[180] The Titan was originally divided into four volumes.--TR.
[181] A musical term, meaning the compensation made by
transferring to imperfect concords part of the beauty of the
perfect ones.--TR.
[182] Every partial development of course works well for the
whole; but only for this reason, because its opposite partial one
balances it in a higher equation and sum total, so that all
individual men are only the limbs of a single giant, such as the
Swedenborgian _man_ is. But in so far as, in one individual, a
want arises which helps out an opposite one in another,--so that
the road of humanity plagues and trips equally much by hills and
by hollows,--it will be seen that every one-sided fulness is,
only a cure of the times, not their health; and that the higher
law is, after all, a culture slower in the individual, but still
harmonious; less in amount, indeed, but impartial, and thereby,
in the long run, even more rapid. We always forget that--as in
mechanics power and time are mutual supplements--eternity is the
infinite power.
[183] According to Borreux, the engineer, literally only every
thousandth shot from small-arms hits. So is it in all cases; fear
death, and then there stand flower-pots ready to fall from
chamber-windows, lightnings from the blue sky, air-guns going
off, polypuses in the heart, mad dogs, robbers, every gash in the
finger, _aqua toffana_, proud flesh, &c., in short, all
nature--that ever-going, crushing cochineal-mill--stands with
innumerable open scissors of fate round about thee, and thou hast
no consolation, save this, that--nevertheless people grow eighty
years old. Fear impoverishment: then fire, flood, famine, and
war, banditti and revolutions, set upon thee with greedy claws
and fangs; and yet, thou rich man! the poor man--creeping along
under the same birds of prey--becomes at last as rich as thou.
March, therefore, boldly through the slumbering lion-herd of
dangers, lying on the right and left, and go up to the fountain,
only do not wantonly wake them up; of course a hell-god drags
down individuals who feared nothing; but so, too, does a higher
God draw up individuals who expected nothing; and fear and hope
are swallowed in one common night.
[184] Titan, 13. Cycle.
[185] At the court of King Olaus, the royal youth Olo, dressed as
a peasant, offered himself as a champion of the daughter against
robbers. Then did the fire of the eyes and nobleness of form tell
as proof of a high descent; thus did Suanhita, for example,
recognize King Regner in a herdsman's guise by the beauty of his
eye and face. The king's daughter looked searchingly into Olo's
flaming eye, and came near swooning; she essayed a second look,
and was senseless; and at the third, swooned. The divine youth
therefore cast his eyelids down but uncovered his brow and his
golden hair and the signs of his rank. See "The German and his
Native Land," by Rosenthal and Karg, Vol. I. pp. 166, 167.
[186] For what we call light is only an intenser white. No one
sees, by night, the luminous stream which rushes upward along by
the earth, pouring from the sun upon the full moon.
[187] This warmer, tenderer, more timid, ever-praised sex, living
more in the opinion of others than in its own, is poisonously
pierced by a reproach which only pricks _us_ so as to draw a
little blood, as noxious beasts, in warm countries and months,
poison, and in cold ones only wound. Therefore let the girls'
schoolmaster consider that a dose which is satire upon the
boy--who, besides, must withstand opinion--becomes a lampoon,
when it lights upon his sister.
[188] Poetic name for May.--TR.
[189] In which were always enclosed letters from Liana to Albano.
Let every one see here, by two examples, how on the harmonica of
love a brother must stand in front as key-bank for the sister,
who would reach the bells. There should, therefore, always be a
couple of couples, diametrically connected in sisterhood and
affection.
[190] "Such a character," writes Hafenreffer in this connection,
"were desirable for romancing Kotzebues, for they, as he always
will, according to his nature, create and raise the dignity of
the situation by the accidental place thereof, might, under the
cloak of his personality, humor entirely their own and disguise
the weakness of the poet under the weakness of the hero."
Methinks this is, so far as a biographer of romancers can decide,
very striking.
[191] Tiring-women.--TR.