Helmholtz’s interpretation of Faraday, and of Maxwell’s answer to the
question: “What is Light?” I then managed to have another discussion
with Professor Koenig. He listened most attentively to my description
of the Faraday-Maxwell electromagnetic theory as I had gathered it
from Helmholtz; and it was, as far as I can recall it now, very
similar to the description given above. This was my first lecture at
the University of Berlin, delivered to a very intelligent audience of
one person, dear little Doctor Koenig. It would have been a signal
success if I had not closed it with a tactless remark, to the effect
that Helmholtz, in his Faraday address, rejected every one of the
four German electrical theories, and declared himself in favor of
Faraday and Maxwell. Helmholtz intimated, and unfortunately I did not
hesitate to say so to Doctor Koenig, that physicists of continental
Europe had not accepted the English theory because it was above their
heads. Finally I said that all this explained most satisfactorily why
Kirchhoff paid so little attention to Faraday and Maxwell. Koenig
looked at his watch, and, as if suddenly remembering an important
engagement, he turned on his heels and left without his customary bow
and greeting. His national pride was evidently wounded. I regretted
it deeply. I did my best to make up with him and succeeded finally,
by admitting unreservedly that, after all, the Faraday-Maxwell
electromagnetic theory rested upon several bold assumptions which had
not yet been verified by experiment. The German electrical theories
also rested upon unverified assumptions, but I said nothing about that
for fear of endangering the re-established _entente cordiale_ between
Doctor Koenig and myself.
Excellenz von Helmholtz had left Berlin for his summer vacation; among
my German fellow students at the Physical Institute there was not much
interest in Faraday and Maxwell. I do not know how difficult it is to
conceal a deep secret, because I never had one to conceal; but I do
know how hard it is to keep imprisoned in one’s heart the joy which one
feels when the light of new knowledge rises above one’s mental horizon.
I had planned to visit my mother during that summer; I had not seen
her for nearly two years. Perhaps, I thought, I might find somebody
in my native Banat to whom I could disclose the joy which I received
from the revelation which came to me through Helmholtz. Kos, my teacher
of fifteen years before in Panchevo, was no longer among the living;
in fact, that school was no longer in existence, the Hungarian régime
having replaced it by a Hungarian school. I would have liked nothing
better than to tell him how Maxwell answered the question: “What is
Light?”
* * * * *
In the beginning of August of that summer I was in Idvor again,
carrying with me the two volumes of Helmholtz’s addresses. My mother
received me with a heart which she described as overflowing with
blessings which my visit and the visit of God’s grace upon Idvor
was pouring into it. The golden harvest was all in, and it was the
richest that Idvor had seen for many a year; the grapes in the old
vineyards were beginning to ripen, and the peach-trees among the rows
of vines in the vineyards were heavily loaded with the juicy fruit of
ambrosial flavor; the melons in the endless melon patches looked big
and flourishing, and suggested that at any moment they might burst with
the fulness of their exuberant prosperity. The dark-green corn-fields
seemed to groan under the heavy load of the young ears of corn, and
the pasturelands alongside of the corn-fields were alive with flocks
of sheep, carrying udders which reminded one of the abundance of milk,
cream, and cheese such as Idvor had seldom seen. All these things my
mother pointed out to me, and she assured me that by the grace of
God she was enabled to be a bountiful hostess to me, because she had
everything in great abundance which she knew I always liked. Melons,
cooled at the bottom of a deep well; grapes and peaches picked before
sunrise and covered up with vine-leaves to keep them cool and fresh;
young corn picked late in the afternoon and roasted in the evening in
front of a wood fire; cream from sheep’s milk supplied by the blessed
sheep the day before. All these were sweet and delicious things; but
have you ever tasted them when their sweetness is flavored by the love
of an indulgent mother? If you have not, then you do not know what
sweetness is. I warned my mother that her hospitality might transform
me, as three years before, into a pampered pet who would be too slow
to return to Berlin. Reminding me of the story which she had told me
two years before, describing my climb up the steep and slippery roof
of Bukovala’s mill in search of a star, she said: “You have done much
climbing during the last two years, and I know that in your climbing
you have found several real stars from heaven. One of them is now in
Berlin and no sweets in Idvor will keep you away from it.” She guessed
right, undoubtedly because she observed with what joy I kept up, during
that vacation, my reading of Helmholtz’s addresses.
Many a night during that summer I spent in my mother’s vineyard
sleeping on sheepskins under the open sky and looking at the stars at
which I looked fifteen years before, when I helped the herdsman to
guard the village oxen during the starlit summer nights. I remembered
the puzzles which I tried to solve at that time concerning the nature
of sound and of light, succeeding in the case of sound and failing
in the case of light. I rejoiced at the feeling that I had finally
succeeded in finding from Faraday and Maxwell through Helmholtz that
sound and light resembled each other, one being a vibration of matter,
and the other a vibration of electricity. The fact that I did not
know what electricity is did not disturb me, because I did not know
what matter is. Nobody knows the exact nature of these even to-day,
except, as Faraday suggested, that they are manifestations of force.
David’s nineteenth Psalm, which I recited so often fifteen years before
during my training in herdsmanship, conveyed a different meaning, and
so did Lyermontoff’s line which says that “star speaketh to star.”
They certainly spoke to me during those glorious August nights, when,
covered with sheepskins, I lay in my mother’s vineyard and amid the
deep silence of slumbering earth I listened to their heavenly tales.
The more I listened the more I became reconciled to the idea that
the language of the stars reaches me in the same way that human
language does, when it speeds on over the telephone wire, conveyed by
vibratory electric and magnetic forces; except that in the transmission
of the telephonic message the vibratory forces glide along the
conducting wire, whereas the stars pour out their waves of vibratory
electromagnetic forces in ever-expanding spheres so that they may
carry the heavenly message to every other star and to everything that
lives, and to everything that has a being. I could not help telling my
mother of my new knowledge which persuaded me that light is a vibration
of electricity, very much like the vibration of the melodious string
described in the Serbian figure of speech, familiar to her, which says:
My heart quivers like the melodious string under the guslar’s bow.
She always was the most attentive audience that I ever had, and the
most responsive. Her wonderful memory, even at that time when she
was seventy years of age, assigned to every essential event of her
experience a suitable place, so that it became a vital chord in
the symphony of her life. She never heard anything worth hearing
without responding with one of these harmonious chords, and this was
particularly true when I was speaking to her. On this particular
occasion, referring to my new knowledge which I brought to Idvor from
Berlin, she reminded me of my new knowledge about lightning which I had
acquired from my teacher Kos, in Panchevo, some fifteen years before,
and afterward tried to explain it to my father and his peasant friends,
who accused me of heresy; and she recalled her defense of me. She
suggested, jokingly, that if my father and his old friends had still
been living they would perhaps accuse me again of heresy on account of
some old legends which clashed with my new knowledge; and she assured
me that she would defend me again. “God sends sunlight,” she said,
“to melt the ice and snow of the early spring, and to resurrect from
death everything that lay lifeless in the cold grave of the bosom of
mother earth, chilled by the icy breath of winter. The same sunlight,”
she continued, “awakens the fields, the meadows, and the pasturelands,
and bids them raise the daily bread of man and beast; it also ripens
the honey-hearted fruit in orchards and vineyards. If that is all done
by the same heavenly force which hurls the lightning across the sombre
summer clouds pregnant with showers, and also carries, as you say, the
humble human voice over the wires between distant peoples, then I see
in it a new proof of God’s infinite wisdom which uses one means only
to do great things as well as small. Ko che ko Bog! Who can fathom the
power of God!” I reminded her of her saying which she often addressed
to me when I was a boy and which I quoted before, namely: “Knowledge is
the golden ladder over which we climb to heaven,” and asked her whether
she included in this the knowledge which I was describing to her.
“I include every knowledge,” she said, “which brings me nearer to
God; and this new knowledge certainly does. Just think of it, my son:
God has been sending his messages from star to star and, according
to David, from the stars to man, ever since the creation of Adam,
employing the very same method and means which man, imitating the
divine method, is beginning to use when he employs electricity to
carry his message to a distant friend. Your teachers who gave you that
knowledge are as wise as the prophets and as holy as the holiest saints
in heaven.”
When I told her of Faraday’s vision, that all things extend to and
exist in every spot of the universe at the same time and that,
therefore, all things are in perpetual contact with each other, every
star feeling, so to speak, the heart-beat of every other star and of
every living thing, even of the tiniest little worm in the earth, she
answered:
“Faraday’s science is that part of my religion which is described in
the words addressed to God by King David:
“‘Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from
thy presence?
“‘If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in
hell, behold, thou art there.’
God is everywhere, and where he is, there is every part of his
creation.” Her religion taught her how to catch the spirit of science,
and I was always certain that science can teach us how to catch the
spirit of her religion.
IX
END OF STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN
I confess that when I first arrived in Berlin I brought with me old
prejudices, which were annoying, to say the least. The Teutonism in
Prague, when I was a schoolboy there, had made lasting impressions
upon my young mind; they were with me when I landed at Castle Garden.
Early impressions are very persistent and cannot be obliterated by
time alone. Christian’s father, the innkeeper of West Street, and
his friends, the hardy Friesland sailors who taught me how to handle
the paint-brush, drew me closer to the German heart, and I found it
much less grasping than I thought it was. But the Frieslander of
those days had no great love for the Prussian. Bilharz, the idealist
of Cortlandt Street, gave me a more intimate knowledge of the German
temper, and helped much to dispel many of my early prejudices. But
Bilharz displayed decided dislike for the Prussians. The few German
friends whom I had during my “greenhorn” days were southern Germans,
and they did not appear to be very friendly to the idea of a united
Germany under Prussian hegemony. These early experiences encouraged
me in the belief that the Prussians were probably responsible for the
Teutonism which I disliked. This belief was strengthened by Bismarck’s
anti-Russian and anti-Serbian, but strongly pro-Austrian, policy at
the treaty of Berlin in 1878. He protested, I knew, that he would
not sacrifice the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier for all the
Balkans; but I did not believe him. Hence the uncomfortable feeling
of being in an enemy country, when I first came to and settled down in
Berlin.
The Teutonism of Prague, more than anything else, was responsible for
it. Racial antipathy is one of the saddest of psychic derangements;
and, although it is a repulsive product of modern nationalism, the
world does less than nothing to get rid of its insidious poisons.
European civilization is being destroyed by it. I suffered from its
evil effects during the early days of my life in Berlin. Helmholtz,
Koenig, and all the officers in the Physical Institute showed me every
kindness and consideration, and that prevented me from turning around
and speeding back to Cambridge as soon as the first breath of the
atmosphere of Berlin gave me an acute attack of anti-Teutonism. My
German landlady and her friends, as well as the German students I met
in the lecture-rooms, struck no responsive chord in my heart, because
it was out of tune with my surroundings. I remained a stranger in a
cold, strange land. A young Scotch friend of mine, a graduate of the
University of Glasgow, appeared on the scene, some time after I had
become settled in Berlin. He kept his promise, given me at Arran, to
join me in Berlin. He stayed at the university for one semester only
and heard lectures on Roman law. He looked like a northern Apollo: tall
and erect, the pink of youth radiating from his handsome face, and the
locks of purest gold adorning a lofty brow, which made you believe
that you were looking at a young Sir Walter Scott. His deep-blue eyes
knew of no suspicions, and his heart had never been touched by the
poison of racial antipathy. He loved the world and the world loved
him. His knowledge of German was very poor, and yet everybody loved to
talk to him. Even the stern Schutzman (policeman), stirred up to white
heat by too noisy a rendering of American and Scotch college songs in
the slumbering streets of Berlin, was as gentle as a dove when the
blue-eyed young Scot stood in front of him and greeted him with a
honey-hearted smile. My landlady, quite an aged person, as well as her
young boarders, begged me to bring him to dinner as often as possible.
“Yes, do bring him,” said a sarcastic young fräulein; “you look quite
human and almost handsome when he is around.” There was much truth in
what she said; the poison of racial antipathy did not operate in me
when he was present. He made friends on every side among the German
students, and when I saw how he warmed up to them and how they warmed
up to him I began to thaw out myself. Helmholtz and dear little Koenig
were the first persons in Berlin who helped me to forget that Europe
was made up of different races who lived in eternal suspicion of each
other. After that, following the example of my Scotch friend, I began
to rid myself of the poisonous infection which I received from the
Teutonism in Prague; but it was a slow process. Helmholtz’s address on
Faraday was so warm and so generous to Faraday as well as to Maxwell,
and so wonderfully just, that I began to question the justice of my
anti-Teutonic prejudices.
The two volumes of Helmholtz’s addresses and public speeches which I
enjoyed so much during that summer in my mother’s vineyard made me
almost repentant. My mother knew of my anti-Teutonic sentiments and
never approved of them. One day we drove to visit my younger sister,
who lived about fifteen miles from Idvor. On the way we passed through
a large village, Echka, having a mixed population of German, Rumanian,
and Serb peasants. There was a striking contrast in the appearance of
the houses, of the people, and of their methods of moving about in the
pursuit of their daily work. The German peasants were far ahead of the
Rumanians as well as of the Serbs. My mother called my attention to it,
but I made no comment. Presently we passed the stately Roman Catholic
church of the village, which looked like a cathedral. It was built,
I was told, by the German peasants of Echka, and my mother told me
that it was crowded on Sundays and holidays, and that the priest was a
very learned and a very good man. When we passed the Orthodox church,
which was quite small and insignificant-looking, my mother said: “Would
you not feel ashamed if St. Sava came down to earth again and after
seeing that splendid German church looked at this hut which is called
the Orthodox church? But small as it is you will never find it filled
except at some weddings or at memorial services for some departed rich
person, when people expect much feasting.”
Again I made no comment, because I was opposed to “alien intruders”
myself, as some people called the German colonists; and my mother
looked disappointed. Just then we saw two peasant girls carrying
river water in shining copper vessels. These vessels were suspended
at the ends of a long flexible staff which was nicely balanced on the
shoulder of each young carrier, so that one vessel was in front and
one behind her. The first girl was a blonde with slippers on her feet;
a simple dark-blue dress covered her youthful figure and displayed
the successive phases of her rhythmical movement. It was synchronized
with the swinging motion of the bright copper vessels, which moved up
and down like a double pendulum, bending the flexible shaft around
its point of support on the shoulder of the fair carrier. The copper
vessels, although filled to the brim, did not spill a single drop of
water; the perfect adjustment of the swinging motion of the carrier
to that of the swinging shaft produced this admirable result. The
girl, the staff, and the shining vessels stood in a beautiful harmonic
relation to each other. They reminded one of the harmonics in a sweet
musical chord. It was a beautiful sight, and I said so. My mother,
noticing my sudden burst of enthusiasm, sounded a warning. “She is a
German girl,” she said, “and she certainly is lovely. Her heart and
soul are in her job. But if you find one like her in Berlin, remember
your promise; you must marry an American girl if you wish to remain an
American, which I know you do.”
She evidently had become a little alarmed at the thought that her
praises of the Germans might cause my sentiments to swing too far the
other way. The second water-carrier was a barefooted and gaudy-looking
lassie, who stepped along any old way and marked her track with
frequent splashes of water from the copper vessels. “She is a wild
Rumanian,” exclaimed my mother; “she can dance like a Vila, but she
hates her job of carrying water. You will never find one like her in
Berlin. The Germans have no use for people who do not love their daily
duties.” My mother was a great admirer of the thrifty and industrious
German colonists in Banat, whom she always recommended as models to
the peasants of Idvor. When she heard my praises of Helmholtz and my
confession of racial antipathy to the Germans she put up many powerful
arguments which were most convincing. They had a wonderful effect.
When I returned to Berlin from Idvor things looked more inviting, and
my landlady remarked that I looked much more cheerful than I did a year
before, when I arrived from Scotland. In another year, she suggested
jokingly, I might look as cheerful as a real Prussian, particularly
if I should succumb to the charms of a Prussian beauty. Remembering
the promise that I had given to my mother about marrying an American
girl, I said to my landlady: “Never! I have already pledged my word to
one who is nearer to my heart than any Prussian beauty could ever be.”
“Ach, Herr Pupin, you have changed most wonderfully,” exclaimed the
landlady, and then she added in a whisper: “Just think of it! To get a
confession on the first day of your return which I could not get before
in nearly a year! I understand now why you were always so distant to
the young ladies in my pensionat.” But the change of feeling, speeded
up by my mother, and noticed by my landlady, was speeded up almost as
effectively by another Serb.
A Bosnian Serb with the name of Nikola had a fine cigarette shop on
Unter den Linden, the principal avenue of Berlin. It was within a
stone’s throw from the Imperial palace, and the highest aristocracy
of Berlin patronized it. He was a rough diamond, and would stand
no nonsense from any prince or count. If they found fault with his
famous Turkish cigarettes he did not hesitate to tell them to buy
them somewhere else. But he prospered, he said, because these German
aristocrats never resented straight talk from man to man. He laughed at
me, when I mentioned to him my suspicions and antipathies; and begged
me to pass with him, from time to time, an hour or so in his store,
and watch his German customers. I did, and profited much. The Prussian
aristocrats had no racial antipathy against a Serb, if their apparently
genuine affection for Nikola had any meaning. Nikola never left them in
any doubt as to his pride of being a Serb.
Half-way between Nikola’s store and the Imperial palace was an old
chop-house, called Habel, dating from the time of Frederick the Great.
Frederick’s generals always stopped there for a glass of wine, when
they returned from an audience with the king. The custom persisted and
was still in existence when I was a student in Berlin. Nikola often
invited me to early luncheon at this chop-house, and there we saw the
great generals and marshals of the German Empire, sitting around a long
and separate table and taking a glass of wine after returning from the
Imperial palace, from their daily audience with old Emperor William.
It was a wonderful sight; those tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
brainy, and serious-minded Teuton warriors inspired tremendous
respect. Nikola assured me that he knew many of them personally, they
being his customers, and that as human beings they were as gentle
as doves. “Many a time I called them down when they joked about my
cigarettes, and they submitted without a murmur. Do you call that
arrogance?” asked Nikola, throwing out his chest and trying to look as
stern and as imposing as any of the generals present.
Once he took me to an avenue where Moltke used to walk and showed
me the great field-marshal, who was then eighty-six years old, but
still as straight as an arrow. “Did you ever see a more modest and
thoughtful or a more spiritual-looking man anywhere?” asked Nikola,
and I confessed that I had not. “Then stop your talk about Prussian
pride!” exclaimed Nikola. On another occasion we walked to the park and
he showed me Bismarck, riding on horseback, a friend and an adjutant
accompanying him. Nikola saluted him and so did I, and Bismarck saluted
back graciously. “Does he look like a brute, or like a fool who would
try to convert by force all the Slavs into Germans?” asked Nikola,
poking fun at my anti-Teutonic suspicions. “No,” said I, “I do not
think he does; in fact, I think he looks very much like Helmholtz,
except that there is much less spirituality in his face than in that
of the great scientist.” “Helmholtz!” exclaimed Nikola, “even he would
lose his saintly expression, if he had to carry the load of the whole
empire upon his shoulders, the socialists on the top of his load
pushing it one way, and the clericals at the bottom pushing it the
other way.”
Nikola was born in Bosnia when the Turks ruled supreme, and hence he
was not much of a scholar; but he was a careful listener, and always
thought through his own head; his judgment was remarkable, I thought.
He knew who’s who and what’s what in Berlin better than many a foreign
diplomat there. He used to joke about it, saying that his knowledge
was expected of him, because he was the next-door neighbor of the
great Kaiser. The Serbs of Banat did not seriously dislike the German
colonists there, nor did the colonists dislike them, and they delighted
in speaking the Serb language. They called each other “komshiya,”
neighbor. The Serbs, in general, use this word when they refer to a
German in a friendly way. Nikola always referred to the great Kaiser as
his “komshiya”; many of his customers knew that and enjoyed it hugely.
They returned the compliment and often addressed Nikola with the
Serbian word “komshiya.” “Come and see my komshiya,” said he one day
to me, and there I stood for the first time in front of the Imperial
palace and waited for the old emperor to show himself at the window.
He did that almost every day about noontime when the guards marched by
on their daily parade. Presenting arms and looking straight at the old
emperor, they marched by like a single body animated by a single heart
and a single soul, and they spanked the ground with their vigorous
goose-step, the rhythmic strokes of which could be heard quite a
distance away through the ringing cheers of the enthusiastic crowd. “Do
you know what that means?” asked Nikola. I answered “No,” and he said:
“It means that every German looks up to his fatherland for orders,
and the perfect rhythm of that goose-step means that every German
will obey these orders and finish on time any job for the good of the
fatherland that may be assigned to him. It is the symbol of German
unity.” That was Nikola’s unique interpretation; I never heard anybody
else interpret it that way. But Nikola had a lively imagination and he
evidently wished me to get a favorable interpretation of everything the
Germans did.