her eyes, only Dorothea looked timidly downwards, and the Baron said in
a fit of rapture, "All the world knows and reveres this model of
education, and if any one doubts the power of love, let him come and
see this family circle."
"Far be from me," said Brandenstein, turning himself to Dorothea, "the
rudeness of feeling which would refuse to acknowledge this tender love;
I only think, when I recall to mind my happy childhood, that love to
parents, and a certain religious and liberal fear of them should be one
and the same thing; for by means of the latter alone my childish love
acquired, I think, its true force and intensity; it is this holy awe
too of something incomprehensible in the parents, that should produce
that blind unqualified obedience, which is the very thing wherein the
child feels itself so happy; for without this obedience, it appears to
me, neither education nor love are possible."
The mother looked apprehensively at her eldest daughter, who seemed to
be of the same opinion, and then said with a rather pointed tone: "I
preferred convincing my children at an early age, and where that was
impossible, I so disposed them, that they did for my sake what they
could not perceive to be proper."
"I respect your mode of education," said the Count, "for who in this
lovely circle could have the heart to impugn it? Yet perhaps these
expedients may be rather too costly substitutes for that plain and
cheap obedience."
The Baron addressed himself in ill humour to Alfred, and the
conversation took a different turn. The young officer related with
self-complacency, that he had lately declined a party, to which he had
been invited by a lady, without any apology, as it appeared to him
sinful to pretend indisposition or an engagement. The company praised
this love of truth, and were of opinion that this fashion and habit
must become universal in society, if it was ever to be delivered from
empty affectation, hypocrisy, and continual petty falsehood. The mother
also hesitatingly joined in these assertions, though she feared such a
line of conduct might be difficult to pursue, without entirely
dissolving the delicate ties of society; but that on this very account
the virtue of the individual, who has the courage to overlook these
considerations, was the more praiseworthy. "There is nothing," she
continued, "which I have sought so much to awaken and keep alive in my
children, as the sacred instinct of truth; I have been on my guard to
prevent them from ever permitting themselves the smallest untruth, even
in jest. I have myself always endeavoured to answer all their questions
with truth, to remove out of their course of instruction every thing
which could not be made clear and plain; but above all I avoided those
absurd legends and lying stories, which cherish fear and superstition,
and tend certainly, more than any thing else, to estrange the minds of
children from truth."
The Baron enlarged upon these positions, and all the rest concurred,
except the Count, who expressed his opinion, that it might be one of
the most difficult of answers to say, what truth, truth properly so
called, was. "Men," said he, "have been seeking it in all directions
for thousands of years, and in this, as in almost all things, good
will, the intention of being veracious, must but too often supply the
place of the thing itself. If I would constantly tell the truth to
children or imbecile persons in answer to all questions, I run in
danger of being unable to speak truth any longer; for the last answer
at least rests upon a mystery which I am as little at liberty to deny,
as I am able to explain it. And to this invisible region we are
impelled at a very early age by imagination and feeling, and the
teacher, who would keep youthful impatience aloof from it, is only
obliged to have recourse to a different lie, which perhaps, in its
false philosophy, is as bad as that of superstition. So likewise it
appears to me injudicious to avoid cultivating the imagination of
children, even in that singular power, which seeks horror, and devises
blind and wild terrors. This impulse is in us, it stirs itself early;
and if one aims at keeping it under, if one strives to destroy it,
which is impossible, it grows on darkling and deepening, and gains in
strength, what it loses in shape. I have known women, who in an
over-enlightened education had been kept even from the most innocent
fairy tale, and who, in their riper years, could not summon courage to
go even through the next room of an evening, so tyrannized were they by
a nameless, absolutely childish panic, so that they impotently trembled
at every sound and every shadow. If, on the contrary, that element in
the imagination of children, which delights in the prodigious and
fearful, is reduced to shape, if it is softened in legends and stories,
then this world of shadows blends even with humour and drollery, and
itself, the most intricate labyrinth of our minds, may become a magic
mirror of truth. By means of this phantasmagoria, we may catch glimpses
of far distant and yet friendly spirits, which but very seldom pass
across us in visible approximation."
"That you are such a friend to superstition," answered the Baroness,
"is what I now learn for the first time."
Dorothea seemed not to lose a word of this singular conversation; she
looked at Kunigunde, whom this description of an irrational alarm, to
which she was often subject even in the day time, literally fitted; the
other sisters too were at times childish enough, and were afraid of
every walk in the evening. Kunigunde was sensitive; she thought the
stranger was acquainted with her weakness, and meant only to describe
her. The mother could hardly conceal her embarrassment.
"I cannot always approach society," proceeded Brandenstein, "with the
naked truth, for this is what it does not require or expect from me. I
may not throw into it the virtues of solitude, if I would not destroy
the charm by which it is so attractive to the man of cultivated mind.
One finds every where bad society, which I certainly do not mean to
praise; but when polished life, the delicate links of the educated
world, the graceful relation of the sexes, the forms contrived by wit
and good breeding, have been so often compared in contempt to the laws
and conditions of an ingenious game of cards, I have thought the simile
not unappropriate, but the contempt singular, and have been at a loss
to conceive that any one should have been blind to the variety of life
and its necessary forms. A man should only have lived for a time with
rustics, who so often want to pass off their rude bluntness for manly
virtue, who violate all decencies, who acknowledge no mystery, no
delicate relation, but nick-name every thing at all refined,
affectation and hypocrisy; a man should have been exposed for weeks
together to this rude pawing and grasping, and the oppressive weariness
it occasions, to value once more the dignity of a polished intellectual
intercourse. In that indeed a bare yea and nay will not always pass;
and to wish to overthrow, by what we call truth, the conventional
forms, by which alone this phenomenon admits of being exhibited, is
just as unreasonable as if I should call the laws which regulate a game
of chess a lie, move with my pawns into my antagonist's last row, and
declare my game won."
"You are a tolerable sophist," said the Baron. "All that is still
wanting is an encomium on the calumny and slander, the envy and
intrigue, of great societies; it would then only remain to throw
contempt upon the quiet virtue, the beautiful civic plainness, the
childlike innocence and noble simplicity of the unfashionable world."
"You cannot possibly have so misunderstood me," said the Count; "I only
mean that one ought not to confound the conditions which are requisite
to every game and every work of art (and good and polite society ought
certainly to partake of the nature of both) with untruths; for even in
dancing there is no truth, if the straight-forward bustling step of
business is to be called by that name, and even the promenade might
from this point of view be exposed to no inconsiderable conscientious
scruples."
"Worse and worse!" cried the Baron: "happily, my ingenious Count, you
are saying all this in company, on which you cannot produce a
pernicious impression."
"You have drawn me in for once," replied Brandenstein, "and so you may
hear my whole confession of faith. I believe there never was a man (and
there never will come one), who did not at some time or other in his
life consciously lie, whether it were a forced shift or weakness, fear,
selfishness, or vanity, or any of the other stains of our nature;
perhaps even merely to follow the spirit of falsehood which but too
temptingly allures us. And we need only take a look at the sublime
apostles, to learn, that they had not always strength sufficient to be
faithful to their model, the eternal divine truth. Many instances of
this sort I should be inclined to call innocent lies, which, for the
very reason that they are so decided, a man of a better nature can soon
avoid. But how stands the case then with that varnished self-love, that
parading egoism, that finished hypocrisy, which form the entire life of
many men into one single lie? I have known some, at least, who were
sunk so deep in the spirit of lying, that there no longer existed for
them such a thing as truth. And these men passed for virtuous, they
esteemed themselves chosen vessels, they could even keep up their part
of hypocrisy on their death-bed."
"Such a case is impossible!" exclaimed the Baron, and all agreed with
him; only Alfred expressed his opinion, that a depravity of this sort
might exist, whereupon Dorothea stared at him with surprize. "You are
speaking, in fact," continued the Baron, "of a former world; during
your absence every thing has changed with us so, that if you are only
now beginning to renew your acquaintance with our country, you will
scarcely find a trace of its former state. The old irreligion, that
empty scepticism which called itself philosophy, is, heaven be thanked,
pretty well gone by; the germs of a genuine religious temper are
unfolding themselves from day to day in greater beauty, one is no
longer ashamed of being a Christian, of believing in the Lord, and
elevating one's self to him in fervent prayer. The churches are once
more filled, the higher classes do not disdain any longer the communion
of their fellow-Christian, books of devotion have supplanted frivolous
reading on the tables of our wives and daughters; purified souls,
instead of entertaining themselves with theatrical gossip, converse
upon the bible, animate each other to penitence and devotion,
communicate the experience of their hearts, mutually strengthen one
another, and the spirit of the Lord speaks more and more distinctly in
these exalted affections. All this, my sceptical friend, you will at
least be forced to allow its value and its weight, for here is truth
and love, here no mistake is possible."
He had said all this with great unction. The Count was silent a moment,
before he said: "Our table-talk has assumed so serious a turn and so
grave an import, that it would certainly be more proper to break off,
and either to reserve these explanations for a calmer hour, or wholly
drop them, since on these important subjects one is most easily
misunderstood."
"Because you now feel yourself completely defeated," said the Baron,
"you wish at all events to provide yourself with a safe retreat. I
should have thought it now became your duty, openly to confess, that
you have nothing to say on this point, unless you would undisguisedly
avow, that the almost forgotten scepticism of former times is dearer to
you than our holy religion."
"O speak!" cried Dorothea, forgetting herself.
"You see how pressingly you are called upon," said the mother, darting
a long and threatening look at Dorothea. Alfred too requested the Count
to explain how far he coincided with the opinions of the age on this
point.
"As I cannot entirely avoid it," said he, "I will briefly hint what I
have been able to observe; for as I have been now a year again in
Germany, every thing is not so strange to me as you suppose, though it
is but a short time back that I came to revisit my birthplace here. I
only wish I could divest you all of the prejudice with which, I
observe, you consider me, as a profane infidel. No, that is really not
my character; but I must reserve to myself the incontestable right of
being a Christian after my own manner. That there are now, as at all
times, really pious and enlightened spirits, and that these deserve our
respect, who would doubt? The need of faith has again proclaimed
itself, the spirit has knocked at almost every heart, and admonitions
have been heard, of various kinds, and from all quarters. A clear fresh
stream has once more poured from the eternal hills along the thirsty
plain, and the things and beings overtaken by it follow the force of
its waves: all feel irresistibly hurried along, and great and small,
strong and weak, are forced down with its current. Genuine as is the
enthusiasm which this has occasioned, yet has it happened here, as in
all historical events, that this phenomenon likewise has been clouded
by the multitude, by vanity and human weakness, and as it was once the
fashion to play the freethinker and the _esprit fort_, though many were
weak and superstitious, so it has now become the custom to seem
religious, though many are frivolous and lukewarm enough at heart."
"_Desinit in atrum piscem_," said the Baron warmly, "your beginning
promised something better."
"How many persons," proceeded Brandenstein calmly, "have fallen in my
way, who almost at the first bow gave me to understand that they were
extraordinary Christians. Others, at every third word, and upon the
most indifferent subjects, make mention of the Saviour; upon every
occasion, however trifling, they fall a praying, and tell us of it;
nay, I have read romances, in which the author said in his preface,
that he never wrote without praying first, and that every thing good
contained in his book was immediate inspiration; the shortest way of
rebutting all criticism, and setting the romance close by the side of
revealed Writ. In company people take every opportunity to talk of
repentance, penance, devotion and redemption, and profane, according to
my feeling, what is sacred, forgetting that it has a resemblance to
love, the feelings and confessions of which the true lover will be
unwilling to expose to a stranger's ear."
"But what harm does it," said the Baron, "if pious spirits do perhaps
speak even too often of the object of their love?"
"It cannot be love," replied Brandenstein, "it is vanity, arrogance,
that affects to be better than other men. Just like that of the period
of sentimentalism or philosophism, it is a sickly craving, that seeks
nourishment every where, that flatters and humours itself into deeper
and deeper disease, looks intolerantly and contemptuously on our fellow
men, who are often better and more pious, because they will not
precisely chime in with the given tone."
"You are painting the excess," faultered the Baroness in a kind of
uneasiness.
"Nothing else, honoured madam," answered the Count; "only that it has
frequently fallen under my notice. I have seen too books of
edification, that seem to be very much in fashion, old and new, which
really can only serve completely to distract men of moderate
intellects, who are already infected with this vanity, in which the
Creator, the essence of love, is represented like a capricious old
humourist, that for want of employment has taken a fancy to weave the
most complicated destinies, and again, in a subtle and extraordinary
manner, to extricate this or that individual out of their misery,
though many at the same time are lost. Others convert religion into
magic and enchantment, or harden the hearts of wives so that they feel
themselves infinitely exalted above their husbands, and keep them, if
they do not quite adopt their own devotional twattle, in a state of
purgatory, and in the feeling, how low they have themselves descended,
to be the saintly wives of such ordinary sinners. I knew a poor girl of
moderate capacity, who esteemed herself happy in becoming the wife of a
young man in thriving circumstances, but who, by the end of half a
year, became likewise a saint, and now juggles herself into the belief,
that her christian virtue consists in enduring her husband; she seems
to herself super-human if she does not quite despise him, but however
she says this every day to herself and her religious playmates, who
confirm her in this exercise of piety. Is not this now sin?"
"Ay surely!" suddenly sighed Kunigunde's husband; and the mother, who
saw the prop of her family visibly breaking down, repented having begun
this conversation, and was angry with her worthy friend the Baron, for
having stirred it into a blaze.
Brandenstein however, who was now at last in full career, was likewise
unable to rest in his spiritual ardour, till he had brought his whole
philippic to bear. "How elevating a spectacle is it," he proceeded more
loudly, "to see pious men, in order to devote themselves entirely to
things sacred, turn their backs on the world and all its treasures, to
live in still seclusion to one great feeling only! I will not censure
particular fraternities, when in a like spirit they immure themselves,
and will have no concern with art and history, philosophy and the
world. But when these narrow-minded devotees, who remain in the world,
who have enjoyed the same education with the rest of mankind, and
profess themselves people of cultivated minds, call out to us over and
over again, that there is only One Thing Needful, that painting, music
and poetry are not only superfluous, but even sinful, and that prayer,
the inward light and penitence, is all that ought to interest the heart
of man,--I should be inclined to ask these persons, of what narrow
feeling that which they call their religion is composed, that it cannot
and ought not to admit of love, truth, reason and the lovely forms of
the imagination? Is it then no longer true, that to the pure all things
are pure? The man to whom God no longer appears in nature and history,
is to be considered as dead; that man is lost, who no longer sees his
lofty presence in the strength of reason. He too is pious on whom a
picture flashes rapturous delight, and who, while he reads
Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, feels blest and in paradise. For
even mirth, humour and wit are of divine original, and we grow the
purer and the more refined, the more we learn to perceive the ray of
divinity in these delicate sports of the fancy."
"It is true indeed," said the Baron, who had observed the Baroness's
obvious dissatisfaction, "we cannot to-day bring this interesting
conversation to an end."
"Impossible," answered the Count, who seemed himself surprized at his
own warmth, "else I should be glad to be informed why these pious
spirits do not submit with more humility to the church? Why they
require, that all men should see things in their way? How it happens
that no doubts cross them too, and enable them to conceive, that they
may themselves be in an error? Whether it is not more christian to
pray, rather according to the gospel with closed doors, than
pharisaically to proclaim their much praying to the world? I might also
observe, that this spiritual vertigo combines itself strikingly enough
with a political one, and that this morbid mood, which is spreading
over all Germany, has rendered it possible for an excessively confused
and feeble book to gain the applause of a crowd, which now at last
evinces, how little it ever comprehended our great poet, at the time
when it was shouting his praises. It may be considered as an outrage to
this great man, if we would not rather view it as ludicrous, that he
should be so schooled and catechized, that his works should be charged
with immorality, and deficiency in idealism, because he never
condescended to the miserable wants of this spokesman. That all this
has been possible, has shown me how little true intellectual culture
has taken root among us, and how easy it is therefore for giddy heads
to perplex with half-notions the bawling crowd."
"You mean Göthe," said the Baron, "and what are called the spurious
'Wander-jahre.' Well, we have now rambled sufficiently wide of our
original argument."
A pause ensued, all seemed out of tune, Dorothea was deeply agitated.
As a servant was bringing in a dish of roast meat, the Baroness cried,
"Oh! how could I forget the poor sick widow? John, carry this dish
immediately to the unfortunate woman, with my hearty wishes. She is
suffering incredibly, as I have been told to-day; she is besides poor,
and her children are able to give her but little assistance." "Ay,
poverty, sickness!" sighed the Baron. "Oh heaven, what would become of
this gloomy earth, if there were not still some tender, noble spirits,
who endeavour to mitigate its enormous wretchedness!"
"The poor woman," added Kunigunde, "is supposed not to have been at all
happy with her deceased husband, he was harsh and rough, and often
treated her with insolence." She darted at the same time at her
husband, who sat at the other end of the table, a singular look, that
was pregnant with meaning. The young man, roused by the conversation,
had the unexampled boldness to reply, that it was often wives' own
fault, if they were not happy in matrimony. The Count, to prevent more
specific explanations, observed that, as the woman's complaint was not
exactly known, it might perhaps do her harm, to eat meat without proper
precaution. But the Baron, who anticipated a new hostile attack, spoke
with pathos of the great beneficence of the Baroness, how she was a
mother to the poor, and could not conceive, how there could be men so
callous as to be unaffected by the misery of their fellow-creatures.
Now came John back with the roast meat, and brought word, that the
widow returned her most dutiful thanks; but that she had been forbidden
meat for the present in her fever by the physician, and that beside she
had received from the chateau, for three weeks past, every thing she
stood in need of, for which she could not sufficiently express her
gratitude. "A physician?" said the Baroness, "she has received already?
and how?"--"Oh, your ladyship," said the old servant confused, and in
agitation, "Miss Dorothea has for a long time past sent her every
thing, she got the doctor for her too, and visits the sick woman
herself every morning and evening." "So!" said the Baroness with a
lengthened quivering tone, and a piercing look fell on her daughter,
who in her confusion could make no reply; "And why, my child, is this
exercise of beneficence, this virtue, which is so new to me in you,
kept so secret? Why not allow your mother a share in the merit, now
that at last your heart inclines to such christian offices of love? My
advice would make the act of charity a genuine one. But as it is, it
looks as if waywardness, rather than compassion, guided your actions."
"Dear mother," begged Dorothea, "spare me."
"It is to be lamented," proceeded the mother, "when even that which in
itself is virtue, by the mode in which it is exercised, transforms
itself into a subject of censure. Above all I see pride and presumption
in this mode of acting, in your undertaking to be wise and managing
without me, when you cannot know whether by this means you are not
causing more harm than good."
"It is too much!" cried Dorothea, weeping aloud; she rose hastily, and
with covered face left the room.
All stared, but the Count seemed most surprized; he said with emotion
in his voice: "Is not the censure that has been passed on the young
lady really too much? She probably meant well; nor does it appear to me
blameable, that she performs her charitable acts in secret, that she is
perhaps a little too reserved about them, in order not to expose
herself to the appearance of ostentation."