I had for a long time pursued my non-juridic studies as well as I could
without the assistance of a teacher. But I had felt the want of one.
And when a newly appointed docent at the University, Professor H.
Bröchner, offered instruction in the study of Philosophy to any who
cared to present themselves at his house at certain hours, I had felt
strongly tempted to take advantage of his offer. I hesitated for some
time, for I was unwilling to give up the least portion of my precious
freedom; I enjoyed my retirement, the mystery of my modest life of
study, but on the other hand I could not grapple with Plato and
Aristotle without the hints of a competent guide as to the why and
wherefore.
I was greatly excited. I had heard Professor Bröchner speak on
Psychology, but his diction was handled with such painful care, was so
monotonous and sounded so strange, that it could not fail to alarm. It
was only the professor's distinguished and handsome face that attracted
me, and in particular his large, sorrowful eyes, with their beautiful
expression, in which one read a life of deep research--and tears. Now,
I determined to venture up to Bröchner. But I had not the courage to
mention it to my mother beforehand, for fear speaking of it should
frighten me from my resolution, so uneasy did I feel about the step I
was taking. When the day which I had fixed upon for the attempt
arrived--it was the 2nd of September, 1861,--I walked up and down in
front of the house several times before I could make up my mind to go
upstairs; I tried to calculate beforehand what the professor would say,
and what it would be best for me to reply, interminably.
The tall, handsome man with the appearance of a Spanish knight, opened
the door himself and received the young fellow who was soon to become
his most intimate pupil, very kindly. To my amazement, as soon as he
heard my name, he knew which school I had come from and also that I had
recently become a student. He vigorously dissuaded me from going
through a course of Plato and Aristotle, saying it would be too great a
strain--said, or implied, that I should be spared the difficult path he
had himself traversed, and sketched out a plan of study of more modern
Philosophy and Aesthetics. His manner inspired confidence and left
behind it the main impression that he wished to save the beginner all
useless exertion. All the same, with my youthful energy, I felt, as I
went home, a shade disappointed that I was not to begin the History of
Philosophy from the beginning.
My visit was soon repeated, and a most affectionate intimacy quickly
sprang up between master and pupil, revealed on the side of the elder,
in an attitude of fatherly goodwill to which the younger had hitherto
been a stranger, the teacher, while instructing his pupil and giving
him practical guidance, constantly keeping in view all that could
further his well-being and assist his future; my attitude was one of
reverence and affection, and of profound gratitude for the care of
which I was the object.
I certainly, sometimes, in face of my master's great thoroughness and
his skill in wrestling with the most difficult thoughts, felt a painful
distrust of my own capacity and of my own intellectual powers, compared
with his. I was also not infrequently vexed by a discordant note, as it
were, being struck in our intercourse, when Bröchner, despite the
doubts and objections I brought forward, always took it for granted
that I shared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was
still tossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But
the confidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had an
attraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfully
prejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of a
lifetime behind him, he looked down from superior heights on the
sympathies and antipathies of a young man.
To me, for instance, Ploug's _The Fatherland_ was at that time
Denmark's most intellectual organ, whereas Bille's _Daily Paper_
disgusted me, more particularly on account of the superficiality and
the tone of finality which distinguished its literary criticisms.
Bröchner, who, with not unmixed benevolence, and without making any
special distinction between the two, looked down on both these papers
of the educated mediocrity, saw in his young pupil's bitterness against
the trivial but useful little daily, only an indication of the quality
of his mind. Bröchner's mere manner, as he remarked one day with a
smile, "You do not read _The Daily Paper_ on principle," made me
perceive in a flash the comicality of my indignation over such articles
as it contained. My horizon was still sufficiently circumscribed for me
to suppose that the state of affairs in Copenhagen was, in and of
itself, of importance. I myself regarded my horizon as wide. One day,
when making a mental valuation of myself, I wrote, with the naïveté of
nineteen, "My good qualities, those which will constitute my
personality, if I ever become of any account, are a mighty and ardent
enthusiasm, a thorough authority in the service of Truth, _a wide
horizon_ and philosophically trained thinking powers. These must make
up for my lack of humour and facility."
It was only several years after the beginning of our acquaintance that
I felt myself in essential agreement with Hans Bröchner. I had been
enraptured by a study of Ludwig Feuerbach's books, for Feuerbach was
the first thinker in whose writings I found the origin of the idea of
God in the human mind satisfactorily explained. In Feuerbach, too, I
found a presentment of ideas without circumlocution and without the
usual heavy formulas of German philosophy, a conquering clarity, which
had a very salutary effect on my own way of thinking and gave me a
feeling of security. If for many years I had been feeling myself more
conservative than my friend and master, there now came a time when in
many ways I felt myself to be more liberal than he, with his mysterious
life in the eternal realm of mind of which he felt himself to be a link.