As a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is brave, even audacious,
in words; particularly when he hopes by such bravery to delight his
noble colleagues--the "We," as he calls them. So the asceticism and
self-denial of the ancient anchorite and saint was merely a form of
Katzenjammer? Jesus may be described as an enthusiast who nowadays
would scarcely have escaped the madhouse, and the story of the
Resurrection may be termed a "world-wide deception." For once we will
allow these views to pass without raising any objection, seeing that
they may help us to gauge the amount of courage which our "classical
Philistine" Strauss is capable of. Let us first hear his confession:
"It is certainly an unpleasant and a thankless task to tell the world
those truths which it is least desirous of hearing. It prefers, in
fact, to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving and spending
after the magnificent fashion of the great, as long as there is
anything left; should any person, however, add up the various items of
its liabilities, and anxiously call its attention to the sum-total, he
is certain to be regarded as an importunate meddler. And yet this has
always been the bent of my moral and intellectual nature." A moral and
intellectual nature of this sort might possibly be regarded as
courageous; but what still remains to be proved is, whether this
courage is natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather acquired
and artificial. Perhaps Strauss only accustomed himself by degrees to
the rôle of an importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired the
courage of his calling. Innate cowardice, which is the Philistine's
birthright, would not be incompatible with this mode of development,
and it is precisely this cowardice which is perceptible in the want of
logic of those sentences of Strauss's which it needed courage to
pronounce. They sound like thunder, but they do not clear the air. No
aggressive action is performed: aggressive words alone are used, and
these he selects from among the most insulting he can find. He
moreover exhausts all his accumulated strength and energy in coarse
and noisy expression, and when once his utterances have died away he
is more of a coward even than he who has always held his tongue. The
very shadow of his deeds--his morality--shows us that he is a
word-hero, and that he avoids everything which might induce him to
transfer his energies from mere verbosity to really serious things.
With admirable frankness, he announces that he is no longer a
Christian, but disclaims all idea of wishing to disturb the
contentment of any one: he seems to recognise a contradiction in the
notion of abolishing one society by instituting another--whereas there
is nothing contradictory in it at all. With a certain rude
self-satisfaction, he swathes himself in the hirsute garment of our
Simian genealogists, and extols Darwin as one of mankind's greatest
benefactors; but our perplexity is great when we find him constructing
his ethics quite independently of the question, "What is our
conception of the universe?" In this department he had an opportunity
of exhibiting native pluck; for he ought to have turned his back on
his "We," and have established a moral code for life out of bellum
omnium contra omnes and the privileges of the strong. But it is to be
feared that such a code could only have emanated from a bold spirit
like that of Hobbes', and must have taken its root in a love of truth
quite different from that which was only able to vent itself in
explosive outbursts against parsons, miracles, and the "world-wide
humbug" of the Resurrection. For, whereas the Philistine remained on
Strauss's side in regard to these explosive outbursts, he would have
been against him had he been confronted with a genuine and seriously
constructed ethical system, based upon Darwin's teaching.
Says Strauss: "I should say that all moral action arises from the
individual's acting in consonance with the idea of kind" (p. 274). Put
quite clearly and comprehensively, this means: "Live as a man, and not
as an ape or a seal." Unfortunately, this imperative is both useless
and feeble; for in the class Man what a multitude of different types
are included--to mention only the Patagonian and the Master, Strauss;
and no one would ever dare to say with any right, "Live like a
Patagonian," and "Live like the Master Strauss"! Should any one,
however, make it his rule to live like a genius--that is to say, like
the ideal type of the genus Man--and should he perchance at the same
time be either a Patagonian or Strauss himself, what should we then
not have to suffer from the importunities of genius-mad eccentrics
(concerning whose mushroom growth in Germany even Lichtenberg had
already spoken), who with savage cries would compel us to listen to
the confession of their most recent belief! Strauss has not yet
learned that no "idea" can ever make man better or more moral, and
that the preaching of a morality is as easy as the establishment of it
is difficult. His business ought rather to have been, to take the
phenomena of human goodness, such--for instance--as pity, love, and
self-abnegation, which are already to hand, and seriously to explain
them and show their relation to his Darwinian first principle. But no;
he preferred to soar into the imperative, and thus escape the task of
explaining. But even in his flight he was irresponsible enough to soar
beyond the very first principles of which we speak.
"Ever remember," says Strauss, "that thou art human, not merely a
natural production; ever remember that all others are human also, and,
with all individual differences, the same as thou, having the same
needs and claims as thyself: this is the sum and the substance of
morality" (p. 277). But where does this imperative hail from? How can
it be intuitive in man, seeing that, according to Darwin, man is
indeed a creature of nature, and that his ascent to his present stage
of development has been conditioned by quite different laws--by the
very fact that be was continually forgetting that others were
constituted like him and shared the same rights with him; by the very
fact that he regarded himself as the stronger, and thus brought about
the gradual suppression of weaker types. Though Strauss is bound to
admit that no two creatures have ever been quite alike, and that the
ascent of man from the lowest species of animals to the exalted height
of the Culture--Philistine depended upon the law of individual
distinctness, he still sees no difficulty in declaring exactly the
reverse in his law: "Behave thyself as though there were no such
things as individual distinctions." Where is the Strauss-Darwin
morality here? Whither, above all, has the courage gone?
In the very next paragraph we find further evidence tending to show us
the point at which this courage veers round to its opposite; for
Strauss continues: "Ever remember that thou, and all that thou
beholdest within and around thee, all that befalls thee and others, is
no disjointed fragment, no wild chaos of atoms or casualties, but
that, following eternal law, it springs from the one primal source of
all life, all reason, and all good: this is the essence of religion"
(pp. 277-78). Out of that "one primal source," however, all ruin and
irrationality, all evil flows as well, and its name, according to
Strauss, is Cosmos.
Now, how can this Cosmos, with all the contradictions and the
self-annihilating characteristics which Strauss gives it, be worthy of
religious veneration and be addressed by the name "God," as Strauss
addresses it?--"Our God does not, indeed, take us into His arms from
the outside (here one expects, as an antithesis, a somewhat miraculous
process of being "taken into His arms from the inside"), but He
unseals the well-springs of consolation within our own bosoms. He
shows us that although Chance would be an unreasonable ruler, yet
necessity, or the enchainment of causes in the world, is Reason
itself." (A misapprehension of which only the "We" can fail to
perceive the folly; because they were brought up in the Hegelian
worship of Reality as the Reasonable--that is to say, in the
canonisation of success.) "He teaches us to perceive that to demand an
exception in the accomplishment of a single natural law would be to
demand the destruction of the universe" (pp. 435-36). On the contrary,
Great Master: an honest natural scientist believes in the
unconditional rule of natural laws in the world, without, however,
taking up any position in regard to the ethical or intellectual value
of these laws. Wherever neutrality is abandoned in this respect, it is
owing to an anthropomorphic attitude of mind which allows reason to
exceed its proper bounds. But it is just at the point where the
natural scientist resigns that Strauss, to put it in his own words,
"reacts religiously," and leaves the scientific and scholarly
standpoint in order to proceed along less honest lines of his own.
Without any further warrant, he assumes that all that has happened
possesses the highest intellectual value; that it was therefore
absolutely reasonably and intentionally so arranged, and that it even
contained a revelation of eternal goodness. He therefore has to appeal
to a complete cosmodicy, and finds himself at a disadvantage in regard
to him who is contented with a theodicy, and who, for instance,
regards the whole of man's existence as a punishment for sin or a
process of purification. At this stage, and in this embarrassing
position, Strauss even suggests a metaphysical hypothesis--the driest
and most palsied ever conceived--and, in reality, but an unconscious
parody of one of Lessing's sayings. We read on page 255: "And that
other saying of Lessing's-- 'If God, holding truth in His right hand,
and in His left only the ever-living desire for it, although on
condition of perpetual error, left him the choice of the two, he
would, considering that truth belongs to God alone, humbly seize His
left hand, and beg its contents for Himself'-- this saying of
Lessing's has always been accounted one of the most magnificent which
he has left us. It has been found to contain the general expression of
his restless love of inquiry and activity. The saying has always made
a special impression upon me; because, behind its subjective meaning,
I still seemed to hear the faint ring of an objective one of infinite
import. For does it not contain the best possible answer to the rude
speech of Schopenhauer, respecting the ill-advised God who had nothing
better to do than to transform Himself into this miserable world? if,
for example, the Creator Himself had shared Lessing's conviction of
the superiority of struggle to tranquil possession?" What!--a God who
would choose perpetual error, together with a striving after truth,
and who would, perhaps, fall humbly at Strauss's feet and cry to
him,"Take thou all Truth, it is thine!"? If ever a God and a man were
ill-advised, they are this Straussian God, whose hobby is to err and
to fail, and this Straussian man, who must atone for this erring and
failing. Here, indeed, one hears "a faint ring of infinite import";
here flows Strauss's cosmic soothing oil; here one has a notion of the
rationale of all becoming and all natural laws. Really? Is not our
universe rather the work of an inferior being, as Lichtenberg
suggests?--of an inferior being who did not quite understand his
business; therefore an experiment, an attempt, upon which work is
still proceeding? Strauss himself, then, would be compelled to admit
that our universe is by no means the theatre of reason, but of error,
and that no conformity to law can contain anything consoling, since
all laws have been promulgated by an erratic God who even finds
pleasure in blundering. It really is a most amusing spectacle to watch
Strauss as a metaphysical architect, building castles in the air. But
for whose benefit is this entertainment given? For the smug and noble
"We," that they may not lose conceit with themselves: they may
possibly have taken sudden fright, in the midst of the inflexible and
pitiless wheel-works of the world-machine, and are tremulously
imploring their leader to come to their aid. That is why Strauss pours
forth the "soothing oil," that is why he leads forth on a leash a God
whose passion it is to err; it is for the same reason, too, that he
assumes for once the utterly unsuitable rôle of a metaphysical
architect. He does all this, because the noble souls already referred
to are frightened, and because he is too. And it is here that we reach
the limit of his courage, even in the presence of his "We." He does
not dare to be honest, and to tell them, for instance: "I have
liberated you from a helping and pitiful God: the Cosmos is no more
than an inflexible machine; beware of its wheels, that they do not
crush you." He dare not do this. Consequently, he must enlist the help
of a witch, and he turns to metaphysics. To the Philistine, however,
even Strauss's metaphysics is preferable to Christianity's, and the
notion of an erratic God more congenial than that of one who works
miracles. For the Philistine himself errs, but has never yet performed
a miracle. Hence his hatred of the genius; for the latter is justly
famous for the working of miracles. It is therefore highly instructive
to ascertain why Strauss, in one passage alone, suddenly takes up the
cudgels for genius and the aristocracy of intellect in general.
Whatever does he do it for? He does it out of fear--fear of the social
democrat. He refers to Bismarck and Moltke, "whose greatness is the
less open to controversy as it manifests itself in the domain of
tangible external facts. No help for it, therefore; even the most
stiff-necked and obdurate of these fellows must condescend to look up
a little, if only to get a sight, be it no farther than the knees, of
those august figures" (p.327). Do you, Master Metaphysician, perhaps
intend to instruct the social democrats in the art of getting kicks?
The willingness to bestow them may be met with everywhere, and you are
perfectly justified in promising to those who happen to be kicked a
sight of those sublime beings as far as the knee. "Also in the domain
of art and science," Strauss continues, "there will never be a dearth
of kings whose architectural undertakings will find employment for a
multitude of carters." Granted; but what if the carters should begin
building? It does happen at times, Great Master, as you know, and then
the kings must grin and bear it.
As a matter of fact, this union of impudence and weakness, of daring
words and cowardly concessions, this cautious deliberation as to which
sentences will or will not impress the Philistine or smooth him down
the right way, this lack of character and power masquerading as
character and power, this meagre wisdom in the guise of
omniscience,--these are the features in this book which I detest. If I
could conceive of young men having patience to read it and to value
it, I should sorrowfully renounce all hope for their future. And is
this confession of wretched, hopeless, and really despicable
Philistinism supposed to be the expression of the thousands
constituting the "We" of whom Strauss speaks, and who are to be the
fathers of the coming generation? Unto him who would fain help this
coming generation to acquire what the present one does not yet
possess, namely, a genuine German culture, the prospect is a horrible
one. To such a man, the ground seems strewn with ashes, and all stars
are obscured; while every withered tree and field laid waste seems to
cry to him: Barren! Forsaken! Springtime is no longer possible here!
He must feel as young Goethe felt when he first peered into the
melancholy atheistic twilight of the Système de la Nature; to him this
book seemed so grey, so Cimmerian and deadly, that he could only
endure its presence with difficulty, and shuddered at it as one
shudders at a spectre.