Generally speaking the best people are excessively reserved in their
relations to one another, even when they are living under favourable
conditions and are themselves highly cultured. Our likes and dislikes,
our finest, most private and tender emotions are suppressed beneath
the threshold of consciousness, while the greater part of what we do,
feel, and think is not in the least natural, and is not at all the
true expression of our nature. What I mean is that up till now there
has only been a single point where we are able to break through that
which we call our life, because it is only on this one central point
that our real nature bursts through the numbness and coolness of the
outer world. That is the apocalypse of love. But it is not at all to
be despaired of, that with a more universal refining of mankind, this
possibility may also be realised on other and more prominent points.
I think that Heyse’s way of expressing it is not at all idealistic or
unreal. How many of love’s suicides has he not verified! How many of
love’s suicides, of whom we read in the papers, have not afforded ample
proof to the psychologists of that which Heyse’s more sceptical critics
have accused as being a trick of the imagination. We read in hundreds
of clever and stupid books of how Hans and Grete fight each other, but
we never read of how Hans and Grete live the secrets of a happy love;
we never read of life’s happy ones.
Why? Because it requires a far subtler and more delicate psychological
touch to describe it. Even Heyse has not described it; even he has
not given us a modern picture filled with the rich tones of life’s
fleeting moments, with the magic of the varying lights upon it, such
as an artist catches when he paints a landscape. He has always been
content to make quite a plain little pencil drawing, in which the
distinguishing features are only faintly outlined. The great service
which he rendered was that he called attention to their existence.
In these little drawings we discern the psychological, fundamental law
which has been almost forgotten amid the little world that surrounds us
with its secondary laws; it is namely this: That in every particular
individual there is a central point which, when set in motion, towers
high above its surroundings, while as a natural consequence everything
assumes a new aspect. The result of this aspect is that everything
becomes of secondary importance if it has no connection with the one
central point. This central point is the finer need of love, which no
longer knows anything but itself when once a sympathetic presence has
awakened it to its full strength.
We have now reached the second psychological consideration. Does a like
sympathetic effect proceed from the one influenced? We are not asking
whether the influence is more or less intense, but whether the effect
is sufficiently powerful to raise the other tower-high above everything
in view of new aspects? Because a refined instinct of natural selection
must be able to alight on an equally high temperature, must be as
unconditionally selected as it itself selects. Everything depends on
this--the affirmation or negation of life--a compromise is impossible!
How often, as in _Memorable Words_, Paul Heyse has underlined those
seemingly insignificant details like a tone of the voice, a smile, a
difference of opinion or a trivial expression which suddenly, no one
knows how, acts as a stop to the current of sympathy which had just
begun. The one frees himself, but the other is no longer able to do so,
and the impulse of his heart overflows into chaos. Therefore love is
the Incommensurable. Love cannot be acquired, cannot be earned, cannot
be obtained by artifice, and it cannot be dispensed with. Paul Heyse
describes how some noble-minded men and women remain alone, not from
obtuseness of the instinct of natural selection, but from refinement,
because they could not find all they wanted.
The third psychological consideration, and the sum of his entire
philosophy of life, is his fatalism. That of itself would be sufficient
to place Heyse apart, in these times when the ruling standard is that
of the multitude. He has the proud submission of a profound insight
which knows that, in the final instance and in the highest matters,
we have nothing in our own power. That which we most earnestly desire
comes, or it comes not, but we cannot do anything one way or the
other. It is true that there is in us a mysterious impulse, as dark
and unknown to ourselves as life itself, which drives us on to where
our personal happiness is to be found, draws us into the Unknown and
entices us until we are led towards that which is ours in life. But we
know nothing of it at the time, and not in every one does it attain to
development.