groups are formed round an elder reading the Scriptures. Jeremiah stands
apart, motionless and as if petrified.--It is on the night following the
fall of Jerusalem. Death and destruction are everywhere. The tombs have
been violated; the temple has been profaned; all the nobles have been
killed, save the king, who has been blinded. Jeremiah groans with horror
when he learns that his prophecies have been fulfilled. People draw away
from him, as from one accursed. In vain does he, with anguish, defend
himself from the charge of having wrought all the evil.
JEREMIAH. I did not will it! You have no right to accuse me. The word
came from my mouth as fire from flint. My word is not my will. Force is
greater than I. Above me stands He, He, the Terrible One, the Merciless!
I am no more than His instrument, His breath, the servant of His
malice.... Woe upon the hands of God! Whom He, the Terrible One seizes,
He will never loose.... Let Him set me free! No longer will I speak His
words, I will not, I will not....
Trumpets sound without, and the will of Nebuchadnezzar is declared. The
city is to disappear from the earth. The survivors may have one night to
bury the dead; then they will be carried into captivity. The people
lament, refusing to go. But a wounded man, who is in pain, wishes to
live, to live! A young woman echoes his words. She does not want to go
into the cold, to go to death. Bear anything, suffer anything; but
live!--Disputes occur among the crowd. Some say that it is impossible to
leave the land where God is. Others maintain that God will be with them
wherever they may go. Jeremiah cries despairingly.
JEREMIAH. He is nowhere! Neither in heaven nor in earth, nor in the
souls of men!
These sacrilegious words arouse horror. But Jeremiah continues.
JEREMIAH. Who has sinned against Him, if not Himself? He has broken His
covenant.... He denies Himself.
Jeremiah recalls all the sacrifices he has made for God. House, mother,
friends, he has abandoned all, lost all. He gave himself up wholly to
God, serving God because he hoped that God would avert the threatened
misfortune. He cursed in the hope that the curse would turn into a
blessing. He prophesied in the hope that he was lying, and that
Jerusalem would be saved. But his prophecies came true, and God was the
liar. He has faithfully served the Faithless One. He refuses to continue
this service. He cuts himself off from the God who hates, to join his
brothers who suffer. He speaks.
JEREMIAH. I hate Thee, God, and I love them only.
The crowd strikes him, wishing to close his mouth, believing him to be
dangerous. He throws himself on his knees, asking pardon for his pride
and for his imprecations; he desires to be nothing more than the
humblest servitor of his people. But all repulse him as a blasphemer.
At this moment there is a violent knocking at the door. Three envoys
from Nebuchadnezzar enter and prostrate themselves before Jeremiah.
Nebuchadnezzar, who admires him, wishes to make him chief of the magi.
Jeremiah refuses, in disdainful terms. Gradually growing warm as he
speaks, he prophecies the fall of Nebuchadnezzar. The great king's hour
is at hand, and with fierce joy the prophet heaps curses upon him.
JEREMIAH. The avenger has awakened; He is coming; He draws nigh;
terrible are the hands with which He smites.... We are His children, His
first-born. He has chastised us, but He will have pity on us. He has
thrown us down, but He will set us up again.
The Chaldean envoys flee, affrighted. The people surround Jeremiah and
acclaim him. They drink in his frenzied words. God is speaking through
his mouth. He unrolls before their eyes the vision of the New
Jerusalem, towards which the dispersed tribes will flock from all the
quarters of the earth. Peace shines on the city. The peace of the Lord,
the peace of Israel. With exclamations of delight, the people, already
looking forward to the days of the return, embrace the feet and knees of
Jeremiah. The prophet awakens from his trance. He no longer knows what
he has said. He is interpenetrated with the love of those around him; he
endeavours to restrain their enthusiasm, which is yet further inflamed
by a miracle of healing. The true miracle, says Jeremiah, is that he has
cursed God and that God has blessed him. God has torn out his hard
heart, and has replaced it with a compassionate heart, enabling him to
share all suffering and to understand its meaning. "I have been long in
finding it; I have been long in finding you, my brothers! No more
curses! Sad is our fate; but let us take hope, for life is wonderful,
the world is holy. I wish to embrace in my love those whom I have
attacked in my anger." He utters thanksgivings for death and for life.
Baruch begs him to carry the healing message to the people assembled in
the square. Jeremiah agrees to do so, saying: "I have been consoled by
God; now let me be the consoler." He wishes to build the undying
Jerusalem in the hearts of men.--The people follow him out, calling him
God's Master-Builder.
SCENE NINE
THE EVERLASTING ROAD.
The great square of Jerusalem, as in Scene Two, but after the
destruction. The half-light of a moon partially veiled by clouds. In the
obscurity there can be seen carts, mules, groups of those ready to
depart. Voices are heard of persons calling one another and checking
their numbers. The people are confused and leaderless. No one pays any
attention to the unfortunate Zedekiah, who has been blinded, and whom
all curse. Songs are heard, drawing nearer. The singers are in the
train of Jeremiah. The prophet speaks to the people, who are at first
incredulous and hostile. He consoles them, announcing their divine
mission. Their heritage is grief; they are the people of suffering
(Leidensvolk), but they are the people of God (Gottesvolk). Happy the
vanquished, happy those that have lost all, that they may find God!
Glory to the time of trial! From the people, now inspired with
enthusiasm, arise choral chants, celebrating the ordeals of ancient
days; celebrating Mizraim and Moses.... The choirs break up into groups
of voices, now solemn, now gay, now exultant. The whole epic of Israel
marches by in these songs, which Jeremiah directs as a skilful driver
manages a team. The people, gradually becoming enkindled, wish to
suffer, wish to set out for exile, and they call upon Jeremiah to lead
them forth. Jeremiah prostrates himself before the unhappy Zedekiah, who
has been thrust aside by the crowd. Zedekiah imagines that the prophet
is mocking him.
JEREMIAH. Thou hast become the king of sorrows, and never hast thou been
more regal.... Anointed by suffering, lead us forth! Thou, who now seest
God only, who no longer seest the world, guide thy people!
Turning to the people, Jeremiah shows to them the leader sent by God,
the "Crowned-by-Suffering" (Schmerzengekrönte). The people bow before
the stricken king.
Day dawns. A tucket sounds. Jeremiah, from the perron of the temple,
summons Israel to set out. Let the people fill their eyes with their
fatherland, for the last time! "Drink your fill of the walls, drink your
fill of the towers, drink your fill of Jerusalem!"--They prostrate
themselves, kissing the earth, and lifting a handful to take with them.
Addressing the "wandering people" (Wandervolk), Jeremiah tells them to
arise, to leave the dead who have found peace, to look not backward but
forward, to look out into the distance, to the highways of the world.
These highways are theirs. An impassioned dialogue ensues between the
prophet and his people.
THE PEOPLE. Shall we ever see Jerusalem again?
JEREMIAH. He who believes, looks always on Jerusalem.
THE PEOPLE. Who shall rebuild the city?
JEREMIAH. The ardour of desire, the night of prison, and the suffering
which brings counsel.
THE PEOPLE. Will it endure?
JEREMIAH. Yes. Stones fall, but that which the soul builds in suffering,
endureth for ever.
The trumpet sounds once more. The people are now eager to depart. The
huge procession ranges itself in silence. At the head is the king, borne
in a litter. The tribes follow, singing as they march, with the solemn
joy of sacrifice. There is neither haste nor lagging. An infinite on the
march. As they pass, the Chaldeans gaze at them with astonishment.
Strange folk, whom no one can understand, whether in their dejection or
their exultation!
CHORUS OF JEWS. We move among the nations, we move athwart the ages, by
the unending roads of suffering. For ever and for ever. Eternally we are
vanquished.... But cities fall, nations vanish, oppressors go down into
shame. We move onward, through the eternities, towards our country,
towards God.
THE CHALDEANS. Their God? Have we not conquered him?... Who can conquer
the invisible? Men we can slay, but the God who lives in them we cannot
slay. A nation can be controlled by force; its spirit, never.
For the third time the tucket sounds. The sun, breaking forth, shines on
the procession of God's people, beginning their march athwart the ages.
* * * * *
Thus does a great artist exemplify the supreme liberty of the spirit.
Others have made a frontal attack upon the follies and crimes of to-day.
At grips with the force which wounds them, their bitter words of revolt
bruise themselves against the obstacles they are endeavouring to break
down. Here, the soul which has won to peace, sees passing before it the
tragical flood of the present. Unperturbed, it torments itself no
longer, for its gaze takes in the whole course of the stream, absorbing
into itself the secular energies of that stream and the tranquil destiny
which leads the flow onward towards the infinite.
_November 20, 1917._
Written for the review "Coenobium," edited by Enrico Bignami, at
Lugano.
XX
A GREAT EUROPEAN: G. F. NICOLAI[48]
I
Art and science have bent the knee to war. Art has become war's
sycophant; science, war's hand-maiden. Few have had the strength or
inclination to resist. In art, rare works, sombre French works, have
blossomed on the blood-drenched soil. In science, the greatest product
during these three criminal years has been the one we owe to G. F.
Nicolai, a German whose spirit is free and whose thought has an enormous
range.
The book is, as it were, a symbol of that unconquerable Freedom whom all
the tyrannies of this age of force have vainly endeavoured to gag. It
was written behind prison walls, but these walls were not thick enough
to stifle the voice which judges the oppressors and will survive them.
Dr. Nicolai, professor of physiology at Berlin University and physician
to the imperial household, found himself, when the war broke out, in the
very focus of the madness which seized the flower of his nation. Not
merely did he refuse to share that madness. Yet more daring, he openly
resisted it. In reply to the manifesto of the 93 intellectuals,
published in the beginning of October, 1914, he wrote a
counter-manifesto, _An Appeal to Europeans_, which was endorsed by two
other distinguished professors at the university of Berlin, Albert
Einstein, the celebrated physicist, and Wilhelm Foerster, president of
the international bureau of weights and measures, the father of
Professor F. W. Foerster. This manifesto was not published, for Nicolai
was unable to collect a sufficient number of signatures. In the summer
term of 1915 he incorporated it in the opening of a series of lectures
he planned to deliver upon the war. Thus, for the fulfilment of what he
deemed his duty as an honest thinker, he deliberately risked his social
position, his academic career, his distinctions, his comfort, and his
friendships. He was arrested, and was interned in Graudenz fortress.
There, unaided, and almost without books, he penned his admirable
_Biology of War_, and managed to have the manuscript sent to
Switzerland, where the first German edition has just been published. The
circumstances in which the book was written have an atmosphere of
mystery and heroism recalling that of the days when the Holy Inquisition
was endeavouring to stifle the thought of Galileo. In the modern world,
the Inquisition of the United States of Europe and America is no less
crushing than was the Holy Inquisition of old. But Nicolai, firmer of
spirit than Galileo, has refused to recant. Last month (September,
1917), the journals of German Switzerland announced that he had been
once more brought to trial, and had been sentenced to five months'
imprisonment by the Danzig court-martial. Thus again does force manifest
its ludicrous weakness, for its unjust decrees merely help to raise a
statue to the man whom force would fain strike down.
* * * * *
The leading characteristic of book and writer is their universality. The
publisher, in a note prefixed to the first edition, tells us that
Nicolai "has a world-wide reputation as a physician, more especially in
the field of cardiac disease"; that "he is a thinker the universality of
whose culture seems almost fabulous in these days of specialisation,
for, while distinguished for his knowledge of neokantian philosophy, he
is equally at home in literature and in dealing with social problems";
that "he is an explorer who has wandered afoot in China, Malaysia, and
even the solitudes of Lapland." Nothing human is foreign to him. In his
book, the chapters on universal history, religious history, and
philosophical criticism, are closely linked with the chapters on
ethnology and biology. What a contrast between this encyclopædic
thought, with its reminiscences of our eighteenth century France, and
the German savant of caricature, specialist to absurdity--a type which
is often enough encountered in real life!
His vast learning is vivified by a captivating and brilliant
personality, overflowing with feeling and humour. He makes no attempt to
conceal himself behind the mask of a false objectivity. In the
Introduction he hastens to tear off this mask, with which the insincere
thought of our epoch is covered. He treats with contempt what he calls
"the eternal straining for all-round treatment
(Einerseits-Andererseits), the perpetual compromise which, under the
hypocritical pretext of "justice," weds incompatibles, the carp and the
hare, "war and humanity, beauty and fashion, internationalism and
nationalism." Method alone should be objective. The conclusions
inevitably retain a subjective element, and it is well that this should
be so. "As long as we refuse to renounce the right of individuality and
the right of striving towards goals of our own choosing, so long must we
judge human deeds from the outlook of our own individuality. War is one
of the deeds of man, and as such we have to pass judgment on it
categorically. Any compromise on this point would obscure the issues;
nay, it would be almost immoral.... War, like everything else, should
have light thrown upon it from every side before we pass judgment on it;
but only to persons of second-rate intelligence can it seem that we
should actually pass our judgment on war from all sides at once, or even
from two sides only."
Such is the objectivity which we have to expect from this book. Not the
soft, flabby, indifferent, contradictory objectivity of the scientific
dilettante, of the arch-eunuch: but a mettlesome objectivity which is
appropriate in this fighting age, the objectivity of one who honestly
attempts to see everything and to know everything; but who, having done
so, endeavours to organise his data in accordance with a hypothesis, an
intuition tinged with passion.
Such a system is worth precisely what the intuition is worth, precisely
what the man who has the intuition is worth. For, in a great thinker,
the hypothesis is the man. His hypothesis is the concentrated essence of
his energy, his observation, his thought, his imaginative powers, and
even of his passions. Nicolai's hypothesis is vigorous, and it takes
risks. The central idea of his book may be summed up as follows: "There
exists a genus humanum, and there is only one such genus. The human
race, humanity as a whole, is but a single organism, and has a common
consciousness."
Whoever speaks of a living organism, speaks of transformation and of
unceasing movement. This perpetuum mobile gives its peculiar colour to
Nicolai's reflections. In general, we who are advocates or opponents of
the war tend to pass judgment on it almost exclusively in abstracto. We
conceive it as static and absolute. It may almost be said that as soon
as a thinker concentrates upon a subject in order to study it, his first
step is to kill it. To a great biologist all is movement, and movement
is the material of his study. The social or moral question that concerns
us is not whether war is good or bad in the sphere of the eternal; but
whether war is good or bad for us in our own moment of time. Now, for
Nicolai, war is a stage in human evolution which man has long outgrown.
His book depicts for us this evolutionary flux of instincts and ideas,
an irresistible current in which there is never a backwash.
* * * * *
The work is divided into two main parts, of unequal length. The first,
occupying three-fourths of the book, is an attack upon the masters of
the hour, war, fatherland, and race; an attack upon the reigning
sophisms. It is entitled "The Evolution of War." The criticism of the
present, in part one, is followed, in part two, by constructive ideas
for the future. This second part is entitled "How War may be abolished."
It outlines the coming society; sketches its morality and its faith. So
abundant, in this book, are data and ideas, that selection is a
difficult matter. Apart from the extraordinary richness of its elements,
the work may be considered from two outlooks, specifically German, and
universally human, respectively. Straightforwardly, at the outset,
Nicolai tells his readers that although, in his opinion, all the nations
must share responsibility for the war, he proposes to concern himself
with the responsibility of Germany alone. He leaves it to the thinkers
of other lands, each in his own country, to settle their country's
accounts. "It is not my business," he says, "to know whether others have
sinned extra muros, but to prevent people from sinning intra muros." If
he chooses his instances from Germany above all, this is not because
instances are lacking elsewhere, but because he writes, above all, for
Germans. A large proportion of his historical and philosophical
criticism deals with Germany ancient and modern. The point is well
worthy of special analysis. No one, henceforward, will have any right to
speak of the German spirit, unless he has read the profound chapters in
which Nicolai, endeavouring to define national individuality, analyses
the characteristics of German Kultur, analyses its virtues and its
vices, its excessive faculty for adaptation, the struggle which the old
Teutonic idealism has waged in its conflict with militarism, and
elucidates the manner in which idealism was vanquished by militarism.
The unfortunate influence of Kant (for whom, none the less, Nicolai has
a great admiration) is stressed by him on account of the part it has
played in this crisis of a nation's soul. Or rather, we may say, Nicolai
stresses the influence of Kant's dualism of the reasons. This dualism of
the pure reason and the practical reason (which Kant, despite the best
efforts of his later years, was never able to associate in a
satisfactory manner) is a brilliant symbol of the contradictory dualism
to which modern Germany has accommodated herself all too easily. For
Germany, preserving full liberty in the world of thought, has trampled
under foot liberty in the world of action, or at least has surrendered
this liberty without ever a regret (Chapter Ten, passim).
These analyses of the German soul are of great interest to the
psychologist, the historian, and the statesmen. But, since I am
compelled to select, I shall choose for description those parts of the
book which are addressed to everyone, which touch us all, which are
truly universal. I shall speak of the general problem of war and peace
in human evolution. I shall have to resign myself to yet further
sacrifices. Ignoring the chapters which discuss this topic from a
historical and from a literary point of view,[49] I shall confine myself
to the biological studies, for it is in these that the author's
individuality finds its most original self-expression.
* * * * *
At grips with the hydra of war, Nicolai attacks the evil at the root. He
opens with a vigorous analysis of instinct in general, for he is careful
to avoid denying the innate character of war.
War, he says, is an instinct which springs from the deeps of mankind, an
instinct which influences even those who condemn it. It is an
intoxication which is carefully fostered in time of peace; when it
breaks forth, it takes possession of all alike. But because it is an
instinct, it does not follow that this instinct is sacred. Rousseau has
popularised the idea that instinct is always good and trustworthy.
Nothing of the kind. Instinct may be mistaken. When it is mistaken, the
race dies out, and we can therefore easily understand that, in races
which do not die out, instinct has a valid reason for existence.
Nevertheless, an animal endowed with sound instincts, may be deceived
by these instincts when it leaves its primitive environment. We see an
example of this in the moth which burns itself in the flame. The
instinct was sound in the days when the sun was the only luminary, but
no evolution has taken place to adapt this instinct to the existence of
lamps. We may admit that every instinct had its use at the time when it
first came into existence. This may be true of the fighting instinct,
but it does not follow that the combative instinct is useful to man
to-day. Instinct is extremely conservative, and survives the
circumstances that produced it. For instance, the wolf, wishing to cover
up its tracks, buries its excrement; the dog, a town dweller, stupidly
scrapes the pavement. In the latter case instinct has become senseless,
purposeless.
Man has retained many rudimentary and functionless instincts. He is able
to modify them, but in his case the task is peculiarly complex. Man is
distinguished from other animals by his incomparably greater power of
modifying the natural environment to suit his own purposes. But this
being so, man should transform his instincts to adapt them to the
changed circumstances. Now these instincts are tenacious, and the
struggle is hard. All the more, therefore, is it necessary. Whole
species of lower animals became extinct because they were unable to
modify their instincts as the environment changed. "Is man also to die
out from want of the will to change his instincts? He can change them,
or he could if he would. Man alone has the power of choice, and
consequently can err. But this curse of the liability to error is the
necessary consequence of freedom, and it gives birth to the blessed
power man possesses to learn and to transform himself." Yet man makes
very little use of this power. He is still encumbered with archaic
instincts. He accepts them complacently. He has an excessive esteem for
what is old precisely because he is swayed by hereditary instincts which
he has unconsciously come to revere.
In the kingdom of the one-eyed, we ought not to make the blind man king.
Because we all have combative instincts, it does not follow that we
should give these instincts free rein. To-day, when we are realising
the advantages of world-wide organisation, it is assuredly time that
such instincts should be put under restraint. Nicolai, seeing his
contemporaries giving themselves up to their enthusiasm for war, is
reminded of dogs which persist in scraping the pavement after relieving
nature.