the dead upon your earth, and
thus ye exist, cloudy, tottering images! Look
down into the abyss over which clouds of ashes
are floating by. Fogs full of worlds arise out
of the sea of death. The future is a rising va-
por, the present a falling one. Kuowest thou

RICHTER.

417

thy earth ?" Here Christ looked down, and his
eyes filled with tears, and he said, "Alas ! I too
was once like you : then I was happy, for I had
still my infinite Father, and still gazed joyfully
from the mountains into the infinite expanse of
heaven; and I pressed my wounded heart on
his soothing image, and said, even in the bitter-
ness of death : ' Father, take thy Son out of his
bleeding shell, and lift him up to thy heart.'
Ah, ye too, too happy dwellers of earth, ye still
believe in him. Perhaps at this moment your
sun is setting, and ye fall amid blossoms, radi-
ance, and tears, upon your knees, and lift up
your blessed han(is, and call out to the open
heaven, amid a thousand tears of joy, 'Thou
knowest me too, thou infinite One, and all my
wounds, and thou wilt welcome me after death,
and wilt close them all.' Ye wretched ones !

after death they will not be closed When

the man of sorrows stretches his sore wounded
back upon the earth to slumber towards a love-
lier morning, full of truth, full of virtue and of
joy, behold, he awakes in the tempestuous
chaos, in the everlasting midnight, and no morn-
ing Cometh, and no healing hand, and no infinite
Father ! Mortal who art near me, if tliou still
livest, worship him, or thou hast lost him for-
ever !"

And as I fell down and gazed into the gleam-
ing fabric of worlds, I beheld the raised rings
of the giant serpent of eternity, which had
couched itself round the universe of worlds,
and the rings fell, and she enfolded the universe
doubly. Then she wound herself in a thou-
sand folds round Nature, and cruslied the worlds
together, and, grinding them, she squeezed the
infinite temple into one church-yard church —
and all became narrow, dark, and fearful, and
a bell -hammer stretched out to infinity was
about to strike the last hour of Time, and split
the universe asunder — when I awoke.

My soul wept for joy, that it could again
worship God; and the joy, and the tears, and
the belief in him, were the prayer. And when
I arose, the sun gleamed deeply behind the full
purple ears of corn, and peacefully threw the
reflection of its evening blushes on the little
moon, which was rising in the east without an
aurora. And between the heaven and the
earth a glad fleeting world stretched out its
short wings, and lived like myself in the pre-
sence of the infinite Father, and from all nature
around me flowed sweet peaceful tones, as
from evening bells.

LETTER TO MY FRIENDS, INSTEAD OF
PREFACE.*

Of ways for becoming happier (not happy)
I could never inquire out more than tliree. The

* Life of Quintus Fixlein. German Romance. T.
Carlisle, Vol. iii. Edinburgh. 18-27.

3c

first, rather an elevated road, is this : To soar
away so far above the clouds of life, that you
see the whole external world, with its wolf-
dens, charnel-houses, and thunder-rods, lying
far down beneath you, shrunk into a little child's
garden. The second is : Simply to sink down
into this little garden ; and there to nestle your-
self so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow,
that, in looking out from your warm lark-nest,
you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-
liouses, or thunder -rods, but only blades and
ears, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a
tree, and a sun-screen, and rain-screen. The
third, finally, which I look upon as the hardest
and cunningest, is that of alternating between
the other two.

This I shall now satisfactorily expound to
men at large.

The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your
Howard, your Republican, he whom civic storm,
or genius poetic storm, impels ; in short, every
mortal with a great Purpose, or even a peren-
nial Passion (were it but that of writing the
largest folios), all these men fence themselves
in by their internal world against the frosts and
heats of the external, as the madman in a worse
sense does : every fixed idea, such as rules every
genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically,
separates and elevates a man above the bed
and board of this Earth, above its Dog's-grot-
toes, buckthorns and Devil's- walls ; like the
Bird of Paradise, he slumbers flying; and on
his outspread pinions, oversleeps unconsciously
the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in
his long fair dream of his ideal Mother-land. —
Alas ! To few is this dream granted ; and these
few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs!*

This skyward track, however, is fit only for
the winged portion of the human species, for
the smallest. What can it profit poor quill-
driving brethren, whose souls have not even
wing-shells, to say nothing of wings ? Or these
tethered persons with the best back breast and
neck fins, who float motionless in the wicker
Fish-box of the State, and are not allowed to
swim, because the Box or State, long ago tied
to the shore, itself swims in the name of the
Fishes? To the whole standing and writing
host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors,
Clerks of all departments, and all the lobsters
packed together heels over head in the Lobster-
basket of the Government office-rooms, and for
refreslipient, sprinkled over with a few nettles ;
to these persons, what way of becoming happy
here, can I possibly point out ?

My second merely ; and that is as follows :
To take a compound microscope, and with it to
discover, and convince themselves, that their
drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that
butterfly-dust is peacock-feathers, mouldiness a
flowery field, and sand a heap of jewels. These
microscopic recreations are more lasting than
all costly watering-place recreations. — But I

* So are the Vampyres called.

418

RICHTER.

must explain these metaphors by new ones.
The purpose, for which I have sent Fixlein^s
Life into the Messrs. Liibeks' Warehouse, is
simply that in this same Life — therefore in this
Preface it is less needful — I may show to the
whole Earth that we ought to value little joys
more than great ones, the night-gown more than
the dress-coat; that Plutus' heaps are worth
less than his handfuls, the plum than the penny
for a rainy day; and that not great, but little
good-haps can make us happy. — Can I accom-
plish this, I shall, through means of my Book,
bring up for Posterity, a race of men finding re-
freshment in all things; in the warmth of their
rooms and of their nighi-caps ; in their pillows;
in the three High Festivals; in mere Apostles'
days ; in the Evening Moral Tales of their
wives, when these gentle persons have been
forth as ambassadors visiting some Dowager
Residence, whither the husband could not be
persuaded; in the bloodletting-day of these
their nev\'sbringers ; in the day of slaughtering,
salting, potting against the rigor of grim winter;
and in all such days. You perceive, my drift
is that man must become a little Tailor-bird,
which, not amid the crashing boughs of the
storm-tost, roaring, immeasurable tree of Life,
but on one of its leaves, sews itself a nest toge-
ther, and there lies snug. The most essential
sermon one could preach to our century, were
a sermon on the duty of staying at home.

The third skyward road is the alternation
between the other two. The foregoing second
way is not good enough for man, who here on
Earth should take into his hand not the Sickle
only, but also the Plough. The _^rsi is too good
for him. He has not always the force, like
Rugendas, in the midst of the Battle to compose
Battle-pieces ; and, like Backhuisen in the Ship-
wreck, to clutch at no board but the drawing-
board to paint it on. And then his pains are
not less lasting than his fatigues. Still oftener
is Strength denied its Arena: it is but the
smallest portion of life that, to a working soul,
offers Alps, Revolutions, Rhine -falls, Worms
Diets, and Wars with Xerxes ; and for the whole
it is better so : the longer portion of life is a
field beaten flat as a threshing-floor, without
lofty Gothard Mountains ; often it is a tedious
ice-field, without a single glacier tinged with
dawn.

But even by walking, a man rests and reco-
vers himself for climbing; by little joys and
duties, for great. The victorious Dictator must
contrive to plough down his battle Mars-field
into a flax and carrot field ; to transform his
theatre of war into a parlour theatre, on which
his children may enact some good pieces from
the Children''s Friend. Can he accomplish this,
can he turn so softly from the path of poetical
happiness into that of household happiness, —
then is he little different from myself, who even
now, though modesty might forbid me to dis-
close it — who even now, I say, amid the crea-
tion of this Letter, have been enabled to reflect,

that when it'is done, so also will the Roses and
Elder-berries of pastry be done, which a sure
hand is seething in butter for the Author of this
Work.

THE MARRIAGE.*

Rise, fair Ascension and Marriage day, and
gladden readers also! Adorn thyself with the
fairest jewel, with the bride, whose soul is as
pure and glittering as its vesture; like pearl
and pearl-muscle, the one as the other, lustrous
and ornamental ! And so over the espalier,
whose fruit-hedge has hitherto divided our dar-
ling from his Eden, every reader now presses
after him ! —

On the 9th of May, 1793, about three in the
morning, there came a sharp peal of trumpets,
like a light -beam, through the dim -red May-
dawn: two twisted horns, with a straight trum-
pet between them, like a note of admiration
between interrogation-points, were clanging
from a house in which only a parishioner (not
the Parson) dwelt and blew : for this parishioner
had last night been celebrating the same cere-
mony which the pastor had this day before him.
The joyful tallyho raised our Parson from his
broad bed (and the Shock from beneath it, who
some weeks ago had been exiled from the white
sleek coverlid), and this so early, that in the
portraying tester, where on every former morn-
ing he had observed his ruddy visage, and his
white bedclothes, all was at i:)resent dim and
crayoned.

I confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam
of dawn on the wall, made it so light, that he
could see his knee-buckles glancing on the chair.
He then softly awakened his mother (the other
guests were to lie for hours in the sheets), and
she had the city cook-maid to awaken, who,
like several other articles of vedding-furniture,
had been borrowed for a day or two from
Flachsenfingen. At two doors he knocked in
vain, and without answer ; for all were already
down at the hearth, cooking, blowing, and ar-
ranging.

How softly does the Spring day gradually
fold back its nun-veil, and the Earth grow bright,
as if it were the morning of a Resurrection ! —
The quicksilver- pillar of the barometer, the
guiding Fire-pillar of the weather-prophet, rests
firmly on Fixlein's Ark of the Covenant. The
Sun raises himself, jiure and cool, into the
morning-blue, instead of into the morning-red.
Swallows, instead of clouds, shoot skimming
through the melodious air. ... 0, the good
Genius of Fair Weather, who deserves many
temples and festivals (because without him no
festival could be held), lifted an a?therial azure
Day, as it were, from the well-clear atmosphere
of the Moon, and sent it down, on blue butter-
fly-wings— as if it were a blue Monday — glitter-

* Froro the same.

RICHTER.

419

ing below the Sun, in the zigzag of joyful qui-
vering descent, upon the narrow spot of Earth,
which our heated fancies are now viewing. . .
And on this balmy, vernal spot, stand amid
flowers, over which the trees are shaking blos-
soms instead of leaves, a bride and a bride-
groom Happy Fixlein ! how shall I paint

thee without deepening the sighs of longing in
the fairest souls 1 —

But soft! we will not drink the magic cup of
Fancy to the bottom, at six in the morning ; but
keep sober till towards night!

At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the
bridegroom — for the din of preparation was dis-
turbing his quiet orison — went out into the
church-yard, which (as in many other places)
together with the church, lay round his mansion
like a court. Here, on the moist green, over
whose closed flowers the church-yard wall was
still spreading broad shadows, did his spirit
cool itself from the warm dreams of Earth :
here, where the white flat grave -stone of his
Teacher lay before him like the fallen-in door
on the Janus'-lemple of Life, or like the wind-
ward side of the narrow house, turned towards
the tempests of the world : here, where the
little shrunk metallic door on the grated cross
of his father uttered to him the inscriptions of
death, and the year when his parent departed,
and all the admonitions and mementos, graven
on the lead ; — there, I say, his mood grew softer
and more solemn ; and he now lifted up by
heart his morning prayer, which usually he
read ; and entreated God to bless him in his
office, and to spare his mother's life, and to look
with favor and acceptance on the purpose of
to-day. — Then, over the graves, he walked into
his fenceless little angular flower-garden ; and
here, composed and confident in the divine
keeping, he pressed the stalks of his tulips
deeper into the mellow earth.

But on returning to the liouse, he was met on
all hands by the bell-ringing and the Janizary-
music of wedding-gladness; — the marriage-
guests had all thrown off" their nightcaps, and
were drinking diligently; — there was a clatter-
ing, a cooking, a frizzling ; — tea-services, cotfee-
services, and warm beer-services, were advanc-
ing in succession ; and plates full of bride-cakes
were going round like potter's frames or cistern-
wheels. — The Schoolmaster, with three young
lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house
an Arioso, with which, so soon as they were
perfect, he purposed to surprise his clerical su-
perior.— But now rushed all the arms of the
foaming joy-streams into one, when the sky-
queen besprinkled with blossoms, the bride,
descended upon Earth in her timid joy, full of
quivering, humble love; — when the bells be-
gan;— when the procession -column set forth
with the whole village round and before it ; —
when the organ, the congregaition, the officiating
priest, and the sparrows on the trees of the
church-window, struck louder and louder their
rolling peals on the drum of the jubilee-festival.

. . . The heart of the singing bridegroom was
like to leap from its place for joy, " that on his
bridal-day, it was all so respectable and grand."
— Not till the marriage benediction could he
pray a little.

Still worse and louder grew the business
during dinner, when pastry-work and march-
pane-devices were brought forward, — when
glasses, and slain fishes (laid under the napkins
to frighten the guests) went round ; — and when
the guests rose, and themselves went round,
and at length danced round : for they had in-
strumental music from the city there.

One minute handed over to the other the
sugar-bowl and bottle-case of joy : the guests
heard and saw less and less, and the villagers
began to see and hear more and more, and to-
wards night they penetrated like a wedge into
the open door, — nay, two youths ventured even
in the middle of the parsonage-court, to mount
a plank over a beam, and commence seesawing.
— Out of doors, the gleaming vapor of the de-
parted Sun was encircling the Earth, the even-
ing-star was glittering over parsonage and
church-yard ; no one heeded it.

However, about nine o'clock, — when the
marriage -guests had well nigh forgotten the
marriage -pair, and were drinking or dancing
along for their own behoof; when poor mortals,
in this sunshine of Fate, like fishes in the sun-
shine of the sky, were leaping up from their
wet cold element; and when the bridegroom
under the star of happiness and love, casting
like a comet its long train of radiance over all
his heaven, had in secret pressed to his joy-filled
breast his bride and his mother, — then did he
lock a slice of wedding-bread privily into a
press, in the old superstitious belief, that this
residue secured continuance of bread for the
whole marriage. As he returned, with greater
love for the sole partner of his life, she herself
met him with his mother, to deliver him in
private the bridal-nightgown and bridal-shirt,
as is the ancient usage. Many a countenance
grows pale in violent emotions, even of joy :
Thiennette's wax -face was bleaching still whiter
under the sunbeams of Happiness. 0, never
fall, thou lily of Heaven, and may four springs
instead of four seasons open and shut thy flower-
bells to the sun ! — All the arms of his soul as
he floated on the sea of joy were quivering to
clasp the soft warm heart of his beloved, to en-
circle it gently and fast, and draw it to his own.
He led her from the crowded dancing-room
into the cool evening. Why does the evening,
does the night put warmer love in our hearts 1
Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness 1 or is
it the exalting separation from the turmoil of
life ; that veiling of the world, in which for the
soul nothing more remains but souls? — is it
therefore, that the letters in which the loved
name stands written on our S2:)irit appear, like
phosphorus-writing, by night, in fire, while by
day in their cloudy traces they but smoke "?
He walked with his bride into the Castle-

420

RICHTER.

garden : she hastened quickly through the Castle,
and past its servants'-hall, where the fair flowers
of her young life had been crushed broad and
dry, under a long dreary pressure ; and her soul
expanded, and breathed in the free open garden,
on whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the
first seeds of the blossoms which to-day were
gladilening her existence. Still Eden! Green
flower -chequered chiaroscuro! — The moon is
sleeping under ground like a dead one ; but be-
yond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds
have fallen down like rose-leaves; and the
evening-star, the brideman of the sun, hovers,
like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red,
and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet
of its light.

The wandering pair arrived at the old gar-
deners hut; now standing locked and dumb,
with dark windows in the light garden, like a
fragment of the Past surviving in the Present.
Bared twigs of trees were folding, with clammy
hall-formed leaves, over the thick intertwisted
tangles of the bushes. — The Spring was stand-
ing, like a conqueror, with Winter at his feet. —
In the bkie pond, now bloodless, a dusky even-
ing-sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters
were moistening the flower-beds. — The silver
sparks of stars were rising on the altar of the
East, and falling down extinguished in the red
sea of the West.

The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder
through the trees, and gave tones to the acacia-
grove ; and the tones called to the pair who had
first become happy within it : " Enter, new
mortal pair, and think of what is past, and of
my withering and your own ; and be holy as
Eternity, and weep not only for joy, but for
gratitude also!" — And the wet-eyed bridegroom
led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and
laid his soul, like a flower, on her heart, and
said : " Best Thiennette, I am unspeakably hap-
py, and would say much, and cannot — Ah, thou
Dearest, we will live like angels, like children
together ! Surely I will do all that is good to
thee ; two years ago I had nothing, no, nothing ;
ah, it is through thee, best love, that I am happy.
I call thee Thou, now, thou dear good soul!"
She drew him closer to her, and said, though
without kissing him : " Call me Thou always,
Dearest !"

And as they slept forth again from the sacred
grove into the magic-dusky garden, he took off"
his hat; first, that he might internally thank
God, and secondly, because he wished to look
into this fairest evening sky.

They reached the blazing, rustling, marriage-
house, but their softened hearts sought stillness ;
and a foreign touch, as in the blossoming vine,
would have disturbed the flower -nuptials of
their souls. They turned rather, and winded
up into the church-yard to preserve their mood.
Majestic on the groves and mountains stood
the Night before man's heart, and made that also
great. Over the white steeple-obelisk the sky
rested bluer ^ and darker / and behind it, wavered

the withered summit of the May-pole with faded
flag. The son noticed his father's grave, on
which the wind was opening and shutting, with
harsh noise, the little door of the metal cross, to
let the year of his death be read on the brass
plate within. An overpowering sadness seized
his heart with violent streams of tears, and
drove him to the sunk hillock, and he led his
bride to the grave, and said : " Here sleeps he,
my good father; in his thirty-second year, he
was carried hither to his long rest. 0 thou
good, dear father, couldst thou to-day but see the
happiness of thy son, like my mother ! But thy
eyes are empty, and thy breast is full of ashes,
and thou seest us not." — He was silent. The
bride wept aloud ; she saw the mouldering cof-
fins of her parents open, and the two dead arise
and look round for their daughter, who had
stayed so long behind them, forsaken on the
Earth. She fell ujion his heart, and faltered :
" 0 beloved, I have neither father nor mother,
do not forsake me !"

O thou who hast still a father and a mother,
thank God for it, on the day when thy soul is
full of joyful tears, and needs a bosom wherein
to shed them. . . .

And with this embracing at a fatlier's grave,
let this day of joy be holily concluded.

THOUGHTS.*

The inner man, like the negro, is born white,
but is colored black by life. In advanced age
the grandest moral examples pass by us, and
our life-course is no more altered by them than
the earth is by a flitting comet ; but in child-
hood the first object that excites the sentiment
of love or of injustice flings broad and deep its
light or shadow over the coming years ; and as,
according to ancient theologians, it was only the
first sin of Adam, not his subsequent ones, which
descended to us by inheritance, so that since the
One Fall we make the rest for ourselves, in like
manner the first fall and the first ascent influ-
ence the whole life.

HOW CHILDREN LEARN TO WORSHIP.

Sublimity is the staircase to the temple of
religion, as the stars are to immensity. When
the vast is manifested in nature, as in a storm,
thunder, the starry firmament, death, then utter
the name of God before your child. Signal ca-
lamity, rare success, a great crime, a noble ac-
tion, are the spots upon which to erect the
child's tabernacle of worship.

Always exhibit before children, even upon
the borders of the holy land of religion, solemn
and devout emotions. These will extend to
them, unveiling at length the object by which
they are excited, though at the beginning they
are awe-struck with you, not knowing where-

* From the Diadem. 1846. Carey & Hart, Philadelphia.
Translated by Miss L. Osgood.

RICHTER.

421

fore. Newton, who uncovered his head when
the greatest Name was pronounced, thus be-
came without words a teacher of religion to
children.

Instead of carrying children frequently to
public worship, I should prefer simply to con-
duct diem upon great days in nature or in hu-
man life into the empty church, and there show
them the holy place of adults. To this I might
add twilight, night, the organ, the hymn, the
priest, exhortation; and so by a mere walk
through the building, a more serious impression
might remain in their young hearts than after a
whole year of common church routine. Let
every hour in which their hearts are consecrated
to religion, be to them as absorbing as that in
which they partake for the first time of the
Lord's Supper.

Let the Protestant child show reverence to
the Catholic images of saints by the road-side —
the same as to the ancient Druidical oak of his
ancestors. Let him as lovingly accept different
forms of religion among men, as different lan-
guages, wherein there is still but one human
mind expressed. Every genius has most power
in his own tongue, and every heart in its own
religion.

SUSCEPTIBIUTY OF THE SENSES IN CHILDREN.

Who has not felt with me, that frequently a
rural nosegay, which was our delight when we
were children in the village, through its old fra-
grance produces for us in cities, in the advanced
years of manhood, an indescribably rapturous
return to godlike childhood, and like a flowery
divinity wafts us upward to the first encircling
Aurora-cloud of our earliest obscure sensations.
But could such a remembrance so forcibly sur-
prise us, were not the child's perception of
flowers most powerful and interior 1

JOYOtrSNESS OF CHILDREN.

How should it be otherwise? I can bear a
melancholy man, but never a melancholy child.
Lito whatever quagmire the former sinks, he
may raise his eyes either to the realm of reason
or to that of hope ; but the little child sinks and
perishes in a single black poison-drop of the
present time. — Only imagine a child conducted
to the scaffold — Cupid in a German coffin — or
fancy a butterfly crawling like a caterpillar
with his four wings pulled off, and you will
feel what I mean.

TOYS.*

You need not surround your children, like
those of the nobility, with a little world of turn-
er's toys. Let their eggs be white, not figured
and painted ; they can dress them out of their
own imaginations. On the contrary, the older
man grows, the larger reality appears. The
fields which glisten for the young with the
morning dew of love's brightness, chill the gray,
half-blind old man with heavy evening damps,
and at last he requires an entire world, even
the second, barely to live in.

LANGUAGES.

Do not torment your pupil with a thousand
tongues. The mere learning of languages is
like expending one's money in the purchase of
fine purses, or learning the Paternoster in every
tongue, but never praying with it.

HAPPY FATHERS.

Two classes of men are happy fathers. The
first is a country gentleman, who enjoys such
golden means of exemption from other occupa-
tions, that his rural mansion can be a benevo-
lent asylum for his children ; since not even
cards, hares, or rents are dearer to him than his
posterity. The other is a country minister — the
six days leisure, the rural seclusion from the
whirl of cities, the free air, the office itself,
which is a higher school of education, and on
every seventh day presents to the children their
dear father upon a glorious elevation, as the
pastor and the saint, thus impressing the seal
of office upon the instructions of the week — all
this opens to the clergyman an arena for educa-
tion, into which he may introduce with advan-
tage other children, as well as his own.

FEMALE DELICACY.

Boys may derive advantage from the evil
example of drunken Helots; girls should wit-
ness only what is good. Even boys do not
come forth from the Augean stable of world-
discipline without some smell of the barn. But
girls are tender, white, Paris-apple blossoms,
parlor flowers, whose delicate freshness cannot
bear to be handled, but may only be touched
with the finest brush. Like the priestesses of
antiquity, they should be brought up only in
holy places ; the harsh, the indecorous, the vio-
lent, they may not hear, far less behold.

SEWING.

Most of the finger-works, whereby the female
quicksilver is made stationary, bring with them
this mischief— the mind, remaining idle, either
grows rusty with dullness, or is given over to
the circling maze of fancy, where wave succeeds
to wave. Sewing and knitting-needles, for in-
stance, keep open the wounds of disappointed
love longer than all the romances in the world ;
they are thorns which prick through the droop-
ing roses. But give the young girl such an oc-
cupation as young men generally have, which
shall require a new thought every minute, and
the old one cannot be continually raying up and
glaring before her. Especially, change of em-
ployment contributes to heal woman's heart;
constant progress in some one thing, man's.

RELIGION.

Upon the mount of religion, man may indeed
still have sorrows, but they are brief. The
nights linger in valleys, but on the mountains
they are shortened, and ever a small red streak
points towards the rising day.
36

422

RICHTER.

THE IDEAL.

Ye holy matrons of by-gone times! As little
did ye know of the ideal heart, as of the circu-
lation of the pure blood which warmed and
colored you, when ye cried, " I do this for my
husband, for my children,'' and appeared in
prosaic subjection to your cares and pursuits.
Yet that holy Ideal was passing through you,
as heaven's fire descends to the earth through
clouds.

MEKKIMENT.

Is there anything in life so lovely and poet-
ical as the laugh and merriment of a young girl,
who still in harmony v/ith all her powers sports
with you in luxuriant freedom, and in her
mirthfulness neither despises nor dislikes? Her
gravity is seldom as innocent as her playful-
ness ; still less that haughty discontent which
converts the youthful Psyche into a dull, thick,
buzzing, wing-drooping night- moth. Among
a certain Indian tribe the youth selected at a
feast that maiden for marriage who laughed in
her sport; perhaps my opinion inclines the
same way.

Laughing cheerfulness throws day-light upon
all the paths of life; discontent blows her ill-
omened vapors from afar ; depression produces
more confusion and distraction of thought than
the above-named giddiness. If, indeed, the
wife could stereotype this comedy by playing
it in wedded life, and sometimes enliven the
dull epic of the husband or hero, by her own
comic-heroic poetry, she would enjoy the delight
of winning and enchanting both husband and
children. Never fear that feminine playfulness
will exclude depth of character and sensibility.
The still energy of the heart is ever growing
and filling itself beneath the outward glee.
How heavenly, when at length for the first time
the laughing eye melts in love, and gushing
tears mirror forth the whole tender soul !

Let then the laughter-loving creatures giggle
on at one another, and especially at the first
clumsy make-game wight who comes among
them, even should he be the writer of this pa-
ragraph.

Truthfulness is not so much a branch as a
blossom of moral, manly strength. The weak,
whether they will or not, must lie. As respects
children, for the first five years they utter neither
truth nor falsehood — they only speak. Their
talk is thitdving aloud ; and as one half of their
thought is often an affirmative, and the other a
negative, and, unlike us, both escape from them,
they seem to lie, while they are only talking
with themselves. Besides, at first they love to
sport with their new art of speech ; and so talk
nonsense merely to hear themr.elves. Often
they do not understand your question, and give
an erroneous, rather than a false reply. — We
may ask, besides, whether, when children seem
to imagine and falsify, they are not often relat-

ing their remembered dreams, which necessa-
rily blend in them with actual experience.

Children everywhere fly on the warm, sunny-
side of hope. They say, when the bird or the
dog has escaped from them, without any reason
for the expectation — "he will come back again
soon." And since they are incapable of distin-
guishing hope, that is, imagination, from reflec-
tion or truth, their self-delusion consequently
assumes the appearance of falsehood. For in-
stance, a truthful little girl described to me va-
rious appearances of a Christ-child, telling what
it had said and done. In all those cases in
which we do not desire to mirror before the
child the black image of a lie, it is sufficient to
say, "Be sober, have done with play."

Finally, we must distinguish between un-
truths relating to the future and the past. We
do not attribute to a grown man who breaks
his word in reference to some future perform-
ance, that blackness of perjury which we charge
on him who falsifies what has been already
done; so with children, before whose brief
vision time, like space, is immeasurable, and
who are as unable to look through a day, as we
through a year, we should widely separate un-
truthfulness of promise from untruthfulness of
assertion. Truth is a divine blossom upon an
earthly root ; of course, it is in time not the
earliest, but the latest virtue.

THE CLASSICS.

The bulwarks around the city of God have
been laid by the ancients for every age, through
the history of their own. Manhood at the pre-
sent day would sink immeasurably low, did
not our youth pass through the still temple of
the great old times and men, as a vestibule to
the crowded Fair of modern life. The names
of Socrates, Cato, Epaminondas, &c., are pyra-
mids of human energy. Rome, Athens, Sparta,
are three coronation cities of the giant Geryon,
which, like primeval mountains of humanity,
grapple with youthful manhood, while modern
ones only attract the eye.

KEVERENCE FOR UFE.

Only place all life before the child, as within
the realm of humanity, and thus the greater
reveals to him the less. Put life and soul into
everything : describe to him even the lily, which
he would pull up as an unorganized thing, as
the daughter of a slender mother, standing in
her garden-bed, from whom her little white off-
spring derives nutriment and moisture. And
let not this be done to excite an empty ener-
vated habit of pity, a sort of inoculation-hospital
for foreign pains, but from the religious cultiva-
tion of reverence for life, the God all-moving in
the tree-top and the human brain. The love
of animals, like maternal affections, has this
advantage, that it is disinterested and claims
no return, and can also at every moment find
an object and an opportunity for its exercise.

AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL.

Born 1767. Died I8i5.

A. W. VON ScHLEGEL, the eldest of the two
brothers whose several and joint labors have
contributed so largely to the literary and aes-
thetic culture of their nation and age, occupies
the front rank among the scliolars and critics
of this century, whether we regard the extent
and variety of his learning or the acuteness of
his analysis and his luminous judgment. As a
translator he surpasses all who have ever la-
bored in that line. The fidelity with which
he has rendered Siiakspeare, or rather the skill
with which he has reproduced iiim, has natu-
ralized that poet in all the states of Germany,
and made him not less a German than he is an
Englisli classic, — perhaps even more popular
in the translation than in the original :^a soli-
tary instance of literary transplantation, unless
the popular versions of the old Hebrew poets
may be regarded as another. " Such," says
Mrs. Austin, " is Herr von Schlegel's masterly
handling of his own language, and the exqui-
site nicety of his ear, that he has, in many
cases (for example, Hamlet's Soliloquy), caught
the very cadence of the original. With no
other living language, perhaps, than the Ger-
man, would this be possible ; and even in that
it is a wonderful achievement." " Calderon
presented still greater difficulties of a me-
trical kind ; these Herr von Schlegel has tri-
umphantly overcome ; he has adhered to the
original even in metre, rhyme, and assonance,
and has combined this exact imitation of form
with an equally faithful interpretation of the
meaning. The translation of the two greatest
dramatic poets of two nations, so unlike in ge-
nius, shows a talent for discriminating, and a
power of handling all the forms and resources
of language, which have never been surpassed."

A. W. von Schlegel has attained no mean
reputation as an original poet, and would pro-
bably have figured more illustriously in that
capacity had not his poetic labors been eclipsed
by his critical. His chief excellence, as a poet,
consists in the perfection which he has given
to tiie forms of poetic composition, and his
magic mastery of language.

He was born at Hanover, on the 5tii of Sep-
tember, 1767. His father held the office of
Counsellor of the Consistory in the Lutheran
Church. He received his early education in
the Lyceum of his native city, where, at the
age of eighteen, he recited before the Public,
on the occasion of the King's birth-day, a poem
on the history of German poetry, which at-
tracted a good deal of attention at the time.
In 1786 he entered the university of Gottingen,
where he became intimate with the poet Bur-
ger, and where he obtained the prize for a Latin
disquisition on the geography of Homer. After
he had finished his philological studies at the
university, he resided for some time in Amster-
dam, in the capacity of private tutor. In 1796
he returned to Germany, and resided at Jena,
where he became a diligent contributor to va-
rious literary journals. He was soon made
Professor in the university in that place, and
produced a great impression far and wide by
his lectures on aesthetics. In connection with
his brother Friedrich, with Tieck, Schelling,
and others, he edited a periodical work, in
which he labored to establish the Romantic
School of Art. In 1802 he removed to Berlin,
where he lectured on literature and art, and
contributed to various periodicals. In 1804 he
travelled with Madame de Stael, and resided
with her successively in Italy, in France, in
Vienna, and finally in Stockholm, where the
Crown -prince of Sweden cultivated his ac-
quaintance, and employed him as political
writer, and afterwards conferred upon him the
title of nobility. In 1808 he read, in Vienna,
the Lectures on Dramatic Art, from which the
following extracts are taken. In 1818 he re-
ceived an appointment as Professor at the new
university at Bonn, which he held until his
death. He commenced, in 1820, a journal de-
voted to the study of tlie Oriental languages,
called the "Indian Library," He also pub-
lished the Bhagavad- Gila, a philosophical
poem in the Sanscrit, and accompanied it with
a Latin translation. He wrote in the French

and in the Italian, as well as in his vernacular

(423)

424

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

tongue. His " Comparison of the PhjEdra of
Euripides with that of Racine," in the former
of those languages, and liis treatise on the
bronze horses at Venice, in the latter, are I

among the most important of his essays. He
was twice married and twice divorced. He
died at Bonn, 1845.

* We have a remarkable instance of this in the pre-
tended ancient theatre of Palladio, at Vicenza. Hercu-
laneum, it is true, had not then been discovered, and the
ruins of the ancient theatre are not easily understood,
if we have never seen one in an entire state.

t I am partly indebted for them to the illustrations of
a learned architect, M. Genelli, of Berlin, author of the
ingenious Letters on Vitruvius. We have compared
several Greek tragedies with our interpretation of this
description of Vitruvius, and endeavored to figure to
ourselves the manner in which they were represented;
and I afterwards found my ideas confirmed, on e.Yamina-
tion of the theatre of Herculaneum, and the two very
small theatres at Pompeii.

LECTURES ON DRAMATIC LITERATURE.

THE GKEKK DRAMA.

(From the translation of John Black.)
"When we hear the word theatre, we natu-
rally think of Avhat with us bears the same
name ; and yet nothing can be more different
from our tlieatre than the Grecian, in every part
of its construction. If in reading the Grecian
pieces we associate our own stage with them,
the light in which we shall view them must be
false in every respect.

The accurate mathematical dimensions of the
principal part of it are to be found in Vitruvius,
who also distinctly points out the great differ-
ence between the Greek and Roman theatres.
But these and similar passages of the ancient
writers have been most perversely interpreted
by architects unacquainted with the ancient
dramatists;* and the philologists on the other
hand, who were altogether ignorant of archi-
tecture, have also fallen into egregious errors.
The ancient dramatists are still, therefore, alto-
gether in want of that sort of illustration which
relates to scenic regulation. In many tragedies
I conceive that my ideas on this subject are suf-
ficiently clear; but others again present difficul-
ties which are not so easily solved. We find
ourselves most at a loss in figuring to ourselves
the representation of the pieces of Aristophanes;
the ingenious poet must have brought his won-
derful inventions before the eyes of his au-
dience in a manner equally bold and astonish-
ing. Even Barthelemy's description of the
Grecian stage is not a little confused, and the
subjoined plan extremely erroneous ; in the
place which he assigns for the representation
of the pieces in Antigone and Ajax, for instance,
he is altogether wrong. The following obser-
vations will not therefore appear the less super-
fluous."]"

The theatres of the Greeks were quite open
above, and their dramas were always acted in
open day, and beneath the canopy of heaven.

The Romans, at an after period, endeavored by
a covering to shelter the audience from the rays
of the sun ; but this degree of luxury was hardly
ever enjoyed by the Greeks. Such a state of
things appears very inconvenient to us ; but the
Greeks had nothing of effeminacy about them,
and we must not forget, too, the beauty of their
climate. When they were overtaken by a storm
or a shower, the play was of course interrupted;
and they would much rather expose themselves
to an accidental inconvenience, than, by shut-
ting themselves up in a close and crowded
house, entirely destroy the serenity of a religious
solemnity, which their plays certainly were.*
To have covered in the scene itself, and impri-
soned gods and heroes in dark and gloomy
apartments with difficulty lighted up, would
have appeared still more ridiculous to them.
An action which so nobly served to establish
the belief of the relations widi heaven could
only be exhibited under an unobstructed heaven,
and under the very eyes of the gods as it were,
for whom, according to Seneca, the sight of a
brave man struggling with adversity is a be-
coming spectacle. With respect to the supposed
inconvenience, which, according to the assertion
of many modern critics, was felt by the poets
from the necessity of always laying the scene
of their pieces before houses, a circumstance
that often forced them to violate probability,
this inconvenience was very little felt by tragedy
and the older comedy. The Greeks, like so
many southern nations of the present day, lived
much more in the open air than we do, and
transacted many things in public which usu-
ally take place with us in houses. For the
theatre did not represent the street, but a place
before the house belonging to it, where the altar
stood on which sacrifices to the household gods
were offered up. Here the women, who lived
in so retired a manner among the Greeks, even
those who were unmarried, might appear with-
out impropriety. Neither was it impossible for
them to give a view of the interior of the houses;
and this was effected, as we shall immediately
see, by ineans of the encyclema.

But the principal reason for this observance
was that publicity, according to the republican
notions of the Greeks, was essential to a grave
and important transaction. This is clearly
proved by the presence of the chorus, whose

* They carefully made choice of a beautiful situation.
The theatre at Tauromenium, at present Taormina, ia
Sicily, of which the ruins are still visible, was, according
to Munter's description, situated in such a manner that
the audience had a view of ^tna over the back-ground
of the theatre.

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

425

remaining on many occasions when secret trans-
actions were going on, has been judged of ac-
cording to rules of propriety inapplicable to that
country, and most undeservedly censured.

The theatres of the ancients were, in compa-
rison with the small scale of ours, of a colossal
magnitude, partly for the sake of containing the
whole of the people, with the concourse of
strangers who flocked to the festivals, and partly
to correspond with the majesty of the dramas
represented in them, which required to be seen
at a respectful distance. The seats of the spec-
tators consisted of steps, which rose backwards
round the semicircle of the orchestra (called by
us the pit), so that they all could see with equal
convemence. The effect of distance was reme-
died by an artificial heightening of the subject
represented to the eye and ear, produced by
means of masks, and contrivances for increasing
the loudness of the voice, and the size of the
figures. Vitruvius speaks also of vehicles of
sound, distributed throughout the building ; but
the commentators are very much at variance
with respect to them. We may without hesi-
tation venture to assume, that the theatres of
the ancients were constructed on excellent
acoustical principles.

The lowest step of the amphitheatre was still
raised considerably above the orchestra, and the
stage was placed opposite to it, at an equal de-
gree of elevation. The sunk semicircle of the
orchestra contained no spectators, and was des-
tined for another purpose. It was otherwise
however with the Romans, but we are not at
present considering the distribution of their
theatres.

The stage consisted of a strip which stretched
from one end of the building to the other, and
of which the depth bore little proportion to this
breadth. This was called the logeuin, in the
Latin, pulpitum, and the usual place for persons
who spoke was in the middle of it. Behind
this middle part, the scene went inward in a
quadrangular form, with less depth, however,
than breadth. The space here comprehended
was called the proscenium. The remaining
part of the logeum, to the right and left of the
scene, had, both before, the brink which adjoined
the orchestra, and behind, a wall possessing no
scenical decorations, but entirely simple, or at
most architecturally ornamented, which was
elevated to an equal height with the uppermost
steps for the audience.

The decoration was contrived in such a man-
ner, that the principal object in front covered
the back-ground, and the prospects of distance
were given at two sides, the very reverse of
the mode adopted by us. This had also its
rules : on the left appeared the town to which
the palace, temple, or whatever occupied the
miildle, belonged ; on the right the open country,
landscape, mountains, seashore, &c. The late-
ral decorations were composed of triangles,
which turned on an axis fastened underneath ;
and in this manner the change of scene was
3d

effected.* In the hindmost decoration it is pro-
bable that many things were exhibited in a
bodily form which are only painted with us.
When a palace or temple was represented,
there appeared in the proscenium an altar,
which answered a number of purposes in the
performance of the pieces.

The decoration was for the most part archi-
tectural, but it was also not unfrequently a
painted landscape, as in Prometheus, where it
represented Caucasus ; or in Philoctetus, where
the desert island of Lemnos, with its rocks and
his cave, were exhibited. It is clear, from a
passage of Plato, that the Greeks, in the decep-
tions of theatrical perspective, carried things
much farther than we might have inferred
from some wretched landscapes discovered in
Herculaneum.

In the back wall of this scene there was a
large main entrance, and two side entrances.
It has been maintained, that from diem it might
be discovered whether an actor played a prin-
cipal or under part, as in the first case he caine
in at the main entrance, and in the second, at
the side doors. But this should be understood
with the distinction, that it must have been re-
gulated according to the nature of the piece.
As the hindmost decoration was generally a
palace, in which the principal characters of
royal descent resided, they naturally came
through the great door, while the servants re-
sided in the wings. There were two other en-
trances ; the one at the end of the logeum, from
whence the inhabitants of the town came ; the
odier underneath in the orchestra, which was
the side for those who had to come from a dis-
tance : they ascended a staircase of the logeunr
opposite to the orchestra, which could be applied
to all sorts of purposes, according to circum-
stances. The entrance, therefore, with respect
to the lateral decorations, declared the place
from whence the players were supposed to
come ; and it might naturally happen, that the
principal characters were in a situation to avail
themselves with propriety of the two last-men-
tioned entrances. The situation of these en-
trances serves to explain many passages in the
ancient dramas, where the persons standing in
the middle see some one advancing, long before
he approaches them. Beneath the seats of the
spectators a stair was somewhere constructed,
which was called the Charonic, and through
which the shadows of the departed, without
being seen by the audience, ascended into the
orchestra, and then, by the stair which we for-
merly mentioned, made their appearance on the
stage. The nearest brink of the logeum some-

* According to an observation on Virgil, by Servius,
the change of scene was produced partly by revolving,
and partly by withdrawing. The former ajiplies to the
lateral decorations, and the latter to the middle or back-
ground. The partition in the middle opened, disappeared
at both sides, and exhibited to view a new picture. But
all the parts of the scene were not always clianged at the
same time.

36*

426

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

times represented the sea-sliore. The Greeks
were well skilled in availing themselves even
of what lay beyond the decoration, and making
it subrervient to scenical etiect. I doubt not,
therelbre, that in the Eumenides the spectators
were twice addressed as an assembled people ;
first, by Pythia, when she calls upon the Greeks
to consult the oracle ; and a second time, when
Pallas, by a herald, commands silence through-
out the place ol" judgment. The frequent ad-
dresses to heaven were undoubtedly directed
to a real heaven ; and when Electra, on her
first appearance, exclaims: '• 0 holy light, and
thou air which fiUest the expanse between earth
and heaven !"' she probably turned towards the
rising sun. The whole of this procedure is
highly deserving of praise; and though modern
critics have censured the mixture of reality and
imitation, as destructive of theatrical illusion,
this only proves that they have misunderstood
the essence of the illusion which can be pro-
duced by an artificial representation. If we
are to be truly deceived by a picture, that is, if
we are to believe in the reality of the object
which we see, we must not perceive its limits,
but look at it through an opening; the frame at
once declares it for a picture. In scenical deco-
rations we are now unavoidably compelled to
make use of architectural contrivances, produc-
tive of the same eflect as the frames of pictures.
It is consequently much better to avoid this, and
to renounce the modern illusion, though it may
have its advantages, for the sake of extending
the view beyond the mere decoration. It was,
generally speaking, a principle of the Greeks,
that everything imitated on the stage should, if
possible, consist of actual representation ; and
only where this could not be done were they
satisfied with a symbolical exhibition.

The machinery for the descent of the gods
through ihe air, or the withdrawing of men from
the earth, was placed aloft behind the walls of
the two sides of the scene, and consequently
removed from the sight of the spectators. Even
in the timeof .lEschylus great use was made of
it, as he not only brings Oceanus through the air
on a grifiin, but also introduces the whole choir
of ocean nymphs, at least fifteen in number, in
a winged chariot. There were hollow places
beneath the stage, and contrivances for thunder
and lightning, for the apparent fall or burning
of a house, &.c.

An upper story could be added to the farther-
most wall of the scene, when they wished to
represent a tower with a wide prospect, or any-
thing similar. The encyclema could be thrust
behind the great middle entrance, a machine
of a semicircular form within, and covered
above, which represented the objects contained
in it as in a house. This was used for produc-
ing a great theatrical effect, as we may see from
many pieces. The side door of the entrance
would naturally be then open, or the curtain
which covered it withdrawn.

A stage curtain, which, we clearly see from

a description of Ovid, was not dropped, but
drawn upwards, is mentioned both by Greek
and Roman writers, and the Latin appellation,
anlceum, is even borrowed from the Greeks. I
suspect, however, that the curtain on the Attic
stage was not in use at its commencement. In
the pieces of jEschylus and Sophocles the scene
is evidently empty at the opening as well as the
conclusion, and therefore it did not require any
contrivance for preventing the view of the spec-
tators. However, in many of the pieces of Eu-
ripides, perhaps also in the (Edipus Tyrannus,
the stage is at once filled, and represents a
standing group, who could not have been first
assembled under the eyes of the spectators. It
must be recollected, that it w-as only the com-
paratively small proscenium, and not the logeum,
which was covered by the curtain ; for, from its
great breadth, to have attempted to screen the
logeum would have been almost impracticable,
without answering any good end.

The entrances of the chorus were beneath in
the orchestra, in which it generally remained,
and in which also it performed its solemn dance,
going backwards and forwards during the choral
songs. In the front of the orchestra, opposite
to the middle of the scene, there was an eleva-
tion with steps, resembling an altar, as high as
the stage, which was called thymele. This
was the station of the chorus when it did not
sing, but merely took an interest in the action.
The leader of the chorus then took his station
on the top of the thymele, to see what was
passing on the stage, and to communicate with
the characters. For though the choral song was
common to the whole, yet when it entered into
the dialogue one person spoke for the rest; and
hence we are to account for the shifting from
thou to ye in addressing them. The thymele
was situated in the very centre of the building;
all the measurements were calculated from it,
and the semicircle of the amphitheatre w-as de-
scribed round that point. It was, therefore, an
excellent contrivance to place the chorus, who
were the ideal representatives of the spectators,
in the very situation where all the radii were
concentrated.

The tragical imitation of the ancients was
altogether ideal, and rhythmical ; and in form-
ing a judgment of it, we must always keep this
in view. It was ideal, as its chief object was
the highest dignity and sweetness; and rhythm-
ical, as the gestures and inflections of voice
were measured in a more solemn manirer than
in real life. As the plastic art of the Greeks
was formed, if we may so express ourselves,
with scientific strictness on the most general
conception, and embodied into various general
characters which were gradually invested with
the charms of animation, so that individuality
was the last thing to which they turned their
attention ; in like manner in the mimetic art,
their first idea was to exhibit their personages
with heroical grandeur, a dignity more than
human, and an ideal beauty : their second was

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

427

character ; and the last of all passion, which in
the collision was thus forced to give way. The
fidelity of the representation was less their ob-
ject than its beauty: with us it is exactly the
reverse. The use of masks, which appears as-
tonishing to us, was not only justifiable on this
principle, but absolutely essential ; and far from
considering them in the light of a last recourse,
the Greeks would with justice have considered
as a last recourse the being obliged to allow a
player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked
individual features, to represent an Apollo or a
Hercules. To them this would have appeared
downright profanation. How limited is the
power of the most finished actor, in changing
the character of his features ! And yet this has
the most unfavorable influence on the expres-
sion of the passion, as all passion is tinged by
the character. Neither are we obliged to have
recourse to the conjecture, that they changed the
masks in the different scenes, for the purpose
of assuming a greater degree of joy or sorrow.*
This would by no means have been sufficient,
as the passions are often changed in the same
scene ; and then modern critics would still be
obliged to suppose, that the masks exhibited a
different appearance on one side from what they
did on the other, and that that side was turned
towards the spectators which the circumstances
of the moment required.-j- No; the countenance
remained from beginning to end the very same,
as we may see from the antique masks cut out
in stone. For the expression of the passion, the
motion of the arms and hands, the attitudes, and
the tone of voice, remained to them. We com-
plain of the want of the expression of the face,
without reflecting, that at such a great distance
its effect would have been lost.

* I call it conjecture, though Barthelemy, in his Ana-
charsis, considers it a settled point. He cites no autho-
rities, and I do not recollect any.

f Voltaire, in his essay on the Tragedy of the Ancients
and Moderns, prefixed to Semiramis, has actually gone
so far. Amidst a multitude of supposed improprieties,
which he crowds together to confound the admirers of
ancient tragedy, the following is one: Aucune nation
(that is to say, excepting the Greeks) ne fait paraitre ses
acteurs sur des especes d'echasses, le visage convert d'un
masque qui exprime la douleur d'un cot6 et la joye de
Tautre. In a conscientious inquiry into the evidence for
an assertion so very improbable, and yet so boldly made,
I can only find one passage in Quinctilian, lib. 11. cap. 3,
and an allusion of Platonius still more vague. (Vide
Aristoph. ed. Kilster, prolegom. p. 10.) Both passages
refer only to the new comedy, and only amount to this,
that in some characters the eyebrows were dissimilar.
As to the view with which this took place, I shall after-
wards say a word or two in considering the new Greek
comedy. Voltaire, however, is without excuse, as the
mention of the cothurnus leaves no doubt that he alluded
to tragic masks. But his error had probably no such
learned origin. In most cases, it would be a fruitless
task to trace the source of his ignorance. The whole
description of the Greek tragedy, as well as that of the
cothurnus in particular, is worthy of the man whose
knowledge of antiquity was such, that in his Essay on
Tragedy, prefixed to Brutus, he boasts of having intro-
duced the Roman Senate on the stage in red mantles.

We are not now inquiring whether, without
the use of masks, it may not be possible to attain
a higher degree of separate excellence in the
mimetic art. This we would very willingly
allow. Cicero, it is true, speaks of the expres-
sion, the softness, and delicacy of the acting of
Roscius, in the same terms that a modern critic
would apply to Garrick or Schroder. But I
will not lay any stress on the acting of this cele-
brated player, the excellence of which has be-
come proverbial, because it appears from a
passage in Cicero that he frequently played
without a mask, and tliat this was preferred by
his contemporaries. I doubt, however, whether
this ever took among the Greeks. But the same
writer relates, that actors in general, for the
sake of acquiring the most perfect purity and
flexibility of voice (and not merely the musical
voice, otherwise the examples would not have
been applicable to the orator), submitted to such
a course of uninterrupted exercises as our mo-
dern players, even the French, who are the
strictest in their discipline, would consider a
most intolerable oppression. The ancients could
show their dexterity in the mimetic art, consi-
dered by itself without the accompaniment of
words, in their pantomimes, which they carried
to a degree of perfection altogether unknown to
the moderns. In tragedy, however, the great
object in the art was strict subordination ; the
whole was to appear animated by one spirit,
and hence, not merely the poetry, but the mu-
sical accompaniment, the scenical decoration
and representation, were all the creation of the
poet. The player was a mere tool, and his ex-
cellency consisted in the accuracy with which
he filled up his part, and by no means in arbi-
trary bravura, or an ostentatious display of skill.
As from the quality of their writing materials
they had not the convenience of many copies,
the parts were studied from the repeated deli-
very of the poet, and the chorus exercised in the
same manner. This was called teaching a
piece. As the poet was also a musician, and
for the most part a player likewise, this must
have greatly contributed to the perfection of the
representation.

We may safely allow that the task of the
modern player, who must change his person
without concealing it, is much more difficult;
but this difficulty affords us no just criterion for
deciding which of the two merits the preference
as a representation of the noble and the beau-
tiful.

As the features of the player acquired a more
decided expression froin the mask, as his voice
was strengthened by a contrivance for that
purpose, the cothurnus, which consisted of seve-
ral considerable additions to his soles, as we
may see in the ancient statues of Melpomene,
raised in like manner his figure considerably
above the middle standard. The female parts
were also played by men, as the voice and other
qualities of women would have conveyed an
inadequate idea of the energy of tragic heromes.

428

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

The forms of the masks,* and the whole ap-
pearance of the tragic figures, we may easily
suppose, were sufficiently beautiful and digni-
fied. We should do well to have the ancient
sculpture always present to our minds ; and the
most accurate conception, perhaps, that we can
possibly have, is to imagine them so many sta-
tues in the grand style endowed with life and
motion. But, as in sculpture, they were fond
of dispensing as much as possible with dress,
for the sake of exhibiting the more essential
beauty of the figure; on the stage they would
endeavour, from an opposite principle, to clothe
as much as they could well do, both from a re-
gard to decency, and because the actual forms
of the body would not correspond sufficiently
wiUi the beauty of the countenance. They
would also exhibit their divinities, which in
sculpture we always observe either entirely
naked, or only half covered, in a complete dress.
They had recourse to a number of means for
giving a suitable strength to the forms of the
limbs, and thus restoring proportion to the in-
creased height of the player.

The great breadth of the theatre in proportion
to its depth must have given to the grouping of
the figures the simple and distinct order of the
bas-relief We prefer on the stage, as well as
everywhere else, groups of a picturesque de-
scription, more crowded, in part covered by
themselves, and stretching out into distance;
but the ancients were so little fond of foreshort-
ening, that even in their painting they generally

* We have obtained a knowledge of them from the
imitations in stone which have come down to iis. They
display both beauty and variety. That great variety
must liave taken place in the tragical department (in the
comic, we can have no doulit about the matter), is evi-
dent from the rich store of technical expressions in tlie
Greek language for every gradation of the age, and cha-
racter of masks. See the Onomasticon of Jul. Pollu.t.
In the marble masks, however, we can neither see the
thinness of the mass from which the real masks were
executed, the more delicate coloring, nor the exquisite
mechanism of their joinings. The abundance of excel-
lent workmen possessed by Athens, in everything which
had reference to the plastic arts, will warrant the con-
jecture that they were in this respect inimitable. Those
who have seen the masks of wa.\ in the grand style,
which in some degree contain the whole head, lately
contrived at the Roman carnival, may form to them-
selves a pretty good idea of the theatrical masks of the
ancients. They imitate life even to its movements in a
nio.n masterly manner, and at such a distance as that
from which the ancient players were seen, the deception
is most perfect. They always contain the apple of the
eye, as we see in the ancient masks, and the person
covered sees merely through the aperture left for the iris.
The ancients must have gone still farther, and contrived
also an iris for the masks, according to the anecdote of
the singer Thamyris, who, in a piece which was probably
of Sophocles, made his appearance with a blue and a
black eye. Even accidental circumstances were imi-
tated; for instance, the cheeks of Tyro, down which the
blood had rolled from the cruel conduct of his stepmother.
The head from the mask must no doubt have appeared
somewhat large for the rest of the tigure ; but this dispro-
portion, in tragedy at least, would not be perceived from
the elevation of the cothurnus.

avoided it. The gestures accompanied the
rhythmus of the declamation, and were intended
to display the utmost beauty and sweetness.
The poetical conception required a certain de-
gree of repose in the action, and that the whole
should be kept in masses, so as to exhibit a suc-
cession of plastic attitudes; and it is not impro-
bable that the player remained for some time
motionless in the same position. But we are
not to suppose from this, that the Greeks were
contented with a cold and spiritless representa-
tion of the passions. How could we reconcile
such a supposition with the fact, that whole
lines in their tragedies are frequently dedicated
to inarticulate exclamations of pain, with which
we have nothing to correspond in any of our
modern languages?

It has been often conjectured that the delivery
of their dialogue must have resembled the mo-
dern recitative. For this conjecture there is no
other foundation than that the Greek, like almost
all the southern languages, must have been pro-
nounced with a greater musical inflection of the
voice than our languages of the north. In other
respects I conceive that their tragic declamation
must have been altogether unlike recitative,
much more measured, and far removed from
its learned and artificial modulation.

We come now to the essence of the Greek
tragedy itself In stating that the conception
was ideal, we are not to understand that the
different characters were morally perfect. In
this case what room could tliere be for such an
opposition or conflict, as the plot of a drama re-
quires ? Weaknesses, errors, and even crimes,
were portrayed in them, but the manners were
always elevated above reality, and every person
was invested with such a portion of dignity and
grandeur as was compatible with the share
which he possessed in the action. The ideality
of the representation chiefly consisted in the
elevation to a higher sphere. The tragical po-
etry wished wholly to separate the image of
humanity which it exhibited to us, from the
ground of nature to which man is in reality
chained down, like a feudal slave. How was
this to be accomplished'? By exhibiting tons
an image hovering in the air? But this would
have been incomiiatible with the law of gravi-
tation and with the earthly materials of which
our bodies are framed. Frequently, what we
praise in art as ideal is really nothing more.
But the production of airy floating shadows can
make no durable impression on the mind. The
Greeks, however, succeeded in combining in
the most perfect manner in their art ideality
with reality; or, dropping school terms, an ele-
vation more than human with all the truth of
life, and all the energy of bodily qualities. They
did not allow their figures to flutter without
consistency in empty space, but they fixed the
statue of humanity on the eternal and immov-
able basis of moral liberty; and that it might
stand there unshaken, being formed of stone or
brass, or some more solid mass than the living

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

429

human bodies, it made an impression by its
own weight, and from its very elevation and
magnificence it was only the more decidedly
subjected to the law of gravity.

Inward liberty and external necessity are the
two poles of the tragic world. Each of these
ideas can only appear in the most perfect man-
ner by the contrast of the other. As the feeling
of internal dignity elevates the man above the
unlimited dominion of impulse and native in-
stinct, and in a word absolves him from the
guardianship of nature, so the necessity which
he must also recognise ought to be no mere na-
tural necessity, but to lie beyond the world of
sense in the abyss of infinitude ; and it must
consequently be represented as the invincible
power of fate. Hence it extends also to the
world of gods; for the Grecian gods are mere
powers of nature, and although immeasurably
higher than mortal man, yet, compared with
infinitude, they are on an equal footing with
himself. In Homer and the tragedians the gods
are introduced in a manner altogether ditferent.
In the former their ai^pearance is arbitrary and
accidental, and can communicate no higher in-
terest to the epic poem than the charm of the
wonderful. But in tragedy the gods either enter
in obedience to fate, and to carry its decrees
into execution, or they endeavor in a godlike
manner to assert their liberty of action, and ap-
jjcar involved in the same struggles with destiny
which man has to encounter.

This is the essence of the tragic in the sense
of the ancients. We are accustomed to give to
all terrible or sorrowful events the appellation
of tragic, and it is certain that such events are
selected in preference by tragedy, though a me-
lancholy conclusion is by no means indispensa-
bly necessary ; and several ancient tragedies,
viz. the Eumenides, Philoctetes, and in some
degree also the ffidipus Colonus, without men-
tioning many of the pieces of Euripides, have a
happy and enlivening termination.

But why does tragedy select those objects
which are so dreadfully repugnant to the wishes
and the wants of our sensible nature? This
question has often been asked, and seldom an-
swered in a very satisfactory manner. Some
have said that the pleasure of such representa-
tions arises from the comparison between the
calmness and tranquillity of our own situation,
and the storms and perplexities to which the
victims of passion are exposed. But when we
take a warm interest in a tragedy, we cease to
think of ourselves ; and when this is not the
case, it is the best of all proofs that we take but
a feeble interest, and that the tragedy has failed
in its etfects. Others again have had recourse
to our feelings for moral improvement, which
is gratified by the view of poetical justice in the
rewards of the good and the punishment of the
wicked. But he whom the aspect of such
dreadful examples could in reality improve,
would be conscious of a sentiment of depression
and humiliation, very far removed from genuine

morality and elevation of mind. Besides, poet-
ical justice is by no means indispensable in a
good tragedy ; it may end with the suffering of
the just and the triumph of the wicked, when
the balance is once restored by the prospect of
futurity. Small will be our improvement, if
with Aristotle we say that the object of tragedy
is to purify the passions by pity and terror. In
the first place the commentators have never
been able to agree as to the meaning of this
proposition, and have had recourse to the most
forced explanations. Look for instance into the
Dramaturgie of Lessing. Lessing gives a new
explanation, and conceives he has found in
Aristotle a poetical Euclid. But mathematical
demonstrations are subject to no misconception,
and geometrical evidence is not applicable to
the theory of the fine arts. Supposing however
tragedy to operate this moral cure in us, it must
do so by the painful feelings of terror and com-
passion ; and it remains to be proved how we
should take a pleasure in subjecting ourselves
to such an operation.

Others have been pleased to say that we are
attracted to theatrical representations from the
want of some violent agitation to rouse us out
of the torpor of every-day life. I have already
acknowledged the existence of this want, when
speaking of the attractions of the drama : and
to it we are even to attribute the fights of wild
beasts and gladiators among the Romans. But
mitst we who are less indurated, and more in-
clined to tender feelings, be desirous of seeing
demi-gods and heroes descend into the bloody
lists of the tragic stage, like so many desperate
gladiators, that our nerves may be shaken by
the aspect of their sufferings'? No: it is not the
aspect of suffering which constitutes the charm
of a tragedy, or the amusement of a circus or
wild beast fight. In the latter we see a display
of activity, strength, and courage, qualities re-
lated to the mental and moral powers of man.
The satisfaction which we derive from the re-
presentation of the powerful situations and
overwhelming passions in a good tragedy, must
be ascribed either to the feeling of the dignity
of human nature, excited by the great models
exhibited to us, or to the trace of a higher order
of things, impressed on the apparently irregular
progress of events, and secretly revealed in
them ; or to both of these causes together.

The true cause, therefore, why in tragical
representations we cannot exclude even that
which appears harsh and cruel is, that a spirit-
ual and invisible power can only be measured
by the opposition which it encounters from some
external force that can be taken in by the senses.
The moral freedom of man can therefore only
be displayed in a conflict with the impulse of
the senses : so long as it is not called into action
by a higher power, it is either actually dormant
in him, or appears to slumber, as it can fill no
part as a mere natural entity. The moral part
of our nature can only be preserved amidst
I struggles and difficulties, and if we were there-

430

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

fore to ascribe a distinctive aim to tragedy, as
instructive, it should be this : that all these suf-
ferings must be experienced, and all these diffi-
culties overcome, to establish the claims of the
iiiiiid to a divine origin, and teach us to estimate
the earthly existence as vam and insignihcaiit.

With respect to everything connected with
this point, I refer my hearers to the Section on
the ISublime in Kant's Criticism of the Judg-
ment (AVi/t/v dcr Uiihcilskrafl'), to the complete
perfection of which nothing is wanting but a
more definite idea of the tragedy of the ancients,
with which he does not seem to have been very
well acquainted.

I come now to another peculiarity which dis-
tinguishes the tragedy of the ancients from ours,
I mean the chorus. We must consider it as the
personification of opinion on the action which
is going on ; the incorporation into the repre-
sentation itself of the sentiments of the poet as
the interpreter for the whole human race. This
is the general poetical character which we must
here assign to it, and that character is by no
means alfected by the circumstance that the
chorus had a local origin in the feasts of Bac-
chus, and that it always had a peculiar national
signification with the Greeks. We have already
said that, with their republican way of thinking,
iniblicity was considered essential to every im-
portant transaction. As in their compositions
they went back to the heroic ages, they gave a
certain republican cast to the families of their
heroes, by carrying on the action either in pre-
sence of the elders of the people, or those per-
sons whose characters entitled them to respect.
This publicity does not, it is true, correspond
\vith Homer's picture of the manners of the he-
roic age ; but both in the costume and the my-
thology, die dramatic poetry generally displayed
a spirit of independence and conscious liberty.

The chorus was therefore introduced to give
the whole that appearance of reality which was
most consistent with the fable. Whatever it
miglit be in particular pieces, it represented in
general, first the national spirit, and then tlie
general participation of mankind. In a word,
the chorus is the ideal spectator. It mitigates
the impression of a heart-rending or moving
story, while it conveys to the actual spectator a
lyrical and musical expression of his own emo-
tions, and elevates him to the region of consi-
deration.

The modern critics have never known what
to make of the chorus ; and this is the less to
be wondered at, as Aristotle atfords no satisfac-
tory solution of the difficulty. The business of
the chorus is better painted by Horace, who as-
scribes to it a general expression of moral par-
ticipation, instruction and admonition. But the
critics in question have either believed that its
chief object was to prevent the stage from ever
being altogether empty, although the proper
place for the chorus was not upon the stage ; or
they have censured it as a superfluous and
laughable accompaniment, and seemed asto-

nished at the supposed impropriety of carrying
on secret transactions in the presence of assem-
bled multitudes. This they consider as the
principal reason for the observance of the unity
of place, as it could not be changed by the poet
without the disinission of the chorus, an act
which would have required at least some sort
of pretext; they believe that the chorus owed
its continuance from the first origin of tragedy
merely to accident ; and as it is easy to perceive
that in Euripides, the last tragic poet wliich we
have, the choral songs have frequently little or
no connection with the fable, and form a mere
episodical ornament, they therefore conclude
that the Greeks had only to take one other step
in dramatic art to explode the chorus altogether.
To refute these superficial conjectures, it is only
necessary to observe, that Sophocles wrote a
Treatise on the chorus, in prose, in opposition
to the principles of some other poets, and that
far from following blindly the practice which
he found established, like an intelligent artist
he could assign reasons for the system wliich
he adopted.

Modern poets of the very first rank, since the
revival of the study of the ancients, have often
attempted to introduce the chorus in their pieces,
for the most part without a correct, and always
without a' vivid idea of its destination. But we
have no suitable singing or dancing, neither
have we, as our theatres are constructed, any
place for it; and it will hardly ever succeed,
therefore, in becoming naturalized with us.

The Greek tragedy, in its pure and unaltered
state, will always for our theatre remain an
exotic plant, which we can hardly hope to cul-
tivate with any success, even in the hot-house
of learned art and criticism. The Grecian my-
thology, which constitutes the materials of an-
cient tragedy, is as foreign to the minds and
imaginations of most of the spectators, as its
form and mode of representation. But to en-
deavor to constrain another subject, an historical
one for example, to assume that form, must
always be a most unprofitable and hopeless
attempt.

I have called mythology the chief material
of tragedy. We know, indeed, of two historical
tragedies, by Grecian authors : the Capture of
Miletus, of Phrynichits, and the Persians, of
iEschylus, a piece which still exists; but these
singular exceptions, both belonging to an epoch
when the art had not attained its full maturity,
among so many hundred examples of a diffisr-
ent description, serve to establish more strongly
the truth of the rule. The sentence passed by
the Athenians on Phrynichus, whom they sub-
jected to a pecuniary fine because, in the repre-
sentation of contemporary calamities which
with due caution he might have avoided, he
had agitated them in too violent a manner,
however hard and arbitrary it may appear in a
judicial point of view, displays nevertheless a
correct feeling with resi^ect to the subject and
the limits of art. The mind suffering under the

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

431

near reality of the subject cannot preserve the
necessary repose and self-possession which are
necessary fof the reception of pure tragical im-
pressions. The heroic fables, on the other hand,
appear always at a certain distance, and in the
light of the wonderful. The wonderful pos-
sesses the advantaiie of being believed, and in
some degree disbelieved, at the same time: be-
lieved in so far as it is founded on the connec-
tion witli- other opinions; disbelieved while we
never take such an immediate interest in it as
we do in what wears the hue of the every-day
life of onr own age. The Grecian mythology
was a web of national and local traditions, held
in equal honor as a part of religion and as an
introduction to history; everywhere preserved
in full life among the people by customs and
monuments, and by the numberless works of
epic and mythical poets. The tragedians had
only therefore to engraft one species of poetry
on another: they were always allowed their
use of certain established fables, invaluable for
tlieir dignity, grandeur, and remoteness from all
accessary ideas of petty description. Every-
tliing, down to the very errors and weaknesses
of tliat departed race of heroes who claimed
their descent from the gods, was consecrated in
the eyes of the people. Those heroes were
painted as beings endowed with more than
hiunan strength ; but, so far from possessing
unerring virtue and wisdom, they were also
represented as under the dominion of furious
and unbridled passions. It was a wild age of
effervescence: the cultivation of social order
had not as yet rendered the soil of morality
arable, and it yielded at the same time the
most beneficent and poisonous productions, with
the fresh and luxuriant fulness of a creative
nature. Here the monstrous and ferocious were
not a necessary intlication of that degradation
and corruption with which they are necessarily
associated under the development of law and
order, and which fill us with sentiments of hor-
ror and aversion. The criminals of the fabulous
t ages are not, if we may be allowed the expres-
sion, amenable to the tribunals of men, but con-
signed over to a higher jurisdiction. Some are
of opinion that the Greeks, in their republican
zeal, took a particular pleasure in witnessing
the representation of the outrages and conse-
quent calamities of the different royal families,
and are almost disposed to consider the ancient
tragedy, in general, as a satire on monarchical
government. This party view would, however,
have deadened the interest of the audience, and
consequently destroyed the effect which it was
the aim of the tragedy to produce. But we
must remark, that the royal families, v/hose
crimes and misfortunes afforded the most abun-
dant materials for tragical pictures of a horrible
description, were the Pelopida? of Mycence, and
the Labdacidce of Thebes, families which were
foreign to the Athenians, for whom the pieces
were composed. We do not see that the Attic
poets endeavored to exhibit the ancient kings

of their country in an odious light; on the con-
trary, they always hold up their national hero,
Theseus, for public admiration, as a model of
justice and moderation, the champion of the
oppressed, the first lawgiver, and even the
founder of their liberty ; and it was one of their
favorite modes of flattering the people, to per-
suade them that, even in the heroic ages, Athens
was distinguished above all the other states of
Greece, for obedience to the laws, humanity,
and a knowledge of the rights of nations. The
general revolution, by which the independent
kingdoms of ancient Greece were converted
into a community of free states, had separated
the heroic age from the age of social cultivation,
by a wide interval, beyond which the genealogy
of a very few families only was attempted to
be traced. This was extremely advantageous
for the ideal elevation of the characters of their
tragedy, as few human things will admit of a
close inspection into them, without betraying
their imperfections. But in the very different
relations of the age in which those heroes lived,
the standard of mere civil and domestic mo-
rality was not applicable, and the feeling must
go back to the primary ingredients of humanity.
Before the existence of constitutions, — before the
profier development of law and right, the sove-
reigns and rulers were their own lawgivers in
a world not yet subjected to order ; and the
fullest scope was thus given to the dominion of
will for good and for bad purposes. Hereditary
rule, therefore, exhibited more striking instances
of sudden changes of fortune than the late times
of political equality. In these respects the high
rank of the principal characters was essential,
or at least favorable to tragic representation,
and not because, according to the idea of some
moderns, those only who can occasion the hap-
piness or misery of numbers are sufficiently im-
portant to interest us in their behalf, nor because
internal elevation of sentiment must be clothed
with external dignity, to claim our honor and
admiration. The Greek tragedians paint the
downfall of kingly houses without any reference
to the condition of the people ; they show us
the man in the king, and, far from veiling their
heroes from our sight in their jiurple mantles,
they allow us to look through their vain splen-
dor, into a bosom torn and harrowed up by
passions. That the regal pomp was not so
necessary as the heroic costume is evident, not
only from the practice of the ancients, but from
the tragedies of the moderns having a reference
to the throne, produced under different circum-
stances, namely, the existence of monarchical
government. They dare not draw from existing
reality, for nothing is less suitable for tragedy
than a court, and a court life. When they do
not therefore paint an ideal kingdom vv'ith dis-
tant manners, they fall into stiffness and for-
mality, which are much more destructive to
freedom and boldness of character, and to deep
pathos, than the narrow circle of private life.
A few mythological fables only seem origi-

432

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

nally marked out for tragedy : such, for example,
as the long-continued alternation of aggressions,
vengeance, and maledictions, which we witness
in the house of Atreus. When we examine tlie
names of the pieces which are lost, we have
great ditTiculty in conceiving how the mytholo-
gical fables on which they are founded, as they
are known to us, could afford sufficient mate-
rials for the development of an entire tragedy.
It is true, the poets, in the various relations of
the same story, had a great amplitude of selec-
tion; and this very variety justified them in
going still farther, and making considerable al-
terations in the circumstances of an event, so
that the inventions added to one piece some-
times contradict the accounts given by the same
poet in another. We are, however, principally
to ascribe the productiveness of mythology, for
the tragic art, to the principle which we ob-
serve so powerful throughout the whole histo-
rical range of Grecian cultivation; namely, that
the power which preponderated for the time
assimilated everything to itself As the heroic
fables, in all their deviations, were easily de-
veloped into the tranquil fulness and light va-
riet^f of epic poetry, they were afterwards
adapted to the object which the tragedians pro-
posed to accomplish, by earnestness, energy,
and compression ; and what in this change of
destination appeared, inapplicable to tragedy
still afforded materials for a sort of half sportive,
though ideal representation, in the subordinate
walk of the satirical drama.

I shall be forgiven, I hope, if I attempt to
illustrate the above reflections on the essence
of the ancient tragedy, by a comparison bor-
rowed from the plastic arts, which will, I trust,
be found somewhat more than a mere fanciful
allusion.

The Homeric epic is, in poetry, what half-
raised workmanship is in sculpture, and tragedy
the distinctly separated group.

The poem of Homer, sprung from the soil of
the traditionary tale, is not yet purified from it,
as the figures of a bas-relief are borne by a
back-ground which is foreign to them. These
figures appear depressed, and in the epic poem
all is painted as past and remote. In the bas-
relief they are generally thrown into profile,
and in the epic characterized in the most artless
manner : they are, in the former, not properly
grouped, but follow one another; and the Ho-
meric heroes, in like manner, advance singly in
succession before us. It has been remarked
that the Iliad is not definitively closed, but that
we are left to suppose something both to pre-
cede and to follow. The bas-relief is equally
boundless, and may be continued ad infinitum,
either from before or behind, on which account
the ancients preferred the selection of those
objects for it which admitted of an indefinite
extension, as the trains at sacrifices, dances, and
rows of combatants, &c. Hence tliey also ex-
hibited bas-reliefs on round surfaces, such as
vases, or the IVieze of a rotunda, where the two

ends are withdrawn from our sight by the curv-
ature, and where, on our advancing, one object
aj)pears as another disappears. The reading
of the Homeric poetry very much resembles
such a circumgyration, as the present object
alone arrests our attention, while that which
precedes and follows is allowed to disappear.

But in the distinctly formed group, as in tra-
gedy, sculpture and poetry bring before our eyes
an independent and definite whole. To sepa-
rate it from natural reality, the former places it
on a base, as on an ideal ground. It also re-
moves as much as possible all foreign and acci-
dental accessaries, that the eye may wholly rest
on the essential objects, the figures themselves.
These figvu-es are wrought into the most com-
plete rounding, yet they refuse the illusion of
colours, and announce by the purity and uni-
formity of the mass of which they are con-
structed, a creation not endowed with perishable
life, but of a higher and more elevated character.

Beauty is the object of sculpture, and repose
is most advantageous for tlie display of beauty.
Repose alone, therefore, is suitable to the figure.
But a number of figures can only be connected
together and grouped by one action. The group
represents beauty in motion, and the object of
it is to combine both in the highest degree.
This can only be effected when the artist finds
means, in the most violent bodily or mental
anguish, to moderate the expression by manly
resistance, calm grandeur, or inherent sweet-
ness, in such a manner that, with the most
moving truth, the features of beauty shall yet
in nowise be disfigured. The observation of
Winkelmann on this subject is inimitable. He
says that beauty with the ancients was the
tongue on the balance of expression, and in this
sense the groups of Niobe and Laococin are
masterpieces ; the one in the sublime and se-
rious, the other in the learned and ornamental
style.

The com2:)arison with ancient tragedy is the
more apposite here as we know that both JE.S-
chylus and Sophocles produced a Niobe, and
that Sophocles was also die author of LaocoOn.
In Laococin the conflicting sufierings and an-
guish of the body, and the resistance of the soul,
are balanced with the most wonderful equili-
brium. The children calling for help, tender
objects of our compassion, and not of our admi-
ration, draw us back to the appearance of the
father, who seems to turn his eyes in vain to
the gods. The convolving serpents exhibit to
us the inevitable destiny which unites together
the characters in so dreadful a manner. And
yet the beauty of proportion, the pleasing flow
of the attitude, are not lost in this violent strug-
gle; and a representation the most frightful to
the senses is yet treated with a degree of mode-
ration, while a mild breath of sweetness is dif-
fused over the whole.

In the group of Niobe there is also the most
perfect mixture of terror and pity. The up-
turned looks of the mother, and the mouth half

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

433

open in supplication, seem to accuse the invi-
sible wrath of Heaven. The daughter, clinging
in the agonies of death to the bosom of her mo-
ther, in her infantine innocence caft have no
other fear than for herself: the innate impulse
of self-preservation was never represented in a
manner more tender and affecting. Can there
on the other hand be exhibited to the senses a
more beautiful image of self- devoting heroic
magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends her body
forwards, that if possible she alone may receive
the destructive bolt? Pride and repugnance
are melted down in the most ardent maternal
love. The more than earthly dignity of the
features is the less disfigured by pain, as from
the quick repetition of the shocks she appears,
as in the fable, to have become insensible and
motionless. But before this figure, twice trans-
formed into stone, and yet so inimitably ani-
mated,— before this line of demarcation of all
hmnan suffering, the most callous beholder is
dissolved in tears.

In all the agitation fjroduced by the sight of
these groups, there is still somewhat in them
which invites us to composed contemplation;
and in the same manner, the tragedy of the
ancients leads us, even in the course of the re-
presentation, to the most elevated reflections on
our existence, and those mysteries in our destiny
which can never be wholly explained.

.ESCHTltrS.

^schylus is to be considered as the creator
of tragedy, which sprung from him completely
armed, liked Pallas from the head of Jupiter.
He clothed it in a state of suitable dignity, and
gave it an appropriate place of exhibition ; he
was the inventor of scenic pomp, and not only
instructed the chorus in singing and dancing,
but appeared in the character of a player. He
was the first who gave development to the dia-
logue, and limits to the lyrical part of the tra-
gedy, which still however occupies too much
space in his pieces. He draws his characters
with a few bold and strongly marked features.
The plans are simple in the extreme : he did
not understand the art of enriching and varying
an action, and dividing its development and
catastrophe into parts, bearing a due proportion
to each other. Hence his action often stands
still, and this circumstance becomes still more
apparent, from the undue extension of his choral
songs. But all his poetry betrays a sublime and
serious mind. Terror is his element, and not
the softer affections; he holds up the head of
Jledusa to his astonished spectators. His man-
ner of treating fate is austere in the extreme:
he suspends it over the heads of mortals in its
gloomy majesty. The cothurnus of ^schylus
has as it were an iron weight: gigantic figures
alone stalk before our eyes. It seems as if it
required an effort m him to condescend to paint
mere men to us: he abounds most in represen-
tation of gods, and seems to dwell with parti-
cular delight in exhibiting the Titans, those

3 E

ancient gods who signify the dark powers of
primitive nature, and who had long been driven
into Tartarus beneath a better regulated world
He endeavors to swell out his language to a
gigantic sublimity, corresponding with the stan-
dard of his cliaracter. Hence he abounds in
harsh combinations and overstrained epithets,
and the lyrical parts of his pieces are often ob-
scure in the extreme, from the involved nature
of the construction. He resembles Dante and
Shakspeare in the very singular cast of his
images and expressions. These images are
nowise deficient in the terrible graces, which
almost all the writers of antiquity celebrate in
^schylus.

-^schylus flourished in the very first vigor
of the Grecian freedom, after its successful
struggle, and he seems to have been thoroughly
imbued with a proud feeling of the superiority
which this struggle reflected on the nation to
w^hich he belonged. He was an eye-witness
of the greatest and most glorious event in the
history of Greece, the overthrow and annihila-
tion of the Persian hosts under Darius and
Xerxes, and had fought in the memorable bat-
tles of Marathon and Salamis with distinguished
bravery. In the Persians he has, in an indirect
manner, sung the triumph which he contributed
to obtain, while he paints the downfall of the
Persian projects, and the ignominious return of
the fugitive monarch to his royal residence. He
describes in the most vivid and glowing colors
the battle of Salamis. In this piece, and in the
Seven before Thebes, a warlike vein gushes
forth ; the personal inclination of the poet for
the life of a hero shines throughout with the
most dazzling lustre. It was well remarked
by Gorgias, the sophist, that Mars, instead of
Bacchus, dictated this last drama ; for Bacchus,
and not Apollo, was the patron of tragic poets,
which may apjpear somewhat singular on a first
view of the matter, but then we must recollect
that Bacchus was not merely the god of wine
and joy, but also the god of the highest degree
of inspiration.

Among the remaining pieces of ^schylus,
we have what is highly deserving of our atten-
tion, a complete triology. The antiquarian ac-
count of triologies is this, that in the more early
times the poet did not contend for the prize
with a single piece, but with three, which how-
ever were not always connected together by
their contents, and that a fourth satirical drama
was also attached to them. All these were
successively represented in one day. The idea
which we must form of the triology in relation
to the tragic art is this ; a tragetly cannot be
indefinitely lengthened and continued, like the
Homeric ejpic poem for example, to which whole
rhapsodies have been appended ; for this is too
independent and complete within itself. Not-
withstanding this circumstance, however, seve-
ral tragedies may be connected together by
means of a common destiny running throughout
all their actions in one great cycle. Hence the
37

434

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

fixing on the number three admits of a satisfac-
tory explanation. It is the thesis, the antithesis,
and the connection. The advantage of this
conjunction was that, in the consideration of the
connected fables, a more ample degree of grati-
fication was derived than coiUd possibly be ob-
tained from a single action. The objects of the
three tragedies might be separated by a wide in-
terval of time, or follow close upon one another.

The three pieces of the triology of ..^schylus
are Agamemnon, the Clioephor:r or Electra, and
the Eumenides or Furies. The object of the
first is the murder of Agamemnon by Clytem-
nestra, on his return from Troy. In the second,
Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother:
facto pius et scehratiis codcrn. This deed, although
perpetrated from the most powerful motives, is
repugnant however to natural and moral order.
Orestes as a prince was, it is true, entitled to
exercise justice even on the members of his
own family; but he was under the necessity
of stealing in disguise into the dwelling of the
tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to
work like an assassin. The memory of his
father pleads his excuse ; but although Clytem-
nestra has deserved death, the blood of his
mother still rises up in judgtnent against him.
This is represented in the Eumenides in the
form of a contention among the gods, some of
whom approve of the deed of Orestes, while
others persecute him, till at last the divine wis-
dom, under the figure of Minerva, reconciles
the opposite claims, establishes a peace, and
puts an end to the long series of crimes and
punishments which desolated the royal house
of Atreus.

A considerable interval takes place between
the period of the first and second pieces, during
which Orestes grows up to manhood. The
second and third are connected together imme-
diately in the order of time. Orestes takes flight
after the murder of his mother to Deljahi, where
we find him at the commencement of the Eu-
menides.

In each of the two first pieces, there is a visi-
ble reference to the one which follows. In
Agamemnon, Cassandra and the chorus pro-
phesy, at the close, to the arrogant Clytemnestra
and her paramour ^gisthus, the punishment
which awaits them at the hands of Orestes. In
the Choephorte, Orestes, immediately after the
execution of tlie deed, finds no longer any re-
pose ; the furies of his mother begin to persecute
him, and he announces his resolution of taking
refuge in Delphi.

The connection is therefore evident through-
out, and we may consider the three pieces,
which were connected together even in the re-
presentation, as so many acts of one great and
entire drama. I mention this as a preliminary
justification of Shakspeare and other modern
poets, in connecting together in one representa-
tion a larger circle of human destinies, as we
can produce to the critics who object to this the
supposed example of the ancients.

In Agamemnon it ■was the intention of .ffis-
chylus to exhibit to us a sudden fall from the
highest pinnacle of prosperity and fame, into
the abyss tof ruin. The prince, the hero, the
general of the whole of the Greeks, in the very
moment when he has succeeded in conc-luding
the most glorious action, the destruction of Troy,
the fame of which is to be re-echoed from the
mouths of the greatest poets of all ages, on en-
tering the threshold of his house, after which
he has long sighed, is strangled amidst the un
suspected preparations for a festival, according
to the expression of Homer, "like an ox in the
stall," strangled by his faithless wife ; her un-
worthy seducer takes possession of his throne,
and the children are consigned to banishment,
or to hopeless servitude.

With the view of giving the greater effect to
this dreadful alternation of fortune, the poet has
previously thrown a splendor over the destruc-
tion of Troy. He has done this in the first half
of the i^iece in a manner peculiar to himself,
which, however singular, must be allowed to
be impressive in the extreme, and to lay fast
hold of the imagination. It is of importance to
Clytemnestra not to be surprised by the arrival
of her husband. She has therefore arranged
an uninterrupted series of signal-fires from Troy
to Mycence to announce to her the great event;
The piece commences with the speech of a
watchman, who supplicates the gods for a re-
lease from his toils, as for ten long years he had
been exposed to the cold dews of night, has
witnessed the various changes of the stars, and
looked in vain for the expected signal ; at the
same time he sighs in secret for the internal
ruin of the royal house. At this moment he
sees the blaze of the long wished-for fires, and
hastens to announce it to his mistress. A chorus
of aged persons apjjears, and in their songs they
trace back the Trojan war, throughout all its
eventful changes of fortune from its first origin,
and recount all the prophecies relating to it, and
the sacrifice of Iphigenia, at the expense of
which the voyage of the Greeks was purchased.
Clytemnestra declares the joyful cause of the
sacrifice which she orders, and the herald Tal-
thybius immediately makes his appearance, who
as an eye-witness announces the drama of the
conquered and i^lundered city consigned as a
prey to the flames, the joy of the victors, and the
glory of their leader. He displays with reluc-
tance, as if unwilling to shade the brilliancy of
his picture, the subsequent misfortunes of the
Greeks, their dispersion, and the shipwreck
suffered by many of them, an immediate symp-
tom of the wrath of the gods. We easily see
how little the unity of place was observed by
the poet, and that he rather avails himself of
the prerogative of his mental dominion over the
powers of nature, and adds wings to the circling
hours in their course towards their dreadful
goal. Agamemnon now comes, borne in a sort
of triumphal procession ; and seated in another
car, laden with booty, follows Cassandra, his

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

435

prisoner of war and mistress, according to the
privilege of the heroes of those days. Clytem-
nestra greets him with hypocritical joy and
veneration; she orders her slaves to cover the
ground with the most costly embroideries of
purple, that it might not be touched by the foot
of the conqueror. Agamemnon, with sage mo-
deration refuses to receive an honor due only to
the gods; at last he yields to their invitations
and enters the house. The chorus then begins
to utter dark forebodings. Clytemnestra returns
to allure Cassandra to her destruction by the
art of soft persuasion. The latter remains dumb
and motionless, but the queen is hardly gone,
when, seized with a prophetic rage, she breaks
out into the most perplexing lamentations, after-
wards unveils her prophecies more distinctly to
the chorus ; she sees in her mind all the enor-
mities which liave been perpetrated in that
house ; the repast of Thyestes, which the sun
refused to look on ; the shadows of the dilace-
rated children appear to her on the battlements
of the palace. She also sees the death prepared
for her master, and although horror-struck at
the atrocious spectacle, as if seized with an
overpowering fury, she rushes into the house to
meet her inevitable death ; we then hear behind
the scenes the sighs of the dying Agamemnon.
The palace opens ; Clytemnestra stands beside
the body of her king and husband, an undaunted
criminal, who not only confesses the deed, but
boasts of it as a just requital for Agamemnon's
ambitious sacrifice of Iphigenia. The jealousy
towards Cassandra, and the criminal union with
the unworthy ^gisthus, which is first disclosed
after the completion of the murder towards the
conclusion of the piece, are motives which she
throws entirely into the back-ground, and hardly
touches on ; this was necessary to preserve the
dignity of the object. But Clytemnestra would
have been improperly portrayed as a. weak
woman seduced from her duty ; she appeared
with the features of that heroic age so rich in
bloody catastrophes, in which all the passions
were violent, and in which, both in good and
evil, men exceeded the ordinary standard of
later and more puny ages. What is so revolt-
ing, what affords such a deep proof of the de-
generacy of human nature, as the spectacle of
horrid crimes conceived in a pusiilairimous bo-
som"? When such crimes are to be i:)orirayed
by the poet, he must neither endeavor to em-
bellish them, nor to mitigate our horror and
aversion. The consequence which is thus given
to the sacrifice of Iphigenia has this particular
advantage, that it keeps within some bounds
our discontent at the fall of Agamemnon. He
cannot be pronounced wholly innocent; an
earlier crime recoils on his own head; and be-
sides, according to the religious idea of the an-
cients, an old curse hung over his house: jEgis-
thus, the contriver of his destruction, is a son of
that very Thyestes on whom his father Atreus
took such an unnatural revenge ; ami this fatal
connection is conveyed to our minds in the most

vivid manner by the chorus, and more espe-
cially by the prophecies of Cassandra.

The scene of the Choephora? is before the
royal palace ; the grave of Agamemnon appears
on the stage. Orestes is seen with his faithful
Pylades, and opens the play (which is unfor-
tunately somewhat mutilated at the commence-
ment) at the sepulchre with a prayer to Mer-
cury, and with an invocation to his father, in
which he promises to avenge him, and to whom
he consecrates a lock. He sees a female train
in mourning weeds issue from the palace, who
bring a libation to the grave ; and, as he thinks
he recognizes his sister among them, he retires
with Pylades that he may first overhear them.
The chorus, which consists of captive Trojan
virgins, reveals with mournful gestures the oc-
casion of its mission, namely, a dreadful dream
of Clytemnestra; it adds obscure forebodings
of the impending revenge for the bloody crime,
and bewails its lot in being obliged to serve
unworthy superiors. Electra asks the chorus if
they mean to fulfil the commission of her hostile
mother, or if they are to pour out their offering
in silence ; and in compliance with their advice,
she also off"ers up a prayer to the subterranean
Mercury and the soul of her father, in her own
nanie and that of the absent Orestes, that he
may appear and avenge him. In pouring out
the offering she joins in the lamentations of the
chorus for the departed. She then conjectures,
from finding a lock of hair resembling her own
in color, and seeing footsteps near the grave,
that her brother has been there; and when she
is almost frantic with joy at the thought, her
brother steps forward and discovers himself.
He soon overcomes her doubts by exhibiting to
her a tissue woven by herself: they give them-
selves np to their joy; he addresses a prayer
to Jupiter, and makes known that Apollo has
called on him, under the most dreadfid threats
of persecution from the furies of his father, to
destroy those who were guilty of his death in
the same manner in which he was destroyed,
namely, by guile and cunning. We have now
hymns on the part of the chorus and Electra,
which consist of prayers to her father's shade
and the subterranean divinities, and a recapitu-
lation of the motives for the deed, especially
those derived from the death of Agamemnon.
Orestes inquires into the vision which induced
Clytemnestra to off'er the libation, and hears
that she dreamt that she gave her breast to a
dragon in her son's cradle and suckled it with
her blood. He now resolves to become the
dragon, and announces more distinctly his in-
tention of stealing into the house as a disguised
stranger, and attacking both her and jEgisthus
by surprise. With this view he withdraws
along with Pylades. The subject of the next
choral hymn is the boundless audacity of men
in general, and especially of women in their
illicit passions, confirmed by the most terrible
mythical examples, and the avenging justice
which always at last overtakes them. Orestes

436

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

returns as a stranger, with Pylades, and desires
admission into the palace. Clytemnestra comes
out, and when she learns from him the death
of Orestes, at which Electra assumes a feigneol
grief, slie invites him to enter and partake of
their hospitality. After a short prayer of the
chorus, tlie nurse comes and mourns her foster
child ; the chorus inspires her with some hopes
of his being still in life, and advises her to con-
trive to bring ^gisthus to Clytemnestra without
his body-guard. On the approaching aspect of
danger, the chorus proffers prayers to Jupiter
and Mercury for the success of the deed, ^gis-
tlius enters into conversation widi the messenger,
can hardly allow himself to be persuaded of the
truth of the joyful news of the death of Orestes,
and hastens into the house for the purpose of
ascertaining it, from whence, after a short prayer
of the chorus, we hear the cries of the murdered.
A servant rushes out and gives the alarm at the
door of the female dwelling, to warn Clytem-
nestra. She hears it, comes forward, and de-
mands an axe to defend herself; but as Orestes
rushes instantaneously on her with the bloody
sword, her courage fails her, and she holds up
to him the maternal breast in the most moving
manner. Hesitating in his purpose, he asks the
counsel of Pylades, who in a few lines exhorts
him by the most cogent reasons to persist; after
an alternation of accusation and defence, he
pursues her into the house, that he may sacrifice
her beside the body of ^gisthus. The chorus
rejoices in a grave hymn at the completion of
the retaliation. The great door of the palace
opens, and exhibits in the inside the two dead
bodies on one bed. Orestes orders the servants
to unfold the capacious vestment in which his
father was entangled when he was slain, that
it may be seen by all the beholders ; the chorus
recognize the bloody spots in it, and mourn
afresh the murder of Agamemnon. Orestes,
while he feels that his mind is becoming con-
fused, lays hold of an oi^portunity of justifying
himself; he declares his intention of repairing
to Delphi to purify himself from the bloody
deed, and flics with terror from the furies of
his mother, whom the chorus does not perceive,
but conceives to be a mere phantom of his ima-
gination, but who nevertheless will no longer
allow him any repose. The chorus concludes
with a reflection on the threefold scene of mur-
der, in the royal palace, since the repast of
Thyestes.

The fable of the Eumenides is, as I have al-
ready said, the justification and absolution of
Orestes from his bloody crime ; it is a trial, but
a trial where the gods are accusers, and de-
fenders, and judges ; and the manner in which
the subject is treated corresponds with its ma-
jesty and importance. The scene itself brought
before the eyes of the Greeks the highest objects
of veneration which were known to them.

It opens before the celebrated temple at Del-
l)hi, which occupies the back-ground; the aged
Pythia enters in sacerdotal pomp, addresses her

prayers to all the gods who presided, or still
preside, over the oracle, harangues the assem-
bled people (the actual), and goes into the tem-
ple to seat herself on a tripod. She returns full
of consternation, and describes what she has
seen in the temple : a man stained with blood,
supplicating protection, surrounded by sleeping
women with serpent hair; she then makes her
exit by the same entrance. Apollo now appears
with Orestes in his traveller's garb, and a sword
and an olive branch in his hands. He promises
him his farther protection, commands him to
flee to Athens, and recommends him to the care
of the present but invisible Mercury, to whom
travellers, and especially those who were under
the necessity of concealing their journey, were
usually consigned.

Orestes goes off" at the side allotted to stran-
gers ;■ Apollo re-enters the temple, which re-
mains open, and the furies are seen in the inte-
rior sleeping on their seats. Clytemnestra now
ascends by the charonic stairs through the or-
chestra, and appears on the stage. We are not
to suppose her a haggard skeleton, but a figure
with the appearance of life, though paler, still
bearing her wounds in her breast, and shrouded
in ethereal -colored vestments. She calls re-
peatedly to the Furies in the language of vehe-
ment reproach, and then disappears, probably
through a trap-door. The Furies awake, and
when they no longer find Orestes, they dance
in wild comrnotion round the stage during the
choral song. Apollo returns from the temple,
and expels them from his sanctuary as profana-
tory beings. We may here suppose him ap-
pearing with the sublime displeasure of the
Apollo of the Vatican, with bow and quiver, or
clothed in his sacred tunic and chlamys.

The scene now changes ; but as the Greeks
on such occasions were fond of going the shortest
way to work, the back-ground remained proba-
bly unchanged, and had now to represent the
temple of Minerva, on the hill of Mars (Areo-
l^agus), and the lateral decorations would be
converted into Athens and the surrounding
landscape. Orestes comes as from another land,
and embraces as a suppliant the statue of Pallas
placed before the temple. The chorus (who,
according to the directions of the poet, were
clothed in black, with purple girdles, and ser-
j/ents in their hair, — the masks with something
of the terrible beauty of Medusa heads, and
even the age marked on plastic principles, — )
follow him on foot to this place, but remain
throughout the remainder of the piece beneath
in the orchestra. The Furies had at first exhi-
bited the rage of beasts of prey at the escape
of their booty, but they now sing with tranquil
dignity their high and terrible office among
mortals, claim the head of Orestes as forfeited
to them, and consecrate it with mysterious
charms to endless pain. Pallas, the warlike
virgin, appears in a chariot and four at the in-
tercession of the suppliant. She listens with
calm dignity to tlie mutual complaints of Orestes

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

437

and liis adversaries, and finally undertakes,
after due reflection, the office of umpire, at the
solicitation of the two parties. The assembled
judges take their seats on the steps of the tem-
ple, the herald commands silence among the
people by sound of trumpets, as at an actual
tribunal. Apollo advances to advocate the
cause of the youth, the Furies in vain oppose
his interference, and the arguments for and
against the deed are gone through in short
speeches. The judges throw their calculi into
the urn, Pallas throws in a white one ; all are
wrought up to the highest pitch of expectation ;
Orestes calls out full of anguish to his protector:

0 Phoebus Apollo, how is the cause decided ?
The Furies, on the other hand :

0 black, night, mother of all things, dost thou behold this 1

In the enumeration of the black and white
pebbles, they are found equal in number, and
the accused is therefore declared by Pallas
acquitted of the charge. He breaks out into
joyful expressions of thanks, while the Furies
on the other hand declaim against the arrogance
of the young gods, who take such liberties with
tlie race of Titan. Pallas bears their rage with
equanimity, addresses them in the language of
kintlness, and even of veneration ; and these
beings, so untractable in their general disposi-
tion, are unable to withstand the power of her
mild and convincing eloquence. They promise
to bless the land over which she has dominion,
while Pallas assigns them a sanctuary in the
Attic territory, where they are to be called the
Eumenides, that is, the benevolent. The whole
ends with a solemn procession round the theatre,
with songs of invocation, while bands of child-
ren, women, and old men, in purple robes, and
with torches in their hands, accompany the
Furies in their exit.

Let us now take a retrospective view of the
whole triology. In Agamemnon we observe in
the deed which is planned and executed, the
greatest disjijay of arbitrary will and j^ower :
the principal character is a great criminal; and
the piece ends with the revolting impressions
produced by the sight of triumphant tyranny
and crime. I have already alluded to the cir-
cumstance of a previous destiny.

The deed in the ChoephorcD is partly recom-
mended by Apollo as an appointment of fate, and
partly originates in natural motives : the desire
of avenging the father, and the fraternal love
for the oppressed Electra. After the deed the
struggle between the most sacred feelings first
becomes manifest, and allows no repiose to the
distracted youth.

From the very commencement, the Eume-
nides stands on the very highest tragical eleva-
tion : all the past is concentrated as it were in
one focus. Orestes has merely been the passive
instrument of fate ; and free agency is trans-
ferred to the more elevated sphere of the gods.
Pallas is properly the principal character. The
opposition between the most sacred relations,

which frequently appears beyond the power of
mortal solution, is represented as a contention
in the world of the gods.

And this leads me to the deep import of the
whole. The ancient mythology is in general
symbolical, although not allegorical; for the two
are quite distinct. Allegory is the personifica-
tion of an idea, a fable solely undertaken with
such a view ; but that is symbolical which has
been created by the imagination for other pur-
poses, or which has a reality in itself indepen-
dent of the idea, but which at the same time is
easily susceptible of a symbolical explanation,
and even of itself suggests it.

The Titans, in general, mean the dark pri-
mary powers of nature and of mind ; the later
gods, what enters more within the circle of con-
sciousness. The former are more nearly related
to the original chaos, the latter belong to a world
already subjected to order. The Furies are the
dreadful powers of conscience, in so far as it
rests on obscure feelings and forebodings, and
yields to no principles of reason. In vain
Orestes dwells on the just motives for the deed —
the voice of blood resounds in his ear. Apollo
is the god of youth, of the noble ebullition of
passionate discontent, of the bold daring action :
hence this deed was commanded by him. Pallas
is cool wisdom, justice, and moderation, which
alone can allay the dispute.

Even the sleep of the Furies in the temple
is symbolical; for only in the holy place, in the
bosom of religion, can the fugitive find rest from
the stings of his conscience. Scarcely however
has he again ventured into the world, when the
image of his murdered mother appears, and
again awakens them. The very speech of
Clytemnestra is symbolical, as well as the attri-
butes of the Furies, the serpents, and the suck-
ing of blood. The same may be said of the
aversion of Apollo for them ; in fact this sym-
bolical application runs throughout the whole. —
The equal cogency of the motives for and
against the deed is denoted by the divided
number of the judges. When at last a sanctuary
is allotted to the softened Furies in the Athe-
nian territory, this is as much as to say that
reason shall not everywhere assert her power
against the instinctive impulse, that there are
certain boundaries in the human mirid which
are not to be passed, and which every person
possessed of a sentiment of reverence will be-
ware of touching, if he wishes lo preserve in-
ward peace.

So much for the deep philosophical import,
which we are not to wonder at finding in this
poet, who, according to the testimony of Cicero,
was a Pythagorean, .^schylus had also his
political views. The first of these was the
rendering Athens illustrious. Delphi was the
religious centre of Greece, and yet how it is
thrown into the shade ! It can only shelter
Orestes from the first onset of persecution, but
not afford him a complete freedom ; this is re-
served for the land where law and humanity
37*

438

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

flourish. His principal object however was the
recommending as essential to the welfare of
Athens the Areopagus,* an iincorniptible yet
mild tribunal, in which the white pebble of
Pallas in favor of the accused does honor to the
humanity of the Athenians. The poet shows
us the origin of an institution fraught with bless-
ings to humanity, in an immense circle of
crimes.

But it will be asked, are not aims of this de-
scription prejudicial to the pure poetical impres-
sion wliicli the whole ought to produce? Most
undoubtedly, in the manner in which other
poets, and especially Euripides, have proceeded
in such cases. But in ^schylus the aim is
much more subservient to the poetry than the
poetry to the aim. He does not lower himself
to a circu)nscribed reality, but elevates it on the
contrary to a higher sphere, and connects it with
the most sublime conceptions.

In the Orestiad (for so the three connected
pieces are called) we certainly possess one of
the most sublime poems that ever was conceived
by the human imagination, and probably the
most mature and faultless of all the productions
of his genius. The period of their composition
confirms this supposition ; for he was at least
sixty years old when he brought these dramas
on the stage, the last which he ever submitted
in competition for the prize at Athens. Every
one of his pieces however which have come
down to us is remarkable either for the display
of some peculiar property of the poet, or as in-
dicative of the step in the art on which he stood
at the time.

The Chained Prometheus is the representa-
tion of constancy under suffering, and that the
never-ending suffering of a god. Exiled to a
naked rock on the shore of the encircling ocean,
tliis drama still embraces the world, the Olym-
pus of the gods, and the earth of mortals, all
scarcely yet reposing in a secure state above the
dread abyss of the dark Titanian powers. The
idea of a self-devoting divinity has been myste-

* I do not find that this aim has ever been ascribed to
jEschjius by the express testimony of any ancient writer.
It is however, not to be mistaken, esjiecially in the
speech of Pallas, beginning with the C80th verse. This
coincides with the account that in the very year when
tlie piece was represented, Olymp. I.\xx. J, a certain
Ephialtes excited the people against the Areopagus,
which was the best guardian of the old and more austere
constitution, and kept democratic extravagance in check.
This Ephialtes was murdered one niglit by an unknown
liand. ^schylus received the first prize in the theatrical
games, but we know at the same time that lie left Athens
immediately afterwards, and passed his remaining years
in Sicily. It is possible that, although the theatrical
judges did him the justice to wliich lie was entitled, he
niigiit be held in aversion by the multitude notwithstand-
ing, and that this without any express sentence of ba-
nisinnent might have induced liim to leave his native
city. The story (if the sight of the terrible chorus of
Furies having thrown children into mortal convulsions,
and caused women to miscarry, appears to me fabulous.
A poet would hardly have been crowned, who had been
the occasion of profaning the festival by such occurrences.

riously inculcated in many religions, as a con-
fused foreboding of the true; liere however it
appears in a most alarming contrast with the
consolations of revelation. For Prometheus does
not suffer on an ttnderstanding with the power
by whom the world is governed, but he atones
for his disobedience, and that disobedience con-
sists in nothing but the attempt to give perfection
to the human race. It is thus an image of hu-
man nature itself: endowed with a miserable
foresight and bound down to a narrow exist-
ence, without an ally, and with nothing to op-
pose to the combined and inexorable powers of
nature, but an unshaken will and the conscious-
ness of elevated claims. The other poems of
the Greek tragedians are single tragedies: but
this may be called tragedy itself: its purest
spirit is revealed with all the annihilating and
overpowering influence of its first unmitigated
austerity.

There is little external action in this piece :
Prometheus merely suffers and resolves from
the beginning to the end; and his sufferings
and resolutions are always the same. But the
poet has contrived in a masterly manner to in-
troduce variety and progress into that which in
itself was determinately filled, and given us a
scale for the measurement of the matchless
power of his sublime Titans in the objects by
which he has surrounded them. We have the
first silence of Prometheus while he is chained
down under the harsh inspection of Strength
and Force, whose threats serve only to excite a
useless compassion in Vulcan, who carries them
into execution ; then his solitary complaints, the
arrival of the tender ocean nymphs, whose kind
but disheartening sympathy induces him to give
vent to his feelings, to relate the causes of his
fall, and to reveal the future, though with pru-
dent reserve he reveals it only in part; the visit
of the ancient Oceanus, a kindred god of the
race of Titans, who, under the pretext of a
zealous attachment to his cause, advises him to
submission towards Jupiter, and who is on that
account dismissed with proud contempt; the
introduction of the raving lo, driven about from
place to place, the victim of the same tyranny
from which Prometheus himself suffers ; his
prophecy of the wanderings to which she is still
doomed, and the fate which at last awaits her,
connected in some degree with his own, as from
her blood he is to receive a deliverer after
the lapse of many ages ; the appearance of
Mercury as a messenger of the tyrairt of the
world, who with threats commands him to dis-
close the secret by which Jupiter may remain
on his throne secure from all the malice of fate ;
and lastly, the yawning of the earth before Pro-
metheus has well declared his refusal, amidst
thunder and lightning, storms and earthquake,
by which he himself and the rock to which he
is chained are swallowed up in the abyss of
the nether world. The triumph of subjection
was never celebrated in more glorious strains,
and we have difficulty in conceiving how the

A. W. SCHLEGEL.

439

poet in the Freed Prometheus could sustain
himself on such an elevation.

In the dramas of ^schylus we have one of
many examples that, in every art as well as
nature, gigantic productions precede those that
evince regularity of proportion, which again in
their turn decline gradually into littleness and
insignificance, and that poetry in its original
appearance approaches always the nearest to
the reverence of religion, whatever form the
latter may assume among the various races of
men.

A saying of the poet, which has been pre-
served, affords us a proof that he endeavored
to maintain himself on this elevation, and pur-
posely avoided all artificial cultivation, which
might have the effect of lowering the divinity
of his character. His brethren stimulated him
to write a new PtEan. He answered : " The
old one of Tynachus is the best, and the same
thing would hajipen here that was observable
in a comparison between the ancient and mo-
dern statues ; for the former with all their sim-
plicity were considered as divine, and the mo-
dern, with all the care bestowed on their
execution, were indeed admired, but bore much
less the impression of a divinity." He carries
his boldness in religious matters, as in every-
thing else, to the utmost limits; and he was
even accused of having in one of his pieces
disclosed the Eleusiniau mysteries, and only
absolved on the intercession of his brother
Amynias, who displayed the wounds which he
had received in the battle of Salamis. He per-
haps believed that in the poetic communication
was contained the initiation into the mysteries,
and that nothing was in this way revealed to
any one who was not worthy of it.

The tragic style of .^schylus is still imper-
fect, and not unfrequently runs into the unmixed
epic and lyric. It is often disjointed, irregular,
and hard. To compose more regular and skil-
ful tragedies than those of .iHschylus was by no
means diflicult; but in the more than mortal
grandeur which he displayed, it was impossible
that he should ever be surpassed ; and even
Sophocles, his younger and more fortunate rival,
did not in this respect equal him. The latter,
in speaking of ^Eschylus, gave a proof that he
was himself a reflecting artist : " .^Eschylus does
what is riglit without knowing it." These few
simple words exhaust the whole of what we
understand by powerful genius unconscious of
its powers.

SOPHOCLES.

The birth-year of Sophocles was nearly at an
equal distance between that of his predecessor
and of ICuripides, so that he was about half a
life-time from each : in this all the accounts are
found to coincide. He was however during
the greater part of his life the contemporary of
both. He frequently contended for the tragic
garland with .^schylus, and he outlived Euri-
pides, who himself attained a good age. If I

may speak in the spirit of the ancient religion,
it seems that a beneficent Providence wished
to evince to the human race, in the instance of
this individual, the dignity and felicity of their
lot, as he was endowed with every divine gift,
with all that can adorn and elevate the mind
and heart, and crowned with every blessing
imaginable in this life. Descended from rich
and honored parents, and born a free citizen of
the most cultivated state of Greece, such were
the advantages with which he entered the
world. Beauty of body and of soul, and the
uninterrupted enjoyment of both in the utmost
perfection, till the extreme limits of human ex-
istence ; an education the most extensive, yet
select, in gymnastics and music, the former so
important in the development of the bodily
powers, and the latter in the communication of
harmony ; the sweet blossom of youth, and the
ripe fruit of age; the possession and continued
enjoyment of poetry and art, and the exercise
of serene wisdom ; love and respect among his
fellow citizens, fame in other countries, and the
countenance and favor of the gods; these are
the general features of the life of this pious and
virtuous poet. It would seem as if the gods, in
return for his dedicating himself at an early age
to Bacchus, as the giver of all joy, and the author
of the cultivation of the human race, by the re-
presentation of tragical dramas for his festivals,
had wished to confer immortality on him, so
long did they delay the hour of his death ; but
as this was impossible, they extinguished his
life as gently as possible, that he might imper-
ceptibly change one immortality for another,
the long duration of his earthly existence for an
imperishable name. When a youth of sixteen,
he was selected, on account of his beauty, to
play on the lyre, and to dance in the Greek
manner before the chorus of youths who, after
the battle of Salamis (in which .^schylus fought,
and which he has so nobly described), executed
the Paean round the trophy erected on that oc-
casion; so that the fairest development of his
youthful beauty coincided with the moment
when the Athenian people had attained the
epoch of their highest glory. He held the rank
of general along with Pericles and Thucydides,
and, when arrived at a more advanced age, the
priesthood of a native hero. In his twenty-fifth
year he began to represent tragedies ; twenty
times he was victorious : he often gained the se-
cond place, and he never was ranked in the third.
In this career he proceeded with increasing suc-
cess till he reached his ninetieth year; and some
of his greatest works were even the fruit of a still
later period. There is a story of an accusation
brought against him by one or more of his elder
sons, of having become childish from age, be-
cause he was too fond of a grandchild by a
second wife, and of being no longer in a condi-
tion to manage his own affairs. In his defence
he merely read to his judges his ffidipus in Co-
lonos, which he had then composed in honor of
Colonos, his birth-place; and the astonished

440

A. W. SCHLEGEL

judges, witlioiit fartlier consultation, conducted
him in triumph to his house. If it be true that
the second CEdipus was written at so late an
age, as from its mature serenity and total free-
dom from the impetuosity and violence of youth
we have good reason to conclude that it actually
was, it affords ns at once a pleasing picture of
the delight and reverence which attended his
concluding years. Although the various ac-
counts of his death appear fabulous, they all
coincide in this, that he departed without a
struggle, while employed in his art, or some-
thing connected with it, and that like an old
swan of Apollo, he breathed out his life in song.
I consider also the story of the Lacedemonian
general ■who had fortified the burying-ground
of his fathers, and who, twice exhorted by Bac-
chus in a vision to allow Sophocles to be there
interred, despatclied a herald to the Athenians
on the subject, with a number of other circum-
stances, as the strongest possible proof of the
established reverence in which his name was
held. In calling him virtuous and pious, I spoke
in the true sense of the words; for although his
works breathe the real character of ancient
grandeur, sweetness and simplicity, of all the
Grecian poets he is also the individual whose
feelings bear the strongest affinity to the spirit
of our religion.

One gift alone was refused to him by nature:
a voice attuned to song. He could only call
forth and direct the harmonious effusions of
other voices ; he was therefore compelled to
depart from the established practice of the poet
acting a part in his own pieces, and only once
(a very characteristic trait) made his appear-
ance in the character of the blind singer Tha-
myris playing on the cithera.

As ^schylus, who raised tragic poetry from
its rude beginnings to the dignity of the cothur-
nus, was his predecessor; the historical relations
in which he stood to Sophocles enabled the latter
to avail himself of the inventions of his original
master, so that ^schylus appears as the rough
designer, and Sophocles as the finished successor.
The more artful construction of the dramas of
the latter is easily perceived : the limitation of
the chorus with respect to the dialogue, the
polish of the rhythmus, and the pure Attic dic-
tion, the introduction of a greater number of
characters, the increase of contrivance in the
fable, the multiplication of incidents, a greater

degree of development, the more tranquil con-
tinuance of all the moments of the action, and
the greater degree of theatrical effect given to
incidents of a decisive nature, the more perfect
rounding of the whole, even considered in a
mere external point of view. But he excelled
^schylus in somewhat still more essential, and
proved himself deserving of the good fortune
of having such a preceptor, and of entering into
competition with hinr in the same subjects: I
mean the harmonious perfection of his mind,
by which he fulfilled from inclination every
duty prescribed by the laws of beauty, and of
which the impulse was in him accompanied
by the most clear consciousness. It was im-
possible to exceed jEscliylus in boldness of
conceiition ; I am inclined however to believe
that Sophocles ajipears only less bold from his
wisdom and moderation, as he always goes to
work with the greatest energy, and perhaps
with even a more determined severity, like a
man who knows the- extent of his powers, and
is determined, when he docs not exceed them,
to stand up with the greater confidence for his
rights. As yEschylus delights in transporting
us to the convulsions of the primary world of
the Titans, Sophocles on the other hand never
avails himself of the gods but when their ap-
pearance is necessary; he formed men, accord-
ing to the general confession of antiquity, better,
that is, not more moral, or exempt from error,
but more beautiful and noble than they appeared
in real life ; and while he took everything in
the most human signification, he was at the
same time aware of their superior destination.
According to all appearance he was also more
moderate than .^Eschylus in his scenic orna-
ments ; he displayed perhaps more taste and
selection in his objects, but did not attempt the
same colossal pomp.

To characterize the native sweetness and
affection so eminent in this poet, the ancients
gave him the appellation of the Attic bee.
Whoever is thoroughly imbued with the feeling
of this property may flatter himself that a sense
for ancient art has arisen within him ; for the
afiected sentimentality of the present day, far
from coinciding with him in this opinion, would
both in the representation of bodily sufferings,
and in the language and economy of the trage-
dies of Sophocles, find much of an unsupportable
austerity.

FRIEDRICH DANIEL ERNST SCH LEIERMACHER.

Born 1763. Died 1834.

The respected divine who bore this name,
distinguished alike by his intellectual pre-emi-
nence and his beautiful piety, somewhat resem-
bles Fenelon in his relation to his time, and the
kind of influence which went forth from him.
With nothing of the mysticism of the French
saint, he possessed the same practical depth
of spirit and the same devout earnestness;
strongly contrasted in this respect with the ra-
tionalistic theologians of his day. As a German
and a theologian, he was learned, of course ;
but he was far more than that ; he was also a
profound philosopher, and, in philosophy, a Pla-
tonist. No modern has entered more fully into
the meaning and spirit of the immortai Greek,
whose works he translated in part. The great
aim of his life was to reconcile philosophy with
Christianity, and to revive the religious senti-
ment in an age when the atheistic philosophy
of France had brought a temporary blight upon
all the nobler products of the soul. The "Dis-
courses on Religion," from which the following
extract is taken, is a contribution to this end.
His last and his most important work is the
Christliche Glaubenslehre (Doctrine of Chris-
tianity).

Schleiermacher was born at Breslau, and
educated as a Moravian at the Seminary of the
United Brethren at Niesky. At the age of
twenty he left the society of the Moravians,
and studied theology at Halle. Having been
ordained as a preacher, he was minister for six
years at the hospital, Charite, in Berlin. During
this time, he published his Monologues and the
Discourses on Religion, and translated Blair's
and Fawcett's sermons. In 1802, he was ap-

pointed professor "extraordinary" of theology at
Halle, and preached to the University. During
the troublous period of the French invasion in
1807, when Halle was taken from the Prus-
sians, he returned to Berlin, and lectured and
preached with patriotic boldness on the state
of the times, unawed by Davoust, who then
occupied the city. In 1809, he was appointed
preacher to the Trinity church in Berlin, and
was married the same year. In 1810, at the
establishment of the University at Berlin, he
was made Professor of theology in tliat institu-
tion. This post he retained until his death.
In 1833, he visited England, and opened the
German church at the Savoy.

In person, Schleiermacher was diminutive
and deformed. As a preacher, he was un-
boundedly popular, although his discourses had
none of those qualities which stir the blood, but
consisted, for the most part, in plain practical
appeals to the understanding and the conscience.
He preached extempore, and, it is said, with no
other preparation than that which he allowed
himself on Sunday morning, — an hour before
service. His conduct during his last hours, as
related by his wife, was characteristic, and
illustrated the Christian faith and piety which
distinguished him through life. His last act, a
few minutes before death, was to administer
the service of the Eucharist to himself and his
family. " In these words of the Holy Scrip-
tures," he said, " I place my trust ; they are
the corner-stone of my faith :" then turning to
his wife and children, " In this love and com-
munion of souls, then, we are and shall be one
and undivided." He died February 12, 1834.

DISCOURSE IV.

ON THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IN EEUGION ; OR O.N THE CHVaCH AND

PRIESTHOOD.

TrunslateU by Mr. George Ripley.

Those among you who are accustomed to re-
gard religion as a disease of the human mind,
cherish also the habitual conviction, that it is an
evil more easily borne, if it cannot be restrained,
3F

so long as it is only insulated individuals here
and there who are infected with it; but that
the common danger is raised to the highest de-
gree, and everything put at stake, as soon as a
too close connexion is permitted between many-
patients of this character. In the former case
it is possible by a judicious treatment, as it were
by an antiphlogistic regimen, and by a healthy,

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442

SCHLEIERMACHER.

spiritual atmosphere, to ward off the violence of
the paroxysms ; and if not to entirely conquer
the exciting cause of the disease, to attenuate it
to such a degree that it shall be almost inno-
cuous. But in the latter case, we must despair
of every other means of cure, except that which
may proceed from some internal beneficent ope-
ration of Nature. For the evil is attended widi
more alarming symptoms, and is more fatal in
its effects, when the too great proximity of other
infected persons feeds and aggravates it in every
individual; the whole mass of vital air is then
quickly poisoned by a few ; the most vigorous
frames are smitten with the contagion ; all the
channels in which the functions of life should
go on are destroyed ; all the juices of the system
are decomposed; and, seized with a similar
feverous delirium, the sound spiritual life and
productions of whole ages and nations are in-
volved in irremediable ruin. Hence your anti-
pathy to the churcli, to every institution which
is intended for the communication of religion,
is always more prominent than that which you
feel to religion itself: hence, also, priests, as the
pillars and the most efficient members of such
institutions, are, of all men, the objects of your
greatest abomination.

Even those among you who hold a little more
indulgent opinion with regard to religion, and
deem it rather a singularity than a disorder of
the mind, an insignificant rather than a danger-
ous ijhenomenon, cherish quite as unfavourable
impressions of all social organization for its pro-
motion. A slavish immolation of all that is free
and peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanism
and barren ceremonies, — these, they imagine,
are the inseparable consequences of every such
institution ; and these, the ingenious and elabo-
rate work of men, who, with almost incredible
success, have made a great merit of things which
are either nothing in themselves, or which any
other person was quite as capable of accom-
jjlishing as they. I should pour out my heart
but very imperfectly before you, on a subject to
wliich I attach the utmost importance, if I did
not undertake to give you the correct point of
view with regard to it. I need not here repeat
how many of the perverted endeavors and me-
lancholy fortunes of humanity you charge upon
religious associations ; this is clear as light, in a
thousand iniiications of your predominant indi-
viduals ; nor will I stop to refute these accusa-
tions, one by one, in order to fix the evil upon
other causes. Let us rather submit the whole
conception of the cliurch to a new examination,
and from its central point, throughout its whole
extent, erect it again upon a new basis, without
regard to what it has actually been hitherto, or
to what experience may suggest concerning it.

If religion exists at all, it must needs possess
a social character ; this is founded not only in
the nature of man, but still more in the nature
of religion. You will acknowledge that it indi-
cates a state of disease, a signal perversion of |

nature, when an individual wishes to shut up
within himself anything which he has produced
and elaborated by his own efforts. It is the dis-
position of man to reveal and to communicate
whatever is in him, in the indispensable rela-
tions and mutual dependence not only of practical
life, but also of his spiritual being, by which he
is connected with all others of his race; and the
more powerfully he is wrought upon by any-
thing, the more deeply it penetrates his inward
nature, so much the stronger is this social im-
pulse, even if we regard it only from the point
of view of the universal endeavor to behold
the emotions which we feel ourselves, as they
are exhibited by others, so that we may obtain
a proof from their example that our own expe-
rience is not beyond the sphere of humanity.

You perceive that I am not speaking here of
the endeavor to make others similar to ourselves,
nor of the conviction that what is exhibited in
one is essential to all; it is merely my aim to
ascertain the true relation between our indivi-
dual life and the common nature of man, and
clearly to set it forth. But the peculiar object
of this desire for commvmication is unquestion-
ably that in which man feels that he is origin-
ally passive, namely, his perceptions and emo-
tions. He is here impelled by the eager wish
to know whether the power which has produced
them in him be not something foreign and un-
worthy. Hence we see man employed, from his
very childhood, with making revelations, which,
for the most part, are of this character ; the con-
ceptions of his understanding, concerning whose
origin there can be no doubt, he allows to rest
in his own mind, and still more easily he deter-
mines to refrain from the expression of his judg-
ments ; but whatever acts upon his senses, what-
ever awakens his feelings, of that he desires to
obtain witnesses, with regard to that he longs
for those who will sympathise with him. How
should he keep to himself those very operations
of the world upon his soul which are the most
universal and comprehensive, which appear to
him as of the most stupendous and resistless
magnitude? How should he be willing to lock
up within his own bosom those very emotions
which impel him with the greatest fiower be-
yond himself, and in the indulgence of which,
he becomes conscious that he can never under-
stand his own nature from himself alone? It
will rather be his first endeavor, whenever a
religious view gains clearness in his eye, or a
pious feeling penetrates his soul, to direct the
attention of others to the same object, and, as far
as possible, to communicate to their hearts the
elevated impulses of his own.

If, then, the religious man is urged by his na-
ture to speak, it is the same nature which se-
cures to him the certainty of hearers. There is
no element of his being with which, at the same
time, there is implanted in man such a lively
feeling of his total inability to exhaust it by him-
self alone, as with that of religion. A sense of
religion has no sooner dawned upon him, than

SCHLEIERMACHER.

443

he feels the infinity of its nature and the limita-
tion of his own ; he is conscious of embracing
but a small portion of it; and that which he
cannot immediately reach, he wishes to perceive,
as far as he can, from the representations of
others who have experienced it themselves, and
to enjoy it with them. Hence, he is anxious to
observe every manifestation of it; and, seeking
to supply his own deficiencies, he watches for
every tone which he recognizes as proceeding
from it. In this manner, mutual communica-
tions are instituted ; in this manner, every one
feels equally the need both of speaking and
hearing.

Bat the imparting of religion is not to be
sought in books, like that of intellectual con-
ceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure
impression of the original product is too far de-
stroyed in this medium, which, in the same way
that dark-colored objects absorb a great propor-
tion of the rays of light, swallows up everything
belonging to the pious emotions of the heart,
which cannot be embraced in the insufficient
symbols from which it is intended again to pro-
ceed. Nay, in the written communications of
religious feeling, everything needs a double
and triple representation; for that which origin-
ally represented, must be represented in its
turn ; and yet the effect on the whole man, in
its complete luiity, can only be imperfectly set
forth by continued and varied reflections. It is
only when religion is driven out from the society
of the living, that it must conceal its manifold
life under the dead letter.

Neither can this intercourse of heart with
heart, on the deepest feelings of humanity, be
carried on in common conversation. Many per-
sons, who are filled with zeal for the interests
of religion, have brought it as a reproach against
the manners of our age, that while all other im-
portant subjects are so freely discussed in the
intercourse of society, so little should be said
concerning God and divine things. I would
defend ourselves against this charge by main-
taining that this circumstance, at least, does not
indicate contempt or inditference towards reli-
gion, but a happy and very correct instinct. In
the presence of joy and merriment, where ear-
nestness itself must yield to raillery and wit,
there can be no place for that which should be
always surrounded with holy veneration and
awe. Religious views, pious emotions, and se-
rious considerations with regard to them, — these
we cannot throw out to each other in such small
crumbs as the topics of a light conversation ;
and when the discourse turns upon sacred sub-
jects, it would rather be a crime than a virtue
to have an answer ready for every question,
and a rejoinder for every remark. Hence, the
religious sentiment retires from such circles as
are too wide for it, to the more confidential in-
tercourse of friendship, and to the mutual com-
munications of love, where the eye and the
countenance are more expressive than words,
and where even a holy silence is understood.

But it is impossible for divine things to be
treated in the usual manner of society, where
the conversation consists in striking flashes of
thought, gaily and rapidly alternating with each
other ; a more elevated style is demanded for
the communication of religion, and a different
kind of society, which is devoted to this pur-
pose, must hence be formed. It is becoming
indeed to apply the whole richness and magni-
ficence of human discourse to the loftiest subject
which language can reach, — not as if there were
any adornment, with which religion could not
dispense, but because it would show a frivolous
and unholy disposition in its heralds, if they did
not bring together the most copious resources
within their power, and consecrate them all to
religion : so that they might thus perhaps ex-
hibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity.
Hence, it is impossible without the aid of po-
etry, to give utterance to the religious sentiment,
in any other than an oratorical manner, with
all the skill and energy of language, and freely
using, in addition, the service of all the arts,
which can contribute to flowing and impas-
sioned discourse. He, therefore, whose heart
is overflowing with religion, can open his mouth
only before an auditory, where that which is
presented, with such a wealth of preparation,
can produce the most extended and manifold
eff'ects.

Would that I could present before you an
image of the rich and luxurious life in this city
of God, when its inhabitants come together each
in the fulness of his own inspiration, which is
ready to stream forth without constraint, but at
the same time, each filled with a holy desire to
receive and to appropriate to himself everything
which others wish to bring before him. If one
comes forward before the rest, it is not because
he is entitled to this distinction, in virtue of an
offioe or of a previous agreement, nor because
pride and conceitedness have given him pre-
sumption: it is rather a free impulse of the
spirit, a sense of the most heart-felt unity of each
with all, a consciousness of entire equality, a
mutual renunciation of all First and Last, of
all the arrangements of earthly order. He
comes forward, in order to communicate to
others, as an object of sympathizing contempla-
tion, the deepest feelings of his soul while under
the influence of God ; to introduce them within
the sphere of religion, in which he breathes his
native air ; and to infect them with the conta-
gion of his own holy emotions. He speaks forth
the Divine which stirs his bosom, and in holy
silence the assembly follows the inspiration of
his words. Whether he unveils a secret mys-
tery, or with prophetic confidence connects the
future with the present; whether he strengthens
old impressions by new examples, or is led by
the lofty visions of his burning imagination into
other regions of the world and into another
order of things ; the practised sense of his au-
dience everywhere accompanies his own ; and
when he returns into himself from his wander-

444

SCHLEIERMACHER.

ings through the kingdom of God, his own heart
and that of each of his hearers are the common
dwelling-place of the same emotion.

If now the agreement of his sentiments with
that which they feel be announced to him,
whether loudly or low, then are holy mysteries
— not merely significant emblems, but, justly re-
garded, natural indications of a peculiar con-
sciousness, and peculiar feelings — invented and
celebrated, a higher choir, as it were, which in
its own lofty language answers to the appealing
voice. But not only, as it were ; for as such a
discourse is music without tune or measure, so
there is also a music among the Holy, which
may be called discourse without words, the
most distinct and expressive utterance of the
inward man. The JNIuse of Harmony, whose
intimate relation with religion, although it has
been for a long time spoken of and described,
is yet recognized only by few, has always pre-
sented upon her altars the most perfect and
magnificent productions of her selectest scholars,
in honor of religion. It is in sacred hymns and
choirs, with which the words of the poet are
connected only by slight and airy bands, that
those feelings are breathed forth which precise
language is unable to contain ; and thus the
tones of thought and emotion alternate with each
other in mutual support, until all is satisfied and
filled with the Holy and the Infinite. Of this
character is the influence of religious men upon
one another ; siach is their natural and eternal
union. Do not take it ill of them, that this hea-
venly bond, — the most consummate product of
the social nature of man, but to which it does
not attain until it becomes conscious of its own
high and peculiar significance,— that this should
be deemed of more value in their sight, than
the political union, which you esteem so far
above everything else, but which will nowhere
ripen to manly beauty, and which compared
with the former, appears far more constrained
than free, far more transitory than eternal.

But where now, in the description which I
have given of the community of the pious, is
that distinction between priests and laymen,
which you are accustomed to designate as the
source of so many evils ? A false appearance
has deceived you. This is not a distinction
between persons, but only one of condition and
employment. Every man is a priest, so far as
he draws around him others, in the sphere which
he has appropriated to himself, and in which
he professes to be a master. Every one is a
layman, so far as he is guided by the counsel
and experience of another, within the sphere
of religion, where he is comparatively a stran-
ger. There is not here the tyrannic aristocracy,
which you describe with such hatred ; but this
society is a priestly people, a perfect repub-
lic, where every one is alternately ruler and
citizen, where every one follows the same power
in another which he feels also in liimself^ and
with which he too governs others.

How then could the spirit of discord and di-

vision,— which you regard as the inevitable
consequence of all religious combinations, — find
a congenial home within this sphere ? I see
nothing but that All is One, and that all the dif-
ferences wliich actually exist in religion, by
means of this very union of the pious, are gently
blended with each other. I have directed your
attention to the different degrees of religious-
ness, I have pointed out to you the diflerent
modes of insight, and the different directions in
which the soul seeks for itself the supreme ob-
ject of its pursuit. Do you imagine that this
must needs give birth to sects, and thus destroy
all free and reciprocal intercourse in religion'?
It is true indeed in contemplation, that every-
thing which is separated into various parts, and
embraced in different divisions, must be opposed
and contradictory to itself; but consider, I pray
you, how Life is manifested in a great variety
of forms, how the most hostile elements seek
out each other here, and for this very reason,
what we separate in contemplation, all flows
together in life. They, to be sure, who on one
of these points bear the greatest resemblance
to each other, will present the strongest mutual
attraction : but they cannot, on that account,
compose an independent whole ; for the degrees
of this affinity imperceptibly diminish and in-
crease, and in the midst of so many transitions
there is no absolute repulsion, no total separa-
tion, even between the most discordant ele-
ments. Take which you will of these masses,
which have assumed an organic form accord-
ing to their own inherent energy ; if you do
not forcibly divide them by a mechanical ope-
ration, no one will exhibit an absolutely dis-
tinct and homogeneous character, but the ex-
treme points of each will be connected at the
same time with those which display diflerent
properties and properly belong to another
mass.

If the pious individuals, who stand on the
same degree of a lower order, formed a closer
union with each other, there are yet some al-
ways included in the combination who have a
presentiment of higher things. These are better
understood by all who belong to a higher social
union, than they understand themselves ; and
there is a point of sympathy between the two
which is concealed only from the latter. If
those combine together, in whom one of the
modes of insight, which I have described, is
predominant, there will always be some among
them who understand at least both of the modes,
and since they in some degree belong to both,
they form a connecting link between two spheres
which would otherwise be separated. Thus
the individual who is more inclined to cherish
a religious connection between himself and na-
ture, is yet by no means opposed, in the essen-
tials of religion, to him who prefers to trace the
footsteps of the Godhead in history: and there
will never be wanting those who can pursue
both paths with equal facility. Thus in what-
ever manner you divide the vast province of

SCHLEIERMACHER.

445

religion, you will always come back to the same
point.

If imbounded universality of insight be the
first and original condition of religion, and hence
also, most naturally, its fairest and ripest fruit,
you perceive that it cannot be otherwise than
that, in proportion as an individual advances in
religion, and the character of his piety becomes
more pure, the whole religious world will more
and more appear to him as an indivisible whole.
The spirit of separation, in proportion as it in-
sists upon a rigid division, is a proof of imper-
fection : the highest and most cultivated minds
always perceive a universal connection, and for
the very reason that they perceive it, they also
establish it. Since every one comes in contact
only with his immediate neighbor, but, at the
same time, has an immediate neighbor on all
sides and in every direction, he is, in fact, in-
dissolubly linked in with the whole. Mystics
and Naturalists in religion, they to whom the
Godhead is a personal Being, and they to whom
it is not, they who have arrived at a systematic
view of the Universe, and they who behold it
only in its elements or only in obscure cliaos, —
all, notwithstanding, should be only one : one
band surrounds them all ; and they can be to-
tally separated only by a violent and arbitrary
force ; every specific combination is nothing
but an integral part of the whole, its peculiar
characteristics are almost evanescent, and are
gradually lost in outlines that become more and
more indistinct ; and at least those who feel
themselves thus united will always be the su-
perior portion. ' . . .

Whence, then, but through a total misunder-
standing, have arisen that wild and disgraceful
zeal for proselytism to a separate and peculiar
form of religion, and that horrible expression
— '• no salvation except with us." As I have
described to you the society of the pious, and
as it must needs be according to its intrinsic
nature, it aims merely at reciprocal communi-
cation, and subsists only between those who are
already in possession of religion, of whatever
character it may be ; how then can it be its
vocation to change the sentiments of those who
now acknowledge a definite system, or to intro-
duce and consecrate those who are totally desti-
tute of one ? The religion of this society, as
such, consists only in the religion of all the pious
taken together: as each one beholds it in the
rest, — it is Infinite, no single individual can
embrace it entirely, since so far as it is indivi-
dual, it ceases to be one, and hence no man can
attain such elevation and completeness, as to
raise himself to its level. If any one then, has
chosen a part in it for himself, whatever it may
be, were it not an absurd procedure for the so-
ciety to wish to deprive him of that which is
adapted to his nature, — since it ought to com-
prise this also within its limits, and hence some
one must needs possess it"?

And to what end should it desire to cultivate
those who are yet strangers to religion? Its

own especial characteristic — the Infinite Whole
— of course it cannot impart to them ; and the
communication of any specific element cannot
be accomplished by the Whole, but only by in-
dividuals. But perhaps then, the Universal, the
Indeterminate, which might be presented, when
we seek that which is common to all the mem-
bers ? But you are aware, that as a general
rule, nothing can be given or communicated, in
the form of the Universal and Indeterminate:
specific object and precise form are requisite
for this purpose ; otherwise, in fact, that which
is presented would not be a reality but a nullity.
Such a society, accordingly, can never find a
measure or rule for this undertaking.

And how could it so far abandon its sphere
as to engage in this enterprise? The want on
which it is founded, the essential principle of
religious society, points to no such purpose.
Individuals unite with each other and compose
a Whole : the Whole, accordingly, rests in itself,
and needs not to strive for anything beyond.
Hence, whatever is accomplished in this way
for religion is the private afli'air of the indivi-
dual for himself, and if I may say so, more in
his relations out of the church than in it. Com-
pelled to withdraw into the inferior scenes of
life, from the circle of religious communion,
where the mutual existence and life in God
afford him the most elevated enjoyment, and
where his spirit, penetrated with holy feelings,
soars to the highest summit of consciousness, it
is his consolation that he can connect everything
with which he must there be employed, with
that which always retains the deepest signifi-
cance in his heart. As he descends from those
lofty regions, among those whose whole endea-
vor and pursuit are limited to earth, he easily
believes — and you must pardon him the feeling
— that he has passed from intercourse with
Gods and Muses, to a race of coarse barbarians.
He feels like a steward of religion among the
unbelieving, a herald of piety among the sa-
vages ; he hopes, like an Orpheus or an Am-
phion, to charm the multitude with his heavenly
tones; he presents himself among them, like a
priestly form, clearly and brightly exhibiting the
lofty, spiritual sense, which fills his soul, in all
his actions and in the whole compass of his
Being. If the contemplation of the Holy and
the Godlike awakens a kindred emotion in
them, how joyfully does he cherish the first
presages of religion in a new heart, as a delight-
ful pledge of its growth even in a harsh and
foreign clime ! With what triumph does he
bear the neophyte with him to the exalted as-
sembly! This activity for the promotion of re-
ligion is only the pious yearning of the stranger
after his home, the endeavor to carry his fadier-
land with him in all his wanderings, and every-
where to find again its laws and customs as the
highest and most beautiful elements of his life ;
but the father-land itself, happy in its own re-
sources, perfectly sufficient for its own wants,
knows no such endeavor.
38

GEORGE WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL.*

Boru 1770. Died 1831.

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the

last of the four great German philosophers,
was born August 27th, 1770, at Stuttgart, in
the kingdom of Wiirtemberg. " It is quite re-
markable," says his biographer, " that one of
his sponsors was a professor of pliilosophy." He
was matriculated as a student of theology in
the University of Tubingen, in the year 1788.
After completing his University career, he pur-
sued an extensive and severe course of study
in comparative retirement, being meanwhile
chiefly employed as a teacher in private fami-
lies. In 1801 he became a public lecturer in
the University of Jena, dedicating liis first work
to an examination of the difference between
the systems of Fichte and Schelling. Here he
continued to give courses of lectures, and to
develope his system, until the taking of Jena
by the French in 1806. For the next two years
he edited a newspaper, then he was rector of a
gymnasium in Nuremberg, where he perfected
his most important work, in which he gave a
new character to the whole system of Logic.
While professor of philosophy in Heidelberg
(1816-18) he published his Encyclopedia, in
which his u'hole scheme of philosophy is con-
tained. He was called to Berlin in the year
1818, and remained there until his death, on
the fourteenth of November, 1831, when he
fell a victim to the cholera.

His philosophy claims to be the absolute sys-
tem, tlie result and culmination of all other
systems. In it he resumes the whole progress
of the human mind, and alleges that his sys-
tem, and that alone, is able to explain the whole
course of history, all the phenomena of nature,
all the problems of speculation. There is one
Absolute Substance pervading all things. That
Substance is Spirit. This Spirit is endued
with the power of development; it produces
from itself the opposing powers and forces of
the universe. All that we have to do is to
stand by and see the process going on. The
process is at first the evolution of antagonistic

* For this account of Hegel, and the translations from
his writings wliicli follow, with the exception of the last,
the editor is indebted to a friend.

forces ; then a mediation between them. All
proceeds by triplicates; there is the positive,
then the negative, then the mediation between
them, which produces a higher unity. This
again is but the starting point for a new series.
And so the process goes on, from stage to stage,
until the Absolute Spirit has passed through all
the stadia of its evolutions, and is exhibited in
its highest form in the Hegelian system of phi-
losophy. The system comprises three depart-
ments : Logic, Natural Philosophy, and the
Philosophy of Spirit. Logic is the science of
the Absolute Idea, in its abstract character;
in the Philosophy of Nature we have the same
Absolute in another, an external form ; in the
Philosophy of Spirit we have its highest stage.
Here it manifests itself as the Subjective Spirit,
the Objective Spirit, and the Absolute Spirit.
The Absolute Spirit, in fine, has three stages
of development, which are Religion, Art, and
Philosophy.

The coliuclive works of this philosopher have
been published in eighteen octavo volumes.
They embrace, besides those already specified,
extensive courses of lectures upon Ethics, Art,
the Philosophy of History, the History of Phi-
losophy, and the Philosophy of Religion. His
system has produced a profound impression
upon the German mind. The theological and
philosophical controversies of the day rage
around it. It is reputed to be the most com-
prehensive and analytic of pantheistic schemes.
Its author and some of his disciples assert, that
it is the same system in the form of philosophy,
which Christianity gives us in the form of faith.
But its present position is that of hostility to
Christianity.

The style of Hegel is declared by one of his
friends to be "strong, pithy, and sometimes
knotty." His terminology is often obscure.
These characteristics may be noted in the fol-
lowing translations, which are ciiiefly taken
from his Philosophy of History. Though this
work was published after his death, yet the
first portion of it, from which our extracts are
derived, was printed from a full manuscript of

the author.

(446)

HEGEL.

447

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPPIY
OF HISTORY.

The subject of this course of Lectures is the
Philosophical History of the World. By this is
not meant general reflections upon history, such
as one might draw from it and illustrate by
appropriate examples, but the History of tire
World itself That its true nature may be
clearly seen, it seems to be necessary first of
all to go through with the other modes in which
history is treated. There are three general
classes into which historical works may be
divided :

1. Primitive History.

2. Systematic History, or History accompanied
by the reflections of the author.

3. Philosophical History.

1. PRIMITIVE HISTORY.

To give a definite image of what I mean by
this kind of history, I need only cite the names
of Herodotus, Thucydides, and other historians
of this stamp, who describe chiefly the deeds,
events, and conditions which they had directly
before them, and in the spirit of whicli they
themselves participated. That which was ex-
ternally present, they transferred in their his-
tories into the domain of mental conceptions.
The external phenomenon is here presented
again in the form of an internal conception.
So, for example, tlie poet takes the materials
which his experience and emotions give him,
and elaborates them into distinct and finished
pictures. These primitive historians have also
at hand tlie reports and narratives of other
men, (it is not possible for one man to see every-
thing,) but only as the poet has an ingredient
in the cultivated language to wl)ich he owes
so mucli. What memory carelessly keeps, the
historian compounds into one whole, places it
in tlie temple of Mnemosyne, and thus gives it
immortal duration. Sagas, popular songs and
traditions are to be excluded from such primi-
tive history, for these are confused and unsettled
things, and hence are peculiar to people that
have not yet obtained a definite historical cha-
racter. The sphere of events actually seen, or
that could be seen, gives a firmer basis than
does the dim antiquity where these sagas and
fables grow up, and they do not constitute a
part of the history of nations which have at-
tained a fi.xed individuality.

These primitive historians now fashion the
events, deeds, and conditions which were ac-
tually before them, into a work that gives to
others a distinct picture of their times. The
contents of such histories cannot, of course, be
of great outv.-ard compass, (see the works of
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Guicciardini ;) for
they are essentially made up of what is present
and living around the authors. The state of
culture of the author is identical with that in
which those events were transacted, which he
fashions into a work ; the spirit of the author

and the spirit of the deeds he narrates are one
and the same. He describes that of which he has
been more or less a part, or in the midst of
which he has lived. There 'are short periods
of time, distinct images of men and events, in-
dividual traits not reflected upon, from which
he gathers his picture, in order to bring the scene
and persons as definitely to the conception of
after-times, as they stood before his own mind,
whether in actual vision or in graphic narratives.
He has nothing to do with reflections upon what
he describes, for he lives in the spirit of the
times, and has not yet got out beyond it : if he
belong, as did Ctesar, to the class of generals or
statesmen, then his own ends and aims are the
ones which come out as historical. When it is
here said that such a historian does not reflect,
but that the persons and people themselves come
forward, this seems to be contradicted by the
speeches which we read, for example, in Thu-
cydides, and which, it is quite certain, were not
delivered as they are reported. But speeches
are acts among men, and essentially effective
acts also. People do indeed often say, it was
only a speech, and mean by this that it was a
harmless affair. Such speeches are mere talk,
and talk has the important advantage of being
harmless. But speeches from one people to an-
other, orations addressed to people and princes
are integral parts of history. Even if Thucy-
dides did compose the speeches he puts into the
mouth of Pericles, the most highly cultivated,
genuine, and noble of statesmen, yet are they
not foreign to Pericles. In these speeches, these
men speak out the maxims of their people, of
their own selves, their consciousness of their
political relations, as well as of their moral and
spiritual natures, the principles which guided
their aims and acts. AVhat the historian lets
them say is not a loaned consciousness, but ex-
presses tfte very culture of the orators.

Of such writers of history, whom we must
study into, and by whom we must linger, if we
would live with the nations, and sink ourselves
into their spirit — of such historians, in whom we
seek not merely learning, but deep and genuine
delight, there are not so many to be found as
we might perchance suppose. Herodotus, the
father, that is the originator of history, and
Thucydides, have been already named. Xeno-
phon's Return of the Ten Thousand is a book
equally original; Ccesar's Commentaries are the
simple master-piece of a great spirit. Iii an-
cient times, these historians were necessarily
great captains and statesmen ; in the middle
ages, if we except the bishops who stood at the
centre of state aflairs, the monks as naive chro-
niclers are to be reckoned here; but they were
as isolated from the events they describe, as
those men of antiquity were connected with
them. In later times, all the relations of things
have changed. Our culture is essentially compre-
hensive, and immediately transforms all events
into reports which give a distinct picture of
them. We have admirable, simple, definite

448

HEGEL.

narratives of this kind, especially of military
transactions, which may well be placed by the
side of CtEsar's, and are even more instructive
than his, on account of the fulness of their con-
tents, and the details of means and conditions.
The French Memoirs also belong here. Many
c'f these are written by men of talent and wit
about matters of limited interest, and they fre-
quently contain much of anecdote; but others are
true historical master-pieces, as those of Cardinal
(le Retz, and bring to view a wider historical
field. In Germany there are but few masters
in this art; Frederic the Great (liistoire de man
temps) is an honorable exception. Such works
can fitly come only from men in high stations.
Only he who stands above can rightly survey
the field, and look at everything; not he who
has looked from below upwards through a
scanty opening.

2. STSTEMATIC BISTORT.

The second kind of history we may call Sys-
tematic History, or history accompanied by the
reflections, and composed in view of the gene-
ral scheme of the author. It is history, in the
exhibition of which we are led beyond mere
present and passing events, not in reference to
time, but in respect of the spirit or views with
which it is composed. Under this second genus,
there are wholly different species to be dis-
tinguished.

a. We wish for a general view of the whole
history of a people or country, or of the world,
in short, what we call General History. Here
the chief thing is the working up of the histori-
cal materials, and to this labor the author comes
with a spirit which is different from the sphii
of the periods of which he treats. In doing this,
the points of chief imiDortance will be, on the
one hatid, the principles which the author ap-
plies in judging of the character and tendency
of the acts and events he describes, and, on the
other hand, those which guide him in the com-
position of the history. The reflections and
judgments of us Germans upon these points
have been very manifold ; every writer of his-
tory has got his own special way in his own
head. The English and French, as a general
thing, know how history should be written: their
stage of culture is more general and national ;
among ns, each one thinks out some subtle pecu-
liarity, and instead of writing history, we are
always trying to find out the way in which his-
tory should be written. This first species of
excogitated history is near akin to primitive his-
tory, when it has no farther aim than to exhibit
the whole history of a country. Such compila-
tions (here belong the histories of Livy, Diodo-
rus, Sicuhts, von Miiller's History of Switzer-
land) when well made are highly serviceable.
It would be best, if the historians would ap-
proximate to those of the first genus, and de-
scribe things so graphically, that the reader
might suppose he was hearing contemporaries
and eye-witnesses relate the events. But the

peculiar tone of mind which every individual
must have, who belongs to a particular stage of
national culture, frequently becomes modified
by the periods through which such a history
takes its course, and the spirit which speaks
from the historian is another than the spirit of
these times. Thus Livy lets the old kings of
Rome, the consuls and generals hold speeches
befitting only a skilful advocate of the times of
Livy, and which besides are most strongly con-
trasted with the genuine tales preserved from
those ancient times ; for example, the fable of
Menenius Agrippa. Thus, too, the same author
gives us descriptions of battles, as though he
had himself seen them, the outlines of which,
however, might be used for the battles of all
ages; and the definitiveness of whose details,
again, is in strong contrast with the want of
connection and inconsistency with which in
other passages he often speaks of the most im-
portant matters. The ditference between such
a compiler and a primitive historian may be
best seen by comparing the work of Polybius,
so far as it lias been preserved to us, with the
mode in which Livy makes use of extracts from,
and abridges it in the corresponding portions
of his history. John von Miiller, in the endeavor
to be true in his descriptions to the times which
he describes, has given to his history a formal,
grandiloquent and pedantic air. One would
much rather read such things in the old Swiss
chronicler, Tscliudy himself; everything is more
simple and natural than in such a mere made-
up and aflected antiquatedness.

A history of this kind which surveys long
periods, or the whole history of the world, must
in truth give up the exhibition of individual
facts, and abridge by abstractions, not merely
by leaving out events and actions, but by mak-
ing the author's thoughts the great means of
epitomising. A battle, a great victory, a siege,
are no longer themselves, but are condensed
into the simplest statements. When Livy tells
of the wars with the Volsci, he says sometimes,
(short enough,) this year war was carried on
with the Volsci.

b. A second kind of systematic history is the
pragmatical. When we have to do with what
is past, and busy ourselves about a remote world,
the mind, by its own activity, creates for itself
a present there, which is the reward of its toil.
The events are different, but what is universal
and internal in them, the connection, is one.
This abolishes the past, and makes the event
present. Pragmatical reflections, abstract as they
may be, do thus make the narrative of past
events into a matter of present interest, and
vivify them as with jiresent life. Whether such
reflections are really interesting and enlivening,
depends upon the spirit of the author. Here
we are especially called upon to make mention
of those moral reflections, and that moral in-
struction to be got from history, for the sake of
which it has often been worked up. Although
it may be said that examples of virtue elevate

HEGEL.

449

the soul, and are to be applied in the moral in-
struction of children, in order to impress them
with a love of excellence; yet the destinies of
nations and states, their complicated interests,
conditions and conflicts are quite another field.
Regents, statesmen, and nations are very em-
phatically referred to the experience of history
for their instruction. But what experience and
history teach is this, that nations and govern-
ments have never learned anything from his-
tory, nor acted according to the lessons which
might have been drawn from it. Every period
has such peculiar circumstances, has such an
individual character, that in it we must and can
judge in view of its own circiunstances alone.
In the pressure of the world's events, neither a
general principle, nor the recollection of similar
relations is of service ; for these, like a dim re-
membrance, have no power against the living
force and freedom of the present. Nothing, in
this respect, is emptier than the oft-repeated
appeal to Greek and Roman examples, so often
made among the French in the time of their
revolution. Nothing can be more diverse than
the character of those people and of our own
times. John von Miiller had such moral ends in
view in his Universal aswell as in his Swiss his-
tory; he prepared such instructions for princes,
governments and people, especially for the Swiss;
(he made special collections of svich maxims
and reflections, and often in his correspondence
gives the exact number of such reflections, which
he had finished in a week :) but all this can
hardly be reckoned among the best things he
has accomplished. It is only a thorough, free
and comprehensive view of the situations, and
the deep significancy of the idea by which we
judge of them, (as, for example, in Montesquieu's
Spirit of the Laws,) which can give truth and
interest to such reflections. Hence one such
history supersedes another; the materials are
open to eveiy writer, every one can easily think
himself able to arrange and elaborate them,
and to make his own spirit pass for the spirit
of the times he describes. From satiety with
such histories, men have frequently gone back,
and given a picture of some one important
event, described from all points of view. Such
works are certainly of some value, but they
give, for the most part, only materials. The
Germans are content with them ; the French,
on the contrary, give such a spirited description
of the past, as makes it seem living and i^re-
sent; they bring the past into direct connection
with present circumstances.

r. The third kind of systematic history is the
critical. This is rather history of history, criti-
cism of narratives, and investigation of their
truth and credibility. Whatever there is extra-
ordinary in it, and intended to be so, does not
consist in the subject-matter, but in the acute-
ness of the writer, whose object is to pare away
something from the narratives. The diflerence
between what was before held to be fact, and
what is now to be so held, is the measure of

3g

the fame of such a critical investigator of his-
tory; and it is not often considered, on the other
hand, how arbitrary are the notions and com-
binations to which he may have surrendered
himself

d. The last kind of systematic history is that
which does not pretend to be more than the
history of some one department, as Art, Law,
or Religion. The special subject is here, indeed,
taken by itself, but since its history is written
from general points of view, it forms a transi-
tion to the Philosophical History of the World.
In our times this kind of history has been more
cultivated ; the philosophical principles con-
tained in these different branches have been
made more prominent. Such branches have a
connection with the whole of a people's history;
the main thing is, whether this connection is
truly exhibited, or is sought for only in external
relations. If the latter, then these separate de-
partments seem to be only accidental and indi-
vidual peculiarities of the nations.

3. PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY.

The third kind of history is the Philosophical.
In respect to the two previous divisions, there
was no need of clearing up their meaning; this
was understood of itself; but it is otherwise
with this last kind, which seems to demand
some explanation or justification.

The philosophy of history, then, in the most
general point of view, signifies nothing other
than a thoughtful consideration of history. As
rational beings, we can never leave off" thinking;
thus we are distinguished from the brutes. In
our sensations, in our knowledge and apprehen-
sion, in our impulses and will, so far as they are
human, there is thought. It may seem that this
appeal to thought, in connection with history, is
unsatisfactory, since in history our thoughts must
be subordinate to what actually exists, to the
data given us, — must be founded upon, and
guided by, the facts; while, on the other hand,
it is said philosophy has thoughts of its own,
engendered by mere speculation, without regard
to what actually exists. If it goes to work upon
history with such speculative notions, then it
only handles it as so much mere material; does
not leave it as it is, but fashions it after the
thought, constructs it a, priori, as we say. And
since the only office of history is to grasp what
is and has been, events and acts, and as it is
more true in proportion as it adheres to its data,
it seems as though the business of philosophy
were in contradiction with such a procedure.
This apparent contradiction, and the objection
to a speculative treatment of history which
springs from it, w^e will here explain and refute,
without, liowever, going into a rectification of
the infinitely varied and right special awry no-
tions which are current, or always invented
anew, respecting the end, the interests and the
treatment of history, and its relation to philo-
sophy.

38*

450

HEGEL.

The only idea which philosophy brings along
with it to the consideration of liislory, is the
simple idea of reason, that reason rules the
woild. This conviction and insight is indeed
an assumption in respect to history, as such ; in
philosophy, however, it is no assumption. In
philosophy, by means of speculative knowledge,
it is evinced that reason — and we may here be
allowed to abide by this expression, without
entering into an investigation of the relation in
which reason stands to God — that reason is the
substance of all things, as well as the infinite
power by which they are moved; is itself the
illimitable material of all natural and spiritual
life, as well as the source of the infinite variety
of forms in which this material is livingly mani-
fested. It is the substance of all things, that is,
it is that whereby and wherein all that really
exists has its being and continuance; it is the
infinite power, — for reason is not so impotent that
it can produce only an ideal, a something which
ever should be and never is, and which has its
being outside of and beyond all that actually
does exist, nobody knows where, some very
special thing in the heads of some men ; it is
the illimitable material of all essentiality and
truth, — for it is not subjected, as is finite action,
to the conditions forced upon it by external ma-
terials, from which it must receive nourishment
and objects for its activity; it feeds upon itself,
it creates its materials, viz. the infinite variety of
extant forms ; ibr only in the shape which reason
prescribes and justifies do phenomena come into
being, and begin to live. That it reveals itself
in the world, and that nothing in the world but
this is revealed ; that its honor and glory are
there, this is what, as we said, is proved by phi-
losophy, and is here assumed as proved.

Though we have said that we here assume
that reason rules the world, yet it is, in fact, not
so much an assumption, as it is the result of the
investigation we have started upon. From the
consideration of the history of die world itself,
we shall come to the result, that there has been
a rational process of things in it; that it has
been the rational and necessary course of the
spirit which moves in the world, — a spirit
whose nature does indeed ever remain one and
the same, but which, in the existence of the
world, unfolds this its one nature. This must,
as was said, be the product of history. The his-
tory itself, however, we have to take as it is ;
we are to go to work historically, empirically.
It might be stated, as the first condition, that
we should truly comprehend the historical ma-
terials ; but in such general expressions as truly
and comprehend^ there is an ambiguity. The or-
dinary and moderate historian, who thinks and
declares that he stands only as a recipient, and
gives himself up to the data, is yet not passive
with his thinking; he brings with him some
categories, through which he looks at what is
before him. In everything, especially, which is
meant to be scientific, reason may not slumber,
reflection must be applied. He who looks at

the world rationally, him the world also looks at
rationally ; the two are reciprocal.

There are some considerations which may
serve to illustrate the general conviction, that
reason has ruled in the world, and in its history,
also. These will give us an opportunity to
touch upon some of the chief points of difiiculty.
One is the historical fact, that Anaxagoras,
the Greek, is said to have been the first to main-
tain that the iwj, understanding in general or
reason, rules the world, — not an intelligence, in
the sense of self-conscious reason — not a spirit,
as such — for the two are to be carefully distin-
guished from each other. The movements of
the solar system follow unchangeable laws;
these laws are the reason of this system ; but
neither the sun, nor the planets which describe
their orbits around it, according to these laws,
have any consciousness thereof. Such an idea
as this, that there is reason in nature, that it is
immutably governed by general laws, does not '
strike us as strange ; we are used to the like,
and do not make much out of them. One rea-
son, therefore, why I mention this historical cir-
cumstance is, to make it apparent that history
teaches us that such like notions, which may
seem to us trivial, have not always been in the
world; that such thoughts make epochs in the
history of the human mind. Aristotle says of
Anaxagoras, as the originator of this thought:
That he appeared like a sober man in the midst
of the drunken. Socrates received this thought
from Anaxagoras, and, with the exception of
the notion of Epicurus, who ascribed all events
to chance, it first became the predominant one
in philosophy. Plato represents Socrates as say-
ing : I rejoiced therein, and hoped that I had
found a teacher who would interpret nature for
me in accordance with reason, — who would
show me in the special its special end, and in
the whole its general purpose ; this hope I
would not have given up for much. But how
greatly was I deceived, when I now zealously
took up the writings of Anaxagoras himself, and
found that he only brought forward external
causes, as air, ether, water and the like, instead
of reason. We see that what Socrates found to
be unsatisfactory in the principle of Anaxagoras
was not the principle itself, but the failing to
apply it to nature in the concrete ; the latter
was not understood, comprehended, by means
of the principle; the principle was held in the
mere abstract, nature was not grasped as a de-
velopment of it, as an organization produced by
reason. I would call your attention here, in the
very beginning, to the point; the difference there
is between holding a formula, a principle, a
truth only in the abstract, and the carrying it on
and out in definitive and exact application into
the concrete development. This difference is
of the widest application.

This idea, that reason governs the world, is
also connected with another application of it,
well known to us in the form of the religious
truth, that the world is not given over to acci-

HEGEL.

451

dent, or to external and accidental causes, but is
under the government of a Providence. I might
appeal to your belief in this principle in this re-
ligious form, if it were not the peculiarity of the
science of philosophy, that it does not allow
authority to any assumptions ; or to speak from
another point of view, if it were not that the
science of which we here treat is itself to fur-
nish the proof, though not of the truth, yet of
the correctness of that principle. The truth,
now, that a Providence, that the Divine Provi-
dence presides over the events of the world,
corresponds with the above principle ; for the
Divine Providence is wisdom and infinite
power, realizing its purposes, — that is, the ab-
solute, the rational end and destiny of the
world; reason is thought, determining itself
with perfect freedom. But, when further con-
sidered, the difference, the opposition even, of
this faith and of our principle shows itself in
the same way as with the demand of Socrates
in respect to the maxim of Anaxagoras. This
faith is equally indefinite, is what is called
faith in Providence in •general, and does not go
forward to what is definite, — to an application
to the whole comprehensive course of the
world's history. Explaining history, generally
ineans only the unveiling of the passions of
men, their genius, their active powers ; and the
definite ends of Providence are called its plan.
But it is this plan which is said to be concealed
from our eyes, which it is audacity even to
wish to know. The ignorance of Anaxagoras
as to the mode in which the understanding
(wij) reveals itself in actual existence, was an
unprejudiced one; he had not become conscious,
nor had any one then in Greece, of any further
application of his views ; he was not yet able
to apply his general principle to the concrete,
to understand the latter by the former; for So-
crates took the first step in grasping the union
of the concrete with the universal. Anaxagoras
was, then, not hostile to such an application ;
but this common faith in Providence is polemi-
cal, at least against the aiDplication of its prin-
ciple to any wide extent, or against the attempt
to understand the general plan of Providence.
For, in special cases, those who hold it are will-
ing sometimes to allow pious minds to see, in
some single occurrences, not what is casual, but
the very appointments of God ; when, for ex-
ample, help unexpectedly comes to an individual
in great distress and need; but such Providen-
tial ends are only of a limited kind, are only
the special ends of this individual. In the his-
tory of the world, however, we have to do with
individuals which are nations, with wholes
which are states ; we cannot then limit our-
selves to such retailing of faith in Providence,
nor yet to that merely abstract, undefined faith,
which only goes so far as to say that there is a
Providence in general, but will not advance to
the statement of its more definite acts. We
should rather earnestly endeavor to understand
the ways of Providence, its means and mani-

festations in history, and to bring those into
connexion with our general principle.

HISTORT AS THE MANIFESTATION OF SPIRIT.

The true sphere of the history of the world
is spiritual. The world comprises in itself both
the physical and the psychical nature ; physical
nature plays a large part in the history of the
world. But spirit, with the course of its deve-
lopment, is the substance of it. Nature is not
here to be considered, so far as it is in itself, as
it were, a system of reason, exhibited in a spe-
cial and pecvtliar element, but only as it stands
related to spirit. Spirit, however, in the theatre
of the world's history, exists in its most concrete
form, comes to its most real manifestations. In
order to understand its connexions with history,
we must make some preliminary and abstract
statements respecting the nature of spirit.

The nature of spirit may be easily understood
by comparison with that which is the entire op-
posite of it, — that is, matter. The substance of
matter is weight, which is only this, that it is
heavy ; the substance, the essence of spirit, on
the contrary, is freedom. Every one finds it im-
mediately credible that spirit, among other attri-
butes, also possesses freedom ; but philosophy
teaches us that all the attributes of spirit exist
only through freedom, that they all are only the
means of which freedom makes use, that this
alone is what they all seek for and produce.
The speculative philosophy recognises this fact,
that freedom is the only truth of spirit. Matter
shows that it is weight, by its tendency to one
centre of gravity; it is essentially made up of
parts, which parts exist separate from, and ex-
ternal to, each other; and it is ever seeking their
unity, and thus seeks to abolish itself, — seeks
the opposite of what it really is ; if it attained
this unity, it were no longer matter, it were de-
stroyed ; it strives to realize an idea, for in
unity it is merely ideal. Spirit, on the other
hand, is just this, that it has its centre in itself;
its unity is not outside of itself, but it has found
it; it is in itself and with itself. Matter has its
substance out of itself; spirit consists in being
with itself. This is freedom ; for when I am de-
pendent, I refer myself to something else which
is not myself; I cannot be without something
external ; but I am free when I am with myself.
This is self-consciousness, the consciousness of
one's self. Two things are here to be distin-
guished : first, that I know or am conscious ;
secondly, what I know or am conscious of. In
self-consciousness, the two come together, for
spirit knows itself; it judges of its own nature.

In this sense, we may say that the history of
the world is the exhibition of the process by
which spirit comes to the consciousness of that
which it really is, — of the significancy of its
own nature. And as the seed contains in itself
the whole nature of the tree, even to the taste
and form of the fruit, so do the first traces of
spirit virtually contain the whole of history.

462

HEGEL.

The Oriental world ilid not know that spirit,
man as such, is of himself free ; -since they knew
it not, they were not free; they only knew that
one is frse ; l)ut just on this account their free-
dom was only arbitrariness, wildness, obtuse
passion ; or, if not so, yet a mildness and tame-
ness of the passions, which is nothing but an
accident or caprice of nature. This one is, there-
fore, only a despot, not a free man. Among the
Greeks, the consciousness of freedom first arose,
and therefore they were free ; but they, as the
Romans also, only knew that some are free, not
that man, as such, is free. Even Plato and
Aristotle did not know this. Hence, the Greeks
not only held slaves, and had their life and the
continuance of their fair freedom bound thereby,
but their freedom itself was partly only an ac-
cidental and perishable flower, and partly a
hard servitude of the human and humane. The
German nations, under the influence of Chris-
tianity, first came to the consciousness that man,
as man, is free, — that freedom of soul consti-
tutes his own proper nature. This conscious-
ness came first into existence in religion, — in
the deepest religion of the spirit. But to fashion
the world after this principle, was a further pro-
blem ; the solution and application of which,
demanded a severe and long labor. With the
reception of the Christian religion, for example,
slavery did not at once come to an end, still less
did freedom at once become predominant in the
States; their governments and constitutions were
not immediately organized in a rational manner,
or even based upon the principle of freedom.
This application of the principle to the world
at large, this thorough penetration and reforma-
tion of the condition of the world by means of
it, is the long process which the history of the
nations brings before our eyes. I have already
called attention to the diflerence between a
principle, as such, and its application, — that is,
the introduction of it into the actual operations
of spirit and life, and carrying it through all of
them ; this is a fundamental position in our
science, and it is essential that we hold it fast
in our thoughts. Here we have brought it out
distinctly, in respect to the Christian principle
of self-consciousness, of freedom ; but it is no
less essential in respect to the principle of free-
dom in general. The history of the world is
the progress in the consciousness of freedom, —
a progress which we shall have to recognise in
its necessity.

What we have now said, in general terms,
upon the diflerence in the knowledge of free-
dom which we find in different ages of the
world, gives us, also, the true division of the
history of the world, and the mode in which
we shall proceed to its discussion. The scheme
is this: the Oriental world only knew that one is
free ; the Greek and Roman world knew that
some are free ; but we know that all men, in
their true nature, are free, — that man, as man,
is free.

THE RELATIOlf OF INDIVIDUALS TO THE WORLD's
HISTORY.

In the history of the world something else is
generally brought out by means of the actions
of individual men than they themselves aim at
or attain, than they directly know of or will ;
they achieve their own ends, but something far-
ther is brought to pass in connection with their
acts, which also lies therein, but which did not
lie in their consciousness and purposes. As an
analogous example we cite the case of a man,
who, out of revenge, which may have been
justly excited, that is, by an tmjust injury, goes
to work and sets fire to the house of another
man. Even in doing this, there is a connection
made between the direct act, and other, although
themselves merely external circumstances, which
do not belong to this act, taken wholly and di-
rectly by itself This act, as such, is the holding
I^erhaps of a small flame to a small spot of a
wooden beam. What is not yet accomplished
by this act goes on and is done of itself; the
part of the beam that 'wa.s set on fire is con-
nected with other parts of the same beam, this
too with the rafters and joists of the whole
house, this house with other houses, and a wide-
spread conflagration ensues, which destroys the
property and goods of many other men besides
the one against whom the revenge was directed,
and even costs many men their lives. All this
lay not in the general act, nor in the intention
of him who began it all. But, still farther, this
action has another general character and desti-
nation : in the purpose of the actor it was only
revenge against an individual by means of the
destruction of his property; but it is also a crime,
and this involves, farther, a punishment. This
may not have been included in the conscious-
ness, and still less in the will of the doer, but
still such is his act in itself, the general cha-
racter, the very substance of it, that which is
achieved by it. In this example all that we
would hold fast is, that in the immediate action
there can lie something more than what was in
the will and consciousness of the actor. The
substance of the action, and thereby the act
itself, here turns round against the doer ; it be-
comes a return-blow against him, which ruins
him. We have not here to lay any emphasis
upon the action considered as a crime ; it is in-
tended only as an analogous example, to show,
that in the definite action there may be some-
thing more than the end directly willed.

One other case may be adduced which will
come up later in its own place, and which,
being itself historical, contains, in the special
form which is essential to our purpose, the union
of the general with the particular, of an end
necessary in itself with an aim which might
seem accidental. It is that of Caesar, in danger
of losing the position he had obtained, if not of
superiority over, yet of equality with, the other
man who stood at the head of the Roman state,
and of submitting to those who were upon the

HEGEL.

453

point of becoming his enemies. These enemies,
who at the same time had their own personal
ends in view, had on their side the formal con-
stitution of the State and the power of seeming
legality. Ccesar fought to maintain liis own
position, honor, and safety, and the victory over
liis opponents was at the same time the con-
quest of the whole kingdom : and thus he be-
came, leaving only the forms of the constitution
of the State, the sole possessor of power. The
carrying out of his own at first negative purpose
got for him the supremacy in Rome ; but this
was also in its true nature a necessary element
in the history of Rome and of the world, so that
it was not his own private gain merely, but an
instinct which consummated that which, consi-
dered by itself, lay in the times themselves.
Such are the great men of history — those whose
private purposes contain the substance of that
which is the will of the spirit of the world.
This substance constitutes their real power; it
is contained in the general and unconscious in-
stinct of men; they are inwardly impelled
thereto, and have no ground on which they can
stand in opposing the man who has undertaken
the execution of such a purpose in his own in-
terest. The people assemble around his ban-
ner ; he shows to them, and carries out, that
which is their own immanent destiny.

Should we, farther, cast a look at the fate of
these world-historical individuals, we see that
they have had the fortune to be the leaders to
a consummation which marks a stage in the
progress of the general mind. That reason
makes use of these instruments we might call
its craft; for it lets them carry out their own
aims with all the rage of passion, and not only
keeps itself unharmed, but makes itself domi-
nant. The particular is for the most part too
feeble against the universal; ihe individuals
are sacrificed. Thus the world's history pre-
sents itself as the conflict of individuals, and in
the field of their special interests all goes on
very naturally. In the animal world the pre-
servation of life is the aim and instinct of each
individual, and yet reason or general laws pre-
vail, and the individuals fall ; thus is it also in
the spiritual world. Passions destroy each
other; reason alone watches, pursues its end,
and makes itself authoritative.

THE STATE.

That which is substantial and true in man's
will is what we call morality and law; and
this is what is divine in tlie external objects of
history. Antigone in Sophocles says: 'The di-
vine commands are not of yesterday or to-day ;
no, they live without end, and no one knows
whence and when they came.' Moral laws are
not accidental, but are reason itself When
these moral laws or ethical principles, which
compose the true substance of humanity, have
authority in the actions and sentiments of men,
when they are really carried out and main-
tained, then we have the State. Now-a-days

there are manifold errors current upon this mat-
ter which pass for established truths, and have
all prejudices in their favor; we will only no-
tice a few of them, and such as have a special
bearing upon the aim of our history.

The State, we say, is the realisation of free-
dom in conformity with ethical laws. An opi-
nion directly opposed to this view is current,
which asserts that inan is free by nature, and
that the society, the State, of which he is natu-
rally a member, must restrict this natural free-
dom. That man is free by nature is wholly
correct in the sense, that this is the true idea of
man, but this idea is something that is to be
realized ; it expresses his destination, and not
what he actually is at first; the nature of any
object can mean the same as the true conception
of it. But this is not the whole meaning of the
phrase; there is also included in it the notion
of the mode in which man existed in his natural
and undeveloped condition. In this sense, a
state of nature is generally assumed in which
man is represented as being in the possession
of his natural rights in the unrestricted exercise
and enjoyment of his freedom. This assump-
tion does not pass for something verified by
history ; and if it were earnestly attempted, it
would be difficult to show that such a state of
nature either now exists, or has in past times
anywhere existed. States of savageness can
indeed be pointed out, but these are always
connected with rude passions and violence,
and, even when most cultivated, we find, among
such tribes, social regulations v/hich restrict
true freedoin. This whole assumption is one
of those misty figments which a dieorising spirit
generates; a notion necessarily flowing from
such a spirit, for which it then feigns a real
existence, without justifying itself in an historical
way.

Such as we find this state of nature to be in
fact, so is it in the notion thereof. Freedom,
being the ideality of what is primitive and na-
tural, is not found in the primitive and natural
condition of man; it must first be wrought out
and won, and tlsat, too, by an unending media-
tion between the impulses of knowledge and
of will. Hence the state of nature is a state of
injustice, of force, of unrestrained natural im-
pulses to inhuman deeds and feelings. Society
and the State do indeed make restrictions, but
the restrictions are put upon these crude emo-
tions and rude impulses, upon fickleness and
passion. These limitations are made by that
constant process of mediation between opposing
principles, which is the only way in which such
freedom is produced, as is conformed to the
true idea thereof, and to the laws of reason.
Right and ethics belong to the very idea of free-
dom ; these are, in their very nature, universal
essences, objects, and ends ; they are found
only as we, by the activity of thought, distin-
guish ourselves from whatever is sensual, and
develope our characters in contrast with what
is merely natural ; and they must, so to speak,

45i

HEGEL.

be moulded into and embodied in the will
which is at first only sensuous, even in opposi-
tion to this will. This is the everlasting mis-
apprehension of freedom, to know it only in its
formal and subjective aspects, abstracted from
its essential objects and aims ; thus is it that
the limitation of those impulses, desires, and
passions, which belong only to single indivi-
duals as sucli, to the sphere of caprice and mere
liking, is taken to be a restriction of freedom.
Such limitation is rather absolutely necessary
to the emancipation of the will ; and society
and the State are the conditions under which
freedom is realised.

Another conception should be mentioned
which goes against the development of right
into its legal forms. The patriarchal state,
taken as a whole, or at least in some of its
branches, is looked upon as the condition in
which the moral and social elements of our
nature are best satisfied, in connection with the
demands of law, and it is said that justice itself
can be truly exercised only in conjunction with
these elements. The family relation lies at the
basis of the patriarchal condition ; and here we
have a development only of the first ethical
elements ; the State must also be added in order
to bring about a conscious development of the
second or higher elements. The patriarchal
relation is a state of transition, in which the
family has grown to a tribe or people; it has
already ceased to have love and trust for its
only bonds ; it has come to be a connection of
mutual service. The unity of the mere family
is one of natin-al sentiment; the State adds
higher bonds, and brings the members of the
family into a higher moral condition and con-
nections.

Finally it is said, that right and the true no-
tion of freedom lie in the general will. When
we speak of the will as general, we mean, that
all individuals are to be subject to it; and when
freedom is said to consist in this, that the indi-
viduals give their assent, it is easily seen that
we have here got only the subjective elements
of the will. It comes out at last to a mere ma-
jority and minority, and Rousseau has already
remarked, that then there is no more freedom,
for the will of the minority is no longer regarded.
In the Polish diet every individual must give
his assent to a measure, or it could not pass;
and for the sake of such freedom the State was
ruined ; for every faction of the people can give
itself out to be the people. That which consti-
tutes the State is found rather in its culture than
in the people as a mass.

The State, as such, is neither a natural, nor, in
its highest form, a patriarchal condition, nor is it
the general will: but it is an ethical whole; the
State, embodied in the individuals, is the true
ethics. The State, its laws, its institutions are the
rights of the individuals belonging to it, are their
external possession ; and its soil, its mountains,
air, and waters, are their land, their fatherland;
their deeds make the history of this State; that

which their forefathers have done belongs to
them, and lives in their memory. All is their
possession — even as the State also possesses
them — for it constitutes their substance, their
being. Their conceptions are thus fulfilled ; and
their will is the willing of these laws and of
this fatherland. It is this spiritual community
which makes one essence, which we call the
spirit of a people. The individuals belong to
it; every individual is the soli of his people,
and at the same time, so far as the state is pro-
gressing, he is the son of his times ; no one re-
mains behind them, nor can he overleap them;
this spiritual essence is his own, he is its repre-
sentative; he came forth from it, and stands in
it. Among the Athenians, Athena had a double
significancy; first, she designated their institu-
tions as a whole ; and she was also the goddess
who represented the imity, the spirit of the
people.

This spirit of a people is a definite spirit; its
character is determined by the historical stage
of their development. This spirit is the basis
out of which proceed all the forms of national
culture. It is an individuality, which in reli-
gion is represented, revereijced, and loved in
its essential character ; in art, it is exhibited in
visible images and forms; in philosophy, it is
known and apprehended as thought. The forms
which these things take are in inseparable union
with the spirit of the people ; the substance of
which they are formed and their objects are ori-
ginally the same ; hence, only with such a reli-
gion can we have such a state ; in such a state
only such a philosophy and art. This remark
is especially important in respect to the folly
of our times, in wishing to invent and carry
out state-constitutions independently of religion.
The Catholic confession, although standing in
common with the Protestant, within the bounds
of Christianity, does not allow that internal jus-
tice and morality of the state, which lies in the
more spiritual Protestant principle, and which
Protestantism ascribes to it. This sundering of
public law and the constitution of the state from
its true basis, is the necessary result of the pecu-
liar principle of the Catholic faith, which does
not acknowledge that law and morals have a
real, substantive existence of their own ; but
when they are thus torn loose from their spiritual
foundation, from the last sanctuary of the con-
science, from the same place where religion has
its seat, then the principles and institutions of
public law have no fixed centre, but remain
abstract and undefined.

Hence it is to be taken as a general principle,
that these essential things belong and go to-
gether, and that what is foreign to their spirit
can have no ingress into a world which has its
own limits. Thus Grecian art is the product
of the Greek religion and governments, and no
one can introduce it among ourselves. It is just
so with the Greek philosophy; though we may
learn much from it, yet it cannot satisfy us.
Spirit takes the form of universality; and if a

HEGEL.

455

state is to advance in culture, if this is just its
office, this culture must be in conformity with
the laws of Spirit. Law, considered as freedom
determining itself, is the objectivity of spirit:
hence that alone is true volition, the will in the
truth of it, which obeys law, for it then obeys
only itself; it is then with itself and free ; this
is the freedom in the State for which the citizen
is active, and which fills his soul. In that the
State, the fatherland constitutes a community
of existence, in that the subjective will of man
becomes subject to the laws, the opposition
between freedom and necessity vanishes. The
rational, that which we have recognised as law,
is necessary; and we are free when we follow
what is rational ; the objective and subjective
will are thus reconciled. The ethics of the
State are not to be regarded as the same thing
with mere morality, are not the mere result of
reflection, are not dependent upon private con-
victions alone ; this is the system of morals fami-
liar to the modern world, while the true and
ancient system was based in this, that each man
stood to his duty. A citizen of Athens did as
it were by instinct what belonged to him to do ;
but if I reflect upon the object of my actions, I
must then have the consciousness that my own
will is first to come in as an essential element.
But the true ethics consists in duty, in conformity
with right, with law which has a real, substantial
existence ; it has been justly called the second
nature, for the first nature of man is his primi-
tive, animal existence.

RELIGION, ART, PHILOSOPHY.

All spiritual action has for its aim and result
the production of the consciousness of the union
of the objective and the subjective; in this is
fieedoin. This union appears to be produced
by the thinking subject, and to go out from it.
Religion stands at the head of the forms of this
union. Here the existing spirit, the spirit be-
longing to this world, becomes conscious of the
Absolute Spirit; and in this consciousness of a
being existing in and for itself, the will of man
renounces its particular for private interests : in
devotion, he puts this aside, for here he can have
notliing to do with what is merely personal to
himself If he is truly penetrated with devo-
tion, he knows that his particular interests are
subordinate. This concentration of soul shows
itself as feeling, but it also passes over into re-
flection; the cultus, meaning by this all forms
of outward worship, is a matiifestation of such
reflection ; the only destination and significaucy
of these externals is to produce that internal
union, — to lead the spirit thereto. By sacrifices,
man expresses his willingness to give up his
own possessions, his own will, his own particu-
lar feelings. Thus Religion is the first form of
the union of the objective and subjective. The
second shape it takes is Art: this comes more
directly into the world of sense than religion ;
in its worthiest bearing its object is to exhibit,
not, indeed, God as spirit, but the different visi-

ble representations which the difl'erent religions
give of God; and, then, what is divine and spi-
ritual in general. Art is intended to make what
is divine more clear ; it presents it to the imagi-
nation and contemplation in visible shapes.
Truth, finally, appears not only in the form of
feeling and of mental images of things, as in re-
ligion ; not only in visible shapes, as in art; but
it is also elaborated by the thinking spirit.
Thus we attain the third mode of the union of
the objective and subjective, and that is philo-
sophy. This is the highest, freest, and purest
shape which it assumes.

THE UNINTELLIGIBILlTr OF PHILOSOPHY.

The difficulty here lies partly in the want of
ability, in itself only a want of habit, to think
abstractly, that is, to hold unmixed thoughts
fast, and to move freely in them. In our ordi-
nary consciousness, thoughts are overlaid and
united with current materials from the world
of sense and of spirit ; and in our after-thoughts,
reflections and reasonings, we mix up feelings,
and mental images of visible objects, \vh\\ the
thoughts themselves : in every sentence where
we speak only of what belongs to the world of
sense, e. g. this leaf is green, the categories of
being and singleness are involved. It is another
thing to make the unmixed thoughts themselves
the object of speculation. The other part of the
unintelligibility arises from the impatient desire
of having what exists in the consciousness, as a
thought or idea, also before the mind, in the
shape of some distinct image. It is a common
saying, we do not know what we are to think
about an idea which has been apprehended;
with an idea there is nothing to be thought but
the idea itself The sense, however, of that
expression is, that there is a longing for some
already known and current notion: when these
notions are taken atway, it is, to the conscious-
ness, as though the very ground were removed,
upon which there was once a firm and home-
like standing-place. When one is transferred
into the pure region of ideas, he knows not
vi^here in the world he is. Hence, those writers,
preachers and authors are found most intelli-
gible, who tell their readers or hearers things
which they already know by heart, which are
current with them, and understood of themselves.
There is a pretension, the opposite of this.
Philosophy lays claim to thinking, as the pecu-
liar form in which it works ; and every man is
by nature a thinking being. This science is,
now, often disdainfully treated by persons who
have never troubled themselves with studying
it, and who imagine tliat they understand, ab
ovo, all about philosophy and its conjunctures,
and are able to philosophize, and judge about
philosophy, just as they walk and talk with
their common education ; and especially on the
ground of their religious feelings. It is granted
that one must have studied the other sciences,
in order to understand them ; and that one is
justified in passing judgment upon them only

456

HEGEL.

•when tliey are understood. It is granted that,
in order to make a shoe perfectly, one must
have learned and practised the art; although
every man has the measure in his own foot,
and has hands, and, with these, natural adapt-
edness to the whole business. Only in philoso-
phizing, such like study, learning and pains arc
not requisite. This convenient opinion has got
confirmation in the latest times, by means of the
theory of immediate knowledge, — of knowledge
by intuitive wisdom.

EMPIRICIS5I AND rHILOSOPHT.

The principle of Experience contains one infi-
nitely important element, that in order to receive
and hold anything to be true, man must himself
be with it, have a knowledge of it as connected
with himself; to speak more definitely, that he
must find such an external object united, and
in unison with, the certainty of himself. He must
himself be there with it, either by means of his
external senses or his internal spirit, his essen-
tial self-consciousness. This principle is the
same as what now-a-days is called faith, direct
knowledge, the revelation in the external world,
and especially in one's own self We call those
sciences which have been named philosophy,
empirical sciences, on account of the jioint of
departure which they take. But the essential
thing' which they aim at and i^roduce is a know-
ledge of laws, of general principles, a theory — the
thoughts that are contained in what is present
around us. Thus the system of Newton is called
Natural Philosophy; while, again, Hugo Gro-
tius, combining together the historical relations
of ditlerent nations to one another, and reasoning
after the common fashion upon these data, ar-
rived at some general principles, a theory which
may be called the Philosophy of the Law of
Nations. The word philosophy still retains this
meaning universally in England. Newton has
the credit of being the greatest of philosophers ;
even down in the price-currents of the fabrica-
tors of instruments we find it ; those instruments
which are not brought under some special rubric
(as magnetic and electric apparatus), the ther-
mometers, barometers, and such like, are called
philosophical inslruments ; although one would
think that Thought alone, and not a composition
of iron, wood, &c., was the instrument of phi-
losophy.* So, too, the science of Political Eco-
nomy, for which we are indebted to these latest
times, is called by them philosophy; while we
Germans name it rational Economy of the State.
In the mouths of English statesmen the expres-

* The Journal published by Thomson has the title,
"Annals of Philosophy, or Magazine for Chemistry, Mine-
ralogy, Mei-luiiiics, Natural History, Agriculture, and the
Arts." One can from this see for himself what the ma-
terials are which are here called philosophical. Among
the advertisenienls of new books in an Enclish paper, I
lately found the following: " The Art of Preserving the
Hair, on Philosophical Principles, neatly printed in post,
8vo., price 7s." Cy philosophical principles are here
probably meant chemical, physiological, and such like.

sion, philosophical principles, is frequently used
with reference to the general principles of State
policy, even in public addresses. In a session
of Parliament on the 2d of February, IS 25,
Brougham, by occasion of an Address in reply
to the Speech from the Throne, spoke of " those
philosophical principles of free trade, worthy of
a statesman — for without doubt they are philo-
sophical— on the adoption of v/hich His Majesty
lias this day congratulated Parliament." And
not only this member of the opposition, but the
Secretary of State, Canning, in reply to a toast
given him at the annual dinner of the Company
of Ship-owners, where Lord Liverpool, the
Prime Minister, presided, also said: "A period
has lately begun in which ministers have it in
their power to apply the correct maxims of a
deep philosophy to our national government."
However different the English Philosophy may
be from the German, when the very name is
elsewhere a by-word and reproach, or used as
some hateful thing, it is an occasion of rejoicing
to see it honored in the mouths of English
statesmen.

It is an old maxim, falsely ascribed to Aris-
totle in the sense that it expresses the stand-
point of his philosophy: nihil est in intellectu,
(juod non fuerit in sensu: — there is nothing in
thought which was not first in sense, in expe-
rience. It is only a misunderstanding when it
is said, that the speculative philosophy will not
grant this principle. But, on the other hand,
it also maintains : nihil est in sensu, quod non
fuerit in intcllectu, — first, in the very general
sense, that the mind (wis) or, with deeper sig-
nificance of definition, the spirit, is the cause of
the world ; and, secondly, in the more special
sense, that our feelings in respect to justice,
morals and religion, are feelings, and so expe-
riences, in respect to matters which have their
root and seat in thought.

WHO THINKS ABSTRACTLY?

FROM HEGEL'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.

Thinks'? Abstractly? — " Sauve qui pent!"
"Save himself who can!" I hear a traitor ex-
claim, who, bribed by the enemy, would decry
this essay, as one that treats of Metaphysics.
For 'metaphysics' and 'abstract,' and, I had
almost said, ' to think,' are words from which —
as from one infected with the plague — every
man is more or less disposed to run away.

I do not however intend here anything so
atrocious as an explanation of what is meant
by 'thinking' and by 'abstract.' I am frightened
enough myself when any one begins to ex-
plain ; for, at a pinch, I understand everything
myself Besides, any explanation of the words,
'to think' and 'abstract,' would be quite super-
fluous. For it is even because the polite world

HEGEL.

457

knows so well what is meant by 'abstract,' that
it shuns the abstract. As no one craves what
he does not know, so no one can hate what he
does not know. Neither is it intended, by
cunning stratagem, to attempt to reconcile the
polite world to the abstract, as if, e. g. under the
cover of a light conversation, 'thinking' and
'the abstract' should be tricked out, until, at
last, without being recognised, and without
awakening any abhorrence, they had crept into
good company, and even been imperceptibly
drawn in by said company, or, as they say in
Suabia, " gezdunscW in, — and then the author of
the plot should come forward and uncover this
otherwise strange guest, 'the abstract,' whom
the whole company had been acknowledging
and treating as a good friend, under a different
name. These scenes of recognition, by which
it is designed to instruct the world against its
will, have this unpardonable fault — they mor-
tify while they instruct; and they discover in
the machinist the wish to acquire a little repu-
tation by his arts. That mortification and this
vanity neutralize the intended effect, and dissi-
pate again the instruction jiurchased at such a
isrice.

Besides, the stratagem, in this instance, if any
such had been designed, is already defeated;
inasmuch as its successful execution requires
that the word of the enigma should not be pro-
nounced at the outset. But that has been done
in the present case, ni the caption. If my essay
had contemplated a ruse like that which has
been described, these words, 'think' and 'ab-
stract,' ought not to have made their appear-
ance in the commencement ; but, like the minis-
ter of state in the play, they should wear an
over-coat through the whole piece, and then in
the last scene unbutton it, and let tlie star* of
wisdom beam forth. But the unbuttoning of
the metaphysical over-coat would not have so
good an eflect as the unbuttoning of the minis-
terial. It would only reveal a couple oC words;
and the best of the joke was to consist in show-
ing that the company had long been in posses-
sion of the thing. So they would gain, in the
end, nothing but the name; wliereas the minis-
terial star indicates something more real, to wit,
a purse vvitli money in it.

It is presumed in good company — and that is
the kind of company we are now in — that every
one present knows what 'thinking' is, what 'ab-
stract' is. We have only to inquire who it is
that thinks abstractly. The design is not, as I
have already remarked, to reconcile the com-
pany to these things, to expect of them that
they should employ themselves with anything
diflicult, to speak to their consciences for heed-
lessly neglecting what is so worthy and befitting
a rational being. The object is rather to recon-
cile the polite world with itself, in case it should
feel — not exactly conscientious scruples on ac-

* In allusion to the star worn on the breast by certain
dignitaries.— T'ra/is.

3h

county of said neglect — but yet inwardly, at
least, a certain respect for abstract thinking, as
for something exalted, and should turn from it
not because it is too mean, but because it is too
high, not because it is too common, but because
it is too distinguished ; or, contrariwise, because
it seems to be an espice, something out of the
way, something whereby one is, not distin-
guished in general society as by new finery,
but rather excluded from it, or made ridiculous
in it, as by a poor dress, or by a rich one, where
the setting of the diamonds is old-fashioned, or
where tlie embroidery, though never so costly,
has long since come to be " Chinese."

Who thinks abstractly? The uncultivated
man, not the cultivated. People who belong
to good society do not think abstractly, because
it is too easy, because it is too low — low, not
according to outward condition; — they abstain
from it, not out of empty hauteur, wliich aflects
to look with contempt on what is above its capa-
city, but on account of the intrinsic littleness of
the thing.

The prepossession and respect for abstract
thinking is so great, that refined noses will begin
to scent and anticipate satire or irony here. But
as my readers are readers of the Morgenblatt,
they know tliat a price is paid for satire ; and
they must suppose that I would rather earn that
price, and concur to obtain it, than give forth
my matters in this way, without remuneration.

I need but adduce, in defence of my proposi-
tion, certain examples, which, as every one will
allow, imply it. We will suppose, then, a mur-
derer is led to the place of execution. To the
common people he is nothing more than a mur-
derer. Ladies, perhaps, will remark that he is
a powerful, handsome, interesting man. But
the people before mentioned, think that remark
shocking. "What! a murderer handsome? How
can any one be so evil-minded as to think a
murderer handsome ? It is to be feared you are
not much better than murderers yourselves."
"This is the corruption of morals which reigns
among the higher classes," adds, perhaps, a
priest, wlio knows the reason of things and the
hearts of men.

One who understands human nature, investi-
gates the course which the education of this
murderer has taken ; he finds in his history, in
his bringing-up, bad domestic relations between
his father and his mother; finds a monstrous
severity exercised towards liini on the occasion
of some light offence, — a severity which has
embittered his feelings in relation to the civil
order; — finds a first reaction against this order,
which caused his expulsion from it, and made
it impossible for him, thenceforward, to main-
tain himself otherwise than by crime. There
may be some who, when they hear this account
of the matter, will say: that man wishes to
apologize for this murderer ! I remember to
liave heard, in my youth, a burgomaster com-
plain that writers of books were going too far,
were endeavoring to extirpate Christianity and
39

458

HEGEL.

justice altogether; that some one had written a
defence of suicide! — dreadful! too dreadful!
On inquiry, it appeared that he had in his mind
the " Sorrows of Werter."

This is thirdcing abstractly, — to see in a
murderer nothing but the abstract fact that he
is a murderer; and by means of this single
quality to expunge all else, all that is human in
him.

Quite otherwise did a refined, sentimental
Leipzig world. They bestrewed and bevvreathed
the wheel, and the criminal who was bound
upon it, with flower-garlands. But this, again,
is an abstraction of an opposite kind. Chris-
tians may well practise rosicrucianism, or rather
cruciroseism, and wreathe the cross with roses.
The cross is a long-since hallowed gibbet and
wheel. It has lost its one-sided signification as
an instrument of degrading punishment, and
gives, on the contrary, the idea of the highest
sorrow and the uttermost rejection, combined
with extreme rapture and divine honor. The
Leipzig cross, on the other hand, wreathed with
violets and roses, represents an atonement in
the manner of Kotzebue, a kind of maudlin
agreement between sentiment and vice.

It was after a very difiereut fashion that I
once heard a vulgar old crone — a spital woman

slay the abstraction of a murderer, and raise

him again to honor. The severed head was
placed upon the scaffold, and the sun was
shining. "How beautifully," said she, "God's
sun of grace illumines Binder's head!" People
say to a wight against whom they are incensed,
" You are not worthy that the sun should shine
upon you !" That woman saw that the mur-
derer's head was shone upon by the sun, and
consequently was still worthy of the sun's light.
She raised him from the punishment of the
scaffold into the sun-grace of God. She did not
bring about the atonement with violets and sen-
timental vanity; but she saw him received with
grace into a higher sun.

"Old woman! your eggs are rotten!" says
the female purchaser to the huckster-woman.
"What!" replies the latter; "my eggs rotten!
Belike, you are rotten yourself Do you say that
of my eggs? You? Didn't the lice eat up
your father on the public road? Didn't your
mother run off with the French 1 Didn't your
grandmother die in the Spital ? Go ! get you a
whole smock, to go with your gauze necker-
chief! Everybody knows where that necker-
chief, and where all your caps come from. If
there were no officers, many a girl would not

be so prinked up now-a-days. And if mis-
tresses would look more to their housekeeping,
there's many a one would sit in the stocks. Go!
patch the holes in your stockings!' In short,
she does not leave her a whole thread. She
thinks abstractly, and concludes her, together
with neckerchief, caps, smock, &c., with fingers
and other parts, also with her father and all her
relations, under the single crime of having
charged her (the huckster) with rotten eggs.
Everything about her is colored through and
through with these rotten eggs; whereas, on the
contrary, those officers, of whom the huckster-
woman spoke, — if (what is very doubtful) there
is anything in the story, — must have seen some-
thing very different.

To come from the maid to servants: — a ser-
vant fares nowhere so badly as with men of in-
ferior rank and small income. The higher the
rank of the master, the better the condition of the
servant. Here, again, the common man thinks
more abstractly. He is haughty towards his
servant, relates to him as to a servant only. To
this one predicate he holds fast. A servant
fares best with Frenchmen. The man of rank
is familiar with his servant. The Frenchman
is "hail! fellow, well met!" with him. When
they are alone, the servant leads the conversa-
tion. See Diderot's Jacques et son maiire. The
master does nothing but take snuff and look at
his watch; and, for the rest, lets the servant
liave his way. The man of rank knows that
the servant is not merely a servant, that he is
acquainted with the news of the city, knows
the girls, and has good projects in his head.
He asks him about these things, and the servant
may say what he knows on the subjects on
which the master questions him. With a French
master, the servant may not only do this, but
may also bring his own matter on the tapis, and
have and maintain his own opinion. And if
the master wants anything, he is not to com-
mand, but he must first reason his own opinion
into the servant, and then give him a good word,
in order that his own opinion may retain the
ascendancy.

In military life, the same distinction is found.
In Austria, the soldier can be flogged ; conse-
quently, he is a vile fellow; for one who has a
passive right to be flogged, is a vile fellow.
And so the common soldier passes with the
officer for this abstraction, a floggable subject,
one with whom a gentleman who has a uniform
and Port d^epee must have intercourse. And
that is to give one's self to the Devil.

JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE.

Born 1771.

ZscHOKKE has become known to the Ameri-
can Public, within a few years past, by trans-
lations of several of his tales. But Zschokke is
something more than a mere story-teller. He is
known in Germany as an historical writer, and
all his works discover the moral philosopher,
well versed in human nature and human af-
fairs, and one who has pondered deeply the
social and individual destination of man.

He was born, according to Wolff's Encyclo
pasdia of German Literature, at Magdeburg,
March 22d, 1771, received a classical educa-
tion in his native city, and studied at Frankfort
on the Oder, where he afterwards took up his
residence, and in 1793 was made Professor of
Philosophy. He soon resigned this office, and
moved to Graubiindten, (Grisons,) where he
undertook the management of a seminary of
education. At the time of the French inva-
sion he acted as mediator, devoting himself
exclusively to the good of the country which
he had adopted as a second father-land. He
was made Government's Commissary for seve-

ral Cantons, and officiated for some time as
Lieutenant Governor at Basel. He then re-
tired to Castle Biberstein in Aargau, but was
soon summoned anew into public life, and made
Superintendent of the Mining and Forest de-
partments. In 181.5, he was made member of
the general Council of the Cantons. In 1829,
he resigned all his public offices, and since that
time has devoted himself exclusively to lite-
rary pursuits, living and laboring, as author by
profession, at Aarau.

Zschokke has tried liis hand at almost every
species of literary production, and has been
successful in all. He excels as narrator, com-
bining artistic judgment with exuberant fancy,
great power of characterization, a lively man-
ner, and a style admirably suited to his mate-
rial ; natural, but at the same time dignified
and correct. But his influence has been great-
est as historian and popular teacher, skilled to
comprehend and penetrate the spirit of the
time, and indefatigable in developing and dif-
fusing sound views of men and things.

LEAVES FROM THE JOURNAL OF A
POOR VICAR IN WILTSHIRE.*

Dec. 15, 1764. — Received to-day from Dr.
Snarl, £10 sterling, being my half-year's salary.
The receipt even of this hardly-earned sum
was attended with many uncomfortable cir-
cumstances.

Not until I had waited an hour and a half in
the cold ante-room was I admitted to the pre-
sence of his Reverence. He was seated in an
easy-chair at his writing-desk. My money was
lying by him, ready counted. My low bow he
returned with a lofty side-nod, while he slightly
pushed back his beautiful black silk cap, and
immediately drew it on again. Really he is a
man of much dignity. I can never approach

* From " The Gift," 1844, Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.
Translated by Rev. W. H. Furness. The translator ven-
tures the conjecture that tlie original fragment from
which Zschokke took the idea of this journal, and which
appeared in the British Magazine (1766), was written by
Goldsmith. It may be, as the German writer suggests,
the germ of the " Vicar of Wakefield," which appeared
first in 1772.

him without awe. I do not believe I should
enter the king's presence with less composure.

He did not urge me to be seated, although he
well knew that I had this very morning walked
eleven miles in the bad weather, and that the
hour and a half's standing in the ante-room had
not much helped to rest my wearied limbs. He
pointed me to the money.

My heart beat violently when I attempted to
introduce the subject which I had so long thought
over, of a little increase of my salary. I shall
never be able to conquer my timidity, even in
the most righteous cause. Twice, with an agony
as if I were about to commit a crime, I endea-
vored to break ground. Memory, words, and
voice failed me. The sweat started in great
drops on my forehead.

"What do you wishl" said the Doctor, very
politely.

"I am — everything is so dear — scarcely able
to get along in these hard times, with this small
salary."

" Small salary, Mr. Vicar ! How can you
think so? I can at anytime procure another
vicar for £15 sterling a year."

(459)

460

ZSCHOKKE.

"For£l5! Without a family, one might in-
deed get along with that sum.''

"Your family, Mr. Vicar," said the doctor, in-
quiringly, " has not received any addition, I
trust. You have only two daughters'?"

" Only two, your Reverence ; but they are
growing up. My Jenny, the eldest, is now
eighteen, and Polly, the younger, will soon be
twelve."

" So much the better. Can"t your girls work?"

I was about to reply, when he cut me short
by rising and observing, while he went to the
window and drummed with his fingers on the
pane, that he had no time to talk with me to-
day. "Think it over," he concluded, "whether
you will retain your place at JEl5 a year, and
let me know. If you relinquish it, I hope you
will have a better situation for a New Year's
present."

He bowed very politely, and again touched
his cap. I swept up the money, and took my
leave. I was thunderstruck. He had never
received nor dismissed me so coldly before.
Without doubt somebody has been speaking ill
of me. He did not once invite me to dinner, as
had always before been his custom. I had de-
pended upon it, for I came from home without
breaking my fast. I bought a loaf in the outskirts
of the town at a baker's shop, which I had ob-
served in passing, and took my M^ay home.

How cast down was I as I trudged along! I
cried like a cliild. The bread I \v as eating was
wet with my tears.

But fy, Thomas ! Shame upon thy faint heart !
Lives not the gracious God still ? What if thou
hadst lost the place entirely? And it is only £5
less ! It is indeed a quarter of my whole little
yearly stipend, and it leaves barely lOd. a day
to feed and clothe three of us. What is there
left for us? Who clothes the lilies of the field !
Who feeds the young ravens ! We must deny
ourselves some of our luxuries.

Dec. 16. — I do believe Jenny's an angel. Her
soul is even more beautiful than her body. I
am almost ashamed of being her father. She is
so much better and more pious than I.

I had not the courage yesterday to tell my
girls the bad news. When I mentioned it to-
day, Jenny at first looked very serious, but sud-
denly she brightened up and said, " Thou art
disquieted, father !"

"Should I not be so?"

" No, thou shouldst not."

"Dear child, we shall never be free from
debt and trouble. I do not know how we can
stand it. Our need is sore. £l5 hardly suffice
for the bare necessaries of life. Who will as-
sist us?"

Instead of answering, Jenny gently passed
one arm round my neck, and pointed upwards
with the other. — "He, there!" said she.

Polly seated herself on my lap, patted my
face, and said, " I want to tell thee something.
I dreamed last night that it was New Year's

day, and that the king came to C . There

was a splendid show. The king dismounted
from his horse before our front door, and came
in. We had nothing to set before him, and
he commanded some of his own dainties to be
brought in dishes of gold and silver. The kettle-
drums and trumpets sounded outside; and only
think, with the sound of the music, in came
some people with a bishop's mitre upon a satin
cushion, a New Year's present for thee ! It
looked very funny, like the pointed caps of the
bishops in the old picture-book. But it became
thee right grandly. Yet I laughed myself almost
out of breath ; and then Jenny waked me up,
which made me quite angry. This dream has
certainly something to do with a New Year's
present. It is only fourteen days to New
Year's."

I said to Polly, "Dreams are but Seems;" but
she said, "Dreams come from God."

I believe no such thing. Still I write the
dream down, to see whether it be not a com-
forting hint from Heaven. A New Year's pre-
sent would be acceptable to all of us.

All day I have been at my accounts. I do
not like accounts. Reckoning and money mat-
ters distract my head, and make my heart
empty and heavy.

Dec. 17. — My debts, God be praised, are all
now paid, but one. At five different places I
paid off £1 lis. sterling. I have therefore left
in ready money, £2 9s. This must last a half-
year. God help us !

The black hose that I saw at tailor Cutbay's I
must leave unpurchased, although I need them
sorely. They are indeed pretty well worn, yet
still in good condition, and the price is reason-
able. But Jenny needs a cloak a great deal
more. I pity the dear child when I see her
shivering in that thin camlet. Polly must be
satisfied with the cloak which her sister has
made for her so nicely out of her old one.

I must give up my share of the newsi^aper which
neighbor Westburn and I took together. It goes
hard with me. Here in C , without a news-
paper one knows nothing of the course of affairs.
At the horse-races at Newmarket, the Duke of
Cumberland won £5000 of the Duke of Grafton.
It is wonderful how literally the words of Scrip-
ture are always fulfilled, "To him who hath,
shall be given," and those other words, too,
"From him who hath not, shall be taken away."
I must lose £5 of even my poor salary.

Fy, Thomas, already murmuring again ! and
wherefore ? For a newspaper, which thou art
no longer able to take? Shame on thee ! Thou
mayst easily learn from others whether General
Paoli succeeds in maintaining the freedom of
Corsica. The French have indeed promised
assistance to the Genoese ; but Paoli has 20,000
veterans.

Dec. 18. — Ah! how happy are we poor people
still ! Jenny has got a grand cloak at the slop-

ZSCHOKKE.

461

shop for a mere song, and now she is sitting
there with Polly, ripping it to pieces, in order to
make it up anew. Jenny understands how to
trade and bargain better than I. But tbey let
her have things at her own price, her voice is
so gentle. We have now joy upon joy. Jenny
wants to appear in the new cloak for the first
time on New Year's Day. Polly has a hundred
comments and predictions about it. I wager,
the Dey of Algiers had not greater pleasure in
the costly present whicli the Venetians made
him, the two diamond rings, the two watches
set with brilliants, the pistols inlaid with gold,
the costly carpets, the rich housings, and tiie
20,000 sequins in cash.

Jenny says we must save the cloak in eat-
ables. Until New Year's, we must buy no
meat. This is as it should be.

Neighbor Westburn is a noble man. I told
him yesterday I must discontinue my subscrip-
tion for the newspaper, because I am not sure
of my present salary, nor even of my place. He
shook my hand and said, " Very well, then I
will take the paper, and you shall still read it
with me."

One must never despair. There are more
good men in the world than one thinks, espe-
cially among the poor.

The same day. Eve. — The baker is a crabbed
man. Although I owe liim nothing, yet when
Polly went to fetch a loaf, and found it very
small and badly risen or half-burnt, he struck
up a quarrel with her, so that people stopped
in the street. He declared that he would not
sell upon trust — that we must go elsewhere for
our bread. I pitied Polly.

I wonder how the people here know every-
thing. Every one in the village is telling how
the doctor is going to put another curate in my
place. It will be the death of me.

The butcher, even, must have got a hint of it.
It certainly was not without design that he sent
his wife to me with complaints about the bad
times, and the impossibility of selling any longer
for anything but cash. She was indeed very
polite, and could not find words to express her
love and respect for us. She advised us to go
to Colswood, and buy the little meat we want
of him, as he is a richer man, and is able to wait
for his money. I cared not to tell the good wo-
man how that usurer treated us a year ago,
when he charged us a penny a pound more than
others for his meat, and, when his oaths and
curses could not help him out, and he could not
deny it, how he declared roundly that he must
receive a little interest when he was kept out
of his money a whole year, and then showed us
the door.

I still have in ready money £2 Is. 3d. What
shall I do, if no^ne M'ill trust me, so that I may
l)iiy my bills quarterly? And if Dr. Snarl ap-
points another curate, then must I and my poor
children be turned upon the street!

Be it so ; God is in the street also !

Dec. 19, eai'ly. ^. M. — I awoke very early to-
day, and pondered what I shall do in my diffi-
cult situation. I thought of Master Sitting, my
rich cousin at Cambridge j only poor people
have no cousins, only the rich. Were New
Year's day to bring me a bishop's mitre, accord-
ing to Polly's dream, then I should have half
England for my relations.

I have written, and sent by the post, the fol-
lowing letter to the Rev. Dr. Snarl :

" I write with an anxious heart. It is said
that your reverence intends to appoint another
curate in my stead. I know not whether the
report has any foundation, or whether it has
arisen merely from my having mentioned to
some persons the interview I had with you.

" The office with which you entrusted me I
have discharged with zeal and fidelity ; I have
preached the word of God in all purity; I have
heard no complaints. Even my inward monitor
condemns me not. I humbly requested for a
little increase of my small salary. Your reve-
rence spoke of reducing the small stipend,
which scarcely suffices to procure me and my
family the bare necessaries of life. Let your
humane heart decide.

" I have laboured sixteen years under your
reverence's pious predecessors, and a year and
a half under yourself I am now fifty years
old. My liair begins to grow gray. Without ac-
quaintances, without patrons, without the pros-
pect of another living, without the means of
earning my bread in any other way, mine and
my children's fate depends upon your compas-
sion. If you fail us, there remains no support
for us but the beggar's staff.

" My daughters, gradually grown up, occasion,
with the closest economy, increased expense.
My eldest daughter, Jenny, supplies the i^lace
of a mother to her sister, and conducts our do-
mestic concerns. We keep no maid; my daugh-
ter is maid, cook, washerwoman, tailoress, and
even shoemaker, while I am the carpenter,
mason, chimney-sweeper, woodcutter, gardener,
farmer, and wood-carrier of the household.

" God's mercy has attended us hitherto. We
have had no sickness. We could not have paid
for medicines. C is a little place.

" My daughters have in vain offered to do
other work, such as washing, mending, and
sewing. They very rarely get any. Here in
the country every one does her own housework ;
none are rich.

" It will be a hard task to carry me and mine
through the year upon £20; but it will be harder
still if I am to attempt it upon £15. But I throw
myself on your compassion and on God, and
pray your reverence at least to relieve me of
this anxiety."

After I had finished this letter, I threw my-
self upon my knees, (while Polly carried it to
the post-office,) and prayed for a happy issue.
I then became wonderfully clear and calm in
my mind. Ah! a word to God is alvs'ays a
word from God — so cheerfully came I from my
39*

4G2

ZSCHOKKE.

little chamber, which I had entered with a
heavy heart.

Jenny sate at work at the window. She sate
there with the repose and grace of an angel.
Light seemed to stream from her looks. A slen-
der sunbeam came through the window, and
transfigured the whole place. I was in a hea-
venly state. I seated myself at the desk, and
wrote my sermon, " On the joys of poverty."

I preach in the pulpit as much to myself as
to my hearers ; and I come from church edified,
if no one else does. If others do not receive
consolation from my words, I find it myself It
is with the clergyman as with the physician.
He knows the power of his medicines, but not
always their efi"ect upon the constitution of
every patient.

The same day. A. M. — This morning I received
a note from a stranger who had tarried over
night at the inn. He begs me, on account of
urgent affairs, to come to him.

I have been to him. I found him a handsome
young man of about six-and-twenty, with noble
features and a graceful carriage. He had on an
old well-worn surtout and boots, which still bore
the marks of yesterday's travel. His round hat,
although originally of a finer material than
mine, was still far more defaced and shabby.
The young man appeared, notwithstanding the
derangement of his dress, to be of good family.
He had on at least a clean shirt of the finest
linen, which perhaps had just been given him
by some charitable hand.

He led me into a private room, begged par-
don a thousand times for having troubled me,
and proceeded to inform me in a very humble
manner, that he found himself in most painful
circumstances, that he knew nobody in this
place, where he had arrived last evening, and
had therefore had recourse to me as a clergy-
man. He was, he added, by profession, an
actor, but without employment, and intending
to proceed to Manchester. He had expended
nearly all his money, and had not enough to
pay his fare at the inn — to say nothing of the
expense of proceeding on his journey. Accord-
ingly he turned in his despair to me. Twelve
shillings would be a great assistance to him.
He promised, if I would favor him with that
advance, that he would honorably and thank-
fully repay it, so soon as he was again con-
nected with any theatre. His name is John
Fleetman.

There was no necessity of his painting his
distress to me so at large. His features ex-
pressed more trouble than his words. He pro-
bably read something of the same kind in my
face; for as he turned his eyes upon me, he
seemed struck with alarm, and exclaimed,
" Will you leave me then without help ?"

I stated to him that my own situation was
full of embarrassment, that he had asked of me
nothing less than the fourth part of all the
jnoney I had in the world, and that I was in

great uncertainty as to the further continuance
of my office.

He immediately became cold in his manner,
and, as it were, drew back into himself, while
he remarked, " You comfort the unfortunate
with the story of your own misfortunes. I ask

nothing of you. Is there no one in C who

has pity, if he has no wealth?"

I cast an embarrassed look at Mr. Fleetman,
and was ashamed to have represented my dis-
tressed situation to him as a reason for my re-
fusal to assist him. I instantly thought over all
my townsmen, and could not trust myself to
name one. I did not perhaps know their hearts
well enough.

I approached him, and laid my hand upon
his shoulder, and said, "Mr. Fleetman, you
grieve me. Have a little patience. You see I
am poor. I will help you if I can. I will give
you an answer in an hour."

I went home. On the way I thought to my-
self, "How odd! the stranger always comes
first to me, and an actor to a clergyman ! There
must be something in my nature that attracts
the wretched and the needy, like a magnet.
Whoever is in need comes to me, who have the
least to give. When I sit at table with stran-
gers, one of the company is sure to have a dog
who looks steadily at what I am eating, and
comes and lays his cold nose directly on my
knee."

When at home, I told the children who the
stranger was, and what he wanted. I wished
for Jenny's advice. She said tenderly, " I know,
father, what thou thinkest, and therefore I have
nothing to advise."

"And what do I think?"

" Why, that thou wilt do unto this poor actor
as thou hopest God and Dr. Snarl will do unto
thee."

I had thought no such thing, but I wished I
had. I got the twelve shillings, and gave them
to Jenny to carry to the traveller. I did not care
to listen to his thanks. It humbles me. Ingra-
titude stirs my spirit up. And, besides, I had
my sermon to prepare.

The same day. Eve. — The actor is certainly a
worthy man. When Jenny returned from the
inn, she had much to tell about him, and also
about the landlady. This woman had found
out that her guest had an empty pocket, and
Jenny could not deny that she had brought him
some money. So Jenny had to listen to a long
sermon upon the folly of giving, when one has
nothing himself, and the danger of helping va-
grants, when one has not the wherewithal to
clothe his own children. "The shirt is nearer
than the coat." "To feed one's own maketh
fat," &c. &c.

I had just turned to my sermon again, when
Mr. Fleetman entered. He could not, he said,

leave C without thanking his benefactor,

by whose means he had been delivered from
the greatest embarrassment. Jenny was just

ZSCHOKKE.

463

setting the table. We had an omelet and some
turnips. 1 invited the traveller to dine with us.
He accepted the invitation. It was very timely,
he intimated, for he had eaten a very scanty
breakfast. Polly brought some beer. We had
not for a long while fared so well.

Mr. Fleetman seemed to enjoy himself with
us. He had quite lost that anxious look he had,
yet there was the sh}^ reserved manner about
him, which is peculiar to the unfortunate. He
inferred that we were very happy, and of that
we assured him. He supposed also that I was
richer and better to do in the world than I de-
sired to appear. There he was mistaken. With-
out doubt the order and cleanliness of our par-
lor dazzled the good man, the clearness of the
windows, the neatness of the curtains, of the
dinner-table, the floor, and the brightness of our
tables and chairs. One usually finds a great
lack of cleanliness in the dwellings of the poor,
because they do not know how to save. But
order and neatness, as I always preached to my
sainted wife and to my daughters, are great
save-alls. Jenny is a perfect mistress therein.
She almost surpasses her mother, and she is
bringing up her sister Polly in the same way.
Her sharp) eyes not a fly-mark can escape.

Our guest soon became quite familiar and in-
timate with us. He spoke more, however, of
our situation than of his own. The poor man
must have some trouble on his heart, I hope not
upon his conscience. I remarked that he often
broke off suddenly in conversation, and became
depressed, then again he would exert himself
to be cheerful. God comfort him !

As he was quitting us after dinner, I gave
him much friendly counsel. Actors, I know, are
rather a light-minded folk. He promised me
sacredly, as soon as he should have money, to
send back my loan. He must be sincere in that,
for he looked very honest, and several times
asked, how long I thought I should be able with
the remainder of my ready money to meet the
necessities of my household.

His last words were, "It is impossible it
should go ill with you in the world. You have
heaven in your breast, and two angels of God
at your side." With these words, he pointed to
Jenny and Polly.

Dec. 20. — The day has passed very quietly,
but 1 cannot say very agreeably, for the grocer,
Jones, sent me his bill for the year. Consider-
ing what we had had of him, it was larger than
we had expected, although we had had nothing
of which we did not ourselves keep an account.
Only he had raised the price of all his arti-
cles. Otherwise, his account agreed honestly
with ours.

The worst is the arrears of my last year's bill.
He begged for the payment of the same, as he
is in great need of money. The whole of what
I owe him amounts to eighteen shillings.

I went to see Mr. Jones. He is a very polite
and reasonable man. I hoped to satisfy him by

paying him in part, and promising to pay the
remainder by Easter. But he was not to be
moved, and he regretted that he should be
forced to proceed to extremities. If he could,
he would gladly wait; but only within three
days he would have to pay a note which had
just been presented to him. With a merchant,
credit is everything.

To all this there was nothing to be said in
reply, after my repeated requests for delay had
proved vain. Should I have let him go to law
against me, as he threatened 1 I sent him the
money, and paid off the whole debt. But now
my whole property has melted down to eleven
shillings. Heaven grant that the actor may
soon return what I loaned him. Otherwise I
know not what help there is for us.

Now go to, thou man of little faith, if thou
knowest not, God knoweth. Why is thy heart
cast down? What evil hast thou done? Poverty
is no crime.

Dec. 24. — One may be right happy after all,
even at the poorest. We have a thousand plea-
sures in Jenny's new cloak. She looks as beauti-
ful in it as a bride. But she wishes to wear it the
first time abroad at church on New Year's day.

Every evening she reckons up, and shows
me with how little expense she has got through
the day. We. are all in bed by seven o'clock, to
save oil and coals. That is no great hardship.
The girls are so much the more industrious in
the day, and they chat together in bed until mid-
night. We have a beautiful supply of turnips and
vegetables. Jenny thinks we can get through
six or eight weeks, without running in debt. That
were a stroke of management without parallel.
And until then, we all hope that Mr. Fleetman
will keep his word like an honest man, and pay
us back the loan. If I appear to distrust him, it
awakens all Jenny's zeal. She will allow no
evil of the comedian.

He is our constant topic. The girls especially
make a great deal out of him. His appearance
interrupted the uniformity of our life. He will
supply us with conversation for a full half year.
Pleasant is Jenny's anger, when the mischievous
Polly exclaims, "But he is an aclor!" Then
Jenny tells of the celebrated actors in London
who are invited to dine with the princes of the
royal family; and she is ready to prove that
Fleetman will become one of the first actors in
the world, for he has fine talents, and a grace-
ful address and well-chosen phrases. " Yes, in-
deed !" said the sly Polly to-day, very wittily,
"beautifid phrases! he called thee an angel."
" And thee too," cried Jenny, somewhat vexed.
"But I was only thrown into the bargain," re-
joined Polly, "he looked only at thee."

This chat and childish raillery of my children
awakened my anxiety. Polly is growing up ;
Jenny is eighteen. What prospect have I of
seeing these poor children provided for? Jenny
is a well-bred, modest, handsome maiden; but
all C knows our poverty. We are therefore

464

ZSCHOKKE.

little regarded, and it will be difficult to find a
husband for Jenny. An angel without money
is not thought half so much of now-a-days, as
a devil with a bag full of guineas. Jenny's
only wealth is her gentle face. That every-
body looks kindly on. Even the grocer, Jones,
when she carried him his money, gave her a
pound of almonds and raisins for a present, and
told her how he was grieved to take my money,
and that, if I bought of him, he would give me
credit till Easter. He has never once said so
much to me.

When I die, who will take care of my deso-
late children'? Who! the God of Heaven. They
are at least qualified to go to service anywhere.
I will not distress myself about the future.

£)ec. 26. — Two hard days these have been.
I have never had so laborious a Christmas. I
preached my two sermons in two days five
times in four different churches. The road was
very bad, and the wind and weather fearful.
Age is beginning to make itself felt. I have not
the freshness and activity I once had. Indeed,
cabbage and turnips, scantily buttered, with
only a glass of fresh water, do not atibrd much
nourishment.

I have dined both days with Farmer Hurst.
The people in the country are more hospitable
by far than here in the town, where nobody has
thought of inviting me to dinner these six
months. Ah! could I have only had my daugh-
ters with me at table ! What profusion was
there ! Could they have only had for a Christ-
mas feast what the farmer's dogs received of
the fragments of our meal ! They did have
some cake, and they are feasting on it now
while I write. It was lucky that I had courage,
when the farmer and his wife pressed me to
eat more, to say that, with their leave, I would
carry a little slice of the cake home to my
daughters. The good-hearted people packed me
a little bag full, and, besides, as it rained piti-
fully, sent me home in their wagon.

Eating and drinking are indeed of little im-
portance, if one has enough to satisfy his hun-
ger and thirst. Yet it may not be denied that a
comfortable provision for the body is an agree-
able thing. One's thoughts are clearer. One
feels with more vivacity.

I am very tired. My conversation with
Farmer Hurst was noteworthy. I will write it
off to-morrow.

Dec. 27. — We have lived to know what per-
fect joy is. But one must be moderate in his joys.
The girls must learn self-restraint, and practise
themselves therein. Therefore I lay aside the
packet of money which Mr. Fleetnian has sent.
I will not break the seal until after dinner. My
daughters are Eve's daughters. They are dying
of curiosity to know what Mr. Fleetmaii writes.
They are examining the address, and the packet
is passing from one to the other three times in
a minute.

Indeed, I am more disturbed than rejoiced.
I lent Mr. Fleetman only twelve shillings, and
he sends me back £5. God be praised ! He
must have been very successful.

How joy and sorrow interchange! I went
early this morning to the alderman, Mr. Field-
son, for I was told yesterday that the wagoner
Brook at Watton Basset had, on account of his em-
barrassments, destroyed himself. Some eleven
or twelve years ago I went security for him to
the amount of £100. He was distantly related
to my sainted wife. The bond has never been
cancelled. The man has latterly had much
trouble, and given himself up to drinking.

The aldermair comforted me not a little. He
said he had heard the report, but that it was
very doubtful whether Brook had destroyed
himself. There had been no authentic intelli-
gence. So I returned home comforted, and
prayed by the way that God would be gracious
to me.

I had hardly reached the house, when Polly
ran to meet me, exclaiming, almost breathless,
" A letter ! a letter from Mr. Fleetman, father,
with £5 ! But the packet has cost seven pence."
Jenny, with blushing looks, handed it to me be-
fore I laid down my hat and staff. The chil-
dren were half out of their wits with joy. So
I pushed aside their scissors, and said, "Do you
not see, children, that it is harder to bear a great
joy with composure than a great evil ? I have
often admired your cheerfulness when we were
in the greatest want, and knew not where we
were to find food for the next day. But now
the first smile of fortune puts you beside your-
selves. To punish you, I shall not open the let-
ter nor the packet of money until after dinner."

Jenny would have it that it was not the
money, but Mr. Fleetman's honesty and grati-
tude that delighted her, and that she only wanted
to know what he wrote and how he was ; but I
adhered to my determination. This little curi-
osity must learn to practise patience.

The same day. Eve. — Our joy is turned into
sorrow. The letter with the money came not
from Mr. Fleetman, but from the Rev. Dr. Snarl.
He gives me notice that our engagement will
terminate at Easter, and he informs me that
until that time I may look about for another
situation, and that he has accordingly not only
paid me up my salary in advance, that I may
bear any travelling expenses I may be at, but
also directed the new vicar, my successor, to
attend to the care of the parish.

Thus the talk of the people here in town was
not wholly without foundation, and it may also
be true, what is said, that the new vicar had
received his appointment thus readily, because
he has married a near relative of his Reverence,
a lady of doubtful reputation. So I must lose
my office and my bread for the sake of such a
person, and be turned into the street with my
poor children, because a man can be found to
buy my place at the price of his own honor.

ZSCHOKKE.

465

Jenny and Polly tinned deadly pale, when they
found that the letter came not from Mr. Fleet-
man, but from the Doctor, and that the money,
instead of being the generous return of a grate-
ful heart, was the last wretched payment for my
long and laborious services. Polly threw her-
self sobbing into a chair, and Jenny left the
room. My hand trembled as I held the letter
containing my formal dismissal. But I went
into my little chamber, locked myself in, and
fell upon my knees and prayed, while Polly
wept aloud.

I rose from my knees refreshed and com-
forted, and took my Bible ; and the first words
upon which my eyes fell were, " Fear not, for I
have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy
name ; thou art mine."

Then all fear vanished out of my heart. I
looked up, and said, " Yea, Lord, I am thine."

As Polly appeared to have ceased weeping,
I went back into the parlor ; but when I saw
her upon her knees praying, with her clasped
hands resting on a chair, I drew back and shut
the door very softly, that the dear soul might
not be disturbed.

After some time I heard Jenny come in. I
then returned to my daughters. They were sit-
ting at the window. I saw by Jenny's eyes
that she had been giving relief to her anguish
in solitude. They both looked timidly at me.
I believe they feared lest they should see des-
pair depicted on my countenance. But when
they saw that I was quite composed, and that I
addressed them with cheerfulness, they were
evidently relieved. I took the letter and the
money, and humming a tune, threw theni into
my desk. They did not allude to what had
happened the whole day. This silence in them
was owing to a tender consideration for me ;
with me it was fear lest I should expose my
weakness before my children.

Bee. 28. — It is good to let the first storm go
by, without looking one's troubles too closely in
the face. We have all had a good night's sleep.
We talk freely now of Dr. Snarl's letter, and of
my loss of office, as of old aifairs. We propose
all kinds of plans for the future. The bitterest
thing is that we must be separated. We can
think of nothing better than that Jenny and
Polly should go to service in respectable families,
while I betake myself to my travels to seek
somewhere a place and bread for myself and
children.

Polly has again recovered her usual cheerful-
ness. She brings out again her dream about
the bishop's mitre, and gives us much amuse-
ment. She counts almost too superstitiously
upon a New Year's present. I have some-
times thought much of dreams, but I do not be-
lieve in them.

As soon as the new vicar, my successor, shall

have arrived, and is able to assume the office, I

shall hand over to him the parish-books, and

take my way in search of bread elsewhere.

3i

In the meantime I will write to a couple of old
friends at Salisbury and Warminster, to request
them to find good places for my daughters, as
cooks, seamstresses, or chambermaids. Jenny
would be an excellent governess for little chil-
dren.

I will not leave my daughters here. The
place is poor, the people are unsocial, proud,
and have the narrow ways of a small town.
They talk now of nothing but the new vicar.
Some are sorry that I must leave, but I know
not who takes it to heart.

Dec. 29. — I have written to-day to my Lord
Bishop of Salisbury, and laid before him in
lively terms the sad, helpless situation of my
children, and my long and faithful services in
the vineyard of the Lord. He must be a hu-
mane pious man. May God touch his heart!
Among the three hundred and four parishes of
the county of Wiltshire, there must certainly be
found for me at least some little corner ! I do
not ask much.

Dec. .30. — The bishop's mitre that Polly
dreamt of must soon make its appearance,
otherwise I shall have to go to jail. I see now
very plainly that the jail is inevitable.

I am very weak, and in vain do I exert my-
self to practise my old heroism. Even strength
fails me for fervent prayer. My distress is too
much for me.

Yes, the jail is unavoidable. I will say it to
myself plainly, that I may become accustomed
to the prosjiect.

The All-merciful have mercy on my dear
children ! I may not — I cannot tell them.

Perhaps a speedy death will save me from
the disgrace. I feel as if my very bones would
crumble away ; fever-shivering in every liarb,
I cannot write for trembling.

Some hours after. — Already I feel more com-
posed. I would have thrown myself into the
arms of God and prayed. But I was not well.
I lay down on my bed. I believe I have slept,
jjerhaps also I fainted. Some three hours have
passed. My daughters have covered my feet
with pillows. I am weak in body, but my
heart is again fresh. Everything which has
happened, which I have heard, flits before me
like a dream.

So the wagoner Brook has indeed maJe way
with himself. Alderman Fieldson has called
and given me the intelligence. He had the
coroner's account, together with the notice of
my bond. Brook's debts are very heavy. I
must account to Withell, a woollen-draper of
Trowbridge, for the hundred pounds sterling.

Mr. Fieldson had good cause to commiserate
me heartily. Good God! a hundred pounds
sterling! How shall I ever obtain it? All that
I and my children have in the world would not
bring a hundred shillings. Brook used to be
esteemed an upright and wealthy man. I never

466

ZSCHOKKE.

thought that he would come to such an end.
The property of my wife was consumed in her
long sickness, and I had to sacrifice the few
acres at Bradford which she inherited. Now I
am a begi^ar. Ah ! if I were only a free beggar!
I must go to prison, if Mr. Withell is not mer-
ciful. It is impossible for me even to think of
paying him.

Same day. Eve. — I am ashamed of my weak-
ness. What! to faint! to despair ! Fy! And
yet believe in a Providence! And a priest of
the Lord ! Fy, Thomas !

I have recovered my composure, and done
wliat I should. I have just carried to tlie post-
office a letter to Mr. Withell, at Trowbridge, in
which I have stated my utter inability to pay
the bond, and confessed myself ready to go to
jail. If he has any human feeling, he will have
jiity on me ; if not, he may drag me away,
whidiersoever he will.

When I came from the office, I put the cou-
rage of my children to the proof. I wished to
prepare them for the worst. Ah ! the maidens
were more of men than the man, more of Chris-
tians than the priest.

I told them of Brook's death, of my debt, and
of the possible consequences. They listened
earnestly and in great sorrow.

"To prison!" said Jenny, silently weeping,
while she threw her arms around me. "Ah,
thou good, poor father, thou hast done no wrong,
and yet hast to bear so much ! I will go to
Trowbridge ; I will throw myself at Withell's
feet; I will not rise until he releases thee!"

"No," cried Polly, sobbing, "do not think of
such a thing. Tradesmen are tradesmen. They
will not for all thy tears give up a farthing of
father's debt. I will go the woollen-draper,
and bind myself to live upon bread and water,
and be his slave, until I have paid him with
my labor what father owes."

In forming such plans, they gradually grew
more composed. But they saw also the vanity
of their hopes. At last said Jenny, " Why all
these useless plans ? Let us wait for Mr.
Withell's answer. If he will be cruel, let him
be so. God is also in the jail. Father, go to
jail. Perhaps thou wilt be better there than
with us in our poverty. Go, for thou goest
without guilt. There is no disgrace in it for
thee. We will both go to service, and our
wages will procure thee everything needful. I
will not be ashamed even to beg. To go a-beg-
ging for a father has something honorable and
holy in it. We will come and visit thee from
time to time. Thou slialt be well taken care
of. We will fear no more."

"Jenny, thou art right," said Polly; "who-
ever fears, does not believe in God. I am not
afraid. I will be cheerful — as cheerful as I can
be, separated from father and thee,"

Such conversations cheered my heart. Fleet-
man was right when he said that I had two
angels of the Lord at my side. .

Dec. 31. — The year is ended. Thanks be to
Heaven, it has been, with the exception of some
storms, a right beautiful and happy year ! It
is true, we often had scarcely enough to eat —
still we have had enough. My poor salary has
often occasioned me bitter cares, still our cares
have had their pleasures. And now I scarcely
possess the means of supporting myself and my
children half a-year longer. But how many
have not even as much, and know not where
to get another day's subsistence ! My place
have I lost. In my old age I am without office
or bread. It is possible that I shall spend the
next year in a jail, separated from my good
daughters. Still Jenny is right; God is there
also in the jail!

To a pure conscience there is no hell even
in hell, and to a bad heart no heaven in heaven.
I am very happy.

Whoever knows how to endure privation is
rich. A good conscience is better than that
which the. world names honor. As soon as we
are able to look with inditference upon what
people call honor and shame, then do we be-
come truly worthy of honor. He who can des-
pise the world enjoys heaven. I understand
the gospel better every day, since I have learned
to read it by the light of experience. The scho-
lars at Oxford and Cambridge study the letter,
not the spirit. Nature is the best interpreter
of the Scriptures.

With these reflections I conclude the year.

I am very glad that I have now for some
time persevered in keeping this journal. Every-
body should keep one. One may learn more
from himself than from the wisest books. When,
by daily setting down our thoughts and feelings,
we in a manner portray ourselves, we can see
at the end of the year how many different faces
we have. Man is not always like himself.
He who says he knows himself, can answer
for the truth of what he says only at the mo-
ment. Few know what they were yesterday ;
still fewer what they will be to-morrow.

A day-book is useful also, because it helps us
to grow in faith in God and Providence. The
whole history of the world does not teach us
so much about these things as the thoughts,
judgments, and feelings of a single individual
for a twelvemonth.

I have also had this year new confirmation
of the truth of the old saying, "Misfortunes sel-
dom come singly, but the darkest hour is just
before morning." When things go hard with
me, then am I most at my ease, always except-
ing the first shock, for then I please myself with
the prospect of the relief which is sure to suc-
ceed, and I smile because nothing can disturb
me. On the other hand, when everything goes
according to my wishes, I am timid and anxious,
and cannot give myself up freely to joy. I dis-
trust the continuance of my peace. Those are
the hardest misfortunes which we allow to take
us by surprise. It is likewise true that trouble
looks more terrible in the distance than when

ZSCHOKKE.

467

it is upon us. Clouds are never so black when
near as they seem in the distance.

1 have learnt from all my calamities to con-
sider, with the quickness of lightning, what
will be their worst effect upon me. So I pre-
pare myself for the worst, and it seldom comes.

This also I find good — I sometimes play with
my hopes, but I never let my hopes play with
me. So I keep them in check. I have only to
remember how rarely fortune has been favor-
able to me ; then all air castles vanish as if
they were ashamed to appear before me. Alas
for him who is the sport of his hopes ! He
pursues will-o'-the-wisps into bogs and mire.

New Year's Day, 1765. A. M. — A wonderful
and sad affair opens the year. Here follows
its history.

Early, about six o'clock, as I lay in bed think-
ing over my sermon, I heard a knocking at the
front door. Polly was up and in the kitchen.
She ran to open the door and see who was
there. Such early visits are not usual with us.
A stranger presented himself with a large box,
which he handed to Polly with these words :

"Mr. " (Polly lost the name) "sends this

box to the Rev. Vicar, and requests him to be
very careful of the contents."

Polly took the box with joyful surprise. The
man disappeared. Polly tapped lightly at my
chamber door to see whether I was awake. I
answered, and she came in, and wishing me
" a happy new year," as well as " good morn-
ing," added laughing, "you will see now, dear
father, whether Polly's dreams are not pro-
phetic. The promised bishop's mitre is come !"
And then she told me how a New Year's pre-
sent had been given her for me. It vexed me,
that she had not asked more particularly for the
name of my unknown patron or benefactor.

While she went out to light a lamp and call
Jenny, I dressed myself I cannot deny that I
was burning with curiosity. For hitherto the

New Year's presents for the Vicar of C e

had been as insignificant as they were rare. I
suspected that my patron, the farmer, whose
good-will I appeared to have won, had meant
to surprise me with a box of cake, and I ad-
mired his modesty in sending me the present
before it was light.

When I entered the parlour, Polly and Jenny
were standing at the table on which lay the
box directed to me, carefully sealed, and of an
unusual size. I had never seen exactly such a
box before. I lifted it, and found it pretty
heavy. In the top were two smoothly cut round
holes.

With Jenny's help, I opened the box very
cautiously, as I had been directed to handle the
contents carefully. A fine white cloth was

removed, and lo ! but no, our astonishment

is indescribable. We all exclaimed with one
voice, " Good God !"

There lay a little child asleep, some six or
eight weeks old, dressed in the finest linen,

with rose-colored ribands. Its little head rested
upon a soft blue silk cushion, and it was ^veU
wrapt up in a blanket. The covering as well
as the little cap, was trimmed with the costliest
Brabant lace.

We stood some moments gazing at it with
silent wonder. At last Polly broke out into a
comical laugh, and cried, " What shall we do
with it? This is no bishop's mitre!'' Jenny
timidly touched the cheek of the sleeping babe
with the tip of her finger, and in a tone full
of pity, said, " Poor, dear little creature ! thou
hast no mother, or might as well have no mo-
ther ! Great God ! to cast off such a lovely,
helpless being! Only see, father, only see,
Polly, how peacefully and trustfully it sleeps,
unconscious of its fate, as if it knew that it is
lying in God's hand. Sleep on, thou poor, for-
saken one ! Thy parents are perhaps too high
in rank to care for thee, and too happy to permit
thee to disturb their happiness. Sleep on, we
will not cast thee out. They have brought thee
to the right place. I will be thy mother."

As Jenny was speaking, two large tears fell
from her eyes. I caught the pious, gentle-
hearted creature to my breast and said, " Be a
mother to this little one! The stepchildren of
fortune come to her stepchildren. God tries
our faith — no, he does not try it. He knows it.
Therefore is this forsaken little creature brought
to us. We do not indeed know how we shall
subsist from one day to another, but He knows,
who has appointed us to be parents to this or-
phan."

Thus the matter was soon settled. The child
continued to sleep sweetly on. In the mean-
while, we exhausted ourselves in conjectures
about its parents, who were undoubtedly known
to us, as the box was directed to me. Polly,
alas! could tell us nothing more of the person
who brought it than she had already told. Now,
while the little thing sleeps, and I run over my
New Year's sermon upon " the Power of the
Eternal Providence," my daughters are holding
a council about the nursing of the poor stranger.
Polly exhibits all the delight of a child. Jenny
appears to be much moved. With me, it is as
if I entered upon the New Year in the midst
of miracles, and — it may be superstition, or it
may be not — as if this little child were sent to
be our guardian angel in our need. I cannot
express the feelings of peace, the still happiness
which I have.

Same day. Eve. — I came home greatly ex-
hausted and weary with the sacred labors of
the day. I had a long and rugged walk. But
I was inspirited by a happy return home, by
the cheerfulness of my daughters, by our plea-
sant little parlor. The table was ready laid
for me, and on it stood a flask of wine, a New
Year's present from an unknown benevolent
hand.

The looks of the lovely little child in Jenny's
arms refreshed me above all things. Polly

468

ZSCHOKKE.

showed me the beautiful little bed of our nurs-
ling, the dozen fine napkins, tlie dear little caps
and night-clothes, which were in the box, and
then a sealed packet of money directed to me,
which they had found at the feet of the child
when it awoke, and they took it out.

Anxious to learn something of the parentage
of our little unknown inmate, I opened the
packet. It contained a roll of twenty guineas
and a letter, as follows :

"Relying with entire confidence upon the
piety and humanity of your Reverence, the un-
happy parents of this dear child commend it to
your care. Do not forsake it. We will testify
our gratitude when we are at liberty to make
ourselves known to you. Although at a dis-
tance, we shall keep a careful watch, and know
everything that you do. The dear boy is named
Alfred. He has been baptized. His board for
the first quarter accompanies this. The same
sum will be punctually remitted to you every
three months. Take the child. We commend
him to the tenderness of your daughter Jenny."

When I had read tlie letter, Polly leaped
with joy, and cried; "There's the bishop's mi-
tre!" Bountiful Heaven! how rich had we
suddenly become ! We read the letter a dozen
times. We did not trust our eyes to look at the
gold upon the table. What a New Year's pre-
sent! From my heaviest cares for the future
was I thus suddenly relieved. But in what a
strange and mysterious way! In vain did I
think over all the people I knew, in order to
discover who it might be who had been forced
by birth or rank to concefcl the existence of their
child, or who were able to make such a liberal
compensation for a simple service of Christian
charity. I tasked my recollection, but I could
think of no one. And yet it was evident that
these parents were well acquainted with me
and mine.

Wonderful are the ways of Providence!

Jan. 2. — Fortune is heaping her favors upon
me. This morning I again received a packet
of money, j£l2, by the post, with a letter from
Mr. Fleetman. It is too much. For a shilling
he returns me a pound. Things must have
gone well with him. He says as much. I
cannot, alas, thank him, for he has forgotten to
mention his address. God forbid I should be
pufled up with my present riches. I hope now
in time to pay ofi' honestly my bond to Mr.
Withell,

When I told my daughters that I had received
a letter from Mr. Fleetman, there was a new
occasion for joy. I do not exactly understand
what the girls have to do with Mr. Fleetman.
Jenny grew very red, and Polly jumped up
laughingly, and held up both her hands before
Jenny's face, and Jenny behaved as if she was
right vexed with the playful girh

I read out Fleetman's letter. But I could
scarcely do it, for the young man is an enthu-
siast. He writes many ilattering things which

I do not deserve. He exaggerates everything,
even indeed when he speaks of the good Jenny.
I pitied the poor girl while I read. I did not
dare to look at her. The passage, however,
which relates to her, is worthy of note. It runs
thus :

"When, excellent sir, I went from your door,
I felt as if I were quitting a father's roof for the
bleak world. I shall never forget you, never
forget how happy I was with you. I see you
now before me, in your rich poverty, in your
Christian humility, in your patriarchal simpli-
city. And the lovely, fascinating Polly ; and
the — all! for your Jenny I have no words! In
what words shall one describe the heavenly
loveliness by which everything earthly is trans-
figured 1 For ever shall I remember the mo-
ment when she gave me the twelve shillings,
and the gentle tone of consolation with which
she spoke to me. Wonder not that I have the
twelve shillings still. I would not part with
them for a thousand guineas. I shall soon per-
haps explain everything to you personally.
Never in my life have I been so happy or so
miserable as I am now. Commend me to your
sweet daughters, if they still bear me in re-
membrance."

I conclude from these lines that he intends
to come this way again. The prospect gives
me pleasure. In his unbounded gratitude, the
young man has perhaps sent me his all, because
I once lent him half of my ready money. That
grieves me. He seems to be a thoughtless youth,
and yet he has an honest heart.

We have great delight in the little Alfred.
The little thing laughed to-day upon Polly, as
Jenny was holding him, like a young mother, in
her arms. The girls are more handy with the
little citizen of the world than I had anticipated.
But it is a beautiful child. We have bought him
a handsome cradle, and provided abundantly
for all his little wants. The cradle stands at
Jenny's bedside. She watches day and night,
like a guardian spirit, over her tender charge.

Jan. 3. — To-day, Mr. Curate Thomson arrived
with his young wife and sent for me. I went
to him immediately at the inn. He is an agree-
able man, and very polite. He informed me
that he was appointed my successor in office,
that he wished, if I had no objections, to enter
immediately upon his duties, and that I might
occupy the parsonage until Easter: he would in
the meanwhile take up his abode in lodgings
prepared for him at Alderman Fieldson's.

I replied that, if he pleased, I would resign
my office to him immediately, as I should thus
be more at liberty to look out for another situa-
tion. I desired only permission to preach a
farewell sermon in the churches in which I
had for so many years declared the word of the
Lord.

He then said that he would come in the after-
noon to examine the state of the parsonage.
— He has been here with his wife and Alderman

ZSCHOKKE.

469

Fieldson. His lady was somewhat haughty, and
appears to be of high birth, for there was no-
thing in the house that pleased her, and she
hardly deigned to look at my daughters. When
she saw the little Alfred in the cradle, she
turned to Jenny, and asked whether she were
already married. The good Jenny blushed up
to her hair, and shook her little head by way
of negative, and stammered out something. I
had to come to the poor girl's assistance. My
lady listened to my story with great curiosity,
and drew up her mouth, and shrugged her
shoulders. It was very disagreeable, but I said
nothing. I invited them to take a cup of tea.
But they declined. Mr. Curate appeared to be
very obedient to the slightest hint of the lady.
We were very glad when the visit was over.

Jan. 6. — iNIr. Withell is an excellent man, to
judge from his letter. He sympathizes with
me in regard to my unfortunate bond, and com-
forts me with the assurance that I must not dis-
quiet myself if I am not able to pay it for ten
years or ever. He appears to be well ac-
quainted with my circumstances, for he alludes
to th3m very cautiously. He considers me an
honest man. That gratifies me most. He shall
not find his confidence misplaced. I will go to
Trowbridge as soon as I can, and pay Mr.
Withell Fleetman's £12 sterling, as an instal-
ment of my monstrous debt.

Although Jenny insists that she sleeps soundly,
that little Alfred is very quiet o' nights, and only
wakes once, when she gives him a drink out of
his little bottle, yet I feel anxious about the
maiden. She is not so lively by far, as for-
merly, although she seems to be much happier
than when we were every day troubled about
our daily bread. Sometimes she sits with her
needle, lost in a reverie, dreaming with open
eyes ; or her hands, once so active, lie sunk
upon her lap. When she is spoken to, she
starts, and has to bethink herself what was
said. All this evidently comes from the inter-
ruption of her proper rest. But she will not
hear a word of it. We cannot even persuade
her to take a little nap in the daytime. She
declares that she feels perfectly well.

I had no idea that she had so much vanity.
Fleetman's praises have not displeased her.
She has asked me for his letter, to read once
more. And she has not yet returned it to me,
but keeps it in her work-basket!

I don"t care, for my part! the vain thing!

Jan. S. — My farewell sermon was accom-
panied with the tears of most of my hearers.
I see now at last that my parishioners love me.
They have expressed their obligations on all
hands and loaded me with gifts. I never be-
fore had such an abundance of provisions in
the house, so many dainties of all kinds, and so
much wine. A hundredth part of my present
plenty would have made me account myself
over-fortunate in past days. We are really

swimming in plenty. But a goodly portion has
already been disposed of. I know some poor

families in C e, and Jenny knows even

more than I. The dear people share in our
pleasures.

I was moved to the inmost by my sermon.
With tears had I written it. It was a sketch of
my whole past course from my call and settle-
ment. I am driven from the vineyard as an
unprofitable servant, and yet I have not labored
as a hireling. Many noble vines have I planted,
many deadly weeds cut away. I am driven
from the vineyard where I have watched, and
taught, and warned, and comforted, and prayed.
I have shrunk from no sick bed. I have
strengthened the dying for the last conflict with
holy hope. I have gone after sinners. I have
not left the poor, desolate. I have called back
the lost to the way of life. Ah ! all these souls
that were knit to my soul, are torn from me —
why should not my heart bleed 1 But God's
will be done!

Gladly would I now offer to take charge of
the parish without salary, but my successor has
the office. I have been used to poverty from
my birth, and care has never forsaken me since
I stepped out of my boy's-shoes. I have enough
for myself and my daughters in little Alfred's
board. We shall be able indeed to lay up
something. I would never again complain of
wind and weather beating against my grey
hairs, could I only continue to break the bread
of life to my flock.

Be it so! I will not murmur. The tear which
drops upon this page, is no tear of discontent.
I ask not for riches and good days, nor have I
ever asked. But, Lord ! Lord ! drive not thy
servant for ever from thy service, although his
powers are small. Let me again enter thy
vineyard, and with thy blessing win souls.

Jan. 13. — My journey to Trowbridge has
turned out beyond all expectation. I arrived
late with weary feet at the pleasant little old
city, and could not rouse myself from sleep until
late the next morning. After I had put on my
clean clothes (I had not been so finely dressed
since my wedding-day — the good Jenny shows
a daughter's care for her father,) I left the inn
and went to Mr. Withell's. He lives in a splendid,
great house.

He received me somewhat coldly at first; but
when I mentioned my name, he led me into his
little office. Here I thanked him for his great
goodness and consideration, told him how I had
happened to give the bond, and what hard for-
tunes had hitherto been mine. I then laid my
jE12 upon the table.

Mr. Withell looked at me for a while in
silence, with a smile, and with some emotion.
He then extended his hand, and shook mine,
and said, "I know all about you. I have in-
formed myself particularly about your circum-
stances. You are an honest man. Take your
JE12 back. I cannot find it in my heart to rob
40

470

ZSCHOKKE.

you of your New Year's present. Rather let
me add a pound to it, to remember me by."

He arose, brought a paper from another room,
opened it and said, "You know this bond and
your signature 1 I give it to you and your chil-
dren." He tore the paper in two, and placed
it in my hand.

I could find no words, I was so deeply
moved. My eyes filled. He saw that I would
thank him, but could not, and he said, "Hush!
hush! not a syllable, I pray you. This is the
only thanks I desire of you. I would gladly
have forgiven poor Brook the debt, had he only
dealt frankly with me."

I dont know a more noble-hearted man than
Mr. Withell. He was too kind. He would have
me relate to him much of my past history. He
introduced me to his wife, and to the young
gentleman his son. He had my little bundle,
containing my old clothes, brought from the inn,
and kept me at his house. The entertainment
was princely. The chamber in which I slept,
the carpet, the bed, were so splendid and costly
that I hardly dared to make use of them.

The next day Mr. Withell sent me home in
his own elegant carriage. I parted with my
benefactor with a heart deeply moved. My
children wept with me for joy, when I showed
them the bond. "See," said I, "this light piece
of paper was the heaviest burthen of my life,
and now it is generously cancelled. Pray for
the life and prosperity of our deliverer !"

Jan. IC. — Yesterday was the most remarkable
day of my life. We were sitting together in the
forenoon ; I was rocking the cradle, Polly was
reading aloud, and Jenny was seated at the
window with her needle, when she suddenly
jumped up, and then fell back again deadly
pale into her chair. We were all alarmed, and
cried, " What is the matter ?" She forced a
smile, and said, " He is coming !"

The door opened, and in came Mr. Fleetman
in a beautiful travelling cloak. We greeted him
right heartily, and were truly glad to see him so
unexpectedly, and, as it appeared, in so much
better circumstances than before. He embraced
me, kissed Polly, and bowed to Jenny, who had
not yet recovered from her agitation. Her pale
looks did not escape him. He inquired anxiously
about her health. Polly replied to his questions,
and he then kissed Jenny's hand, as though he
would beg her pardon for having occasioned
her such an alarm. But there was nothing to
be said about it, for the poor girl grew red again
like a newly-blown rose.

I called for cake and wine, to treat my guest
and benefactor better than on a former occa-
sion; but he declined, as he could not tarry
long, and he had company at the inn. Yet at
Jenny's request, he sate down and took some
wine with us.

As he had spoken of the company which had
come with him, I supposed that it must be a
company of comedians, and inquired whether

they intended to stop and play in C , observ-
ing that the place was too poor. He laughed
out, and replied, " Yes, we shall play a comedy,
but altogether gratis." Polly was beside her-
self with joy, for she had long wanted to see a
play. She told Jenny, who had gone for the
cake and wine. Polly inquired whether many
actors had come with him. "A gentleman and
lady," said he, "but excellent players."

Jenny appeared unusually serious. She cast
a sad look at Fleetman, and asked, "And you —
will you also appear"? ' This was said in that
tone peculiarly soft, yet very penetrating, which
I have seldom observed in her, and only upon
rare occasions, and at the most serious moments.
Poor Fleetman himself trembled at her tone,
so like the voice of the angel of doom. He
looked up to her with an earnest gaze, and ap-
peared to struggle with himself for an answer,
and then advancing towards her a step, he said,
"Miss, by my God and yours, you alone can
decide that!"

Jenny dropped her eyes. He continued to
speak. She answered. I could not compre-
hend what they were about. They spoke —
Polly and I listened with the greatest attention,
but we neither of us understood a word, or
rather we heard words without any sense. And
yet Fleetman and Jenny appeared not only to
understand one another perfectly, but, what
struck me as very strange, Fleetman was deeply
moved by Jenny's answers, although they ex-
pressed the veriest trifles. At last Fleetman
clasped his hands passionately to his breast,
raised his eyes, streaming with tears, to heaven,
and with an impressive appearance of emotion,
exclaimed, "Then am I indeed unhappy!"

Polly could hold out no longer. With a comi-
cal vivacity, she looked from one to the other,
and at last cried out, " I do believe that you
two are beginning to play already!"

He pressed Pollys hand warmly, and said,
" Ah ! that it were so !"

I put an end to the confusion by pouring out
the wine. We drank to the welfare of our friend.
Fleetman turned to Jenny, and stammered out,
"Miss, in earnest, my welfare 1" She laid her
hand upon her heart, cast down her eyes, and
drank.

Fleetman immediately became more com-
posed. He went to the cradle, looked at the
child, and when Polly and I had told him its
history, he said to Polly, with a smile, " Then
you have not discovered that I sent you this
New Year's present 1"

We all exclaimed in utter amazement, "Who!
you?" He then proceeded to relate what fol-
lows: "My name," said he, "is not Fleetman.
I am Sir Cecil Fairford. My sister and myself
have been kept out of our rightful property by
my father's brother, who took advantage of cer-
tain ambiguous conditions in my father's will,
and involved us in a long and embarrassing
lawsuit. We have hitherto lived with difSculty
upon the little property left us by our mother,

ZSCHOKKE.

471

who died early. My sister has suffered most
from the tyranny of her uncle, who was her
guardian, and who had destined her for the
son of an intimate and powerful friend of his.
But my sister, on the other hand, was secretly
contracted to the young Lord Sandom, whose
father, then living, was opposed to their mar-
riage. Without the knowledge either of my
uncle or the old lord, they v/ere secretly mar-
ried. The little Alfred is their son. My sister,
under the pretence of benefiting her health and
availing herself of sea-bathing, left the house
of her guardian, and put herself vmder my pro-
tection. When the child was born, our great
concern was to find a place for it where it would
have the tenderest care. 1 accidentally heard
a touching account of the poverty and humanity

of the parish minister of C , and I came

hither to satisfy myself The manner in which
I was treated by you decided me.

" I have forgotten to mention that my sister
never returned to her guardian. For about six
months ago I won the suit against him, and
entered into possession of my patrimony. My
uncle instituted a new suit against me for with-
drawing my sister from his charge ; but the old
Lord Sandom died suddenly a few days ago of
apoplexy, and my brother-in-law has made his
marriage public. So that the suit falls to the
ground, and all cause for keeping the child's
birth secret is removed. Its parents have now
come with me to take the child away, and I
have come to take away you and your family,
if the projjosal I make you shall be accepted.

"During the lawsuit in which I have been
engaged, the living, which is in the gift of my
family, has remained unoccupied. I have at my
disposal this situation, which yields over £200
per annum. You, sir, have lost your place. I
shall not be happy unless you come and reside
near me, and accept this living."

God only knows how I was affected at these
words. My eyes were blinded with tears of
joy. I stretched out my hands to the man who
came a messenger from heaven. I fell upon
his breast. Polly threw her arms around him
with a cry of delight. Jenny thankfully kissed
the baronet's hand. But he snatched it from
her with visible agitation, and left us.

My happy children were still holding me in
their embraces, and we were still mingling our
tears and congratulations, when the baronet re-
turned, bringing his brother-in-law. Lord San-
dom, with his wife. The latter was an uncom-
monly beautiful young lady. Without saluting
us, she ran to the cradle of her child. She
knelt down over the little Alfred, kissed his

cheeks, and wept freely with mingled pain and
delight. Her lord raised her up, and had much
trouble in composing her.

When she had recovered her composure,
and apologized to us all for her b haviour, she
thanked first me and then Polly in the most
touching terms. Polly disowned all obligation,
and pointed to Jenny, who had withdrawn to
the window, and said, " My sister there has
been its mother !"

Lady Sandom approached Jenny, gazed at her
long in silence, and with evidently delighted sur-
prise, and then glanced at her brother with a
smile, and folded Jenny in her arms. The dear
Jenny, in her modesty, scarcely dared to look
up. " I am your debtor," said my lady, " but
the service you have rendered to a mother's
heart it is impossible for me to repay. Become
a sister to me, lovely Jenny; sisters can have
no obligations between them." As they em-
braced each other, the baronet approached.
"There stands my poor brother," said my lady;
" as you are now my sister, he may stand nearer
to your heart, dear Jenny, may he not?"

Jenny blushed and said, " He is my father's
benefactor."

" Will you not be," replied the lady, " the
benefactress of my poor brother? Look kindly
on him. If you only knew how he loves you!"

The baronet took Jenny's hand and kissed it,
and said, as Jenny struggled to withdraw it,
"Miss, will you be unkind to me ? I am unhappy
without this hand." Jenny, much disturbed, let
her hand remain in his. The baronet then led
my daughter to me, and begged me for my
blessing.

"Jenny," said I, "it depends upon thee. Do
we dream ? Canst thou love him ? Do thou
decide."

She then turned to the baronet, who stood
before her, deeply agitated, and cast upon him
a full, penetrating look, and then took his hand
in both hers, pressed it to her breast, looked
up to heaven, and softly whispered, " God has
decided."

I blessed my son and my daughter. They
embraced. There was a solemn silence. All
eyes were wet.

Suddenly Polly sprang up, laughing through
ller tears, and flung herself upon my neck,
while she cried, "There! we have it! The
New Year's present! Bishop's mitres upon
bishop's mitres!"

Little Alfred awoke.

It is in vain — I cannot describe this day.
My happy heart is full, and I am continually
interrupted.

FRIEDKICH VON SCHLEGEL.

Born 1772. Died 1S29.

Friedrich, a younger brother of A. W. von
Schlegel, was born at Hanover, five years
later. Destined by his father to mercantile
pursuits, he was placed for that purpose in a
counting--room at Leipzig ; but feeling a strong
predilection for Letters, and discovering more
than ordinary capacity, he was recalled and
suffered to take his own course. He studied
Philology in Gottingen and in Leipzig, during
which time he read every autiior of note in the
Latin and Greek languages. He then resided
for awhile in Berlin and in Dresden, published
his "Greeks and Romans," 1797, and the fol-
lowing year, his " Poetry of the Greeks and
Romans," a continuation of the former. In
1800, he went as Privatdocent (private teacher)
to Jena, where he labored in conjunction with
his brother and others, of like views, and pub-
lished several poems. In 1803, at Cologne, he
went over to the Roman Catholic church,* to-
gether with his wife, a daughter of Mendels-
sohn. He next resided for several years in
Paris, where he lectured on Philosophy, and
where he published his "Europa." While
here he devoted himself to the study of the
southern languages, and particularly to tliat of
India. He also published, 1804, a collection
of romantic poems of the middle ages, from
printed sources and manuscripts; and illustra-
tions of the history of Joan of Arc, drawn from
the Notices et Ex traits. His Sprache und
Weisheil der Indier belongs to this period.

In 1808 he returned to Germany, and was
made secretary of the Austrian Government at
Vienna, where he exerted a powerful influence
by his proclamations against Napoleon. After
the conclusion of the peace, he gave lectures
in Vienna, on modern history and on the lite-
rature of all nations. In 1815, he was ap-
pointed by Prince Metternich, Austrian Coun-
sellor of Legation at the Diet in Frankfort. In
1818 he returned to Vienna, where he lived
as Secretary of the Court, and devoted himself

* According to Wolff in the Encyclopddie der Deutschen
JVationallitteraiur. Tlie Conversationslezicon refers this
apostasy to a later date,— 1808.

to literary pursuits. During this period he
published his " View of the present Political
Relations." In 1820 he undertook a periodical
called Concordia, the object of which was to
reconcile the difl^erent opinions on Church and
State. In 1827 he gave a course of lectures
ui Vienna, on the Piiilosophy of Life, which
was published the following year. In Decem-
ber 1828, he began another course in Dresden,
on the Philosophy of Language and of the
Word. These lectures he did not live to com-
plete, but died in the midst of the course, Ja-
nuary 11th, 1629. It has been noted as em-
blematic of the man, that the last word which
came from his pen was aber {but). This was
written at eleven o'clock at night. At one,
he breathed his last.

Friedrich von Schlegel is thought to have
surpassed his brother in originality, to have
equalled liim in depth and extent of learning,
but to fall far behind him in point of taste and
clearness. " Like his brother he opened to
Poetry and to Science in Germany, new and
hitherto unknown regions. He was the first
who specially directed attention to the great
intellectual treasures of the Indians, and intro-
duced among us the studies relating to these.
Later, after his change of faith, he assailed, in
the most decided manner, French democracy
and frivolity; but then, in his capacity of phi-
losophical historian, he became an opponent of
religious and political liberty and enlighten-
ment, and completely lost himself at last in
misty speculations and politico-religious vaga-
ries."* With regard to this "change of faith,"
and the criticisms and imputations to which it
gave rise, Mr. Carlyle judges thus: " Of Schle-
gel himself and his character and spiritual his-
tory we can profess no thorough or final under-
standing; yet enough to make us view him
with admiration and pity, nowise .with harsh,
contemptuous censure; and must say, with
clearest persuasion, that the outcry of his being
' a renegade,' &c., is but like other such out-

* Wolff's EncyclopUdie.

(472)

F. SCHLEGEL.

473

cries, a judgment where there was neither jury,
nor evidence, nor judge. The candid reader
in this book itself,* to say notliing of all the
rest, will find traces of a high, far-seeing, ear-

* Schle^'el's last work ; Luclures on tlic Tliilosophy of
Language, &c.

nest spirit, to whom 'Austrian Pensions' and
the Kaiser's crown and Austria altogether,
were but a light matter to the finding and vi-
tally appropriating of truth. Let us respect
the sacred mystery of a Person ; rush not irre-
verently into man's Holy of Holies !"

LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF
HISTORY.

From the Translation of R/ibinson.
THE CHINKSE EMPIRE.

The Chinese empire is the largest of all the
monarchies now existing on the earth, and on
this account alone may well challenge the at-
tention of the historical inquirer. It is not ab-
solutely the greatest in territorial extent, though
even in this respect it is scarcely inferior to the
greatest; but in point of population it is, in all
probability, the first. Spain, could we now
include in the number of her possessions her
American colonies, would exceed all other em-
pires in extent. The same may be said of
Russia, with her colonies and boundless j)ro-
vinces in the north of Asia. But, great as the
population of Russia may be, considered in it-
self and relatively to the other European states,
it can sustain no comparison with that of China.
England, with the East Indies and her colonial
possessions in the three divisions of the globe,
Polynesia, Africa, and America, has inileed a
very wide extent, and perhaps, including the
hundred and ten millions that own her sway in
India, comes the nearest, in point of i^opulation,
to China. Of the amount of the Chinese popu-
lation, which is not certainly knovvri, that of In-
dia may furnish a criterion for a conjectural and
probable estimate. However, as this vast region
is everywhere intersected by navigable rivers
and canals, everywhere studded with large and
populous cities, and enjoys a climate as genial,
or even still more genial, and certainly far more
salubrious, than that of India; as, like the latter
coimtry, it everywhere presents to the eye the
richest culture, and is in all appearance as
niufh peopled, or over-peopled, we may take
India, whose total population is by no means
included in the hundred and ten millions under
British rule, as furnishing a pretty accurate
standard for the computation of the Chinese
population. Now, when we consider that even
China proper is larger than the whole western
peninsula of India, and tliat the vast coun-
tries dependent on China, such as Thibet and
Southern Tartary, are very populous, the con-
jectural calculation of the English writer whom
I follow in these remarks on the Chinese popu-
lation, and who reckons it at one hundred and
fifty millions, may be regarded as very mode-
rate, and might, with perfect safety, be consi-
derably raised. Thus then the Chinese popu-
lation is nearly as large as the whole population
3k

of Europe, and constitutes, if not a fourth, at
least a fifth, of the total population of the globe.

Cursory comparisons of this kind are not
without value. The history of civilization, form-
ing the basis, and as it were the outward body,
of the philosophy of history, which should be
the inner and highest sense of the whole, is
deeply interesting in all that refers to the general
condition of humanity. And such an interest,
which does not of itself lie in mere statistical
calculations, but in the outward condition of
mankind, as the symbol of its inward state,
may very well belong to comparisons of this
nature.

The interest, however, which the philosophic
historian should take in all that relates to hu-
manity in general, and to the various nations
of the earth, ought not to be regulated by the
false standard of an indiscriminate equality,
considering all nations of equal importance, and
paying equal attention to all, without distinction.
This would imply insensibility to man's higher
nature, or ignorance of it. But this interest
should be measured not merely by the popula-
tion of a state, or by geographical extent of ter-
ritory, or by external power, but by population,
territory and power combined — by moral worth
and intellectual pre-eminence, by the scale of
civilization to which the nation has attained.
The Tongoosses, though a very widely-diffused
race — the Calmucks, though they have much to
claim our attention, compared with the other
nations of central Asia, cannot certainly excite
equal interest, or hold a place in the history
of human civilization with the Greeks or the
Egyptians; though the territory of Egypt itself
is certainly not particularly large, nor, according
to our customary standard of population, were
its inhabitants, in all probability, ever very
numerous. In the same way, the Empire of
the Moguls, which embraced China itself, has
not the same importance in our eyes as the
Roman Empire, either in its rise or in its fall.
Writers of universal history have not however
always avoided this fault, and have been too
much disposed to place all nations on the same
historical footing, — on the false level of an in-
discriminate equality ; and to regard humanity
in a mere physical point of view, and according
to the natural classification of tribes and races.
In these sketches of history, the high and the
noble is often ranked with the low and the
vulgar; and neither what is truly great, nor
what is of lesser importance (for this, too, should
40*

474

F. SCHLEGEL.

not be overlooked), has its due place in these
portraits of mankind.

A numerous, or even excessive population, is
undoubtedly an essential element of political
power in a state ; but it is not the only, nor in
any respect the principal indication of the civi-
lization of a country. It is only in regard to
civilization that the population of China de-
serves our consideration. Although in these
latter times, when Europe, by her political as-
cendancy over the other parts of the world,
has proved the pre-eminence of her arts and
civilization, England and Russia have become
the immediate neighbors of China towards the
north and west, yet these territorial relations
affect not the rest of Europe ; and China, when
we leave out of consideration its very' import-
ant commerce, cannot certainly be accounted a
political power in the general system. Even
in ancient, as well as in modern times, China
never figured in the history of Western Asia or
Europe, and had no connection whatever with
their inhabitants ; but this great country has
ever stood apart, like a world within itself, in
the remote, unknown Eastern Asia. Hence,
the earlier writers of universal history have
taken little or no notice of this great empire,
shut out as it was from the confined horizon of
their views. And this was natural, when we
consider that the conquests and expeditions of
the Asiatic nations were considered by these
writers as subjects of the first importance.
No conquerors have ever marched from China
into Western Asia, like Xerxes, for instance,
who passed from the interior of Persia to
Athens ; or Alexander the Great, who extended
his victorious march from his small paternal
province of Macedon to beyond the Indus, and
almost to the borders of the Ganges, though
the latter river, in despite of all his efforts, he
was unable to reach. But great victorious ex-
peditions have proceeded not from China, but
from Central Asia, and the nations of Tartary,
who have invaded China itself; though in
those invasions the manners, mind, and civili-
zation of the Chinese have evinced their power,
since their Tartar conquerors, in the earliest
as in the latest times, have, after a few gene-
rations, invariably conformed to the manners
and civilization of the conquered nation, and
become more or less Chinese. Not only the
great population and flourishing agriculture
of this fruitful country, but the cultivation of
silk, for which it has been celebrated from all
antiquity, the culture of the tea -plant, which
forms such an important article of European
trade, as well as the knowledge of several
most useful medicinal productions of nature,
and unique, and, in their way, excellent pro-
ducts of industry and manufacture, prove the
very high degree of civilization to which this
people have attained. And why should not
that people be entitled to a high place, or one
of the highest among civilized nations, which
had known, many centuries before Europe, the

art of printing, gunpowder, and the magnet—
those three so highly celebrated and 'valuable
discoveries of European skill 1 Instead of the
regular art of printing with transposable letters,
which would not suit the Chinese system of
writing, this people make use of a species of
lithography, which, to all essential purposes, is
the same, and attended with the same effects.
Gunpowder serves in China, as it did in Europe
in the infancy of the discovery, rather for amuse-
ment and fireworks, than for the more serious
purposes of war and conquest; and though this
people are acquainted with the magnetic needle,
they have never made a like extended applica-
ation of its powers, and never employ it, either
in a confined river and coasting navigation, or
on the wide ocean, on which they never venture.
The Chinese are remarkable, too, for the ut-
most polish and refinement of manners, and
even for a precise civility and love of stately
ceremonial. In many respects, indeed, their
politeness and refinement almost equal those
of European nations, or at least are far supe-
rior to what we usually designate by the term
of oriental manners — a term which, in our
sense, can apply only to the nearer Mahometan
countries of the Levant. Of this assertion, we
may find a sufficient proof in any single tale
that portrays the present Chinese life and man-
ners; in the novel, for instance, translated by
M. Remusat. In their present manners and
fashions, however, there are many things utterly
at variance with European taste and feelings;
I need only mention the custom of the digni-
taries, functionaries, and literary men letting
their nails grow to the length of birds' claws,
and that other custom in women of rank, of
compressing their feet to an extreme diminu-
tiveness. Both customs, according to die re-
cent account of a very intelligent Englishman,
serve to mark and distinguish the upper class :
for the former renders the men totally incapa-
ble of hard or manual labor, and the latter im-
pedes the woman of rank in walking, or at
least gives her a mincing gait, and a languid,
delicate and interesting air. These minute
traits of manners should not be overlooked in
the general sketch of the nation, for they per-
fectly correspond to many other characteristic
marks and indications of the unnatural stiff-
ness, childish vanity, and exaggerated refine-
ment, which we meet with in the more im-
portant province of its intellectual character.
Even in the basis of all intellectual culture, the
language, or rather the writing of the Chinese,
this character of refinement, pushed beyond all
bounds and all conception, is visible, while, on
the other hand, it is coupled with great intel-
lectual poverty and jejuneness. A language
where there are not many more than three hun-
dred, not near four hundred, and (according to
the most recent critical investigation) only 272
monosyllabic primitive roots without any kind
of grammar; where the not merely various, but
utterly unconnected significations of one and the

F. SCHLEGEL.

475

same wqrd are marked, in the first place, by a
varying modulation of the voice, according to a
foarfold method of accentuation ; in the next
place and chiefly, by the written characters,
which amount to the prodigious number of
eighty thousand, while the Egyptian hieroglyphs
do not exceed the number of eight hundred —
such a language must needs be the most arti-
ficial in tlie whole world ; — an inference, not
invalidated by the fact that, out of that great
number of all actual or possible written charac-
ters, but a fourth part perhaps is really in use,
and a still less portion is necessary to be learned.
As the meaning, especially of more complex
notions and abstract ideas, can be fully fixed
and accurately determined only by such artifi-
cial ciphers, the language is far more dependent
on these written characters than on living
sound ; for one and the same sound may often
be designated by 160 different characters, and
have as many significations. It not rarely occurs
that the Chinese, when they do not very well
understand each other in conversation, have re-
course to writing, and by copying down these
ciphers are enabled to divine each other's mean-
ing, and become mutually intelligible. Indeed,
it furnishes labor sufficient to fill up the life of
man, for even the European scholars who have
engaged in this study find it a matter of no
small difficulty, to devise a system whereby a
dictionary, or rather a systematic catalogue of
all these written characters may be composed,
to serve as a fit guide on this ocean of Chinese
signs. But we shall again have occasion to
recur to this sid)ject; and, indeed, it is only in
connection with the iJeculiarities of the Chinese
mind that this writing system can be properly
explained and understood in its true meaning,
or rather its meaningless construction and ela-
borateness.

Although the construction of canals, and all
the regulations of water-carriage, could have
attained only by degrees to their present state
of perfection, still this alone would prove the
very early attention which this people had
given to the arts of civilized life. Mention is
often made of them in the old Chinese histories
and imjoerial annals ; and the canals of China,
like the Nile in Egypt, were ever the objects of
most anxious solicitude to the government.
These annals, whenever they have occasion to
speak of those great inundations and destructive
floods which are of such frequent occurrence in
Chinese history, invariably represent the atten-
tion besto\ved on water-courses and water-regu-
lations as the most certain mark of a wise,
benevolent and provident administration. On
the other hand, the neglect of this most import-
ant of administrative concerns is ever regarded
as the proof of a wicked, reckless and unfortu-
nate reign : and in these histories some great
calamity, or even violent catastrophe, is sure to
follow, like a stroke of divine vengeance, on
this unpardonable neglect of duty.

The Ions: succession of the different native

dynasties of China, Tchin, Han, Tung, and
Sung, down to the Moguls, which fills the dif-
fuse annals of the empire, furnishes few im-
portant data on the intellectual progress of the
Chinese ; and everything of importance to the
object of our present inquiries, that can be ga-
thered out of the mass of political history, may
be reduced to a very few plain facts. The Eng-
lish writer, whom we have already cited, though
otherwise inclined to a certain degree of scep-
ticism in his views, fixes the commencement
of the historical ages of authentic history in the
ancient dynasty of Chow, eleven hundred years
before the Christian era. The first fact of im-
portance, as regards the moral and intellec-
tual civilization of China, is, that this country,
originally divided into many small principali-
ties and under petty sovereigns, whose power
was more limited, enjoyed a greater share of
liberty. The great burning of the books, of
which more particular mention will be pre-
sently made, as •well as the erection of the
great wall, are attributed to the first general
emperor of all China, Chihoangti ; in whose
reign, too, Japan became a Chinese colony, or
received from China a political establishment.
At a still later period, as in the fifth century of
our era, and again at the time of the Mogul con-
quest under Zingis Khan, China was divided
into two kingdoms, a northern and a southern.
But there is another fact already mentioned,
that throws still stronger light on the high civili-
zation of China — it is, that at every period
when this empire has been conquered by the
Moguls and Tartars, the conquerors, overcome
in their turn by the ascendancy of Chinese civili-
zation, have, ■within a short time, invariably
adojJted the manners, laws, and even the lan-
guage of China, and thus its institutions have
remained, on the whole, unaltered. But here
is a circumstance in Chinese history particularly
worthy of our attention. In no state in the
world do we see such an entire, absolute, and
rigid monarchical unity as in that of China,
especially under its ancient form; although this
government is more limited by laws and man-
ners, and is by no means of that arbitrary and
despotic character which we are wont to attri-
bute to the more modern oriental states. In
China, before the introduction of the Indian re-
ligion of Buddhu, there was not even a distinct
sacerdotal class — there is no nobility, no heredi-
tary class with hereditary rights — education, and
employment in the service of the state, form the
only marks of distinction ; and the men of let-
ters and government functionaries are blended
together in the single class of Mandarins ; but
the state is all in all. However, this absolute
monarchical system has not conduced to the
peace, stability, and permanent prosperity of
the state, for the whole history of China, from
beginning to end, displays one continued series
of seditions, usurpations, anarchy, changes of
dynasty, and other violent revolutions and catas-
trophes. This is proved by the bare statement

476

F. SCHLEGEL.

of facts, though the official language of the im-
perial annals ever concedes the final triumph
to the monarchical principle.

The same violent revolutions occurred in the
department of science and of public doctrines,
as in the instance already cited of the general
burning of the books by order of the first gene-
ral emperor, when the men of letters, or at least
a party of them, were persecuted, and four
hundred and sixty followers of Confucius burnt.
This act of tyranny undoubtedly supposes a
very violent contest between factions — an im-
portant political struggle between hostile sects,
and a mighty revolution in the intellectual
world. At the same time too, a favorite of
this tyrannical prince introduced a new system
of writing, which has led to the greatest confu-
sion, even in subsequent ages. Such an intellec-
tual revolution, is doubtless evident on the intro-
duction of the Indian religion of Buddhu. or Fo,
(according to the Chinese appellation,) which
took place precisely three-and-thirty years after
the foundation of Cliristianity. The conquest of
China by the Moguls, under Zingis Khan, oc-
curred at the same time that their expeditions
towards the opposite quarter of Europe spread
terror and desolation over Russia and Poland,
as far as the confines of Silesia. This conquest
produced a reaction, and a popular revolution,
conducted by a common citizen of China, by
name Chow, restored the empire; this citizen
afterwards ascended the throne, and became
the founder of a new Chinese dynasty. The
emperors of the present dynasty of Mantchou
Tartars, that has now governed China since the
middle of the seventeenth century, are distin-
guished for their attachment to the old customs
and institutions of China, and even to its lan-
guage and science ; and their elevation to the
throne has given rise to many great scientific
enterprises, and has been singularly favorable
to the investigations of those European scholars,
whose object it is to make us better acquainted
with China. But at the moment I am speaking,
a great rebellion has broken out in the northern
part of the kingdom, and in the opposite extre-
mity the Christians are exposed to a more than
ordinary persecution.

These few leading incidents in Chinese his-
tory may suffice to make known the principal
epochs in -the intellectual progress and civiliza-
tion of this people. As the constitution and
development of the human mind are in each
of those ancient nations closely connected with
the nature of their language, and even some-
times (as in the case of the Chinese) with their
system of writing, the language of the latter
people being, on account of its amazing copious-
ness, less fit for conversation than for writing, I
shall now make a few remarks on the very
artificial mode of Chinese writing, which is
perfectly unique in its kind : but I shall confine
my observation to its general character, and
shall forbear entering into the vast labyrinth of
the eighty thousand cipher-signs of speech, and

all the problems and difficulties which they in-
volve. The Chinese writing was undoubtedly
in its origin symbolical, though the rude marks
of those primitive symbols can now scarcely
be discerned in the enigmatical abbreviations,
and in the complex combinations of the charac-
ters at present in use. It is no slight problem
even for the learned of China to reduce, with
any degree of certainty, the boundless quantity
of their written characters to their simple ele-
ments and primitive roots : in this, however,
they have succeeded, and have shown that all
these elements are to be found in the two hun-
dred and fourteen symbols, or keys of writing,
as they call them. The Chinese characters of
the primitive ages comprise only representa-
tions, indicated by a few rude strokes, of those
first simple objects which surround man while
living in the most simple state of society —
such as the sun and moon, the most familiar
animals, the common plants, the implements
of human labor, weapons, and the difierent
parts of human dwellings. This is the same
rude symbolical writing which we find among
other civilized nations, the Americans, for ex-
ample, and among them, the Mexicans in par-
ticular.

The celebrated French orientalist, Abel Re-
musat, who in our times has infused a new
life into the study of Chinese literature, and
especially thrown on the whole subject a much
greater degree of clearness than originally be-
longed to it, has, in his examination of this first
very meagre outline of the infant civilization
of China, wherein he discovers the then very
contracted circle of Chinese ideas, made many
intelligent observations, and many historical
deductions. And if, as he conjectures, the dis-
covery of Chinese writing must date its origin
four thousand years back, this would bring it
within three or four generations from the de-
luge, according to the vulgar era — an estimate
which certainly is not exaggerated. If this
European scholar, intimately conversant as
he is with Chinese antiquities and science, is
at a loss adequately to describe his astonish-
ment at the extreme poverty of these first sym-
bols of Chinese writing, so no one, doubtless,
possesses in a higher degree than himself all
the necessary attainments to enable him to ap-
preciate the immeasurable distance between
this first extreme jejuneness of ideas, and the
boundless wealth displayed in the latter artifi-
cial and complex writing of the Chihese.

But when, among other things, he calls our
attention to the fact that, in this primitive writ-
ing, even the sign or symbol of a priest is want-
ing— a symbol which together with the class
itself must exist among the very rudest nations
— I must concur in the truth of the remark : for
he himself adduces, among other characters,
one which must represent a magician. Now
among the heathen nations of the primitive age,
the one personage was certainly identical with
the other, as even among the Cainites was very

F. SCHLEGEL.

477

probably the case. Even the combination of
several of those simple characters, which gene-
rally serve to denote the more abstract ideas,
seem often, or at least originally, not to have
been regulated by any profound principle of
symbolism, but to have arisen merely out of the
vulgar perceptions or impressions of every-day
life. For instance, the character denoting hap-
piness is composed of two signs, of which one
represents an open mouth, and the other a
handful of rice, or rice by itself Here we see
no allusion is made to any very lofty or chime-
rical idea of happiness, or to any mystic or spi-
ritual conception of it ; but, as this written cha-
racter well evinces, the Chinese notion of hap-
piness is simply represented by a mouth filled
and saturated with good wine. Another ex-
ample of nearly the same kind, given by Re-
musat with a sort of polite reluctance, is the
character designating woman, which, when
doubled, signifies strife and contention, and
when tripled, immoral and disorderly conduct.
How widely removed are all those coarse
and trivial combinations of ideas from an ex-
quisite sense — a deep symbolism of Nature —
from those spiritual emblems in the Egyptian
hieroglyphics, so far as they have been deci-
phered ; although these emblems may have
been, and were in fact, applied to the purpose
of alphabetic usage. In the hieroglyphics there
is, besides the bare literal meaning, a high sym-
bolic inspiration, like a soul of life, the breathing
of a high, indwelling spirit, a deeply felt signi-
ficancy, a lofty and beautiful design apparent
through the dead characters denoting any par-
ticular name or fact.

But independently of this boundless chaos of
written characters, the Chinese undoubtedly
possess a system of scientific symbols and sym-
bolical signs, which constitute the substance
of their most sacred book, the I-King, which
signifies the book of unity, or, as others explain
it, the book of changes ; and either name will
agree with the meaning of those symbols which,
when rightly understood, and conceived in the
spirit of early antiquity, will appear to be of a
very remarkable and scientific nature. There
are only two primary figures or lines, from
which proceed originally the four symbols and
the eight kona or combinations representing
Nature, which form the basis of the high Chi-
nese philosophy. These first two primary prin-
ciples are a straight, unbroken line, and a line
broken or divided into two. If these first sim-
I^le elements are doubled, namely, two straight
lines put under each other like our arithmetical
sign of equation, and two broken or divided
lines also put together, the difierent lines are
formed. According as one broken line occu-
pies the upper or the lower place, there are
two possible variations — when put together,
there are four possible variations ; and these
constitute the four symbols. But if three lines
of these two kinds, the straight and the broken,
are united or placed under each other, so, ac-

cording to the number or the upper, middle or
lower place of either species of line, there are
eight possible combinations, and these are the
eight kona, which, together with the four sym-
bols, refer to the natural elements, and to the
primary principles of all things, and serve as
the symbolical expression, or scientific designa-
tion of these.

What is now the real sense and proper sig-
nification of those scientific primary lines among
the Chinese, which exert an influence over the
whole of their ancient literature, and upon
which they themselves have written an incre-
dible number of learned commentaries'? Leib-
nitz supposed them to contain a reference to the
modern algebraical discoveries, and especially
to the binary calculation. Other writers, espe-
cially among the English, drawing their obser-
vations more from real life, remark on the other
hand, that this ancient system of mystical lines
serves at present the purpose of a sort of ora-
cular play of questions, like the turning up of
cards among Europeans, and is converted to
many superstitious uses, especially for making
pretended discoveries in alchemy, to w^hich the
Chinese are very much addicted. But this is
only an abuse of modern times, which no longer
understand this primitive system of symbolical
signs and lines. The high antiquity of these
lines and of the eight kona can be the less a
matter of doubt, as even mythology has ascribed
them to the primitive patriarch of the Chinese,
Fohi, who is represented as having espied these
lines on the back of a tortoise, and having thence
deduced the written characters ; which many
of the learned Chinese wish to derive from
these eight kona or combinations of the first
symbolical lines. But the French scholar, whom
I have more than once had occasion to name,
and who is well able to form a competent opi-
nion on the subject, is most decidedly opposed
to this Chinese derivation of all the written
characters from the eight kona; and it would
appear, indeed, that the latter differ totally from
the common system of Chinese writing, and
must be looked upon as of a distinct scientific
nature.

Perhaps we may find a natural explanation
of the true, and not very hidden sense of these
signs, by comparing the fundamental doctrines
of the elder Greek philosophy and science of
Nature. Thus, in the writings of Plato, mention
is often made of the one and of the other, or of
unity and duality, as the original elements of
Nature and first principles of all existence. By
this is meant the doctrine of the first opposition
and of the many oppositions derived from the
first; and also of the possible, and conceivable,
or required adjustment and compromise be-
tween the two, and of the restoration of the
first unity and eternal equality anterior to all
opposition, and which terminates and absorbs
in itself all discord. Thus these eight kona,
and mathematical signs or symbolical lines of
ancient China, would comprise nothing more

478

F. SCHLEGEL.

than a dry outline of all dynamical speculation
and science. And it is therefore quite consistent
that the old sacred book which contains these
principles of Chinese science should be termed
either the book of unity or the book of changes;
for doubtless this title refers to the doctrine of
an absolute unity, as the fundamental principle
of all things, and to the doctrine of difl'erences,
or oppositions or changes springing out of that
first unity.

This doctrine of an opposition in all things —
in thought as in nature — will become more ap-
parent if we reflect on the new and brilliant
discoveries in natural philosophy. For as in
this science, the oxygen and hydrogen parts in
the chemistry of metals, or the positive or nega-
tive end of electrical phenomena, in the attract-
ing and repelling pole of magnetism, reveal
such an opposition and dynamic play of living
powers in nature ; so in this philosophy of
China, the abstract doctrine of this opposition
and dynamical change of existence seems to be
laid down with a sort of mathematical gene-
rality, as the basis of all future science. In our
higher natural philosophy, indeed, all this has
been jiroved from facts and experience ; and,
besides, this dynamic life forms but one element,
and the one branch of the science to be ac-
quired; and a philosophy founded entirely on
this dynamical law of existence, without any
regard to the other and higher principle of in-
ternal experience and moral life, intellectual
intuition and divine revelation, would be at
best a very partial system, and by no means of
general application ; or if a general application
of such a system were made, it must lead to
endless mistakes, errors and contradictions.
That such a system of dynamical speculation
and science, if extended to objects where it
cannot be corroborated by facts, to all things
divine and human, real, possible, or impossible,
will undoubtedly lead to such a chaotic con-
fusion of ideas, we have had a memorable ex-
perience in the German "Philosophy of Nature"
of the last generation ; a philosophy which con-
sisted in a fanciful play of thought with Polari-
ties, and oppositions, and points of indifference be-
tween them, but which has been long appreciated
in its true worth and real nature, and consigned
to its proper limits.

Thus this outline of the old Chinese symbols
of thought, which have a purely metaphysical
import, would lay before us the most recent
error clothed in the most antique form — but the
Chinese system is in itself very remarkable and
important. The fundamental text of the old
sacred book on this doctrine of unity and oppo-
sitions, and which may now be easily compre-
hended, runs thus, according to Rernusat's lite-
ral translation : "The great first principle has
engendered or produced two equations and dif-
ferences, or primary rules of existence: but the
two primary rules or two oppositions, namely,
Yn and Yang, or repose and motion (the affirm-
ative and negative as we might otherwise call

them), have produced four signs or symbols;
and the four symbols have produced the eight
kona, or further combinations." These eight
kona are kien, or ether, kui, or pure water, li,
or pure fire, tcliin, or thunder, siun, the wind,
kan, common water, ken, a mountain, and kuen,
the earth.

On this ancient basis of Chinese philosophy,
proceeding from inditference to diflerences, was
afterwards founded the rationalist system of
Lao-tseu, whose name occurs somewhat earlier
than that of Confucius. The Taosse, or disci-
ples of Reason, as the followers of this philoso-
pher entitle themselves, have very much de-
generated, and have become a complete athe-
istical sect; though the blame of this must be
attributed, not to the founder, but to his disciples
only. It is however acknowledged that the
atheistical princijiles of tliis dead science of
reason, have been very widely diffused through-
out the Chinese empire, and for a certain period
were almost generally prevalent.

As it is necessary to keep in view a certain
chronological order, in our investigations of the
progressive development of Chinese intellect, I
may here observe that, as far as European re-
search has been able to ascertain, we may dis-
tinguish three principal and successive epochs
in the history both of the religion and science
of China. The first epoch is that of sacred tra-
dition, and of the old constitution of the Chinese
empire, and discloses those primitive views,
and that primitive system of ethics, on which
the empire was founded. The second, which
we may fix about six centuries before our era,
is the period of scientific philosophy, pursu-
ing two opposite iniths of inquiry. Confucius
applied his attention entirely to the more prac-
tical study of ethics, with vt'hich, indeed, the
old constitution, history, and sacred traditions
of the Chinese were very intimateJy connected ;
and the pure morality of Confucius, which was
the first branch of Chinese philosophy knov/n
in Europe, excited to a high degree the enthu-
siasm of many European scholars, who, by their
too exclusive admiration, were prevented from
forming a right estimate of the general character
of Chinese philosophy.

Another system of philosophy, purely specu-
lative and widely difl'erent from the practical
and ethical doctrine of Confucius, was the sys-
tem of Lao-tseu and his school, whence issued
the above-mentioned rationalist sect of Taosse,
that has at last fallen into atheism. As to the
question whether Lao-tseu travelled into the
remote West, or in case he came only as far as
Western Asia, whether he derived his system
from the Persian or Egyptian doctrines, or me-
diately from the Greek philosophy — this ques-
tion I shall not here stop to discuss, for the
matter is very doubtful in itself, and, were it
even proved, still all the doctrines borrowed
from the West were invested in a form purely
Chinese, and clothed in quite a native garb.
Those signs in the I-King, we have already

F. SCHLEGEL.

479

spoken of, evidently comprise the germ of such
an absolute, negative, and consequently athe-
istic rationalism — a mechanical play of idle ab-
stractions. The third epoch in the progress of
Chinese opinions is formed by the introduction
of the Indian religion of Buddha or of Fo. The
great revolution which had previously occurred
in the old doctrines and manners of China; and
the ruling spirit of that false and absolute ra-
tionalism, had already paved the way for the
foreign religion of Buddha, which, of all the
Pagan imitations of truth, occupies the lowest
grade.

The old sacred traditions of the Chinese are
not so overlaid, nor disfigured with fictions, as
those of most other Asiatic nations; those of the
Indians, for example, and of the early nations
of Pagan Europe ; but their traditions breathe
the purer spirit of genuine history. Hence, the
poetry of the Chinese is not mythological, like
that of other nations, but is either lyrical, (as in
the Shi-King, a book of sacred songs, composed
or compiled by Confucius,) or is entirely con-
fined to the representation of real life, and of
the social relations — as in the modern tales and
novels, several of which have been translated
into the European languages.

The old traditions of the Chinese have many
traits of a kindred character with, or at least of
a strong resemblance to, the Mosaic revelation,
and even to the sacred traditions of the nations
of Western Asia, particularly the Persians ; and
in these traditions we find much that either
corroborates the testimony of Holy Writ, or at
least aflTords matter for further comparison. We
have before mentioned the very peculiar man-
ner in which the Chinese speak of the great
Flood, and how their first progenitors struggled
against the savage waters, and how this task
was afterwards neglected by bad or improvi-
dent rulers, who, in consequence of this neglect,
were brought to ruin.

I will cite but one instance, where the pa-
rallel is indeed remarkable. In the I-King,
mention is made of the fallen dragon, or of the
spirit of the dragon, that, for his presumption in
wishing to ascend to heaven, was precipitated
into the abyss ; and the words in which this
event is described are precisely the same, or at
least very similar to those which our Scriptures
apply to the rebel angel, and the Persian books
to Ahriman. However, this dragon is whimsi-
cally, we might almost say, artlessly, made the
sacred symbol of the Chinese Empire and the
Emperor. The paternal power of the latter is
understood in a much too absolute sense ; not
only is the Emperor styled the lord of heaven
and earth, and even the sun of God, but his will
is revered as the will of God, or rather com-
pletely identified with it ; and even the most
determined eulogists of the Chinese constitution
and manners, cannot deny that the monarch is
almost the object of a real worship. Chris-
tianity teaches that all power is from God j but
it does not thereby declare that all power is one

and the same with God. Even a dominion
over nature and her powers is ascribed to the
Emperor of China, as the illustrious lord of
heaven and earth.

Moreover, no hereditary nobility, no classes
separated by distinctions of birth, exist in this
country, as in India. The Emperor, half iden-
tified with the Deity, had alone the privilege in
ancient times of offering on the sacred heights
of the great sacrifice to God. Some European
writers have, from this circumstance, conceived
the Chinese constitution to be theocratic ; but if
it be so, it is only in its outward form or original
mould ; for it would be difficult to show in it
any trace of a true, vital theocracy. All that
pomp of sacred ceremony and religious titles,
so strangely absurd, forms a striking contrast
with real history, and with that long succession
of profligate and unfortunate reigns, and per-
petual revolutions, which fill most of the pages
of the Chinese annals. We should err greatly,
were we to regard all these high imperial titles
as the mere swell and exaggeration of Eastern
phraseology. The Chinese speak of their celes-
tial Empire of the Medium, as they call their
country, in terms which no European writer
would apply to a Christian state ; and such, in-
deed, as the Scriptures and religious authors use
in reference only to the kingdom of God. They
cannot conceive it possible for the earth to con-
tain two emperors at one and the same time,
and own the sway of more than one such abso-
lute lord and master. Hence, they look on
every solemn foreign embassy as a debt of
homage; nor is this sentiment the idle effect of
vanity or fancy — it is a firm and settled belief,
perfectly coinciding with the whole system of
their religious and political doctrines.

THE HINDOOS.

When Alexander the Great had attained the
object of his most ardent desires, and, realizing
the fabulous expedition of Bacchus and his train
of followers, had at last reached India, the
Greeks found this vast region, even on this side
of the Ganges — (for that river, the peculiar ob-
ject of Alexander's ambition, the conqueror, in
despite of all his efforts, was unable to reach)—
the Greeks found this country extensive, fertile,
highly cultivated, populous, and filled with
flourishing cities, as it was divided into a num-
ber of great and petty kingdoms. They found
there an hereditary division of castes, such as
still subsists ; although the}' reckoned not four,
but seven, a circumstance, however, which, as
we shall see later, argues no essential differ-
ence in the division of Indian classes at that
period. They remarked, also, that the country
was divided into two religious parties or sects,
the Erachmans and the Samancans. By the first,
the Greeks designated the ibllowers of the reli-
gion of Braluna, as well as of Vishnoo and Siva,
a religion which still subsists, and is more
deeply rooted and more widely difi"used and
prevalent in India than any other religious

480

F. SCHLEGEL.

system ; distinguished as it is by its leading
do^ma of the transmigration of souls, which has
exerted the inightiest influence on every depart-
ment of thought, on the whole bearing of Indian
philosophy, and on the whole arrangement of
Indian life. But by the Greek denomination of
Sainnncans we must certainly understand the
Buddhists, as, among the rude nations of cen-
tral Asia, and in other countries, the priests of
the religion of Fo bear at this day the name of
Schamans. These priests indeed appear to be
little better than mere sorcerers and jugglers, as
are the priests of all idolatrous nations that are
sunk to the lowest degree of barbarism and
superstition. The word itself is pure Indian,
and occurs frequently in the religious and meta-
physical treatises of that people; for originally,
and before it liad received such a mean accep-
tation among those Buddhist nations, it had
quite a philosophical sense, as it still has in the
Sanscrit. This word denotes that equality of
mind, or that deep internal equanimity, which,
according to the Indian philosophy, must pre-
cede, and is indispensably requisite to the per-
fect union with the Godhead. In general, all
the names by which Buddha, the priests of his
religion, and its important and fundamental
doctrines are known, whether in Thibet, or
among the Mongul nations, in Siam, in Pegu, or
in Japan — in general, we say, all those names
are pure Indian words; for the tradition of all
those nations, with unanimous accord, deduces
the origin of this sect from India.

The name of Buddha, which the Chinese have
changed or shortened into that of Fo, is rather
an honorary appellation, and is expressive of
the divine wistlom with which, in the opinion
of his followers, he was endowed; or which
rather, according to their belief, became visible
in his person. The period of his existence is
fixed by many at six hundred years, by others
again at a thousand years, before the Christian
era. His real and historical name was Gau-
tama; and it is remarkable that the same name
was borne by the author of one of the principal
philosophical systems of the Hindoos, the Nyaya
philosophy, the leading principles of which will
be the subject of future consideration, when we
come to speak of the Indian philosophy. Indeed,
the dialectic spirit, which pervades the Nyaya
philosophy, would seem to be of a kindred na-
ture and like origin with the confused meta-
physics of the Buddhists. But the names, not-
withstanding their identity, denote two different
persons; although even the founder of the dia-
lectic system, like almost all other celebrated
names in the ancient history, traditions and
sciences of the Indians, figures in the character
of a mythological personage. But we must first
take a view of the state of manners, and the
state of political civilization, in India, in order
to be able to form a right judgment and estimate
of the intellectual and scientific exertions of its
inhabitants, and of the peculiar nature and ten-
dency of the Indian opinions.

By the manner in which the Greek writers
speak of the two religious i^arties into which
Alexander found the country divided, it can
scarcely be doubted that the Buddhists at that
period were far more numerous, and more ex-
tensively diffused throughout India, than they
are at the present day, and this inference is
even corroborated by many historical vouchers
of the Indians themselves. Although the Build-
hists are now but an obscure sect of dissenters
in the western peninsula, they are still tolera-
bly numerous in several of its provinces; while,
on the other hand, they have complete posses-
sion of the whole eastern and Indo-Chinese
peninsula. Besides this sect, there are many
other religious dissenters even in Hindoslan ;
such, for instance, as the sect of Jains, who
steer a middle course between the followers of
the old and established religion of Brahma and
the Buddhists; for, like the latter, they reject the
Indian division and system of castes. * * *
This singular phenomenon of Ii:idian life has
even some points of connection with a capital
article of their creed, the doctrine of the trans-
migration of souls — a doctrine which will be
later the subject of our inquiries, and which
we shall endeavor to place in a nearer and
clearer light. In showing the influence of the
institution of castes on the state of manners in
India, I may observe, in the first place, that in
this division of the social ranks there is no dis-
tinct class of slaves, (as was indeed long ago
remarked by the Greeks,) that is to say, no such
class of bought slaves — no men, the property
and merchandise of their fellow-men — as ex-
isted in ancient Greece and Rome, as exist even
at this day among Mahometan nations ; and, as
in the case of the Negroes, are still to be found
in the colonial possessions of the Christian and
European states. The laboring class of the
Sudras is undoubtedly not admitted to the high
privileges of the first classes, and is in a state
of great dependence upon these ; but this very
caste of Sudras has its hereditary and clearly
defined rights. It is only by a crime, that a
man in India can lose his caste, and the rights
annexed to it. These rights are acquired by
birth, except in the instance of the offspring of
unlawful marriages between persons of difier-
ent castes. The fate of these hapless wretches
is indeed hard — harder, almost, than that of
real slaves among other nations. Ejected, ex-
communicated as it were, loaded with maledic-
tion, they are regarded as the outcasts of society,
yea, almost of humanity itself. This terrible
exclusion, however, from the rights of citizen-
ship, occurs only in certain clearly specified
cases. There are even some cases of exception
explicitly laid down, where a marriage with a
person of diflerent caste is permitted, or where
at least the only consequence to the children of
such marriage is a degradation to an inferior
class of society. But the general rule is, that a
lawful marriage can be contracted only with a
woman of the same caste. Women participate

F. SCHLEGEL.

481

in all the rights of their caste ; in the high pre-
rogatives of Brahmins, if they are of the sacer-
dotal race, although there are not and never
were priestesses among the Indians, as among
the other heathen nations of antiquity; or in
the privileges of nobility, if they belong to the
caste of the Cshatriyas. These privileges which
belong and are secured to women, and this par-
ticipation in the rights and advantages of their
respective classes, must tend much, undoubt-
edly, to mitigate the injurious effects of poly-
gamy. The latter custom has ever prevailed,
and still jirevails in India, tliough not to the
same degree of licentiousness, nor with the
same unlimited and despotic control as in Ma-
hometan countries ; but a plurality of wives is
there permitted only under certain conditions,
and with certain legal restrictions, consequently
in that milder form under which it existed of
old in the warm climes of Asia, and according
to the patriarchal simplicity of the yet thinly
peopled world. The much higher social rank,
and better moral condition of the female sex in
India, are apparent from those portraits of In-
dian life, which are drawn in their beautiful
works of poetry, whether of a primitive or a
later date, and from that deep feeling of ten-
derness, that affectionate regard and reverence,
with which the character of woman and her
domestic relations are invariably represented.
These few examples suffice to show the moral
effects of the Indian division of castes; and
while they serve to defend this institution
against a sweeping sentence of condemnation,
or the indiscriminate censure of too partial pre-
judice, they place the subject in its true and
proper light, and present alike the advantages
and defects of the system.

When the Greeks, who accompanied or fol-
lowed Alexander into India, numbered seven
instead of four castes in that country, they did
not judge inaccurately the outward condition
of things, but they paid not sufficient attention
to the Indian notion of castes; and their very
enumeration of those castes proves they had
some points of detail. In this enumeration,
they assign the first rank to the Brachnians, or
wise men ; and by the artisans, they no doubt
understood the trailing and manufacturing class
of the Vaisyas. The counsellors and intendants
of kings and princes do not constitute a distinct
caste, but are mere officers and functionaries,
who, if they be lawyers, belong to, and must be
taken from, the caste of Brahmins; though the
other two upper castes are not always rigidly ex-
cluded from these functions. The class, again,
that tends the breeding of cattle, and lives by
the chase, forms not a distinct caste, but merely
follows a peculiar kind of employment. And
when the Greeks make two castes of the agri-
culturists and the warriors, they only mean to
draw a distinction between the laborers and
the masters, or the real proprietors of the soil.

3l

Even the name of Cshatriyas signifies landed
proprietor ; and as in the old Germanic consti-
tution, the arriere-ban was composed of landed
proprietors, and the very possession of the soil
imposed on the nobility the obligation of mili-
tary service; so, in the Indian constitution, the
two ideas of property in land and military ser-
vice, are indissolubly connected. Some modern
inquirers have attached very great importance
to the undoubtedly wide and remarkable sepa-
ration of the fourth or menial caste of Sudras
from the three upper castes. They have thought
they perceived, also, a very great difference in
the bodily structure and general physiognomy
of this fourth caste from those of the others; and
have thence concluded that the caste of Sudras
is descended from a totally different race, some
primitive and barbarous people whom a more
civilized nation, to whom the tliree upper castes
must have belonged, have conquered and sub-
dued, and degraded to that menial condition,
the lowest grade in the social scale — a grade to
which the iron arm of law eternally binds them
down. This hypothesis is, in itself, not very im-
probable ; and it may bo proved from history,
that the like has really occurred in several
Asiatic and even European countries. In the
back-ground of old, mighty and civilized na-
tions, we can almost always trace the primeval
inhabitants of the country, who, dispossessed
of their territory, have been either reduced to
servitude by their conquerors, or have gradually
been incorporated with them. These primitive
inhabitants, when compared with their later
and more civilized conquerors, appear indeed
in general rude and barbarous, though we find
among them a certain number of ancient cus-
toms and arts, which by no means tend to con-
firm the notion of an original and universal
savage state of nature. It is possible that the
same circumstances have occurred in India,
though this is by no means a necessary infer-
ence, for humanity in its progress follows not
one uniform course, but pursues various and
widely difierent paths; and hitherto, at least,
no adequate historical proof has, in my opinion,
been adduced for the reality of such an occur-
rence in India. It has also been conjectured
that the caste of warriors, or the princes and
hereditary nobility, possessed originally greater
power and influence; and that it is only by
degrees the race of Brahmins has attained to
that great preponderance which it displays in
later times, and which it even still possesses.
We find, indeed, in the old epic, mythological,
and historical poems of the Indians, many pas-
sages which describe a contest between tliese
two classes, and wliich represent the deified
heroes of India victoriously defending the wise
and pious Brahmins from the attacks of the
fierce and presumptuous Cshatriyas. Tills ac-
count, however, is susceptible of another inter-
pretation, and should not be taken exclusively
in this political sense. That in the brilliant
period of their ancient and national dynasties
41

482

F. SCHLEGEL.

and governments, the princes and warlike nobi-
lity possessed greater weight and importance
than at present, is quite in the nature of tilings,
and appears indeed to liave been undoubtedly
the case. From many indications in the old
Indian traditions and histories, it would appear
that the caste of Cshatriyas was partially, at
least, of foreign extraction; while those tradi-
tionary accounts constantly represent the caste
of Brahmins as the highest class, and nobler
part, nay, the corner-stone of the wliole com-
munity.

The origin of an hereditary caste of warriors,
when considered in itself, may be easily ac-
counted for, and it is nowise contrary to the na-
ture of things that, even in a state of society
where legal rights are yet undefined, the son,
especially the eldest, should govern and admin-
ister the territory or property which his deceased
father possessed, and even in those cases where
it was necessary, should take possession, admin-
ister, and defend this property by open force
and the aid of his dependants.

But afterwards, when the social relations be-
came more clearly fixed by law, and a union
on a larger scale was formed by a general
league, as the duties of military service were
annexed to the soil, so the right to the soil was
again determined by, and depended on, mili-
tary service ; now^, in that primitive period of
history, such a political union might have been
formed by a common subordination to a higher
power, or liy a confederacy between several
potentates ; and this has really been the origin
of an hereditary, landed nobility, in many
countries.

The hereditary continuance or transmission
of arts and trades, whereby the son pursues the
occupation of the father, and learns and applies
what the latter has discovered, lias nothing sin-
gular in itself, and appears indeed to contain its
own explanation. But it is not easy, or, at least,
equally so, to account for the exclusive distribu-
tion and the exact and rigid separation of castes,
particularly by any religious motives and prin-
ciples, which are, however, indubitably con-
nected with this institution. Still less can we
understand the existence of a great, hereditary
class of priests, eternally divided from the rest
of the community, such as existed both in India
and Egypt. To comprehend this strange phe-
nomenon, we must endeavor to discover its
origin, and trace it back, as far as is possible, to
the primitive ages of the world. If, for die
sake of brevity, I have used the expression, "a
class of liereditary jjriests," I ought to add, in
order to explain my meaning more clearly, that
the word priests must not be taken in that literal
sense which antiquity attached to it; that the
Brahmins are not confined merely to the func-
tions of prayer, but are strictly and eminently
theologians, since they alone are permitted to
read and interpret the Vedas, while the other
castes can read only with their sanction such
passages of those sacred writings as are adapted

to their circumstances, and the fourth caste are
entirely jirohibited from hearing any portion of
them. The Brahmins are also the lawyers and
physicians of India, and hence the Greeks did
not designate them erroneously, when they
termed them the caste of philosopliers. * *
* * * Among the Indians, the ruling jirin-
ciple of existence was the doctrine of the trans-
migration of souls, which appears indeed to be
the most characteristic of all their opinions, and
was, by its influence on real life, by far the
most important. We must in the first place
remember, and keep well in our minds, that,
among those nations of primitive antiquity, the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not
a mere probable hypothesis, which, as with
many moderns, needs laborious researches and
difluse argumentations, in order to produce con-
viction on the mind. Nay, we can hardly give
the name of faith to this primitive conception;
for it was a lively certainty, like the feeling of
one's own being, and of what is actually pre-
sent ; and this firm belief in a mere future
existence exerted its influence on all sublunary
alfairs, and was often the motive of mightier
deeds and enterprises, than any more earthly
interest could inspire. I said above, that the
doctrine of the transmigration of souls was not
unconnected with the Indian system of castes ;
for the most honorable appellation of a Brahmin
is Tvija, that is to say, a second time Ijoru, or
regenerated. On one hand, this appellation re-
fers to that spiritual renovation and second
birth of a life of purity consecrated to God, as
in this consists the true calling of a Brahmin,
and the sjjecial purpose of his caste. On the
other hand, this term refers to the belief that
the soul, after many transmigrations through
various forms of animals, and various stages of
natural existence, is permitted in certain cases,
as a peculiar recompense, when it has gone
through its prescribed cycle of migrations, to
return to the world, and be born in the class of
Brahmins. This doctrine of the transmigration
of souls through various bodies of animals or
other forms of existence, and even through more
than one repetition of iiuman life (whether such
migrations were intended as the jaunishment of
souls for their viciousness and impiety, or as
trials for their further purification and amend-
ment)— this doctrine which has always been,
and is still so prevalent in India, was held like
wise by the ancient Egyptians. This accord-
ance in the faith of these two ancient nations,
established beyond all doubt by historical testi-
mony, is indeed remarkable ; and even in the
minutest particulars on the course of migration
allotted to souls, and on the stated periods and
cycles of that migration, the coincidence is often
jjerfectly exact. In this doctrine there was a
noble element of truth — the feeling that man,
since he has gone astray and wandered so far
from his God, must needs exert many efibrts,
and undergo a long and painful pilgrimage,
before he can join the source of all perfection; —

F. SCHLEGEL.

483

the funi conviction and positive certainty that
nothing defective, impure, or defiled with earthly
stains, can enter the pure region ofperlect spirits,
or be eternally united to God ; and that thus,
before it can attain to this blissful end, the im-
mortal soul must pass through long trials and
many purifications. It may now well be con-
ceived, and indeed the experience of this life
would prove it, that suflering, which deeply
pierces the soul, anguish, that convulses all the
members of existence, may contribute, or may
even be necessary to the deliverance of the soul
from all alloy and pollution, as, to borrow a
comparison from natural objects, the generous
nielal is melted down in fire and purged from
its dross. It is certainly true that the greater
the degeneracy and the degradation of man, the
nearer his approximation to the brute ; and
when the transmigration of the immortal soul
through the bodies of various animals is merely
considered as the punishment of its former
transgressions, we can very well understand
the opinion which supposes that man, who, by
his crimes and the abuse of his reason, had de-
scended to the level of the brute, should at last
be transformed into the brute itself. But what
could have given rise to the opinion that the
transmigration of souls through the bodies of
beasts was the road or channel of amendment,
was destined to draw the soul nearer to infinite
perfection, and even to accomplish its total
union with the Supreme Being, from whom, in
all appearance, it seemed calculated to remove
it I'urther ? And as regards a return to the pre-
sent state and existence of man, what thinking
person would ever wish to return to a life
divided and fiuctuating as it is, between desire
and disgust, wasted in internal and external
strife, and which, though brightened by a few
scattered rays of truth, is still encompassed
with the dense clouds of error ; — even though
this return to earthly existence should be ac-
complished in the Brahminical class so highly
revered in India, or in the princely and royal
race so highly favored by fortune? There is in
all this a strange mixture and confusion of the
ideas of this world with those of the next ; and
how the latter is separated from the former by
an impassable gulf, they seem not to have been
sufliciently aware. Both these ancient nations,
the Egyptians as well as the Indians, regarded,
with few exceptions, the Metempsychosis, not
as an object of joyful hope, but rather as a
calamity impending over the soul; and whether
they considered it to be a punishment for earthly
transgressions, or a slate of probation — a severe
but preparatory trial of purification — they still
looked on it as a calamity, which to avert or to
mitigate, they deemed that no attempt, no act,
no exertion, no sacrifice, ought to be spared.

In the manner, however, in which these two
nations conceived this doctrine, there was a
striking and fundamental difference ; and if the
leading tenet was the same among both, the
views which each connected with it were very

dissimilar. Deprived, as we are, of the old
books and original writings of the EgyjJtians,
we are unable perfectly to comprehend and
seize their peculiar ideas on this subject, and
state them with the same assurance as we can
those of the Indians, whose ancient writings we
now possess in such abundance, and which in
all main points perfectly agree wdth the accounts
of the ancient classics. But we are left to infer
the ideas of the Egyptians on the Metempsy-
chosis only from their singular treatment of the
dead and the bodies of the deceased; from that
sepulchral art (if I may use the expression)
which with them acc|uired a dignity and an im-
portance, and was carried to a pitch of refine-
ment, such as we find among no other people;
from that careful and costly consecration of the
corpse, which we still regard with wonder and
astonishment in their mummies and other monu-
ments. That all these solemn preparations, and
the religious rites which accompanied them, that
the inscriptions on the tombs and mummies had
all a religious meaning and object, and were
intimately connected with the doctrine of the
transmigration of souls, can admit of no doubt,
though it is a matter of greater dilFiculty to
ascertain with precision the peculiar ideas they
were nreant to express. Did the Egyptians
believe that the soul did not separate imme-
diately from the body which it has ceased to
animate, but only on the decay and putrefaction
of the corpse ? Or did they wish, by their art
of embalmment, to preserve the body from
decay, in order to deliver the soul from the
dreaded transmigration 1 The Egyptian treat-
ment of the dead would certainly seem to
imply a belief that, for some time at least after
death, there existed a certain connection be-
tween the soul and body. Yet we cannot adopt
this supposition to an unqualified extent, as it
would be in contradiction to those symbolical
representations that so frequently occur in Egyp-
tian art, and in which the soul, immediately
after death, is represented as summoned before
the judgment-seat of God, severely accused by
the hostile demon, but defended by the friendly
and guardian spirit, who employs every resource
to procure the deliverance and acquittal of the
soul. Or did the Egyptians think that by all
these rites, as by so many magical expedients,
they would keep ofl" the malevolent fiend from
the soul, and obtain for it the succour of good
and friendly divinities'? Now, that the gates
of hieroglyphic science have been at last opened,
we may trust that a further progress in the
science will disclose to us more satisfactory in-
formation on all these tojiics.

The Indians, however, who always remained
total strangers to the mode of burial and treat-
ment of the dead practised in Egypt, adopted a
very difl'erent course to procure the deliverance
of the human soul from transmigration : they
had recourse to philosophy, to the highest aspir-
ings of thought towards God, to a total and
lasting immersion of feeling in the unfathom-

484

F. SCHLEGEL.

able abyss of the divine essence. They have
never doulited that by this means a perfect
union with the Deity might be obtained even
in this life, and that thus the soixl, emanci-
pated from all mutation and migration through
the various forms of animated nature in this
world of illusion, might remain forever united
with its God. Such is the object to which all
the different systems of Indian philosophy tend
— such is the term of all their inquiries. This
philosophy contains a multitude of the sub-
limest reflections on the separation from all
earthly things, and on the vmion with the God-
head ; and there is no high conception in this
department of metaphysics, unknown to the
Hindoos. But this absorption of all thought
and all consciousness in God — this solitary en-
during feeling of internal and eternal union
with the Deity, they have carried to a pitch
and extreme that may almost be called a moral
and intellectual self-annihilation. This is the
same philosophy, though in a different form,
which, in the history of European intellect
and science, has received the denomination of
mysticism. The possible excesses, the perilous
abyss in this philosophy has been in general ac-
knowledged, and even pointed out in particular
cases, where egotism or pride has been detected
under a secret disguise, or where this total ab-
straction of thought and feeling has spurned all
limit, measure, and law. In general, however,
the European mind, by its more temperate and
harmonious constitution, by the greater variety
of its attainments, and, above all, by the purer
and fuller light of revealed truth, has been pre-
served frcnn those aberrations of mysticism
which in India have been carried to such a
fearful extent, not only in speculation, but in
real life and practice ; and which, tratiscending
as they do all the limits of human nature, far
exceed the bounds of possibility, or what men
have in general considered as such. And the
apparently incredible things which the Greeks
related more than two thousand years ago,
respecting the recluses of India, or Gymnoso-
phists, as they called those Yogis, are found to
exist even at the present day ; and ocular ex-
perience has fully corroborated the truth of
their narratives.

Of the political history of India, little can be
said, for the Indians scarcely possess any regu-
lar history — any works to which we should
give the denomination of historical ; for their
history is interwoven and almost confounded
with mythology, and is to be found only in the
old mythological works, especially in their two
great national and epic poems, the Eamayan
and the Mahabarat, and in the eighteen Puranas
(the most select and classical of the popular
and mythological legends of India), and per-
haps in the traditionary history of particular
dynasties and provinces ; and even the works
A'e have mentioned are not merely of a mytho-

historical, but in a great measure of a theolo-
gical and philosophical purport. The more
modern history of Hiudostan, from the first
Mahometan conquest at the commencement of
the eleventh century of our era, can indeed be
traced with pretty tolerable certainty; but as
this portion of Indian history is unconnected
with, and incapable of illustrating the true state
and progress of the intellectual refinement of
the Hindoos, it is of no importance to our imme-
diate object. Tlie more ancient history of that
country, particularly in the earlier period, is
mostly fabulous, or, to characterize it by a softer,
and at the same time more correct name, a his-
tory purely mythic and traditionary; and it
would be no easy task to divest the real and
authentic history of ancient India of the garb
of mythology and poetical tradition ; a task
which at least has not yet been executed with
adequate critical acumen.

Chronology, too, shares the same fate with the
sister science of history, for in the early period
it is fabulous, and in the more modern, it is
often not sufficiently precise and accurate. The
number of years assigned to the first three
epochs of the world must be considered as pos-
sessing an astronomical import, rather than as
furnishing any criterion for an historical use. It
is only the fourth and last period of the world —
the age of progressive misery and all-prevailing
wo, which the Indians term Caliyug — that we
can in any way consider an historical epoch ;
and this, the duration of which is computed at
four thousand years, began about a thousand
years before the Christian era. Of the progress
and term of this period of the world, considered
in reference to the history of mankind, the In-
dians entertain a very simple notion. They
believe that the condition of mankind will be-
come at first much worse, but will be afterwards
ameliorated. The regular historical epoch, when
the chronology of India begins to acquire greater
certainty, and from which indeed it is ordina-
rily computed, is the age of King Vikramaditya,
who reigned in the more civilized part of India,
somewhat earlier than the Emperor Augustus,
in the West, perhaps about sixty years before
our era. It was at the court of this monarch,
that nine of the most celebrated sages and poets
of the second era of Indian literature flourished ;
and among these was Calidas, the author of the
beautiful dramatic poem of Sacontala, so gene-
rally known by the English and German trans-
lations. It was in the age of Vikramaditya, that
the later poetry and literature of India, of which
Calidas was so bright an ornament, reached its
full bloom. The elder Indian poetry, particu-
larly the two great epic poems above mentioned,
entirely belong to the early and more fabulous
ages of the world ; so far at least as the poets
themselves are assigned to those ages, and figure
in some degree, as fabulous personages. We
may, however, observe that in the style of po-
etry, in art, and even in the language itself,
there reigns a very great difference between

F. SCHLEGEL.

485

these primitive heroic poems, and the works of
Calidas and other contemporary poets — the dif-
ference is at least as great as that which exists
between Homer and Theocritus, or the other
Bucolic poets of Greece. The oldest of the two
epic poems of the Indians, the Ramayana, by
the poet Valimki, celebrates Rama, his love for
a royal princess, tlie beautiful Sita, and his con-
quest of Lanka, or the modern Isle of Ceylon.
Although in the old historical Sagas of the In-
dians, we find mention made of far-ruling mo-
narchs and all -conquering heroes, still these
traditions seem to show, as in the instance first
cited, that in the oldest, as in the latest times,
prior to foreign conquest, India was not united
in one great monarchy, but was generally par-
celled out into a variety of states ; and this fact
serves to prove that such has ever been in gene-
ral the political condition of that country. The
whole body of ancient Indian traditions and
mythological history is to be found in the other
great epic of the Indians, the Mahabarata, whose
author, or at least compiler, was Vyasa, the
founder of the Vedanta philosophy, the most
esteemed and most prevalent of all the philoso-
phical systems of the Hindoos.

In the whole Indian philosophy, there are in
fact only three different modes of thought, or
three systems absolutely divergent, and we
shall give a sufficiently clear idea of these sys-
tems, if we say that the first is founded on na-
ture, the second on thought, or on the thinking
self, and the third attaches itself exclusively to
the revelation comprised in the Vedas. The
first system, which seems to be one of the most
ancient, bears the name of the Sanchya philo-
sophy— a name which signifies "the philosophy
of Numbers." This is not to be understood in
the Pythagorean sense, that numbers are the
principle of all things, or according to the very
similar principle laid down in the books of
I-King, where we find the eight kona, or the
symbolic, primary lines of all existence. But
the Sanchya systent bears this name because it
reckons successively the first principles of all
things and of all being to the number of four or
five-and-twenty. Among these first principles,
it assigns the highest place to Nature, the second
to understanding, and by this is meant not
merely human understanding, but general and
even Infinite Intelligence ; so that we may con-
sider this system as a very partial philosophy
of Nattire ; and indeed it has been regarded by
some Indian writers as atheistical — a censure
in which the learned Englishman, Mr. Cole-
brooke (to whose extracts and notices we are
indebted for our most precise information on
this whole branch of Indian literature), seems
almost inclined to concur. This system was,
however, by no means a coarse materialism, or
a denial of the Divinity and of everything sa-
cred. The doubts expressed in the passages
cited by Mr. Colebrooke, are directed far more
against the Creation than against God j they

regard the motive which could have induced
the Supreme Being, the Spirit of infinite perfec-
tion, to create the external world, and the i^os-
sibility of such a creation.

This Sanchya Philosophy would be more
properly designated in our modern phil030[)liic
phraseology as a system of complete Dualism,
where two substances are represented as coex-
istent— on one hand, a self-existent energy of
Nature, which emanated, or eternally emanates,
from itself; and on the other hand, eternal truth,
or the Supreme and Infinite Mind.

The Indian Philosophers in general were so
inclined to regard the whole outward world of
sense, as the product of illusion, as a vain and
idle apparition, that we can well imagine they
were unable to reconcile the creation of such a
world (which appeared to them a world of
darkness, or perhaps, on a somewhat higher
scale, as an intermediate state of illusion,) with
their mystical notion of the infinite perfection
of the Supreme Being and Eternal Spirit. For
even in Ethics they were wont to jalace the idea
of Supreme Perfection in a state of absolute
repose, but not (at least to an equal degree) ia
the state of active energy or exertion. Great
as the error of such a system of dualism may
be, there is yet a mighty difference between a
philosophy which denies, or at least miscon-
ceives, the Creation, and one which denies the
existence of the Deity; for such atheism never
occurred to the minds of those philosophers.
The doctrine of a primary self existing energy
in Nature, or of the eternity of the Universe,
may, in a practical point of view, appear as
gross an error, but in philosojDhy we must make
accurate distinctions, and forbear to place this
ancient dualism on the same level with that
coarse materialism, that destructive and athe-
istic Atomical philosophy, or any other doctrines
professed by the later sects of a dialectic Ra-
tionalism.

Valuable, undoubtedly, as are such extracts
and communications from the originals in a
branch of human science still so little known,
yet they will not alone suffice, and, without a
certain philosophic flexibility of talent in the
inquirer, they will fail to aflbrd him a proper
insight into the true nature, the real spirit and
tendency of those ancient systems of philosophy.
That the Indian philosophy, even when it has
started from the most opposite principles, and
when its circuitous or devious course has
branched more or less widely from the common
path, is sure to wind round, and fall into the
one general track — the vmiform term of all In-
dian philosophy — is well exemplified by the
second part of the Sanchya system (called the
Yoga philosophy), where we find a totally dif-
ferent principle proclaimed; and while it ut-
terly abandons the primary doctrine of a self-
existent principle in Nature laid down in the
first part of the philosophy, it unfolds those
maxims of Indian mysticism which recur in
every department of Hindoo literature. That
41 *

486

F. SCHLEGEL.

total absorption in the one thought of the Deity,
that entire abstraction from all the impressions
and notions of sense — that suspension of all
outward, and in part even of inward life, ef-
fected lay the energy of a will tenaciously fixed
and entirely concentrated on a single point, and
by which, according to the belief of the Indians,
miraculous power and supernatural knowledge
are attained^are held up in the second part of
the Sanchya system as the highest term of all
mental exertion. The word, Yoga, signifies the
complete union of all our thoughts and faculties
with God, by which alone the soul can be freed,
that is, delivered from the unhappy lot of trans-
migration; and this, and this only, forms the
object of all Indian philosophy.

The Indian name of Yogi is derived from the
same word, which designates this philosophy.
The Indian Y^ogi is a hermit or penitent, who,
absorbed in this mystic contemplation, remains
often for years fixed immovably to a single spot.
In order to give a lively representation of a
phenomenon so strange to us, which appears
totally incredible and almost impossible, although
it has been repeatedly attested by eye-witnesses,
and is a well-ascertained historical fact, I will
extract from the drama of Sacontala by the poet
Calidas, a description of a Yogi, remarkable for
its vivid accuracy, or, to use the expression of
the German commentator, its fearful beauty.
King Dushmanta inquires of Indra's charioteer
the sacred abode of him whom he seeks ; and
to this the charioteer replies:* "A little beyond
the grove, where you see a pious Yogi, motion-
less as a pollard, holding his thick bushy hair
and fixing his eyes on the solar orb. Mark —
his body is half covered with a white ant's edi-
fice made of raised clay; the skin of a snake
supplies the place of his sacerdotal thread, and
part of it girds his loins; a number of knotty
plants encircle and wound his neck ; and sur-
rounding birds' nests almost conceal his shoul-
ders." We must not take this for the invention
of fancy, or the exaggeration of a poet; the ac-
curacy of this description is confirmed by the
testimony of innumerable eye-witnesses, who
recount the same fact, and in precisely similar
colors. During that jieriod of wonderful phe-
nomena and supernatural powers — the first
three centuries of the Christian church — we
meet with only one Simon Stylites, or column-
stander; and his conduct is by no means held
up by Christian writers as a model of imitation,
but is regarded, at best, as an extraordinary ex-
ception permitted on certain special grounds.
In the Indian forests and deserts, and in the
neighborhood of those holy places of pilgrimage
mentioned above, there are many hundreds of
these hermits — those strange human phenomena
of the highest intellectual abstraction or delusion.
Even the Greeks were acquainted with them,
and, among so many other wonders, make men-

* We have transcribed Sir William Jones' own words,
as given in his translation of SacontaU.

tion of them, in their description of India, under
the name of the Gymnosophists. Formerly
such accounts would have been regarded as
incredible, and as exceeding the bounds of pos-
sibility; but such conjectures can be of no avail
against historical facts repeatedly attested and
undeniably proved. Now that men are better
acquainted with the wonderful flexibility of
human organization, and with those marvellous
powers which slumber concealed within it, they
are less disposed to form light and hasty deci-
sions on phenomena of this description. The
whole is indeed a magical intellectual self-ex-
altation, accomplished by the energy of the will
concentrated on a single point: and this con-
centration of the mind, when carried to this ex-
cess, may lead not merely to a figurative, but to
a real intellectual self-annihilation, and to the
disorder of all thought, even of the brain. While
on the one hand we must remain amazed at the
strength of a will so tenaciously and persever-
ingly fixed on an object purely spiritual, we
must, on the other hand, be filled with profound
regret at the sight of so much energy wasted for
a purpose so erroneous, and in a manner so
appalling.

The second species of Indian philosophy, to-
tally different from the other two kinds, and
which proceeds not from Nature, but from the
principle of thought and from the thinking self,
is comprised in the Nyaya system, whose foun-
der was Gautama, a personage whom several
of the earlier investigators of Indian literature,
particularly Dr. Taylor, in his Translation of
the "Prabodha Chandrodaya" (page 116), have
confounded with the founder of the Buddhist
sect, as both bear the same name. But a closer
inquiry has proved them to be distinct persons;
and Mr. Colebrooke himself finds greater points
of coincidence or affinity between the Sanchya
philosophy and Buddhism, than between the
latter and the Nyaya system. This Nyaya phi-
losophy, proceeding from the act of thought,
comprises in the doctrine of particulars, distinc-
tions and subdivisions, the application of the
thinking principle; and this part of the system
embraces all which among the Greeks went
under the name of logic or dialectic ; and which
with us is partly classed under the same head.
Very many writings and commentaries have
been devoted to the detailed treatment and ex-
position of these subjects, which the Indians
seem to have discussed with almost the same
diifuseness, or at least copiousness, as the Greeks.
Like the Indians, the learned Englishman, who
has first unlocked to our view this department
of Indian literature, has paid comparatively
most attention to this second part of the Nyaya,
philosophy. But all this logical philosophy,
though it may furnish one more proof (if such
be necessary) of the extreme richness, variety,
and refinement of the intellectual culture of the
Hindoos, yet possesses no immediate interest for
the object we here propose to ourselves. Mr.
Colebrooke remarks, however, that the funda-

F. SCHLEGEL.

487

mental tenets of this philosophy comprise, as
indeed is evident, not merely a logic in the or-
dinary acceptation of the word, but the meta-
physics of all logical science. On this part of
the subject, I conld have wished that in the
authentic extracts he has given us from the
Sancrit originals, he had more distinctly educed
the leading doctrines of the system, and thus
furnished us with adequate data for forming
a judgment on the general character of this phi-
losophy, as well as on its points of coincidence
with other systems, and with the philosophy of
the Buddhists. For although it appears to be
well ascertained that the religion of Buddha
sprang from some perverted system of Hindoo
philosophy, yet the points of transition to such
a religious creed existing in the Indian systems
of philosophy have not yet been clearly pointed
out. The Vedanta philosophy must here evi-
dently be excepted ; for to this Buddhism is as
much opposed as to the old Indian religion of
the Vedas. Moreover tliat endless confusion
and unintelligibleness of the Buddhist metaphy-
sics, which we have before spoken of, may first
be traced to tlie source of Idealism ; though in
the progress of that philosophy, many errors
have been associated with it, errors which even,
in its origin, were most widely removed from
it ; for every system of error asserts and even
believes that it is perfectly consistent, though in
none is such consistency found.

The basis and prevailing tendency of the
Nyaya system (to judge from the extracts with
which we have been furnished) is most decid-
edly ideal. On the whole we can very well
conceive that a system of pliilosophy beginning
with the highest act of thought, or proceeding
from the thinking self, should run into a course
of the most decided and absolute idealism, and
that the general inclination of the Indian philo-
sophers to regard the whole external world of
sense as vain illusion, and to represent indivi-
dual personality as absorbed in the Godhead
by the most intimate union, should have given
birth to a complete system of self-delusion — a
diabolic self-idolatry, very congenial with the
principles of that most ancient of all anti-chris-
tian sects — the Buddhists.

The Indian audiorities cited' by Colebrooke
impute to the second part of the Nyaya philo-
sophy a strong leaning to the atomical system.
We must here recollect that, as the Indian mind
pursued the most various and opposite paths of
inquiry even in pliilosophy, there were besides
the six most prevalent philosophic systems, re-
cognized as generally conformable to religion,
several others in direct opposition to the esta-
blished doctrines on the Deity and on religion.
Among these the Charvaci philosophy, which,
according to Mr. Colebrooke, comprises the
metaphysics of the sect of Jains, deserves a
passing notice. It is a system of complete ma-
terialism founded on the atomical doctrines,
such as Epicurus taught, and which met with
so much favor and adhesion in the declining

ages of Greece and Rome ; doctrines which
several moderns have revived in latter times,
but which the profound investigations of natural
philosophy, now so far advanced, will scarcely
ever permit to take root again.

The third species or branch of Indian philo-
sophy, is that which is attached to the Vedas,
and to the sacred revelation and traditions they
contain. The first part of this philosophy — the
Miniansd — is, according to Mr. Colebrooke, more
immediately devoted to the interpretation of the
Vedas, and most probably contains the funda-
mental rules of interpretation, or the leading
principles, whereby independent reason is made
to harmonize with the word of revelation con-
veyed by sacred tradition. The second or
finished part of the system is called the Vedanta
philosophy. The last word in this term, " Ve-
danta,"' wliich is compounded of two roots, is
equivalent to the German word ende (end), or
still more to the Latin, finis, and denotes the
end or ultimate object of any effort; and so the
entire term Vedanta will signify a philosophy
which reveals the true sense, the internal spirit,
and the proper object of the Vedas, and of the
primitive revelation of Brahma comprised there-
in. This Vedanta philosophy is the one which
no\v generally exerts the greatest influence on
Indian literature and Indian life ; and it is very
possible that some of the six recognized, or at
least tolerated, systems of philosophy, may have
been purposely thiown into the back-ground, or,
when they clashed too rudely with the princi-
ples of the prevailing system, have been soft-
ened down by their partisans, and have thus
come to us in that state. A wide field is here
opened to the future research and critical inqui-
ries of Indian scholars.

This Vedanta philosophy is, in its general
tendency, a complete system of Pantheism; but
not the rigid, mathematical, abstract, negative
Pantheism of some modern thinkers ; for such
a total denial of all personality in God, and of
all freedom in man, is incompatible with the
attachment which the Vedanta philosophy pro-
fesses for sacred tradition and ancient mytho-
logy; and accordingly a modified, poetical, and
half-mythological system of Pantheism, may
here naturally be expected, and actually exists.
Even in the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, and of the Metempsychosis, the personal
existence of the human soul, inculcated by the
ancient faith, is not wholly denied or rejected
by this more modern system of philosophy;
though on this whole it certainly is not exempt
from the charge of Pantheism. But all the sys-
tems of Indian philosophy tend more or less to
one practical aim — namely, the final deliver-
ance and eternal emancipation of the soul from
the old calamity — the dreaded fate — the fright-
ful lot — of being compelled to wander through
the dark regions of nature — through the various
forms of the brute creation — and to change ever
anew its terrestrial shape. The second point
in which the difierent systems of Indian philo-

488

F. SCHLEGEL.

sopliy mostly agree is this, tlmt the various
sacrifices prescribed for this end in the Vedas,
arc not free from blame or vice, partly on ac-
count of the effusion of blood necessarily con-
nected with animal sacrifice — and partly on
account of the inadequacy of such sacrifices to
the final deliverance of the soul, useful and
salutary though they be in other respects.

The general and fundamental doctrine of the
Metempsychosis has rendered the destruction
of animals extremely repulsive to Indian feel-
ings, from the strong apprehension that a case
may occur where, unconsciously and innocently,
one may violate or injure the soul of some former
relative in its present integument. But even
the Vedas themselves inculcate the necessity
of tliat sublime science which rises above na-
ture, for the attaimnent of the full and final de-
liverance of the soul; as is expressed in an old
remarkable passage of the Vedas, thus literally
translated by Mr. Colebrooke.* " Man must
recognise the soul — man must separate it from
nature — then it comes not again — then it comes
not again." These last words signify. Then the
soul is delivered from the danger of a return to
earth — from the misfortune of transmigration,
and it remains forever united to God ; a union
which can be obtained only by that pure sepa-
ration from nature, which is that sublimest sci-
ence, invoked in the first words of this passage.

Animal sacrifices for the souls of the departed,
particularly for those of deceased parents, whicli
were regarded as the most sacred duty of the
son and of the posterity, were among those re-
ligious usages which occupied an important
place in the patriarchal ages, and were most
deeply interwoven with the v/hole arrangement
of life in that primitive period, as is evident
from all those Indian rites, and the system of
doctrines akin to them. These sacrifices are
certainly of very ancient origin, and may well
have been derived from the mourning father of
mankind, and the first pair of hostile brothers.
To these may afterwards have been added all
that multitude of religious rites and doctrines,
or marvellous theories respecting the immortal
soul and its ulterior destinies. Hence the in-
dispensable obligation of marriage for the Brah-
mins, in order to insure the blessing of legiti-
mate offspring, regarded as one of the highest

* See Colebrooke's article on the Vedas, in the eighth
volume of Asiatic Kesearches.

objects of existence in the patriarchal ages, for

the prayers of the son only could obtain the

deliverance, and secure the repose, of a departed

parent's soul; and this was one of his most

sacred duties. The high reverence for women,

among the Indians, rests on the same religious

notion, as is expressed by the old poet in these

lines :

" Woman is man's better half.
Woman is man's bnsom friend,
Woman is redemption's source,
From Woman springs the liberator."

This last line signifies, what we mentioned
above, that the son is the Liberator appointed
by God, to deliver by prayer the soul of his
deceased father. The poet then continues : —
"Women are the friends of the solitary— they
solace him with their sweet converse ; like to
a father, in discharge of duty, consoling as a
mother in misfortune."

We should scarcely conceive it possible (and
it certainly tends to prove the original power,
copiousness and flexibility of the human mind)
that, by the side of a false mysticism totally
sunk and lost in the abyss of the eternally in-
cornprehensible and unflithomable, like the In-
dian philosophy, a rich, various, beautiful and
highly -wrought poetry should have existed.
The Epic narrative of the old Indian poems
bears a great resemblance to the Homeric poetry,
in its inexhaustible copiousness, in the touching
simplicity of its antique forms, in justness of
feeling, and accuracy of delineation. Yet in its
subjects, and in the prevailing tone of its My-
thological fictions, this Indian Epic poetry is
characterized by a style of fancy incomparably
more gigantic, such as occasionally prevails in
the mythology of Hesiod — in the accounts of the
old Titanic wars — or in the fabulous world of
.^schylus, and of the Doric Pindar. In the
tenderness of amatory feeling, in the descriptioti
of female beauty, of the character and domestic
relations of woman, the Indian poetry may be
compared to the purest and noblest efTusions of
Christian poesy ; though, on the whole, from
the thoroughly mythical nature of its subjects,
and from the rhythmical forms of its speech, it
bears a greater resemblance to that of the an-
cients. Among the latter poets, Calidas, who
is the most renowned and esteemed in the dra-
matic poetry of the Indians, might be called,
by way of comparison, an Idyllic and senti-
mental Sophocles.

NOVALIS. (FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG)

Born 1772. Died ISOI.

NovALis is known as the associate of Tieck
and the Schlegels in establishing the Romantic
School of Poetry which blossomed in Germany
toward the close of the last century. But No-
valis possesses a significance independent of
any clique, and, amid this famed constellation,
shines as a particular star, with proper and in-
dividual lustre. The literary firmament of
Germany has many greater lights, but none
fairer. His contributions to the national lite-
rature are insignificant in extent, and consist,
for the most part, of fragments and rhapsodies ;
but the little he wrote is instinct with a rare
and noble spirit, and the effect has been alto-
gether disproportionate to the bulk.

A singular charm invests this youth. For
youth he was at the time of his death. His pre-
mature decease enhances the interest created
by his lofty aims and his deep-eyed enthusiasm,
imparting a certain ideal and heroic beauty to
the early lost, whose germ of golden promise
was not permitted to unfold in this present.
Purity of heart, religious fervor, deep poetic
feeling, and mystic inwardness, combined with
true philosophic genius and scientific attain-
ments far above the standard of general scho-
larship, constitute his distinguishing charac-
teristics.

Friedrich von Hardenberg was born in the
county of Mansfeld, in Saxony. His father
(Baron von Hardenberg) and his mother were
members of the Moravian Communion, pro-
foundly religious, without narrowness or bigotry.
He was one of eleven children, all of whom are
said to have been distinguished by remarkable
endowments of mind and heart. As a child,
he was weakly, and discovered but little intel-
lect. But after a dangerous illness, which oc-
curred in his ninth year, he seemed to wake
as from a dream, and thenceforward showed
himself a youth of rare promise. He studied
successively at the universities of Jena, Leipzig
and Wittemberg, but chose a practical calling
for his pursuit, in preference to the learned
professions, and held an ofiice under his father,
who was director of the government salt-works
in Saxony.

3u

The critical event of his life was the death
of his betrothed, Sophie v. K., who is repre-
sented as a being of preternatural beauty of
person and of soul. "The first glimpse," says
Tieck,* "of this beautiful and wondrous lovely
form determined his whole life ; nay, we may
say, that the sentiment which penetrated and
animated him became the theme of his whole
life." * * * » All who knew this wonder-
ful beloved of our friend, are agreed that no
description can express with what a grace and
heavenly charm this unearthly being moved,
what beauty shone around her, wlmt pathos
and majesty invested her. Novalis became a
poet whenever he spoke of her." She died the
day but one succeeding her fifteenth birth-day,
the 19th March, 1797. " No one dared to com-
municate the tidings to Novalis. At lengtli,
his brother Carl undertook it. The mourner
locked himself up for three days and nights,
and then journeyed to Arnstadt, that, with
faithful friends, he might be nearer the beloved
spot which now concealed the remains of this
most precious being." * * * "At this
period, Novalis lived only in his grief; it be-
came natural to him to regard the visible and
the invisible world as one, and to distinguish
between life and death only by his longing for
the latter. At the same time, life became to
him transfigured, and his whole being was dis-
solved as in a lucid, conscious dream of a higher
existence."

Novalis died within four years from the date
of this affliction. That term comprises near':^'
all his writings.

" Since he had so far outstripped his age, his
country was authorized to expect extraordinary
things of him, had not this early death over-
taken him. The unfinished writings he has
left behind him have already wrought much ;
many of his great thoughts will exert tlieir in-
spiration in the future, and noble minds and
deep thinkers will be enlightened and in-
flamed by the scintillations of his spirit."

* See tlv; biographical sketch prefixed to Tieck and Fr.
Schlegel'a edition of Novalis' works, from which this ac-
count is taken.

(489)

490

NOVALIS.

"Novalis was tall, slender, and of noble pro-
portions. Ho wore his lig-ht-brown hair in pen-
dent locks; his hazel eye was clear and gleam-
inof ; and the complexion of his countenance,
especially of the intellectual forehead, almost
transparent." * * * "Profile and expres-
sion resembled very nearly the Evangelist John,
as we see him in the glorious great picture of A.
Diirer, preserved at Niirnberg and Munchen."

" His conversation was lively and loud, his
jresticulation noble. I have never seen liim
wearied ; even when we continued the conver-
sation far into the night, he put a stop to it
only by an effort of the will, in order to rest,
and still read before he slept. Ennui he knew
not, even in oppressive company with mediocre
heads, for he was sure to discover some person
who could impart to him a new knowledge
which might be of use to him, insignificant as
it seemed. His kindliness, his open communi-
cation, made him everywhere beloved. His
skill in the art of conversation was so great,
that inferior heads never perceived how far he
overlooked them. Though in conversation he
loved best to uncover the depths of the soul,
and spoke with enthusiasm of the regions of
the invisible, he was yet frolicsome as a child,
jested with unembarrassed cheerfulness, and
gave nimself to the jests of the company.
Without vanity or pride of learning, a stranger
to all affectation and hypocrisy, he was a
genuine, true man, tlie purest and loveliest
embodiment of a lofty, immortal mind."

" His true studies, for several years, had
been philosophy and physics. In the latter,
his observations, combinations, and surmises,
often outstripped his time. In philosophy, he
studied especially Spinoza and Fichte. * * *
Ilis knowledge of mathematics and the me-
chanic arts, especially mining, was remarkable.
On the other hand, he was but little interested
in the fine arts. Music he loved much, but
had only a superficial knowledge of it ; to
sculpture and painting his mind was not much
drawn, although he could express the most
original ideas and the liighest surmises respect-
ing all tliese arts. Tlius I remember, e.g. a. con-
troversy respectmg landscape-painting, in which

I could not comprehend his view ; but t!;e ex-
cellent landscape-patnter, Friedrich, in Dres-
den, has since actualized it, in great part, out
of his own rich, poetic mind. * * * Goethe
had long been his study ; he preferred before
all other works Wilhelm Meister, as little as
one would suppose it, from his severe criticism
of this work in his Fragments." * * *

" It had become with him the most natural
view to regard the commonest, nearest, as
miraculous, and the strange, the supernatural,
as something common. Thus, every-day life
itself environed him like a wondrous tale, and
that region which most men but surmise or
doubt, as distant, incomprehensible, was to
him a beloved home. Thus he invented, un-
bribed by examples, a new mode of representa-
tion ; and in many-sidedness of reference, in
his view of love, in his faith in it — as for him,
at once, instructress, wisdom, religion ; — in
that a single great life-moment and one deep
pain and loss became the substance of his
poetry and his contemplation, he alone among
moderns resembles the sublime Dante, and
sings to us, like him, an unfathomable mystic
song, very different from that of many imitators
who think they can put on and put off mysti-
cism like an ornament. Therefore is, also,
his Romance* consciously and unconsciously
but the representation of his own mind and
destiny ; as he himself makes his Heinrich
say, in the fragment of the second part, that
destiny and mind are names of one idea."

Novalis did not leave the Lutheran Church
for the Church of Rome, as has been falsely
asserted.f

* Heinrich von Ofterdiiigen.

t See Tieck's preface to the fifth edition of Novalis'
works, in which he says: "I may affirm that to my
friend Hardenherf; this transition into another Christian
Communion from the Lutheran, in which he was born,
was utterly impossible." This fifth edition exchides the
essay entitled " Christianity or Europe," which it seems
had been inserted in the fourth edition without Tieck's
consent, by Fr. von Schlegel, as seeming to favor Ro-
manism. This essay, when offered for publication in tlie
Atlienaeum, in 1799, had been rejected by a committee
of the friends of the author, consisting of Tieck, tlie two
Schlegels, and Schelling, as " weak and unsatisfactory,"
and altogether unworthy of Novalis' genius.

NOVALIS.

491

FROM HEINRICH VON OFTERDINGEN*

THE VISIT TO THE CATE.

[Heinrich is travelling, virith his mother, to
Augsburg, the residence of his grandfather.
Several merchants, bound in the same direction,
join their company. At an inn on the road
they fall in with an aged miner, who entertains
them with matters pertaining to his craft. At
length, he proposes an expedition to some caves
in the vicinity, in which he is joined by Hein-
rich, by the merchants, and by several villagers.]

The evening was cheerful and warm. The
moon stood in mild glory above the hills, and
caused wondrous dreams to arise in all crea-
tures. Herself a dream of the sun, she lay above
the introverted dream-world, and led Nature,
divided with innumerable boundaries, back into
that fabulous prime, when each germ still slum-
bered within itself, and, solitary and untouched,
longed in vain to unfold the dark fulness of its
measureless being. The wonder-story of the
evening mirrored itself in Heinrich's mind. It
seemed to him as if the world reposed unco-
vered within him, and exhibited to him, as to a
guest, all its treasures and its hidden charms.
The grand and simple appearance around him
seemed to him so intelligible. He thought Na-
ture incomprehensible to man, only because she
piles up around him the nearest, the most inti-
mate, with such lavishness of manifold expres-
sion. The words of the old man had opened a
hidden tapestry-door within him. He saw that
his little chainber was built contiguous to a lofty
minster, out of whose floor of stone arose the
grave fore-world, while from the dome, the
clear, glad future, in the form of angel-children,
hovered singing above it. Mighty voices trem-
bled through the silvery song, and through the
wide portals all creatures entered in, each ex-
pressing its inner nature in a simple petition,
and a dialect peculiar to itself. How did he
wonder that this luminous view, which was
now already become indispensable to his exist-
ence, had so long been foreign to him ! Now
he overlooked at once all his relations with the
wide world around him, and comjirehended ail
the strange conceptions and suggestions which
he had often experienced in the contemplation
of it. The story told by the merchants, of the
youth who studied nature so diligently, and who
became the son-in-law of a king, came into his
mind, and a thousand other reminiscences of his
life associated themselves, of their own accord,
by a magic thread.

While Heinrich gave himself up tohis medi-
tations, the company had approached the cave.
The entrance was low ; the old man took a
torch, and clambering over some stones, entered

* An unfinished Romance, which the author designed,
he says, to be "an apotheosis of Poetry." The first part
contains the initiation of the poet ; the second his trans-
figuration. The name of the hero is that of an actual
German poet or Minnesinger of the 13th century.— Tr.

first. A quite perceptible current of air streamed
toward him, and the old man assured them that
they might follow with safety. The most timid
went last, and held their weapons in readiness.
Heinrich and the merchants walked behind the
miner, and the boy strode briskly by his side.
The way, at first, was through a somewhat nar-
row passage, but soon terminated in a very ex-
tensive and lofty cave, which the glare of the
torches was unable wholly to illumine. One
saw, however, in the background, several open-
ings, which lost themselves in the wall of rock.
The floor was soft and tolerably even; likewise
the walls and the ceiJing were not rough or
irregular. But what especially engaged the
attention of all, was the countless multitude of
bones and teeth which strewed the floor. Some
of them were perfectly preserved, in others
.there were marks of corruption, and those which
here and there protruded from the walls, seemed
to have become petrified. Most of them were
of unusual size and strength. The old miner
rejoiced in these relics of a primeval age ; only
the peasants had misgivings about them, for
they regarded them as manifest traces of beasts
of prey at hand, although the old man pointed
out to them most convincingly the evidences of
an inconceivable antiquity, and asked them if
they had ever noticed any signs of ravages
among their herds, or of the plunder of human
neighbors, and whether they could regard these
bones as those of known animals or men ? The
old man wished now to penetrate farther into
the mountain, but the peasants deemed it ad-
visable for them to retreat, and to await his
entrance before the cave. Heinrich, the mer-
chants, and the boy, remained with the miner,
and provided themselves with ropes and torches.
They soon reached a second cave, and the old
man did not forget to mark the passage through
which they had entered, by a figure composed
of bones, which he placed before it. This cave
resembled the first, and was equally rich in
animal remains.

Heinrich experienced a strange awe ; it struck
him as if he were wandering through the fore-
courts of the inner earth-palace. Heaven and
earth were suddenly far removed from him ;
and these dark, wide halls appeared to belong
to a wondrous subterranean kingdom. He
thought within himself, were it not possible
that a separate world stirs this monstrous life
beneath our feet? that unheard-of births have
their being and their doings in the fastnesses
of the earth, which the interior fire of the dark
womb works up into gigantic forms of spirit-
power? • Might not, some time, these awful
strangers, driven forth by the in-pressing cold,
appear among us, while perhaps, at the same
tiine, heavenly guests — living, speaking Powers
of the star-world — became visible above our
heads? Are these bones the remains of emi-
grations toward the surface, or signs of a flight
into the deeps ?

Suddenly, the old man called to the rest, and

492

NOVALIS.

showed them a human footstep quite fresh on
the floor of the cave. No others appeared; so
he thought they might follow this trace without
fear of meeting with robbers. * * *

After some searching, they found in an angle
of the side-wall, on the right, a sloping passage,
into which the footsteps appeared to lead. Soon
they thought they could perceive a brightness,
which grew stronger the nearer they approached.
A new vault, of greater extent than the former,
opened itself before them, in the background of
which they saw, sitting by a lamp, the figure of
a man, who had a large book lying before him
on a stone tablet, in which he seemed to be
reading. He turned himself toward them, rose
and came to meet them. He looked neither old
nor young, no traces of time were perceptible
in him, except his straight grey hairs, which
were parted on the forehead. He had soles
bound to his feet, and seemed to have no other
clotliing except a wide mantle which was folded
about him, and made more prominent his large
and noble form. It seemed as if he were re-
ceiving expected guests in his dwelling.

"It is kind in you to visit me," he said; "you
are the lirst friends I have seen here, as long as
I have lived in this place. It would seem that
people are beginning to consider more atten-
tively our large and wondrous house." The old
man replied : " We did not expect to find here
so friendly a host. We were told of wild beasts
and goblins, and find ourselves very agreeably
deceived. If we have disturbed you in your
devotions and profound contemplations, pardon
thus much to our curiosity.'' " Can any contem-
plation be more delightful,' said the unknown,
"than that of glad and congenial human faces?
Do not think me a misanthrope, because you find
me in this solitude. I have not fled the world,
I have only sought a place of rest, where I
might pursue my meditations undisturbed."
"Do you never repent your resolution? and are
tliere not hours when you feel afraid, and when
your heart longs for a human voice?"

"Not jjow. There was a time, in my youth,
when ardent enthusiasm induced me to become
a recluse. Dim presentiments occupied my
youthful imagination. I hoped to find full nou-
rishment for my heart in solitude. Inexhaustible
seemed to me the fountain of my inner life.
But I soon perceived that one must bring with
him abundance of experiences, that a young
heart cannot be alone, nay, that it is only by
manifold converse with his kind, that man can
acquire a certain self-subsistence. * * *
The dangers and vicissitudes of war, the high
poetic spirit which accompanies a war-host,
tore me from my youthful solitude, and deter-
mined the fortunes of my life. It may be, that
the long tumult, the numberless events which I
witnessed, have expanded yet farther my taste
for solitude. Innumerable reminiscences are
entertaining company, — the more entertaining
the more varied the glance with which we
overlook them, and which now first discovers

their true connection, the deep meaning of their
sequence, and the import of their jjhenomena.
The true understanding of human history does
not unfold itself till late, and rather under the
still influences of recollection, than under tlie
more powerful impressions of the present time.
The nearest events seem but loosely connected,
but they sympathize all the more wonderfully
with remote ones ; and only then when one is
in a condition to overlook a long series, and
neither to take everything literally, nor, with
wanton vagaries, to confound the true order,
does one perceive the secret concatenation of
the former and tiie future, and learn to com-
pound history out of hope and memory. Only
he, however, to whom the entire fore-time is
present, can succeed in discovering the simple
rule of history. We attain only to imperfect,
cumbrous formulas, and may be glad if we can
but find for ourselves an available prescript,
which shall give us satisfactory solutions for our
own short life. But I may venture to affirm
that every careful contemplation of the fates of
life affords a deep and inexhaustible enjoyment,
and, of all thoughts, exalts us most above earthly
ills. Youth reads history only from curiosity,
like an entertaining wonder-tale; to riper age
it becomes a heavenly, consoling and edifying
friend, who by her wise discourses gently pre-
pares us for a higher, more comprehensive
career, and by means of intelligible images,
makes us acquainted with the unknown world.
The Cl'iurch is the dwelling-house of History,
and the still churchyard her emblematic flower-
garden. Only aged, God-fearing men should
write of History, whose own history is nearly
at an end, and who have nothing more to hope
for, but to be transplanted into the garden. Not
gloomy and troubled will their account be; —
rather, a ray from the, cupola will exhibit every-
thing in the most correct and beautiful light,
and a holy Spirit will hover over those strangely
moved waters." * * * " When I consider
all these things aright, it seems to me as if the
historian should be a poet also, for only poets
understand the art of presenting events in their
true connection. In their narratives and fables,
I have observed with silent pleasure a delicate
feeling for the mysterious spirit of life. There
is more truth in their wonder-stories than in
learned chronicles. Although the personages
and their fortunes are fictitious, the sense in
which they are invented is true and natural. It
is to a certain extent indifl^erent, as it regards
our entertainment and our instruction, whether
the persons in whose destinies we trace our
own, actually lived or not. What we want is
an intuition of the great, simple soul of the phe-
nomena of time. If this wish is satisfied, we
do not trouble ourselves about the accidental
existence of the external figures." * * *
" Since I have inhabited tliis cave," continued
the recluse, " I have learned to meditate more
of the olden time. It is indescribable how this
study attracts. I can imagine the love which a

NOVALIS.

493

miner must have for his handicraft. When I
look at these strange old bones whicli are ga-
thered together here in such a mighty multitude,
when I think of the wild time in which these
foreign, monstrous animals, impelled, perhaps,
by fear and alarm, crowded in dense masses
into these caves, and here found their death ;
when, again, I ascend to the times in which
these caverns grew together, and vast floods
covered the land, I appear to myself like a
dream of the future, like a child of the everlast-
ing peace. How quiet and peaceful, how mild
and clear is Nature at the present day, com-
pared with those violent, gigantic times! The
most fearful tempest, the most appalling earth-
quake in our days, is but a faint echo of those
terrific birth-throes. It may be, that the vege-
table and animal world, and even the human
beings of that time, if any there were on single
islands in this ocean, had a different structure,
more firm and rude. At least, one ought not
to charge the traditions, which tell of a race of
giants, with fabrication."

••'It is pleasant," said the old man, " to observe
the gradual pacification of nature. There ap-
pears to have formed itself gradually, a more
and more intimate agreement, a more peaceful
communion, a mutual assistance and animation ;
and we can look forward to ever better times.
Possibly, here and there the old leaven may
still ferment, and some violent convulsions may
ensue, but we can discern, notwithstanding
these, an almighty striving after a freer, a more
liarmonious constitution; and, in this spirit, each
convulsion will pass by and lead us nearer to
the great goal. It may be, that Nature is no
longer so fruitful as formerly, that no metals or
precious stones are formed in these days, that
no more rocks and mountains arise, that plants
and animals no longer swell up to such asto-
nishing size and strength. But the plastic, en-
nobling, social powers of Nature have increased
all the more. Her disposition has become more
receptive and delicate, her fantasy more mani-
fold and emblematic, her touch lighter and more
artistic. She approaches human kind ; and if
once she w^as a wild-teeming rock, she is now
a still, germinating plant, a mere human artist."

Heinrich and the merchants had listened at-
tentively to this conversation, and the former,
especially, experienced new developments in
his fore-feeling soul. Many words, many thoughts,
fell like quickening fruit-seed into his bosom,
and transported him quickly from the narrow
sphere of his youth to the height of the world.
The hours just past lay like long years behind
him, and it seemed to him as if he had never
thought or felt otherwise than now.

The recluse showed them his books ; they
were did histories and poems. Heinrich turned
over the leaves of the large and beautifully-illu-
minated manuscripts. The short lines of the
verses, the titles, single passages, and the neat
pictures which appeared here and there, like

embodied words, for the purpose of seconding
the imagination of the reader, excited mightily
his curiosity. The recluse remarked his inward
joy, and explained to him the singular repre-
sentations. The most manifold life-scenes were
depicted there. Battles, funeral solemnities,
wedding -festivals, shipwrecks, caves and pa-
laces, kings, heroes, priests, old men and young,
D-ien in foreign costume, and strange animals,
appeared in various alternations and connec-
tions. Heinrich could not see his fill, and would
have desired nothing better than to stay with
the recluse, who attracted him irresistibly, and
to be instructed by him concerning these books.
Meanwhile the old man asked if there were
any more caves, and the recluse answered that
there were several very spacious ones in the
vicinity, and that he would accompany him
thither. The old man was ready, and the re-
cluse, who had noticed the pleasure which
Heinrich had in his books, induced him to re-
main behind, and to entertain himself with these
during their absence. Heinrich was glad to
remain with the books, and thanked him heartily
for the permission. He turned over the leaves
with infinite joy. At length there fell into his
hands a book written in a foreign language,
which appeared to him to bear some resem-
blance to the Latin and to the Italian. He longed
very much to know the language, for the book
particularly pleased him, although he understood
not a word of it. It had no title, but he found,
in seeking, several pictures. They seemed to
him strangely familiar, and as he gazed more
attentively, he discovered his own form quite
distinguishable among the figures. He started
and thought he had been dreaming, but after
repeated inspection, he could not doubt the per-
fect similitude. He could scarcely believe his
senses when, presently, he discovered in one
of the pictures, the cave, with the recluse and
the old man by his side. By degrees, he found
in other pictures the Eastern maid, his parents,
the count and countess of Thuringen, his friend
the court-chaplain, and many others of his ac-
quaintance. But their garments were diflferent,
and they appeared to belong to another age. A
great number of figures he knew not how to
name, yet they seemed familiar to him. He
saw his similitude in various situations. To-
ward the end of the book, he appeared larger
and nobler. A guitar was lying on his arm,
and the countess was handing him a garland.
He saw himself at the Imperial court, on ship-
board, in close embrace with a slender, lovely
maiden, in battle with wild-looking men, in
friendly converse with Saracens and Moors. A
man of earnest aspect appeared frequently in
his company. He conceived a profound reve-
rence for this lofty figure, and was rejoiced to
see himself arm in arm with him. The last
pictures were dark and unintelligible ; but some
of the forms of his dream surprised him with
intense delight. The conclusion appeared to
be wanting. Heinrich was much troubled, and
42

494

NOYALIS.

wished noiliiiig more ardently than to be able
to read tlie book and to possess it entire. He
viewed the pictures again and again, and was
confused when he heard the company returning.
An unaceoimtable shame came over him. He
did not dare to make known his discovery, and
merely asked the recluse, as unconcernedly as
possible, respecting the title and the language.
He learned that it was written in the Provencal
tongue. "It is a great while since I have read
it,'" said the recluse; "I do not rejnember ex-
actly the subject. All I know is, that it is a
Romance of the wonderful fortunes of a poet,
in \vhich poetry is represented and lauded in
manifold relations. The conclusion is wanting
to this copy, which I brought with me from Je-
rusalem, where I found it among the effects of
a deceased friend, and kept it as a memorial
of him.

THE POET AND HIS DAUGHTER.

The journey was now ended. It was toward
evening when our travellers arrived, safe and
in good spirits, in the world-renowned city of
Augsburg, and rode through the lofty streets to
the house of old Schwaning. * * * They
found the house illuminated, and a merry music
reached their ears. " What will you wager,"
said the merchants, " that your grandfather is
giving a irierry entertainment? We come as if
called. How surprised he will be at the imin-
viied guests I Little does he dream that the
true festival is now to begin.''

Among the guests, Heinrich had noticed a
man who appeared to be the person that he had
seen often at his side, in that book. His noble
aspect distinguished him before all the rest. A
cheerful earnestness was the spirit of his counte-
nance. An open, beautifully archeil brow ; great,
black, piercing and firm eyes; a roguish trait
about the merry mouth, and altogether clear and
manly proportions made it significant and attract-
ive. He was strongly built, his movements were
easy and fall of exinession, and where he stood,
it seemed as if he would stand forever. Hein-
rich asked his grandfather about him. '• I am
glad,"' said the old man, " that you have re-
marked him at once. It is my excellent friend
Klingbolir, the poet. Of his acquaintance and
friendship you may be prouder than of the em-
peror's. But how stands it with your heart ?
He has a beautiful daughter; perhaj^s she will
supplant the father in your regards. I shall be
surprised if you have not observed her." Hein-
rich blushed. "I was absent, dear grandfather.
The company was numerous, and I noticed only
your friend." "It is very easy to see," replied
Schwaning, " that you are from the north. We
will soon find means to thaw you, here. You
shall soon learn to look out lor j^retty eyes."

The old Schwaning led Heinrich to KJing-
sohr, and told him how Heinrich had observed
him at once, and felt a very lively desire to be
acquainted with him. Heinrich was diffident.

Klingsohr spoke to him in a very friendly man-
ner of his country and his journey. There was
something so confidential in his voice, that
Heinrich soon took heart and conversed with
him freely. After some time Schwaning re-
turned, and brought with him the beautifid
Mathilde. " Have compassion on my shy grand-
son, and pardon him for seeing your father be-
fore he did you. Your gleaming eyes will
awaken his slumbering youth. In his country
the spring is late."

Heinrich and Mathilde colored. They looked
at each other with wondering eyes. She asked
him with gentle, scarce audible words: "did
he like to dance?"' Just as he was aflirming
this question a merry dancing-music struck up.
Silently he offered her his hand, she gave hers,
and they mingled in the ranks of the waltzing
pairs. Schwaning and Klingsohr looked on.
The mother and the merchants rejoiced in Hein-
rich's activity, and in his beautiful partner.
* * * Heinrich wished the dance never to
end. With intense satisfaction his eye rested
on the roses of his partner. Her innocent eye
shunned him not. She seemed the spirit of her
father in the loveliest disguise. Out of her
large, calm eyes, spoke eternal youth. On a
light, heaven -blue ground reposed the mild
glory of the dusky stars. Around them brow
and nose sloped gracefully. A lily inclined
toward the rising sun, was her face ; and from
the slender white neck, blue veins meandered
in tempting curves around the delicate cheeks.
Her voice was like a far-away echo, and the
small brown curly head seemed to hover over
the light form.

THE FEAST.

The music banished reserve and roused every
inclination to cheerful sport. Baskets of flowers
in full splendor breathed forth odors on the
table, and the wine crept about among the
dishes and the flowers, shook his golden wings,
and wove curtains of bright tapestry between
the guests and the world. Heinrich now, for
the first time, understood what a feast was. A
thousand gay spirits seemed to him to dance
about the table, and in still sympathy with gay
men, to live by their joys and to intoxicate them-
selves with their delights. The joy of life stood
like a sounding tree full of golden fruits before
him. Evil did not show itself, and it seemed
to him impossible that ever human inclination
should have turned from this tree to the dan-
gerous fruit of knowledge, to the tree of conflict.
He now understood wine and food. He found
their savor surpassingly delicious. They were
seasoned for him by a heavenly oil, and sparkled

from the cuiJ the glory of earthly life.

********

It was deep in the night when the company
separated. The first and only feast of my life !
said Heinrich to himself when he was alone.

He went to the window. The choir of the
stars stood in the dark sky, and in the east a

NOVALIS.

495

white sliecn announced the coming day. With
full transport Heinrich exclaimed: "You, ye
everlasting stars, ye silent pilgrims, you I in-
voke as witnesses of my sacred oath! For
Mathilde I will live, and eternal truth shall
bind my heart to hers. For me too the morn
of an everlasting day is breaking. The night
is past. I kindle myself, a never-dying sacri-
fice to the rising sun !

THE DUE AM.

Heinrich was heated, and it was late, toward
morning, when he fell asleep. The thoughts
of his sold ran together into wondrous dreams.
A deep blue river shimmered from the green
plain. On the smooth surface swam a boat.
Mathilde sat and rowed. She was decked with
garlands, sang a simple song, and looked toward
him with a sweet sorrow. His bosom was op-
pressed, he knew not why. The sky was
bright, and peaceful the flood. Her heavenly
countenance mirrored itself in the waves. Sud-
denly the boat began to spin round. He called
to her, alarmed. She smiled, and laid the oar
in the boat, which continued incessantly to
whirl. An overwhelming anxiety seized him.
He plunged into the stream, but could make no
progress, the water bore him. She beckoned,
she appeared desirous to say something. Al-
ready tlie boat shipped water, but she smiled
with an inefiable inwardness, and looked cheer-
fully iiito the whirlpool. All at once it drew
her down. A gentle breath streaked across the
waves, which flowed on as calm and as shining
as before. The terrific agony deprived him of
consciousness. His heart beat no more. He
did not come to himself until he found himself
on dry ground. He might have swam far, it
was a itrange country. He knew not what had
befallen him; his mind was gone: — thoughtless
he wandered farther into the land. He felt
himself dreadfully exhausted. A little fountain
trickled from a hill, it sounded like clear bells.
With his hand he scooped a few drops, and
wetted his parched lips. Like an anxious dream
the terrible event lay behind him. He walked
on and on; flowers and trees spoke to him.
He felt himself so well, so at home. Then lie
heard again that simple song. He pursued the
sound. Suddenly some one held him back by
his garment. Pear Heinrich ! called a well-
known voice. He looked round, and Mathilde
clasped him in her arms. " Why didst thou run
from me, dear heart V said she, drawing a long
breath, " I could scarce overtake thee." Hein-
rich wept. He pressed her to his bosom. —
" Where is the river?" he exclaimed with tears.
" Seest thou not its blue waves above us?"
He looked up, and the blue river was flowing
gently above their heads. "Where are we,
dear iMathilde?" "With our parents." "Shall
we remain together?" " Forever," she replied,
while she pressed her lips to his, and so clasped
him that she could not be separated from him
again. She whispered a strange mysterious

word into his mouth, which vibrated through
his whole being. He wished to repeat it, when
his grandfather called and he awoke. He would
have given his life to remember that word.

THE VEGETABLE WOULD.

Plants are, as it were, the most direct lan-
guage of the earth. Every new leaf, every
strange flower, is some secret that is pressing
forth, and which, because it cannot move or
sj^eak for joy and love, becomes a mute, quiet
plant. When we find such a flower in a soli-
tary place, does it not seem as if everything
around were transfigured, and as if the little
feathered tones loved best to dwell in its vi-
cinity ? One could wee^j for joy, and, secluded
from the world, thrust hands and feet into the
ground and strike root, in order never to leave
the happy neighborhood. Over the whole dry
world is flung this green, mysterious carpet of
love. With every spring it is made new, and
its strange writing is legible only to the beloved,
like the posies of the Orient. Forever will he
read, and never read his fill; and daily become
aware of new meanings, new, transporting reve-
lations of loving Nature.

CLOUDS.

"There is certainly something mysterious in
the clouds," said Sylvester, "and certain kinds
have often a quite wonderful influence over us.
They march, and would take us up with their
cool shadows and bear us away; and while
their forms are lovely and variegated, like a
breathed-out wish of our inner man, their bright-
ness, and the splendid light that then reigns on
the earth, are like a prophecy of an unknown,
ineffable glory. But there are also dim, and
grave, and terrible forms of clouds, in which all
the terrors of the ancient night appear to threaten
us. The heaven seems as if it would never be-
come clear again, the cheerful blue is expunged,
and a lurid, copper-red, on a black-grey ground,
awakens awe and terror in every breast. When,
then, the destructive beams dart down, and-
with mocking laughter, the crashing thunder-
blows follow in their rear, we are terrified to
the very centre of our being; and if, then, there
arises not in us the sublime feeling of our moral
supremacy, we think we are delivered up to
the terrors of hell, to the power of evil spirits.
These are echoes of the old, inhuman Nature ;
but they are also rousing voices of the higher
Nature — the heavenly conscience within us.
Mortality groans in its ground-fastnesses; but
the immortality begins to shine with increased
brightness, and to know itself

CONSCIENCE.

"When," asked Heinrich, "when will there
no longer be any need of terrors, of pains, of
distress, and of evil in the world V

When there is but one power, — the power
of conscience ; when Nature has become chaste
and moral. There is but one cause of evi'

496

NOVALIS.

the universal weakness ; and this weakness is
nothing but imperfect moral receptivity and in-
sensibility to the cliarm oi' Freedom.

Conscience is the inborn mediator in every
man. It is God's vicegerent on the earth, and
is therefore regarded by many as the highest
and the last. * * * Conscience is man's
most projTer essence, completely transfigured j —
the celestial, aboriginal man. It is not this or
that, it commands not in general propositions,
it consists not of single virtues. There is but
one virtue — the pure, earnest will which, in the
moment of decision, resolves and chooses imme-
diately. In living and peculiar indivisibility, it
inhabits and animates the delicate symbol of
the human body, and avails to call the spiritual
members into truest activity.

Nature subsists only through the spirit of
virtue, and is destined to become ever more
steadfast.

FROM THE FRAGx\IENTS.

Where no gods are, spectres rule.

The best thing that the French achieved by
their Revolution, was a p)ortion of Germanity.

Germanity is genuine popularity, and there-
fore an ideal.

Where children are, there is tlie golden age.

Spirit is now active here and there : when
will Spirit be active in the whole ? When will
mankind, in the mass, begin to consider ?

Nature is pure Past, foregone freedom ; and
therefore, throughout, the soil of history.

The antithesis of body and spirit is one of
the most remarkable and dangerous of all anti-
theses. It has played an important part in
history.

Only by comparing ourselves, as men, with
other rational beings, could we know what we
truly are, what position we occupy.

The history of Christ is as surely poetry as it
is history. And, in general, only that history is
history which might also be fable.

The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise,
the symbol of youth, and ends with the ever-
lasting kingdom, with the holy city. The his-
tory of every man should be a Bible.

Prayer is to religion what thinking is to phi-
losophy. To pray is to make religion.

The more sinful man feels himself the more
Christian he is.

Christianity is opposed to science, to art, to
enjoyment in the proper sense.

It goes forth from the common man. It in-
spires the great majority of the limited on earth.

It is the germ of all democracy, the highest
fact in the domain of the popular.

Light is the symbol of genuine self-possession.
Therefore light, according to analogy, is the ac-
tion of the self-contact of matter. Accordingly,
day is the consciousness of the planet, and
while the sun, like a god, in eternal self-action,
inspires the centre, one planet after another
closes one eye for a longer or shorter time, and
with cool sleep refreshes itself for new life and
contemplation. , Accordingly, here, too, there is
religion. For is the life of the planets aught
else but sun-worship 1

The Holy Ghost is more than the Bible. This
should be our teacher of religion, not the dead,
earthly, equivocal letter. '

All faith is miraculous, and worketh miracles.

Sin is indeed the real evil in the world. All
calamity jjroceeds from that. He who under-
stands sin, understands virtue and Christianity,
himself and the world.

' ',

The greatest of miracles is a virtuous act.

If a man could suddenly believe, in sincerity,
that he was moral, he would be so.

We need not fear to admit that man has a
preponderating tendency to evil. So much the
belter is he by nature, for only the unlike attracts.

Everything distinguished (peculiar) deserves
ostracism. Well for it if it ostracises itself.
Everything absolute must quit the world.

A time will come, and that soon, when all
men will be convinced, that there can be no
king without a republic, and no republic with-
out a king; that both are as inseparable as body
and soul. The true king will be a republic, the
true republic a king.

In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows
a disturbance of the equipoise.

Most people know not how interesting they
are, what interesting things they really utter.
A true representation of themselves, a record
and estimate of their sayings, would make them
astonished at themselves, would help them to
discover in themselves an entirely new world.

Man is the Messiah of Nature.

The soul is the most powerful of all poi-
sons. It is the most penetrating and ditiusible
stimulus.

NOVALIS.

497

Kvery sickness is a musical problem ; the cure
is the musical sohition.

Inoculation with death, also, will not be want-
ing in some future universal therapia.

The idea of a perfect health is interesting
only in a scientific point of view. Sickness is
necessary to individualization.

If God could be man, he can also be stone,
plant, animal, element, and perhaps, in this way,
there is a continuous redemption in Nature.

Life is a disease of the spirit, a passionate
activity. Rest is the peculiar property of the
spirit. From the spirit comes gravitation.

As nothing can be free, so, too, nothing can
be forced, but spirit.

A space-filling individual is a body, a time-
filling individual is a soul. <

It should be inquired, whether Nature has not
essentially changed with the progress of culture.

All activity ceases when knowledge comes.
The state of knowing is eudmnonism, blest re-
pose of contemplation, heavenly quietism.

Miracles, as contradictions of Nature, are
amathematical. But there are no miracles in
this sense. What we so term, is intelligible
precisely by means of mathematics; for nothing
is miraculous to mathematics.

In mu'sic, mathematics appears formally, as
revelation, as creative idealism. All enjoyment
is musical, consequently mathematical. The
highest life is mathematics.

There may be mathematicians of the first
magnitude who cannot cipher. One can be a
great cipherer without a conception of mathe-
matics.

Instinct is genius in Paradise, before the pe-
riod of self-abstraction (self-recognition).

The fate which oppresses us is the sluggish-
ness of our spirit. By enlargeinent and culti-
vation of our activity, we change ourselves into
fate. Everything appears to stream in upon
us, because we do not stream out. We are ne-
gative, because we choose to be so ; the more
positive we become, the more negative will the
world around us be, until, at last, there is no
more negative, and we are all in all. God
wills gods.

All power appears only in transition,
manent power is stuff.

Per-

Every act of introversion — every glance into
our interior — is at the same time ascension,
going up to heaven, a glance at the veritable
outward.

Only so far as a man is happily married to
himself, is he fit for married life and family
life, generally.

One must never confess that one loves one's
self. The secret of this confession is the
life-principle of the only true and eternal
love.

We conceive God as personal, just as we con
ceive ourselves personal. God is just as per-
sonal and as individual as we are ; for what
we call / is not our true 7, but only its off
glance.

LUDWIG TIECK.*

Born 1773.

LuDwiG TiECK, born at Berlin, on the 31st
of May, 1773, is known to tlie world only as a
Man of Letters, having- never held any public
station, or tbllowed any profession, except that
of authorship. Of liis private history the critics
and news-hunters of Jiis own country complain
that they have little information ; a deficiency
which may arise in part from the circumstance,
tliat till of late years, though from the first ad-
mired by tlie Patricians of his native literature,
he has stood in no high favor, and of course
awakened no great curiosity, among the read-
ing Plebs ; and may indicate, at the same time,
that in his walk and conversation, there is little
wonderful to be discovered.

His literary life he began at Berlin, in his
twenty-second year, by the publication of three
novels, following each other in quick succes-
sion : Abdullah, William Lovell, and Peter
Leberrecht. Tliese works found small patron-
age at their first appearance, and are still re-
garded as immature products of his genius ; the
opening of a cloudy, as well as fervid dawn ;
betokening a day of strong heat, and perhaps
at last, of serene brightness. A gloomy tragic
spirit is said to reign tliroughout all of them ;
the image of a high passionate mind, scorning
the base and the false, rather than accomplish-
ing the good and the true ; in rapt earnestness
" interrogating Fate," and receiving no answer
but the echo of its own questions reverberated
from the dead walls of its vast and lone impri-
sonment.

In this stage of spiritual progress, where so
many not otherwise ungifted minds at length
painfully content themselves to take up their
permanent abode, where our own noble and
hapless Byron perished from among us at the
instant when his deliverance seemed at hand,
it was not Tieck's ill fortune to continue too
long. His Popular Talcs, published in 1797,
as an appendage to his last novel, under the
title of Peter Leberrechts Volksmdhrchen, al-
ready indicate that he had worked his wray

* The following notice, as well as the translation from
Tieck, is from Carlyle's "German Romance."

throusfh these baleful shades into a calmer and
sunnier elevation ; from wliich, and happily
without looking at the world through a painted
glass of any sort, he had begun to see that tliere
were things to be believed, as well as things
to be denied ; things to be loved and forwarded,
as well as things to be hated and trodden under
foot. Tlte active and positive of Goodness was
displacing the barren and tormenting negative ;
and wortliy feelings were now to be translated
into their only proper language, worthy actions.
In Tieck's mind, all Goodness, all that was
noble or excellent in Nature, seems to have
combined itself under the image of Poetic
Beauty ; to the service and defence of wliich
he has ever since unweariedly devoted his gifts
and his days.

These Volkmuhrchen are of the most varied
nature : sombre, pathetic, fantastic, satirical ;
but all pervaded by a warm, genial soul, which
accommodates itself with equal aptitude to the
gravest or the gayest form. A soft abundance,
a simple and kindly but often solemn majesty
is in them : wondrous shapes, full of meaning,
move over the scene, true modern denizens of
the old Fairyland ; low tones of plaintiveness
or awe flit round us; or a starry splen^r twin-
kles down from the immeasurable depths of
Night.

It is by this work, as revised and perfected
long afterwards, that we now purpose introduc-
ing Tieck to the notice of the English reader :
it was by this also that he was introduced to
the notice of liis countrymen. Peter Leber-
rechts Volksmdhrchen was reviewed by August
VVilhelm Schlegel, in the Jena Litteraturzei-
tung ; and its author, for the first time, brought
under the eye of the world as a man of rich
endowments, and in the fair way for turning
them to proper account. To the body of the
world, however, this piece of news was .sur-
prising rather than delightful; for Tieck's
merits were not of a kind to sfflit the ears of
the groundlings, and his manner of producing
them was ill calculated to conciliate a kind
hearing. Schiller and Goethe were at this

C49S)

TIECK.

499

time silent, or occupied with History and Plii-
losopliy : Tieck belonged not to the existing po-
etic guild ; and, far from soliciting admission, he
■^ had not scrupled, in the most pleasant fashion,
to inform the craftsmen that their great Diana
was a dumb idol, and their silver shrines an
unprofitable thing. Among these Volksmdhr-
chen, one of the most prominent is Der Gestie-
felle Kater, a dramatised version of Puss in
Boots ; under the grotesque mask of which, he
had laughed with his whole heart, in a true
Aristophanic vein, at the actual aspect of lite-
rature ; and without mingling his satire with
personalities, or any other false ingredient, had
rained it like a quiet shower of volcanic ashes
on the cant of Illumination, the cant of Sensi-
bility, the cant of Criticism, and the many other
cants of that shallow time, till the gum-flower
products of the poetic garden hung draggled
and black under their unkindly coating. In
another country, at another day, the drama of
Puss in Boots may justly be supposed to ap-
pear with enfeebled influences; yet even to a
stranger there is not wanting a feast of broad
joyous humor in this strange phantasmagoria,
where pit and stage, and man and animal, and
earth and air, are jumbled in confusion worse
confounded, and the copious, kind, ruddy light
of true mirth overshines and warms the whole.
This What-d'ye-call it of Puss in Boots was,
as it were, the key-note which for several years
determined the tone of Tieck's literary enter-
prises. The same spirit lives in his Verkehrte
Welt (World Turned Topsy-turvy), a drama
of similaf structure, which accompanied the
former ; in his tale of Zerbino, or the Tour in
search of Taste, which soon followed it; and
in numerous parodies and lighter pieces which
he gave to the world in his Poetic Journal,-
the second and last volume of which periodical
contains his Letters on Shakspeare, inculcating
the same doctrines, in a graver shape. About
this time, after a short residence in Hamburgh,
where he had married, he removed his abode
to Jena ; a change which confirmed him in his
literary tendencies, and facilitated the attain-
ment of their objects. It was here that he be-
came acquainted with the two Schlegels; and,
at the same time, with their friend Novalis, a
young man of a pure, warm, and benignant
genius, whose fme spirit died in its first blos-
soming, and whose posthumous works it was,
ere long, tlie melancholy task of Tieck, and the
younger Schlegel, to publish under their su-

perintendence. With Wackenroder of Berlin,
a person of kindred mind with Novalis, and
kindred fortune also, having died very early,
Tieck was already acquainted and united ; for
he had co-operated in the Ilerzensergiessungen
eines einsamen Klosterbruders, an elegant and
impressive work on pictorial art, and Wacken-
roder's chief performance.

These young men sympathised completely
in their critical ideas with Tieck; and each
was laboring in his own spiiere to disseminate
them, and reduce them to practice. Their en-
deavors, it would seem, have prospered ; for, in
colloquial literary history, this gifted cinquefoil,
often it is only the trefoil of Tieck and tiie two
Schlegels, have the credit, which was long the
blame, of founding a New School of Poetry, by
which the Old School, first fired upon in the
Gestiefelte Kater, and ever afterwards assailed,
without intermission, by eloquence and ridi-
cule, argument and entreaty, was at length
displaced and hunted out of being; or, like
Partridge the Astrologer, reduced to a life
which could be proved to be no life.

Of this New School, which has been the
subject of much unwise talk, and of much not
very wise writing, we cannot here attempt to
offer any suitable description, far less any just
estimate. One thing may be remarked, that
the epithet School seems to describe the case
with little propriety. That since the beginning
of the present century, a great change has
taken place in German literature, is plain
enough, without commentators ; but that it was
effected by three young men, living in the little
town of Jena, is not by any means so plam.
The critical principles of Tieck and the Schle-
gels had already been set forth, in the form
both of precept and prohibition, and with all
the aids of philosophic depth and epigrammatic
emphasis, by the united minds of Goethe and
Schiller, in the Horen and Xenien. Tlie de-
velopment and practical application of the doc-
trine is all that pertains to these reputed foun-
ders of the sect. But neither can the change
be said to have originated with Scliiller and
Goethe ; for it is a change originating not in
individuals, but in universal circumstances, and
belongs not to Germany, but to Europe. Among
ourselves, for instance, within the last thirty
years, who has not lifted up his voice with
double vigor in praise of Shakspeare and Na-
ture, and vituperation of French taste and
French philosophy 1 Who has not heard of the

500

TIECK.

glories of old English literature ; the wealth
of Queen Elizabeth's age ; the penury of Queen
Anne's ; and the inquiry whether Pope was a
poet? A similar temper is breaking out in
France itself, hermetically sealed as that coun-
try seemed to be against all foreign influences ;
and doubts are beginning to be entertained, and
even expressed, about Corneille and the Three
Unities. It seems to be substantially the same
thing which has occurred in Germany, and
been attributed to Tieck and his associates :
only, tliat the revolution, which is here pro-
ceeding, and in France commencing, appears
in Germany to be completed. Its results have
there been embodied in elaborate laws, and
profound systems have been promulgated and
accepted : whereas with us, in past years, there
has been as it were a Literary Anarchy ; for
the Pandects of Blair and Bossu are obsolete
or abrogated, but no new code supplies their
place ; and, author and critic, each sings or
says that which is right in his own eyes. For
the principles of German Poetics, we can only
refer the reader to the treatises of Kant, Schil-
ler, Ricliter, the Schlegels, and their many
copyists and expositors ; with the promise that
his labor will be hard, but not unrewarded by
a plenteous harvest of results, which, whether
they be doubted, denied, or believed, he will
find no trivial or unprofitable subject for his
contemplation.

These doctrines of taste, which Tieck em-
braced every opportunity of enforcing as a
critic, he did not fail diligently to exemplify in
practice ; as a long and rapid series of poetical
performances lies before the world to attest.
Of these, his Genoveva, a play grounded on
the legend of that Saint, appears to be regarded
as his master-piece by the best judges ; though
Franz Sternebalds Wanderungen, the ficti-
tious History of a Student of Painting, was
more r.elished by others ; and, as a critic tells
us, "here and there a low voice might be even
heard voting that this novel equalled Wilhelm
Meister ,- the peaceful clearness of which it
however nowise attained, but only, with visible
effort, strove to imitate." In this last work he
was assisted by Wackenroder. At an earlier
period, he had come forth, as a translator, with
a new version of Don Quixote : he now ap-
peared also as a commentator, with a work
entitled Minnelieder aus dem Schwabischen
Zeitalter (Minstrelsy of the Swabian Era),

published at Berlin in 1803; with an able Pre-
face, explaining the relation of these poets to
Petrarca and the Troubadours. In 1804, he
sent out his Kaiser Octavianus, a story which,
like the other works mentioned in this para-
graph, I have never seen, but which I find
praised by his countrymen in no very intelligi-
ble terms, as "a fair revival of the old Mi'ihr-
chen (Traditionary Tale) ; in which, however,
the poet moves freely, and has completed the
cycle of the romance." Die Gemdlde (the
Pictures), another of his fictions, has lately
been translated into English.

Tieck's frequent change of place bespeaks
less settledness in his domestic, than happily
existed in his intellectual circumstances. From
Jena he seems to have again removed to Ber-
lin ; then to a country residence near Frankfort
on the Oder ; which, in its turn, he quitted for
a journey into Italy. In this classic country
he found new facilities for two of his favorite
pursuits: he employed himself, it is said, to
good purpose, in the study of ancient and mo-
dern art ; to which, while in Rome, he added
the examining of many old German manuscripts
preserved in the Vatican Library. From hi^
labors in this latter department, and elsewhere,
his countrymen have not long ago obtained, in
addition to the Minstrelsy, an Altdcutsches
Theater (Old-German Theatre), in two vo-
lumes, with the hope of more. A collection of
Old-German Poetry is still expected.

In 1806, he returned to Germany ; first to
Munich, then to his former retreat near Frank-
fort ; but for the next seven years, he was little
heard of as an active member of the literary
world ; and the regret of his admirers was in-
creased by intelligence that ill health was the
cause of his inactivity. That this inactivity
was more apparent than real, he has proved by
his reappearance in new vigor, at a time when
he finds a readier welcome and more willing
audience. He has since published abundantly
in various forms ; as a translator, an editor, and
a writer both of poetry and prose. In 1812,
appeared his early Volksmdhrchen, retouched,
and improved, and combined into a whole, by
conversations, critical, disquisitionary, and de-
scriptive, in two volumes, entitled Phantasus ;
from which our present specimens of him are
taken. His Altdeutsches Theater was followed
by an Altenglisches, including the disputed
plays of Shakspeare ; a work gladly received

TIECK.

001

by his countrymen, no less devoted admirers
of Sliakspeare tlian ourselves. Since that time,
he has paid us a personal visit. In 1818, he
was in London, and is said to have been well
satisfied with his reception ; which we cannot
but hope was as respectfiil and kind as a guest
so accomplished, and so friendly to England,
deserved at our hands. The fruit of his resi-
dence among us, it seems, has already appeared
in his writings. He has very lately given to
tlie world a novel on Sliakspeare and his Times ;
in which he has not trembled to introduce, as

acting characters, the great dramatist himself,
with Marlowe, and various other poets of that
age. Such is the report, which adds, that his
work is admired in Germany; but that any
copy of it has crossed the Channel, I have not
heard.

Of Tieck's present residence, or special
pursuits, or economical circumstances, I am
sorry to confess my entire ignorance. One
little fact may perhaps be worth adding ; that
Sophia Bernhardi, an esteemed authoress, is
his sister.

THE ELVES.

"Where is our little Maiyl" said the father.

"She is playiny: out upon the green there, with
our neighbor's boy,'' replied the mother.

"I wish they may not run away and lose
themselves," said he; "they are so thought-
less."

The mother looked for the little ones, and
brought tlieni their evening luncheon. "It is
warm," said the boy; "and Mary had a longing
for the red cherries."

"Have a care, children," said the mother,
" and do not run too far from home, or into the
wood ; father and I are going to the fields."

Little Andres answered: "Never fear, the
wood frightens us; we shall sit here by the
house, where there are people near us."

The mother went in, and soon came out again
with her husband. They locked the door, and
turned towards the fields to look after their
laborers, and see their hay-harvest in the mea-
dow. Their house lay upon a little green
height, encircled by a pretty ring of paling,
which likewise enclosed their fruit and flower-
garden. The hamlet stretched somewhat deeper
down, and on the other side lay the castle of the
Count. Martin rented the large farm from this
nobleman ; and was living in contentment with
his wife and only child; for he yearly saved
some money, and had the i^rospect of becoming
a man of substance by his industry, for the
ground was productive, and the Count not
illiberal.

As he walked with his wife to the fields, he
gazed cheerfully round, and said : "What a dif-
ferent look this quarter has, Brigitta, from the
place we lived in formerly! Here it is all so
green; the whole village is bedecked with thick-
spreading fruit-trees; the ground is full of beau-
tiful herbs and flowers ; all the houses are cheer-
ful and cleanly, the inhabitants are at their ease :
nay, I could almost fancy that the woods are
greener here than elsewhere, and the sky bluer;
and, so far as the eye can reach, you have plea-
sure and delight in beholding the bountiful
Earth."

"And whenever you cross the stream," said
Brigitta, " you are, as it were, in another world,
all is so dreary and withered ; but every tra-
veller declares that our village is the fairest in
the country, far and near."

"All but that fir-ground," said her husband;
" do but look back to it, how dark and dismal
that solitary spot is lying in the gay scene: the
dingy fir-trees, with the smoky huts behind
them, the ruined stalls, the brook flowing past
with a sluggish melancholy."

" It is true," replied Brigitta ; " if you but ajo-
proach that spot, you grow disconsolate and sad,
you know not why. What sort of people can
they be that live there, and keep themselves so
separate from the rest of us, as if they had an
evil conscience 1"

"A miserable crew," replied the young far-
mer: "gipsies, seemingly, that steal and cheat
in other quarters, and have their hoard and
hiding-place here. I wonder only that his lord-
ship suffers them."

"Who knows," said the wife, with an accent
of pity, "but perhaps they may be poor people,
wishing, out of shame, to conceal their poverty ;
for, after all, no one can say aught ill of them ;
the only thing is, that they do not go to church,
and none knows how they live ; for the little
garden, which indeed seems altogether waste,
cannot possibly suj^port them ; and fields they
have none."

" God knows," said Martin, as they went
along, " what trade they follow ; no mortal
comes to them ; for the place they live in is as
if bewitched and excommunicated, so that even
our wildest fellows will not venture into it."

Such conversation they pursued, while walk-
ing to the fields. That gloomy spot they spoke
of lay aside from the hamlet. In a dell, begirt
with firs, you might behold a hut, and various
ruined office-houses ; rarely v/as smoke seen to
mount from it, still more rarely did men appear
there; though at times curious people, venturing
somewhat nearer, had perceived upon the bench
before the hut, some hideous women, in ragged
clothes, dandling in their arms some children
equally dirty and ill-favored; black dogs were

502

TIECK.

running up and down upon the boundary; and,
of an evening, a man of monstrous size was seen
to cross the foot-bridge of the brook, and disap-
pear in the hut; and, in the darkness, various
shai)es were observed, moving like shadows
round a fire in the open air. Tliis piece of
ground, the firs, and the ruined huts, formed in
trutli a strange contrast with tlie bright green
landscape, the white houses of the hamlet, and
the stately new-built castle.

The two little ones had now eaten their fruit;
it came into their heads to run races; and the
little nimble Mary always got the start of the
less active Andres. "It is not fair," cried An-
dres at last: "let us try it for some length, then
we shall see who wins."

"As thou wilt," said Mary; "only to the
brook we must not run."

"No," said Andres; "but there, on the hill,
stands the large pear-tree, a quarter of a mile
from this. I shall run by the left, round past
the fir-ground ; thou canst try it by the right,
over the fields ; so we do not meet till we get
up, and then we shall see which of us is the
swifter."

" Done," cried Mary, and began to run ; " for
we shall not mar one another by the way, and
my father says it is as far to the hill by that
side of the gipsies' house as by this."

Andres had already started, and Mary, turn-
ing to the right, could no longer see him. " It
is very silly," said she to herself: "I have only
to take heart, and run along the bridge, past the
hut, and through the yard, and I shall certainly
be first." She was already standing by the
brook and the clump of firs. " Shall I ? No ;
it is too frightful," said she. A little white dog
was standing on the farther side, and barking
with might and main. In her terror, Mary
thought the dog some monster, and sprang back.
" Fy! fy !" said she : " the dolt is gone half way
by this time, while I stand here considering."
The little dog kept barking, and, as she looked
at it more narrowly, it seemed no longer fright-
ful, but, on the contrary, quite pretty : it had a
red collar round its neck, with a glittering bell ;
atjd as it raised its head, and shook itself in
barking, the little bell sounded with the finest
tinkle. "Well, I must risk it!" cried she: "I
will run for life ; quick, quick, I am through ;
certainly to Heaven, they cannot eat me up
alive in half a minute!" And with this, the
gay, courageous, little Mary. sf)rang along the
foot-bridge ; passed the dog, which ceased its
barking, and began to fawn on her; and in a
moment she was standing on the otlif-r bank,
and the black firs all round conce;; ■ I from
view her father's house, and the red of the
landscape.

But what was her astonishment when here!
The loveliest, most variegated flower-garden
lay round her ; tulips, roses, and lilies, were
glittering in the fairest colours ; blue and gold-
red butterflies were wavering in the blossoms;
cages of shining wire were hung on the espa-

liers, with many-colored birds in them, singing
beautiful songs ; and children, in short white
frocks, with flowing yellow hair and brilliant
eyes, were frolicking about; some playing with
lambkins, some feeding the birds, or gathering
flowers, and giving them to one another; some,
again, were eating cherries, grapes, and ruddy
apricots. No hut was to be seen ; but instead
of it, a large fair house, with a brazen door and
lofty statues, stood glancing in the middle of the
space. Mary was confounded with surprise,
and knew not what to think ; but, not being
bashful, she went right up to the first of the
children, held out her hand, and wished the
little creature good even.

"Art thou come to visit us, then?" said the
glittering child ; " I saw thee running, playing
on the other side, but thou wert frightened for
our little dog."

" So you are not gipsies and rogues," said
Mary, "as Andres always told me? He is a
stupid thing, and talks of much he does not un-
derstand."

"Stay with us," said the strange little girl;
" thou wilt like it well."

"But we are running a race."

" Thou wilt find thy comrade soon enough.
There, take and eat."

Mary ate, and found the fruit more sweet
than any she had ever tasted in her life before ;
and Andres, and the race, and the prohibition
of her parents, were entirely forgotten.

A stately woman, in a shining robe, came to-
wards them, and asked about the stranger child.
"Fairest lady," said Mary, "I came running
hither by chance, and now they wish to keep
me."

" Thou art aware, Zerina," said the lady,
" that she can be here but for a little while ;
besides, thou should'st have asked my leave."

" I thought," said Zerina, " when I saw her
admitted across the bridge, that I might do it;
we have often seen her running in the fields,
and thou thyself hast taken pleasure in her
lively temper. She will have to leave us soon
enough."

"No, I will stay here," said the little stran-
ger; "for here it is so beautiful, and here I
shall find the prettiest playthings, and store of
berries and cherries to boot. On the other side
it is not half so grand."

The gold-robed lady went away with a smile ;
and many of the children now came bounding
round the happy Mary in their mirth, and
twitched her, and incited her to dance; others
brought her lambs, or curious playthings: others
made music on instruments, and sang to it.

She kept, however, by the j^laymate who had
first met her; for Zerina was the kindest and
loveliest of them all. Little Mary cried and
cried again: "I will stay with you forever; I
will stay with you, and you shall be my sisters ;"
at which the children all laughed, and embraced
her. "Now, we shall have a royal sport," said
Zerina. She ran into the palace, and returned

TIECK.

503

with a little golden box, in which lay a quantity
of seeds, like glittering dust. She lifted of it
with her little hand, and scattered some grains
on the green earth. Instantly the grass began to
move, as in waves ; and, after a few moments,
bright rose-bushes started from the ground, shot
rapidly up, and budded all at once, while the
sweetest perfume filled the place. Mary also
took a little of the dust, and, having scattered
it, she saw white lilies, and the most variegated
pinks, pusliing up. At a signal from Zerina,
the flowers disappeared, and others rose in
their room. " Now," said Zerina, " look for
something greater." She laid two pine-seeds
in the ground, and stamped them in sharply
with her foot. Two green bushes stood before
them. "Grasp me fast," said she; and Mary
threw her arms about the slender form. She
felt herself borne upwards; for the trees were
springing under them with the greatest speed ;
the tall pines waved to and fro, and the two
children held each other fast embraced, swing-
ing this way and that in the red clouds of the
twilight, and kissed each other; while the rest
were climbing up and down the trunks with
quick dexterity, pushing and teasing one another
with loud laughter when they met; if any one
fell down in the press, it fiew through the air,
and sank slowly and surely to the ground. At
length Mary was beginning to be frightened ;
and the other little child sang a few loud tones,
and the trees again sank down, and set them
on the ground as gradually as they had lifted
them before to the clouds.

They next went through the brazen door of
the palace. Here' many fair women, elderly
and young, were sitting in the round hall, par-
taking of the fairest fruits, and listening to glo-
rious invisible music. In the vaulting of the
ceiling, palms, flowers, and groves stood painted,
among which little figures of children were
sporting and winding in every graceful posture;
and with the tones of the music, the images
altered and glowed with the most burning co-
lours; now the blue and green were sparkling
like radiant light, now these tints faded back in
paleness, the purple flamed up, and the gold
took fire ; and then the naked children seemed
to be alive among the flower-garlands, and to
draw breath, and emit it through their ruby-
colored lips; so that by fits you could see the
glance of their little white teeth, and the light-
ing up of their azure eyes.

From tlie hall, a stair of brass led down to a
subterranean chamber. Here lay much gold
and silver, and precious stones of every hue
shone out between them. Strange vessels stood
along the walls, and all seemed filled with
costly things. The gold was worked into many
forms, and glittered with the friendliest red.
Many little dwarfs were busied in sorting the
pieces from the heap, and putting them in the
vessels; others, hunch-backed and bandy-legged,
with long red noses, were tottering slowly
along, half-bent to the ground, under full sacks,

which they bore as millers do their grain ; and,
with much panting, shaking out the gold-dust
on the ground. Then they darted awkwardly
to the right and left, and caught the rolling ball
that were likely to run away ; and it happened
now and then that one in his eagerness overset
the other, so that both fell heavily and clumsily
to the ground. They made angry faces, and
looked askance, as Mary laughed at their ges-
tures and their ugliness. Behind them sat an
old crumpled little man, whom Zerina reve-
rently greeted ; he thanked her with a grave
inclination of his head. He held a sceptre in
his hand, and wore a crown upon his brow,
and all the other dwarfs appeared to regard
him as their master, and obey his nod.

" What more wanted ?" asked he, with a
surly voice, as the children came a little nearer.
Mary was afraid, and did not speak ; but her
companion answered, they were only come to
look about them in the chamber. " Still your
old child's tricks!" replied the dwarf: "Will
there never be an end to idleness?" With this,
he turned again to his employment, kept his
people weighing and sorting the ingots ; some
he sent away on errands, some he chid with
angry tones.

" Who is the gentleman ?" said Mary.

" Our Metal-Prince," replied Zerina, as they
walked along.

They seemed once more to reach the open
air, for they were standing by a lake, yet no
sun appeared, and they saw no sky above their
heads. A little boat received them, and Zerina
steered it diligently forwards. It shot rapidly
along. On gaining the middle of the lake, the
stranger saw that multitudes of pipes, channels,
and brooks, were spreading from the little sea in
every direction. "These waters to the right,"
said Zerina, " flow beneath yon garden, and
this is why it blooms so freshly; by the other'
side we get down into the great stream." On
a sudden, out of all the channels, and from every
quarter of the lake, came a crowd of little chil-
dren swimming up ; some wore garlands of
sedge and water-lily; some had red stems of
coral, others were blowing on crooked shells; a
tumultuous noise echoed merrily from the dark
shores ; among the children might be seen the
fairest women sporting in the waters, and often
several of the children sprang about some one
of them, and with kisses hung upon her neck
and shoulders. All saluted the strangers ; and
these steered onwards through the revelry out
of the lake, into a little river, which grew nar-
rower and narrower. At last the boat came
aground. The strangers took their leave, and
Zerina knocked against the cliff. This opened
like a door, and a female form, all red, assisted
them to mount. "Are you all brisk here?" in-
quired Zerina. "They are just at work," re-
plied the other, "and happy as they could
wish; indeed, the heat is very pleasant."

They went up a winding stair, and on a sud-
\ den Mary found herself in a most resplendent

504

TIECK.

hall, so that as she entered, her eyes were daz-
zled by the radiance. Flame-colored tapestry
covered the walls with a purple glow ; and
when her eye had grown a little used to it, the
stranger saw, to her astonishment, that, in the
tapestry, there were figures moving up and
down in dancing joyfulness ; in form so beauti-
ful, and of so fair proportions, that nothing
could be seen more graceful ; their bodies were
as of red crystal, so tliat it appeared as if the
blood were visible within them, flowing and
playing in its courses. They smiled on the
stranger, and saluted her with various bows ;
but as Mary was about approaching nearer
them, Zerina plucked her sharply back, crying:
"Thou wilt burn thyself, my little Mary, for the
whole of it is fire."

Mary felt the heat. "Why do the pretty
creatures not come out," said she, "and play
with us 1"

"As thou livest in the Air," replied the other,
«so are they obliged to stay continually in Fire,
and would faint and languish if they left it.
Look now, how glad they are, how they laugh
and shout; those down below spread out the
fire-floods everywhere beneath the earth, and
thereby the flowers, and fruits, and wine, are
made to flourish; these red streams again, are
to run beside the brooks of water ; and thus the
fiery creatures are kept ever busy and glad.
But for thee it is too hot here ; let us return to
the garden."

In the garden, the scene had changed since
they left it. The moonshine was lying on every
flower; the birds were silent, and the children
were asleep in complicated groups, among the
green groves. Mary and her friend, however,
did not feel fatigue, but walked about in the
warm summer night, in abundant talk, till
morning.

When the day dawned, they refreshed them-
selves on fruit and milk, and Mary said : "Sup-
pose we go, by way of change, to the firs, and
see how things look there?"

" With all my heart," replied Zerina ; " thou
wilt see our watchmen, too, and they will surely
please thee; they are standing up among the
trees on the mound." The two proceeded
through the flower-garden by pleasant groves,
full of nightingales ; then they ascended a vine-
hill ; and at last, after long Ibllowing the wind-
ings of a clear brook, arrived at the firs, and the
height which bounded the domain. " How does
it come," said Mary, "that we have to walk so
far here, when without, the circuit is so narrow ?"
« I know not," said her friend ; " but so it is."
They mounted to the dark firs, and a chill
wind blew from without in their faces ; a haze
seemed lying far and wide over the landscape.
On the top were many strange forms standing;
with mealy, dusty faces ; their mis-shapen heads
not unlike those of white owls; they were clad
in folded cloaks of shaggy wool ; they held um-
brellas of curious skins stretched out above
them • and they waved and fanned themselves

incessantly with large bat's wings, which flared
out curiously beside the woollen roquelaures.
" I could laugh, yet I am frightened," cried
Mary.

" These are our good trusty watchmen," said
her playmate; "they stand here and wave their
fans, that cold anxiety and inexplicable fear
may fall on every one that attempts to approach
us. They are covered so, because without it is
now cold and rainy, which they cannot bear.
But snow, or wind, or cold air, never reaches
down to us ; here is an everlasting spring and
summer: yet if these poor people on the top
were not frequently relieved, they would cer-
tainly perish."

" But who are you, then ?" said Mary, while
again descending to the flowery fragrance; "or
have you no name at all V

"We are called the Elves," replied the
friendly child; "people talk about us in the
Earth, as I have heard."

They now perceived a mighty bustle on the
green. "The fair Bird is come!" cried the
children to them : all hastened to the hall.
Here, as they approached, young and old were
crowding over the threshold, all shouting for
joy; and from within resounded a triumphant
peal of music. Having entered, they perceived
the vast circuit filled with the most varied forms,
and all were looking upwards to a large Bird
with glancing plumage, that was sweeping
slowly round in the dome, and in its stately
flight describing many a circle. The music
sounded more gaily than before; the colors and
lights alternated more rapidly. At last the
music ceased ; and the Bird, with a rustling
noise, floated down upon a glittering crown that
hung hovering in air under the high window,
by which the hall was lighted from above. His
plumage was purple and green, and shining
golden streaks played through it; on his head
there waved a diadem of feathers, so resplendent
that they glanced like jewels. His bill was
red, and his legs of a glancing blue. As he
moved, the tints gleamed through each other,
and the eye was charmed with their radiance.
His size was as that of an eagle. But now he
opened his glittering beak; and sweetest melo-
dies came pouring from his moved breast, in
finer tones than the lovesick nightingale gives
forth ; still stronger rose the song, and streamed
like floods of Light, so that all, the very children
themselves, were moved by it to tears of joy
and rapture. When he ceased, all bowed be-
fore him ; he again flew round the dome in cir-
cles, then darted through the door, and soared
into the light heaven, where he shone far up
like a red point, and then soon vanished from
their eyes.

"Why are ye all so glad?" inquired Mary,
bending to her fair playmate, who seemed
smaller than yesterday.

"The King is coming!" said the little one;
" many of us have never seen him, and whither-
soever he turns his face, there is happiness and

TIECK.

505

mirtli ; we have long looked for him, more anx-
iously than you look for spring when winter
lingers with you; and now he has announced,
by his fair herald, that he is at hand. This
wise and glorious Bird, that has been sent to us
by the King, is called Phcenix ; he dwells far
otf in Arabia, on a tree, which there is no otlier
that resembles on Earth, as in like manner there
is no second Phoenix. When he feels himself
grown old, he builds a pile of balm and incense,
kindles it, and dies singing; and then from the
fragrant ashes, soars up the renewed Phcenix
with unlessened beauty. It is seldom he so
wings his course that men behold him; and
when once in centuries this does occur, they
note it in their annals, and expect remarkable
events. But now, my friend, thou and I must
part; for the sight of the King is not permitted
thee."

Then the lady widi the golden robe came
through the throng, and beckoning Mary to her,
led her into a sequestered walk. "Thou must
leave us, my dear child," said she ; " the King
is to hold his court here for twenty years, per-
haps longer; and fruitfulness and blessings will
spread far over the land, but chiefly here beside
us ; all the brooks and rivulets will become
more bountiful, all the fields and gardens richer,
the wine more generous, the meadows more
fertile, and the woods more fresh and green ; a
milder air will blow, no hail shall hurt, no flood
shall threaten. Take this ring, and think of us :
but beware of telling any one of our existence ;
or we must fly this land, and thou and all around
will lose the happiness and blessing of our
neighborhood. Once more, kiss thy playmate,
and farewell." They issued from the walk;
Zerina wept, Mary stooped to embrace her, and
they parted. Already she was on the narrow
bridge; the cold air was blowing on her back
from the firs; the little dog barked with all its
might, and rang its little bell ; she looked round,
then hastened over, for the darkness of the firs,
the bleakness of the ruined huts, the shadows
of the twilight, were filling her with terror.

"What a night my parents must have had on
my account!" said she within herself, as she
slept on the green; "and I dare not tell them
where I have been, or what wonders I have
witnessed, nor indeed would they believe me."
Two men passing by saluted her, and as they
went along, she heard them say: "What a
pretty girl! Where can she come from ?" With
quickened steps she approached the house : but
the trees which were hanging last night loaded
with fruit, were now standing dry and leafless ;
the house was difibrently painted, and a new
barn had been built beside it. Mary was
amazed, and thought she must be dreaming.
In this perplexity she opened the door; and
behind the table sat her father, between an un-
known woman and a stranger youth. "Good
God ! Father,"' cried she, " where is my mother ?"

" Thy mother !" said the woman, with a fore-
casting tone, and sprang towards her: "Ha,
3o

thou surely canst not — Yes, indeed, indeed thou
art my lost, long-lost dear, only Mary!" She
had recognised her by a little brown mole be-
neath the chin, as well as by her eyes and
shape. All embraced her, all were moved
with joy, and the parents wept. Mary was
astonished that she almost reached to her father's
stature ; and she could not understand how her
mother had become so changed and faded ; she
asked the name of the stranger youth. " It is
our neighbour's Andres," said Martin. " How
comest thou to us again, so unexpectedly, after
seven long years? Where hast thou been?
Why didst thou never send us tidings of thee ?"

" Seven years !" said Mary, and could not
order her ideas and recollections. " Seven
whole years?"

" Yes, yes," said Andres, laughing, and shak-
ing her trustfully by the hand ; " I have won
the race, good Mary ;'I was at the pear-tree and
back again seven years ago, and thou, sluggish
creature, art but just returned !"

They again asked, they pressed her; but re-
membering her instruction, she could answer
nothing. It was they themselves chiefly that,
by degrees, shaped a story for her : How, hav-
ing lost her way, she had been taken up by a
coach, and carried to a strange remote part,
where she could not give the people any notion
of her parents' residence ; how she was con-
ducteol to a distant town, where certain worthy
persons brought her up, and loved her ; how
they had lately died, and at length she had re-
collected her birth-place, and so returned. " No
matter how it is!" exclaimed her mother;
" enough that we have thee again, my little
daughter, my own, my all !"

Andres waited supper, and Mary could not
be at home in anything she saw. The house
seemed small and dark ; she felt astonished at
her dress, which was clean and simple, but
appeared quite foreign ; she looked at the ring
on her finger, and the gold of it glittered strange-
ly, inclosing a stone of burning red. To her
father's question, she replied that the ring also
was a present from her benefactors.

She was glad when the hour of sleep arrived,
and she hastened to her bed. Next morning
she felt much more collected ; she had now
arranged her thoughts a little, and coitld better
stand the questions of the people in the village,
all of whom came in to bid her welcome. An-
dres was there too with the earliest, active,
glad, and serviceable beyond all others. The
blooming maiden of fifteen had made a deep
impression on him ; he had passed a sleepless
night. The people of the castle likewise sent
for Mary, and she had once more to tell her
story to them, which was now grown quite fa-
miliar to her. The old Count and his Lady
were surprised at her good breeding; she w^s
modest, but not embarrassed ; she made answer
courteously in good phrases to all their ques-
tions ; all fear of noble persons and their equip-
age had passed away from her ; for when she
43

506

TIECK.

measured tliese halls and forms by the wonders
and the high beauty she had seen with the
Elves in their hidden abode, this earthly splen-
dor seemed but dim to her, the presence of
men was almost mean. Tlie young lords were
charmed with her beauty.

It was now February. The trees were bud-
ding earlier than usual ; the nightingale had
never come so soon ; the spring rose fairer in
the land than the oldest men could recollect it.
In every quarter, little brooks gushed out to irri-
gate the pastures and meadows ; the hills seemed
heaving, the vines rose higher and higher, the
fruit-trees blossomed as they had never done ;
and a swelling fragrant 'blessedness hung sus-
pended heavily in rosy clouds over the scene.
All prospered beyond expectation : no rude day,
no tempest injured the fruits; the wine flowed
blushing in immense grapes; and the inhabit-
ants of the place felt astonished, and were cap-
tivated as in a sweet dream. The next year
was like its forerunner; but men had now be-
come accustomed to the marvellous. In autumn,
Mary yielded to the pressing entreaties of An-
dres and her parents ; she w^as betrothed to
him, and in winter they were married.

Hhe often thought with inward longing of her
residence behind the fir-trees ; she continued
serious and stilL Beautiful as all that lay around
her was, she knew of something yet more beau-
tiful; and from the remembrance of this, a faint
regret attuned her nature to soft melancholy.
It smote her jiainfuUy when her father and
mother talked about the gipsies and vagabonds,
that dwelt in the dark spot of ground. Often
she was on the point of speaking out in defence
of those good beings, whom she knew to be the
benefactors of the land ; especially to Andres,
who appeared to take delight in zealously abus-
ing them : yet still she repressed the word that
was struggling to escape her bosom. So passed
this year; in the next, she was solaced by a
little daughter, whom she named Elfrida, think-
ing of the designation of her friendly Elves.

The young people lived with Martin and
Brigitta, the house being large enough for all;
and helped their parents in conducting their
now extended husbandry. The little Elfrida
soon displayed peculiar faculties and gifts ; for
she could walk at a very early age, and could
speak perfectly before she was a twelvemonth
old ; and after some few years, she had become
so wise and clever, and of such wondrous
beauty, that all people regarded her with asto-
nishment; and her mother could not keep away
the thought that her child resembled one of
those shining little ones in the space behind the
Firs. Elfriila cared not to be with other child-
ren; but seemed to avoid, with a sort of horror,
their tumultuous amusements; and liked best
to be alone. She would then retire into a corner
of the garden, and read, or work diligently with
her needle ; often also you might see her sitting,
as if deep sunk in thought; or violently walking
up and down the alleys, speaking to herself.

Her parents readily allowed her to liave her
will in these things, for she was healthy, and
waxed apace ; only her strange sagacious an-
swers and observations often made them anx-
ious. " Such wise children do not grow to age,"
her grandmother, Brigitta, many times observed ;
" they are too good for this world ; the child,
besides, is beautiful beyond nature, and will
never find its proper place on Earth."

The little girl had this peculiarity, that she
was very loath to let herself be served by any
one, but endeavored to do everything herself.
She was almost the earliest riser in the house ;
she washed herself carefully, and dressed with-
out assistance : at night she was equally careful ;
she took special heed to pack up her clothes and
washes with her own hands, allowing no one,
not even her mother, to meddle with her arti-
cles. The mother lutmored her in this caprice,
not thinking it of any consequence. But what
was her astonishment, when, happening one
holiday to insist, regardless of Elfrida's tears
and screams, on dressing her out for a visit to
the castle, she found upon her breast, suspended
by a string, a piece of gold of a strange form,
which she directly recognised as one of that sort
she had seen in such abundance in the subter-
ranean vault! The little thing was greatly
frightened ; and at last confessed that she had
found it in the garden, and as she liked it much,
had kept it carefully: she at the same time
prayed so earnestly and pressingly to have it
back, that Mary fastened it again on its former
place, and, full of thoughts, went out with her
in silence to the castle.

Sidewards from the farm-house lay some of-
fices for the storing of produce and implements ;
and behind these there was a little green, with
an old grove, now visited by no one, as, from
the new arrangement of the buildings, it lay too
far from the garden. In this solitude, Elfrida
delighted most; and it occurred to nobody to
interrupt her here, so that frequently her parents
did not see her for half a day. One afternoon
her mother chanced to be in these buildings,
seeking for some lost article among the lumber ;
and she noticed that a beam of light was com-
ing in, through a chink in the wall. She took
a thought of looking through this aperture, and
seeing what her child was busied with ; and it
happened that a stone was lying loose, and
could be pushed aside, so that she obtained a
view right into the grove. Elfrida was sitting
there on a little bench, and beside her the well-
known Zerina; and the children were playing,
aiid amusing one another, in the kindliest unity.
The Elf embraced her beaiuiful companion, and
said mournfully: "Ah! dear little creature, as
I sport with thee, so have I sported with thy
mother, when she was a child ; but you mor-
tals so soon grow tall and thoughtful! It is
very hard: wert thou but to be a child as long
as I!"

"Willingly would I do it," said Elfrida; "but
they all say, I shall conre to sense, and give over

TIECK.

507

playing altogether ; for I have great gifts, as
they think, for growing wise. Ah ! and then I
shall see thee no more, thou dear Zerina! Yet
it is with us as with the fruit-tree flowers : how
glorious the blossoining apple-tree, with its red
bursting buds ! It looks so stately and broad ;
and every one, that passes under it, thinks
surely something great will come of it; then the
sun grows hot, and the buds come joyfully forth ;
but the wicked kernel is already there, which
pushes off and casts away the fair flower's
dress ; and now, in pain and waxing, it can do
nothing more, but must grow to fruit in harvest.
An apple, to be sure, is pretty and refreshing;
yet nothing to the blossom of spring. So is it
also with us mortals : I am not glad in the least
at growing to be a tall girl. Ah! could I but
once visit you !"

"Since the King is with us," said Zerina, "it
is quite impossible ; but I will come to thee,
my darling, often, often, and none shall see me
either here or there. I will pass invisible
through the air, or fly over to thee like a bird ;
Oh! we will be much, much together, while
thou art so little. What can I do to please
thee V

" Thou must like me very dearly,'' said El-
frida, "as I like thee in my heart: but come,
let us make another rose."

Zerina took a well-known box from her bo-
som, threw two grains from it on the ground ;
and instantly a green bush stood before them,
with two deep-red roses, bending their heads,
as if to kiss each other. The children plucked
them smiling, and the bush disappeared. "0
that it would not die so soon!" said Elfrida;
" this red child, this wonder of the Earth !"

"Give it me here," said the little Elf; then
breathed thrice upon the budding rose, and
kissed it thrice. " A'ow," said she, giving back
the rose, " it will continue fresh and blooming
till winter."

" I will keep it," said Elfrida, " as an image
of thee ; I will guard it in my little room, and
kiss it night and morning, as if it were thyself."

" The sun is setting," said the other, " 1 must
home." They embraced again, and Zerina
vanished.

In the evening, Mary clasped her child to her
breast, with a feeling of alarm and veneration.
She henceforth allowed the good little girl more
liberty than formerly ; and often calmed her
husband, when he came to searcli for the child ;
which for some time he was wont to do, as her
retiredness did not please him, and he feared
that, in the end, it might make her silly, or even
jjervert her understanding. The mother often
glided to the chink ; and almost always found
the bright Elf beside her child, employed in
sport, or in earnest conversation.

"'Wouldst thou like to fly 7" inquired Zerina
once.

" Oh, well ! How well !" replied Elfrida ; and
the fairy clasped her mortal playmate in her
arms, and mounted with her from the ground,

till they hovered above the grove. The mother,
in alarm, forgot herself, and pushed out her
head in terror to look after them ; when Zerina,
from the air, held up her finger, and threatened
yet smiled ; then descended with the child,
embraced her, and disappeared. After this, it
happened more than once that Mary was ob-
served by her; and every time, the shining
little creature shook her head, or threatened, yet
with friendly looks.

Often, in disputing with her husband, Mary
had said in her zeal : " Thou dost injustice to
the poor people in the hut !" But when Andres
pressed her to explain why she differed in opi-
nion from the whole village, nay, from his Lord-
ship himself; and how she could understand it
better than the whole of them, she still broke
ofl" embarrassed, and became silent. One day,
after dinner, Andres grew more violent than
ever ; and maintained that, by one means or
another, the crew must be packed away, as a
nuisance to the country ; when his wife, in
anger, said to him : " Hush ! for they are bene-
factors to thee and to every one of us."

" Benefactors !" cried the other, in astonish-
ment: "These rogues and vagabonds'?"

In her indignation, she was now at last
tempted to relate to him, under promise of the
strictest secrecy, the history of her youth : and
as Andres at every word grew more incredu-
lous, and shook his head in mockery, she took
him by the hand, and led him to the chink ;
where, to his amazement, he beheld the glitter-
ing Elf sporting with his child, and caressing
her in the grove. He knew not what to say ;
an exclamation of astonishment escaped him,
and Zerina raised her eyes. On the instant she
grew pale, and trembled violently; not with
friendly, but with indignant looks, she made the
sign of threatening, and then said to Elfrida :
"Thou canst not help it, dearest heart; but they
will never learn sense, wise as they believe
themselves." She embraced the little one with
stormy haste ; and then, in the shape of a raven,
flew with hoarse cries over the garden, towards
the Firs.

In the evening, the little one was very still,
she kissed her rose with tears ; Mary felt de-
pressed and frightened, Andres scarcely spoke.
It grew dark. Suddenly there went a rustling
through the trees; birds flew to and fro with
wild screaming, thunder was heard to roll, the
Earth shook, and tones of lamentation moaned
in the air. Andres and his wife had not cou-
rage to rise ; they shrouded themselves within
the curtains, and with fear and trembling await-
ed the day. Towards morning, it grew calmer ;
and all was silent when the Sun, with his cheer-
ful light, rose over the wood.

Andres dressed himself, and Mary now ob-
served that the stone of the ring upon her finger
had become quite pale. On opening the door,
the sun shone clear on their faces, but the scene
around then-, they could scarcely recognise. The
freshness of the wood was gone; the hills were

508

TIECK.

shrunk, the brooks were flowing languidly with
scanty streams, the sky seemed grey ; and when
you turned to the Firs, they were standing there
no darker or more dreary than the other trees.
The huts behind were no longer frightful; and
several inhabitants of the village came and told
about the fearful night, and how they had been
across the spot where the gipsies had lived;
how these people must have left the place at
last, for their huts were standing empty, and
witliin had quite a common look, just like the
dwellings of other poor people: some of their
household gear was left behind.

Elfrida in secret said to her mother : " I could
not sleep last night; and in my fright at the
noise, I was praying from the bottom of my
heart, when the door suddenly opened, and my
playmate entered to take leave of me. She had
a travelling-pouch slung round her, a hat on her
head, and a large statf in her hand. She was
very angry at thee ; since on thy account she
had now to suffer the severest and most painful
jjunishments, as she had always been so fond
of thee; for all of them, she said, were very
loath to leave this quarter."

Mary forbade her to speak of this ; and now
the ferryman came across the river, and told
them new wonders. As it was growing dark,
a stranger man of large size had come to him,
and hired his boat till sunrise ; and with this
condition, that the boatman should remain quiet
in his house, at least should not cross the thres-
hold of his door. " I was frightened," continued
the old man, " and the strange bargain would
not let me sleep. I slipped softly to the win-
dow, and looked towards the river. Great
clouds were driving restlessly through the sky,
and the distant woods were rustling fearfully ;
it was as if my cottage shook, and moans and
lamentations glided round it. On a sudden, I
perceived a white streaming light, that grew
broader and broader, like many thousands of
falling stars ; sparkling and waving, it proceeded
forward from the dark Fir-ground, moved over
the fields, and spread itself along towards the
river. Then I heard a trampling, a jingling, a
bustling, and rushing, nearer and- nearer ; it
went forwards to my boat, and all stept into it,
men and women, as it seemed, and children ;
and the tall stranger ferried them over. In the

river were by the boat swimming many thou-
sands of glittering forms ; in the air white clouds
aiul lights were wavering; and all lamented
and bewailed that they must travel forth so far,
far away, and leave their beloved dwelling.
The noise of the rudder and tlie water creaked
and gurgled between whiles, and then suddenly
there would be silence. Many a time the boat
landed, and went back, and was again laden ;
many heavy casks, too, they took along with
them, which multitudes of horrid-looking little
fellows carried and rolled ; whether they were
devils or goblins. Heaven only knows. Then
came, in waving brightness, a stately freight;
it seemed an old man, mounted on a small white
horse, and all were crowding round him. I
saw nothing of the horse but its head ; for the
rest of it was covered with costly glittering
cloths and trappings : on his brow the old man
had a crown, so bright, that as he came across,
I thought the sun was rising there, and the red-
ness of the dawn glimmering in my eyes. Thus
it went on all night; I at last fell asleep in the
tumult, half in joy, half in terror. In the morn-
ing all was still ; but the river is, as it were,
run ofl^, and I know not how I am to steer my
boat in it now."

The same year there came a blight ; the
woods died away, the springs ran dry ; and the
scene, which had once been the joy of every
traveller, was in autumn standing waste, naked,
and bald ; scarcely showing here and there, in
the sea of sand, a spot or two where grass, with
a dingy greenness, still grew up. The fruit-
trees all withered, the vines faded away, and
the aspect of the place became so melancholy,
that the Count, with his people, next year left
the castle, which in time decayed and fell to
ruins.

Elfrida gazed on her rose day and night with
deep longing, and thought of her kind playmate;
and as it drooped and withered, so did she also
hang her head ; and before the spring, the little
maiden had herself faded away. Mary often
stood upon the sj^ot before the hut, and wept
for the happiness that had departed. She
wasted herself away like her child, and in a
few years she too was gone. Old Martin, with
his son-in-law, returned to the quarter where
he had lived before.

./

FEEDERIC WILLIAM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING.

Boro 1775.

ScHELLiNG, the third and the only surviving
one of the great quaternion of German philoso-
phers, was born at Leonberg, in Wiirtemberg,
January 27th, 1775. He studied philosophy
and theology at Tubingen, Leipzig and Jena.
At the latter university he was a pupil of Fichte,
and afterward (1798) succeeded him as pro-
fessor of philosophy. In 1803, he went to
Wvirzburg, as professor ordinarius of philoso-
phy ; in 1807, to Munich, where he was made
general secretary of the Academy of the Plastic
Arts, and where he was ennobled by the King
of Bavaria. In 1820, he left that place in dis-
gust, in consequence of a literary controversy
with the president of the Academy of Sciences,
and lectured on philosophy in Erlangen ; but
accepted an invitation to return, seven years
after, as professor ordinarius of philosophy, with
the title of Privy Aulic Counsellor. He re-
mained in Munich until the beginning of the
present decade, when he was invited to Berlin
by the reigning monarch of Prussia, to lecture
at the university in the capacity of member of
the Berlin Academy; a situation which he
holds, it is believed, to this day, having entered
upon it in November, 1841.

If Fichte's is the most interesting character
among the transcendental philosophers of Ger-
many, Schelling's is the richest genius and the
widest influence. Incalculable has been the
influence of his profound intuitions on Philoso-
phy, Letters, Science, Art ; on all departments
of human Thought. His word was the breath
of spring to the intellectual world of his time.
It brought verdure and a sudden efllorescence
to every branch of knowledge. Probably no
man of his age, certainly no one in the prov-
ince of abstract speculation, has put forth so
many new and life-giving thoughts. His phi-
losophy is creative, as that of Kant is destruc-
tive. He combines — what is so rare in philo-
sophy— intuitive perception and poetic imagi-
nation, with dialectic subtlety and pliilosophical
analysis. He is the poet of the transcendental
movement, as Fichte is its preacher.

Schelling has given to the world no com-

plete system of philosophy. There is no one
work, as in the case of Kant and Fichte, which
can be referred to as containing a full and sys-
tematic exposition of his distinctive views.
They are scattered through a long series of
works, each one of which presents some par-
ticular result of his speculations, or some par-
ticular aspect of his philosophy. Moreover, his
view varies in different statements. His phi-
losophy has received new modifications at dif-
ferent periods of his long life. But these modi-
fications have not changed its identity; and the
general direction of his opinions remains the
same. The following are the titles of some of
his works : " On the Possibility of a Form of
Philosophy;" "Idea of a Philosophy of Na-
ture ;" " Introduction to a System of Natural
Philosophy ;" " Concerning the /,•" " The Soul
of the World ;" " On the Relation between the
Ideal and the Real in Nature ;" " Philosophy
and Religion," &c. &c.

Schelling differs from Fichte in the objective
or realistic direction of his thought. Both en-
deavored to construct a philosophy of the Abso-
lute. Both set out with the principle that there
is but one being, one substance, Fichte sought
it in the conscious self; Schelling finds it in
Nature. Fichte regarded Nature, or the world
of appearances, as a modification of Thought ;
Schelling regards Thought as a function or
blossom of Nature. Accordingly, he gave to
his philosdphy the title, "Natural Philosophy,"
or "Philosophy of Nature." It is also called
the " Philosophy of Identity," because he holds
that matter and spirit, the ideal and the real,
subject and object, are identical. The Abso-
lute, according to him, is neither real nor ideal,
(neither matter nor spirit,) but the identity of
both. There is but one Being; that Being
may be considered at once or alternately, as
either wholly ideal or wholly real. God is the
absolute identity of Nature and Thouglit, of
matter and spirit. And this absolute identity
is not the cause of the universe, but the uni-
verse itself — a God-universe.

From this account, it will be seen that the
43 * (509)

510

SCHELLING.

philosophy of Schelling bears a close resem-
blance to tliat of Spinoza. What Spinoza dis-
sected ill dry mathematical formulas, Schelling
gave fortli a living soul. But, though they
agree in substance, they differ in spirit. With
Schelling, the spirit predominates; with Spi-
noza, the substance. Spinoza saw God imma-
nent in Nature; Schelling sees Nature dis-
solved in God.

"By far the most important result of Schell-
ing's philosophy," says Menzel, "seems to be
the impartial epical view of the world which
it imparts. In the system of Schelling, every
party finds its place opposite another ; the sep-
aration is shown to be a natural one ; their
contradictions are referred to an original and
necessary opposition. This system throughout
tolerates nothing exclusive, no unconditional
persecution of another. It endeavors to secure

to every spiritual existence, be it an opinion, a
character or an event, the same right in a na-
tural philosophy of mind and history which
every material existence has in common
science. It considers the historical periods as
seasons of the year, nationalities as zones, tem-
peraments as the elements, characters as crea-
tures, and tiicir manifestations in thought and
action as necessarily founded in Nature, and as
diverse as the instincts. According to this
system, there is a growth and a progress, a
multiplicity and an order, in the intellectual
world, as in the natural. In it alone the end-
less war of opinion is hushed, and every con-
tradiction finds its simplest and most natural
solution."*

* Menzel's " German Literature." Translated by C. C.
Felton.

ON THE RELATION OF THE PLASTIC
ARTS TO NATURE.

A SPEECH ON THE CELEBRATION OF THE 12TH OCTOBER, 18 07, AS
THE NAME-DAY OF HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF BAVARIA.

Delivered before tlie Public Assembly of the Royal Acaileniy of
Sciences at Munich, by F. W. J. Schelhng.*

• * * Plastic Aut, according to the most
ancient expression, is silent Poetry. The in-
ventor of this definition no doubt meant thereby
that the former, like the latter, is to express spi-
ritual thoughts — conceptions whose source is the
soul ; only not by speech, but like silent Nature
by shape, by form, by corporeal, independent
works.

Plastic Art, therefore, evidently stands as a
uniting link between the soul and Nature,
and can be apprehended only in the living
centre of both. Indeed, since Plastic Art has
its relation to the soul in common with every
other art, and particularly with Poeiry, that by
which it is connected with Nature, and, like
Nature, a productive force, remains as its sole
])eculiarity. So that to this alone can a theory
relate which shall be satisfactory to the under-
standing, and helpful and profitable to Art
itself.

We hope, therefore, in considering Plastic Art
in relation to its true prototype and original
source, Nature, to be able to contribute some-
thing new to its theory — to give some additional
exactness or clearness to the conceptions of it;
but, above all, to set forth the coherence of the
whole structure of Art in the light of a higher
necessity.

But has not Science always recognised this
relation ? Has not indeed every theory of mod-

* Translated by J. Elliot Cabot, Esq.

em times taken its departure from this very
position, that Art should be the imitator of Na-
ture? Such has indeed been the case. But
what should this broad general proposition profit
the artist, when the notion of Nature is of so
various interpretation, and when there are al-
most as many ditferiug views of it, as various
modes of life? Thus, to one, Nature is nothing
more than the lifeless aggregate of an indeter-
minable crowd of objects, or the space in which,
as in a vessel, he imagines things placed ; — to
another, only the soil from which he draws his
nourishment and support; — to the inspired
seeker alone, the holy, ever-creative original
energy of the world, which generates and busily
evolves all things out of itself

The proposition would indeed have a high
significance, if it taught Art to emulate this
creative force ; but the sense in which it was
meant can scarcely be doubtful to one acquaint-
ed with the universal condition of Science at
the time when it was first brought forward.
Singular enough that the very persons who de-
nied all life to Nature, should set it up for imita-
tion in Art! To them might be applied the
words of a profound writer :* " Your lying phi-
losophy has put Nature out of the way; and
why do you call upon us to imitate her? Is it
that you may renew the pleasure by perpetrat-
ing the same violence on the disciples of
Nature ?"

Nature was to them not merely a dumb, but an
altogether lifeless image, in whose inmost being
even no living word dwelt ; a hollow scaf-
folding of forms, of which as hollow an image
was to be transferred to the canvass, or hewn
out in stone.

* J. G. Hamann.

SCHELLING.

511

This was the proper doctrine of those more
ancient and savage nations, who, as they saw
in Nature nothing divine, letclied idols out of
her ; whilst, to the susceptive Greeks, who
everywhere felt the presence of a vitally effi-
cient principle, genuine gods arose out of Nature.
But is, then, the disciple of Nature to copy
everything in Nature without distinction? and of
everything, every part? Only beautiful objects
should be represented; and, even in these, only
the Beaivtiful and Perfect.

Thus is the proposition farther determined;
but, at the same time, this asserted, that, in Na-
ture, the perfect is mingled with the imperfect
— the beautiful with the unbeautifuL Now, how
should he wjio stands in no other relation to
Nature than that of servile imitation, distinguish
the one from the other? It is the way of imi-
tators to appropriate the faults of their model
sooner and easier than its excellences, since the
former offer handles and tokens more easily
grasped ; and thus we see that imitators of Na-
ture in this sense have imitated oftener, and
even more affectionately, the ugly than the
beautiful.

If we regard in things, not their principle, but
the empty abstract form, neither will they say
anything to our soul ; our own heart, our own
spirit we must put to it, that they answer us.

But wliat is the perfection of a thirig? No-
thing else than the creative life in it, its power
to exist. Never, therefore, will he, who fancies
that Nature is altogether dead, be successful in
that profound process (analogous to the chemi-
cal) whence proceeds, purified as by fire, the
pure gold of Beauty and Truth.

Nor was there any cliange in the main view
of the relation of Art to Nature, even when the
unsatisfactoriness of the principle began to be
more generally felt ; no change, even by the
new views and new knowledge so nobly estab-
lished by John Winkelmann. He indeed re-
stored to the soul its full efficiency in Art, and
raised it from its unworthy dependence into the
realm of spiritual freedom. Powerfully moved
by the beauty of tbrni in the works of antiquity,
he taught that the production of ideal Nature,
of Nature elevated above the Actual, together
with the expression of spiritual conceptions, is
the highest aim of Art.

But if we examine in what sense this sur-
passing of the Actual by Art has been under-
stood by the most, it turns out that, with this
view also, the notion of Nature as mere product ;
of things as a lifeless result, still continued ; and
the idea of a living creative Nature was in no
wise awakened by it. So that these ideal forms
also could be animated by no positive insight
into their nature ; and if the forms of the
Actual were dead for the dead beholder, these
were not less so. Was no independent produc-
tion of the Actual possible, neither was it of
the Ideal. The object of the imitation was
changed, the imitation remained. In the place
of Nature were substituted the sublime works

of Antiquity, whose outward forms the pupils
busied themselves in taking down, but without
the spirit that fills them. These, however, are
as unapproachable, nay, more so, than the works
of Nature ; and leave us yet colder, if we
bring not to them the spiritual eye to penetrate
through the veil, and feel the stirring energy
within.

On the other hand, artists, since that time,
have indeed received a certain ideal bias, and
notions of a beauty superior to matter ; but these
notions were like fair words, to which the deeds
do not correspond. Wliile the previous method
in Art produced bodies without soul, this view
taught only the secret of the soul, but not that
of the body. The theory had, as usual, passed
with one hasty stride to the opposite extreme ;
but the vital mean it had not yet found.

Who can say that Winkelmann had not an
insight into the highest beauty? But with him
it appeared in its dissevered elements: on one
side as beauty in idea, and flowing out from the
soul ; on the other, as beauty of forms.

But what is the efficient link that connects
the two? or by what power is the soul cre-
ated together with the body, at once and as
if with one breath? If this lies not within the
power of Art, as of Nature, then it can create
nothing whatever. This vital connecting link,
Winkelmann did not determine ; he did not
teach how, from the idea, forms can be pro-
duced. Thus Art went over to that method
which we would call the retrograde, since it
strives from the form to come at the essence.
But not thus is the Unlimited reached ; it is not
attainable by mere enhancement of the Limited.
Hence, such works as have had their beginning
iu form, with all elaborateness on that side,
show, in token of their origin, an incurable want
at the very point where we expect the consum-
mate, the essential, the final. The miracle by
which the Limited should be raised to the Un-
limited, the human become divine, is wanting:
the magic circle is drawn, but the spirit that
it should enclose, appears not, disobedient to
the call of him who thought a creation possible
through mere form. * * * *

Nature meets us everywhere, at first with
reserve, and in form more or less severe. She
is like that quiet and serious beauty, that excites
not attention by noisy advertisenient, nor attracts
the vulgar gaze.

How can we, as it were, spiritually melt this
apparently rigid form, so that the pure energy
of things may flow together with the force of
our spirit, and pour forth in one united gush ?
We must transcend Form, in order to gain it
again as intelligible, living, and truly felt. Con-
sider the most beautiful forms: what remains
behind after you have abstracted from them the
efficient principle within? Nothing but mere
unessential qualities, such as extension and the
relations of space. Does the fact that one por-
tion of matter exists near another, and distinct

512

SCHELLING.

from it, contribute anything to its inner essence?
or does it not ratlier contribute nothing? Evi-
dently the latter. It is not mere contiguous
existence, but the manner of it, that makes
form ; and this can be determined only by a
positive force, which is even opposed to sepa-
rateness, and subordinates the rnanifoldness of
the parts to the unity of one idea — from the
force that works in the crystal, to that which, as
a gentle magnetic current, gives to the particles
of matter in the human form a position and
arrangement among themselves, through which
the idea, the essential unity and beauty, can
become visible.

Not only, however, as active principle, but as
spirit and effective science, must the essence
appear to us in the form, in order that we may
truly apprehend it. For all unity must be spi-
ritual in nature and origin : and what is the aim
of all investigation of Nature, but to find science
therein? For that wherein there were no Un-
derstanding, could not be the object of Under-
standing: the Unknowing could not be known.
The science by M'hich Nature works is not, in-
deed, like human science, connected with reflec-
tion upon itself: in it, the conception is not
separate from the act, nor the design from the
execution. Thus, rude matter strives, as it
were, blindly, after regular shape, and unknow-
ingly assumes pure stereometric forms, which
belong, nevertheless, to the realm of ideas, and
are something spiritual in the material.

The sublimest arithmetic and geometry are
innate in the stars, and unconsciously displayed
by them in their motions. More distinctly, but
still beyond their grasp, the living cognition ap-
pears in animals ; and thus we see them, though
wandering about without reflection, bring about
innumerable results far more excellent than
themselves: — the bird that, intoxicated with
music, transcends itself in soul-like tones ; the
little artistic creature, that, without practice or
instruction, accomjilishes light works of archi-
tecture ; — but all dir.ected by an overpowering
(spirit, that lightens in them already with single
flashes of knowledge, but as yet appears no-
where as the full sun, as in Man.

This formative science in Nature and Art
is the link that connects idea and form, body
and soul. Before everything stands an eter-
nal idea, formed in the Infinite Understanding;
but by what means does this idea pass into
actuality and embodiment? Only through the
creative science that is as necessarily connected
with the Infinite Understanding, as in the artist
the principle that seizes the idea of unsensuous
Beauty, with that which sets it forth to the
senses.

Is the artist to be called happy and praise-
worthy before all, to whom the gods have grant-
ed this spirit; so the work of art will appear in
that measure excellent in which it shows to us,
as in outline, this vmadulterated energy of crea-
tion and activity in Nature.

It was long ago perceived that, in Art, not

everything is performed with consciousness ;
that, with the conscious activity, an unconscious
action must combine ; and that it is of the per-
fect unity and mutual interpenetration of the
two that the highest in Art is born.

Works that want this seal of unconscious
science, are recognised by the evident absence
of life self-supported and independent of the
producer: as, on the contrary, where this acts.
Art imparts to its work, together with the ut-
most clearness to the understanding, that unfa-
thomable reality wherein it resembles a work
of Nature.

It has often been attempted to make clear the
position of the artist in regard to Nature, by
saying that Art, in order to be such, must first
withdraw itself from Nature, and return to it
only in the last completeness. The true sense
of this saying, it seems to us, can be no other
than this : That in all things in Nature, the liv-
ing idea shows itself only blindly active : were
it so also in the artist, he would be in nothing
distinct from Nature. But, should he attempt
consciously to subordinate himself altogether to
the Actual, and give back with servile fidelity
the already existing, he would produce larva,
but no works of Art. He must therefore with-
draw himself from the product, from the crea-
ture; but only in order to raise himself to the
creative energy, and spiritually to seize this.
Thus he ascends into the realm of pure ideas ;
he forsakes the creature, to regain it with thou-
sand-fold interest, and in this sense certainly to
return to Nature. This spirit of Nature working
at the core of things, and speaking through form
and shape as by symbols only, the artist must
certainly follow with emulation ; and only so
far as he seizes this with genial imitation, has
he himself produced anything genuine. For
works produced by aggregation, even of forms
beautiful in themselves, would still be destitute
of all beauty, since that, through which the
work on the whole is truly beautiful, cannot be
form. It is above form — it is Essence; the
Universal; the look and expression of the in-
dwelling spirit of Nature.

Now it can scarcely be doubtful what is to
be thought of the so-called idealising of Nature
in Art, so universally demanded. This demand
seems to arise from a way of thinking, accord-
ing to which not Truth, Beauty, Goodness, but
the contrary of all these is the Actual. Were
the Actual indeed opposed to Truth and Beauty,
it would be necessary for the artist, not to ele-
vate or idealise it, but to get rid of and destroy
it, in order to create anything true and beauti-
ful. But how should it be possible for anything
to be actual except the True ; and what is Beauty,
if not full complete Being?

What higher aim, therefore, could Art have,
than to represent that which in Nature truly is ?
Or how should it undertake to excel so-called
actual Nature, since it must always fall short
of it?

For does Art impart to its works actual sen-

SCHELLING.

513

8U0US life? This statue breathes not, is stirred
by no pulsation, warmed by no blood.

But both the pretended excelling and the ap-
parent falling short show themselves as the
consequences of one and the same principle, so
soon as we place the aim of Art in the exhibil-
ing of '.hat which truly is.

Only on the surface have its works the ap-
pearance of life ; in Nature, life seems to reach
deeper, and to be wedded entirely with the
material. But does not the continual mutation
of matter and the universal lot of final dissolu-
tion teach U9 the unessential character of this
union, and that it is no intimate combination 1
Art, accordingly, in the merely superficial anima-
tion of its works, represents the unessential as
not existing.

How comes it that to every tolerably culti-
vated taste, imitations of the so-called Actual,
even though carried to deception, appear in the
last degree untrue ; nay, produce the impression
of spectres ; whilst a work in which the idea is
predominant strikes us with the full force of
truth, and alone places us in the genuine actual
world 1 Wlience comes it, if not from the more
or less obscure feeling which tells us that the
idea alone is the living principle in things, but
all else unessential and vain shadow 1

On the same ground may be explained all
the opposite cases, which are brought up as in-
stances of the surpassing of Nature by Art. In
arresting the rapid course of human years ; in
uniting the energy of developed manhood with
the soft charm of early youth ; or exhibiting a
mother of grown-up sons and daughters in the
full possession of vigorous beauty, what does
Art, except to strike out what is unessential.
Time ?

If, according to the remark of a discerning
critic, every growth in Nature has but an in-
stant of truly complete beauty, we may also say
that it has too only an instant of full existence.
* In this instant it is what it is in all eternity :
beside this, it has only a coming into and a
passing out of existence. Art, in representing
the thing at that instant, removes it out of Time,
and sets it forth in its pure Being, in the eternity
of its life.

After everything positive and essential had
once been abstracted from Form, it necessarily
appeared limiting, and, as it were, hostile, to
the Essence ; and the same theory that had
called up the false and powerless Ideal, neces-
sarily tended to the formless in Art. Form
would indeed be a limitation to the Essence if
it existed independent of it. But if it exists
with and by means of the Essence, how could
this feel itself limited by that which it has
itself created? Violence would indeed be done
it by a form forced upon it, but never by one
proceeding from itself. In tliis, on the contrary,
it must rest contented, and feel its own exist-
ence to be self-sustained and complete in it-
self.

Peterminateness of form is in Nature never a
3p

negation, but ever an affirmation. Commonly,
indeed, the shape of a body seems a confine-
ment; but could we behold the creative energy,
it would reveal itself as the measure that this
energy imposes upon itself, and in which it
shows itself a truly intelligent fojrce ; for in
everything is the power of self-rule allowed to
be an excellence, and one of the highest.

In like manner most persons consider the
particular in a negative manner: viz. as that
which is not the whole or all. But no particular
exists by means of its limitation, but through
the indwelling force with which it maintains
itself as a particular Whole, in distinction from
the Universe.

This force of particularity, and thus also of
individuality, showing itself as vital character,
the negative conception of it is necessarily fol-
lowed byan unsatisfying and false view of the
characteristic in Art. Lifeless and of intolera-
ble hardness would be the Art that sliould aim
to exhibit the empty shell or limitation of the
Individual. Certainly we desire to see not
merely the individual, but more than this, its
vital Idea. But if the artist have seized the
inward creative spirit and essence of the Idea,
and sets this forth, he makes the individual a
world in itself, a class, an eternal prototype :
and he who has grasped the essential character
needs not to fear hardness and severity, for
these are the conditions of life. Nature, who
in her completeness appears as the utmost be-
nignity, we see in each particular aiming even
primarily and principally at severity, seclusion
and reserve. As the whole creation is the work
of the utmost externisation and renunciation
[Entausserungi, so the artist must first deny
himself and descend into the Particular, with-
out shunning isolation, nor the pain, the an-
guish of Form.

Nature, from her first works, is throughout
characteristic; the energy of fire, the splendor
of light she shuts up in hard stone : the tender
soul of melody in severe metal: — even on the
threshold of Life, and already meditating organic
shape, she sinks back overpowered by the might
of Form, into petrifaction.

The life of the plant consists in still recep-
tivity, but in what exact and severe outline is
this passive life enclosed ! In the animal king-
dom the strife between Life and Form seems
first properly to begin: her first works Nature
hides in hard shells, and where these are laid
aside, the animated world attaches itself again
through its constructive impulse to the realm
of crystallization. Finally she comes forward
more boldly and freely, and vital, important
characteristics show themselves, and are the
same through whole classes. Art, indeed, can-
not begin so far down as Nature. Though
Beauty is spread everywhere, yet there are
various grades in the appearance and unfolding
of the Essence, and thus of Beauty. But Art
demands a certain fulness, and desires not to
strike a single note or tone, nor even a detach-

514

SCHELLING.

ed accord, but at once the full symphony of
Beauty.

Art, therefore, prefers to grasp immediately
at the highest and most developed, the human
form. For since it is not given it to embrace
tlie immeasurable whole, and as in all other
creatures only single fulgurations, in Man alone
full entire Being appear without abatement,
Art is not only permitted but required to
see the sum of Nature in JMan alone. But
precisely on this account, — that she here as-
sembles all in one point. Nature repeats her
whole multiformity, and pursues again in a
narrower compass the same course that she
had gone through in her wide circuit.

Here, therefore, arises the demand upon the
artist first to be true and faithful in detail, in
order to come forth complete and beautiful in
the whole. Here he must wrestle with the
creative spirit of Nature ; — [which in the moral
world also deals out character and stamp in
endless variety,] — not in weak and etieminate,
but stout and courageous conflict.

Persevering exercise in the study of that
by virtue of which the characteristic in things
is a positive principle, must preserve him from
emptiness, weakness, inward inanity, before he
can venture to aim by ever higher combination
and final melting together of manifold forms,
to reach the extremest beauty in works unit-
ing the highest simplicity with infinite mean-
ing.

Only through the perfection of form can
Form be made to disappear; and this is cer-
tainly the final aim of Art in the Characteristic.
But as the apparent harmony that is even more
easily reached by the empty and frivolous than
by others, is yet inwardly vain; so in Art the
quickly attained harmony of the exterior with-
out inward fulness. And if it is the part of
theory and instruction to oppose the spiritless
copying of beautiful forms, especially must they
oppose the tendency toward an efleminate
characterless Art, which gives itself indeed
higher names, but therewith only seeks to hide
its incapacity to fulfil the fundamental condi-
tions.

That lofty Beauty in which the fulness of
form causes Form itself to disappear, was
adopted by the modern theory of Art after
Winkelmann, not only as the highest, but as the
only standard. But as the deep foundation upon
which it rests was overlooked, it resulted that
a negative conception was formed of that which
is the sum of all affirmation.

Winkelmann compares Beauty with water
drawn from the bosom of the spring, which the
less taste it has, the wliolesomer it is esteemed.
It is true that tlie highest Beauty is character-
less, but it is so as we say of the Universe that
it has no determinate dimension, neither length,
breadth nor depth, since it has all in equal in-
finity : or that the Art of creative Nature is
formless, because she herself is subjected to no
form.

In this and in no other sense can we say tl.at
Grecian art in its highest cultivation rises into
the characterless. But it did not aim imme-
diately at diis. It was from the bonds of Na-
ture that it struggled upwards to divine free-
dom. From no lightly scattered seed, but only
from a deeply enfolded kernel, could this heroic
growth spring up. Only mighty emotions, only
a deep stirring of the fancy through the impres-
sion of all-enlivening, all-commanding energies
of Nature, could stamp upon Art that invincible
vigor with which from the rigid, secluded ear-
nestness of earlier productions up to the period
of works overflowing with sensuous grace, it
ever remained faithful to truth, and produced
the highest spiritual Reality which it is given to
mortals to behold.

In like manner as their Tragedy commences
with the grandest characteristicness in morals,
so the beginning of their Plastic Art was the
earnestness of Nature, and the stern goddess
of Athens its first and only Muse.

This epoch is marked by that style which
Winkelmann describes as the still harsh and
severe, from which the next or lofty style was
able to develop itself by the mere enliance-
ment of the Characteristic into the Sublime and
tlie Simple.

For in the statues of the most perfect or
divine natures, not only all the complexity of
form of which human nature is capable had to
be united, but moreover the union must be such ,
as may be conceived to exist in the system of
the Universe itself: viz. the lower forms, or
those relating to inferior attributes, being com-
prehended under higher, and all at last under
one supreme form, in which they indeed extin-
guish each other as separately existing, but still
continue in Essence and efficiency.

Thus, though we cannot call this high and
self-sufficing Beauty characteristic, so far as
herewith is connected the notion of limitation
or conditiouality in the manifestation, yet still
thecharacteristiccontinues efficient, though indis-
tinguishable, within: as in the crystal, although
transparent, the texture nevertheless remains.

Each characteristic element has its weight,
however slight, and helps to bring about the
sublime equipoise of Beauty.

The outer side or basis of all Beauty is beauty
of form. But as Form cannot exist without
Essence, wherever Form is, there also is Cha-
racter ; whether in visible presence or only
perceptible in its effects. Characteristic Beauty,
therefore, is Beauty in the root, iVom which
alone Beauty can arise as the fruit. Essence
may, indeed, outgrow Form, but even then
the Characteristic remains as the still efficient
ground-work of the Beautiful.

A most excellent critic,* to whom the Gods
have given sway over Nature as well as Art,
compares the Characteristic in its relation to

* Goethe. Wcrie (1840) xxx. 352. Mr. Ward's translation
of Goethe's " Essays on Art," p. 76.

SCHELLING.

515

Beauty, with the skeleton in its relation to the
living form. Were we to interpret this striking
simile in our sense, we should say that the
skeleton, in Nature, is not as in our thought
detached from the living whole : that the firm
and the yielding, the determining and the de-
termined, mutually presuppose each other, and
can exist only together : thus that the vitally
Characteristic is already the whole form, the
result of the action and reaction of bone and
flesh, of Active and Passive. And although
Art, like Nature, in its higher developments,
thrusts inward the previously visible skeleton,
yet this latter can never be opposed to Shape
and Beauty, since it has always a determining
share in the production of the one as well as
of the other.

But whether that high and independent Beauty
should be the only standard in Art, as it is the
highest, seems to depend on the degree of ful-
ness and extent that belongs to the particular
Art.

Nature, in her wide circumference, ever ex-
hibits the higher with the lower : creating in
Man the godlike, she elaborates in all her other
productions only its material and foundation,
which must exist in order that in contrast with
it the Essence as such may appear. And even
in the higher world of Man the great mass
serves again as the basis uj)on which the god-
like that is preserved pure in the few, mani-
fests itself in legislation, government, and the
establishment of Religion. So that wherever
Art works with more of the complexity of Na-
ture, it may and must display together with the
highest measure of Beauty, also its ground-
work and raw material as it were, in distinct
appropriate forms.

Here first prominently unfolds itself the dif-
ference in Nature of the forms of Art.

Plastic Art, in the more exact sense of the
term, disdains to give Space outwai-dly to the
object, but bears it within itself. This, hovvever,
narrows its field ; it is compelled, indeed, to
display the beauty of the Universe almost in a
single point. It must therefore aim imme-
diately at the highest, and can attain complexity
only separately and in the strictest exclusion of
all conflicting elements. By isolating the purely
animal in human nature it succeeds in forming
inferior creations too, harmonious and even
beautiful, as we are taught by the beauty of
numerous Fauns preserved from Antiquity: it
can, indeed, parodying itself like the merry
spirit of Nature, reverse its own Ideal, and for
instance, in the extravagance of the Silenic
figures, by light and sportive treatment, appear
freed again from the pressure of matter.

But in all cases it is compelled strictly to iso-
late the work, in order to inake it self-consistent
and a world in itself; since for this form of Art
there is no higher unity, in which the dissonance
of particulars should be melted into harmony.

Painting, on the contrary, in the very extent
of its sphere, can better measure itself with the

Universe, and create with epic profusion. In
an Iliad there is room even for aThersites, and
what does not find a place in the great epic of
Nature and History !

Here the Particular scarcely counts anything
by itself; the Universe takes its place, and that,
which by itself would not be beautiful, becomes
so in the harmony of the whole. If in an ex-
tensive painting, uniting forms by the allotted
space, by light, by shade, by reflection, the
highest measure of Beauty were everywhere
employed, the result would be the most unna-
tural monotony ; for, as Winkelmann says, the
highest idea of Beauty is everywhere one and
the same, and scarce admits of variation. The
detail would be preferred to the whole, where,
as in every case in whicli the whole is formed
by multiplicity, the detail must be subordinate
to it.

In such a work, therefore, a gradation of
Beauty must be observed, by which alone the
full Beauty concentrated in the focus becomes
visible ; and from an exaggeration of particu-
lars proceeds an equipoise of the whole. Here,
then, the limited and characteristic finds its
place ; and theory at least should direct the
painter, not so much to the narrow space in
which the entire Beauty is concentrically col-
lected, as to the characteristic complexity of
Nature, through which alone he can impart to
an extensive work the full measure of living
significance.

Thus thought, among the founders of modern
art, the noble Leonardo ; thus Raphael, the
master of high Beauty, who shunned not to ex-
hibit it in smaller measure, rather than to appear
monotonous, lifeless, and unreal — though he
understood not only how to produce it, but also
how to break up uniformity by variety of ex-
pression.

For, although Character can show itself also
in rest and equilibrium of form, yet it is only
in action that it becomes truly alive.

By Character we understand a unity of several
forces, operating constantly to produce among
them a certain equipoise and determinate pro-
portion, to which, if undisturbed, a like equi-
poise in the symmetry of the forms corresponds.
But if this vital Unity is to display itself in act
and operation, this can only be when the forces,
excited by some cause to rebellion, forsake their
equilibrium. Every one sees that this is the
case in the Passions.

But here we are met by the well-known
maxim of the theorists, which demands that
Passion should be moderated as far as possible,
in its actual outburst, that beauty of Form may
not be injured. But we think this maxim should
rather be reversed, and read thus : — that Pas-
sion should be moderated by Beauty itself. For
it is much to be feared that this desired mode-
ration too may be taken in a negative sense —
whereas, what is really requisite is, to oppose
to Passion a positive force. For as Virtue con-
sists, not in the absence of passions, but in the

516

SCHELLING.

mastery of the spirit over them, so Beauty is
preserved, not by their removal or abatement,
but by tlie mastery of Beauty over them.

The forces of Passion must actually show
themselves — it must be seen that they are pre-
pared to rise in mutiny, but are kept down by
the power of Character, and break against the
forms of firmly-fouiided Beauty, as the waves
of a stream that just fills, but cannot overflow
its banks. Otherwise, this striving after mode-
ration would resemble only those shallow mo-
ralists, who, the more readily to dispose of Man,
prefer to mutilate his nature; and who have so
entirely removed every positive element from
actions, that the people gloat over the spectacle
of great crimes, in order to refresh themselves
at last with the view of something positive.

In Nature and Art the Essence strives first
after actualization, or exhibition of itself in the
Particular. Thus in each the utmost severity
is manifested at the commencement; for without
bound, the boundless could not appear; without
severity, gentleness could not exist: and if unity
is to be perceptible, it can only be through par-
ticularity, detachment, and opposition. In the
beginning, therefore, the creative spirit shows
itself entirely lost in its form, inaccessibly shut
up, and even in its grandeur still harsh. But
the more it succeeds in uniting its entire fidlness
in one product, the more it gradually relaxes
from its severity ; and where it has fully deve-
loped the form, so as to rest contented and self-
collected in it, it seems to become cheerful, and
begins to move in gentle lines. This is the
period of its fairest maturity and blossom, in
which the pure vessel has arrived at perfection;
the spirit of Nature becomes free from its bonds,
and feels its relationship to the soul. As by a
gentle morning blush stealing over the whole
form, the coming soul announces itself: it is not
yet present, but everything prepares for its recep-
tion, by the delicate play of gentle movements;
the rigid outlines melt and temper themselves
into flexibility; a lovely essence, neither sen-
suous nor spiritual, but which cannot be grasped,
ditluses itself over the form, and entwines it-
self with every outline, every vibration of the
frame.

This essence, not to be seized, as we have
already remarked, but yet perceptible to all, is
what the language of the Greeks designated by
the name Charis, ours as Grace.

Wherever, in a fully developed form, Grace
appears, the work is complete on the side of
Nature; nothing more is wanting; all demands
are satisfied. Here, already, soul and body are
in complete harmony; Body is Form, Grace is
Soul, although not Soul in itself, but the Soul of
Form, or the Soul of Nature.

Art may linger, and remain stationary at this
point ; for, already, on one side at least its whole
task is finished. The pure image of Beauty
arrested at this point is the Goddess of Love.

But the beauty of the Soul in itself, joined to

sensuous Grace, is the highest apotheosis of
Nature.

The spirit of Nature is only in appearance
opposed to the Soul ; essentially, it is the instru-
ment of its revelation; it brings about indeed
the antagonism that exists in all things, but only
that the one essence may come forth, as the
utmost benignity, and the reconciliation of all
the forces.

All other creatures are driven by the mere
force of Nature, and through it maintain their
individuality ; in Man alone, as tlie central point,
arises the soul, without which the world would
be like the natural universe without the sun.

The Soul in Man, therefore, is not the prin-
ciple of individuality, but that whereby he
raises himself above all egoism, whereby he
becomes capable of self-sacrifice, and of disin-
terested love, and (which is the highest,) of the
contemplation and knowledge of the Essence
of things ; and thus of Art.

In him it is no longer employed about Matter,
nor has to do with it immediately, but only
with the spirit, (as the life) of things. Even
while appearing in the body, it is yet free from
the body, the consciousness of which hovers in
the soul in the most beauteous shapes only as a
light, undisturbing dream. It is no quality, no
faculty, nor anything special of the sort; it knows
not, but is Science ; it is not good, but Goodness;
it is not beautiful, as body even may be, but
Beauty itself

Most readily, or most immediately, indeed, in
a work of art, the soul of the artist is seen as
invention, in the detail, and in the total result,
as the unity that hovers over it in serene still-
ness. But the Soul must be visible in objec-
tive representation, as the primaeval energy of
thought, in portraitures of human beings, alto-
gether filled by an idea, by a noble contempla-
tion; or as indwelling essential Goodness.

Each of these finds its distinct expression
even in the completes! repose, but a more living
one where the Soul can reveal itself in activity
and antagonism ; and since it is by the passions
mainly that the force of life is interrupted, it is
the generally received opinion, that the beauty
of the Soul shows itself especially in its quiet
supremacy amid the storm of the jjassions.

But here an important distinction is to be
made. For the Soul must not be called upon
to moderate those passions which are only an
outbreak of the lower spirits of Nature, nor can
it be displayed in antithesis with these ; for
where calm considerateness is still in contention
with them, the Soul has not yet appeared : they
must be moderated by unassisted Nature in
Man, by the might of the Spirit. But there are
cases of a higher sort, in which, not a single
force alone, but the intelligent Spirit itself
breaks down all barriers: cases, indeed, where
the Soul is subjected by the bond that connects
it with sensuous existence, to pain, which should
be foreign to its divine nature: where Man feels

SCHELLING.

517

himself invaded and attacked in the root of his
existence, not by mere powers of Nature, but
by moral forces : where innocent error hurries
him into crime, and thus into misery, where
deep-felt injustice excites to rebellion the holiest
feelings of humanity.

This is the case in all situations, truly, and in
a high sense, tragical, such as the Tragedy of
the ancients brings before our eyes. Where
blindly passionate forces are aroused, the col-
lected Spirit is present as the guardian of Beauty ;
but if the Spirit itself be hurried away, as by
an irresistible might, what power shall watch
over and protect sacred Beauty? Or, if the
soul participate in the struggle, how shall it
save itself from pain and from desecration"?

Arbitrarily to limit die power of pain, of ex-
cited feeling, would be to sin against the very
meaning and aim of Art, and would betray a
want of feeling and soul in the artist himself.

Already therein, that Beauty, based on grand
and firmly-established forms has become Cha-
racter, Art has provided the means of display-
ing without injury to symmetry the whole in-
tensity of Feeling. For where Beauty rests on
mighty forms, as upon immoveable pillars, a
slight change in its relations, scarcely touching
the form, causes us to infer the great force that
was necessary in order to eflect it. Still nrore
does Grace sanctify pain. It is the essential
nature of Grace that it does not know itself;
but not being wilfully acquired, it also can-
not be wilfully lost. When intolerable an-
guish, when even madness, sent by avenging
Gods, takes away consciousness and reflection,
Grace stands as a protecting dsemon by the suf-
fering form, and prevents it from manifesting
anything unseemly, anything discordant to Hu-
manity ; but if it fall, to fall at least a pure and
unspotted victim.

Not yet the Soul itself, but the prophecy of it;
Grace accomplishes by natural means, what the
Soul does by a divine power, in transforming
pain, torpor, even death itself, into Beauty.

Yet Grace thus preserved amid the extremest
discordance would be dead, without a transfigu-
ration by the soul. But what expression can
belong to the soul in this situation 1 It delivers
itself from pain, and comes forth conquering,
not conquered, by relinquishing its connection
with sensuous existence.

It is for the natural Spirit to exert its energies
for the preservation of sensuous existence, the
Soul enters not into this contest; but its presence
moderates even the storms of painfully-strug-
gling life. Outward force can take away only
outward goods, but not reach the Soul: it can
tear asunder a temporal bond, not dissolve the
eternal one of a truly divine love. Not hard
and unfeeling, nor wanting in love itself, the
Soul on the contrary displays in pain this alone,
as the sentiment that outlasts sensuous existence,
and thus raises itself above the ruins of outward
life or fortune in divine glory.

It is this expression of the Soul that the creator

of the Niobe has shown us in this statue. All
the means by which Art tempers even the Ter-
rible, are here made use of Mightiness of
form, sensuous Grace, nay, even the nature of
the subject-matter itself softens the expression,
since pain, transcending all expression, annihi-
lates itself, and Beauty, which it seemed im-
possible to preserve from destruction, is pro-
tected from injury by the commencing torpor.

But what would it all be without the Soul ;
and how shall this manifest itself?

We see on the countenance of the mother,
not grief alone for the already prostrated flower
of her children; not alone deadly anxiety for
the preservation of those yet remaining, and of
the youngest daughter, who has fled for safety
to her bosom ; nor resentment against the cruel
deities; least of all, as is pretended, cool defi-
ance : all these we see, indeed, but not these
alone ; for, through grief, anxiety, and resent-
ment streams, like a divine light, eternal love,
as that which alone remains : and in this is
preserved the mother, as one who was not, but
now is a mother, and who remains united with
the beloved ones by an eternal bond.

Every one acknowledges that greatness, pu-
rity, and goodness of soul have also their sen-
suous expressions. But how is this conceivable,
unless the principle that acts in Matter be itself
cognate and similar to Soul ?

For the representation of the Soul there are
again gradations in Art, according as it is joined
with the merely Characteristic, or in visible
union with the Charming and Graceful.

Who perceives not, in the tragedies of iEschy-
lus, that lofty morality already predominant,
which is at home in the works of Sophocles ?
But in the former it is enveloped in a bitter rind,
and passes less into the whole work, since the
bond of sensuous Grace is yet wanting. But
out of this severity, and the still terrible charms
of earlier Art, could yet proceed the grace of
Sophocles, and with it the complete fusion of
the two elements, which leaves us doubtful
whether it is more moral or sensuous Grace
that enchants us in the works of this poet.

The same is true of the plastic productions
of the early and severe style, in comparison
with the gentleness of the later.

If Grace, besides being the transfiguration of
the spirit of Nature, is also the medium of con-
nection between moral Goodness and sensuous
Appearance, it is evident how Art must tend
from all points towards it as its centre. This
Beauty, which results from the perfect inter-
penetration of moral Goodness and sensuous
Grace, seizes and enchants us when we meet
it, with the force of a miracle. For, whilst the
spirit of Nature shows itself everywhere else
independent of the Soul, and, indeed, in a mea-
sure opposed to it, here, it seems, as if by volun-
tary accord, and the inward fire of divine love,
to melt into union with it: the remembrance of
the fundamental unity of the essence of Nature
and the essence of the Soul, comes over the
44

518

SCHELLING.

beholder with sudden clearness : the conviction
that all antagonism is only apparent; that Love
is the bond of all things, and pure Goodness the
foundation and substance of the whole Creation.

Here Art as it were transcends itself, and
becomes means only. On this summit sensuous
Grace becomes in turn only the husk and body
of a higher life : what was before a whole is
treated as a part, and the highest relation of Art
and Nature is reached in this, that it makes
Natiu-e the medium of manifesting the soul
which it contains.

But though in this blossoming of Art, as in
the blossoming of the vegetable kingdom, all
the previous stages are repeated, yet on the
other hand we may see in what various direc-
tions Art can proceed from this centre. Espe-
cially the difference in nature of the two forms
of plastic Art here sliows itself most strongly.
For Sculpture, representing its ideas by corpo-
real things, seem to reach its highest point in
the complete equilibrium of Soul and Matter —
if it give a preponderance to the latter, it sinks
below its own idea — but it seems altogether
impossible for it to elevate the soul at the ex-
pense of Matter, since it must thereby transcend
itself. The perfect sculptor indeed, as Winkel-
mann remarks on occasion of the Belvidere
Apollo, will use no more material than is need-
ful to accomplish his spiritual purpose: but also
on the other hand he will put into the soul no
more energy than is at the same time expressed
in the material : for precisely upon this, fully
to embody the spiritual, depends his art. Sculp-
ture, therefore, can reach its true summit only
in the representation of those natures in whose
constitution it is implied that they actually em-
body all that is contained in their Idea or soul;
thus only in divine natures. So that Sculpture,
even if no Mythology had preceded it, would
of itself have come upon Gods, and have in-
vented such if it found none.

Moreover as the Spirit, on this lower platform,
has again the same relation to Matter that we
have ascribed to the Soul, (being the principle
of activity and motion, as Matter is that of rest
and inaction,) the law that regulates Expression
and Passion, must be a fundamental principle
of its nature.

But this law must be applicable not only to
the lower passions, but also equally to those
higher and godlike passions, if it is permitted
so to call them, by which the Soul is at!ected
in rapture, in devotion, in adoration. Hence,
since from these passions the Gods alone are
exempt. Sculpture is inclined from this side also
to the imaging of divine natures.

The nature of Painting however seetns to
dilfer entirely from that of Sculpture. For the
former represents objects not like the latter, by
corporeal things, but by light and color ; tlirough
a medium therefore itself incorporeal, and in a
measure spiritual. And Painting moreover
gives out its productions nowise as the things
themselves, but expressly as pictures. From

its very nature therefore it does not lay as much
stress on the material as Sculpture, and seems
indeed from this reason, when it exalts the ma-
terial above the spirit, to degrade itself more
than Sculpture in a like case : and on the other
hand to be yet more justified in giving a clear
preponderance to the soul.

Where it aims at the highest it will indeed
ennoble the passions by Character, or moderate
them by Grace, or manifest ia them the power
of the Soul : but on the other hand it is precisely
those' higher passions, depending on the rela-
tionship of the soul with a Supreme Being, that
are entirely suited to the nature of Painting.
Indeed while Sculpture maintains an exact ba-
lance between the force whereby a thing exists
outwardly and acts in Nature, and that by virtue
of which it lives inwardly and as soul, and ex-
cludes mere passivity even from Matter ; Paint-
ing on the contrary may soften in favor of the
soul the characteristicness of the force and acti-
vity in Matter, and transform it into resignation
and endurance, by which Man seems to become
more generally susceptible to the inspirations
of the soul, and to higher influences.

This diametrical difference explains of itself
not only the necessary predominance of Sculp-
ture in the ancient, and of Painting in the mo-
dern world, (since in the former the tone of
mind was thoroughly plastic, whereas the latter
makes even the soul the passive instrument of
higher revelations): but this also is evident; that
it is not enough to strive after the Plastic in
form and manner of representation, but that it
is requisite before all to think and to feel plas-
tically, that is, antiquely.

And as the deviation of Sculpture into the
picturesque is destructive to Art, so the narrow-
ing down of Painting to the conditions and
forms belonging to Sculpture, is an arbitrarily
imposed limitation. For while Sculpture, like
Gravitation, acts towards one point, it is per-
mitted to Painting, as to Light, to fill all space
with its creative energy.

This unlimited universality of Painting is
demonstrated by History itself, and by the ex-
amples of the greatest masters, who, without
injury to the essential character of their art,
have developed to perfection each particular
stage by itself: so that we can find also in the
history of Art the same sequence that may be
l^ointed out in its nature. Not indeed in exact
order of time, but yet substantially. For thus
is represented in Michael Angelo the oldest and
mightiest epoch of liberated Art ; that in which
it displays its yet uncontrolled strength in gi-
gantic progeny : as in the fables of the symbolic
Fore-world, the Earth, after the embrace of
Uranus, brought forth at first Titans and hea-
ven-storming giants, before the mild reign of
the serene Gods began.

Thus the painting of the Last Judgment, with
which, as the sum of his art, that giant spirit
filled the Sistine Chapel, seems to remind us
more of the first ages of the Earth and its pro-

SCHELLING.

519

ducts, than of its last. Attracted towards the
most hidden abysses of organic, particularly of
the human form, he sh'uns not the Terrible;
nay, he seeks it purposely, and startles it from its
repose in the dark workshops of Nature. Want
of delicacy, grace, pleasingness, he balances by
the extremes! energy ; and if he excites horror
by his representations, it is the terror that, ac-
cording to fable, the ancient god Pan spreads
around him when he suddenly appears in the
assemblies of men.

It is the method of Nature to produce the ex-
traordinary by isolation and the exclusion of op-
posed qualities. Thus, it was necessary that,
in Michael Angelo, earnestness and the deep
significant energy of Nature should prevail,
rather than a sense for the grace and sensibility
that belong to the Soul, in order to display the
extreme of pure plastic force in the painting of
modern times.

After the earlier violence and the vehement
impulse of birth is assuaged, the spirit of Nature
is transfigured into Soul, and Grace is born.
This point Art reached, after Leonardo da Vinci,
in Correggio, in whose works the sensuous Soul
is the active principle of Beauty.

As the modern fable of Psyche closes the
circle of the old mythology; so Painting, by
giving a preponderance to the Soul, attained a
new, though not a higher step of Art.

This Guido Reiii strove after, and became the
proper painter of the soul. Such seems to us
to be the necessary interpretation of his whole
endeavor, often uncertain, and, in many of his
works, losing itself in the vague.

This is shown, as, perhaps, in few of his
other i^ictures, in the masterpiece that is offered
to the admiration of all in the great collection
of our king.

In the figure of the heavenwards ascending
virgin, all harshness and sternness is effaced
even to the last trace: and, indeed, does not
Painting itself seem in it to soar upwards, trans-
figured on its own pinions, as the liberated
Psyche delivered from the severity of Form?

Here nothing outward remains, with separate
natural force ; everything expresses receptivity
and still endurance, even the perishable flesh,
the character of which the Italian language de-
signates by the term morbidczza, altogether un-
like that with which Raphael invests the de-
scending Queen of Heaven, as she appears to
the adoring pope and a saint.

Though the remark be well-founded, that the
original of Guido's female heads is the Niobe
of antiquity, yet the ground of this similarity is
surely no mere intentional imitation ; perhaps a
like aim led to like means.

As the Florentine Niobe is an extreme in
Sculpture, and the representation in it of the
Soul; so this well-known picture is an extreme
in Painting, which here ventures to lay aside
even the requisite of shade and the obscure, and
to work almost with jiure Light.

Even though it might be permitted to Paint-
ing, from its peculiar nature, to give a distinct
preponderance to the Soul, yet theory and in-
struction will do best constantly to aim at that
original Centre, whence alone Art may be pro-
duced ever anew; whereas, at the stage last
mentioned, it must necessarily stand still, or
degenerate into cramped mannerism. For even
that higher passivity is opposed to the idea of
fully energetic Being, whose image and reflex
Art is called upon to display.

A right perception will ever enjoy seeing a
thing worthily, and, as far as possible, independ-
ently developed, even on this side of its indi-
viduality : yea, the Deity would look down with
pleasure on a creature that, gifted with a pure
soul, should stoutly assert the dignity of its na-
ture outwardly also, and by its energetic sensuous
existence.

We have seen how the work of Art, springing
up out of the depths of Nature, begins with de-
terminateness and limitation, unfolds its inward
plenitude and infinity, is finally transfigured in
Grace, and at last attains to Soul. But we can
conceive only in detail what, in the creative act
of mature Art, is but one operation. No theory
and no rules can give this spiritual creative
power. It is the pure gift of Nature, which
here, for the second time, makes a close ; for,
having fully actualized herself, she invests the
creature with her creative energy. But as, in
the grand progress of Art, these diflerent stages
appeared successively, until, at the highest, all
joined in one ; so also, in particidars, sound cul-
ture can spring up only where it has unfolded
itself regularly from the germ and root to the
blossom.

The requirement that Art, like everything
living, should commence from the first rudi-
ments, and, to renew its youth, constantly return
to them, may seem a hard doctrine to an age
that has so often been assured that it has oidy
to take from works of Art already in existence
the most consummate Beauty, and thus as at a
step to reach the final goal. Have we not al-
ready the Excellent, the Perfect? How then
should we return to the rudimentary and un-
formed 1

Had the great founders of modern Art thought
thus, we should never have seen their miracles.
Before them also stood the creations of the an-
cients, round statues and works in relief, which
they might have transferred immediately to their
canvas. But such an appropriation of a Beauty
not self-won, and therefore unintelligible, would
not satisfy an artistic instinct that aimed through-
out at the fundamental, and from which the
Beautiful was again to create itself with free
original energy. They were not afraid, there-
fore, to appear simple, artless, dry, beside those
exalted ancients; nor to cherish Art for a long
time in the undistinguished bud, until the period
of Grace had arrived.

Whence comes it that we still look upon these
works of the older masters, from Giotto to the

520

SCHELLING.

teacher of Raphael, with a sort of reverence,
indeed with a certain predilection, if not that
the faithfulness of their endeavor, and the grand
earnestness of their serene voluntary limitation,
compels our respect and admiration.

The same relation that they held to the an-
cients, the present generation holds to them.
Their time and ours are joined by no living
transmission, no link of continuous organic
growth ; we must reproduce Art in the way
they did, but with energy of our own, in order
to be like them.

Even that Indian-summer of Art, at the end
of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seven-
teenth centuries, could call forth only a few new
blossoms on the old stem, but no productive
germs, still less plant a new tree of Art. But to
set aside the works of perfected Art, and to seek
out its scanty and simple beginnings, as some
have desired, would be a new and perhaps
greater mistake ; it would be no real return to
the fundamental : simplicity would be ati'ecta-
tion, and grow into hypocritical show.

But what prospect does the present time offer
for an Art springing from a vigorous germ, and
growing up from the root? For it is in a great
measure depenilant on the character of its time ;
and who would j^romise the approbation of the
present time to such earnest beginnings, when
Art, on the one hand, scarcely obtains equal
consideration with other instruments of prodigal
luxury ; and, on the other, artists and amateurs,
with entire want of ability to grasp Nature,
praise and demand the Ideal?

Art springs only from that powerful striving
of the inmost powers of the heart and the spirit,
which we call Inspiration. Everything that
from difficult or small beginnings has grown up
to great power and height, owes its growth to
Inspiration. Thus empires and states, thus arts
and sciences. But it is not the power of the
individual that accomplishes this, but the Spirit
alone, that dilluses itself over all. For Art
especially is dependant on the tone of the public
mind, as the more delicate plants on atmosphere
and weather : it needs a general enthusiasm for
Sublimity and Beauty, like that which, in the
time of the Medici, as a warm breath of spring,
called forth at once and together all those great
spirits. *******

[t is only when the public life is actuated by
the same forces through whose energy Art is
elevated, that the latter can derive any advan-
tage from it ; for Art cannot, without giving up

the nobility of its nature, aim at anything out-
ward.

Art and Science can move only on their own
axes ; the artist, like every spiritual laborer, can
follow only the law that God and Nature have
written in his heart. None can help him — he
must help himself; nor can he be outwardly re-
warded, since anything that he should produce
for the sake of aught out of itself, would thereby
become a nullity. Hence, too, no one can direct
him, nor prescribe the path he is to tread. Is
he to be pitied if he have to contend against his
time, he is deserving of contempt if he truckle
to it. But how should it be even possible for
him to do this? Without great general enthu-
siasm there are only sects, no public opinion :
not an established taste, not the great ideas of a
whole people, but the voices of a few arbitrarily
appointed judges, determine as to merit; and
Art, which in its elevation is self-sufficing, courts
favor, and serves where it should rule.

To diflerent ages are given different inspira-
tions. Can we expect none for this age, since
the new world now forming itself, as it exists
in part already outwardly, in part inwardly and
in the hearts of men, can no longer be measured
by any standard of jirevious opinion; and since
everything, on the contrary, loudly demands
higher standards and an entire renovation ?

Should not the sense to which Nature and
History have more livingly unfolded themselves,
restore to Art also its great arguments ? The
attempt to draw sparks from the ashes of the
Past, and fait them again into a universal flame,
is a vain endeavor. Only a revolution in the
ideas themselves is able to raise Art from its
exhaustion : only new Knowledge, new Faith
can inspire it for the work, by which it can dis-
play, in a renewed life, a splendor like the past.

An Art in all resjiects the same as that of
foregoing centuries, will never return; for Na-
ture never repeats herself. Such a Raphael
will never be again, but another, who shall have
reached in an equally original manner the sum-
mit of Art. Only let the fundamental condi-
tions be fulfilled, and renewed Art will show,
like that which preceded it, in its first works,
its aim and intent. In the production of the
distinctly characteristic, if it proceed from a
fresh original energy, Grace is already present,
even though hidden, and in both the advent of
the soul already determined. Works produced
in this manner, even in their rudimentary im-
perfection, are necessary and eternal. * * *

ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN.

Born 1776. Died 1312.

Hoffman is celebrated chiefly for his suc-
cessful use of the magic and demonic element
in fiction. In this particular he stands first
among the story-tellers of his time, and has had
many imitators both in Germany and in France.
But Hoffman does not revel in horrors for their
own sake ; he is not to be confounded with such
writers as Maturin, and Lewis, and Mrs. Rad-
cliffe, among English novelists. He does not
seek to make the flesh creep and the hair bris-
tle, but aims rather at the diaphragm. He
views all these infernalia on the humorous
side, and if any one trait is particularly promi-
nent in his writings it is irony. In him Ho-
garth and Hell-Breughel unite. Then, he was
a great musician, and had speculated, perhaps
as profoundly as any man, on the philosophy of
music, with which speculations his compositions
are often occupied and everywhere tinged.

Hoffman was a native of Konigsberg, where
he received his education, and devoted himself
to the study of the Law. After completing his
course, he received an appointment to an office
connected with his vocation, at Grosslogau, and
afterwards at Berlin. In 1800, he was made
assessor in the government of Posen ; in 1802,
he removed to Plozk, where he held the office
of counsellor ; and in 1803, to Warsaw. At
the invasion of this city by the French, in 1806,
he was forced to lay down his office, and to
have recourse to music for a support. In 1808,
he was appointed director of music at the new
theatre in Bamberg, and thence went to Leip-
zig, and afterward to Dresden, in the same
capacity. In 1816, he was reinstated as coun-
sellor in the court of judicature, at Berlin,
where he died, July 24th, 1822.

Hoffman had much that was noble in his
character, but likewise much that was morbid
and vicious. With a recklessness not unfre-
quently found in connection with fine artistic,
and especially musical talent, he gave himself
up to sensual excess, and wasted body and soul
with riotous living.

His principal works are Fanlasiestucke in
CalloCs manier, and the Serapiansbrilder.
3q

Besides these he published several volumes of
tales and works of fiction, some of which, as
the JMeisler Floh and the Lebensansichlen des
Kater Miirr, are satirical.

The following is Menzel's judgment con-
cerning him :

" With Hoffman the sentimentality of Kleist
and the humor of Chamisso* appear to be fused
together. He became the head of the new de-
monic school, and the poetic Pluto who ruled
the dark realm in its widest extent. Or rather,
was he not himself ruled by it? It is the poetry
of fear that gives all his works such a peculiar
stamp. Hence the sense of hearing, which is
so closely connected with the feeling of terror,
was with him so highly developed. Therefore
his ear detected everywhere the mysterious
tones of nature as well as of art. * * *
And yet we can accuse him of no exaggerated
softness or effeminate unmanliness; for his
principal works employ themselves with a pain,
with a despair, witli a daring and an agony of
the thoughts, of which only man is capable, not
woman. It is disease, extravagance, delirium,
but still always manly.

" From the devil down to a wry-faced child's-
doU, from the dissonance of life which rends the
soul, down to a dissonance in music which only
rends the ear, the immeasurable kingdom of the
ugly, the repulsive, the annoying, was gathered
around him, and his descriptions paint alter-
nately these tormenting objects and the tot'
ments which they prepare for a beautiful soul,
with inimitable vividness and truth. He him-
self is that mad musician Kreisler, who, with
his delicate sense for the purest and holiest
tones, is driven to despair by the dissonances
which everywhere assail him maliciously, as
from hell. But he retained this delicate sense
not in music alone. In all the spheres of life
he finds, corresponding with musical disso-
nances, those ugly, hostile grimaces and demo-
nic Powers by which precisely the noblest
souls are most painfully stretched upon the

>»q/>1t ^ ♦ # ^ ^ 'T' *

* Author of Peter Sclemihl.

44 * (521)

522

HOFFMANN.

" Hoffman's innermost being was music, and
the prayer of St. Antliony is never wanting to
his hellish caricatures, nor the Christmas bell
to the witches' Sabbath, nor to the concert of
devils the pure and piercing tone with which
the virgin soul takes leave of a shattered and
priceless instrument. It is true he paints to us
the soul only in its shattered state; but the
soul was ever noble, and carried heaven with
its harmony.

" Hoffman shares with Jean Paul his delicate
sensibility to painful impressions. * * *
Posterity will say that the dissonance which

pervades our time was seized by no poet so
poetically as by Hoffman ; and perhaps the
poetic spell consists precisely in this, that he
did not, like so many other poets, seek a politi-
cal solution of the dissonance, and appeal to the
future, but held fast the illusion of a black,
overshadowed fantasy, of a dream without
waking."

It is scarcely necessary to say, that the tale
from which the following extracts are given,
is intended to allegorize the conflict between
the poetic and the prosaic in human life.

THE GOLDEN POT.

FIRST VIGIL.

The Mishaps of the Student Anselnius. Conrector Paulmanu's
Tobacco-box, and the Gold-greeu Snakes.

On Ascension-day, about three o'clock in the
afternoon, there came a young man running
through the Schwarztlior, or Black Gate, out of
Dresden, and right into a basket of apples and
cakes, which an old and very ugly woman was
there exposing to sale. The crash was prodi-
gious ; all that escaped being squelched to
pieces, was scattered away, and the street-ur-
chins joyfully divided the booty which this
quick gentleman bad thrown them. At the
murder-shriek which the crone set up, her gos-
sips, leaving their cake and brandy-tables, en-
circled the young man, and with plebeian vio-
lence stormfuUy scolded him: so that, for shame
and vexation, he uttered no word, but merely
held out his small, and by no means particularly
well -filled purse, which the crone eagerly
clutched, and stuck into her pocket. The firm
ring now opened ; but as the young man started
ofl", the crone called after him: "Ay, run, run
thy ways, thou Devil's bird ! To the Crystal
run ! to the Crystal!" The squealing, creaking
voice of the woman had something unearthly
in it: so that the promenaders paused in amaze-
ment, and the laugh, which at first had been
imiversal, instantly died away. The Student
Anselmus, for the young man was no other, felt
himself, though he did not in the least under-
stand these singular phrases, nevertlieless seized
with a certain involuntary horror ; and he quick-
ened his. steps still more, to escape the curious
looks of the multitude, which were all turned
towards him. As he worked his way through
the crowd of well-dressed people, he heard them
murmuring on all sides : " Poor young fellow !
Ha! what a cursed beldam it is!'' The mys-
terious words of the crone had oddly enough
given this ludicrous adventure a sort of tragic
turn ; and the youth, before unobserved, was
now looked after with a certain sympathy. The
ladies, for his fine shape and handsome face,

which the glow of inward anger was rendering
still more expressive, forgave him this awkward
step, as well as the dress he wore, though it
was utterly at variance with all mode. His
pike-gray frock was shaped as if the tailor had
known the modern form only by hearsay; and
his well-kept black satin lower habiliments gave
the whole a certain pedagogic air, to which the
gait and gesture of the wearer did not at all
correspond.

The Student had almost reached the end of
the alley which leads out to the Linke Bath ;
but his breath could stand such a rate no longer.
From running, he took to walking; but scarcely
did he yet dare to lift an eye from the ground ;
for he still saw apples and cakes dancing round
him ; and every kind look from this or that fair
damsel was to him but the reflex of the mock-
ing laughter at the Schwarztlior. In this mood,
he had got to the entrance of the Bath : one
group of holiday people after the other were
moving in. Music of wind-instruments re-
sounded from the place, and the din of merry
guests was growing louder and louder. The
poor Student Anselmus was almost on the point
of weeping; for he too had expected, Ascen-
sion-day having always been a family-festival
with him, to participate in the felicities of the
Linkean paradise ; nay, he had purposed even
to go the length of a half portion of coffee with
rum, and a whole bottle of double beer; and
that he might carouse at his ease, had put more
money in his purse than was entirely conve-
nient or advisable. And now, by this fatal step
into the apple-basket, all that he hat! about him
had been swept away. Of cofl'ee, of double or
single beer, of music, of looking at the bright
damsels; in a word, of all his fancied enjoy
ments, there was now nothing more to be said.
He glided slowly past; and at last turned down
the Elbe road, w.bich at that time happened to
be quite solitary.

Beneath an elder-tree, which had grown out
through the wall, he found a kind green resting-
place : here he sat down, and filled a pipe from
the Sanitatskaaster, or Health-tobacco-box, of

HOFFMANN.

523

which his friend the Conrector Paulmann had
lately made him a present. Close before him,
rolled and chafed the gold-dyed waves of the
fair Elbe-stream : behind him rose lordly Dres-
den, stretching, bold and proud, its light towers
into the airy sky; which again, farther off, bent
itself down towards flowery meads and fresh
springing woods ; and in the dim distance, a
range of azure peaks gave notice of remote Bo-
hemia. But, heedless of this, the Student An-
selmus, looking gloomily before him, blew forth
his smoky clouds into the air. His chagrin at
length became audible, and he said : " Of a
truth, I am born to losses and crosses for my
life long! That in boyhood, at Odds or Evens,
I coidd never once guess the right way ; that
my bread and butter always fell on the but-
tered side ; of all these sorrows I will not speak :
but is it not a frightful destiny, that now, when,
in spite of Satan, I have become a student, I
must still be a jolthead as before? Do I ever
put a new coat on, without the first day smear-
ing it with tallow, or on some ill-fastened nail
or other, tearing a cursed hole in it? Do I ever
bow to any Councillor or any lady, without
pitching the hat out of my hands, or even slid-
ing away on the smooth pavement, and shame-
fully oversetting? Had I not, every market-
day, while in Halle, a regular sum of from three
to four groschen to jiay for broken pottery, the
Devil putting it into my head to walk straight
forward, like a leming-rat? Have I ever once
got to my college, or any place I was appointed
to, at the right time? What availed it that I
set out half an hour before, and planted myself
at the door, with the knocker in my hand ?
Just as the clock is going to strike, souse! some
Devil pours a wash-basin down on me, or I
bolt against some fellow coming out, and get
myself engaged in endless quarrels till the time
is clean gone.

" Ah ! well-a-day ! whither are ye fled, ye
blissful dreams of coming fortune, when I proud-
ly thought that here I inight even reach the
height of Privy Secretary? And has not my
evil star estranged from me my best patrons?
I learn, for instance, that the Councillor, to whom
I have a letter, cannot suffer cropt hair ; v/ith
immensity of trouble, the barber fastens me a
little cue to my hindhead ; but at the first bow,
his unblessed knot gives way, and a little shock,
running snuffmg about me, frisks off to the Privy
Councillor with the cue in his mouth. I spring
after it in terror ; and stumble against the table,
where he has been working while at breakfast ;
and cups, plates, ink-glass, sand-box, rush jing-
ling to the floor, and a flood of chocolate and ink
overflows the Relation he has just been writing.
'Is the Devil in the man?' bellows the furious
Privy Councillor, and shoves me out of the room.

" What avails it that Conrector Paulmann
gave me hopes of a writership : will my malig-
nant fate allow it, which everywhere pursues
me? To-day even! Do bat think of it ! I was
purposing to hold my good old Ascension-day

with right cheerfulness of soul : I would stretch
a point for once ; I might have gone, as well as
any other guest, into Linke's Bath, and called
out proudly: 'Marqueur! a bottle of double-
beer ; best sort, if you please !' I might have
sat till far in the evening; and, moreover, close
by this or that fine party of well-dressed ladies.
I know it, I feel it! heart would have come into
me, I should have been quite another man ; nay,
I miglit have carried it so far, that when one or
other of them asked : 'What o'clock may it be?'
or 'What is it they are playing?' I should have
started up with light grace, and without over-
turning my glass, or stumbling over the bench,
but in a curved posture, moving one step and a
half forward, I should have answered : ' Give
me leave, mademoiselle! it is the overture of
the Donanweibchen ;'' or, ' It is just going to strike
six.' Could any mortal in the world have taken
it ill of me? No! I say; the girls would have
looked over, smiling so roguishly; as they al-
ways do when I pluck up heart to show them
that I too understand the light tone of society,
and know how ladies should be spoken to. And
now the Devil himself leads me into that cursed
apple -basket, and now must I sit moping in

solitude, with nothing but a poor pipe of "'

Here the Student Anselmus was interrupted in
his soliloquy by a strange rustling and whisking,
which rose close by him in the grass, but soon
glided up into the twigs and leaves of the elder-
tree that stretched out over his head. It was
as if the evening wind were shaking the leaves ;
as if little birds were twittering among the
branches, moving their little wings in capricious
flutter to and fro. Then he heard a whispering
and lisping; and it seemed as if the blossoms
were sounding like little crystal bells. Ansel-
mus listened and listened. Ere long, the whis-
pering, and lisping, and tinkling, he himself
knew not how, grew to faint and half-scattered
words :

" 'Twixt this way, 'twixt that; 'twixtbranches,
'twixt blossoms, come shoot, come twist and
twirl we ! Sisterkin, sisterkin ! up to the shine ;
up, down, through and through, quick! Sun-
rays yellow ; evening-wind whispering ; dew-
drops pattering; blossoms all singing: sing we
with branches and blossoms ! Stars soon glitter ;
must down: 'twixt this way, 'twixt that, come
shoot, come twist, come twirl we, sisterkin !"

And so it went along, in confused and con-
fusing speech. The Student Anselmus thought:
" Well, it is but the evening-wind, which to-night
truly is whispering distinctly enough." But at
that moment there sounded over his head, as it
were, a triple harmony of clear crystal bells:
he looked up, and perceived three little Snakes,
glittering with green and gold, twisted round
the branches, and stretching out tlieir heads to
the evening sun. Then, again, began a whis-
pering and twittering in the same words as be-
fore, and tlie little Snakes went gliding and
caressing uji and down through the twigs; and
while they moved so rapidly, it was as if the

524

HOFFMANN.

elder-bush were scattering a thousand glittering
emeralds through the dark leaves.

" It is the evening sun which sports so in the
elder-bush," thought the Student Anselmus; but
the bells sounded again; and Anselmus ob-
served that one Snake held out its little head to
him. Through all his limbs there went a shock
like electricity; he quivered in his inmost heart;
he kept gazing up, and a pair of glorious dark-
blue eyes were looking at him with unspeakable
longing ; and an unknown feeling of highest
blessedness and deepest sorrow was like to rend
liis heart asunder. And as he looked, and still
looked, full of warm desire, into these kind eyes,
the crystal bells sounded louder in harmonious
accord, and the glittering emeralds fell dow^n
and encircled him, flickering round him in thou-
sand sparkles, and sporting in resplendent
threads of gold. The Elder-bush moved and
spoke : " Thou layest in my shadow ; my per-
fume flowed round thee, but thou understoodst
it not. The perfume is my speech, when Love
kindles it."' The Evening-Wind came gliding
past, and said : " I played round thy temples,
but thou understoodst me not. That breath is
my speech, when Love kindles it." The Sun-
beam broke through the clouds, and the sheen
of it burnt, as iu words: "I overflowed thee
with slowing gold, but thou understoodst me
not: That glow is my speech, when Love kin-
dles it."

And, still deeper and deeper sunk in the
view of these glorious eyes, his longing grew
keener, his desire more warm. And all rose
and moved around him, as if awakening to glad
life. Flowers and blossoms shed their odors
round him ; and their odor was like the lordly
singing of a thousand softest voices; and what
they sung was borne, like an echo, on the golden
evening clouds, as they flitted away, into far-off
lands. But as the last sun-beam abruptly sank
behind the hills, and the twilight threw its veil
over the scene, there came a hoarse deep voice,
as from a great distance :

"Hey! hey! what chattering and jingling is
that up there? Hey! hsy! who catches me
the ray behind the hills? Sunned enough, sung
enough. Hey! hey! through bush and grass,
through grass and stream. Hey ! hey ! Come
dow-w-n, dow-w-w-n !"

So faded the voice away, as in murmurs of a
distant thunder ; but the crystal bells broke off
in sharp discords. All became mute ; and the
Student Anselmus observed how the three
Snakes, glittering and sparkling, glitled through
the grass towards the river; rustling and hus-
tling, they rusUed into the Elbe ; and over the
waves where they vanished, there crackled up
a green flame, which, gleaming forward ob-
liquely, vanished in the direction of the city.

SECOND VlelL.

How the Student Ansnimiis was looked upon as drunk and mad.
The crusbing of Uie Kibe. Bandmaster Graun's Bravura. Con-
radi's SloniacUic Liqueur, and Ike bronzed A|)ple-woman.

"The gentleman is ailing some v/ay!" said a

decent burgher's wife, who, returning from a
walk with her family, had paused here, and,
with crossed arms, was looking at the mad
pranks of the Student Anselmus. Anselmus
had clasped the trunk of the elder-tree, and
was calling incessantly up to the branches and
leaves : " 0 glitter and shine once more, ye dear
gold Snakes ; let me hear your little bell-voices
once more ! Look on me once more, ye kind
eyes ; 0 once, or I must die in pain and warm
longing!" And with this, he was sighing and
sobbing from the bottom of his heart most piti-
fully; and in his eagerness and impatience,
shaking the elder-tree to and fro ; which, how-
ever, instead of any reply, rustled quite stupidly
and unintelligibly with its leaves; and so rather
seemed, as it were, to make sport of the Stu-
dent Anselmus and his sorrows.

"The gentleman is ailing some way!" said
the burgher's wife ; and Anselmus felt as if you
had shaken him out of a deep dream, or poured
ice-cold water on him, that he might awaken
without loss of time. He now first saw clearly
where he was; and recollected what a strange
apparition had assaulted him, nay, so beguiled
his senses, as to make him break forth into loud
talk with himself. Li astonishment, he gazed
at the woman ; and at last snatching up his hat,
which had fallen to the ground in his transport,
was for making off in all speed. The burgher
himself had come forward in the meanwhile;
and, setting down the child from his arm on the
grass, had been leaning on his staff, and with
amazement listening and looking at the Stu-
dent. He now jiicked up the pipe and tobacco-
box which the Student had let fall, and, hold-
ing them out to him, said: "Don't take on so
dreadfully, my worthy sir, or alarm people in
the dark, when nothing is the matter, after all,
but a drop or two of christian liquor: go home,
like a pretty man, and take a nap of sleep on it."
The Student Anselmus felt exceedingly
ashamed; he uttered nothing but a most la-
mentable Ah !

" Pooh ! Pooh !" said the burgher, " never
mind it a jot; such a thing will happen to the
best; on good old Ascension-day a man may
readily enough forget himself in his joy, and
gulp down a thought too much. A clergyman
himself is no worse for it: I presume, my
worthy sir, you are a Candidatus. — But, with
your leave, sir, I shall fill niy pipe with your
tobacco; mine went done a little while ago."

This last sentence the burgher uttered while
the Student Anselmus was about putting up his
pipe and box; and now the burgher slowly and
deliberately cleaned his pipe, and began as
slowly to fill it. Several burgher girls had
come up : these were speaking secretly with
the woman and each other, and tittering as they
looked at Anselmus. The Student felt as if he
were standing on prickly thorns, and burning
needles. No sooner had he got back his pipe
and tobacco-box, than he darted off at the height
of his speed.

HOFFMANN.

525

All the strange things he had seen were clean
gone from his memory: he simply recollected
having babbled all manner of foolish stuff be-
neath the elder-tree. This was the more fright-
ful to him, as he entertained from of old an in-
ward horror against all soliloquists. It is Satan
that chatters out of them, said his Rector ; and
Anselmus had honestly believed him. But to
be regarded as a Candidatus Thcologite, over-
taken with drink on Ascension-day ! The thought
was intolerable.

Running on with these mad vexations, he
was just about turning up the Poplar Alley, by
the Kosel garden, when a voice behind him
called out: " Herr Anselmus ! Herr Anselmus !
for the love of Heaven, whither are you run-
ning in such haste?" The Student paused, as
if rooted to the ground ; for he was convinced
that now some new mischance would befall
him. The voice rose again : "Herr Anselnms,
come back, then : we are waiting for you here
at the water!" And now the Student perceived
that it was his friend Conrector Paulmann's
voice : he went back to the Elbe ; and found
the Conrector, with his two daughters, as well
as Registrator Heerbrand, all on the point of
stepping into their gondola. Conrector Paul-
mann invited the Student to go with them
across the Elbe, and then to pass the evening
at his house iu the Pirna suburb. The Student
Anselmus very gladly accepted this proposal ;
thinking thereby to escape the malignant des-
tiny, which had ruled over him all day.

Now, as they were crossing the river, it
chanced that, on the farther bank, in the Anton
garden, a firework was just going off. Sputter-
ing and hissing, the rockets went aloft, and their
blazing stars flew to pieces in the air, scattering
a thousand vague shoots and flashes round
them. The Student Anselmus was sitting by
the steersman, sunk in deep thought ; but when
he noticed in the water the reflection of these
darting and wavering sparks and flames, he
felt as if it was the little golden Snakes that
were sporting in the flood. All the wonders
that he had seen at the elder-tree again started
forth into his heart and thoughts ; and again
that unspeakable longing, that glowing desire,
laid hold of him here, which had before agi-
tated his bosom in painful spasms of rapture.

" Ah ! is it you again, my little golden
Snakes? Sing now, O sing! In your song let
the kind, dear, dark-blue eyes, again appear to
me — All? are ye under the waves, then?"

So cried the Student Anselmus, and at the
same time made a violent movement, as if he
were for plunging from the gondola into the
river.

"Is the Devil in you, sir?" exclaimed the
steersman, and clutched him by the coat-breast.
The girls, who were sitting by him, shrieked in
terror, and fled to the other side of the gondola.
Registrator Heerbrand whispered something in
Conrector Paulmann's ear, to which the latter
answered at considerable length, but in so low

a tone, that Anselmus could distinguish nothing
but the words : " Such attacks more than once ?
— Never heard of it." Directly after this, Con-
rector Paulmann also rose; and then sat down,
with a certain earnest, grave, official mien,
beside the Student Anselmus, taking his hand,
and saying: " How are you, Herr Anselmus ?"
The Student Anselmus was like to lose his wits,
for in his mind there was a mad contradiction,
which he strove in vain to reconcile. He now
saw plainly that what he had taken for the
gleaming of the golden Snakes was nothing but
the image of the fireworks in Anton's garden:
but a feeling unexperienced till now, he him-
self knew not whether it was rapture or pain,
cramped his breast together ; and when the
steersman struck through the water with his
helm, so that the waves, curling as in anger,
gurgled and chafed, he heard in their din a soft
whispering: "Anselmus! Anselmus! seest thou
not how we still skim along before thee ? Sis-
terkin looks at thee again : believe, believe,
believe in us!" And he thought he saw in the
reflected light three green-glowing streaks : but
then, when he gazed, full of fond sadness, into
the water, to see whether these gentle eyes
would not again look up to him, he perceived
too well that the shine proceeded only from the
windows in the neighbouring houses. He was
sitting mute in his place, and inwardly battling
with himself, when Conrector Paulmann re-
peated, with still greater emphasis : " How are
you, Herr Anselmus ?"

With the most rueful tone, Anselmus replied:
"Ah ! Herr Conrector, if you knew what strange
things I have been dreaming, quite awake, with
open eyes, just now, under an elder-tree at the
wall of Linke's garden, you would not take it
amiss of me that I am a little absent, or so."

" Ey, ey, Herr Anselmus !" interrupted Con-
rector Paulmann, "I have always taken you for
a solid young man : but to dream, to dream
wftli your eyes wide open, and then, all at
once, to start up for leaping into the water !
This, begging your pardon, is what only fools
or madmen could do."

The Student Anselmus was deeply affected
at his friend's hard saying ; then Veronica,
Paulmann's eldest daughter, a most pretty
blooming girl of sixteen, addressed her father :
"But, dear father, something singular must have
befallen Herr Anselmus; and perhaps he only
thinks he was awake, while he may have really
been asleep: and so all manner of wild stuff
has come into his head, and is still lying in his
thoughts."

"And, dearest Mademoiselle! Worthy Con-
rector!" cried Registrator Heerbrand, "may one
not, even when awake, sometimes sink into a
sort of dreaming state? I myself have had
such fits. One afternoon, for instance, during
coffee, in a sort of brown study like this, in the
special season of corporeal and spiritual diges-
tion, the place where a lost jld was lying oc-
curred to me, as if by inspiration; and last

526

HOFFMANN.

night, no farther gone, there came a glorious
large Latin paper tripping out before my open
eyes, in the very same way."

"Ah! most honoured Registrator," answered
Conrector Paulmann ; "you have always had a
tendency to the Poelica ; and thus one falls into
fantasies and romantic humors."

The Student Anselmus, however, was par-
ticularly gratified that in this most troublous
situation, while in danger of being considered
drunk or crazy, any one should take his part;
and though it was already pretty dark, he
thought he noticed, for the first time, that Ve-
ronica had really very fine dark-blue eyes, and
this too without remembering the strange pair
which he had looked at in the elder-bush. On
the whole, the adventure under the elder-bush
had once more entirely vanished from the
thoughts of the Student Anselmus ; he felt him-
self at ease and light of heart; nay, in the
capriciousness of joy, he carried it so far, that
he olTered a helping hand to his fair advocate,
Veronica, as she was stepping from the gon-
dola; and without more ado, as she put her
arm in his, escorted her home with so much
dexterity and good luck, that he only missed his
footing once, and this being the only wet spot
in the whole road, only spattered Veronica's
white gown a very little by the incident.

Conrector Paulmann failed not to observe this
happy change in the Student Anselmus; he re-
sumed his liking for him, and begged forgive-
ness for the hard words which he had let fall
before. " Yes," added he, " we have many ex-
amples to show that certain phantasms may rise
before a man, and pester and plague him not a
little ; but this is bodily disease, and leeches are
good for it, if applied to the right part, as a coi
tain learned physician, now deceased, has di-
rected." The Student Anselmus knew not
whether he had been drunk, crazy, or sick; but
at all events the leeches seemed entirely super-
fluous, as these supposed phantasms had utterly
vanished, and the Student himself was growing
happier and happier, the more he prospered in
serving the pretty Veronica with all sorts of
dainty attentions. ,

As usual, after the frugal meal, came music;
the Student Anselmus had to take his seat be-
fore the harpsichord, and Veronica accompanied
his playing with her pure clear voice: "Dear
Mademoiselle," said Registrator Heerbrand,
" you have a voice like a crystal bell !"

"That she has not!" ejaculated the Student
Anselmus, he scarcely knew how. "Crystal
bells in elder-trees sound strangely! strangely!"
continued the Student Anselmus, murmuring
half aloud.

Veronica laid her hand on his shoulder, and
asked: "What are you saying now, Herr An-
selmus?"

Instantly Anselmus recovered his cheerful-
ness, and began inlaying. Conrector Paulmann
gave a grim look at him ; but Registrator Heer-
brand laid a music-leaf on the frame, and sang

with ravisliing grace one of Bandmaster Graun"s
Ijravura airs. The Student Anselmus accompa-
nied this, and much more; and a fantasy duet,
which Veronica and he now fingered, and Con-
rector Paulmann had himself composed, again
brought all into the gayest humor.

It was now pretty late, and Registrator Heer-
brand was taking up his hat and slick, when
Conrector Paulmann went up to him with a
mysterious air, and said : " Hem ! — Would not
you, honored Registrator, mention to the good
Herr Anselmus himself — Hem ! what we were
speaking of before ?"

" With all the pleasure in nature," said Re-
gistrator Heerbrand, and having placed himself
in the circle, began, without farther preamble,
as follows :

"In this city is a strange remarkable man,
people say he follows all manner of secret sci-
ences ; but as there are no such sciences, I rather
take him for an antiquary, and along with this,
for an experimental chemist. I mean no other
than our Privy Archivarius Lindhorst. He lives,
as you know, by himself, in his old sequestered
house ; and when disengaged from his office,
he is to be found in his library, or in his chemi-
cal laboratory, to which, however, he admits no
stranger. Besides many curious books, he pos-
sesses a number of manuscripts, partly Arabic,
Coptic, and some of them in strange characters,
which belong not to any known tongue. These
he wishes to have copied properly; and for this
purpose he requires a man who can draw with
the pen, and so transfer these marks to parch-
ment, in Indian ink, with the highest strictness
and fidelity. The work is carried on in a sepa-
rate chamber of his house, under his own over-
f'^;lit; and besides free board during the time
of business, he pays his man a spezieslhaler, or
specie-dollar, daily, and promises a handsome
present when the copying is rightly finished.
The hours of work are from twelve to six.
From three to four, you take rest and dinner.

"Herr Archivarius Lindhorst having in vain
tried one or two young people for copying these
manuscripts, has at last applied to me to find
Irim an expert drawer ; and so I have been
thinking of you, dear Herr Anselmus, for I know
that you both write very neatly, and likewise
draw with the pen to great perfection. Now,
if in these bad times, and till your future esta-
blishment, you could like to earn a spezieslhaler
in the day, and this present over and above,
you can go to-morrow precisely at noon, and
call upon the Archivarius, whose house no doubt
you know. But be on your guard against any
blot! If such a thing falls on your copy, you
must begin it again; if it falls on the original,
the Archivarius will think nothing to throw you
over the window, for he is a hot-tempered gen-
tleman."

The student Anselmus was filled with joy at
Registrator Heerbrand's proposal ; for not only
could the Student write well and draw well
with the pen, but this copying with laborious

HOFFMANN.

527

calligraphic, pains was a thing he delighted in
beyond aught else. So he thanked his patron
in the most grateful terms, and promised not to
fail at noon to-morrow.

All night the Student Anselmus saw nothing
but clear speziesthalers, and heard nothing but
their lovely clink. Who could blame the poor
youth, cheated of so many hopes by capricious
destiny, obliged to take counsel about every
fartliing, and to forego so many joys which a
young heart requires! Early in the morning
he brought out his black-lead pencils, his crow-
quills, his Indian ink ; for better materials,
thought he, the Archivarius can find nowhere.
Above all, he mustered and arranged his calli-
graphic masterpieces and his drawings, to show
theni to the Archivarius, in proof of his ability
to do what he wished. All prospered with the
Student; a peculiar happy star seemed to be
presiding over him ; his neckcloth sat right at
the very first trial ; no lack burst ; no loop gave
way in his black silk stockings; his hat did not
once fall to the dust after he had trimmed it.
In a word, precisely at half-past eleven, the
Student Anselmus, in his pike-grey frock, and
black satin lower habiliments, with a roll of
calligraphics and pen-drawings in his pocket,
was standing in the Schlossgasse, or Castle-
gate, in Conradi's shop, and drinking one — two
glasses of the best stomachic liqueur ; for here,
thought he, slapping on the still empty pocket,
for here spoziesthalers will be chinking soon.

Notwithstanding the distance of the solitary
street where the Archivarius Lindhorst's an-
tique residence lay, the Student Anselmus was
at the front-door before the stroke of twelve.
He stood here, and was looking at the large fine
bronze knocker ; but now when, as the last
stroke tingled through the air with loud clang
from the steeple-clock of the Kreuzkirche, or
Cross-church, he lifted his hand to grasp this
same knocker, the metal visage twisted itself,
with horrid rolling of its blue-gleaming eyes,
into a grinning smile. Alas, it was the Apple-
woman of the Schwarzthor ! The pointed teeth
gnashed together in the loose jaws, and in their
chattering through the skinny lips, there was a
growl of: "Thou fool, fool, fool! — Wait, wait!
— Why didst run ! — Fool !" Horror-struck, the
Student Anselmus flew back; he clutched at
the door-post, but his hand caught the bell-rope,
and pulled it, and in piercing discords it rung
stronger and stronger, and through the whole
empty house the echo repeated, as in mockery:
"To the crystal, fall!'' An unearthly terror
seized the Student Anselmus, and quivered
through all his limbs. The bell-rope lengthened
downwards, and became a white transparent
gigantic serpent, which encircled and crushed
him, and girded him straiter and straiter in its
coils, till his brittle jDaralysed limbs went crash-
ing in pieces, and the blood spouted from his
veins, penetrating into the transparent body of
the serpent, and dyeing it red. "Kill me! Kill
me!" he would have cried, in liis horrible

agony ; but the cry was only a stifled gurgle in
his throat. The serpent lifted its head, and laid
its long peaked tongue of glowing brass on the
breast of Anselmus ; then a fierce pang suddenly
cut asunder the artery of life, and thought fled
away from him. On returning to his senses,
he was lying on his own poor truckle-bed ; Con-
rector Paulmann was standing before him, and
saying : " For Heaven's sake, what mad stufl" is
this, dear Herr Anselmus?"

SIXTH TIOIL.

Archivarius Lindhorst's Garden, with some Mock-birds. The
Golden Pot. English current-hand. Pot-hooks. The Prince
of the Spirits.

"It may be, after all," said the Student An-
selmus to himself, "that the superfine strong
stomachic liqueur, which I took somewhat freely
in Monsieur Conradi's, might really be the cause
of all these shocking phantasms, which so tor-
tured me at Archivarius Lindhorst's door.
Therefore, I will go quite sober to-day ; and so
bid defiance to whatever farther mischief may
assail me." On this occasion, as before when
equipping himself for his first call on Archiva-
rius Lindhorst, the Student Anselmus put his
pen-drawings, and calligraphic masterpieces,
his bars of Indian ink, and his well-pointed
crow-pens, into his pockets; and was just turn-
ing to go out, when his eye lighted on the vial
with the yellow liquor, which he had received
from Archivarius Lindhorst. All the strange
adventures he had met with again rose on his
mind in glowing colours : and a nameless emo-
tion of rapture and pain thrilled through his
breast. Involuntarily he exclaimed, with a
most piteous voice: "Ah, am not I going to the
Archivarius solely for a sight of thee, thou gentle
lovely Serpentina!" At that moment, he felt
as if Serpentina's love might be the prize of
some laborious perilous task which he had to
undertake ; and as if this task were no other
than the copying of the Lindhorst manuscripts.
That at his very entrance into the house, or
more properly, before his entrance, all manner
of mysterious things might happen, as of late,
was no more than he anticipatetl. He thought
no more of Conradi's strong water; but hastily
put the vial of liquor in his waistcoat-pocket,
that he might act strictly by the Archivarius'
directions, should the bronzed Apple-woman
again take it upon her to make faces at him.

And did not the hawk-nose actually peak it-
self, did not the cat-eyes actually glare from the
knocker, as he raised his hand to it, at the stroke
of twelve "? But now, without farther ceremony,
he tlribbled his liquor into the pestilent visage;
and it folded and moulded itself, that instant,
down to a glittering bowl-round knocker. The
door went up : the bells sounded beautifully
over all the house: " Klingling, youngling, in,
in, spring, spring, klingling." In good heart he
mounted the fine broad stair; and feasted on
the odors of some strange perfumery, that was
floating through the house. In doubt, he paused

528

HOFFMANN.

on the lobby ; for he knew not at which of these
many fine doors he was to knock. But Archi-
varius Lindhorst, in a white damask night-gown,
stept forth to him, and said : " Well, it is a real
pleasure to me, Herr Anselmus, that you have
kept your word at last. Come this way, if you
please ; I must take you straight into the Labo-
ratory.'' And with this he stept rapidly through
the lobby, and opened a little side-door, which
led into a long passage. Anselmus walked on
in liigh spirits, behind the Archivarius ; they
passed from this corridor into a hall, or rather
into a lordly green-house : for on both sides, up
to the ceiling, stood all manner of rare won-
drous flowers, nay, great trees with strangely-
formed leaves and blossoms. A magic dazzling
light shone over the whole, though you could
not discover whence it came, for no window
whatever was to be seen. As the Student An-
selmus looked in through the bushes and trees,
long avenues appeared to open in remote dis-
tance. In the deep shade of thick cypress
groves, lay glittering marble fountains, out of
which rose wondrous figures, spouting crystal
jets that fell with pattering spray into the gleam-
ing lily-cups ; strange voices cooed and rustled
through the wood of curious trees ; and sweetest
perfumes streamed up and down.

The Archivarius had vanished : and Ansel-
mus saw nothing but a huge bush of glowing
fire -lilies before him. Intoxicated with the
sight and the fine odors of this fairy-garden,
Anselmus stood fixed to the spot. Then began
on all sides of him a giggling and laughing; and
light little voices railed and mocked him : "Herr
Studiosus! Herr Studiosus! how came you
hither? Why have you dressed so bravely,
Herr Anselmus'? Will you chat with us for a
minute, how grandmammy sat squelching down
upon the egg, and young master got a stain on
his Sunday waistcoat? — Can you play the new
tune, now, which you learned from Daddy
Cockadoodle, Herr Anselmus? — You look very
fine in your glass periwig, and post-paper boots."
So cried and chattered and sniggered the little
voices, out of every corner, nay, close by the
Student himself, who now observed that all
sorts of party-colored birds were fluttering
above him, and jeering him in hearty laughter.
At that moment, the bush of fire-lilies advanced
towards him ; and he perceived that it was
Archivarius Lindhorst, whose flowered night-
gown, glittering in red and yellow, had so far
deceived his eyes.

" I beg your pardon, wortliy Herr Anselmus,"
said the Archivarius, "for leaving you alone: I
wished, in passing, to take a peep at my fine
cactus, which is to blossom to-night. But how
like you my little house-garden?"

"Ah, Heaven! Immeasurably pretty it is,
most valued Herr Archivarius," replied the Stu-
dent; "but those party-colored birds have been
bantering me a little."

"What chattering is this?" cried the Archi-
varius angrily into the bushes. Then a huge

grey Parrot came fluttering out, and perched
itself beside the Archivarius on a myrtle-bough ;
and looking at him with an uncommon earnest-
ness and gravity through a pair of spectacles
that stuck on his hooked bill, it creaked out:
" Don't take it amiss, Herr Archivarius ; my
wild boys have been a little free or so; but the
Herr Studiosus has himself to blame in the
matter, for "

"Hush! hush!" interrupted Archivarius Lind-
horst; "I know the varlets; but tliou must keep
them in better discijiline, my friend ! — Now,
come along, Herr Anselmus."

And the Archivarius again stept forth, through
many a strangely-decorated chamber ; so that
the Student Anselmus, in following him, could
scarcely give a glance at all the glittering won-
drous furniture, and other unknown things, with
which the whole of them were filled. At last
they entered a large apartment ; where the Ar-
chivarius, casting his eyes aloft, stood still ; and
Anselmus got time to feast himself on the glo-
rious sight, which the simple decoration of this
hall aflbrded. Jutting from the azure-colored
walls, rose gold-bronze trunks of high palm-
trees, which wove their colossal leaves, glitter-
ing like bright emeralds, into a ceiling far up :
in the middle of the chamber, and resting on
three Egyptian lions, cast out of dark bronze,
lay a porphyry plate ; and on this stood a simple
Golden Pot, from which, so soon as he beheld
it, Anselmus could not turn away an eye. It
was as if, in a thousand gleaming reflexes, all
sorts of shapes were sporting on the bright po-
lished gold: often he perceived his own form,
with arms stretched out in longing — ah ! be-
neath the elder-bush, — and Serpentina was
winding and shooting up and down, and again
looking at him with her kind eyes. Anselmus
was beside himself with frantic rapture.

"Serpentina! Serpentina!" cried he aloud;
and Archivarius Lindhorst whirled round ab-
ruptly, and said : " How now, worthy Herr
Anselmus ? If I mistake not, you were pleased
to call for my daughter; she is quite in the
other side of the house at present, and indeed
just taking her lesson on the harpsichord. Let
us go along."

Anselmus, scarcely knowing what he did,
followed his conductor; he saw or heard no-
thing more, till Archivarius Lindhorst suddenly
grasped his hand, and said : " Here is the
place!" Anselmus awoke as from a dream,
and now perceived that he was in a high room,
all lined on every side with book-shelves, and
nowise diflering from a common library and
study. In the middle stood a large writing-
table, with a stuffed arin-chair before it. " This,"'
said Archivarius Lindhorst, "is your work-room
for the present : whether you may work, some
other time, in the blue library, where you so
suddenly called out my daughter's name, I yet
know not. But now I could wish to convince
myself of your ability to execute this task ap-
pointed you, in the way I wish it and need it."

HOFFMANN.

529

The Student here gathered full courage; and
not without internal self-complacence in the
certainty of highly gratifying Archivarius Lind-
horst, pulled out his drawings and specimens
of penmanship from his pocket. But no sooner
had the Archivarius cast his eye on the first
leaf, a piece of writing in the finest English
style, than he smiled very oddly, and shook his
head. These motions he repeated at every fol-
lowing leaf, so that the Student Anselmus felt
the blood mounting to his face ; and at last,
when the smile became quite sarcastic and
contemptuous, he broke out in downright vexa-
tion : "The Herr Archivarius does not seem
contented with my poor talents."

" Dear Herr Anselmus," said Archivarius
Lindhorst, "you have indeed fine capacities for
the art of calligraphy ; but, in the meanwhile,
it is clear enough, I must reckon more on your
diligence and good-will, than on your attain-
ments in the business."

The Student Anselmus spoke largely of his
often-acknowledged perfection in this art, of his
fine Chinese ink, and most select crow-quills.
But Archivarius Lindhorst handed him the
English sheet, and said: "Be judge yourself!"
Anselmus felt as if struck by a thunderbolt, to
see his hand-writing look so: it was miserable,
beyond measure. There was no rounding in
the turns, no hair-stroke where it should be; no
proportion between the capital and single let-
ters ; nay, villainous school-boy pot-hooks often
spoiled the best lines. " And then," continued
Archivarius Lindhorst, "your ink will not
stand." He dipt his finger in a glass of water,
and as he just skimmed it over the lines, they
vanished without vestige. The Student Ansel-
mus felt as if some monster were throttling him :
he could not utter a word. There stood he,
with the unlucky sheet in his hand; but Archi-
varius Lindhorst laughed aloud, and said:
"Never mind it, dearest Herr Anselmus; what
you could not perfect before, will perhaps do
better here. At any rate, you shall have better
materials than you have been accustomed to.
Begin, in Heaven's name!"

From a locked press, Archivarius Lindhorst
now brought out a black fluid substance, which
ditfused a most peculiar odor ; also pens, sharply
pointed and of strange color, together with a
sheet of especial whiteness and smoothness;
then at last an Arabic manuscript: and as An-
selmus sat down to work, the Archivarius left
the room. The Student Anselmus had often
copied Arabic manuscripts already ; the first
problem, therefore, seemed to him not so very
dilficult to solve. "How these pot-hooks came
into my fine English current-hand. Heaven, and
Archivarius Lindliorst, know best," said he;
" but that they are not from mij hand, I will
testify to the death !" At every new word that
stood fair and perfect on the parchment, his
courage increased, and with it his adroitness.
In truth, these pens wrote exquisitely well ; and
tJie mysterious ink flowed pliantly, and black
3r

as jet, on the bright white parchment. And as
he worked along so diligently, and with such
strained attention, he began to feel more and
more at home in the solitary room ; and already
he had quite fitted himself into his task, which
he now hoped to finish well, when at the stroke
of three the Archivarius called him into the
side -room to a savory dinner. At table, Ar-
chivarius Lindhorst was in special gaiety of
heart: he inquired about the Student Anselmus'
friends, Conrector Paulmann, and Registrator
Heerbrand, and of the latter especially he had
store of merry anecdotes to tell. The good old
Rhenish was particularly grateful to the Student
Anselmus, and made him more talkative than
he was wont to be. At the stroke of ibur, he
rose to resume his labor ; and this punctuality
appeared to please the Archivarius.

If the copying of these Arabic manuscripts
had prospered in his hands, before dinner, tlie
task now went forward much better ; nay, he
could not himself comprehend the rapidity and
ease, with which he succeeded in transcribing
the twisted strokes of this foreign character.
But it was as if, in his inmost soul, a voice were
whispering in audible words: "Ah! couldst
thou accomplish it, wert thou not thinking of
her, didst thou not believe in her and in her
love ?" Then there floated whispiers, as in low,
low, waving crystal tones, through the room :
" I am near, near, near ! I help thee : be bold,
be steadfast, dear Anselmus ! I toil with thee,
that thou mayest be mine!" And as, in the
fulness of secret rapture, he caught these sounds,
the unknown characters grew clearer and clearer
to him ; he scarcely required to look on the ori-
ginal at all; nay, it was as if the letters were
already standing in pale ink on the parclmrent,
and he had nothing more to do but mark them
black. So did he labor on, encompassed with
dear inspiring tones as with soft sweet breath,
till the clock struck six, and Archivarius Lind-
horst entered the apartment. He came forward
to the table, with a singular smile; Anselmus
rose in silence: the Archivarius still looked at
him, with that mocking smile: but no sooner
had he glanced over the copy, than the smile
passed into deep solemn earnestness, which
every feature of his face adapted itself to ex-
press. He seemed no longer the same. His
eyes, which usually gleamed with sparkling
fire, now looked with unutterable mildness at
Anselmus ; a soft red tinted the pale cheeks ;
and instead of the irony which at other times
compressed the mouth, the softly-curved grace-
ful lips now seemed to be opening for wise and
soul-p)ersuading speech. The whole form was
higher, statelier; the wide night-gown spread
itself like a royal mantle in broad folds over his
breast and shoulders; and through the white
locks, ^vhicll lay on his high open brow, there
winded a thin band of gold.

"Young man," began the Archivarius in so-
lemn tone, "before thou tlioughtest of it, I knew
thee, and all the secret relations which bind
45

530

HOFFMANN.

thee to the dearest and holiest of my interests!
Serpentina loves thee ; a singular destiny, whose
fateful threads were spun by enemies, is ful-
filled, should she be thine, and thou obtain, as
an essential dowry, the Golden Pot, whicli of
right belongs to her. But only from effort and
contest can thy happiness in the higher life
arise; hostile Principles assail thee; and only
the interior force with which thou shalt with-
stand these contradictions can save thee from
disgrace and ruin. Whilst laboring here, thou
art passing tlie season of instruction : Belief and
full knowledge will lead thee to the near goal,
if thou but hold fast, what thou hast well begun.
Bear her always and truly in thy thoughts, her
who loves thee ; then shalt thou see the mar-
vels of the Golden Pot, and be happy for ever
more. Fare thee well ! Archivarius Lindhorst
expects thee to-rnorrow at noon in thy cabinet.
Fare thee well !'' With these words Archiva-
rius Lindliorst softly pushed the Student Ansel-
mus out of the door, which he then locked ; and
Anselmus found himself in the chamber where
he had dined, the single door of which led out
to the lobby.

Altogether stupified with these strange phe-
nomena, the Student Anselmus stood lingering
at the street-door; he heard a window open
above him, and looked up: it was Archivarius
Lindhorst, quite the old man again, in his light-
grey gown, as he usually appeared. Tiie Ar-
chivarius called to him: "Hey, worthy Herr
Anselmus, what are you studying over there?
Tush, the Arabic is still in your head. My
compliments to Herr Conrector Paulmann, if you
see him ; and come to-morrow precisely at noon.
The fee for this day is lying in your right waist-
coat-pocket.'' The Student Anselmus actually
found the clear speziesthaler in the pocket indi-
cated ; but he took no joy in it. " What is to
come of all this," said he to himself, " I know
not: "but if it be some mad delusion and con-
juring work that has laid hold of me, the dear^
Serpentina still lives and moves in my inward
heart; and before I leave her, I will die alto-
gether ; for I know that the thought in me is
eternal, and no hostile Principle can take it from
me : and what else is this thought but Serpen-
tina's love?"

EIGHTH TIGII.

The Library of the Palm-trees. Fortunes of an unhappy Sala-
mander. How the Black Quill caressed a Parsnip, and Regis-
trator Heerbrand was much overtaken with Liquor.

The Student Anselmus had now worked
several days with Archivarius Lindhorst; these
working hours were for him the happiest of his
life ; still encircled with lovely tones, with Ser-
pentina's encouraging voice, he was filled and
overflowed with a pure delight, which often
rose to highest rapture. Every strait, every
little care of his needy existence, had vanished
from his thoughts ; and in the new life, which
had risen on him as in serene sunny splendor,
he comprehended all the wonders of a higher

world, which before had filled him with aston-
ishment, nay, with dread. His copying pro-
ceeded rapidly and lightly; for he felt more
and more as if he were writing characters long
known to him ; and he scarcely needed to cast
his eye upon the manuscript, while copying it
all with the greatest exactness.

Except at the hour of dinner, Archivarius
Lindhorst seldom made his appearance ; and
this always precisely at the moment when An-
selmus had finished the last letter of some ma-
nuscript: then the Archivarius would hand him '
another, and directly after, leave him. without
uttering a word ; having first stirred the ink
with a little black rod, and changed the old
pens with new sharji-pointed ones. One day,
whan Anselmus, at the stroke of twelve, had
as usual mounted the stair, he found the door
through which he commonly entered, standing
locked; and Archivarius Lindhorst came for-
ward from the other side, dressed in his strange
flower-figured night-gown. He called aloud:
"To-day come this way, good Herr Anselmus;
for we must to the chamber where Bhogovotgi-
ta's masters are waiting for us."

He slept along the corridor, and led Anselmus
through the same chambers and halls, as at the
first visit. The Student Anselmus again felt
astonished at the marvellous beauty of the gar-
den: but he now perceived that many of the
strange flowers, hanging on the dark bushes
were in truth insects glancing with lordly colors,
hovering up and down with their little wings,
as they danced and whirled in clusters, caress-
ing one another with their antennae. On the
other hand again, the rose and azure-colored
birds were odoriferous flowers; and the per-
fume which they scattered, mounted from their
cups in low lovely tones, which, with the gur-
gling of distant fountains, and the sighing of the
high groves and trees, mingled themselves into
mysterious accords of a deep unutterable longing.
The mock-birds, which had so jeered and flouted
him before, were again fluttering to and fro
over his head, and crying incessantly with their
sharp small voices : " Herr Studiosus, Herr Stu-
diosus, don't be in such a hurry ! Don't peep
into the clouds so ! They may fall about your
ears — He ! He ! Herr Studiosus, put your pow-
der-mantle on ; cousin Screech-Owl will frizzle
your toupee." And so it went along, in all
manner of stupid chatter, till Anselmus left the
garden.

Archivarius Lindhorst at last stept into the
azure chamber: the porphyry, with the Golden
Pot, was gone; instead of it, in the middle of
the room, stood a table overhung with violet-
colored satin, upon which lay the writing-ware
already known to Anselmus; and a stuffed
arm-chair, covered with the same sort of cloth,
was placed beside it.

"Dear Herr Anselmus," said Archivarius
Lindhorst, "you have now copied me a number
of manuscripts, rapidly and correctly, to my no
small contentment : you have gained my confi-

HOFFMANN.

531

dence ; but the liarclest is yet behind ; and that
is the transcribing or ratlier painting of certain
works, written in a peculiar character ; I keep
them in this room, and they can only be copied
on the spot. You will, therefore, in future,
work here ; but I must recommend to you the
greatest foresight and attention ; a false stroke,
or, which may Heaven forefend, a blot let fall
on the original, will plunge you into misfortune."

Ansehnus observed that from the golden
trunks of the palm-trees, little emerald leaves
projected : one of these leaves the Arehivarius
took hold of; and Anselraus could not but per-
ceive that the leaf was in truth a roll of parch-
ment, which the Arehivarius unfolded, and
spread out before the Student on the table. An-
sehnus wondered not a little at these strangely
intertwisted characters; and as he looked over
the many points, strokes, dashes, and twirls in
the manuscript, he almost lost hope of ever
copying it. He fell into deep thoughts on the
subject.

" Be of courage, young man !" cried the Ar-
ehivarius ; " if thou hast continuing Belief and
true Love, Serpentina will help thee."

His voice sounded like ringing metal ; and as
Anselmus looked up in utter terror, Arehivarius
Lindhorst was standing before him in the kingly
form, which, during the first visit, he had as-
sumed in the library. Anselmus felt as if in
his deep reverence he could not but sink on his
knee ; but the Arehivarius slept up the trunk
of a palm-tree, and vanished aloft among the
emerald leaves. The Student Anselmus per-
ceived that the Prince of the Spirits had been
speaking with him, and was now gone up to his
study; perhaps intending, by the beams which
some of the Planets had dispatched to him as
envoys, to send back word what was to become
of Anselmus and Serpentina.

" It may be too," thought he farther, " that he
is expecting news from the Springs of the Nile;
or that some magician from Lapland is paying
him a visit: me it behoves to set diligently
about my task." And with this, he began
studying the foreign characters in the roll of
parchment.

The strange music of the garden sounded
over to him, and encircled him with sweet
lovely odors; the mock-birds too he still heard
giggling and twittering, but could not distinguish
their words, a thing which greatly pleased him.
At times also it was as if the leaves of the
palm-trees were rustling, and as if the clear
crystal tones, which Anselmus on that fateful
Ascension-day had heard under the elder-bush,
were beaming and flitting through the room.
Wonderfully strengthened by this shining and
tinkling, the Student Anselmus directed his eyes
and thoughts more and more intensely on the
superscription of the parchment roll ; and ere
long he felt, as it were from his inmost soul, that
the characters could denote nothing else than
these words : Of the marriage of the Salamander
with the green Snake. Then resounded a louder

triphony of clear crystal bells : '= Anselmus! dear
Anselmus!" floated to him from the leaves;
and, O wonder ! on the trunk of the palm-tree
the green Snake came winding down.

"Serpentina! Serpentina!" cried Anselmus,
in the madness of highest rapture ; for as he
gazed more earnestly, it was in truth a lovely
glorious maiden that, looking at him with those
dark blue eyes, full of inexpressible longing, as
they lived in his heart, was hovering down to
meet him. The leaves seemed to jut out and
expand ; on every hand were prickles sprouting
from the trunk ; but Serpentina twisted and
winded herself deftly through them ; and so
drew her fluttering robe, glancing as if in
changeful colors, along with her, that, plying
round the dainty form, it nowhere caught on
the projecting points and prickles of the palm-
tree. She sat down by Anselmus on the same
chair, clasping him with her arm, and pressing
him towards her, so that he felt the breath which
came from her lips, and the electric warmth of
her frame.

"Dear Anselmus!" began Serpentina, "thou
shalt now soon be wholly mine; by thy Belief,
by thy Love thou shalt obtain me, and I will
bring thee the Golden Pot, which shall make us
both happy forevermore."

" 0 thou kind lovely Serpentina !" said Ansel-
mus, " if I have but thee, what care I for all
else ! if thou art but mine, I will joyfully give
in to all the wondrous mysteries that have beset
me ever since the moment when I first saw
thee."

" I know," continued Serpentina, " that the
strange and mysterious things, with which my
father, often merely in the sport of his humor,
has surrounded thee, have raised distrust and
dread in thy mind ; but now, I hope, it shall be
so no more ; for I come at this moment to tell
thee, dear Anselmus, from the bottom of my
heart and soul, all and sundry to a tittle that
thou needest to know for understanding my
father, and so for seeing clearly what thy rela-
tion to him and to me really is."

Anselmus felt as if he were so wholly clasped
and encircled by the gentle lovely form, that
only with her could he move and live, and as
it were but the beating of her pulse that throbbed
through his nerves and fibres ; he listened to
each one of her words till it sounded in his in-
most heart, and, like a burning ray, kindled in
him the rapture of Heaven. He had put his
arm round that daintier than dainty waist; but
the changeful glistering cloth of her robe was
so smooth and slippery, that it seemed to him
as if she could at any moment wind herself from
his arms, and glide away. He trembled at the
thought.

"Ah, do not leave me, gentlest Serpentina!"
cried he; "thou art my life."

"Not now," said Serpentina, "till I have told
thee all that in thy love of me thou canst com-
prehend :

" Know then, dearest, that my father is sprung

532

HOFFMANN.

from the wondrous race of the Salamanders;
and that I owe my existence to his love for the
green Snake. In primeval times, in the Fairy-
land Atlantis, the potent Spirit-prince Phospho-
rus bore rule ; and to him the Salamanders, and
other Spirits of the Elements, were plighted.
Once on a time, the Salamander, whom he
loved before all others (it was my father),
chanced to be walking in the stately garden,
which Phosphorus' mother had decked in the
lordliest fashion with her best gifts; and the
Salamander heard a tall Lily singing in low
tones: 'Press down thy little eyelids, till my
Lover, the Morning-wind, awake thee.' He
stept towards it : touched by his glowing breath,
the Lily opened her leaves; and he saw the
Lily's daughter, the green Snake, lying asleep
in the hollow of the flower. Then was the
Salamander inflamed with warm love for the
fair Snake ; and he carried her away from the
Lily, whose perfumes in nameless lamentation
vainly called for her beloved daughter through-
out all the garden. For the Salamander had
borne her into the palace of Phosphorus, and
was there b,eseeching him : ' Wed me with my
beloved, and she shall be mine for evermore.' —
'Madman, what askest thou!' said the Prince
of the Spirits; 'Know that once the Lily was
my mistress, and bore rule with me; but the
Spark, which I cast into her, threatened to an-
nihilate the fair Lily ; and only my victory over
the black Dragon, whom now the Spirits of the
Earth hohl in fetters, maintains her, that her
leaves continue strong enough to enclose this
Spark, and preserve it within them. But when
thou claspest the green Snake, thy fire will con-
sume her frame ; and a new Being rapidly
arising from her dust, will soar away and leave
thee.'

"The Salamander heeded not the warning of
the Spirit-prince : full of longing ardor he folded
the green Snake in his arms; she crumbled into
ashes ; a winged Being, born from her dust,
soared away through the sky. Then the mad-
ness of desperation caught the Salamander;
and he ran through the garden, dashing forth
fire and flames ; and wasted it in his wild fury,
till its fairest flowers and blossoms hung down,
blackened and scathed ; and their lamentation
filled the air. The indignant Prince of the Spi-
rits, in his wrath, laid hold of the Salamander,
and said : 'Thy fire has burnt out, thy flames are
extinguished, thy rays darkened: sink down to
the Spirits of the Earth; let these mock and jeer
thee, and keep thee captive, till the Fire-ele-
ment shall again kindle, and beam up with thee
as with a new being from the Earth.' The poor
Salamander sank down extinguished : but now
the testy old Earth-spirit, who was Phosphorus'
gardener, came forth and said : ' Master ! who
has greater cause to complain of the, Salamander
than I? Had not all the fair flowers, which he
has burnt, been decorated with my gayest me-
tals; had I not stoutly nursed and tended them,
and spent many a fair hue on their leaves ? And

yet I must pity the poor Salamander; for it was
but love, in which thou, 0 Master, hast full often
been entangled, that drove him to despair, and
made him desolate the garden. Remit him the
too harsh punishment!' — 'His fire is for the
present extinguished,' said the Prince of the
Spirits; 'but in the hapless time, when the
Speech of Nature shall no longer be intelligible
to degenerate man; when the Spirits of the
Elements, banished into their own regions,
shall speak to him only from afar, in faint,
spent echoes ; when, displaced from the har-
monious circle, an infinite longing alone shall
give him tidings of the Land of Marvels, which
he once might inhabit while Belief and Love
still dwelt in his soul: in this hapless time, the
fire of the Salamander shall again kindle ; but
only to manhood shall he be permitted to rise,
and entering wholly into man's necessitous ex-
istence, he shall learn to endure its wants and
oppressions. Yet not only shall the remem-
brance of his first state continue with him ; but
he shall again rise into the sacred harmony of
all Nature; he shall understand its wonders,
and the power of his fellow-spirits shall stand
at his behest. Then, too, in a Lily-bush, shall
he find the green Snake again: and the fruit of
his marriage with her shall be three daughters,
which, to men, shall appear in the form of their
mother. In the spring season these shall disport
them in the dark Elder-bush, and sound with
their lovely crystal voices. And then if, in that
needy and mean age of inward stuntedness,
there shall be found a youth who understands
their song; nay, if one of the little Snakes look
at him with her kind eyes; if the look awaken
in him forecastings of the distant wondrous
Land, to which, having cast away the burden
of the Common, he can courageously soar; if,
with love to the Snake, there rise in him belief
in tlie Wonders of Nature, nay, in his own ex-
istence amid these Wonders, then the Snake
shall be his. But not till three youths of this
sort have been found and wedded to the three
daughters, may the Salamander cast away his
heavy burden, and return to his brothers.' —
'Permit me. Master,' said the Earth-spirit, ' to
make these three daughters a present, which
may glorify their life with the husbands they
shall find. Let each of them receive from me
a Pot, of the fairest metal which I have ; I will
polish it with beams borrowed from the dia-
mond ; in its glitter shall our Kingdom of
Wonders, as it now exists in the Harmony of
universal Nature, be imaged back in glorious
dazzling reflection ; and from its interior, on the
day of marriage, shall spring forth a Fire-lily,
whose eternal blossoms shall encircle the youth
that is found worthy, with sweet wafting odors.
Soon too shall he learn its speech, and under-
stand the wonders of our kingdom, and dwell
with his beloved in Atlantis itself

" Thou perceivest well, dear Anselmus, that
the Salamander of whom I speak is no other
than my father. Spite of his higher nature, he

HOFFMANN.

533

was forced to subject hiinsclf to the paltriest
contradictions of common life; and hence, in-
deed, often comes the wayward humor with
which he vexes many. He has told me now
and then, that, for the inward make of mind,
which the Spirit-prince Phosphorus required as
a condition of marriajje with me and my sisters,
men have a name at present, which, in truth,
they frequently enough misapply : they call it a
childlike poetic character. This character, he
says, is often found in youths, who, by reason
of their high simplicity of manners, and their
total want of what is called knowledge of the
world, are mocked by the populace. Ah, dear
Anselnuis! benealli the Elder-bush, thou under-
stoodest my song, my look : thou lovest the
green Snake, thou believest in me, and wilt be
mine forevermore ! The fair Lily will bloom
forth from the Golden Pot; and we shall dwell,
happy, and united, and blessed, in Atlantis to-
gether!

"Yet I must not hide from thee that in its
deadly battle with the Salamanders and Spirits
of the Earth, the black Dragon burst from their
grasp, and hurried otT through the air. Phos-
phorus, indeed, again holds him in fetters; but
from the black Quills, which, in the struggle,
rained down on the ground, there sprung up
hostile Spirits, which on all hands set them-
selves against the Salamanders and Spirits of
the Earth. That woman who so hates thee,
dear Anselmus, and who, as my father knows
full well, is striving for possession of the Golden
Pot; that woman owes her existence to the love
of such a Qnill (plucked in battle from the Dra-
gon's wing) for a certain Parsni]) beside which
it dropped. She knows her origin and her
power ; for, in the moans and convulsions of
the captive Dragon, the secrets of many a mys-
terious constellation are revealed to lier ; and
she uses every means and effort to work from
the Outward into the Inward and unseen ; while
my father, with the beams which shoot forth
from the spirit of the Salamander, withstands
and subdues her. All the baneful principles
which lurk in deadly herbs and poisonous
beasts, she collects; and, mixing them under
favorable constellations, raises therewith many
a wicked spell, which overwhelms the soul of
man with fear and trembling, and subjects him
to the power of those Demons, produced from
the Dragon when it yielded in battle. Beware
of that old woman, dear Anselmus! She hates
thee ; because thy chihllike pious character has
annihilated many of her wicked charms. Keep
true, true to me ; soon art thou at the goal !''

"O my Serpentina! my own Serpentina!"
cried the Student Anselmus, "how could I
leave thee, how should I not love thee for-
ever!'' A kiss was burning on his lips; he
awoke as from a deep dream : Serpentina had
vanished; six o'clock was striking, and it fell
heavy on his heart that to-day he had not copied
a single stroke. Full of anxiety, and dreading
reproaches from the Archivarius, he looked into

the sheet; and, 0 wonder! the copy of the
mysterious manuscript was fairly concluded;
and he thought, on viewing the characters more
narrowly, that the writing was nothing else but
Serpentina's story of her father, the favorite of
the Spirit-prince Phosphorus, in Atlantis, the
Land of Marvels. And now entered Archiva-
rius Lindhorst, in his light-grey surtout, with
hat and staff: he looked into the parchment on
which Anselmus had been writing; took a large
pinch of snuff, and said with a smile : "Just as
I thought! — Well, Herr Anselmus, here is your
speziesthaler ; we will now to the Linke Bath:
do but follow me!" The Archivarius stept ra-
pidly through the garden, in which there was
such a din of singing, whistling, talking, that the
Student Anselmus was quite deafened with it,
and thanked Heaven when he found himself on
the street.

Scarcely had they walked twenty paces, when
they met Registrator Heerbrand, who compan-
ionably joined them. At the Gate, they filled
their pipes, which they had about them : Regis-
trator Heerbrand complained that he had left
his tinder-box behind, and could not strike fire.
"Fire!" cried Archivarius Lindhorst, scornfully;
"here is fire enough, and to spare!" And with
this he snapped his lingers, out of which came
streams of sparks, and directly kindled the
pipes. — "Do but observe the chemical knack
of some men!" said Registrator Heerbrand;
but the Student Anselmus thought, not without
internal awe, of the SalamaiiJer and his history.

In the Linke Bath, Registrator Heerbrand
drank so much strong double beer, that at last,
though usually a good-natured quiet man, he
began singing student songs in squeaking tenor ;
he asked every one sharply. Whether he was
his friend or not? and at last had to be taken
home by the Student Anselmus, long after Ar-
chivarius Lindhorst had gone his ways.

NINTH TIGIL.

How the Student Anselmus attained to some Sense. The Punch
Party. How the Student Anselmus took Coniector Pauhiiann
for a Screech-Owl. and the latter felt much hurt at it. The
Ink-blot, and its Consequences.

The 'strange and mysterious things which day
by day befell the Student Anselmus, had entirely
withdrawn him from his customary life. Ho
no longer visited any of his friends, and waited
every morning with impatience, for the hoin- of
noon, which was to unlock his paradise. And
yet while his whole soul was turned to the
gentle Serpentina, and the wonders of Archiva-
rius Lindhorst's fairy kingdom, he could not help
now and then thinking of Veronica ; nay, often
it seemed as if she came before him and con-
fessed with blushes how heartily she loved him ;
how much she longed to rescue him from the
phantoms, which were mocking and befooling
him. At times he felt as if a foreign power,
suddenly breaking in oia his mind, were draw-
ing him with resistless force to the forgotten Ve-
ronica; as if he must needs follow her whithei
45*

534

HOFFMANN.

she pleased to lead him, nay, as if lie were
bound to her by ties that would not break.
That very night after Serpentina had first ap-
peared to him in the form of a lovely maiden;
after the wondrous secret of the Salamander's
nuptials with the green Snake had been dis-
closed, Veronica came before him more vividly
than ever. Nay, not till he awoke, was he
clearly aware that he had but been dreaming;
for he had felt persuaded that Veronica was
actually beside him, complaining with an ex-
pression of keen sorrow, which pierced through
his inmost soul, that he should sacrifice her deep
true love to fantastic visions, which only the
distemper of his mind called into being, and
which, moreover, would at last prove his ruin.
Veronica was lovelier than he had ever seen
her; he could not drive her from his thoughts:
and in this perplexed and contradictory mood
he hastened out, hoping to get rid of it by a
morning walk.

A secret magic influence led him on to the
Pirna gate : he was just turning into a cross
street, when Convector Paulmann, coming after
him, cried out: "Ey! Ey!— Dear Herr Ansel-

mus! iniice! Amice! Where, in Heaven's

name, have you been buried so loni^? We
never see you at all. Do you know, Veronica
is longing very much to have another song with
you. So come along; you were just on the road
to me, at any rate."

Tlie Student Anselmus, constrained by this
friendly violence, went along with the Conrector.
On entering the house, they were met by Ve-
ronica, attired with such neatness and attention,
that Conrector Paulmann, full of amazement,
asked her: "Why so decked, Mamsell? Were
you expecting visitors? Well, here I bring you
Herr Anselmus."

The Student Anselmus, in daintily and ele-
gantly kissing Veronica's hand, felt a small soft
pressure from it, which shot like a stream of fire
over all his frame. Veronica was cheerfulness,
was grace itself; and when Paulmann left them
for his stud}^ she contrived, by all manner of
rogueries and waggeries, so to uplift the Student
Anselmus, that he at last quite forgot his bash-
fulness, and jigged round the room M'ith the
light-headed maiden. But here again the De-
mon of Awkwardness got hold of him : he jolted
on a table, and Veronica's pretty little work-box
fell to the floor. Anselmus lifted it; the lid had
started up; and a little round metallic mirror
was glittering on him, into which he looked
with peculiar delight. Veronica glided softly
up to him ; laid her hand on his arm, and
pressing close to him, looked over his shoulder
into the mirror also. And now Anselmus felt
as if a battle were beginning in his soul:
thoughts, images flashed out — ArchiVarius Lind-
hoi-st.— Serpentina, — the green Snake — at last
the tumult abated, and all this chaos arranged
and shaped itself into distinct consciousness.
It was now clear to him that he had always
thought of Veronica alone ; nay, that the form

which had yesterday appeared to him in the
blue chamber, had been no other than Veronica;
and that the wild legend of the Salamander's
marriage with the green Snake, had merely
been written down by him from the manuscript,
but nowise related in his hearing. He wondered
not a little at all these dreams; and ascribed
them solely to the heated state of mind into
which Veronica's love had brought him, as well
as to his working with Arehivarius Lindhorst,
in -whose rooms there were, besides, so many
strangely intoxicating odors. He could not but
laugh heartily at the mad whim of falling in
love with a little green Snake; and taking a
well-fed Privy Arehivarius for a Salamander:
" Yes, yes ! It is Veronica !" cried he aloud ; but
on turning round his head, he looked right into
Veronica's blue eyes, from which warmest love
was beaming. A faint soft Ah ! escaped her
lips, which at that moment were burning on his.
"0 happy I!" sighed the enraptured Student:
"What I yesternight but dreamed, is in very
deed mine to-day."

"But wilt thou really wed me, then, when
thou art Hofrath?" said Veronica.

"That I will," replied the Student Anselmus;
and just then the door creaked, and Conrector
Paulmann entered with the words :

"Now, dear Herr Anselmus, I will not let
you go to-day. You will put up with a bad
dinner; then Veronica will make us delightful
coff'ee, which we shall drink with Registrator
Heerbrand, for he promised to come hither."

"Ah, best Herr Conrector!" answered the
Student Anselmus, "are you not aware that I
must go to Arehivarius Lindhorst's and copy?"
" Look you, Amice!" said Conrector Paulmann,
holding U23 his watch, which pointed to half past
twelve.

The Student Anselmus saw clearly that he
was much too late for Arehivarius Lindhorst;
and he complied with the Conrector's wishes
the more readily, as he might now hope to look '
at Veronica the whole day long, to obtain many
a stolen glance, and little squeeze of the hand,
nay, even to succeed in conquering a kiss. So
high had the Student Anselmus' desires now
mounted ; he felt more and more contented in
soul, the more fully he convinced himself that
he should be delivered from all the fantastic
imaginations, which really might have made a
sheer idiot of him.

Registrator Heerbrand came, as he had pro-
mised, after dinner; and coff'ee being over, and
the dusk come on, the Registrator, puclcering his
face together, and gaily rubbing his hands, sig-
nified that he had something about him, which,
if mingled and reduced to form, as it were,
paged and titled, by Veronica's fair hands, migl't
be pleasant to them all, on this October evening
" Come out, then, with this mysterious sub-
stance which you carry with you, most valued
Registrator," cried Conrector Paulmann. Then
Registrator Heerbrand shoved his hand into his
deep pocket, and at three journeys, brought out

J

HOFFMANN.

535

a bottle of arrack, two citrons, and a quantity
of sugar. Before half an hour had passed, a
savory bowl of punch was smoking on Paul-
mann"s table. Veronica drank their health in
a sip of the liquor; and ere long there was
plenty of gay. good-natured chat among the
friends. But the Student Anselmus, as the
spirit of the drink mounted into his head, felt
all the images of those wondrous things, which
for some time he had experienced, again coming
through his mind. He saw the Archivarius in
his damask night-gown, which glittered like
phosphorus ; Vie saw the azure roorji, the golden
palm-trees; nay, it now seemed to him as if he,
must still believe in Serpentina: there was a
fermentation, a conflicting tumult in his soul.
Veronica handed him a glass of punch ; and in
taking it, he gently touched her hand. "Ser-
pentina! Veronica!" sighed he to himself He
sank into deep dreams ; but Registrator Heer-
brand cried quite aloud : " A strange old gen-
tleman, whom nobody can fathom, he is and
will be, this Archivarius Lindhorst. Well, long
life to him ! Your glass, Herr Anselmus !"

Then the Student Anselmus awoke from his
dreams, and said, as he touched glasses with Re-
gistrator Heerbrand : "Tiiat j^roceeds, respected
Herr Registrator, from the circumstance, that
Archivarius Lindhorst is in reality a Salaman-
der, who wasted in his fury the Spirit-prince
Phosphorus' garden, because the green Snake
had flown away from him."

" How? what?'' inquired Conrector Paulmann.

" Yes," continued the Student Anselmus ;
"and for this reason he is now forced to be a
Royal Archivarius; and to keep house here in
Dresden with his three daughters, who, after all,
are notliing more than little gold-green Snakes,
that bask in elder-bushes, and traitorously sing,
and seduce away young people, like as many
syrens."

"Herr Anselmus! Herr Anselmus!" cried
Conrector Paulmann, " is there a crack in your
brain? In Heaven's name, what monstrous stuff
is this you are babbling?"

" He is right," interrupted Registrator Heer-
brand : " that fellow, that Archivarius, is a
cursed Salamander, and strikes you fiery snips
from his fingers, which burn holes in your sur-
tout like red-hot tinder. Ay, ay, thou art in the
right, brotherkin Anselmus ; and whoever says
No, is saying No to me!" And at these words
Registrator Heerbrand struck the table with his
fist, till the glasses rung again.

"Registrator! Are you frantic?" cried the
wroth Conrector. « Herr Studiosus, Herr Stu-
dio.-ns ! what is this you are about again ?"

"Ah!" said the Student, "you too are nothing
but a bird, a screech-owl, that frizzles toupees,
Herr Conrector !"

"What! — I a bird? — A screech-owl, a friz-
zier?" cried the Conrector, full of indignation:
"Sir, you are mad, horn mad!"

" But the crone will get a clutch of him," cried
Registrator Heerbrand.

"Yes, the crone is potent," interrupted the
Student Anselmus, "though she is but of mean
descent; for her father was nothing but a ragged
wing-feather, and her mother a dirty parsnip:
but the most of her power she owes to all sorts
of banefid creatures, poisonous vermin which
she keeps about her."

"That is a horrid calumny," cried Veronica,
with eyes all glowing in anger: "old Liese is a
wise woman; and the black Cat is no baneful
creature, but a polished young gentleman of
elegant manners, and her cousin german."

"Can he eat Salamanders without singing his
whiskers, and dying like a candle-snuff?" cried
Registrator Heerbrand.

" No ! no !" shouted the Student Anselmus,
" that he never can in this world ; and the
green Snake loves me, and I have looked into
Serpentina's eyes."

"The Cat will scratch them out," cried Ve-
ronica.

"Salamander, Salamander beats them all,
all," hollowed Conrector Paulmann, in the high-
est fury : " But am I in a madhouse ? Am I mad
myself? What unwise stuff am I chattering?
Yes, I am mad too ! mad too !" And with this,
Conrector Pauhnann started up ; tore the peruke
from' his head, and dashed it against the ceiling
of the room; till the battered locks whizzed,
and, tangled into utter disorder, rained down
the powder far and wide. Then the Student
Anselmus and Registrator Heerbrand seized the
punch-bowl and the glasses ; and, hallooing and
huzzaing, pitched them against the ceiling also,
and the sherds fell jingling and tingling about
their ears.

" Vivat the Salamander! — Pcrcat, pereat the
crone! — Break the metal mirror! — Dig the cat"s
eyes out I — Bird, little Bird, from the air — Eheu —
Eheu — Evoe — Evoc, Salamander!" So shrieked,
and shouted, and bellowed the three, like utter
maniacs. With loud weeping, Frftnzchen ran
out; but Veronica lay whimpering for pain and
sorrow on the sofa.

At this moment the door opened: all was in-
stantly still ; and a little man, in a small grey
cloak, came stepping in. His countenance had
a singular air of gravity; and especially the
round hooked nose, on vvhich was a huge pair
of spectacles, distinguished itself from all the
noses ever seen. He wore a strange peruke
too ; more like a feather-cap than a wig.

" Ey, inany good evenings!" grated and
cackled the little comical mannikin. "Is the
Student Herr Anselmus among you, gentleinen?
— Best compliments from Archivarius Lind-
horst; lie has waited to-day in vain for Herr
Anselmus; but to-morrow he begs most respect-
fully to request that Herr Anselmus would not
forget the hour.''

And with this he went out again ; and all of
them now saw clearly that the grave little
mannikin was in fact a grey Parrot. Conrector
Paulmann and Registrator Heerbrand raised a
horse-laugh, which reverberated through the

536

HOFFMANN.

room ; and in the intervals, Veronica was moan-
ing and whimpering, as if torn by nameless sor-
row ; but, as to the Stiulent Ansehnus, tlie
madness of inward horror was darting through
him; and unconsciously he ran tlirough the door,
along the streets. Instinctively he reached his
house, his garret. Ere long Veronica came in
to him, with a peaceful and friendly look, and
asked him why, in the festivity, he had so vexed
her ; and desired him to be on his guard against
imaginations, while working at Archivarius
Lindhorst's. "Good night, good night, my be-
loved friend !" whispered Veronica, scarce au-
dibly, and breathed a kiss on his lips. He
stretched out his arms to clasp her, but the
dreamy shape had vanished, and he awoke
cheerful and refreshed. He could not but laugh
heartily at the effects of the punch ; but in
thinking of Veronica, he felt pervaded by a
most delightful feeling. "To her alone," said
he within himself, "do I owe this return from
my insane whims. In good sooth, I was little
better than the man who believed himself to be
of glass; or he who durst not leave his rooni
for fear the hens should eat him, as he was a
barleycorn. But so soon as I am Hofrath, I
marry Mademoiselle Paulmann, and be happy,
and there's an end of it."

At noon, as he walked through Archivarius
Lindhorst's garden, he could not help wondering
how all this had once appeared so strange and
marvellous. He now saw nothing past com-
mon; earthen flowerpots, quantities of gerani-
ums, myrtles, and the like. Instead of the
glittering party-colored birds which used to flout
him, there were nothing but a few sparrows,
fluttering hither and thither, which raised an
unpleasant unintelligible cry at sight of Ansel-
mus. The azure room also had quite a different
look; and he could not understand how that
glaring blue, and those unnatural golden trunks
of palm-trees, with their shapeless glistening
leaves, should ever have pleased him for a mo-
ment. The Archivarius looked at him with a
most peculiar ironical smile, and asked: -'Well,
how did you like the punch last night, good
Anselmus?"'

" Ah, doubtless you have heard from the grey

Parrot how " answered the Student Ans6l-

mus, quite ashamed; but he stopt short, be-
thinking him that tliis appearance of the Parrot
was all a piece of jugglery.

" I was there myself," said Archivarius Lind-
horst; "did you not see mel But, among the
mad pranks you were playing, I had nigh got
lamed : for I was sitting in the punch-bowl, at
the very moment when Registrator Heerbrand
laid hands on it, to dash it against the ceiling;
and I had to make a quick retreat into the Con-
rector's pipe-head. Now, adieu, Herr Anselmus !
Be diligent at your task; for the lost day also
you shall have a speziesthaler, because you
worked so well before."

" How can the Archivarius babble such mad
stuff?" thought the Student Anselmus, sitting

down at the table to begin the copying of the
manuscript, which Archivarius Lindhorst had
as usual spread out before him. But on the
parchment roll, he perceived so many strange
crabbed strokes and twirls all twisted together
in inexplicable confusion, offering no resting-
point for the eye, that it seemed to him well
nigh impossible to copy all this exactly. Nay,
in glancing over the whole, you might have
thought the parchment was nothing but a piece
of thickly veined marble, or a stone sprinkled
over with lichens. Nevertheless he determined
to do his utmost ; and boldly dipt in his pen :
but the ink would not run, do what he liked;
impatiently he spirted the point of his pen
against his nail, and — Heaven and Earth ! — a
huge blot fell on the outspread original ! Hissing
and foaming, rose a blue flash from the blot ;
and crackling and wavering, shot through the
room to the ceiling. Then a thick vapor rolled
from the walls ; the leaves began to rustle, as
if shaken by a tempest; and down out of them
darted glaring basilisks in sparkling fire ; these
kindled the vapor, and the bickering masses of
flame rolled round Anselmus. The golden
trunks of the palm-trees became gigantic snakes,
which knocked their frightful heads together
with piercing metallic clang; and wound their
scaly bodies round Anselmus.

"Madman! suffer now the punishment of
what, in capricious irreverence, thou hast
done!'' So cried the frightful voice of the
crowned Salamander, wlro appeared above the
snakes like a glittering beam in the midst of
the flame : and now the yawning jaws of the
snakes poured forth cataracts of fire on Ansel-
mus; and it was as if the fire-streams were
congealing about his body, and changing into a
firm ice-cold mass. But while Anselmus' limbs,
more and more pressed together, and contracted,
stiffened into powerlessness, his sense passed
away. On returning to himself, he could not
stir a joint: he was as if surrounded with a
glistening brightness, on which he struck if he
but tried to lift his hand. — Alas ! He was sitting
in a well-corked crystal bottle, on a shelf, in the
library of Archivarius Lindhorst.

TENTH VIGIL.

Sorrows of the Student Anselmus in the Glass Bottle. Happy
Life of the Cross Church Scholars and Law Clerks. The Bat-
tle in the Library of Archivarius Lindhorst. Victory of the
Salamander, and Deliverance of the Student Anselmus.

JusTLT may I doubt whether thou, favorable
reader, wert ever sealed up in a glass bottle ;
or even that any vivid tormenting dream ever
oppressed thee with such necromatic trouble.
If so were the case, thou wilt keenly enough
figure out the poor Student Anselmus' woe : but
shouldst thou never have even dreamed such
things, then will thy quick fancy, for Anselmus'
sake and mine, be obliging enough still to en-
close itself for a few moments in the crystal.
Thou art drowned in dazzling splendor ; all
objects about thee appear illuminated and begirt

HOFFMANN.

537

with beaming rainbow hues : all quivers and
wavers, and clangs and drones, in the sheen;
thou art swimming, motionless and powerless
as in a firmly congealed ether, which so presses
thee together that the spirit in vain gives orders
to the dead and stiffened body. Weightier and
weightier the mountain burden lies on thee;
more and more does every breath exhaust the
little handful of air, that still played up and
down in the narrow space; thy pulse throbs
madly; and cut through with horrid anguish,
every nerve is quivering and bleeding in this
deadly agony. Have pity, favorable reader, on
the Student Anselmus! Him this inexpressible
torture laid hold of in his glass prison : but he
felt too well that death could not relieve him ;
for did he not awake from the deep swoon into
which the excess of pain had cast him, and open
his eyes to new wretchedness, when the morn-
ing sun shone clear into the room? He could
move no limb ; but his thoughts struck against
the glass, stupifying him with discordant clang;
and instead of the words, which the spirit used
to speak from within him, he now heard only
the stifled din of madness. Then he exclaimed
in his despair : " 0 Serpentina ! Serpentina !
save me from this agony of Hell!" And it was
as if faint sighs breathed around him, which
spread like green transparent elder-leaves over
the glass ; the clanging ceased ; the dazzling
perplexing glitter was gone, and he breathed
more freely.

" Have not I myself solely to blame for my
misery? Ah! Have not I sinned against thee,
thou kind, beloved Serpentina? Have not I
raised vile doubts of thee ? Have not I lost my
Belief; and with it, all, all that was to make
me so blessed ? Ah ! Thou wilt now never,
never be mine ; for me the Golden Pot is lost,
and I shall not beliold its wonders any more.
Ah ! But once could I see thee ; but once hear
thy kind sweet voice, thou lovely Serpentina!"

So wailed the Student Anselmus, caught with
deep piercing sorrow : then spoke a voice close
by him : "What the devil ails you Herr Studio-
sus? What makes you lament so, out of all
compass and measure?"

The Student Anselmus now perceived that
on the same shelf with him were five other
bottles, in which he perceived three Cross
Church Scholars, and two Law Clerks.

"Ah, gentlemen, my fellows in misery," cried
he, " how is it possible for you to be so calm,
nay so happy, as I read in your cheerful looks?
You are sitting here corked up in glass bottles,
as well as I, and cannot move a finger; nay,
not think a reasonable thought, but there rises
such a murder-tumult of clanging and droning,
and in your head itself a tumbling and rumbling
enough to drive one mad. But doubtless you
do not believe in the Salamander, or the green
Snake."

" You are pleased to jest, Mein Herr Studio-
sus," replied a Cross Church Scholar ; " we
have never been better off than at present: for
3s

the speziesthalers which the mad Archivarius
gave us for all manner of pot-hook copies, are
chinking in our pockets ; we have now no Ita-
lian choruses to learn by heart ; we go every
day to Joseph's or other houses of call, where
the double-beer is sufficient, and we can look a
pretty girl in the face ; so we sing like real Stu-
dents, Gaudeamus igitur, and are contented in
spirit !"

"They of the Cross are quite right," added a
Law Clerk; "I too am well furnished with
speziesthalers, like my dearest colleague beside
me here ; and we now diligently walk about on
the Weinberg, instead of scurvy Act-writing
within four walls."

"But, my best, worthiest masters!" said the
Student Anselmus, " do you not observe, then,
that you are all and sundry corked up in glass
bottles, and cannot for your hearts walk a hairs-
breadth ?"

Here the Cross Church Scholars and the Law
Clerks set up a loud laugh, and cried : " The
Student is mad ; he fancies himself to be sitting
in a glass bottle, and is standing on the Elbe-
bridge and looking right down into the water.
Let us go along!"

" Ah !" sighed the Student, " they have never
seen the kind Serpentina; they know not what
Freedom, and life in Love, and Belief, signifies;
and so by reason of their folly and low-mi nded-
ness, they feel not the oppression of the impri-
sonment into which the Salamander has cast
them. But I, unhappy I, must perish in want
and woe, if she, whom I so inexpressibly love,
do not deliver me!"

Then waving in faint tinkles, Serpentina's
voice flitted through the room: "Anselmus!
believe, love, hope !" And every tone beamed
into Anselmus' prison; and the crystal yielded
to his pressure, and expanded, till the breast of
the captive could move and heave.

The torment of his situation became less and
less, and he saw clearly that Serpentina still
loved him ; and that it was she alone, who had
rendered his confinement tolerable. He dis-
turbed himself no more about his insane com-
panions in misfortune; but directed all his
thoughts and meditations on the gentle Serpen-
tina. Suddenly, however, there arose on the
other side a dull croaking repulsive murmur.
Ere long he could observe that it proceeded
from an old coffee-pot, with half-broken lid,
standing over against him on a little shelf As
he looked at it more narrowly, the ugly features
of a wrinkled old woman by degrees unfolded
themselves; and in a few moments, the Apple-
wife of the Schwarzthor stood before him. She
grinned and laughed at him, and cried with
screeching voice : " Ey, Ey, my pretty boy, must
thou lie in limbo now ? To the crystal thou
hast run : did I not tell thee long ago ?"

"Mock and jeer me; do, thou cursed witch!"
said the Student Anselmus, " thou art to blame
for it all ; but the Salamander will catch thee,
thou vile Parsnip !"

538

HOFFMANN.

"Ho, ho!" replied the crone, "not so proud,
good readywritcr ! Tlioii hast squelched my
little sons to pieces, thou hast burnt my nose;
but I must still like thee, thou knave, for once
thou wert a pretty fellow ; and my little daugh-
ter likes thee too. Out of the crystal thou wilt
never come unless I help thee: up thither I
cannot clamber; but my cousin gossip the Rat,
that lives close behind thee, will eat the shelf
in two ; thou shalt jingle down, and I catch
thee in my apron, that thy nose be not broken,
or tliy fine sleek face at all injured : then I carry
thee to Mamsell Veronica ; and thou shalt
marry her, when thou art Hofrath."

" Avaunt, thou devil's brood!'' cried the Stu-
dent Anselmns full of fury; "it was thou alone
and thy hellish arts that brought me to the sin
which I must now expiate. But I bear it all
patiently: for only here can I be, where the
kind Serpentina encircles me with love and
consolation. Hear it, thou beldam, and despair!
I bid defiance to thy power: I love Serpentina,
and none but her for ever; I will not be Ho-
frath, will not look at Veronica, who by thy
means entices me to evil. Can the green
Snake not be mine, I will die in sorrow and
longing. Take thyself away, thou filthy rook !
Take thyself away !"

The crone laughed, till the chamber rung:
" Sit and die then," cried she : " but now it is
time to set to work ; for I have other trade to
follow here." She threw off her black cloak,
and so stood in hideous nakedness; then she
ran round in circles, and large folios came tum-
bling down to her ; out of these she tore parch-
ment leaves, and rapidly patching them together
in artfid combination, and fixing them on her
body, in a few instants she M^as dressed as if
in strange party-colored harness. Spitting fire,
the black Cat darted out of the ink-glass, which
was standing on the table, and ran mewing to-
wards the crone, who shrieked in loud triumph,
and along with him vanished through the door.

Anselmus observed that she went towards
the azure chamber; and directly he heard a
hissing and storming in the distance; the birds
in the garden were crying; the Parrot creaked
out: "Help! help! Thieves! thieves!" That
moment the crone returned with a bound into
the room, carrying the Golden Pot on her arm,
and with hideous gestures, shrieking wildly
through the air; "Joy! joy, little son! — Kill the
green Snake! To her, son! To her!"

Anselmus thought he heard a deep moaning,
heard Serpentina's voice. Then horror and
despair took hold of him: he gathered all his
force, he dashed violently, as if nerve and ar-
tery were bursting, against the crystal; a pierc-
ing clang went through the room, and the
Archivarius in his bright damask nightgown
was standing in the door.

"Hey, hey! vermin! — Mad spell! — Witch-
work! — Hither, holla!" So shouted he: then
the black hair of the crone started up in tufts;
her red eyes glanced with infernal fire, and

clenching together the peaked fangs of her
abominable jaws, she hissed: "Hiss, at him!
Hiss, at him ! Hiss!" and laughed and neighed
in scorn and mockery, and pressed the Golden
Pot firmly towards her, and threw out of it
handfuls of glittering earth on the Archivarius;
but as it touched the nightgown, the earth
changed into flowers, which rained down on
the ground. Then the lilies of the nightgown
flickered and flamed up; and the Archivarius
cauglit these lilies blazing in sparky fire and
dashed them on the witch ; she howled for
agony, but still as she leapt aloft and shook her
harness of parchment the lilies went out, and
fell away into ashes.

" To her, iny lad !" creaked the crone : then
the black Cat darted through the air, and soused
over the Archivarius' head towards the door;
but the grey Parrot fluttered out against him;
caught him with his crooked bill by the nape,
till red fiery blood burst down over his neck;
and Serpentina's voice cried : " Saved ! Saved !"
Then the crone, foaming with rage and despe-
ration, darted out upon the Archivarius : she
threw the Golden Pot behind her, and holding
up the long talons of her skinny fists, was for
clutching the Archivarius by the throat : but he
instantly dofl'ed his nightgown, and hurled it
against her. Then, hissing, and sputtering, and
bursting, shot blue flames from the parchment
leaves, and the crone rolled round in howling
agony, and strove to get fresh earth from the
Pot, fresh parchment leaves from the books,
that she might stifle the blazing flames ; and
whenever any earth or leaves came down on
her, the flames went out. But now, from the
interior of the Archivarius issued fiery crack-
ling beams, and darted on the crone.

"Hey, hey! To it again! Salamander! Vic-
tory !" clanged the Archivarius' voice through
the chamber ; and a hundred bolts whirled
forth in fiery circles round the shrieking crone.
Whizzing and buzzing flew Cat and Parrot in
their furious battle ; but at last the Parrot, with
his strong wing, dashed the Cat to the ground ;
and with his talons transfixing and holding fast
his adversary, which, in deadly agony, uttered
horrid mews and howls, he, with his sharp bill,
picked out his glowing eyes, and the burning
froth spouted from them. Then thick vapor
streamed up from the spot where the crone,
hurled to the ground, was lying under the night-
gown: her howling, her terrific, piercing cry of
lamentation, died away in the remote distance.
The smoke, which had spread abroad with irre-
sistible smell, cleared off"; the Archivarius pick-
ed up his nightgown; and under it lay an ugly
Parsnip.

"Honored Herr Archivarius, here let me offer
you the vanquished foe," said the Parrot, hold-
ing out a black hair in his beak to Archivarius
Lindhorst.

"Very right, my worthy friend," replied the
Archivarius: "here lies my vanquished foe too:
be so good now as to manage what remains. This

HOFFMANN.

539

very clay, as a small douceur, you shall have
six cocoa-nuts, and a new pair of spectacles
also, for I see the Cat has villainously broken
the glasses of these old ones."

"Yours forever, most honored friend and pa-
tron !" answered the Parrot, much delighted ;
then took the Parsnip in his bill, and fluttered
out with it by the window, which Archivarius
Lindhorst had opened for him.

The Archivarius now lifted the Golden Pot,
and cried, with a strong voice, " Serpentina !
Serpentina!" But as the Student Anselmus,
joying in the destruction of the vile beldam
wlio had hurried him into misfortune, cast his
eyes on the Archivarius, behold, here stood once
more tlie high majestic form of the Spirit-prince,
looking up to him with indescribable dignity and
grace. "Anselmus," said the Spirit-prince, " not
thou, but a hostile Principle, which strove de-
structively to penetrate into thy nature, and
divide thee against thyself, was to blame for
thy unbelief. Thou hast kept thy faithfulness :
be free and happy." A bright flash quivered
through the spirit of Anselmus: the royal tri-
phony of the crystal bells sounded stronger and
louder than he had ever heard it: his nerves
and fibres thrilled ; but, swelling higher and
higher, the melodious tones rang through the
room ; the glass which enclosed Anselmus
broke ; and he rushed into the arms of his dear
and gentle Serpentina.

ELEVENTH VIGIL.

Conrector Paulmann's anger at the Madness which had broken
out in his Family. How Registrator Heerhrand became Ho-
frath ; and, in the keenest Frost, walked about in Shoes and
silk Stocking's. Veronica's Confessions. Betrolhment over the
steaming Soup-plate.

" But tell me, best Registrator ! how the
cursed punch last night could so mount into our
heads, and drive us to all manner of allotria?'''
So said Conrector Paulmann, as he next morn-
ing entered his room, which still lay full of
broken sherds ; with his hapless peruke, dis-
solved into its original elements, floating in
punch among the ruin. For after the Student
Anselmus ran out of doors, Conrector Paulmann
and Registrator Heerbrand had still kept trotting
and hobbling up and down the room, shouting
like maniacs, and butting their heads together;
till Frilnzchen, with much labor, carried her
vertiginous papa to bed ; and Registrator Heer-
branil in the deepest exhaustion, sunk on the
sofa, which Veronica had left, taking refuge iir
her bed-room. Registrator Heerbrand had his
blue handkerchief tied about his head; he
looked quite pale and melancholic, and moan-
ed out: " Ah, worthy Conrector, not the punch
which Mamsell Veronica most admiiably brew-
ed, no! but simply that cursed Student is to
blame for all the mischief Do you not observe
that he has long been mente captus? And are
you not aware that madness is infections'? One
fool makes twenty ; pardon me, it is an old
proverb : especially when you have drunk a

glass or two, you fall into madness quite readily,
and then involuntarily you manoeuvre, and go
through your exercise, just as the crack-brained
fugleman makes the motion. Would you believe
it, Conrector 1 I atn still giddy when I think of
that grey Parrot!"

"Grey fiddlestick!" interrupted the Conrec-
tor : '• it was nothing but Archivarius Lindhorst's
little old Famulus, who had thrown a grey cloak
over him, and was seeking the Student Ansel-
mus."

"It may be," answered Registrator Heerbrand;
"but, I must confess, I am quite downcast in
spirit; the whole night through there was such
a piping and organing."

"That was I," said the Conrector, "for I
snore loud."

"Well, maybe," answered the Registrator:
"but, Conrector, Conrector! Ah, not without
cause did I wish to raise some cheerfulness
ainong us last night — And that Anselmus has
spoiled all ! You know not — 0 Conrector, Con-
rector !" And with this. Registrator Heerbrand
started up; plucked the cloth from his head,
embraced the Conrector, warmly pressed his
hand, and again cried, in quite heart-breaking
tone: " 0 Conrector, Conrector !" and snatching
his hat and stafli", rushed out of doors.

" This Anselmus comes not over my threshold
again," said Conrector Paulmann; "for I see
very well, tliat, with this moping madness of
his, he robs the best gentlemen of their senses.
The Registrator is now over with it too: I have
hitherto kept safe; but the Devil, who knocked
hard last night in our carousal, may get in at
last, and play his tricks with me. So Apnge,
Satanas! Off with thee, Anselmus !" Veronica
had grown quite pensive; she spoke no word;
only smiled now and then very oddly, and liked
best to be alone. "She too has Anselmus in
her head," said the Conrector, full of spleen:
"but it is well that he does not show himself
here; I know he fears me, this Anselmus, and
so he never comes."

These concluding words Conrector Paulmann
spoke aloud ; then the tears rushed into Vero-
nica's eyes, and she said, sobbing : "Ah! how
can Anselmus come'? He has long been corked
up in the glass bottle."

"How? What?" cried Conrector Paulmann.
"Ah Heaven! Ah Heaven! she is doting too,
like the Registrator: the loud fit will soon
come! Ah, thou cursed, abominable, thrice-
cursed Anselmus!" He ran forth directly to
Doctor Eckstein ; who smiled, and again said :
"Ey! Ey!" This time, however, he prescribed
notliiug; but added, to the little he had uttered,
the following words, as he walked away:
"Nerves! Come round of itself Take the air ;
walks; amusements; theatre; playing Soitfags-
kittd, Schwestern von Prag. Come round of itself"
" So eloquent I have seldom seen the Doctor,"
thought Conrector Paulmann; "really talkative,
I declare!"

Several days and weeks and months were

540

HOFFMANN.

gone ; Anselmus had vanished ; but Registrator
Heerbrand also did not make his apjsearance :
not till the fourth of February, when the Regis-
trator, in a new fashionable coat of the finest
cloth, in shoes and silk stockings, notwithstand-
ing the keen frost, and with a large nosegay of
fresh flowers in his hand, did enter precisely at
noon into the parlor of Conrector Paulmann,
who wondered not a little to see his friend so
dizened. With a solemn air. Registrator Heer-
brand stept forward to Conrector Paulmann ;
embraced him with the finest elegance, and
then said : " Now at last, on the Saint"s-day of
your beloved and most honored Mamsell Ve-
ronica, I will tell you out, straight forward,
what I have long had lying at my heart. That
evening, that unfortunate evening, when I put
the ingredients of our noxious punch in my
pocket, I purposed imparting to you a piece of
good news, and celebrating the happy day in
convivial joys. Already I had learned that I
was to be made Hofrath ; for which promotion
I have now the patent, cmn nomine et sigillo
Principis, in my pocket."

"Ah ! Herr Registr — Herr Hofrath Heerbrand,
I meant to say,'" stammered the Conrector.

"But it is you, most honored Conrector," con-
tinued the new Hofrath; "it is you alone that
can complete my happiness. For a long time,
I have in secret loved your daughter, Mamsell
Veronica; and I can boast of many a kind look
which slie has given me, evidently showing that
she would not cast me away. In one word,
honored Conrector! I, Hofrath Heerbrand, do
now entreat of you the hand of your most amia-
ble IMamsell Veronica, whom I, if you have
nothing against it, purpose shortly to take home
as my wife."

Conrector Paulmann, full of astonishment,
clapped his hands repeatedly, and cried : " Ey,
Ey, Ey! Herr Registr — Herr Hofrath, I meant
to say — who would have thought it? Well, if
Veronica does really love you, I for my share
cannot object: nay, perhaps, her present melan-
choly is nothing but concealed love for you,
most honored Hofrath ! You know what freaks
they have !"

At this moment Veronica entered, pale and
agitated as she now commonly was. Then
Hofrath Heerbrand stept towards her; men-
tioned in a neat speech her Saint's day and
handed her the odorous nosegay, along with a
little packet; out of which, when she opened
it, a pair of glittering earrings beamed up to
her. A rapid flying blush tinted her cheeks;
her eyes sparkled in joy, and she cried: "O
Heaven! These are the very earrings which I
wore some weeks ago, and thought so much of"

" How can this be, dearest Mamsell," inter-
rupted Hofrath Heerbrand, somewhat alarmed
and hurt, " when I bought these jewels not an
hour ago in the Schlossgasse, for current mo-
ney?"

But Veronica heeded him not; she was
standing before the mirror to witness the etfect

of the trinkets, which she had already suspended
in her pretty little ears. Conrector Paulmann
disclosed to her, with grave countenance and
solemn tone, his friend Heerbrand's preferment
and present proposal. Veronica looked at the
Hofrath with a searching look, and said; "I
have long known that you wished to marry me.
Well, be it so ! I promise you my heart and
hand ; but I must now unfold to you, to both of
you, I mean, my father and my bridegroom,
much that is lying heavy on my heart; yes,
even now, though the soup should get cold,
which I see Franzchen is just putting on the
table."

Without waiting for the Conrector's or the
Hofrath's reply, though the words were visibly
hovering on the lips of both, Veronica continued :
" You may believe me, best father, I loved An-
selmus from my heart, and when Registrator
Heerbrand, who is now become Hofrath him-
self, assured us that Anselmus might probably
enough get some such length, I resolved that he
and no other should be my husband. But then
it seemed as if alien hostile beings were for
snatching him away from me: I had recourse
to old Liese, who was once my nurse, but is
now a wise woman, and a great enchantress.
She promised to help me, and give Anselmus
wholly into my hands. We went at midnight
on the Equinox to the crossing of the roads :
she conjured certain hellish spirits, and by aid
of the black Cat, we manufactured a little me-
tallic mirror, in which I, directing my thoughts
on Anselmus, had but to look, in order to rule
him wholly in heart and mind. But now I
heartily repent having done all this; and here
abjure all Satanic arts. The Salamander has
conquered old Liese ; I heard her shrieks ; but
there was no help to be given: so soon as the
Parrot had eaten the Parsnip, my metallic mir-
ror broke in two with a piercing clang." Ve-
ronica took out both the pieces of the mirror,
and a lock of hair from her work-box, and
handing them to Hofrath Heerbrand, she pro-
ceeded : " Here, take the fragments of the mir-
ror, dear Hofrath : throw them down, to-night,
at twelve o'clock, over the Elbe-bridge, from
the place where the Cross stands; the stream
is not frozen there : the lock, however, do you
wear on your faithful breast. I here abjure all
magic: and heartily wish Anselmus joy of his
good fortune, seeing he is wedded with the
green Snake, who is much prettier aud richer
than I. You, dear Hofrath, I will love and
reverence as becomes a true honest wife."

"Alake! Alake !" cried Conrector Paulmann,
full of sorrow ; " she is cracked, she is cracked ;
she can never be Frau Hofrathirm ; she is
cracked !"

"Not in the smallest," interrupted Hofrath
Heerbrand ; "I know well that Mamsell Vero-
nica has had some kindness for the loutish An-
selmus ; and it may be that in some fit of pas-
sion, she has had recourse to the wise woman,
who, as I perceive, can be no other than tho

HOFFMANN.

541

card-caster and coffee-pourer of the Seetlior ; in
a word, old Rauerin. Nor can it be denied that
there are secret arts, which exert their influence
on men but too balefully ; we read of such in
the Ancients, and doubtless there are still such ;
but as to what Mamsell Veronica is pleased to
say about the victory of the Salamander, and
the marriage of Anselmus with the green Snake,
this, in reality, I take for nothing but a poetic
allegory ; a sort of song, wherein she sings her
entire farewell to the Student."

"Take it for what you will, best Hofrath!"
cried "Veronica; "perhaps for a very stupid
dream."'

"That I nowise do,"' replied Hofrath Heer-
brand ; " for I know well that Anselmus him-
self is possessed by secret powers, which vex
him and drive him on to all imaginable mad
freaks."

Con rector Paulmann could stand it no longer;
he broke loose : " Hold ! For the love of Heaven,
hold ! Are we again overtaken with the cursed
punch, or has Anselmus' madness come over us
too? Herr Hofrath, what stuff is this you are
talking ■? I will suppose, however, that it is love
which haunts your brain : this soon comes to
rights in marriage : otherwise I sliould be ap-
prehensive that you too had fallen into some
shade of madness, most honored Herr Hofrath ;
then what would become of the future branches
of the family, inheriting the malum of their pa-
rents? But now I give my paternal blessing to
this happy union ; and permit you as bride and
bridegroom to take a kiss."

This happened forthwith ; and thus before
the presented soup had grown cold, was a for-
mal betrotliment concluded. In a few weeks,
Frau HoAathinn Heerbrand was actually, as
she had been in vision, sitting in the balcony of
a fine house in the Neumarkt, and looking down
with a smile on the beaux, who passing by
turned their glasses up to her, and said : " She
is a heavenly woman, the Hofrathinn Heer-
brand."

TWELFTH VIGII..

Account of the Freehold Property to which Anselmus removed,
as Son-m-law of Archivarius Lindhorst ; and how he lives
theie with Serpentina. Conclusion.

How deeply did I feel, in the centre of my
spirit, the blessedness of the Student Anselmus,
who now, indissolubly united with his gentle
Serpentina, has withdrawn to the mysterious
Land of Wonders, recognised by him as the
home towards which his bosom, filled with
strange forecastings, had always longed. But
in vain was all my striving to set before thee,
favorable reader, those glories with which An-
selmus is encompassed, or even in the faintest
degree to shadow them forth to thee in words.
Reluctantly I could not but acknowledge the
feebleness of my every expression. I felt my-
self enthralled amid the paltriness of every-day
life; I sickened in tormenting dissatisfaction; I
glided about like a dreamer; in brief, I fell into

L

that condition of the Student Anselmus, which,
in the Fourth Vigil, I have endeavored to set
before thee. It grieved me to the heart, when
I glanced over the Eleven Vigils, now happily
accomplished, and thought that to insert the
Twelfth, the keystone of the whole, would
never be vouchsafed me. For whensoever, in
the night season, I set myself to complete the
work, it was as if mischievous Spirits (they
might be relations, perhaps cousins-german, of
the slain witch) held a polished glittering piece
of metal before me, in which I beheld my own
mean Self, pale, overwatched, and melancholic,
like Registrator Heerbrand after his bout of
punch. Then I threw down my pen, and
hastened to bed, that I might behold the happy
Anselmus and the fair Serpentina at least in
my dreams. This had lasted for several days
and nights, when at length quite unexpectedly
I received a note from Archivarius Lindhorst,
in which he addressed me as follows:

"Respected Sir, — It is well known tome that
you have written down, in Eleven Vigils, the
singular fortunes of my good son-in-law Ansel-
mus, whilom Student, now Poet; and are at
present cudgelling your brains very sore, that
in the Twelfth and Last Vigil you may tell
somewhat of his happy life in Atlantis, where
he now lives with my daughter, on the pleasant
Freehold, which I possess in that country. Now,
notwithstanding I much regret that hereby my
own peculiar nature is unfolded to the reading
world ; seeing it may, in my office as Privy Ar-
chivarius, expose me to a thousand inconveni-
ences; nay, in the Collegium even give rise to
the question : How far a Salamander can justly,
and with binding consequences, plight himself
by oath, as a Servant of the State ? and how
far, on the whole, important affairs may be in-
trusted to him, since, according to Gabalis and
Swedenborg, the Spirits of the Elements are not
to be trusted at all ? — notwithstanding, my best
friends must now avoid my embrace ; fearing
lest, in some sudden anger, I dart out a flash or
two, and singe their hair-curls, and Sunday
frocks; notwithstanding all this, I say, it is still
my purpose to assist you in the completion of
the "Work, since much good of me and of my
dear married daughter (would the other two
were off my hands also!) has therein been
said. Would you write your Twelfth Vigil,
therefore, then descend your cursed five pair
of stairs, leave your garret, and come over to
me. In the blue palm-tree-room, which you
already know, you will find fit writing mate-
rials; and you can then, in few words, specify
to your readers, what you have seen ; a better
plan for you than any long-winded description
of a life, which you know only by hearsay.
" With esteem, your obedient servant,

"The Sai-amandeh Lindhorst,
" P. T. Royal Archivarius."

This truly somewhat rough, yet on the whole
frientlly note from Archivarius Lindhorst, gave
me high pleasure. Clear enough it seemed,
46

542

HOFFMANN.

indoed, tlifit the singular manner in which the
fortunes of liis son-in-law had been revealed to
me, and which I, bound to silence, must conceal
even from thee, favorable reader, was well
known to this peculiar old gentleman ; yet he
had not taken it so ill as I might readily have
apprehended. Nay, here was he offering me
his helpful hand in the completion of my work;
and from this I might justly conclude, that at
bottom he was not averse to have his marvel-
lous existence in the world of spirits thus di-
vulged through the press.

"It may be," thought I, "that he himself ex-
pects from this measure, perhaps, to get his two
other daughters the sooner married : for who
knows but a spark may fall in this or that young
man's breast, and kindle a longing for the green
Snake ; whom, on Ascension-day, under the
elder-bush, he will forthwith seek and find ?
From the woe which befell Anselmus, when
inclosed in the glass bottle, he will take warn-
ing to be doubly and trebly on his guard against
all Doubt and Unbelief"

Precisely at eleven o'clock, I extinguished my
study-lamp ; and glided forth to Archivarius
Lindhorst, who was already waiting for me in
the lobby.

"Are you there, my worthy friend? Well,
this is what I like, that you have not mistaken
my good intentions: do but follow me!"

And with this he led the way through the
garden, now filled with dazzling brightness,
into the azure chamber, where I observed the
same violet table, at which Anselmus had been
writing.

Archivarius Lindhorst disappeared : but soon
came back, carrying in his hand a fair golden
goblet, out of which a high blue flame was
sparkling up. "Here," said he, "I bring you
the favorite drink of your friend the Bandmas-
ter, Joliannes Kreisler.* It is burning arrack,
into which I have thrown a little sugar. Sip a
touch or two of it : I will doff my night-gown,
and to amuse myself and enjoy your worthy
company while you sit looking and writing, I
shall just bob up and down a little in the goblet."

" As you please, honored Herr Archivarius,"
answered I : " but if I am to ply the liquor, you
will get none."

"Don't fear that, my good fellow," cried the
Archivarius; then hastily threw off his night-
gown, mounted, to my no small amazement,

* An imaginary musical enthusiast of whom Hoffmann
has written much; undwr the fiery sensitive wayward
character of this crazy Bandmaster, presenting, it would
seem, a shadowy likeness of himself. The Kreisleriaiia
occupy a large space among these Fantasy pieces ; and
Johannes Kreisler is the main figure in Kater Murr,
Hoffmann's favorite but unfinished work. In the the
third and last volume, Kreisler was to end, not in com-
posure and illumination, as the critics would have re-
quired, but in utter madness : a sketch of a wild, flail-like
scarecrow, dancing vehemently and blowing soap-bub-
bles, and which had been intended to front the last title-
page, was found among Hoffmann's papers, and engraved
and published in his Life and Remains. — Ed.

into the goblet, and vanished in the blaze.
Without fear, softly blowing back the flame, I
partook of the drink : it was truly precious !

Stir not the emerald leaves of the palm-trees
in soft sighing and rustling, as if kissed by the
breath of the morning wind? Awakened from
their sleep, they move, and mysteriously whisper
of the wonders, which from the far distance
approach like tones of melodious harjjs ! The
azure rolls from the walls, and floats like airy
vapor to and fro ; but dazzling beams shoot
through it; and whirling and dancing, as in ju-
bilee of childlike sport, it mounts and mounts
to immeasurable height, and vaults itself over
the palm-trees. But brighter and brighter shoots
beam on beam, till in boundless expanse opens
the grove where I behold Anselmus. Here
glowing hyacinths, and tulips, and roses, lift
their fair heads; and their perfumes, in loveli-
est sound, call to the happy youth : " Wander,
wander among us, our beloved ; for thou under-
standest us! Our perfume is the Longing of
Love: we love thee, and are thine forever-
more!" The golden rays burn in glowing tones:
"We are Fire, kindled by love. Perfume is
Longing; but Fire is Desire: and dwell we
not in thy bosom? We are thy own!" Tlie dark
bushes, the high trees rustle and sound: "Come
to us, thou loved, thou happy one ! Fire is De-
sire ; but Hope is our cool Shadow. Lovingly
we rustle round thy head : for thou understand-
est us, because Love dwells in thy breast!"
The brooks and fountains murmur and patter :
" Loved one, walk not so quickly by : look into
our crystal ! Thy image dwells in us, which we
preserve with Love, for thou hast understood
us." In the triumphal choir, bright birds are
singing: "Hear us! Hear us! We are Joy, we
are Delight, the rapture of Love !" But anxiously
Anselmus turns his eyes to the glorious Temple,
which rises behind him in the distance. The
fair pillars seem trees; and the capitals and
friezes acanthus leaves, which in wondrous
wreaths and figures form splendid decorations.
Anselmus walks to the Temple : he views with
inward delight the variegated marble, the steps
with their strange veins of moss. "Ah, no!"
cries he, as if in the excess of rapture, " she is
not far from me now; she is near!'' Then ad-
vances Serpentina, in the fulness of beauty and
grace, from the Temple; she bears the Golden
Pot, from which a bright Lily has sprung. The
nameless rapture of infinite longing glows in.
her meek eyes; she looks at Anselmus, and
says: "Ah! Dearest, the Lily has sent forth her
bowl: what we longed for is fulfilled: is there
a happiness to equal ours?" Anselmus clasps
her with the tenderness of warmest ardor : the
Lily burns in flaming beams over his head.
And louder move the trees and bushes ; clearer
and gladder play the brooks; the birds, the
shining insects dance in the waves of perfume:
a gay, bright rejoicing tumult, in the air, in the
water, in the earth, is holding the festival of

HOFFMANN.

M3

Love! Now rush sparkling streaks, gleaming
over all the bushes; diamonds look from the
ground like shining eyes: strange vapors are
wafted hither on sounding wings: they are the
Spirit? of the Elements, who do homage to the
Lily, and proclaim the happiness of Anselmus.
Then Anselmus raises his head, as if encircled
with a beamy glory. Is it looks? Is it words?
Is it song? You hear the sound : "Serpentina!
Belief in. thee, Love of thee has unfolded to my
soul the inmost spirit of Nature ! Thou hast
brought me the Lily, which sprung from Gold,
from the primeval Force of the world, before
Phosphorus had kindled the spark of Thought ;
this Lily is Knowledge of the sacred Harmony
of all Beinas ; and in this do I live in highest
blessedness forevermore. Yes, I, thrice happy,
have perceived what was highest: I must in-
deed love thee forever, 0 Serpentina! Never
shall the golden blossoms of the Lily grow pale;
for, like Belief and Love this Knowledge is
eternal."

For the vision, in which I had now beheld
Anselmus bodily, in his Freehold of Atlantis, I
stand indebted to the arts of the Salamander;
and most fortunate was it that, when all had
melted into air, I found a paper lying on the

violet-table, with the foregoing statement of the
matter, written fairly and distinctly by my own
hand. But now I felt myself as if transpierced
and torn in pieces by sharp sorrow. " Ah,
happy Anselmus, who hast cast away the bur-
den of week-day life, who in the love of thy
kind Serpentina fliest with bold pinion, and now
livest in rapture and joy on thy Freehold in At-
lantis ! while I — poor I ! — must soon, nay, in
few moments, leave even this fair hall, which
itself is far from a Freehold in Atlantis ; and
again be transplanted to my garret, where, en-
thralled among the pettinesses of necessitous
existence, my heart and my sight are so be-
dimmed with thousand mischiefs, as with thick
fog, that the fair Lily will never, never be be-
held by me."

Then Archivarius Lindhorst patted me gently
on the shoulder, and said: "Soft, soft, my ho-
nored friend ! Lament not so ! Were you not
even now in Atlantis ; and have you not at
least a pretty little copyhold Farm there, as the
poetical possession of your inward sense? And
is the blessedness of Anselmus aught else but a
Living in Poesy? Can aught else but Poesy
reveal itself as the sacred Harmony of all Be-
ings, as the deepest secret of Nature ?"

ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO/

Born 1781. Died 1839.

We would fain perform in some degree an
act of tardy justice to the memory of a poet of
no mean order, and a man of rare and sterling
worth. Considering the early and extensive
popularity which the story of Peter Schlemihl
obtained in this country, it is surprising how
rarely the author's name is mentioned amongst
us. Few English readers, we believe, are
aware that he ever wrote a line of poetry, or
acquired any other title to celebrity than that
which his far-famed romance conferred upon
him. Yet neither as to the man nor his works
is this neglect deserved. Both have long been
regarded in Germany with fervent love and
admiration, and both commend themselves to
our sympathies by qualities peculiarly adapted
to win the cordial esteem of Englishmen. But
even were it not so, even though Chamisso
claimed our attention on no higher grounds,
curiosity at least might well be directed towards
the productions of a Frenchman, whose German
style has been accepted in the country of his
adoption as a model of purity, force, and ele-
gance. Such an example of eminent mastery
achieved both in prose and verse over a lan-
guage which was not the writer's mother
tongue, is almost unique in the history of lite-
rature.

Louis Charles Adelaide, or, as he was after-
wards called, Adalbert von Chamisso, was one
of the younger sons of the count of that name,
and was born in the Chateau de Boncourt, in
Champagne, in January, 1781. His family,
which was of Lorrainian origin, had been dis-
tinguished for its loyalty to its suzerains, its
ample feudal honors and possessions, and its
intermarriages with many reigning houses.
Not less eminent than its prosperous fortunes
were the disasters that afterwards befel it.
Adalbert's parents were residing in the chateau
where he was born when the Revolution broke
out. Boncourt was assailed, ransacked, and
destroyed.

Little is known of Chamisso's childhood, ex-
cept that he was even then remarkable for the

• Abridged from Foreign Quarterly Review, No. LXXII.

taciturn and thoughtful disposition that charac-
terized his manhood, and already evinced a
propensity to the pursuits of the naturalist and
the reveries of the poet. " I used," he says,
" to observe insects, search out new plants, and
at an open window on stormy nights, stand
contemplating and reflecting." When his
more volatile companions teased and ridiculed
him for his backwardness to join in their romps,
his mother would come to the rescue, and cry
out, " Let him alone ; he will outstrip you all
by and by as a man, as much as he surpasses
you now in good conduct and information."
He used to say of his own fourth son, a delicate
boy, whose apparent weakness of intellect oc-
casioned his mother much uneasiness, " Never
fear, the lad will come right in time ; he is ex-
actly such as I was myself at his age."

Chamisso was nine years old when his im-
poverished family fled from France. At thir-
teen, he studied drawing and miniature paint-
ing, at Wurtzburg. At fifteen, after having
been for some time a pupil in the painting de-
partment of the royal porcelain manufactory of
Berlin, he became one of the Queen of Prus-
sia's pages. At seventeen, he entered the
Prussian army ; three years afterwards (1801)
he was a lieutenant, and his family returned
to France. The first occupation of the young
Prussian officer was to make himself thoroughly
acquainted with the German tongue ; for at
twenty years of age he was not yet perfectly
familiar with the language, in the literature of
which he was afterwards to take so prominent
a place.

In 1810, he was called to France, to fill a
professorship in the new college of Napoleon-
ville ; his errand was again a fruitless one, but
the journey made him acquainted with Madame
de Stael and M. de Barante, the historian, then
prefect of Vendee. With the latter he spent
the winter of 1810-11, agreeably enough, in-
structing the future translator of Schiller in
German literature, and filling up his leisure
with the perusal of old fabliaux and romances
of chivalry. He was also a welcome guest of

C544)

CHAMISSO.

545

Madame de Stael's, at Chaumont and Blois;
and after her banishment he followed her to
Geneva and Coppet.

It was during his visit to Coppet that Cha-
misso began the study of Botany, which was
afterwards the professional occupation of his
life. In 1812, he made a pedestrian tour in
Switzerland, hesitated on the frontiers of Italy,
and then turned short round to the north, hun-
gering for his beloved Germany. Hastening
to Berlin, he entered the university as a medi-
cal pupil, and began to study anatomy and
physiology with intense zeal.

In 1813, he composed his famous tale of
" Peter Schlemihl," the man who was rendered
miserable by the loss of his shadow. Ampere
has an ingenious passage on this subject, which
is worth quoting :

" Is there a latent moral in this whimsical
story! Without doing like Schlemihl, and
running after a shadow, it seems to me we may
attribute to the author the intention of express-
ing this truth, that in society, as it is now con-
stituted, virtue, merit, and even fortune, are
not everything. It is not enough that one is
rich, something more is wanting to give one
mark and consequence in the world; there
needs a slight shadowy something, designated
by the vague, but not insignificant words, spe-
ciality, notability, position. To be other than
a nobody in society in these days, when men
are no longer classed according to rank, one
must bear a known name, or have produced a
book, or possess some striking accomplishment ;
one must have the supplementary aid of fashion,
or enjoy a celebrity, a notoriety, a distinction,
as they phrase it, of one kind or another. This
is the indispensable shadow for which the devil
sometimes tempts us to sell our souls, and with-
out which we succeed in nothing. The author
of 'Peter Schlemihl' is right in concluding,
that when one has not a shadow, one ought not
to so into the sunshine."

We accept this interpretation, although since
it was written Ilitzig has published Chamisso's
positive declaration that he had no didactic
purpose in view when he composed the tale.
We hold that every well-constructed story, in-
asmuch as it purports to present a regular
series of events and circumstances, bound to-
gether by known laws, must of necessity supply
data from which may be deduced one moral or
more. In other words, the details of any fable
will suggest pointed analogies just in proportion
3t

as they are consistent with each other and co-
herent. It is generally conceded that although
the poet's functions have a moral tendency, he
is not required to be solicitous about teaching
categorically ; and perhaps it would not be too
much to say that if he thinks about his moral
at all, the less he does so the better. Chamisso
appears to have been of this opinion :

"1 have seldom," he says, "any ulterior aim
in my poetry; if an anecdote or a word strikes
me in a particular manner {mich selbst in Leibe
von der Seite der linken Pfole bewegt) I sup-
pose it must have the same effect on others,
and I set to work, wrestling laboriously with
the language, till the thing comes out dis-
tinctly.

" If by chance I have had a notion to evolve,
I am always disappointed with the way in
which the thing turns out. It looks flimsy;

there is no life in it You may call me

for this a nightingale, or a cuckoo, or any other
singing bird, rather than a reasoning man;

with all my heart ! I ask no better

Schlemihl, too, came forth in this way. I had
lost on a journey my hat, portmanteau, gloves,
pocket-handkerchief, and all my movable es-
tate. Fouque asked me whether I had not also
lost my shadow ; and we pictured to ourselves
the effects of such a disaster. Another time,
in turning over the leaves of a book by Lafon-
taine (I do not know the title), was found a
passage in which a very obliging man was de-
scribed as producing all sorts of things from his
pocket in a party, as fast as they were called
for ; upon this I remarked that, only ask him
civilly, the good fellow would, no doubt, lug
out a coach and horses from his pocket. — Here
was Schlemihl complete in conception, and as
time hung heavy enough on my hands in the
country, I began to write. In truth I had no
need to have read the 'Baron de Feneste'
(Daubigne's philosophical romance) to have
picked up all sorts of practical knowledge,
touching the ^mvisOm and the tt,mu But it
was not my object to embody this knowledge,
but to amuse Hitzig's wife and children, whom
I looked upon as my public, and so it has come
to pass that you and others have laughed over
my performance."

He employed the latter part of 1813, and
the greater part of the following year, upon
natural history, attending lectures on mineral-
ogy, which surprised him with the discovery
" that stones had so much sense in them," as-
46*

546

CHAM IS SO.

sistinf in the arraiiffemeiit of the Crustacea in
the Zoological Museum of Berlin, and exercis-
ing himself in writing and speaking Latin, pre-
paratory to taking his doctor's degree. The
storm of war broke out again in 1815, and made
him more than ever solicitous to withdraw for
a while fi'om the scene of strife. He endea-
vored to join the Prince de Neuwied, who was
about to travel in Brazil, but was disappointed
in this and many other similar attempts. At
last the opportunity he so much longed for ar-
rived. Taking up a newspaper one day at
Hitzig's, he chanced to see the announcement
of a voyage of discovery towards the North
Pole and in the Pacific, which was about to be
undertaken on board the Russian ship of war,
commanded by Otto von Kotzebue, son of the
German author of that name. Stamping with
his foot, Chamisso exclaimed, " I wish I was
with these Russians at the North Pole." "Are
you in earnest ?" said Hitzig. " Quite so."
And, on the 15th of July, Chamisso left Berlin
for a voyage of three years.

He published a very lively and entertaining
account of this voyage. In 1829, he produced
his grandest work, Salas y Gomez, which pro-
bably first germinated in his mind during this
voyage.

Returning to Berlin in the autumn of 1818,
he employed the remainder of that year in ar-
ranging the specimens of natural history he
had brought home, and which he bestowed on
the Berlin Museum. In 1819 he was married,
and of his bride he speaks thus : " She is young,
blooming and strong, handsome and good, pure
and innocent, clear, cloudless and serene, calm,
rational and cheerful, and so amiable !"

Whilst he was writing verses for his young
wife, and arranging the Herbaria of the Museum
of Berlin, Chamisso, it is probable, scarcely re-
collected his quality of French emigrant. He
was agreeably reminded of this, in the autumn
of 1825, by a call to Paris to receive 100,000
francs lodged to his credit by the Commissioners
of the Indemnity Fund. He was welcomed
with marked distinction by the learned world
of Paris, and passed his time far more plea-
santly than he had done when he visited the
luxurious capital in his needy and obscure
youth. The letters he wrote home were filled
with accounts of tlie many remarkable things,
literary and theatrical, social and political,
which Paris presented to his view at that stir-
But in the midst of all this ex-

ring period

citement he did not lose sight of the least
every-day detail of his beloved home. " Don't
forget," he says, writing to his wife, "don't
forget the roses; don't forget the children's
letters ; don't forget to strew food for the spar-
rows on my window. I shall return to you the
same as I left you ; let me find everything
again just as it was."

After his return from Paris, in 1827, a second
German edition of" Schlemihl" was published,
with an appendix containing a small collection
of his poems. Up to this time he had no serious
belief in his own poetical powers, and in a let-
ter to Varnhagen's sister (May 24, 1827), he
says, "That I am no poet, nor ever was, is
manifest, but that does not prevent me from
having a feeling for poetry." But the new
publication began to attract public attention
towards him, and, in June, 1828, he ventured
to write to De la Foye. " I almost begin to
think I am one of the poets of Germany."
The matter was put beyond all doubt by the
reception given to his " Salas y Gomez" in the
following year. Soon after this we find him
mentioning, with honest pride, that next to
Uhland's Poems, none were in such frequent
demand for presents as his own. Bridegrooms
especially selected them as gifts for their
brides.

Chamisso's existence had now reached the
culminating point from which began its conti-
nuous descent. In 1831, he was seized by that
worst form of influenza, which we all remember
to have been the precursor of the cholera. It
broke down his iron constitution, and left be-
hind it a chronic affection of the lungs, from
which he never recovered. His declinincf
years were still cheered by the increasing ho-
nors conferred on him, both as a poet and a
naturalist, but they were visited by a calamity
for which there was no balm on earth. Hia
wife died on the 21st of May, 1837, in her
thirty-sixth year. He bore this fatal blow with
manly fortitude, thankful for the blessings he
had enjoyed, and patiently awaiting his dis-
missal. It was not long delayed. He survived
his wife exactly fifteen months, and expired on
the 21st of August, 1839.

Most characteristic of the man, was the man-
ner in which he passed this interval. Earnest
and strenuous to the last, he increased rather
than rela.xed his mental activity. He found in
occupation the best alleviation of his sorrows,
and employed himself simultaneously on two

CHAMISSO.

547

works of very dissimilar character. He pub-
lislied a grammar of the Havai language,
spoken in some of the islands of the South Sea,
and entered upon an elaborate philological in-
vestigation of the kindred dialects; and he
joined Baron Gaudy in translating, or rather,
as he says, Germanizing a selection of ninety-
eight songs of Beranger. He continued also,
the troublesome task of editing the " Musen
Almanach," and shortly before his death, he
showed that the old ardor was not extinct
within liim, by undertaking a journey to Leip-

THE WONDERFUL HISTORY OF PETER
SCHLEMIHL.

CHAPTER I.

Ai'teh a fortunate, but for me very trouble-
some voyage, we finally reached the port. The
instant that I touched land in the boat, I loaded
myself with my few effects, and passing through
the swarming people, I entered the first, and
least house, before which I saw a sign hang. I
requested a room ; the boots measured me with
a loolv, and conducted me into the garret. I
caused fresh water to be brought, and made
him exactly describe to me where I should find
Mr. Thomas John.

" Before the north-gate ; the first country-house
on the right hand ; a large new house of red
and white marble, with many columns."

" Good."' It was still early in the day. I
opened at once my bundle; took thence my
new black cloth coat; clad myself cleanly in
my best apparel ; put my letter of introduction
into my pocket, and set out on the way to the
man who was to promote my modest expecta-
tions.

When I had ascended the long North Street,
and reached the gate, I soon saw the pillars
glimmer through the foliage. "Here it is then,"
tliought I. I wiped the dust from my feet with
my pocket-handkerchief; put my neckcloth in
order, and in God's name rung the bell. The
door flew open. In the hall I had an examina-
tion to undergo; the porter, however, permitted
me to be announced, and I had the honor to be
called into the park, where Mr. John was
walking with a select party. I recognised the
man at once by tlie lustre of his corpulent self-
complacency. He received me very well — as
a rich man receives a poor devil, — even turned
towards me, without turning from the rest of
the company, and took the offered letter from
my hand. '"So, so, from my brother. I have
heard nothing from him for a long time. But
he is well? There," continued he, addressing
the company, without waiting for an answer,
and pointing with the letter to a hill, "there I
am going to erect the new building." He broke

zig, in order to run over the first portion of the
Dresden Railway, He was radiant with de-
light. Speaking as a poet, he called the loco-
motive "■Time's wings" and in the language
of a naturalist, he defined it as a warm-blooded
animal without eyes. He looked on the inven-
tion as the certain commencement of a new
era, and deemed that every moneyed man was
morally bound to contribute a portion of his
means towards the promotion of a system from
which such grand results were to accrue.

the seal without breaking off the conversation,
whicli turned upon riches.

" He that is not master of a million, at least," he
observed, "is — f)ardoa me the word — a wretch!"
" O ! how true !" I exclaimed with a rush of
overflowing feeling.

That pleased him. He smiled at me, and
said — " Stay here, my good friend; in awhile
I shall perhaps have time to tell you what I
think about this." He pointed to the letter,
which he then thrust into his pocket, and turned
again to the company. He ofi'ered his arm to
a young lady; the other gentlemen addressed
themselves to other fair ones; each found wliat
suited him; and all proceeded towards the
rose-blossomed mount.

I slid into the rear, without troubling any
one, for no one troubled himself any further
about me. The company was excessively
lively; there was dalliance and playfulness;
trifles were sometimes discussed with an im-
portant tone, but oftener important matters with
levity; and especially pleasantly flew the wit
over absent friends and their circumstances. I
was too strange to understand much of all this;
too anxious and introverted to take an interest
in such riddles.

We had reached the rosary. The lovely
Fanny, the belle of the day, as it appeared,
would, out of obstinacy, herself break ofl" a
blooming bough. She wounded herself on a
thorn, and as if from the dark roses, flowed the
purple on her tender hand. This circumstance
put the whole party into a flutter. English
jolaister was sought for. A still, thin, lanky,
longish, oldish man, who stood near, and whom
I had not hitherto remarked, put his hand in-
stantly into the close-lying breast-pocket of his
old French grey taffetty coat; produced thence
a little pocket-book; opened it; and presented
to the lady, with a jnofound obeisance, the re-
quired article. She took it without noticing the
giver, and without thanks ; the wound was
bound up ; and we went forward over the hill,
I from whose back the company could enjoy the
wide prospect over the green labyrinth of the
park to the boundless ocean.

548

CHAMISSO.

The view was in reality vast and splendid.
A light point appeared on the horizon between
the dark flood, and the blue of the heaven.
" A telescope here !" cried Jolin ; and already
before the servants who appeared at the call,
were in motion, the grey man, modestly bowing,
had thrust his hand into his coat-pocket, and
drawn thence a beautiful DoUond, and handed
it to Mr. John. Bringing it immediately to his
eye, he informed the company that it was the
ship which went out yesterday, and was de-
tained in view of port by contrary winds. The
telescope passed from hand to hand, but not
again into that of its owner. I, however, gazed
in wonder at the man, and could not conceive
how the great machine had come out of the
narrow pocket: but this seemed to have struck
no one else, and nobody troubled himself any
farther about the grey man than about myself.

Refreshments were handed round ; the choic-
est fruits of every zone, in the costliest vessels.
Mr. John did the honors with an easy grace,
and a second time addressed a word to me.
" Help yourself ; you have not had the like at
sea." I bowed, but he saw it not, he was
already speaking with some one else.

The company would fain have reclined upon
the sward on the slope of the hill, opposite to
the outstretched landscape, had they not feared
the dampness of the earth. "It were divine,"
observed one of the party, "had we but a Tur-
key carpet to spread here." The wish was
scarcely expressed when the man in the grey
coat had his hand in his pocket, and was busied
in drawing thence, with a modest and even
bumble deportment, a rich Turkey carpet in-
terwoven with gold. The servants received it
as a matter of course, and opened it on the re-
quired spot. The company without ceremony,
took their places upon it; for myself, I looked
again in amazement on tlie man ; at the carpet,
which measured above twenty paces long and
ten in breadth ; and rubbed my eyes, not know-
ing what to think of it, especially as nobody saw
anything extraordinary in it.

I would fain have had some explanation re-
garding the man, and have asked who he was,
but I knew not to whom to address myself, for
I was almost more afraid of the gentlemen's
servants than of the served gentlemen. At
length I took courage, and stepped up to a
young man who appeared to me to be of less
consideration than the rest, and who had often
stood alone. I begged him softly to tell me
who the agreeable ma'i in the grey coat there
was.

" He there, who looks like an end of thread
that has escaped out of a tailor's needlel"

"Yes, he who stands alone."

"I don't know him," he replied, and as it
seemed in order to avoid a longer conversation
with me, he turned away, and spoke of indif-
ferent matters to another.

The sun began now to shine more powerfully,
and to inconvenience the ladies. The lovely

Fanny addressed carelessly to the grey man,
whom as far as I am aware, no one had yet
spoken to, the trifling question, "Whether he
had not, perchance, also a tent by him ?' — He
answered her by an obeisance most profound,
as if an unmerited honor were done him. and
had already his hand in his pocket, out of which
I saw come canvass, poles, cordage, iron-work,
in short, everything whjch belongs to the most
splendid pleasure-tent. The young gentlemen
helped to expand it, and it covered the whole
extent of the carpet, and nobody found anything
remarkable in it.

I was already become uneasy, nay horrified
at heart, but how completely so, as, at the very
next wish expressed, I saw him yet pull out of
his pocket three roadsters — I tell thee three
beautiful great black horses, with saddle and
caparison. Bethink thee ! for God's sake ! —
three saddled horses, still out of the same
pocket out of which already a pocket-book, a
telescope, an embroidered carpet, twenty paces
long and ten broad, a pleasure-tent of equal di-
mensions, and all the requisite poles and irons,
had come forth ! If I did not protest to thee
that I saw it myself with my own eyes, thou
couldst not possibly believe it.

Embarrassed and obsequious as the man
himself appeared to be, little as was the atten-
tion which had been bestowed upon him, yet
to me his grisly aspect, from whicli I could not
turn my eyes, became so fearful, that I could
bear it no longer,

I resolved to steal away from the company,
which from the insignificant part I played in it
seemed to me an easy affair. I proposed to
myself to return to the city, to try my luck again
on the morrow with Mr. John, and if I could
muster the necessary courage, to question him
about the singular grey man. Had I only had
the good fortune to escape so well !

I had already actually succeeded in stealing
through the rosary, and in descending the liill,
found myself on a piece of lawn, when fearing
to be encountered in crossing the grass out of
the path, I cast an enquiring glance round me.
What was my terror to behold the man in the
grey coat behind me, and making towards me!
In the next moment he took off his hat before
me, and bowed so low as no one had ever yet
done to me. There was no doubt but that he
wished to address me, and without being rude,
I could not prevent it. I also took off my hat;
bowed also; and stood there in the sun with
bare head as if rooted to the ground. I stared
at him full of terror, and was like a bird which
a serpent has fascinated. He himself appeared
very much embarrassed. He raised not his
eyes ; again bovved repeatedly ; drew nearer,
and addressed me with a soft, tremulous voice,
almost in a tone of supplication.

"May I hope, sir, that you will pardon my
boldness in venturing in so unusual a manner to
approach you, but I would ask a favor. Per-
mit me most condescendingly — "

CHAMISSO.

549

"But in God's name!" exclaimed I in my
trepidation, " what can I do for a man who — "
we both started, and, as I believe, reddened.

After a moment's silence, he again resumed :
"During the short time that I had the happiness
to find myself near you, I have, sir, many
times, — allow me to say it to you — really con-
templated with inexpressible admiration, the
beautiful, beautiful, shadow which, as it were,
with a certain noble disdain, and without your-
self remarking it, you cast from you in the sun-
shine. The noble shadow at your feet there.
Pardon me the bold supposition, but possibly
you might not be indisposed to make this sha-
dow over to me."

I was silent, and a mill-wheel seemed to
whirl round in my head. What was I to make
of this singular proposition to sell my own sha-
dow? He must be mad, thought I, and with
an altered tone which was more assimilated to
that of his own humility, 1 answered thus:

" Ha ! ha ! good friend, have not you then
enough of your own shadow? I take this for a
business of a very singular sort — ."

He hastily interrupted me; — "I have many
things in my pocket which, sir, might not ap-
pear worthless to you, and for this inestimable
shadow I hold the very highest price too small."

It struck cold through me again as I was re-
minded of the pocket. I knew not how I could
have called him good friend. I resumed the
conversation, and sought, if possible, to set all
right again by excessive politeness.

"But, sir, pardon your most humble servant;
I do not understand your meaning. How in-
deed could my shadow" — He interrupted me —

" I beg your permission only here on the spot
to be allowed to take up this noble shadow and
put it in my pocket; how I shall do that be my
care. On the other hand, as a testimony of my
grateful acknowledgment to you, I give you the
choice of all the treasures which I carry in my
pocket, — the genuine Spring-root,* the Man-
drake-root, the Change-penny, the Rob-dollar,
the napkin of Roland's Page, a mandrake-man,
at your own price. But these, probably don't
interest you, — rather Fortunatus's Wishing-cap
newly and stoutly repaired, and a lucky-bag
such as he had !"

"The Luck-purse of Fortunatus !" I exclaimed,
interrupting him ; and great as my anxiety was,
with that one word he had taken my whole
mind captive. A dizziness seized me, and
double ducats seemed to glitter before my eyes.

" Honored Sir, will you do me the favor to
view, and to make trial of this purse ?" He
thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out a
tolerably large, well-sewed purse of stout Cor-

* These are references to facts in the popular tales of
Germany: as for instance, the Spring-wnrzel, or Spring-
root, is found in the story of Ruherzahl ; and the Galgen-
niannlein, or gallows-nien, were little figures cut out of
a root, said by the dealers in such things in the middle
nges, to be actual mandrake-roots growing in that shape
at the feet of gallowses, etc., etc.

duan leather, with two strong strings, and
handed it to me. 1 plunged my hand into it,
and drew out ten gold pieces, and again ten,
and again ten, and again ten. I extended him
eagerly my hand — " Agreed ! the business is
done ; for the purse you have my shadow !"

He closed with me ; kneeled instantly down
before me, and I beheld him, with an admirable
dexterity, gently loosen my shadow from top to
toe from the grass, lift it up, roll it together, fold
it, and finally, pocket it. He arose, made me
another obeisance, and retreated towards the
rosary. I fancied that I heard him there softly
laughing to himself; but I held the purse fast
by the strings ; all round me lay the clear sun-
shine, and within me was yet no power of re-
flection.

CHAPTER II.

At length I came to myself, and hastened
to quit the place where I had nothing more to
expect. In the first place I filled my pockets
witVi gold ; then I secured the strings of the
purse fast round my neck, and concealed the
purse itself in my bosom. I passed unobserved
out of the park, reached the highway and took
the road to the city. As, sunk in thought, I
approached the gate, I heard a cry behind me.

"Young gentleman! eh! young gentleman!
hear you !"

I looked round, an old woman called after
me.

" Do take care, sir, you have lost your shadow !"

"Thank you, good mother!" I threw her a
gold piece for her well-meant intelligence, and
stopped under the trees. /

At the city gate I was compelled to hear again
from the sentinel — " Where has the gentleman
left his shadow ?" And immediately again from
some women — "Jesus Maria! the poor fellow
has no shadow !" That began to irritate me, and
I became especially careful not to walk in the
sun. This could not, however, be accomplished
everywhere, for instance, over the broad street
which I next must approach actually, as mis-
chief would have it, at the very moment that
the boys came out of school. A cursed hunch-
backed rogue, I see him yet, spied out instantly
that I had no shadow. He proclaimed the fact
with a loud outcry to the whole assembled lite-
rary street youth of the suburb, who began
forthwith to criticise me, and to pelt me with
mud. "Decent people are accustomed to take
their shadow with them, when they go into the
sunshine." To defend myself from them I
threw whole handfuls of gold amongst them
and sprang into a hackney-coach, which some
compassionate soul procured for me.

As soon as I found myself alone in the rolling
carriage I began to weep bitterly. The pre-
sentiment must already have arisen in me, that
far as gold on earth transcends in estimation,
merit and virtue, so much higher than gold it-
self is the shadow valued ; and as I had earlier
sacrificed wealth to conscience, I had now

550

CHAMISSO.

tl)ro\vn away the shadow for mere gold. What
in the world could and would become of trie! —

I was again greatly annoyed as the carriage
stopped before my old inn. I was horrified at
the bare idea of entering that wretched cock-
loft. I ordered my things to be brought down;
received my miserable bundle with contempt,
threw down some gold pieces, and ordered the
coachman to drive to the most fashionable hotel.
The house faced the north, and I had not the
sun to fear. I dismissed the driver with gold ;
caused the best front rooms to be assigned me,
and shut myself up in them as quickly as I
could !

What thinkest thou I now began? Oh, my
dear Chamisso, to confess it even to thee makes
me blush. I drew the unlucky purse from my
bosom, and with a kind of desperation which,
like a rushing conflagration, grew in me with
self-increasing growth, I extracted gold, and
gold, and gold, and ever more gold, and strewed
it on the floor, and strode amongst it, and made
it ring again, and feeding my poor heart on the
splendor and the sound, flung continually more
metal to metal, till in my weariness, I sank
down on the rich heap, and rioting thereon,
rolled and revelled amongst it. So passed the
day, the evening. I opened not my door ; night
and day found me lying on my gold, and then
sleep overcame me.

I dreamed of thee. I seemed to stand behind
the glass-door of thy little room, and to see thee
sitting then at thy work-table, between a skele-
ton and a bundle of dried plants. Before thee
lay open Haller, Humboldt, and Linnaeus; on
thy sofa a volume of Goethe and "The Magic-
Ring." I regarded thee long, and every thing
in thy room, and then thee again. Thou didst
not move, thou drewest no breath ;— r-thou wert
dead !

I awoke. It appeared still to be very early.
My vt'atcli stood. I was sore all over ; thirsty
and hungry too; I had taken nothing since the
evening before. I pushed from me with loath-
ing and indignation the gold on which I had
before sated my foolish heart. In my vexation
I knew not what I should do with it. It must
not lie there. I tried whether the purse would
swallow it again, — but no! None of my win-
dows opened upon the sea. I found myself
compelled laboriously to drag it to a great cup-
board which stood in a cabinet, and there to
pile it. I left only some handfuis of it lying.
When I had finished the work, I threw myself
exhausted into an easy chair, and waited for
the stirring of tlie people in the liouse. As soon
as possible I ordered food to be brought, and
the landlord to come to me.

I fixed in consultation with this man the fu-
ture arrangements of my house. He recom-
mended for the services about my person a
certain Bendel, whose honest and intelligent
physiognomy immediately captivated me. He
it was whose attachment has since accompanied
me consolingly through the wretchedness of

life, and has helped me to support my gloomy
lot. I spent the whole day in my room among
masterless servants, shoemakers, tailors, and
tradespeople. I fitted myself out, and purchased
besides a great many jewels and valuables for
the sake of getting rid of some of the vast heap
of hoarded up gold ; but it seemed to me as if
it were impossible to diminish it.

In the mean time I brooded over my situation
in the most agonising despair. I dared not
venture a step out of my doors, and at evening
I caused forty waxlights to be lit in my room
before I issued from the shade. I thought with
horror on the terrible scene with the schoolboys,
yet I resolved, much courage as it demanded,
once more to make a trial of public opinion.
The nights were then moonlight. Late in the
evening I threw on a wide cloak, pressed my
hat over my eyes, and stole, trembling like a
criminal, out of the liouse. I stepped first out
of the shade in whose protection I had arrived
there, in a remote square, into the full moon-
light, determined to learn my fate out of the
mouths of the passers by.

Spare me, dear friend, the painful repetition
of all that I had to endure. The women often
testified the deepest compassion with which I
inspired them, declarations which no less trans-
pierced me than tlie mockery of the youth and
the proud contempt of the men, especially of
those fat, well-fed fellows, who themselves cast
a broad shadow. A lovely and sweet girl, who,
as it seemed, accompanied her parents, while
these suspiciously only looked before their feet,
turned by chance her flashing eyes upon me.
She was obviously terrified ; she observed my
want of a shadow, let fall her veil over her
beautiful countenance, and dropping her head,
passed in silence.

I could bear it no longer. Briny streams
started from my eyes, and cut to the heart, I
staggered back into the shade. I was obliged to
support myself against the houses to steady my
steps and wearily and late reached my dwelling.

I spent a sleepless night. The next morning
it was my first care to have the man in the grey
coat everywhere sought after. Possibly I might
succeed in finding him again, and how joyful !
if he repented of the foolish bargain as heartily
as I did. I ordered Bendel to come to me, he
appeared to possess address and tact; I de-
scribed to him exactly the man in whose pos-
session lay a treasure without which my life
was only a misery. I told him the time, the
place in which I had seen him ; I described to
him all who had been present, and added,
moreover, this token : he should particularly
inquire after a DoUond's telescope ; after a gold
interwoven Turkish carpet; after a splendid
pleasure tent; and, finally, after the black
chargers, whose story, we knew not how, was
connected with that of the mysterious man, who
seemed of no consideration amongst them, and
whose appearance had destroyed the quiet and
happiness of my life.

CHAMISSO.

551

When I had clone speaking I fetched out gold,
such a load that I was scarcely able to carry it,
and laid upon it precious stones and jewels of a
far greater value. "Bendel," said I, "these
level many ways, and make easy many things
■which appeared quite impossible; don't be
stingy with it, as I am not, but go and rejoice
thy master with the intelligence on which his
only hope depends."

He went. He returned late and sorrowful.
None of the people of Mr. John, none of his
guests, and he had spoken with all, were able
in the remotest degree, to recollect the man in
the grey coat. The new telescope was there,
and no one knew whence it had come ; the
carpet, the tent were still there spread and
pitched on the self-same hill ; the servants
boasted of the affluence of their master, and no
one knew whence these same valuables had
come to him. He himself took his pleasure in
them, and did not trouble himself because he
did not know whence he had them. The young
gentlemen had the horses, which they had rid-
den, in their stables, and they praised the libe-
rality of Mr. John who on that day made them
a present of them. Thus much was clear from
the circumstantial relation of Bendel, whose
active zeal and able proceeding, although with
such fruitless result, received from me their
merited commendation. I gloomily motioned
him to leave me alone.

" I have," began he again, " given my master
an account of the matter which was most im-
portant to him. I have yet a message to deliver
which a person gave me whom I met at the
door as I went out on the business in which I
have been so unfortunate. The very words of
the man were these : 'Tell Mr. Peter Schlemihl
he will not see me here again as I am going
over sea, and a favorable wind calls me at this
moment to the harbor. But in a year and a
day I will have the honor to seek him myself,
and then to propose to him another and probably
to him more agreeable transaction. Present my
most humble compliments to him, and assure
him of my thanks.' I asked him who he was,
but he replied, your honor knew him already."
"What was the man's appearance?" cried I,
filled with foreboding, and Bendel sketched me
the man in the grey coat, trait by trait, word for
word, as he had accurately described in his
former relation the man after whom he had
inquired.

"Unhappy one!" I exclaimed, wringing my
hands, — "that was the very man!" and there
fell, as it were, scales from his eyes.

"Yes! it was he, it was, positively!" cried
he in horror, "and I, blind and imbecile wretch
have not recognized him, have not recognized
him, and have betrayed my master!"

He broke out into violent weeping; heaped
the bitterest reproaches on himself, and the de-
spair in which he was inspired even me with
compassion. I spoke comfort to him, assured
him repeatedly that I entertained not the slight-

est doubt of his fidelity, and sent him instantly
to the port, if possible to follow the traces of
this singular man. But in the morning a great
number of ships which the contrary winds had
detained in the harbor, had run out, bound to
different climes and different shores, and the
grey man had vanished as tracelessly as a
dream.

CHAPTER III.

Of what avail are wings to him who is fast
bound in iron fetters'? He is compelled only
the more fearfully to despair. I lay like Faffner
by his treasure far from every consolation, suf-
fering much in the midst of my gold. But my
heart was not in it, on the contrary, I cursed it,
because I saw myself through it cut ofi' from
all life. Brooding over my gloomy secret alone,
I trembled before the meanest of my servants,
whom at the same time I was forced to envy,
for he had a shadow ; he might show himself
in the sun. I wore away days and nights in
solitary sorrow in my chamber, and anguish
gnawed at my heart.

There was another who pined away before
my eyes ; my faithful Bendel never ceased to
torture himself with silent reproaches, that he
had betrayed the trust reposed in him by his
master, and had not recognized him after whom
he was despatched, and with whom he must
believe that my sorrowful fate was intimately
interwoven. I could not lay the fault to his
charge ; I recognised in the event the mysteri-
ous nature of the Unknown.

That I might leave nothing untried, I one
time sent Bendel with a valuable brilliant ring
to the most celebrated painter of the city, and
begged that he would pay me a visit. He
came. I ordered my people to retire, closed
the door, seated myself by the man, and after I
had praised his art, I came with a heavy heart
to the business, causing him before that to pro-
mise the strictest secrecy.

"Mr. Professor," said I, "could not you, think
you, paint a false shadow for one, who by the
most unlucky chance in the world, has become
deprived of his own ?"

" You mean a personal shadow ?"

"That is precisely my meaning"

"But," continued he, "through what awk-
wardness, through what negligence could he
then lose his proper shadow ?"

"How it happened," replied I, " is now of
very little consequence, but thus far I may say,"
added I, lying shamelessly to him, "in Russia,
whither he made a journey last winter, in an
extraordinary cold his shadow froze so fast to
the ground that he could by no means loose it
again."

"The false shadow that I could paint him,"
replied the professor, " would only be such a
one as by the slightest agitation he might lose
again, especially a person, who, as appears by
your relation, has so little adhesion to his own
native shadow. Ho who has no shadow, let

552

CHAMISSO.

him keep out of the sunshine, that is the safest
and most sensible thing for him." He arose
and witlidrevv, easting at me a transpiercing
glance which mine could not support. I sunk
back in my seat, and covered my face with my
hands.

Thus Bendel found me, as he at length entered.
He saw the grief of his master, and was desirous
silently and reverently to withdraw. I looked
up, I lay under the burden of my trouble ; I
must communicate it.

"Bendel!"' cried 1, "Bendel, thou only one
who seest my affliction and respectest it, seek-
est not to pry into it, but appearest silently and
kindly to sympathise, come to me, Bendel, and
be the nearest to my heart ; I have not locked
from thee the treasure of my gold, neither will
I lock from diee the treasure of my grief Ben-
del, forsake me not. Bendel, thou beholdest me
rich, liberal, kind. Thou imaginest that the
world ought to honor me, and thou seest me fly
the world, and hide myself from it. Bendel,
the world has passed judgment, and cast me
from it, and perhaps thou too wilt turn from
me when thou knowest my fearful secret.
Bendel, I am rich, liberal, kind, but, — 0 God!
— I have no shadow!"'

"No shadow!" cried the good youth with
horror, and the bright tears gushed from his
eyes. "Woe is me, that I was born to serve a
shadowless master !" He was silent, and I held
my face buried in my hands.

"Bendel," added I, at length, tremblingly —
" now hast thou my confidence, and now canst
thou betray it — go forth and testify against me."
He appeared to be in a heavy conflict with
himself; at length, he flung himself before me
and seized my hand, which he bathed with his
tears.

"No!" exclaimed he, "think the world as it
will, I cannot, and will not, on account of a
shadow abandon my kind master; I will act
justly, and not with policy. I will continue
with you, lend you my shadow, help you when
I can, and when I cannot, weep with you." I
fell on his neck, astonished at such unusual
sentiment, for I was convinced that he did it
not for gold.

From that time my fate and my mode of life
were in some degree changed. It is indescri-
bable how much Bendel continued to conceal
my defect. He was everywhere before me
and with me ; foreseeing everything, hitting on
contrivances, and where danger threatened,
covering me quickly with his shadow, since he
was taller and bulkier than I. Thus I ventured
myself again among men, and began to play a
part in the world. I was obliged, it is true, to
assume many peculiarities and humors, but such
became the rich, and so long as the truth con-
tinued to be concealed, I enjoyed all the honor
and respect which were paid to my wealth. I
looked calmly forward to the promised visit of
the mysterious unknown, at the end of the year
and the day.

I felt, indeed, that I must not remain longer
in a place where I had once been seen without
a shadow, and where I might easily be betrayed.
Perhaps I yet thought too much of the manner
in which I had introduced myself to Thomas
John, and it was a mortifying recollection. I
would therefore here merely make an experi-
ment, to present myself with more ease and
confidence elsewhere, but that now occurred
which held me a long time riveted to my van-
ity, for there it is in the man that the anchor
bites the firmest ground.

Even the lovely Fanny, whom I in this place
again encountered, honored me with some no-
tice without recollecting ever to have seen me
before ; for I now had wit and sense. As I
spoke, people listened, and I could not, for the
life of me, comprehend myself how I had ar-
rived at the art of maintaining and engrossing
so easily the conversation. The impression
which I perceived that I had made on the fair
one, made of me just what she desired — a fool,
and I thenceforward followed her through
shade and twilight wherever I could. I was
only so far vain that I wished to make her vain
of myself, and found it impossible, even with
the very best intentions, to force the intoxication
from my head to my heart.

But why relate to thee the whole long ordi-
nary story ? Thou thyself hast often related it
to me of other honorable people. To the old,
well known play in which I goodnaturedly un-
dertook a wornout part, there came in truth to
her and me, and everybody, unexpectedly a
most peculiar and poetic catastrophe.

As, according to my wont, I had assembled
on a beautiful evening a party in a garden, I
wandered with the lady, arm in arm at some
distance from the other guests, and exerted my-
self to strike out pretty speeches for her. She
cast down modestly her eyes, and returned
gently the pressure of my hand, when suddenly
the moon broke through the clouds behind me,
and — she saw only her own shadow thrown
forward before her ! She started and glanced
wildly at me, then again on the earth, seeking
my shadow with her eyes, and what passed
within her, painted itself so singularly on her
countenance, that I should have burst into a
loud laugh if it had not itself ran ice-cold over
my back.

I let her fall from my arms in a swoon, shot
like an arrow through the terrified guests,
reached the door, flung myself into the first
chaise which I saw on tlie stand, and drove
back to the city, where this time, to my cost, I
had left the circumspect Bendel. He was ter-
rified as he saw me; — one word revealed to
him all. Post horses were immediately fetched.
I took only one of my people with me, an arrant
knave, called Rascal, who had contrived to
make himself necessary to me by his clever-
ness; and who could suspect nothing of the
present occurrence. That night I left upwards
of a hundred miles behind me. Bendel re-

CHAMISSO.

553

niained behind me to discharge my esttiblishment,
to pay money, and to bring me what I most
required. When he overtook me next day, I
threw myself into his arms, and swore to him,
never again to run into the like folly, but in fu-
ture to be more cautious. We continued our
journey without pause, over the frontiers and
the mountains, and it was not till we began to
descend and had placed those lofty bulwarks
between us and our former unlucky abode, that
I allowed myself to be persuaded to rest from
the fatigues I liad undergone, in a neighboring
and little frequented Bathing-place.

CHAPTER IT.

I MUST pass in my relation hastily over a time
in which, how gladly would I linger, could I
but conjure up the living spirit of it with the re-
collection. But the color which vivified it, and
can only vivify it again, is extinguished in me ;
and when I seek in my bosom what then so
mightily animated it, tj|e grief and the joy, the
innocent illusion, — then do I vainly smite a rock
in which no living spring now dwells, and the
god is departed from me. How changed does
this past time now appear to me. I would act
in the watering place an heroic character, ill
studied, and myself a novice on the boards, and
my gaze was lured from my part by a pair of
blue eyes. The parents, deluded by the play,
ofler everything only to make the business
quickly secure ; and the poor farce closes in
mockery. And that is all, all ! That presents
itself now to me so absurd and commonplace,
and yet is it terrible, that that can thus appear
to me which then so richly, so luxuriantly,
swelled my bosom. Mina! as I wept at losing
thee, so weep I still to have lost thee also in
myself. Am I then become so old ■? Oh, me-
lancholy reason ! Oh, but for one pulsation of
that time ! one moment of that illusion! But no!
alone on the high waste sea of thy bitter flood !
and long out of the last cup of champagne the
elfin has vanished !

I had sent forward Bendel with some purses
of gold to procure for me a dwelling adapted to
my needs. He had there scattered about much
money, and expressed himself somewhat inde-
finitely respecting the distinguished stranger
whom he served, for I would not be named, and
that filled the good people with extraordinary
fancies. As soon as my house was ready Ben-
del returned to conduct me thither. We set
out.

About three miles from the place, on a sunny
plain, our progress was obstructed by a gay fes-
tal throng. The carriage stopped. Music, sound
of bells, discharge of cannon, were heard; a
loud vivat! rent the air; before the door of the
carriage appeared, clad in white, a troop of
damsels of extraordinary beauty, but who were
eclipsed by one in particular, as the stars of night
by the sun. She stepped forth from the midst
of her sisters ; the tall and delicate figure
kneeled blushing before me, and presented to
3 u

me on a silken cushion a garland woven of
laurel, olive branches, and roses, while she ut-
tered some words about majesty, veneration and
love, which I did not understand, but whose
bewitching silver tone intoxicated my ear and
heart. It seemed as if the heavenly apparition
had sometime already passed before me. The
chorus struck in, and sung the praises of a good
king and the happiness of his people.

And this scene, my dear friend, in the face
of the sun ! She kneeled still only two paces
from me, and I without a shadow, could not
spring over the gulph, could not also fall on the
knee before the angel ! Oh ! what would I then
have given for a shadow ! I was compelled to
hide my shame, my anguish, my despair, deep
in the bottom of my carriage. At length Bendel
recollected himself on my behalf He leaped
out of the carriage on the other side. I called
him back, and gave him out of my jewel-case,
which lay at hand, a splendid diamond crown,
which had been made to adorn the brows of
the lovely Fanny! He stepped forward, and
spoke in the name of his master, who could not
and would not receive such tokens of homage ;
there must be some mistake; and the good
people of the city were thanked for their good
will. As he said this, he took up the proffered
wreath, and laid the brilliant coronet in its
place. He then extended respectfully his hand
to the lovely maiden, that she might arise, and
dismissed, with a sign, clergy, magistrates, and
all the deputations. No one else was allowed
to approach. He ordered the throng to divide,
and make way for the horses ; sprang again
into the carriage, and on we went at full gallop,
through a festive archway of foliage and flowers
towards the city. The discharges of cannon
continued. The carriage stopped before my
house. I sprang hastily in at the door, dividing
the crowd which the desire to see me had col-
lected. The mob hurrahed under my window,
and I let double ducats rain out of it. In the
evening the city was voluntarily illuminated.

And yet I did not at all know what all this
could mean, and who I was supposed to be. I
sent out Rascal to make enquiry. He brought
word to this efl'ect: — that the people had re-
ceived certain intelligence that the good king
of Prussia travelled through the country under
the name of a Graf; that my adjutant had been
recognised; and, finally, how great the joy was
as they became certain that they really had me
in the place. They now saw clearly that I evi-
dently desired to maintain the strictest incognito,
and how very wrong it had been to attempt so
importunately to lift the veil. But I had resented
it so graciously, so kindly, — I should certainly
pardogl^their good heartedness.

The thing appeai-ed so amusing to the rogue,
that he did his best, by reproving words, the
more to strengthen the good folk in their belief
He made a very comical recital of all this: and
as he found that it diverted me, he made a joke
to me of his own additional wickedness. Shall
47

554

CHAMISSO.

I confess it? It flattered me, even by such
means, to be taken for that honored head.

I commanded a feast to be prepared for the
evening of the next day, beneath the trees which
over-shadowed tlieopen space before my house;
and the whole city to be invited to it. The
mysterious power of my purse ; the exertions
of Bendel and the active invention of Rascal,
succeeded in triumphing over time itself. It is
really astonishing how richly and beautifully
everything was arranged in those few hours.
The splendor and abundance which exhibited
themselves, and the ingenious lighting up, so
admirably contrived that I felt myself quite se-
cure, left me nothing to desire. I could not but
praise my servants.

The evening grew dark ; the guests appeared,
and were presented to me. Nothing more was
said about Majesty; I was styled with deep
reverence and obeisance, Herr Graf. What
was to be done? I allowed the Herr Graf to
please, and remained from diat hour the Graf
Peter. In the midst of festive multitudes my
soul yearned alone after one. She entered late,
— she w^as and wore the crown. She followed
modestly her parents, and seemed not to know
that she was the loveliest of all. They were
presented to me as Mr. Forest-master, his lady
and their daughter. I found many agreeable
and obliging things to say to the old people;
before the daughter I stood like a rebuked boy,
and could not bring out one word. I begged
her, at length, with a faltering tone, to honor
this feast by assuming the office whose insignia
she graced. She entreated with blushes and a
moving look to be excused ; but blushing still
more than herself in her presence, I j^aid her as
her first subject my homage, with a most pro-
found respect, and the hint of the Graf became
to all the guests a command which every one
with emulous joy hastened to obey. Majesty,
innocence and grace, presided in alliance with
beauty over a rapturous feast. Mina's happy
parents believed their child only thus exalted
in honor of diem. I myself was in an indescri-
bable intoxication. I caused all the jewels
which yet remained of those which I had for-
merly purchased, in order to get rid of burthen-
some gold, all the pearls, all the precious stones,
to be laid in two covered dishes, and at the
table, in the name of the queen, to be distributed
round to her companions and to all the ladies.
Gold, in the mean time, was incessantly strewed
over the inclosing lists among the exulting people.

Bendel, the next morning, revealed to me in
confidence that the suspicion which he had long
entertained of Rascal's honesty, was now be-
come certainty. That he had yesterday em-
bezzled whole purses of gold. "Let us permit,"
replied I, " the poor scoundrel to enjoy the petty
plunder. I spend willingly on everybody, why
not on him? Yesterday he and all the fresh
people you have brought me, served me hon-
estly; they helped me joyfully to celebrate a
joyful feast."

There was no farther mention of it. Rascal
remained the first of my servants, but Bendel
Avas my friend and my confidant. The latter
was accustomed to regard my wealth as inex-
haustible, and he pried not after its sources;
entering into my humor, he assisted me rather
to discover opportunities to exercise it, and to
spend my gold. Of that unknown one, that
pale sneak, he knew only this, that I could alone
through him be absolved from the curse which
weighed on me; and that I feared him, on
whom my sole hope reposed. That, for the
rest, I was convinced that he could discover me
anywhere ; I him nowhere ; and that therefore
awaiting the promised day, I abandoned every
vain enquiry.

The magnificence of my feast, and my beha-
vior at it, held at first the credulous inhabitants
of the city firmly to their preconceived opinion.
True, it was soon stated in the newspapers that
the whole story of the journey of the king of
Prussia had been a mer^groundless rumor; but
a king I now was, and must spite of everything
a king remain, and truly one of the most rich
and royal who had ever existed ; only peojile
did not rightly know what king. The world
has never had reason to complain of the scarcity
of monarchs, at least in our time. The good
people who had never seen any of them, pitched
with equal correctness first on one and then on
another ; Graf Peter still remained who he was.

At one time appeared amongst the guests at
the Bath, a tradesman, who had made himself
bankrupt in order to enrich himself; and who
enjoyed universal esteem, and had a broad
though somewhat pale shadow. The property
which he had scraped together, he resolved to
lay out in ostentation, and it even occurred to
him to enter into rivalry with me. I had re-
course to my purse, and soon brought the poor
devil to such a pass, that in order to save his
credit he was obliged to become bankrupt a
second time, and hasten over the frontier. Thus
I got rid of him. In this neighborhood I made
many idlers and good-for-nothing fellows.

With all the royal splendor and expenditure
by which I made all succumb to me, I still in
my own house lived very simply and retired.
I had established the strictest circumspection as
a rule. No one except Bendel, under any pre-
tence whatever, was allowed to enter the rooms
which I inhabited. So long as the sun shone, I
kept myself shut up there, and it was said the
Graf is employed in his cabinet. With this
employment numerous couriers stood in con-
nexion, whom I, for every trifle, sent out and
received. I received company alone under my
trees, or in my hall arranged and lighted accord-
ing to BendeTs plan. When I went out, on
which occasions it was necessary that I should
be constantly watched by the Argus eyes of
Bendel, it was only to the Forester's Garden,
for the sake of one alone ; for my love was the
innermost heart of my life.

Oh, my good Chamisso ! I will hope that thou

CHAMISSO.

555

hast not yet forgotten what love is ! I leave much
unmentioiied here to thee. Mina was really an
amiable, kind, good child. I had taken her
whole imagination captive. She could not, in
her humility, conceive how she could be worthy
that I should alone have fixed my regard on
her ; and she returned love for love with all the
youthful power of an innocent heart. She loved
like a woman, offering herself wliolly up; self-
forgetting; living wholly and solely for him
who was her life ; regardless if she herself
perished ; — that is to say — she really loved.

But I — oh what terrible hours — terrible and
yet worthy that I should wish them back again,
— have I often wept on Benders bosom, when,
after the first unconscious intoxication, I recol-
lected myself; looked sharply into myself; — I,
without a shadow, with knavish selfishness de-
stroying this angel, this pure soul which I had
deceived and stolen. Then did I resolve to
reveal myself to her; then did I swear with a
most passionate oath *to tear myself from her,
and to fly; then did I burst out into tears, and
concert with Bendel how in the evening I should
visit her in the Forester's garden.

At other times I flattered myself with great
expectations from the rapidly approaching visit
from the grey man, and wept again when I had
in vain tried to believe in it. I had calculated
the day on which I expected again to see the
fearful one ; for he had said in a year and a
day; and I believed his word.

The parents, good honorable old people, who
loved their only child extremely, were amazed
at the connexion, as it already stood, and they
knew not what to do in it. Earlier they could
not have believed that the Graf Peter could
think only of their child; but now he really
loved her and was beloved again. The mother
was probably vain enough to believe in the
probability of an union, and to seek for it; the
sound masculine understanding of the father did
not give way to such overstretched imaginations.
Both were persuaded of the purity of my love!
they could do nothing more than pray for their
child.

I have laid my hand on a letter from Mina
of this date, which I still retain. Yes, this is
her own writing. I transcribe it for thee.

" I am a weak silly maiden, and cannot be-
lieve that my beloved, because I love him
dearly, dearly, will make the poor girl unhappy.
Ah ! thou art so kind, so inexpressibly kind, but
do not misunderstand me. Thou shalt sacrifice
nothing for me, desire to sacrifice nothing for
me. Oh God ! I should hate myself if thou
didst! No — thoii hast made me immeasurably
happy; hast taught me to love thee. Away! 1
know my own fate. Graf Peter belongs not to
me, he belongs to the world. I will be proud
when I hear — ' that was he, and that was he
again, — and that has he accomplished; there
they have worshipped him, and there they have
deified him !' See, when I think of this, then
am I angr} with thee, that with a simple child

thou canst forget thy high destiny. Away ! or
the thought will make me miserable I I — oh !
who through thee am so happy, so blessed.
Have I not woven, too, an olive branch and a
rosebud into thy life, as into the wreath which
I was allowed to present to thee? I have thee
in my heart, my beloved, fear not to leave me.
I will die oh ! so happy, so ineffably happy
through thee !"

Thou canst imagine how the words must cut
through my heart. I explained to her that I
was not what people believed me, that I was
only a rich but infinitely miserable man. That
a curse rested on me, which must be the only
secret between us, since I was not yet without
hope that it should be loosed. That this was
the poison of my days ; that I might drag her
down with me into the gulph, — she who was
the sole light, the sole happiness, the sole heart
of my life. Then wept she again, because I
was unhappy. Ah, she was so loving, so kind !
To spare me but one tear, she, and with what
transport, would have sacrificed herself without
reserve.

In the mean time she was far from rightly
comprehending my words; she conceived in
me some prince on whom had fallen a heavy
bann, some high and honored head, and her
imagination amidst heroic pictures limned forth
her lover gloriously.

Once I said to her — "Mina, the last day in
the next month may change my fate and decide
it, — if not I must die, for I will not make thee
unhappy." Weeping she hid her head in my
bosom. "If thy fortune changes, let me know
that thou art happy. I have no claim on thee.
Art thou wretched, bind me to thy wretched-
ness, that I may help thee to bear it."

" Maiden ! maiden ! take it back, that word,
that foolish word which escaped thy lips. And
knowest thou this wretchedness "? Knowest thou
this curse ? Knowest who thy love, — what he ?
Seest thou not that I convulsively shrink together,
and have a secret from thee ?" She fell sobbing
to my feet, and repeated with.oaths her intreaty.
I announced to the Forest-master, who enter-
ed, that it was my intention on the first ap-
proaching of the month to solicit the hand of his
daughter. I fixed precisely this time, because '
in the interim many things might occur which
might influence my fortunes. That I was un-
changeable in my love to his daughter.

The good man was quite startled as he heard
such words out of the mouth of Graf Peter. He
fell on my neck, and again became quite ashamed
to have thus forgotten himself Then he began
to doubt, to weigh, and to enquire. He spoke
of dowry, security, and the fortune for his be-
loved child. I thanked him for reminding me
of these things. I told him that I desired to
settle myself in this country where I seemed to
be beloved, and to lead a care-free life. I begged
him to purchase the finest estate that the coun-
try had to oifer, in the name of his daughter,
and to charge the cost to me. A father could,

556

CHAMISSO.

in such matter, best serve a lover. It gave him
enough to do, for everywhere a stranger was
before him, and he could only purchase for
about a million.

My thus employing him was, at the bottom,
an innocent scheme to remove him to a distance,
and I had employed him similarly before. For
I must confess that he was rather wearisome.
The good mother was, on the contrary, some-
what deaf, and not like him jealous of the honor
of entertaining the Graf

The mother joined us. The happy people
pressed me to stay longer with them that even-
ing,— I dared not remain another minute. I
saw already the rising moon glimmer on the
horizon, — my time was up.

The next evening I went again to the For-
ester's garden. I had thrown my cloak over
my shoulders and pulled my hat over my eyes.
I advanced to ]\Iina. As she looked up and
beheld me, she gave an involuntary start, and
there stood again clear before my soul the ap-
parition of that terrible night when I showed
myself in the moonlight without a shadow. It
was actually she! But had she also recognised
me again? She was silent and thoughtful; on
my bosom lay a hundred-weight pressure. I
arose from my seat. She threw herself silently
weeping on my bosom. I went.

I now found her often in tears. It grew
darker and darker in my soul ; the parents
meanwhile swam in supreme felicity; the
eventful day passed on sad and sullen as a
thunder cloud. The eve of the day was come.
I could scarcely breathe. I had in precaution
filled several chests with gold. I watched the
midnight hour approach. — It struck.

I now sat, my eye fixed on the fingers of the
clock, counting the minutes, the seconds, like
dagger-strokes. At every noise which arose, I
started up ; — the day broke. The leaden hours
crowded upon each other. It was noon — even-
ing— night : as the clock fingers sped on, hope
withered ; it struck eleven and nothing ap-
peared ; the last minutes of the last hour fell,
and nothing appeared. It struck the first stroke,
— the last stroke of the twelfth hour, and I sank
hopeless and in boundless tears upon my bed.
On the morrow I should — forever shadowless,
solicit the hand of my beloved. Towards morn-
ing an anxious sleep pressed down my eyelids.

CHAPTER T.

It was still early morning when voices, which
were raised in my ante-chamber in violent dis-
pute, awoke me. I listened. Bendel forbade
entrance ; Rascal swore high and hotly that he
would receive no commands from his fellow,
and insisted in forcing his way into my room.
The good Bendel warned him that such words,
came they to my ear, would turn him out of his
most advantageous service. Rascal threatened
to lay hands on him if he any longer obstructed
his entrance.

I had half dressed myself. 1 flung the door

wrathfully open, and advanced to Rascal —
" What wantest thou, villain ?" He stepped two
strides backwards, and ref)lied quite coolly:
" To request you most humbly, Herr Graf, just
to allow me to see your shadow ; — the sun
shines at this moment so beautifully in the
court."

I was struck, as with thunder. It was some-
time before I could recover my speech. " How
can a servant towards his master" — He inter-
rupted very calmly my speech —

"A servant may be a very honorable man,
and not be willing to serve a shadowless
master — I demand my discharge." It was ne-
cessary to try other chords. "But honest, dear
Rascal, who has put the imlucky idea into your
head? How canst thou believe — ?"

He proceeded in the same tone — "People
will assert that you have no shadow — and, in
short, you show me your shadow, or give me
my discharge."

Bendel, pale and trembling, but more discreet
than I, gave me a sign. I sought refuge in the
all-silencing gold ; and that had lost its power.
He threw it at my feet. " From a shadowless
man I accept nothing!" He turned his back
upon me, and went most deliberately out of the
room with his hat upon his head and whistling
a tune. I stood there with Bendel as one turned
to stone, thoughtless, motionless, gazing after him.

Heavily sighing and with death in my heart,
I i^repared myself to redeem my promise, and
like a criminal before his judge, to appear in the
Forest-master's garden. I alighted in the dark
arbor, which was named after me, and where
they would be sure also at this time to await
me. The mother met me, care-free and joyous.
Mina sate there, pale and lovely as the first
snow which often in the autumn kisses the last
flowers, and then instantly dissolves into bitter
water. The Forest-master went agitatedly to
and fro, a written paper in his hand, and ap-
peared to force down many things in himself
which painted themselves with rapidly alter-
nating flushes and paleness on his otherwise
immovable countenance. He came up to me
as I entered and with frequently choked words,
begged to speak with me alone. The path in
which he invited me to follow him, conducted
towards an open, sunny part of the garden. I
sunk speechless on a seat, and then followed a
long silence, which even the good mother dared
not interrupt.

The Forest-master raged continually with
unequal steps to and fro in the arbor, and sud-
denly halting before me, glanced on the paper
which he held, and demanded of me with a
searching look —

"May not, Herr Graf, a certain Peter Schle-
mihl be not quite unknown to you ? ' I was
silent. " A man of superior character and sin-
gular attainments — " He paused for an answer.

"And suppose I were the same man?"

"Who," added he vehemently — " has by some
means, lost his shadow !"

CHAMISSO.

557

"Oh, my foreboding, my foreboding!" ex-
claimed Mina, " Yes, I have long known it, he
has no shadow," and she flung herself into the
arms of her mother, who terrified, clasped her
convulsively, and upbraided her that to her own
hurt she had kept to herself such a secret. But
she, like Aretliusa, was changed into a fountain
of tears, which at the sound of my voice flowed
still more copiously, and at my approach burst
forth in torrents.

"And you," again grimly began the Forest-
master, "and you, with unparalleled impudence,
have made no scruple to deceive these and my-
self, and you give out that you love her whom
you have so deeply humbled. See, there, how she
weeps and writhes! Oh, horrible! horrible!"

I had to such a degree lost all reflection, that
talking like one crazed, I began — "And, after
all, a shadow is nothing but a shadow ; one can
do very well without that, and it is not worth
while to make such a riot about it." But I felt
so sharply the baselessness of what I was saying,
that I stopped of myself, without his deigning
ine an answer, and I then added, — " What one
has lost at one time, may be found again at
another!"

He rushed fiercely towards me — "Confess to
me, sir ! confess to me, how became you deprived
of your shadow!"

I was compelled again to lie. "A rude fel-
low one day trod so heavily on my shadow that
he rent a great hole in it. I have only sent it
to be mended, for money can do much, and I
was to have received it back yesterday."

"Good, sir, very good!" replied the Forest-
master. " You solicit my daughter's Viand ;
others do the same. I have, as her father, to
care for her. I give you three days in which
you may see after a shadow. If you appear
before me within these three days with a good,
well-fitting shadow, you shall be welcome to
me ; but on the fourth day — I tell you plainly, —
my daughter is the wife of another."

I would yet attempt to speak a word to Mina,
but she clung, sobbing violently, only closer to
her mother's breast, who motioned me to be
silent and to withdraw. I reeled away, and
the world seemed to close itself behind me.

Escaped from Bendel's aftectionate oversight,
I traversed in erring course, woods and fields.
The perspiration of my agony dropped from my
brow, a hollow groaning convulsed my bosom,
madness raged within me.

I know not how long this had continued,
when on a sunny heath, I felt myself plucked
by the sleeve. I stood still and looked round —
it was the man in the grey coat, who seemed to
have run himself qviite out of breath in pursuit
of me. He immediately began :

"I had announced myself for to-day, but you
could not wait the time. There is nothing amiss,
however, yet. You consider the matter, receive
your shadow again in exchange, which is at
your service, and turn immediately back. You
shall be welcome in the Forest-master's garden;

the whole has been only a joke. Rascal, who
has betrayed you, and who seeks the hand of
your bride, I will take charge of; the fellow is
ripe."

I stood there as still asleep. "Announced for
to-day ?" I counted over again the time, — he
was right. I had constantly miscalculated a
day. I sought with the right hand in my bosom
for my purse : he guessed my meaning, and
stepped two paces backwards.

"No, Herr Graf, that is in too good hands,
keep you that." I stared at him with eyes of
enquiring wonder, and he proceeded : " I re-
quest only a trifle, as memento. You be so
good as to set your name to this paper." On
the parchment stood the words :

" By virtue of this my signature, I make over
my soul to the holder of this, after its natural
separation from the body."

I gazed with speechless amazement, alter-
nately at the writing and the grey unknown.
Meanwhile, with anew made pen he had taken
up a drop of blood which flowed from a fresh
thorn-scratch on my hand and presented it to me.

"Who are you then?" at length I asked him.

"What signifies if?" he replied. "And is
not that plain enough to be seen in me? A
poor devil, a sort of learned man and doctor,
who in return for precious arts, receives from
his friends poor thanks, and for himself, has no
other amusement on earth but to make his little
experiments. — But, however, sign. To the right
there — P eter Schiemihi.."

I shook my head, and said, " Pardon me, sir,
I do not sign that."

"Not?" replied he, in amaze, "and why not?"

"It seems to me to a certain degree serious to
stake my soul on a shadow."

"So, so," repeated he, "serious!" and he
laughed almost in my face. " And if I might
venture to ask, what sort of a thing is that soul
of yours? Have you ever seen it? And what
do you think of doing with it when you are
dead ? Be glad that you have found an ama-
teur who in your lifetime is willing to pay you
for the bequest of this X, of this galvanic power,
or polarised Activity, or whatever this silly thing
may be, with something actual; that is to say,
with your real shadow, through which you may
arrive at the hand of your beloved, and at the
accomplishment of all your desires. Will you
rather push forth, and deliver up that poor
young creature to that low bred scoundrel Ras-
cal ? No, you must witness that with your own
eyes. Here, I lend you the Tarn-cap," (the cap
of invisibility) — he drew it from hts pocket —
"and we will proceed unseen to the Forester's
garden."

I must confess that I was excessively ashamed
of being ridiculed by this man. I detested him
from the bottom of )ny heart ; and I believe that
this personal antipathy withheld me, more than
principle, or prejudice, from purchasing my
shadow, essential as it was, by the required
signature. The thought also was intolerable to
^47*

558

CHAMISSO.

me of making the excursion which he proposed,
in his company. To see this abhorred sneak,
this mocking cobold, step between me and my
beloved, two torn and bleeding hearts, revolted
my innermost feeling. I regarded what was
past as predestined, and my wretchedness as
unchangeable, and turning to the man, I said to
him,

"Sir, I have sold you my shadow for this in
itself most excellent purse, and I have suffi-
ciently repented of it. Let the bargain be at an
end, in God's name !" He shook his head, and
made a very gloomy face. I continued, "I will
then sell you nothing further of mine, even for
this offered price of my shadow ; and, therefore,
I shall sign nothing. From this you may un-
derstand, that the cap-wearing to which you
invite me, must be much more amusing for you
than for me. Excuse me, therefore ; and as it
cannot now be otherwise, let us part."

'•It grieves me, Monsieur Schlemihl, that you
obstinately decline the business which I propose
to you. Perhaps another time I may be more
fortunate. Till our speedy meeting again ! —
Apropos : Permit me yet to show you, that the
things which I purchase I by no means suffer
to grow mouldy, but honorably preserve, and
that they are well used by me."

With that he drew my shadow "out of his
pocket and with a dexterous throw unfolding it
on the heath, spread it out on the sunny side of
his feet, so that he walked between two attend-
ant shadows, his own and mine, for mine must
equally obey him, and accommodate itself to
and follow all his movements.

When I once saw my poor shadow again,
after so long an absence, and beheld it degraded
to so vile a service, whilst I, on its account, was
in such unspeakable trouble, my heart broke,
and I began bitterly to weep. The detested
wretch swaggered with the plunder snatched
from me, and impudently renewed his proposal.

" You can yet have it. A stroke of the pen,
and you snatch therewith the poor unhappy
Alina from the claws of the villain into the arms
of the most honored Herr Graf; — as observed,
only a stroke of the pen."

My tears burst forth with fresh impetuosity,
but I turned away and motioned to him to
withdraw himself. Bendel, who filled with
anxiety, had traced me to this spot, at this mo-
ment arrived. When the kind, good soul, found
me weeping, and saw my shadow, which could
not be mistaken, in the power of the mysterious
grey man, he immediately resolved, was it even
by force, to restore to me the possession of my
property; and as he did not understand going
much about with tender phrases, he immediately
assaulted the man with words, and without
much asking, ordered him bluntly to allow that
which was my own, instantly to follow me.
Instead of answer, he turned his back, and
went. But Bendel up with his buckthorn cud-
gel which he carried, and following on his
heels, without mercy, and with reiterated com-

matjds to give up the shadow, made him feel
the full force of his vigorous arm. He, as ac-
customed to such handling, ducked his head, set
up his shoulders, and with silent and deliberate
steps pursued his way over the heath, at once
going off with my shadow and my faithful ser-
vant. I long heard the heavy sounds roll over
the waste, till they were finally lost in the dis-
tance. I was alone, as before, with my misery.

CHAPTER TI.

Left alone on the wild heath, I gave free
current to my countless tears, relieving my heart
from an ineffably weary weight. But I saw no
bound, no outlet, no end to my intolerable mi-
sery, and I drank besides with savage thirst of
the fresh poison which the unknown had poured
into my wounds. When I called the image of
Mina before my soul, and the dear, sweet form
appeared pale and in tears, as I saw her last in
my shame, then stepped the shadow of the im-
pudent and mocking Rascal between her and
me ; I covered my face and fled through the
wild. But the hideous apparition left me not,
but pursued me in my flight, till I sank breath-
less on the ground, and moistened it with a
fresh torrent of tears.

And all for a sliadow. And this shadow a
pen-stroke had obtained for me. I thought on
the strange proposition and my refusal. All was
chaos in me. I had no longer either judgment
or mastership of thought.

The day went over. I stilled my hunger
with wild fruits; my thirst in the nearest moun-
tain stream. The night fell ; I lay down beneath
a tree. The damp morning awoke me out of a
heavy sleep in which I heard myself rattle in
the throat as in death. Bendel must have lost
all trace of me, and it rejoiced me to think so.
I would not return again amongst men before
whom I fled in terror, like the timid game of
the mountains. Thus I lived through three
weary days.

On the fourth morning I found myself on a
sandy plain bright with the sun, and sate on the
fragment of a rock in its beams, for I loved now
to enjoy its long- withheld countenance. I still
fed iny heart with its despair. A light rustle
startled me. Ready for flight I threw round
me a hurried glance ; I saw no one, but in the
sunny sand there glided past me a human sha-
dow, not unlike my own, which wandering
there alone, seemed to have got away from its
possessor. There awoke in me a mighty yearn-
ing. "Shadow," said I, "dost thou seek thy
master ? I will be he," and I sprang forward to
seize it. I thought that if I succeeded in tread-
ing on it so that its feet touched mine, it probably
would remain hanging there, and in time ac-
commodate itself to me.

The shadow, on my moving, fled before me,
and I was compelled to begin a strenuous chase
of the light fugitive, for which the thought of
rescuing myself from my fearful condition could
alone have endowed me with the requisite

CHAMISSO.

559

vigor. It flew towards a wood, at a great dis-
tance, in which I must of necessity, have lost it.
I perceived this, — a horror convulsed my heart,
inflamed my desire, added wings to my speed ;
I gained evidently on the shadow, I came con-
tinually nearer, I must certainly reach it. Sud-
denly it stopped, and turned towards me. Like
a lion on its prey, I shot with a mii^hty spring
forwards to make seizure of it, — and dashed
unexpectedly against a hard and bodily object.
Invisibly I received the most unprecedented
blows on the ribs that mortal man probably
ever received.

The efl^ect of the terror in me was convul-
sively to close my arms, and firmly to enclose
that which stood unseen before me. In the
rapid transaction, I plunged forward to the
ground, but backwards and under me was a
man whom I had embraced and who now first
became visible.

The whole occurrence became now very
naturally explicable to me. The man must
have carried the invisible bird's nest which ren-
ders him who holds it, but not his shadow, im-
perceptible, and had now cast it away. I
glanced round, soon discovered the shadow of
the invisible nest itself, leaped up and towards
it, and did not miss the precious prize. Invisi-
ble and shadowless, I held the nest in my hand.

The man swiftly springing up, gazing round
instantly after his fortunate conqueror, descried
on the wide sunny plain neither him nor his
shadow, for which he sought with especial
avidity. For that I was myself entirely sha-
dowless he had no leisure to remark, nor could
he imagine such a thing. Having convinced
himself that every trace had vanished, he turned
his hand against himself, and lore his hair. To
me, however, the acquired treasure had given
the power and desire to mix again amongst
men. I did not want for self-satisfying pallia-
tives for my base robbery, or rather I had no
need of them ; and to escape from every thought
of the kind, I hastened away, not even looking
round at the unhappy one, whose deploring
voice I long heard resounding behind me. —
Thus, at least, appeared tome the circumstances
at the time.

I was on fire to proceed to the Forester's
garden, and there myself to discern the truth of
what the Detested One had told me. I knew
not, however, where I was. I climbed the next
hill, in order to look round over the country, and
perceived from its summit the near city, and the
Forester's garden lying at my feet. My heart
beat violently, and tears of another kind than
what I had till now shed, rushed into my eyes.
I should see her again ! Anxious desire hastened
my steps down the most direct path. I passed
unseen some peasants who came out of the city.
They were talking of me, of Rascal and the
Forest-master; I would hear nothing, — I hurried
past.

I entered the garden, all the tremor of expec-
tation in my bosom. I seemed to hear laughter

near me. I shuddered, threw a rapid glance
round me, but could discover nobody. I ad-
vanced farther. I seemed to perceive a sound
as of man's steps at hand, but there was nothing
to be seen. I believed myself deceived by my
ear. It was yet early, no one in Graf Peter's
arbor, the garden still empty. I traversed the
well-known paths. I penetrated to the very
front of the dwelling. The same noise more
distinctly followed me. I seated myself with
an agonised heart on a bench which stood in
the sunny space before the house-door. It
seemed as if I had heard the unseen cobold,
laughing in mockery, seat himself near me.
The key turned in tlie door, it opened, and the
Forest-master issued forth with papers in his
hand. A mist seemed to envelope my head. I
looked up, and — horror ! the man in the grey
coat sate by me, gazing on me with a satanic
leer. He had drawn his Tarncap at once over
his head and mine; at his feet lay his and my
shadow peaceably by each other. He played
negligently with the well-known paper which
he held in his hand, and as the Forest-master,
busied with his documents, went to and fro in
the shadow of the arbor, he stooped familiarly
to my ear, and whispered in it these words,
"So then you have notwithstanding accepted
my invitation, and here sit we for once two
heads under one cap. All right! all right!
But now give me my bird's nest again ; you
have no further occasion for it, and are too
honorable a man to wish to withhold it from
me ; but there needs no thanks : I assure you
that I have lent it you with the most hearty
good will." He took it unceremoniously out of
my hand, put it in his pocket, and laughed at
me, and that so loud that the Forest-master
himself looked round at the noise. I sate there
as if changed to stone.

"But you must allow," continued he, " that
such a cap is much more convenient. It covers
not only your person but your shadow at the
same time, and as many others as you have a
mind to take with you. See you, to-day again,
I conduct two of them" — he laughed again.
"Mark this, Schlemihl, what we at first won't
do widi a good will, that will we in the end be
compelled to. I still fancy you will buy that
thing from me, take back the bride (for it is yet
time), and we leave Rascal dangling on the gal-
lows, an easy thing for us so long as rope is to
be had. Hear you — I will give you also my
cap into the bargain."

The mother came forth, and the conversation
began. "How goes it with Minal"

"She weeps."

"Silly child! it cannot be altered!"

" Certainly not; but to give her to another so
soon. Oh, man ! thou art cruel to thy own
child."

" No, mother, that thou quite mistakest. When
she, even before she has wept out her childish
tears, finds herself the wife of a very rich and
honorable man, she will awake comforted out

560

C H A M I S S O.

of her trouble as out of a dream, and thank God
and us, that wilt thou see !"

" God grant it!"'

" She possesses now, indeed a very respectable
property ; but after the stir that this unlucky
aflair with tlie adventurer has made, canst thou
believe that a partner so suitable as Mr. Rascal
could be readily found for her? Dost thou know
what a fortune Mr. Rascal possesses?"' He has
paid six millions for estates here in the country
free from all debets. I have had the title deeds
in my own hands ! He it was who everywhere
had the start of me ; and besides this, has in his
possession bills on Thomas John for about five
and a half millions."

"He must have stolen enormously."

'•"What talk is that again! He has wisely
saved what would otherwise have been lavished
away."

" A man that has worn livery — "

" Stupid stuff! he has, however, an unblem-
ished shadow."

" Thou art right, but — "

The man in the greycoat laughed and looked
at me. The door opened and Mina came forth.
She supported herself on the arm of a chamber-
maid, silent tears rolled down her lovely pale
cheeks. She seated herself on a stool which
was placed for her under the lime trees, and
her father took a chair by her. He tenderly
took her hand, and addressed her with tender
words, while she began violently to weep.

"Thou art my good, dear child, and thou wilt
be reasonable, wilt not wish to distress thy old
fadier, who seeks only thy happiness. I can
well conceive it, dear heart, that it has sadly
shaken thee. Thou art wonderfully escaped
from thy misfortunes ! Before we discovered
the scandalous imposition, thou hadst loved this
unworthy one greatly; see, Mina, I know it,
and upbraid thee not for it. I myself, dear
child, also loved him so long as I looked upon
him as a great gentleman. But now thou seest
how different all has turned out. What! every
poodle has his own shadow, and should my
dear child have a husband — no! thou thinkst,
indeed, no more about him. Listen, Mina. N^ow
a man solicits thy hand, who does not shun the
sunshine, an honorable man, who truly is no
prince, but who possesses ten millions; ten
times more than thou; a man who will make
my dear child happy. Answer me not, make
no opposition, be my good, dutiful daughter, let
thy loving father care for thee, and dry thy
tears. Promise me to give thy hand to Mr.
Rascal. Say, wilt thou promise me this?"'

She answered with a faint voice, — ■'■ I have
no will, no wish further upon earth. Happen
with me what my father will."

At this moment ilr. Rascal was announced,
and stepped impudently into the circle. Mina
lay in a swoon. My detested companion glanced
archly at me, and whispered in hurried words —
"And that can you endure? What then flows
instead of blood in your veins?" He scratched

with a hasty movement a slight wound in my
hand, blood flowed, and he continued — "Ac-
tually red blood! — So sign then!"' I had the
parchment and the pen in my hand.

CHAPTER VII.

Mt wish, dear Chamisso, is merely to submit
myself to thy judgment, not to endeavor to bias
it. I have long passed the severest sentence on
myself, for I have nourished the tormenting
worm in my heart. It hovered during this
solemn moment of my life, incessantly before
my soul, and I could only lift my eyes to it with
a despairing glance, with humility and contri-
tion. Dear friend, he who in levity only sets
his foot out of the right road, is unawares con-
ducted into other paths, which draw him down-
wards, and ever downwards; he then sees in
vain the guiding stars glitter in heaven ; there
remains to him no choice; he must descend un-
pausingly the declivity, and become a voluntary
sacrifice to Nemesis. After the false step which
had laid the curse upon me, I had, sinning
through love, forced myself into the fortunes of
another being, and what remained for me but
that where I had sowed destruction, where
speedy salvation was demanded of me, I should
blindly rush forward to the rescue ? — for the
last hour struck ! Think not so meanly of me,
my Adelbert, as to imagine that I should have
regarded any price that was demanded as too
high, that I should have begrudged anytliing
that was mine even more than my gold. No,
Adelbert! but my soul was possessed with the
most unconquerable hatred of this mysterious
sneaker along crooked paths. I might do him
injustice, but every degree of association with
him maddened me. And here stepped forth,
as so frequently in my life, and as especially
often in the history of the world, an event in-
stead of an action. Since then I have achieved
reconciliation with myself. I have learned, in
the first place, to reverence Necessity ; and
what is more than the action performed, the
event accomplished — her property. Then I have
learned to venerate this Necessity as a wise
Providence, which lives through that great col-
lective Machine in which we ofliciate simply as
co-operating, impelling and impelled wheels.
What shall be, must be; what should be, hap-
pened, and not without that Providence, M'hich
I vdtimately learned to reverence in my own
fate, and in the fate of her on whom mine thus
impinged.

I know not whether I shall ascribe it to the
excitement of my soul under the impulse of such
mighty sensations ; or to the exhaustion of my
physical strength, which during the last days
such unwonted privations had enfeebled ; or
whedier, finally, to the desolating commotion
which the presence of this grey fiend excited in
my whole nature; be that as it may, as I was
on the point of signing, I fell into a deep swoon,
and lay a long time as in the arms of death.

Stamping of feet and curses were the first

CHAMISSO.

561

sounds which struck my ear, as I returned to
consciousness. I opened my eyes: it was dark ;
my detested attendant was busied scolding about
me. "Is not that to behave like an old woman?
Up with yon, man ! and complete off-hand what
you have resolved on, if you have not taken
another thought and had ratlier blubber." I
raised myself with difficulty from the ground
and gazed in silence around. It was late in
the evening; festive music resounded from the
brightly illuminated Forester's house, various
groups of people wandered through the garden
walks. One couple came near in conversation,
and seated themselves on the bench which I
had just quitted. They talked of the union this
morning solemnized between Mr. Rascal and
the daughter of the house. So, then, it had
taken place!

I tore the Tarncap of the already vanished
Unknown from my head, and hastened in
brooding silence towards the garden gate,
plunging myself into the deepest night of the
thicket, and striking along the path past Graf
Peter's arbor. But invisibly my tormenting
spirit accompanied me, pursuing me with keen-
est reproaches. "These then are one's thanks
for the pains which one has taken to support
Monsieur, who has weak nerves, through the
long precious day. And one shall act the fool
in the play. Good, Mr. Wronghead, fly you
from me if you please, but we are, nevertheless,
inseparable. You have my gold and I your
shadow, and this will allow us no repose. Did
anybody ever hear of a shadow forsaking its
master ? Your's draws me after you till you
take it again into favor, and I get rid of it.
What you have hesitated to do out of fresh
pleasure, will you, only too late, be compelled
to seek through new weariness and disgust.
One cannot escape one"s fate." He continued
speaking in the same tone. I fled in vain; he
relaxed not, but ever present insultingly talked
of gold and shadow. I could come to no single
thought of my own.

I struck through unfrequented ways towards
my house. When I stood before it, and gazed
at it, I could scarcely recognise it. No light
shone through the dashed-in windows. The
doors were closed ; no throng of servants was
moving therein. There was a laugh near me.
'•Ha! ha! so goes it! But you'll probably find
your Bendel at home, for he was the other day
purposely sent back so weary, that he has most
likely kept his bed since." He laughed again.
"He will have a story to tell! Well then, for
the present, good night ! We meet speedily
again !"

I had rung repeatedly ; light appeared ; Ben-
del demanded from within who rung. When
the good man recognised my voice, he could
scarcely restrain his joy. The door flew open,
and we stood weeping in each other's arms. I
found liim greatly changed, weak and ill ; but
for me, — my hair was become quite grey!

He conducted me through the desolated rooms
3 V

to an inner apartment which had been spared.
He brought food and wine, and we seated our-
selves, and he again began to weep. He related
to me that he the other day had cudgelled the
grey-clad man whom he had encountered with
my shadow, so long and so far, that he had lost
all trace of me, and had sunk to the earth in
utter fatigue. That after this, as he could not
find me, he returned home, whither presently
the mob, at Rascal's instigation, came rushing
in fury, dashed in the windows, and gave full
play to their lust of demolition. Thus did they
to their benefactor. The servants had fled va-
rious ways. The police had ordered me, as a
suspicious person to quit the city, and had al-
lowed only four-and-twenty hours in which to
evacuate their jurisdiction. To that which I
already knew of Rascal's affluence and mar-
riage, he had yet much to add. This scoundrel,
from whom all had proceeded that had been
done against me, must, from the beginning, have
been in jiossession of my secret. It appeared
that attracted by gold, he had contrived to thrust
himself upon me, and at the very first had pro-
cured a key to the gold cupboard, where he had
laid the foundation of that fortune, whose aug-
mentation he could now afford to despise.

All this Bendel narrated to me with abundant
tears, and then wept for joy that he again beheld
me, again had me ; and that after he had long
doubted whither this misfortune might have led
me, he saw me bear it so calmly and collectedly;
for such an aspect had despair now assumed in
me. I beheld my misery unchangeably before
me ; I had wept out to it my last tear ; not
another cry could be extorted from my heart ; I
presented to it my bare head with chill indif-
ference.

" Bendel," I said, " thou knowest my lot. Not
without earlier blame has my heavy punish-
inent befallen me. Thou, innocent man, shall
no longer bind thy destiny to mine. I do not
desire it. I ride to-night still forward ; saddle
me a horse ; I ride alone ; thou remainest : it is
my will. Here still must remain some chests
of gold ; that retain thou ; but I will alone wan-
der incessantly through the world : but if ever a
happier hour should smile upon me, and fortune
look on me with reconciled eyes, then will I
remember thee, for I have wept upon thy firmly
faithful bosom in heavy and agonising hours."

With a broken heart was this honest man
compelled to obey this last command of his
master, at whicl his soul shrunk with terror. I
was deaf to his prayers, to his representations,
blind to his tears. He brought me out my steed.
Once more I pressed the weeping man to my
bosom, sprung into the saddle, and vmder the
shroud of night hastened from the grave of my
existence, regardless which way my horse con-
ducted me, since I had longer on the earth, no
aim, no wish, no hope.

CHAPTER Till.

A PEDESTRiAX soou joined me, who begged,

562

C H A M I S S 0 .

after he liad ^valked for some time by the side
of my horse, that as we went the same way, he
inight be allowed to lay a cloak which he car-
ried, on the steed behind me. I permitted it in
silence. He thanked me with easy politeness
for the trifling service; praised my horse, and
thence took occasion to extol the happiness and
power of the rich, and let himself, I know not
how, fall into a kind of monologue, in which he
had me now merely for a listener.

He unfolded his views of life and of the
world, and came very soon upon metaphysics,
in which the ultimate pretension extended to
the discovery of the word that should solve all
mysteries. He stated his premises with great
clearness and proceeded to the proofs.

Thou knowest, my friend, that I have clearly
discovered, since I have run through the schools
of the philosophers, that I have by no means a
turn for philosophical speculations, and that I
have totally renounced for myself this field.
Since then I have left many things to them-
selves ; abandoned the desire to know and to
comprehend many things ; and as thou thyself
advised me, have, trusting to my common sense,
followed as far as I was able the voice within
me on the direct course. Now this rhetorician
seemed to me to raise with great talent a firmly
put-together fabric, which was at once self-based
and self-supported, and stood as by an innate
necessity. I missed, however, in it completely,
what most of all I was desirous to find, and so
it became lor me merely a work of art, whose or-
namental compactness and completeness served
only to charm the eye; nevertheless I listened
willingly to the eloquent man who drew my
attention from my grief to him ; and I would
have gladly yielded myself wholly up to him,
had he captivated my heart as much as my un-
derstanding.

Meanwhile the time had passed, and unob-
served the dawn had already enlightened the
heaven. I was horrified as I looked suddenly
up, and saw the pomp of colors unfold itself in
the east, which announced the approach of the
sun ; while at this hour in which the shadows
ostentatiously display themselves in their great-
est extent, there was no protection from it; no
refuge in the open country to be descried. And
I was not alone ! I cast a glance at my com-
panion, and was again terror-struck. It was no
other than the man in the grey coat!

He smiled at my alarm, and went on without
allowing me to gel in a word. 4|'Let, however,
as is the way of the world, our mutual advan-
tage for awhile unite us. It is all in good time
for separating. The road here along the moun-
tain-range, though you have not yet thought of
it, is. nevertheless, the only one into which you
could prudently have struck. Down into the
valley you may not venture ; and still less will
you desire to return again over the heights,
whence you are come ; and this is also exactly
my way. I see that you already turn pale be-
fore the rising sun. I will, for the time we keep

company, lend you your shadow, and you, on
that account, tolerate me in your society. You
have no longer your Bendel with you, 1 will do
you good service. You do not like me, and I
am sorry for it; but, notwithstanding, ycu can
make use of me. The devil is not so black as
he is painted. Yesterday you vexed me, it is
true; I will not upbraid you with it to-day ; and
I have already shortened the way hitlier for
you ; that you must allow. Only just take your
shadow again awhile on trial."

The sun had ascended ; people appeared on
the road ; I accepted, though with internal re-
pugnance, the proposal. Smiling he let my
shadow glide to the ground, which immediately
took its place on that of the horse, and trotted
gaily by my side. I was in the strangest state
of mind. I rode pasta group of country-people,
who made way for a man of consequence, re-
verently, and with bared heads. I rode on, and
gazed with greedy eyes and a palpitating heart
on this my quondam shadow which I had now
borrowed from a stranger, yes, from an enemy.
The man went carelessly near me, and even
whistled a tune. He on foot, I on horseback ;
a dizziness seized me ; the temptation was too
great; I suddenly turned the reins; clapped
spnrs to the horse, and struck at full speed into
a side-path. But I carried not ofl' the shadow,
which at the turning glided from the horse, and
awaited its lawful possessor on the high road.
I was compelled with shame to turn back. The
man in the grey coat when he had calmly fin-
ished his tune, laughed at me, set the shadow
right again for me; and informed me, that it
would then only hang fast and remain with me
when I was disposed to become the rightful
proprietor. "I hold you," continued he, "fast
by the shadow, and you cannot escape me. A
rich man, like you, needs shadow, it cannot be
otherwise, and you only are to blame that you
did not perceive that sooner."

I continued my journey on the same road ;
the comforts and the splendor of life again sur-
rounded me; I could move about free and con-
veniently, since I possessed a shadow, although
only a borrowed one ; and I everywhere inspired
the respect which riches command. But I car-
ried death in my heart. My strange companion,
who gave himself out as the unworthy servant
of the richest man in the world, possessed an
extraordinary professional readiness, prompt
and clever beyond comparison, the very model
of a valet for a rich man, but he stirred not from
my side, perpetually directing the conversation
towards me, and continually blabbing out the
most confidential matters; so that, at length,
were it only to be rid of him, I resolved to set-
tle the affair of the shadow. He was become
as burthensome to me as he was hateful. I was
even in fear of him. He had made me de-
pendent on him. He held me, after he had
conducted me back into the glory of the world,
which I had fled from. I was obliged to tole-
rate his eloquence upon myself, and felt, in fact.

CHAMISSO.

563

that he was in the right. A rich man in the
world must have a shadow, and so soon as I
desired to command the rank which he had
contrived again to make necessary to me, I saw
but one issue. By this, however, I stood fast; —
after having sacrificed my love, after my life
had been blighted, I would never sign away
my soul to this creature, for all the shadows in
the world. I knew not how it would end.

We sate, one day, before a cave which the
strangers who frequent these mountains, are
accustomed to visit. We heard there the rush
of subterranean streams roaring up from im-
measurable depths, and the stone cast in seemed,
in its resounding fall, to find no bottom. He
painted to me, as he often did, with a vivid
power of imagination and in the lustrous charms
of the most brilliant colors, the most carefully
finished pictures of what I might achieve in the
world by virtue of my purse, if I had but once
my shadow in my possession. With my elbows
rested on my knees, I kept my face concealed
in my hands, and listened to the false one, my
heart divided between the seduction and my
own strong will. In such an inward conflict I
could no longer contain myself, and the deciding
strife began.

" You appear, sir, to forget that I have indeed
allowed you, upon certain conditions, to remain
in my company, but that I have reserved my
perfect freedom."

"If you command it, I pack up."

He was accustomed to menace. I was silent.
He began immediately to roll up my shadow.
I tiu-ned pale, but I let it proceed. There fol-
lowed a long pause ; he first broke it.

"You cannot bear me, sir. You hate me; I
know it; yet why do you hate mel Is it be-
cause you attacked me on the highway, and
sought to deprive me by violence of my bird's
nest ? Or is it because you have endeavored in
a thievish manner, to cli^at me out of my pro-
perty, the shadow, which was entrusted to you
entirely on your honor? I, for my part, do not,
therefore, hate you. I find it quite natural that you
should seek to avail yourself of all your advan-
tages, cunning, and power. For the rest, that
you have the very strictest principles ; and that
you think like honor itself, is a taste that you
have, against which I have nothing to say. In
fact, I think not so strictly as you ; I merely act
as you think. Or have I at any time pressed
my finger on your throat in order to bring to me
your most precious soul, for which I have a
fancy? Have I, on account of my bartered
purse, let a servant loose on you? Have I
sought thus to swindle you out of it?" I had
nothing to oppose to this, and he proceeded. —
"Very good, sir! very good! you cannot endure
me: I know that very well, and am by no
means angry with you for it. We must part,
that is clear, and in fact, you begin to be very
wearisome to me. In order, then, to rid you of
my further, shame-inspiring presence, I counsel
yoix once more purchase this thing from me." I

extended to him the purse : " At that price ?" —
"No!"

I sighed deeply, and added, "Be it so, then.
I insist, sir, that we part, and that you, no longer,
obstruct my path in a world which it is to be
hoped, has room enough in it for us both." He
smiled, and replied, "I go, sir; but first let me
instruct you how you may ring for me when you
desire to see again, your most devoted servant.
You have only to shake your purse, so that the
eternal gold pieces therein jingle, and the sound
will instantly attract me. Every one thinks of
his own advantage in this world. You see that
I at the same time am thougVitful of yours, since
I reveal to you a new power. Oh ! this purse !
— had the moths already devoured your sha-
dow, that would still constitute a strong bond be-
tween us. Enough, you have me in my gold.
Should you have any commands, even when
far off, for your servant, you know that I can
show myself, very active in the service of my
friends, and the rich stand particularly well
with me. You have seen it yourself Only
your shadow, sir, — allow me to tell you that —
never again, except on one sole condition."

Forms of the past time swept before my soul.
I demanded hastily — " Had you a signature from
Mr. John?" He smiled. "With so good a friend
it was by no means necessary." " Where is he?
By God I will know it !" He plunged hesita-
tingly his hand into his pocket, and, dragged
thence by the hair, appeared Thomas John's
ghastly disfigured form, and the blue death-lipr.
moved themselves with heavy words — ''Justo
judicio Dei j'udicatus sum ; justo judicio Dei con-
demnatus sum." I shuddered with horror, and
dashing the ringing purse into the abyss, I spoke
to him the last words. " I adjure thee, horrible
one, in the name of God ! take thyself hence,
and never again show thyself in my sight!"

He arose gloomily, and instantly vanished
behind tlie masses of rock which bounded this
wild, overgrown spot.

CHAPTER IX.

I SATE there without shadow and without
money, but a heavy weight was taken from my
bosom. I was calm. Had I lost my love, or
had I in that loss felt myself free from blame, I
believe that I should have been happy; but I
knew not, however, what I should do. I ex-
amined my pockets : I found yet several gold
pieces there ; I counted them and laughed. I
had my horses below at the inn ; I was ashamed
of returning thither; I must, at least, wait till
the sun was gone down ; it stood yet high in the
heaven. I laid myself down in the shade of
the nearest trees, and fell calmly asleep.

Lovely shapes blended themselves before me
in charming dance into a pleasing<dream. Miiia
with a fiower-wreath in her hair floated by me,
and smiled kindly upon me. The noble Bendel
also was crowned with flowers, and went past
with a friendly greeting. I saw many besides,
and I believe thee too, Chamisso, in the distant

564

CHAMISSO.

throng. A bright light appeared, but no one
had a shadow, and what was stranger, it had
by no means a bad effect. Flowers and songs,
love and joy, under groves of palm. I could
neitlier hold fest nor single out the moving,
lightly floating, loveable forms : but I knew that
I dreamed such a dream with joy, and was
careful to avoid waking. I was already awake,
but still kept my eyes closed in order to retain
the fading apparition longer before my soul.

I finally opened my eyes ; the sun stood still
high in the heaven, but in the east; I had slept
through the night. I took it for a sign that I
should not return to the inn. I gave up readily
as lost, what I yet possessed there, and deter-
mined to strike on foot into a neighboring path,
which led along the wood-grown feet of the
mountains, leaving it secretly to fate to fulfil
what it had yet in store for me. I looked not
behind me, and thought not even of applying to
Bendel, whom I left rich behind me, and which
I could readily have done. I considered the
new character which I should support in the
world. My dress was very modest. I had on
an old black Polonaise, which I had already
worn in Berlin, and which, I know not how,
had first come again into my hands for this
journey. I had also a travelling cap on my
head, a pair of old boots on my feet. I arose,
and cut me on the spot a knotty stick as a me-
morial, and advanced at once on my wandering.

I met in the wood an old peasant who friend-
ly greeted me, and with whom I entered into
conversation. I inquired, like an inquisitive
traveller, first the way, then about the country,
and its inhabitants, the productions of the moun-
tains, and many such things. He answered my
questions sensibly and loquaciously. We came
to the bed of a mountain torrent, which had
spread its devastations over a wide tract of the
forest. I shuddered involuntarily at the sun-
bright sjjace, and allowed the countryman to go
first; but in the midst of this dangerous spot, he
stood still, and turned to relate to me the l)is-
tory of this desolation. He saw immediately
my defect, and paused in the midst of his dis-
course.

" But how does that happen, — the gentleman
has actually no shadow !"

"Alas! alas!" replied I, sighing, "during a
long and severe illness, my hair, nails, and sha-
dow fell off. See, father, at my age, my hair,
which is renewed again, is quite white, the
nails very short, and the shadow, — that will
never grow again."

"Ay! ay!'' responded the old man, shaking
his head, — "no shadow, that is bad! That was
a bad illness that the gentleman had." But he
continued not his narrative, and at the next
cross way which presented itself, he left me
without saying a word. Bitter tears trembled
anew upon my cheeks, and my cheerfulness
was gone.

I pursued my way with a sorrowful heart,
and sought no further the society of men. I

kept myself in the darkest wood, and was many
a time compelled, in order to pass over a space
where the sun shone, to wait for whole hours,
least some human eye should forbid me the
transit. In the evening I sought for a small inn
in the villages. I went particularly in quest of
a mine in the mountains where I hoped to get
work under the oath ; since, besides that my
present situation made it imperative that I
should provide for my support, I had discovered
that the most active labor alone could protect
me from my own annihilating thoughts.

A few rainy days advanced me well on the
way, but at the expense of my boots, whose
soles had been calculated for the Graf Peter,
and not for the pedestrian laborer. I was al-
ready barefoot: I must procure a pair of new
boots. The next morning I transacted this bu-
siness with much gravity in a village where
was held a Wake, and where in a booth old and
new boots stood for sale. I selected and bar-
gained long. I was forced to deny myself a
new pair, which I would gladly have had, but
the extravagant demand frightened me. I there-
fore contented myself with an old pair, which
were yet good and strong, and which the hand-
some, blond-haired boy who kept the stall, for
present cash payment handed to me with a
friendly smile, and wished me good luck on my
journey. I put them on at once, and left the
place by the northern gate.

I was sunk very deep in my thoughts and
scarcely saw where I set my feet, for I was
pondering on the mine which I lioped to reach
by evening, and where I hardly knew how I
should propose myself. I had not advanced two
hundred strides when I observed that I had got
out of the way. I therefore looked round me,
and found myself in a wild and ancient forest,
where the axe appeared never to have been
wielded. I pressed forward still a few steps,
and beheld myself in- the midst of desert rocks
which were overgrown only with moss and
lichens, and between which lay fields of snow
and ice. The air was intensely cold ; I looked
round, — the wood had vanished behind me. I
took a few strides more, — and around me
reigned the silence of death : boundlessly ex-
tended itself the ice whereon I stood, and on
which rested a thick, heavy fog. The sun stood
blood-red on the edge of the horizon. The cold
was insupportable.

I knew not what had happened to me ; the
benumbing fiost compelled me to hasten my
steps; I heard alone the roar of distant waters;
a step and I was on the ice margin of an ocean.
Innumerable herds of seals plunged rushing be
fore me in the flood. I pursued this shore ; I
saw naked rocks, land, birch and pine forests ;
I now advanced for a few minutes right on-
wards. It was stifling hot. I looked around, —
I stood amongst beautifully cultivated rice-fields,
and beneath mulberry-trees. I seated myself in
their shade; I looked at my watch; I had left
the market town only a quarter of an hour be-

CHAMISSO.

565

fore. I fancied that I dreamed ; I bit my tongue
to awake myself. I closed my eyes in order to
collect my thoughts. I heard before me singu-
lar accents pronounced through the nose. I
looked up. Two Chinese, unmistakeable from
their Asiatic form of countenance, if indeed I
would have given no credit to their costume,
addressed me in their speech with the accustom-
ed salutations of their country. I arose and
stepped two paces backward ; I saw them no
more. The landscape was totally changed,
trees and forests instead of rice-fields. I con-
templated these trees, and the plants which
bloomed around me, which I recognised as the
growth of south-eastern Asia. I wished to ap-
proach one of these trees, — one step, and again
all was changed. I marched now like a recruit
who is drilled, and strode slowly, and with
measured steps. Wonderfully diversified lands,
rivf>-s, meadows, mountain chains, steppes,
deserts of sand, unrolled themselves before my
astonished eyes. There was no doubt of it, — I
had seven-leagued boots on my feet.

CHAPTER X.

I FEti in speechless adoration on my knees
and shed tears of thankfulness, for suddenly
stood my fortune clear before my soul. For
early oifence thrust out from the society of men,
I was cast, for compensation, upon Nature,
which I ever loved; the earth was given me
as a rich garden, study for the object and strength
of my life, and science for its goal. It was no
resolution which I adopted. I have since then,
with severe, unremitted diligence, striven faith-
fully to represent what then stood clear and
perfect before my eye, and my satisfaction has
depended on the agreement of the demonstration
with the original.

I prepared without hesitation, with a hasty
survey, to take possession of the field which I
should hereafter reap. I stood on the heights
of Thibet, and the sun, which had risen upon
me only a few hours before, now already stooped
to the evening sky. I wandered over Asia from
east to west, overtaking him in his course, and
entered Africa. I gazed about me with eager
curiosity, as I repeatedly traversed it in all di-
rections. As I surveyed the ancient pyramids
and temples in passing through Egypt, I descried
in the desert not far from hundred-gated Thebes,
the caves where the christian anchorites once
dwelt. It was suddenly firm and clear in me —
here is thy home ! I selected one of the most
concealed which was at the same time spacious,
convenient and inaccessible to the jackalls, for
ny future abode, and again went forward.

I passed at the pillars of Hercules, over to
Europe, and when I had reviewed the southern
and northern provinces, I crossed from northern
Asia over the polar glaciers to Greenland and
America ; traversed both parts of that continent,
and the winter which already reigned in the
south drove me speedily back northwards from
Cape Horn.

I tarried awhile till it was day in eastern
Asia, and after some repose, continued my
wandering. I traced through both Americas
the mountain chain which comprehends the
highest known inequalities on our globe. I
stalked slowly and cautiously from summit to
summit, now over flaming volcanoes, now snow-
crowned peaks, often breathing with difficulty;
when reaching Mount Elias, I sprang across
Behring's Straits to Asia. I followed the west-
ern shores, in their manifold windings, and ex-
amined with especial care which of the islands
there located were accessible to me. From the
peninsula of Malacca my boots carried me to
Sumatra, Java, Bali and Lamboc. I attempted
often with danger, and always in vain, a north-
west passage over the lesser islets and rocks
with which this sea is studded to Borneo and
the other islands of this Archipelago. I was
compelled to abandon the hope. At length I
seated myself on the extremes! part of Lamboc,
and gazing towards the south and east, wept,
as at the fast closed grating of my prison, that 1
had so soon discovered my limits. New-Hol-
land so extraordinary, and so essentially neces-
sary to the comprehension of the earth and its
sun-woven garment, of the vegetable and the
animal world, with the South-Sea and its Zoo-
phyte islands, was interdicted to me, and thus,
at the very outset, all that I should gather and
build up was destined to remain a mere frag-
ment ! Oh, my Adelbert, what after all, are the
endeavors of men !

Often did I in the severest winter of the
southern hemisphere, endeavor, passing the
polar glaciers westward, to leave behind me
those two hundred strides out from Cape Horn,
which sundered me probably from Van Die-
man's Land and New Holland, regardless of my
return, or whether this dismal region should
close upon me as my coffin-lid, making despe-
rate leaps from ice-drift to ice-drift, and bidding
defiance to the cold and the sea. In vain — I
never reached New-Holland, but every time, I
came back to Lamboc, seated myself on its
extremest peak, and wept again, with my face
turned towards the south and east, as at the fast
closed bars of my prison.

I tore myself at length from this spot, and re-
turned with a sorrowful heart into inner Asia.
I traversed that farther, pursuing the morning
dawn westward, and came yet in the night to
my proposed home in the Thebais, which I had
touched upon in the afternoon of the day before.
As soon as I was somewhat rested, and when
it was day again in Europe, I made it my first
care to procure everything which I wanted.
First of all, stop-shoes; for I had experienced
how inconvenient it was when I wished to ex-
amine near objects, not to be able to slacken my
stride, except by pulling olf my boots. A pair
of slippers drawn over them had completely the
efiect which I anticipated, and later I always
carried two pairs, since I sometimes threw them
from my feet, without having time to pick them
48

566

CHAMISSO.

up again, when lions, men, or hyosnas startled
me from my botanising. My very excellent
watcli was, for the short duration of my passage,
a cajjital clironometer. Besides this 1 needed
a sextant, some scientific instruments and books.
To procure all this, I made several anxious
journeys to London and Paris, which, auspi-
ciously for me, a mist just then overshadowed.
As the remains of my enchanted gold was now
exhausted, I easily accomplished the payment
by gathering African ivory, in which, however,
I was obliged to select only the smallest tusks,
as not too heavy for me. I was soon furnished
and equipped with all these, and commenced
immediately, as private iihilosopher, my new
course of life.

I roamed about the earth, now determining
the altitudes of mountains ; now the tempera-
ture of its springs and the air ; now contem-
plating the animal, now inquiring into the ve-
getable tribes. I hastened from the equator to
the pole ; from one world to the other, comparing
facts with facts. The eggs of the African ostrich
or the northern sea-fowl, and fruits, especially
of the tropical palms and Bananas, were even
my ordinary food. In lieu of happiness I had
tobacco, and of human society and the ties of
love, one faithful poodle, which guarded my
cave in the Thebais, and when I returned home
with fresh treasures, sprang joyfully towards
nie, and gave me still a human feeling, that I
was not alone on the earth. An adventure was
yet destined to conduct me back amongst man-
kind.

CHAPTER Xr.

As I once scotched my boots on the shores of
the north, and gathered lichens and sea-weed,
an ice-bear came unawares upon me round the
corner of a rock. Flinging off my slippers, I
would step over to an opposite island, to which
a naked crag which protruded midway from the
waves offered me a passage. I stepped with
one foot firmly on the rock, and plunged over on
the other side into the sea, one of my slippers
having unobserved remained fast on the foot.

The excessive cold seized on me ; I with dif-
ficulty rescued my life from this danger ; and
the moment I reached land, I ran with the ut-
most speed to the Lybian deserts in order to
dry myself in the sun, but as I was here exposed,
it burned me so furiously on the head that I
staggered back again very ill towards the north.
I sought to relieve myself by rapid motion, and
ran with swift, uncertain steps, from west to
east, from east to west. I found myself now in
the day, now in the night ; now in summer now
in the winter's cold.

I know not how long I thus reeled about on
the earth. A burning fever glowed in my veins ;
with deepest distress I felt my senses forsaking
me. As mischief would have it, in my incau-
tious career, I now trod on some one's foot; I
must have hurt him ; I received a heavy blow,
and fell to the ground.

When I again returned to consciousness, I lay
comfortably in a good bed, which stood amongst
many other beds in a handsome hall. Some
one sate at my head; people went through the
hall from one bed to another. They came to
mine, and spake together about me. They
styled me Number Twelve; and on the wall at
my feet stood, — yes, certainly it was no delusion,
I could distinctly read on a black tablet of mar-
ble in great golden letters, quite correctly writ-
ten, my name —

PETER SCHLEMIHL.

On the tablet beneath my name were two other
rows of letters, but I was too weak to put them
together. I again closed my eyes.

I heard something of which the subject was
Peter Schlemihl read aloud, and articulately,
but I could not collect the sense. I saw a
friendly man, and a very lovely woman in black
dress appear at my bedside. The forms were
not strange to me, and yet I could not recognise
them.

Some time went over, and I recovered my
strength. I was called Number Twelve, and
Number Twelve, on account of his long beard,
passed for a Jew, on which account, however,
he was not at all the less carefully treated.
That he had no shadow appeared to have been
unobserved. My boots, as I was assured, were,
with all that I had brought hither, in good keep-
ing, in order to be restored to me on my recovery.
The place in which I lay was called the Schle-
MiHLiujr. What was daily read aloud concerning
Peter Schlemihl, was an exhortation to pray for
him as the Founder and Benefactor of this in-
stitution. The friendly man whom I had seen by
my bed was Bendel; the lovely woman was Mina.
I recovered unrecognised in the Schlemihl-
ium ; and learned yet farther that I was in
BendeTs native city, where, with the remains
of my otherwise unblessed gold, he had in my
name founded this Hospital, where the unhappy
blessed me, and himself maintained its superin-
tandence. Mina was a widow. An unhappy
criminal process had cost Mr. Rascal his life,
and her the greater part of her property. Her
parents were no more. She lived here as a
pious widow, and practised works of mercy.

Once she conversed with Mr. Bendel at the
bedside of Number Twelve. " Why, noble lady,
will you so often expose yourself to the bad at-
mosphere which prevails here 1 Does fate then
deal so hardly with you that you wish to die V
"No, Mr. Bendel, since I have dreamed out
my long dream, and have awoke in myself, all
is well with me ; since then I crave not, and
fear not death. Since then, I reflect calmly on
the past and the future. Is it not also with a
still and inward happiness that you now, in so
devout a manner, serve your master and friend?"
" Thank God, yes, noble lady. But we have
seen wonderful things ; we have unwarily
drunk much good, and bitter woes, out of the
full cup. Now it is empty, and we may believe
that the whole has been only a trial ; and armed

CHAMISSO.

567

with wise discernment, await the real begin-
ning. The real beginning is of another fashion ;
and we wish not back the first jugglery, and are
on the whole glad, such as it was, to have lived
through it. I feel also within me a confidence
that it must now be better than formerly with
our old friend."

" In me too," replied the lovely widow, and
then passed on.

The conversation left a deep impression upon
me, but I was undecided in myself, whether I
should make myself known, or depart hence
unrecognised. I took my resolve. I requested
paper and pencil, and wrote these words: — "It
is indeed better with your old friend now than
formerly, and if he does penance it is the pen-
ance of reconciliation."'

Hereupon I desired to dress myself, as I found
myself stronger. The key of the small ward-
robe which stood near my bed, was brought,
and I found therein, all that belonged to me. I
put on my clothes, suspended my botanical case,
in which I rejoiced still to find my northern li-
chens, round my black Polonaise, drew on my
boots, laid the written paper on my bed, and as
the door opened, I was already far on the way
to the Thebais.

As I took the way along the Syrian coast, on
which I for the last time had wandered from
home, I perceived my poor Figaro coming to-
wards me. This excellent poodle, who had
long expected his master at home, seemed to
desire to trace him out. I stood still and called
to liim. He sprang barking towards me, with
a thousand moving assurances of liis inmost and
most extravagant joy. I took him up under my
arm, for in truth he could not follow me, and
brought him with me home again.

I found all in its old order ; and returned
gradually as my strength was recruited, to my
former employment and mode of life, except
that I kept myself for a whole year out of the.

to me, wholly insupportable polar cold. And
thus, my dear Chamisso, I live to this day. My
boots are no worse for the wear, as that very
learned work of the celebrated Tieckius, De
Rebus Gestis Polticelli, at first led me to fear.
Their force remains unimpaired, my strength
only decays : yet I have the comfort to have
exerted it in a continuous and not fruitless
pursuit of one object. I have, so far as my
boots could carry me, become more fundament-
ally acquainted than any man before me with
the earth, its shape, its elevations, its tempe-
ratures, the changes of its atmosphere, the exhi-
bitions of its magnetic power, and the life
upon it, especially in the vegetable world. The
facts I have recorded with the greatest possible
exactness, and in perspicuous order in several
works, and stated my deductions and views
briefly in several treaties. I have settled the
geography of the interior of Africa, and of the
northern polar regions ; of the interior of Asia,
and its eastern shores. My Historia Stirpium
Plantarum Utriusque Orbis stands as a grand
fragment of the Flora Universalis Terrse, and as
a branch of my Systema Naturse. I believe that
I have therein not merely augmented, at a mo-
derate calculation, the amount of known species,
more than one third, but have done something
for the Natural System, and for the Geography
of Plants. I shall labor diligently at my Fauna.
I shall take care that, before my death, my
works shall be deposited in the Berlin Univer-
sity.

And thee, my dear Chamisso, have I selected
as the preserver of my singular history, which,
perhaps, when I have vanished from the earth,
may afibrd valuable instruction to many of its
inhabitants. But thou, my friend, if thou wilt
live among men, learn before all things to rev-
erence the shadow, and then the gold. Wishest
thou to live only for thyself and for thy better
self — oh, then! — thotx needest no counsel.

THE END.

SCS.O~0

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

Los Angeles
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