A corpse is a pleasant thought for a worm, and a worm is a dreadful
thought for every living creature. Worms fancy their kingdom of heaven
in a fat body; professors of philosophy seek theirs in rummaging among
Schopenhauer's entrails, and as long as rodents exist, there will
exist a heaven for rodents. In this, we have the answer to our first
question: How does the believer in the new faith picture his heaven?
The Straussian Philistine harbours in the works of our great poets and
musicians like a parasitic worm whose life is destruction, whose
admiration is devouring, and whose worship is digesting.
Now, however, our second question must be answered: How far does the
courage lent to its adherents by this new faith extend? Even this
question would already have been answered, if courage and
pretentiousness had been one; for then Strauss would not be lacking
even in the just and veritable courage of a Mameluke. At all events,
the "becoming modesty" of which Strauss speaks in the above-mentioned
passage, where he is referring to Beethoven, can only be a stylistic
and not a moral manner of speech. Strauss has his full share of the
temerity to which every successful hero assumes the right: all flowers
grow only for him--the conqueror; and he praises the sun because it
shines in at his window just at the right time. He does not even spare
the venerable old universe in his eulogies--as though it were only now
and henceforward sufficiently sanctified by praise to revolve around
the central monad David Strauss. The universe, he is happy to inform
us, is, it is true, a machine with jagged iron wheels, stamping and
hammering ponderously, but: "We do not only find the revolution of
pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding of
soothing oil" (p. 435). The universe, provided it submit to Strauss's
encomiums, is not likely to overflow with gratitude towards this
master of weird metaphors, who was unable to discover better similes
in its praise. But what is the oil called which trickles down upon the
hammers and stampers? And how would it console a workman who chanced
to get one of his limbs caught in the mechanism to know that this oil
was trickling over him? Passing over this simile as bad, let us turn
our attention to another of Strauss's artifices, whereby he tries to
ascertain how he feels disposed towards the universe; this question of
Marguerite's, "He loves me--loves me not--loves me?" hanging on his
lips the while. Now, although Strauss is not telling flower-petals or
the buttons on his waistcoat, still what he does is not less harmless,
despite the fact that it needs perhaps a little more courage. Strauss
wishes to make certain whether his feeling for the "All" is either
paralysed or withered, and he pricks himself; for he knows that one
can prick a limb that is either paralysed or withered without causing
any pain. As a matter of fact, he does not really prick himself, but
selects another more violent method, which he describes thus: "We open
Schopenhauer, who takes every occasion of slapping our idea in the
face" (p. 167). Now, as an idea--even that of Strauss's concerning the
universe--has no face, if there be any face in the question at all it
must be that of the idealist, and the procedure may be subdivided into
the following separate actions:--Strauss, in any case, throws
Schopenhauer open, whereupon the latter slaps Strauss in the face.
Strauss then reacts religiously; that is to say, he again begins to
belabour Schopenhauer, to abuse him, to speak of absurdities,
blasphemies, dissipations, and even to allege that Schopenhauer could
not have been in his right senses. Result of the dispute: "We demand
the same piety for our Cosmos that the devout of old demanded for his
God"; or, briefly, "He loves me." Our favourite of the Graces makes
his life a hard one, but he is as brave as a Mameluke, and fears
neither the Devil nor Schopenhauer. How much "soothing oil" must he
use if such incidents are of frequent occurrence!
On the other hand, we readily understand Strauss's gratitude to this
tickling, pricking, and slapping Schopenhauer; hence we are not so
very much surprised when we find him expressing himself in the
following kind way about him: "We need only turn over the leaves of
Arthur Schopenhauer's works (although we shall on many other accounts
do well not only to glance over but to study them), etc." (p. 166).
Now, to whom does this captain of Philistines address these words? To
him who has clearly never even studied Schopenhauer, the latter might
well have retorted, "This is an author who does not even deserve to be
scanned, much less to be studied." Obviously, he gulped Schopenhauer
down "the wrong way," and this hoarse coughing is merely his attempt
to clear his throat. But, in order to fill the measure of his
ingenuous encomiums, Strauss even arrogates to himself the right of
commending old Kant: he speaks of the latter's General History of the
Heavens of the Year 1755 as of "a work which has always appeared to me
not less important than his later Critique of Pure Reason. If in the
latter we admire the depth of insight, the breadth of observation
strikes us in the former. If in the latter we can trace the old man's
anxiety to secure even a limited possession of knowledge--so it be but
on a firm basis--in the former we encounter the mature man, full of
the daring of the discoverer and conqueror in the realm of thought."
This judgment of Strauss's concerning Kant did not strike me as being
more modest than the one concerning Schopenhauer. In the one case, we
have the little captain, who is above all anxious to express even the
most insignificant opinion with certainty, and in the other we have
the famous prose-writer, who, with all the courage of ignorance,
exudes his eulogistic secretions over Kant. It is almost incredible
that Strauss availed himself of nothing in Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason while compiling his Testament of modern ideas, and that he knew
only how to appeal to the coarsest realistic taste must also be
numbered among the more striking characteristics of this new gospel,
the which professes to be but the result of the laborious and
continuous study of history and science, and therefore tacitly
repudiates all connection with philosophy. For the Philistine captain
and his "We," Kantian philosophy does not exist. He does not dream of
the fundamental antinomy of idealism and of the highly relative sense
of all science and reason. And it is precisely reason that ought to
tell him how little it is possible to know of things in themselves. It
is true, however, that people of a certain age cannot possibly
understand Kant, especially when, in their youth, they understood or
fancied they understood that "gigantic mind," Hegel, as Strauss did;
and had moreover concerned themselves with Schleiermacher, who,
according to Strauss, "was gifted with perhaps too much acumen." It
will sound odd to our author when I tell him that, even now, he stands
absolutely dependent upon Hegel and Schleiermacher, and that his
teaching of the Cosmos, his way of regarding things sub specie
biennii, his salaams to the state of affairs now existing in Germany,
and, above all, his shameless Philistine optimism, can only be
explained by an appeal to certain impressions of youth, early habits,
and disorders; for he who has once sickened on Hegel and
Schleiermacher never completely recovers.
There is one passage in the confession-book where the incurable
optimism referred to above bursts forth with the full joyousness of
holiday spirits (pp. 166-67). "If the universe is a thing which had
better not have existed," says Strauss, "then surely the speculation
of the philosopher, as forming part of this universe, is a speculation
which had better not have speculated. The pessimist philosopher fails
to perceive that he, above all, declares his own thought, which
declares the world to be bad, as bad also; but if the thought which
declares the world to be bad is a bad thought, then it follows
naturally that the world is good. As a rule, optimism may take things
too easily. Schopenhauer's references to the colossal part which
sorrow and evil play in the world are quite in their right place as a
counterpoise; but every true philosophy is necessarily optimistic, as
otherwise she hews down the branch on which she herself is sitting."
If this refutation of Schopenhauer is not the same as that to which
Strauss refers somewhere else as "the refutation loudly and jubilantly
acclaimed in higher spheres," then I quite fail to understand the
dramatic phraseology used by him elsewhere to strike an opponent. Here
optimism has for once intentionally simplified her task. But the
master-stroke lay in thus pretending that the refutation of
Schopenhauer was not such a very difficult task after all, and in
playfully wielding the burden in such a manner that the three Graces
attendant on the dandling optimist might constantly be delighted by
his methods. The whole purpose of the deed was to demonstrate this one
truth, that it is quite unnecessary to take a pessimist seriously; the
most vapid sophisms become justified, provided they show that, in
regard to a philosophy as "unhealthy and unprofitable" as
Schopenhauer's, not proofs but quips and sallies alone are suitable.
While perusing such passages, the reader will grasp the full meaning
of Schopenhauer's solemn utterance to the effect that, where optimism
is not merely the idle prattle of those beneath whose flat brows words
and only words are stored, it seemed to him not merely an absurd but a
vicious attitude of mind, and one full of scornful irony towards the
indescribable sufferings of humanity. When a philosopher like Strauss
is able to frame it into a system, it becomes more than a vicious
attitude of mind--it is then an imbecile gospel of comfort for the "I"
or for the "We," and can only provoke indignation.
Who could read the following psychological avowal, for instance,
without indignation, seeing that it is obviously but an offshoot from
this vicious gospel of comfort?--"Beethoven remarked that he could
never have composed a text like Figaro or Don Juan. Life had not been
so profuse of its snubs to him that he could treat it so gaily, or
deal so lightly with the foibles of men" (p. 430). In order, however,
to adduce the most striking instance of this dissolute vulgarity of
sentiment, let it suffice, here, to observe that Strauss knows no
other means of accounting for the terribly serious negative instinct
and the movement of ascetic sanctification which characterised the
first century of the Christian era, than by supposing the existence of
a previous period of surfeit in the matter of all kinds of sexual
indulgence, which of itself brought about a state of revulsion and
disgust.
"The Persians call it bidamag buden, The Germans say
'Katzenjammer.'"[9]*
[Footnote * : Remorse for the previous night's excesses.--Translator's
note.]
Strauss quotes this himself, and is not ashamed. As for us, we turn
aside for a moment, that we may overcome our loathing.