Public opinion in Germany seems strictly to forbid any allusion to the evil and
dangeious consequences of a war, more particularly when the war in question has
been a victorious one. Those writers, therefore, command a more ready attention
who, regarding this public opinion as final, proceed to vie with each other in
their jubilant praise of the war, and of the powerful influences it has brought
to bear upon morality, culture, and art. Yet it must be confessed that a gieat
victory is a great danger. Human nature bears a triumph less easily than a
defeat; indeed, it might even be urged that it is simpler to gain a victory of
this sort than to turn it to such account that it may not ultimately proxe a
seiious rout.
But of all evil results due to the last contest with France, the most
deplorable, peihaps, is that widespread and even universal error of public
opinion and of all who think publicly, that German culture was also victorious
in the struggle, and that it should now, therefore, be decked with garlands, as
a fit recognition of such extraordinary events and successes. This error is in
the highest degree pernicious: not because it is an error,—for there are
illusions which are both salutary and blessed,—but because it threatens
to convert our victory into a signal defeat. A defeat? —I should say
rather, into the uprooting of the "German Mind" for the benefit of the "German
Empire."
Even supposing that the fight had been between the two cultures, the standard
for the value of the victor would still be a very relative one, and, in any
case, would certainly not justify such exaggerated triumph or
self-glorification. For, in the first place, it would be necessary to ascertain
the worth of the conquered culture. This might be very little; in which case,
even if the victory had involved the most glorious display of arms, it would
still offer no warrant for inordinate rapture.
Even so, however, there can be no question, in our case, of the victory of
German culture; and for the simple reason, that French culture remains as
heretofore, and that we depend upon it as heretofore. It did not even help
towards the success of our arms. Severe military discipline, natural bravery
and sustaining power, the superior generalship, unity and obedience in the rank
and file—in short, factors which have nothing to do with culture, were
instrumental in making us conquer an opponent in whom the most essential of
these factors were absent. The only wonder is, that precisely what is now
called "culture" in Germany did not prove an obstacle to the military
operations which seemed vitally necessary to a great victory. Perhaps, though,
this was only owing to the fact that this "thing" which dubs itself "culture"
saw its advantage, for once, in keeping in the background.
If however, it be permitted to grow and to spread, if it be spoilt by the
flattering and nonsensical assurance that it has been
victorious,—then, as I have said, it will have the power to extirpate
German mind, and, when that is done, who knows whether there will still be
anything to be made out of the surviving German body!
Provided it were possible to direct that calm and tenacious bravery which the
German opposed to the pathetic and spontaneous fury of the Frenchman, against
the inward enemy, against the highly suspicious and, at all events, unnative
"cultivation" which, owing to a dangerous misunderstanding, is called "culture"
in Germany, then all hope of a really genuine German "culture"—the
reverse of that "cultivation"—would not be entirely lost. For the Germans
have never known any lack of clear-sighted and heroic leaders, though these,
often enough, probably, have lacked Germans. But whether it be possible to turn
German bravery into a new direction seems to me to become ever more and more
doubtful; for I realise how fully convinced every one is that such a struggle
and such bravery are no longer requisite; on the contrary, that most things are
regulated as satisactorily as they possibly can be—or, at all events,
that everything of moment has long ago been discovered and accomplished: in a
word, that the seed of culture is already sown everywhere, and is now either
shooting up its fresh green blades, or, here and there, even bursting forth
into luxuriant blossom. In this sphere, not only happiness but ecstasy reigns
supreme. I am conscious of this ecstasy and happiness, in the ineffable,
truculent assurance of German journalists and manufacturers of novels,
tragedies, poems, and histories (for it must be clear that these people belong
to one category), who seem to have conspired to improve the leisure and
ruminative hours—that is to say, "the intellectual lapses"—of the
modern man, by bewildering him with their printed paper. Since the war, all is
gladness, dignity, and self-consciousness in this merry throng. After the
startling successes of German culture, it regards itself, not only as approved
and sanctioned, but almost as sanctified. It therefore speaks with gravity,
affects to apostrophise the German People, and issues complete works, after the
manner of the classics; nor does it shrink from proclaiming in those journals
which are open to it some few of its adherents as new German classical writers
and model authors. It might be supposed that the dangers of such an abuse of
success would be recognised by the more thoughtful and enlightened among
cultivated Germans; or, at least, that these would feel how painful is the
comedy that is being enacted around them: for what in truth could more readily
inspire pity than the sight of a cripple strutting like a cock before a mirror,
and exchanging complacent glances with his reflection! But the "scholar" caste
willingly allow things to remain as they are, and re too much concerned with
their own affairs to busy themselves with the care of the German mind.
Moreover, the units of this caste are too thoroughly convinced that their own
scholarship is the ripest and most perfect fruit of the age—in fact, of
all ages—to see any necessity for a care of German culture in general;
since, in so far as they and the legion of their brethren are concerned,
preoccupations of this order have everywhere been, so to speak, surpassed. The
more conscientious observer, more particularly if he be a foreigner, cannot
help noticing withal that no great disparity exists between that which the
German scholar regards as his culture and that other triumphant culture of the
new German classics, save in respect of the quantum of knowledge. Everywhere,
where knowledge and not ability, where information and not art, hold the first
rank,—everywhere, therefore, where life bears testimony to the kind of
culture extant, there is now only one specific German culture—and this is
the culture that is supposed to have conquered France?
The contention appears to be altogether too preposterous. It was solely to the
more extensive knowledge of German officers, to the superior training of their
soldiers, and to their more scientific military strategy, that all impartial
Judges, and even the French nation, in the end, ascribed the victory. Hence, if
it be intended to regard German erudition as a thing apart, in what sense can
German culture be said to have conquered? In none whatsoever; for the moral
qualities of severe discipline, of more placid obedience, have nothing in
common with culture: these were characteristic of the Macedonian army, for
instance, despite the fact that the Greek soldiers were infinitely more
cultivated. To speak of German scholarship and culture as having conquered,
therefore, can only be the outcome of a misapprehension, probably resulting
from the circumstance that every precise notion of culture has now vanished
from Germany.
Culture is, before all things, the unity of artistic style, in every expression
of the life of a people. Abundant knowledge and learning, however, are not
essential to it, nor are they a sign of its existence; and, at a pinch, they
might coexist much more harmoniously with the very opposite of
culture—with barbarity: that is to say, with a complete lack of style, or
with a riotous jumble of all styles. But it is precisely amid this riotous
jumble that the German of to-day subsists; and the serious problem to be solved
is: how, with all his learning, he can possibly avoid noticing it; how, into
the bargain, he can rejoice with all his heart in his present "culture"? For
everything conduces to open his eyes for him—every glance he casts at his
clothes, his room, his house; every walk he takes through the streets of his
town; every visit he pays to his art-dealers and to his trader in the articles
of fashion. In his social intercourse he ought to realise the origin of his
manners and movements; in the heart of our art-institutions, the pleasures of
our concerts, theatres, and museums, he ought to become apprised of the super-
and juxta-position of all imaginable styles. The German heaps up around him the
forms, colours, products, and curiosities of all ages and zones, and thereby
succeeds in producing that garish newness, as of a country fair, which his
scholars then proceed to contemplate and to define as "Modernism per
se"; and there he remains, squatting peacefully, in the midst of this
conflict of styles. But with this kind of culture, which is, at bottom, nothing
more nor less than a phlegmatic insensibility to real culture, men cannot
vanquish an enemy, least of all an enemy like the French, who, whatever their
worth may be, do actually possess a genuine and productive culture, and whom,
up to the present, we have systematically copied, though in the majority of
cases without skill.
Even supposing we had really ceased copying them, it would still not mean that
we had overcome them, but merely that we had lifted their yoke from our necks.
Not before we have succeeded in forcing an original German culture upon them
can there be any question of the triumph of German culture. Meanwhile, let us
not forget that in all matters of form we are, and must be, just as dependent
upon Paris now as we were before the war; for up to the present there has been
no such thing as a original German culture.
We all ought to have become aware of this, of our own accord. Besides, one of
the few who had he right to speak to Germans in terms of reproach Publicly drew
attention to the fact. "We Germans are of yesterday," Goethe once said to
Eckermann. "True, for the last hundred years we have diligently cultivated
ourselves, but a few centuries may yet have to run their course before our
fellow-countrymen become permeated with sufficient intellectuality and higher
culture to have it said of them, it is a long time since they were
barbarians."
If, however, our public and private life is so manifestly devoid of all signs
of a productive and characteristic culture; if, moreover, our great artists,
with that earnest vehemence and honesty which is peculiar to greatness admit,
and have admitted, this monstrous fact—so very humiliating to a gifted
nation; how can it still be possible for contentment to reign to such an
astonishing extent among German scholars? And since the last war this
complacent spirit has seemed ever more and morerready to break forth into
exultant cries and demonstrations of triumph. At all events, the belief seems
to be rife that we are in possession of a genuine culture, and the enormous
incongruity of this triumphant satisfaction in the face of the inferiority
which should be patent to all, seems only to be noticed by the few and the
select. For all those who think with the public mind have blindfolded their
eyes and closed their ears. The incongruity is not even acknowledged to exist.
How is this possible? What power is sufficiently influential to deny this
existence? What species of men must have attained to supremacy in Germany that
feelings which are so strong and simple should he denied or prevented from
obtaining expression? This power, this species of men, I will name—they
are the Philistines of Culture.
As every one knows, the word "Philistine" is borrowed from the vernacular of
student-life, and, in its widest and most popular sense, it signifies the
reverse of a son of the Muses, of an artist, and of the genuine man of culture.
The Philistine of culture, however, the study of whose type and the hearing of
whose confessions (when he makes them) have now become tiresome duties,
distinguishes himself from the general notion of the order "Philistine" by
means of a superstition: he fancies that he is himself a son of the Muses and a
man of culture. This incomprehensible error clearly shows that he does not even
know the difference between a Philistine and his opposite. We must not be
surprised, therefore, if we find him, for the most part, solemnly protesting
that he is no Philistine. Owing to this lack of self-knowledge, he is convinced
that his "culture" is the consummate manifestation of real German culture; and,
since he everywhere meets with scholars of his own type, since all public
institutions, whether schools, universities, or academies, are so organised as
to be in complete harmony with his education and needs, wherever he goes he
bears with him the triumphant feeling that he is the worthy champion of
prevailing German culture, and he frames his pretensions and claims
accordingly.
If, however, real culture takes unity of style for granted (and even an
inferior and degenerate culture cannot be imagined in which a certain
coalescence of the profusion of forms has not taken place), it is just possible
that the confusion underlying the Culture-Philistine's error may arise from the
fact that, since he comes into contact everywhere with creatures cast in the
same mould as himself, he concludes that this uniformity among all "scholars"
must point to a certain uniformity in German education—hence to culture.
All round him, he sees only needs and views similar to his own; wherever he
goes, he finds himself embraced by a ring of tacit conventions concerning
almost everything, but more especially matters of religion and art. This
imposing sameness, this tutti unisono which, though it responds to no
word of command, is yet ever ready to burst forth, cozens him into the belief
that here a culture must be established and flourishing. But Philistinism,
despite its systematic organisation and power, does not constitute a culture by
virtue of its system alone; it does not even constitute an inferior culture,
but invariably the reverse—namely, firmly established barbarity. For the
uniformity of character which is so apparent in the German scholars of to-day
is only the result of a conscious or unconscious exclusion and negation of all
the artistically productive forms and requirements of a genuine style. The mind
of the cultured Philistine must have become sadly unhinged; for precisely what
culture repudiates he regards as culture itself; and, since he proceeds
logically, he succeeds in creating a connected group of these
repudiations—a system of non-culture, to which one might at a pinch grant
a certain "unity of style," provided of course it were Ot nonsense to attribute
style to barbarity. If he have to choose between a stylish act and its
opposite, he will invariably adopt the latter, and, since this rule holds good
throughout, every one of his acts bears the same negative stamp. Now, it is by
means of this stamp that he is able to identify the character of the "German
culture," which is his own patent; and all things that do not bear it are so
many enemies and obstacles drawn up against him. In the presence of these
arrayed forces the Culture-Philistine either does no more than ward off the
blows, or else he denies, holds his tongue, stops his ears, and refuses to face
facts. He is a negative creature—even in his hatred and animosity.
Nobody, however, is more disliked by him than the man who regards him as a
Philistine, and tells him what he is—namely, the barrier in the way of
all powerful men and creators, the labyrinth for all who doubt and go astray,
the swamp for all the weak and the weary, the fetters of those who would run
towards lofty goals, the poisonous mist that chokes all germinating hopes, the
scorching sand to all those German thinkers who seek for, and thirst after, a
new life. For the mind of Germany is seeking; and ye hate it because it is
seeking, and because it will not accept your word, when ye declare that ye have
found what it is seeking. How could it have been possible for a type like that
of the Culture-Philistine to develop? and even granting its development, how
was it able to rise to the powerful Position of supreme judge concerning all
questions of German culture? How could this have been possible, seeing that a
whole procession of grand and heroic figures has already filed past us, whose
every movement, the expression of whose every feature, whose questioning voice
and burning eye betrayed the one fact, that they were seekers, and that
they sought that which the Culture-Philistine had long fancied he had
found—to wit, a genuine original German culture? Is there a
soil—thus they seemed to ask—a soil that is pure enough,
unhandselled enough, of sufficient virgin sanctity, to allow the mind of
Germany to build its house upon it? Questioning thus, they wandered through the
wilderness, and the woods of wretched ages and narrow conditions, and as
seekers they disappeared from our vision; one of them, at an advanced age, was
even able to say, in the name of all: "For half a century my life has been hard
and bitter enough; I have allowed myself no rest, but have ever striven, sought
and done, to the best and to the utmost of my ability."
What does our Culture-Philistinism say of these seekers? It regards them simply
as discoverers, and seems to forget that they themselves only claimed to be
seekers. We have our culture, say her sons; for have we not our "classics"? Not
only is the foundation there, but the building already stands upon it—we
ourselves constitute that building. And, so saying, the Philistine raises his
hand to his brow.
But, in order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed
veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. This,
generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one ought
to know that there is only one way of honouring them, and that is to continue
seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the
search. But to foist the doubtful title of "classics" upon them, and to "edify"
oneself from time to time by reading their works, means to yield to those
feeble and selfish emotions which all the paying public may purchase at
concert-halls and theatres. Even the raising of monuments to their memory, and
the christening of feasts and societies with their names—all these things
are but so many ringing cash payments by means of which the Culture-Philistine
discharges his indebtedness to them, so that in all other respects he may be
rid of them, and, above all, not bound to follow in their wake and prosecute
his search further. For henceforth inquiry is to cease: that is the Philistine
watchword.
This watchword once had some meaning. In Germany, during the first decade of
the nineteenth century, for instance, when the heyday and confusion of seeking,
experimenting, destroying, promising, surmising, and hoping was sweeping in
currents and cross-currents over the land, the thinking middle-classes were
right in their concern for their own security. It was then quite right of them
to dismiss from their minds with a shrug of their shoulders the omnium
gatherum of fantastic and language-maiming philosophies, and of rabid
special-pleading historical studies, the carnival of all gods and myths, and
the poetical affectations and fooleries which a drunken spirit may be
responsible for. In this respect they were quite right; for the Philistine has
not even the privilege of licence. With the cunning proper to base natures,
however, he availed himself of the opportunity, in order to throw suspicion
even upon the seeking spirit, and to invite people to join in the more
comfortable pastime of finding. His eye opened to the joy of Philistinism; he
saved himself from wild experimenting by clinging to the idyllic, and opposed
the restless creative spirit that animates the artist, by means of a certain
smug ease—the ease of self-conscious narrowness, tranquillity, and
self-sufficiency. His tapering finger pointed, without any affectation of
modesty, to all the hidden and intimate incidents of his life, to the many
touching and ingenuous joys which sprang into existence in the wretched depths
of his uncultivated existence, and which modestly blossomed forth on the
bog-land of Philistinism.
There were, naturally, a few gifted narrators who, with a nice touch, drew
vivid pictures of the happiness, the prosaic simplicity, the bucolic
robustness, and all the well-being which floods the quarters of children,
scholars, and peasants. With picture-books of this class in their hands, these
smug ones now once and for all sought to escape from the yoke of these dubious
classics and the command which they contained—to seek further and to
find. They only started the notion of an epigone-age in order to secure peace
for themselves, and to be able to reject all the efforts of disturbing
innovators summarily as the work of epigones. With the view of ensuring their
own tranquillity, these smug ones even appropriated history, and sought to
transform all sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease into
branches of history—more particularly philosophy and classical philology.
Through historical consciousness, they saved themselves from enthusiasm; for,
in opposition to Goethe, it was maintained that history would no longer kindle
enthusiasm. No, in their desire to acquire an historical grasp of everything,
stultification became the sole aim of these philosophical admirers of "nil
admirari." While professing to hate every form of fanaticism and
intolerance, what they really hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and
the tyranny of the real claims of culture. They therefore concentrated and
utilised all their forces in those quarters where a fresh and vigorous movement
was to be expected, and then paralysed, stupefied, and tore it to shreds. In
this way, a philosophy which veiled the Philistine confessions of its founder
beneath neat twists and flourishes of language proceeded further to discover a
formula for the canonisation of the commonplace. It expatiated upon the
rationalism of all reality, and thus ingratiated itself with the
Culture-Philistine, who also loves neat twists and flourishes, and who, above
all, considers himself real, and regards his reality as the standard of reason
for the world. From this time forward he began to allow every one, and even
himself, to reflect, to investigate, to astheticise, and, more particularly, to
make poetry, rnusic, and even pictures—not to mention systems philosophy;
provided, of course, that everything were done according to the old pattern,
and that no assault were made upon the "reasonable" and the "real"—that
is to say, upon the Philistine. The latter really does not at all mind giving
himself up, from time to time, to the delightful and daring transgressions of
art or of sceptical historical studies, and he does not underestimate the charm
of such recreations and entertainments; but he strictly separates "the
earnestness of life" (under which term he understands his calling, his
business, and his wife and child) from such trivialities, and among the latter
he includes all things which have any relation to culture. Therefore, woe to
the art that takes itself seriously, that has a notion of what it may exact,
and that dares to endanger his income, his business, and his habits! Upon such
an art he turns his back, as though it were something dissolute; and, affecting
the attitude of a. guardian of chastity, he cautions every unprotected virtue
on no account to look.
Being such an adept at cautioning people, he is always grateful to any artist
who heeds him and listens to caution. He then assures his protege that things
are to be made more easy for him; that, as a kindred spirit, he will no longer
be expected to make sublime masterpieces, but that his work must be one of two
kinds—either the imitation of reality to the point of simian mimicry, in
idylls or gentle and humorous satires, or the free copying of the best-known
and most famous classical works, albeit with shamefast concessions to the taste
of the age. For, although he may only be able to appreciate slavish copying or
accurate portraiture of the present, still he knows that the latter will but
glorify him, and increase the well-being of "reality"; while the former, far
from doing him any harm, rather helps to establish his reputation as a
classical judge of taste, and is not otherwise troublesome; for he has, once
and for all, come to terms with the classics. Finally, he discovers the general
and effective formula "Health" for his habits, methods of observation,
judgments, and the objects of his patronage; while he dismisses the importunate
disturber of the peace with the epithets "hysterical" and "morbid." It is thus
that David Strauss—a genuine example of the satisfait in regard to
our scholastic institutions, and a typical Philistine—it is thus that he
speaks of "the philosophy of Schopenhauer" as being "thoroughly intellectual,
yet often unhealthy and unprofitable." It is indeed a deplorable fact that
intellect should show such a decided preference for the "unhealthy" and the
"unprofitable"; and even the Philistine, if he be true to himself, will admit
that, in regard to the philosophies which men of his stamp produce, he is
conscious of a frequent lack of intellectuality, although of course they are
always thoroughly healthy and profitable.
Now and again, the Philistines, provided they are by themselves, indulge in a
bottle of wine, and then they grow reminiscent, and speak of the great deeds of
the war, honestly and ingenuously. On such occasions it often happens that a
great deal comes to light which would otherwise have been most stead-fastly
concealed, and one of them may even be heard to blurt out the most precious
secrets of the whole brotherhood. Indeed, a lapse of this sort occurred but a
short while ago, to a well-known aesthete of the Hegelian school of reasoning.
It must, however, be admitted that the provocation thereto was of an unusual
character. A company of Philistines were feasting together, in celebration of
the memory of a genuine anti-Philistine—one who, moreover, had been, in
the strictest sense of the words, wrecked by Philistinism. This man was
Holderlin, and the afore-mentioned aesthete was therefore justified, under the
circumstances, in speaking of the tragic souls who had foundered on
"reality"—reality being understood, here, to mean Philistine reason. But
the "reality" is now different, and it might well be asked whether Holderlin
would be able to find his way at all in the present great age. "I doubt," says
Dr. Vischer, "whether his delicate soul could have borne all the roughness
which is inseparable from war, and whether it had survived the amount of
perversity which, since the war, we now see flourishing in every quarter.
Perhaps he would have succumbed to despair. His was one of the unarmed souls;
he was the Werther of Greece, a hopeless lover; his life was full of softness
and yearning, but there was strength and substance in his will, and in his
style, greatness, riches and life; here and there it is even reminiscent of
AEschylus. His spirit, however, lacked hardness. He lacked the weapon humour;
he could not grant that one may be a Philistine and still be no barbarian." Not
the sugary condolence of the post-prandial speaker, but this last sentence
concerns us. Yes, it is admitted that one is a Philistine; but, a
barbarian?—No, not at any price! Unfortunately, poor Holderlin could not
make such flne distinctions. If one reads the reverse of civilisation, or
perhaps sea-pirating, or cannibalism, into the word "barbarian," then the
distinction is justifiable enough. But what the aesthete obviously wishes to
prove to us is, that we may be Philistines and at the same time men of culture.
Therein lies the humour which poor Holderlin lacked and the need of which
ultimately wrecked him.*
On this occasion a second admission was made by the speaker: "It is not always
strength of will, but weakness, which makes us superior to those tragic souls
which are so passionately responsive to the attractions of beauty," or words to
this effect. And this was said in the name of the assembled "We"; that is to
say, the "superiors," the "superiors through weakness." Let us content
ourselves with these admissions. We are now in possession of information
concerning two matters from one of the initiated: first, that these "We" stand
beyond the passion for beauty; secondly, that their position was reached by
means of weakness. In less confidential moments, however, it was just this
weakness which masqueraded in the guise of a much more beautiful name: it was
the famous "healthiness" of the Culture-Philistine. In view of this very recent
restatement of the case, however, it would be as well not to speak of them any
longer as the "healthy ones," but as the "weakly," or, still better, as the
"feeble." Oh, if only these feeble ones were not in power! How is it that they
concern themselves at all about what we call them! They are the rulers, and he
is a poor ruler who cannot endure to be called by a nickname. Yes, if one only
have power, one soon learns to poke fun—even at oneself. It cannot matter
so very much, therefore, even if one do give oneself away; for what could not
the purple mantle of triumph conceal? The strength of the Culture-Philistine
steps into the broad light of day when he acknowledges his weakness; and the
more he acknowledges it— the more cynically he acknowledges it—the
more completely he betrays his consciousness of his own importance and
superiority. We are living in a period of cynical Philistine confessions. Just
as Friedrich Vischer gave us his in a word, so has David Strauss handed us his
in a book; and both that word and that book are cynical.
Concerning Culture-Philistinism, David Strauss makes a double confession, by
word and by deed; that is to say, by the word of the confessor, and the act of
the writer. His book entitled The Old Faith and the New is, first in
regard to its contents, and secondly in regard to its being a book and a
literary production, an uninterrupted confession; while, in the very fact that
he allows himself to write confessions at all about his faith, there already
lies a confession. Presumably, every one seems to have the right to compile an
autobiography after his fortieth year; for the humblest amongst us may have
experienced things, and may have seen them at such close quarters, that the
recording of them may prove of use and value to the thinker. But to write a
confession of one's faith cannot but be regarded as a thousand times more
pretentious, since it takes for granted that the writer attaches worth, not
only to the experiences and investigations of his life, but also to his
beliefs. Now, what the nice thinker will require to know, above all else, is
the kind of faith which happens to be compatible with natures of the Straussian
order, and what it is they have "half dreamily conjured up" (p. 10) concerning
matters of which those alone have the right to speak who are acquainted with
them at first hand. Whoever would have desired to possess the confessions, say,
of a Ranke or a Mommsen? And these men were scholars and historians of a very
different stamp from David Strauss. If, however, they had ever ventured to
interest us in their faith instead of in their scientific investigations, we
should have felt that they were overstepping their limits in a most irritating
fashion. Yet Strauss does this when he discusses his faith. Nobody wants to
know anything about it, save, perhaps, a few bigoted opponents of the
Straussian doctrines, who, suspecting, as they do, a substratum of satanic
principles beneath these doctrines, hope that he may compromise his learned
utterances by revealing the nature of those principles. These clumsy creatures
may, perhaps, have found what they sought in the last book; but we, who had no
occasion to suspect a satanic substratum, discovered nothing of the sort, and
would have felt rather pleased than not had we been able to discern even a dash
of the diabolical in any part of the volume. But surely no evil spirit could
speak as Strauss speaks of his new faith. In fact, spirit in general seems to
be altogether foreign to the book— more particularly the spirit of
genius. Only those whom Strauss designates as his "We," speak as he does, and
then, when they expatiate upon their faith to us, they bore us even more than
when they relate their dreams; be they "scholars, artists, military men, civil
employes, merchants, or landed proprietors; come they in their thousands, and
not the worst people in the land either!" If they do not wish to remain the
peaceful ones in town or county, but threaten to wax noisy, then let not the
din of their unisono deceive us concerning the poverty and vulgarity of
the melody they sing. How can it dispose us more favourably towards a
profession of faith to hear that it is approved by a crowd, when it is of such
an order that if any individual of that crowd attempted to make it known to us,
we should not only fail to hear him out, but should interrupt him with a yawn?
If thou sharest such a belief, we should say unto him, in Heaven's name, keep
it to thyself! Maybe, in the past, some few harmless types looked for the
thinker in David Strauss; now they have discovered the "believer" in him, and
are disappointed. Had he kept silent, he would have remained, for these, at
least, the philosopher; whereas, now, no one regards him as such. He no longer
craved the honours of the thinker, however; all he wanted to be was a new
believer, and he is proud of his new belief. In making a written declaration of
it, he fancied he was writing the catechism of "modern thought," and building
the "broad highway of the world's future." Indeed, our Philistines have ceased
to be faint-hearted and bashful, and have acquired almost cynical assurance.
There was a time, long, long ago, when the Philistine was only tolerated as
something that did not speak, and about which no one spoke; then a period
ensued during which his roughness was smoothed, during which he was found
amusing, and people talked about him. Under this treatment he gradually became
a prig, rejoiced with all his heart over his rough places and his wrongheaded
and candid singularities, and began to talk, on his own account, after the
style of Riehl's music for the home.
"But what do I see? Is it a shadow? Is it reality? How long and broad my poodle
grows!"
For now he is already rolling like a hippopotamus along "the broad highway of
the world's future," and his growling and barking have become transformed into
the proud incantations of a religious founder. And is it your own sweet wish,
Great Master, to found the religion of the future? "The times seem to us not
yet ripe (p. 7). It does not occur to us to wish to destroy a church." But why
not, Great Master? One but needs the ability. Besides, to speak quite openly in
the latter, you yourself are convinced that you Possess this ability. Look at
the last page of your book. There you actually state, forsooth, that your new
way "alone is the future highway of the world, which now only requires partial
completion, and especially general use, in order also to become easy and
pleasant."
Make no further denials, then. The religious founder is unmasked, the
convenient and agreeable highway leading to the Straussian Paradise is built.
It is only the coach in which you wish to convey us that does not altogether
satisfy you, unpretentious man that you are! You tell us in your concluding
remarks: "Nor will I pretend that the coach to which my esteemed readers have
been obliged to trust themselves with me fulfils every requirement,... all
through one is much jolted" (p. 438). Ah! you are casting about for a
compliment, you gallant old religious founder! But let us be straightforward
with you. If your reader so regulates the perusal of the 368 pages of your
religious catechism as to read only one page a day—that is to say, if he
take it in the smallest possible doses-then, perhaps, we should be able to
believe that he might suffer some evil effect from the book—if only as
the outcome of his vexation when the results he expected fail to make
themselves felt. Gulped down more heartily, however, and as much as possible
being taken at each draught, according to the prescription to be recommended in
the case of all modern books, the drink can work no mischief; and, after taking
it, the reader will not necessarily be either out of sorts or out of temper,
but rather merry and well-disposed, as though nothing had happened; as though
no religion had been assailed, no world's highway been built, and no profession
of faith been made. And I do indeed call this a result! The doctor, the drug,
and the disease—everything forgotten! And the joyous laughter! The
continual provocation to hilarity! You are to be envied, Sir; for you have
founded the most attractive of all religions —one whose followers do
honour to its founder by laughing at him.
The Philistine as founder of the religion of the future—that is the new
belief in its most emphatic form of expression. The Philistine becomes a
dreamer—that is the unheard-of occurrence which distinguishes the German
nation of to-day. But for the present, in any case, let us maintain an attitude
of caution towards this fantastic exaltation. For does not David Strauss
himself advise us to exercise such caution, in the following profound passage,
the general tone of which leads us to think of the Founder of Christianity
rather than of our particular author? (p. 92): "We know there have been noble
enthusiasts—enthusiasts of genius; the influence of an enthusiast can
rouse, exalt, and produce prolonged historic effects; but we do not wish to
choose him as the guide of our life. He will be sure to mislead us, if we do
not subject his influence to the control of reason." But we know something
more: we know that there are enthusiasts who are not intellectual, who do not
rouse or exalt, and who, nevertheless, not only expect to be the guides of our
lives, but, as such, to exercise a very lasting historical influence into the
bargain, and to rule the future;—all the more reason why we should place
their influence under the control of reason. Lichtenberg even said: "There are
enthusiasts quite devoid of ability, and these are really dangerous people." In
the first place, as regards the above-mentioned control of reason, we should
like to have candid answers to the three following questions: First, how does
the new believer picture his heaven? Secondly, how far does the courage lent
him by the new faith extend? And, thirdly, how does he write his books? Strauss
the Confessor must answer the first and second questions; Strauss the Writer
must answer the third.
The heaven of the new believer must, perforce, be a heaven upon earth; for the
Christian "prospect of an immortal life in heaven," together with the other
consolations, "must irretrievably vanish" for him who has but "one foot" on the
Straussian platform. The way in which a religion represents its heaven is
significant, and if it be true that Christianity knows no other heavenly
occupations than singing and making music, the prospect of the Philistine, à
la Strauss, is truly not a very comforting one. In the book of confessions,
however, there is a page which treats of Paradise (p. 342). Happiest of
Philistines, unroll this parchment scroll before anything else, and the whole
of heaven will seem to clamber down to thee! "We would but indicate how we act,
how we have acted these many years. Besides our profession—for we are
members of the most various professions, and by no means exclusively consist of
scholars or artists, but of military men and civil employes, of merchants and
landed proprietors;... and again, as I have said already, there are not a few
of us, but many thousands, and not the worst people in the
country;—besides our profession, then, I say, we are eagerly accessible
to all the higher interests of humanity; we have taken a vivid interest, during
late years, and each after his manner has participated in the great national
war, and the reconstruction of the German State; and we have been profoundly
exalted by the turn events have taken, as unexpected as glorious, for our much
tried nation. To the end of forming just conclusions in these things, we study
history, which has now been made easy, even to the unlearned, by a series of
attractively and popularly written works; at the same time, we endeavour to
enlarge our knowledge of the natural sciences, where also there is no lack of
sources of information; and lastly, in the writings of our great poets, in the
performances of our great musicians, we find a stimulus for the intellect and
heart, for wit and imagination, which leaves nothing to be desired. Thus we
live, and hold on our way in joy."
"Here is our man!" cries the Philistine exultingly, who reads this: "for this
is exactly how we live; it is indeed our daily life."* And how perfectly he understands the euphemism!
When, for example, he refers to the historical studies by means of which we
help ourselves in forming just conclusions regarding the political situation,
what can he be thinking of, if it be not our newspaper-reading? When he speaks
of the active part we take in the reconstruction of the German State, he surely
has only our daily visits to the beer-garden in his mind; and is not a walk in
the Zoological Gardens implied by 'the sources of information through which we
endeavour to enlarge our knowledge of the natural sciences'? Finally, the
theatres and concert-halls are referred to as places from which we take home 'a
stimulus for wit and imagination which leaves nothing to be
desired.'—With what dignity and wit he describes even the most suspicious
of our doings! Here indeed is our man; for his heaven is our heaven!"
Thus cries the Philistine; and if we are not quite so satisfied as he, it is
merely owing to the fact that we wanted to know more. Scaliger used to say:
"What does it matter to us whether Montaigne drank red or white wine?" But, in
this more important case, how greatly ought we to value definite particulars of
this sort! If we could but learn how many pipes the Philistine smokes daily,
according to the prescriptions of the new faith, and whether it is the
Spener or the National Gazette that appeals to him over his
coffee! But our curiosity is not satisfied. With regard to one point only do we
receive more exhaustive information, and fortunately this point relates to the
heaven in heaven—the private little art-rooms which will be consecrated
to the use of great poets and musicians, and to which the Philistine will go to
edify himself; in which, moreover, according to his own showing, he will even
get "all his stains removed and wiped away" (p. 433); so that we are led to
regard these private little art-rooms as a kind of bath-rooms. "But this is
only effected for some fleeting moments; it happens and counts only in the
realms of phantasy; as soon as we return to rude reality, and the cramping
confines of actual life, we are again on all sides assailed by the old
cares,"—thus our Master sighs. Let us, however, avail ourselves of the
fleeting moments during which we remain in those little rooms; there is just
sufficient time to get a glimpse of the apotheosis of the Philistine—
that is to say, the Philistine whose stains have been removed and wiped away,
and who is now an absolutely pure sample of his type. In truth, the opportunity
we have here may prove instructive: let no one who happens to have fallen a
victim to the confession-book lay it aside before having read the two
appendices, "Of our Great Poets" and "Of our Great Musicians." Here the rainbow
of the new brotherhood is set, and he who can find no pleasure in it "for such
an one there is no help," as Strauss says on another occasion; and, as he might
well say here, "he is not yet ripe for our point of view." For are we not in
the heaven of heavens? The enthusiastic explorer undertakes to lead us about,
and begs us to excuse him if, in the excess of his joy at all the beauties to
be seen, he should by any chance be tempted to talk too much. "If I should,
perhaps, become more garrulous than may seem warranted in this place, let the
reader be indulgent to me; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaketh. Let him only be assured that what he is now about to read does not
consist of older materials, which I take the opportunity of inserting here, but
that these remarks have been written for their present place and purpose" (pp.
345-46). This confession surprises us somewhat for the moment. What can it
matter to us whether or not the little chapters were freshly written? As if it
were a matter of writing! Between ourselves, I should have been glad if they
had been written a quarter of a century earlier; then, at least, I should have
understood why the thoughts seem to be so bleached, and why they are so
redolent of resuscitated antiquities. But that a thing should have been written
in 1872 and already smell of decay in 1872 strikes me as suspicious. Let us
imagine some one's falling asleep while reading these chapters—what would
he most probably dream about? A friend answered this question for me, because
he happened to have had the experience himself. He dreamt of a wax-work show.
The classical writers stood there, elegantly represented in wax and beads.
Their arms and eyes moved, and a screw inside them creaked an accompaniment to
their movements. He saw something gruesome among them—a misshapen figure,
decked with tapes and jaundiced paper, out of whose mouth a ticket hung, on
which "Lessing" was written. My friend went close up to it and learned the
worst: it was the Homeric Chimera; in front it was Strauss, behind it was
Gervinus, and in the middle Chimera. The tout-ensemble was Lessing. This
discovery caused him to shriek with terror: he waked, and read no more. In
sooth, Great Master, why have you written such fusty little chapters?
We do, indeed, learn something new from them; for instance, that Gervinus made
it known to the world how and why Goethe was no dramatic genius; that, in the
second part of Faust, he had only produced a world of phantoms and of symbols;
that Wallenstein is a Macbeth as well as a Hamlet; that the Straussian reader
extracts the short stories out of the Wanderjahre "much as naughty
children pick the raisins and almonds out of a tough plum-cake"; that no
complete effect can be produced on the stage without the forcible element, and
that Schiller emerged from Kant as from a cold-water cure. All this is
certainly new and striking; but, even so, it does not strike us with wonder,
and so sure as it is new, it will never grow old, for it never was young; it
was senile at birth. What extraordinary ideas seem to occur to these Blessed
Ones, after the New Style, in their aesthetic heaven! And why can they not
manage to forget a few of them, more particularly when they are of that
unaesthetic, earthly, and ephemeral order to which the scholarly thoughts of
Gervinus belong, and when they so obviously bear the stamp of puerility? But it
almost seems as though the modest greatness of a Strauss and the vain
insignificance of a Gervinus were only too well able to harmonise: then long
live all those Blessed Ones! may we, the rejected, also live long, if this
unchallenged judge of art continues any longer to teach his borrowed
enthusiasm, and the gallop of that hired steed of which the honest Grillparzer
speaks with such delightful clearness, until the whole of heaven rings beneath
the hoof of that galumphing enthusiasm. Then, at least, things will be livelier
and noisier than they are at the present moment, in which the carpet-slippered
rapture of our heavenly leader and the lukewarm eloquence of his lips only
succeed in the end in making us sick and tired. I should like to know how a
Hallelujah sung by Strauss would sound: I believe one would have to listen very
carefully, lest it should seem no more than a courteous apology or a lisped
compliment. Apropos of this, I might adduce an instructive and somewhat
forbidding example. Strauss strongly resented the action of one of his
opponents who happened to refer to his reverence for Lessing. The unfortunate
man had misunderstood;—true, Strauss did declare that one must be of a
very obtuse mind not to recognise that the simple words of paragraph 86 come
from the writer's heart. Now, I do not question this warmth in the very least;
on the contrary, the fact that Strauss fosters these feelings towards Lessing
has always excited my suspicion; I find the same warmth for Lessing raised
almost to heat in Gervinus—yea, on the whole, no great German writer is
so popular among little German writers as Lessing is; but for all that, they
deserve no thanks for their predilection; for what is it, in sooth, that they
praise in Lessing? At one moment it is his catholicity— the fact that he
was critic and poet, archaeologist and philosopher, dramatist and theologian.
Anon, "it is the unity in him of the writer and the man, of the head and the
heart." The last quality, as a rule, is just as characteristic of the great
writer as of the little one; as a rule, a narrow head agrees only too fatally
with a narrow heart. And as to the catholicity; this is no distinction, more
especially when, as in Lessing's case, it was a dire necessity. What astonishes
one in regard to Lessing-enthusiasts is rather that they have no conception of
the devouring necessity which drove him on through life and to this
catholicity; no feeling for the fact that such a man is too prone to consume
himself rapidly, like a flame; nor any indignation at the thought that the
vulgar narrowness and pusillanimity of his whole environment, especially of his
learned contemporaries, so saddened, tormented, and stifled the tender and
ardent creature that he was, that the very universality for which he is praised
should give rise to feelings of the deepest compassion. "Have pity on the
exceptional man!" Goethe cries to us; "for it was his lot to live in such a
wretched age that his life was one long polemical effort." How can ye, my
worthy Philistines, think of Lessing without shame? He who was ruined precisely
on account of your stupidity, while struggling with your ludicrous fetiches and
idols, with the defects of your theatres, scholars, and theologists, without
once daring to attempt that eternal flight for which he had been born. And what
are your feelings when ye think of Winckelman, who, in order to turn his eyes
from your grotesque puerilities, went begging to the Jesuits for help, and
whose ignominious conversion dishonours not him, but you? Dare ye mention
Schiller's name without blushing? Look at his portrait. See the flashing eyes
that glance contemptuously over your heads, the deadly red cheek—do these
things mean nothing to you? In him ye had such a magnificent and divine toy
that ye shattered it. Suppose, for a moment, it had been possible to deprive
this harassed and hunted life of Goethe's friendship, ye would then have been
reponsible for its still earlier end. Ye have had no finger in any one of the
life-works of your great geniuses, and yet ye would make a dogma to the effect
that no one is to be helped in the future. But for every one of them, ye were
"the resistance of the obtuse world," which Goethe calls by its name in his
epilogue to the Bell; for all of them ye were the grumbling imbeciles, or the
envious bigots, or the malicious egoists: in spite of you each of them created
his works, against you each directed his attacks, and thanks to you each
prematurely sank, while his work was still unfinished, broken and bewildered by
the stress of the battle. And now ye presume that ye are going to be permitted,
tamquam re bene gesta, to praise such men! and with words which leave no
one in any doubt as to whom ye have in your minds when ye utter your encomiums,
which therefore "spring forth with such hearty warmth" that one must be blind
not to see to whom ye are really bowing. Even Goethe in his day had to cry:
"Upon my honour, we are in need of a Lessing, and woe unto all vain masters and
to the whole aesthetic kingdom of heaven, when the young tiger, whose restless
strength will be visible in his every distended muscle and his every glance,
shall sally forth to seek his prey!"
How clever it was of my friend to read no further, once he had been enlightened
(thanks to that chimerical vision) concerning the Straussian Lessing and
Strauss himself. We, however, read on further, and even craved admission of the
Doorkeeper of the New Faith to the sanctum of music. The Master threw the door
open for us, accompanied us, and began quoting certain names, until, at last,
overcome with mistrust, we stood still and looked at him. Was it possible that
we were the victims of the same hallucination as that to which our friend had
been subjected in his dream? The musicians to whom Strauss referred seemed to
us to be wrongly designated as long as he spoke about them, and we began to
think that the talk must certainly be about somebody else, even admitting that
it did not relate to incongruous phantoms. When, for instance, he mentioned
Haydn with that same warmth which made us so suspicious when he praised
Lessing, and when he posed as the epopt and priest of a mysterious Haydn cult;
when, in a discussion upon quartette-music, if you please, he even likened
Haydn to a "good unpretending soup" and Beethoven to "sweetmeats" (p. 432);
then, to our minds, one thing, and one thing alone, became
certain—namely, that his Sweetmeat-Beethoven is not our Beethoven, and
his Soup-Haydn is not our Haydn. The Master was moreover of the opinion that
our orchestra is too good to perform Haydn, and that only the most
unpretentious amateurs can do justice to that music—a further proof that
he was referring to some other artist and some other work, possibly to Riehl's
music for the home.
But whoever can this Sweetmeat-Beethoven of Strauss's be? He is said to have
composed nine symphonies, of which the Pastoral is "the least remarkable"; we
are told that "each time in composing the third, he seemed impelled to exceed
his bounds, and depart on an adventurous quest," from which we might infer that
we are here concerned with a sort of double monster, half horse and half
cavalier. With regard to a certain Eroica, this Centaur is very hard
pressed, because he did not succeed in making it clear "whether it is a
question of a conflict on the open field or in the deep heart of man." In the
Pastoral there is said to be "a furiously raging storm," for which it is
"almost too insignificant" to interrupt a dance of country-folk, and which,
owing to "its arbitrary connection with a trivial motive," as Strauss so
adroitly and correctly puts it, renders this symphony "the least remarkable." A
more drastic expression appears to have occurred to the Master; but he prefers
to speak here, as he says, "with becoming modesty." But no, for once our Master
is wrong; in this case he is really a little too modest. Who, indeed, will
enlighten us concerning this Sweetmeat-Beethoven, if not Strauss
himself—the only person who seems to know anything about him? But,
immediately below, a strong judgment is uttered with becoming non-modesty, and
precisely in regard to the Ninth Symphony. It is said, for instance, that this
symphony "is naturally the favourite of a prevalent taste, which in art, and
music especially, mistakes the grotesque for the genial, and the formless for
the sublime" (p. 428). It is true that a critic as severe as Gervinus was gave
this work a hearty welcome, because it happened to confirm one of his
doctrines; but Strauss is "far from going to these problematic productions" in
search of the merits of his Beethoven. "It is a pity," cries our Master, with a
convulsive sigh, "that one is compelled, by such reservations, to mar one's
enjoyment of Beethoven, as well as the admiration gladly accorded to him." For
our Master is a favourite of the Graces, and these have informed him that they
only accompanied Beethoven part of the way, and that he then lost sight of
them. "This is a defect," he cries, "but can you believe that it may also
appear as an advantage?" "He who is painfully and breathlessly rolling the
musical idea along will seem to be moving the weightier one, and thus appear to
be the stronger" (pp. 423-24). This is a confession, and not necessarily one
concerning Beethoven alone, but concerning "the classical prose-writer"
himself. He, the celebrated author, is not abandoned by the Graces. From the
play of airy jests—that is to say, Straussian jests— to the heights
of solemn earnestness—that is to say, Straussian earnestness—they
remain stolidly at his elbow. He, the classical prose-writer, slides his burden
along playfully and with a light heart, whereas Beethoven rolls his painfully
and breathlessly. He seems merely to dandle his load; this is indeed an
advantage. But would anybody believe that it might equally be a sign of
something wanting? In any case, only those could believe this who mistake the
grotesque for the genial, and the formless for the sublime—is not that
so, you dandling favourite of the Graces? We envy no one the edifying moments
he may have, either in the stillness of his little private room or in a new
heaven specially fitted out for him; but of all possible pleasures of this
order, that of Strauss's is surely one of the most wonderful, for he is even
edified by a little holocaust. He calmly throws the sublimest works of the
German nation into the flames, in order to cense his idols with their smoke.
Suppose, for a moment, that by some accident, the Eroica, the Pastoral, and the
Ninth Symphony had fallen into the hands of our priest of the Graces, and that
it had been in his power to suppress such problematic productions, in order to
keep the image of the Master pure, who doubts but what he would have burned
them? And it is precisely in this way that the Strausses of our time demean
themselves: they only wish to know so much of an artist as is compatible with
the service of their rooms; they know only the extremes— censing or
burning. To all this they are heartily welcome; the one surprising feature of
the whole case is that public opinion, in matters artistic, should be so
feeble, vacillating, and corruptible as contentedly to allow these exhibitions
of indigent Philistinism to go by without raising an objection; yea, that it
does not even possess sufficient sense of humour to feel tickled at the sight
of an unaesthetic little master's sitting in judgment upon Beethoven. As to
Mozart, what Aristotle says of Plato ought really to be applied here:
"Insignificant people ought not to be permitted even to praise him." In this
respect, however, all shame has vanished—from the public as well as from
the Master's mind: he is allowed, not merely to cross himself before the
greatest and purest creations of German genius, as though he had perceived
something godless and immoral in them, but people actually rejoice over his
candid confessions and admission of sins—more particularly as he makes no
mention of his own, but only of those which great men are said to have
committed. Oh, if only our Master be in the right! his readers sometimes think,
when attacked by a paroxysm of doubt; he himself, however, stands there,
smiling and convinced, perorating, condemning, blessing, raising his hat to
himself, and is at any minute capable of saying what the Duchesse Delaforte
said to Madame de Staël, to wit: "My dear, I must confess that I find no one
but myself invariably right."
A corpse is a pleasant thought for a worm, and a worm is a dreadful thought for
every living creature. Worms fancy their kingdom of heaven in a fat body;
professors of philosophy seek theirs in rummaging among Schopenhauer's
entrails, and as long as rodents exist, there will exist a heaven for rodents.
In this, we have the answer to our first question: How does the believer in the
new faith picture his heaven? The Straussian Philistine harbours in the works
of our great poets and musicians like a parasitic worm whose life is
destruction, whose admiration is devouring, and whose worship is digesting.
Now, however, our second question must be answered: How far does the courage
lent to its adherents by this new faith extend? Even this question would
already have been answered, if courage and pretentiousness had been one; for
then Strauss would not be lacking even in the just and veritable courage of a
Mameluke. At all events, the "becoming modesty" of which Strauss speaks in the
above-mentioned passage, where he is referring to Beethoven, can only be a
stylistic and not a moral manner of speech. Strauss has his full share of the
temerity to which every successful hero assumes the right: all flowers grow
only for him—the conqueror; and he praises the sun because it shines in
at his window just at the right time. He does not even spare the venerable old
universe in his eulogies—as though it were only now and henceforward
sufficiently sanctified by praise to revolve around the central monad David
Strauss. The universe, he is happy to inform us, is, it is true, a machine with
jagged iron wheels, stamping and hammering ponderously, but: "We do not only
find the revolution of pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the
shedding of soothing oil" (p. 435). The universe, provided it submit to
Strauss's encomiums, is not likely to overflow with gratitude towards this
master of weird metaphors, who was unable to discover better similes in its
praise. But what is the oil called which trickles down upon the hammers and
stampers? And how would it console a workman who chanced to get one of his
limbs caught in the mechanism to know that this oil was trickling over him?
Passing over this simile as bad, let us turn our attention to another of
Strauss's artifices, whereby he tries to ascertain how he feels disposed
towards the universe; this question of Marguerite's, "He loves me—loves
me not—loves me?" hanging on his lips the while. Now, although Strauss is
not telling flower-petals or the buttons on his waistcoat, still what he does
is not less harmless, despite the fact that it needs perhaps a little more
courage. Strauss wishes to make certain whether his feeling for the "All" is
either paralysed or withered, and he pricks himself; for he knows that one can
prick a limb that is either paralysed or withered without causing any pain. As
a matter of fact, he does not really prick himself, but selects another more
violent method, which he describes thus: "We open Schopenhauer, who takes every
occasion of slapping our idea in the face" (p. 167). Now, as an idea—even
that of Strauss's concerning the universe—has no face, if there be any
face in the question at all it must be that of the idealist, and the procedure
may be subdivided into the following separate actions:—Strauss, in any
case, throws Schopenhauer open, whereupon the latter slaps Strauss in the face.
Strauss then reacts religiously; that is to say, he again begins to belabour
Schopenhauer, to abuse him, to speak of absurdities, blasphemies, dissipations,
and even to allege that Schopenhauer could not have been in his right senses.
Result of the dispute: "We demand the same piety for our Cosmos that the devout
of old demanded for his God"; or, briefly, "He loves me." Our favourite of the
Graces makes his life a hard one, but he is as brave as a Mameluke, and fears
neither the Devil nor Schopenhauer. How much "soothing oil" must he use if such
incidents are of frequent occurrence!
On the other hand, we readily understand Strauss's gratitude to this tickling,
pricking, and slapping Schopenhauer; hence we are not so very much surprised
when we find him expressing himself in the following kind way about him: "We
need only turn over the leaves of Arthur Schopenhauer's works (although we
shall on many other accounts do well not only to glance over but to study
them), etc." (p. 166). Now, to whom does this captain of Philistines address
these words? To him who has clearly never even studied Schopenhauer, the latter
might well have retorted, "This is an author who does not even deserve to be
scanned, much less to be studied." Obviously, he gulped Schopenhauer down "the
wrong way," and this hoarse coughing is merely his attempt to clear his throat.
But, in order to fill the measure of his ingenuous encomiums, Strauss even
arrogates to himself the right of commending old Kant: he speaks of the
latter's General History of the Heavens of the Year 1755 as of "a work
which has always appeared to me not less important than his later Critique
of Pure Reason. If in the latter we admire the depth of insight, the
breadth of observation strikes us in the former. If in the latter we can trace
the old man's anxiety to secure even a limited possession of knowledge—so
it be but on a firm basis—in the former we encounter the mature man, full
of the daring of the discoverer and conqueror in the realm of thought." This
judgment of Strauss's concerning Kant did not strike me as being more modest
than the one concerning Schopenhauer. In the one case, we have the little
captain, who is above all anxious to express even the most insignificant
opinion with certainty, and in the other we have the famous prose-writer, who,
with all the courage of ignorance, exudes his eulogistic secretions over Kant.
It is almost incredible that Strauss availed himself of nothing in Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason while compiling his Testament of modern ideas,
and that he knew only how to appeal to the coarsest realistic taste must also
be numbered among the more striking characteristics of this new gospel, the
which professes to be but the result of the laborious and continuous study of
history and science, and therefore tacitly repudiates all connection with
philosophy. For the Philistine captain and his "We," Kantian philosophy does
not exist. He does not dream of the fundamental antinomy of idealism and of the
highly relative sense of all science and reason. And it is precisely reason
that ought to tell him how little it is possible to know of things in
themselves. It is true, however, that people of a certain age cannot possibly
understand Kant, especially when, in their youth, they understood or fancied
they understood that "gigantic mind," Hegel, as Strauss did; and had moreover
concerned themselves with Schleiermacher, who, according to Strauss, "was
gifted with perhaps too much acumen." It will sound odd to our author when I
tell him that, even now, he stands absolutely dependent upon Hegel and
Schleiermacher, and that his teaching of the Cosmos, his way of regarding
things sub specie biennii, his salaams to the state of affairs now
existing in Germany, and, above all, his shameless Philistine optimism, can
only be explained by an appeal to certain impressions of youth, early habits,
and disorders; for he who has once sickened on Hegel and Schleiermacher never
completely recovers.
There is one passage in the confession-book where the incurable optimism
referred to above bursts forth with the full joyousness of holiday spirits (pp.
166-67). "If the universe is a thing which had better not have existed," says
Strauss, "then surely the speculation of the philosopher, as forming part of
this universe, is a speculation which had better not have speculated. The
pessimist philosopher fails to perceive that he, above all, declares his own
thought, which declares the world to be bad, as bad also; but if the thought
which declares the world to be bad is a bad thought, then it follows naturally
that the world is good. As a rule, optimism may take things too easily.
Schopenhauer's references to the colossal part which sorrow and evil play in
the world are quite in their right place as a counterpoise; but every true
philosophy is necessarily optimistic, as otherwise she hews down the branch on
which she herself is sitting." If this refutation of Schopenhauer is not the
same as that to which Strauss refers somewhere else as "the refutation loudly
and jubilantly acclaimed in higher spheres," then I quite fail to understand
the dramatic phraseology used by him elsewhere to strike an opponent. Here
optimism has for once intentionally simplified her task. But the master-stroke
lay in thus pretending that the refutation of Schopenhauer was not such a very
difficult task after all, and in playfully wielding the burden in such a manner
that the three Graces attendant on the dandling optimist might constantly be
delighted by his methods. The whole purpose of the deed was to demonstrate this
one truth, that it is quite unnecessary to take a pessimist seriously; the most
vapid sophisms become justified, provided they show that, in regard to a
philosophy as "unhealthy and unprofitable" as Schopenhauer's, not proofs but
quips and sallies alone are suitable. While perusing such passages, the reader
will grasp the full meaning of Schopenhauer's solemn utterance to the effect
that, where optimism is not merely the idle prattle of those beneath whose flat
brows words and only words are stored, it seemed to him not merely an absurd
but a vicious attitude of mind, and one full of scornful irony towards
the indescribable sufferings of humanity. When a philosopher like Strauss is
able to frame it into a system, it becomes more than a vicious attitude of
mind—it is then an imbecile gospel of comfort for the "I" or for the
"We," and can only provoke indignation.
Who could read the following psychological avowal, for instance, without
indignation, seeing that it is obviously but an offshoot from this vicious
gospel of comfort?—"Beethoven remarked that he could never have composed
a text like Figaro or Don Juan. Life had not been so profuse of its snubs to
him that he could treat it so gaily, or deal so lightly with the foibles of
men" (p. 430). In order, however, to adduce the most striking instance of
this dissolute vulgarity of sentiment, let it suffice, here, to observe that
Strauss knows no other means of accounting for the terribly serious negative
instinct and the movement of ascetic sanctification which characterised the
first century of the Christian era, than by supposing the existence of a
previous period of surfeit in the matter of all kinds of sexual indulgence,
which of itself brought about a state of revulsion and disgust.
"The Persians call it bidamag buden, The Germans say
'Katzenjammer.'"*
Strauss quotes this himself, and is not ashamed. As for us, we turn aside for a
moment, that we may overcome our loathing.
As a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is brave, even audacious, in words;
particularly when he hopes by such bravery to delight his noble
colleagues—the "We," as he calls them. So the asceticism and self-denial
of the ancient anchorite and saint was merely a form of Katzenjammer?
Jesus may be described as an enthusiast who nowadays would scarcely have
escaped the madhouse, and the story of the Resurrection may be termed a
"world-wide deception." For once we will allow these views to pass without
raising any objection, seeing that they may help us to gauge the amount of
courage which our "classical Philistine" Strauss is capable of. Let us first
hear his confession: "It is certainly an unpleasant and a thankless task to
tell the world those truths which it is least desirous of hearing. It prefers,
in fact, to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving and spending after
the magnificent fashion of the great, as long as there is anything left; should
any person, however, add up the various items of its liabilities, and anxiously
call its attention to the sum-total, he is certain to be regarded as an
importunate meddler. And yet this has always been the bent of my moral and
intellectual nature." A moral and intellectual nature of this sort might
possibly be regarded as courageous; but what still remains to be proved is,
whether this courage is natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather
acquired and artificial. Perhaps Strauss only accustomed himself by degrees to
the rôle of an importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired the courage of
his calling. Innate cowardice, which is the Philistine's birthright, would not
be incompatible with this mode of development, and it is precisely this
cowardice which is perceptible in the want of logic of those sentences of
Strauss's which it needed courage to pronounce. They sound like thunder, but
they do not clear the air. No aggressive action is performed: aggressive words
alone are used, and these he selects from among the most insulting he can find.
He moreover exhausts all his accumulated strength and energy in coarse and
noisy expression, and when once his utterances have died away he is more of a
coward even than he who has always held his tongue. The very shadow of his
deeds—his morality—shows us that he is a word-hero, and that he
avoids everything which might induce him to transfer his energies from mere
verbosity to really serious things. With admirable frankness, he announces that
he is no longer a Christian, but disclaims all idea of wishing to disturb the
contentment of any one: he seems to recognise a contradiction in the notion of
abolishing one society by instituting another—whereas there is nothing
contradictory in it at all. With a certain rude self-satisfaction, he swathes
himself in the hirsute garment of our Simian genealogists, and extols Darwin as
one of mankind's greatest benefactors; but our perplexity is great when we find
him constructing his ethics quite independently of the question, "What is our
conception of the universe?" In this department he had an opportunity of
exhibiting native pluck; for he ought to have turned his back on his "We," and
have established a moral code for life out of bellum omnium contra omnes
and the privileges of the strong. But it is to be feared that such a code could
only have emanated from a bold spirit like that of Hobbes', and must have taken
its root in a love of truth quite different from that which was only able to
vent itself in explosive outbursts against parsons, miracles, and the
"world-wide humbug" of the Resurrection. For, whereas the Philistine remained
on Strauss's side in regard to these explosive outbursts, he would have been
against him had he been confronted with a genuine and seriously constructed
ethical system, based upon Darwin's teaching.
Says Strauss: "I should say that all moral action arises from the individual's
acting in consonance with the idea of kind" (p. 274). Put quite clearly and
comprehensively, this means: "Live as a man, and not as an ape or a seal."
Unfortunately, this imperative is both useless and feeble; for in the class
Man what a multitude of different types are included—to mention
only the Patagonian and the Master, Strauss; and no one would ever dare to say
with any right, "Live like a Patagonian," and "Live like the Master Strauss"!
Should any one, however, make it his rule to live like a genius—that is
to say, like the ideal type of the genus Man—and should he perchance at
the same time be either a Patagonian or Strauss himself, what should we then
not have to suffer from the importunities of genius-mad eccentrics (concerning
whose mushroom growth in Germany even Lichtenberg had already spoken), who with
savage cries would compel us to listen to the confession of their most recent
belief! Strauss has not yet learned that no "idea" can ever make man better or
more moral, and that the preaching of a morality is as easy as the
establishment of it is difficult. His business ought rather to have been, to
take the phenomena of human goodness, such—for instance—as pity,
love, and self-abnegation, which are already to hand, and seriously to explain
them and show their relation to his Darwinian first principle. But no; he
preferred to soar into the imperative, and thus escape the task of explaining.
But even in his flight he was irresponsible enough to soar beyond the very
first principles of which we speak.
"Ever remember," says Strauss, "that thou art human, not merely a natural
production; ever remember that all others are human also, and, with all
individual differences, the same as thou, having the same needs and claims as
thyself: this is the sum and the substance of morality" (p. 277). But where
does this imperative hail from? How can it be intuitive in man, seeing that,
according to Darwin, man is indeed a creature of nature, and that his ascent to
his present stage of development has been conditioned by quite different
laws—by the very fact that be was continually forgetting that others were
constituted like him and shared the same rights with him; by the very fact that
he regarded himself as the stronger, and thus brought about the gradual
suppression of weaker types. Though Strauss is bound to admit that no two
creatures have ever been quite alike, and that the ascent of man from the
lowest species of animals to the exalted height of the Culture—Philistine
depended upon the law of individual distinctness, he still sees no difficulty
in declaring exactly the reverse in his law: "Behave thyself as though there
were no such things as individual distinctions." Where is the Strauss-Darwin
morality here? Whither, above all, has the courage gone?
In the very next paragraph we find further evidence tending to show us the
point at which this courage veers round to its opposite; for Strauss continues:
"Ever remember that thou, and all that thou beholdest within and around thee,
all that befalls thee and others, is no disjointed fragment, no wild chaos of
atoms or casualties, but that, following eternal law, it springs from the one
primal source of all life, all reason, and all good: this is the essence of
religion" (pp. 277-78). Out of that "one primal source," however, all ruin and
irrationality, all evil flows as well, and its name, according to Strauss, is
Cosmos.
Now, how can this Cosmos, with all the contradictions and the self-annihilating
characteristics which Strauss gives it, be worthy of religious veneration and
be addressed by the name "God," as Strauss addresses it?—"Our God does
not, indeed, take us into His arms from the outside (here one expects, as an
antithesis, a somewhat miraculous process of being "taken into His arms from
the inside"), but He unseals the well-springs of consolation within our own
bosoms. He shows us that although Chance would be an unreasonable ruler, yet
necessity, or the enchainment of causes in the world, is Reason itself." (A
misapprehension of which only the "We" can fail to perceive the folly; because
they were brought up in the Hegelian worship of Reality as the
Reasonable—that is to say, in the canonisation of success.) "He teaches
us to perceive that to demand an exception in the accomplishment of a single
natural law would be to demand the destruction of the universe" (pp. 435-36).
On the contrary, Great Master: an honest natural scientist believes in the
unconditional rule of natural laws in the world, without, however, taking up
any position in regard to the ethical or intellectual value of these laws.
Wherever neutrality is abandoned in this respect, it is owing to an
anthropomorphic attitude of mind which allows reason to exceed its proper
bounds. But it is just at the point where the natural scientist resigns that
Strauss, to put it in his own words, "reacts religiously," and leaves the
scientific and scholarly standpoint in order to proceed along less honest lines
of his own. Without any further warrant, he assumes that all that has happened
possesses the highest intellectual value; that it was therefore absolutely
reasonably and intentionally so arranged, and that it even contained a
revelation of eternal goodness. He therefore has to appeal to a complete
cosmodicy, and finds himself at a disadvantage in regard to him who is
contented with a theodicy, and who, for instance, regards the whole of man's
existence as a punishment for sin or a process of purification. At this stage,
and in this embarrassing position, Strauss even suggests a metaphysical
hypothesis—the driest and most palsied ever conceived—and, in
reality, but an unconscious parody of one of Lessing's sayings. We read on page
255: "And that other saying of Lessing's— 'If God, holding truth in His
right hand, and in His left only the ever-living desire for it, although on
condition of perpetual error, left him the choice of the two, he would,
considering that truth belongs to God alone, humbly seize His left hand, and
beg its contents for Himself'— this saying of Lessing's has always been
accounted one of the most magnificent which he has left us. It has been found
to contain the general expression of his restless love of inquiry and activity.
The saying has always made a special impression upon me; because, behind its
subjective meaning, I still seemed to hear the faint ring of an objective one
of infinite import. For does it not contain the best possible answer to the
rude speech of Schopenhauer, respecting the ill-advised God who had nothing
better to do than to transform Himself into this miserable world? if, for
example, the Creator Himself had shared Lessing's conviction of the superiority
of struggle to tranquil possession?" What!—a God who would choose
perpetual error, together with a striving after truth, and who would,
perhaps, fall humbly at Strauss's feet and cry to him,"Take thou all Truth, it
is thine!"? If ever a God and a man were ill-advised, they are this Straussian
God, whose hobby is to err and to fail, and this Straussian man, who must atone
for this erring and failing. Here, indeed, one hears "a faint ring of infinite
import"; here flows Strauss's cosmic soothing oil; here one has a notion of the
rationale of all becoming and all natural laws. Really? Is not our
universe rather the work of an inferior being, as Lichtenberg
suggests?—of an inferior being who did not quite understand his business;
therefore an experiment, an attempt, upon which work is still proceeding?
Strauss himself, then, would be compelled to admit that our universe is by no
means the theatre of reason, but of error, and that no conformity to law can
contain anything consoling, since all laws have been promulgated by an erratic
God who even finds pleasure in blundering. It really is a most amusing
spectacle to watch Strauss as a metaphysical architect, building castles in the
air. But for whose benefit is this entertainment given? For the smug and noble
"We," that they may not lose conceit with themselves: they may possibly have
taken sudden fright, in the midst of the inflexible and pitiless wheel-works of
the world-machine, and are tremulously imploring their leader to come to their
aid. That is why Strauss pours forth the "soothing oil," that is why he leads
forth on a leash a God whose passion it is to err; it is for the same reason,
too, that he assumes for once the utterly unsuitable rôle of a metaphysical
architect. He does all this, because the noble souls already referred to are
frightened, and because he is too. And it is here that we reach the limit of
his courage, even in the presence of his "We." He does not dare to be honest,
and to tell them, for instance: "I have liberated you from a helping and
pitiful God: the Cosmos is no more than an inflexible machine; beware of its
wheels, that they do not crush you." He dare not do this. Consequently, he must
enlist the help of a witch, and he turns to metaphysics. To the Philistine,
however, even Strauss's metaphysics is preferable to Christianity's, and the
notion of an erratic God more congenial than that of one who works miracles.
For the Philistine himself errs, but has never yet performed a miracle. Hence
his hatred of the genius; for the latter is justly famous for the working of
miracles. It is therefore highly instructive to ascertain why Strauss, in one
passage alone, suddenly takes up the cudgels for genius and the aristocracy of
intellect in general. Whatever does he do it for? He does it out of
fear—fear of the social democrat. He refers to Bismarck and Moltke,
"whose greatness is the less open to controversy as it manifests itself in the
domain of tangible external facts. No help for it, therefore; even the most
stiff-necked and obdurate of these fellows must condescend to look up a little,
if only to get a sight, be it no farther than the knees, of those august
figures" (p.327). Do you, Master Metaphysician, perhaps intend to instruct the
social democrats in the art of getting kicks? The willingness to bestow them
may be met with everywhere, and you are perfectly justified in promising to
those who happen to be kicked a sight of those sublime beings as far as the
knee. "Also in the domain of art and science," Strauss continues, "there will
never be a dearth of kings whose architectural undertakings will find
employment for a multitude of carters." Granted; but what if the carters should
begin building? It does happen at times, Great Master, as you know, and then
the kings must grin and bear it.
As a matter of fact, this union of impudence and weakness, of daring words and
cowardly concessions, this cautious deliberation as to which sentences will or
will not impress the Philistine or smooth him down the right way, this lack of
character and power masquerading as character and power, this meagre wisdom in
the guise of omniscience,—these are the features in this book which I
detest. If I could conceive of young men having patience to read it and to
value it, I should sorrowfully renounce all hope for their future. And is this
confession of wretched, hopeless, and really despicable Philistinism supposed
to be the expression of the thousands constituting the "We" of whom Strauss
speaks, and who are to be the fathers of the coming generation? Unto him who
would fain help this coming generation to acquire what the present one does not
yet possess, namely, a genuine German culture, the prospect is a horrible one.
To such a man, the ground seems strewn with ashes, and all stars are obscured;
while every withered tree and field laid waste seems to cry to him: Barren!
Forsaken! Springtime is no longer possible here! He must feel as young Goethe
felt when he first peered into the melancholy atheistic twilight of the
Système de la Nature; to him this book seemed so grey, so Cimmerian and
deadly, that he could only endure its presence with difficulty, and shuddered
at it as one shudders at a spectre.
We ought now to be sufficiently informed concerning the heaven and the courage
of our new believer to be able to turn to the last question: How does he write
his books? and of what order are his religious documents?
He who can answer this question uprightly and without prejudice will be
confronted by yet another serious problem, and that is: How this Straussian
pocket-oracle of the German Philistine was able to pass through six editions?
And he will grow more than ever suspicious when he hears that it was actually
welcomed as a pocket-oracle, not only in scholastic circles, but even in German
universities as well. Students are said to have greeted it as a canon for
strong intellects, and, from all accounts, the professors raised no objections
to this view; while here and there people have declared it to be a religions
book for scholars. Strauss himself gave out that he did not intend his
profession of faith to be merely a reference-book for learned and cultured
people; but here let us abide by the fact that it was first and foremost a work
appealing to his colleagues, and was ostensibly a mirror in which they were to
see their own way of living faithfully reflected. For therein lay the feat. The
Master feigned to have presented us with a new ideal conception of the
universe, and now adulation is being paid him out of every mouth; because each
is in a position to suppose that he too regards the universe and life in the
same way. Thus Strauss has seen fulfilled in each of his readers what he only
demanded of the future. In this way, the extraordinary success of his book is
partly explained: "Thus we live and hold on our way in joy," the scholar cries
in his book, and delights to see others rejoicing over the announcement. If the
reader happen to think differently from the Master in regard to Darwin or to
capital punishment, it is of very little consequence; for he is too conscious
throughout of breathing an atmosphere that is familiar to him, and of hearing
but the echoes of his own voice and wants. However painfully this unanimity may
strike the true friend of German culture, it is his duty to be unrelenting in
his explanation of it as a phenomenon, and not to shrink from making this
explanation public.
We all know the peculiar methods adopted in our own time of cultivating the
sciences: we all know them, because they form a part of our lives. And, for
this very reason, scarcely anybody seems to ask himself what the result of such
a cultivation of the sciences will mean to culture in general, even supposing
that everywhere the highest abilities and the most earnest will be available
for the promotion of culture. In the heart of the average scientific type
(quite irrespective of the examples thereof with which we meet to-day) there
lies a pure paradox: he behaves like the veriest idler of independent means, to
whom life is not a dreadful and serious business, but a sound piece of
property, settled upon him for all eternity; and it seems to him justifiable to
spend his whole life in answering questions which, after all is said and done,
can only be of interest to that person who believes in eternal life as an
absolute certainty. The heir of but a few hours, he sees himself encompassed by
yawning abysses, terrible to behold; and every step he takes should recall the
questions, Wherefore? Whither? and Whence? to his mind. But his soul rather
warms to his work, and, be this the counting of a floweret's petals or the
breaking of stones by the roadside, he spends his whole fund of interest,
pleasure, strength, and aspirations upon it. This paradox—the scientific
man—has lately dashed ahead at such a frantic speed in Germany, that one
would almost think the scientific world were a factory, in which every minute
wasted meant a fine. To-day the man of science works as arduously as the fourth
or slave caste: his study has ceased to be an occupation, it is a necessity; he
looks neither to the right nor to the left, but rushes through all
things—even through the serious matters which life bears in its
train—with that semi-listlessness and repulsive need of rest so
characteristic of the exhausted labourer. This is also his attitude towards
culture. He behaves as if life to him were not only otium but
sine dignitate: even in his sleep he does not throw off the yoke, but
like an emancipated slave still dreams of his misery, his forced haste and his
floggings. Our scholars can scarcely be distinguished—and, even then, not
to their advantage—from agricultural labourers, who in order to increase
a small patrimony, assiduously strive, day and night, to cultivate their
fields, drive their ploughs, and urge on their oxen. Now, Pascal suggests that
men only endeavour to work hard at their business and sciences with the view of
escaping those questions of greatest import which every moment of loneliness or
leisure presses upon them—the questions relating to the wherefore,
the whence, and the whither of life. Curiously enough, our
scholars never think of the most vital question of all—the wherefore of
their work, their haste, and their painful ecstasies. Surely their object is
not the earning of bread or the acquiring of posts of honour? No, certainly
not. But ye take as much pains as the famishing and breadless; and, with that
eagerness and lack of discernment which characterises the starving, ye even
snatch the dishes from the sideboard of science. If, however, as scientific
men, ye proceed with science as the labourers with the tasks which the
exigencies of life impose upon them, what will become of a culture which must
await the hour of its birth and its salvation in the very midst of all this
agitated and breathless running to and fro—this sprawling scientifically?
For it no one has time—and yet for what shall science have time if
not for culture? Answer us here, then, at least: whence, whither, wherefore all
science, if it do not lead to culture? Belike to barbarity? And in this
direction we already see the scholar caste ominously advanced, if we are to
believe that such superficial books as this one of Strauss's meet the demand of
their present degree of culture. For precisely in him do we find that repulsive
need of rest and that incidental semi-listless attention to, and coming to
terms with, philosophy, culture, and every serious thing on earth. It will be
remembered that, at the meetings held by scholars, as soon as each individual
has had his say in his own particular department of knowledge, signs of
fatigue, of a desire for distraction at any price, of waning memory, and of
incoherent experiences of life, begin to be noticeable. While listening to
Strauss discussing any worldly question, be it marriage, the war, or capital
punishment, we are startled by his complete lack of anything like first-hand
experience, or of any original thought on human nature. All his judgments are
so redolent of books, yea even of newspapers. Literary reminiscences do duty
for genuine ideas and views, and the assumption of a moderate and grandfatherly
tone take the place of wisdom and mature thought. How perfectly in keeping all
this is with the fulsome spirit animating the holders of the highest places in
German science in large cities! How thoroughly this spirit must appeal to that
other! for it is precisely in those quarters that culture is in the saddest
plight; it is precisely there that its fresh growth is made impossible—so
boisterous are the preparations made by science, so sheepishly are favourite
subjects of knowledge allowed to oust questions of much greater import. What
kind of lantern would be needed here, in order to find men capable of a
complete surrender to genius, and of an intimate knowledge of its
depths—men possessed of sufficient courage and strength to exorcise the
demons that have forsaken our age? Viewed from the outside, such quarters
certainly do appear to possess the whole pomp of culture; with their imposing
apparatus they resemble great arsenals fitted with huge guns and other
machinery of war; we see preparations in progress and the most strenuous
activity, as though the heavens themselves were to be stormed, and truth were
to be drawn out of the deepest of all wells; and yet, in war, the largest
machines are the most unwieldy. Genuine culture therefore leaves such places as
these religiously alone, for its best instincts warn it that in their midst it
has nothing to hope for, and very much to fear. For the only kind of culture
with which the inflamed eye and obtuse brain of the scholar working-classes
concern themselves is of that Philistine order of which Strauss has announced
the gospel. If we consider for a moment the fundamental causes underlying the
sympathy which binds the learned working-classes to Culture-Philistinism, we
shall discover the road leading to Strauss the Writer, who has been
acknowledged classical, and tihence to our last and principal theme.
To begin with, that culture has contentment written in its every feature, and
will allow of no important changes being introduced into the present state of
German education. It is above all convinced of the originality of all German
educational institutions, more particularly the public schools and
universities; it does not cease recommending these to foreigners, and never
doubts that if the Germans have become the most cultivated and discriminating
people on earth, it is owing to such institutions. Culture-Philistinism
believes in itself, consequently it also believes in the methods and means at
its disposal. Secondly, however, it leaves the highest judgment concerning all
questions of taste and culture to the scholar, and even regards itself as the
ever-increasing compendium of scholarly opinions regarding art, literature, and
philosophy. Its first care is to urge the scholar to express his opinions;
these it proceeds to mix, dilute, and systematise, and then it administers them
to the German people in the form of a bottle of medicine. What conies to life
outside this circle is either not heard or attended at all, or if heard, is
heeded half-heartedly; until, at last, a voice (it does not matter whose,
provided it belong to some one who is strictly typical of the scholar tribe) is
heard to issue from the temple in which traditional infallibility of taste is
said to reside; and from that time forward public opinion has one conviction
more, which it echoes and re-echoes hundreds and hundreds of times. As a matter
of fact, though, the aesthetic infallibility of any utterance emanating from
the temple is the more doubtful, seeing that the lack of taste, thought, and
artistic feeling in any scholar can be taken for granted, unless it has
previously been proved that, in his particular case, the reverse is true. And
only a few can prove this. For how many who have had a share in the breathless
and unending scurry of modern science have preserved that quiet and courageous
gaze of the struggling man of culture—if they ever possessed
it—that gaze which condemns even the scurry we speak of as a barbarous
state of affairs? That is why these few are forced to live in an almost
perpetual contradiction. What could they do against the uniform belief of the
thousands who have enlisted public opinion in their cause, and who mutually
defend each other in this belief? What purpose can it serve when one individual
openly declares war against Strauss, seeing that a crowd have decided in his
favour, and that the masses led by this crowd have learned to ask six
consecutive times for the Master's Philistine sleeping-mixture?
If, without further ado, we here assumed that the Straussian confession-book
had triumphed over public opinion and had been acclaimed and welcomed as
conqueror, its author might call our attention to the fact that the
multitudinous criticisms of his work in the various public organs are not of an
altogether unanimous or even favourable character, and that he therefore felt
it incumbent upon him to defend himself against some of the more malicious,
impudent, and provoking of these newspaper pugilists by means of a postscript.
How can there be a public opinion concerning my book, he cries to us, if every
journalist is to regard me as an outlaw, and to mishandle me as much as he
likes? This contradiction is easily explained, as soon as one considers the two
aspects of the Straussian book—the theological and the literary, and it
is only the latter that has anything to do with German culture. Thanks to its
theological colouring, it stands beyond the pale of our German culture, and
provokes the animosity of the various theological groups—yea, even of
every individual German, in so far as he is a theological sectarian from birth,
and only invents his own peculiar private belief in order to be able to dissent
from every other form of belief. But when the question arises of talking about
Strauss THE WRITER, pray listen to what the theological sectarians have to say
about him. As soon as his literary side comes under notice, all theological
objections immediately subside, and the dictum comes plain and clear, as if
from the lips of one congregation: In spite of it all, he is still a
classical writer!
Everybody—even the most bigoted, orthodox Churchman—pays the writer
the most gratifying compliments, while there is always a word or two thrown in
as a tribute to his almost Lessingesque language, his delicacy of touch, or the
beauty and accuracy of his aesthetic views. As a book, therefore, the
Straussian performance appears to meet all the demands of an ideal example of
its kind. The theological opponents, despite the fact that their voices were
the loudest of all, nevertheless constitute but an infinitesimal portion of the
great public; and even with regard to them, Strauss still maintains that he is
right when he says: "Compared with my thousands of readers, a few dozen public
cavillers form but an insignificant minority, and they can hardly prove that
they are their faithful interpreters. It was obviously in the nature of things
that opposition should be clamorous and assent tacit." Thus, apart from the
angry bitterness which Strauss's profession of faith may have provoked here and
there, even the most fanatical of his opponents, to whom his voice seems to
rise out of an abyss, like the voice of a beast, are agreed as to his merits as
a writer; and that is why the treatment which Strauss has received at the hands
of the literary lackeys of the theological groups proves nothing against our
contention that Culture-Philistinism celebrated its triumph in this book. It
must be admitted that the average educated Philistine is a degree less honest
than Strauss, or is at least more reserved in his public utterances. But this
fact only tends to increase his admiration for honesty in another. At home, or
in the company of his equals, he may applaud with wild enthusiasm, but takes
care not to put on paper how entirely Strauss's words are in harmony with his
own innermost feelings. For, as we have already maintained, our
Culture-Philistine is somewhat of a coward, even in his strongest sympathies;
hence Strauss, who can boast of a trifle more courage than he, becomes his
leader, notwithstanding the fact that even Straussian pluck has its very
definite limits. If he overstepped these limits, as Schopenhauer does in almost
every sentence, he would then forfeit his position at the head of the
Philistines, and everybody would flee from him as precipitately as they are now
following in his wake. He who would regard this artful if not sagacious
moderation and this mediocre valour as an Aristotelian virtue, would certainly
be wrong; for the valour in question is not the golden mean between two faults,
but between a virtue and a fault—and in this mean, between virtue and
fault, all Philistine qualities are to be found.
"In spite of it all, he is still a classical writer." Well, let us see! Perhaps
we may now be allowed to discuss Strauss the stylist and master of language;
but in the first place let us inquire whether, as a literary man, he is equal
to the task of building his house, and whether he really understands the
architecture of a book. From this inquiry we shall be able to conclude whether
he is a respectable, thoughtful, and experienced author; and even should we be
forced to answer "No" to these questions, he may still, as a last shift, take
refuge in his fame as a classical prose-writer. This last-mentioned talent
alone, it is true, would not suffice to class him with the classical authors,
but at most with the classical improvisers and virtuosos of style, who,
however, in regard to power of expression and the whole planning and framing of
the work, reveal the awkward hand and the embarrassed eye of the bungler. We
therefore put the question, whether Strauss really possesses the artistic
strength necessary for the purpose of presenting us with a thing that is a
whole, totum ponere?
As a rule, it ought to be possible to tell from the first rough sketch of a
work whether the author conceived the thing as a whole, and whether, in view of
this original conception, he has discovered the correct way of proceeding with
his task and of fixing its proportions. Should this most important Part of the
problem be solved, and should the framework of the building have been given its
most favourable proportions, even then there remains enough to be done: how
many smaller faults have to be corrected, how many gaps require filling in!
Here and there a temporary partition or floor was found to answer the
requirements; everywhere dust and fragments litter the ground, and no matter
where we look, we see the signs of work done and work still to be done. The
house, as a whole, is still uninhabitable and gloomy, its walls are bare, and
the wind blows in through the open windows. Now, whether this remaining,
necessary, and very irksome work has been satisfactorily accomplished by
Strauss does not concern us at present; our question is, whether the building
itself has been conceived as a whole, and whether its proportions are good? The
reverse of this, of course, would be a compilation of fragments—a method
generally adopted by scholars. They rely upon it that these fragments are
related among themselves, and thus confound the logical and the artistic
relation between them. Now, the relation between the four questions which
provide the chapter-headings of Strauss's book cannot be called a logical one.
Are we still Christians? Have we still a religion? What is our conception of
the universe? What is our rule of life? And it is by no means contended that
the relation is illogical simply because the third question has nothing to do
with the second, nor the fourth with the third, nor all three with the first.
The natural scientist who puts the third question, for instance, shows his
unsullied love of truth by the simple fact that he tacitly passes over the
second. And with regard to the subject of the fourth chapter—marriage,
republicanism, and capital punishment—Strauss himself seems to have been
aware that they could only have been muddled and obscured by being associated
with the Darwinian theory expounded in the third chapter; for he carefully
avoids all reference to this theory when discussing them. But the question,
"Are we still Christians?" destroys the freedom of the philosophical standpoint
at one stroke, by lending it an unpleasant theological colouring. Moreover, in
this matter, he quite forgot that the majority of men to-day are not Christians
at all, but Buddhists. Why should one, without further ceremony, immediately
think of Christianity at the sound of the words "old faith"? Is this a sign
that Strauss has never ceased to be a Christian theologian, and that he has
therefore never learned to be a philosopher? For we find still greater cause
for surprise in the fact that he quite fails to distinguish between belief and
knowledge, and continually mentions his "new belief" and the still newer
science in one breath. Or is "new belief" merely an ironical concession to
ordinary parlance? This almost seems to be the case; for here and there he
actually allows "new belief" and "newer science" to be interchangeable terms,
as for instance on page II, where he asks on which side, whether on that of the
ancient orthodoxy or of modern science, "exist more of the obscurities and
insufficiencies unavoidable in human speculation."
Moreover, according to the scheme laid down in the Introduction, his desire is
to disclose those proofs upon which the modern view of life is based; but he
derives all these proofs from science, and in this respect assumes far more the
attitude of a scientist than of a believer.
At bottom, therefore, the religion is not a new belief, but, being of a piece
with modern science, it has nothing to do with religion at all. If Strauss,
however, persists in his claims to be religious, the grounds for these claims
must be beyond the pale of recent science. Only the smallest portion of the
Straussian book—that is to say, but a few isolated pages—refer to
what Strauss in all justice might call a belief, namely, that feeling for the
"All" for which he demands the piety that the old believer demanded for his
God. On the pages in question, however, he cannot claim to be altogether
scientific; but if only he could lay claim to being a little stronger, more
natural, more outspoken, more pious, we should be content. Indeed, what perhaps
strikes us most forcibly about him is the multitude of artificial procedures of
which he avails himself before he ultimately gets the feeling that he still
possesses a belief and a religion; he reaches it by means of stings and blows,
as we have already seen. How indigently and feebly this emergency-belief
presents itself to us! We shiver at the sight of it.
Although Strauss, in the plan laid down in his Introduction, promises to
compare the two faiths, the old and the new, and to show that the latter will
answer the same purpose as the former, even he begins to feel, in the
end, that he has promised too much. For the question whether the new belief
answers the same purpose as the old, or is better or worse, is disposed of
incidentally, so to speak, and with uncomfortable haste, in two or three pages
(p. 436 et seq.-), and is actually bolstered up by the following subterfuge:
"He who cannot help himself in this matter is beyond help, is not yet ripe for
our standpoint" (p. 436). How differently, and with what intensity of
conviction, did the ancient Stoic believe in the All and the rationality of the
All! And, viewed in this light, how does Strauss's claim to originality appear?
But, as we have already observed, it would be a matter of indifference to us
whether it were new, old, original, or imitated, so that it were only more
powerful, more healthy, and more natural. Even Strauss himself leaves this
double-distilled emergency-belief to take care of itself as often as he can do
so, in order to protect himself and us from danger, and to present his recently
acquired biological knowledge to his "We" with a clear conscience. The more
embarrassed he may happen to be when he speaks of faith, the rounder and fuller
his mouth becomes when he quotes the greatest benefactor to modern men-Darwin.
Then he not only exacts belief for the new Messiah, but also for
himself—the new apostle. For instance, while discussing one of the most
intricate questions in natural history, he declares with true ancient pride: "I
shall be told that I am here speaking of things about which I understand
nothing. Very well; but others will come who will understand them, and who will
also have understood me" (p. 241).
According to this, it would almost seem as though the famous "We" were not only
in duty bound to believe in the "All," but also in the naturalist Strauss; in
this case we can only hope that in order to acquire the feeling for this last
belief, other processes are requisite than the painful and cruel ones demanded
by the first belief. Or is it perhaps sufficient in this case that the subject
of belief himself be tormented and stabbed with the view of bringing the
believers to that "religious reaction" which is the distinguishing sign of the
"new faith." What merit should we then discover in the piety of those whom
Strauss calls "We"?
Otherwise, it is almost to be feared that modern men will pass on in pursuit of
their business without troubling themselves overmuch concerning the new
furniture of faith offered them by the apostle: just as they have done
heretofore, without the doctrine of the rationality of the All. The whole of
modern biological and historical research has nothing to do with the Straussian
belief in the All, and the fact that the modern Philistine does not require the
belief is proved by the description of his life given by Strauss in the
chapter,"What is our Rule of Life?" He is therefore quite right in doubting
whether the coach to which his esteemed readers have been obliged to trust
themselves "with him, fulfils every requirement." It certainly does not; for
the modern man makes more rapid progress when he does not take his place in the
Straussian coach, or rather, he got ahead much more quickly long before the
Straussian coach ever existed. Now, if it be true that the famous "minority"
which is "not to be overlooked," and of which, and in whose name, Strauss
speaks, "attaches great importance to consistency," it must be just as
dissatisfied with Strauss the Coachbuilder as we are with Strauss the Logician.
Let us, however, drop the question of the logician. Perhaps, from the artistic
point of view, the book really is an example of a. well-conceived plan, and
does, after all, answer to the requirements of the laws of beauty, despite the
fact that it fails to meet with the demands of a well-conducted argument. And
now, having shown that he is neither a scientist nor a strictly correct and
systematic scholar, for the first time we approach the question: Is Strauss a
capable writer? Perhaps the task he set himself was not so much to scare people
away from the old faith as to captivate them by a picturesque and graceful
description of what life would be with the new. If he regarded scholars and
educated men as his most probable audience, experience ought certainly to have
told him that whereas one can shoot such men down with the heavy guns of
scientific proof, but cannot make them surrender, they may be got to capitulate
all the more quickly before "lightly equipped" measures of seduction. "Lightly
equipped," and "intentionally so," thus Strauss himself speaks of his own book.
Nor do his public eulogisers refrain from using the same expression in
reference to the work, as the following passage, quoted from one of the least
remarkable among them, and in which the same expression is merely paraphrased,
will go to prove:—
"The discourse flows on with delightful harmony: wherever it directs its
criticism against old ideas it wields the art of demonstration, almost
playfully; and it is with some spirit that it prepares the new ideas it brings
so enticingly, and presents them to the simple as well as to the fastidious
taste. The arrangement of such diverse and conflicting material is well thought
out for every portion of it required to be touched upon, without being made too
prominent; at times the transitions leading from one subject to another are
artistically managed, and one hardly knows what to admire most—the skill
with which unpleasant questions are shelved, or the discretion with which they
are hushed up."
The spirit of such eulogies, as the above clearly shows, is not quite so subtle
in regard to judging of what an author is able to do as in regard to what he
wishes. What Strauss wishes, however, is best revealed by his own emphatic and
not quite harmless commendation of Voltaire's charms, in whose service he might
have learned precisely those "lightly equipped" arts of which his admirer
speaks—granting, of course, that virtue may be acquired and a pedagogue
can ever be a dancer.
Who could help having a suspicion or two, when reading the following passage,
for instance, in which Strauss says of Voltaire, "As a philosopher [he] is
certainly not original, but in the main a mere exponent of English
investigations: in this respect, however, he shows himself to be completely
master of his subject, which he presents with incomparable skill, in all
possible lights and from all possible sides, and is able withal to meet the
demands of thoroughness, without, however, being over-severe in his method"?
Now, all the negative traits mentioned in this passage might be applied to
Strauss. No one would contend, I suppose, that Strauss is original, or that he
is over-severe in his method; but the question is whether we can regard him as
"master of his subject," and grant him "incomparable skill"? The confession to
the effect that the treatise was intentionally "lightly equipped" leads us to
think that it at least aimed at incomparable skill.
It was not the dream of our architect to build a temple, nor yet a house, but a
sort of summer-pavilion, surrounded by everything that the art of gardening can
provide. Yea, it even seems as if that mysterious feeling for the All were only
calculated to produce an aesthetic effect, to be, so to speak, a view of an
irrational element, such as the sea, looked at from the most charming and
rational of terraces. The walk through the first chapters— that is to
say, through the theological catacombs with all their gloominess and their
involved and baroque embellishments—was also no more than an aesthetic
expedient in order to throw into greater relief the purity, clearness, and
common sense of the chapter "What is our Conception of the Universe?" For,
immediately after that walk in the gloaming and that peep into the wilderness
of Irrationalism, we step into a hall with a skylight to it. Soberly and
limpidly it welcomes us: its mural decorations consist of astronomical charts
and mathematical figures; it is filled with scientific apparatus, and its
cupboards contain skeletons, stuffed apes, and anatomical specimens. But now,
really rejoicing for the first time, we direct our steps into the innermost
chamber of bliss belonging to our pavilion-dwellers; there we find them with
their wives, children, and newspapers, occupied in the commonplace discussion
of politics; we listen for a moment to their conversation on marriage,
universal suffrage, capital punishment, and workmen's strikes, and we can
scarcely believe it to be possible that the rosary of public opinions can be
told off so quickly. At length an attempt is made to convince us of the
classical taste of the inmates. A moment's halt in the library, and the
music-room suffices to show us what we had expected all along, namely, that the
best books lay on the shelves, and that the most famous musical compositions
were in the music-cabinets. Some one actually played something to us, and even
if it were Haydn's music, Haydn could not be blamed because it sounded like
Riehl's music for the home. Meanwhile the host had found occasion to announce
to us his complete agreement with Lessing and Goethe, although with the latter
only up to the second part of Faust. At last our pavilion-owner began to praise
himself, and assured us that he who could not be happy under his roof was
beyond help and could not be ripe for his standpoint, whereupon he offered us
his coach, but with the polite reservation that he could not assert that it
would fulfil every requirement, and that, owing to the stones on his road
having been newly laid down, we were not to mind if we were very much jolted.
Our Epicurean garden-god then took leave of us with the incomparable skill
which he praised in Voltaire.
Who could now persist in doubting the existence of this incomparable skill? The
complete master of his subject is revealed; the lightly equipped
artist-gardener is exposed, and still we hear the voice of the classical author
saying, "As a writer I shall for once cease to be a Philistine: I will not be
one; I refuse to be one! But a Voltaire—the German Voltaire—or at
least the French Lessing."
With this we have betrayed a secret. Our Master does not always know which he
prefers to be—Voltaire or Lessing; but on no account will he be a
Philistine. At a pinch he would not object to being both Lessing and
Voltaire—that the word might be fulfilled that is written, "He had no
character, but when he wished to appear as if he had, he assumed one."
If we have understood Strauss the Confessor correctly, he must be a genuine
Philistine, with a narrow, parched soul and scholarly and common-place needs;
albeit no one would be more indignant at the title than David Strauss the
Writer. He would be quite happy to be regarded as mischievous, bold, malicious,
daring; but his ideal of bliss would consist in finding himself compared with
either Lessing or Voltaire—because these men were undoubtedly anything
but Philistines. In striving after this state of bliss, he often seems to waver
between two alternatives—either to mimic the brave and dialectical
petulance of Lessing, or to affect the manner of the faun-like and
free-spirited man of antiquity that Voltaire was. When taking up his pen to
write, he seems to be continually posing for his portrait; and whereas at times
his features are drawn to look like Lessing's, anon they are made to assume the
Voltairean mould. While reading his praise of Voltaire's manner, we almost seem
to see him abjuring the consciences of his contemporaries for not having
learned long ago what the modern Voltaire had to offer them. "Even his
excellences are wonderfully uniform," he says: "simple naturalness, transparent
clearness, vivacious mobility, seductive charm. Warmth and emphasis are also
not wanting where they are needed, and Voltaire's innermost nature always
revolted against stiltedness and affectation; while, on the other hand, if at
times wantonness or passion descend to an unpleasantly low level, the fault
does not rest so much with the stylist as with the man." According to this,
Strauss seems only too well aware of the importance of simplicity in
style; it is ever the sign of genius, which alone has the privilege to
express itself naturally and guilelessly. When, therefore, an author selects a
simple mode of expression, this is no sign whatever of vulgar ambition; for
although many are aware of what such an author would fain be taken for, they
are yet kind enough to take him precisely for that. The genial writer, however,
not only reveals his true nature in the plain and unmistakable form of his
utterance, but his super-abundant strength actually dallies with the material
he treats, even when it is dangerous and difficult. Nobody treads stiffly along
unknown paths, especially when these are broken throughout their course by
thousands of crevices and furrows; but the genius speeds nimbly over them, and,
leaping with grace and daring, scorns the wistful and timorous step of caution.
Even Strauss knows that the problems he prances over are dreadfully serious,
and have ever been regarded as such by the philosophers who have grappled with
them; yet he calls his book lightly equipped! But of this dreadfulness
and of the usual dark nature of our meditations when considering such questions
as the worth of existence and the duties of man, we entirely cease to be
conscious when the genial Master plays his antics before us, "lightly equipped,
and intentionally so." Yes, even more lightly equipped than his Rousseau, of
whom he tells us it was said that he stripped himself below and adorned himself
on top, whereas Goethe did precisely the reverse. Perfectly guileless geniuses
do not, it appears, adorn themselves at all; possibly the words "lightly
equipped" may simply be a euphemism for "naked." The few who happen to have
seen the Goddess of Truth declare that she is naked, and perhaps, in the minds
of those who have never seen her, but who implicitly believe those few,
nakedness or light equipment is actually a proof, or at least a feature, of
truthi Even this vulgar superstition turns to the advantage of the author's
ambition. Some one sees something naked, and he exclaims: "What if this were
the truth!" Whereupon he grows more solemn than is his wont. By this means,
however, the author scores a tremendous advantage; for he compels his reader to
approach him with greater solemnity than another and perhaps more heavily
equipped writer. This is unquestionably the best way to become a classical
author; hence Strauss himself is able to tell us: "I even enjoy the unsought
honour of being, in the opinion of many, a classical writer of prose. "He has
therefore achieved his aim. Strauss the Genius goes gadding about the streets
in the garb of lightly equipped goddesses as a classic, while Strauss the
Philistine, to use an original expression of this genius's, must, at all costs,
be "declared to be on the decline," or "irrevocably dismissed."
But, alas! in spite of all declarations of decline and dismissal, the
Philistine still returns, and all too frequently. Those features, contorted to
resemble Lessing and Voltaire, must relax from time to time to resume their old
and original shape. The mask of genius falls from them too often, and the
Master's expression is never more sour and his movements never stiffer than
when he has just attempted to take the leap, or to glance with the fiery eye,
of a genius. Precisely owing to the fact that he is too lightly equipped for
our zone, he runs the risk of catching cold more often and more severely than
another. It may seem a terrible hardship to him that every one should notice
this; but if he wishes to be cured, the following diagnosis of his case ought
to be publicly presented to him:— Once upon a time there lived a Strauss,
a brave, severe, and stoutly equipped scholar, with whom we sympathised as
wholly as with all those in Germany who seek to serve truth with earnestness
and energy, and to rule within the limits of their powers. He, however, who is
now publicly famous as David Strauss, is another person. The theologians may be
to blame for this metamorphosis; but, at any rate, his present toying with the
mask of genius inspires us with as much hatred and scorn as his former
earnestness commanded respect and sympathy. When, for instance, he tells us,
"it would also argue ingratitude towards my genius if I were not to
rejoice that to the faculty of an incisive, analytical criticism was added the
innocent pleasure in artistic production," it may astonish him to hear that, in
spite of this self-praise, there are still men who maintain exactly the
reverse, and who say, not only that he has never possessed the gift of artistic
production, but that the "innocent" pleasure he mentions is of all things the
least innocent, seeing that it succeeded in gradually undermining and
ultimately destroying a nature as strongly and deeply scholarly and critical as
Strauss's—in fact, the real Straussian Genius. In a moment of
unlimited frankness, Strauss himself indeed adds: "Merck was always in my
thoughts, calling out, 'Don't produce such child's play again; others can do
that too!'" That was the voice of the real Straussian genius, which also asked
him what the worth of his newest, innocent, and lightly equipped modern
Philistine's testament was. Others can do that too! And many could do it
better. And even they who could have done it best, i.e. those thinkers who are
more widely endowed than Strauss, could still only have made nonsense of it.
I take it that you are now beginning to understand the value I set on Strauss
the Writer. You are beginning to realise that I regard him as a mummer who
would parade as an artless genius and classical writer. When Lichtenberg said,
"A simple manner of writing is to be recommended, if only in view of the fact
that no honest man trims and twists his expressions," he was very far from
wishing to imply that a simple style is a proof of literary integrity. I, for
my part, only wish that Strauss the Writer had been more upright, for then he
would have written more becomingly and have been less famous. Or, if he would
be a mummer at all costs, how much more would he not have pleased me if he had
been a better mummer—one more able to ape the guileless genius and
classical author! For it yet remains to be said that Strauss was not only an
inferior actor but a very worthless stylist as well.
Of course, the blame attaching to Strauss for being a bad writer is greatly
mitigated by the fact that it is extremely difficult in Germany to become even
a passable or moderately good writer, and that it is more the exception than
not, to be a really good one. In this respect the natural soil is wanting, as
are also artistic values and the proper method of treating and cultivating
oratory. This latter accomplishment, as the various branches of it, i.e.
drawing-room, ecclesiastical and Parliamentary parlance, show, has not yet
reached the level of a national style; indeed, it has not yet shown even a
tendency to attain to a style at all, and all forms of language in Germany do
not yet seem to have passed a certain experimental stage. In view of these
facts, the writer of to-day, to some extent, lacks an authoritative standard,
and he is in some measure excused if, in the matter of language, he attempts to
go ahead of his own accord. As to the probable result which the present
dilapidated condition of the German language will bring about, Schopenhauer,
perhaps, has spoken most forcibly. "If the existing state of affairs
continues," he says, "in the year 1900 German classics will cease to be
understood, for the simple reason that no other language will be known, save
the trumpery jargon of the noble present, the chief characteristic of which is
impotence." And, in truth, if one turn to the latest periodicals, one will find
German philologists and grammarians already giving expression to the view that
our classics can no longer serve us as examples of style, owing to the fact
that they constantly use words, modes of speech, and syntactic arrangements
which are fast dropping out of currency. Hence the need of collecting specimens
of the finest prose that has been produced by our best modern writers, and of
offering them as examples to be followed, after the style of Sander's pocket
dictionary of bad language. In this book, that repulsive monster of style
Gutzkow appears as a classic, and, according to its injunctions, we seem to be
called upon to accustom ourselves to quite a new and wondrous crowd of
classical authors, among which the first, or one of the first, is David
Strauss: he whom we cannot describe more aptly than we have already—that
is to say, as a worthless stylist. Now, the notion which the Culture-Philistine
has of a classic and standard author speaks eloquently for his
pseudo-culture—he who only shows his strength by opposing a really
artistic and severe style, and who, thanks to the persistence of his
opposition, finally arrives at a certain uniformity of expression, which again
almost appears to possess unity of genuine style. In view, therefore, of the
right which is granted to every one to experiment with the language, how is it
possible at all for individual authors to discover a generally agreeable tone?
What is so generally interesting in them? In the first place, a negative
quality—the total lack of offensiveness: but every really productive
thing is offensive. The greater part of a German's daily reading matter is
undoubtedly sought either in the pages of newspapers, periodicals, or reviews.
The language of these journals gradually stamps itself on his brain, by means
of its steady drip, drip, drip of similar phrases and similar words. And, since
he generally devotes to reading those hours of the day during which his
exhausted brain is in any case not inclined to offer resistance, his ear for
his native tongue so slowly but surely accustoms itself to this everyday German
that it ultimately cannot endure its absence without pain. But the
manufacturers of these newspapers are, by virtue of their trade, most
thoroughly inured to the effluvia of this journalistic jargon; they have
literally lost all taste, and their palate is rather gratified than not by the
most corrupt and arbitrary innovations. Hence the tutti unisono with which,
despite the general lethargy and sickliness, every fresh solecism is greeted;
it is with such impudent corruptions of the language that her hirelings are
avenged against her for the incredible boredom she imposes ever more and more
upon them. I remember having read "an appeal to the German nation," by Berthold
Auerbach, in which every sentence was un-German, distorted and false, and
which, as a whole, resembled a soulless mosaic of words cemented together with
international syntax. As to the disgracefully slipshod German with which Edward
Devrient solemnised the death of Mendelssohn, I do not even wish to do more
than refer to it. A grammatical error—and this is the most extraordinary
feature of the case—does not therefore seem an offence in any sense to
our Philistine, but a most delightful restorative in the barren wilderness of
everyday German. He still, however, considers all really productive
things to be offensive. The wholly bombastic, distorted, and threadbare syntax
of the modern standard author—yea, even his ludicrous
neologisms—are not only tolerated, but placed to his credit as the spicy
element in his works. But woe to the stylist with character, who seeks as
earnestly and perseveringly to avoid the trite phrases of everyday parlance, as
the "yester-night monster blooms of modern ink-flingers," as Schopenhauer says!
When platitudes, hackneyed, feeble, and vulgar phrases are the rule, and the
bad and the corrupt become refreshing exceptions, then all that is strong,
distinguished, and beautiful perforce acquires an evil odour. From which it
follows that, in Germany, the well-known experience which befell the normally
built traveller in the land of hunchbacks is constantly being repeated. It will
be remembered that he was so shamefully insulted there, owing to his quaint
figure and lack of dorsal convexity, that a priest at last had to harangue the
people on his behalf as follows: "My brethren, rather pity this poor stranger,
and present thank-offerings unto the gods, that ye are blessed with such
attractive gibbosities."
If any one attempted to compose a positive grammar out of the international
German style of to-day, and wished to trace the unwritten and unspoken laws
followed by every one, he would get the most extraordinary notions of style and
rhetoric. He would meet with laws which are probably nothing more than
reminiscences of bygone schooldays, vestiges of impositions for Latin prose,
and results perhaps of choice readings from French novelists, over whose
incredible crudeness every decently educated Frenchman would have the right to
laugh. But no conscientious native of Germany seems to have given a thought to
these extraordinary notions under the yoke of which almost every German lives
and writes.
As an example of what I say, we may find an injunction to the effect that a
metaphor or a simile must be introduced from time to time, and that it must be
new; but, since to the mind of the shallow-pated writer newness and modernity
are identical, he proceeds forthwith to rack his brain for metaphors in the
technical vocabularies of the railway, the telegraph, the steamship, and the
Stock Exchange, and is proudly convinced that such metaphors must be new
because they are modern. In Strauss's confession-book we find liberal tribute
paid to modern metaphor. He treats us to a simile, covering a page and a half,
drawn from modern road-improvement work; a few pages farther back he likens the
world to a machine, with its wheels, stampers, hammers, and "soothing oil" (p.
432); "A repast that begins with champagne" (p. 384); "Kant is a cold-water
cure" (p. 309); "The Swiss constitution is to that of England as a watermill is
to a steam-engine, as a waltz-tune or a song to a fugue or symphony" (p. 301);
"In every appeal, the sequence of procedure must be observed. Now the mean
tribunal between the individual and humanity is the nation" (p. 165); "If we
would know whether there be still any life in an organism which appears dead to
us, we are wont to test it by a powerful, even painful stimulus, as for example
a stab" (p. 161); "The religious domain in the human soul resembles the domain
of the Red Indian in America" (p. 160); "Virtuosos in piety, in convents"(p.
107); "And place the sum-total of the foregoing in round numbers under the
account" (p. 205); "Darwin's theory resembles a railway track that is just
marked out... where the flags are fluttering joyfully in the breeze." In this
really highly modern way, Strauss has met the Philistine injunction to the
effect that a new simile must be introduced from time to time.
Another rhetorical rule is also very widespread, namely, that didactic passages
should be composed in long periods, and should be drawn out into lengthy
abstractions, while all persuasive passages should consist of short sentences
followed by striking contrasts. On page 154 in Strauss's book we find a
standard example of the didactic and scholarly style—a passage blown out
after the genuine Schleiermacher manner, and made to stumble along at a true
tortoise pace: "The reason why, in the earlier stages of religion, there appear
many instead of this single Whereon, a plurality of gods instead of the one, is
explained in this deduction of religion, from the fact that the various forces
of nature, or relations of life, which inspire man with the sentiment of
unqualified dependence, still act upon him in the commencement with the full
force of their distinctive characteristics; that he has not as yet become
conscious how, in regard to his unmitigated dependence upon them, there is no
distinction between them, and that therefore the Whereon of this dependence, or
the Being to which it conducts in the last instance, can only be one."
On pages 7 and 8 we find an example of the other kind of style, that of the
short sentences containing that affected liveliness which so excited certain
readers that they cannot mention Strauss any more without coupling his name
with Lessing's. "I am well aware that what I propose to delineate in the
following pages is known to multitudes as well as to myself, to some even much
better. A few have already spoken out on the subject. Am I therefore to keep
silence? I think not. For do we not all supply each other's deficiencies? If
another is better informed as regards some things, I may perhaps be so as
regards others; while yet others are known and viewed by me in a different
light. Out with it, then! let my colours be displayed that it may be seen
whether they are genuine or not.'"
It is true that Strauss's style generally maintains a happy medium between this
sort of merry quick-march and the other funereal and indolent pace; but between
two vices one does not invariably find a virtue; more often rather only
weakness, helpless paralysis, and impotence. As a matter of fact, I was very
disappointed when I glanced through Strauss's book in search of fine and witty
passages; for, not having found anything praiseworthy in the Confessor, I had
actually set out with the express purpose of meeting here and there with at
least some opportunities of praising Strauss the Writer. I sought and sought,
but my purpose remained unfulfilled. Meanwhile, however, another duty seemed to
press itself strongly on my mind—that of enumerating the solecisms, the
strained metaphors, the obscure abbreviations, the instances of bad taste, and
the distortions which I encountered; and these were of such a nature that I
dare do no more than select a few examples of them from among a collection
which is too bulky to be given in full. By means of these examples I may
succeed in showing what it is that inspires, in the hearts of modern Germans,
such faith in this great and seductive stylist Strauss: I refer to his
eccentricities of expression, which, in the barren waste and dryness of his
whole book, jump out at one, not perhaps as pleasant but as painfully
stimulating, surprises. When perusing such passages, we are at least assured,
to use a Straussian metaphor, that we are not quite dead, but still respond to
the test of a stab. For the rest of the book is entirely lacking in
offensiveness —that quality which alone, as we have seen, is productive,
and which our classical author has himself reckoned among the positive virtues.
When the educated masses meet with exaggerated dulness and dryness, when they
are in the presence of really vapid commonplaces, they now seem to believe that
such things are the signs of health; and in this respect the words of the
author of the dialogus de oratoribus are very much to the point: "illam ipsam
quam jactant sanitatem non firmitate sed jejunio consequuntur." That is why
they so unanimously hate every firmitas, because it bears testimony to a kind
of health quite different from theirs; hence their one wish to throw suspicion
upon all austerity and terseness, upon all fiery and energetic movement, and
upon every full and delicate play of muscles. They have conspired to twist
nature and the names of things completely round, and for the future to speak of
health only there where we see weakness, and to speak of illness and
excitability where for our part we see genuine vigour. From which it follows
that David Strauss is to them a classical author.
If only this dulness were of a severely logical order! but simplicity and
austerity in thought are precisely what these weaklings have lost, and in their
hands even our language has become illogically tangled. As a proof of this, let
any one try to translate Strauss's style into Latin: in the case of Kant, be it
remembered, this is possible, while with Schopenhauer it even becomes an
agreeable exercise. The reason why this test fails with Strauss's German is not
owing to the fact that it is more Teutonic than theirs, but because his is
distorted and illogical, whereas theirs is lofty and simple. Moreover, he who
knows how the ancients exerted themselves in order to learn to write and speak
correctly, and how the moderns omit to do so, must feel, as Schopenhauer says,
a positive relief when he can turn from a German book like the one under our
notice, to dive into those other works, those ancient works which seem to him
still to be written in a new language. "For in these books," says Schopenhauer,
"I find a regular and fixed language which, throughout, faithfully follows the
laws of grammar and orthography, so that I can give up my thoughts completely
to their matter; whereas in German I am constantly being disturbed by the
author's impudence and his continual attempts to establish his own
orthographical freaks and absurd ideas— the swaggering foolery of which
disgusts me. It is really a painful sight to see a fine old language, possessed
of classical literature, being botched by asses and ignoramuses!"
Thus Schopenhauer's holy anger cries out to us, and you cannot say that you
have not been warned. He who turns a deaf ear to such warnings, and who
absolutely refuses to relinquish his faith in Strauss the classical author, can
only be given this last word of advice—to imitate his hero. In any case,
try it at your own risk; but you will repent it, not only in your style but in
your head, that it may be fulfilled which was spoken by the Indian prophet,
saying, "He who gnaweth a cow's horn gnaweth in vain and shorteneth his life;
for he grindeth away his teeth, yet his belly is empty."
By way of concluding, we shall proceed to give our classical prose-writer the
promised examples of his style which we have collected. Schopenhauer would
probably have classed the whole lot as "new documents serving to swell the
trumpery jargon of the present day"; for David Strauss may be comforted to hear
(if what follows can be regarded as a comfort at all) that everybody now writes
as he does; some, of course, worse, and that among the blind the one-eyed is
king. Indeed, we allow him too much when we grant him one eye; but we do this
willingly, because Strauss does not write so badly as the most infamous of all
corrupters of German—the Hegelians and their crippled offspring. Strauss
at least wishes to extricate himself from the mire, and he is already partly
out of it; still, he is very far from being on dry land, and he still shows
signs of having stammered Hegel's prose in youth. In those days, possibly,
something was sprained in him, some muscle must have been overstrained. His
ear, perhaps, like that of a boy brought up amid the beating of drums, grew
dull, and became incapable of detecting those artistically subtle and yet
mighty laws of sound, under the guidance of which every writer is content to
remain who has been strictly trained in the study of good models. But in this
way, as a stylist, he has lost his most valuable possessions, and stands
condemned to remain reclining, his life long, on the dangerous and barren
shifting sand of newspaper style—that is, if he do not wish to fall back
into the Hegelian mire. Nevertheless, he has succeeded in making himself famous
for a couple of hours in our time, and perhaps in another couple of hours
people will remember that he was once famous; then, however, night will come,
and with her oblivion; and already at this moment, while we are entering his
sins against style in the black book, the sable mantle of twilight is falling
upon his fame. For he who has sinned against the German language has desecrated
the mystery of all our Germanity. Throughout all the confusion and the changes
of races and of customs, the German language alone, as though possessed of some
supernatural charm, has saved herself; and with her own salvation she has
wrought that of the spirit of Germany. She alone holds the warrant for this
spirit in future ages, provided she be not destroyed at the sacrilegious hands
of the modern world. "But Di meliora! Avaunt, ye pachyderms, avaunt!
This is the German language, by means of which men express themselves, and in
which great poets have sung and great thinkers have written. Hands off!" *
To put it in plain words, what we have seen have been feet of clay, and what
appeared to be of the colour of healthy flesh was only applied paint. Of
course, Culture-Philistinism in Germany will be very angry when it hears its
one living God referred to as a series of painted idols. He, however, who dares
to overthrow its idols will not shrink, despite all indignation, from telling
it to its face that it has forgotten how to distinguish between the quick and
the dead, the genuine and the counterfeit, the original and the imitation,
between a God and a host of idols; that it has completely lost the healthy and
manly instinct for what is real and right. It alone deserves to be destroyed;
and already the manifestations of its power are sinking; already are its purple
honours falling from it; but when the purple falls, its royal wearer soon
follows.
Here I come to the end of my confession of faith. This is the confession of an
individual; and what can such an one do against a whole world, even supposing
his voice were heard everywhere! In order for the last time to use a precious
Straussism, his judgment only possesses "that amount of subjective truth
which is compatible with a complete lack of objective
demonstration"—is not that so, my dear friends? Meanwhile, be of good
cheer. For the time being let the matter rest at this "amount which is
compatible with a complete lack"! For the time being! That is to say, for as
long as that is held to be out of season which in reality is always in season,
and is now more than ever pressing; I refer to...speaking the truth.*
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