VOLUME VII
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
BETTINA VON ARNIM
KARL LEBRECHT IMMERMANN
KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW
ANASTASIUS GRÜN
NIKOLAUS LENAU
EDUARD MÖRIKE
ANNETTE ELISABETH VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF
FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
MORITZ GRAF VON STRACHWITZ
EMANUEL GEIBEL
GEORG HERWEGH
THE GERMAN CLASSICS
Masterpieces of German Literature
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
PATRONS' EDITION
IN TWENTY VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
1914
THE GERMAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY
CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS
VOLUME VII
* * * * *
CONTENTS OF VOLUME VII
#Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel#
The Life of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. By J. Loewenberg.
Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree.
The Philosophy of Law. Translated by J. Loewenberg.
Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. Translated by J. Loewenberg.
#Bettina von Arnim#
The Life of Bettina von Arnim. By Henry Wood.
Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. Translated by Wallace Smith Murray.
#Karl Lebrecht Immermann#
Immermann and His Drama _Merlin_. By Martin Schütze.
Immermann's _Münchhausen_. By Allen Wilson Porterfield.
The Oberhof. Translated by Paul Bernard Thomas.
#Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow#
Gutzkow and Young Germany. By Starr Willard Cutting.
Sword and Queue. Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron.
German Lyric Poetry from 1830 to 1848. By John S. Nollen.
#Anastasius Grün#
A Salon Scene. Translated by Sarah T. Barrows.
#Nikolaus Lenau#
Prayer. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
Sedge Songs. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker.
Songs by the Lake. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
The Postilion. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
To the Beloved from Afar. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
The Three Gipsies. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
My Heart. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
#Eduard Mörike#
An Error Chanced. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
A Song for Two in the Night. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
Early Away. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.
The Forsaken Maiden. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
Weyla's Song. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
Seclusion. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
The Soldier's Betrothed. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
The Old Weathercock: An Idyll. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
Think of It, My Soul. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
Erinna to Sappho. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
* * * * *
Mozart's Journey from Vienna to Prague. Translated by Florence Leonard
#Annette Elizabeth von Droste-Hülshoff#
Pentecost. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
The House in the Heath. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
The Boy on the Moor. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
On the Tower. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
The Desolate House. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
The Jew's Beech-Tree. Translated by Lillie Winter
#Ferdinand Freiligrath#
The Duration of Love. Translated by M.G. in _Chambers' Journal_
The Emigrants. Translated by C.T. Brooks
The Lion's Ride. Translated by C.T. Brooks
The Spectre-Caravan. Translated by J.C. Mangan
Had I at Mecca's Gate been Nourished. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
Wild Flowers. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
The Dead to the Living. Translated by Bayard Taylor
Hurrah, Germania! In _Pall Mall Gazette_, London
The Trumpet of Gravelotte. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker
#Moritz Graf von Strachwitz#
Douglas of the Bleeding Heart. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork
#Georg Herwegh#
The Stirrup-Cup. Translated by William G. Howard
#Emanuel Geibel#
The Watchman's Song. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
The Call of the Road. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Autumn Days. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
The Death of Tiberius. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME VII
Arco. By Benno Becker
Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel. By Schlesinger
Royal Old Museum in Berlin. By Schinkel
Bettina von Arnim
The Goethe Monument. By Bettina von Arnim
Karl Lebrecht Immermann. By C.T. Lessing
The Master of the Oberhof. By Benjamin Vautier
The Oberhof. By Benjamin Vautier
The Freemen's Tribunal. By Benjamin Vautier
Lisbeth. By Benjamin Vautier
Oswald, the Hunter. By Benjamin Vautier
Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow
The Potsdam Guard. By Adolph von Menzel
King Frederick William I of Prussia. By R. Siemering
King Frederick William I and His "Tobacco Collegium". By Adolph von Menzel
Anastasius Grün
Nikolaus Lenau
Evening on the Shore. By Hans am Ende
Eduard Mörike. By Weiss
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff
The Farm House. By Hans am Ende
Ferdinand Freiligrath. By J Hasenclever
Dusk on the Dead Sea. By Eugen Bracht
Death on the Barricade. By Alfred Rethel
George Herwegh
Emanuel Geibel. By Hader
Journeying. By Ludwig Richter
THE LIFE OF GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D.
Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard University
Among students of philosophy the mention of Hegel's name arouses at once
a definite emotion. Few thinkers indeed have ever so completely
fascinated the minds of their sympathetic readers, or have so violently
repulsed their unwilling listeners, as Hegel has. To his followers Hegel
is the true prophet of the only true philosophic creed, to his
opponents, he has, in Professor James's words, "like Byron's corsair,
left a name 'to other times, linked with one virtue and a thousand
crimes.'"
The feelings of attraction to Hegel or repulsion from him do not emanate
from his personality. Unlike Spinoza's, his life offers nothing to stir
the imagination. Briefly, some of his biographical data are as follows:
He was born at Stuttgart, the capital of Würtemberg, August 27, 1770.
His father was a government official, and the family belonged to the
upper middle class. Hegel received his early education at the Latin
School and the Gymnasium of his native town. At both these institutions,
as well as at the University of Tübingen which he entered in 1788 to
study theology, he distinguished himself as an eminently industrious,
but not as a rarely gifted student. The certificate which he received
upon leaving the University in 1793 speaks of his good character, his
meritorious acquaintance with theology and languages, and his meagre
knowledge of philosophy. This does not quite represent his equipment,
however, for his private reading and studies carried him far beyond the
limits of the regular curriculum. After leaving the University he spent
seven years as family tutor in Switzerland and in Frankfurt-on-the-Main.
Soon after, in 1801, we find him as _Privat-Docent_; then, in 1805, as
professor at the University of Jena. His academic activities were
interrupted by the battle of Jena. For the next two years we meet him as
an editor of a political journal at Bamberg, and from 1808 to 1816 as
rector of the Gymnasium at Nuremberg. He was then called to a
professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg. In 1818 he was called to
Berlin to fill the vacancy left by the death of Fichte. From this time
on until his death in 1831, he was the recognized dictator of one of the
most powerful philosophic schools in the history of thought.
It is no easy task to convey an adequate idea of Hegel's philosophy
within the limits of a short introduction. There is, however, one
central thought animating the vast range of his whole philosophic system
which permits of non-technical statement. This thought will be more
easily grasped, if we consider first the well-known concept of
permanence and change. They may be said to constitute the most
fundamental distinction in life and in thought. Religion and poetry have
always dwelt upon their tragic meaning. That there is nothing new under
the sun and that we are but "fair creatures of an hour" in an
ever-changing world, are equally sad reflections. Interesting is the
application of the difference between permanence and change to extreme
types of temperament. We may speak loosely of the "static" and the
"dynamic" temperaments, the former clinging to everything that is
traditional, conservative, and abiding in art, religion, philosophy,
politics, and life; the latter everywhere pointing to, and delighting
in, the fluent, the novel, the evanescent. These extreme types, by no
means rare or unreal, illustrate the deep-rooted need of investing
either permanence or change with a more fundamental value. And to the
value of the one or the other, philosophers have always endeavored to
give metaphysical expression.
[Illustration: SCHLIESINGER GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL]
Some thinkers have proclaimed change to be the deepest manifestation of
reality, while others have insisted upon something abiding behind a
world of flux. The question whether change or permanence is more
essential arose early in Greek philosophy. Heraclitus was the first one
to see in change a deeper significance than in the permanence of the
Eleatics. A more dramatic opposition than the one which ensued between
the Heracliteans and the Eleatics can scarcely be imagined--both schools
claiming a monopoly of reason and truth, both distrusting the senses,
and each charging the other with illusion. Now the significance of
Hegel's philosophy can be grasped only when we bear in mind that it was
just this profound distinction between the permanent and the changing
that Hegel sought to understand and to interpret. He saw more deeply
into the reality of movement and change than any other philosopher
before or after him.
Very early in his life, judging by the recently published writings of
his youth, Hegel became interested in various phases of movement and
change. The vicissitudes of his own inner or outer life he did not
analyze. He was not given to introspection. Romanticism and mysticism
were foreign to his nature. His temperament was rather that of the
objective thinker. Not his own passions, hopes, and fears, but those of
others invited his curiosity. With an humane attitude, the young Hegel
approached religious and historical problems. The dramatic life and
death of Jesus, the tragic fate of "the glory that was Greece and the
grandeur that was Rome," the discrepancies between Christ's teachings
and the positive Christian religion, the fall of paganism and the
triumph of the Christian Church--these were the problems over which the
young Hegel pondered. Through an intense study of these problems, he
discovered that evil, sin, longing, and suffering are woven into the
very tissue of religious and historical processes, and that these
negative elements determine the very meaning and progress of history and
religion. Thereupon he began a systematic sketch of a philosophy in
which a negative factor was to be recognized as the positive vehicle in
the development of the whole world. And thus his genius came upon a
method which revealed to him an orderly unfolding in the world with
stages of relative values, the higher developing from the lower, and all
stages constituting an organic whole.
The method which the young Hegel discovered empirically, and which the
mature rationalist applied to every sphere of human life and thought, is
the famous Dialectical Method. This method is, in general, nothing else
than the recognition of the necessary presence of a negative factor in
the constitution of the world. Everything in the world--be it a
religious cult or a logical category, a human passion or a scientific
law--is, so Hegel holds, the result of a process which involves the
overcoming of a negative element. Without such an element to overcome,
the world would indeed be an inert and irrational affair. That any
rational and worthy activity entails the encounter of opposition and the
removal of obstacles is an observation commonplace enough. A
preëstablished harmony of foreseen happy issues--a fool's paradise--is
scarcely our ideal of a rational world. Just as a game is not worth
playing when its result is predetermined by the great inferiority of the
opponent, so life without something negative to overcome loses its zest.
But the process of overcoming is not anything contingent; it operates
according to a uniform and universal law. And this law constitutes
Hegel's most central doctrine--his doctrine of Evolution.
In order to bring this doctrine into better relief, it may be well to
contrast it superficially with the Darwinian theory of transformation.
In general, Hegel's doctrine is a concept of value, Darwin's is not.
What Darwinians mean by evolution is not an unfolding of the past, a
progressive development of a hierarchy of phases, in which the later is
superior and organically related to the earlier. No sufficient criterion
is provided by them for evaluating the various stages in the course of
an evolutionary process. The biologist's world would probably have been
just as rational if the famous ape-like progenitor of man had chanced to
become his offspring-assuming an original environment favorable for such
transformation. Some criterion besides the mere external and accidental
"struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest" must be furnished
to account for a progressive evolution. Does the phrase "survival of the
fittest" say much more than that those who happen to survive _are_ the
fittest, or that their survival proves their fitness? But that survival
itself is valuable: that it is better to be alive than dead; that
existence has a value other than itself; that what comes later in the
history of the race or of the universe is an advance over what went
before-that, in a word, the world is subject to an immanent development,
only a comprehensive and systematic philosophy can attempt to show.
The task of Hegel's whole philosophy consists in showing, by means of
one uniform principle, that the world manifests everywhere a genuine
evolution. Unlike the participants in the biological "struggle for
existence," the struggling beings of Hegel's universe never end in
slaying, but in reconciliation. Their very struggle gives birth to a new
being which includes them, and this being is "higher" in the scale of
existence, because it represents the preservation of two mutually
opposed beings. Only where conflicts are adjusted, oppositions overcome,
negations removed, is there advance, in Hegel's sense; and only where
there is a passage from the positive through its challenging negative to
a higher form inclusive of both is there a case of real development.
The ordinary process of learning by experience illustrates somewhat
Hegel's meaning. An individual finds himself, for instance, in the
presence of a wholly new situation that elicits an immediate, definite
reaction. In his ignorance, he chooses the wrong mode of behavior. As a
consequence, trouble ensues; feelings are hurt, pride is wounded,
motives are misconstrued. Embittered and disappointed with himself, he
experiences great mental sorrow. But he soon learns to see the situation
in its true light; he condemns his deed and offers to make amends. And
after the wounds begin to heal again, the inner struggles experienced
commence to assume a positive worth. They have led him to a deeper
insight into his own motives, to a better self-comprehension. And he
finally comes forth from the whole affair enriched and enlightened. Now
in this formal example, to which any content may be supplied, three
phases can be distinguished. First, we have the person as he meant to be
in the presence of the new situation, unaware of trouble. Then, his
wrong reaction engendered a hostile element. He was at war with himself;
he was not what he meant to be. And finally, he returned to himself
richer and wiser, including within himself the negative experience as a
valuable asset in the advance of his development.
This process of falling away from oneself, of facing oneself as an enemy
whom one reconciles to and includes in one's larger self, is certainly
a familiar process. It is a process just like this that develops one's
personality. However the self may be defined metaphysically, it is for
every self-conscious individual a never-ceasing battle with conflicting
motives and antagonistic desires--a never-ending cycle of endeavor,
failure, and success through the very agency of failure.
A more typical instance of this rhythmic process is Hegel's view of the
evolution of religion. Religion, in general, is based on a dualism which
it seeks to overcome. Though God is in heaven and man on earth, religion
longs to bridge the gulf which separates man and God. The religions of
the Orient emphasize God's infinity. God is everything, man is nothing.
Like an Oriental prince, God is conceived to have despotic sway over
man, his creature. Only in contemplating God's omnipotence and his own
nothingness can man find solace and peace. Opposed to this religion of
the infinite is the finite religion of Greece.
Man in Greece stands in the centre of a beautiful cosmos which is not
alien to his spirit. The gods on high, conceived after the likeness of
man, are the expression of a free people conscious of their freedom. And
the divinities worshiped, under the form of Zeus, Apollo,
Aphrodite--what are they but idealized and glorified Greeks? Can a more
complete antithesis be imagined? But Christianity becomes possible after
this struggle only, for in Christianity is contained both the principle
of Oriental infinity and the element of Hellenic finitude, for in a
being who is both God and man--a God-man--the gulf between the infinite
and finite is bridged. The Christian, like the Greek, worships
man--Jesus; but this man is one with the eternal being of the Orient.
Because it is the outcome of the Oriental and Greek opposition, the
Christian religion is, in Hegel's sense, a higher one. Viewing the
Oriental and the Hellenic religions historically in terms of the
biological "struggle for existence," the extinction of neither has
resulted. The Christian religion is the unity of these two struggling
opposites; in it they are conciliated and preserved. And this for Hegel
is genuine evolution.
That evolution demands a union of opposites seems at first paradoxical
enough. To say that Christianity is a religion of both infinity and
finitude means nothing less than that it contains a contradiction.
Hegel's view, strange as it may sound, is just this: everything includes
a contradiction in it, everything is both positive and negative,
everything expresses at once its Everlasting Yea and its Everlasting No.
The negative character of the world is the very vehicle of its progress.
Life and activity mean the triumph of the positive over the negative, a
triumph which results from absorbing and assimilating it. The myth of
the Phoenix typifies the life of reason "eternally preparing for
itself," as Hegel says, "a funeral pile, and consuming itself upon it;
but so that from its ashes it produces the new, renovated, fresh life."
That the power of negativity enters constitutively into the rationality
of the world, nay, that the rationality of the world demands negativity
in it, is Hegel's most original contribution to thought. His complete
philosophy is the attempt to show in detail that the whole universe and
everything it contains manifests the process of uniformly struggling
with a negative power, and is an outcome of conflicting, but reconciled
forces. An impressionistic picture of the world's eternal becoming
through this process is furnished by the first of Hegel's great works,
the _Phenomenology of Spirit_. The book is, in a sense, a cross-section
of the entire spiritual world. It depicts the necessary unfolding of
typical phases of the spiritual life of mankind. Logical categories,
scientific laws, historical epochs, literary tendencies, religious
processes, social, moral, and artistic institutions, all exemplify the
same onward movement through a union of opposites. There is eternal and
total instability everywhere. But this unrest and instability is of a
necessary and uniform nature, according to the one eternally fixed
principle which renders the universe as a whole organic and orderly.
Organic Wholeness! This phrase contains the rationale of the restless
flow and the evanescent being of the Hegelian world. It is but from the
point of view of the whole that its countless conflicts, discrepancies,
and contradictions can be understood. As the members of the body find
only in the body as a whole their _raison d'être_, so the manifold
expressions of the world are the expressions of one organism. A hand
which is cut off, as Hegel somewhere remarks, still looks like a hand,
and exists; but it is not a real hand. Similarly any part of the world,
severed from its connection with the whole, any isolated historical
event, any one religious view, any particular scientific explanation,
any single social body, any mere individual person, is like an amputated
bodily organ. Hegel's view of the world as organic depends upon
exhibiting the partial and abstract nature of other views. In his
_Phenomenology_ a variety of interpretations of the world and of the
meaning and destiny of life are scrutinized as to their adequacy and
concreteness. When not challenged, the point of view of common sense,
for instance, seems concrete and natural. The reaction of common sense
to the world is direct and practical, it has few questions to ask, and
philosophic speculations appear to it abstract and barren. But, upon
analysis, it is the common sense view that stands revealed as abstract
and barren. For an abstract object is one that does not fully correspond
to the rich and manifold reality; it is incomplete and one-sided.
Precisely such an object is the world of common sense. Its concreteness
is ignorance. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt
of by common sense. Its work-a-day world is not even a faint reflex of
the vast and complex universe. It sees but the immediate, the obvious,
the superficial. So instead of being concrete, it is, in truth, the very
opposite. Nor is empirical science with its predilection for "facts"
better off. Every science able to cope with a mere fragmentary aspect of
the world and from a partial point of view, is forced to ignore much of
the concrete content of even its own realm. Likewise, art and religion,
though in their views more synthetic and therefore more concrete, are
one-sided; they seek to satisfy special needs. Philosophy
alone--Hegelian philosophy--is concrete. Its aim is to interpret the
world in its entirety and complexity, its ideal is to harmonize the
demands of common sense, the interests of science, the appeal of art,
and the longing of religion into one coherent whole. This view of
philosophy, because it deals with the universe in its fulness and
variety, alone can make claim to real concreteness. Nor are the other
views false. They form for Hegel the necessary rungs on the ladder which
leads up to his own philosophic vision. Thus the Hegelian vision is
itself an organic process, including all other interpretations of life
and of the world as its necessary phases. In the immanent unfolding of
the Hegelian view is epitomized the onward march and the organic unity
of the World-Spirit itself.
The technical formulation of this view is contained in his _Logic_.
This book may indeed be said to be Hegel's master-stroke. Nothing less
is attempted in it than the proof that the very process of reasoning
manifests the same principle of evolution through a union of opposites.
Hegel was well aware, as much as recent exponents of anti-intellectualism,
that through "static" concepts we transmute and falsify the "fluent"
reality. As Professor James says "The essence of life is its continuously
changing character; but our concepts are all discontinuous and
fixed ... When we conceptualize we cut out and fix, and exclude everything
but what we have fixed. A concept means a _that-and-no-other_." But are
our concepts static, fixed, and discontinuous? What if the very
concepts we employ in reasoning should exemplify the universal flow of
life? Hegel finds that indeed to be the case. Concepts we daily use,
such as quality and quantity, essence and phenomenon, appearance and
reality, matter and force, cause and effect, are not fixed and
isolated entities, but form a continuous system of interdependent
elements. Stated dogmatically the meaning is this: As concavity and
convexity are inseparably connected, though one is the very opposite
of the other--as one cannot, so to speak, live without the other, both
being always found in union--so can no concept be discovered that is
not thus wedded to its contradiction. Every concept develops, upon
analysis, a stubbornly negative mate. No concept is statable or
definable without its opposite; one involves the other. One cannot
speak of motion without implying rest; one cannot mention the finite
without at the same time referring to the infinite; one cannot define
cause without explicitly defining effect. Not only is this true, but
concepts, when applied, reveal perpetual oscillation. Take the terms
"north" and "south." The mention of the north pole, for example,
implies at once the south pole also; it can be distinguished only by
contrast with the other, which it thus _includes_. But it is a north
pole only by _excluding_ the south pole from itself--by being itself
and not merely what the other is not. The situation is paradoxical
enough: Each aspect--the negative or the positive--of anything appears
to exclude the other, while each requires its own other for its very
definition and expression. It needs the other, and yet is independent
of it. How Hegel proves this of all concepts, cannot here be shown.
The result is that no concept can be taken by itself as a
"that-and-no-other." It is perpetually accompanied by its "other" as
man is by his shadow. The attempt to isolate any logical category and
regard it as fixed and stable thus proves futile. Each category--to
show this is the task of Hegel's _Logic_--is itself an organism, the
result of a process which takes place within its inner constitution.
And all logical categories, inevitably used in describing and
explaining our world, form one system of interdependent and
organically related parts. Hegel begins with an analysis of a concept
that most abstractly describes reality, follows it through its
countless conflicts and contradictions, and finally reaches the
highest category which, including all the foregoing categories in
organic unity, is alone adequate to characterize the universe as an
organism. What these categories are and what Hegel's procedure is in
showing their necessary sequential development, can here not even be
hinted at.
That the logical development of the categories of thought is the same as
the historical evolution of life--and _vice versa_--establishes for
Hegel the identity of thought and reality. In the history of philosophy,
the discrepancy between thought and reality has often been emphasized.
There are those who insist that reality is too vast and too deep for man
with his limited vision to penetrate; others, again, who set only
certain bounds to man's understanding, reality consisting, they hold, of
knowable and unknowable parts; and others still who see in the very
shifts and changes of philosophic and scientific opinion the delusion of
reason and the illusiveness of reality. The history of thought certainly
does present an array of conflicting views concerning the limits of
human reason. But all the contradictions and conflicts of thought prove
to Hegel the sovereignty of reason. The conflicts of reason are its own
necessary processes and expressions. Its dialectic instability is
instability that is peculiar to all reality. Both thought and reality
manifest one nature and one process. Hence reason with its "dynamic"
categories can comprehend the "fluent" reality, because it is flesh of
its flesh and bone of its bone. Hegel's bold and oft quoted words "What
is rational is real; and what is real is rational," pithily express his
whole doctrine. The nature of rationality and the nature of reality are,
for Hegel, one and the same spiritual process, the organic process of
triumphing over and conquering conflicts and contradictions. Where
reality conforms to this process it is rational (that which does not
conform to it is not reality at all, but has, like an amputated leg,
mere contingent existence); the logical formula of this process is but
an abstract account of what reality is in its essence.
The equation of the real and the rational, or the discovery of one
significant process underlying both life and reason, led Hegel to
proclaim a new kind of logic, so well characterized by Professor Royce
as the "logic of passion." To repeat what has been said above, this
means that categories are related to one another as historical epochs,
as religious processes, as social and moral institutions, nay, as human
passions, wills, and deeds are related to one another. Mutual conflict
and contradiction appear as their sole constant factor amid all their
variable conditions. The introduction of contradiction into logical
concepts as their _sine qua non_ meant indeed a revolutionary departure
from traditional logic. Prior to Hegel, logical reasoning was reasoning
in accordance with the law of contradiction, i. e., with the assumption
that nothing can have at the same time and at the same place
contradictory and inconsistent qualities or elements. For Hegel, on the
contrary, contradiction is the very moving principle of the world, the
pulse of its life. _Alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend_, as
he drastically says. The deeper reason why Hegel invests contradiction
with a positive value lies in the fact that, since the nature of
everything involves the union of discrepant elements, nothing can bear
isolation and independence. Terms, processes, epochs, institutions,
depend upon one another for their meaning, expression, and existence; it
is impossible to take anything in isolation. But this is just what one
does in dealing with the world in art or in science, in religion or in
business; one is always dealing with error and contradiction, because
one is dealing with fragments or bits of life and experience. Hence--and
this is Hegel's crowning thought--anything short of the whole universe
is inevitably contradictory. In brief, contradiction has the same sting
for Hegel as it has for any one else. Without losing its nature of
"contradictoriness," contradiction has logically this positive meaning.
Since it is an essential element of every partial, isolated, and
independent view of experience and thought, one is necessarily led to
transcend it and to see the universe in organic wholeness.
Thus, as Hegel puts his fundamental idea, "the truth is the whole."
Neither things nor categories, neither histories nor religions, neither
sciences nor arts, express or exhaust by themselves the whole essence of
the universe. The essence of the universe is the _life_ of the totality
of all things, not their _sum_. As the life of man is not the sum of his
bodily and mental functions, the whole man being present in each and all
of these, so must the universe be conceived as omnipresent in each of
its parts and expressions. This is the significance of Hegel's
conception of the universe as an organism. The World-Spirit--Hegel's
God--constitutes, thinks, lives, wills, and is _all_ in unity. The
evolution of the universe is thus the evolution of God himself.
The task of philosophy, then, as Hegel conceives it, is to portray in
systematic form the evolution of the World-Spirit in all its necessary
ramifications. These ramifications themselves are conceived as
constituting complete wholes, such as logic, nature, mind, society,
history, art, religion, philosophy, so that the universe in its onward
march through these is represented as a Whole of Wholes--_ein Kreis von
Kreisen_. In Hegel's complete philosophy each of these special spheres
finds its proper place and elaborate treatment.
Whether Hegel has well or ill succeeded in the task of exhibiting in
each and all of these spheres the one universal movement, whether or no
he was justified in reading into logic the same kind of development
manifested by life, or in making life conform to one logical
formula--these and other problems should arouse an interest in Hegel's
writings. The following selections may give some glimpse of their
spirit.
In conclusion, some bare suggestions must suffice to indicate the reason
for Hegel's great influence. Hegel has partly, if not wholly, created
the modern historical spirit. Reality for him, as even this inadequate
sketch has shown, is not static, but is essentially a process. Thus
until the history of a thing is known, the thing is not understood at
all. It is the becoming and not the being of the world that constitutes
its reality. And thus in emphasizing the fact that everything has a
"past," the insight into which alone reveals its significant meaning,
Hegel has given metaphysical expression and impetus to the awakening
modern historical sense. His idea of evolution also epitomizes the
spirit of the nineteenth century with its search everywhere for geneses
and transformations--in religion, philology, geology, biology. Closely
connected with the predominance of the historical in Hegel's philosophy
is its explicit critique of individualism and particularism. According
to his doctrine, the individual as individual is meaningless. The
particular--independent and unrelated--is an abstraction. The isolation
of anything results in contradiction. It is only the whole that animates
and gives meaning to the individual and the particular. This idea of
subordinating the individual to universal ends, as embodied particularly
in Hegel's theory of the State, has left its impress upon political,
social, and economic theories of his century. Not less significant is
the glorification of reason of which Hegel's complete philosophy is an
expression. Reason never spoke with so much self-confidence and
authority as it did in Hegel. To the clear vision of reason the universe
presents no dark or mysterious corners, nay, the very negations and
contradictions in it are marks of its inherent rationality. But Hegel's
rationalism is not of the ordinary shallow kind. Reason he himself
distinguishes from understanding. The latter is analytical, its function
is to abstract, to define, to compile, to classify. Reason, on the other
hand, is synthetic, constructive, inventive. Apart from Hegel's special
use of the term, it is this synthetic and creative and imaginative
quality pervading his whole philosophy which has deepened men's insight
into history, religion, and art, and which has wielded its general
influence on the philosophic and literary constellation of the
nineteenth century.
* * * * *
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY[1] (1837)
TRANSLATED BY J. SIBREE, M.A.
The subject of this course of lectures is the Philosophical History of
the World. And by this must be understood, not a collection of general
observations respecting it, suggested by the study of its records and
proposed to be illustrated by its facts, but universal history itself.
To gain a clear idea, at the outset, of the nature of our task, it seems
necessary to begin with an examination of the other methods of treating
history. The various methods may be ranged under three heads:
I. Original History.
II. Reflective History.
III. Philosophical History.
I. Of the first kind, the mention of one or two distinguished names will
furnish a definite type. To this category belong Herodotus, Thucydides,
and other historians of the same order, whose descriptions are for the
most part limited to deeds, events, and states of society, which they
had before their eyes and whose spirit they shared. They simply
transferred what was passing in the world around them to the realm of
re-presentative intellect; an external phenomenon was thus translated
into an internal conception. In the same way the poet operates upon the
material supplied him by his emotions, projecting it into an image for
the conceptive faculty.
These original historians did, it is true, find statements and
narratives of other men ready to hand; one person cannot be an
eye-and-ear witness of everything. But, merely as an ingredient, they
make use only of such aids as the poet does of that heritage of an
already-formed language to which he owes so much; historiographers bind
together the fleeting elements of story, and treasure them up for
immortality in the temple of Mnemosyne. Legends, ballad-stories, and
traditions must be excluded from such original history; they are but dim
and hazy forms of historical apprehension, and therefore belong to
nations whose intelligence is but half awakened. Here, on the contrary,
we have to do with people fully conscious of what they were and what
they were about. The domain of reality--actually seen, or capable of
being so-affords a very different basis in point of firmness from that
fugitive and shadowy element in which were engendered those legends and
poetic dreams whose historical prestige vanishes as soon as nations have
attained a mature individuality.
Such original historians, then, change the events, the deeds, and the
states of society with which they are conversant, into an object for the
conceptive faculty; the narratives they leave us cannot, therefore, be
very comprehensive in their range. Herodotus, Thucydides, Guicciardini,
may be taken as fair samples of the class in this respect. What is
present and living in their environment is their proper material. The
influences that have formed the writer are identical with those which
have molded the events that constitute the matter of his story. The
author's spirit and that of the actions he narrates are one and the
same. He describes scenes in which he himself has been an actor, or at
any rate an interested spectator. It is short periods of time,
individual shapes of persons and occurrences, single, unreflected
traits, of which he makes his picture. And his aim is nothing more than
the presentation to posterity of an image of events as clear as that
which he himself possessed in virtue of personal observation, or
lifelike descriptions. Reflections are none of his business, for he
lives in the spirit of his subject; he has not attained an elevation
above it. If, as in Cæsar's case, he belongs to the exalted rank of
generals or statesmen, it is the prosecution of his own aims that
constitutes the history.
Such speeches as we find in Thucydides, for example, of which we can
positively assert that they are not _bona fide_ reports, would seem to
make against our statement that a historian of his class presents us no
reflected picture, that persons and people appear in his works in
_propria persona_ ... Granted that such orations as those of
Pericles--that most profoundly accomplished, genuine, noble
statesman--were elaborated by Thucydides, it must yet be maintained that
they were not foreign to the character of the speaker. In the orations
in question, these men proclaim the maxims adopted by their countrymen
and formative of their own character; they record their views of their
political relations and of their moral and spiritual nature, and publish
the principles of their designs and conduct. What the historian puts
into their mouths is no supposititious system of ideas, but an
uncorrupted transcript of their intellectual and moral habitudes.
Of these historians whom we must make thoroughly our own, with whom we
must linger long if we would live with their respective nations and
enter deeply into their spirit--of these historians to whose pages we
may turn, not for the purposes of erudition merely, but with a view to
deep and genuine enjoyment, there are fewer than might be imagined.
Herodotus, the Father, namely the Founder, of History, and Thucydides
have been already mentioned. Xenophon's _Retreat of the Ten Thousand_ is
a work equally original. Cæsar's _Commentaries_ are the simple
masterpiece of a mighty spirit; among the ancients these annalists were
necessarily great captains and statesmen. In the Middle Ages, if we
except the bishops, who were placed in the very centre of the political
world, the monks monopolize this category as naïve chroniclers who were
as decidedly isolated from active life as those elder annalists had been
connected with it. In modern times the relations are entirely altered.
Our culture is essentially comprehensive, and immediately changes all
events into historical representations. Belonging to the class in
question, we have vivid, simple, clear narrations--especially of
military transactions--which might fairly take their place with those of
Cæsar. In richness of matter and fulness of detail as regards strategic
appliances and attendant circumstances, they are even more instructive.
The French "Memoirs" also fall under this category. In many cases these
are written by men of mark, though relating to affairs of little note;
they not unfrequently contain such a large amount of anecdotal matter
that the ground they occupy is narrow and trivial. Yet they are often
veritable masterpieces in history, as are those of Cardinal Retz, which,
in fact, trench on a larger historical field. In Germany such masters
are rare, Frederick the Great in his _Histoire de mon temps_ being an
illustrious exception. Writers of this order must occupy an elevated
position, for only from such a position is it possible to take an
extensive view of affairs--to see everything. This is out of the
question for him who from below merely gets a glimpse of the great world
through a miserable cranny.
II. The second kind of history we may call the _Reflective._ It is
history whose mode of representation is not really confined by the limits
of the time to which it relates, but whose spirit transcends the
present. In this second order a strongly marked variety of species may
be distinguished.
1. It is the aim of the investigator to gain a view of the entire
history of a people, of a country, or of the world in short, what we
call universal history. In this case the working up of the historical
material is the main point. The workman approaches his task with his own
spirit--a spirit distinct from that of the element he is to manipulate.
Here a very important consideration is the principles to which the
author refers the bearing and motives of the actions and events which he
describes, as well as those which determine the form of his narrative.
Among us Germans this reflective treatment and the display of ingenuity
which it affords assume a manifold variety of phases. Every writer of
history proposes to himself an original method. The English and French
confess to general principles of historical composition, their viewpoint
being more nearly that of cosmopolitan or national culture. Among us,
each labors to invent a purely individual point of view; instead of
writing history, we are always beating our brains to discover how
history ought to be written.
This first kind of Reflective history is most nearly akin to the
preceding, when it has no further aim than to present the annals of a
country complete. Such compilations (among which may be mentioned the
works of Livy, Diodorus Siculus, Johannes von Müller's _History of
Switzerland_) are, if well performed, highly meritorious. Among the best
of the kind may be included such annalists as approach those of the
first-class writers who give so vivid a transcript of events that the
reader may well fancy himself listening to contemporaries and
eye-witnesses. But it often happens that the individuality of tone which
must characterize a writer belonging to a different culture is not
modified in accordance with the periods which such a record must
traverse. The spirit of the writer may be quite apart from that of the
times of which he treats. Thus Livy puts into the mouths of the old
Roman kings, consuls, and generals, such orations as would be delivered
by an accomplished advocate of the Livian era, and which strikingly
contrast with the genuine traditions of Roman antiquity--witness, for
example, the fable of Menenius Agrippa. In the same way he gives us
descriptions of battles as if he had been an actual spectator; but their
salient points would serve well enough for battles in any period, for
their distinctness contrasts, even in his treatment of chief points of
interest, with the want of connection and the inconsistency that prevail
elsewhere. The difference between such a compiler and an original
historian may be best seen by comparing Polybius himself with the style
in which Livy uses, expands, and abridges his annals in those periods of
which Polybius' account has been preserved. Johannes von Müller, in the
endeavor to remain faithful in his portraiture to the times he
describes, has given a stiff, formal, pedantic aspect to his history. We
much prefer the narratives we find in old Tschudi; all is more naïve and
natural than when appearing in the garb of a fictitious and affected
archaism.
A history which aspires to traverse long periods of time, or to be
universal, must indeed forego the attempt to give individual
representations of the past as it actually existed. It must foreshorten
its pictures by abstractions, and this includes not merely the omission
of events and deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that Thought
is, after all, the most trenchant epitomist. A battle, a great victory,
a siege no longer maintains its original proportions, but is put off
with a mere allusion. When Livy, for instance, tells us of the war with
the Volsci, we sometimes have the brief announcement: "This year war was
carried on with the Volsci."
2. A second species of Reflective history is what we may call the
pragmatical. When we have to deal with the past and occupy ourselves
with a remote world, a present rises into being for the mind--produced
by its own activity, as the reward of its labor. The occurrences are,
indeed, various; but the idea which pervades them-their deeper import
and connection--is one. This takes the occurrence out of the category of
the past and makes it virtually present. Pragmatical (didactic)
reflections, though in their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and
indefeasibly of the present, and quicken the annals of the dead past
with the life of today. Whether, indeed, such reflections are truly
interesting and enlivening depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral
reflections must here be specially noticed--the moral teaching expected
from history; the latter has not infrequently been treated with a direct
view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate
the soul and are applicable in the moral instruction of children for
impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of people and
states, their interests, relations, and the complicated tissue of their
affairs, present quite another field. Rulers, statesmen, nations, are
wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience
offers in history; yet what experience and history teach is this-that
peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, nor
have they acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved
in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so
strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by
considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the
pressure of great events a general principle gives no help.
It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the past. The pallid
shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the
present. Looked at in this light nothing can be shallower than the
oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples during the French
Revolution; nothing is more diverse than the genius of those nations and
that of our times. Johannes von Müller, in his _Universal History_ as
also in his _History of Switzerland_, had such moral aims in view. He
designed to prepare a body of political doctrines for the instruction of
princes, governments, and peoples (he formed a special collection of
doctrines and reflections, frequently giving us in his correspondence
the exact number of apothegms which he had compiled in a week); but he
cannot assert that this part of his labor was among the best he
accomplished. It is only a thorough, liberal, comprehensive view of
historical relations (such for instance, as we find in Montesquieu's
_L'Esprit des Lois_) that can give truth and interest to reflections of
this order. One Reflective history, therefore, supersedes another. The
materials are patent to every writer; each is prone to believe himself
capable of arranging and manipulating them, and we may expect that each
will insist upon his own spirit as that of the age in question.
Disgusted by such reflective histories, readers have often returned with
pleasure to narratives adopting no particular point of view--which
certainly have their value, although, for the most part, they offer only
material for history. We Germans are content with such; but the French,
on the other hand, display great genius in reanimating bygone times and
in bringing the past to bear upon the present condition of things.
3. The third form of Reflective history is the _Critical_. This deserves
mention as preeminently the mode, now current in Germany, of treating
history. It is not history itself that is here presented. We might more
properly designate it as a History of History--a criticism of historical
narratives and an investigation of their truth and credibility. Its
peculiarity, in point of fact as well as intention, consists in the
acuteness with which the writer extorts from the records something
which was not in the matters recorded. The French have given us much
that is profound and judicious in this class of composition, but have
not endeavored to make a merely critical procedure pass for substantial
history; their judgments have been duly presented in the form of
critical treatises. Among us, the so-called "higher criticism," which
reigns supreme in the domain of philology, has also taken possession of
our historical literature; it has been the pretext for introducing all
the anti-historical monstrosities that a vain imagination could suggest.
Here we have the other method of making the past a living reality; for
historical data subjective fancies are substituted, whose merit is
measured by their boldness--that is, the scantiness of the particulars
on which they are based and the peremptoriness with which they
contravene the best established facts of history.
4. The last species of Reflective history announces its fragmentary
character on its very face. It adopts an abstract position; yet, since
it takes general points of view (such, for instance, as the History of
Art, of Law, of Religion), it forms a transition to the Philosophical
History of the World. In our time this form of the history of ideas has
been especially developed and made prominent. Such branches of national
life stand in close relation to the entire complex of a people's annals;
and the question of chief importance in relation to our subject is,
whether the connection of the whole is exhibited in its truth and
reality, or is referred to merely external relations. In the latter
case, these important phenomena (art, law, religion, etc.), appear as
purely accidental national peculiarities. It must be remarked, if the
position taken is a true one, that when Reflective history has advanced
to the adoption of general points of view, these are found to constitute
not a merely external thread, a superficial series, but are the inward
guiding soul of the occurrences and actions that occupy a nation's
annals. For, like the soul-conductor, Mercury, the Idea is, in truth,
the leader of peoples and of the world; and Spirit, the rational and
necessitated will of that conductor, is and has been the director of
the events of the world's history. To become acquainted with Spirit in
this, its office of guidance, is the object of our present undertaking.
III. The third kind of history is the _Philosophical_. No explanation
was needed of the two previous classes; their nature was self-evident.
It is otherwise with the last, which certainly seems to require an
exposition or justification. The most general definition that can be
given is, that the philosophy of history means nothing but the
thoughtful consideration of it. Thought is, indeed, essential to
humanity. It is this that distinguishes us from the brutes. In
sensation, cognition, and intellection, in our instincts and volitions,
as far as they are truly human, thought is a constant element. To insist
upon thought in this connection with history may, however, appear
unsatisfactory. In this science it would seem as if thought must be
subordinate to what is given, to the realities of fact--that this is its
basis and guide; while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced
ideas, without reference to actuality. Approaching history thus
prepossessed, speculation might be supposed to treat it as a mere
passive material, and, so far from leaving it in its native truth, to
force it into conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it, as
the phrase is, _a priori_. But as it is the business of history simply
to adopt into its records what is and has been-actual occurrences and
transactions; and since it remains true to its character in proportion
as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in philosophy a
process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer. This
contradiction, and the charge consequently brought against speculation,
shall be explained and confuted. We do not, however, propose to correct
the innumerable special misrepresentations, whether trite or novel, that
are current respecting the aims, the interests, and the modes of
treating history and its relation to philosophy.
The only thought which philosophy brings with it to the contemplation
of history, is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the
sovereign of the world; that the history of the world, therefore,
presents us with a rational process. This conviction and intuition is a
hypothesis in the domain of history as such; in that of philosophy it is
no hypothesis. It is there proved by speculative cognition that
Reason--and this term may here suffice us, without investigating the
relation sustained by the universe to the Divine Being--is substance, as
well as Infinite Power; its own Infinite Material is that underlying all
the natural and spiritual life which it originates, as also the Infinite
Form--that which sets this material in motion. On the one hand, Reason
is the substance of the universe--viz., that by which and in which all
reality has its being and subsistence. On the other hand, it is the
infinite energy of the universe; since Reason is not so powerless as to
be incapable of producing anything but a mere ideal, a mere
intention--having its place outside reality, nobody knows where;
something separate and abstract in the heads of certain human beings. It
is the _infinite complex of things_, their entire essence and truth. It
is its own material which it commits to its own active energy to work
up--not needing, as finite action does, the conditions of an external
material of given means from which it may obtain its support and the
objects of its activity. It supplies its own nourishment and is the
object of its own operations. While it is exclusively its own basis of
existence and absolute final aim, it is also the energizing power
realizing this aim, developing it not only in the phenomena of the
natural, but also of the spiritual universe--the history of the world.
That this "Idea" or "Reason" is the _true_, the _eternal_, the
absolutely _powerful_ essence; that it reveals itself in the world, and
that in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honor and
glory--is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in
philosophy and is here regarded as demonstrated.
In entering upon this course of lectures, I may fairly presume, at
least, the existence in those of my hearers who are not acquainted with
philosophy, of a belief in Reason, a desire, a thirst for acquaintance
with it. It is, in fact, the wish for rational insight, not the ambition
to amass a mere heap of acquirements, that should be presupposed in
every case as possessing the mind of the learner in the study of
science. If the clear idea of Reason is not already developed in our
minds, in beginning the study of universal history, we should at least
have the firm, unconquerable faith that Reason does exist there, and
that the world of intelligence and conscious volition is not abandoned
to chance, but must show itself in the light of the self-cognizant Idea.
Yet I am not obliged to make such a preliminary demand upon your faith.
What I have said thus provisionally, and what I shall have further to
say, is, even in reference to our branch of science, not to be regarded
as hypothetical, but as a summary view of the whole, the result of the
investigation we are about to pursue--a result which happens to be known
to _me_, because I have traversed the entire field. It is only an
inference from the history of the world that its development has been a
rational process, that the history in question has constituted the
rational necessary course of the World-Spirit--that Spirit whose nature
is always one and the same, but which unfolds this, its one nature, in
the phenomena of the world's existence. This must, as before stated,
present itself as the ultimate result of history; but we have to take
the latter as it is. We must proceed historically--empirically. Among
other precautions we must take care not to be misled by professed
historians who (especially among the Germans, and those enjoying a
considerable authority) are chargeable with the very procedure of which
they accuse the philosopher--introducing _a priori_ inventions of their
own into the records of the past. It is, for example, a widely current
fiction that there was an original primeval people, taught directly by
God, endowed with perfect insight and wisdom, possessing a thorough
knowledge of all natural laws and spiritual truth; that there have been
such or such sacerdotal peoples; or, to mention a more specific claim,
that there was a Roman Epos, from which the Roman historians derived the
early annals of their city, etc....
I will mention only two phases and points of view that concern the
generally diffused conviction that Reason has ruled, and is still ruling
in the world, and consequently in the world's history; because they give
us, at the same time, an opportunity for more closely investigating the
question that presents the greatest difficulty, and for indicating a
branch of the subject which will have to be enlarged on in the sequel.
1. One of these points is that passage in history which informs us that
the Greek Anaxagoras was the first to enunciate the doctrine that
[GREEK: nous],--Understanding in general, or Reason, governs the world.
It is not intelligence as self-conscious Reason--not a spirit as such
that is meant; and we must clearly distinguish these from each other.
The movement of the solar system takes place according to unchangeable
laws. These laws are Reason, implicit in the phenomena in question; but
neither the sun nor the planets which revolve around it according to
these laws can be said to have any consciousness of them.
A thought of this kind--that nature is an embodiment of Reason, that is,
unchangeably subordinate to universal laws--appears nowise striking or
strange to us. We are accustomed to such conceptions and find nothing
extraordinary in them; and I have mentioned this extraordinary
occurrence partly to show how history teaches that ideas of this kind,
which may seem trivial to us, have not always been in the world; that,
on the contrary, such a thought makes an epoch in the annals of human
intelligence. Aristotle says of Anaxagoras, as the originator of the
thought in question, that he appeared as a sober man among the drunken.
Socrates adopted the doctrine from Anaxagoras, and it forthwith became
the ruling idea in philosophy--except in the school of Epicurus, who
ascribed all events to chance. "I was delighted with the sentiment,"
Plato makes Socrates say, "and hoped I had found a teacher who would
show me Nature in harmony with Reason, who would demonstrate in each
particular phenomenon its specific aim, and, in the whole, the grand
object of the universe. I would not have surrendered this hope for a
great deal. But how very much was I disappointed, when, having zealously
applied myself to the writings of Anaxagoras, I found that he adduces
only external causes, such as atmosphere, ether, water, and the like."
It is evident that the defect which Socrates complains of respecting
Anaxagoras' doctrine does not concern the principle itself, but the
shortcoming of the propounder in applying it to nature in the concrete.
Nature is not deduced from that principle; the latter remains, in fact,
a mere abstraction, inasmuch as the former is not comprehended and
exhibited as a development of it--an organization produced by and from
Reason. I wish, at the very outset, to call your attention to the
important difference between a conception, a principle, a truth limited
to an abstract form, and its determinate application and concrete
development. This distinction affects the whole fabric of philosophy;
and among other bearings of it there is one to which we shall have to
revert at the close of our view of universal history, in investigating
the aspect of political affairs in the most recent period.
We have next to notice the rise of this idea that Reason directs the
world, in connection with a further application of it well known to
us--in the form, viz., of the religious truth that the world is not
abandoned to chance and external contingent causes, but that a
Providence controls it. I stated above that I would not make a demand on
your faith in regard to the principle announced. Yet I might appeal to
your belief in it, in this religious aspect, if as a general rule, the
nature of philosophical science allowed it to attach authority to
presuppositions. To put it in another shape--this appeal is forbidden,
because the science of which we have to treat proposes itself to furnish
the proof, not indeed of the abstract truth of the doctrine, but of its
correctness as compared with facts. The truth, then, that a Providence
(that of God) presides over the events of the world consorts with the
proposition in question; for Divine Providence is wisdom, endowed with
an infinite power, which realizes its aim, viz., the absolute rational
design of the world. Reason is thought conditioning itself with perfect
freedom. But a difference--rather a contradiction--will manifest itself
between this belief and our principle, just as was the case in reference
to the demand made by Socrates in the case of Anaxagoras' dictum. For
that belief is similarly indefinite; it is what is called a belief in a
general providence, and is not followed out into definite application,
or displayed in its bearing on the grand total--the entire course of
human history. But to explain history is to depict the passions of
mankind, the genius, the active powers, that play their part on the
great stage; and the providentially determined process which these
exhibit constitutes what is generally called the "plan" of Providence.
Yet it is this very plan which is supposed to be concealed from our
view, which it is deemed presumption even to wish to recognize. The
ignorance of Anaxagoras as to how intelligence reveals itself in actual
existence was ingenuous. Neither in his consciousness, nor in that of
Greece at large, had that thought been further expanded. He had not
attained the power to apply his general principle to the concrete, so as
to deduce the latter from the former; it was Socrates who took the first
step in comprehending the union of the concrete with the universal.
Anaxagoras, then, did not take up a hostile position toward such an
application; the common belief in Providence does; at least it opposes
the use of the principle on a large scale, and denies the possibility of
discerning the plan of Providence. In isolated cases this plan is
supposed to be manifest. Pious persons are encouraged to recognize in
particular circumstances something more than mere chance, to acknowledge
the guiding hand of God; for instance, when help has unexpectedly come
to an individual in great perplexity and need. But these instances of
providential design are of a limited kind, and concern the
accomplishment of nothing more than the desires of the individual in
question. But in the history of the world, the individuals we have to do
with are peoples, totalities that are States. We cannot, therefore, be
satisfied with what we may call this "peddling" view of Providence, to
which the belief alluded to limits itself. Equally unsatisfactory is the
merely abstract, undefined belief in a Providence, when that belief is
not brought to bear upon the details of the process which it conducts.
On the contrary our earnest endeavor must be directed to the recognition
of the ways of Providence, the means it uses, and the historical
phenomena in which it manifests itself; and we must show their
connection with the general principle above mentioned. But in noticing
the recognition of the plan of Divine Providence generally, I have
implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day, viz., that of
the possibility of knowing God; or rather--since public opinion has
ceased to allow it to be a matter of question--the doctrine that it is
impossible to know God. In direct contravention of what is commanded in
holy Scripture as the highest duty--that we should not merely love, but
know God--the prevalent dogma involves the denial of what is there
said--namely, that it is the Spirit, _der Geist_, that leads into truth,
knows all things, penetrates even into the deep things of the Godhead.
While the Divine Being is thus placed beyond our knowledge and outside
the limit of all human things, we have the convenient license of
wandering as far as we list, in the direction of our own fancies. We are
freed from the obligation to refer our knowledge to the Divine and True.
On the other hand, the vanity and egoism which characterize our
knowledge find, in this false position, ample justification; and the
pious modesty which puts far from itself the knowledge of God can well
estimate how much furtherance thereby accrues to its own wayward and
vain strivings. I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the
connection between our thesis--that Reason governs and has governed the
world--and the question of the possibility of a knowledge of God,
chiefly that I might not lose the opportunity of mentioning the
imputation against philosophy of being shy of noticing religious truths,
or of having occasion to be so; in which is insinuated the suspicion
that it has anything but a clear conscience in the presence of these
truths. So far from this being the case, the fact is that in recent
times philosophy has been obliged to defend the domain of religion
against the attacks of several theological systems. In the Christian
religion God has revealed Himself--that is, He has given us to
understand what He is, with the result that He is no longer a concealed
or secret existence. And this possibility of knowing Him, thus afforded
us, renders such knowledge a duty. God wishes for His children no
narrow-hearted souls or empty heads, but those whose spirit is of itself
indeed, poor, but rich in the knowledge of Him, and who regard this
knowledge of God as the only valuable possession. That development of
the thinking spirit, which has resulted from the revelation of the
Divine Being as its original basis, must ultimately advance to the
intellectual comprehension of what was presented, in the first instance,
to feeling and imagination. The time must eventually come for
understanding that rich product of active Reason which the history of
the world offers to us. It was for a while the fashion to profess
admiration for the wisdom of God, as displayed in animals, plants, and
isolated occurrences. But if it be allowed that Providence manifests
itself in such objects and forms of existence, why not also in universal
history? This is deemed too great a matter to be thus regarded. But
divine wisdom, i. e., Reason, is one and the same in the great as in the
little; and we must not imagine God to be too weak to exercise his
wisdom on the grand scale. Our intellectual striving aims at realizing
the conviction that what was intended by eternal wisdom is actually
accomplished in the domain of existent, active Spirit, as well as in
that of mere Nature. Our mode of treating the subject is, in this
aspect, a Theodicaea--a justification of the ways of God--which Leibnitz
attempted metaphysically in his method, i. e., in indefinite abstract
categories--so that the ill that is found in the world may be
comprehended, and the thinking Spirit reconciled with the fact of the
existence of evil. Indeed, nowhere is such a harmonizing view more
pressingly demanded than in universal history; and it can be attained
only by recognizing the positive existence, in which that negative
element is a subordinate and vanquished nullity. On the one hand, the
ultimate design of the world must be perceived, and, on the other, the
fact that this design has been actually realized in it, and that evil
has not been able permanently to establish a rival position. But this
conviction involves much more than the mere belief in a superintending
[GREEK: nous] or in "Providence." "Reason," whose sovereignty over the
world has been maintained, is as indefinite a term as "Providence,"
supposing the term to be used by those who are unable to characterize it
distinctly, to show wherein it consists, so as to enable us to decide
whether a thing is rational or irrational. An adequate definition of
Reason is the first desideratum; and whatever boast may be made of
strict adherence to it in explaining phenomena, without such a
definition we get no farther than mere words. With these observations we
may proceed to the second point of view that has to be considered in
this Introduction.
2. The inquiry into the essential destiny of Reason, as far as it is
considered in reference to the world, is identical with the question
_What is the ultimate design of the world?_ And the expression implies
that that design is destined to be realized. Two points of consideration
suggest themselves: first, the _import_ of this design--its abstract
definition; secondly, its _realization_.
It must be observed at the outset that the phenomenon we
investigate--universal history--belongs to the realm of "spirit." The
term "World" includes both physical and psychical nature. Physical
nature also plays its part in the world's history, and attention will
have to be paid to the fundamental natural relations thus involved. But
Spirit, and the course of its development, is our substantial object.
Our task does not require us to contemplate nature as a rational system
in itself--though in its own proper domain it proves itself such-but
simply in its relation to _Spirit_. On the stage on which we are
observing it--universal history--Spirit displays itself in its most
concrete reality. Notwithstanding this (or rather for the very purpose
of comprehending the general principles which this, its form of concrete
reality, embodies) we must premise some abstract characteristics of the
nature of Spirit.
We have therefore to mention here
(1) The abstract characteristics of the nature of
Spirit.
(2) What means Spirit uses in order to realize its
Idea.
(3) Lastly, we must consider the shape which the
perfect embodiment of Spirit assumes--the
State.
(1) The nature of Spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct
opposite--Matter. As the essence of Matter is gravity, so, on the other
hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is freedom.
All will readily assent to the doctrine that Spirit, among other
properties, is also endowed with freedom; but philosophy teaches that
all the qualities of Spirit exist only through freedom; that all are but
means for attaining freedom; that all seek and produce this and this
alone. It is a result of speculative philosophy that freedom is the sole
truth of Spirit. Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency toward
a central point. It is essentially composite, consisting of parts that
_exclude_ one another. It seeks its unity; and therefore exhibits itself
as self-destructive, as verging toward its opposite--an indivisible point.
If it could attain this, it would be Matter no longer; it would have
perished. It strives after the realization of its Idea; for in unity it
exists ideally. Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has
its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already
found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of
itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now
this is freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to
something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something
external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon
myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than
self-consciousness-consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be
distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact _that I know_;
secondly, _what I know_. In self-consciousness these are merged in
one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own
nature, as also an energy enabling it to realize itself; to make itself
actually what it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it
may be said of universal history that it is the exhibition of Spirit in
the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially.
And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree and the taste
and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain
the whole of that history. The Orientals have not attained the knowledge
that Spirit--Man _as such_--is free; and because they do not know
this, they are not free. They only know that one is free; but on this
very account, the freedom of that one is only caprice; ferocity--brutal
recklessness of passion, or a mildness and tameness of the desires, which
is itself only an accident of nature--is mere caprice like the former.
That _one_ is therefore only a despot, not a _free man_. The
consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they
were free; but they, and the Romans likewise, knew only that _some_ are
free, not man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. The
Greeks, therefore, had slaves, and their whole life and the maintenance
of their splendid liberty was implicated with the institution of
slavery--a fact, moreover, which made that liberty, on the one hand,
only an accidental, transient and limited growth, and on the other, a
rigorous thraldom of our common nature--of the Human. The Germanic
nations, under the influence of Christianity, were the first to attain
the consciousness that man is free; that it is the freedom of Spirit
which constitutes its essence. This consciousness arose first in
religion, the inmost region of Spirit; but to introduce the principle
into the various relations of the actual world involves a more extensive
problem than its simple implantation--a problem whose solution and
application require a severe and lengthened process of culture. In
proof of this we may note that slavery did not cease immediately on the
reception of Christianity. Still less did liberty predominate in States;
or governments and constitutions adopt a rational organization, or
recognize freedom as their basis. That application of the principle to
political relations, the thorough molding and interpenetration of the
constitution of society by it, is a process identical with history
itself. I have already directed attention to the distinction here
involved, between a principle as such and its application--that is, its
introduction and fulfilment in the actual phenomena of Spirit and life.
This is a point of fundamental importance in our science, and one which
must be constantly respected as essential. And in the same way as this
distinction has attracted attention in view of the Christian principle
of self-consciousness--freedom, it also shows itself as an essential one
in view of the principle of freedom generally. The history of the world
is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom--progress
whose development, according to the necessity of its nature, it is our
business to investigate.
The general statement given above of the various grades in the
consciousness of freedom-which we applied in the first instance to the
fact that the Eastern nations knew only that one is free, the Greek and
Roman world only that _some_ are free, while we know that all men
absolutely (man as man) are free--supplies us with the natural division
of universal history, and suggests the mode of its discussion. This is
remarked, however, only incidentally and anticipatively; some other
ideas must be first explained.
The destiny of the spiritual world, and--since this is the substantial
world, while the physical remains subordinate to it, or, in the language
of speculation, has no truth as against the spiritual--the final cause
of the world at large we allege to be the consciousness of its own
freedom on the part of Spirit, and, _ipso facto_, the reality of that
freedom. But that this term "freedom" is, without further
qualification, an indefinite, incalculable, ambiguous term, and that,
while what it represents is the _ne plus ultra_ of attainment, it is
liable to an infinity of misunderstandings, confusions, and errors, and
to become the occasion for all imaginable excesses--has never been more
clearly known and felt than in modern times. Yet, for the present, we
must content ourselves with the term itself without further definition.
Attention was also directed to the importance of the infinite difference
between a principle in the abstract and its realization in the concrete.
In the process before us the essential nature of freedom--which involves
absolute necessity--is to be displayed as coming to a consciousness of
itself (for it is in its very nature, self-consciousness) and thereby
realizing its existence. Itself is its own object of attainment and the
sole aim of Spirit. This result it is at which the process of the
world's history has been continually aiming, and to which the sacrifices
that have ever and anon been laid on the vast altar of the earth,
through the long lapse of ages, have been offered. This is the only aim
that sees itself realized and fulfilled, the only pole of repose amid
the ceaseless change of events and conditions, and the sole efficient
principle that pervades them. This final aim is God's purpose with the
world; but God is the absolutely perfect Being, and can, therefore, will
nothing other than Himself--His own will. The nature of His will--that
is His nature itself--is what we here call the idea of freedom,
translating the language of religion into that of thought. The question,
then, which we may next put, is What means does this principle of
freedom use for its realization? This is the second point we have to
consider.
(2) The question of the means by which freedom develops itself to a
world conducts us to the phenomenon of history itself. Although freedom
is, primarily, an undeveloped idea, the means it uses are external and
phenomenal, presenting themselves in history to our sensuous vision. The
first glance at history convinces us that the actions of men proceed
from their needs, their passions, when the occasion seems to call for
it--is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea
of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle--Plan of
Existence--Law--is a hidden, undeveloped essence which, as such--however
true in itself--is not completely real. Aims, principles, etc., have a
place in our thoughts, in our subjective design only, but not as yet in
the sphere of reality. That which exists for itself only is a
possibility, a potentiality, but it has not emerged into existence. A
second element must be introduced in order to produce actuality--viz.,
actuation, realization; and its motive power is the will--the activity
of man in the widest sense. It is only by this activity that that Idea,
as well as abstract characteristics generally, are realized, actualized;
for of themselves they are powerless. The motive power that puts them in
operation and gives them determinate existence, is the need, instinct,
inclination, and passion of man. That some conception of mine should be
developed into act and existence, is my earnest desire; I wish to assert
my personality in connection with it; I wish to be satisfied by its
execution. If I am to exert myself for any object, it must in some way
or other be _my_ object. In the accomplishment of such or such designs I
must at the same time find _my_ satisfaction; although the purpose for
which I exert myself includes a complication of results, many of which
have no interest for me. This is the absolute right of personal
existence--to find _itself_ satisfied in its activity and labor. If men
are to interest themselves for anything, they must, so to speak, have
part of their existence involved in it and find their individuality
gratified by its attainment. Here a mistake must be avoided. We intend
blame, and justly impute it as a fault, when we say of an individual
that he is "interested" (in taking part in such or such
transactions)--that is, seeks only his private advantage. In
reprehending this we find fault with him for furthering his personal
aims without any regard to a more comprehensive design, of which he
takes advantage to promote his own interest or which, with this view,
he even sacrifices. But he who is active in promoting an object is not
simply "interested," but interested in that object itself. Language
faithfully expresses this distinction. Nothing therefore happens,
nothing is accomplished, unless the individuals concerned seek their own
satisfaction in the issue. They are particular units of society--that
is, they have special needs, instincts, and interests generally,
peculiar to themselves. Among these needs are not only such as we
usually call necessities--the stimuli of individual desire and
volition--but also those connected with individual views and
convictions; or--to use a term expressing less decision--leanings of
opinion, supposing the impulses of reflection, understanding, and
reason, to have been awakened. In these cases people demand, if they are
to exert themselves in any direction, that the object should commend
itself to them, that, in point of opinion-whether as to its goodness,
justice, advantage, profit they should be able to "enter into it"
(_dabei sein_). This is a consideration of special importance in our
age, when people are less than formerly influenced by reliance on
others, and by authority; when, on the contrary, they devote their
activities to a cause on the ground of their own understanding, their
independent conviction and opinion.
We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on
the part of the actors; and--if interest be called passion, inasmuch as
the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible
interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of
volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it--we may
affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished
without passion. Two elements, therefore, enter into the object of our
investigation--the first the Idea, the second the complex of human
passions; the one the warp, the other the woof of the vast arras-web of
universal history. The concrete mean and union of the two is liberty,
under the conditions of morality in a State. We have spoken of the idea
of freedom as the nature of Spirit, and the absolute goal of history.
Passion is regarded as a thing of sinister aspect, as more or less
immoral. Man is required to have no passions. Passion, it is true, is
not quite the suitable word for what I wish to express. I mean here
nothing more than human activity as resulting from private interests,
special, or if you will, self-seeking designs--with this qualification,
that the whole energy of will and character is devoted to their
attainment, and that other interests (which would in themselves
constitute attractive aims), or, rather, all things else, are sacrificed
to them. The object in question is so bound up with the man's will that
it entirely and alone determines the "hue of resolution" and is
inseparable from it; it has become the very essence of his volition. For
a person is a specific existence--not man in general (a term to which no
real existence corresponds); but a particular human being. The term
"character" likewise expresses this idiosyncrasy of will and
intelligence. But character comprehends all peculiarities whatever, the
way in which a person conducts himself in private relations, etc., and
is not limited to his idiosyncrasy in its practical and active phase. I
shall, therefore, use the term "passion," understanding thereby the
particular bent of character, as far as the peculiarities of volition
are not limited to private interest but supply the impelling and
actuating force for accomplishing deeds shared in by the community at
large. Passion is, in the first instance, the subjective and therefore
the formal side of energy, will, and activity--leaving the object or aim
still undetermined. And there is a similar relation of formality to
reality in merely individual conviction, individual views, individual
conscience. It is always a question of essential importance--what is the
purport of my conviction, what the object of my passion--in deciding
whether the one or the other is of a true and substantial nature.
Conversely, if it is so, it will inevitably attain actual existence--be
realized.
From this comment on the second essential element in the historical
embodiment of an aim, we infer--glancing at the institution of the State
in passing--that a State is well constituted and internally powerful when
the private interest of its citizens is one with the common interest of
the State, when the one finds its gratification and realization in the
other--a proposition in itself very important. But in a State many
institutions must be adopted, and much political machinery invented,
accompanied by appropriate political arrangements--necessitating long
struggles of the understanding before what is really appropriate can be
discovered--involving, moreover, contentions with private interest and
passions and a tedious discipline of the latter in order to bring about
the desired harmony. The epoch when a State attains this harmonious
condition marks the period of its bloom, its virtue, its vigor, and its
prosperity. But the history of mankind does not begin with a conscious
aim of any kind, as is the case with the particular circles into which
men form themselves of set purpose. The mere social instinct implies a
conscious purpose of security for life and property; and when society has
been constituted this purpose becomes more comprehensive. The history of
the world begins with its general aim--the realization of the idea of
Spirit--only in an implicit form (_an sich_), that is, as nature--a
hidden, most profoundly hidden, unconscious instinct; and the whole
process of history (as already observed) is directed to rendering this
unconscious impulse a conscious one. Thus appearing in the form of
merely natural existence, natural will--that which has been called the
subjective side--physical craving, instinct, passion, private interest,
as also opinion and subjective conception, spontaneously present
themselves at the very commencement. This vast congeries of volitions,
interests, and activities, constitute the instruments and means of the
World-Spirit for attaining its object, bringing it to consciousness and
realizing it. And this aim is none other than finding itself--coming to
itself--and contemplating itself in concrete actuality. But that those
manifestations of vitality on the part of individuals and peoples, in
which they seek and satisfy their own purposes, are, at the same time,
the means and instruments of a higher and broader purpose of which they
know nothing-which they realize unconsciously might be made a matter of
question-rather has been questioned, and, in every variety of form,
negatived, decried, and contemned as mere dreaming and "philosophy." But
on this point I announced my view at the very outset and asserted our
hypothesis--which, however, will appear in the sequel in the form of a
legitimate inference--and our belief that Reason governs the world and
has consequently governed its history. In relation to this independently
universal and substantial existence all else is subordinate, subservient
to it, and the means for its development. The union of universal
abstract existence generally with the individual--the subjective--that
this alone is truth belongs to the department of speculation and is
treated in this general form in logic. But in the process of the world's
history itself--as still incomplete--the abstract final aim of history
is not yet made the distinct object of desire and interest. While these
limited sentiments are still unconscious of the purpose they are
fulfilling, the universal principle is implicit in them and is realizing
itself through them. The question also assumes the form of the union of
freedom and necessity, the latent abstract process of Spirit being
regarded as necessity, while that which exhibits itself in the conscious
will of men, as their interest, belongs to the domain of freedom. As the
metaphysical connection (i. e., the connection in the Idea) of these
forms of thought, belongs to logic, it would be out of place to analyze
it here. The chief and cardinal points only shall be mentioned.
Philosophy shows that the Idea advances to an infinite antithesis--that,
namely, between the Idea in its free, universal form, in which it exists
for itself, and the contrasted form of abstract introversion, reflection
on itself, which is formal existence-for-self, personality, formal
freedom, such as belongs to Spirit only. The universal Idea exists thus
as the substantial totality of things on the one side, and as the
abstract essence of free volition on the other. This reflection of the
mind on itself is individual self-consciousness--the polar-opposite of
the Idea in its general form and therefore existing in absolute
limitation. This polar-opposite is consequently limitation,
particularization for the universal absolute being; it is the side of
the definite existence, the sphere of its formal reality, the sphere of
the reverence paid to God. To comprehend the absolute connection of this
antithesis is the profound task of metaphysics. This limitation
originates all forms of particularity of whatever kind. The formal
volition (of which we have spoken) wills itself and desires to make its
own personality valid in all that it purposes and does; even the pious
individual wishes to be saved and happy. This pole of the antithesis,
existing for itself, is--in contrast with the Absolute Universal
Being--a special separate existence, taking cognizance of speciality
only and willing that alone. In short, it plays its part in the region
of mere phenomena. This is the sphere of particular purposes, in
effecting which individuals exert themselves on behalf of their
individuality--give it full play and objective realization. This is also
the sphere of happiness and its opposite. He is happy who finds his
condition suited to his special character, will, and fancy, and so
enjoys himself in that condition. The history of the world is not the
theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for
they are periods of harmony--periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.
Reflection of self--the freedom above described--is abstractly defined
as the formal element of the activity of the absolute Idea. The
realizing activity of which we have spoken is the middle term of the
syllogism, one of whose extremes is the universal essence, the _Idea_,
which reposes in the penetralia of Spirit; and the other, the complex of
external things--objective matter. That activity is the medium by which
the universal latent principle is translated into the domain of
objectivity.
I will endeavor to make what has been said more vivid and clear by
examples. The building of a house is, in the first instance, a
subjective aim and design. On the other hand we have, as means, the
several substances required for the work--iron, wood, stones. The
elements are made use of in working up this material--fire to melt the
iron, wind to blow the fire, water to set the wheels in motion in order
to cut the wood, etc. The result is that the wind, which has helped to
build the house, is shut out by the house; so also are the violence of
rains and floods and the destructive powers of fire, so far as the house
is made fire-proof. The stones and beams obey the law of gravity--press
downward--and so high walls are carried up. Thus the elements are made
use of in accordance with their nature, and yet are made to coöperate
for a product by which their operation is limited. It is thus that the
passions of men are gratified; they develop themselves and their aims in
accordance with their natural tendencies and build up the edifice of
human society, thus fortifying a position for Right and Order _against
themselves_.
The connection of events above indicated involves also the fact that, in
history, an additional result is commonly produced by human actions
beyond what they aim at and obtain what they immediately recognize and
desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is
thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not
present to their consciousness and not included in their design. An
analogous example is offered in the case of a man who, from a feeling of
revenge--perhaps not an unjust one, but produced by injury on the
other's part--burns that other man's house. A connection is immediately
established between the deed itself, taken abstractly, and a train of
circumstances not directly included in it. In itself it consisted in
merely bringing a small flame into contact with a small portion of a
beam. Events not involved in that simple act follow of themselves. The
part of the beam which was set afire is connected with its remote
portions, the beam itself is united with the woodwork of the house
generally, and this with other houses, so that a wide conflagration
ensues which destroys the goods and chattels of many other persons
besides those belonging to the person against whom the act of revenge
was first directed, perhaps even costs not a few men their lives. This
lay neither in the deed intrinsically nor in the design of the man who
committed it. But the action has a further general bearing. In the
design of the doer it was only revenge executed against an individual in
the destruction of his property, but it is, moreover, a crime, and that
involves punishment also. This may not have been present to the mind of
the perpetrator, still less in his intention; but his deed itself, the
general principles it calls into play, its substantial content, entail
it. By this example I wish only to impress on you the consideration
that, in a simple act, something further may be implicated than lies in
the intention and consciousness of the agent. The example before us
involves, however, the additional consideration that the substance of
the act, consequently, we may say, the act itself, recoils upon the
perpetrator--reacts upon him with destructive tendency. This union of
the two extremes--the embodiment of a general idea in the form of direct
reality and the elevation of a speciality into connection with universal
truth--is brought to pass, at first sight, under the conditions of an
utter diversity of nature between the two and an indifference of the one
extreme toward the other. The aims which the agents set before them are
limited and special; but it must be remarked that the agents themselves
are intelligent thinking beings. The purport of their desires is
interwoven with general, essential considerations of justice, good,
duty, etc.; for mere desire--volition in its rough and savage
forms--falls not within the scene and sphere of universal history. Those
general considerations, which form at the same time a norm for directing
aims and actions, have a determinate purport; for such an abstraction
as "good for its own sake," has no place in living reality. If men are
to act they must not only intend the Good, but must have decided for
themselves whether this or that particular thing is a good. What special
course of action, however, is good or not, is determined, as regards the
ordinary contingencies of private life, by the laws and customs of a
State; and here no great difficulty is presented. Each individual has
his position; he knows, on the whole, what a just, honorable course of
conduct is. As to ordinary, private relations, the assertion that it is
difficult to choose the right and good--the regarding it as the mark of
an exalted morality to find difficulties and raise scruples on that
score--may be set down to an evil or perverse will, which seeks to evade
duties not in themselves of a perplexing nature, or, at any rate, to an
idly reflective habit of mind--where a feeble will affords no sufficient
exercise to the faculties--leaving them therefore to find occupation
within themselves and to expand themselves on moral self-adulation.
It is quite otherwise with the comprehensive relations with which
history has to do. In this sphere are presented those momentous
collisions between existing, acknowledged duties, laws, and rights, and
those contingencies which are adverse to this fixed system, which assail
and even destroy its foundations and existence, and whose tenor may
nevertheless seem good--on the large scale, advantageous--yes, even
indispensable and necessary. These contingencies realize themselves in
history; they involve a general principle of a different order from that
on which depends the permanence of a people or a State. This principle
is an essential phase in the development of the creating Idea, of Truth
striving and urging toward (consciousness of) itself. Historical
men--world-famous individuals--are those in whose aims such a general
principle lies.
Cæsar, in danger of losing a position--not perhaps at that time of
superiority, yet at least of equality with the others who were at the
head of the State, and of succumbing to those who were just on the point
of becoming his enemies--belongs essentially to this category. These
enemies--who were at the same time pursuing their own personal aims--had
on their side the form of the constitution, and the power conferred by
an appearance of justice. Cæsar was contending for the maintenance of
his position, honor, and safety; and, since the power of his opponents
included the sovereignty over the provinces of the Roman Empire, his
victory secured for him the conquest of that entire Empire; and he thus
became--though leaving the form of the constitution--the autocrat of the
State. What secured for him the execution of a design, which in the
first instance was of negative import--the autocracy of Rome--was,
however, at the same time an independently necessary feature in the
history of Rome and of the world. It was not, then, his private gain
merely, but an unconscious impulse that occasioned the accomplishment of
that for which the time was ripe. Such are all great historical men,
whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will
of the World-Spirit. They may be called heroes, inasmuch as they have
derived their purposes and their vocation, not from the calm, regular
course of things, sanctioned by the existing order, but from a concealed
fount--one which has not attained to phenomenal, present existence--from
that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which, impinging on
the outer world as on a shell, bursts it in pieces, because it is
another kernel than that which belonged to the shell in question. They
are men, therefore, who appear to draw the impulse of their life from
themselves, and whose deeds have produced a condition of things and a
complex of historical relations which appear to be only their own
interest and their own work.
Such individuals had no consciousness of the general Idea they were
unfolding, while prosecuting their aims; on the contrary, they were
practical, political men. But, at the same time, they were thinking men,
who had an insight into the requirements of the time--_what was ripe
for development_. This was the very truth for their age, for their
world--the species next in order, so to speak, and which was already
formed in the womb of time. It was theirs to know this nascent
principle, the necessary, directly sequent step in progress, which their
world was to take, to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in
promoting it. World-historical men--the heroes of an epoch--must,
therefore, be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their
words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to
satisfy themselves, not others. Whatever prudent designs and counsels
they might have learned from others would be the more limited and
inconsistent features in their career; for it was they who best
understood affairs, from whom others learned, and approved, or at least
acquiesced in, their policy. For that Spirit which had taken this fresh
step in history is the inmost soul of all individuals, but in a state of
unconsciousness which the great men in question aroused. Their fellows,
therefore, follow these soul-leaders; for they feel the irresistible
power of their own inner Spirit thus embodied. If we go on to cast a
look at the fate of these world-historical persons, whose vocation it
was to be the agents of the World-Spirit, we shall find it to have been
no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was
labor and trouble; their whole nature was naught else but their
master-passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty
husks from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are
murdered, like Cæsar; transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon. This
fearful consolation--that historical men have not enjoyed what is called
happiness, and of which only private life (and this may be passed under
various external circumstances) is capable--this consolation those may
draw from history who stand in need of it; and it is craved by envy,
vexed at what is great and transcendent, striving, therefore, to
depreciate it and to find some flaw in it. Thus in modern times it has
been demonstrated _ad nauseam_ that princes are generally unhappy on
their thrones; in consideration of which the possession of a throne is
tolerated, and men acquiesce in the fact that not themselves but the
personages in question are its occupants. The free man, we may observe,
is not envious, but gladly recognizes what is great and exalted, and
rejoices that it exists.
It is in the light of those common elements which constitute the
interest and therefore the passions of individuals that these historical
men are to be regarded. They are great men, because they willed and
accomplished something great--not a mere fancy, a mere intention, but
whatever met the case and fell in with the needs of the age. This mode
of considering them also excludes the so-called "psychological" view,
which, serving the purpose of envy most effectually, contrives so to
refer all actions to the heart, to bring them under such a subjective
aspect, that their authors appear to have done everything under the
impulse of some passion, mean or grand, some morbid craving, and, on
account of these passions and cravings, to have been immoral men.
Alexander of Macedon partly subdued Greece, and then Asia; therefore he
was possessed by a morbid craving for conquest. He is alleged to have
acted from a craving for fame, for conquest; and the proof that these
were the impelling motives is that he did what resulted in fame. What
pedagogue has not demonstrated of Alexander the Great, of Julius Cæsar,
that they were instigated by such passions, and were consequently
immoral men? From this the conclusion immediately follows that he, the
pedagogue, is a better man than they, because he has not such
passions--a proof of which lies in the fact that he does not conquer
Asia, or vanquish Darius and Porus, but, while he enjoys life himself,
lets others enjoy it too. These psychologists are particularly fond of
contemplating those peculiarities of great historical figures which
appertain to them as private persons. Man must eat and drink; he
sustains relations to friends and acquaintances; he has passing
impulses and ebullitions of temper. "No man is a hero to his
valet-de-chambre," is a well-known proverb; I have added--and Goethe
repeated it ten years later--"but not because the former is no hero, but
because the latter is a valet." He takes off the hero's boots, assists
him to bed, knows that he prefers champagne, etc. Historical personages
waited upon in historical literature by such psychological valets come
poorly off; they are brought down by these their attendants to a level
with, or, rather, a few degrees below the level of, the morality of such
exquisite discerners of spirits. The Thersites of Homer who abuses the
kings is a standing figure for all times. Blows--that is, beating with a
solid cudgel--he does not get in every age, as in the Homeric one; but
his envy, his egotism, is the thorn which he has to carry in his flesh;
and the undying worm that gnaws him is the tormenting consideration that
his excellent views and vituperations remain absolutely without result
in the world. But our satisfaction at the fate of Thersitism also, may
have its sinister side.
A world-famous individual is not so unwise as to indulge a variety of
wishes to divide his regards. He is devoted to the one aim, regardless
of all else. It is even possible that such men may treat other great,
even sacred interests, inconsiderately--conduct which is deserving of
moral reprehension. But so mighty a form must trample down many innocent
flowers and crush to pieces many an object in its path.
The special interest of passion is thus inseparable from the active
development of a general principle; for it is from the special and
determinate, and from its negation, that the universal results.
Particularity contends with its like, and some loss is involved in the
issue. It is not the general idea that is implicated in opposition and
combat, and that is exposed to danger. It remains in the background,
untouched and uninjured. This may be called the cunning of reason--that
it sets the passions to work for itself, while that which develops its
existence through such impulsion pays the penalty and suffers loss. For
it is _phenomenal_ being that is so treated, and, of this, a portion is
of no value, another is positive and real. The particular is, for the
most part, of too trifling value as compared with the general;
individuals are sacrificed and abandoned. The Idea pays the penalty of
determinate existence and of corruptibility, not from itself, but from
the passions of individuals.
But though we might tolerate the idea that individuals, their desires,
and the gratification of them, are thus sacrificed, and their happiness
given up to the empire of chance, to which it belongs, and that, as a
general rule, individuals come under the category of means to an
ulterior end, there is one aspect of human individuality which we should
hesitate to regard in that subordinate light, even in relation to the
highest, since it is absolutely no subordinate element, but exists in
those individuals as inherently eternal and divine--I mean morality,
ethics, religion. Even when speaking of the realization of the great
ideal aim by means of individuals, the subjective element in them--their
interest and that of their cravings and impulses, their views and
judgments, though exhibited as the merely formal side of their
existence--was spoken of as having an infinite right to be consulted.
The first idea that presents itself in speaking of means is that of
something external to the object, yet having no share in the object
itself. But merely natural things--even the commonest lifeless
objects--used as means, must be of such a kind as adapts them to their
purpose; they must possess something in common with it. Human beings,
least of all, sustain the bare external relation of mere means to the
great ideal aim. Not only do they, in the very act of realizing it, make
it the occasion of satisfying personal desires whose purport is diverse
from that aim, but they share in that ideal aim itself, and are, for
that very reason, objects of their own existence--not formally merely,
as the world of living beings generally is, whose individual life is
essentially subordinate to that of man and its properly used up as an
instrument. Men, on the contrary, are objects of existence to
themselves, as regards the intrinsic import of the aim in question. To
this order belongs that in them which we would exclude from the category
of mere means--morality, ethics, religion. That is to say, man is an
object of existence in himself only in virtue of the Divine that is in
him--the quality that was designated at the outset as Reason, which, in
view of its activity and power of self-determination, was called
freedom. And we affirm--without entering at present on the proof of the
assertion--that religion, morality, etc., have their foundation and
source in that principle, and so are essentially elevated above all
alien necessity and chance. And here we must remark that individuals, to
the extent of their freedom, are responsible for the depravation and
enfeeblement of morals and religion. This is the seal of the absolute
and sublime destiny of man--that he knows what is good and what is evil;
that his destiny is his very ability to will either good or evil--in one
word, that he is the subject of moral imputation, imputation not only of
evil, but of good, and not only concerning this or that particular
matter, and all that happens _ab extra_, but also the good and evil
attaching to his individual freedom. The brute alone is simply innocent.
It would, however, demand an extensive explanation--as extensive as the
analysis of moral freedom itself--to preclude or obviate all the
misunderstandings which the statement that what is called innocence
imports the entire unconsciousness of evil--is wont to occasion.
In contemplating the fate which virtue, morality, even piety experience
in history, we must not fall into the Litany of Lamentations, that the
good and pious often, or for the most part, fare ill in the world, while
the evil-disposed and wicked prosper. The term prosperity is used in a
variety of meanings--riches, outward honor, and the like. But in
speaking of something which in and for itself constitutes an aim of
existence, that so-called well or ill faring of these or those isolated
individuals cannot be regarded as an essential element in the rational
order of the universe. With more justice than happiness--or a fortunate
environment for individuals--it is demanded of the grand aim of the
world's existence that it should foster, nay, involve the execution and
ratification of good, moral, righteous purposes. What makes men morally
discontented (a discontent, by the way, on which they somewhat pride
themselves), is that they do not find the present adapted to the
realization of aims which they hold to be right and just--more
especially, in modern times, ideals of political constitutions; they
contrast unfavorably things as they are, with their idea of things as
they ought to be. In this case it is not private interest nor passion
that desires gratification, but reason, justice, liberty; and, equipped
with this title, the demand in question assumes a lofty bearing and
readily adopts a position, not merely of discontent, but of open revolt
against the actual condition of the world. To estimate such a feeling
and such views aright, the demands insisted upon and the very dogmatic
opinions asserted must be examined. At no time so much as in our own,
have such general principles and notions been advanced, or with greater
assurance. If, in days gone by, history seems to present itself as a
struggle of passions, in our time--though displays of passion are not
wanting--it exhibits, partly a predominance of the struggle of notions
assuming the authority of principles, partly that of passions and
interests essentially subjective but under the mask of such higher
sanctions. The pretensions thus contended for as legitimate in the name
of that which has been stated as the ultimate aim of Reason, pass
accordingly for absolute aims--to the same extent as religion, morals,
ethics. Nothing, as before remarked, is now more common than the
complaint that the ideals which imagination sets up are not realized,
that these glorious dreams are destroyed by cold actuality. These ideals
which, in the voyage of life, founder on the rocks of hard reality may
be in the first instance only subjective and belong to the idiosyncrasy
of the individual, imagining himself the highest and wisest. Such do not
properly belong to this category. For the fancies which the individual
in his isolation indulges cannot be the model for universal reality,
just as universal law is not designed for the units of the mass. These
as such may, in fact, find their interests thrust decidedly into the
background. But by the term "Ideal" we also understand the ideal of
Reason--of the good, of the true. Poets--as, for instance,
Schiller--have painted such ideals touchingly and with strong emotion,
and with the deeply melancholy conviction that they could not be
realized. In affirming, on the contrary, that the Universal Reason does
realize itself, we have indeed nothing to do with the individual,
empirically regarded; that admits of degrees of better and worse, since
here chance and speciality have received authority from the Idea to
exercise their monstrous power; much, therefore, in particular aspects
of the grand phenomenon, might be criticized. This subjective
fault-finding--which, however, only keeps in view the individual and its
deficiency, without taking notice of Reason pervading the whole--is
easy; and inasmuch as it asserts an excellent intention with regard to
the good of the whole, and seems to result from a kindly heart, it feels
authorized to give itself airs and assume great consequence. It is
easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in States, and in
Providence, than to see their real import and value. For in this merely
negative fault-finding a proud position is taken--one which overlooks
the object without having entered into it, without having comprehended
its positive aspect. Age generally makes men more tolerant; youth is
always discontented. The tolerance of age is the result of the ripeness
of a judgment which, not merely as the result of indifference, is
satisfied even with what is inferior, but, more deeply taught by the
grave experience of life, has been led to perceive the substantial,
solid worth of the object in question. The insight, then, to which--in
contradistinction to those ideals--philosophy is to lead us, is, that
the real world is as it ought to be--that the truly good, the universal
divine Reason, is not a mere abstraction, but a vital principle capable
of realizing itself. This Good, this Reason, in its most concrete form,
is God. God governs the world; the actual working of His government, the
carrying out of His plan, is the history of the world. This plan
philosophy strives to comprehend; for only that which has been developed
as the result of it possesses _bona fide_ reality. That which does not
accord with it is negative, worthless existence. Before the pure light
of this divine Idea--which is no mere Ideal--the phantom of a world
whose events are an incoherent concourse of fortuitous circumstances,
utterly vanishes. Philosophy wishes to discover the substantial purport,
the real side of the divine idea, and to justify the so much despised
reality of things; for Reason is the comprehension of the divine work.
But as to what concerns the perversion, corruption, and ruin of
religious, ethical, and moral purposes and states of society generally,
it must be affirmed that, in their essence, these are infinite and
eternal, but that the forms they assume may be of a limited order, and
consequently may belong to the domain of mere nature and be subject to
the sway of chance; they are therefore perishable and exposed to decay
and corruption. Religion and morality--in the same way as inherently
universal essences--have the peculiarity of being present in the
individual soul, in the full extent of their Idea, and therefore truly
and really; although they may not manifest themselves in it _in extenso_
and are not applied to fully developed relations. The religion, the
morality of a limited sphere of life, for instance that of a shepherd or
a peasant, in its intensive concentration and limitation to a few
perfectly simple relations of life has infinite worth--the same worth as
the religion and morality of extensive knowledge and of an existence
rich in the compass of its relations and actions. This inner focus, this
simple region of the claims of subjective freedom, the home of
volition, resolution, and action, the abstract sphere of
conscience--that which comprises the responsibility and moral value of
the individual--remains untouched and is quite shut out from the noisy
din of the world's history--including not merely external and temporal
changes but also those entailed by the absolute necessity inseparable
from the realization of the idea of freedom itself. But, as a general
truth, this must be regarded as settled, that whatever in the world
possesses claims as noble and glorious has nevertheless a higher
existence above it. The claim of the World-Spirit rises above all
special claims.
These observations may suffice in reference to the means which the
World-Spirit uses for realizing its Idea. Stated simply and abstractly,
this mediation involves the activity of personal existences in whom
Reason is present as their absolute, substantial being, but a basis, in
the first instance, still obscure and unknown to them. But the subject
becomes more complicated and difficult when we regard individuals not
merely in their aspect of activity, but more concretely, in conjunction
with a particular manifestation of that activity in their religion and
morality--forms of existence which are intimately connected with Reason
and share in its absolute claims. Here the relation of mere means to an
end disappears, and the chief bearings of this seeming difficulty in
reference to the absolute aim of Spirit have been briefly considered.
(3) The third point to be analyzed is, therefore: What is the object to
be realized by these means--that is, What is the form it assumes in the
realm of reality? We have spoken of means; but, in carrying out of a
subjective, limited aim, we have also to take into consideration the
element of a material either already present or which has to be
procured. Thus the question would arise: What is the material in which
the Ideal of Reason is wrought out? The primary answer would be:
Personality itself, human desires, subjectivity generally. In human
knowledge and volition as its material element Reason attains positive
existence. We have considered subjective volition where it has an object
which is the truth and essence of reality--viz., where it constitutes a
great world-historical passion. As a subjective will, occupied with
limited passions, it is dependent, and can gratify its desires only
within the limits of this dependence. But the subjective will has also a
substantial life, a reality, in which it moves in the region of
essential being and has the essential itself as the object of its
existence. This essential being is the union of the subjective with the
rational will; it is the moral whole, the _State_, which is that form of
reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom, but on the
condition of his recognizing, believing in, and willing that which is
common to the whole. And this must not be understood as if the
subjective will of the social unit attained its gratification and
enjoyment through that common will, as if this were a means provided for
its benefit, as if the individual, in his relations to other
individuals, thus limited his freedom, in order that this universal
limitation, the mutual constraint of all, might secure a small space of
liberty for each. Rather, we affirm, are law, morality, government, and
these alone, the positive reality and completion of freedom. Freedom of
a low and limited order is mere caprice, which finds its exercise in the
sphere of particular and limited desires.
Subjective volition, passion, is that which sets men in activity, that
which effects "practical" realization. The Idea is the inner spring of
action; the State is the actually existing, realized moral life. For it
is the unity of the universal, essential will, with that of the
individual; and this is "morality." The individual living in this unity
has a moral life and possesses a value that consists in this
substantiality alone. Sophocles in his _Antigone_ says, "The divine
commands are not of yesterday, nor of today; no, they have an infinite
existence, and no one could say whence they came." The laws of morality
are not accidental, but are the essentially rational. It is the very
object of the State that what is essential in the practical activity of
men and in their dispositions should be duly recognized; that it should
have a manifest existence and maintain its position. It is the absolute
interest of Reason that this moral whole should exist; and herein lies
the justification and merit of heroes who have founded States, however
rude these may have been. In the history of the world, only those
peoples can come under our notice which form a State; for it must be
understood that the State is the realization of freedom, i. e., of the
absolute final aim, and that it exists for its own sake. It must further
be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses--all
spiritual reality--he possesses only through the State. For his
spiritual reality consists in this, that his own essence, Reason, is
objectively present to him, that it possesses objective immediate
existence for him. Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a
partaker of morality, of a just and moral social and political life. For
truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the
universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, and in its universal
and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on
earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more
definite shape than before--that in which freedom obtains objectivity
and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity. For law is the
objectivity of Spirit, volition in its true form. Only that will which
obeys law is free; for it obeys itself--it is independent and,
therefore, free. When the State or our country constitutes a community
of existence, when the subjective will of man submits to laws, the
contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes. The rational has
necessary existence, as being the reality and substance of things, and
we are free in recognizing it as law and following it as the substance
of our own being. The objective and the subjective will are then
reconciled and present one identical homogeneous whole. For the
morality (_Sittlichkeit_) of the State is not of that ethical
(_moralische_) reflective kind, in which one's own conviction bears
sway; the latter is rather the peculiarity of the modern time, while the
true antique morality is based on the principle of abiding by one's duty
(to the State at large). An Athenian citizen did what was required of
him, as it were from instinct; but if I reflect on the object of my
activity I must have the consciousness that my will has been called into
exercise. But morality is duty--substantial right, a "second nature," as
it has been justly called; for the first nature of man is his primary,
merely animal, existence.
The development _in extenso_ of the idea of the State belongs to the
philosophy of jurisprudence; but it must be observed that in the
theories of our time various errors are current respecting it, which
pass for established truths and have become fixed prejudices. We will
mention only a few of them, giving prominence to such as have a
reference to the object of our history.
The error which first meets us is the direct opposite of our principle
that the State presents the realization of freedom--the opinion--that
man is free by nature, but that in society, in the State, to which
nevertheless he is irresistibly impelled, he must limit this natural
freedom. That man is free by nature is quite correct in one sense,
namely, that he is so according to the idea of humanity; but we imply
thereby that he is such only in virtue of his destiny--that he has an
undeveloped power to become such; for the "nature" of an object is
exactly synonymous with its "idea." But the view in question imports
more than this. When man is spoken of as "free by nature," the mode of
his existence as well as his destiny is implied; his merely natural and
primary condition is intended. In this sense a "state of nature" is
assumed in which mankind at large is in the possession of its natural
rights with the unconstrained exercise and enjoyment of its freedom.
This assumption is not raised to the dignity of the historical fact; it
would indeed be difficult, were the attempt seriously made, to point
out any such condition as actually existing or as having ever occurred.
Examples of a savage state of life can be pointed out, but they are
marked by brutal passions and deeds of violence; while, however rude and
simple their, conditions, they involve social arrangements which, to use
the common phrase, "restrain freedom." That assumption is one of those
nebulous images which theory produces, an idea which it cannot avoid
originating, but which it fathers upon real existence without sufficient
historical justification.
What we find such a state of nature to be, in actual experience, answers
exactly to the idea of a merely natural condition. Freedom as the ideal
of that which is original and natural does not exist as original and
natural; rather must it first be sought out and won, and that by an
incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers. The
state of nature is, therefore, predominantly that of injustice and
violence, of untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings.
Limitation is certainly produced by society and the State, but it is a
limitation of the mere brute emotions and rude instincts, as also, in a
more advanced stage of culture, of the premeditated self-will of caprice
and passion. This kind of constraint is part of the instrumentality by
which only the consciousness of freedom and the desire for its
attainment, in its true--that is, its rational and ideal form--can be
obtained. To the ideal of freedom, law and morality are indispensably
requisite; and they are, in and for themselves, universal existences,
objects, and aims, which are discovered only by the activity of thought,
separating itself from the merely sensuous and developing itself in
opposition thereto, and which must, on the other hand, be introduced
into and incorporated with the originally sensuous will, and that
contrarily to its natural inclination. The perpetually recurring
misapprehension of freedom consists in regarding that term only in its
formal, subjective sense, abstracted from its essential objects and
aims; thus a constraint put upon impulse, desire, passion--pertaining to
the particular individual as such--a limitation of caprice and
self-will is regarded as a fettering of freedom. We should, on the
contrary, look upon such limitation as the indispensable proviso of
emancipation. Society and the State are the very conditions in which
freedom is realized.
We must notice a second view, contravening the principle of the
development of moral relations into a legal form. The patriarchal
condition is regarded, either in reference to the entire race of man or
to some branches of it, as exclusively that condition of things in which
the legal element is combined with a due recognition of the moral and
emotional parts of our nature, and in which justice, as united with
these, truly influences the intercourse of the social units. The basis
of the patriarchal condition is the family relation, which develops the
primary form of conscious morality, succeeded by that of the State as
its second phase. The patriarchal condition is one of transition, in
which the family has already advanced to the position of a race of
people, where the union, therefore, has already ceased to be simply a
bond of love and confidence and has become one of plighted service.
We must first examine the ethical principle of the Family, which may be
reckoned as virtually a single person, since its members have either
mutually surrendered their individual personality and consequently their
legal position toward one another, with the rest of their particular
interests and desires, as in the case of the parents, or, in the care of
children who are primarily in that merely natural condition already
mentioned, have not yet attained such an independent personality. They
live, therefore, in a unity of feeling, love, confidence, and faith in
one another, and, in a relation of mutual love, the one individual has
the consciousness of himself in the consciousness of another; he lives
out of self; and in this mutual self-renunciation each regains the life
that had been virtually transferred to the other--gains, in fact, the
other's existence and his own, as involved with that other. The ultimate
interests connected with the necessities and external concerns of life,
as well as the development that has to take place within their circle,
i. e., of the children, constitute a common object for the members of the
family. The spirit of the family--the _Penates_--form one substantial
being, as much as the spirit of a people in the State; and morality in
both cases consists in a feeling, a consciousness, and a will, not
limited to individual personality and interest, but embracing the common
interests of the members generally. But this unity is, in the case of
the family, essentially one of feeling, not advancing beyond the limits
of the merely natural. The piety of the family relation should be
respected in the highest degree by the State; by its means the State
obtains as its members individuals who are already moral (for as mere
persons they are not) and who, in uniting to form a State, bring with
them that sound basis of a political edifice--the capacity of feeling
one with a whole. But the expansion of the family to a patriarchal unity
carries us beyond the ties of blood-relationship--the simply natural
elements of that basis; and outside of these limits the members of the
community must enter upon the position of independent personality. A
review of the patriarchal condition, _in extenso_, would lead us to give
special attention to the theocratical constitution. The head of the
patriarchal clan is also its priest. If the family in its general
relations is not yet separated from civic society and the State, the
separation of religion from it has also not yet taken place; and so much
the less since the piety of the hearth is itself a profoundly subjective
state of feeling.
We have considered two aspects of freedom--the objective and the
subjective; if, therefore, freedom is asserted to consist in the
individuals of a State, all agreeing in its arrangements, it is evident
that only the subjective aspect is regarded. The natural inference from
this principle is, that no law can be valid without the approval of all.
It is attempted to obviate this difficulty by the decision that the
minority must yield to the majority; the majority therefore bears sway;
but long ago J.J. Rousseau remarked that, in that case, there would no
longer be freedom, for the will of the minority would cease to be
respected. At the Polish Diet each individual member had to give his
consent before any political step could be taken; and this kind of
freedom it was that ruined the State. Besides, it is a dangerous and
false prejudice that the people alone have reason and insight, and know
what justice is; for each popular faction may represent itself as the
people, and the question as to what constitutes the State is one of
advanced science and not of popular decision.
If the principle of regard for the individual will is recognized as the
only basis of political liberty, viz., that nothing should be done by or
for the State to which all the members of the body politic have not
given their sanction, we have, properly speaking, no constitution. The
only arrangement found necessary would be, first, a centre having no
will of its own, but which should take into consideration what appeared
to be the necessities of the State, and, secondly, a contrivance for
calling the members of the State together, for taking the votes, and for
performing the arithmetical operations of reckoning and comparing the
number of votes for the different propositions, and thereby deciding
upon them. The State is an abstraction, having even its generic
existence in its citizens; but it is an actuality, and its simply
generic existence must embody itself in individual will and activity.
The want of government and political administration in general is felt;
this necessitates the selection and separation from the rest of those
who have to take the helm in political affairs, to decide concerning
them, and to give orders to other citizens, with a view to the execution
of their plans. If, for instance, even the people in a democracy resolve
on a war, a general must head the army. It is only by a constitution
that the abstraction--the State--attains life and reality; but this
involves the distinction between those who command and those who obey.
Yet obedience seems inconsistent with liberty, and those who command
appear to do the very opposite of that which the fundamental idea of the
State, viz., that of freedom, requires. It is, however, urged that
though the distinction between commanding and obeying is absolutely
necessary, because affairs could not go on without it, and indeed, this
seems only a compulsory limitation, external to and even contravening
freedom in the abstract--the constitution should be at least so framed
that the citizens may obey as little as possible and the smallest
modicum of free volition be left to the commands of the superiors; that
the substance of that for which subordination is necessary, even in its
most important bearings, should be decided and resolved on by the
people, by the will of many or of all the citizens; though it is
supposed to be thereby provided that the State should be possessed of
vigor and strength as a reality--an individual unity. The primary
consideration is, then, the distinction between the governing and the
governed, and political constitutions in the abstract have been rightly
divided into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; this gives occasion,
however, for the remark that monarchy itself must be further divided
into despotism and monarchy proper; that in all the divisions to which
the leading idea gives rise, only the generic character is to be made
prominent, it being not intended thereby that the particular category
under review should be exhausted as a form, order, or kind in its
concrete development. But it must especially be observed that the above
mentioned divisions admit of a multitude of particular modifications--not
only such as lie within the limits of those classes themselves but also
such as are mixtures of several of these essentially distinct classes
and which are consequently misshapen, unstable, and inconsistent forms.
In such a collision, the concerning question is: What is the best
constitution--that is, by what arrangement, organization, or mechanism
of the power of the State can its object be most surely attained? This
object may indeed be variously understood; for instance, as the calm
enjoyment of life on part of the citizens, or as universal happiness.
Such aims have suggested the so-called ideals of constitutions, and,
as a particular branch of the subject, Ideals of the education of
princes (Fénelon), or of the governing body, the aristocracy at large
(Plato); for the chief point they treat of is the condition of those
subjects who stand at the head of affairs, and in these ideals the
concrete details of political organization are not at all considered.
The inquiry into the best constitution is frequently treated as if not
only the theory were an affair of subjective independent conviction,
but as if the introduction of a constitution recognized as the best,
or as superior to others, could be the result of a resolve adopted in
this theoretical manner, as if the form of a constitution were a matter
of free choice, determined by nothing else but reflection. Of this
artless fashion was that deliberation--not indeed of the Persian people,
but of the Persian grandees, who had conspired to overthrow the
pseudo-Smerdis and the Magi, after their undertaking had succeeded
and when there was no scion of the royal family living--as to what
constitution they should introduce into Persia; and Herodotus gives an
equally naïve account of this deliberation.
In the present day, the constitution of a country and people is not
represented as so entirely dependent on free and deliberate choice. The
fundamental, but abstractly and therefore imperfectly, entertained
conception of freedom, has resulted in the republic being very generally
regarded--in theory--as the only just and true political constitution.
Even many who occupy elevated official positions under monarchical
constitutions, so far from being opposed to this idea are actually its
supporters; only they see that such a constitution, though the best,
cannot be realized under all circumstances, and that, while men are what
they are, we must be satisfied with less freedom, the monarchical
constitution, under the given circumstances and the present moral
condition of the people, being even regarded as the most advantageous.
In this view also the necessity of a particular constitution is made to
depend on the condition of the people as though the latter were
non-essential and accidental. This representation is founded on the
distinction which the reflective understanding makes between an idea and
the corresponding reality. This reflection holding to an abstract and
consequently untrue idea, not grasping it in its completeness, or--which
is virtually, though not in point of form, the same--not taking a
concrete view of a people and a State. We shall have to show, further,
on, that the constitution adopted by a people makes one substance, one
spirit, with its religion, its art, and its philosophy, or, at least,
with its conceptions, thoughts and culture generally--not to expatiate
upon the additional influences _ab extra_, of climate, of neighbors, of
its place in the world. A State is an individual totality, of which you
cannot select any particular side, although a supremely important one,
such as its political constitution, and deliberate and decide respecting
it in that isolated form. Not only is that constitution most intimately
connected with and dependent on those other spiritual forces, but the
form of the entire moral and intellectual individuality, comprising all
the forces it embodies, is only a step in the development of the grand
whole, with its place pre-appointed in the process--a fact which gives
the highest sanction to the constitution in question and establishes its
absolute necessity. The origin of a State involves imperious lordship on
the one hand, instinctive submission on the other. But even
obedience--lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler--in itself
implies some degree of voluntary connection. Even in barbarous states
this is the case; it is not the isolated will of individuals that
prevails; individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will
is the essential bond of political union. This unity of the general and
the particular is the Idea itself, manifesting itself as a State, and
which subsequently undergoes further development within itself. The
abstract yet necessitated process in the development of truly
independent states is as follows: They begin with regal power, whether
of patriarchal or military origin; in the next phase, particularity and
individuality assert themselves in the form of aristocracy and
democracy; lastly, we have the subjection of these separate interests to
a single power, but one which can be absolutely none other than one
outside of which those spheres have an independent position, viz., the
monarchical. Two phases of royalty, therefore, must be distinguished--a
primary and a secondary. This process is necessitated to the end that
the form of government assigned to a particular stage of development
must present itself; it is therefore no matter of choice, but is the
form adapted to the spirit of the people.
In the constitution the main feature of interest is the self-development
of the rational, that is, the political condition of a people, the
setting free of the successive elements of the Idea, so that the several
powers in the State manifest themselves as separate, attain their
appropriate and special perfection, and yet, in this independent
condition, work together for one object and are held together by
it--i. e., form an organic whole. The State is thus the embodiment of
rational freedom, realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form.
For its objectivity consists in this--that its successive stages are not
merely ideal, but are present in an appropriate reality, and that in
their separate and several workings they are absolutely merged in that
agency by which the totality, the soul, the individuate unity, is
produced, and of which it is the result.
The State is the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human
will and its freedom. It is to the State, therefore, that change in the
aspect of history indissolubly attaches itself; and the successive
phases of the idea manifest themselves in it as distinct political
principles. The constitutions under which world-historical peoples have
reached their culmination, are peculiar to them, and therefore do not
present a generally applicable political basis. Were it otherwise the
differences of similar constitutions would consist only in a peculiar
method of expanding and developing that generic basis, whereas they
really originate in diversity of principle. From the comparison
therefore of the political institutions of the ancient world-historical
peoples, it so happens that, for the most recent principle of a
constitution for the principle of our own times, nothing, so to speak,
can be learned. In science and art it is quite otherwise--that is, the
ancient philosophy is so decidedly the basis of the modern that it is
inevitably contained in the latter and constitutes its basis. In this
case the relation is that of a continuous development of the same
structure, whose foundation-stone, walls, and roof have remained what
they were. In art, the Greek itself, in its original form, furnishes us
the best models, but in regard to political constitution it is quite
otherwise; here the ancient and the modern have not their essential
principle in common. Abstract definitions and dogmas respecting just
government--importing that intelligence and virtue ought to bear
sway--are, indeed, common to both, but nothing is so absurd as to look
to Greeks, Romans, or Orientals, for models for the political
arrangements of our time. From the East may be derived beautiful
pictures of a patriarchal condition, of paternal government, and of
devotion to it on the part of peoples; from Greeks and Romans,
descriptions of popular liberty. Among the latter we find the idea of a
free constitution admitting all the citizens to a share in deliberations
and resolves respecting the affairs and laws of the commonwealth. In our
times, too, this is its general acceptation; only with this
modification, that--since our States are so large, and there are so many
of "the many," the latter (direct action being impossible) should by the
indirect method of elective substitution express their concurrence with
resolves affecting the common weal--that is, that for legislative
purposes generally the people should be represented by deputies. The
so-called representative constitution is that form of government with
which we connect the idea of a free constitution; and this notion has
become a rooted prejudice. On this theory people and government are
separated. But there is a perversity in this antithesis, an
ill-intentioned ruse designed to insinuate that the people are the
totality of the State. Besides, the basis of this view is the principle
of isolated individuality--the absolute validity of the subjective
will--a dogma which we have already investigated. The great point is
that freedom, in its ideal conception, has not subjective will and
caprice for its principle, but the recognition of the universal will,
and that the process by which freedom is realized is the free
development of its successive stages. The subjective will is a merely
formal determination--a _carte blanche_--not including what it is that
is willed. Only the rational will is that universal principle which
independently determines and unfolds its own being and develops its
successive elemental phases as organic members. Of this Gothic-cathedral
architecture the ancients knew nothing.
At an earlier stage of the discussion we established the two elemental
considerations: First, the _idea_ of freedom as the absolute and final
aim; secondly, the _means_ for realizing it, i. e., the subjective side
of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity. We then
recognized the State as the moral whole and the reality of freedom, and
consequently as the objective unity of these two elements. For although
we make this distinction in two aspects for our consideration, it must
be remarked that they are intimately connected, and that their
connection is involved in the idea of each when examined separately. We
have, on the one hand, recognized the Idea in the definite form of
freedom, conscious of and willing itself, having itself alone as its
object, involving at the same time the pure and simple Idea of Reason
and, likewise, what we have called Subject, self-consciousness, Spirit,
actually existing in the world. If, on the other hand, we consider
subjectivity, we find that subjective knowledge and will is thought. But
by the very act of thoughtful cognition and volition, I will the
universal object--the substance of absolute Reason. We observe,
therefore, an essential union between the objective side--the Idea, and
the subjective side--the personality that conceives and wills it. The
objective existence of this union is the State, which is therefore the
basis and centre of the other concrete elements of the life of a
people--of art, of law, of morals, of religion, of science. All the
activity of Spirit has only this object--the becoming conscious of this
union, i. e., of its own freedom. Among the forms of this conscious union
_religion_ occupies the highest position. In it Spirit-rising above the
limitations of temporal and secular existence--becomes conscious of the
Absolute Spirit, and, in this consciousness of the Self-Existent Being,
renounces its individual interest; it lays this aside in devotion--a
state of mind in which it refuses to occupy itself any longer with the
limited and particular. By sacrifice man expresses his renunciation of
his property, his will, his individual feelings. The religious
concentration of the soul appears in the form of feeling; it
nevertheless passes also into reflection; a form of worship (_cultus_)
is a result of reflection. The second form of the union of the objective
and subjective in the human spirit is art; this advances farther into
the realm of the actual and sensuous than religion. In its noblest walk
it is occupied with representing, not, indeed, the Spirit of God, but
certainly the Form of God; and, in its secondary aims, that which is
divine and spiritual generally. Its office is to render visible the
divine, presenting it to the imaginative and intuitive faculty. But the
true is the object not only of conception and feeling, as in
religion--and of intuition, as in art--but also of the thinking faculty;
and this gives us the third form of the union in question--philosophy.
This is consequently the highest, freest, and wisest place. Of course we
are not intending to investigate these three phases here; they have only
suggested themselves in virtue of their occupying the same general
ground as the object here considered the _State._
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW (1832)
BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard
University
THE STATE
IDEA AND AIM OF THE STATE
The State is the realization of the ethical idea. It is the ethical
spirit as revealed, self-conscious, substantial will. It is the will
which thinks and knows itself, and carries out what it knows, and in so
far as it knows. The unreflected existence of the State rests on custom,
and its reflected existence on the self-consciousness of the individual,
on his knowledge and activity. The individual, in return, has his
substantial freedom in the State, as the essence, purpose, and product
of his activity.
The true State is the ethical whole and the realization of freedom. It
is the absolute purpose of reason that freedom should be realized. The
State is the spirit, which lives in the world and there realizes itself
consciously; while in nature it is actual only as its own other or as
dormant spirit. Only as present in consciousness, knowing itself as an
existing object, is it the State. The State is the march of God through
the world, its ground is the power of reason realizing itself as will.
The idea of the State should not connote any particular State, or
particular institution; one must rather consider the Idea only, this
actual God, by itself. Because it is more easy to find defects than to
grasp the positive meaning, one readily falls into the mistake of
emphasizing so much the particular nature of the State as to overlook
its inner organic essence. The State is no work of art. It exists in the
world, and thus in the realm of caprice, accident, and error. Evil
behavior toward it may disfigure it on many sides. But the ugliest man,
the criminal, the invalid, and the cripple, are still living human
beings. The affirmative, life, persists in spite of defects, and it is
this affirmative which alone is here in question.
In the State, everything depends upon the unity of the universal and the
particular. In the ancient States the subjective purpose was absolutely
one with the will of the State. In modern times, on the contrary, we
demand an individual opinion, an individual will and conscience. The
ancients had none of these in the modern sense; the final thing for them
was the will of the State. While in Asiatic despotisms the individual
had no inner self and no self-justification, in the modern world man
demands to be honored for the sake of his subjective individuality.
The union of duty and right has the twofold aspect that what the State
demands as duty should directly be the right of the individual, since
the State is nothing but the organization of the concept of freedom. The
determinations of the individual will are given by the State
objectivity, and it is through the State alone that they attain truth
and realization. The State is the sole condition of the attainment of
the particular end and good.
Political disposition, called patriotism--the assurance resting in truth
and the will which has become a custom--is simply the result of the
institutions subsisting in the State, institutions in which reason is
actually present.
Under patriotism one frequently understands a mere willingness to
perform extraordinary acts and sacrifices. But patriotism is essentially
the sentiment of regarding, in the ordinary circumstances and ways of
life, the weal of the community as the substantial basis and the final
end. It is upon this consciousness, present in the ordinary course of
life and under all circumstances, that the disposition to heroic effort
is founded. But as people are often rather magnanimous than just, they
easily persuade themselves that they possess the heroic kind of
patriotism, in order to save themselves the trouble of having the truly
patriotic sentiment, or to excuse the lack of it.
Political sentiment, as appearance, must be distinguished from what
people truly will. What they at bottom will is the real cause, but they
cling to particular interests and delight in the vain contemplation of
improvements. The conviction of the necessary stability of the State in
which alone the particular interests can be realized, people indeed
possess, but custom makes invisible that upon which our whole existence
rests; it does not occur to any one, when he safely passes through the
streets at night, that it could be otherwise. The habit of safety has
become a second nature, and we do not reflect that it is the result of
the activity of special institutions. It is through force this is
frequently the superficial opinion-that the State coheres, but what
alone holds it together is the fundamental sense of order, which is
possessed by all.
The State is an organism or the development of the idea into its
differences. These different sides are the different powers of the State
with their functions and activities, by means of which the universal is
constantly and necessarily producing itself, and, being presupposed in
its own productive function, it is thus always actively present. This
organism is the political constitution. It eternally springs from the
State, just as the State in turn maintains itself through the
constitution. If these two things fall asunder, if both different sides
become independent of each other, then the unity which the constitution
produces is no longer operative; the fable of the stomach and the other
organs may be applied to it. It is the nature of an organism that all
its parts must constitute a certain unity; if one part asserts its
independence the other parts must go to destruction. No predicates,
principles, and the like suffice to express the nature of the State; it
must be comprehended as an organism.
The State is real, and its reality consists in the interest of the whole
being realized in particular ends. Actuality is always the unity of
universality and particularity, and the differentiation of the universal
into particular ends. These particular ends seem independent, though
they are borne and sustained by the whole only. In so far as this unity
is absent, no thing is real, though it may exist. A bad State is one
which merely exists. A sick body also exists; but it has no true
reality. A hand, which is cut off, still looks like a hand and exists,
but it has no reality. True reality is necessity. What is real is
internally necessary.
To the complete State belongs, essentially, consciousness and thought.
The State knows thus what it wills, and it knows it under the form of
thought.
The essential difference between the State and religion consists in that
the commands of the State have the form of legal duty, irrespective of
the feelings accompanying their performance; the sphere of religion, on
the other hand, is in the inner life. Just as the State, were it to
frame its commands as religion does, would endanger the right of the
inner life, so the church, if it acts as a State and imposes punishment,
degenerates into a tyrannical religion.
In the State one must want nothing which is not an expression of
rationality. The State is the world which the spirit has made for
itself; it has therefore a determinate and self-conscious course. One
often speaks of the wisdom of God in nature, but one must not believe
that the physical world of nature is higher than the world of spirit.
Just as spirit is superior to nature, so is the State superior to the
physical life. We must therefore adore the State as the manifestation of
the divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend
nature, it is infinitely harder to grasp the essence of the State. It is
an important fact that we, in modern times, have attained definite
insight into the State in general and are much engaged in discussing and
making constitutions; but that does not advance the problem much. It is
necessary to treat a rational matter in the light of reason, in order to
learn its essential nature and to know that the obvious does not always
constitute the essential.
When we speak of the different functions of the powers of the State, we
must not fall into the enormous error of supposing each power to have an
abstract, independent existence, since the powers are rather to be
differentiated as elements in the conception of the State. Were the
powers to be in abstract independence, however, it is clear that two
independent things could never constitute a unity, but must produce war,
and the result would be destruction of the whole or restoration of unity
by force. Thus, in the French Revolution, at one time the legislative
power had swallowed up the executive, at another time the executive had
usurped the legislative power.
THE CONSTITUTION
The constitution is rational, in so far as the State defines and
differentiates its functions according to the nature of its concept.
Who shall make the constitution? This question seems intelligible, yet
on closer examination reveals itself as meaningless, for it presupposes
the existence of no constitution, but only a mere mass of atomic
individuals. How a mass of individuals is to come by a constitution,
whether by its own efforts or by those of others, whether by goodness,
thought, or force, it must decide for itself, for with a disorganized
mob the concept of the State has nothing to do. But if the question does
presuppose an already existing constitution, then to make a constitution
means only to change it. The presupposition of a constitution implies,
however, at once, that any modification in it must take place
constitutionally. It is absolutely essential that the constitution,
though having a temporal origin, should not be regarded as made. It (the
principle of constitution) is rather to be conceived as absolutely
perpetual and rational, and therefore as divine, substantial, and above
and beyond the sphere of what is made.
Subjective freedom is the principle of the whole modern world--the
principle that all essential aspects of the spiritual totality should
develop and attain their right. From this point of view one can hardly
raise the idle question as to which form is the better, monarchy or
democracy. One can but say that the forms of all constitutions are
one-sided that are not able to tolerate the principle of free
subjectivity and that do not know how to conform to the fully developed
reason.
Since spirit is real only in what it knows itself to be, and since the
State, as the nation's spirit, is the law permeating all its affairs,
its ethical code, and the consciousness of its individuals, the
constitution of a people chiefly depends upon the kind and the character
of its self-consciousness. In it lies both its subjective freedom and
the reality of the constitution.
To think of giving a people a constitution _a priori_, though according
to its content a more or less rational one--such a whim would precisely
overlook that element which renders a constitution more than a mere
abstract object. Every nation, therefore, has the constitution which is
appropriate to it and belongs to it.
The State must, in its constitution, permeate all situations. A
constitution is not a thing just made; it is the work of centuries, the
idea and the consciousness of what is rational, in so far as it is
developed in a people. No constitution, therefore, is merely created by
the subjects of the State. The nation must feel that its constitution
embodies its right and its status, otherwise the constitution may exist
externally, but has no meaning or value. The need and the longing for a
better constitution may often indeed be present in individuals, but that
is quite different from the whole multitude being permeated with such an
idea--that comes much later. The principle of morality, the inwardness
of Socrates originated necessarily in his day, but it took time before
it could pass into general self-consciousness.
THE POWER OF THE PRINCE
Because sovereignty contains in ideal all special privileges, the common
misconception is quite natural, which takes it to be mere force, empty
caprice, and synonymous with despotism. But despotism means a state of
lawlessness, in which the particular will as such, whether that of
monarch or people (_ochlocracy_), is the law, or rather instead of the
law. Sovereignty, on the contrary, constitutes the element of ideality
of particular spheres and functions under lawful and constitutional
conditions.
The sovereignty of the people, conceived in opposition to the
sovereignty residing in the monarch, stands for the common view of
democracy, which has come to prevail in modern times. The idea of the
sovereignty of the people, taken in this opposition, belongs to a
confused idea of what is commonly and crudely understood by "the
people." The people without its monarch and without that whole
organization necessarily and directly connected with him is a formless
mass, which is no longer a State. In a people, not conceived in a
lawless and unorganized condition, but as a self-developed and truly
organic totality--in such a people sovereignty is the personality of the
whole, and this is represented in reality by the person of the monarch.
The State must be regarded as a great architectonic edifice, a
hieroglyph of reason, manifesting itself in reality. Everything
referring merely to utility, externality, and the like, must be excluded
from its philosophic treatment. That the State is the self-determining
and the completely sovereign will, the final decision being necessarily
referred to it--that is easy to comprehend. The difficulty lies in
grasping this "I will" as a person. By this it is not meant that the
monarch can act arbitrarily. He is bound, in truth, by the concrete
content of the deliberations of his council, and, when the constitution
is stable, he has often nothing more to do than to sign his name--but
this name is important; it is the point than which there is nothing
higher.
It may be said that an organic State has already existed in the
beautiful democracy of Athens. The Greeks, however, derived the final
decision from entirely external phenomena, from oracles, entrails of
sacrificial animals, and from the flight of birds. Nature they
considered as a power which in this wise made known and gave expression
to what was good for the people. Self-consciousness had at that time not
yet attained to the abstraction of subjectivity; it had not yet come to
the realization that an "I will" must be pronounced by man himself
concerning the decisions of the State. This "I will" constitutes the
great difference between the ancient and the modern world, and must
therefore have its peculiar place in the great edifice of the State.
Unfortunately this modern characteristic is regarded as merely external
and arbitrary.
It is often maintained against the monarch that, since he may be
ill-educated or unworthy to stand at the helm of the State, its fortunes
are thus made to depend upon chance. It is therefore absurd to assume
the rationality of the institution of the monarch. The presupposition,
however, that the fortunes of the State depend upon the particular
character of the monarch is false. In the perfect organization of the
State the important thing is only the finality of formal decision and
the stability against passion. One must not therefore demand objective
qualification of the monarch; he has but to say "yes" and to put the dot
upon the "i." The crown shall be of such a nature that the particular
character of its bearer is of no significance. Beyond his function of
administering the final decision, the monarch is a particular being who
is of no concern. Situations may indeed arise in which his particularity
alone asserts itself, but in that case the State is not yet fully
developed, or else is ill constructed. In a well-ordered monarchy the
law alone has objective power to which the monarch has but to affix the
subjective "I will."
Monarchs do not excel in bodily strength or intellect, and yet millions
permit themselves to be ruled by them. To say that the people permit
themselves to be governed contrary to their interests, aims, and
intentions is preposterous, for people are not so stupid. It is their
need, it is the inner power of the idea, which, in opposition to their
apparent consciousness, urges them to this situation and retains them
therein.
Out of the sovereignty of the monarch flows the prerogative of pardoning
criminals. Only to the sovereignty belongs the spiritual power to undo
what has been done and to cancel the crime by forgiving and forgetting.
Pardon is the remission of punishment, but does not abolish right. Right
remains, and the pardoned is a criminal as he was before the pardon. The
act of mercy does not mean that no crime has been committed. This
remission of punishment may be effected in religion, for by and in
spirit what has been done can be made un-done. But in so far as
remission occurs in the world, it has its place only in majesty and is
due only to its arbitrary decision.
THE EXECUTIVE
The main point upon which the function of the government depends is the
division of labor. This division is concerned with the transition from
the universal to the particular and the individual; and the business is
to be divided according to the different branches. The difficulty lies
in harmonizing the superior and the inferior functions. For some time
past the main effort has been spent in organizing from above, the lower
and bulky part of the whole being left more or less unorganized; yet it
is highly important that it should become organic, for only thus is it a
power and a force; otherwise it is but a heap or mass of scattered
atoms. Authoritative power resides only in the organic state of the
particular spheres.
The State cannot count on service which is capricious and voluntary (the
administration of justice by knights-errant, for instance), precisely
because it is capricious and voluntary. Such service presupposes acting
according to subjective opinion, and also the possibility of neglect and
of the realization of private ends. The opposite extreme to the
knight-errant in reference to public service would be the State-servant
who was attached to his task solely by want, without genuine duty and
right.
The efficiency of the State depends upon individuals, who, however, are
not entitled to carry on the business of the State through natural
fitness, but according to their objective qualification. Ability, skill,
character, belong to the particular nature of the individual; for a
particular office, however, he must be specially educated and trained.
An office in the State can, therefore, be neither sold nor bequeathed.
Public service demands the sacrifice of independent self-satisfaction
and the giving up of the pursuit of private ends, but grants the right
of finding these in dutiful service, and in it only. Herein lies the
unity of the universal and the particular interests which constitutes
the concept and the inner stability of the State.
The members of the executive and the officials of the State form the
main part of the middle class which represents the educated intelligence
and the consciousness of right of the mass of a people. This middle
class is prevented by the institutions of sovereignty from above and the
rights of corporation from below, from assuming the exclusive position
of an aristocracy and making education and intelligence the means for
caprice and despotism. Thus the administration of justice, whose object
is the proper interest of all individuals, had at one time been
perverted into an instrument of gain and despotism, owing to the fact
that the knowledge of the law was hidden under a learned and foreign
language, and the knowledge of legal procedure under an involved
formalism.
In the middle class, to which the State officials belong, resides the
consciousness of the State and the most conspicuous cultivation: the
middle class constitutes therefore the ground pillar of the State in
regard to uprightness and intelligence. The State in which there is no
middle class stands as yet on no high level.
THE LEGISLATURE
The legislature is concerned with the interpretation of the laws and
with the internal affairs of the State, in so far as they have a
universal content. This function is itself a part of the constitution
and thus presupposes it. Being presupposed, the constitution lies, to
that degree, outside the direct province of the legislature, but in the
forward development of the laws and the progressive character of the
universal affairs of government, the constitution receives its
development also.
The constitution must alone be the firm ground on which the legislature
stands; hence it must not be created for purposes of legislation. But
the constitution not only is, its essence is also to _become_--that is,
it progresses with the advance of civilization. This progress is an
alteration which is imperceptible, but has not the form of an
alteration. Thus, for example, the emperor was formerly judge, and went
about the empire administering justice. Through the merely apparent
advance of civilization it has become practically necessary that the
emperor should gradually yield his judicial function to others, and thus
came about the transition of the judicial function from the person of
the prince to a body of judges; thus the progress of any condition is an
apparently calm and imperceptible one. In this way and after a lapse of
time a constitution attains a character quite different from what it had
before.
In the legislative power as a whole are operative both the monarchical
element and the executive. To the former belongs the final decision; the
latter as advisory element possesses concrete knowledge, perspective
over the whole in all its ramifications, and acquaintance with the
objective principles and wants of the power of the State. Finally, in
the legislature the different classes or estates are also active. These
classes or estates represent in the legislature the element of
subjective formal freedom, the public consciousness, the empirical
totality of the views and thought of the many.
The expression "The Many" [Greek: oi polloi] characterizes the empirical
totality more correctly than the customary word "All." Though one may
reply that, under this "all," children, women, etc., are obviously meant
to be excluded, yet it is more obvious that the definite expression
"all" should not be used when something quite indefinite is in question.
There are, in general, current among the public so unspeakably many
distorted and false notions and phrases about the people, the
constitution, and the classes, that it would be a vain task to mention,
explain, and correct them. The prevalent idea concerning the necessity
and utility of an assembly of estates amounts to the assumption that the
people's deputies, nay, the people itself, best understand what would
promote the common weal, and that they have indubitably the good will to
promote it. As for the first point, the case is just the reverse. The
people, in so far as this term signifies a special part of the citizens,
stands precisely for the part that does not know what it wills. To know
what one wills, and, what is more difficult, to know what the absolute
will, viz., reason, wills, is the fruit of deep knowledge and insight;
and that is obviously not a possession of the people. As for the
especially good will, which the classes are supposed to have for the
common good, the usual point of view of the masses is the negative one
of suspecting the government of a will which is evil or of little good.
The attitude of the government toward the classes must not be
essentially a hostile one. Belief in the necessity of this hostile
relation is a sad mistake. The government is not one party in opposition
to another, so that both are engaged in wresting something from each
other. When the State is in such a situation it is a misfortune and not
a mark of health. Furthermore, the taxes, for which the classes vote,
are not to be looked upon as gifts, but are consented to for the best
interests of those consenting. What constitutes the true meaning of the
classes is this--that through them the State enters into the subjective
consciousness of the people and thus the people begin to share in the
State.
In despotic countries, where there are only princes and people, the
people assert themselves, whenever they act, as a destructive force
directed against the organization, but the masses, when they become
organically related to the State, obtain their interests in a lawful and
orderly way. When this organic relation is lacking, the self-expression
of the masses is always violent; in despotic States the despot shows,
therefore, indulgence for his people, and his rage is always felt by
those surrounding him. Moreover, the people of a despotic State pay
light taxes, which in a constitutional State are increased through the
very consciousness of the people. In no other country are taxes so heavy
as they are in England.
There exists a current notion to the effect that, since the private
class is raised in the legislature to a participation in the universal
cause, it must appear in the form of individuals--either that
representatives are chosen for the function, or that every individual
exercises a vote. This abstract atomic view prevails neither in the
family nor in civic society, in both of which the individual appears
only as a member of a universal. The State, however, is in essence an
organization of members, and these members are themselves spheres; in it
no element shall show itself as an unorganized mass. The many, as
individuals, whom one chooses to call the people, are indeed a
collection, but only as a multitude, a formless mass, whose movement and
action would be elemental, irrational, savage, and terrible.
The concrete State is the whole, organized into its particular spheres,
and the member of the State is a member of such a particular class.
Only in this objective determination can the individual find recognition
in the State. Only in his coöperate capacity, as member of the community
and the like, can the individual first find a real and vital place in
the universal. It remains, of course, open to him to rise through his
skill to any class for which he can qualify himself, including even the
universal class.
It is a matter of great advantage to have among the delegates
representatives of every special branch of society, such as trade,
manufacture, etc.--individuals thoroughly familiar with their branch and
belonging to it. In the notion of a loose and indefinite election this
important matter is left to accident; every branch, however, has the
same right to be represented as every other. To view the delegates as
representatives has, then, an organic and rational meaning only if they
are not representatives of mere individuals, of the mere multitude, but
of one of the essential spheres of society and of its large interests.
Representation thus no longer means substitution of one person by
another, but it means, rather, that the interest itself is actually
present in the representative.
Of the elections by many separate individuals it may be observed that
there is necessarily an indifference, especially in large States, about
using one's vote, since one vote is of such slight importance; and those
who have the right to vote will not do so, no matter how much one may
extol the privilege of voting. Hence this institution turns into the
opposite of what it stands for. The election becomes the business of a
few, of a single party, of a special interest, which should, in fact, be
neutralized.
Through the publicity of the assembly of classes public opinion first
acquires true thoughts and an insight into the condition and the notion
of the State and its affairs, and thus develops the capacity of judging
more rationally concerning them; it learns, furthermore, to know and
respect the routine, talents, virtues, and skill of the authorities and
officers of the State. While publicity stimulates these talents in
their further development and incites their honorable display, it is
also an antidote for the pride of individuals and of the multitude, and
is one of the greatest opportunities for their education.
It is a widespread popular notion that everybody already knows what is
good for the State, and that it is this common knowledge which finds
expression in the assembly. Here, in the assembly, are developed
virtues, talents, skill, which have to serve as examples. To be sure,
the ministers may find these assemblies onerous, for ministers must
possess large resources of wit and eloquence to resist the attacks which
are hurled against them. Nevertheless, publicity is one of the best
means of instruction in the interests of the State generally, for where
publicity is found the people manifest an entirely different regard for
the State than in those places where there are no assemblies or where
they are not public. Only through the publication of every one of their
proceedings are the chambers related to the larger public opinion; and
it is shown that what one imagines at home with his wife and friends is
one thing, and what happens in a great assembly, where one feat of
eloquence wrecks another, is quite a different thing.
PUBLIC OPINION
Public opinion is the unorganized way in which what a people wants and
thinks is promulgated. That which is actually effective in the State
must be so in an organic fashion. In the constitution this is the case.
But at all times public opinion has been a great power, and it is
particularly so in our time, when the principle of subjective freedom
has such importance and significance. What shall now prevail, prevails
no longer through force, little through use and custom, but rather
through insight and reasons.
Public opinion contains, therefore, the eternal substantial principles
of justice, the true content, and the result of the whole constitution,
legislation, and the universal condition in general. The form
underlying public opinion is sound common sense, which is a fundamental
ethical principle winding its way through everything, in spite of
prepossessions. But when this inner character is formulated in the shape
of general propositions, partly for their own sake, partly for the
purpose of actual reasoning about events, institutions, relations, and
the recognized wants of the State, there appears also the whole
character of accidental opinion, with its ignorance and perversity, its
false knowledge and incorrect judgment.
It is therefore not to be regarded as merely a difference in subjective
opinion when it is asserted on the one hand--
"Vox populi, vox dei";
and on the other (in Ariosto, for instance)--[2]
"Che'l Volgare ignorante ogn' un riprenda
E parli piü di quel che meno intenda."
Both sides co-exist in public opinion. Since truth and endless error are
so directly united in it, neither one nor the other side is truly in
earnest. Which one is in earnest, is difficult to decide--difficult,
indeed, if one confines oneself to the direct expression of public
opinion. But as the substantial principle is the inner character of
public opinion, this alone is its truly earnest aspect; yet this insight
cannot be obtained from public opinion itself, for a substantial
principle can only be apprehended apart from public opinion and by a
consideration of its own nature. No matter with what passion an opinion
is invested, no matter with what earnestness a view is asserted,
attacked, and defended, this is no criterion of its real essence. And
least of all could public opinion be made to see that its seriousness is
nothing serious at all.
A great mind has publicly raised the question whether it is permissible
to deceive a people. The answer is that a people will not permit itself
to be deceived concerning its substantial basis, the essence, and the
definite character of its spirit, but it deceives itself about the way
in which it knows this, and according to which it judges of its acts,
events, etc.
Public opinion deserves, therefore, to be esteemed as much as to be
despised; to be despised for its concrete consciousness and expression,
to be esteemed for its essential fundamental principle, which only
shines, more or less dimly, through its concrete expression. Since
public opinion possesses within itself no standard of discrimination, no
capacity to rise to a recognition of the substantial, independence of it
is the first formal condition of any great and rational enterprise (in
actuality as well as in science). Anything great and rational is
eventually sure to please public opinion, to be espoused by it, and to
be made one of its prepossessions.
In public opinion all is false and true, but to discover the truth in it
is the business of the great man. The great man of his time is he who
expresses the will and the meaning of that time, and then brings it to
completion; he acts according to the inner spirit and essence of his
time, which he realizes. And he who does not understand how to despise
public opinion, as it makes itself heard here and there, will never
accomplish anything great.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
The freedom of public utterance (of which the press is one means, having
advantage over speech in its more extended reach, though inferior to it
in vivacity), the gratification of that prickling impulse to express and
to have expressed one's opinion, is directly controlled by the police
and State laws and regulations, which partly hinder and partly punish
its excesses. The indirect guarantee lies in its innocuousness, and
this again is mainly based on the rationality of the constitution, the
stability of the government, and also on the publicity given to the
assemblies of the classes. Another security is offered by the
indifference and contempt with which insipid and malicious words are, as
a rule, quickly met.
The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write
what one pleases, is parallel to the one of freedom in general, viz., as
freedom to do what one pleases. Such views belong to the uneducated
crudity and superficiality of naïve thinking. The press, with its
infinite variety of content and expression, represents what is most
transient, particular, and accidental in human opinion. Beyond the
direct incitation to theft, murder, revolt, etc., lies the art of
cultivating the expression which in itself seems general and indefinite
enough, but which, in a measure, conceals a perfectly definite meaning.
Such expressions are partly responsible for consequences of which, since
they are not actually expressed, one is never sure how far they are
contained in the utterances and really follow from them. It is this
indefiniteness of the content and form of the press which prevents the
laws governing it from assuming that precision which one demands of
laws. Thus the extreme subjectivity of the wrong, injury, and crime
committed by the press, causes the decision and sentence to be equally
subjective. The laws are not only indefinite, but the press can, by the
skill and subtlety of its expressions, evade them, or criticise the
judgment of the court as wholly arbitrary. Furthermore, if the utterance
of the press is treated as an offensive deed, one may retort that it is
not a deed at all, but only an opinion, a thought, a mere saying.
Consequently, impunity is expected for opinions and words, because they
are merely subjective, trivial, and insignificant, and, in the same
breath, great respect and esteem is demanded for these opinions and
words--for the opinions, because they are mine and my mental property,
and for the words, because they are the free expression and use of that
property. And yet the basic principle remains that injury to the honor
of individuals generally, abuse, libel, contemptuous caricaturing of the
government, its officers and officials, especially the person of the
prince, defiance of the laws, incitement to revolt, etc., are all
offenses and crimes of different grades.
However, the peculiar and dangerous effect of these acts for the
individuals, the community, and the State depends upon the nature of the
soil on which they are committed, just as a spark, if thrown upon a heap
of gunpowder, has a much more dangerous result than if thrown on the
mere ground, where it vanishes and leaves no trace. But, on the whole, a
good many such acts, though punishable by law, may come under a certain
kind of nemesis which internal impotence is forced to bring about. In
entering upon opposition to the superior talents and virtues, by which
impotence feels oppressed, it comes to a realization of its inferiority
and to a consciousness of its own nothingness, and the nemesis, even
when bad and odious, is, by treating it with contempt, rendered
ineffectual. Like the public, which forms a circle for such activity, it
is confined to a harmless malicious joy, and to a condemnation which
reflects upon itself.
MEANING OF WAR
There is an ethical element in war. It must not be regarded as an
absolute ill, or as merely an external calamity which is accidentally
based upon the passions of despotic individuals or nations, upon acts of
injustice, and, in general, upon what ought not to be. The recognition
of the finite, such as property and life, as accidental, is necessary.
This necessity is at first wont to appear under the form of a force of
nature, for all things finite are mortal and transient. In the ethical
order, in the State, however, nature is robbed of its force, and the
necessity is exalted to a work of freedom, to an ethical law. The
transient and negative nature of all things is transformed in the State
into an expression of the ethical will. War, often painted by edifying
speech as a state in which the vanity of temporal things is
demonstrated, now becomes an element whereby the ideal character of the
particular receives its right and reality. War has the deep meaning that
by it the ethical health of the nations is preserved and their finite
aims uprooted. And as the winds which sweep over the ocean prevent the
decay that would result from its perpetual calm, so war protects the
people from the corruption which an everlasting peace would bring upon
it. History shows phases which illustrate how successful wars have
checked internal unrest and have strengthened the entire stability of
the State.
In peace, civic life becomes more extended, every sphere is hedged in
and grows immobile, and at last all men stagnate, their particular
nature becoming more and more hardened and ossified. Only in the unity
of a body is health, and, where the organs become stiff, there is death.
Eternal peace is often demanded as an ideal toward which mankind should
move. Thus Kant proposed an alliance of princes, which should settle the
controversies of States, and the Holy Alliance probably aspired to be an
institution of this kind. The State, however, is individual, and in
individuality negation is essentially contained. A number of States may
constitute themselves into a family, but this confederation, as an
individuality, must create an opposition and so beget an enemy. Not only
do nations issue forth invigorated from their wars, but those nations
torn by internal strife win peace at home as a result of war abroad. War
indeed causes insecurity in property, but this real insecurity is only a
necessary commotion. From the pulpits much is preached concerning the
insecurity, vanity, and instability of temporal things, and yet every
one, though he may be touched by his own words, thinks that he, at
least, will manage to hold on to his possessions. Let the insecurity
finally come, in the form of Hussars with glistening sabres, and show
its earnest activity, and that touching edification which foresaw all
this now turns upon the enemy with curses. In spite of this, wars will
break out whenever necessity demands them; but the seeds spring up anew,
and speech is silenced before the grave repetitions of history.
The military class is the class of universality. The defense of the
State is its privilege, and its duty is to realize the ideality
contained in it, which consists in self-sacrifice. There are different
kinds of bravery. The courage of the animal, or the robber, the bravery
which arises from a sense of honor, the chivalrous bravery, are not yet
the true forms of it. In civilized nations true bravery consists in the
readiness to give oneself wholly to the service of the State, so that
the individual counts but as one among many. Not personal valor, but the
important aspect of it, lies in self-subordination to the universal
cause.
To risk one's life is indeed something more than mere fear of death, but
this is only negative; only a positive character--an aim and
content--gives meaning to bravery. Robbers and murderers in the pursuit
of crime, adventurers in the search of their fanciful objects, etc.,
also possess courage, and do not fear death. The principle of the modern
world--the power of thought and of the universal--has given to bravery a
higher form; the higher form causes the expression of bravery to appear
more mechanical. The brave deeds are not the deeds of any particular
person, but those of the members of a whole. And, again, since hostility
is directed, not against separate individuals, but against a hostile
whole, personal valor appears as impersonal. This principle it is which
has caused the invention of the gun; it is not a chance invention that
has brought about the change of the mere personal form of bravery into
the more abstract.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Just as the individual is not a real person unless related to other
persons, so the State is no real individuality unless related to other
States. The legitimate power of a State, and more especially its
princely power, is, from the point of view of its foreign relations, a
wholly internal affair. A State shall, therefore, not interfere with the
internal affairs of another State. On the other hand, for a complete
State, it is essential that it be recognized by others; but this
recognition demands as a guarantee that it shall recognize those States
which recognize it, and shall respect their independence. Hence its
internal affairs cannot be a matter of indifference to them.
When Napoleon, before the peace of Campoformio, said, "The French
Republic requires recognition as little as the sun needs to be
recognized," his words suggest nothing but the strength of existence,
which already carries with it the guarantee of recognition, without
needing to be expressed.
When the particular wills of the State can come to no agreement their
controversy can be decided only by war. What offense shall be regarded
as a breach of a treaty, or as a violation of respect and honor, must
remain indefinite, since many and various injuries can easily accrue
from the wide range of the interests of the States and from the complex
relations of their citizens. The State may identify its infinitude and
honor with every one of its single aspects. And if a State, as a strong
individuality, has experienced an unduly protracted internal rest, it
will naturally be more inclined to irritability, in order to find an
occasion and field for intense activity.
The nations of Europe form a family according to the universal principle
of their legislation, their ethical code, and their civilization. But
the relation among States fluctuates, and no judge exists to adjust
their differences. The higher judge is the universal and absolute Spirit
alone--the World-Spirit.
The relation of one particular State to another presents, on the largest
possible scale, the most shifting play of individual passions,
interests, aims, talents, virtues, power, injustice, vice, and mere
external chance. It is a play in which even the ethical whole, the
independence of the State, is exposed to accident. The principles which
control the many national spirits are limited. Each nation as an
existing individuality is guided by its particular principles, and only
as a particular individuality can each national spirit win objectivity
and self-consciousness; but the fortunes and deeds of States in their
relation to one another reveal the dialectic of the finite nature of
these spirits. Out of this dialectic rises the universal Spirit, the
unlimited World-Spirit, pronouncing its judgment--and its judgment is
the highest--upon the finite nations of the world's history; for the
history of the world is the world's court of justice.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART (1820-21)
BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard
University
THE MEANING OF ART
The appropriate expression for our subject is the "Philosophy of Art,"
or, more precisely, the "Philosophy of Fine Arts." By this expression we
wish to exclude the beauty of nature. In common life we are in the habit
of speaking of beautiful color, a beautiful sky, a beautiful river,
beautiful flowers, beautiful animals, and beautiful human beings. But
quite aside from the question, which we wish not to discuss here, how
far beauty may be predicated of such objects, or how far natural beauty
may be placed side by side with artistic beauty, we must begin by
maintaining that artistic beauty is higher than the beauty of nature.
For the beauty of art is beauty born--and born again--of the spirit. And
as spirit and its products stand higher than nature and its phenomena,
by so much the beauty that resides in art is superior to the beauty of
nature.
To say that spirit and artistic beauty stand higher than natural beauty,
is to say very little, for "higher" is a very indefinite expression,
which states the difference between them as quantitative and external.
The "higher" quality of spirit and of artistic beauty does not at all
stand in a merely relative position to nature. Spirit only is the true
essence and content of the world, so that whatever is beautiful is truly
beautiful only when it partakes of this higher essence and is produced
by it. In this sense natural beauty appears only as a reflection of the
beauty that belongs to spirit; it is an imperfect and incomplete
expression of the spiritual substance.
[Illustration: ROYAL OLD MUSEUM IN BERLIN _By Schinkel_]
Confining ourselves to artistic beauty, we must first consider certain
difficulties. The first that suggests itself is the question whether art
is at all worthy of a philosophic treatment. To be sure, art and beauty
pervade, like a kindly genius, all the affairs of life, and joyously
adorn all its inner and outer phases, softening the gravity and the
burden of actual existence, furnishing pleasure for idle moments, and,
where it can accomplish nothing positive, driving evil away by occupying
its place. Yet, although art wins its way everywhere with its pleasing
forms, from the crude adornment of the savages to the splendor of the
temple with its marvelous wealth of decoration, art itself appears to
fall outside the real aims of life. And though the creations of art
cannot be said to be directly disadvantageous to the serious purposes of
life, nay, on occasion actually further them by holding evil at bay, on
the whole, art belongs to the relaxation and leisure of the mind, while
the substantial interests of life demand its exertion. At any rate, such
a view renders art a superfluity, though the tender and emotional
influence which is wrought upon the mind by occupation with art is not
thought necessarily detrimental, because effeminate.
There are others, again, who, though acknowledging art to be a luxury,
have thought it necessary to defend it by pointing to the practical
necessities of the fine arts and to the relation they bear to morality
and piety. Very serious aims have been ascribed to art. Art has been
recommended as a mediator between reason and sensuousness, between
inclination and duty, as the reconcilor of all these elements constantly
warring with one another. But it must be said that, by making art serve
two masters, it is not rendered thereby more worthy of a philosophic
treatment. Instead of being an end in itself, art is degraded into a
means of appealing to higher aims, on the one hand, and to frivolity and
idleness on the other.
Art considered as means offers another difficulty which springs from
its form. Granting that art can be subordinated to serious aims and that
the results which it thus produces will be significant, still the means
used by art is deception, for beauty is appearance, its form is its
life; and one must admit that a true and real purpose should not be
achieved through deception. Even if a good end is thus, now and then,
attained by art its success is rather limited, and even then deception
cannot be recommended as a worthy means; for the means should be
adequate to the dignity of the end, and truth can be produced by truth
alone and not by deception and semblance.
It may thus appear as if art were not worthy of philosophic
consideration because it is supposed to be merely a pleasing pastime;
even when it pursues more serious aims it does not correspond with their
nature. On the whole, it is conceived to serve both grave and light
interests, achieving its results by means of deception and semblance.
As for the worthiness of art to be philosophically considered, it is
indeed true that art can be used as a casual amusement, furnishing
enjoyment and pleasure, decorating our surroundings, lending grace to
the external conditions of life, and giving prominence to other objects
through ornamentation. Art thus employed is indeed not an independent or
free, but rather a subservient art. That art might serve other purposes
and still retain its pleasure-giving function, is a relation which it
has in common with thought. For science, too, in the hands of the
servile understanding is used for finite ends and accidental means, and
is thus not self-sufficient, but is determined by outer objects and
circumstances. On the other hand, science can emancipate itself from
such service and can rise in free independence to the pursuit of truth,
in which the realization of its own aims is its proper function.
Art is not genuine art until it has thus liberated itself. It fulfils
its highest task when it has joined the same sphere with religion and
philosophy and has become a certain mode of bringing to consciousness
and expression the divine meaning of things, the deepest interests of
mankind, and the most universal truths of the spirit. Into works of art
the nations have wrought their most profound ideas and aspirations. Fine
Art often constitutes the key, and with many nations it is the only key,
to an understanding of their wisdom and religion. This character art has
in common with religion and philosophy. Art's peculiar feature, however,
consists in its ability to represent in _sensuous form_ even the highest
ideas, bringing them thus nearer to the character of natural phenomena,
to the senses, and to feeling. It is the height of a supra-sensuous
world into which _thought_ reaches, but it always appears to immediate
consciousness and to present experience as an alien _beyond_. Through
the power of philosophic thinking we are able to soar above what is
merely _here_, above sensuous and finite experience. But spirit can heal
the breach between the supra-sensuous and the sensuous brought on by its
own advance; it produces out of itself the world of fine art as the
first reconciling medium between what is merely external, sensuous, and
transient, and the world of pure thought, between nature with its finite
reality and the infinite freedom of philosophic reason.
Concerning the unworthiness of art because of its character as
appearance and deception, it must be admitted that such criticism would
not be without justice, if appearance could be said to be equivalent to
falsehood and thus to something that ought not to be. Appearance is
essential to reality; truth could not be, did it not shine through
appearance. Therefore not appearance in general can be objected to, but
merely the particular kind of appearance through which art seeks to
portray truth. To charge the appearance in which art chooses to embody
its ideas as deception, receives meaning only by comparison with the
external world of phenomena and its immediate materiality, as well as
with the inner world of sensations and feelings. To these two worlds we
are wont, in our empirical work-a-day life, to attribute the value of
actuality, reality, and truth, in contrast to art, which is supposed to
be lacking such reality and truth. But, in fact, it is just the whole
sphere of the empirical inner and outer world that is not the world of
true reality; indeed it may be called a mere show and a cruel deception
in a far stricter sense than in the case of art. Only beyond the
immediacy of sense and of external objects is genuine reality to be
found. Truly real is but the fundamental essence and the underlying
substance of nature and of spirit, and the universal element in nature
and in spirit is precisely what art accentuates and makes visible. This
essence of reality appears also in the common outer and inner world, but
it appears in the form of a chaos of contingencies, distorted by the
immediateness of sense perception, and by the capriciousness of
conditions, events, characters, etc. Art frees the true meaning of
appearances from the show and deception of this bad and transient world,
and invests it with a higher reality, born of the spirit. Thus, far
removed from being mere appearances, the products of art have a higher
reality and a more genuine being than the things of ordinary life.
THE CONTENT AND IDEAL OF ART
The content of art is spiritual, and its form is sensuous; both sides
art has to reconcile into a united whole. The first requirement is that
the content, which art is to represent, must be worthy of artistic
representation; otherwise we obtain only a bad unity, since a content
not capable of artistic treatment is made to take on an artistic form,
and a matter prosaic in itself is forced into a form quite opposed to
its inherent nature.
The second requirement demands of the content of art that it shall be no
abstraction. By this is not meant that it must be concrete, as the
sensuous is alleged to be concrete in contrast to everything spiritual
and intellectual. For everything that is genuinely true, in the realm
of thought as well as in the domain of nature, is concrete, and has, in
spite of universality, nevertheless, a particular and subjective
character. By saying, for example, that God is simply One, the Supreme
Being as such, we express thereby nothing but a lifeless abstraction of
an understanding devoid of reason. Such a God, as indeed he is not
conceived in his concrete truth, can furnish no content for art, least
of all for plastic art. Thus the Jews and the Turks have not been able
to represent their God, who is still more abstract, in the positive
manner in which the Christians have represented theirs. For in
Christianity God is conceived in his truth, and therefore concrete, as a
person, as a subject, and, more precisely still, as Spirit. What he is
as spirit appears to the religious consciousness as a Trinity of
persons, which at the same time is One. Here the essence of God is the
reconciled unity of universality and particularity, such unity alone
being concrete. Hence, as a content in order to be true must be concrete
in this sense, art demands the same concreteness; because a mere
abstract idea, or an abstract universal, cannot manifest itself in a
particular and sensuous unified form.
If a true and therefore concrete content is to have its adequate
sensuous form and shape, this sensuous form must--this being the third
requirement--also be something individual, completely concrete, and one.
The nature of concreteness belonging to both the content and the
representation of art, is precisely the point in which both can coincide
and correspond to each other. The natural shape of the human body, for
example, is a sensuous concrete object, which is perfectly adequate to
represent the spiritual in its concreteness; the view should therefore
be abandoned that an existing object from the external world is
accidentally chosen by art to express a spiritual idea. Art does not
seize upon this or that form either because it simply finds it or
because it can find no other, but the concrete spiritual content itself
carries with it the element of external, real, yes, even sensuous,
representation. And this is the reason why a sensuous concrete object,
which bears the impress of an essentially spiritual content, addresses
itself to the inner eye; the outward shape whereby the content is
rendered visible and imaginable aims at an existence only in our heart
and mind. For this reason alone are content and artistic shape
harmoniously wrought. The mere sensuously concrete external nature as
such has not this purpose for its only origin. The gay and variegated
plumage of the birds shines unseen, and their song dies away unheard;
the torch-thistle which blossoms only for a night withers without having
been admired in the wilds of southern forests; and these forests, groves
of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, with the most odorous
and fragrant perfumes, perish and waste, no more enjoyed. The work of
art is not so unconsciously self-immersed, but it is essentially a
question, an address to the responsive soul, an appeal to the heart and
to the mind.
Although the sensuous form in which art clothes its content is not
accidental, yet it is not the highest form whereby the spiritually
concrete may be grasped. A higher mode than representation through a
sensuous form, is thought. True and rational thinking, though in a
relative sense abstract, must not be one-sided, but concrete. How far a
definite content can be adequately treated by art and how far it needs,
according to its nature, a higher and more spiritual form, is a
distinction which we see at once if, for example, the Greek gods are
compared with God as conceived in accordance with Christian notions. The
Greek god is not abstract but individual, closely related to the natural
human form. The Christian God is also a concrete personality, but he is
pure spiritually, and can be known only as spirit and in spirit. His
sphere of existence is therefore essentially inner knowledge, and not
the outer natural shape through which he can be represented but
imperfectly and not in the whole depth of his essence.
But the task of art is to represent a spiritual idea to direct
contemplation in sensuous form, and not in the form of thought or of
pure spirituality. The value and dignity of such representation lies in
the correspondence and unity of the two sides, of the spiritual content
and its sensuous embodiment, so that the perfection and excellency of
art must depend upon the grade of inner harmony and union with which the
spiritual idea and the sensuous form interpenetrate.
The requirement of the conformity of spiritual idea and sensuous form
might at first be interpreted as meaning that any idea whatever would
suffice, so long as the concrete form represented this idea and no
other. Such a view, however, would confound the ideal of art with mere
correctness, which consists in the expression of any meaning in its
appropriate form. The artistic ideal is not to be thus understood. For
any content whatever is capable, according to the standard of its own
nature, of adequate representation, but yet it does not for that reason
lay claim to artistic beauty in the ideal sense. Judged by the standard
of ideal beauty, even such correct representation will be defective. In
this connection we may remark that the defects of a work of art are not
to be considered simply as always due to the incapacity of the artist;
defectiveness of form has also its root in defectiveness of content.
Thus, for instance, the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, in their artistic
objects, their representations of the gods, and their idols, adhered to
formlessness, or to a vague and inarticulate form, and were not able to
arrive at genuine beauty, because their mythological ideas, the content
and conception of their works of art, were as yet vague and obscure. The
more perfect in form works of art are, the more profound is the inner
truth of their content and thought. And it is not merely a question of
the greater or lesser skill with which the objects of external nature
are studied and copied, for, in certain stages of artistic consciousness
and artistic activity, the misrepresentation and distortion of natural
objects are not unintentional technical inexpertness and incapacity, but
conscious alteration, which depends upon the content that is in
consciousness, and is, in fact, demanded by it. We may thus speak of
imperfect art, which, in its own proper sphere, may be quite perfect
both technically and in other respects. When compared with the highest
idea and ideal of art, it is indeed defective. In the highest art alone
are the idea and its representation in perfect congruity, because the
sensuous form of the idea is in itself the adequate form, and because
the content, which that form embodies, is itself a genuine content.
The higher truth of art consists, then, in the spiritual having attained
a sensuous form adequate to its essence. And this also furnishes the
principle of division for the philosophy of art. For the Spirit, before
it wins the true meaning of its absolute essence, has to develop through
a series of stages which constitute its very life. To this universal
evolution there corresponds a development of the phases of art, under
the form of which the Spirit--as artist--attains to a comprehension of
its own meaning.
This evolution within the spirit of art has two sides. The development
is, in the first place, a spiritual and universal one, in so far as a
gradual series of definite conceptions of the universe--of nature, man,
and God--finds artistic representation. In the second place, this
universal development of art, embodying itself in sensuous form,
determines definite modes of artistic expression and a totality of
necessary distinctions within the sphere of art. These constitute the
particular arts.
We have now to consider three definite relations of the spiritual idea
to its sensuous expression.
SYMBOLIC ART
Art begins when the spiritual idea, being itself still indefinite and
obscure and ill-comprehended, is made the content of artistic forms. As
indefinite, it does not yet have that individuality which the artistic
ideal demands; its abstractness and one-sidedness thus render its shape
defective and whimsical. The first form of art is therefore rather a
mere search after plasticity than a capacity of true representation. The
spiritual idea has not yet found its adequate form, but is still engaged
in striving and struggling after it. This form we may, in general, call
the _symbolic_ form of art; in such form the abstract idea assumes a
shape in natural sensuous matter which is foreign to it; with this
foreign matter the artistic creation begins, from which, however, it
seems unable to free itself. The objects of external nature are
reproduced unchanged, but at the same time the meaning of the spiritual
idea is attached to them. They thus receive the vocation of expressing
it, and must be interpreted as if the spiritual idea were actually
present in them. It is indeed true that natural objects possess an
aspect which makes them capable of representing a universal meaning, but
in symbolic art a complete correspondence is not yet possible. In it the
correspondence is confined to an abstract quality, as when, for example,
a lion is meant to stand for strength.
This abstract relation brings also to consciousness the foreignness of
the spiritual idea to natural phenomena. And the spiritual idea, having
no other reality to express its essence, expatiates in all these natural
shapes, seeks itself in their unrest and disproportion, but finds them
inadequate to it. It then exaggerates these natural phenomena and shapes
them into the huge and the boundless. The spiritual idea revels in them,
as it were, seethes and ferments in them, does violence to them,
distorts and disfigures them into grotesque shapes, and endeavors by the
diversity, hugeness, and splendor of such forms to raise the natural
phenomena to the spiritual level. For here it is the spiritual idea
which is more or less vague and non-plastic, while the objects of nature
have a thoroughly definite form.
The incongruity of the two elements to each other makes the relation of
the spiritual idea to objective reality a negative one. The spiritual as
a wholly inner element and as the universal substance of all things, is
conceived unsatisfied with all externality, and in its _sublimity_ it
triumphs over the abundance of unsuitable forms. In this conception of
sublimity the natural objects and the human shapes are accepted and left
unaltered, but at the same time recognized as inadequate to their own
inner meaning; it is this inner meaning which is glorified far and above
every worldly content.
These elements constitute, in general, the character of the primitive
artistic pantheism of the Orient, which either invests even the lowest
objects with absolute significance, or forces all phenomena with
violence to assume the expression of its world-view. This art becomes
therefore bizarre, grotesque, and without taste, or it represents the
infinite substance in its abstract freedom turning away with disdain
from the illusory and perishing mass of appearances. Thus the meaning
can never be completely molded into the expression, and, notwithstanding
all the aspiration and effort, the incongruity between the spiritual
idea and the sensuous form remains insuperable. This is, then, the first
form of art-symbolic art with its endless quest, its inner struggle, its
sphinx-like mystery, and its sublimity.
CLASSICAL ART
In the second form of art, which we wish to designate as the
_classical_, the double defect of symbolic art is removed. The symbolic
form is imperfect, because the spiritual meaning which it seeks to
convey enters into consciousness in but an abstract and vague manner,
and thus the congruity between meaning and form must always remain
defective and therefore abstract. This double aspect disappears in the
classical type of art; in it we find the free and adequate embodiment of
the spiritual idea in the form most suitable to it, and with it meaning
and expression are in perfect accord. It is classical art, therefore,
which first affords the creation and contemplation of the completed
ideal, realizing it as a real fact in the world.
But the congruity of idea and reality in classical art must not be
taken in a formal sense of the agreement of a content with its external
form; otherwise every photograph of nature, every picture of a
countenance, landscape, flower, scene, etc., which constitutes the aim
of a representation, would, through the conformity of content and form,
be at once classical. The peculiarity of classical art, on the contrary,
consists in its content being itself a concrete idea, and, as such, a
concrete spiritual idea, for only the spiritual is a truly essential
content. For a worthy object of such a content, Nature must be consulted
as to whether she contains anything to which a spiritual attribute
really belongs. It must be the World-Spirit itself that _invented_ the
proper form for the concrete spiritual ideal--the subjective mind--in
this case the spirit of art--has only _found_ it, and given it natural
plastic existence in accordance with free individual spirituality. The
form in which the idea, as spiritual and individual, clothes itself when
revealed as a temporal phenomenon, is _the human form_. To be sure,
personification and anthropomorphism have frequently been decried as a
degradation of the spiritual; but art, in so far as its task is to bring
before direct contemplation the spiritual in sensuous form, must advance
to such anthropomorphism, for only in its body can mind appear in an
adequately sensuous fashion. The migration of souls is, in this respect,
an abstract notion, and physiology should make it one of its fundamental
principles that life has necessarily, in its evolution, to advance to
the human shape as the only sensuous phenomenon appropriate to the mind.
The human body as portrayed by classical art is not represented in its
mere physical existence, but solely as the natural and sensuous form and
garb of mind; it is therefore divested of all the defects that belong to
the merely sensuous and of all the finite contingencies that appertain
to the phenomenal. But if the form must be thus purified in order to
express the appropriate content, and, furthermore, if the conformity of
meaning and expression is to be complete, the content which is the
spiritual idea must be perfectly capable of being expressed through the
bodily form of man, without projecting into another sphere beyond the
physical and sensuous representation. The result is that Spirit is
characterized as a particular form of mind, namely, as human mind, and
not as simply absolute and eternal; but the absolute and eternal Spirit
must be able to reveal and express itself in a manner far more
spiritual.
This latter point brings to light the defect of classical art, which
demands its dissolution and its transition to a third and higher form,
to wit, the _romantic_ form of art.
ROMANTIC ART
The romantic form of art destroys the unity of the spiritual idea and
its sensuous form, and goes back, though on a higher level, to the
difference and opposition of the two, which symbolic art left
unreconciled. The classical form of art attained, indeed, the highest
degree of perfection which the sensuous process of art was capable of
realizing; and, if it shows any defects, the defects are those of art
itself, due to the limitation of its sphere. This limitation has its
root in the general attempt of art to represent in sensuous concrete
form the infinite and universal Spirit, and in the attempt of the
classical type of art to blend so completely spiritual and sensuous
existence that the two appear in mutual conformity. But in such a fusion
of the spiritual and sensuous aspects Spirit cannot be portrayed
according to its true essence, for the true essence of Spirit is its
infinite subjectivity; and its absolute internal meaning does not lend
itself to a full and free expression in the confinement of the bodily
form as its only appropriate existence.
Now, romantic art dissolves the inseparable unity which is the ideal of
the classical type, because it has won a content which goes beyond the
classical form of art and its mode of expression. This content--if
familiar ideas may be recalled--coincides with what Christianity
declares to be true of God as Spirit, in distinction to the Greek
belief in gods which constitutes the essential and appropriate subject
for classical art. The concrete content of Hellenic art implies the
unity of the human and divine nature, a unity which, just because it is
merely _implied_ and _immediate_, permits of a representation in an
immediately visible and sensuous mold. The Greek god is the object of
naïve contemplation and sensuous imagination; his shape is, therefore,
the bodily shape of man; the circle of his power and his essence is
individual and confined. To man the Greek god appears as a being and a
power with whom he may _feel_ a kinship and unity, but this kinship and
unity, are not reflected upon or raised into definite knowledge. The
higher stage is the _knowledge_ of this unconscious unity, which
underlies the classical form of art and which it has rendered capable of
complete plastic embodiment. The elevation of what is unconscious and
implied into self-conscious knowledge brings about an enormous
difference; it is the infinite difference which, for example, separates
man from the animal. Man is an animal, but, even in his animal
functions, does not rest satisfied with the potential and the
unconscious as the animal does, but becomes conscious of them, reflects
upon them, and raises them--as, for instance, the process of
digestion--into self-conscious science. And it is thus that man breaks
through the boundary of his merely immediate and unconscious existence,
so that, just because he knows himself to be animal, he ceases in virtue
of such knowledge to be animal, and, through such self-knowledge only,
can characterize himself as mind or spirit.
If in the manner just described the unity of the human and divine nature
is raised from an _immediate_ to a _conscious,_ unity, the true mold for
the reality of this content is no longer the sensuous, immediate
existence of the spiritual, the bodily frame of man, but
self-consciousness and internal contemplation. For this reason
Christianity, in depicting God as Spirit--not as particularized
individual mind, but as absolute and universal Spirit--retires from the
sensuousness of imagination into the sphere of inner being, and makes
this, and not the bodily form, the material and mold of its content; and
thus the unity of the human and divine nature is a conscious unity,
capable of realization only by spiritual knowledge. The new content, won
by this unity, is not dependent upon sensuous representation; it is now
exempt from such immediate existence. In this way, however, romantic art
becomes art which transcends itself, carrying on this process of
self-transcendence within its own artistic sphere and artistic form.
Briefly stated, the essence of romantic art consists in the artistic
object being the free, concrete, spiritual idea itself, which is
revealed in its spirituality to the inner, and not the outer, eye. In
conformity with such a content, art can, in a sense, not work for
sensuous perception, but must aim at the inner mood, which completely
fuses with its object, at the most subjective inner shrine, at the
heart, the feeling, which, as spiritual feeling, longs for freedom
within itself and seeks and finds reconciliation only within the inner
recesses of the spirit. This _inner_ world is the content of romantic
art, and as such an inner life, or as its reflection, it must seek
embodiment. The inner life thus triumphs over the outer world--indeed,
so triumphs over it that the outer world itself is made to proclaim its
victory, through which the sensuous appearance sinks into worthlessness.
On the other hand, the romantic type of art, like every other, needs an
external mode of expression. But the spiritual has now retired from the
outer mode into itself, and the sensuous externality of form assumes
again, as it did in symbolic art, an insignificant and transient
character. The subjective, finite mind and will, the peculiarity and
caprice of the individual, of character, action, or of incident and
plot, assume likewise the character they had in symbolic art. The
external side of things is surrendered to accident and committed to the
excesses of the imagination, whose caprice now mirrors existence as it
is, now chooses to distort the objects of the outer world into a bizarre
and grotesque medley, for the external form no longer possesses a
meaning and significance, as in classical art, on its own account and
for it own sake. Feeling is now everything. It finds its artistic
reflection, not in the world of external things and their forms, but in
its own expression; and in every incident and accident of life, in every
misfortune, grief, and even crime, feeling preserves or regains its
healing power of reconciliation.
Hence, the indifference, incongruity, and antagonism of spiritual idea
and sensuous form, the characteristics of symbolic art, reappear in the
romantic type, but with this essential difference. In the romantic
realm, the spiritual idea, to whose defectiveness was due the defective
forms of symbolic art, now reveals itself in its perfection within mind
and feeling. It is by virtue of the higher perfection of the idea that
it shuns any adequate union with an external form, since it can seek and
attain its true reality and expression best within itself.
This, in general terms, is the character of the symbolic, classical, and
romantic forms of art, which stand for the three relations of the
spiritual idea to its expression in the realm of art. They consist in
the aspiration after, and the attainment and transcendence of, the ideal
as the true idea of beauty.
THE PARTICULAR ARTS
But, now, there inhere in the idea of beauty different modifications
which art translates into sensuous forms. And we find a fundamental
principle by which the several particular arts may be arranged and
defined--that is, the species of art contain in themselves the same
essential differences which we have found in the three general types of
art. External objectivity, moreover, into which these types are molded
by means of a sensuous and particular material, renders them independent
and separate means of realizing different artistic functions, as far as
each type finds its definite character in some one definite external
material whose mode of portrayal determines its adequate realization.
Furthermore, the general types of art correspond to the several
particular arts, so that they (the particular arts) belong each of them
_specifically_ to _one_ of the general types of art. It is these
particular arts which give adequate and artistic external being to the
general types.
ARCHITECTURE
The first of the particular arts with which, according to their
fundamental principle, we have to begin, is architecture. Its task
consists in so shaping external inorganic nature that it becomes
homogeneous with mind, as an artistic outer world. The material of
architecture is matter itself in its immediate externality as a heavy
mass subject to mechanical laws, and its forms remain the forms of
inorganic nature, but are merely arranged and ordered in accordance with
the abstract rules of the understanding, the rules of symmetry. But in
such material and in such forms the ideal as concrete spirituality
cannot be realized; the reality which is represented in them remains,
therefore, alien to the spiritual idea, as something external which it
has not penetrated or with which it has but a remote and abstract
relation. Hence the fundamental type of architecture is the _symbolical_
form of art. For it is architecture that paves the way, as it were, for
the adequate realization of the God, toiling and wrestling in his
service with external nature, and seeking to extricate it from the chaos
of finitude and the abortiveness of chance. By this means it levels a
space for the God, frames his external surroundings, and builds him his
temple as the place for inner contemplation and for reflection upon the
eternal objects of the spirit. It raises an inclosure around those
gathered together, as a defense against the threatening of the wind,
against rain, the thunder-storm, and wild beasts, and reveals the will
to gather together, though externally, yet in accordance with the
artistic form. A meaning such as this, the art of architecture is able
to mold into its material and its forms with more or less success,
according as the determinate nature of the content which it seeks to
embody is more significant or more trivial, more concrete or more
abstract, more deeply rooted within its inner being or more dim and
superficial. Indeed, it may even advance so far as to endeavor to create
for such meaning an adequate artistic expression with its material and
forms, but in such an attempt it has already overstepped the bounds of
its own sphere, and inclines towards sculpture, the higher phase of art.
For the limit of architecture lies precisely in this, that it refers to
the spiritual as an internal essence in contrast with the external forms
of its art, and thus whatever spirit and soul are possessed it must
point to as something other than itself.
SCULPTURE
Architecture, however, has purified the inorganic external world, has
given it symmetric order, has impressed upon it the seal of mind, and
the temple of the God, the house of his community, stands ready. Into
this temple now enters the God himself. The lightning-flash of
individuality strikes the inert mass, permeates it, and a form no longer
merely symmetrical, but infinite and spiritual, concentrates and molds
its adequate bodily shape. This is the task of sculpture. Inasmuch as in
it the inner spiritual element, which architecture can no more than hint
at, completely abides with the sensuous form and its external matter,
and as both sides are so merged into each other that neither
predominates, sculpture has the _classical_ form of art as its
fundamental type. In fact, the sensuous realm itself can command no
expression which could not be that of the spiritual sphere, just as,
conversely, no spiritual content can attain perfect plasticity in
sculpture which is incapable of being adequately presented to perception
in bodily form. It is sculpture which arrests for our vision the spirit
in its bodily frame, in immediate unity with it, and in an attitude of
peace and repose; and the form in turn is animated by the content of
spiritual individuality. Therefore the external sensuous matter is here
not wrought, either according to its mechanical quality alone, as heavy
mass, nor in forms peculiar to inorganic nature, nor as indifferent to
color, etc., but in ideal forms of the human shape, and in the whole of
the spatial dimensions. In this last respect sculpture should be
credited with having first revealed the inner and spiritual essence in
its eternal repose and essential self-possession. To such repose and
unity with itself corresponds only that external element which itself
persists in unity and repose. Such an element is the form taken in its
abstract spatiality. The spirit which sculpture represents is that which
is solid in itself, not variously broken up in the play of contingencies
and passions; nor does its external form admit of the portrayal of such
a manifold play, but it holds to this one side only, to the abstraction
of space in the totality of its dimensions.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMANTIC ARTS
After architecture has built the temple and the hand of sculpture has
placed inside it the statue of the God, then this sensuously visible God
faces in the spacious halls of his house the _community_. The community
is the spiritual, self-reflecting element in this sensuous realm, it is
the animating subjectivity and inner life. A new principle of art begins
with it. Both the content of art and the medium which embodies it in
outward form now demand particularization, individualization, and the
subjective mode of expressing these. The solid unity which the God
possesses in sculpture breaks up into the plurality of inner individual
lives, whose unity is not sensuous, but essentially ideal.
And now God comes to assume the aspect which makes him truly spiritual.
As a hither-and-thither, as an alternation between the unity within
himself and his realization in subjective knowledge and individual
consciousness, as well as in the common and unified life of the many
individuals, he is genuinely Spirit--the Spirit in his community. In his
community God is released from the abstractness of a mysterious
self-identity, as well as from the naïve imprisonment in a bodily shape,
in which he is represented by sculpture. Here he is exalted into
spirituality, subjectivity, and knowledge. For this reason the higher
content of art is now this spirituality in its absolute form. But since
what chiefly reveals itself in this stage is not the serene repose of
God in himself, but rather his appearance, his being, and his
manifestation to others, the objects of artistic representation are now
the most varied subjective expressions of life and activity for their
own sake, as human passions, deeds, events, and, in general, the wide
range of human feeling, will, and resignation. In accordance with this
content, the sensuous element must differentiate and show itself
adequate to the expression of subjective feeling. Such different media
are furnished by color, by the musical sound, and finally by the sound
as the mere indication of inner intuitions and ideas; and thus as
different forms of realizing the spiritual content of art by means of
these media we obtain painting, music, and poetry. The sensuous media
employed in these arts being individualized and in their essence
recognized as ideal, they correspond most effectively to the spiritual
content of art, and the union between spiritual meaning and sensuous
expression develops, therefore, into greater intimacy than was possible
in the case of architecture and sculpture. This intimate unity, however,
is due wholly to the subjective side.
Leaving, then, the symbolic spirit of architecture and the classical
ideal of sculpture behind, these new arts in which form and content are
raised to an ideal level borrow their type from the _romantic_ form of
art, whose mode of expression they are most eminently fitted to voice.
They form, however, a totality of arts, because the romantic type is the
most concrete in itself.
PAINTING
The first art in this totality, which is akin to sculpture, is painting.
The material which it uses for its content and for the sensuous
expression of that content is visibility as such, in so far as it is
individualized, viz., specified as color. To be sure, the media employed
in architecture and sculpture are also visible and colored, but they are
not, as in painting, visibility as such, not the simple light which
contrasts itself with darkness and in combination with it becomes color.
This visibility as a subjective and ideal attribute, requires neither,
like architecture, the abstract mechanical form of mass which we find in
heavy matter, nor, like sculpture, the three dimensions of sensuous
space, even though in concentrated and organic plasticity, but the
visibility which appertains to painting has its differences on a more
ideal level, in the particular kinds of color; and thus painting frees
art from the sensuous completeness in space peculiar to material things
only, by confining itself to a plane surface.
On the other hand, the content also gains in varied particularization.
Whatever can find room in the human heart, as emotion, idea, and
purpose, whatever it is able to frame into a deed, all this variety of
material can constitute the many-colored content of painting. The whole
range of particular existence, from the highest aspirations of the mind
down to the most isolated objects of nature, can obtain a place in this
art. For even finite nature, in its particular scenes and aspects, can
here appear, if only some allusion to a spiritual element makes it akin
to thought and feeling.
MUSIC
The second art in which the romantic form finds realization, on still a
higher level than in painting, is music. Its material, though still
sensuous, advances to a deeper subjectivity and greater specification.
The idealization of the sensuous, music brings about by negating space.
In music the indifferent extension of space whose appearance painting
admits and consciously imitates is concentrated and idealized into a
single point. But in the form of a motion and tremor of the material
body within itself, this single point becomes a concrete and active
process within the idealization of matter. Such an incipient ideality of
matter which no longer appears under the spatial form, but as temporal
ideality, is sound the sensuous acknowledged as ideal, whose abstract
visibility is transformed into audibility. Sound, as it were, exempts
the ideal from its absorption in matter.
This earliest animation and inspiration of matter furnishes the medium
for the inner and intimate life of the spirit, as yet on an indefinite
level; it is through the tones of music that the heart pours out its
whole scale of feelings and passions. Thus as sculpture constitutes the
central point between architecture and the arts of romantic
subjectivity, so music forms the centre of the romantic arts, and
represents the point of transition between abstract spatial
sensuousness, which belongs to painting, and the abstract spirituality
of poetry. Within itself music has, like architecture, an abstract
quantitative relation, as a contrast to its inward and emotional
quality; it also has as its basis a permanent law to which the tones
with their combinations and successions must conform.
POETRY
For the third and most spiritual expression of the romantic form of art,
we must look to poetry. Its characteristic peculiarity lies in the power
with which it subjugates to the mind and to its ideas the sensuous
element from which music and painting began to set art free. For sound,
the one external medium of which poetry avails itself, is in it no
longer a feeling of the tone itself, but is a sign which is, by itself,
meaningless. This sign, moreover, is a sign of an idea which has become
concrete, and not merely of indefinite feeling and of its _nuances_ and
grades. By this means the tone becomes the _word_, an articulate voice,
whose function it is to indicate thoughts and ideas. The negative point
to which music had advanced now reveals itself in poetry as the
completely concrete point, as the spirit or the self-consciousness of
the individual, which spontaneously unites the infinite space of its
ideas with the time-element of sound. But this sensuous element which,
in music, was still in immediate union with inner feelings and moods,
is, in poetry, divorced from the content of consciousness, for in poetry
the mind determines this content on its own account and for the sake of
its ideas, and while it employs sound to express them, yet sound itself
is reduced to a symbol with out value or meaning. From this point of
view sound may just as well be considered a mere letter, for the
audible, like the visible, is now relegated to a mere suggestion of
mind. Thus the genuine mode of poetic representation is the inner
perception and the poetic imagination itself. And since all types of art
share in this mode, poetry runs through them all, and develops itself
independently in each. Poetry, then, is the universal art of the spirit
which has attained inner freedom, and which does not depend for its
realization upon external sensuous matter, but expatiates only in the
inner space and inner time of the ideas and feelings. But just in this,
its highest phase, art oversteps the bounds of its own sphere by
abandoning the harmoniously sensuous mode of portraying the spirit and
by passing from the poetry of imagination into the prose of thought.
SUMMARY
Such, then, is the organic totality of the several arts the external art
of architecture, the objective art of sculpture, and the subjective arts
of painting, music, and poetry. The higher principle from which these
are derived we have found in the types of art, the symbolic, the
classical, and the romantic, which form the universal phases of the
idea of beauty itself. Thus symbolic art finds its most adequate reality
and most perfect application in architecture, in which it is
self-complete, and is not yet reduced, so to speak, to the inorganic
medium for another art. The classical form of art, on the other hand,
attains its most complete realization in sculpture, while it accepts
architecture only as forming an inclosure round its products and is as
yet not capable of developing painting and music as absolute expressions
of its meaning. The romantic type of art, finally, seizes upon painting,
music, and poetry as its essential and adequate modes of expression.
Poetry, however, is in conformity with all types of the beautiful and
extends over them all, because its characteristic element is the
esthetic imagination, and imagination is necessary for every product of
art, to whatever type it may belong.
Thus what the particular arts realize in individual artistic creations
are, according to the philosophic conception, simply the universal types
of the self-unfolding idea of beauty. Out of the external realization of
this idea arises the wide Pantheon of art, whose architect and builder
is the self-developing spirit of beauty, for the completion of which,
however, the history of the world will require its evolution of
countless ages.
THE LIFE OF BETTINA VON ARNIM
BY HENRY WOOD, PH.D. Professor of German, Johns Hopkins University
The ten years succeeding the publication of _Goethe's Briefwechsel mit
einem Kinde_ (1835) coincided in point of time with the awakening in
England, through Thomas Carlyle, and in America as well, of an intense
if not yet profound interest in German Literature. It must remain a
tribute to the ideal enthusiasm of the movement that, among the first
German works to receive a permanent welcome and become domiciled in
American literary circles, was that strange and glittering mass, flotsam
of a great poet's life dislodged and jettisoned from his personality by
the subtle arts of the "Child" who had now gathered it up again and was
presenting it to the astonished world. At a time when the _Foreign
Quarterly Review_ in England (1838) was vainly endeavoring to persuade
"Madame von Arnim" not to undertake the translation of her work, "whose
unrestrained effusions far exceed the-bounds authorized by English
decorum," Margaret Fuller was preparing in Boston to translate Bettina's
_Günderode_, and soon felt herself in a position to state[3] that
"_Goethe's Correspondence with a Child_ is as popular here as in
Germany." In one respect, indeed, Bettina's vogue in America remained
for the rest of her lifetime more secure than in her own country, where
the publication of her later politico-sociological works, _Dies Buch
gehört dem König_ (1843) and _Gespräche mit Dämonen_ (1852), was
followed by a temporary eclipse of her popularity, and where also her
fate, in persistently associating her with Rahel, the wife of Varnhagen,
as a foil for Rahel's brilliant but transitory glitter, had
tarnished her own fame.[4]
[Illustration: BETTINA VON ARNIM]
For these things American readers of the _Correspondence_ seem to have
cared but little. While German critics were deliberating as to what
grouping of characteristics could best express Bettina as a type, the
American public had already discovered in her a rare personality--the
recipient and custodian of Frau Rat's fondest memories of Goethe's
childhood; the "mythological nurse-maid,"[5] to whom, though in her
proper name as well as to her first-born son, successive editions of
Grimm's _Fairy Tales_ had been dedicated; the youthful friend of
Beethoven, from whom she had received treasured confidences as to the
influence exerted by Goethe's verse upon his mind and art; at times the
haunting Muse of Germany's greatest poet and, since 1811, the wife of
the most chivalrous of German poets, Achim von Arnim. If we add to these
characteristics the circumstance that, as Arnim's wife and as the mother
of their rarely endowed children, she had become the centre of a
distinguished and devoted circle in the Mark Brandenburg and in the
Prussian capital, the distance separating us from Ben Jonson's attitude
in his Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke is no longer very great:
"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother."[6]
It is, nevertheless, not through the aid of Ben Jonson's line, "fair and
wise and good as she," that Bettina may be described. She suggests far
rather an electrical, inspired, lyrical nature. The spokesman of this
literary estimate of Bettina was Margaret Fuller, and it is interesting
to note that this best of American critics at once instituted a
comparison between Bettina and Karoline von Günderode, in which the
former was made to stand for Nature and the latter for Art. But it
appears to have escaped notice that Margaret Fuller, in presenting her
example of the artistic type, has, with no express intention, given us a
picture of herself.[7] The subtle harmonies, the soft aerial grace, the
multiplied traits, the soul delicately appareled, the soft dignity of
each look and gesture, the silvery spiritual clearness of an angel's
lyre, drawing from every form of life its eternal meaning--these are all
lineaments of the Countess of Pembroke type, and these characteristics
Margaret Fuller herself shared. How different is her description of
Bettina!
"Bettina, hovering from object to object, drawing new tides of vital
energy from all, living freshly alike in man and tree, loving the breath
of the damp earth as well as the flower which springs from it, bounding
over the fences of society as well as over the fences of the field,
intoxicated with the apprehension of each new mystery, never hushed into
silence by the highest, flying and singing like a bird, sobbing with the
hopelessness of an infant, prophetic, yet astonished at the fulfilment
of each prophecy, restless, fearless, clinging to love, yet unwearied in
experiment--is not this the pervasive vital force, cause of the effect
which we call Nature?"
On the part of both Goethe and Bettina, there was always a recognition
of such a natural force operating in her. As Günderode once put it,
"Bettina seems like clay, which a divine artificer, preparing to fashion
it into something rare, is treading with his feet." On the 13th of
August, 1807, Bettina wrote: "Farewell, glorious one, thou who dost both
dazzle and intimidate me. From this steep cliff [Goethe] upon which my
love has risked the climb, there is no possible path down again. That is
not to be thought of; I should simply break my neck." Goethe's reply, in
this as in other cases, was characteristic: "What can one say or give
to thee, which thou hast not after thy own fashion already appropriated?
There is nothing left for me but to keep still, and let thee have thy
way." In this passage-at-arms, the whole of the _Correspondence_, though
not its charm, is concentrated. Goethe was intent on keeping the
relationship within its first limitations, that is to say, as a
friendship in which his mother, Frau Rat, was included as a necessary
third party. The impetuous young _confidante_ was already transmitting
to Goethe chapters from the history of his childhood, as seen through
the communications of his mother to her. These had given the poet the
purest pleasure, and he intended making use of them for his
Autobiography.[8] But, on the other hand, as soon as Bettina risked
independent judgments on his creations, as in the case of the _Elective
Affinities_ (1809), her inadequacy and her presumption in claiming for
herself the rôle of a better Ottilie were both painfully apparent. Her
attitude toward the adored object was a combination of meekness and
pretension, the latter predominating as time went on. "It was sung at my
cradle, that I must love a star that should always remain apart. But
thou [Goethe] hast sung me a cradle song, and to that song, which lulls
me into a dream on the fate of my days, I must listen to the end of my
days." To this humility succeeded the self-deception of the so-called
later Diary. Under date of March 22, 1832, Bettina relates that Goethe,
at their last interview in the early days, had called her his Muse.
Hence, on learning of his death, she reproached herself for ever having
left him--"the tree of whose fame, with its eternally budding shoots,
had been committed to my care. Alas for the false world, which separated
us, and led me, poor blind child, away from my master!" Margaret
Fuller[9] called Goethe "my parent." But how sharp is the contrast
between her tone of reverent affection and the umbrageous jealousy of
Bettina!
And Goethe? While the poet safeguarded his fatherly relation to Bettina,
up to the break in 1811, in a hundred ways, we find him already, in
1807, inclosing in a letter to his mother the text of Sonnet I., which
had been inspired, in the first instance, by his friendship with Minna
Herzlieb. Bettina, left to draw her own conclusions, at once identified
herself with "Oreas" in the sonnet, and reproached herself for having
plunged, like a mountain avalanche, into the broad, full current of the
poet's life. From the letter of September 17th it is plain that Bettina
indulged, in all seriousness, the fanciful notion that her inspiration
was, in a sense, necessary to Goethe's fame. In her fond, mystical
interpretation of the sonnets, her heart seems to her the fruitful
furrow, the earth-womb, in which Goethe's songs are sown, and out of
which, accompanied by birth-pangs for her, they are destined to soar
aloft as heavenly poems. She closes with a partial application to
herself of the Biblical text (Luke 1. 40): "Blessed art thou among
women."
Goethe's detractors, particularly among the literary school called Young
Germany, were fond of repeating the insinuation of Fanny Tarnow (1835),
that the poet prized in Bettina only her capacity for idolizing him. But
Goethe's attitude toward the "Child" was far removed from that of
poet-pasha, and Bettina had nothing of the vacuous odalisque in her
composition. G. von Löper has well said of her composite traits: "The
tender radiance of first youth hovers over her descriptions; but, while
one is beholding, Bettina suddenly changes into a mischievous elf, and,
if we reach out to grasp the kobold, lo! a sibyl stands before us!"
Behind all Bettina's mobility there is a force of individuality, as
irresistible and as recurrent as the tides. Her brother Clemens and her
brother-in-law Savigny tried in vain to temper the violence of her
enthusiasm for the insurgent Tyrolese, of her flaming patriotism,
of her hatred of philistinism in every form, of her scorn for the
then fashionable neutrality and moderation in the expression of
political opinion.
[Illustration: THE GOETHE MONUMENT (BY BETTINA NON ARNIM)]
She was by nature and choice the advocate of the oppressed, whenever
and wherever met with. The aristocratic _élégant_ Rumohr was obliged
to put up with the following from her: "Why are you not willing to
exchange your boredom, your melancholy caprices, for a rifle? With
your figure, slender as a birch, you could leap over abysses and
spring from rock to rock; but you are lazy and infected with the
disease of neutrality. You cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the
enemy? On, on, for God, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's
Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero,
fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps
to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of
comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, they must lack thee
awhile."
The end of poets' friendships with literary women is not always marked
by an anticlimax. Of Margaret Fuller, Emerson wrote in the privacy of
his Journal: "I have no friend whom I more wish to be immortal than she.
An influence I cannot spare, but would always have at hand for
recourse." Words like these Bettina was continually listening for from
her poet-idol, but she heard instead only the disillusioning echo of her
own enthusiasms. Possessing neither stability of mind nor any consistent
roundness of character, she was incapable of rendering herself necessary
to Goethe. In her case, however, the gifts that were denied at her
cradle seem to have been more than made up to her. Her ardent and
aspiring soul, shutting out "all thoughts, all passions, all delights"
else, was distilled into longing to share in the unending life of
Goethe's poesy.[10]
Through the possession of this quality, Bettina, though not herself of
heroic mold, enters the society of the great heroines and speaks to
posterity. Ariadne on the island of Naxos lives not more truly in Ovid's
poetical _Epistles_, than Bettina in the _Correspondence_. But Bettina
has not, like Ariadne, had immortality conferred upon her through the
verses of two great poets. She has rather taken it for herself, as
Goethe said she was wont to do, in anticipating every gift. It is
accordingly not in the _Elegiacs_ of Ovid, flowing as a counter-stream
to Lethe, that we may discern Bettina's gesture of immortal repose as a
metamorphosed heroine. She is a type of the inspired lyrical nature, a
belated child of the Renaissance. A graceful English song-writer of the
Elizabethan period, Thomas Campion, who was as fond as Bettina of the
figure of the flower and the sun, through which she symbolized her
relation to Goethe, has in his verses anticipated her pose and her tone
of agitated expectancy:
"Is [he] come? O how near is [he]?
How far yet from this friendly place?
How many steps from me?
When shall I [him] embrace?
These armes I'll spread, which only at (his) sight shall close,
Attending, as the starry flower that the sun's noone-tide knowes."
Campion termed his verses _Light Conceits of Lovers_. It is difficult to
weigh Bettina's fancies, for she has, as it were, taken the scales with
her when she closed the _Correspondence:_ but it is only just to say of
her Letters, that they realize, as a whole, Tasso's description of the
permanent state of the true lover: "Brama assai, poco spera e nulla
chiede" (Desire much, hope little and nothing demand).
GOETHE'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH A CHILD (1835)
BY BETTINA VON ARNIM TRANSLATED BY WALLACE SMITH MURRAY
LETTERS TO GOETHE'S MOTHER
May 11, 1807.
Dear Frau Rat:
I have been lying in bed for some time, but shall get up now to write
you all about our trip. I wrote you that we passed through the military
lines in male attire. Just before we reached the city gate my
brother-in-law made us get out, because he wanted to see how becoming
the clothes were. Lulu looked very well in them, for she has a splendid
figure and the fit was perfect, whereas all my clothes were too loose
and too long and looked as if I had bought them at a rag fair. My
brother-in-law laughed at me and said I looked like a Savoyard boy and
could be of great service to them. The coachman had driven us off the
road through a forest, and when we came to a cross-road he didn't know
which way to turn. Although it was only the beginning of the four weeks'
trip, I was afraid we might get lost and then arrive in Weimar too late.
I climbed up the highest pine and soon saw where the main road lay. I
made the whole trip on the driver's box, with a fox-skin cap on my head
and the brush hanging down my back. Whenever we arrived at a station, I
would unharness the horses and help hitch up the fresh ones, and would
speak broken German with the postilions as though I were a Frenchman. At
first we had beautiful weather, just as though spring were coming; but
soon it turned very cold and wintry. We passed through a forest of huge
pines and firs all covered with frost; everything was spotless, for not
a soul had driven along the road, which was absolutely white. Moreover
the moon shone upon this deserted paradise of silver; a death-like
stillness reigned-only the wheels creaked from the cold. I sat up on the
box and wasn't a bit cold; winter weather strikes sparks from me! Along
toward midnight we heard some one whistling in the forest. My
brother-in-law handed me a pistol out of the carriage and asked whether
I should have the courage to shoot in case robbers came along. I said
"Yes," and he answered, "But don't shoot too soon." Lulu, who was inside
the carriage, was frightened nearly to death, but where I was, out under
the open sky, with my pistol cocked and my sabre buckled on, countless
stars twinkled above me, the glistening trees casting their gigantic
shadows on the broad, moon-lit way--all that made me brave away up on my
lofty seat! Then I thought of _him_ and wondered, if he had met me under
such circumstances in his youthful years, whether it would not have made
so poetic an impression on him that he would have composed sonnets to me
and never have forgotten me. Now perhaps he thinks differently, and has
probably risen above such a magic impression. It may be that higher
qualities--how shall I ever attain them?--will maintain a right over
him, unless eternal fidelity, cleaving to his threshold, finally wins
_him_ for me! Such was my mood on that cold, clear, winter night, in
which I found no occasion to shoot off my pistol. Not until daybreak did
I receive permission to fire it. The carriage stopped and I ran into the
forest and bravely shot it off into the dense solitude, in honor of your
son. In the meantime our axle had broken; we felled a tree with an axe
we had with us and bound it securely with ropes; then my brother-in-law
discovered how handy I was and complimented me. Thus we went on to
Magdeburg. Precisely at seven o'clock in the evening the fortress gates
are closed; we arrived just a minute late and had to wait outside till
seven the next morning. It wasn't very cold, and the two inside the
chaise went to sleep. In the night it began to snow; I had pulled my
cloak over my head and sat quietly in my exposed seat. In the morning
they peeped out of the carriage at me and beheld a snow man; but before
they could get thoroughly frightened I threw off the cloak under which I
had kept quite warm. In Berlin I was like a blind man in a throng and
was so absent-minded that I could take no interest in anything. I only
longed for a dark place where I shouldn't be disturbed and could think
of the future that was so near at hand. Oh, mother, mother, think of
your son! If you knew you were to see him in a short time, you too would
be like a lightning-rod attracting every flash of lightning. When we
were only a few miles from Weimar, my brother-in-law said he did not
wish to make the detour through Weimar, but would rather take another
road. I remained silent, but Lulu would not hear of it; she said it had
been promised me and he would have to keep his word. Oh, mother, the
sword hung by a hair over my head, but I managed to escape from under
it.
We reached Weimar at twelve o'clock and sat down to dinner, but I
couldn't eat. The other two lay down on the sofa and went to sleep, for
we hadn't slept in three nights. "I advise you," said my brother-in-law,
"to take a rest too; it won't make much difference to Goethe whether you
go to see him or not, and there's nothing remarkable to see in him
anyway." Can you imagine how these words discouraged me? Oh, I didn't
know what to do, all alone in a strange town. I had changed my dress and
stood at the window and looked at the town clock; it was just striking
half-past two. It seemed to me, too, that Goethe wouldn't care
particularly about seeing me; I remembered that people called him proud.
I compresses my heart to quell its yearning. Suddenly the clock struck
three, and then it seemed exactly as though he had called me. I ran down
for the servant, but there was no carriage to be found. "Will a sedan
chair do?" "No," I said, "that's an equipage for the hospital"--and we
went on foot. There was a regular chocolate porridge in the streets and
I had to have myself carried over the worst bogs. In this way I came to
Wieland, not to your son. I had never seen Wieland, but I pretended to
be an old acquaintance. He thought and thought, and finally said, "You
certainly are a dear familiar angel, but I can't seem to remember when
and where I have seen you." I jested with him and said, "Now I know that
you dream of me, for you can't possibly have seen me elsewhere!" I had
him give me a note to your son which I afterwards took with me and kept
as a souvenir. Here's a copy of it: "Bettina Brentano, Sophie's sister,
Maximilian's daughter, Sophie La Roche's granddaughter wishes to see
you, dear brother, and pretends that she's afraid of you and that a note
from me would serve as a talisman and give her courage. Although I am
pretty certain that she is merely making sport of me, I nevertheless
have to do what she wants and I shall be astonished if you don't have
the same experience. W.
April 23, 1807."
With this note I sallied forth. The house lies opposite the
fountain--how deafening the waters sounded in my ears! I ascended the
simple staircase; in the wall stand plaster statues which impose
silence--at any rate I couldn't utter a sound in this sacred hallway.
Everything is cheery and yet solemn! The greatest simplicity prevails in
the rooms, and yet it is all so inviting! "Do not fear," said the modest
walls, "he will come, and he will be, and he will not claim to be _more_
than you." And then the door opened and there he stood, solemnly
serious, with his eyes fixed upon me. I stretched out my hands toward
him, I believe, and soon I knew no more. Goethe caught me up quickly to
his heart. "Poor child, did I frighten you?"--those were the first words
through which his voice thrilled my heart. He led me into his room and
placed me on the sofa opposite him. There we sat, both mute, until at
last he broke the silence. "You have doubtless read in the paper that
we suffered a great bereavement a few days ago in the death of the
Duchess Amalia."
"Oh," I said, "I do not read the papers."
"Why, I thought everything that goes on in Weimar interests you."
"No, nothing interests me but you alone, and therefore I'm far too
impatient to pore over the papers."
"You are a kind child." A long pause--I, glued in such anxiety to the
odious sofa; you know how impossible it is for me to sit up in such
well-bred fashion. Oh, mother, is it possible for any one to forget
herself thus?
Suddenly I said, "I can't stay here on this sofa any longer," and jumped
up.
"Well," said he, "make yourself comfortable;" and with that I flew into
his arms. He drew me on his knee and pressed me to his heart. Everything
was quiet, oh, so quiet, and then all vanished. I hadn't slept for so
long--years had passed in longing for him--and I fell asleep on his
breast. When I awoke a new life began for me. I'll not write you more
this time.
BETTINA.
May, 1807.
* * * Yes, man has a conscience; it exhorts him to fear nothing and to
leave no demand of the heart unsatisfied. Passion is the only key to the
world and through it the spirit learns to know and feel everything, for
how could he enter the world otherwise? And so I feel that only through
my love for him am I born into the spirit, that only through him the
world is opened to me where the sun shines and day becomes distinct from
night. The things I do not learn through this love, I shall never
comprehend. I wish I were a poor beggar girl and might sit at his
door-step, and take a morsel of bread from him, and that in my glance my
soul would be revealed to him. Then he would draw me close to him and
wrap me in his cloak, that I might grow warm. Surely he would not bid me
depart; I could remain, wandering on and on in his home. And so the
years would roll by and no one would know who I am and no one would know
what had become of me, and thus the years and life itself would go by.
The whole world would be mirrored in his face, and I should have no need
of learning anything more.* * *
October, 1808.
* * * I hadn't yet seen him at that time when you used to while away for
me those hours of ardent longing by picturing to me in a thousand
different ways our first meeting and his joyous astonishment. Now I know
him and I know how he smiles and the tone of his voice--how calm it is
and yet so full of love; and his exclamations--how they come swelling
from the depths of his heart like the tones of a melody, and how gently
he soothes and affirms what surges forth in wild disorder from an
overflowing heart. When I met him so unexpectedly again last year, I was
so beside myself and wanted to speak, but simply could not compose
myself. Then he placed his fingers on my lips and said, "Speak with your
eyes--I understand it all"; and when he saw that they were full of tears
he pressed my eyelids down and said; "Quiet, quiet, that is best for
both of us!" Yes, dear mother, quiet was instantly suffused through my
whole being, for didn't I possess everything for which I had longed for
years! Oh, mother, I shall never cease thanking you for bearing this
friend; where else could I have found him? Now don't laugh at me, but
remember that I loved him before I knew the least thing about him, and
if you had not borne him what would have become of him? That is a
question you cannot answer.
* * * Thus a part of the winter passed. I was in a very happy frame of
mind--others might call it exaltation, but it was natural to me. By the
fortress wall that surrounded the large garden there was a watch-tower
with a broken ladder inside. A house close by had been broken into, and
though the thieves could not be traced it was believed they were
concealed in the tower. I had examined it by day and seen that it would
be impossible for a strong man to climb up this very high ladder, which
was rotten and lacked many rungs. I tried it, but slid down again after
I had gone up a short distance. In the night, after I had lain in bed
awhile and Meline was asleep, the thought left me no peace. I threw a
cloak about my shoulders, climbed out of the window, and walked by the
old Marburg castle, where the Elector Philip and Elizabeth peeped
laughingly out of the window. Often enough in the daytime I had observed
this marble couple leaning far out of the window arm in arm, as though
they wanted to survey their lands; but now at night I was so afraid of
them that I jumped quickly into the tower. There I seized the ladder and
helped myself up, heaven knows how; what I was unable to do in the
daytime I accomplished at night with anxiously throbbing heart. When I
was almost at the top, I stopped and considered that the thieves might
really be up there and that they might attack me and hurl me from the
tower. There I hung, not knowing whether to climb up or down, but the
fresh air I scented lured me to the top. What feelings came over me when
I suddenly, by snow and moonlight, surveyed the landscape spread out
beneath me and stood there, alone and safe, with the great host of stars
above me! Thus it is after death; the soul, striving to free itself,
feels the burden of the body most as it is about to cast it off, but it
is victorious in the end and relieved of its anguish. I was conscious
only of being alone and nothing was closer to me at that moment than my
solitude; all else had to vanish before this blessing. * * *
LETTERS _to_ GOETHE.
May 25, 1807.
* * * Ah, I can impart nothing else to thee than simply that which goes on
in my heart! "Oh, if I could be with him now!" I thought, "the sunlight
of my joy would beam on him with radiance as glowing as when his eye
meets mine in friendly greeting. Oh, how splendid! My mind a sky of
purple, my words the warm dew of love; my soul must issue like an
unveiled bride from her chamber and confess: "Oh, lord and master, in
the future I will see thee often and long by day, and the day shall
often be closed by such an evening as this."
This I promise--that whatever goes on in my soul, all that is untouched
by the outer world, shall be secretly and faithfully revealed to him who
takes such loving interest in me and whose all-embracing power assures
abundant, fruitful nourishment to the budding germs within my breast!
Without faith the lot of the soul is hard; its growth is slow and meagre
like that of a hot-plant between rocks. Thus am I--thus I was until
today--and this fountain of my heart, always without an outlet, suddenly
finds its way to the light, and banks of balsam-breathing fields,
blooming like paradise, accompany it on its way.
Oh, Goethe! My longing, my feelings, are melodies seeking a song to
cling to! May I cling to thee? Then shall these melodies ascend high
enough to accompany _thy_ songs!* * *
June 20, 1807.
* * * I cannot resist telling thee what I have dreamed of thee at
night--as if thou wert in the world for no other purpose. Often I have
had the same dream and I have pondered much why my soul should always
commune with thee under the same conditions. It is always as though I
were to dance before thee in ethereal garments. I have a feeling that I
shall accomplish all. The crowd surrounds me. Now I seek thee, and thou
sittest opposite me calm and serene as if thou didst not observe me and
wert busy with other things. Now I step out before thee with shoes of
gold and my silvery arms hanging down carelessly--and wait. Then thou
raisest thy head, involuntarily thy gaze is fixed upon me as I describe
magic circles with airy tread. Thy eye leaves me no more; thou must
follow me in my movements, and I experience the triumph of success! All
that thou scarcely divinest I reveal to thee in the dance, and thou art
astonished at the wisdom concealed in it. Soon I cast off my airy robe
and show thee my wings and mount on high! Then I rejoice to see thy eye
following me, and I glide to earth again and sink into thy embrace. Then
thou sighest and gazest at me in rapture. Waking from these dreams I
return to mankind as from a distant land; their voices seem so strange
and their demeanor too! And now let me confess that my tears are flowing
at this confession of my dreams. * * *
March 15, 1808.
When in a few weeks I go into the Rhine country, for spring will be here
then, I shall write thee from every mountain; I am always so much nearer
thee when I am outside the city walls. I sometimes seem to feel thee
then with every breath I take. I feel thee reigning in my heart when it
is beautiful without, when the air caresses; yes, when nature is good
and kind like thee, then I feel thee so distinctly! * * *
* * * All other men seem to me as one and the same--I do not distinguish
between them, and I take no interest in the great universal sea of human
events. The stream of life bears thee, and thou me. In thy arms I shall
pass over it, and thou wilt bear me until the end--wilt thou not? And
even though there were thousands of existences yet to come, I can not
take wing to them, for with thee I am at home. So be thou also at home
in me--or dost thou know anything better than me and thee in the magic
circle of life? * * *
March 30, 1808.
* * * The vineyards were still partially covered with snow. I was sitting
on a broken window-bar and freezing, yet my ardent love for thee
permeated my being. I was trembling for fear of falling, yet I climbed
still higher because it occurred to me too venturesome for thy sake;
thus thou often inspirest me with daring. It was fortunate that the wild
wolves from the Odenwald[11] did not appear, for I should have grappled
with them had I thought of thy honor. It seems foolish, but it's
true.--Midnight, the evil hour of spirits, awakens me, and I lie at the
window in the cold winter wind. All Frankfurt is dead, the wicks in the
street lamps are on the point of expiring, and the old rusty
weather-vanes cry out to me, and I ask myself, is that the eternal tune?
Then I feel that this life is a prison where we all have only a pitiful
vision of real freedom; that is one's own soul. Then a tumult rages in
my breast and I long to soar above these old pointed gabled roofs that
cut off heaven from me. I leave my chamber, run through the wide halls
of our house, and search for a way through the old garrets. I suspect
there are ghosts behind the rafters, but I do not heed them. Then I seek
the steps to the little turret, and, when I am at last on top, I look
out through the small window at the wide heavens and am not at all cold.
It seems to me then as if I must give vent to all my pent-up tears, and
the next day I am so cheerful and feel new-born, and I look with cunning
for a prank to play. And--canst thou believe it?--all this is--thou!
May, 1808.
If it pleases thee to see me at thy feet in deep shame and confusion,
then look down upon me now. Thus does the poor shepherd-maiden fare, on
whose head the king places a crown; even though her heart be proud to
love him, yet the crown is too heavy and her little head staggers under
the burden. And besides, she is intoxicated with the honor and the
homage which her beloved pays her.
Oh, I shall be careful never to complain again or to pray for fine
weather, for I cannot bear the blinding sunbeams! No, rather sigh in
silent darkness than be led by thy muse into the brilliant daylight,
confused and crowned--that breaks my heart. O, do not gaze on me so
long; remove the crown and press me to thy heart! Teach me to forget
in thee that thou returnest me, glorified, to myself.
July 7, 1808.
* * * Ah, the rainbow even now setting its diamond foot on the meadow at
Ingelheim and reaching over the house to Mount St. John is just like the
blissful illusion I have of thee and me! The Rhine, spreading out its
net to catch the vision of its banks of paradise, is like this flame of
life nourished by reflections of the unattainable. Let it then win
nothing more from reality than this illusion; it will give to me the
peculiar spirit and the character expressive of my own self, just as the
reflection does to the river in which it is mirrored. * * *
July 18, 1808.
* * * Yesterday evening I went up the Rochus mountain alone and wrote thee
thus far; then I dreamed a little, and when I came to myself I thought
the sun was just going down, but it was the rising moon. I was
astonished and should have been afraid, but the stars wouldn't let
me--these hundreds of thousands and _I_ together on that night. Who am
I, then, that I should be of raid? Am I not numbered with them? I didn't
dare descend and, besides, I shouldn't have found a boat to cross in.
The nights aren't so very long now, anyway, so I turned over on the
other side, said "good night" to the stars and was soon fast asleep. Now
and then I was awakened by flitting breezes, and then I thought of thee.
As often as I awoke I called thee to me and always said in my heart:
"Goethe be with me, that I may not be afraid." Then I dreamed that I was
floating along the reedy banks of the Rhine, and where it is deepest
between black rocky cliffs the ring thou gavest me slipped off. I saw it
sinking deeper and deeper till it reached the bottom. I wanted to call
for help, but then I awoke in the radiance of the morning, rejoicing
that the ring was still on my finger. Ah, prophet, interpret my dream
for me! Anticipate fate, and let no dangers beset our love after this
beautiful night when, betwixt fear and joy, in counsel with the stars, I
thought of thy future!
* * * No one knows where I was--and, even if they did, could they
imagine why I was there? Thou tamest toward me through the whispering
forest, enveloped in a soft haze, and when thou wert quite near me my
tired senses could not endure it, so strong was the fragrance of the
wild thyme. Then I fell asleep--it was so beautiful--all blossoms and
fragrance! And the great boundless host of stars and the flickering
silver moon that danced near and far upon the stream, the intense
stillness of nature in which one hears all that stirs--ah, I feel my
soul implanted here in this nocturnal trembling! Future thoughts are
blossoming here; these cold dew-pearls that weigh down grass and herbs,
from these the spirit grows! Oh, it hastens to blossom for _thee_,
Goethe! It will unfold its gayest colors before thee! It is for love of
thee that I wish to think, that I struggle with the inexpressible. Thou
lookest upon me in spirit and thy gaze draws thoughts from me, and then
I am often compelled to say things I do not understand but only see.
The spirit also has senses. Just as there is much that we only hear, or
only see, or only feel, so there are thoughts which the spirit also
perceives with only one of these senses. Often I only see what I am
thinking; often I only feel it, and when I hear it I experience a shock.
I do not know how I come by this knowledge which is not the fruit of my
own meditation. I look about me for the author of this opinion and then
conclude that it is all created from the fire of love. There is warmth
in the spirit; we feel it; the cheeks glow from our thoughts and cold
chills come over us, which fan our inspiration into new flame. Yes, dear
friend, this morning when I awoke it seemed to me as though I had
experienced great things, as though the pledges of my heart had wings
and soared over hill and dale into the pure, serene, radiant ether. No
vow, no conditions--nothing but appropriate motion, pure striving for
the divine. This is my pledge: Freedom from all ties, and that I will
have faith only in that spirit which reveals the beautiful and
prophesies eternal bliss. * * *
We were on the road five days, and since then it has rained incessantly.
The whole house full of guests, and not even a little corner where I
could enjoy solitude and write thee!
As long as I have anything to tell thee, I firmly believe that thy
spirit is fixed upon me as upon so many enigmas of nature. In fact, I
believe that every human being is such an enigma, and that the mission
of love between friends is to solve that enigma so that each shall learn
to know his deeper nature through and in his friend. Yes, dearest, it
makes me happy that my life is gradually developing through thee, and
for that reason I do not want to seem what I am not; I should prefer to
have all my faults and weaknesses known to thee rather than give thee a
false conception of what I am, for then thy love would not concern me
but rather an illusion that I had substituted for myself. For that
reason, also, a feeling often warns me that I must avoid this or that
for love of thee, because I should deny it in thy presence.
From the Rochusberg.
Oh, Goethe, thy letters are so dear to me that I have tied them up
in a silk kerchief embroidered with bright flowers and golden ornaments.
The last day before our Rhine trip I did not know what to do with them.
I did not want to take them along, since we had only one portmanteau
between us, and I did not want to leave them in my little room, which I
could not lock because it was being used; I thought the boat might sink
and I drown--and then these letters, one after the other of which has
reposed close to my heart, would fall into strange hands. At first I
wanted to leave them with the nuns in Vollratz (they are St. Bernard
nuns who were driven from their convent and are now living there), but I
changed my mind afterwards. The last time I was up here on the mountain
I found a spot. Beneath the confession-chair still standing in the
Rochus chapel, in which I'm also in the habit of keeping my writings, I
dug a hole and lined it on the inside with shells from the Rhine and
beautiful little pebbles that I found on the mountain. I placed the
letters in it, wrapped in their silken covering, and before the spot
planted a thistle which I had pulled up carefully by the roots together
with the earth about them. On the journey I was often worried about
them; what a shock it would have been if I had not found them again! My
heart stands still at the very thought of it!
August 24, 1808.
* * * It was midnight; the moon rose dim. The ship, whose shadow sailed
along beside it, like a monster, upon the illuminated Rhine, cast a
dazzling light upon the woody meadow of Ingelheim along which it was
moving. The moon appeared behind the meadow, mild and modest, and
gradually wrapped itself in a thin cloud of mist as in a veil. Whenever
we contemplate nature in calm meditation, it always lays hold of our
heartstrings. What could have turned my senses more fervently to God,
what could have more easily freed me from the trivial things that
oppress me? I am not ashamed to confess to thee that at that moment thy
image flamed up impetuously in my soul. It is true: Thy radiance pierces
me as the sun pours into the crystal of the grape and, like the sun,
thou dost ripen me with ever increasing fire and ever increasing
purity. * * *
February 23, 1809.
If thy imagination is supple enough to accompany me into all the
recesses of ruined walls, over mountains and chasms, then I shall
venture farther and introduce thee to the recesses of my heart.
I beg thee, therefore, to climb up here, still higher, up three flights
to my room; sit on the blue stool by the green table opposite me. I
merely want to gaze at thee--and, Goethe--does thy imagination still
follow me?--then thou must discover the most constant love in my eyes,
and must draw me lovingly into thy arms, and say, "Such a faithful child
is given me as a reward, as amends, for much! This child is dear to me,
'tis a treasure, a precious jewel that I do not wish to lose." Dost thou
understand? And thou must kiss me, for that is what _my_ imagination
bestows on thine!
I shall lead thee still farther! Step softly into the chamber of my
heart-here we are in the vestibule--utter stillness--no Humboldt--no
architect--no barking dog. Thou art not a stranger; go up and knock; it
will be alone and call to thee "Come in!" Thou wilt find it on a cool,
quiet couch, and a friendly light will greet thee. All will be peace and
order, and thou wilt be welcome! What is that? Heavens! See the flames
shooting up over him! Whence this conflagration? Who can save here? Poor
heart! Poor, suffering heart! What can reason accomplish here? It knows
everything better and yet can not help; its arms drop helpless by its
side. * * *
Good night, good night until tomorrow! Everything is quiet and all in
the house are asleep dreaming of the things they desire when awake; but
I alone am awake with thee. Outside, on the street, all is still. I
should like to be assured that at this moment no soul besides mine is
thinking of thee, that no other heart gives a throb for thee, and that I
alone in the wide world am sitting at thy feet, my heart beating with
full strokes. And while all are asleep I am awake in order to press thy
knee to my breast--and thou?--the world need not know that thou lovest
me!
October 23, 1809.
The moon is shining from afar over the mountains and winter clouds drive
by in droves. I have been standing at the window awhile and watching the
tumult in the heavens. Dear Goethe! Good Goethe! I am all alone; it has
taken me out of myself again and up to thee. I must nurse this love
between us like a new-born babe. Beautiful butterflies balance
themselves on the flowers I have planted about his cradle, golden fables
adorn his dreams; I jest and play with him, and employ all my cunning to
gain his favor. But thou dost master it without effort by the splendid
harmony of thy spirit; with thee there is no need of tender outbursts,
of protestations. While I look after each moment of the present, the
power of blessing emanates from thee that transcends all reason and all
the universe. * * *
Last night I dreamed of thee! What could have been more beautiful? Thou
wast serious and very busy and didst ask me not to disturb thee. That
made me sad and then thou didst press my hand tenderly to my bosom and
didst say, "Be quiet; I know thee and understand all." Then I awoke, and
thy ring, which I had pressed to myself in my sleep, had left its
imprint on my bosom. I pressed it more firmly against the same spot,
since I could not embrace thee. Is there nothing, then, in a dream? To
me it is everything, and I will gladly give up the activities of the day
if I can be with thee and speak with thee at night. Oh, be thou my
happiness in my dreams!
Munich, November 9, 1809.
* * * This is my vow: I will gather flowers for thee and bright garlands
shall adorn thy entrance; should thy foot stumble, it will be over the
wreaths which I have laid on thy threshold, and shouldst thou dream, it
is the balsam of magic blossoms that intoxicates thee--flowers of a
strange and distant world where I am at home and not a stranger as in
this book[12] where a ravenous tiger devours the delicate image of
spiritual love. I do not understand this cruel riddle; I cannot
comprehend why they all make themselves unhappy and why they all serve a
malicious demon with a thorny sceptre, why Charlotte, who strews incense
before him daily, yes, hourly, should prepare misfortune for them all
with mathematical precision! Is not love free? Are those two not
affinities? Why should she prevent them from living this innocent life
with and near each other? They are twins; twined round each other they
ripen on to their birth into the light, and she would separate these
seedlings because she cannot believe in innocence, which she inoculates
with the monstrous sin of prejudice! O what a fatal precaution!
Let me tell you: No one seems to comprehend ideal love; they all believe
in sensual love, and consequently they neither experience nor bestow any
happiness that springs from that higher emotion or might be fully
realized through it. Whatever may fall to my lot, let it be through this
ideal love that tears down all barriers to new worlds of art,
divination, and poetry. Naturally it can live only in a noble element
just as it feels at home only in a lofty mind.
Here thy Mignon occurs to me--how she dances blindfolded between eggs.
My love is adroit; you can rely thoroughly on its instinct; it will also
dance on blindly, and will make no misstep. * * *
November 29, 1809.
I had written thus far yesterday, when I crept into bed from fear, but I
could not succeed yesterday in falling asleep at thy feet, lost in
contemplation of thee as I do every evening. I was ashamed that I had
chattered so arrogantly, and perhaps all is not as I mean it. Maybe it
is jealousy that excites me so and impels me to seek a way to draw thee
to me again and make thee forget _her_.[13]
Well, put me to the test, and, be it as it may, do not forget my love.
Forgive me also for sending thee my diary. I wrote it on the Rhine and
have spread out before thee my childhood years and shown thee how our
mutual affinity drove me on like a rivulet hastening on over crags and
rocks, through thorns and mosses, till thou, mighty stream, didst engulf
me. Yes, I wanted to keep this book until I should at last be with thee
again, so that I might tell by looking into thy eyes in the morning what
thou hadst read in it the evening before. But now it torments me to
think of thee substituting my diary for Ottilie's, and loving the living
one who remains with thee more than the one who has departed from thee.
Do not burn my letters, do not tear them up, for it might give thee
pain--so firmly, so absolutely, am I joined to thee. But do not show
them to any one; keep them concealed like a secret beauty, for my love
is becoming to thee; thou art beautiful because thou feelest thyself
loved!
February 29, 1810.
I will confess to thee and honestly acknowledge all my sins--first,
those for which thou art partly responsible and which thou too must
expiate with me, then those which weigh most heavily on me, and finally
those in which I actually rejoice.
First: I tell thee too often that I love thee, yet I know nothing else,
no matter how, much I turn it one way or the other; that's all there is.
Secondly: I am jealous of all thy friends, the playmates of thy youth,
the sun that shines into thy room, thy servants, and, above all, thy
gardener that lays out the asparagus-beds at thy command.
Thirdly: I begrudge thee all pleasure because I am not along. When any
one has seen thee and speaks of thy gaiety and charm, it does not please
me particularly; but when he says thou wast serious, cool, and reserved,
then I am delighted!
Fourthly: I neglect every one for thy sake; nobody is anything to me,
and I don't care anything about their love; indeed, if any one praises
me, he displeased me. That is jealousy of thee and me, and by no means a
proof of a generous heart; it is a sign of a wretched character that
withers on one side when it would blossom on the other.
Fifthly: I have a great inclination to despise everybody, especially
those that praise thee, and I cannot bear to hear anything good said of
thee. Only a few simple persons can I allow to speak of thee, and it
need not be praise at that. No, they may even make fun of thee a little,
and then, I can tell thee, an unmerciful roguishness comes over me when
I can throw off the chains of slavery for a brief spell.
Sixthly: I have a deep resentment in my soul that it is not thee with
whom I live under the same roof and with whom I breathe the same air. I
am afraid to be near strangers. In church I look for a seat on the
beggars' bench, because they are the most neutral; the finer the people,
the stronger my aversion. To be touched makes me angry, ill, and
unhappy, and so I cannot stand it long in society at dances. I am fond
of dancing, could I but dance alone in the open where the breath of
strangers would not touch me. What influence would it have on the soul
if one could always live near one's friend?--all the more painful the
struggle against that which must remain forever estranged, spiritually
as well as physically.
Seventhly: When I have to listen to any one reading aloud in company, I
sit in a corner and secretly hold my ears shut or, at the first word
that comes along, completely lose myself in thoughts. Then, when some
one does not understand, I awaken out of another world and presume to
supply the explanation, and what the rest consider madness is all
reasonable enough to me and consistent with an inner knowledge that I
cannot impart. Above all, I cannot bear to hear anything read from thy
works, nor can I bear to read them aloud; I must be alone with me and
thee.
Vienna, May 28, 1810.
It is Beethoven of whom I want to speak now, and in whom I have
forgotten the world and thee. I may not be qualified to judge, but I am
not mistaken when I say (what perhaps no one now realizes or believes)
that he is far in advance of the culture of all mankind, and I wonder
whether we can ever catch up with him! I doubt it. I only hope that he
may live until the mighty and sublime enigma that lies in his soul may
have reached its highest and ripest perfection. May he reach his highest
ideal, for then he will surely leave in our hands the key to a divine
knowledge which will bring us one step nearer true bliss!
To thee I may confess that I believe in a divine magic which is the
element of spiritual nature, and this magic Beethoven employs in his
music. All he can teach thee about it is pure magic; every combination
of sounds is a phase of a higher existence, and for this reason
Beethoven feels that he is the founder of a new sensuous basis in the
spiritual life. Thou wilt probably be able to feel intuitively what I am
trying to say, and that it is true. Who could replace this spirit? From
whom could we expect anything equivalent to it? All human activity
passes to and fro before him like clockwork; he alone creates freely
from his inmost self the undreamed of, the untreated. What would
intercourse with the outside world profit this man, who is at his sacred
work before sunrise and scarcely looks about him before sunset, who
forgets bodily nourishment, and who is borne in his flight by the stream
of inspiration past the shores of superficial, everyday life. He himself
said to me, "Whenever I open my eyes I cannot but sigh, for all I see is
counter to my religion and I must despise the world which does not
comprehend that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and
philosophy. It is the wine which inspires new creations, and I am the
Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and intoxicates their
spirit! * * * I have no friend and must ever be alone, but I know that God
is nearer to me in my art than to others, and I commune with him
without fear; I have always recognized Him and understood Him. Nor have
I any fears for my music; it can meet no evil fate, for he to whom it
makes itself intelligible will be freed from all misery with which
others are burdened."
All this Beethoven said to me the first time I saw him, and I was
penetrated with a feeling of reverence when he expressed himself to me
with such friendly candor, since I must have seemed very unimportant to
him. Besides, I was astonished, for I had been told that he was
exceedingly reticent and avoided conversation with any one; in fact,
they were afraid to introduce me to him, so I had to look him up alone.
He has three dwellings in which he alternately conceals himself--one in
the country, one in the city, and the third on the bastion, in the third
story of which I found him. I entered unannounced and mentioned my name.
He was seated at the piano and was quite amiable. He inquired whether I
did not wish to hear a song that he had just composed. Then he sang, in
a shrill and piercing voice, so that the plaintiveness reacted upon the
listener, "Knowest thou the land?" "It is beautiful, isn't it, very
beautiful!" he cried, enraptured; "I'll sing it again;" and was
delighted at my ready applause. "Most people are stirred by something
good, but they are not artistic natures; artists are fiery--they do not
weep." Then he sang one of thy songs that he had composed lately, "Dry
not, Tears of Eternal Love."
Yesterday I went for a walk with him through a beautiful garden at
Schönbrunn that was in full blossom; all the hothouses were open and the
fragrance was overpowering. Beethoven stopped in the burning sun and
said, "Goethe's poems exercise a great power over me, not alone through
their content, but also through their rhythm, and I am incited and moved
to compose by his language, which is built up as if by the aid of
spirits into a sublime structure that bears within it the mystery of
harmonies. Then from the focus of my inspiration I must let the melody
stream forth in every direction; I pursue it, passionately overtake it
again, see it escaping me a second time and disappearing in a host of
varying emotions; soon I seize it with renewed ardor; I can no longer
separate myself from it, but with impetuous rapture I must reproduce it
in all modulations, and, in the final moment, I triumph over the musical
idea--and that, you see, is a symphony! Yes, music is truly the mediator
between the spiritual and the sensuous world. I should like to discuss
this with Goethe; I wonder whether he would understand me! Melody is the
sensuous life of poetry. Does not the spiritual content of a poem become
sensuous feeling through melody? Do we not in the song of Mignon feel
her whole sensuous mood through melody, and does not this sensation
incite one in turn to new creations? Then the spirit longs to expand to
boundless universality where everything together forms a channel for the
_feelings_ that spring from the simple musical thought and that
otherwise would die away unnoted. This is harmony; this is expressed in
my symphonies; the blending of manifold forms rolls on to the goal in a
single channel. At such moments one feels that something eternal,
infinite, something that can never be wholly comprehended, lies in all
things spiritual; and although I always have the feeling of success in
my compositions, yet with the last stroke of the drum with which I have
driven home my own enjoyment, my musical conviction, to my hearers, I
feel an eternal hunger to begin anew, like a child, what a moment before
seemed to me to have been exhausted.
"Speak to Goethe of me; and tell him to hear my symphonies. Then he will
agree with me that music is the sole incorporeal entrance into a higher
world of knowledge which, to be sure, embraces man, but which he, on the
other hand, can never embrace. Rhythm of the spirit is necessary to
comprehend music in its essence; music imparts presentiments,
inspirations of divine science, and what the spirit experiences of the
sensuous in it is the embodiment of spiritual knowledge. Although the
spirits live upon music as man lives upon air, it is a very different
matter to _comprehend_ it with the spirit. But the more the soul draws
its sensuous nourishment from it, the riper the spirit becomes for a
happy mutual understanding.
"But few ever attain this understanding, for just as thousands marry for
love and yet love is never once revealed to them, although they all
pursue the trade of love, so do thousands hold communion with music and
yet do not possess its revelation. For music also has as its foundation
the sublime tokens of the moral sense, just as every art does; every
genuine invention indicates moral progress. To subject oneself to its
inscrutable laws, to curb and guide one's spirit by means of these laws,
so that it will pour forth the revelations of music--this is the
isolating principle of art. To be dissolved by its revelation--that is
the surrender to the divine, which quietly exercises its mastery over
the delirium of unbridled forces and thus imparts the greatest efficacy
to the imagination. Thus art always represents divinity, and the human
relationship to art constitutes religion. Whatever we acquire through
art comes from God; it is a divine inspiration, which sets up an
attainable goal for human capacities.
"We do not know whence our knowledge comes; the firmly inclosed seed
requires the warm, moist, electric soil to sprout, to think, to express
itself. Music is the electric soil in which the soul lives, thinks,
invents. Philosophy is a precipitation of its electric spirit, and the
need that philosophy feels of basing everything on an ultimate principle
is in turn relieved by music. Although the spirit is not master of what
it creates through the mediation of music, yet it experiences ecstasy in
this creation. In this way every genuine creation of art is independent,
mightier than the artist himself, and through its expression it returns
to its divine source; it is concerned with man only insomuch as it bears
witness to divine mediation in him.
"Music gives the spirit its relation to harmony. A thought, even when
isolated, still senses the totality of relationship in the spirit; thus
every thought in music is most intimately and inseparably related to the
totality of harmony, which is unity. Everything electric stimulates the
spirit to fluent, precipitous, musical creation. I myself am of an
electrical nature." * * *
He took me to a grand rehearsal with full orchestra, and I sat back in a
box all alone in the large, unlighted hall, and saw this mighty spirit
wield his authority. Oh, Goethe I No emperor, no king, is so conscious
of his power, so conscious that all power radiates from him, as this
same Beethoven is, who only now in the garden was searching for the
source of his inspiration. If I understood him as I feel him, I should
be omniscient. There he stood, so firmly resolved, his gestures and
features expressing the perfection of his creation, anticipating every
error, every misconception; every breath obeyed his will, and everything
was set into the most rational activity by the superb presence of his
spirit. One might well prophesy that such a spirit will reappear in a
later reincarnation as ruler of the universe!
November 4, 1810.
Dost thou want me to tell thee of bygone days, how, when thy spirit was
revealed to me, I gained control over my own spirit in order the more
perfectly to embrace and love thine? And why should I not become dizzy
with ecstasy? Is the prospect of a fall so fearful after all? Just as
the precious jewel, touched by a single ray of light, reflects a
thousand colors, so also thy beauty, illumined only by the ray of my
enthusiasm, will be enriched a thousandfold.
It is only when everything is comprehended that the Something can prove
its full worth, and so thou wilt understand when I tell thee that the
bed in which thy mother brought thee into the world had blue checkered
hangings. She was eighteen years old at the time, and had been married a
year. In this connection she remarked that thou wouldst remain forever
young and that thy heart would never grow old, since thou hadst received
thy mother's youth into the bargain. Thou didst ponder the matter for
three days before thou didst decide to come into the world, and thy
mother was in great pain. Angry that necessity had driven thee from thy
nature-abode and because of the bungling of the nurse, thou didst arrive
quite black and with no signs of life. They laid thee in a so-called
butcher's tray and bathed thee in wine, quite despairing of thy life.
Thy grandmother stood behind the bed, and when thou didst open thine
eyes she cried out, "Frau Rat, he lives!" "Then my maternal heart awoke
and it has lived in unceasing enthusiasm to this very hour," said thy
mother to me in her seventy-fifth year. Thy grandfather, one of the most
honored citizens of Frankfurt and at that time syndic, always applied
good as well as bad fortune to the welfare of the city, and so thy
difficult birth resulted in an accoucher being appointed for the poor.
"Even in his cradle he was a blessing to mankind," said thy mother. She
gave thee her breast but thou couldst not be induced to take
nourishment, and so a nurse was procured for thee. "Since he drank from
her with such appetite and comfort and we discovered that I had no
milk," she said, "we soon noticed that he was wiser than all of us when
he wouldn't take nourishment from me."
Now that thou art born at last I can pause a little; now that thou art
in the world, each moment is dear enough to me to linger over it, and I
have no desire to call up the second moment, since it will drive me away
from the first. "Where'er thou art are love and goodness, where'er thou
art is nature too." Now I shall wait till thou writest me again, "Pray
go on with thy story." Then I shall first ask, "Well, where did we leave
off?" and then I shall tell thee of thy grandparents, thy dreams, thy
beauty, pride, love, etc. Amen.
"Frau Rat, he lives!" These words always thrilled me through and
through whenever thy mother uttered them in exultant tones. Of thy birth
we may well say:
The sword that threatens danger
Hangs often by a thread;
But the blessing of eternity
On us one gracious glance may shed.
Extract from a letter written in 1822, ten years after the breach in
their relations.
To give perfect expression to thee would probably be the most powerful
seal of my love, indeed, being a creation of divine nature, it would
prove my affinity to thee. It would be an enigma solved, like unto a
long restrained mountain torrent which at last penetrates to the light,
enduring the tremendous fall in voluptuous rapture, at a moment of life
through which and after which a higher existence begins.
Thou destroyer, who hast taken my free will from me; thou creator, who
hast produced within me the sensation of awakening, who hast convulsed
me with a thousand electric sparks from the realm of sacred nature!
Through thee I learned to love the curling of the tender vine, and the
tears of my longing have fallen on its frost-kissed fruits; for thy sake
I have kissed the young grass, for thy sake offered my open bosom to the
dew; for thy sake I have listened intently when the butterfly and the
bee swarmed about me, for I wanted to feel _thee_ in the sacred sphere
of thy enjoyments. Oh, thou; toy in disguise with thy beloved--could I
help, after I had divined thy secret, becoming intoxicated with love for
thee?
Canst thou divine the thrills that shook me when the trees poured down
their fragrance and their blossoms upon me? For I thought and felt and
firmly believed that it was _thy_ caressing of nature, _thy_ enjoyment
of her beauty, that it was _her_ yearning, _her_ surrender to thee, that
loosened these blossoms from their trembling boughs and sent them gently
whirling into my lap.
BETTINA.
IMMERMANN AND HIS DRAMA "MERLIN"
BY MARTIN SCHÜTZE, PH.D. Associate Professor of German Literature,
University of Chicago
Karl Lebrecht Immermann was born in Magdeburg, in April, 1796. His
father, who held a good position in the Civil Service, was a very severe
and domineering man; his mother, imaginative and over-indulgent. Karl's
childhood and early youth were uneventful. After passing through the
regular course of preparatory education in a "Gymnasium," he entered, in
1813, the University of Halle. During his first year there, Germany rose
up to throw off the yoke of Napoleon, and the King of Prussia issued a
proclamation calling the nation to arms, to which the people responded
with unprecedented unanimity and enthusiasm. Schoolboys and bearded men,
laborers and professional men, merchants and soldiers, united in one
patriotic purpose. The regular army was everywhere supplemented by
volunteer organizations. An epoch began which in its enthusiasm, its
idealism, the force and richness of its inspiration, and its
overwhelming impetus deserved, more than any other in modern history,
its title: "The Spring of Nations."
Immermann's sensitive and responsive nature thrilled with the general
impulse, and he asked his father to let him join the army, but was told,
peremptorily, not to interrupt the first year of his studies. He
submitted, and plunged into the study of the literature of the
Romanticists, which, in its remoteness from actuality, offered
distraction from his disappointment. During this time he fell ill of
typhoid fever, from which he did not fully recover until the campaign
had victoriously ended in the battle of Leipzig. He joined, however,
after Napoleon's escape from Elba, the second campaign, in which he took
part in two battles. At the end of the war, having retired as an officer
of the reserves, he returned to Halle to finish his study of the law.
He found a new spirit dominant among the students. This spirit,
characterized by a strongly democratic desire for national unity, pride
of race, and impatience with external and conventional restraints, had a
rich network of roots in the immediate past: in the individualism and
the humanism of the Storm and Stress Movement and the Classic Era of the
eighteenth century; in the subjective idealism of the Romantic school;
in the nationalism of Klopstock, Herder, Schiller, and Fichte, and in
the self-reliant transcendentalism of Kant's philosophy and
Schleiermacher's theology. This spirit had received its political
direction principally through the genius of the Baron von Stein, the
Prussian statesman, whose aim was the restoration of German national
unity. He believed that the political unity of Germany must rest on the
soundness of the common people, rather than on the pretensions of the
aristocracy whose corruption he held responsible for the decadence of
the nation. Following the example of Frederick the Great, he tried to
foster the simple virtues of the common man. He was, however, opposed to
radicalism, seeing permanent progress only in order, self-discipline,
and moderation. His leading idea, which was shared by such men as
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Niebuhr, and others, was that the principal task
of the time was to arouse the whole nation to independent political
thinking and activity, in order to develop self-confidence, courage, and
devotion to a great unselfish ideal. These ideas became a national
ideal, an active passion, under the pressure and stress of the
Napoleonic usurpation and in the heat and fervor of war and victory.
[Illustration: C.T. LESSING KARL LERRECHT IMMERMANN]
It was unavoidable that this spirit produced among the younger men,
and especially among the university students, traditionally unaccustomed
to patience with restraints, many excesses, absurdities and follies.
An extreme and tyrannical nativism, a tasteless archaism in dress,
manner, and speech, an intolerant and aggressive democratic propaganda
offended and bullied the more conservative. This spirit spread
particularly through the agencies of the student fraternities called
"Burschenschaften," and the athletic associations, the "Turners,"
advocated and fostered by Jahn.
Immermann became the mouthpiece of the conservatives among the students,
and he went so far as to publish some pamphlets denouncing specific acts
of violence of the leading radical fraternity, the "Teutonia." When the
university authorities, who to a considerable extent sympathized with
the radicals, neglected to act, Immermann addressed a complaint to the
King. This move resulted in the dissolution of the accused fraternity
and in governmental hostility to all fraternities, and brought the
hatred and contempt of the radicals on Immermann.
Immermann acted undoubtedly from sincere motives, yet deserved much of
the condemnation he suffered. He had not sufficient vision to penetrate
through the objectionable and tasteless externalities of the liberal
movement--with which he was unfairly preoccupied even at the time of
_Die Epigonen_, a score of years later--to the greater and enduring core
of the aspirations of the modern age. The petty things were too near to
his eye and obscured the greater things which were further removed. He
thought he upheld a higher principle of morality by applying the
principles of von Stein to a new situation; but be failed to see the
new, larger morality imbedded in much confusion. History has reversed
his judgment.
After completing his studies he received a government appointment in the
provincial capital of Westphalia, Muenster. Here, in this conservative
old town, began one of the most extraordinary relations between man and
woman in modern German literary history. Immermann fell in love with
Countess Elisa von Luetzow-Ahlefeldt, wife of the famous old commander
of volunteers, Brigadier-General von Luetzow. Elisa, an extremely gifted
and spirited woman, had formed a circle of interesting people, in which
her husband, a dashing soldier but a man of uninteresting mentality,
played a very subordinate part. Immermann and Elisa struggled along
against the tyranny of the affinity that drew them together. Immermann
wrote a number of dramas, highly romantic, in which the passion and
strife within him found varied expression. The play which made him known
beyond his immediate circle, was _Cardenio and Celinde_, the conflict of
which was suggested by his own.
Elisa was finally divorced from Luetzow. Immermann was appointed a judge
in Magdeburg, and later in Duesseldorf. He asked Elisa to marry him. She
refused, but offered to live with him in free companionship. They joined
their lives, pledging themselves not to enter other relations. They
remained together until 1839, less than a year before Immermann's death,
when he married a young girl of nineteen. Elisa left his house in sorrow
and bitterness. Immermann characterized his relation to her thus in a
letter to his fiancée, in 1839: "I loved the countess deeply and purely
when I was kindled by her flame. But she took such a strange position
toward me that I never could have a pure, genuine, enduring joy in this
love. There were delights, but no quiet gladness. I always felt as if a
splendid comet had appeared on the horizon, but never as if the dear
warm God's sun had risen."
His life with Elisa in Duesseldorf was rich in friends and works. The
sculptor Schadow, the founder of the art school there, the dramatists
von Uechtritz and Michael Beer, brother of Meyerbeer, were among his
friends. He had intimate relations with Mendelssohn during the years of
the latter's stay in Duesseldorf. He tried to assist Grabbe, the erratic
and unfortunate dramatist. During three years he was manager of the
Duesseldorf theatre, trying many valuable and idealistic experiments.
He died August 25, 1840.
The most important of his works are _Das Trauerspiel in Tirol_, 1826,
treating of the tragic story of Andreas Hofer; _Kaiser Friedrich II_.,
1827, a drama of the Hohenstaufen; the comic heroic epic,
_Tulifaentchen_, 1830, a satiric version of an heroic Tom Thumb;
_Alexis_, 1832, a trilogy setting forth the destruction of the reforms
begun by Peter the Great; _Merlin_, 1832; and his two novels, _Die
Epigonen_, 1836, and _Münchhausen_, 1838-9.
In _Die Epigonen_, one of the long list of representatives of the
species of novels which began with Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_, Immermann
tried to present the development of a young man and a picture of the
principal social forces of his period. But he was too imitative in
following his great model, and too much confused by subjective
preoccupations, to comprehend and to state clearly the substance of the
matter.
Only two of his works have enduring value, his mystical tragedy
_Merlin_, and the part of _Münchhausen_ called "Der Oberhof" (The Upper
Farm), which deals with the lives and types of the small freehold
farmers. Immermann, following Baron von Stein, believed that the health
and future of society, endangered by the corrupt and dissipated
nobility, rested, on the sturdy, self-reliant, individualistic yet
severely moral and patriotic, small peasant. In the main character of
the story, the rugged, proud, inflexibly honorable old farmer, who has
inherited the sword of Charles the Great, he has drawn one of the most
living characters in early modern German fiction. The other figures,
too, are full of life and reality. The story has, aside from its
importance in the history of the German novel, an enduring value of its
own.
Immermann, in spite of his unremitting endeavor, failed to attain
literary or moral greatness. He lacked the fundamental and organic unity
of great natures. He had more qualities of mind than most of his
important contemporaries, but in not one of these qualities did he
attain to the degree which assures distinction. In his _Merlin_ he
treated a conflict which was fundamentally similar to that of
Grillparzer's _Libussa_. Yet Grillparzer, much more one-sided than he,
possessed the true Romantic-mystic quality, whereas Immermann had to
elaborate his symbolism with the patchwork of careful, allegoric
analysis. He had a richer contact with social forces than Heine, yet his
realizations of them were awkward and meagre, his humor wooden, his
imagery derived. He had much greater intellectual force than Platen, yet
he lacked the incisive and controlled critical sense of the latter.
Having no one faculty to a distinguished degree, he constantly had to
substitute the strained labor of one faculty for the spontaneous
production of another. Predominantly rationalistic, he labored at the
symbolistic vision of Romanticism; preëminently a man of prose, he
endeavored all his life to be a great poet. He mistook the responsive
excitement produced by the ideas and visions of others for authentic
inspiration, the vivacity of a sociable and conversational gift for the
creative force of genius, and the immobility of obvious and established
conventional judgments for an extraordinary soundness and incisiveness
of fundamental analysis.
There was in him, as he himself once said, a certain "aftertaste of a
worthy philistinism." The dominant bent of his mind was toward the
immediate actualities, and this bent in the end, as in his antagonism
against the radical students in Halle, always overcame his endeavor to
grasp the more remote realities of a larger vision.
The purposes of his literary works, like the beginning and purpose of
his intimacy with Elisa, are always large, comprehensive, and
idealistic, but they always, even in his most important work, _Merlin_,
dwindle to petty details of actuality. His significance for the present
age does not so much rest on his objective achievement, as on some of
his qualities which prevented achievement. He was perhaps the most
considerable representative of the literary "Epigones" intervening
between the esthetic individualistic humanism of the eighteenth, and the
economic-coöperative humanism of the nineteenth century. He, more fully
perhaps than any of his contemporaries, represented the peculiar
border-type of literary personality which is both compounded and torn
asunder by all the principal conflicting forces of a period of historic
transition. He was a victim of the manifold division of impulses, the
ill-related patchwork of impressions, and the disconcerting refractions
of vision, which characterized his contemporaries. It is in the fact
that he united in himself the principal factors which made up the
complexion of his age, to an extraordinary degree, that he has his
strongest claim upon the sympathetic and studious interest of the modern
age.
MERLIN: A MYTH
The principal dramatic agencies in _Merlin_ are Satan, Klingsor,
Titurel, King Artus and his Round Table, Niniana, and Merlin. In them,
Immermann tried to embody the dominant moral and intellectual
tendencies, as he saw them in history and his own times. Satan, the
demiurgos, is to him no theological devil, but a princely character, the
"Lord of Necessity," the non-moral, irresistible, cosmic force of
physical creation. He demands, expressing the faith of Young-Germany:
"O! naked bodies, insolent art,
O! wrath of heroes, and heroic voice!"
The pride of life in him and in Lucifer, who personifies the creative
fire, is aroused against the narrow asceticism of orthodox Christianity,
embodied in the wan and feeble Titurel. Satan decides to imitate the
Lord of Christianity, by begetting upon a virgin, Candida, a son who is
to save the world from the sterility of asceticism. Candida is briefly
introduced, acknowledging the power of the mighty spirit and bewailing
her fate in one of the finest passages in the play. Merlin is born,
combining the supernatural creative powers of his father with the
tenderness and sympathy of his mother. His purpose is to reconcile the
true principles of primitive Christianity with the natural impulses of
life. Merlin thus is opposed to his father as well as to Titurel and his
dull and narrow "guild" who keep the true spirit of humanity captive. He
is both anti-Satan and anti-Christ.
He next comes into conflict with the third fundamental force, Klingsor.
The latter is really only a variant of Satan and, while interesting, is
somewhat less fundamental, being more a philosophic and literary, than
an active, antagonist. His symbol is the circled serpent, the embodiment
of permanence within the changing world of actuality. He represents the
nature-philosophy of Romanticism and especially of Schelling, a
philosophy so vast and unsubstantial that all values of conduct and all
incentives to action disappeared in its featureless abyss. Immermann
intensely disliked it. He was, as he said, a lover of men; the worship
of nature drained and exhausted the sympathies, the wills and the
spirits of men. The passages in which Klingsor himself, in his moments
of despair, and Merlin expose the emptiness of this philosophy, are
among the best philosophic statements of the play. They are, how ever,
too exhaustive. But they are good philosophy, if they are bad drama and
poetry. Klingsor says of the "nature book"
"It asserts: all is vain; nought but stale mediocrity--while we are
shaken from, shell to core by the breath of the times." He is worshipped
by the dwarfs because he has opened the mysteries of inanimate nature,
and he commands the spirits of classical life represented by Antinous,
and the pagan' gods and demi-gods, the personifications of the naïve
impulses of nature. But he realizes that his wisdom, while it makes
dwarfs happy, is inadequate for human beings.
The teaching of Merlin is essentially the humanism of the moderate
liberalism of Baron von Stein and his followers. Klingsor, voicing the
sentiments of Romantic aristocratism, accuses him:
"You tell the mob: Be your own Savior; seek inspiration in your own
work. The people like to be told of their majesty. Keep on bravely
lying, sweetly flattering, and the prophet is complete."
Merlin retorts:
"You describe yourself, not me. Men have a deep sense of truth, and pay
in false coin only him that offers them false gifts." He then continues,
lashing the transcendent egotism of the Romantic conception of man in
the universe: "To you the earth, the ocean, the firmament, are nothing
but a ladder for your own elevation, and you must absolutely reject the
thing called humility. In order to maintain yourself strong and whole
you have to find men weak and only partial beings," etc. Later, in lines
_1637ff_., he proceeds, in what are probably the finest and richest
passages in the work, to state his own purpose of combining all that is
great, true, beautiful, human, and noble, into one comprehensive and
rational faith of humanity.
Merlin tries to teach his faith to King Artus and his circle, who embody
the frivolous, irresponsible, though refined, conduct of the nobility,
essentially the same nobility whom von Stein accused of injuring the
nation and Immermann satirized and exposed in _Münchhausen_. They decide
to seek salvation in the primitive idealism of India, appointing Merlin
their guide. Merlin, however, succumbs to the silly Niniana, the
personification of wanton desire. She makes him tell her a fated word,
after promising not to repeat it. She thoughtlessly repeats it. He now
loses his superhuman power, i. e., the power of absolute spiritual
integrity, and becomes subject to the limitations of earth, like a
common man. He can no longer lead Artus and his court, who perish of
their own spiritual vacuity.
The end of the play is unsatisfactory. The hero's surrender to the lust
of the flesh, undoubtedly suggested by Goethe's _Faust_ and consistent
in Goethe's poem, is foreign to the conflict of this play, which, not
being human, as is that of _Faust_, but an abstract antagonism of
general historic principles, should have been solved without the
interference of the mere creature weaknesses of the hero and the mere
creature sympathies of the reader. Immermann planned to untie the knot
in a second part, which was to treat of the salvation of Merlin; but he
never carried his purpose beyond a few slight introductory passages.
IMMERMANN'S "MÜNCHHAUSEN"
BY ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD, PH.D. Instructor in German, Columbia
University
Immermann first thought of writing a new _Münchhausen_ in 1821, the year
of his satirical comedy, _The Princes of Syracuse_, which contains the
embryonic idea of this "history in arabesques." Conscientious
performance of his duties as a judge and incessant activity as a writer
along other lines forced the idea into the background until 1830, the
year of his satirical epic, _Tulifäntchen_, in which the theme again
received attention. In 1835 he finished _Die Epigonen_, a novel
portraying the social and political conditions in Germany from 1815 to
1830, and in 1837 he began systematic work on _Münchhausen_, continuing,
from a different point of view and in a different mood, his delineation
of the civic and intellectual status of Germany of his own time. The
last part of the entire work was published in 1839, having occupied,
intermittently, eighteen of his twenty years of literary productivity.
The first edition was exhausted one year after publication, a second
appeared in 1841, a third in 1854, and since 1857 there have been many
of all kinds, ranging from the popular "Reclam" to critical editions
with all the helps and devices known to modern scholarship.
In so far as the just appreciation of a literary production is dependent
upon a study of its genesis, the reading of _Die Epigonen_ is necessary
to a complete understanding of _Münchhausen_, for through these two
works runs a strong thread of unbroken development. Hermann, the
immature hero of the former, and his associates, bequeath a number of
characteristics to the title-hero and his associates of the latter; but
where the earlier work is predominantly sarcastic, political, and
pessimistic, the later one is humorous, intellectual, and optimistic. It
would seem, therefore, that, in view of its bright outlook, mature view,
and sympathetic treatment, Immermann's greatest epic in prose was
destined to be read in its entirety, frequently, and with pleasure.
This is, however, not the case. Starting from a long line of models,
Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_ among others, _Münchhausen_ resembles the
diffusive works of similar title by Raspe (1785) and Bürger (1787). It
takes its name from Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Baron of Münchhausen
(1720-1797), and satirizes many of the whimsicalities of Herman Ludwig
Heinrich, Prince of Pückler-Muskau (1785-1871). And it flagellates again
and again such bizarre literary and intellectual phenomena of the time
as Raupach's Hohenstaufen dramas, Görres' mysticism, Menzel's
calumniations, Eduard Gans' liberalism, Bettina's pretensions, Young
Germany's reaction, even the Indian studies of the Schlegels and
Alexander von Humboldt's substantial scholarship, so that, for the
general reader, the larger part of the work is a sealed book. Its
references are obscure, its satire abstruse, its humor vague. Even
Ferdinand Freiligrath, Immermann's contemporary and friend, declined, on
the ground of lack of familiarity with the allusions, to write a
commentary to it.
According to Immermann's own statement, he began _Münchhausen_ without a
shimmer of an idea as to how he would finish it; but he finished it,
having in the meantime gone through a complete inner transformation, in
a way that surprised even himself and greatly pleased his readers. We
have here, consequently, a novel which, though written as a whole, falls
naturally into two parts, the one negative and satirical, the other
positive and human. And odd indeed is the situation in the negative
part.
As in _Die Epigonen_, the scene is laid in Westphalia. The impoverished
Baron Schnuck-Puckelig-Erbsenscheucher, a faithful representative of the
narrow-minded and prejudiced nobility, lives with his prudish,
sentimental daughter, Emerentia, in the dilapidated castle, Schnick
Schnack-Schnurr. Their sole companion is the daft school-teacher,
Agesel, who, having lost, from too much study of phonetics, the major
part of his never gigantic mind, imagines that he is a direct descendant
of the Spartan King Agesilaus. With these occupants and no more, the
castle resembles a harmless home for the insane. But one day
Münchhausen, the prince of liars and chief of swindlers, accompanied by
his servant, Karl Buttervogel, the Sancho Panza of the story, comes to
the castle. His presence enlivens; his interminable stories, through
which Immermann satirizes the tendencies of the time, delight at first,
then tire, then become intolerable. To maintain his influence, he
suggests to the old Baron the establishment of a stock company for the
selling of compressed air, assuring this gullible old soul that hereby
his fortunes can be retrieved and his appointment as Privy Councilor can
be realized. The Baron, though pleased, enters into the proposition with
caution. But Münchhausen, unable to execute his scheme, finds himself in
an embarrassing dilemma from which he disentangles himself by mysteriously
disappearing and never again coming to light. Emerentia has
in the meantime fallen in love with Karl Buttervogel, whom she
erroneously looks upon as a Prince in disguise. At the prospect of so
humble a son-in-law, the Baron becomes frantic, violently removes
Buttervogel from the castle, which, as a result of the Baron's ravings,
falls to the ground with a crash and a roar--a catastrophe which reminds
one of Poe's _Fall of the House of Usher_--and the Baron and Agesel are
restored to their senses.
The chief trouble with this fantastic story is that it lacks artistic
measure and objective plausibility. Immermann, omnivorous reader that he
was, wrote this part of his book, not from life, but from other books.
And even granting that he carried out his plan with a reasonable degree
of cleverness, the average reader is not sufficiently acquainted with
Kerner and Platen and their long line of queer contemporaries to see the
point, so he skips over this part of the work and turns at once to _Der
Oberhof_.
It is needless to state that Immermann never wrote a work with such a
title. Editors and publishers have simply followed the lead of readers
and brought out separately the best parts of the complete novel under
the heading of the third chapter of the second book. There is not even
final agreement as to how much of the original work should be included
in order to make a well-rounded story. The editions, of which there are
many, vary in size from seventy-five to three hundred and seventy-five
octavo pages. The best arrangement is that which includes the second,
fifth, seventh and eighth books.
Here again we meet with three leading characters--the very honest and
reliable Hofschulze, the owner of the "Upper Farm," in whom are
personified and glorified the best traditions of Westphalia; Lisbeth,
the daughter of Münchhausen and Emerentia, the connecting link between
romantic and realistic Germany; and Oswald, the Suabian Count disguised
as a hunter, a thoroughly good fellow. But this by no means exhausts the
list of pleasing personalities. The good Deacon, who had lost interest
in life and faith in men while tutoring a young Swedish Count, and who
was made over by his new work among the solid middle class of
Westphalia, is a character of real charm; his ideals are humanitarian in
the best sense, his wisdom is sound, his help generous. Jochem, Oswald's
servant, is the incarnation of fidelity; the old Captain, who finds
himself today in a French and tomorrow in a Prussian mood, is
instructive at least, for such dualistic patriotism was not unknown at
the time; the Collector follows his vocation with inspiring avidity, the
Sexton is droll without knowing it, and each of the Hofschulze's
servants has something about him that separates him from his
confederates even though he be nameless. There are no supernumeraries
among the characters.
By reason of her common sense and energy, Lisbeth had for some time kept
the old Baron's head above water. One of her duties was to collect
taxes, a business which frequently brought her to the "Upper Farm,"
where she was always sure of a kind reception. Oswald, too, came to the
Farm one day to settle an affair of honor with Münchhausen. Instead of
finding him, however, he meets Lisbeth, and here the love story begins.
While waiting at the Farm for Jochem to find Münchhausen, Oswald agrees
to recompense the Hofschulze for his hospitality by keeping the wild
deer away from the grain fields. His duties are nominal; he exchanges
views with the men of the Farm, corresponds with his friends in Suabia,
wanders over the fields and occasionally shoots at some game without
ever hitting. His room must have been occupied before his arrival by a
beautiful girl, for in it he finds a tidy hood and kerchief that betray
the charms of their wearer, and he dreams of her at night. And one day,
while wandering through the woods, he catches sight of a lovely girl
looking into the calyx of a wonderful forest flower. He is on the point
of going up to her when her very charm holds him back, and that night he
dreams again of his beautiful predecessor in the Hofschulze's corner
room.
And then, while wandering again through the pathless woods, he shoots at
a roe but hits Lisbeth, the girl of his dreams. The wound is, however,
slight, and by the time it has healed their love has become perfect, so
that, immediately after the wedding of the Hofschulze's daughter, for
whom Lisbeth had been a bridesmaid, and before the same altar at which
the ceremony had just been performed, the good Deacon pronounces the
blessing upon the newly betrothed pair.
With the Deacon's official act over, imaginary troubles cease and real
ones begin. Oswald, grieved beyond expression to learn that Lisbeth is
the daughter of Münchhausen and Emerentia, is on the point of leaving
the Farm immediately and Lisbeth forever; Lisbeth, having thought all
the time that her lover was a plain hunter, is in complete despair when
told that he is a real Count; the Hofschulze does not take kindly to the
idea of their marriage, for Oswald has not always revered Westphalian
traditions, the secret tribunal, for example, as he should have done;
Oswald's friends in Suabia object to his marrying a foundling, and
advise him to come home and straighten out a love affair he has there
before entering into a new and foreign one; the doctor is not even
certain that the wedding is hygienically wise. But love dispels all
fears and doubts, and the good Deacon makes Oswald and Lisbeth man and
wife.
Immermann's lifelong attempts at the studied poetizations of
traditional, aristocratic, high-flown themes brought him but scant
recognition even in his day, and they have since been well-nigh
forgotten. But when, one year before his death, he wrote an
unpretentious love story taken from the life of simple people whom he
met on his daily walks, he thereby assured himself of immortality. Few
works prove more convincingly than _Der Oberhof_ that great literature
is neither more nor less than an artistic visualization and faithful
reflection of life. The reading of this unassuming "village story," the
first of its kind in German literature, warms the heart and stirs the
springs of living fancy, simply because it relates in terse and direct
language a series of incidents in the lives of very possible and very
real human beings.
* * * * *
KARL LEBRECHT IMMERMANN
THE OBERHOF (1839) TRANSLATED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS
CHAPTER I
THE JUSTICE OF THE ESTATE
With the sleeves of his shirt rolled up the old Justice of the estate
was standing in the yard between the barns and the farm buildings and
gazing attentively into a fire which he had kindled on the ground
between stones and logs, and which was now crackling merrily. He
straightened around a small anvil which was standing beside it, laid
down a hammer and a pair of tongs so as to have them ready to grasp,
tested the points of some large wheel-nails which he drew forth from the
breast-pocket of a leather apron he had tied around him, put the nails
down in the bottom of the rack-wagon, the wheel of which he was about to
repair, carefully turned the rim around until the place where the tire
was broken was on top, and then made the wheel fast by putting stones
under it.
After he had again looked into the fire for a few moments, but not long
enough to cause his bright, sharp eyes to blink, he quickly thrust the
tongs into it, lifted out the red-hot piece of iron, laid it on the
anvil, pounded it with the hammer so that the sparks flew in all
directions, clapped the still glowing piece of iron down on the broken
place in the tire, hammered and welded it fast with two heavy blows, and
then drove the nails into their places, which was easily done, as the
iron was still soft and pliable.
A few very sharp and powerful blows gave the inserted piece its
finishing touch. The Justice kicked away the stones with which he had
made the wheel fast, seized the wagon by its tongue in order to test the
mended tire, and in spite of its weight hauled it without exertion
diagonally across the yard, so that the hens, geese and ducks, which had
been quietly sunning themselves, flew, with loud cries, before the
rattling vehicle, and a couple of pigs jumped up, grunting, from their
mud-holes.
Two men, the one a horse-dealer, the other a tax-collector or receiver,
who were sitting at a table beneath the large linden in front of the
house and imbibing their drink, had been watching the work of the robust
old man.
"It must be true!" one of them, the horse-dealer, called out. "You would
have made an excellent blacksmith, Judge!"
The Justice washed his hands and face in a pail of water which was
standing beside the anvil, poured the water into the fire to extinguish
it, and said:
"He is a fool who gives to the blacksmith what he can earn himself!"
He picked up the anvil as if it were a feather, and carried it, along
with the hammer and tongs, under a little shed which stood between the
house and the barn, and in which there were standing, or hanging, a
work-bench, saws, chisels, and whatever other tools pertain to the
carpenter's or joiner's trade, as well as a quantity of wood and boards
of many kinds.
While the old man was still busying himself under the shed, the
horse-dealer said to the receiver:
"Would you believe it that he also repairs with his own hands all the
posts, doors, thresholds, boxes, and cases in the house, or if luck
favors him makes new ones himself? I believe that he could be an expert
joiner, if he wanted to, and put together a first-class cabinet."
"You are wrong there," said the Justice, who had overheard the latter
remark and who, having taken off his leather apron, now emerged from the
shed in a smock-frock of white linen and sat down at the table with the
two men.
[Illustration: The Master of the Oberhof]
A maid brought a glass to him also, and, after drinking the health of his
guests, he continued: "To make a post or a door or a threshold, all you
need is a pair of sound eyes and a steady hand, but a cabinet-maker has
to have more than that. I once allowed my conceit to deceive me into
thinking that I could put together, as you call it, a first-class
cabinet, because I had handled plane and chisel and T-square more or
less doing carpenter's work. I measured and marked and squared off the
wood and had everything fitted down to the inch. Yes, but now when it
came to the joining and gluing together, everything was all wrong; the
sides were warped and wouldn't come together, the lid in front was too
large, and the drawers too small for the openings. You can still see the
contraption; I let it stand on the sill to guard me from future
temptation. For it always does a man good to have a reminder of his
weakness constantly before his eyes."
At this moment a loud neigh was heard from the stable across the yard.
The horse-dealer cleared his throat, spat, struck a light for his pipe,
blew a dense cloud of smoke into the receiver's face, and looked first
longingly toward the stable, and then thoughtfully down at the ground.
Then he spat once more, removed the varnished hat from his head, wiped
his brow with his sleeve, and said: "Still this sultry weather!"
Thereupon he unbuckled his leather money-pouch from his body, threw it
down on the table with a bang, so that its contents rattled and jingled,
untied the strings, and counted out twenty bright gold pieces, the sight
of which caused the receiver's eyes to sparkle, while the old Justice
did not even look at them.
"Here is the money!" cried the horse-dealer, bringing his clenched fist
down on the table with a thump. "Do I get the brown mare for it? God
knows, she's not worth a penny more!"
"Then keep your money, so that you won't suffer any loss!" replied the
Justice cold-bloodedly. "Twenty-six is my price, as I have already said,
and not a farthing less! You've known me a good many years, Mr. Marx,
and you ought to realize by this time that dickering and beating down
don't work with me, because I never take back what I say. I ask for a
thing what it is worth to me, and never overcharge. So an angel with a
trumpet might come down from heaven, but he wouldn't get the bay mare
for less than twenty-six!"
"But," exclaimed the horse-dealer, provoked, "business consists of
demanding and offering, doesn't it? I'd overcharge my own brother! When
there is no more overcharging in the world, business will come to an
end."
"On the contrary," replied the Justice, "business will then take much
less time, and for that very reason will be more profitable. And besides
that, both parties always derive much benefit from a transaction
involving no overcharge. It has always been my experience that, when an
overcharge is made, one's nature gets hot, and it results in nobody's
knowing exactly what he is doing or saying. The seller, in order to put
an end to the argument, often lets his wares go for a lower price than
that which he had quietly made up his mind to charge, and the buyer, on
the other hand, just as often, in the eagerness and ardor of bidding,
wastes his money. Where there is absolutely no talk of abatement, then
both parties remain beautifully calm and safe from loss."
"Inasmuch as you talk so sensibly, you have, I presume, thought better
of my proposal," broke in the receiver. "As I, have already said, the
government wants to convert into cash all the corn due from the farms in
this region. It alone suffers a loss from it, for corn is corn, whereas
money is worth so much today and so much tomorrow. Meanwhile, you see,
it is their wish to free themselves from the burden of storing up corn.
Kindly do me the favor, then, to sign this new cash-contract, which I
have brought with me for that purpose."
"By no means!" answered the Justice vehemently. "For many hundreds of
years corn, and only corn, has been paid over from the Oberhof to the
monastery, and the receiver's office will have to content itself with
that, just as the monastery has done. Does cash grow in my fields? No!
Corn grows in them! Where, then, are you going to get the cash?"
"You're not going to be cheated, you know!" cried the receiver.
"We must always stand by the old ways of doing things," said the Justice
solemnly. "Those were good times when the tablets with the lists of
imposts and taxes of the peasantry used to hang in the church. In those
days everything was fixed, and there were never any disagreements, as
there are nowadays all too often. Afterwards it was said that the
tablets with the hens and eggs and bushels and pecks of grain.
interfered with devotion, and they were done away with." With that he
went into the house.
"There is a stubborn fellow for you!" cried the horse-dealer, when he
could no longer see his business friend. He put his varnished hat back
on his head again with an air of vexation. "If he once makes up his mind
not to do something, the devil himself cannot bring him around. The
worst of it is that the fellow rears the best horses in this region, and
after all, if you get right down to it, lets them go cheap enough."
"An obstinate, headstrong sort of people it is that lives hereabouts,"
said the receiver. "I have just recently come from Saxony and I notice
the contrast. There they all live together, and for that reason they
have to be courteous and obliging and tractable toward one another. But
here, each one lives on his own property, and has his own wood, his own
field, his own pasture around him, as if there were nothing else in the
world. For that reason they cling so tenaciously to all their old
foolish ways and notions, which have everywhere else fallen into disuse.
What a lot of trouble I've had already with the other peasants on
account of this stupid change in the mode of taxation! But this fellow
here is the worst of all!" "The reason for that, Mr. Receiver, is that
he is so rich," remarked the horse-dealer. "It is a wonder to me that
you have put it through with the other peasants around here without him,
for he is their general, their attorney and everything; they all follow
his example in every matter and he bows to no one. A year ago a prince
passed through here; the way the old fellow took off his hat to him,
really, it looked as if he wanted to say: 'You are one, I am another.'
To expect to get twenty-six pistoles for the mare! But that is the
unfortunate part of it, when a peasant acquires too much property. When
you come out on the other side of that oak wood, you walk for half an
hour by the clock through his fields! And everything arranged in first
rate order all the way! The day before yesterday I drove my team through
the rye and wheat, and may God punish me if anything more than the
horses' heads showed up above the tops. I thought I should be drowned."
"Where did he get it all?" asked the receiver.
"Oh!" cried the horse-dealer, "there are a lot more estates like this
around here; they call them Oberhofs. And if they do not surpass many a
nobleman's, my name isn't Marx. The land has been held intact for
generations. And the good-for-nothing fellow has always been economical
and industrious, you'll have to say that much for him I You saw, didn't
you, how he worked away merely to save the expense of paying the
blacksmith a few farthings? Now his daughter is marrying another rich
fellow; she'll get a dowry, I tell you! I happened to pass the linen
closet; flax, yarn, tablecloths and napkins and sheets and shirts and
every possible kind of stuff are piled up to the ceiling in there. And
in addition to that the old codger will give her six thousand thalers in
cash! Just glance about you; don't you feel as if you were stopping with
a count?"
During the foregoing dialogue the vexed horse-dealer had quietly put his
hand into his money-bag and to the twenty gold pieces had added, with an
air of unconcern, six more. The Justice appeared again at the door, and
the other, without looking up, said, grumbling; "There are the
twenty-six, since there is no other way out of it."
The old peasant smiled ironically and said: "I knew right well that you
would buy the horse, Mr. Marx, for you are trying to find one for thirty
pistoles for the cavalry lieutenant in Unna, and my little roan fills
the bill as if she had been made to order. I went into the house only to
fetch the gold-scales, and could see in advance that you would have
bethought yourself in the meantime."
The old man, who one moment displayed something akin to hurry in his
movements and the next the greatest deliberation, depending upon the
business with which he happened to be occupied, sat down at the table,
slowly and carefully wiped off his spectacles, fastened them on his
nose, and began carefully to weigh the gold pieces. Two or three of them
he rejected as being too light. The horse-dealer raised a loud objection
to this, but the Justice, holding the scales in his hands, only listened
in cold-blooded silence, until the other replaced them with pieces
having full weight. Finally, the business was completed; the seller
deliberately wrapped the money in a piece of paper and went with the
horse-dealer to the stable, in order to deliver the horse over to him.
The receiver did not wait for them to return. "One can't accomplish
anything with a clod-hopper like that," he said. "I But in the end if
you don't come around and pay us up regularly, we will--" He felt for
the legal documents in his pocket, realized by their crackling that they
were still there, and left the yard.
Out of the stable came the horse-dealer, the Justice, and a farm-hand
who was leading behind him two horses, the horse-dealer's own and the
brown mare which he had just bought. The Justice, giving the latter a
farewell pat, said "It always grieves one to sell a creature which one
has raised, but who can do otherwise?--Now behave well, little brownie!"
he added, giving the animal a hearty slap on her round, glossy
haunches. In the meantime the horse-dealer had mounted. With his gaunt
figure, his short riding-jacket under the broad-brimmed, varnished hat,
his yellow breeches over his lean thighs, his high leather boots, his
large, heavy spurs, and his whip, he looked like a highwayman. He rode
away cursing and swearing, without saying good-by, leading the brown
mare by a halter. He never once glanced back at the farm-house, but the
mare several times bent her neck around and emitted a doleful neigh, as
if complaining because her good days were now over. The Justice remained
standing with the laborer, his arms set akimbo, until the two horses had
passed out of sight through the orchard. Then the man said: "The animal
is grieving."
"Why shouldn't she?" replied the Justice. "Aren't we grieving too? Come
up to the granary--we'll measure the oats."