We ought now to be sufficiently informed concerning the heaven and the
courage of our new believer to be able to turn to the last question:
How does he write his books? and of what order are his religious
documents?
He who can answer this question uprightly and without prejudice will
be confronted by yet another serious problem, and that is: How this
Straussian pocket-oracle of the German Philistine was able to pass
through six editions? And he will grow more than ever suspicious when
he hears that it was actually welcomed as a pocket-oracle, not only in
scholastic circles, but even in German universities as well. Students
are said to have greeted it as a canon for strong intellects, and,
from all accounts, the professors raised no objections to this view;
while here and there people have declared it to be a religions book
for scholars. Strauss himself gave out that he did not intend his
profession of faith to be merely a reference-book for learned and
cultured people; but here let us abide by the fact that it was first
and foremost a work appealing to his colleagues, and was ostensibly a
mirror in which they were to see their own way of living faithfully
reflected. For therein lay the feat. The Master feigned to have
presented us with a new ideal conception of the universe, and now
adulation is being paid him out of every mouth; because each is in a
position to suppose that he too regards the universe and life in the
same way. Thus Strauss has seen fulfilled in each of his readers what
he only demanded of the future. In this way, the extraordinary success
of his book is partly explained: "Thus we live and hold on our way in
joy," the scholar cries in his book, and delights to see others
rejoicing over the announcement. If the reader happen to think
differently from the Master in regard to Darwin or to capital
punishment, it is of very little consequence; for he is too conscious
throughout of breathing an atmosphere that is familiar to him, and of
hearing but the echoes of his own voice and wants. However painfully
this unanimity may strike the true friend of German culture, it is his
duty to be unrelenting in his explanation of it as a phenomenon, and
not to shrink from making this explanation public.
We all know the peculiar methods adopted in our own time of
cultivating the sciences: we all know them, because they form a part
of our lives. And, for this very reason, scarcely anybody seems to ask
himself what the result of such a cultivation of the sciences will
mean to culture in general, even supposing that everywhere the highest
abilities and the most earnest will be available for the promotion of
culture. In the heart of the average scientific type (quite
irrespective of the examples thereof with which we meet to-day) there
lies a pure paradox: he behaves like the veriest idler of independent
means, to whom life is not a dreadful and serious business, but a
sound piece of property, settled upon him for all eternity; and it
seems to him justifiable to spend his whole life in answering
questions which, after all is said and done, can only be of interest
to that person who believes in eternal life as an absolute certainty.
The heir of but a few hours, he sees himself encompassed by yawning
abysses, terrible to behold; and every step he takes should recall the
questions, Wherefore? Whither? and Whence? to his mind. But his soul
rather warms to his work, and, be this the counting of a floweret's
petals or the breaking of stones by the roadside, he spends his whole
fund of interest, pleasure, strength, and aspirations upon it. This
paradox--the scientific man--has lately dashed ahead at such a frantic
speed in Germany, that one would almost think the scientific world
were a factory, in which every minute wasted meant a fine. To-day the
man of science works as arduously as the fourth or slave caste: his
study has ceased to be an occupation, it is a necessity; he looks
neither to the right nor to the left, but rushes through all
things--even through the serious matters which life bears in its
train--with that semi-listlessness and repulsive need of rest so
characteristic of the exhausted labourer. This is also his attitude
towards culture. He behaves as if life to him were not only otium but
sine dignitate: even in his sleep he does not throw off the yoke, but
like an emancipated slave still dreams of his misery, his forced haste
and his floggings. Our scholars can scarcely be distinguished--and,
even then, not to their advantage--from agricultural labourers, who in
order to increase a small patrimony, assiduously strive, day and
night, to cultivate their fields, drive their ploughs, and urge on
their oxen. Now, Pascal suggests that men only endeavour to work hard
at their business and sciences with the view of escaping those
questions of greatest import which every moment of loneliness or
leisure presses upon them--the questions relating to the wherefore,
the whence, and the whither of life. Curiously enough, our scholars
never think of the most vital question of all--the wherefore of their
work, their haste, and their painful ecstasies. Surely their object is
not the earning of bread or the acquiring of posts of honour? No,
certainly not. But ye take as much pains as the famishing and
breadless; and, with that eagerness and lack of discernment which
characterises the starving, ye even snatch the dishes from the
sideboard of science. If, however, as scientific men, ye proceed with
science as the labourers with the tasks which the exigencies of life
impose upon them, what will become of a culture which must await the
hour of its birth and its salvation in the very midst of all this
agitated and breathless running to and fro--this sprawling
scientifically?
For it no one has time--and yet for what shall science have time if
not for culture? Answer us here, then, at least: whence, whither,
wherefore all science, if it do not lead to culture? Belike to
barbarity? And in this direction we already see the scholar caste
ominously advanced, if we are to believe that such superficial books
as this one of Strauss's meet the demand of their present degree of
culture. For precisely in him do we find that repulsive need of rest
and that incidental semi-listless attention to, and coming to terms
with, philosophy, culture, and every serious thing on earth. It will
be remembered that, at the meetings held by scholars, as soon as each
individual has had his say in his own particular department of
knowledge, signs of fatigue, of a desire for distraction at any price,
of waning memory, and of incoherent experiences of life, begin to be
noticeable. While listening to Strauss discussing any worldly
question, be it marriage, the war, or capital punishment, we are
startled by his complete lack of anything like first-hand experience,
or of any original thought on human nature. All his judgments are so
redolent of books, yea even of newspapers. Literary reminiscences do
duty for genuine ideas and views, and the assumption of a moderate and
grandfatherly tone take the place of wisdom and mature thought. How
perfectly in keeping all this is with the fulsome spirit animating the
holders of the highest places in German science in large cities! How
thoroughly this spirit must appeal to that other! for it is precisely
in those quarters that culture is in the saddest plight; it is
precisely there that its fresh growth is made impossible--so
boisterous are the preparations made by science, so sheepishly are
favourite subjects of knowledge allowed to oust questions of much
greater import. What kind of lantern would be needed here, in order to
find men capable of a complete surrender to genius, and of an intimate
knowledge of its depths--men possessed of sufficient courage and
strength to exorcise the demons that have forsaken our age? Viewed
from the outside, such quarters certainly do appear to possess the
whole pomp of culture; with their imposing apparatus they resemble
great arsenals fitted with huge guns and other machinery of war; we
see preparations in progress and the most strenuous activity, as
though the heavens themselves were to be stormed, and truth were to be
drawn out of the deepest of all wells; and yet, in war, the largest
machines are the most unwieldy. Genuine culture therefore leaves such
places as these religiously alone, for its best instincts warn it that
in their midst it has nothing to hope for, and very much to fear. For
the only kind of culture with which the inflamed eye and obtuse brain
of the scholar working-classes concern themselves is of that
Philistine order of which Strauss has announced the gospel. If we
consider for a moment the fundamental causes underlying the sympathy
which binds the learned working-classes to Culture-Philistinism, we
shall discover the road leading to Strauss the Writer, who has been
acknowledged classical, and tihence to our last and principal theme.
To begin with, that culture has contentment written in its every
feature, and will allow of no important changes being introduced into
the present state of German education. It is above all convinced of
the originality of all German educational institutions, more
particularly the public schools and universities; it does not cease
recommending these to foreigners, and never doubts that if the Germans
have become the most cultivated and discriminating people on earth, it
is owing to such institutions. Culture-Philistinism believes in
itself, consequently it also believes in the methods and means at its
disposal. Secondly, however, it leaves the highest judgment concerning
all questions of taste and culture to the scholar, and even regards
itself as the ever-increasing compendium of scholarly opinions
regarding art, literature, and philosophy. Its first care is to urge
the scholar to express his opinions; these it proceeds to mix, dilute,
and systematise, and then it administers them to the German people in
the form of a bottle of medicine. What conies to life outside this
circle is either not heard or attended at all, or if heard, is heeded
half-heartedly; until, at last, a voice (it does not matter whose,
provided it belong to some one who is strictly typical of the scholar
tribe) is heard to issue from the temple in which traditional
infallibility of taste is said to reside; and from that time forward
public opinion has one conviction more, which it echoes and re-echoes
hundreds and hundreds of times. As a matter of fact, though, the
aesthetic infallibility of any utterance emanating from the temple is
the more doubtful, seeing that the lack of taste, thought, and
artistic feeling in any scholar can be taken for granted, unless it
has previously been proved that, in his particular case, the reverse
is true. And only a few can prove this. For how many who have had a
share in the breathless and unending scurry of modern science have
preserved that quiet and courageous gaze of the struggling man of
culture--if they ever possessed it--that gaze which condemns even the
scurry we speak of as a barbarous state of affairs? That is why these
few are forced to live in an almost perpetual contradiction. What
could they do against the uniform belief of the thousands who have
enlisted public opinion in their cause, and who mutually defend each
other in this belief? What purpose can it serve when one individual
openly declares war against Strauss, seeing that a crowd have decided
in his favour, and that the masses led by this crowd have learned to
ask six consecutive times for the Master's Philistine
sleeping-mixture?
If, without further ado, we here assumed that the Straussian
confession-book had triumphed over public opinion and had been
acclaimed and welcomed as conqueror, its author might call our
attention to the fact that the multitudinous criticisms of his work in
the various public organs are not of an altogether unanimous or even
favourable character, and that he therefore felt it incumbent upon him
to defend himself against some of the more malicious, impudent, and
provoking of these newspaper pugilists by means of a postscript. How
can there be a public opinion concerning my book, he cries to us, if
every journalist is to regard me as an outlaw, and to mishandle me as
much as he likes? This contradiction is easily explained, as soon as
one considers the two aspects of the Straussian book--the theological
and the literary, and it is only the latter that has anything to do
with German culture. Thanks to its theological colouring, it stands
beyond the pale of our German culture, and provokes the animosity of
the various theological groups--yea, even of every individual German,
in so far as he is a theological sectarian from birth, and only
invents his own peculiar private belief in order to be able to dissent
from every other form of belief. But when the question arises of
talking about Strauss THE WRITER, pray listen to what the theological
sectarians have to say about him. As soon as his literary side comes
under notice, all theological objections immediately subside, and the
dictum comes plain and clear, as if from the lips of one congregation:
In spite of it all, he is still a classical writer!
Everybody--even the most bigoted, orthodox Churchman--pays the writer
the most gratifying compliments, while there is always a word or two
thrown in as a tribute to his almost Lessingesque language, his
delicacy of touch, or the beauty and accuracy of his aesthetic views.
As a book, therefore, the Straussian performance appears to meet all
the demands of an ideal example of its kind. The theological
opponents, despite the fact that their voices were the loudest of all,
nevertheless constitute but an infinitesimal portion of the great
public; and even with regard to them, Strauss still maintains that he
is right when he says: "Compared with my thousands of readers, a few
dozen public cavillers form but an insignificant minority, and they
can hardly prove that they are their faithful interpreters. It was
obviously in the nature of things that opposition should be clamorous
and assent tacit." Thus, apart from the angry bitterness which
Strauss's profession of faith may have provoked here and there, even
the most fanatical of his opponents, to whom his voice seems to rise
out of an abyss, like the voice of a beast, are agreed as to his
merits as a writer; and that is why the treatment which Strauss has
received at the hands of the literary lackeys of the theological
groups proves nothing against our contention that Culture-Philistinism
celebrated its triumph in this book. It must be admitted that the
average educated Philistine is a degree less honest than Strauss, or
is at least more reserved in his public utterances. But this fact only
tends to increase his admiration for honesty in another. At home, or
in the company of his equals, he may applaud with wild enthusiasm, but
takes care not to put on paper how entirely Strauss's words are in
harmony with his own innermost feelings. For, as we have already
maintained, our Culture-Philistine is somewhat of a coward, even in
his strongest sympathies; hence Strauss, who can boast of a trifle
more courage than he, becomes his leader, notwithstanding the fact
that even Straussian pluck has its very definite limits. If he
overstepped these limits, as Schopenhauer does in almost every
sentence, he would then forfeit his position at the head of the
Philistines, and everybody would flee from him as precipitately as
they are now following in his wake. He who would regard this artful if
not sagacious moderation and this mediocre valour as an Aristotelian
virtue, would certainly be wrong; for the valour in question is not
the golden mean between two faults, but between a virtue and a
fault--and in this mean, between virtue and fault, all Philistine
qualities are to be found.