The Philistine as founder of the religion of the future--that is the
new belief in its most emphatic form of expression. The Philistine
becomes a dreamer--that is the unheard-of occurrence which
distinguishes the German nation of to-day. But for the present, in any
case, let us maintain an attitude of caution towards this fantastic
exaltation. For does not David Strauss himself advise us to exercise
such caution, in the following profound passage, the general tone of
which leads us to think of the Founder of Christianity rather than of
our particular author? (p. 92): "We know there have been noble
enthusiasts--enthusiasts of genius; the influence of an enthusiast can
rouse, exalt, and produce prolonged historic effects; but we do not
wish to choose him as the guide of our life. He will be sure to
mislead us, if we do not subject his influence to the control of
reason." But we know something more: we know that there are
enthusiasts who are not intellectual, who do not rouse or exalt, and
who, nevertheless, not only expect to be the guides of our lives, but,
as such, to exercise a very lasting historical influence into the
bargain, and to rule the future;--all the more reason why we should
place their influence under the control of reason. Lichtenberg even
said: "There are enthusiasts quite devoid of ability, and these are
really dangerous people." In the first place, as regards the
above-mentioned control of reason, we should like to have candid
answers to the three following questions: First, how does the new
believer picture his heaven? Secondly, how far does the courage lent
him by the new faith extend? And, thirdly, how does he write his
books? Strauss the Confessor must answer the first and second
questions; Strauss the Writer must answer the third.
The heaven of the new believer must, perforce, be a heaven upon earth;
for the Christian "prospect of an immortal life in heaven," together
with the other consolations, "must irretrievably vanish" for him who
has but "one foot" on the Straussian platform. The way in which a
religion represents its heaven is significant, and if it be true that
Christianity knows no other heavenly occupations than singing and
making music, the prospect of the Philistine, _à la_ Strauss, is truly
not a very comforting one. In the book of confessions, however, there
is a page which treats of Paradise (p. 342). Happiest of Philistines,
unroll this parchment scroll before anything else, and the whole of
heaven will seem to clamber down to thee! "We would but indicate how
we act, how we have acted these many years. Besides our
profession--for we are members of the most various professions, and by
no means exclusively consist of scholars or artists, but of military
men and civil employés, of merchants and landed proprietors;... and
again, as I have said already, there are not a few of us, but many
thousands, and not the worst people in the country;--besides our
profession, then, I say, we are eagerly accessible to all the higher
interests of humanity; we have taken a vivid interest, during late
years, and each after his manner has participated in the great
national war, and the reconstruction of the German State; and we have
been profoundly exalted by the turn events have taken, as unexpected
as glorious, for our much tried nation. To the end of forming just
conclusions in these things, we study history, which has now been made
easy, even to the unlearned, by a series of attractively and popularly
written works; at the same time, we endeavour to enlarge our knowledge
of the natural sciences, where also there is no lack of sources of
information; and lastly, in the writings of our great poets, in the
performances of our great musicians, we find a stimulus for the
intellect and heart, for wit and imagination, which leaves nothing to
be desired. Thus we live, and hold on our way in joy."
"Here is our man!" cries the Philistine exultingly, who reads this:
"for this is exactly how we live; it is indeed our daily life."[3]
And how perfectly he understands the euphemism! When, for example, he
refers to the historical studies by means of which we help ourselves
in forming just conclusions regarding the political situation, what
can he be thinking of, if it be not our newspaper-reading? When he
speaks of the active part we take in the reconstruction of the German
State, he surely has only our daily visits to the beer-garden in his
mind; and is not a walk in the Zoological Gardens implied by 'the
sources of information through which we endeavour to enlarge our
knowledge of the natural sciences'? Finally, the theatres and
concert-halls are referred to as places from which we take home 'a
stimulus for wit and imagination which leaves nothing to be
desired.'--With what dignity and wit he describes even the most
suspicious of our doings! Here indeed is our man; for his heaven is
our heaven!"
[3] This alludes to a German student-song.
Thus cries the Philistine; and if we are not quite so satisfied as he,
it is merely owing to the fact that we wanted to know more. Scaliger
used to say: "What does it matter to us whether Montaigne drank red or
white wine?" But, in this more important case, how greatly ought we to
value definite particulars of this sort! If we could but learn how
many pipes the Philistine smokes daily, according to the prescriptions
of the new faith, and whether it is the _Spener_ or the _National Gazette_
that appeals to him over his coffee! But our curiosity is not
satisfied. With regard to one point only do we receive more exhaustive
information, and fortunately this point relates to the heaven in
heaven--the private little art-rooms which will be consecrated to the
use of great poets and musicians, and to which the Philistine will go
to edify himself; in which, moreover, according to his own showing, he
will even get "all his stains removed and wiped away" (p. 433); so
that we are led to regard these private little art-rooms as a kind of
bath-rooms. "But this is only effected for some fleeting moments; it
happens and counts only in the realms of phantasy; as soon as we
return to rude reality, and the cramping confines of actual life, we
are again on all sides assailed by the old cares,"--thus our Master
sighs. Let us, however, avail ourselves of the fleeting moments during
which we remain in those little rooms; there is just sufficient time
to get a glimpse of the apotheosis of the Philistine--that is to say,
the Philistine whose stains have been removed and wiped away, and who
is now an absolutely pure sample of his type. In truth, the
opportunity we have here may prove instructive: let no one who happens
to have fallen a victim to the confession-book lay it aside before
having read the two appendices, "Of our Great Poets" and "Of our Great
Musicians." Here the rainbow of the new brotherhood is set, and he who
can find no pleasure in it "for such an one there is no help," as
Strauss says on another occasion; and, as he might well say here, "he
is not yet ripe for our point of view." For are we not in the heaven
of heavens? The enthusiastic explorer undertakes to lead us about, and
begs us to excuse him if, in the excess of his joy at all the beauties
to be seen, he should by any chance be tempted to talk too much. "If I
should, perhaps, become more garrulous than may seem warranted in this
place, let the reader be indulgent to me; for out of the abundance of
the heart the mouth speaketh. Let him only be assured that what he is
now about to read does not consist of older materials, which I take
the opportunity of inserting here, but that these remarks have been
written for their present place and purpose" (pp. 345-46). This
confession surprises us somewhat for the moment. What can it matter to
us whether or not the little chapters were freshly written? As if it
were a matter of writing! Between ourselves, I should have been glad
if they had been written a quarter of a century earlier; then, at
least, I should have understood why the thoughts seem to be so
bleached, and why they are so redolent of resuscitated antiquities.
But that a thing should have been written in 1872 and already smell of
decay in 1872 strikes me as suspicious. Let us imagine some one's
falling asleep while reading these chapters--what would he most
probably dream about? A friend answered this question for me, because
he happened to have had the experience himself. He dreamt of a
wax-work show. The classical writers stood there, elegantly
represented in wax and beads. Their arms and eyes moved, and a screw
inside them creaked an accompaniment to their movements. He saw
something gruesome among them--a misshapen figure, decked with tapes
and jaundiced paper, out of whose mouth a ticket hung, on which
"Lessing" was written. My friend went close up to it and learned the
worst: it was the Homeric Chimera; in front it was Strauss, behind it
was Gervinus, and in the middle Chimera. The _tout-ensemble_ was
Lessing. This discovery caused him to shriek with terror: he waked,
and read no more. In sooth, Great Master, why have you written such
fusty little chapters?
We do, indeed, learn something new from them; for instance, that
Gervinus made it known to the world how and why Goethe was no dramatic
genius; that, in the second part of Faust, he had only produced a
world of phantoms and of symbols; that Wallenstein is a Macbeth as
well as a Hamlet; that the Straussian reader extracts the short
stories out of the _Wanderjahre_ "much as naughty children pick the
raisins and almonds out of a tough plum-cake"; that no complete effect
can be produced on the stage without the forcible element, and that
Schiller emerged from Kant as from a cold-water cure. All this is
certainly new and striking; but, even so, it does not strike us with
wonder, and so sure as it is new, it will never grow old, for it never
was young; it was senile at birth. What extraordinary ideas seem to
occur to these Blessed Ones, after the New Style, in their æsthetic
heaven! And why can they not manage to forget a few of them, more
particularly when they are of that unæsthetic, earthly, and ephemeral
order to which the scholarly thoughts of Gervinus belong, and when
they so obviously bear the stamp of puerility? But it almost seems as
though the modest greatness of a Strauss and the vain insignificance
of a Gervinus were only too well able to harmonise: then long live all
those Blessed Ones! may we, the rejected, also live long, if this
unchallenged judge of art continues any longer to teach his borrowed
enthusiasm, and the gallop of that hired steed of which the honest
Grillparzer speaks with such delightful clearness, until the whole of
heaven rings beneath the hoof of that galumphing enthusiasm. Then, at
least, things will be livelier and noisier than they are at the
present moment, in which the carpet-slippered rapture of our heavenly
leader and the lukewarm eloquence of his lips only succeed in the end
in making us sick and tired. I should like to know how a Hallelujah
sung by Strauss would sound: I believe one would have to listen very
carefully, lest it should seem no more than a courteous apology or a
lisped compliment. Apropos of this, I might adduce an instructive and
somewhat forbidding example. Strauss strongly resented the action of
one of his opponents who happened to refer to his reverence for
Lessing. The unfortunate man had misunderstood;--true, Strauss did
declare that one must be of a very obtuse mind not to recognise that
the simple words of paragraph 86 come from the writer's heart. Now, I
do not question this warmth in the very least; on the contrary, the
fact that Strauss fosters these feelings towards Lessing has always
excited my suspicion; I find the same warmth for Lessing raised almost
to heat in Gervinus--yea, on the whole, no great German writer is so
popular among little German writers as Lessing is; but for all that,
they deserve no thanks for their predilection; for what is it, in
sooth, that they praise in Lessing? At one moment it is his
catholicity--the fact that he was critic and poet, archæologist and
philosopher, dramatist and theologian. Anon, "it is the unity in him
of the writer and the man, of the head and the heart." The last
quality, as a rule, is just as characteristic of the great writer as
of the little one; as a rule, a narrow head agrees only too fatally
with a narrow heart. And as to the catholicity; this is no
distinction, more especially when, as in Lessing's case, it was a dire
necessity. What astonishes one in regard to Lessing-enthusiasts is
rather that they have no conception of the devouring necessity which
drove him on through life and to this catholicity; no feeling for the
fact that such a man is too prone to consume himself rapidly, like a
flame; nor any indignation at the thought that the vulgar narrowness
and pusillanimity of his whole environment, especially of his learned
contemporaries, so saddened, tormented, and stifled the tender and
ardent creature that he was, that the very universality for which he
is praised should give rise to feelings of the deepest compassion.
"Have pity on the exceptional man!" Goethe cries to us; "for it was
his lot to live in such a wretched age that his life was one long
polemical effort." How can ye, my worthy Philistines, think of Lessing
without shame? He who was ruined precisely on account of your
stupidity, while struggling with your ludicrous fetiches and idols,
with the defects of your theatres, scholars, and theologists, without
once daring to attempt that eternal flight for which he had been born.
And what are your feelings when ye think of Winckelman, who, in order
to turn his eyes from your grotesque puerilities, went begging to the
Jesuits for help, and whose ignominious conversion dishonours not him,
but you? Dare ye mention Schiller's name without blushing? Look at his
portrait. See the flashing eyes that glance contemptuously over your
heads, the deadly red cheek--do these things mean nothing to you? In
him ye had such a magnificent and divine toy that ye shattered it.
Suppose, for a moment, it had been possible to deprive this harassed
and hunted life of Goethe's friendship, ye would then have been
responsible for its still earlier end. Ye have had no finger in any one
of the life-works of your great geniuses, and yet ye would make a
dogma to the effect that no one is to be helped in the future. But for
every one of them, ye were "the resistance of the obtuse world," which
Goethe calls by its name in his epilogue to the Bell; for all of them
ye were the grumbling imbeciles, or the envious bigots, or the
malicious egoists: in spite of you each of them created his works,
against you each directed his attacks, and thanks to you each
prematurely sank, while his work was still unfinished, broken and
bewildered by the stress of the battle. And now ye presume that ye are
going to be permitted, tamquam re bene gesta, to praise such men! and
with words which leave no one in any doubt as to whom ye have in your
minds when ye utter your encomiums, which therefore "spring forth with
such hearty warmth" that one must be blind not to see to whom ye are
really bowing. Even Goethe in his day had to cry: "Upon my honour, we
are in need of a Lessing, and woe unto all vain masters and to the
whole æsthetic kingdom of heaven, when the young tiger, whose
restless strength will be visible in his every distended muscle and
his every glance, shall sally forth to seek his prey!"