(_Continued_)
Reflections on the Future of Denmark--Conversations with Giuseppe
Saredo--Frascati--Native Beauty--New Susceptibilities--Georges
Noufflard's Influence--The Sistine Chapel and Michael Angelo--Raphael's
Loggias--A Radiant Spring.
I
Saredo said to me one day: "I am not going to flatter you--I have no
interest in doing so; but I am going to give you a piece of advice,
which you ought to think over. Stay in Italy, settle down here, and you
will reach a far higher position than you can possibly attain in your
own country. The intellectual education you possess is exceedingly rare
in Italy; what I can say, without exaggeration, is that in this country
it is so extraordinary that it might be termed an active force. Within
two years you would be a power in Italy, at home, you will never be
more than a professor at a University. Stay here! Villari and I will
help you over your first difficulties. Write in French, or Italian,
which you like, and as you are master of the entire range of Germanic
culture, which scarcely any man in Italy is, you will acquire an
influence of which you have not the least conception. A prophet is
never honoured in his own country. We, on the other hand, need you. So
stay here! Take Max Müller as an example. It is with individuals as
with nations; it is only when they change their soil that they attain
their full development and realise their own strength."
I replied: "I am deaf to that sort of thing. I love the Danish language
too well ever to forsake it. Only in the event of my settlement in
Denmark meeting with opposition, and being rendered impossible, shall I
strap on my knapsack, gird up my loins, and hie me to France or Italy;
I am glad to hear that the world is not so closed to me as I had
formerly believed."
My thoughts were much engaged on my sick-bed by reflections upon the
future of Denmark. The following entry is dated March 8, 1871:
What do we mean by _our national future_, which we talk so much
about? We do not purpose to extend our borders, to make conquests, or
play any part in politics. For that, as is well comprehensible, we know
we are too weak. I will leave alone the question as to whether it is
possible to live without, in one way or another, growing, and ask: What
do we want? _To continue to exist_. How exist? We want to get
Slesvig back again, for as it is we are not _existing_; we are
sickening, or else we are living like those lower animals who even when
they are cut in pieces, are quite nimble; but it is a miserable life. We
are in a false position with regard to Germany. The centripetal force
that draws the individual members of one nationality together, and which
we in Denmark call Danishness, that which, further, draws nationalities
of the same family together, and which in Denmark is called
_Scandinavianism_, must logically lead to a sympathy for the
merging of the entire race, a kind of _Gothogermanism_. If we seek
support from France, we shall be behaving like the Poles, turning for
help to a foreign race against a nation of our own. I accuse us, not of
acting imprudently, but of fighting against a natural force that is
stronger than we. We can only retard, we cannot annihilate, the
attraction exerted by the greater masses on the lesser. We can only hope
that we may not live to feel the agony.
Holland and Denmark are both threatened by Germany, for in this
geography is the mighty ally of Germany. The most enlightened Dane can
only cherish the hope that Denmark, conquered, or not conquered, will
brave it out long enough for universal civilisation, by virtue of the
level it has reached, to bring our independence with it. As far as the
hope which the majority of Danes cherish is concerned (including the
noble professors of philosophy), of a time when Nemesis (reminiscence of
theology!), shall descend on Prussia, this hope is only an outcome of
foolishness. And even a Nemesis upon Prussia will never hurt Germany,
and thus will not help us.
But the main question is this: If we--either through a peaceable
restoration of Slesvig, or after fresh wars, or through the dawning of
an era of peace and civilisation--regain our integrity and independence,
shall we exist then? Not at all. Then we shall sicken again. A country
like Denmark, even including Slesvig, is nowadays no country at all. A
tradesman whose whole capital consists of ten rigsdaler is no tradesman.
The large capitals swallow up the small. The small must seek their
salvation in associations, partnerships, joint-stock companies, etc.
Our misfortune lies in the fact that there is no other country with
which we can enter into partnership except Sweden and Norway, a little,
unimportant state. By means of this association, which for the time
being, is our sheet-anchor, and which, by dint of deploying enormous
energy, might be of some importance, we can at best retard our
destruction by a year or two. But the future! Has Denmark any future?
It was France who, to her own unspeakable injury, discovered, or rather,
first proclaimed, the principle of nationality, a principle which at
most could only give her Belgium and French Switzerland, two neutral
countries, guaranteed by Europe, but which gave Italy to Piedmont,
Germany to Prussia, and which one day will give Russia supremacy over
all the Slavs.
Even before the war, France was, as it were, squeezed between bucklers;
she had no possible chance of gaining anything through her own precious
principle, and did not even dare to apply it to the two above-mentioned
points. While she fearfully allowed herself to be awarded Savoy and
Nice, Prussia grew from nineteen million inhabitants to fifty millions;
and probably in a few years the Germans of Austria will fall to Germany
as well. Then came the war, and its outcome was in every particular what
Prévost-Paradol, with his keen foresight, had predicted: "Afterwards,"
he wrote, "France, with Paris, will take up in Europe the same position
as Hellas with Athens assumed in the old Roman empire; it will become
the city of taste and the noble delights; but it will never be able to
regain its power." It has, in fact, been killed by this very theory of
nationality; for the only cognate races, Spain and Italy, are two
countries of which the one is rotten, the other just entered upon the
convalescent stage. Thus it is clear that Germany will, for a time,
exercise the supreme sway in Europe. But the future belongs neither to
her nor to Russia, but, if not to England herself, at any rate to the
Anglo-Saxon race, which has revealed a power of expansion in comparison
with which that of other nations is too small to count. Germans who go
to North America, in the next generation speak English. The English have
a unique capacity for spreading themselves and introducing their
language, and the power which the Anglo-Saxon race will acquire cannot
be broken in course of time like that of ancient Rome; for there are no
barbarians left, and their power is based, not on conquest, but on
assimilation, and the race is being rejuvenated in North America.
How characteristic it is of our poor little country that we always hear
and read of it as "one of the oldest kingdoms in the world." That is
just the pity of it. If we were only a young country! There is only one
way by which we can rejuvenate ourselves. First, to merge ourselves into
a Scandinavia; then, when this is well done and well secured, to
approach the Anglo-Saxon race to which we are akin. Moral: Become an
Anglo-Saxon and study John Stuart Mill!
And I studied Mill with persevering attention, where he was difficult,
but instructive, to follow, as in the _Examination of Hamilton's
Philosophy_, which renews Berkeley's teachings, and I read him with
delight where, accessible and comprehensible, he proclaims with
freshness and vigour the gospel of a new age, as in the book _On
Liberty_ and the one akin to it, _Representative Government_.