The Parents of Princess Elizabeth.
We have caused a long series of pictures from life to pass before
us, and yet we have learnt to know but a small proportion of the
distinguished men and women who belonged to the House of Wied. PRINCE
HERMAN, who was born in 1814, was also one of the most distinguished
men of his time. After he had finished his studies in Göttingen,
travelled in Germany and France, and served for some time in a regiment
of Guards in Berlin, he undertook the management of his numerous
estates. Of noble and aristocratic appearance, he was endowed with the
finest qualities of the heart and was distinguished by his modesty,
which virtue was ever to be found in the House of Wied. He was a man of
deep learning and culture, and of great intellectual power. Being of a
philosophic turn of mind which was of a speculative cast, the highest
object of his life was a ceaseless endeavour to attain to a knowledge
of the important questions which concern the physical and spiritual
condition of man. His mind was constantly fixed on the mysterious
problems of human nature. The results of his reflections are enshrined
in a work which was anonymously published in 1859 and bore the title
“The Unconscious Life of the Soul and the Manifestations of God.” Many
experiences which took place in his own house or with which he had come
in contact had convinced him of the reality and the efficiency of the
superhuman elements in man. He did not doubt the fact of the magnetic
powers of feeling, somnambulism, electric affinities, clairvoyance, &c.
In order to elucidate these facts, the Prince sought to establish a
theory which he himself only termed an hypothesis; that the essential
conditions of human nature should be a body, soul, and spirit; the soul
a personal and conscious principle, whilst the creative spirit is of
God, ever present and working within man--an unconscious principle. The
Prince named these “the three conditions of human nature,” and this
theory was the foundation of his views of life. His work, therefore,
has to do with the unconscious life of the soul. The spirit manifests
itself, the soul is acted upon by the spirit. What the spirit creates
awakes the consciousness in the soul. The unconscious life of the soul
is, therefore, a revelation of godly power. What Mesmer denominated
magnetic power is, according to the Prince, the power of God. It is
a creative and life-giving power, which can heal the infirmities of
the human body, restore organic life, and elevate spiritual life.
Consequently the Prince regarded the so-called magnetic power as
sacred, and magnetic healing as a religious work. We gather from this
that the Prince acknowledges that these revelations are of God, but
does not understand the idea in a dogmatic light. He does not regard
the workings of this power as a miracle in the ordinary sense of the
word, but as natural occurrences; still, he believes with Hamlet that
nature possesses more and higher powers “than are dreamt of in our
philosophy.”
As, according to the fundamental idea of his philosophy with regard to
the threefold nature of man, soul and spirit may indeed act together,
but at the same time they exist separate from one another, and, being
by no means identical, the Prince could not assent to the dicta of
the so-called Philosophers of Identity (_Identitats Philosophen_).
The latter assert the identity of nature and spirit; they look upon
the human mind as being evolved from the divine, and upon the soul as
being evolved from the mind; he therefore rejected the Pantheistic as
well as the philosophical systems of Schelling and Hegel, and classed
himself with those philosophers whom Schelling called _Reflections
menschen_, _i.e._, thinkers who, according to the ordinary view, retain
the contrast between the inner and the outer worlds, between internal
and external phenomena, between perceptions and things, thinking
and being, but who consider any knowledge going beyond this, and
endeavouring to overcome this contrast by comprehending the unity of
all things, to be impossible. His views were similar to those of Kant.
Prince Herman therefore felt himself specially attracted towards the
Königsberg philosopher, who in his critical works had so accurately and
carefully distinguished the intellectual or spiritual world from the
sensuous, the essence of things or the things-in-themselves from the
phenomena. Only with respect to the free will of man he felt unable
to follow the teaching of Kant, who, while declaring the essence
of man as well as of things in general to lie beyond the range of
knowledge, asserted the same with regard to that moral freedom which
(as the Prince thought) should reveal itself to us by means of moral
self-examination and become practically intelligible. Here Prince
Herman thought he perceived a contradiction which he set himself to
remove. With that object he wrote and published an essay entitled
“The Results of an Examination of Kant’s Doctrine of Free Will.” To
refute the objections he encountered, he defended his point of view in
a pamphlet published shortly before his death under the title “_Replik
und Duplik_.” It had been his endeavour to give an explanation of
human free will, and the objection had been made that his doctrine was
“Determinism.” That doctrine, briefly expressed, was as follows. Free
will, properly understood, consists in the liberty of will or choice,
that is, in the power of choosing one among several possibilities
or motives of action, which presupposes the power of reflection, of
consideration, or of doubt. If man were omniscient, he would not
have to reflect or to consider. Divine omniscience excludes free
will, whereas human ignorance includes free will. Because the greater
part of the conditions under which we act remains hidden to us, we
act without knowing our dependence, and imagine a limited number of
possibilities from among which we may choose. Consequently we cannot
help imagining ourselves to be free, and this necessary imagination,
the Prince thinks, is really freedom itself. The choice only is free,
not the effect. According to the Prince’s view, therefore, there are
no free causes. The notion of a free cause appears to him as an empty
phantom--“a cloud, which Polonius at one time takes for a camel, at
another for a weasel, and which yet remains nothing but vapour.”
With his usual modesty, Prince Herman never represents his views as
infallible, but regards them as material for the solution of the
difficult problems of the connection of man to the spiritual world. He
regarded opinions which differed from his own with the toleration of
a thoughtful man who honours all intellectual labour. In his personal
principles he was truly German. That the unity of Germany could only
be brought about by means of Prussia was his firm conviction. He hoped
that the German Princes would be brought to renounce their sovereignty
of their own free will, for the good of their country. He did not doubt
that sooner or later circumstances would induce them to do so. In the
Upper House Prince Herman represented Liberal opinions, but he soon
retired from public life in order to live entirely for his family and
his philosophic labours. He studied the historic works of Mommsen,
Häusser, and Ranke with peculiar interest. Besides which he had a
deep feeling for art, and was himself a painter of no mean merit. In
consequence of a bath which he had imprudently taken at the camp of
Kilish in 1835 the Prince contracted an illness which was a hindrance
to him for the rest of his life, and was the cause of his early death.
In 1842 Prince Herman married the youthful Princess Marie of Nassau.
She was eminently fitted to fulfil the duties which devolved upon her
in her position of princess, wife, and mother. Of dignified appearance,
she is distinguished by her personal beauty and her truly noble mind.
She is a woman of great power of will, of clear judgment, wonderful
devotion, and untiring energy; very severe in what she demands of
herself, whilst her kindness and indulgence towards all with whom
she comes in contact are unbounded. Having been much tried herself
by sorrow and suffering, the Princess feels a true sympathy for the
sufferings of others. To minister to the wants of the sick and poor,
and to comfort them with her personal sympathy, is her greatest
happiness. In the homes of the poor at Neuwied she is regarded as a
beneficent angel, and a blessing enters with her. She possesses the
happy gift of winning the love and sympathy of all classes of people.
The Princess is beloved and honoured by all, and her wonderful charm
delights all who approach her.
[Illustration]