{"collection":"ritual-magic","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_76837/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_76837","id":"gutenberg_76837","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76837","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: German Literature","Frederick II, King of Prussia, 1712-1786","Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832","Nobel Prizes in Literature","Occultism","Prussia (Germany) -- Foreign relations -- 1740-1815","Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910"],"text":"THOMAS MANN\n\n                                  THREE\n                                  ESSAYS\n\n\n                               _Translated\n                  from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter_\n\n                      NEW YORK \u00b7 ALFRED \u00b7 A \u00b7 KNOPF\n                                  1929\n\n\n\n\n            COPYRIGHT 1922, 1925 BY S. FISCHER VERLAG, BERLIN\n               COPYRIGHT 1929 BY ALFRED \u00b7 A \u00b7 KNOPF \u00b7 INC.\n\n          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE\n                 THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM\n\n                         PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1929\n                     SECOND PRINTING NOVEMBER, 1929\n\n\n                         ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS\n\n                  _Friedrich und Die Grosse Koalition_\n                                   IN\n                            REDE UND ANTWORT\n                                 AND AS\n              _Goethe und Tolstoi_ and _Okkulte Erlebnisse_\n                                   IN\n                               BEM\u00dcHUNGEN\n\n\n              MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n\n\n\n                                CONTENTS\n\n\n                       I \u00b7 GOETHE AND TOLSTOY \u00b7 3\n\n         II \u00b7 FREDERICK THE GREAT AND THE GRAND COALITION \u00b7 143\n\n                 III \u00b7 AN EXPERIENCE IN THE OCCULT \u00b7 219\n\n\n\n\n                                    I\n\n                           GOETHE AND TOLSTOY\n\n\n\n\n                           GOETHE AND TOLSTOY\n\n\nAt the beginning of our century a man was still living in Weimar,\nJulius St\u00f6tzer by name and schoolmaster by calling, who, as a\nsixteen-year-old student, had dwelt under the same roof with Dr.\nEckermann and only a few steps away from Goethe\u2019s door. Young St\u00f6tzer\nand a schoolmate and fellow-lodger would now and again, with beating\nhearts, catch gleams and glimpses of the hallowed form as the old man\nsat by his window. But the lads were possessed by a desire to see him\nfor once close at hand and get a good look at him. They applied to his\nfamulus, their house-mate, and implored him by some means or other to\nprocure them this boon. Eckermann was a kindly soul. One summer day\nhe let the boys in by the back gate to the garden of the illustrious\nhouse; and there, hugely confused, they stood and waited for Goethe;\nwho, to their consternation, did actually appear. He was strolling\nabout the garden in a light-coloured house-coat--very probably the\nfamous flannel dressing-gown we wot of--and catching sight of the lads\nwent up to them. There he stood, wafting odours of eau-de-Cologne, with\nhis hands, of course, on his back, and his abdomen to the fore; with\nthat air of a city father beneath which, so we are told, he hid his\nself-consciousness--and asked the youths their names and what they\nwanted. Probably all in one breath; which indeed, if it thus happened,\nso added to the austere effect that they could scarcely get out an\nanswer. However, they stammered something; whereupon the old man bade\nthem be diligent in their tasks--which they were free to interpret as\nmeaning that they would do better to be at them and not stand gaping\nhere--and went his way.\n\nSo much for that--it happened in the year 1828.--Thirty-three years\nafterwards, one day about one o\u2019clock St\u00f6tzer--now an experienced\nand devoted master in the secondary schools--was about to take the\nsecond class of the session when a seminary pupil stuck his head\nin at the door and announced that a stranger wanted to see Herr\nSt\u00f6tzer. And without more ado the stranger entered at his heels: a man\nconsiderably younger than the schoolmaster, with a thinnish beard,\nprominent cheek-bones, and small grey eyes, with furrows between\nthe heavy brows. He neglected to introduce or otherwise account for\nhimself; but simply and straightway asked what lessons there were\nthis afternoon, and on hearing that there was first history and then\nlanguage, professed himself well pleased. He said that he had been\nvisiting schools in southern Germany, France, and England; and sought\nan acquaintance with those of northern Germany as well. He spoke like\na German. You would take him for a schoolmaster, from the comments he\nmade, his well-informed, intelligent questions, and the way he kept\nputting things down in his notebook. He stopped for the whole of the\nlesson-hour. The children wrote a theme, an exercise on some subject\nin their copy-books; and the stranger said he was greatly interested\nin these compositions--might he take them away with him? \u201cDear me,\u201d\nSt\u00f6tzer thought, \u201cthat _is_ na\u00efve.\u201d Who was to reimburse the children\nfor their copy-books? After all, Weimar was a poor city.... He said\nas much, in politer phrases. But the stranger replied that that might\nbe managed, and went out. St\u00f6tzer sent a message to the Director,\ntelling him of the unusual occurrence. And the adjective he used was\nthe correct one--though it was only much later that he understood\nhow correct it had been. For at the moment and on the spot it could\nnot mean much to him, when the stranger came back, with a bundle of\nwriting-paper under his arm, and gave his name to St\u00f6tzer and the\nDirector: Count Tolstoy, from Russia. But Schoolmaster St\u00f6tzer lived to\na ripe old age, and consequently had plenty of time to hear about the\ngentleman whose acquaintance he had thus made.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis man, then, who lived in Weimar from 1812 to 1905, and whose life\nwas otherwise no doubt uneventful enough, might boast of having enjoyed\none extraordinary privilege: the personal acquaintance of both Goethe\nand Tolstoy, the two great men whose names form the subject of this\nessay. Yes, Tolstoy was in Weimar! When he was thirty-three years\nold--for he was born in the year that saw young St\u00f6tzer\u2019s interview\nwith Goethe--Count Leo Nikolaevich came to Germany from Brussels (where\nhe had in the first place met Proudhon and been convinced by him\nthat _la propri\u00e9t\u00e9_ is _le vol_, and in the second place had written\nthe story called _Polikuschka_) and visited the city of Goethe. As\na distinguished stranger and guest of the Russian Embassy he was\nadmitted to the house on the Frauenplan, which was not then open to the\npublic. We are told, however, that he was more interested in the Fr\u00f6bel\nkindergarten, conducted by one of Fr\u00f6bel\u2019s own pupils, and studied its\npedagogic system with the greatest zeal and curiosity.\n\nYou see, of course, why I have told you this little tale. It was\nin hope to render more palatable the \u201cand\u201d at the top of the page,\nwhich must have made you lift your eyebrows at first sight. Goethe\nand Tolstoy. What sort of arbitrary and unseemly combination is that?\nNietzsche once reproached us Germans with a peculiar clumsiness in\nthe use of the word \u201cand.\u201d We said \u201cSchopenhauer and Hartmann,\u201d he\nsneered; we said \u201cGoethe and Schiller\u201d too--he was very much afraid\nwe even said \u201cSchiller and Goethe\u201d! Setting Schopenhauer and Hartmann\naside; as far as Goethe and Schiller are concerned, Nietzsche\u2019s highly\nsubjective dislike of moralists and theatre people should not have led\nhim so far astray as to deny a relationship which is not less valid\nbecause of the inherent and typical contrast it displays. Its best\nspokesman, indeed, was its supposedly affronted half! It was hasty of\nNietzsche, it was unjustifiably autocratic, thus to mock, and in his\nmockery to invoke, or assume, an order of merit which is, and must\nremain, highly controversial, the most controversial thing in the\nworld. It is not on the whole the German way to be hasty in deciding\nprecisely this question of all questions. We instinctively avoid\nputting ourselves on record, on one side or the other. We prefer a\nfree-handed policy, and so, personally, do I; and I mean to stick to\nthis policy, to support and glorify it, in all that follows. Precisely\nthis policy, and no other, is the meaning of the conjunction when we\nsay \u201cGoethe _and_ Schiller\u201d: where it converts the combination to an\nantithesis, and combines with the deliberate intention of contrast. No\none who has ever come into contact with the sphere of German thought\nrepresented by that classic essay which comprehends all the others and\nmakes them superfluous--I mean Schiller\u2019s _Naive und Sentimentalische\nDichtung_--can fail to find this \u201cand\u201d deeply antithetic. Another\nprecisely similar instance is the conjunction \u201cTolstoy _and_\nDostoyevsky.\u201d On the other hand, if we deny the \u201cand\u201d its right to\npoint a contrast, and confine its function to asserting essential\naffinity, essential similarity--what then? Would there not at once take\nplace in our fancy a change of partners? On profound intellectual,\nnay, rather, on profoundly natural grounds, would not Schiller and\nDostoyevsky move together, and on the other side--Goethe and Tolstoy?\n\nYou will be feeling far from satisfied. Obviously. You will say: there\nis something besides quality, there is position, there is rank. All\nhonour, you will say, to antithesis, but things which differ so much in\norder of greatness really cannot be placed alongside like that. Granted\nthat the one was a European humanist and thorough-paced pagan, while\nthe other was an anarchist, and a primitive oriental Christian to boot.\nBut the German world-poet, whose name one names with the highest, with\nDante, with Shakespeare, and the realistic novelist who in our own era\nand not so long ago ended his enigmatic life, and that truly in a most\nenigmatic manner; to speak of these two in the same breath--it simply\nwill not do, it is an offence against the aristocratic instinct, it is\nin bad taste.\n\nWe put on one side the paganism of the one, the Christianity of the\nother. Let us leave them there--we may find time to come back to them\nlater on. But as for this aristocratic instinct, if you like to call\nit that; let me say roundly that so far from offending against it\nwith my parallel, I do it explicit honour. Are you certain you have\nno delusions--are you sure your perspective is not distorted in this\nmatter of rank and relative greatness? Turgeniev, in his last letter\nto Tolstoy, written on his death-bed in Paris, in which he conjured\nhis friend to return to literature and stop tormenting himself with\ntheology, Turgeniev was the first to give Tolstoy the title of \u201cthe\ngreat writer of Russia,\u201d which he has had ever since, and which seems\nto mean that he holds in the eyes of his countrymen the same rank that\nthe author of _Faust_ and _Wilhelm Meister_ does in ours. Tolstoy\nhimself, as we were saying, was Christian through and through. Yet his\nhumility was not so exaggerated as to prevent him from setting his name\nboldly beside the greatest, yes, beside the legendary great. He said of\n_War and Peace_: \u201cModesty aside, it is something like the Iliad.\u201d He\nwas heard to say the same of his earliest work, _Childhood, Boyhood,\nYouth_. Was that megalomania? To me, frankly, it sounds like plain and\nsimple fact. \u201c_Nur die Lumpe_,\u201d says Goethe, \u201c_sind bescheiden._\u201d A\nheathen saying. But Tolstoy subscribed to it. He saw himself always of\nheroic grandeur; and as early as at thirty-seven, writing in his diary,\nhe ranked his own works, the finished and the still to write, with the\ngreat literature of the world.\n\nIn the judgment, then, of those competent to render it, the great\nwriter of Russia; by his own estimate, the Homer of his time--but that\nis not all. After Tolstoy\u2019s death Maxim Gorky published a little book\nof reminiscences, the best book, in my humble opinion, that he has\nwritten. It closes with the words: \u201cAnd I, who do not believe in God,\nlooked at him timidly, for some dark reason looked at him and thought:\nThe man is godlike.\u201d Godlike. Extraordinary. Nobody ever said or\nthought that of Dostoyevsky, nobody ever could have thought or said it.\nHe has been called a saint; and one might in all sincerity apply the\nword to Schiller, at least in the Christian sense which it must always\nconnote, if without the specifically Byzantine flavour. But Goethe and\nTolstoy, these two, have been found godlike. The epithet \u201cOlympian\u201d is\na commonplace. It was not, however, only as a world-renowned old man of\ncommanding intellect that Goethe had it applied to him; it was while\nhe was still young, still the youth, of whose godlike, compelling gaze\nWieland sang, that he had the attribute conferred upon him, a thousand\ntimes, by his own contemporaries. Riemer relates that at sixty the old\nman took occasion to make rather acridly merry over it. \u201cThe deuce take\ngodlike,\u201d he cried. \u201cWhat good does it do me to have people say: \u2018That\nis a godlike man,\u2019 when I go by? They behave just as they like, they\nimpose on me just the same. People only call a man godlike when he lets\nthem have their own way!\u201d--As for Tolstoy, you could not say he was\nOlympian; he was not a humanistic god, of course. He was, Gorky says,\nmore like some sort of Russian god, sitting on a maple throne under a\ngolden lime-tree; pagan, then, with a difference, compared with the\nZeus of Weimar, but pagan none the less, because gods _are_ pagan. Why?\nBecause they are of the same essence as nature. One does not need to be\na follower of Spinoza--as Goethe was, and had his own good reasons for\nit--to feel God and Nature as one, and the nobility that nature confers\nas godlike. \u201cHis superhumanly developed individuality is a monstrous\nphenomenon, almost forbidding, he has something in him of the fabled\nSviatogor, whom the earth cannot hold.\u201d Thus Gorky, on Tolstoy. And I\ncite it in this matter of relative greatness. Gorky, for instance, goes\non to say: \u201cThere is something about him which always makes me want to\nshout: \u2018Behold what a marvellous man lives upon this earth!\u2019 For he\nis, so to speak, in general and beyond everything else, a human human\nbeing, a man.\u201d That sounds like something we have heard before. It\nreminds us of--whom?\n\nNo, the question of rank, the aristocratic problem, is no problem at\nall, within the grouping I have chosen. It becomes one only when we\nchange partners: when we take saintly humanity and couple it, by means\nof the antithetic conjunction, with the godlike; when we say \u201cGoethe\nand Schiller,\u201d \u201cTolstoy and Dostoyevsky.\u201d Only then, I think, do we\npose the question of aristocracy, the problem in ethics and \u00e6sthetics:\nWhich is greater? Which is more aristocratic? I shall not answer either\nof these. I will let the reader come to his individual conclusion in\nthis matter of value, according to his own taste. Or, less glibly put,\naccording to the conception he has of humanity, which--I must add,\n_sotto voce_--will have to be one-sided and incomplete to admit of his\ncoming to any decision at all.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nIs it not strangely moving to hear that one man had known them both,\nthe creator of _Faust_ and the \u201cgreat writer of Russia\u201d? For certainly\nthey belonged to different centuries. Tolstoy\u2019s life covered the\ngreater part of the nineteenth. He is absolutely its son. As an artist\nhe exhibits all of its characteristics, and, indeed, those of its\nsecond half. As for Goethe, the eighteenth century brought him forth,\nand essential traits of his character and training belong to it--a\nstatement it would be very easy to substantiate. Yet on the other hand\none might say that just as much of the eighteenth, Goethe\u2019s century,\nsurvived in Tolstoy as there had already come to birth of Tolstoy\u2019s,\nof the nineteenth, in Goethe. Tolstoy\u2019s rationalizing Christianity\nhas more in common with the deism of the eighteenth century than it\nhas with Dostoyevsky\u2019s violent and mystical religiosity, which was\nentirely of the nineteenth. His system of practical religion--the\nessence of which was a destructive intellectual force that undermined\nall regulations, human and divine--had more affinity with the\nsocial criticism of the eighteenth century than with Dostoyevsky\u2019s\nmoralizations, although those were, on the one hand, far more profound,\non the other far more religious. And Tolstoy\u2019s _penchant_ for Utopias,\nhis hatred of civilization, his passion for rusticity, for a bucolic\nplacidity of the soul--an aristocratic passion, the passion of a\nnobleman--to all that, the eighteenth century, and indeed the French\neighteenth century, can lay claim. And, on the other hand, Goethe. What\nmost astonishes us in that masterpiece of his old age, the sociological\nnovel _Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre_, is the intuition, the keenness\nand breadth of vision--they seem positively occult, but are simply\nthe expression of a finer organism, the fruit of the most sensitive\npenetration--which anticipate the whole social and economic development\nof the nineteenth century: the industrialization of the old cultural\nand agrarian countries, the triumph of the machine, the rise of the\norganized labouring classes, the class conflict, democracy, socialism,\nAmericanism itself, with the intellectual and educational consequences\nof all these.\n\nBut when all is said, and whatever the chronological affinity of these\ntwo great men, they cannot be called contemporaries. Only four years\ndid the two of them inhabit this mortal sphere together: from 1828,\nwhen Tolstoy was born, to 1832, when Goethe died. Which does not\nprevent them from having one cultural element of their intellectual and\nspiritual make-up in common, and that a very real and positive one--to\nsay nothing of universally human elements like Homer and the Bible. I\nmean the element Rousseau.\n\n\u201cI have read the whole of Rousseau, the whole twenty volumes, including\nthe lexicon of music. What I felt for him was more than enthusiasm;\nit was worship. At fifteen I wore round my neck, instead of the usual\ncrucifix, a medallion with his picture. I am so familiar with some of\nthe passages in his works that I feel as though I had written them\nmyself.\u201d These are Tolstoy\u2019s words, taken from his _Confessions_. And\ncertainly he was Rousseauian more intimately, more personally, more\ndamagingly, so to speak, than was Goethe, who as a man had nothing in\ncommon with poor Jean Jacques\u2019s enigmatic and not always ingratiating\ncomplexities. Yet hear Goethe (I quote from an early review):\n\u201cReligious conditions, and the social conditions so narrowly bound\nup with them; the pressure of the laws, the still greater pressure\nof society, to say nothing of a thousand other factors, leave the\ncivilized man or the civilized nation no soul of his own. They stifle\nthe promptings of nature, they obliterate every trait out of which\na characteristic picture could be made.\u201d That is, from the literary\npoint of view, _Sturm und Drang_. But from the intellectual and\nhistorical, it is Rousseauianism. It bears the impress of revolution,\neven of anarchy; though in the Russian seeker after God that impress is\nreligious and early Christian, whereas in Goethe\u2019s words the humanistic\ntrend can be felt, the irradiation of a cultural and self-developing\nindividualism which Tolstoy would have banned as egoistic and\nunchristian. But unchristian, egoistic, it is not: it means work on\nman, on mankind, on humanity, and it issues, as the _Wanderjahre_\nshows, in the social world.\n\nWhat two ideas does the very sound of Rousseau\u2019s name inevitably\nevoke--aside, that is, from the idea of nature, which is, of course,\nfirst and foremost? Why, naturally, the idea \u201ceducation\u201d and the idea\n\u201cautobiography.\u201d Jean Jacques Rousseau was the author of _\u00c9mile_ and\nof the _Confessions_. Now, both these elements, the pedagogic and the\nautobiographic, are present in full strength in Goethe as in Tolstoy;\nthey cannot be dissociated from the work or the life of either. It\nis as an amateur pedagogue that Tolstoy has been introduced in this\nessay; and we know that for long years he was nothing else, that he\nforced into this channel the whole violence of the passion that was\nin him, and wrestled theoretically and practically to the very verge\nof exhaustion with the problem of the Russian primary school. As for\nGoethe, it is needless to say that his was a pedagogic nature in the\nfullest sense of the word. The two great monuments of his life, one\nin poetry and one in prose, the _Faust_ and the _Wilhelm Meister_,\nare both creative treatments of the theme of education. And whereas\nin the _Lehrjahre_ the idea is still that of the individual forming\nhimself--\u201cfor to form myself, just as I am, was darkly, from my\nyouth up, my purpose and my desire,\u201d says Wilhelm Meister--in the\n_Wanderjahre_ the educational idea is objectivated, and issues in\nsocial, even in political concepts; while at the heart of the work is,\nas you know, the stern and beautiful Utopia of the _Pedagogic Province_.\n\nThe second association, the autobiographic, the confessional, is of\ncourse easy to attest in both authors. That all of Goethe\u2019s works\nrepresent \u201cfragments of one great confession\u201d we should know ourselves\neven if he did not tell us; and is not _Dichtung und Wahrheit_,\nnext to the _Confessions_ of Saint Augustine and Rousseau, the most\nfamous autobiography in the world? Well, and Tolstoy too wrote\nconfessions: I mean in the main a book with that title, laid down\nthroughout on the line of the great self-revelations that runs from\nthe African saint to Strindberg, the son of the servant. But Tolstoy\nis in the same case with Goethe: not by virtue of one book alone is\nhe autobiographical. Beginning with the _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_,\nthroughout the whole body of his work, he is autobiographical to an\nextent that makes it possible for Merezhkovsky, the great Russian\ncritic, to say: \u201cThe artistic work of Leo Tolstoy is at bottom\nnothing else than one tremendous diary, kept for fifty years, one\nendless, explicit confession.\u201d Yes, and this critic adds: \u201cIn the\nliteratures of all times and peoples there will hardly be found a\nsecond example of an author who reveals his personal and private life,\noften in its most intimate aspects, with such open-hearted sincerity.\u201d\nWell--open-hearted.... I may be allowed a comment upon the somewhat\neuphemistic epithet. One might, if one wanted to be invidious, use\na different adjective to characterize this sincerity--an adjective\nthat would suggest what Turgeniev had in mind when he once ironically\nreferred to the shortcomings inevitable in a great writer: by which,\nobviously, he meant the lack of certain restraints, the absence of a\ncustomary reserve, discretion, decency, shame, or, on the positive\nside, the domination of a definite claim on the love of the world--an\nabsolute claim, indeed, in that it is all one to the revealer whether\nhe reveal virtues or vices. He craves to be known and loved, loved\nbecause known, or loved _although_ known; that is what I mean by an\nabsolute claim on love. And the remarkable thing is that the world\nacknowledges and honours the claim.\n\n\u201cA life that is romantic has always self-love at the bottom of it.\u201d\nI like this saying; and subjoin that self-love is also always at\nthe bottom of all autobiography. For the impulse a man feels to\n\u201cfixate\u201d his life, to exhibit its development, to celebrate his own\ndestiny in set literary form and passionately invoke the sympathy\nof his contemporaries and posterity, has for a premise the same\nuncommonly lively sense of his own ego which, according to that\npenetrating saying, is at the bottom of a life full of romantic\nhappenings. Subjectively, for the man himself, but also objectively\nfor the world at large. Of course, this love of self is something\ndifferent, something stronger, deeper, more fruitful, than any mere\nself-complacency or self-love of the ordinary kind. In the finest\ninstances it is what Goethe in the _Wanderjahre_ calls \u201c_Ehrfurcht vor\nsich selbst_,\u201d and celebrates as the highest form of awe. It is the\ngrateful and reverent self-absorption of the darling of the gods, that\nrings with incomparable sincerity from the lines:\n\n    _Alles geben die G\u00f6tter, die unendlichen,\n    Ihren Lieblingen ganz:\n    Alle Freuden, die unendlichen,\n    Alle Schmerzen, die unendlichen, ganz._\n\nIt is a proud and na\u00efve interest in the mystery of high preferment,\ntangible superiority, perilous privilege, whose standard-bearer the\nchosen one feels himself to be; it is a craving to bear witness, out\nof the deeps of experience, how a genius is shaped; a desire to link\ntogether, by some miracle of grace, joy, and service; it was this\ndesire which brought forth _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ and in the truest\nsense inspires all great autobiography.\n\n\u201cI felt the need,\u201d writes Tolstoy of his youthful period, \u201cto be known\nand loved of all the world; to _name my name_, the sound of which would\ngreatly impress everybody, so that they would troop round me and thank\nme for something....\u201d That was quite early, before he had conceived\nany of his creative works or envisaged the idea of founding a new,\npractical, earthly, dogmaless religion--though this idea, according to\nhis journal, had occurred to him by the time he was twenty-seven years\nold. His name, he feels, his mere name, Leo Tolstoy, this formula for\nhis darkly and mightily stirring ego, should, as it were, serve notice\nto the world; whereby, for some reason as yet unknown, the world should\nbe greatly impressed, and feel impelled to surround him in grateful\nthrongs. Long after that, in 1883--at about the same date that Tolstoy\nposed for an artist friend, sitting at his table and writing--he reads\naloud to another friend and admirer, the one-time officer Tschertkof,\nfrom the manuscript of his just-completed personal revelations _What\nDoes My Faith Consist In?_ He reads from this manuscript a categorical\nreprobation of military service, on the grounds of his Christianity;\nwhich so gratifies the ex-officer that he hears nothing else, ceases to\nlisten, and only rouses out of his absorption when he hears, suddenly\nuttered, the reader\u2019s own name. Tolstoy, coming to the end of his\nmanuscript, had, with particular clarity, says Tschertkof, enunciated\nthe name signed underneath the text: \u201cLeo Tolstoy.\u201d\n\nGoethe once played a little literary hoax with his own name, which I\nhave always found singularly touching. You will recall that in the\n_West-\u00f6stliche Divan_ he selected for himself as the lover of Marianne\nZuleika the name of Hatem (the most richly giving and receiving one).\nThe choice betrays a blissful self-preoccupation. Now, in one of\nthe poems, a glorious one, he uses this name at the end of a line,\nwhere, however, it does not rhyme as according to the structure of the\nverse it should, and the name which would rhyme if it stood there is\nanother, is Goethe\u2019s own; so that the reader involuntarily makes the\nsubstitution mentally as he reads. \u201c_Nur dies Herz_,\u201d says the already\nwhite-haired lover to the youthful beloved,\n\n    \u201c_Nur dies Herz, es ist von Dauer,\n    Schwillt in Jugendlichstem Flor;\n    Unter Schnee und Nebelschauer\n    Rast ein \u00c4tna dir hervor.\n    Du besch\u00e4mst wie Morgenr\u00f6te\n    Jener Gipfel ernste Wand,\n    Und noch einmal f\u00fchlet Hatem\n    Fr\u00fchlingshauch und Sommerbrand._\u201d\n\n\u201c_Und noch einmal f\u00fchlet Goethe_ ...\u201d With what delightful playfulness\nthe poet makes the reader eliminate the name Hatem, which does not\ngive the rhyme his ear expects! The eastern masquerade is abandoned for\nautobiography, the ear confutes the eye, and Goethe\u2019s own name, beloved\nof men and gods, emerges with peculiar clarity, rhymed to perfection\nand irradiated by the most beautiful thing the world of sense can show:\nthe rosy dawn.\n\nMay one call that \u201c_Selbstgef\u00e4lligkeit_,\u201d that awestruck sense of\nplenitude, of copious abundance, which pervades the consciousness of\nthe darling of the gods? Goethe all his life had set his face against\nthe affectation which might condemn such a feeling. He let it be known\nthat in his opinion self-condemnation was the business of those who\nhad no ground for anything else. He even openly spoke a good word for\nordinary vanity, and said that the suppression of it would mean social\ndecay, adding that the vain man can never be entirely crude. Whereupon\nfollows the question: Is love of self ever quite distinguishable from\nlove of humanity?\n\n    _Wie sie sich an mich verschwendet,\n    Bin ich mir ein wertes Ich;\n    H\u00e4tte sie sich weggewendet,\n    Augenblicks verl\u00f6r\u2019 ich mich._\n\nAnd is not young Tolstoy\u2019s dream of glory, his craving to be known and\nloved, evidence of his love to the great _Thou_ of the world? Love of\nthe ego and love of the world are psychologically not to be divorced;\nwhich makes the old question whether love is ever altruistic, and not\nutterly egotistic, the most idle question in the world. In love, the\ncontradiction between egotism and altruism is abrogated quite.\n\nFrom which it follows that the autobiographical impulse scarcely ever\nturns out to be a mere dilettante trifling. It seems to carry its own\njustification with it. Talent, generally speaking, is a ticklish,\ndifficult conception; the point of which is really less whether a man\n_can do_ something than whether a man _is_ something. One might almost\nsay that talent is nothing more or less than a high state of adequacy\nto one\u2019s lot in life. But whose life is it that possesses this dignity\nin the face of destiny? With brains and sensibility anything can be\nmade out of any life, out of any life a romantic existence can be made.\nDiffering in this from the pure poetic impulse, which so often rests\nupon sheer self-deception, the autobiographic, as it seems, always\npresupposes a degree of brains and sensibility which justifies it\nbeforehand; so that it need only become productive to be certain of our\nsympathy. Hence the conclusion I drew: that if the world sanction the\nlove of self, which is at the bottom of the impulse, it will as a rule\nrespond to it as well.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\n\u201cBehold, what a marvellous creature lives upon this earth!\u201d Gorky,\ncontemplating Tolstoy, utters this inward cry. And this cry it is to\nwhich all biography seeks to move the world. Any human life, given\nbrains and sensibility, can be made interesting and sympathetic, even\nthe most wretched. J. J. Rousseau was not precisely one\u2019s idea of a\ndarling of the gods. The father of the French Revolution was an unhappy\nwretch, half or three-quarters mad, and probably a suicide. Certainly\nthe blend of sensibility and catarrh of the bladder displayed in the\n_Confessions_ is not, \u00e6sthetically speaking, to everybody\u2019s taste.\nNevertheless, his self-exposure contains and constitutes a claim\nupon the love of the world, which has been so abundantly honoured,\nwith so many tears, that really one might call poor Jean Jacques the\nwell-beloved, _le bien-aim\u00e9_. And this world-wide emotional response\nhe owes to his bond with nature--rather a one-sided bond, it must\nbe owned, for certainly this fool of genius, this exhibitionistic\nworld-shaker, was a stepchild of the All-Mother rather than one of her\npets, an accident of birth instead of a god-given miracle of favour and\npreference. His relation to nature was sentimental in the fullest sense\nof the word, and the tale of his life swept over the world in a wave of\nsentiment, not to say sentimentality. Poor Jean Jacques!\n\nNo, not in this tone does one refer to the two whom men called godlike,\ndivine; in whom, as we have seen, important traits of Rousseau\u2019s\ncharacter are reproduced. For they were not sentimental, scarcely had\nthey occasion to yearn for nature, they themselves were nature. Their\nbond with her was not one-sided, like Rousseau\u2019s--or if it was, then it\nwas nature who loved them, her darlings, loved them and clung to them,\nwhile on their side they drew away, and strove to free themselves from\nher heavy and earth-bound domination; with indifferent success, it must\nbe said, looking at them both singly and together. Goethe confesses:\n\u201cSo here I am, with all my thousand thoughts, sent back to be a child\nagain, unacquainted with the moment, in darkness about myself.\u201d And\nto Schiller, the singer of the highest freedom, he writes: \u201cHow great\nan advantage your sympathy and interest will be to me you will soon\nsee, when you discover in me a sort of sluggishness and gloom which\nis stronger than myself.\u201d And yet we may agree that Goethe\u2019s highly\nhumanistic effort to \u201cconvert the cloudy natural product into a clear\nimage of itself (i.e., of reason) and so discharge the duty and the\nclaim of existence,\u201d as Riemer with extraordinary beauty expresses\nit, was crowned with a purer success than the attempt of Count Leo\nNikolaevich Tolstoy to transform his life into the holy life of our\nblessed father the Bojar Lev, as Gorky says. This process of making\na Christian and a saint of himself, on the part of a human being and\nartist so loved of nature that she had endowed him with godlikeness,\nwas, as an effort at spiritual regeneration, most inept. Anglo-Saxondom\nhailed it with acclaim, but, after all, the spectacle is painful rather\nthan gratifying, compared with Goethe\u2019s high endeavour. For there is\nno conflict between nature and culture; the second only ennobles the\nfirst, it does not repudiate it. But Tolstoy\u2019s method was not the\nennoblement but the renunciation of self, and that can quite easily\nbecome the most mortifying kind of deception. It is true that Goethe,\nat a certain stage in his development, called _G\u00f6tz_ the work of\nan undisciplined boy; but never did he so childishly and miserably\ncalumniate his own art as the ageing Tolstoy did, when he regretted\nhaving written _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_, the fruit of his fresh\nyouthful vigour, condemning it as insincere, literary, sinful; or when\nhe spoke at large of \u201cthe artistic twaddle\u201d that filled the twelve\nvolumes of his works, and to which \u201cpeople today ascribe an unmerited\nsignificance.\u201d That is what I call false self-renunciation, a clumsy\nattempt at spiritualization. Yet renounce himself as he would in words,\nhis very existence gave him the lie; and Gorky looked at him, the\npatriarch with the \u201csly\u201d little smile and the artist hands with their\nswollen veins, and thought to himself: \u201cThe man is godlike.\u201d\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nWeimar, and Yasnaya Polyana. There is no spot on earth today whence\npower streams out as once from these two, no shrine strong in grace,\nthe resort of pilgrims, whither the longings and vague hopes of men,\ntheir need and craving to adore, turn as they did thitherward at\nthe beginning of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth\ncentury. We possess descriptions of the state Goethe kept in Weimar;\nwhen he, now no longer merely the creator of certain works of art,\nbut a prince of life, the highest representative of European culture,\ncivilization, and humanity, with his staff of secretaries, his higher\naides and eager friends at his back, bore up, with that bestarred\nofficial dignity which the world enjoined upon him and behind which\nhe hid the mysteries and abysses of his genius, against the onrushing\ntide of civilized humanity--princes, artists, youths, and rustics,\nto whom the consciousness of having been vouchsafed one glimpse of\nhim might gild the rest of their lives; even though the great moment\nitself might and often did turn out to be a chilling disappointment.\nIn much the same way, I say, the little Russian village became,\nabout 1900, the centre and nodal point, the shrine whose virtue was\nsuch that it drew all the world. The host of pilgrims was even more\ncolourful, more international, more heterogeneous; for during the\ncentury communications had increased, the world had broadened out.\nSouth Africans, Americans, Japanese, Australians, natives of the Malay\nPeninsula, Siberian refugees, and Indian Brahmins, representatives\nof all the European nations, scholars, poets, artists, statesmen,\ngovernors, senators, students, military personages, workmen, peasants,\nFrench politicians, journalists of every stripe, from every country\non the globe; and again youth, youth from all over the world. \u201cWho\ndoes not go to him?\u201d asks a Russian writer: \u201cto greet him, to express\nsympathy with his ideas, to seek relief from tormenting problems.\u201d And\nhis biographer Birukov says: \u201cOne and all they troop to this village\nand then go home to talk about the great words and great thoughts of\nthe grey old seer who lives there.\u201d\n\n\u201cGreat words and great thoughts.\u201d Of course. But it is quite likely\nthe words and thoughts with which the prophet regaled them were not\nalways so remarkable. Neither were Goethe\u2019s; out of sheer embarrassment\nhe might fail to utter great things to those who waited on him. But\nit is a question whether people ever went to Weimar or to the village\ncalled \u201cBright Meadow\u201d for the sake of the great words and thoughts\nthey might perchance hear, or were led by a much more profound and\nelemental craving. I shall be accused of mysticism if I say that the\nattraction such shrines possess for all the world, so that men promise\nthemselves salvation from a visit, is not at all intellectual in its\nnature but something else entirely. \u201cElemental\u201d is the only word for\nit. For Goethe\u2019s case, I may quote Wilhelm von Humboldt, who declared,\na few days after the master\u2019s death, that the strangest thing of all\nwas the way this man had exercised so powerful an influence, without\nas it were meaning to at all, unconsciously, unintentionally, by\nthe mere fact of his existence; this, he says, quite apart from his\nintellectual activity as a thinker and poet, and as an outgrowth of\nhis great and unique personality. Well and good. But, after all, we\nuse the word \u201cpersonality\u201d when we want to express an idea which at\nbottom escapes definition. Personality is not immediately a matter of\nmind or spirit--nor yet of culture. Our conception of it is one which\ntakes us outside the domain of the rational, into the sphere of the\nmystic and elemental, into the _natural_ sphere. \u201cA great nature\u201d--that\nis another phrase we use in our effort to find a formula and a symbol\nwhich shall express power streaming forth and drawing the world to\nitself. But nature is not spirit; in fact, this antithesis is, I should\nsay, the greatest of all antitheses. Gorky not only disbelieved in\nTolstoy\u2019s Christian, Buddhistic, Chinese gospel of wisdom, he did not\neven believe that Tolstoy believed in it. And yet he gazed at him,\nand thought, in amaze: \u201cThe man is like God.\u201d It was not spirit, but\nnature, moved him to this inward cry. And when the pilgrims trooped to\nWeimar and \u201cBright Meadow\u201d the refreshment and quickening they dimly\nhoped for was not of the mind; it was the sight of and contact with\ngreat vital energy, with human nature richly endowed, with the lofty\nnobility of a beloved child of God. For one does not need to be a\nSpinozist, like Goethe, who had his own good reasons for being one, to\nhail the favourites of nature as the favourites of God.\n\nSchiller, great sufferer though he was, was kinder, more human to his\nvisitors. This we learn for instance from the actor Friederich, who\nsays he left this glorious poet \u201cmore consoled,\u201d after having just\npreviously taken a chill, to speak figuratively, at an audience on the\nFrauenplan. \u201cGoethe\u2019s whole appearance,\u201d he goes on, \u201cseemed measured\nand formal. I sought in vain a trait that betrayed the genial creator\nof _The Sorrows of Werther_ or _Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_. You can\nimagine how this frigid reception and unfriendly treatment put me off,\nit was so contrary to all my expectations. Dearly should I have liked\nto say to Goethe: \u2018What sort of graven image are you? It is impossible\nthat you could have written the _Lehrjahre_.\u2019 But I choked it down.\u201d\nOne is reminded of the Moscow worthy with whom Gorky drove away from\nYasnaya Polyana: who for a long time could not get his breath at all,\nonly kept ruefully smiling and ejaculating as in a daze: \u201cWell, well,\nthat was a cold douche! Gracious, but he\u2019s stiff! And I thought he was\nan anarchist!\u201d Perhaps, even probably, if it had been Dostoyevsky he\nvisited, he would have found him more anarchistic--in other words, less\n\u201cstiff\u201d--and would have parted from him \u201cmore consoled,\u201d as did the\ngood Friederich from the glorious Schiller, who even let Friederich\nrecite to him. On the other hand, neither Schiller\u2019s nor Dostoyevsky\u2019s\ngenius would have turned any odd corner of the earth into a shrine for\npilgrims. Anyhow, neither of them lived long enough for that. They\ndied too young, they did not reach the patriarchal years of Goethe and\nTolstoy, nature denied them the dignity and consecration of great age,\nshe did not grant them to be characteristically fruitful throughout\nall the stages of the human scene, to live a whole and classic human\nlife. True, it may be said that the dignity that comes with length\nof days has nothing to do with spirit. A greybeard may be stupid and\nordinary; yet men do regard with religious awe his white hair and\nwrinkles; his is a natural nobility conferred by length of years--but\nnatural nobility is probably a pleonasm. Nobility is always natural.\nPeople are not ennobled, that is rubbish; they are noble by birth, on\nthe ground of their flesh and blood. Nobility then is physical: on the\nbody and not on the mind all nobility has always laid the greatest\nstress. That may explain a certain strain of brutality which has always\nbeen peculiar to human nobility. And is there not something brutal\ntoo, in its way, heathenish, sagalike, in the arrogant way Goethe\nsometimes boasted of his vitality, his indestructibility? When he was\neighty-one he said to Soret: \u201cWell, so S\u00f6mmering is dead. He was barely\na miserable five-and-seventy years old! What poor things men are, not\nto be brave enough to hold out longer than that! On that score I really\nmust do justice to that highly radical ass my friend Bentham; he is\nquite well preserved, and he is a few weeks older than I am myself!\u201d\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo Schiller and Dostoyevsky, to get back to them, were not vouchsafed\nthe ennoblement that comes with length of days. They died comparatively\nyoung. Why? Well, because they were sick men, as everybody knows,\nboth of them; one consumptive, the other epileptic. But I raise two\nquestions: First, do we not feel that their illness was deeply founded\nin the very being of the two of them, an essential and typical trait of\nthe kind of men they were? And second, does it not seem that in their\ncase it is the disease itself that engenders or brings out a nobility\nsharply distinguished from that love of self and the autobiographical\npride of birth which is part of its consummate sense of its own ego?\nSchiller\u2019s nobility and Dostoyevsky\u2019s nobility mean a quite different\nsort of deepening and heightening of their humanity--yes, of their\n_humanity_, in view of which does not disease appear precisely as an\naristocratic attribute of heightened humanity? It follows then that the\nphrase \u201cnatural nobility\u201d is no pleonasm after all; that there does\nexist another kind of nobility besides that conferred by nature on her\nfavoured sons. Clearly there are two ways of heightening and enhancing\nhuman values: one exalts them up to the godlike, and is a gift of\nnature\u2019s grace; the other exalts them up to the saintly, by grace of\nanother power, which stands opposed to her and means emancipation from\nher, eternal revolt from her. That other power is the power of the\nspirit. But the question which of these two is higher, which kind of\nenhancement of human values is the nobler: this it is which I called\nthe aristocratic problem.\n\nHere, with all due reserve, a little philosophy of disease may not be\nout of place. Disease has two faces and a double relation to man and\nhis human dignity. On the one hand it is hostile: by overstressing the\nphysical, by throwing man back upon his body, it has a dehumanizing\neffect. On the other hand, it is possible to think and feel about\nillness as a highly dignified human phenomenon. It may be going too\nfar to say that disease _is_ spirit, or, which would sound very\ntendentious, that spirit is disease. Still, the two conceptions do have\nvery much in common. For the spirit is pride; it is a wilful denial and\ncontradiction of nature; it is detachment, withdrawal, estrangement\nfrom her. Spirit is that which distinguishes from all other forms of\norganic life this creature man, this being which is to such a high\ndegree independent of her and hostile to her. And the question, the\naristocratic problem, is this: is he not by just so much the more man,\nthe more detached he is from nature--that is to say, the more diseased\nhe is? For what can disease be, if not disjunction from nature? \u201c_Tut\nder Finger dir weh_,\u201d says Hebbel epigrammatically, \u201c_schied er vom\nLeibe sich ab,_\n\n    _Und die S\u00e4fte beginnen, im Gliede gesondert zu kreisen:\n    Aber so ist auch der Mensch, f\u00fcrcht\u2019 ich, ein Schmerz nur in Gott._\u201d\n\nWas it not Nietzsche who called man \u201c_das kranke Tier_\u201d? What did he\nmean, if not that man is more than beast only in the measure that he\nis ailing? In spirit, then, in disease, resides the dignity of man; and\nthe genius of disease is more human than the genius of health.\n\nYou will deny that; you will not agree to have it so. But, in the first\nplace, disease, as a philosophical term, is by no means a negation\nand a condemnation. It is merely a statement, which need be no less\nacceptable than the term \u201chealth,\u201d there being a nobility of disease\nas there is a nobility of health. And, in the second place, may I\nremind you that Goethe identified the Schillerian conception of the\n\u201csentimental\u201d with that of disease? After, that is, he had previously\nidentified the antithesis of \u201csimple and sentimental\u201d with that of\nclassic and romantic. \u201cThe conception of classic and romantic poetry,\u201d\nhe said one day to Eckermann, \u201cthat is abroad today, and making so much\nstrife and schism, came originally from Schiller and me. My poetical\nmaxim has been objectivity of treatment, and I wanted it to prevail.\nBut Schiller, whose method is entirely subjective, thought his way\nwas right, and wrote the essay on simple and sentimental poetry in\ndefence of his conception.\u201d Again: \u201cI have thought of a new phrase\nwhich states not too badly the relation between the classic and the\nromantic. The classic I call the healthy, the romantic the diseased. If\nwe distinguish classic and romantic on this basis we shall soon clarify\nthe situation.\u201d\n\nHere, then, we have an order of things according to which, on the\none hand, the simple, the objective, the sound, and the classic are\nidentical; and, on the other hand, the \u201csentimental,\u201d the subjective,\nthe pathological, the romantic. Thus one might call man the romantic\nbeing, in that he, a spiritual entity, stands outside of and beyond\nnature, and in this his emotional separation from her, in this his\ndouble essence of nature and spirit, finds both his own importance\nand his own misery. Nature is happy, or she seems so to him. For he,\ninvolved in tragical paradox, is a romantically miserable being.\nDoes not all our love of our kind rest on a brotherly, sympathetic\nrecognition of the human being\u2019s well-nigh hopelessly difficult\nsituation? Yes, there is a patriotism of humanity, and it rests on\nthis: we love human beings because they have such a hard time--and\nbecause we are one of them ourself!\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nTolstoy, in his _Confessions_, remarks that as a small child he knew\nnothing of nature, he had not even noticed her existence. \u201cIt is not\npossible,\u201d he says, \u201cthat I was given neither flowers nor leaves to\nplay with, that I did not see the grass or the sunlight. And yet up\nto my fifth or sixth year I have no memory of what we call nature.\nProbably we have to get free from her in order to see her, and I myself\nwas nature.\u201d From which can be deduced that even the mere seeing of\nnature, and our so-called enjoyment of her, are not only a specifically\nhuman condition, but one full of yearning emotion, in other words\npathological, implying as it does our separation from her. Tolstoy\u2019s\nrecollection is that he felt the pain of this separation for the first\ntime when his childhood under the care of nurses came to an end and\nhe moved over to his older brothers and the tutor Feodor Ivanovich in\nthe lower storey. Never again, he assures us, did he feel so strongly\nwhat a sense of duty meant, and what, accordingly, moral and ethical\nobligation: \u201cthe feeling of the Cross, to carry which every one of us\nis called. It was hard for me to part from all I had known since I was\nborn. I was sad, sunk in poetical melancholy; less because I had to\npart from human beings, my nurse, my sisters, my aunt, than because I\nwas leaving my little bed with its curtains and pillows. Moreover, I\nwas apprehensive of the new life I was entering.\u201d The appearance of the\nword \u201cCross\u201d in this connexion is significant, not only with reference\nto Tolstoy, but also for the thing itself, the process of loosing\noneself from nature. This process was felt by Tolstoy as painful and\nethical: painful because ethical, and ethical because painful. He\ngives it a moral and an ascetic significance, as that which actually\ncomprises all man\u2019s ethical obligation. To be humanized means, for\nhim, to be denaturalized; and from that moment on, the struggle of his\nexistence consists in this sort of humanizing process: in the divorce\nfrom nature, from everything that was natural and to him peculiarly so,\nfor example from the family, the nation, the State, the Church, from\nall the passions of the senses and the instincts, from love, the hunt,\nat bottom from all of physical life, and especially from art, which\nmeant to him quite essentially the life of the body and the senses.\nIt is quite wrong to think of this struggle as a crisis of conversion\ntaking place suddenly in his later years; to make its inception roughly\ncoincide with the beginning of old age. When the news came that the\ngreat Russian writer was as though stricken by a sort of mystical\nmadness, the Frenchman Vogu\u00e9 declared that he had long expected it. He\nwas quite justified. The germ of Tolstoy\u2019s intellectual development had\nlain in _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_; and the psychology of Levin in\n_Anna Karenine_ plainly indicated what further course it would take.\nBesides, we have the evidence of Tolstoy\u2019s comrades in arms when he\nwas an officer, the Sebastopol time. They give the clearest picture of\nthe violence with which the struggle even then raged within him. But\nhere we should note that his wrestling to break the strong bonds in\nwhich nature held him, regularly led up to disease, immediately assumed\nthe form of illness. \u201cLeochen is completely consumed by his writing\nnow,\u201d so his wife, Countess Sophia Alexandrovna, puts it, about the\nyear 1880, when he buried himself in theology and the philosophy of\nreligion. It is a sight her love hates to see, and she constantly tries\nto call him back to creative work. \u201cHis eyes are strange and staring,\nhe hardly speaks at all, he is like a being from another world, and\nis positively not capable of thinking of earthly things....\u201d \u201cLeochen\nis quite sunk in his work. His head pains him all the time. He is\nvery much changed, and become a rigid and practising Christian. But\nhe has got grey, his health is weak, he is sadder and more silent all\nthe time.\u201d--\u201cTomorrow we shall have been here a month,\u201d she writes in\n1881 from Moscow, \u201cand the first two weeks I wept every day without\nstopping, because Leochen was not only in a gloomy state, but fallen\ninto a kind of despairing apathy. He ate nothing and did not sleep,\nsometimes literally wept--I honestly believe I shall lose my reason.\u201d\nAnd to her husband himself: \u201cI am beginning to think that when a happy\nman suddenly begins to see only the horrible side of life, and has no\neyes for anything good, he must be ill. You should do something for\nit, I say this in all seriousness. It seems so clear to me, I suffer\nso to see you.... Did you never know before that there were people in\nthe world who were hungry, miserable, unhappy, and wicked? Open your\neyes: there are also strong and healthy, happy and good ones. If God\nwould only help you--what can I do? You must be ill,\u201d the poor woman\nwails--and is he not? He himself writes: \u201cMy health grows worse and\nworse, often I wish I could die. Why I am so reduced, I do not know\nmyself. Perhaps it is age, perhaps illness....\u201d\n\nCompare with this the descriptions of him when he had sought in the\nholy animalism of married life a refuge from the insoluble riddles that\nhis intellect set him; and then, with that power which the critics\ndelighted to call \u201cbearlike\u201d--Turgeniev sought in vain to convince\nhim that it came from the source whence all things come--created his\ntwo epic novels _War and Peace_ and _Anna Karenine_. \u201cHe was always\nlight-hearted then,\u201d his sister-in-law relates, \u201cin high spirits, as\nthe English say, fresh, healthy, and jolly. On the days when he did\nnot write he went hunting with me or his neighbour Ribikov. We hunted\nwith greyhounds.... Evenings he played patience in Tantchen\u2019s room.\u201d\nWhat happy days! Who can blame poor Countess Sophia Alexandrovna for\nscarcely containing herself for joy when she hears that her hollow-eyed\nChristian is planning a new imaginative work? Her happiness is\ntouching. \u201cWhat gladness suddenly filled me, to read that you mean to\nwrite something creative again! What I have so long awaited and hoped\nfor has come to you. That is salvation, that is happiness, in it we\nshall come together again, it will console you and irradiate our life.\nThis is the work you were made for, and outside this sphere there is no\njoy for your soul. God give you strength to cling to this ray of light,\nin order that the divine spark may flare up in you again. The thought\nfills me with ecstasy....\u201d\n\nGoethe\u2019s and Tolstoy\u2019s biographies show that these great writers\nboth alike suppressed for years their gift of plastic creation--for\nwhich, as Countess Sophia Alexandrovna says, they were born--and\nboth in the service of a directly social activity--that is to say,\non highly moral grounds. Tolstoy suppressed the artist in him in\nfavour of his activities as _mirowov posrednik_ (justice of the\npeace) and schoolmaster without pay. Goethe governed the dukedom\nof Saxe-Weimar, for ten years of his early manhood dedicated his\npowers to excise regulations, details of book manufacture, levies of\nrecruits, construction of streets and water-conduits, workhouses,\nmines and quarries, finance, and other such matters--while Merck, in\nthe style of Turgeniev, was constantly concerned to rescue him for\nliterature, and he himself, with increasing resignation, steeling\nhimself by inward exhortations to patience and fortitude, held himself\nto the heavy, hard, unrewarding, unnatural task. Added to all this, in\nGoethe\u2019s case, there was that somewhat seraphic affair with Frau von\nStein. No doubt it was most beautifully instrumental in the process\nof civilizing the son of the Titans; but after all it did justice to\nbut one of those famous two souls, which had, alas, their dwelling\nin his breast, and it let the other, the one with the \u201c_klammernde\nOrganen_,\u201d the \u201cprehensile organs,\u201d go empty away.--Well, in both\ncases, Goethe\u2019s and Tolstoy\u2019s, the result is illness. \u201cMy office as\njustice of the peace,\u201d writes Tolstoy, \u201chas ended in destroying my\ngood relations with the landowners, quite aside from the fact that\nit injures my health.\u201d Teaching the village children had the same\nresult. True, in his pedagogical journal he claims that the exercises\nthe children wrote were more accomplished than the writings of Leo\nTolstoy, Pushkin, and Goethe; yet he discerns something evil and even\ncriminal in his intercourse with them, it seems to him that he abuses\nand corrupts their souls. \u201cIt seemed to go very well,\u201d he says in the\n_Confessions_, \u201cbut I felt that I was mentally not healthy enough\nand that it could not go on so for much longer. I was more ailing\nmentally than physically; I threw it all overboard and drove out to\nthe Kalmucks of the steppes to drink mares\u2019 milk and lead an animal\nlife.\u201d--This absconding to the steppes vividly recalls the secret\nflight to Italy which was Goethe\u2019s salvation, after he too had seen\nthat it could not go on so for much longer. The thirty-four-year-old\nman had become silent, taciturn, in plain words melancholy. He thought\nit was probably natural that a man should become serious over serious\nthings. His health was actually undermined; by the time he was\nsix-and-thirty his face was the face of a victim of exhaustion. For\nthe first time he thought of taking a cure. He began to be aware of the\nruinous perversity of his existence; expressed his view in the shrewd\nunderstatement that he was meant for private life. And fled before\ndestruction. The parallel continues to hold: for Leo Nikolaevich,\nreturned from the steppes and the mares\u2019 milk cure, marries his Sophia\nAlexandrovna, who from then on finds herself almost continuously in\nthe family way, and with epic and primeval power creates his two great\nnovels. While Goethe, back from Italy, takes Christiane Vulpius unto\nhimself and, freed from the cares of office, gives his mind to his\nnatural tasks. All which might serve as a gloss upon a philosophy of\ndisease.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nArt is objective, creative contemplation, closely bound up with nature.\nCritique, on the other hand, is the moralizing, analysing attitude\ntoward life and nature. In other words, critique is spirit; whereas\ncreation is the preoccupation of the children of God and nature.\n\n\u201cIn poetry my maxim was the objective principle,\u201d says Goethe. \u201cI am\na plastic artist.\u201d Indeed, the contrast between Goethe\u2019s position\nand that of his great counterpart (Schiller standing for idealism,\nmoralization, rhetoric, in short for critique) is too well known to\nneed labouring. Goethe regarded his own inborn poetic gift \u201cquite\nas nature.\u201d His tolerance, his attitude of live and let live, the\ncomplaisance of his character, are all consonant with this view. They\nare based on the Spinozan concept of the perfectitude and necessity\nof all being, on the idea of a world free from final ends and final\ncauses, in which evil has its rights like good. \u201cWe struggle,\u201d he\ndeclares, \u201cto perfect the work of art as an end in itself. They, the\nmoralists, think of the ulterior effect, about which the true artist\ntroubles himself as little as nature does when she makes a lion or a\nhumming-bird.\u201d It is a primary maxim with him that art is as inimical\nto purpose as nature herself; and this is the point where the follower\nof Spinoza sympathizes with Kant, who conceives detached contemplation\nas the genuine \u00e6sthetic state, thus making a fundamental distinction\nbetween the \u00e6sthetic-creative principle and the ethical-critical one.\n\u201cWhen,\u201d says Goethe, \u201cphilosophy confirms and enhances our original\nfeeling of our oneness with nature, turning it into a profound and\ntranquil contemplation, then I welcome it.\u201d I could cite ten or twelve\nother places in his works, where in the name of art he repudiates the\nmoral sanction--which indeed is always social as well. \u201cIt is possible,\nI suppose, for a work of art to have a moral effect; but to demand\nfrom the artist a moral purpose and intention is to spoil his craft\nfor him.\u201d--\u201cI have, in my trade as a writer, never asked myself: How\nshall I be of service to the world at large? All I have ever done was\nwith the view of making myself better and more full of insight, of\nincreasing the content of my own personality; and then only of giving\nutterance to what I had recognized as the good and the true.\u201d\n\nWhen we contrast the Christian-social ethics of Tolstoy as an old man\nwith Goethe\u2019s pagan and cultural idealism, we must not forget that the\nTolstoyan socialism had its origin in the most private and personal\nneed, the profoundest concern with the salvation of one\u2019s own soul. A\npermanent dissatisfaction with self, a tortured seeking for the meaning\nof life, was the source of this socialism. The moralist began all his\nteachings and reforms with a self-discipline (the _Confessions_, that\nis) such as the true and proper social critic never demands of himself.\nRevolutionary in the real and political sense of the word he can by\nno means be called. \u201cThe significance of the Christian doctrine,\u201d\nhe declares, \u201cis not that in its name society shall forcibly be\nreformed. It is that one shall find a meaning to life.\u201d And it should\nbe pointed out that Tolstoy\u2019s original conception of art corresponded\nprecisely to Goethe\u2019s--a fact which will surprise none but those who\nin all good faith accept him as a child of spirit, like Schiller and\nDostoyevsky, on the ground of his na\u00efve and clumsy efforts at spiritual\nregeneration, and fail to recognize in him a natural nobility akin\nto Goethe\u2019s own. Tolstoy\u2019s hatred of Shakespeare, which dates from\nmuch earlier than is generally realized, undoubtedly has its roots in\nantagonism against that universal and all-accepting nature: in the\njealousy which a man enduring moral torment was bound to feel in face\nof the blithe irony of an absolutely creative genius. It was a reaction\nagainst nature, against the simple, against indifference to the moral\npoint of view; and an impulse toward spirit--that is, toward an ethical\nand even social revaluation--a reaction so whole-souled, indeed, that\nit ended in his playing off against Shakespeare Mrs. Harriet Beecher\nStowe, the creator of _Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin_--an absurdity which only\ngoes to show how very much the child of nature he was. Genuine sons\nof spirit and of the idea, like Schiller and Dostoyevsky, do not run\naground on such fantastic coasts. Tolstoy\u2019s critical and moral faculty,\nin short his bias toward spirit, was but a secondary impulse, and a\nfeeble one at that. It always balked at organic union with his mighty\ncreative gift; we have unequivocal declarations from him to the effect\nthat, in his view, pure creative power stood higher than talent with a\nsocial coloration. As an old man he criticized Dostoyevsky for going\nin for politics, much as Goethe had criticized Uhland\u2019s activities in\nthat line. At the age of thirty-one, in 1859, as a member of the Moscow\nsociety of the Friends of Russian Literature, he made a speech in which\nhe so sharply accented the superiority of the purely artistic elements\nin literature over merits due to ulterior or ephemeral causes that the\npresident of the society, Chomiakof, reminded him in a sharp rejoinder\nthat a servant of pure art might very well, without knowing or wishing\nit, find himself indicting society.\n\nAn outburst of intellectual misgivings, of that humility of spirit to\nwhich the sons of nature are prone, occurs at the end of Tolstoy\u2019s\nnovel _Lucerne_. Here is a splendid lament over the fate of man,\nwho, with all his need of positive redemption, is flung into an\never-billowing and shoreless ocean of good and evil. \u201cIf man,\u201d cries\nTolstoy, \u201chad only once learned not to judge and think so sharply and\ndecisively, and not always to give answers to questions which are only\nput in order that they may remain for ever questions! If he would\nonly comprehend that every thought is at once false and true!... Men\nhave divided up into sections this ever-rolling, boundless, eternally\nmingled chaos of good and bad; they have drawn themselves imaginary\nboundary-lines in this sea, and they expect the sea to divide according\nto their lines. As if it were not possible to make millions of other\ndivisions, from other points of view, and on different planes!...\nCivilization is good, barbarism evil, freedom is good, unfreedom\nevil. This imaginary knowledge destroys in human nature the _original\nblissful and instinctive striving towards good_.\u201d And asking himself\nwhether in the souls of the poor there may not be more happiness and\naffirmation of life than in that of the callous rich man against\nwhom, for his own part, his heart revolts, he bursts out with the\nwords: \u201cEndless is the goodness and wisdom of Him who has permitted\nand commanded all these contradictions. Only to you, poor worm, so\npresumptuously struggling to accomplish your schemes and devices,\nonly to you do they seem contradictory. He looks mildly down from\nHis radiant, immeasurable height and rejoices in the endless harmony\nwherein in endless conflict you all do move!\u201d\n\nCould one express oneself more \u201cGoethically\u201d? Even the \u201c_Harmonie des\nUnendlichen_\u201d is here. This is not mere philosophical or moral doubt;\nthe words are too light, too thin, too intellectual to characterize\nthe piety, the religious submission, the adoration of nature, that\nbreathe from Tolstoy\u2019s page. This is not the voice of the prophet,\nschoolmaster, and reformer; here speaks the child of this world, the\ncreative artist. Nature was his element, as she was the element, the\nbeloved, kindly mother, of Goethe--and his constant tearing at the bond\nwhich held him fast to her, his desperate urging away from her in the\ndirection of spirit and morality, from creation to critique, has much\nto command our respect and reverence, though at the same time there\nis about it something painful, tormenting, and humiliating, which is\nnot present in the character of Goethe. Look at Tolstoy\u2019s attitude\ntoward music, it is most instructive. When he met Berthold Auerbach\nin Dresden, that not too profound moralist told him that music is an\nirresponsible enjoyment, and added that irresponsible enjoyment is the\nfirst step toward immorality. Tolstoy, in his journal, made this clever\nand abominable phrase his own. His hatred and fear of music had the\nsame moral and social basis as his hatred and fear of Shakespeare. We\nare told that at the sound of music he grew pale and his face became\ndrawn with an expression very like horror. Notwithstanding, he was\nnever able to live without music. In his earlier years he even founded\na musical society. Before beginning work he habitually seated himself\nat the piano--that means a good deal. And in Moscow, when he sat beside\nTschaikowsky and listened to the composer\u2019s Quartet in D major, he\nbegan to sob at the _andante_, before everybody. No, unmusical he was\nnot. Music loved him, even though he, great moralizing infant that he\nwas, felt that he ought not to return her love.\n\nThere is that legend of the giant Ant\u00e6us, who was unconquerable because\nfresh strength streamed into him whenever he touched his mother earth.\nThe lives of Goethe and Tolstoy irresistibly recall that myth. Both\nsons of mother earth, they differ only therein, that one of them was\naware of the source of his nobility, the other not. There are places\nin Tolstoy\u2019s remorseful confessions where he touches the earth, and\nall at once his words, which, so long as they dealt in theory, were\nwooden and confused, are imbued with the most penetrating sensuousness,\nwith an irresistible force and freshness of life. He recalls how once\nas a child he went nutting with his grandmother in the hazel-wood.\nLackeys instead of horses draw the grandmother\u2019s little carriage into\nthe grove. They break through the undergrowth and bend the boughs,\nfull of ripe, already dropping nuts, down into the old lady\u2019s lap and\nshe gathers them into a bag. Little Leo marvels at the strength of\nthe tutor, Feodor Ivanovich, who bends the heavy branches; when he\nlets go they spring up again and slowly mingle with the others. \u201cI\ncan feel how hot it was in the sun, how pleasantly cool in the shade,\nhow we breathed the sharp scent of the hazel leaves, while all round\nus the girls were cracking nuts between their teeth; we munched the\nfull, fresh, white kernels without stopping.\u201d--The fresh, full, white\nkernels cracking between the girls\u2019 teeth: that is Ant\u00e6us-Tolstoy, and\nthe strength of his mother the earth streams through him, as it did\nwhen he wrote _War and Peace_, where his rather vague, fine-drawn, not\nvery convincing philosophical digressions are followed by pages of\nwhich Turgeniev wrote: \u201cThey are glorious, they are the very best there\nis, everything original, everything descriptive, the hunt, the night\nboat-ride and all--nobody in Europe can touch him.\u201d\n\nAnd Goethe: how the Ant\u00e6us-consciousness governed his whole existence!\nHow constantly it conditioned his seeking and shaping! Nature is\nto him \u201chealing and comfort\u201d after the visitations of passion; and\nwhile he well knows that to know her \u201cone must have moulded all the\nmanifestations of the human being into one definite and distinct\nentity,\u201d that true research is unthinkable without the gift of\nimagination, he is wary of the fantastic, avoids speculative natural\nphilosophy, guards himself against losing touch with the earth, and\ncalls the idea \u201cthe result of experience.\u201d The imagination that guides\nhis research is intuitive, it is the inborn sympathy of the child of\nnature with the organic. It is Ant\u00e6an, like the imaginative power\nwhich conditions his creative art, nor is that, either, capricious\nin its nature, but precise and based on the sense-perceptions. Such\nis the imagination of the creative artist. The sons of the thought,\nof the idea, of spirit, theirs is another kind. We will not say that\nthe one creates more reality than the other. But the figures created\nby the plastic fancy possess the realism of sheer being; while those\ncreated by the \u201csentimental\u201d artist evince their actuality by action.\nSchiller himself makes this distinction. Apart from the things they\ndo, he himself confesses, they have something shadowy--\u201c_etwas\nSchattenhaftes_\u201d is his expression. Translate this from the sphere\nof German idealism into the Russian and revelational, and you get,\nas a sort of national pendant to Schiller\u2019s world of idea, rhetoric,\nand drama, the shadow-world of Dostoyevsky, over-life-size and\nexaggeratedly true. A catchword occurs to one from the philosophy of\nart, that is in everybody\u2019s mouth today, or at least was yesterday:\nthe word \u201cexpressionism.\u201d Really, what we call expressionism is only\na late form, strongly impregnated with the Russian and revelational,\nof romantic idealism. Its conflict with the epic attitude toward art,\nthe conflict between contemplation and ecstatic vision, is neither new\nnor old, it is eternal. And it finds complete expression in on the one\nside Goethe and Tolstoy, on the other Schiller and Dostoyevsky. And to\nall eternity the truth, power, calm, and humility of nature will be in\nconflict with the disproportionate, fevered, and dogmatic presumption\nof spirit.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nVery much, yes, precisely as Goethe\u2019s \u201cprofound and tranquil\ncontemplation,\u201d his precise and sensuous fancy, the lifelikeness of\nhis characters, stand in relation to the ideal visions of Schiller and\nthe activism of his creations, so the mighty sense-appeal of Tolstoy\u2019s\nart stands to Dostoyevsky\u2019s sickly, distorted dream-and-soul world.\nIndeed, the contrast becomes even more pointed by reason of differences\nbetween nations and periods. Tolstoy, the realistic novelist, the\nprince-and-peasant scion of a race still young, displays in his art a\nsensuousness more powerful, more immediately fleshly in its appeal,\nthan does the German humanist and classicist, bourgeois-born and\npatrician-bred, in his.\n\nCompared with Eduard and Charlotte, the lovers in the\n_Wahlverwandtschaften_, Vronsky and Anna are like a fine strong\nstallion and a noble mare. The comparison is not mine; it has often\nbeen made. A certain school of Russian criticism, hostile, of course,\nand on a low plane, found most offensive Tolstoy\u2019s animalism, his\nunheard-of interest in the life of the body, his genius for bringing\nhome to us man\u2019s physical being. These critics wrote, for instance,\nthat _Anna Karenine_ reeked with the classic odour of babies\u2019 diapers.\nThey raved at the salaciousness of certain scenes, and ironically\nreproached Tolstoy for omitting to describe how Anna takes her bath and\nVronsky washes himself. They were wrong even in the fact; for Tolstoy\ndoes tell us how Vronsky washes, we see him rubbing his red body. And\nin _War and Peace_ we are vouchsafed a glimpse of Napoleon naked,\nin the scene where he has his fat back sprayed with eau-de-Cologne.\nA critic wrote in _Die Tat_ about this book: \u201cIts main theme is the\nsatisfaction of any and every human being within the fold of wedded\nbliss, conceived in the grossest sense.\u201d And then the same critic,\nparodying Tolstoy\u2019s style, proposed to him that he write another novel\ntreating of Levin\u2019s love for his cow Pania.\n\nAll this, of course, is on a lower plane than the criticism of Goethe\nwhich Caroline Herder wrote to Knebel: \u201cOh, if he would only give some\nsoul to his characters! If only there were not so much philandering in\neverything that he writes, or, as he himself so likes to call it, so\nmuch \u2018good feeling.\u2019\u201d But unenlightened comment such as this may very\nwell be illuminating none the less, even though unawares and as it were\non false pretences; and these remarks, in their folly, do undoubtedly\ncontain a grain of truth. Caroline\u2019s \u201cphilandering\u201d is a mincing,\nsentimental word to characterize what Goethe wrote; yet it has a\ncertain aptness, if the comparison is between his frank realism and\nthe lofty insubstantiality of Schiller\u2019s world. It is not such a bad\njoke, either, to make Levin fall in love with his cow. It hits off the\nfleshliness of Tolstoy\u2019s art as contrasted with the holy soulfulness of\nDostoyevsky\u2019s--especially when we remember Tolstoy\u2019s personal passion\nfor one of the preoccupations of farm life--namely, the breeding of\ncattle and pigs. It is an interest quite proper, of course, to a landed\nproprietor; yet where so strongly marked as this surely not quite\nwithout deeper meaning.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nI am still resolved not to pass judgment. I did, indeed, throw out\nthe question of nobility, the matter of rank. But I am wary of hasty\ndecisions, and even at the risk of being called vacillating, I hold to\nmy policy of the free hand and my faith in its ultimate fruitfulness.\nWhy should I not be a cautious judge of the swaying battle, when I know\nthat what I called above the arrogance of spirit is one with that great\nand highly affecting principle which we call freedom?\n\nSchiller\u2019s loftiest boast is the freedom of the singer. But Goethe\u2019s\nattitude toward the conception of freedom is at all times cautious, not\nonly in the political field, but consistently, fundamentally, and in\nevery connexion. Of Schiller he says: \u201cIn his latter years, when he had\nhad enough of freedom in a physical sense, he went over to it in the\nrealm of the ideal, and I might almost say that it killed him; for it\ncaused him to make demands on his physical powers that were altogether\ntoo much for them. I have great respect for the categorical imperative,\nI know how much good can come of it; but one must not carry it too far,\nfor then this idea of the ideal freedom certainly leads to no good.\u201d--I\nconfess that this habit of using Schiller\u2019s heroic life to point a\nwarning against exaggerations in the use of the categorical imperative\nhas always made me smile. To confront the moral with the natural is\nalways humorous. But in other places where this child of God expresses\nhimself about heroes and saints his words have quite a different ring\nand bear witness frankly and sincerely to the nobility of spirit. He\ndeclared one day that he passed for an aristocrat, but that Schiller\nwas at bottom much more of a one than he. The remark bears directly\nupon the problem of aristocracy: certainly not in the political\nfield, nor yet to the fact that Schiller had spoken of the \u201ceternally\nblind,\u201d to whom one must not lend Heaven\u2019s torches of light; no, it\nhas immediate reference to the aristocracy of spirit, which Goethe was\nat the moment comparing with his own, the aristocracy of nature, and\nfinding it the more lofty of the two. \u201cNothing disturbed him,\u201d he says\nadmiringly, \u201cnothing constrained him, nothing distracted the flight of\nhis thoughts. He was as great at the tea-table as he would have been\nin the council-chamber.\u201d This admiring wonder rises from the depths of\nGoethe\u2019s Ant\u00e6us-nature, which had no consciousness at all of a freedom\nlike that, of such independence and unrestraint. Rather he knew himself\nto be constantly conditioned by a hundred circumstances; influenced,\nobligated, willingly indeed, with a certain pride in his earth-bound\naristocracy, yet influenced and obligated none the less. Pantheistic\nnecessity was the fundamental feeling of his existence. It is not\nenough to say he did not believe in the freedom of the will. He denied\nthe conception, he denied that such a thing was even conceivable. \u201cWe\nbelong to the laws of nature,\u201d he says, \u201ceven when we rebel against\nthem; we are working with her, even when we work against her.\u201d That\nd\u00e6monic determinism of his whole being was often felt by others. They\nsaid he was possessed, and not able to act voluntarily. His earth-bound\nstate manifested itself, for instance, in such sensitiveness to weather\nthat he called himself a regular barometer. And we may not take it that\nhe felt his dependence, which amounted to compulsion, as personally\nlowering, or that his will had ever rebelled against it. The will is\nthe spirit: nature is by way of being mild and easy-going. Thus the\naristocrat in bondage may feel a noble pride as he bends the knee\nto the dark power to which he belongs and which guides him so well;\nand yet be capable, as Goethe\u2019s case shows at least, of a gesture of\nelegant homage before the aristocracy of freedom. \u201c_Denn hinter ihm_,\u201d\nsays Goethe in the Epilogue to _The Bell_, with reference to Schiller:\n\n    _Denn hinter ihm in wesenlosem Scheine\n    Lag, was uns alle b\u00e4ndigt, das Gemeine._\n\nTruly this is homage which breathes a spirit of the most profound\nresignation. For what _is_ \u201c_das Gemeine_\u201d? Nothing else than the\nnatural, from the point of view of spirit and of freedom. For freedom\nis spirit; it is release from nature, rebellion against her; it is\nhumanity conceived as emancipation from the natural and its bondage,\nthis emancipation being the thing that is actually human and worthy\nof humanity. Here we see the question of aristocracy flowing together\nwith that of human dignity. Which is finer, which worthier of humanity,\nfreedom or bonds, self-will or submission, the moral or the natural?\nIf I refuse to answer, it is in the conviction that this question can\nnever be answered with finality.\n\nBut, on the other hand, the moral \u201csentimentalist\u201d can be no\n\u201csentimentalist\u201d at all if he does not on his side display an even\nlivelier and profounder eagerness to pay homage to the aristocracy\nwhich is of nature. Unquestionably there is a certain charming humility\nin the attitude of spirit toward nature, a delicate readiness, often\nquite unrequited, to pay her respect, which is one of the greatest\nand most touching phenomena of the higher life. Dostoyevsky read\nTolstoy\u2019s early work _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_ in Siberia, in the\nperiodical called _The Contemporary_, and was so taken with it that he\ninquired on all sides after the anonymous author. \u201cCalm, deep, clear,\nyet unfathomable as nature is unfathomable, that is the impression it\nleaves,\u201d he writes. \u201cThere it is, and everything, even the smallest\ndetail, shows the beautiful unity of the temperament from which it\nflows.\u201d--No, these are not Dostoyevsky\u2019s words, though they might\nhave been. It is Schiller who writes thus, about _Wilhelm Meister_,\nin that letter in which, for the first time, he apostrophizes Goethe\nas \u201cDearest Friend\u201d: an emotional form of address, in which, so far\nas I know, Goethe never explicitly acquiesced. Dostoyevsky wrote\nthe profoundest and most loving of all existing critiques of _Anna\nKarenine_; a masterpiece of enthusiastic exposition, which Tolstoy,\nperhaps, never even read (he never did read criticisms of his works),\nto say nothing of his ever feeling impelled to write reviews of\nanything by Dostoyevsky. When Feodor Michaelovich died, Tolstoy is\nsaid to have said: \u201cI loved that man very much.\u201d But his consciousness\nof the fact came a little late in the day; for while Dostoyevsky was\nalive Tolstoy never troubled his head about him; while afterwards, in\na letter to Strachof, Dostoyevsky\u2019s biographer, he compared him with\na horse, who seemed a splendid creature and worth a thousand roubles,\nuntil suddenly he went lame, and then the fine strong animal was not\nworth a groschen. \u201cThe longer I live,\u201d he said, \u201cthe more I think of\nmen who are not lame.\u201d But this horse-philosophy, as applied to the\nauthor of _The Brothers Karamazof_ does not seem quite happy, to put it\nmildly.\n\nWe know, and we rejoice to know, that in the case of Goethe and\nSchiller nature\u2019s attitude to spirit was altogether more brotherly\nand dignified, and on a higher plane. But if Goethe played here too\nthe part of Hatem, the richly bestowing and receiving one, he did not\nafter all take from the dear friend more than he gave him, to say\nnothing of all he gave by virtue of his mere existence, unconsciously,\ninvoluntarily. Was not Schiller\u2019s part in the relationship, after all,\nthat of service? I think so, myself, simply because it lies in the\nnature of the thing, because Schiller did not in the least need, to\nkeep him fruitful, the meed of praise, love, inspiration, which he\nbestowed upon Goethe. And I note that such a letter as his famous first\none, which knit the bond between them, in which with kindly hand he\n\u201cgave the sum\u201d of Goethe\u2019s life, he never did get from Goethe in return.\n\nOne utterance of Schiller\u2019s to Goethe has always delighted me, it seems\nto characterize the relationship so wonderfully. I mean the passage\nin a letter where he warns Goethe against Kant, his own spiritual\nmaster and his idol. Goethe, he tells him, can only be a Spinozan; his\nbeautiful simple nature would be at once vitiated by contact with a\nphilosophy of freedom. It is no more and no less than the problem of\nirony which we catch sight of here: without exception the profoundest\nand most fascinating in the world. For we see here that nothing is\nmore foreign to spirit than a desire to convert nature to itself.\nIt warns nature against itself. To the moral \u201csentimentalist,\u201d all\nthat is nature seems beautiful and highly worth preserving. Knowledge\nfeels that life is beautiful; and this is the feeling of the moral\nfor the simple, of the holy for the divine, of nature for spirit; and\nin this peculiarly absolute judgment of values resides the ironic\ngod, resides Eros. Spirit accordingly enters into a relationship with\nnature which is in a sense erotic, in a sense determined by male-female\nsex-polarity. And by virtue of the relation it can venture to abase\nitself and dare the ultimate self-surrender, without thereby resigning\nany of its own nobility. Indeed, it will always retain the accent of a\ncertain tender contempt. In H\u00f6lderlin\u2019s lines precisely this emotional\nirony is immortalized:\n\n    _Wer das Tiefste gedacht, liebt das Lebendigste,\n    Hohe Tugend versteht, wer in die Welt geblickt,\n    Und es neigen die Weisen\n    Oft am Ende zu Sch\u00f6nem sich._\n\nOn the other hand, this simple nature too has an ironic mood, which\nis one with the objectivity of its character and precisely coincides\nwith the conception of poetry, inasmuch as it lifts itself above\nits subject, above joy and grief, good and bad, death and life, to\nplay freely with them. Goethe speaks of this mood in _Dichtung und\nWahrheit_, with reference to Herder.\n\nIt is plain that what kept Goethe apart from Schiller so long was,\nmore than anything else, the latter\u2019s prepossessions on the subject\nof freedom: his conception of human dignity, which was entirely based\non the dictatorship of spirit--that is, was entirely revolutionary in\ncharacter--which conceived in this emancipated sense all humanity, all\nnobility, all human nobility--and that, to a nature like Goethe\u2019s,\nmust have seemed both odious and insulting to nature. It is, for\ninstance, certain _a priori_ that Goethe took the greatest umbrage at\nthe famous essay _\u00dcber Anmut und W\u00fcrde_. In it occur things like the\nfollowing: \u201cMovements which have as principle only animal sensuousness\nbelong only, however voluntary we may suppose them to be, to physical\nnature, which never reaches of itself to grace. If it were possible to\nhave grace in the manifestations of physical appetites and instincts,\ngrace would no longer be either capable or worthy to serve as the\nexpression of humanity.\u201d That one might describe as idealistic malice\nof spirit against nature, and so Goethe must have regarded it. For it\nis audacious to assert that grace cannot come out of the sensuous, nor\nnature reach to grace. Grace, then, is not a manifestation worthy of\nhumanity; for that desire can express itself with charm, and instinct\nwith grace, is a \u201ccharming\u201d fact of experience. And when Schiller goes\non to say: \u201cGrace is a beauty not given by nature, but produced by\nthe subject itself ... it is the beauty of form under the influence\nof free will; it is the beauty of those particular phenomena which\nthe person himself determines. The architectonic beauty does honour\nto the author of nature; grace does honour to him who possesses it.\nThat is a gift, this is a personal merit\u201d--the moral distinction\nhe draws between talent and personal merit becomes a consummate\naffront to Goethe\u2019s vital consciousness and his aristocratic feeling.\n\u201cFools never think,\u201d says Goethe, \u201chow fortune and merit are linked\ntogether.\u201d What he means by \u201cfortune\u201d is what Schiller calls \u201cnature\u201d\nand \u201ctalent,\u201d and distinguishes from free human merit. While Goethe,\nhalf-maliciously, half-paradoxically going about to deprive the\nword \u201cmerit\u201d of the moralistic flavour that clings to it, likes to\ntalk about \u201cinborn merit.\u201d Everybody is free to call this a logical\ncontradiction. But there are cases where logic is confronted by a\nmetaphysical certainty higher than itself; and Goethe, who on the\nwhole was certainly no metaphysician, undoubtedly felt the problem of\nfreedom to be a metaphysical one. That is to say, an undemonstrable\nintuition told him that freedom, and therewith merit and demerit, were\nnot a matter of the empirical but of the intelligible world; that, to\nspeak with Schopenhauer, freedom does not consist in _operari_ but in\n_esse_. Herein lies the humbleness of his aristocracy, the aristocracy\nof his humility; both of them so categorically opposed to Schiller\u2019s\nidealistic evaluations, his personal and moral pride in his freedom.\nGoethe, when he wants to characterize the principle which composes his\nessential nature, speaks humbly and gratefully of a \u201cgift of fortune.\u201d\nBut the conception of a \u201cgift,\u201d of \u201cgrace,\u201d is more aristocratic than\none might think. What it means is the indissoluble union of fortune and\nmerit, a synthesis of freedom and necessity, in short \u201cinborn merit\u201d;\nand the gratitude, the humility, carry with them that metaphysical\nconsciousness of being at all times and absolutely certain of the\nfavour of destiny.\n\nThere is, in Goethe\u2019s case, an amazing bit of evidence on this point,\nwhich I cannot refrain from quoting. Speaking of Bentham, he says it\nis the height of madness for the man, at his age, to be so radical. He\nis answered that if His Excellence had been born in England he could\nhardly have escaped being a radical and reformer. Whereat Goethe, with\nMephistophelian mien: \u201cWhat do you take me for? You think I would be\nspying out abuses and tacking names on to them? I, who if I had been\nborn in England would have been living on abuses? If I had been born\nin England I should have been a duke, or better still a bishop with\nrevenues of thirty thousand pounds sterling.\u201d--\u201cVery fine. But suppose\nYour Excellence had not drawn the big prize in the lottery; suppose you\nhad drawn a blank?\u201d To which Goethe: \u201cNot everybody, my dear friend,\nis _made for the big prize_. Do you think I should have played such a\nfoolish trick (_sottise_) as to draw a blank?\u201d\n\nAll that, of course, is in jest. But is it only in jest? Does it\nnot rather voice that deep metaphysical certainty that never and\nunder no circumstances should he or could he be other than favoured\nand privileged, ever other than well-born? And in this certainty is\nthere not after all something like a consciousness of freedom of the\nwill, if only of freedom after the event? Really, it is priceless.\nTo be born into the world a starving revolutionary, an idealistic\n\u201csentimentalist,\u201d that he calls a _sottise_. Is that the irony the\nchildren of God wreak on the children of spirit? If there be such a\nthing as inborn merit, then there is inborn demerit as well; and if\nit is a _sottise_ to come into the world an average man, or poor, or\nsick, or stupid, then the criminal is indeed not only empirically but\nmetaphysically culpable. For merit and reward, guilt and punishment,\nare conceptions that belong together. And one punishment at least,\nall those merit who have committed the _sottise_ of drawing a blank\nin life\u2019s lottery: that of eternal destruction; whereas the chosen\nones get eternal life too at the end. \u201c_Wer keinen Namen sich erwarb,\nnoch Edles will, geh\u00f6rt den Elementen an; so fahret hin!_\u201d But as the\npossibility of nobly aspiring and achieving a name is not a matter\nof empirical freedom of the will, this \u201c_so fahret hin_\u201d is a piece\nof gross heartlessness. And if the conception of election by grace,\nto which that of metaphysical depravity corresponds, is a Christian\nconception, at any rate it shows Christianity turning its aristocratic\nside outwards.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nI said awhile back that it seemed to me not accidental that Schiller\nand Dostoyevsky were sick men and did not, like Goethe and Tolstoy,\narrive at a reverend length of days. Rather I was inclined to regard\ntheir poor health as fundamental to their characters. Quite as symbolic\nis the further external fact, that the two great realists and creative\nartists were of upper station, born to a privileged social status,\nwhereas the heroes and saints of the idea, Schiller and Dostoyevsky,\none the son of a Swabian army surgeon and the other of a Moscow\nhospital physician, were the children of modest people and spent all\ntheir days in pinched and homely, one might almost say undignified\ncircumstances. I call this biographical fact symbolic, because it\ntestifies to the Christianity of the spirit, whose kingdom, as the\nScriptures say, is not of this world--in personalities as little as\nin the realm of the ideal and the artistic. Wherein it opposes a\nperpetual contrast to the kingdom of nature and nature\u2019s favourites,\nwhose rank and essence are quite and entirely \u201cof this world,\u201d the\nphysical, pagan world. Therein lies their \u201crealism.\u201d And they were,\nboth Tolstoy and Goethe, realists enough to feel a na\u00efve enjoyment in\ntheir privileged status, yes, in a sort to lay stress upon it and show\nthemselves imbued by a consciousness of it; which would impress one as\ncuriously unenlightened were it not plain that they themselves regard\nit in a symbolic sense and even rather childishly assimilate it in\ntheir own minds to their consciousness of their higher, extra-social,\nhuman aristocracy. Goethe\u2019s patrician birth was so dear to him that his\npatent of nobility, when he had it in his hands, meant \u201cnothing, simply\nnothing.\u201d \u201cWe Frankfort patricians,\u201d he said, \u201calways felt ourselves\nlike nobility.\u201d But in the same conversation and connexion, by way of\nrefuting a slur upon himself as the obsequious servant of royalty, he\nputs it thus: \u201cYes, I felt so much at ease (_so wohl in meiner Haut_),\nand so very much the aristocrat, that if they had made me a prince\nit would not have surprised me.\u201d I may say in passing that it would\nhave become him to be a prince. Had he taken up Napoleon\u2019s invitation\nto transfer his activity to Paris, had he written there the _C\u00e6sar_\nNapoleon wanted him to write, in which he need only have given vent\nto the hatred he had felt as a youth for the \u201cbase, the contemptible\nmurder,\u201d the Emperor would certainly have made him a prince, as by his\nown account he would have done for Corneille as well. My point is to\nshow how, in Goethe\u2019s mind, the consciousness of his social position\nlay very close to that of his nobility as a human being, as a child\nof God. The two flow together in one and the same consciousness of\nnobility, or \u201cinborn merit.\u201d\n\nCount Leo Tolstoy came, as we know, from one of the oldest and finest\nof Russian families. When we read his books, _Childhood, Boyhood,\nYouth_, or _Anna Karenine_, that picture of high life in Moscow, we\nare impressed with the fact that the author is a man who was brought\nup with all the advantages. We get the same feeling when we read\n_Dichtung und Wahrheit_ or _Die Wahlverwandtschaften_. And in Tolstoy\ntoo we find the same familiar and perhaps childish phenomenon we\nnoticed in Goethe: his noble blood and the distinction conferred\nby his great gifts both belonged to him quite simply because they\nbelonged to him, and his consciousness of them mingled in his joy in\nhimself, of which, despite all his attacks of poverty of spirit, he\npossessed a very great deal. His fame as a writer, so he wrote to\nhis father-in-law, delights him very much; he finds it most pleasant\nto be an author _and_ a nobleman. An author and a nobleman--all his\nChristianity, all his anarchism, to the contrary and notwithstanding,\nhe never ceased to be a striking combination of those two. When\nTurgeniev first made the acquaintance of the youthful Tolstoy he said:\n\u201cNot a word, not a gesture of his is natural. He is constantly posing;\nit is a mystery to me how such a sensible man can take such childish\npride in his silly title.\u201d This is the same Turgeniev who wrote to a\nFrench publisher: \u201cI am not worthy to untie his shoe-laces\u201d; so it\nis unlikely that the first-quoted remark misrepresents the facts. As\nfor the aged Tolstoy, Gorky relates: \u201cHis comfortable, democratic\nmanner took many people in; and I have often seen Russians, who judge\npeople by their clothes, gush over him with their famous \u2018simplicity\nof manner,\u2019 which might better be called \u2018beastly familiarity.\u2019 And\nsuddenly, from under his peasant beard, and his rumpled democratic\nblouse, the old Russian _Barin_, the aristocrat of aristocrats, would\npeep forth; and in the chill that emanated from him the confiding\nvisitor\u2019s nose would be frost-bitten. It was a joy to see this\nblue-blooded creature: the noble charm of his gestures, the haughty\nreticence of his speech, the murderous and fastidious sharpness of\nhis tongue. He displayed just so much of the _Barin_ as these servile\nsouls needed to see; when they roused the _Barin_ in Tolstoy it came\neasy and natural and overwhelmed them so that they shrivelled up\nand whined.\u201d--The blue noses call up memories of Weimar, chilling\nmemories of receptions and formal calls--only that Goethe was never\nmalicious enough to put on the democratic pose; and his most frigid\nmanner concealed more love than Tolstoy ever felt--Tolstoy, whose\nlast and most frightful secret Turgeniev\u2019s penetrating mind laid\nbare: it was that Tolstoy could love nobody but himself! But it was a\n\u201cjoy,\u201d in Gorky\u2019s sense of the word, to see Tolstoy for instance at\nthe Petrov yearly fair, whither he drove from his estate in Samara in\nthe seventies. His charm made him very popular in the merry whirl of\npeasants, Cossacks, Bashkirs, and Kirghiz. Even with drunken folk,\nwe are told, he did not hesitate to strike up a conversation. And\nthen came the following quiet and characteristic little episode. A\ndrunken peasant, in his excess of feeling, wanted to embrace Tolstoy.\nBut one stern and expressive look from Leo Nikolaevich\u2019s eyes met the\nman and sobered him in a twinkling. He dropped his hands of himself,\nand said: \u201cNo? Well, all right, then.\u201d What was there in that look to\nmake it have such an arresting, quenching, sobering effect? Was it the\nconsciousness of the _Barin_? Or of the great author? In such a case it\nis quite impossible to distinguish between them--as little objectively\nas doubtless it was subjectively.\n\n\u201cWhen Leo Nikolaevich wanted to please,\u201d Gorky tells us, \u201che could do\nit better than a pretty and clever woman. Imagine a crowd of all sorts\nof people sitting in his room: the Grand Duke Nicholai Michailovich,\nthe house-painter Ilya, a social-democrat from Jalta, a musician, a\nGerman, the poet Bulgakov, and so on; they all look at him with the\nsame enamoured eyes, while he expounds to them the doctrine of Lao\nTse.... I used to look at him just like the others. And now I long to\nlook at him once more--and I shall never see him again.\u201d--One thing\nis obvious: it was _not_ the doctrine of Lao Tse which brought that\nlovelorn look into all their eyes. The teaching would have roused very\nscant general interest but for the expounder. But that look in every\neye is the very same that Karl August had in mind when he passed on to\nGoethe the greetings sent by Napoleon on the Emperor\u2019s way back from\nRussia: \u201cYou see,\u201d he added, \u201cheaven and hell are both making eyes at\nyou.\u201d\n\nYes, and the democratic moujik blouses were immaculate, made of soft\nfine material, highly comfortable and pleasant to wear, and the linen\nwas scented. Of course, he did not scent it himself. The Countess\nattended to that, and he, who liked it very much, pretended not to\nnotice, just as he pretended not to know that the vegetarian dishes he\nexclusively ate were all prepared with _bouillon_. \u201cHis face is that of\na peasant,\u201d reports an eyewitness, \u201cwith a broad nose, a weather-beaten\nskin, and thick, beetling brows with small, piercing grey eyes beneath\nthem. But, despite the peasant features, no one could fail to recognize\nat first glance the fine, cosmopolitan Russian gentleman, member of\nthe very highest society.\u201d Conversing thus in English or French with a\nGrand Duke, he reminds one very much of Goethe, on whom princes waited,\nand who thought it no derogation of his nobility, human or divine, to\nseason it with a little knack for polite nothings. When Tolstoy visited\nAlexander Herz in London, his daughter, young Natalia Alexandrovna,\nbegged to be present in a dark corner, that she might behold in the\nflesh the author of _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_. With beating heart\nshe awaited Tolstoy\u2019s appearance. She was bitterly disappointed to see\na man dressed in the latest fashion, with good manners and a flow of\nspeech, the subject-matter of which was exclusively the cock-fights and\nboxing-matches he had seen in London. \u201cNot a word that came from his\nheart, not a word that could have corresponded to my expectations, did\nI hear during the single interview at which I was present.\u201d\n\nNothing of the sort is reported of Dostoyevsky or Schiller. Never\ndid these by their worldliness disappoint the expectations of their\naudience. The sons of spirit make personally a spiritual impression,\nas the hopeful average man expects those to do who are soul-shakers.\nThat lofty, pallid, suffering-saint and criminal look of Dostoyevsky\ncorresponded to the idea the Russians got of the phenomenon of\nhis genius, just as Schiller\u2019s mild, intrepid, fanatical, and\nequally ailing physiognomy, with open shirt-collar and flowing silk\nneckerchief, corresponded to the image which the German mind might\nhave formed of its hero. Whereas on the other hand Goethe, if we\naccept Riemer\u2019s description of him as he moved among his guests in\na blue coat, \u201cthe powerful, expressive face showing the effects of\nsun and fresh air, with the black side-locks floating about it, the\nblack hair bound in a queue, was more like a well-to-do, comfortable\nfarmer, or a much-visited staff-officer in mufti, than like a shrinking\nand sensitive poet.\u201d And it is true, _a priori_, that neither of\nthose other two ever estranged ardent admiration by displaying a\nbanal enthusiasm for cock-fighting and boxing. Whereas the sense of\nsport, the taste for bodily exercise, physical training, and physical\nenjoyment, played an essential r\u00f4le in Tolstoy\u2019s life as in Goethe\u2019s.\nWe call these tastes gentlemanly and thus indicate the physical basis\nof the well-born-ness which is of this world. \u201cOne must see him,\u201d\nwrote Riemer about Goethe; \u201chow strong and firm he stands on his feet,\nwith what bodily agility and sure step he moves. Early gymnastic\ntraining, dancing, skating, riding, even coursing and racing, had\ngiven him this mobility and suppleness; he could never make a false\nstep on the worst path or be in danger of slipping or falling; easily\nand swiftly he passed over smooth ice, narrow foot-paths and bridges,\nand rocky steeps. As a youth he climbed among chasms and shingle with\nhis princely friend, mounted towering rocks and Alpine crags with the\nboldness of a chamois; and so throughout his fifty years of geological\nexploration no mountain has been too high for him, no shaft too deep\nnor passage too low, no cave labyrinthine enough.\u201d\n\nThe great interest which Leo Tolstoy took in his body showed itself\nnegatively as well as positively. Negatively, in his Christian and\nascetic grumblings at his beastly physical, in such utterances as\nthat the body is a hindrance to the good man, and in such phrases as:\n\u201cI am ashamed to speak of my disgusting body.\u201d Positively, in all\nthe training and care he gave it. His interest in it begins at the\nmoment--of which he speaks in the _Confessions_--when he sat as a\nlittle child in a wooden tub, enveloped in the smell of the bran-water\nin which he was being bathed, and for the first time noticed his little\nbody with the ribs visible on the breast in front, and straightway\nfeels drawn to it by a very strong inclination. Tolstoy\u2019s face was,\nhumanly speaking, ugly, and he suffered greatly on account of it,\nconvinced that there could be little joy in store for a creature\nwith such a broad nose, such thick lips, and such small grey eyes.\nHe confesses that he would have given anything he had for a handsome\nface. The youth who is tortured by the problem of death, and ponders\nall the high and ultimate questions with as much maturity as the aged\nprophet, this youth is at the same time perpetually occupied with his\nown appearance, is obviously possessed by the desire to be elegant\nand _comme il faut_; sets the greatest store by physical development,\ngymnastic exercise; drills, rides, and hunts as though he had no higher\nambition in his head nor thought of any. His passion for the hunt is\nso excessive that he confesses to his wife that of human beings he\nnever forgot Sophia Alexandrovna, but out hunting he forgot everything\nbut his double-barrelled shot-gun. From more than one letter of those\nwho knew him in his prime we see what a daring sportsman he was, how\nhe sprang with astonishing agility over gullies and chasms and would\nspend whole days in the wild. We are told that a better companion could\nnot be conceived of. The pacifism, Christian, Buddhistic, or Chinese,\nof his latter days forbade him of course to kill animals, although\nhis indestructible physical strength and trained agility would still\nhave allowed him to hunt and though he still cherished the greatest\ndesire to. He bade it farewell. He submitted himself to a test and\nfound he had fortitude enough to let the hares run. And in his case\nthat meant a good deal, as we see from the following anecdote, related\nby Gorky. Tolstoy put on a heavy overcoat and thick boots and took\nGorky for a walk in the birch-woods. He leaped like a schoolboy over\npuddles and ditches, shook the rain-drops from the boughs, lovingly\nstroked the moist, satiny trunks of the birch-trees, and talked\nabout Schopenhauer.... \u201cSuddenly a hare got up under our feet. Leo\nNikolaevich gave an excited start, his face lighted up, he let out\na halloo like an old huntsman. Then he looked at me with a curious\nsmile and began laughing, a hearty human laugh. At this moment he was\nirresistible.\u201d--Still finer is the story of the hawk which the old man\nsaw circling above his chickens, about to swoop. Leo Nikolaevich stares\nup at the bird of prey, his hand over his eyes, and says in an \u201cexcited\nwhisper\u201d: \u201cThe rascal! Now, now! He\u2019s coming ... oh, he\u2019s afraid....\nI\u2019ll call the stable-boy.\u201d He calls, the hawk disappears. But Tolstoy\nis taken with regrets. He sighs and says: \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have called.\nThen he would have swooped.\u201d They are his chickens. But all the\nsympathy of the venerable prophet of pacifism is with the hawk.\n\nOf his son Iliuscha he wrote in a letter: \u201cIliuscha is lazy, he is\ngrowing, and his soul is not yet overwhelmed by organic processes.\u201d\nWhat does he mean by that? Growing is itself an organic process, and if\ngrowing is innocent, so too will be the organic processes which growth\nbrings about, and with which Tolstoy was only too well acquainted,\nsince they made his life a burden to him all his days. The Church\u2019s\nconception of woman as _instrumentum diaboli_ was with him something\nmore than a mood from the time of the _Kreuzer Sonata_; it dates from\nmuch earlier, from the journals of his boyish days; and he speaks of\norganic processes in the sense of that early Christian pope who, in\norder to mortify the flesh, made a detailed list of all its disgusting\nand evil-smelling functions, the functions of this body which in the\nend has to submit to the final indignity of putrefaction. That kind\nof cross-grained speculation Tolstoy would be just the one to set\nabout, and he did. Very sensual men well know such moods. Maupassant\nsomewhere calls the act of coition filthy and ridiculous--\u201c_ordurier et\nridicule_.\u201d Could objectivity further go? But such blithe and cynical\nobjectivity was not Tolstoy\u2019s sort. His hatred of the organic has a\nshattering accent of subjective torment and rage. And yet he is so much\nthe darling of the creative impulse of organic life that one must go\nback to Goethe to find a human being who was \u201c_so wohl in seiner Haut_\u201d\nas he. Yes, the parallel is even more exact. In both of them, and in\njust the same way, the most beatific organic well-being, amounting to\norganic rapture, mingled with a rooted melancholy and the profoundest\nintimacy with death. Goethe, when he was a riotous, dandiacal student\nin Leipsic, might any moment quit the society of men, the card-play and\ndance, and yield himself to solitude. We have plenty of witnesses to\nhis brilliance, his childish, fantastic extravagances in the circle of\nhis friends, with the Jacobis, Heinse, Stilling in Elberfeld. He cuts\ncapers, dances round the table like a clown, in short cannot contain\nhimself for a mysterious intoxication; the philistines sitting round\nthink he has gone mad. And that is the same Goethe whose Werther drove\nmore than one young man to self-destruction, and who practised himself\nin suicide by keeping a sharp dagger on his bed-table and trying every\nevening to drive it a little further into his body.\n\nWe have noted the same excess of animal spirits in Tolstoy; in whom,\nindeed, they persisted up to an old age lacking in the dignity,\nstateliness, and formal gravity of Goethe\u2019s latest period. Which\nneed surprise nobody. For we cannot doubt that Goethe led a more\nearnest, laborious, exemplary life than the Slavic junker; or that\nhis cultural activities presupposed far more genuine self-abnegation,\nrestraint, and discipline than Tolstoy\u2019s uttermost ineffectual efforts\nat spiritualization, sticking fast as these always did in a bog of\nfantastic absurdity. Tolstoy\u2019s aristocratic charm was, and Gorky so\ndepicts it, that of a noble animal. He never managed to arrive at\nthe dignity of man the civilized, man the triumpher over odds. It is\nlovely to hear of all the pranks he played with the children, his\ndroll conceits, the gymnastic feats he performed for and with them; the\nendless croquet, lawn-tennis, and leap-frog parties in the garden at\nYasnaya Polyana. He not only shared all the activities of youth, but he\nwas the life and soul of them. The sixty-year-old man runs races with\nthe boys, his bicycle trips extend, much to the Countess\u2019s anxiety,\nover thirty versts. \u201cWhen there is some activity requiring agility,\nstrength, and suppleness,\u201d comments a bystander, \u201che never takes his\neyes off the players, he puts his whole soul into their success or\nfailure. Often he cannot resist and joins in with a youthful fire and\nmuscular flexibility which the onlooker could only envy.\u201d In the family\ncircle he performed the sheerest absurdities. He had invented a game\ncalled Numidian Horsemen, which made the children weep with delight.\nLeo Nikolaevich would suddenly spring from his chair, lifting his hand,\nand run about the room flapping it in the air, whereupon everybody,\ngrown-ups, children, and all, followed suit. That is, I repeat,\ncharming, though a little bizarre. It becomes more so when we learn\nthat all these high spirits occur in the years after his \u201cconversion,\u201d\nin the period of his soul-crises, his ascetic eclipses and theological\nbroodings. But what shall be said of the incident recorded by his\nfather-in-law, Behrs? They were walking about the room together in\nlight converse, one evening, when suddenly the elderly prophet sprang\nupon Behrs\u2019s shoulder. He probably jumped down again at once; but for\na second he actually perched up there, like a grey-bearded kobold--it\ngives one an uncanny feeling! I do not ask my readers to imagine\nGoethe, in his later period, leaping unexpectedly on a visitor\u2019s\nshoulder. There is a decided difference of temperament, that is clear.\nBut the resemblance is no less so.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nLooking more closely at the matter, I find that there is a complex of\nproblems, a \u201cproblematic,\u201d peculiar to the sons of nature, the creative\nand objective artists, which is entirely foreign to the children of the\nidea, and, for all the brilliant sunshine of favour they move in, casts\na strange dark cloud upon them which must considerably chill their\nconsciousness of aristocratic well-being. My feeling is that it is pure\nerror to think that conflict and complexity are things of the spirit,\nwhile nature\u2019s kingdom must be all brightness and harmony. It looks as\nthough the contrary were the case. If what we call happiness consists\nin harmony, clarity, unity with oneself, in the consciousness of a\npositive, confident, decisive turn of mind, if, in short, it is peace\nresident in the soul, then obviously happiness is a state far easier\nfor the sons of spirit to arrive at than for the children of nature.\nFor the latter, though surely singleness of heart should be their lot,\nseem never to attain the joy and peace it might confer. Nature herself\nappears to weave in their very being a questionable strand, an element\nof contradiction, negation, and all-pervasive doubt, which, since it\ncannot conduce to goodness, cannot conduce to happiness either. Spirit\nis good. Nature is by no means good. One might say she is evil, if\nmoral categories were admissible with reference to her. She is, then,\nneither good nor evil, she escapes definition, as she herself refuses\nto define and judge; she is, speaking objectively, indifferent, and as\nthis indifference of hers appears subjectively and spiritually in her\nchildren, it becomes a complication that has more to do with torment\nand evil than with happiness and goodness, and which certainly seems\ncome not to bring peace into the world, like the human and benevolent\nspirit, but rather doubt and dire confusion.\n\nObviously I am not speaking here of the comparatively harmless conflict\nbetween the Faustian \u201ctwo souls,\u201d the battle between the impulses\nof a strong animal constitution and the yearnings after \u201c_Gefilden\nhoher Ahnen_\u201d--a battle, and a \u201cproblematic,\u201d of which Goethe speaks\nout of such deep experience, and which not only made Tolstoy\u2019s youth\na period of such hardship, so torn with remorse, but persisted in\nhim up to old age. I am speaking of something which seems at first\nblush to be much blither and simpler: a position something like that\nof Goethe between Lavater and Basedow, in which Goethe designates\nhimself as \u201c_das Weltkind in der Mitten_\u201d. That sounds simple, and\npleasant, and self-complacent, and was probably so meant. And yet in\nthe word \u201c_Weltkind_\u201d and the associations that surround it there is\nsomething sinister, a difficulty and a \u201cproblematic,\u201d by contrast\nwith which the \u201cprophetic\u201d existence is nothing less than sweetness\nand light and plain sailing. \u201cGoethe\u2019s tendency to negation,\u201d writes\nChancellor von M\u00fcller on some occasion or other, \u201cand his incredible\njudicial-mindedness came out strong again.\u201d \u201cThere is something,\u201d\nGorky writes about Tolstoy, \u201cwhich presumably he will never reveal\nto a human being, which appears darkly in his conversation, and is\nhinted at in his journals. To me it seems like the apotheosis of\nnegation, the deepest and most hideous nihilism, springing from a\nstratum of boundless and hopeless despair, from a solitude of which\nprobably no one else in the world has ever been so frightfully\naware.\u201d No one? It was not Tolstoy who created the so lyric figure of\nMephistopheles--though indeed the Mephistophelian element was never\nlacking to any period of his life. The ceaseless, tormenting effort to\nshape that which he calls his conception of life, to arrive at truth\nand clarity and inward peace, found expression in his youth, partly in\na gloomy irritability that led to duels and scenes with his friends,\nwhich he took in desperate earnest, as matters of life and death,\nkilling and dying; but partly also in malicious negation in general,\nan inimical spirit of contradictiousness, which, as we are expressly\nassured, made a quite Mephistophelian impression. Though of course\nthis was not a nihilistic but a moral attitude, and was not assumed\nsave in opposition to things that were not true--only they were simply\neverything! In the young Tolstoy there was observable, \u201cfrom the\nbeginning, a sort of unconscious enmity toward all accepted laws in\nthe kingdom of thought. No matter what the opinion expressed; and the\ngreater the authority of the speaker, the more was Tolstoy at pains\nto take up and accentuate an inimical attitude. If you watched him\nas he listened, and saw the sarcastic curl of his lip, you could not\navoid the impression that he was thinking, not so much of answering\nwhat was said, as of himself saying something which should surprise\nand confound the speaker.\u201d That is nihilism, that is malice. But it is\nnot so much cold malice as it is a tortured spite against anybody who\nfancied he held the secret of clarity and truth. It is a disbelief in\nclarity and truth. This spite, and this incredulity, were especially\ndirected against Turgeniev, the clear-eyed and human man with whom he\nnever could get on. \u201cTolstoy,\u201d said Turgeniev, \u201cearly developed a trait\nwhich, lying as it does at the root of his gloomy conception of life,\nhas caused him great suffering. He has never managed to believe in the\nsincerity of mankind. Every expression of feeling seemed to him false;\nand he had the habit, due to his extraordinarily penetrating gaze, of\nboring through with his eye the man he considered insincere.\u201d And when\nTurgeniev said this, he added the confession that never in his life had\nhe encountered anything with such power to dishearten him as this same\npiercing gaze, which, accompanied by two or three biting remarks, could\nbring to the verge of madness anybody who did not possess particularly\nstrong self-control. Now Turgeniev\u2019s self-control was strong. He was\nat the height of his literary success; serene and untroubled, he could\nencounter the complexities of his younger colleague with the calmness\nof a man who lived on good terms with himself. But precisely this\nsecurity was what troubled Tolstoy. He seems to have gone deliberately\nabout with this tranquil, good-natured man, working with such a clear\nconviction that what he did was right, to goad him past the bounds of\nself-control. Simply this conviction that he knew and did what was\nright was more than Tolstoy could bear; for certainly he himself did\nnot in the least know what was right. Garschin says: \u201cIn his view, the\npeople who passed for good were merely hypocrites, who paraded their\ngoodness and pretended to the certainty that their work served a good\nend.\u201d Turgeniev too saw in Tolstoy this strange, sinister, malicious\nbent. He resolved to hold fast to what he considered \u201cright\u201d and not to\nlose his self-control; so he avoided Tolstoy, left Saint Petersburg,\nwhere the latter was living, and went first to Moscow and then to\nhis own estate. But--this is most significant of all, as evidence of\nTolstoy\u2019s state of mind--Tolstoy followed him. Followed him step for\nstep, \u201clike a lovesick girl,\u201d to use Turgeniev\u2019s own phrase.\n\nAll which is very telling, very extraordinary. Above all, it shows how\ncompletely the old Tolstoy, of whom Gorky writes, was foreshadowed\nin the young one. Did he really ever find out what was \u201cright\u201d--the\nreal, the true, the incontrovertible? For others he did, he gave them\nconviction. But he himself certainly never got free of the negation and\nneutrality of the elemental character. \u201cRousseau,\u201d he said, \u201clied and\nbelieved his lies.\u201d Did he believe his own lies? No, for he did not\nlie. He was elemental, nihilistic, malicious, and unfathomable. \u201cWould\nyou very much like to know?\u201d he asks.--\u201cVery much.\u201d--\u201cThen I will\nnot tell you.\u201d And he smiles and plays with his thumbs. This smile,\nthis \u201csly little smile\u201d--Gorky speaks of it again and again. There is\nsomething not only extra-moral but extra-mental, extra-human, about\nit; it bespeaks the mystery of the \u201cnatural,\u201d the elemental, which is\nnot at all kindly disposed, but rather takes pleasure in confusion.\nAccording to Gorky, the old man loved to put insidious questions. \u201cWhat\ndo you think about yourself?\u201d \u201cDo you love your wife?\u201d \u201cHow do you like\nmine?\u201d \u201cDo you like me, Alexei Maximovich?\u201d--\u201cDisingenuous!\u201d Gorky\ncries. \u201cThe whole time, he is making an experiment, testing something\nout, as though he were going into battle. It is interesting, but not to\nmy taste. He is the devil, and I am a babe in arms beside him. He ought\nto leave me alone.\u201d\n\nOne day Gorky sees the aged Tolstoy sitting alone by the sea. This\nscene is the crowning point of his reminiscences. \u201cHe sat, his head\non his hands; the wind blew the silver hair of his beard through his\nfingers. He was looking far out across the sea, and the little green\nwaves rolled docilely to his feet and caressed them, as though they\nwanted to tell the old wizard something about themselves.... He seemed\nlike an ancient stone come alive, that knew and pondered the beginning\nand end of all things, and what and how would be the end of the stones\nand grasses of the earth, the waters of the sea, the whole universe\nfrom the sun to the grain of sand. And the sea is a part of his soul,\nand all about him comes from him and out of him. In the old man\u2019s\nmusing quietude I felt something portentous, magic. I cannot express in\nwords what I more felt than thought at that moment. In my heart were\nrejoicing and fear, then all melted together in one single blissful\nfeeling: \u2018I am not bereft on this earth, so long as this old man is\nliving on it.\u2019\u201d And Gorky steals away on his tiptoes that the sand may\nnot crunch under his tread and disturb the old man\u2019s thoughts.\n\nThe mystical reverence that Gorky here depicts is not that which lays\nhold on us at sight of the heroes of the idea. Neither Dostoyevsky nor\nSchiller has inspired this sort of awe and shuddering, however saintly\nthey seemed. So much is certain. Nor can the reverence felt for Goethe\nbe of just this same nature--though akin to it. The Tolstoyan greatness\nand remoteness is wild and primeval and pagan in its nature, it is\nantecedent to culture. It lacks the human, the humanistic element.\nThis ancient of days and of wisdom, musing there at the edge of the\neverlasting sea, wrapped up in the All, conning the beginning and end\nof things--the picture evokes a twilit, prehuman, uncanny world of\nfeeling, a world of incantations and runes. What he is pondering, the\nnorns whisper thee by night. He was like, says the shaken beholder,\nan ancient stone come alive: note that, a stone, not anything that\ncivilization has produced, not man made in the likeness of God, not\na human being like Goethe. Goethe\u2019s humanistic divineness is clearly\nsomething quite different from the primeval, pagan formlessness of\nTolstoy\u2019s, which makes Gorky say of him: \u201cHe is the devil.\u201d And still,\nat the very bottom, the common factor persists: in Goethe too there\nis the elemental, the sinister, the dark, neutral, negation- and\nconfusion-loving devil.\n\nThere is a saying of his, arbitrary enough, yet with an accent of\nhidden suffering, that opens to us more of his inner self than many\na clear and wise and ordered utterance. \u201cIf I am to listen to the\nopinion of others,\u201d he said (and only listen to it, observe, not accept\nit), \u201cthen it must be positively expressed. Problems I have enough in\nmyself.\u201d That is a confession, put in the form of a demand. It has\na proud, Olympian accent, but the voice that utters it quivers with\nimpatience, with painful irritation at the inner complications, which\nmakes it so imperative that the positive should come from without....\n\u201cOut of one of his eyes looks an angel,\u201d writes someone who made his\nacquaintance on a journey, \u201cout of the other a devil; and his speech is\ndeep irony on the score of all human affairs.\u201d Of all? That is great,\nbut it is not generous--and, after all, is he not a man himself? One\nwho often saw him says: \u201cToday he was altogether in that mood of bitter\nhumour and sophistical contradictiousness he is so prone to display.\u201d\nAgain we have the negation, the spirit of contradiction and malice,\nof which gentle young Sulpice Boisser\u00e9e has such a story to tell in\nhis diary. \u201cAt eleven o\u2019clock I am with Goethe again. The invective\ncontinues.\u201d He has a go at all sorts of things: politics, \u00e6sthetics,\nsociety, religion, Germany, France, philhellenism, parties, and so\non, in such a style that poor young Boisser\u00e9e feels--\u201c_mit allen\ndiesen moquanten Reden_\u201d--as though he were \u201cat a witches\u2019 sabbath.\u201d\nThat is saying a good deal. It is either too strong, considering the\nword \u201c_moquant_\u201d which he uses, or else that word is a good deal too\nweak--which is more likely. Anyhow the entry, from the year 1826,\nshows the confusion to which the petulant old man could reduce simple\nand humble-minded people. An observer who must have been no fool\nwrote something about him which stirs a secret horror that is somehow\nparalysing. \u201cHe is tolerant, without being mild.\u201d Just consider what\nthat means. Toleration, indulgence, is always, in our human experience,\nassociated with mildness, with benevolent feeling toward man and the\nuniverse; so far as I know, it is a product of love. But tolerance\n_without_ love, _harsh_ tolerance--what would that be? It is more\nthan human, it is icy neutrality, it is either something godlike or\nsomething devilish.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nI shall be saying nothing new, but it may serve to bring order and\nclarity into our thoughts to keep the fact before us: all national\ncharacter belongs to the natural sphere, and all tendency toward the\ncosmopolitan to the spiritual. The word \u201cethnic\u201d brings together\ntwo conceptions which we do not ordinarily connect, paganism and\nnationalism; thus by implication, and conversely, every super-national\nand humane point of view is classified in our mind as Christian in\nspirit.\n\nGoethe\u2019s alleged devotion to paganism (in the _Wanderjahre_ he reckons\nJudaism among the ethnic and heathen folk-religions) would lead us\naccordingly to expect of him an outlook basically anti-humanistic and\nfolk-national. That we should be entirely wrong in this expectation, as\na basic constitution in him, as \u201cnature,\u201d might be arguable. However,\nso far as he was himself aware, he was consciously a humanist and a\ncitizen of the world. Despite all his nature Olympian and divine, he\nwas in a high degree Christian in spirit. Nietzsche placed Goethe,\nhistorically and psychologically speaking, between Hellenism and\npietism; and thus expressed the combination of creative and critical,\nsimple and \u201csentimental,\u201d ancient and modern, in Goethe\u2019s character.\nFor Goethe\u2019s \u201cpietism\u201d is of course nothing else than his modernity.\nMany centuries of Christian cultivation of the subjective--a whole\ncentury of pietistic, introspective, autobiographical discipline--were\nneeded to make possible a work like _Werther_. Which is as much as\nto say that in the impulse to autobiography Christian and democratic\nelements are mingled with that na\u00efve, spoilt-darling claim on the\nworld\u2019s affections of which we spoke above. They are the same as\nthat democratic tendency out of which Tolstoy likes to consider his\nconfessions as emanating; when, in true Rousseauian fashion, he\nresolves \u201cto write a history of his life, utterly and entirely true\nto fact,\u201d in the belief that this \u201cwill be more useful to mankind\u201d\nthan those previous twelve volumes full of literary twaddle. He seems\nunaware that they are quite as autobiographical, quite as ethical\nin character, as anything could be, and disowns them as pagan and\nartistic, as self-indulgent and \u201cirresponsible.\u201d\n\nGoethe, with all his aversion to the \u201cCross,\u201d did often and expressly\nacknowledge his reverence for the Christian idea. It is as significant\nas it is surprising to come upon the idea of the sanctity of suffering\nin the Pedagogic Province; and if Goethe saw in the Church \u201celements\nof weakness and instability\u201d and in its precepts \u201c_gar viel Dummes_,\u201d\nstill he bore witness that \u201cthere is in the Gospels an effective\nresplendence and majesty, issuing from the person of Christ, of a\ncharacter in which only the divine appear upon this earth.\u201d \u201cThe human\nspirit,\u201d he says, with sympathetic and openly acknowledged fellowship,\n\u201cwill never rise higher than the majesty and moral elevation of\nChristianity, as it radiates from the Gospels.\u201d But Goethe\u2019s\nChristianity manifests itself in the admirable attitude, as of a pupil\nto a master, which he had toward Spinoza, whom he called \u201c_theissimus_\u201d\nand of whom he said that nobody had spoken of the Divinity so like\nthe Saviour as he. If, indeed, the dualistic separation of God and\nnature is the fundamental principle of Christianity, then Spinoza was\na pagan, and Goethe was too. But God and nature are not all the world:\nthere is the human, the humane, as well; and Spinoza\u2019s conception of\nhumanity is Christian, in so far as he defines the phenomenon man as\nthe becoming-_conscious_ of the God-nature in the human being, as a\nbursting forth out of mere dull being and living; accordingly, as\nliberation from nature, and so as _spirit_. Again, there is absolutely\nnothing pagan about that famous _Mastery of the Passions by their\nAnalysis_; and just as little in the Spinozan motif of renunciation\n(\u201c_Entsagung_\u201d), which becomes the general motif of Goethe\u2019s life and\nwork, like the idea of freedom for Schiller and the idea of redemption\nfor Wagner.\n\nOn the contrary, it was just this pathos of renunciation, which cast\nsuch a Christian shade upon the pagan, aristocratic, child-of-nature\nwell-being of Goethe\u2019s life and lent his spirited features an expressly\nGothic trait of suffering not to be overlooked save by the gross\npopular belief in his aristocratic good fortune. How much resignation\nmust have darkened the end of this apparently consummate and favoured\nexistence! His life-work, though almost superhuman, remained entirely\na fragment--it is putting it mildly to say that \u201cnot all the dreams of\nblossoms ripened\u201d--Wagner\u2019s performance, for instance, or Ibsen\u2019s, is\nincomparably more a rounded and effective whole. One may put it that\nGoethe\u2019s spirit was far more powerful than his nature, greater than his\npower to give it form or than his organically allotted span; and it is\neasy to understand that vehement demand of his for immortality, which\nis one of the magnificent, d\u00e6monic expressions of his personality:\nNature, he cried, was bound to give him a new body when the one he had\ncould no longer sustain his spirit.\n\nConsider even his love-life, which likewise the popular mind tends\nto think of as sunlit and blissful, divinely favoured and without a\ncross. Certainly he was much loved and rich in love; certainly to\nhim much enjoyment was given. In the realm of the erotic he had his\nspells of coarseness, when he behaved a little like a garden god:\nwhen, ingenuous and unsentimental as the antique world, he would enjoy\nwithout stint and indulge without a qualm. His marriage, a misalliance,\nsocially and intellectually, was a result of this attitude of mind.\nBut where he loved so that lofty poesy was the result, and not merely\na Venetian epigram ticked out in hexameters on a maiden\u2019s back; where\nit was serious, the romance regularly ended in renunciation. He never\nactually possessed Lotte or Friederike, nor Lilli, nor the Herzlieb,\nnor Marianne, nor even Ulrike--and not even Frau von Stein. He never\nloved unrequited--unless in the immensely painful, absurdly agitating\naffair with little Levetzof. Yet in all these cases resignation was\nthe order of the day: either on moral grounds, or for the sake of his\nfreedom. Mostly he bolted.\n\nBut the renunciation I mean was a deeper and higher thing. In his\nstature, his lineaments, his proportions as he stands today in the\neyes of the nation, he is what he is as the work of renunciation. I\nam not speaking generally, I do not refer to the sense of sacrifice\nwhich is the meaning of all art; nor to the struggle with chaos, the\nsurrender of freedom, the creative constraint which is its inner\nessence. Goethe\u2019s pathos of renunciation--or, since we are speaking\nof permanent forces dominating the whole of existence, his ethos of\nrenunciation--is of a more personal kind. It is his destiny, it is\nthe instinctive mandate of his especially national gift, which was\nessentially civilizing in its mission. Or, rather, might this destiny\nand mission, this bond, this conditioning limitation and pedagogic duty\nof renunciation, be after all something less personal to him than it\njust now appeared? Might it perhaps be the law of his destiny, innate\nand inviolable save at the expense of heavy spiritual penalties; the\nimperative which is the essence of the German spirit, destined always,\nas it is, somehow and in some degree, to feel itself called to a\ncultural task?--I spoke of the consciousness of a community of feeling,\nwhich Goethe must, at moments, have felt with Christianity. What did\nit consist in, and to what had it reference? Goethe pays homage to\nthe \u201cmoral culture\u201d of Christianity--that is, to its humanity, its\ncivilizing, anti-barbarian influence. It was the same as his; and the\noccasional homage he paid it undoubtedly springs from his recognition\nthat the mission of Christianity within the confines of the Germanic\npeoples bore a likeness to his own. And here, in the fact that he\nconceived his task, his duty to his nation, as essentially a civilizing\nmission, lies the deepest and the most German significance of his\nrenunciation. Does anyone doubt that there were in Goethe possibilities\nof a greatness and growth, wilder, ranker, more disruptive, more\n\u201cnatural,\u201d than those which his instinct for self-conquest allowed him\nto develop, and which today give our mental picture of him so highly\npedagogic a cast? In his _Iphigenia_ the idea of humanity, as opposed\nto barbarism, wears the impress of civilization--not in the polemical\nand even political sense in which we use the word today, but in the\nsense of moral culture. It was a Frenchman, Maurice Barr\u00e8s, who pointed\nout that the _Iphigenia_ is a \u201ccivilizing work,\u201d in that it \u201cstands\nfor the rights of society against the arrogance of intellect.\u201d The\nphrase fits almost better that other monument of self-discipline and\nself-correction, yes, almost of self-mortification, which has been a\ntarget for ridicule on account of its affected atmosphere of courts and\nculture: I mean the _Tasso_. Both are works of resignation, of German\nand schoolmasterish renunciation of all the advantages of barbarism.\nWagner, on the other hand, the voluptuary, did not renounce them; he\nyielded to them all, with huge effectiveness; and his punishment is\nthat the acclaim accorded to his riotously national art grows daily\ncruder and more popular.\n\nMy subject is still the aspiration of the children of nature toward\nspirit; which is just as sentimental in kind as is the converse\nstriving of the sons of the spirit toward nature, and may function with\nvarying degrees of aptitude or success, with more or less na\u00efvet\u00e9 or\nsubtlety. Compared with Goethe\u2019s majestic work of spiritualization,\nI cannot find that Tolstoy\u2019s struggles to throw off nature\u2019s yoke\nwere crowned with great success. But I am whimsical enough to relish\nputting my finger on the mighty kernel of racial loyalty which dwelt\nat the heart of the Christianity of the one and the humanity of\nthe other. And that kernel was, of course, in other words, their\naristocratic integrity; for racial loyalty is aristocratic by nature,\nwhile Christianity, humanity, and civilization all represent the\nconflicting principle of the spirit of democracy, and the process of\nspiritualization is at the same time one of democratization. What\nTolstoy aptly calls his \u201cdemocratic trend\u201d--aptly, because the word\n\u201ctrend\u201d implies a will and a direction somewhither, indicating an\neffort and not mere being--finds emphatic expression now and again in\nGoethe as well. \u201cOne would have,\u201d he says, \u201cto become _Catholic_ at\nonce, in order to have a share in the lives of humanity!\u201d To mingle\nwith humanity, on equal terms, to lead the life of the people, and in\nthe market-place, seems at such moments happiness to him. \u201cIn these\nsmall sovereign states,\u201d he cries, \u201cwhat wretched, isolated men\nwe are!\u201d And he praises Venice as a monument to the power, not of\na single despot, but of a whole people. But such phrases, clearly,\nare meant more correctively than absolutely; they are self-critical\ncomments, meant to redress the balance of his German and Protestant\naristocratism--\u201ctendencies,\u201d then, sentimental leanings, of the same\nkind as the radical and pacifistic bent of the Russian giant, in\nwhose \u201choliness\u201d a penetrating eye can see so much self-deception,\nchildishness, and \u201clet\u2019s pretend.\u201d\n\nA close observer like Gorky, or a shrewd critic like Merezhkovsky, felt\nat once and keenly the patriarchal and sensual quality, the life-bound\nanimalism, which lay beneath the sanctification. Tolstoy married at\nthirty-four the eighteen-year-old Sophia Alexandrovna Behrs, who from\nthen on was scarcely ever anything but \u201cexpectant,\u201d and was confined\nthirteen times. Through long, creative years, his marriage was an idyll\nof family life, full of healthy, god-fearing animal pleasure, against\na lavish economic background of agriculture and cattle-breeding. The\natmosphere was Judaic Old Testament rather than Christian. Tolstoy\nknows the same great simple love of existence, the everlasting\nchildlike joy of life, that possessed Goethe\u2019s soul. When he \u201cpraises\neach day for its beauty,\u201d when he \u201cmarvels at the richness of God\u2019s\nkingdom\u201d expressing itself therein, how \u201ceach day He sends some new\nthing to distinguish it,\u201d we feel a better understanding of what lay\nat the bottom of Goethe\u2019s conception of \u201c_Behagen_.\u201d Waves of piercing\nsensuous enjoyment of nature break upon him even in the years of gloom,\nwhen he meditates suicide, plans the _Confession_--in short, conjures\nup that misunderstanding to which his sanctification falls prey, and\ndehumanizes and shrinks the majesty of the patriarch, christianizes and\nconventionalizes it into the Anglo-Indian model.\n\nMerezhkovsky called him the great seer of the body, in contrast to\nDostoyevsky the visionary of the soul; and truly it is the body to\nwhich his love and deepest interest belong, to which his knowledge\nrefers, by which his genius is conditioned. We see this so clearly\nin his reaction to old age. In 1894 he writes: \u201cAge is approaching.\nThat means the hair falls out, the teeth decay, the wrinkles come,\nthe breath gets bad. Even before the end, everything turns frightful,\ndisgusting; sweat, rouge, powder, all sorts of beastliness. Then\nwhat has become of that which I have served? Where has beauty gone?\nIt is the essence of everything. Without it there is nothing, no\nlife.\u201d--This description of dying while the body still lives, may\npass for Christian, by virtue of its insistence on misery and its\ncharacterization of the flesh, revolting and insulting on the spiritual\nside. But the physical apprehension of old age and death is through and\nthrough pagan and sensual.\n\nAksakov says of Tolstoy: \u201cHis gift is _bearlike_ in kind and degree.\u201d\nAnd is it not this \u201cbearlike\u201d quality of his genius that made Tolstoy\n\u201cthe great writer of Russia,\u201d the author of _War and Peace_, the epic\npoet of the people\u2019s struggle against Rome, against Napoleon? I openly\ndeclare my deliberate intention to cast doubt on the pacifism which\nthe prophet of humanity so didactically professed. Not, I hasten to\nadd, from any anti-pacifistic sentiments on my own part; merely out\nof a sense of humour. That Tolstoy was in his youth a soldier and\nan officer, we know. From his biography we learn that he was heart\nand soul a soldier; and we have evidence of his heroic and warlike\nenthusiasm in the Sebastopol days--that \u201csplendid time,\u201d that \u201cglorious\ntime,\u201d that time of touching pride in the Russian army, when he was\nconfessedly saturated with patriotic feeling and thrilled by his\nexperience of comradery under arms, first felt when the serious moment\nis at hand. His attitude toward the Serbo-Turkish war of 1877 is still\nfull of conviction. It is a _real_ war, he says, and it moves him.\nThe distinction between \u201creal\u201d and \u201cunreal\u201d doubtless indicates some\nprogress in the direction of pacifism. But is pacifism \u201creal\u201d so long\nas it is conditional and must progress in order to exist?\n\nIn 1812, at least, there _was_ a \u201creal\u201d war, and its history occupied\nTolstoy long before he became the great writer of Russia by dint of it.\nHe treated of it, quite in the patriotic key, in his school at Yasnaya\nPolyana. From all we hear, he dealt with it on a mythical rather than\na historical basis; but he expressly declared that he presented his\npupils with these legends of a warlike mythology in order to rouse\ntheir patriotic feeling. And then the root-and-branch Russianism, the\nfundamental folk-character of his peasant-patrician nature, comes out\nstrong in his epos, whose theme is a defensive war waged against the\ninvasion of Latin civilization. _War and Peace_ had a huge popular\nsuccess, though the critics and military men had some fault to find.\n_On the intellectual side it was weak_, they said; its philosophy of\nhistory was narrow and superficial; it was mysticism and sophistry to\ndeny the influence of individuals on events. But the creative power,\nthe \u201cbearlike\u201d strength of it, were unanimously declared to be beyond\nall discussion, as well as its enormous genuineness as a folk-epic.\nThe liberal criticism of Russia admitted that it was \u201cRussian to the\ncore,\u201d that it \u201cpresented the soul of the Russian people, in its\nwhole range and variety, in all its lofty simplicity, with a sheer\ncreative power that had never been equalled.\u201d But the critics took in\nbad part Tolstoy\u2019s \u201cwilful remoteness from all contemporary _currents\nof progress_\u201d--a phenomenon and a reproach which were to recur with\nthe appearance of _Anna Karenine_. \u201c_Anna Karenine_ I don\u2019t like,\u201d\nTurgeniev wrote, \u201cthough there are splendid things in it: the race, the\nmowing, the hunt. But the whole thing is soured; it _smells of Moscow_,\nand old maids and incense and Slavophils and high life and all that.\u201d\nIn a word, Turgeniev, the _Sapadnik_, rejected with horror the oriental\nelement in the novel, and with him went the whole liberal-radical\nparty; some ignored _Anna Karenine_, others sneered or called names,\nwhile the Slavophils and the aristocrats and court party rubbed their\nhands in glee. In fact Tolstoy, in an intellectual and political\nsense, had the reactionaries on his side; and they could have little\nappreciation of the artistic qualities of his work. The liberals were\nliberal enough to know how to value these, and they did so, albeit in\nthat state of bewilderment into which people always fall at the sight\nof genius in the camp of reaction. Witness the bewilderment of Europe\nover Bismarck.\n\nThe paradox is worth a little attention. Our idealists would have us\nbelieve that genius, the creative power, must, as a living force, act\nonly in the service of progress and human purpose, and be justly denied\nto the forces which side against life, show sympathy with death, and\nare inimical to freedom and progress and thus bad in the human sense.\nWe would almost accept it as metaphysical evidence for the goodness\nof a thing if a capital piece of writing were done in its name. And\nreally, it does seem that, as a rule, the reactionary camp suffers\nfrom lack of talent. But not invariably. The reactionary genius does\noccur, the brilliant and conquering ability does act as attorney for\nretrograde tendencies--and nothing dazes the world more than the\nsight of this paradoxical phenomenon. Sainte-Beuve said of Joseph de\nMaistre that he had \u201cnothing of a writer but the gift\u201d--a comment which\nperfectly expresses this bewilderment and precisely indicates the thing\nI mean.\n\nLiberal and progressive Russia must have seen in Tolstoy just this--a\ncase of a great gift in the service of reaction. But it is clear enough\nthat this great gift is of one essence with his fundamental Russianism,\nhis immense integration with the people, his pagan and natural\naristocracy; and that the tendency toward democratic spiritualization\nwas--just tendency, romantic in its nature and crowned, after all, by\nsuch strikingly indifferent success! His tremendous orientalism found\nintellectual expression in this mockery at and denial of European\nprogress; and this it was which must necessarily and profoundly\nalienate all the westernizing and liberalizing, all the \u201cPetrinic\u201d\nelements in Russia. Actually, he quite frankly scouted the western\nbelief in progress, which, he said, had been accepted by the Russia of\nPeter the Great. They had, he said, observed the operation of the law\nof progress in the Duchy of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, with its three\nthousand inhabitants. But then came China, with its two hundred million\ninhabitants, and knocked the theory of progress into a cocked hat.\nWhich did not for one moment prevent them from believing in progress as\na general law of mankind; they took the field with cannons and guns to\ninstruct the Chinese in their thesis. Yet ordinary human understanding\ntells us that if the history of the larger part of mankind, which we\ncall the Orient, does not confirm the law of progress, then this law\ndoes not obtain for the whole of mankind, but forms at most an article\nof faith for a certain part of it. Tolstoy vows that he himself is\nunable to find a universal law in the life of mankind, and that history\nmight be co-ordinated just as well in the light of any other idea or\n\u201chistorical whimsy\u201d as in that of progress. And more than that, he does\nnot see the slightest necessity of finding laws for history--quite\napart from the impossibility of the thing. The universal, eternal law\nof perfection, he says, stands written in the soul of every human\nbeing; it is only an error to carry it over into the field of history.\nSo long as it remains personal, this law is fruitful and accessible to\nall; applied to historical conceptions, it is idle talk. The general\nprogress of mankind is an unproved thesis. It does not exist for any\nof the nations of the east; hence it is just as unfounded to assert\nthat progress is a primary law of mankind as it would be to say that\nblondness is--all people being blond save those with dark hair.\n\nIt is remarkable to see how ideas from the sphere of an idealistic\nindividualism, which is German, and places human perfection within\nthe individual soul, are here found in the company of others which\nconstitute the most decisive challenge to an arrogant Europe setting\nitself up as intellectual arbiter of the world. Tolstoy protests\nagainst what he considers the childishness of this attitude, which\nconfuses western Europe with humanity as a whole; and the protest\nbetrays that his gaze is directed eastward. It betrays, in a word, his\nAsiatic bias: anti-\u201cPetrinic,\u201d primitive Russian, anti-civilization--in\nshort, _bearlike_. What we hear is the voice of the Russian god on the\nmaple throne under the golden lime-tree.\n\nThe voice of our humanistic deity has a different ring. Goethe, beyond\na doubt, hated and scorned Asia. The element of Sarmatian wildness\nin which Tolstoy found himself so much at home and which merely gets\nrationalized in his late prophetic period, would always remain remote\nand foreign to the spirit of the great German, with its exclusively\ncultural bias. A journey Goethe once made into Upper Silesian Poland\nwas the occasion of what contact he had with the Slav. His impressions\nare \u201cmostly remarkable negatively.\u201d He observes ignorance, lack of\nculture, low standards of living, stupidity. He feels himself \u201cremote\nfrom cultured men.\u201d His attitude at the time of the War of Liberation,\noffensive as it was to patriotic feeling, the admiring and personally\nfriendly respect he felt for the classic phenomenon of Napoleon (\u201cthe\nman is too big for you\u201d) belong in this same category. \u201cIt is true,\u201d he\nsays in 1813, \u201cI no longer see French and Italians, but in their stead\nI see Cossacks, Bashkirs, Croats, Magyars, Kashubes, brown and other\nhussars.\u201d This enumeration of eastern races has an extraordinarily\ncontemptuous ring. That the Cossacks and Kashubes were in the country\nas allies and the French as enemies seems not to matter to him.\nHe confesses, indeed, that he too is glad to be rid of the Gallic\n_soldatesca_; yet he is obviously not far from finding more humiliation\nin the alliance with Russia and the dependence of Germany upon the\neast than in her subjugation upon the west; and certain it is that the\nhumanism of the writer who created the _Iphigenia_ has more affiliation\nwith the humanity of western Europe, which has given the mould to our\ncivilization, than with the soft and savage human nature of Half-Asia.\n\nUnpatriotically he declared that he could not hate the French--he\nowed them far too much of his culture. The words are only right and\nproper. But (just as in Tolstoy\u2019s case) the fun begins directly it\nis a question of his nature, of that pre-intellectual fundamental\nconstitution we were talking about, which had its own ways of finding\nexpression, and which is so extraordinarily un-French that it might\nwell be described as pre-eminently German. It would be wrong to bring\nin evidence here his coldness towards \u201cfreedom.\u201d For in the first\nplace the principle of order (_ordre_) is something just as French\nand classic and rationalist as the principle of freedom, which on\nparty grounds is set over against it. And in the second, there is\nnothing un-German about freedom. We know with what \u00e9clat Goethe cited\nGuizot\u2019s dictum that Germany gave the idea of personal freedom to\nthe world. But there is in Goethe something that rebels against the\nidea, against the doctrinaire and theoretic; a lack of faith that\nthe particular, existing under definite conditions, could ever be\nimproved by the method of abstraction; a realism, that is, and a\nscepticism, in matters political, which one may as well call un-French\nas particularly German--taking France as the country of revolution and\nGermany as the country of a certain national weakness for the living,\nhistorically conditioned, \u201corganic.\u201d We must remember that he was a\npractical politician, he had governed Saxe-Weimar. But the practical\nsphere is not kind to the soul; it is a training in cynicism, as many a\npolitician has found out, even in France, where more than one radical\nhas become a conservative and turned the guns on the people after he\ncame to power. Perhaps Goethe might have been more generous-minded,\npolitically speaking, if he had not lost his idealism in the practical\nfield. But this too is unlikely, since from the very beginning he\nwas insensitive to historical democracy, to history defined as the\nevolution of the idea in the masses; he was fundamentally unacquainted\nwith enthusiasm for political ideas, and in general conceived of\nhistory as the biography of great men--an aristocratism which is as\ndifferent from Schiller\u2019s high-flung democratic gesture as it is from\nthe Christian-moujik disparagement of heroes in _War and Peace_.\n\nIt would be foolish to think of him as servile, despite the anecdote\nabout Beethoven and the imperial company on the promenade at Karlsbad.\nHis subservience to princes was purely mundane in its character,\nwherever no personal friendship came in play. When in 1794 Freiherr\nvon Gagern published his challenge to the intelligence of Germany, and\nto Goethe in particular, to put its pen at the service of the \u201cgood,\u201d\nthat is to say, the conservative cause--no other than that of a new\nalliance of German princes for the purpose of saving the country from\nanarchy--Goethe, after thanking him politely for the confidence reposed\nin him, made the characteristic reply that he considered it impossible\nfor princes and writers to unite upon a common task. Notwithstanding\nwhich, we need waste no words over his strictly negative attitude\ntoward the French Revolution.\n\nOn the intellectual side, his view of humanity was a cynical one--that\nis to say, it was radically sceptical. But we know that this was on\nthe intellectual side alone, from the fact that it did not prevent him\nfrom loving his fellow-men. We have his confession that the mere sight\nof the human countenance could cure him of the blues. What he did not\nbelieve in was drawing up articles and holding love-feasts. We shall\nnever know whether Hegel was mocking or spoke in honest enthusiasm\nwhen he said: \u201cAs long as the sun has stood in the firmament and the\nplanets circled round it, it has never been seen that a human being\nstands on his head--i.e., on his understanding--and bases reality\nupon it.\u201d Whether jest or earnest, it was this that revolted Goethe.\nHe judged it to be entirely against nature to try to insist that\nthe whole of mankind find just one choice of means, just one route\ntoward civic happiness. Upon which I may comment as follows: that,\nin the first place, one such utterance, by virtue of its strongly\nnationalist, individualist, aristocratic emphasis, outweighs the whole\nburden of his indifference toward the War of Liberation, and that\nsurely he who uttered it was only prevented by his admiration for the\ngenius of Napoleon--likewise aristocratic in its origin--from seeing\nin the _Imperator_ the standard-bearer of precisely this democratic\n\u201cinsistency.\u201d But, in the second place, we must admit that he had a\nright to set up as an advocate of nature. To quote again:\n\n    _Franztum dr\u00e4ngt in unsern verworrenen Tagen, wie einstmals\n    Luthertum es getan, ruhige Bildung zur\u00fcck._\n\n    (Driven by the spirit of France in our troublous days, as aforetime\n    By the spirit of Luther oppressed, quiet culture retreats.)\n\nWhat a telling synthesis this, of France and Luther; how unprejudiced\nby national feeling! It is all one to him whether the unrest, the\ndistraction, come from this side or that of the Rhine. No matter\nwhence it comes, it is his enemy, the enemy of nature and culture,\nof the _ruhige Bildung_ which is at the bottom of his idea of\nhumanity. The distich shows clearly--shows it despite all _Lust\nam Protestieren_--where he would have stood, say, in the sixteenth\ncentury. In the name of that lofty conception of _Bildung_, in\nwhich nature and culture unite, he would have been for Rome against\nthe Reformation--or else he would have taken up an ambiguous and\nirresponsible position, as Erasmus did, of whom Luther said that repose\nwas dearer to him than the Cross. \u201cThe Cross\u201d--a couple of centuries\nlater, that was the Revolution. Revolution was the spirit--and to\nGoethe his _ruhige Bildung_ was dearer.\n\nHere, for a moment, Erasmus and Goethe meet, in an atmosphere of\npatrician quietism, humanistic love of peace. But the parallel does\nnot long hold--there is too much difference in the scale, and, after\nall, men\u2019s character, the essence of their being, is greatly affected\nby their proportions. Tolstoy\u2019s \u201cfolkishness,\u201d for instance--is it not\nthe expression and apanage of his bearlike bulk? Are they not one and\nthe same thing? And may we not draw from Goethe\u2019s greatness the _a\npriori_ conclusion that his humanistic cosmopolitanism must contain a\ngood-sized racial core? Erasmus, the subtle, was not \u201cfolkish.\u201d It was\nLuther who was that. And truly, in scale, in essence, as an embodiment\nof Germanic greatness, Goethe belongs more with Luther than with the\nhumanists--yes, more even with Bismarck, to whom he is much closer than\na certain antithesis, beloved abroad, would seem to show.\n\nDangerous, perhaps, to say so--as giving aid and comfort to the\ncave-bears of nationalism the world over--but sometimes it is hard\nnot to feel sceptical about the genuineness and validity of Goethe\u2019s\nhumanism. A godlike man, like Tolstoy. But is it possible that the\nantique, humanistic, Jovelike attributes of his godhead were more a\nconvention than we think; that they did not go very deep, and that he\nhimself, all the time, like Tolstoy, the Russian god under the golden\nlime-tree, was an ethnic divinity, an eruption of that Germanic and\naristocratic paganism which claims both Luther and Bismarck as its\nsons, and which, on both sides, played a r\u00f4le in the ideology of the\nlate war?\n\nAn open hostility, against Goethe as well as against Bismarck, is at\nwork in certain literary, humane, and radical circles, a demand for\nhis dethronement. It cannot be without all sense or justification.\nGoethe, as a follower of Spinoza, conceived of all natural final causes\nand purposes as anthropomorphic fictions; thus he was disinclined\nto an anthropocentric, emancipatory conception of humanity, which\nteleologically refers everything to itself and looks upon art\nas a servant of mankind. His synthesis of art and nature is not\nhumanitarian. An approach by the route of the senses is natural to him:\nit makes him see the burning of a peasant house as real and appealing\nto his sympathies, whereas \u201cthe Fall of the Fatherland\u201d he would find\nan empty phrase. All which, frankly and flippantly spoken, is never\nvery far removed from the brute.\n\nThere is in him a feeling for power, for the struggle \u201cuntil one proves\nstronger than the other\u201d; in such sentiments the pacifism of spirit\nwould find it impossible to rejoice. It \u201cmakes him sad to be friends\nwith everybody.\u201d He \u201cneeds anger.\u201d Certainly, that is not Christian\nlove of peace--though Lutheran it may be, and Bismarckian to boot.\nOne might say much--and much has been said--in evidence of his love of\nstrife, his fondness for \u201cpitching in and punishing,\u201d his readiness\nto close the mouth of opposed opinions by a show of power and to\n\u201cremove such people from society.\u201d But best of all I love--if here too\nonly because it is so amusing--the tale of Kotzebue and the Schiller\ncelebration which Kotzebue got up with the sole and single purpose of\nannoying Goethe and playing Schiller off against him. That low-minded\nKotzebue! He _knows_ that the plan will annoy the old man; he also\nknows that Goethe can forbid the celebration by virtue of his office.\nSo he puts the choice squarely before him: he can forbid it, and\nthereby betray his jealousy and despotism; or, if he hesitates to go so\nfar, he can pocket up the annoyance. With majestic simplicity Goethe\nchooses to exercise his power. He _forbids the celebration_. Bismarck\nwould have done the same.\n\nIn the soul-economy of this breed of giants are certain parallel\ntraits. There is violence and there is sentimentality: crude words\nboth to describe what I mean, crude and naturalistically derogatory;\nyet it is my humour to use them; for even if I wanted to I could not\nignore the hidden irony--quite objective, quite unsuspected irony,\nof course--involved in their gigantic loyalties, their aristocratic\nservitude. They were both \u201cfaithful German servants of their Lord\u201d (oh,\nmy God!): the \u201ccivilian Wallenstein\u201d and the despot of _Kultur_; they\nwere German \u201c_Edelknechte_\u201d both; and there was nothing hypocritical\nabout it all, only their giant-sensibilities functioning at full\nheight. The similarity of the character and situation is so strong\nas to bewilder one: Karl August and the simple old man whom Bismarck\n\u201cserved\u201d blend into one single symbolic figure. In the year 1825 he of\nSaxe-Weimar celebrated the fiftieth jubilee of his reign, which was at\nthe same time the fiftieth year of Goethe\u2019s residence in Weimar. On\nthis day Goethe calls himself \u201chis master\u2019s most enraptured servant.\u201d\nHe is the first with his congratulations, at six o\u2019clock at the Roman\nvilla in the park. The emotion is great and genuine. \u201cTogether to our\nlatest breath!\u201d We see the venerable Wilhelm going to meet Bismarck on\nthe landing with just such another embrace; while a fugitive red mounts\nin the cheeks of Roderich von Posa, who turns away with the words: \u201cI\ncannot be a courtier!\u201d\n\nI confessed in the beginning my tendency to make a matter of intrinsic\nvalue out of the matter of size. The greatest German poet must\nalso be the most German one--that is an association more immediate\nand inevitable than even the causal, it is temporal, it is simply\nthe future tense. And it was sanctioned by a source which will be\nuniversally accepted as authoritative. It was Father Jahn, who, _motu\nproprio_, in the year 1810 declared that Goethe was the most German of\npoets--quite unperturbed by the fact that Goethe behaved at all times\nas distantly and unsympathetically toward _deutsche Bruderschaften_\nas Tolstoy toward Slavic. And then, in 1813, when he had very nearly\nsucceeded in bringing himself into bad odour as a man without a\ncountry, Barnhagen von Ense cried out: \u201cGoethe not a patriotic German?\nAll the freedom of Germania early found a home in his breast, there\nto become, to our never-sufficiently-to-be-acknowledged advantage,\nthe pattern, the example, and the root of our culture. In the shade\nof this tree we all live and move. Never did roots thrust firmer and\ndeeper into the soul of our Fatherland, never did shoots more lustily\nsuck strength from its breast. That our youth feel pride in their arms,\nloftiness in their spirits, hath more reference to him than to many\nanother who may lay claim to great activity therein.\u201d\n\nGood, fine, powerful words. They proceed from the truth that in\nnational matters very little depends on what a man says or the opinions\nhe holds; on what he does, on the other hand, everything. When a man\nhas written _G\u00f6tz_, _Faust_, _Wilhelm Meister_, the _Spr\u00fcche in Reimen_\nand _Hermann und Dorothea_--a poem which Schlegel honoured with the\nepithet \u201c_vaterl\u00e4ndisch_\u201d--he can indulge in a bit of cosmopolitan\nirresponsibility, just as the \u201cgreat writer of Russia\u201d could indulge\nin the rationalizing Christian pacifism of his latter period. The\nnational is so much second nature that one may address oneself to the\nmind without running the risk of literary unrealism; and as nature\nGoethe always felt the national--we see it, among others, in the famous\nremark to Eckermann: \u201cNational hatred is a queer thing after all. You\nwill always find it keenest and most violent _in the lowest stages\nof culture_. But there is a stage where it quite disappears, and one\nstands in a way above the nations and feels the well- or ill-being of\na neighbouring people as though it were one\u2019s own. This stage was\nconformable to my nature, and I had confirmed myself in it long before\nI reached my sixtieth year.\u201d\n\nSpiritual regeneration. This summons to achieve the spirit is the\nsentimental imperative of the favourites of nature; just as that\nof the sons of spirit is the summons to achieve the form. And they\nrespond to it--with more or less of aptitude. Tolstoy\u2019s self-imposed\ntask of shaking off the natural man was but spiritualizing the savage;\nyet a touching and honourable sight, even alongside of Goethe\u2019s\nmajestic culture. The main thing is that nothing should come too easy.\nEffortless nature--that is crude. Effortless spirit is without root--or\nsubstance. A lofty encounter of nature and spirit as they mutually\nyearn toward each other--that is man.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nGorky says of Tolstoy a quite extraordinary and startling thing: he\nsuggests the possibility that Tolstoy, despite the strength of his\nreason, sometimes hoped, or at least the thought occurred to him,\nthat possibly nature would make an exception, and grant him physical\nimmortality. \u201cThe whole broad earth looks toward him: from China, from\nIndia, from America, from everywhere stretch hither living, vibrating\nthreads, his soul is for all and for always. Why should not nature\nbreak her law, and grant one man physical immortality--why not?\u201d What\nmadness! But even if it is not true, even if the sensible old man\nnever came on such a monstrously presumptuous thought--even so, it is\nvery telling that Gorky should have come on it for him. It shows what\nseemed to a competent observer to be Tolstoy\u2019s relation to nature and\nlife.--And Goethe? Is it likely that the grey-haired lover of Fraulein\nvon Levetzof never rebelled against the limitations of human life, as\nNapoleon did at the limitations of human power, when he complained that\nmen had become unbelievers, unwilling to acknowledge him a god, as they\nhad his brother Alexander? Shall we imagine him utterly incapable of\nthe thought which Gorky ascribes to the old Tolstoy: that nature might\nconceivably hesitate to destroy him, her darling son, as she did all\nordinary humankind?\n\nYet die he did, without warning, at the age of eighty-three. Nature, as\nit were, tenderly got round him. He had been ailing; he settled down\nin his arm-chair for a rest and a nap, and he was gone. The passage\nin which Eckermann describes the appearance of the corpse is famous.\n\u201cThe body lay naked, folded in a white sheet; they had put large\npieces of ice round, to keep it fresh as long as possible. Friedrich\n(the servant) unwrapped the sheet, and I was astounded at the godlike\nsplendour of those limbs. The chest exceedingly powerful, broad and\ndeep; the arms and thighs full and gently muscular; the feet slender\nand very chaste in form; and nowhere on the body a trace of fat or\nshrinking or decay. A perfect human being lay in great beauty there\nbefore me; and the delight I felt made me forget for a moment that the\nimmortal spirit had forsaken such a frame.\u201d\n\nLet there be no misunderstanding. Nobody asserts that Goethe and\nTolstoy were, so to speak, four-square; that by contrast with the\nmorbid geniuses Schiller and Dostoyevsky they were \u201cnormal\u201d in the\ncommon acceptation of the word. Even the genius most endowed by nature\nis never natural in the philistine sense; that is to say, normal,\nhealthy, and according to rule. In his physical there must always be\nsomething high-strung and irritable, prone to crises and disease, in\nhis psychical always something foreign to the average man, affecting\nhim uncannily--something almost psychopathic; though the philistine\nmust not be allowed to put it like that.... No; what I refer to here\nis that _sense-endowment_ possessed by the noble race of Ant\u00e6us\nand celebrated by Goethe\u2019s Faust in the words he addresses to the\nEarth-Spirit:\n\n    _Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles,\n    Warum ich bat. Du hast mir nicht umsonst\n    Dein Angesicht im Feuer zugewendet.\n    Gabst mir die herrliche Natur zum K\u00f6nigreich,\n    Kraft, sie zu f\u00fchlen, zu geniessen. Nicht\n    Kalt staunenden Besuch erlaubst du nur,\n    Verg\u00f6nnest mir, in ihre tiefe Brust\n    Wie in den Busen eines Freunds, zu schauen_....\n\n\u201cPower to feel and to enjoy nature.\u201d Tolstoy\u2019s sense-endowment, as an\nindividual, must have been that of a noble, highly sensitive animal,\nmost perfectly equipped by nature and strengthened and sublimated\nby the contemplative power and awareness of the human being. His\neyes, the small, keen grey eyes under the bushy brows, were like\na falcon\u2019s. They saw everything. They were capable of analysis so\npenetrating as sometimes to seem fantastic. A critic once wrote\nof him: \u201cYou are sometimes capable of saying \u2018such and such things\nabout the constitution of a certain man indicated that he wanted\nto travel to India.\u2019\u201d His sense of smell, it seems, was especially\npenetrating. The fact plays no small part in the sensuous atmosphere\nof his writing, and appears to have conflicted at times with his own\nhuman feeling. \u201cHowever much I dislike to speak of it,\u201d he says in\nhis _Recollections_, \u201cI can still remember the characteristic sharp\nodour which was personal to my aunt, probably in consequence of some\ncarelessness in dress.\u201d\n\nI have already spoken of Goethe\u2019s sensitiveness to weather conditions.\nIt was due to his almost exaggerated sense-endowment; and became\npositively occult when that night in his chamber in Weimar he felt the\nearthquake of Messina. Animals have a nervous equipment which enables\nthem to feel such events when they occur and even beforehand. The\nanimal in us transcends; and all transcendence is animal. The highly\nirritable sense-equipment of a man who is nature\u2019s familiar goes beyond\nthe bounds of the actual senses and issues in the suprasensual, in\nnatural mysticism. With Goethe the divine animal is frankly and proudly\njustified of itself in all spheres of activity, even the sexual. His\nmood was sometimes priapic--a thing which of course does not happen\nwith Tolstoy, in whose nature the element of antique culture was\nmissing. In him the voice of sexual desire spoke in no classic accents;\nit revelled Russianly in its strength; yet at the same time it always\nhad a moral cast, was at all times followed, probably even accompanied,\nby profound remorse. Tolstoy\u2019s comrades from his Sebastopol period\nbear witness to the fury with which even at that time the battle\nbetween sensual and spiritual impulses raged within him. According to\nthem young Count Tolstoy was a glorious comrade, the life and soul of\nhis battery, overflowing with high spirits. When he was away, they\nwere disconsolate. \u201cWe would hear nothing of him,\u201d says the narrator,\n\u201cfor a whole day, for two or three days. At last he would come back,\nthe very picture of the prodigal son; gloomy, knocked up, out of sorts\nwith himself. He would take me aside and begin to confess. He confessed\neverything, simply everything, his gambling, his carousing, where he\nhad spent his days and nights--and, would you believe it, his remorse\nand suffering were as deep as though he had committed some great crime.\nHis despair went so beyond all bounds that it was painful to behold.\nThat was the sort of man he was. He was, in a word, very remarkable,\nand, to tell the truth, I never did quite understand him.\u201d\n\nThat we can well believe. The remorse and suffering to which the young\nofficer was a witness sprang of course from that conflict within\nTolstoy\u2019s own breast which afterwards gave him such unrivalled power\nto stir the conscience and prick man\u2019s fear of God awake. But the\ndepth of his moral necessity is a precise measure of the violence of\nhis instincts; and though his natural man bore heavier and heavier on\nhis Christianity as time went on, so that he craved surcease from its\nstings, yet he never, up till the end, attained to peace. Tolstoy in\nsex matters held out as long as Goethe, who mocked himself thus:\n\n    _Alter, h\u00f6rst du noch nicht auf?\n    Immer, M\u00e4dchen!_\n\nBut his state of mind toward woman, whom he had early learned to\nregard, after the manner of the Fathers, as _instrumentum diaboli_, had\nlong since assumed such a form that an experience like that of Goethe\nwith Ulrike was unthinkable. Stranger still--or no, in a man of his\nparts and magnificence it is only what we should expect--we find not\na trace of cant or prudishness or even delicacy in all his recorded\nutterances on this subject. On the contrary, they are all of a pagan\nfrankness that borders on the cynical. He goes walking by the sea with\nGorky and Anton Tschekof, and suddenly he levels at Tschekof a question\nabout the latter\u2019s youth, using a crude Biblical word with rather\nstartling effect. Anton Pavlovich is confused; he pulls at his little\nbeard and mutters something in reply. The old man lets him stammer\nawhile, then, looking out to sea, delivers himself in four words, of a\nconfession of his own, in good round terms, ending with a very low and\nvulgar peasant word. \u201cWhen they come from his rugged lips,\u201d says Gorky,\n\u201cwords like that lose their barrack-room flavour and sound quite simple\nand natural.\u201d\n\nAgain, he says: \u201cIf Leo Nikolaevich were a natural scientist, he\nwould certainly evolve the most ingenious hypotheses, and make the\ngreatest discoveries.\u201d Gorky has not here in mind Tolstoy\u2019s remarkable\nsense-equipment; but I am inclined to associate the two ideas. Nor,\nit would appear, has he Goethe in mind when he ascribes to Tolstoy a\nlatent genius for the natural sciences; but I have. To me it seems a\npertinent fact that Goethe, in Venice--this was in 1790, at the time\nof those amorous adventures celebrated in the _Epigrams_--saw a broken\nsheep-skull on the Lido, and had that morphological insight into the\ndevelopment of all the bones of the skull out of the vertebr\u00e6 which\nshed such important illumination upon the metamorphosis of the animal\nbody. When Gorky says that Tolstoy, if he had gone in for it, would\nhave made brilliant discoveries in the field of natural science, there\ncan be no doubt of his meaning. He has in mind that initiated sympathy\nwith organic life which those must possess who are her favoured sons--a\nsympathy not far from Eros, and in which Goethe\u2019s biologic intuitions\nhave their source; for example, his incredibly sure-footed anticipation\nof the cell theory.\n\nDoes it not find expression, this sympathy, in the youthful Goethe\u2019s\nGanymede-pathos? \u201c_Mit tausendfacher Liebeswonne sich an mein Herz\ndr\u00e4ngt deiner ewigen W\u00e4rme heilig Gef\u00fchl._\u201d... \u201c_Aufw\u00e4rts an deinen\nBusen, alliebender Vater!_\u201d Does it not find expression in his\npantheism, which is only the objectivation of his feeling, in such\nwise that his own utter surrender gives him to know the divine not as\nsomething from without, but as irradiating him through and through?\nIn any case, this organic sympathy, this living interest, is entirely\ndirected toward life, toward the \u201c_ewige W\u00e4rme_\u201d; whereas--and what\ncould be more characteristic of the difference between these two,\nnature\u2019s great children?--Tolstoy\u2019s strongest, most tormenting,\ndeepest, and most productive interest has to do with death. It is\nthe thought of death which dominates his thoughts and writing, to\nsuch an extent that one may say no other great master of literature\nhas felt and depicted death as he has--felt it with such frightful\npenetration, depicted it so insatiably often. Tolstoy\u2019s poetic genius\nfor questioning death is the pendant to Goethe\u2019s intuition in the field\nof natural science; and sympathy with the organic is at the bottom of\nboth. Death is a very sensual, very physical business; and it would be\nhard to say whether Tolstoy was so interested in death because he was\nso much and so sensually interested in the body, and in nature as the\nlife of the body, or whether it was the other way about. In any case,\nin his fixation with death, _love_ comes into play too: for the fear of\ndeath, this source of Tolstoy\u2019s poetry and his feeling for religion, is\nfear of the love of nature, it is the negative, naturalistic other side\nof Goethe\u2019s Ganymede-impulse.\n\n\u201c_Du f\u00fchrst_,\u201d says Goethe-Faust to the Earth-Spirit:\n\n    \u201c_Du f\u00fchrst die Reihe der Lebendigen\n    Vor mir vorbei und lehrst mich meine Br\u00fcder\n    Im stillen Busch, in Luft und Wasser kennen._\u201d\n\n\u201cMy brothers.\u201d We know that it was Goethe who took in all seriousness\nthe idea of \u201cman\u2019s close relation to the beast,\u201d and that before\nscience had got far enough on to do so; his possession by this thought,\nthis profound and true intuition, shows us the child of nature in all\nhis sympathy with the organic. Schiller\u2019s humanity, his conception of\nman, which was at bottom emancipatory, haughtily inimical to nature,\nwould have found little pleasure in such a conception; and one does\nnot discover ideas to which one is unsympathetic; that is to say,\nideally unsympathetic. There is not such a thing as an assumptionless\nscience. Scientific discoveries are always the result of an ideal\nassumption: the medi\u00e6val statement \u201c_Credo ut intellegam_\u201d is eternally\nright. Belief is the organ of knowledge; and without the preconceived,\nprevisioned idea of a unified plan on which is based the development\nof the higher vertebrate world, including man--in the plant world the\nconception of the \u201cprimitive plant\u201d--Goethe never would have found the\n_os intermaxillare_ in man. I may speak of the amusing contradiction\nbetween his discovery and the humanistic explanation he gave it. He\nsays that the intermaxillary bone is variously shaped, in animals,\naccording to circumstance and necessity; but that when it came to man,\nthe highest in the scale, it hid itself for shame, \u201cafraid of betraying\nan animal voracity.\u201d Ideal human pride might retort that it was truly\ninhuman to spy out the shamefaced hidden bone and bring it to the light.\n\nYet how remarkable and significant it is to see Goethe\u2019s medical and\nbiological interest being seasoned from the start with the humanistic,\nwith his concern with man and his beauty! And consequently with art\ntoo; since art with Goethe was a humanistic discipline, and all the\ndisciplines and faculties of human endeavour, human wisdom, human\npower, were seen by him as variations and adumbrations of one and\nthe same great compelling and enchanting interest and concern, which\nis man. To study humanity from the angle of medicine and the natural\nsciences did not lie in his family tradition, as it did in Schiller\u2019s\nand Dostoyevsky\u2019s, both of whom were sons of physicians, and neither\nof whom gave a thought to man\u2019s physical side. On the other hand, we\nknow that ever since his Leipsic days Goethe had occupied himself with\nmedicine, associated every day with medical men in Strasburg, worked\nin the dissecting-rooms, spent time in the obstetrical clinic and the\nclinic for internal diseases. The spirit in which he pursued these\nstudies, the kind of interest he took in them, is clear from the fact\nthat he himself later in life lectured to young artists in the academy\non the bony structure of the body. The same thing comes out even\nplainer in the words he puts into the mouth of Wilhelm Meister in the\n_Wanderjahre_, when the hero takes his surgical training. His primary\ninterest is in anatomy; and we get some very curious information on the\npoint of previous preparation in a quite different field of activity.\n\n\u201cBy a peculiar method, which no one would guess, I had already made\ngood progress in knowledge of the human frame; and this was during my\ntheatrical career. When you come down to it, the physical man, after\nall, plays the principal r\u00f4le there--a fine man, a fine woman! If\nthe manager is lucky enough to have got hold of these, the writers\nof comedy and tragedy are assured. The free footing upon which such\nsociety lives makes their associates more familiar with the peculiar\nbeauty of the uncovered limbs than any other relationship; different\ncostumes often oblige them to make visible what otherwise is generally\nconcealed. On this point I might have much to say, as also of physical\ndefects which the sensible actor must recognize in himself or others,\nin order, if not to correct, at least to hide them. In this way I was\nsufficiently prepared to give consistency to the anatomical course\nwhich taught me to know the outer parts more accurately, whilst\nthe inner parts too were not strange to me, inasmuch as a certain\nperception of them had always been present to me.\u201d\n\nThis is, I repeat, a significant bit of information. We learn, not\nonly that the acquaintance with the human form, which Wilhelm owed to\nthe \u201cfree footing\u201d of theatrical life, was a happy preparation for his\nanatomical studies; but also that both, his leaning to the theatre and\nhis interest in medicine, were expressions of one and the same profound\ninterest, his sympathy with the organic and its highest revelation,\nthe human form--an interest, and a sympathy, not far removed, as I\nsaid, from Eros. For instance, when Wilhelm Meister, one day in the\ndissecting-room, finds that his subject is \u201cthe most beautiful female\narm that ever twined itself about a young man\u2019s neck\u201d--and cannot bring\nhimself to mutilate with his instruments this \u201cglorious manifestation\nof nature.\u201d Out of this incident there comes about his acquaintance\nwith that remarkable man, the \u201cplastic anatomist,\u201d a sculptor who\nprepares from wax or other material anatomical dissections possessing\nthe fresh colour and appearance of the natural subjects, in the\nhope of employing his ingenuity and fertility of method to make the\ndemonstrations more valuable to students and medical practitioners\nthe world over. There follow the most pregnant conversations upon\nthe association of plastic art and anatomical knowledge, and the two\nintertwine in the most wonderful way when the master \u201ccast in a shaped\nmass the beautiful torso of a youth and now was skilfully trying to\ndivest the ideal form of the epidermis, to change the beautiful shapes\nof life into a veritable preparation of muscular tissue.\u201d\n\nHere the prose work of Goethe\u2019s later period refers to his own youthful\nthoughts and experiences as a student. He had early discovered and\nstated that a knowledge of nature and a knowledge of art reciprocally\nheighten each other. \u201cAs I observe nature,\u201d he wrote from Rome, \u201cso I\nnow observe art, and win what I have so long striven after, a perfect\nconception of the highest that has been accomplished by man; and _my\nsoul gets formed_ more on this side and looks into a freer field.\u201d\n\u201cArchitecture and sculpture and painting are to me now like mineralogy,\nbotany, and zoology,\u201d he says in a letter to Herder. And again: \u201cWe can\nfinally rival nature by the use of art only when we have learned from\nher, at least to some extent, the way she proceeds in the formation of\nher works.... The human form cannot be comprehended merely by looking\nat the surface of it; one must lay bare its inwardness, disjoin its\nparts, observe the connexion between them, note the dissimilarities,\nbe instructed in the action and counter-action, print upon one\u2019s mind\nthe hidden and dormant and basic features of a phenomenon, if one wants\nreally to see and imitate it as it moves, a beautiful, indivisible\nwhole, in living waves before our eyes.\u201d These are Goethe\u2019s words, and\nwho could doubt their truth? Who would deny that it advantages the\nartist to have knowledge of something beneath the skin, so that he can\npaint what is not seen as well as what is: in other words, if he stand\nto nature in another relation besides the lyrical, if, for example, he\nis a physician on the side, a physiologist, an anatomist, and quietly\nknows what he knows about the _dessous_ as well? The envelope of a\nhuman body consists not only of the mucous membrane and cornea of the\nepidermis, but underneath one has to imagine the corium with its oil\nand sweat glands, blood-vessels and tubercles, and under that again the\nadipose tissue, the upholstery that lends the form its charm. But what\nthe artist knows and thinks tells too: it flows into his hand and has\nits effect; it is not there and yet somehow it is, and just this it\nis that gives perspicuousness. Art, I repeat, is only one humanistic\ndiscipline among others; all of them, philosophy, jurisprudence,\nmedicine, theology, even the natural sciences and technology as well,\nare only variations and subspecies of one and the same high and\ninteresting theme--toward which we can never take up a sufficiently\nvaried and many-sided attitude, for it is man; and the _human form_ is\nthe summary of them all, it is, to speak with Goethe, \u201cthe _non plus\nultra_ of all human knowledge and activity, the alpha and omega of all\nthings known unto us.\u201d\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nAutobiography, and education. The two conceptions meet again when\nwe envisage this idea of the human form, this loftiest expression\nof our sympathy with the organic. Yes, in view of this idea, so\ngenuinely creative, the two conceptions flow into one humane whole:\nthe pedagogic element resides, consciously or unconsciously (and if\nunconsciously, so much the better), in the autobiographic; it follows\nfrom it, it grows out of it.\n\nGoethe somewhere calls Wilhelm Meister his \u201cbeloved likeness (_sein\ngeliebtes Ebenbild_).\u201d In what sense? Does a man love his own\nlikeness? Unless he suffer from hopeless self-complacency, should\nnot the sight of it make him aware of his own shortcomings? Yes, of\ncourse, it should. And this very awareness of a need of improvement\nand completion, this consciousness of his own ego as a task, a moral,\n\u00e6sthetic, cultural obligation, becomes objective in the hero of the\nautobiographical novel, the epic of education. To this personage the\ncreative ego acts as guide, philosopher, and friend--at once identical\nand superior--to an extent that makes Goethe once refer to his Wilhelm\nas \u201ca poor dog.\u201d The phrase bespeaks a parental tenderness, not only\ntoward the poor fellow in his _dunklen Drange_ whom he created in his\nown image, but also toward himself. And thus, at the very heart of the\nautobiographic pathos there takes place the turn for the pedagogic.\nAnd this process of objectivation goes on in Wilhelm Meister through\nthe introduction of the society of the Turm, which takes in hand\nhis destiny and human development and leads him in mysterious ways.\nMore and more plainly in the _Lehrjahre_ does the original idea of a\npersonally conducted adventure in self-improvement tend toward the\npedagogic; until in the _Travels_ it issues entirely in the social,\nyes, even in the political. At the end of the _Faust_ there is an\nunmistakable flashing-up in poetry of the same vision of the union of\nself and society in the educational process. For the Enlightened, who\non earth \u201c_immer strebend sich bem\u00fcht_\u201d, is received on high by the\nyouthful saved, who sing:\n\n    \u201c_Wir wurden fr\u00fch entfernt\n    Von Lebech\u00f6ren;\n    Doch dieser hat gelernt,\n    Er wird uns lehren._\u201d\n\nNobody has ever loved his own ego, nobody was ever egocentric, in the\nsense of conceiving of his own ego as a cultural task and toiling\nearly and late in pursuance of it, without reaping, almost as though\nby accident, educational influence in the outer world, and the joy and\ndignity of a leader and former of youth. The harvest never comes save\nat the height of life, and the moment of his realization of it is the\nsublime moment in the life of the productive human being. He never\nforesees, or even suspects, the moment beforehand. The autobiographical\n\u201cpoor dog,\u201d with his mind from his youth up wholly on the difficulties\nof ploughing his own furrow, or, in the religious phrase, on the saving\nand justification of his own soul, will not have imagined he can teach\nanything, to improve or to convert men. Yet the day comes when, still\nincredulous, still astonished, he realizes that he has been teaching\nwhile he learned--shaping, guiding, leading, training, putting his own\nstamp on youth, by the power of words, by that lofty instrument of\nculture which is Eros-filled and binds the hearts of men. And from the\nday of his realization this knowledge possesses his whole life with\na certainty, a creative bliss which leaves far behind it all ordinary\nhuman joys of love and fatherhood--just as the life of the mind is\nwont to exceed all personal and sensual things in value, beauty, and\nsplendour.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\n\u201cI am reading Goethe. My mind teems,\u201d Tolstoy wrote in his journal at\nthe beginning of the sixties. He was then a man of some thirty years\nand had not long returned to Russia and begun his work as a preaching\nand practising pedagogue. What was he reading? Was it contact with\nGerman idealism and humanism that made his mind so to \u201cteem\u201d? It was\nan alien sphere to him. For in Tolstoy (otherwise than in Goethe), the\norigin of the pedagogic impulse was immediately social and ethical.\nA man of parts and attainments, said he, must share with those who\nlack such blessings before he can derive pleasure from them himself.\nThe motive seems _a poor one_ to me; rationalizing and humanitarian,\nlike all the conscious thought of the great artist just then, I find\nit deeply inferior to the beautiful humanity of Goethe, in whom the\nsocial ideal was an organic outgrowth of the cultural and educational.\nBut what Tolstoy thought was usually smaller than what he was. And\nto come back to our starting-point: what was it made his mind \u201cteem\u201d\nwhen he read Goethe and at the same time set to work as single-handed\nschoolmaster and founder of a primary school to put into practice the\npedagogic ideas that rumbled in his belly?\n\nOr, rather, to experiment with them. For he had made up his mind to\nsettle, by actual experiment, what it was that the people, and in\nparticular youth, wanted to be taught; it had not been settled, and\nthat it had to be settled was his primary pedagogical thesis. \u201cThe\npeople,\u201d he said, \u201cthis most interested party in the whole situation,\nparty and judge in one, listens quietly to our more or less ingenious\nexposition as to the best way of preparing and presenting its mental\nfodder. It is not disturbed; for it perfectly knows that in the great\nbusiness of its mental development it will never take a false step, or\naccept anything that is false; and that all efforts to force it into\npaths unsuited to it, for instance German paths, will be like water\non a duck\u2019s back.\u201d One must recognize, Tolstoy declares in writing\nand controversy, that the German type of school is a desirable one;\nthat is a fact for which history vouches. But, even so, one may as\na Russian hesitate to enter the lists in favour of a primary school\nwhich does not yet exist there. What historical argument can be brought\nfor the assertion that Russian schools must be like those in the\nrest of Europe? The people, he says, need education, and every human\nbeing seeks it unconsciously. The more highly cultivated classes,\nsociety, and government officials, seek to extend the benefits of\ntheir knowledge and to educate the less educated masses. One would\nsuppose that such a concurrence of the needs of both classes, the\ngiving as well as the receiving, would suffice. But no. The masses\nsteadily oppose all efforts made in their behalf to educate them, so\nthat these are often entirely futile. Whose is the fault? Which is\nmore justified: the opposition, or the system against which it is\ndirected? Must the opposition be broken or the system altered? The\nlatter, Tolstoy decides, is the case. \u201cShall we not,\u201d he asks, \u201cconfess\nhonourably and openly that we do not, cannot, know what the needs of\nthe coming generations will be; but that we feel none the less bound\nto investigate? That we will not charge the masses with ignorance\nbecause they will not accept our education; but rather accuse ourselves\nof both ignorance and arrogance if we go on trying to educate them on\nour own lines? Let us at last cease to see hostility in the resistance\nof the people to our system; and find in it the expression of the\npeople\u2019s will, which alone should guide us. Let us at last accept the\nfact, so clearly evinced by the whole history of pedagogics, that if\nthe educating class are to know what is good and what bad, the class\nto be educated must have full power to register dissatisfaction,\nand opportunity to reject a system which they instinctively find\nunsatisfying; that, in short, _freedom_ is the sole criterion of\neducational methods.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe sole criterion of education is freedom, the sole method\nexperience, experimentation.\u201d This is Tolstoy\u2019s first and highest\npedagogic maxim. According to him, the school should be at once a means\nof education and an experiment performed on the rising generation, an\nexperiment productive of ever new results. It should, in other words,\nbe an educational laboratory, where the experiment of pedagogic science\nseeks to create a firm basis for itself. To do this, it is necessary\nthat it function under circumstances that ensure the value of its\nresults--that is, in freedom. The school as it is, Tolstoy declares,\nenfeebles the children by distorting their mental faculties. During\nthe most precious period of development it wrenches the child out of\nthe family circle, robs him of the joy of freedom, and makes of him\na jaded, suppressed creature, upon whose face rests an expression of\nweariness, fear, and boredom, while with his lips he repeats strange\nwords in a language he does not know. But if we give the people freedom\nduring their training, then we also give them the chance to speak out\non the score of their necessities, and furthermore to choose among\nthe kinds of knowledge offered. Philosophers from Plato to Kant have\nunanimously striven to free the school from the fetters of tradition.\nThey have sought to discover wherein the intellectual needs of man\nconsist, and to build up new schools on these more or less correctly\nenvisaged needs. Luther demands that the masses shall study the\nScripture from the original text, and not from the commentaries of the\nFathers. Bacon advises the study of nature from nature herself and not\nfrom the works of Aristotle. Rousseau wants to teach life _from life_,\nas he conceives it, and not from outworn experience. All philosophy\nstands for freeing the school from the idea of instructing the younger\ngeneration in that which the older generation held to be science; and\nin favour of the idea of teaching them what they themselves need. And\nwe can see by the history of pedagogic science that every step forwards\nconsists in greater natural _rapport_ between pupil and teacher, in\nless compulsion and greater facilitation of the process of learning.\n\nTolstoy, then, an anarchistic pedagogue, sets his face against\ndiscipline. \u201cThe school in which there is less compulsion,\u201d he says,\n\u201cis better than the one in which there is more. The method which can\nbe introduced without increased disciplinary strain is good; one which\nrequires greater severity is surely wrong. Take a school like mine and\ntry to carry on conversations about tables and corners of rooms or\nshove little dice to and fro. A frightful disorder will reign at once,\nand it will be absolutely necessary to restore order. But tell them an\ninteresting story or set them an interesting task, or let someone write\non the board and the others correct, and _let them all out of their\nbenches_, and they will all be busy, and there will be no mischief, and\nno increased discipline will be necessary. We may safely say that this\nway is good.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe children bring nothing with them,\u201d thus Tolstoy describes the\nprocedure at Yasnaya Polyana, \u201cneither primers nor copy-books. There\nare no tasks to take home. They need not remember anything--nothing\nof what they did the day before. They need carry nothing, either in\ntheir hands or in their heads. They bring nothing with them but their\nreceptive natures and the conviction that school will be just as jolly\ntoday as it was yesterday; they only think of the instruction when it\nhas begun. No one who comes late is ever scolded, and they never come\nlate, except some of the older ones, whose fathers occasionally keep\nthem to work. When that happens, they run as fast as they can to school\nand get there breathless.\u201d\n\nLucky village children of Yasnaya Polyana! But it is comprehensible\nthat Tolstoy tries to make the school at least pleasant for his pupils;\nhis faith in its educational value is weak, and he makes in the end no\nsecret of his conviction--which he declares he derived from personal\nobservation in the schools of Paris, Marseilles, and other cities of\nwestern Europe--that the greater part of popular education is gained,\nnot from school, but from life; and that free public instruction,\nby means of lectures, clubs, books, exhibitions, and so on, remains\nfar superior to any teaching in schools. But be that as it may; what\ninterests us here is not the rightness or wrongness of Tolstoy\u2019s ideas,\nbut rather what is characteristic in them; and characteristic they\ncertainly are, in the highest degree, and from every point of view, not\nonly in a personal sense, but also as a sign, even as an augury of his\ntime.\n\nWhat strikes one first of all, then, is a note that sounds in clearest\ncontradiction to certain other of his doctrines: to the pacifistic and\nantinational ones, to the thesis of democratic equality he preached\nin his latter days. It is the national note. He emphasizes the\nright of the Russian people to an education suited to their genius,\nindependently of the foreign spirit. His root-and-branch Russianism,\nat this time still quite unregenerate, denies the right of the upper\nand official classes, with their west-European liberal education, to\nforce upon the masses an education not suited to their actual needs.\nHere he is turning against Peter the Great, who created these official\nclasses and gave them their orientation toward liberalism and the\nwest. Tolstoy\u2019s educational ideas are all extreme anti-\u201cPetrinic,\u201d\nanti-western, anti-progressive. He openly declares that the educated\nclass is not capable of giving the masses their proper training,\nconceiving, as it does, that the well-being of the people lies in the\ndirection of civilization and progress. What speaks out of Tolstoy\u2019s\nmouth, what rules his thinking, is Moscow. It is that leaning toward\nAsia which so alarmed Turgeniev and others like him in Tolstoy\u2019s\nwritings and which here is elevated to a pedagogic principle. His\nanarchism, his faith in the anarchistic principle as the single\nreasonable basis of communal human life; his doctrine that absolute\nfreedom makes all discipline superfluous--all these are part of it, and\nit and they are expressed in Tolstoy\u2019s prescription to \u201clet all the\nchildren out of the benches\u201d and free them from every oppressive sense\nof duty.\n\nThis \u201c_letting all the children out of the benches_\u201d--a picturesque\nand stimulating formula--is a perfect symbol for Tolstoy\u2019s social and\npolitical (or, rather, his anarchistic, antipolitical) views. His\nfamous letter to Czar Alexander III develops these most concisely. The\nnew Czar\u2019s father had been murdered on the first of March 1881; and\nTolstoy wrote begging him to exercise clemency toward the murderers. He\nhere sets down for the Emperor, in words so compelling that one almost\nwonders at their not prevailing, the two _political_ expedients which\nhad been applied up to date against increasing political disorder:\nfirst, force and terror; and second, liberalism, constitution,\nparliament. Both these have finally shown themselves impotent. There\nremains, however, a third expedient, which is not of a political\nnature and which has at least the advantage of having never yet been\ntried. It consists in the fulfilment of the divine will regardless of\nconsequences, without any cautious reservations of policy; quite simply\nin love, forgiveness, the requital of evil with good; in mildness, in\nnon-resistance against evil, in freedom.... In a word, Tolstoy advises\nthe Czar to \u201clet all the children out of the benches\u201d; he counsels\nanarchy--I am not using the word in a derogatory sense, but quite\nobjectively, to specify a definite social and political gospel of\nsalvation.\n\nThe Asiatic bias of this great Russian genius has already been shown\nto be a mixture of various psychical elements: oriental passivity,\nreligious quietism, and an unmistakable tendency to Sarmatian wildness.\nHere, in this anarchistic theory, it lies down with quite different\ncompany: with the revolutionary ideals of western Europe, with the\neducational and political conceptions of Rousseau and his pupil\nPestalozzi, in both of whom there is present the element of wildness,\nthe return to nature--in short, the anarchistic element in another\nform and under other colours. Here, then, we are arrived at the common\nfactor in the education of our two protagonists--but with a difference.\nOn the educational side, Goethe fell away from his allegiance to\nRousseau. Pedagogic Rousseauianism, as preached and practised by its\nfounder, revolted him. Furiously, even desperately, he rejected it, and\nthe anarchical individualism of the revolutionary education.\n\nBoisser\u00e9e tells how Goethe expressed to him his distress on the\nscore of Pestalozzi and his system. For its original purpose and\nin its original setting, where Pestalozzi had only the children of\nthe people in mind, the poor who lived in their isolated huts in\nSwitzerland and could not send their children to school, it might be\na capital idea. But it became the most destructive one in the world\nso soon as it ceased to confine itself to elementary teaching and\nwent on to language, art, the general field of knowledge and power,\nwhich of course presupposed a _previous tradition_.... And then\nthe insubordination this cursed kind of education aroused: look at\nthe impudence of the little school-urchins, who feel no awe of any\nstranger, but rather put him in a fright instead. All respect gone,\neverything done away with that makes human beings human beings in their\nrelations with each other. \u201cWhat should I have been,\u201d cried Goethe, \u201cif\nI had not always been obliged to show respect for others? And these\nmen, in their madness and frenzy, to reduce everything to terms of the\nsingle individual and be simply gods of self-sufficiency! They think\nto educate a nation which shall stand against the barbaric hordes,\njust as soon as the latter shall have mastered the elementary tools of\nunderstanding, which Pestalozzi has made it so very easy for them to\ndo.\u201d\n\nTradition, reverence--which \u201cmakes human beings human beings in their\nrelations with each other\u201d--conformity of the ego within a noble and\nestimable community; do you not feel the nearness of the Pedagogic\nProvince? Let me recall a moment that dream so wise and splendid, at\nonce austere and blithe, in which can be traced much of the humanism of\nthe eighteenth century, much of the spirit of the _Zauberfl\u00f6te_, of\nSarastro and the \u201cmoving toward good with one\u2019s hand in a friend\u2019s\u201d;\nand which at the same time contains so much that is new and bold, and,\nhumanly speaking, advanced that it cannot be called less revolutionary\nthan Tolstoy\u2019s educational ideas. Only, of course, the anarchistic\nflavour is utterly lacking; while its conception of humanity and\nhuman dignity, culture and civilization, is so consonant with solemn\nregulation and gradation, with such a pronounced sense of reverence, of\ntraditions, symbols, mysteries, and rhythm, with such a symmetrical,\nalmost choreographic restraint in its freedom, that I may be permitted\nto call it statesmanlike in the best and finest sense, by way of\npointing the contrast to Tolstoy\u2019s \u201cletting the children out of the\nbenches.\u201d However, the boys and youths of Goethe\u2019s dream-province do\nnot sit glued to their benches either, at least we do not see them\nthus. The basis of their education is quite in the Pestalozzan style:\nit is husbandry. And their training goes forward in the open air,\nwork and play constantly accompanied by singing. We are told, quite\nexplicitly, what its essence is: \u201cWise men lead the boys to find out\nthemselves what is fitted for them; and shorten the by-ways into which\nman will often too readily turn aside.\u201d Every well-marked bent to a\npursuit is fostered and cultivated, for \u201cto know and practise one thing\nrightly gives higher culture than half-way performance of a hundred\nthings.\u201d But if the education is thus adapted to the individual, it\nis not thereby in the very least individualistic--so little, in fact,\nthat respect for convention is insisted upon, and regarded as a\nconspicuous characteristic of genius; for genius understands that art\nis called art just because it is not nature; and easily accommodates\nitself to paying respect to the conventions, in the view that they\nrepresent \u201can agreement arrived at by the superior elements of society,\nwhereby the essential and indispensable is regarded as the best.\u201d That\nis hostility toward the voluntary, with a vengeance; and the Head is\nat pains to define and interpret it by a musical parallel. \u201cWould a\nmusician,\u201d he asks, \u201clet a pupil make a wild attack on the keyboard\nor invent intervals to please himself? No, the striking thing is that\nnothing is left to the choice of the learner. The element in which\nhe is to work is fixed, the tool he must use put into his hand, even\nthe way he shall use it is prescribed--I mean the change of fingers,\nin order that one get out of the other\u2019s way and make the path plain\nfor its successor; until by dint of this regulated co-operation and\nthus alone the impossible at last becomes the possible.\u201d--It is not by\nchance, I insist, that the Heads of the Province draw their parallel\nfrom the field of music: is she not truly the most spirited symbol for\nthat regulated co-operation of manifold elements toward an end and goal\nwhich is culturally noble and worthy of humanity? In the Pedagogic\nProvince song presides over all the activities, everything else is\nlinked with it and communicated by it. \u201cThe simplest pleasures as well\nas the simplest tasks are animated and impressed by song; yes, even our\ninstruction in morals and religion is communicated in this wise.\u201d Even\nthe elements of knowledge, reading, writing, reckoning, are derived\nfrom song, note-writing, and putting text beneath, and from observing\nthe basic measures and notation--in short, as agriculture is the\nnatural, so music is the spiritual element of education, \u201cfor from it\nlevel paths run out in all directions.\u201d\n\nAnother great German and shaper of German destiny comes to mind here:\nLuther\u2019s view of music as an instrument of education was very like\nGoethe\u2019s. \u201c_Musicam_,\u201d he says, \u201cI have always loved. One should\naccustom youth to this art, for it makes fine, capable people. A\nschoolmaster who cannot sing I will not look at.\u201d And in the schools\nunder his influence there was almost as much singing as in the\nPedagogic Province--whereas no one would know whether they sang in\nTolstoy\u2019s school or not. To the wanderer through the Pedagogic Province\nit seems as though none of its inhabitants did anything of his own\npower, but as though a mysterious spirit animated them through and\nthrough, leading them on toward one single great goal. This spirit is\nthe spirit of music, of culture, of \u201cregulated co-operation,\u201d whereby\nalone at length \u201cthe impossible\u201d--that is to say, the state as work of\nart--becomes possible; it is a spirit remote from and hostile to all\nbarbarism; one would like to be allowed to call it a German spirit.\n\nThe salutation in three degrees, whose meaning, the threefold\nreverence, is kept secret from the boys themselves, because mystery\nand respect for the mysterious is a moral and civilizing influence;\nthe insistence upon modesty and decorum; the lining up and standing\nat attention of the young human being in face of the world, and\nhis honourable comradeship with his kind; the enhancing of his own\nhonour through the honours he renders; all this militarism so highly\nimbued with the spirit and with art--how far it is from the rational\nradicalism of Tolstoy\u2019s Christianity, with its heart of wildness! Is\nit anyway credible that, in essentials, a remarkable likeness subsists\nbetween the educational conceptions of our two geniuses?\n\nTolstoy in all pious simplicity once declared that the world can\nfind salvation simply by no longer doing anything which does not\nseem inherently reasonable: that is to say, anything which our whole\nEuropean world is doing today; for example, teaching the grammar of\ndead languages. What finds utterance, what bursts forth, in this\npolemic against the study of ancient tongues is the revolt of the\nRussian people against humanistic civilization itself. Tolstoy\u2019s\nunclassic paganism stands revealed, his ethnic godhead, which,\naccording to Gorky, was not Olympian, but more like that of a Russian\ngod, \u201csitting on a maple throne, under a golden lime-tree.\u201d Tolstoy\u2019s\npedagogic writing betrays an extremely anti-humanistic, anti-literary,\nanti-rhetorical conception of the relative importance of different\nbranches of study. He has anything but the traditional European\nview of the importance of the discipline of reading and writing;\nentertaining not the faintest humanistic fear of \u201canalphabetism,\u201d\nbut rather openly defending what to our way of thinking would almost\namount to a state of barbarism. \u201cWe see people,\u201d he says, \u201cwho are\nequipped with all the knowledge necessary for farming; who perfectly\ncomprehend all its bearings, though they can neither read nor write;\nor capital military leaders, tradespeople, foremen, machine-overseers,\nlabourers, all people who got their training from life, not books,\nand stored up large resources of information and reflection. On the\nother hand we see people who can both read and write, but who have not\nprofited by this advantage to learn any new thing.\u201d When he dwells\nupon the conflict between the needs of the people and the learning\nforced upon them by the ruling classes, he has in mind the fact that\nthe elementary schools are an outgrowth of the higher ones. First the\nchurch school, then the higher education, then after that the primary\nschool--a false hierarchy, for it is false that the primary school,\ninstead of conforming to its own needs, should conform--only on a\nsmaller scale--to the demands of the higher education. His meaning is\nclear. He finds the folk-school too literary, too much subordinated\nto the classical ideal of education, not practical or vital enough,\nnot guided by the principle of training for a calling in life. But we\nshall be mistaken in expecting from him any greater kindness for either\nthe system or the spirit of the higher institutions of learning. He\naccuses them of being \u201centirely divorced from actual life.\u201d He compares\nthe true education derived from life itself with that offered to the\nacademic student, and finds that the former produces men capable in\ntheir calling, the latter merely \u201cso-called people with a university\neducation--advanced, that is to say irritable, sickly liberals.\u201d He\ngives \u201cLatin and rhetoric\u201d another hundred years of life, not more,\nand so much only for the reason that \u201cwhen the medicine has once been\nbought, one must take it.\u201d The phrase betrays plainly enough his\nattitude toward classical education, toward the traditional European\nculture, toward humanism. It betrays at the same time his attitude\ntoward the west and civilization, his folk-hatred of all that is not of\nthe people, that is foreign, that comes from abroad, that has merely a\ncultural value--in short, the anger of primitive Russia against Peter\nthe Great.\n\nIt is time we looked round in the Pedagogic Province for the place\nwhere youth busies itself with the ancient tongues. And, after all, it\nis rather a shock not to find it. Goethe is not such a barbarian as to\ndespise the study of language or languages, as a cultural instrument.\nHe calls it enthusiastically the most sensitive in the world, and\nemphasizes its value as a civilizing agent, by having his imaginary\npupils take it in connexion with the rude tasks of stable-work; so\nthat, caring for and training animals, they do not become like animals\nthemselves. But the languages here are modern languages. The tongues of\nvarious nations are studied in turn--but Latin and Greek, it will be\nnoted, are not in the curriculum.\n\nWell, there are other things which are not expressly mentioned either.\nBut that precisely these subjects should be absent is after all rather\nstriking. Was Goethe a humanist, or was he not? In the first place,\nhis humanism was always of another and a broader kind than merely the\nphilological. And in the second place, the impress of a certain high\nausterity lies upon all the regulations of the Pedagogic Province,\ndespite the Parnassian blitheness that reigned there. There is no doubt\nthat Goethe, in his consciously pedagogic period, felt, curiously\nenough, toward the humanistic, Winkelmannian ideal of education much\nas Tolstoy and Auerbach did about music: a moral severity against the\nsybaritic, dilettante, the roving and ranging, sipping and changing,\nwhich he considered the danger of the \u201cuniversally human\u201d ideal as\napplied to pedagogy. He considered this danger more threatening\nthan the peril of specialization and its consequent narrowness and\nimpoverishment--the horrors of which we later comers, to be sure, have\nlearned to know. He espouses the cause of vocational against verbal\ntraining, out of the same anti-literary tendency which we observed\nin Tolstoy; sharing with him the conviction that human culture makes\nsounder progress by the method of limitation; he is radical enough\nto use the _Wanderjahre_ as a mouth-piece through which to shout\n\u201c_Narrenpossen_ (Stuff and nonsense)!\u201d at the \u201cuniversally human\u201d\neducational ideal and \u201call its works.\u201d That is severe. But today, when\nnobody any longer can live on his income, does it not sound like an\nuncommonly clear-sighted prophecy when he declares: \u201cWhoever from now\non does not take to either an art or a trade will have a hard time of\nit\u201d?\n\nI have made no secret of my tendency to interpret the paganism of the\nchildren of nature in a primarily ethnical sense. And I am greatly\nstrengthened by this astonishingly radical and decisive rejection, on\nGoethe\u2019s part, of a humane and literary education. Almost I might have\ndared interpret that gruff \u201c_Narrenpossen!_\u201d as the revolt of Germanic\nfolkishness against the humanistic culture itself. I have every\nwarrant for asserting that Goethe would have fought like Tolstoy the\nfolly of offering watered scholarship to the people for education--a\nfolly by which one waters the people\u2019s sense and spirit, debases and\ninsults, instead of, as one fondly imagines, elevating them! Goethe,\nwho in the _Wahlverwandtschaften_ advances--surreptitiously, \u201c_weil die\nMenge gleich verh\u00f6hnet_\u201d--the reactionary and esoteric doctrine: \u201cBring\nup the boys to be servants and the girls to be mothers, then all will\nbe well\u201d: was he the man to advocate the breeding of \u201cadvanced, that\nis to say irritable and sickly liberals\u201d? And was there not perhaps\nprophetic vision at work in the severity and the limitations of his\neducational principles? Did his sense of time, like the Russian\u2019s, give\n\u201cLatin and rhetoric\u201d a limit of some hundred years of life? Strange\nevents in our Europe today incline one to regard his maxims in a\nprophetic light.\n\nThe great revolution in Russia brought to the light of day--that\nlight which is so good at illuminating the _surface_ of things--the\nwestern Marxism which had put its impress upon Tolstoy\u2019s country. But\nit must not blind us to the spectacle of the bolshevist revolution\nas the end of an epoch: the epoch of Peter the Great, the western,\nliberalizing, European epoch in the history of Russia, which now, with\nthis revolution, faces eastward once more. It was to no European idea\nof progress that the Czar fell victim. In him Peter the Great was\nmurdered, and his fall opened to his people not the path toward Europe,\nbut the way home to Asia. But is there not also in western Europe,\nprecisely since the time of this crisis--whose prophet Leo Tolstoy\nwas, although Moscow sees it not--is there not also in western Europe\na feeling alive that not only for Russia, but for it, for us, for all\nthe world there is at hand the ending of an epoch: the bourgeois,\nhumanistic, liberal epoch, which was born at the Renaissance and\ncame to power with the French Revolution, and whose last convulsive\ntwitchings and manifestations of life we are now beholding? The\nquestion is put today whether this Mediterranean, classic, humanistic\ntradition is commensurate with humanity and thus coeval with it, or\nwhether it is only the intellectual expression and apanage of the\nbourgeois liberal epoch and destined to perish with its passing.\n\nEurope seems to have answered the question already. The anti-liberal\nrebound is more than plain, it is palpable. It finds political\nexpression in a disgusted turning away from democracy and parliamentary\ngovernment, in an about-face toward dictatorship and terror, executed\nwith frowning brows. Italian fascism is the precise pendant to Russian\nbolshevism; all its archaistic gesturings and mummery cannot disguise\nits essential hostility to the humane. And on the Iberian peninsula,\nwhere the destruction of the liberal system was still more obvious than\nin Italy, things have taken the same course, even more decisively;\nmilitary dictatorship has been well established there for some time.\nBut, indeed, all over Europe--as a consequence of the war and a sign\nof an anti-liberal temper--the waters of nationalism are mightily\nswollen. The individual peoples of Europe display a turkey-cock\nself-assertiveness, a furious self-deification, in striking contrast\nto the poverty and prostration of the continent as a whole.\n\nThe spiritual destinies of France are remarkable indeed, and of\nimmediate importance to us Germans. In the first years after the war\nno country seemed more confirmed in the bourgeois-classical tradition.\nFrance seemed the one truly conservative country in all Europe. Far\nfrom thinking of war as a new revolution, it was bent instead, after\nthe victory and on the basis of the victory, on seeing in it nothing\nbut the confirmation and the consummation of the old, the bourgeois\norder of 1789. To such questions as the one I have raised above, France\nmade answer with tranquil irony. If Germany, she said, wanted to dream\napocalyptic dreams, let her do so by all means; for herself, she felt\nvery comfortable in her classical tradition. Once on the occasion of\nan international exchange of ideas I had sought to get some of these\nmatters expressed; and I remember how a contributor to the French\nofficial newspaper organ answered me that France had always been and\nwould always remain _solidement rationaliste et classique_.\n\nBut that was the voice of official, bourgeois, conservative France,\nnot the other France, loftier, young, intellectual, secretly astir.\nCertainly, this new France is beginning to \u201cdream apocalyptically\u201d;\nthere is of late a good deal of reason to doubt that she feels as much\nat home as she used to in her tradition. What M. Poincar\u00e9, who has no\nbetter name for it, knows and hates as \u201ccommunism\u201d is nothing but the\nprocess that is going on there of undermining his bourgeois, classical,\nold-revolutionary France; the disintegration of the Latin conception\nof civilization by the action of spiritual ferments which have filtered\nin from the outside and are doing their work in the blood of the\nyouth--a new, anti-bourgeois, spiritual, and proletarian revolution;\nand we in Germany think we have ground for hope that, if there are to\nbe atmospheric changes, we too may get a little more air to breathe.\nFor in France the interests of nationalism and of the humanistic\nculture coincide, in so far as both are based upon the conviction of\nthe absolute supremacy of the Latin civilization and its mission of\nworld-domination as an abiding concern of humanity. Whereas a spirit of\nEuropean solidarity, and a certain readiness, however conditional, to\ncome to terms with Germany, is more likely to be found on the side of\nthe \u201ccommunistic\u201d new-revolutionary France, which is no longer quite so\nsound on the score of its cultural Latinity.\n\nGermany\u2019s position, with reference to these phenomena to the west of\nher, is a difficult and complicated one. For us Germans ourselves, and\nfor the world at large, it is highly important that she see it clearly\nand recognize it for what it is. For in Germany too there exist the\ntwo camps, a humanistic and a \u201ccommunistic\u201d; from which it follows\nthat two peoples may behave the same, culturally speaking, and reach\nquite different results, and that there are circumstances under which\nthe pursuance of the same spiritual tendency may be the worst possible\nmethod of arriving at political _rapprochement_.\n\nI do not propose to dwell upon German fascism, nor upon the\ncircumstances, the quite comprehensible circumstances, of its origin.\nIt is enough to say that it is a racial religion, with antipathy\nnot only for international Judaism, but also, quite expressly, for\nChristianity, as a humane influence; nor do its priests behave more\nfriendly toward the humanism of our classical literature. It is a pagan\nfolk-religion, a Wotan cult: it is, to be invidious--and I mean to be\ninvidious--romantic barbarism. It is only consistent in the cultural\nand educational sphere, where it seeks to check the stream of classical\neducation, to the advantage of the primitive German heritage. And it\ndoes not or it will not see what an unhappy pendant it thus furnishes\nto the anti-Latinism of modern-minded France, and how very much it\nplays into the hands of M. Poincar\u00e9, the communist-hater. To profess\npaganism in Germany today, to worship Odin and hold feasts of the\nsolstice, to conduct oneself like a folk-barbarian, is to prove those\nFrench patriots in the right who would like to erect on the Rhine the\nbreastwork of occidental civilization; it is asininely to compromise\nthe position of those Frenchmen who do not make such fine distinctions\nbetween Latinity and barbarism, and who are interested in peace,\nunderstanding, compromise, and a \u201cgentleman\u2019s agreement\u201d with Germany.\n\nThis is what I meant when I said that to pursue the same spiritual\ntendency may be the most wrong-headed of all possible ways for two\nnations to arrive at a _rapprochement_. Now is not the moment for\nGermany to make anti-humanistic gestures; to pattern itself upon\nTolstoy\u2019s pedagogic bolshevism; to characterize as ethnical savagery\nthe rebuke which Goethe administered to the hedonism of the general\nhumanistic ideal in education. No, on the contrary, it is the time for\nus to lay all possible stress upon our great humane inheritance and\nto cultivate it with all the means at our command--not only for its\nown sake, but in order to put visibly in the wrong the claims of Latin\ncivilization. And, in particular, our socialism, which has all too\nlong allowed its spiritual life to languish in the shallows of a crude\neconomic materialism, has no greater need than to find access to that\nloftier Germany which has always sought with its spirit the land of the\nGreeks. It is today, politically speaking, our really national party;\nbut it will not truly rise to the height of its national task until--if\nI may be allowed the extravagance--Karl Marx has read Friedrich\nH\u00f6lderlin: a consummation which, by the way, seems in a fair way to be\nachieved.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nBeautiful is resolution. But the really fruitful, the productive,\nand hence the artistic principle is that which we call reserve. In\nthe sphere of music we love it as the prolonged note, the teasing\nmelancholy of the not-yet, the inward hesitation of the soul, which\nbears within itself fulfilment, resolution, and harmony, but denies it\nfor a space, withholds and delays, scruples exquisitely yet a little\nlonger to make the final surrender. In the intellectual sphere we love\nit as irony: that irony which glances at both sides, which plays slyly\nand irresponsibly--yet not without benevolence--among opposites, and\nis in no great haste to take sides and come to decisions; guided as\nit is by the surmise that in great matters, in matters of humanity,\nevery decision may prove premature; that the real goal to reach is not\ndecision, but harmony, accord. And harmony, in a matter of eternal\ncontraries, may lie in infinity; yet that playful reserve called irony\ncarries it within itself, as the sustained note carries the resolution.\nIn the foregoing pages I have tried it, this \u201cinfinite\u201d irony; and my\nreaders may judge upon which extreme it more enjoyed playing, at which\nside of the eternal contradiction it took keener aim--and draw their\nconclusions accordingly; only not too far-reaching ones!\n\nIrony is the pathos of the middle ... its moral too, its ethos. I said\nthat it is not, in general, the German way to be hasty in deciding\nthe aristocratic problem--if I may, in this phrase, sum up the whole\ncomplex of contrasted values dealt with in the present essay. We are a\npeople of the middle, a world-bourgeoisie; there is a fittingness in\nour geographical position and in our _mores_. I have been told that in\nHebrew the words for knowing and insight have the same stem as the word\nfor between.\n\nThat German writer who has most urgently pondered upon the problem\nof aristocracy was, philologically speaking, greatly daring when\nhe invented a derivation for the name of the German people: from\n_Tiusche-Volk_; that is, _T\u00e4usche-Volk_. But, for all that, the idea\nis full of esprit. A people that settles in the bourgeois world-middle\nmust needs be the _t\u00e4uschende_, the elusive folk: the race that\npractises a sly and ironic reserve toward both sides, that moves\nbetween extremes, easily, with non-committal benevolence; with the\nmorality, no, the simplicity of that elusive \u201cbetweenness\u201d of theirs,\ntheir faith in knowledge and insight, in cosmopolitan culture.\n\nFruitful difficulty of the middle, thou art freedom and reserve in one!\nLet them tell us, as they have told us, that this free-handed policy\nof ours brings us, in actual practice, to grief. But this practice is\ndoubtful, this disaster even more so. More than probably it came upon\nus for our own best good; more than probably we were more profoundly\nstriving to bring it about than man ever strives to encompass his\nhappiness. Again, humility in the face of failure is no more noble than\nhumility in the face of success; and nothing but defeatism could shake\nour faith in the rightness and sanctity of this spiritual attitude of\nours, whose end and aim is justified, not as a craving for freedom or\nas ironic reserve, but as a final synthesis and harmony, the pure idea\nof man himself.\n\nThat mutual character of the sentimental longing--of the sons of spirit\nfor nature, of the sons of nature for spirit (for, as we found, it\nis not spirit alone that is sentimental)--argues a higher unity as\nhumanity\u2019s goal; which she, in very truth the standard-bearer of all\naspiration, endows with her own name, with _humanitas_. That instinct\nof self-preservation, full of reserve as it is, felt by the German\npeople in their central position as a world-bourgeoisie, is genuine\nnationalism. For that is the name we give to a people\u2019s craving for\nfreedom, to the pains they take with themselves, to their effort after\nself-knowledge and self-fulfilment. So too the artist is loyally and\ndevotedly convinced that his only thought is to wrest his own work and\nhis very own dream out of the block of stone; and yet, in some solemn\nand moving hour, may learn that the spirit which possessed him had a\npurer source, that from the stone he carved there is emerging a loftier\nimage than he knew.\n\nFolk, and humanity. It was a seer out of the east, one of those who,\nlike Goethe, Nietzsche, and Whitman, have looked long into the slowly\nmounting dawn of a new piety--it was Dmitri Merezhkovsky who has said\nthat the animal contains the beast-man and the beast-god. The essence\nof the beast-god is as yet scarcely comprehended by man, though it is\nonly the union of the beast-god with the beast-man which will some\nday bring about the redemption of the race of mankind. This \u201csome\nday,\u201d this idea of a redemption, which is no longer Christian and\nyet not pagan either, carries in itself the solution of the problem\nof aristocracy, as well as justifying, yes, sanctifying, all ironic\nreserve on the subject of ultimate values.\n\nWe have treated with some assurance of great natures, great creative\nartists, children of God, in whom the beast-god was strong, as also\ntheir sense of self, their feeling for repose, for woman, for the\npeople; we have enjoyed the wit of those world-spirits who tempered\nand humanized their confessed egotism with a strain of the didactic\nimpulse. More hesitantly we have trenched upon the god-man sphere of\nthose others, their emotional opposites, the men of deeds, the sons of\nspirit, the saintly and sickly. The true saying of that Russian that\nthe essence of the beast-god is as yet scarcely apprehended by man\nmight strengthen our faith in the ironic doctrine that there is more\nof grace among those who at bottom \u201ccan love nobody but themselves.\u201d\nBut well we know that there is no deciding the question which of these\ntwo lofty types is called to contribute more and better to the highly\ncherished idea of a perfected humanity.\n\n1922\n\n\n\n\n                                   II\n\n               FREDERICK THE GREAT AND THE GRAND COALITION\n\n\n\n\n               FREDERICK THE GREAT AND THE GRAND COALITION\n\n                        An Abstract for the Hour\n\n\nWell, where shall I begin? The writer of history--and in this case the\nhistorical essayist as well--is always subject to the temptation to\nwhich Wagner so magnificently succumbed when, with no more in view than\nthe presentation of his hero\u2019s downfall, he found himself lured by a\npedantic enthusiasm deeper and deeper into his folktale, and urged to\ninclude a larger and larger area of his background, until at last he\nfetched up against the first beginnings and origins of all things; and\nthere, at the lowest E of the prelude to the prelude, he solemnly and\nalmost soundlessly set to. But both space and time vigorously protest\nagainst my following Wagner\u2019s example in this sketch of the origins of\na war, the repetition--or continuation--of which we are seeing today.\nRather let me be strict with myself; and since I must begin somewhere,\nlet me make my beginning with the profound mistrust, the deep-seated\nand, to be quite fair, the rather well-founded mistrust felt by all the\nworld for Frederick II of Prussia.\n\nConsider: here is a young man, boyish of feature, elegantly built,\nif rather plump, \u201cthe nicest little creature in the kingdom,\u201d a\nstranger said of him; fresh-coloured, chubby-cheeked, with large,\nshort-sighted, sparkling blue eyes and a nose that made a straight\nline with his forehead and had a na\u00efve little rosy tip. And this nice\nyoung man is a crown prince, with a perfectly well-known past that has\nbeen somewhat dissipated and by turns alarming and alarmed; by way of\nbeing a _libre-penseur_ too, a pert young philosopher and litt\u00e9rateur,\nauthor of the highly humanistic _Antimachiavelli_. He is totally\nunmilitary, so far as can be seen, a civilian of the civilians, even\neffeminate; runs up bills, and has his heart set on the pomps and\nvanities. And now this young man becomes king--having proved so devoid\nof honourable feeling as not to have been provoked by any cudgellings\nor neck-twistings on the part of his fearsome papa to put a bullet\nthrough his brain or even to resign in his brother\u2019s favour. And as\nking so conducts himself that nobody knows what to think. The day that\nhe ascended the throne went for ever after by the name \u201c_La journ\u00e9e\ndes dupes_.\u201d Almost everything turned out contrary to expectations.\nThose who had trembled before the revenge of the new master were\nnot punished, while those who dreamed that their day had come found\nthemselves disillusioned. The poets and fortune-hunters who swarmed\nround the throne and could not huzza loud or long enough, visibly drew\nin their horns; and a jolly fellow from Rheinsberg, who knew no better\nthan to strike up confidently in the key of former days, received a\nsparkling blue glance and the cutting words: \u201c_Monsieur, \u00e0 pr\u00e9sent je\nsuis roi._\u201d In other words, the joke is played out. It is precisely\nthe scene in Shakespeare, perhaps the finest in the whole of him, where\nsomebody, with just such a look, says to somebody else: \u201cI know thee\nnot, old man.\u201d\n\nSome things which the youth does in his very first days of power have\nliterary _habitus_, are rather high-handed and self-assertive. He\nabolishes the torture--so much the better for the thieves! He declares\nthat the gazettes need not be afraid to be a little amusing, they will\nnot be prosecuted; and annuls the censorship (and puts it back a year\nlater). He proclaims religious toleration--that is his much-talked-of\nenlightenment, of course. But what has become of that dream of\nParnassus, that court of the muses, where fashion and wit should\nreign and all be careless, voluptuous, and gallant? It is nowhere\nat all. The new lord turns out to be, of all things in the world, a\nrigid economist. No rise in the pay of officials. No reduction of the\nhigh tariffs, however much certain people may have counted on relief.\nThe chancelleries of the kingdom are notified that the financial\nsystem of his dear departed Majesty will continue strictly in force.\nFinance-Minister Boden, a much-hated skinflint, remains in office.\nThere is no such thing as trust, or easy-going, or _laissez-aller_.\nEverybody is watched as never before. And Baron von P\u00f6llnitz actually\nsaid, with a sigh: \u201cI\u2019d give a hundred pistoles to have the old man\nback again!\u201d\n\nNo revolutionary changes of system, then. No loosening of the reins\nof government, no new faces in the Ministry. But one thing, at least,\nwill surely be different: this is a civilian of civilians who reigns,\nhe stands for literature and silk dressing-gowns and a definite\nend to Potsdam militarism. Surely the corporal\u2019s baton has gone out\nof fashion! Well, just here everybody gets the greatest surprise of\nall. The slack and rather sensual young philosopher comes out as an\nimpassioned soldier: he has no thought of weakening the military basis\nof the State. Weaken it? He strengthens the army by fifteen battalions,\nfive squadrons of hussars (introduced on the Austrian model), and\na squadron of _gardes du corps_, bringing it up to a round ninety\nthousand men. The uniform once cursed and jeered at he is never seen\nout of. His conservatism extends to the retention of all the existing\nmilitary ranks. \u201cThe army organization is a monument of His Majesty our\ndearly beloved father\u2019s wisdom in government; it is, in essentials, not\nto be tampered with.\u201d A few barbarities in the recruiting system are\ndone away with: the flogging of cadets, maltreating the common man,\nhave to be frowned on for his credit\u2019s sake. But that is all. What\nseems to need change is the _meaning_ of the institution, the spirit in\nwhich it is employed--its political significance, in short. And just\nhere is the suspicious thing.\n\nThe military had been something like a foible of the deceased\nsovereign, a barbaric and rather costly fad, a laughing-stock at all\nthe courts of Europe, where it had never weighed in the scale of\naffairs. All at once it becomes \u201cthe power of the State\u201d--Frederick\u2019s\nphrase in one of his first letters as ruler--a curiously practical\nconception, further borne out by the way he sets to work to purge the\nestablishment of the quaint flourishes it had as a fad of the deceased\nKing. The regiment of giants, a sight worth looking at, but not good\nfor much else, is done away with, appears for the last time at the\nfuneral ceremonies of Frederick William. Only a battalion of grenadier\nguards is left, for the sake of filial piety. \u201cThe power of the State.\u201d\nPrussia\u2019s representatives at foreign courts begin suddenly to speak\na language that makes one doubt one\u2019s ears. Prussia takes the stage;\nPrussia unmistakably means to be treated as the not negligible entity\nshe really is. Her astonishing young king behaves as though Prussia\nwere not so much a state of the German empire as a European one. He\nlets it be known that he is not minded for ever to span the bow and\nnever to let it go, as Europe has long mocked at Prussia for doing.\n\nBut what shall we make of all this? Had he been a comedian all this\ntime? Count Seckendorff once wrote about him to Vienna when he was\nstill crown prince: \u201cHis greatest fault is his dissimulation and\nfalseness, which makes it necessary to exercise the very greatest\ncaution in what one tells him.\u201d Yes, that is evidently true.\nSeckendorff goes on: \u201cHe told me he was a poet, he could write a\nhundred lines in an hour. And a musician too, a moral philosopher,\na physicist, a mechanic. What he never will be is a statesman or a\ncommander-in-chief.\u201d Looked at from this end, it seems as though the\nyoung man had deliberately dissimulated in this respect as well. For\nthe last surprise is the greatest of all; for the first time it betrays\nwhat is actually to be expected of him.\n\nFrederick has not been on the throne for half a year when Charles VI\ndies; and scarcely is the Emperor below ground when Frederick, to the\ngreat consternation of his own ministers, generals, and relatives and\nthe rest of the world as well, lays some sort of claim to Silesia.\nBy the letter of the law and by virtue of solemn compacts, the claim\nis wholly unfounded; or, if you like, founded on the divers acts of\nperfidy and presumption which Brandenburg has had from time immemorial\nto endure from Austria. In any case it is a claim which Frederick,\nunless Maria Theresa acquiesces, and that she cannot possibly do, is\nprepared to maintain with the sword. \u201cEverything is in readiness,\u201d he\nwrites to Algarotti; \u201cI have only to put into effect the plans I have\nhad a long time in my head.\u201d A long time? And everything in readiness?\nWithout saying a word to a soul? Without betraying by the smallest\nsign that he had such ideas in his head? Well, he has certainly been\na dissembling, reserved, solitary young man, all the conviviality on\nthe Remusberg to the contrary notwithstanding! To Voltaire, on the\nother hand, he writes: \u201cThe Emperor\u2019s death upset all my peaceful\nideas.\u201d This in order that Voltaire in France might not suppose that\nthe attack had been a matter of long preparation. Oh, a young man both\nparticularly solitary and particularly sly!\n\nHowever, there it is: Frederick invades the imperial domains--he,\nMargrave of Brandenburg, who, as hereditary arch-chamberlain, has had\nto hand the wash-basin to Maria Theresa\u2019s ancestors. \u201c_C\u2019est un fou,\ncet homme l\u00e0 est fol_,\u201d said Louis XV, who after all must have known\nsomething about the game of politics. A piece of bravado, a perfectly\nreckless beginning, says all Europe. And the English Minister in\nVienna is even then of the opinion that Frederick ought to be outlawed.\n\nBut bravado or no--Austria is in bad form, things turn out well for\nFrederick. There is the battle of Mollwitz, where he is beaten and\ntakes to his heels for ten miles, while Schwerin comes up and wins the\nday for him. Not a glorious day for the King, but a victory none the\nless. Then Bavaria has hankerings after the imperial crown, France\nsupports her, Austria is hard pressed. On top of that comes Chotusitz,\nwhere Buddenbrock throws the Austrians into the burning village; and\nMaria Theresa, who would rather lose a whole province to Bavaria than\na single village to Prussia (she hates this Frederick with the whole\nstrength of her femininity), must, anguish in her white bosom, tears in\nher blue eyes, sign a peace that assures to the King Upper and Lower\nSilesia and the Duchy of Gratz. He has them, they are his.\n\nWhat else? A round two years have passed when Frederick makes war\nagain--ostensibly as an elector of the realm to bring succour to the\nhard-pressed Bavarian emperor, but actually because Maria Theresa\nhas meanwhile been rather too successful against France and Bavaria,\nand Frederick suspects that when she has finished with the others\nshe will turn round and take Silesia away from him again: beautiful,\nnever-to-be-forgotten Silesia--she bursts into tears whenever she hears\nit mentioned. And she is not without powerful friends: for instance,\nKing George II of England, conqueror of the French and ally of the\nEmpress-queen since Worms, 1734. King George wrote to her in these\nvery words: \u201c_Madame, ce qui est bon \u00e0 prendre est bon \u00e0 rendre_\u201d--the\nletter fell into Frederick\u2019s hands. England and Austria have helped\neach other defend the territories which each had possessed up to 1739.\nUp to 1739? That was, to be sure, before Frederick took Silesia. And\nthere are similar pacts entered into between Austria and Saxony. The\nAustrian historians call heaven to witness that the Empress had not\nat that time planned any attack, but it was enough for Frederick. He\nstood very well with France: since June he had had with Richelieu\na twelve-year offensive alliance; he is not without diplomatic\nsafeguards. In these two years he has increased the \u201cpower of the\nState\u201d by eighteen thousand \u201cmoustaches,\u201d as Voltaire called them;\ngreatly strengthened and rebuilt the Silesian fortresses; and in the\nmiddle of the summer of \u201944 he strikes again, without even declaring\nwar; falls upon Bohemia eighty thousand strong, marches through Saxony\nwithout even asking the Elector\u2019s leave, marches toward Prague, marches\nactually against Vienna.\n\nIt is heavy going. Now and then things look desperate. Charles\nof Lorraine hurls himself from Alsace into Bohemia and threatens\nFrederick\u2019s Silesian connexions; the Saxon army has the King in the\nrear--there is an awkward retreat, due to several foolish decisions\non Frederick\u2019s part, by his own later confession--he learned much\nfrom them. By the next year his generalship shows itself devilishly\nimproved! Soor follows on Hohenfriedberg; after he has annihilated\nthe Saxons at Kesselsdorf, Count Harrach comes as broker to Dresden,\nand Maria Theresa confirms the cession of Silesia, while Frederick\nrecognizes her husband, the gallant Francis of Lorraine, as German\nemperor. Why not?--Charles VII is dead, and Frederick never set great\nstore by him anyhow.\n\nBut why does he make peace with Habsburg? Because he sees that fortune\nhas been with France in the Netherlands, and so, for the present,\nthe Empress-queen\u2019s preponderance is not very great. Also, to the\nhuge dissatisfaction of France, he makes peace with England too,\nwithdraws with his booty--Silesia--and sagely resists for the next\nthree years--for so long does the War of the Pragmatic Sanction go on\nbetween France and Austria supported by the sea powers--all attempts to\ndraw him out of his neutrality. By the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which\nfinally brought the struggle to an end in favour of Maria Theresa, he\ngets his Silesian \u201cacquisition\u201d expressly guaranteed.\n\nBut one thing we must say: if the Silesian \u201cacquisition\u201d be considered\nrobbery, a piece of property snatched in defiance of justice--and\npeople did so consider it, and so it was--then they should not have\nsolemnly guaranteed it to the robber. That they did so guarantee it\nmeant that they left it to time to right the wrong (as time can do) and\nthat Europe and Maria Theresa from then on renounced all machinations\nand conspiracies against the robber, and accepted the _fait accompli_.\nBut this they did not do, Maria Theresa in particular did not do it.\nShe did not abandon the hope that she might yet get Silesia back,\ndespite the Peace of Aix; and that is a black mark against the name\nof that splendid, simple, high-hearted woman, who was otherwise so\ndeserving of all the interest and sympathy she got from Europe. But why\nwas it that Europe--or its courts and governments--never felt easy on\nthe score of this king? Because of the great mistrust, with which our\nstory began, and which the King repaid with interest. The mistrust was\nrooted in his fundamentally strange, enigmatic character. Europe knew\nit to be a danger; and its later manifestations kept her constantly\nholding her breath.\n\nThe fact was that of all the powers who had gone to war over the\nPragmatic Sanction, Frederick alone had gained something, had even\ngained a great deal. That he kept the splendid province was the least\nof his gains. But this beggarly young Prussia, with its poor two\nmillion souls, had measured itself beside, or against, Austria, as an\nequal; it had squeezed in among the great powers of Europe, and claimed\nto speak in all their counsels as one of them; it had forced them to\nreckon with Prussia as a political factor not merely weighty, but even\ndecisive--for Frederick had managed to stage himself in the popular\nimagination as the balance-wheel of European equilibrium, at least so\nfar as the relations between France and Austria were concerned. Now,\nit is very hard on Europe to be forced to change its attitude like\nthat. It takes her centuries. She struggles, she scolds, she sneers;\nshe denies the new factor any political, cultural, above all any moral\njustification, she cannot utter enough spite and venom against the\nnewcomer, she sees nothing but a speedy ruin in store for him; and, if\nher prophecies do not look like fulfilling themselves with measurable\nhaste, then all the old-established society of states are ready to bury\nthe hatchet of their private quarrels over prestige and interests,\nhowever vital, in order to fall on the kill-joy and crush him. She\nwill do that, or try to, twice, if need be, within a hundred and fifty\nyears. Simple people like Frederick\u2019s philosopher friend Jordan, even\nin the second Silesian war, can never understand why it is that \u201cthe\naccounts in the newspapers are never favourable to us.\u201d Yes, it was\nstrange. But the newspaper accounts could not prevent Frederick from\nkeeping Silesia. And now, at least, with the guarantee safe in his\npocket, surely he is satiated and satisfied? Apart from measures taken\nagainst him--was he, on his side, well and peacefully minded?\n\nHe did not give the impression that he meant to disarm immediately. He\nkept his army, after the Peace at Dresden, on a footing of a hundred\nand forty thousand men; there were in addition the \u201csupernumerary\ntroops,\u201d whose strength he doubled, so that he had at his disposition\na trained reserve of sixteen thousand men. That made a hundred and\nfifty-six thousand \u201cmoustaches,\u201d an absurd figure for a country of\nPrussia\u2019s relative rank and economic resources. Louis XV had not so\nmany soldiers, certainly not so many beastly good ones. For Frederick\u2019s\narmy, out of all compass as far as numbers went, was put through its\npaces in a way that was the talk of Europe.\n\nHe made demands, and insisted on performance, with respect to mobility\nand tactical precision, unheard of in his time. The foreign military\ngentry who were allowed now and then to look on were amazed--and,\neven so, they did not get to see the real thing. These masses of\ntroops wheeled and deployed, they developed the famous oblique\nbattle-order, invented by the King, in eight various formations, with\na mathematical accuracy that would have made old Prince Eugene, who\nhad once patronized the Prince at Philippsburg, doubt his own eyes.\nAnd there reigned throughout a practical spirit which was quite the\nopposite of amateurish enthusiasm. There were no splendid encampments\nand display man\u0153uvres, as in other countries, where huge assemblages\nof troops came together in time of peace and went harmlessly through\ntheir exercises. Frederick held man\u0153uvres on a large scale each year\nat Spandau or Potsdam; and these forced advances over heavy ground,\nthese actions on the plain, these river crossings and assaults, these\nvaried and whole-hearted attacks on the problem of how a superior\nenemy--it seemed one reckoned with a superior enemy, possibly with a\ncombination of enemies?--can be rolled up on the flank and destroyed;\nthey were all trials of war, in bitter earnest and quite undisguised,\ncarried out with the sole end and aim of visualizing the actual\nconflict and familiarizing officers and troops with the details of\nthe bloody business. And an aggressive spirit, a purpose of swift and\nlively action, was inoculated by every possible means into the blood\nof these troops--contrary to the fashion of the time and bordering on\nthe uncivilized. Frederick had only contempt for the refined methods of\nmaking war as practised in his century--those \u201ccapital generals, who\nhave spent whole campaigns in various man\u0153uvres, without one being able\nto get the better of the other--which earned them high praise from the\nGeneral Staff.\u201d He despised too the entrenched position, which was held\nin such great regard. Battle, at all costs! Force the enemy to fight;\nbattles must be decisive, that is what they are for. Attack, attack!\n_Attaquez donc toujours!_ A bayonet charge is his passion, he was the\nfirst to regulate the details of its execution. \u201cDon\u2019t shoot more than\nyou need, and, above all, not too soon! At twenty, even ten paces from\nthe enemy, let off a good stiff salvo under his nose and then give it\nhim in the ribs with the bayonet.\u201d Then the cavalry: \u201cThe King herewith\nforbids all officers of cavalry, on pain of disgrace and cassation,\never to let themselves be attacked in any action; for Prussians must\nalways attack the enemy.\u201d At a hand-gallop? No, in full career. \u201cThen,\nin close formation, they must spur their horses on, at the top of\ntheir lungs, as they charge.\u201d \u201cAt the top of their lungs.\u201d \u201cUnder\ntheir noses.\u201d \u201cGive it them in the ribs.\u201d It all sounds so savage, so\nreckless, so extreme, so inordinate, so violent! The man must be bent\non a ruthless offensive and thinking of nothing else. Is it possible\nfor anyone to trust him?\n\nAlas, no, probably not. Probably it was not possible, even if anyone\nhad wanted to--again, quite apart from any measures taken against\nhim! This king was much too secretive and dissembling; reserved\neven with his intimates, or, rather, he had no intimates. Never to\nbe communicative, never to let anyone guess his thoughts, such was\nhis first principle as a ruler. He stated it quite frankly one day,\nhimself: \u201cIf I thought,\u201d he said, \u201cthat my shirt or my skin knew\nanything of my intentions, I would tear them off.\u201d A savage way of\nputting it--and very expressive of his extreme and obstinate intention\nto keep his own counsel. What could be accomplished by diplomatic\nmethods, with such a king? The foreign gentlemen found him inscrutable.\nHis moderation, his neutrality, his good intentions--nobody believed\nin them, and he knew that they did not. He said: \u201cIn Vienna they take\nme for an irreconcilable enemy of the house of Austria; in London they\nthink me far more restless, more ambitious, richer than I am. Bestuchev\n[the Russian imperial chancellor] believes that I am plotting mischief;\nin Versailles they say I am falling asleep over my interests. They are\nall mistaken. But what makes for trouble is that these misapprehensions\nmay have evil consequences. What must be done is to anticipate\n[?] these consequences, and relieve Europe of her preconception.\u201d\n_Pre_-conception? Why, it was a _post_-conception, a conception formed\nafter the two Silesian wars. Again, perhaps he was speaking quite\nsincerely, and merely deceived himself on the score of the danger he\nhimself was to Europe? A puzzle to everybody, was he perhaps one to\nhimself as well?\n\nHe led a singular life--it contrasted with any and every monarchical\nhabit of the time. In summer he got up at three o\u2019clock. But three\no\u2019clock is the time to go to bed, when God has placed you in a position\nto enjoy life! Scarcely was his hair combed when he began to govern.\nDid he govern well? Certainly he governed with a suspiciousness,\na self-will, a despotism which could only be called boundless and\nextravagant, and which entered into everything, the smallest as well\nas the greatest field, and deprived the work of others of all dignity.\nHe so loved work that he took it all to himself, and left his servants\nnot enough; or, rather, what remained was irksome and petty, and he\nspied on and scolded and humiliated them even at that. \u201c_Cette race\nmaudite_\u201d (thus, rightly or wrongly, he called the whole of humanity)\nwould, he was convinced, begin to deceive him and defraud the State if\nit got the least chance; and his complete lack of confidence had at\nleast this much good about it, that his officials had to reckon with\nthe fact that the King would see and examine everything, his subjects\nmight be certain that their complaints and petitions did come before\nhim instead of falling under the table. He never let anything be lost\nsight of, he gave himself pain over the smallest detail.\n\nYes, self-willed and despotic he certainly was; up to the most\ngrandiose and down to the pettiest sense of those words. Nobody dared\ntravel without his permission; in granting which, the King decreed\nthe amount of the journey money, down to a farthing: for the burgher\nso much, for the junker a little more. He awed and astonished all\nthe world by operations that had something superhuman and fantastic\nabout them, such as erecting mighty dams to fight the power of the\nsea and to wrench from it strips of land which had for centuries been\nits prey. Or he ploughed the marshes, turned bogs into fields, set\nten thousand spades to work to make canals through the swamps of the\nOderbruch--callous toward the suffering of his labourers, who might\nall die off of swamp-fever, so long as they were sacrificed to the\nfuture and to his impatient will. If a stranger wanted a good seat at\na parade, he had to write to the King, and the King answered in his\nown hand. Yet it was this very king who one day declared that he would\nno longer sit silent and endure the obsolete abuses and formalities in\nthe administration of justice; he would mix in and attack the problem\nhimself--and straightway he created the common law of the land, a great\nand bold reform, a model of reason and fair-mindedness, which all other\ncountries were fain to study and admire.\n\nThe army, the administration, service at home and abroad. That was\nnot all. He \u201cmixed into\u201d other matters too, and did not stop with\n\u201cmixing.\u201d He was his own finance minister (obstinately stingy here;\nextravagant there, where it was a matter of some large and it might\nbe impossible scheme or other), his own minister for agriculture (who\nsimply refused to believe, because Linn\u00e6us and others said so, that\nthe potato was a poisonous plant, and arbitrarily insisted that it be\nplanted), his own minister for commerce (and as such conservative,\nwalking in his father\u2019s footsteps, with prohibited schedules and\nprotection and monopolies, his main idea being that the money should\nstop in the country), his own minister of works and mines, his own lord\nchamberlain, and what not besides?--for when a man lives separated from\nhis wife and gets up at three o\u2019clock in the morning, he can get a lot\ndone in the course of the day.\n\nIt took a king like this, a man who could work as he could, to show\nthe full meaning of the word \u201cdespotism.\u201d Until his time no one had\ngrasped its significance. But the despotism he created was _a new_\nkind. He was an enlightened despot--which means that his subjects might\nthink and say what they liked, provided that he, on his side, might do\nas he chose--an arrangement which it must be admitted was useful to\nboth parties. Religions meant little or nothing to him, he despised\nthem all. Persecuted irreligion found an asylum and even an official\nstatus in his kingdom. Lampoons, satires, libels directed against him,\nmoved him not at all. He did not fear brains: his love of them was\nbalanced by his scorn--so long as they were not backed by any power.\nOn being told that one of his subjects had criticized him, he asked:\n\u201cHas he a hundred thousand men? Then what do you want me to do with\nhim?\u201d Which was cynical, of course. And, indeed, he did have a cynical\ncast of mind, which betrayed itself even in his dress, that got dirtier\nand shabbier as time went on; and in the kind of diversions he chose:\nthe habitual blasphemies at his supper parties, the dry, malicious\npleasure he had in goading on the literary men and philosophers whom he\nfound in food, in \u201cembroiling\u201d them in disputes and quarrels with each\nother. Even his mania for work, was there not something cynical, arid,\ninhuman, misanthropic, about it too, to any healthy and right human\nsense? For a healthy and right human sense understands--and understood\nin Frederick\u2019s time too--that career and accomplishment are not all of\nlife; that life has its purely human claims and duties of happiness, to\nneglect which may be a greater sin than a little easy-goingness toward\noneself and others in the matter of one\u2019s work; and again, according to\nthe healthy and right human sense, nobody can be called a harmonious\npersonality who does not understand how to satisfy the just claims of\nboth sides of life. And this king did not, he had no comprehension of\nthese facts, though surely a king ought to know them as well as other\npeople. His insane industry, his insistence on merit and getting things\ndone, was ascetic and somehow horrible in its nature. He hated monks,\nof course, as he hated all religious and clergy; but he was rather like\na monk himself, a monk in a blue soldier coat and yellow waistcoat\nalways spotted with snuff. And he was a cynical old bachelor, and a\ngood share of his ill feeling and his uncanniness had surely to do\nwith his relations with the female sex, which were as a matter of fact\nno relations at all, and pretty incomprehensible even to his own age,\nhighly capricious as that was in its attitude toward sex matters.\n\nHe had been, as I said, rather a dissipated youth. When he was fifteen\nyears old, he visited the luxurious court of Dresden, where he liked\nit not a little, and fell in love head over ears with the Countess\nOrselska, the daughter and favourite of Augustus II; but the King,\nwho was somewhat jealous, offered him instead the Countess Formera,\na well-shaped damsel, displaying her first in the guise of a living\npicture. This lady accordingly became Frederick\u2019s first mistress.\nAfterwards he got hold of the Orselska as well. Such tales are legion:\nfor instance, there is one about the Freifrau von Wreech, whom he used\nto visit when he was at K\u00fcstrin, and who supplied him with candles\nand books, and even with money, which he is supposed never to have\nrefunded, though Frau von Wreech gave birth to a child which her\nhusband never acknowledged. Then there was the daughter of a Potsdam\nprecentor, who was publicly whipped and sent to the house of correction\n\u201cfor life.\u201d And in Ruppin and Rheinsberg he had his fill of debauchery;\nbut Seckendorff wrote to Prince Eugene that \u201cit seemed the body was\nnot strong enough for the demands made upon it by the desires, and\nthe Crown Prince appears to seek in his dissipations a reputation for\ngallantry rather than to gratify actual sinful inclinations.\u201d All\nwhich might be true and might not. But it is certain that none of\nthese affairs had anything to do with passion in any higher or deeper\nsense, any more than they had with genuine feeling or warmth of heart.\nFrederick, when quite young, declared that all he wanted of women was\npleasure, and that, having enjoyed, he despised them. He had never\nbeen in love. Then came a _malheur_; there is talk of an operation\nfollowing; and from then on something was broken in his nature. He soon\nceased to act the voluptuary; woman had played out her brief and not\ntoo honourable r\u00f4le in his life.\n\nMisogyny is now deep-seated in his nature. Henceforth one cannot\nimagine him in any tender situation--it would seem grotesque. His\nmarriage, of course, was no marriage at all; but that does not signify,\nsince it was a forced one. It was not merely that the other sex left\nhim cold. He hated it, he poured scorn on it, he could not endure it\nanywhere near him. His wife\u2019s ladies complained: \u201cWe do not ask that\nthe King should love us; but that he simply cannot stand us--that is\nhard.\u201d The wife of his hypochondriac friend d\u2019Argens was allowed, as\na particular favour, to live in Sans Souci; save for this the palace\nwas a sort of cloister. But a cloister is not quite a natural place\nto live in. The Italian dancer Barberini passed for some time as the\nKing\u2019s mistress; but Voltaire, on the subject of the relationship,\nexpressed himself thus: \u201c_Il en \u00e9tait un peu amoureux parce qu\u2019elle\navait les jambes d\u2019un homme._\u201d So it too was hardly the regular\nthing. Frederick\u2019s masculinity was obviously not attracted in the\northodox way by the feminine counter-pole. Possibly the long years of\nsoldiering contributed to this state of things and weaned his interests\nfrom the other sex. There are many cases of military who were or who\nbecame women-haters. This man, brought up in an atmosphere of French\nfemininity, may have grown so accustomed to the maleness of camps\nthat at last he \u201ccould not stand the smell\u201d of women. And this was\nin the Frenchest of centuries, a woman\u2019s century _par excellence_,\nsaturated with the perfume of the _Ewig-Weibliche_. His conception\nof soldiership, ascetic to begin with (the highest soldier in his\ncommand durst not in the field eat off anything but tin), made him\nso anti-feminine that the soft appeal of love and marriage was quite\nshut out. He did not like his officers\u2019 marrying, he wanted them to\nbe cloistered warriors like himself; and expressed his view in the\nwitticism he made, that his officers \u201cshould find their happiness in\nthe sword and not in the ...\u201d Anyhow, they should find it in the\nsword. In 1778, out of the seventy-four officers of a regiment of\ndragoons there was just one married.\n\nNow why was all that? Perhaps at bottom it was not a little political.\nWe must not forget that the most powerful countries in Europe were at\nthat time ruled by women: the Empress Elizabeth, the Empress-queen\nof Austria, and the Pompadour. Frederick despised and affronted them\nto the point of political gaucherie. Aloud, at table, before all his\nlackeys, he called them \u201cthe three first wh...s in Europe.\u201d This though\nhe knew, or, rather, because he knew, that no remark of his escaped the\nspies of foreign courts. In any case, the ugly word may have fitted\ntwo of them, but certainly it did not Maria Theresa; in vituperating\nthat chaste and childishly high-minded woman he obviously only levelled\nat the sex. The Little Mother, Elizabeth, on the other hand, did lay\nherself open by her weakness for strong drink and muscular military;\nbut these very weaknesses were what kept her a powerful potentate,\nand it was most injudicious of Frederick to make them the theme of\nscurrilous little rhymes, which of course came to her ears and made\nthe mistress of Russia his envenomed and everlasting enemy. And why\ncould he not bring himself to the point of a few friendly words\nwith the Pompadour, after she had daintily taken pains to meet him\nhalf-way--and considering she was the actual ruler of France? She was\nonly a butcher\u2019s daughter, named Poisson, the wife of a publican and\nprocurer, and herself a procuress to boot. Admitted and conceded, that\nwas what she was. But in the first place, what is the good of being an\nenlightened despot if you cannot look beyond such small matters? And\nin the second, she was rather more than delicious, with that clever,\nroguish little head and that billowing embroidered frock--its measured\nd\u00e9colletage sagely half-hiding, half-revealing delights which an\nall-Christian king had known how to value. Scarcely a sign betrayed the\nfilth whence she came and which remained her element. She knew how to\npreside discreetly over a privy council. Frederick, when he wantonly\nrepulsed her, was aiming at the female rather than at the concubine.\n\u201cI do not know her,\u201d he said: \u201c_Je ne la connais pas._\u201d Anybody else,\nin his place, would have rued that, later. Maria Theresa--foundress\nof the chastity commission, pious and faithful wife--displayed more\nself-control. \u201c_Princesse et Cousine_,\u201d she wrote; \u201c_Madame ma tr\u00e8s\nch\u00e8re S\u0153ur_\u201d--it sounds scandalous, but it had to be done, for\nSilesia\u2019s sake. As for Frederick\u2019s bearing toward the Empress-queen\nherself, it sets in the clearest light his callousness where the sex\nwas concerned. All the chroniclers and critics, chivalrous before\neverything else, speak of his behaviour as abominable.\n\nThere is a beautiful portrait drawing of the Empress-queen, by Meytens,\nin the copperplate collection in Berlin. There is the sumptuous rococo\nhead, majestic and sturdy at once, proud and na\u00efve: the pure brow,\nwith a little diadem above it crowning the powdered hair that falls in\ncurls upon the royal shoulders. There is the double chin, childishly\ndignified, the clear eyes, the powerful hooked nose, the wholesome\nmouth, full without being coarse. Her voice is said to have had a\ncompelling charm. Court and people idolized her. She reigned in the\nfear of God, piously, patriarchally, comfortably. To her husband, Franz\nof Lorraine, a famous petticoat-chaser, she was a loyal wedded wife,\nconniving at all his shortcomings. When he died, she turned to his\nsobbing mistress, Princess Auersperg, and said: \u201cMy dear Princess, we\nhave both lost much.\u201d She was as good-natured as that. When her son,\nDuke Leopold of Tuscany, made her a grandmother for the first time,\nshe was so beside herself for joy that she ran in her night-dress\nthrough the castle corridors to the Burgtheater, where there was a\nperformance. Leaning out over the balcony of the royal box she called\ndown into the house: \u201cPoldy\u2019s got a baby! And, to cap the climax, on\nmy wedding-anniversary! Isn\u2019t he a love?\u201d We hear her call, we share\nthe rapture of her audience. She was not yet four-and-twenty when her\nfather died and bequeathed her the burden of the crown. Her health\ntottered beneath the defeat of Mollwitz and the ensuing crisis; for,\nto add to everything else, she was with child. \u201cFor all my realms were\nthe field of battle,\u201d she later wrote, \u201cand I knew not where I could\nbe brought to bed in peace.\u201d Yet with what lofty spirit, what touching\ncourage, she bore herself! Still weak from her lying-in, on her arm the\ninfant whom in tears and troubles she had brought into the world, the\ncrown of Saint Stephen on her head, she stood in Pressburg before the\nassembly of the Empire and summoned the chivalry of her Hungary to the\ndefence of her insulted majesty. And the magnates--one can see them--in\nfrenzied enthusiasm swung their crooked sabres and pressed round the\nthrone with the cry: \u201cWe will die for our King, Maria Theresa!\u201d But\nFrederick was without bowels of feeling for this majestic weakness;\nprobably the pale maternity of his enemy only added fuel to the\nflames of his masculinity, and rather roused disgust than reverence.\nThroughout the long, inhuman struggle to which the two Silesian wars\nwere the prelude, the thought that he was dealing with women never left\nhim a moment. It recurs in countless of his utterances of that time;\nwho knows if the shameful thought of being defeated by three women was\nnot what stiffened his back? At the thanksgiving service after the\nvictory of Mollwitz he gave out the text from I Timothy ii. 12: \u201cBut\nI suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man,\nbut to be silent.\u201d--Maria Theresa, when she heard about it, was not a\nlittle wroth. She had a name for him, at once childish and oracular;\nit seems to show that her woman\u2019s intuition pierced the secret of his\ncharacter. She never named him save as \u201cthe bad man.\u201d The bad man. Yes,\nthat he was, with the emphasis as much on man as on bad. The mysteries\nof sex are very profound, never will they be quite explained. Was it\nthat this king could not endure women because he was such a bad man, or\nthat he was such a bad man because he could not endure women? A riddle\nnot to be unriddled. But that the two things were somehow dependent on\neach other--of that I feel certain.\n\n\u201cThe bad man\u201d: he was that to everybody, though it was Maria Theresa\nwho by preference and from the depths of her heart gave him the name.\nThere was always a whispering and a plotting and a conspiring round\nabout him--defensively, of course, in the end, and as precautionary\nmeasures--all directed against him; he had always to realize it,\neven when he knew nothing specific; and he parried, as well as he\ncould, ten years long. Yes, we must agree that during all that time\nhe was, diplomatically speaking, on the defensive against his worse\nnature--though one might, indeed, get the impression that even this\nbehaviour was dictated by sheer malice and in order to lead honest\npeople by the nose.... To sum up, the constellation of great powers was\nat that time as follows:\n\nThe traditional, three-hundred-year-old rivalry between France and\nAustria was a settled factor, a political constant, which it seemed\nwould have to be reckoned with to all eternity. It had brought France\nand Prussia together and the alliance of June 1744 had still up to \u201956\nto run. But that alliance had become rather loose and unreliable, after\nFrederick withdrew--prematurely, in the view of France--from the War\nof the Succession. As for England, her hostility toward France was if\npossible even more venerable than that country\u2019s toward Austria. France\nloomed large upon the continent, France had a fleet, overseas interests\n(there were disputes in America, more precisely in Canada)--in short,\nquite enough to make England keep a sharp eye on her. And George II\ncould endure Frederick as little as anybody else. He too, though not\na female, had been satirized in an epigram. And so England clave to\nRussia, where the amateur of strong drink and muscular soldiers sat\nenthroned; and did this with especial reference to Prussia; Prussia\nbeing still regarded as an ally of France, and in a position, in case\nof war between the latter and the English, to attack England on her\ncontinental heel of Achilles--in other words, Hanover.... The attitude\nof Saxon Poland was particularly curious, involved, and timid--under\nan Augustus anything but Strong, or, rather, under his prime minister\nand head of the Cabinet, Count Br\u00fchl, a great spender, a great rou\u00e9 and\nintriguer, who presently ruined the country financially and after that\npolitically too. This man possessed two hundred pairs of shoes, eight\nhundred embroidered night-shirts, five hundred suits of clothes, one\nhundred and two watches, eight hundred and forty-three tobacco-boxes,\neighty-seven rings, fifty-seven smelling-bottles, twenty-nine coaches,\nand fifteen hundred wigs. But I digress.--On Sweden Frederick thought\nhe could count, his sister Ulrike being crown princess there. French\ninfluence, also, was paramount in that country--that is, it drew\nsubsidies from France.\n\nThe intrigues, the war of pens and plottings against a greater Prussia,\nbegan, so to speak, while the ink was still wet on the signatures to\nthe Peace of Dresden. Next to Austria, where the alienation of Silesia\nwas regarded as entirely temporary, the chief source of the intrigues\nwas Russia; Austria, of course, always played the r\u00f4le of diplomat\nwith a light touch, whereas Russia, at all times clumsy, at all times\nready to conspire, hammered away at the war and the annexation of\nEast Prussia. I mentioned that Russia\u2019s leader of foreign affairs was\nBestuchev, the imperial chancellor, who took care, by arrangement with\nthe Austrian and English agents, to feed the alcoholic hatred of his\nmistress for the King of Prussia, and to hold the resources of his\nhalf-savage country at the service of Austria. Scarcely any relations\nnow subsisted between the courts of Berlin and Saint Petersburg. A sort\nof latent state of war obtained. Every spring, troops assembled in the\nBaltic Provinces and threatened to overflow the Prussian border. But\nthere had to be some show of conducting matters in the European way; so\nall sorts of documents were drawn up on parchment, with secret clauses\nand everything proper and in order.\n\nThe fact was that as early as 1745 an alliance had been entered into\nby the maritime powers and the Saxon-Polish and Hungarian courts--the\nfamous Warsaw Alliance, so-called. It had only been ratified in the\nspring of that year, at Leipsic, and looked harmless enough on the\nsurface, but it had a secret clause, the Warsaw Agreement, signed only\nby the monarchs of Hungary and Poland, which was definitely directed\nagainst the robber of Silesia. Scarcely had the Peace of Dresden been\nsigned, when Vienna, through the proper diplomatic channels, let it\nbe known in Dresden that she hoped the Warsaw Agreement was still\nin force. Br\u00fchl would have been delighted to utter a hearty yes in\nreply; but that he was afraid to; began to wriggle, and through all\nthe following years continued to wriggle, until the arrival of the\ncatastrophe. Saxony had come off unharmed from the Peace of Dresden;\ncontrary to her expectations, for when Frederick was fighting in\nBohemia she had attacked him in the rear. But he contented himself\nwith an indemnity--the victor of Soor and Kesselsdorf was just then\nbehaving with great moderation, not to say magnanimity. Br\u00fchl, however,\nhated Frederick; at that time everything political had a strong\npersonal coloration, and the hatred of the luxurious and effeminate\nminister-president toward the ascetic and industrious soldier was\ninborn and indestructible, it yielded nothing in violence to the\nAustrian brand. Br\u00fchl would have been delighted to give it free vent;\nbut there was the outward attitude of Saxony toward the Prussian\nstates, and there was the abominable superiority of the Prussian army.\n\u201cThe Warsaw Agreement,\u201d answered Br\u00fchl: yes, it subsisted, and then\nagain, it did not subsist. It subsisted conditionally. It subsisted\non condition that it did no harm to Saxony. It subsisted on condition\nthat Russia joined it. It was indispensable that Russia should join--if\nshe did, then by all means. It went without saying. \u201c_Parfaitement_,\u201d\nreplied Austria, and applied to Russia; and Russia barely waited to be\nasked, she was on the spot at once, with clumsy and unlimited zeal.\nIn the year \u201946 a defensive alliance--only defensive, of course--was\narranged between Austria and Russia. It contained a secret clause, to\nthe effect that if the King attacked either of them, he should be held\nto have forfeited Silesia thereby--beloved, lamented Silesia, which\ngrew dearer and dearer to the Empress-queen, the more she saw what\nFrederick knew how to get out of it; Catholic Silesia, whose possession\nby a heretic and criminal cried to heaven. Br\u00fchl was politely invited\nto come in ... but Br\u00fchl still wriggled. No, no signature, no official\ncommitment, it was too dangerous. And as they were sure of his good\nintentions, they let him off the signature, in God\u2019s name. If anybody\naccuses Saxony of having joined an alliance against Frederick, he lies.\nSaxony had preserved its neutrality, Saxony had not signed. That it had\ndone its utmost, with Austria, to stir up trouble in Saint Petersburg\nis another matter. It was neutral, none the less; it had not signed.\n\nA defensive alliance, be it known, is an alliance which only begins\nto be in force when one or another party to it is attacked by a given\nother power or group of powers. But one speaks in strategy of an\noffensive defensive; and it would appear that something of the kind\nmay also occur in the diplomatic sphere; indeed, if it were not for\nthe conciliatory title, it might sometimes be very hard to distinguish\na defensive alliance from its reprehensible opposite. In politics, as\nalso in life, the name is mostly a sort of _concession au publique_,\nand deals only superficially with the fact it represents. An attack\nmay be of sheer necessity; but then it is not an attack at all, it\nis a defence. And if an attack is advantageous to the members of\nthe defensive alliance, why, then it becomes as good as impossible\nto draw the psychological line where the _casus f\u0153deris_ ceases to\nbe a contingency which everybody would unite in avoiding, and turns\ninto something devoutly to be wished. Thus it becomes a question of\nsensibility, and has to be left to the feeling of the allies, when\none of them shall and will feel itself attacked; and accordingly, to\ninvoke the _casus f\u0153deris_ it is only necessary to drive your opponent\nto do the attacking--in other words, to force him into the r\u00f4le of\nformal aggressor, which is scarcely very difficult, and may be,\nunder some circumstances, very easy. Things will inevitably so shape\nthemselves, when one of the parties to the defensive alliance is a\npower like the Muscovite kingdom, a power whose instinct to expand has\nsomething elemental and irresponsible about it, like the stretching\nand the appetite of a giant; a power which, knowing itself ultimately\nunconquerable, is at all times clumsily eager for the fray. Now, as for\nthis defensive alliance between Austria and Russia, aimed at Prussia:\nthe Empress Maria Theresa had repeatedly and solemnly renounced\nSilesia, and she was much too god-fearing a woman even to think of\nbreaking the compacts of Dresden, Breslau, and Aix-la-Chapelle. But\nfor that very reason she needed to find a way of getting back Silesia\nwhich should be morally possible; and this she secured by the alliance\nwith Russia. For if Frederick were to attack, he would lose his right\nto the province. Which was now for the good Maria Theresa the _casus\nf\u0153deris_--a danger or a desirability? Let us call it a tempting\ndanger, or a troubling desire. But what Russia understood by the\nword \u201cdefensive\u201d is clear from the fact that in 1753 it was formally\nannounced in the council of state in Saint Petersburg, and made the\nbasis of a protocol, that it would also be permissible to attack\nPrussia in case an ally of Russia attacked her first. A corollary\nperhaps rather alcoholic in origin, but it makes the question wherein a\ndefensive alliance differs, except in name, from another, to a certain\nextent legitimate.\n\nWell, and did Frederick know of these things? Oh, yes, one thing and\nanother did come to his ears in the course of these years, if more by\nway of a trickle than in a steady stream. He had to put them together\nand make sense of them himself. The system of espionage was just\nthen at the height of its flower, blossoming rather more luxuriantly\nthan it does today; and Frederick was its greatest supporter,\nconsidering it to be of the highest importance to maintain spies\neverywhere, in all the important places. He called them his \u201c_Kujons_\u201d\n(rascals) or \u201c_Pfaffen_\u201d (parsons), and never could have too many of\nthem--especially since they did not cost very much. Br\u00fchl had set up a\nwhole office in Dresden just for deciphering the Prussian dispatches;\nso we may consider it in the light of a retort on Frederick\u2019s part\nthat he kept a \u201c_Kujon_\u201d there in his pay, to post him in events\nimportant for the King to know. This famous _filou_, named Menzel, a\nbook-keeper by occupation, had access to the files which contained the\nsecret documents of the government of Saxony, and for years made copies\nof the diplomatic correspondence between Russia and Vienna, which,\ntogether with the replies sent by the wriggling Br\u00fchl, he punctually\ndispatched to Potsdam. From these documents Frederick gleaned precisely\nthe dealings which Saxony had with Vienna and Saint Petersburg at the\nbeginning and toward the middle of the fifties. He learned how Br\u00fchl\nwriggled and twisted in order both to preserve and to betray the\nneutrality of Saxony; how Russia was persuaded to come in; how they\negged her on, in her clumsy enthusiasm, to bring things to a point;\nhow a god-fearing empress set to work to find a valid, an ethical\nexcuse for action. He learned--if he had not known before--what\nsort of thing a defensive alliance might be, when directed against\nhimself; and, supposing that he, on his side, was not god-fearing and\npeaceably disposed, not at all inclined to rest on the laurels of\nHohenfriedberg, but, on the contrary, cherishing all sorts of schemes\nand treacheries--then, here in these very papers, he himself possessed\nthe moral possibility which the good Empress-queen was to reap from\nhis offensive. As you see, the real inwardness of things was somewhat\ncomplicated, though it was, on Frederick\u2019s side, more downright, more\ncontemptuous, less involved, than it was with Maria Theresa and the man\nwho, as Frederick said, had fifteen hundred wigs and no head.\n\nI pass over the numerous provocations, intrigues, and crises of the\nsecond class, which occupied the political world during these years\nof peace, without lying on the direct line of the march of events. As\nearly as the spring of \u201949, the eager Bestuchev had come very near to\nspringing the mine--on the score of the antagonism between France and\nEngland. The Duke of Newcastle, then the head of the English Foreign\nOffice, was working for an alliance directed against France, which\nshould include, besides the sea powers, Russia, Austria, Saxony, and a\nfew other German states--all very much to Bestuchev\u2019s mind, for here\nthe prospect beckoned him of involving Sweden and Prussia in a general\nconflict. He set to work in Sweden, where he thought to bring about a\nchange in the succession, and wean the country from French and Prussian\ninfluence, drawing it within the sphere of Russian control. He hoped\nin this way to force Prussia to act in a military sense. And when he\ndemanded from England, Austria, and Saxony a declaration that he might\ncount on their support in his Swedish undertakings, the whole world\nexpected an immediate catastrophe. But Frederick maliciously drew his\nneck out of the noose. He invoked the French interest in behalf of\nSweden, he mildly warned the London uncle; and as he gave emphasis to\nhis diplomacy by calling up his reserves, England and Austria found\nit expedient to dissociate themselves from Russia. Moreover, Denmark\nwas won over to the Prussian-Swedish-French _entente_; there was even\ntalk that Turkey would come in. In short, the hostile combination was\nsprung, Bestuchev was isolated and obliged to put off the execution of\nhis plans to a better time.\n\nBut the initiative now passed to an Austrian statesman, with a name\nfamous in history, who at this stage of developments stepped full\nlength into the picture: lean and stiff, in a peruke powdered with\nexcessive care, the curls of which were arranged to hide the wrinkles\non his forehead; with a long, calm, blue-eyed, almost English face,\nand a huge diamond order in his velvet coat. His name was Kaunitz,\nWenzel Anton Count Kaunitz; Maria Theresa, who early recognized\nhis great talents, later made him a prince. He was an oddity, such\nas the eighteenth century brought forth in numbers. Excessively\nhypochondriac--another peculiarity fashionable in that time--he\nabominated fresh air, and never went out of doors, so that he was\nas white as a cellar plant. In his pocket he carried a whole little\narsenal of dental instruments, which he brought out after a meal--even\nwhen he dined out--and began to rummage about in his mouth with a lot\nof rags and lancets and little mirrors. Until one time the French\nambassador said: \u201c_Levons-nous; le prince veut \u00eatre seul._\u201d After\nthat Kaunitz left off going into society. Goodness knows how many\nother maggots he had in his brain; but as a politician he was shrewd,\nfar-sighted, judicial, and with an enormous gift for sticking to a\nplan once formed. And he had just one thought in his head: Prussia\nmust be thrown by the heels, if the illustrious house of Austria were\nto continue in existence. That was a good and right thought, from his\npoint of view, but it had in itself nothing original about it. What\nwas original, original and really magnificent, was the method which\nKaunitz, and Kaunitz alone, evolved in order to put his thought into\nexecution.\n\nKaunitz comprehended that to checkmate Prussia and crowd her to\nthe wall it was necessary not only to break up the Franco-Prussian\nalliance, but actually to draw France over to the Austrian side. If\ngenius consists in essential independence of thought, that was a\nconception worthy of the name. All the world over, it was an impossible\nidea that France and Austria should ever walk hand in hand. Sooner\nwould fire and water mix. The mutual jealousy of the two houses had\nleft its mark on the whole history of Europe--not merely since the days\nof the great Richelieu. But, granted that this was so, Kaunitz could\nnot see why it should be so for ever. \u201cMuch is not dared\u201d--so ran his\ndevice--\u201cMuch is not dared because it seems hard, much seems hard only\nbecause it is not dared.\u201d He acted upon this motto. If France decided\nto join the Saint Petersburg offensive-and-defensive alliance, she\nbrought Sweden over with her; Saxony too would not hesitate to turn\non Frederick, so soon as she risked nothing by the act; and if the\nVersailles government no longer stirred up the German princes against\nthe house of Austria, the German states were pretty certain to be\nloyal. By a general understanding such as that, everybody stood to win.\nIf France were instrumental in the recovery of Silesia, she would be\nallowed as a reward some enlargement in Flanders. East Prussia would\nfall to Russia, Magdeburg to Saxon Poland; if Sweden cared in the least\nabout Pomerania, she would be a fool to stand aside. Anyhow, Sweden\nhad no choice, she was bound by French money. If hope and hatred once\nmoved them all to strike this monstrous alliance, then Frederick was\nsurrounded, hopelessly and helplessly, and a coalition formed such as\nthe world had never seen before: a glorious coalition, which history\ncould not but christen with the name of Wenzel Anton Kaunitz.\n\nThese ideas did not spring full-grown in one day from the head of\ntheir originator. Like all good things they had deep beginnings. Even\nat the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which Kaunitz concluded for Austria,\nhe offered Brabant and Flanders to Versailles, on condition that his\ncountry recovered Silesia by means of French assistance. But France\ndeclined. Considering her position with regard to England, she found\nthe Prussian alliance too valuable to be weakened by such undertakings.\nSince that date Kaunitz had industriously fed and fostered the mistrust\nof the bad man at Potsdam in all the courts of Europe. From 1747 to\n1748 he was consul in London, where he plied George II with intercepted\nPrussian dispatches and a thousand insinuations against his nephew. But\nin the year 1751 he came to Paris, and there began the golden age of\nhis career as an intriguer.\n\nHe lived in the Palais Bourbon like a private gentleman of quality,\nwith several women whom he gave entertainment; but he received very\nlittle. However, with the two important persons, the monarch and the\nPoisson person, he was on the best of terms; it was he who brought\nhis liege lady in Vienna to the point of those _princesse et cousine_\nletters which were probably the hardest sacrifice ever legitimacy laid\nupon the altar of politics. Kaunitz pursued his aims with a tact and\npersistence truly admirable. He knew that at bottom the Most Christian\nKing, despite the alliance still in force, abominated Frederick. Louis\nwas bigoted and lazy; coddled, self-indulgent, uxorious; naturally his\nactive, soldierly, free-thinking, Protestant cousin of Brandenburg\nwas an offence to him. The alliance existed for reasons of state, of\ncourse; it was directed against England, and threatened Hanover, the\nEnglish possession on the continent. But as for personal or dynastic\nsympathies, they were nil, there was no basis for them; and setting\nthe political aside, a friendship between two old, aristocratic houses\nlike Bourbon and Habsburg was more humanly fitting than the one that\nobtained between Versailles and the upstart breed of the Potsdam\ndrill-sergeant. And the creature had written scurrilous lampoons\nagainst our marquise, and government by mistresses, and our all-highest\nand laziest Majesty\u2019s sacred person: Kaunitz hinted very skilfully,\nand now and then was in a position to produce a bit of new evidence.\nWhat audacity, what ingratitude this king displayed! What immemorial\ndisloyalty! For never, unless with France\u2019s help, could he have got\nSilesia for himself, and how had he shown his gratitude? By leaving\nher in the lurch and crawling off into the woods with his prey. But\nthat is the way little states always behave when the big ones fall out\namong themselves. To whose use and behoof, when you think of it, had\nFrance and Austria been at each others\u2019 throats all these centuries?\n_Cui bono?_--to speak Latin. Had either one of them gained anything?\nNo, they had only weakened each other; the gainers had been the small\nand middle-sized states, who otherwise would have had to do as they\nwere told, and who now were fishing in troubled waters. It was this\nPrussian land-grabber who had won; thanks to the discord between France\nand Austria, he had gained a position for which nature had not intended\nhim. Kaunitz was not so radical as to assert that an understanding\nbetween his own country and France was conceivable, possible, perhaps\neven necessary. Only it was amusing to imagine how things would be if\nsuch an understanding were to come within the range of possibilities.\nIt would be like heaven, that was all. Everybody\u2019s cares and troubles\nwould vanish, you would wish for a thing and it would fall into your\nlap. Poor Silesia--it would not take long to wrench it from the\nclutches of the bad man. And if France also dreamed dreams--Flemish\ndreams--be sure Austria would find an opportunity to show herself\ngrateful. What else? Nothing else, probably--save that, yes, France\nand Austria united would simply be able to do anything they wanted to.\nStrengthened on both sides, in splendid equilibrium, without occasion\nfor jealousy, they would hold sway in Europe, and every foreign will\nwould have to bow the knee in face of their united front. So would it\nbe if a concord between them were possible. But such was not the case;\nunfortunately, not at all. Tradition compelled them to work against\neach other, to the end that neither of them got anything; and so it\nmust be, to all eternity. Habits were strong, bad habits were the\nstrongest. Stronger than all else was prejudice, and reason must bow\nbefore it.--Or must it?\n\nThis was the sort of thing that Kaunitz dropped into every ear which\nstayed still long enough to listen. He trotted out his theory on every\noccasion, turned it this side and that, showed it in various lights.\nFirst people laughed, then they stopped to think. It was daring, it was\namusing--after a while they wondered if perhaps it might not be more\nthan a joke. Gradually it became the _dernier cri_, a political mode,\n_tr\u00e8s chic_ as a topic of conversation in boudoirs and coffee-houses.\nThe erstwhile Poisson was enchanted with it--and the Empress had\nwritten her such a charming letter! But there were sound ministerial\nreasons for not repudiating the alliance with Prussia; and Kaunitz\u2019s\nparadoxes could not so soon have taken on even a half-way tangible\nform, had not the man against whom they were directed advantaged all\nhis labours.\n\nFrederick probably felt that a cooler breeze had begun to blow\nfrom Versailles; and the French attitude seemed the more foolish to\nhim in that an English-French conflict was looming large and black\non the horizon. They would surely come to blows on the subject of\nthe French-Canadian border-line; the rivalry of the two maritime\npowers was pressing to a warlike issue; and as Frederick\u2019s treaty\nwith France could not possibly extend to a Prussian guarantee of the\nFrench possessions in America, he felt that France might reasonably\nbe solicitous about his friendship. What was it Versailles wanted? If\nit was a land war, if it wanted to attack England in Hanover, then\nsurely Prussia\u2019s help was more important than this new flirtation\nwith Vienna--a joke which would soon be played out when the war with\nEngland was once on. For ever since the days of Louis XIV Austria\u2019s\nplace, and Holland\u2019s too, had been on the English side in a French and\nEnglish war. And as for Russia, England did not spare her guineas when\nshe set out to bribe the Muscovite navy \u201cagainst the common foe.\u201d And\nthe common foe--Frederick might flatter himself that he was the man.\nEngland had in him a not quite comfortable neighbour on the continent,\nand she did well to take precautions against a Prussian attack on her\nelectorate of Hanover. But while she set her diplomacy to work, what\ndid France do? France did nothing at all, whereas there were three\nthings at least which she should have done. She should have stirred up\nTurkey, to hold the two empires in check. She should have come to an\nunderstanding with Frederick on the subject of Hanover. And, lastly,\nshe should have brought England to hear reason, by attacking Hanover.\nFrederick had been expecting for months that the Duke of Nivernais\nwould come to Potsdam to negotiate. But he did not come. Obviously,\nKaunitz was at the bottom of that. Frederick thought the petticoat\ngovernment at Versailles was showing itself pitiably hare-brained and\nsilly. England was sending a fleet to America; she was capturing French\nships and King George was threatening in parliament; but Louis and\nhis one-time Poisson seemed bent on repose. The only step Louis took\nwas to instruct his foreign minister, Rouill\u00e9, to make the following\nproposal to the Prussian ambassador: \u201cWrite to your sovereign that he\nought to assist us against Hanover. There will be a lot of plunder.\nThe King of England\u2019s treasury is well filled. The King need only help\nhimself.\u201d It was brazen. But it shows incidentally what sort of repute\nKing Frederick enjoyed in Europe and particularly at the court of\nVersailles. He sent back the reply that if they had proposals like that\nto make they would do better to employ a Mandrin as go-between (Mandrin\nbeing a notorious highway robber). He hoped that in future M. Rouill\u00e9\nwould make a distinction between the persons with whom he had to deal.\nA haughty, virtuous answer--and one that would certainly make a good\nimpression in England.\n\nFrederick had chosen between England and France. He saw the latter\nvacillating, feeble, lacking in confidence. And he felt that he was\nbeing undermined in Paris by Prince Kaunitz. He gave France up. He was\nconvinced that if he attacked Hanover he would have England, Austria,\nand Russia against him. On the other hand, if he cast in his lot with\nEngland, in the first place the French would not come to Germany, and\nin the second he would have the money-bags on his side in all future\ncontingencies. An understanding with Russia would thereby be achieved,\nand who knew if it might not in the future be possible to prize Russia\nloose from Austria, and by thus isolating Maria Theresa wean her from\nher hope of regaining Silesia? Here was the reasoning that underlay\nFrederick\u2019s humourless retort to M. Rouill\u00e9. And England heard it.\nCould she win over Hanover\u2019s dangerous neighbour, and thus secure her\ncontinental communications for her naval war with France? England\ntook steps. And soon the _rapprochement_ came about. By the middle\nof January 1756 a convention was signed at Westminster, according to\nwhich Prussia and England vowed mutual peace and friendship, and, in\nparticular, bound themselves to act to prevent any armed power from\nmarching into or through Germany. That was all.\n\nReally it was not much. England certainly had no intention of falling\nout with Russia and Austria on Frederick\u2019s account. And, on his side,\nFrederick perhaps did not believe that an understanding with England\nmust necessarily mean a break with France. But France was beside\nherself. Yes, Kaunitz was right. This man was an out and out wretch.\nHe openly put himself on the side of France\u2019s enemies. But they would\nshow him.... They showed him. Kaunitz had meanwhile taken the helm of\nforeign affairs at Vienna and was represented at Paris through Count\nStarhemberg. He could at once report the most gratifying progress\nin his French enterprise. It was at this time that our marquise\nshowed how well she could preside at a real council of state. In the\nboudoir of her ch\u00e2teau of Babiole there took place those very private\nnegotiations between her, Count Starhemberg, and the Abb\u00e9 Bernis, her\nprot\u00e9g\u00e9, which, on May the first, resulted in a contract of defence\nand neutrality between France and Austria: the Treaty of Versailles,\nwhich was the answer to the Convention of Westminster, and which, as a\nmatter of fact, was so well seasoned that somebody called it a blank\ndeclaration of war for the Austrian chancellor. In it was the statement\nthat France and Austria would stand together, that in case of need one\nof them would place twenty-four thousand men at the disposition of the\nother; and there were also included all sorts of things about subsidies\nto Austria. It was not set down that Austria would cede territory in\nthe Netherlands to France as soon as Austria by France\u2019s help had got\nback Silesia; but they continually treated of it, and the Marquise so\nunderstood it.\n\nAnd if it were only France that was outraged! But Russia was outraged\ntoo. \u201cWhat?\u201d Elizabeth cried; \u201chave we taken so much money from England\nonly to have her patronize this man who has made a mock of me all\nover Europe for the sake of a few harmless little fancies?\u201d Russia\nturned her back on England. With furious haste she set herself to get\ninto touch once more with France. Furiously she proffered Austria a\nplain and blunt offensive alliance against Prussia. They could hardly\nhold her back. Kaunitz, who had not quite yet got France where he\nwanted her, had to preach patience to Saint Petersburg, and advise\ndiscretion, \u201clest the desperate King of Prussia fall on us prematurely.\u201d\n\nSo Frederick, then, had missed his reckoning altogether--granted, of\ncourse, that he had reckoned as the writers of the period (among whom\nhe was one) say that he did. And granting that he had not known all\nthe time, in his heart of hearts, that in one way or another he would\none day have to prove the strength of his budding greatness before the\nwhole of Europe, and had been ready for many a day to do it. Today\nit looks as though both alternatives were true: that he had war in\nhis blood, but that, more out of spite than love of peace, he played\nthe diplomatic game of balancing powers--just for the fun of leading\ndestiny by the nose. At all events, the Convention of Westminster\ncaused an incredible political upheaval; and any critic of the time\nmight have said that this royal statesman was such a bungler that he\nhad managed to unite against him all the sworn hereditary enemies of\nEurope. A new system of understandings arose: Austria did not stick to\nEngland against France, and Bourbon and Habsburg joined hands. Russia\ndisregarded the subsidies contracted for with England the previous\nyear; mad with rage, she went over to France and Austria. And so they\nwere united, they, the three greatest powers on the continent. And on\nthe other side stood Frederick; with a single friend, not exaggeratedly\nloyal at that, who concealed from him that she was no longer friends\nwith Russia, and who, moreover, had her hands full with the war\noverseas. However, the famous money-belt would be at his disposition,\nat least for the present and if things did not go too badly with him.\n\nSuch was the position; and it did not take Frederick long to grasp\nit. Not in vain did he keep spies at every court. He knew the\nsecrets of Babiole. From The Hague came hints of the Franco-Russian\n_rapprochement_. \u201cAre you sure of the Russians?\u201d he continually asked\nMitchell, the English ambassador. And Mitchell replied: \u201cMy government\nis sure of them.\u201d Adding _sotto voce_ that he himself was not so sure,\nand that just lately a courier had told him that all the roads up to\nthe Lithuanian frontier were full of marching Russians. For Mitchell\nthe Scot was an honest man and he had great respect for Frederick.\nTo make assurance doubly sure, word came from Dresden of Russia\u2019s\neager urging, and of her leaving England in the lurch. The Viennese\nambassador gave further detail about the offensive Austro-French\nalliance, which was not signed yet, but was under constant discussion;\ncomprehensively speaking, it was as follows; on the day when Austria,\nwith the help of France, won back Silesia, it ceded to France a part\nof the Netherlands.--Take it all in all, the Kaunitz schemes, his\ncoalition and his dreams of partition, were pretty plain.\n\nIt was a great deal that Frederick had in his hands; quite enough to\nafford him the moral possibility which he was supposed to give the\ngood Maria Theresa by attacking. It is not hard to guess his state of\nmind--to presume to understand his feelings would be more daring. A\nbitter, angry, Mephistophelian laughter must have risen to his lips\nat the thought of that clique over there striving so hard to preserve\ntheir innocence, to put on him the odium of the offensive--on him,\nwho was above either the simplicity or the hypocrisy of such clear\npsychological distinctions between offensive and defensive; and\nwho had no fear of either praise or blame. And again, he felt that\nPrussia would have in the end to assert herself and show what she\ncould do; he had war in his blood, he meant war--whereas the others\nonly meant, in the first instance, diplomatic chicanery. The draft of\nthat Franco-Austrian alliance, whose aim was the recovery of Silesia,\npresupposed an offensive taken by Frederick--and even so it remained\na draft. The whole Kaunitz scheme of a coalition for the destruction\nof Prussia was in the first place no more than that, and very little\nof it had been put on paper. There is no document in existence from\nwhich Maria Theresa\u2019s intention to attack Prussia can be proved; nor\nany showing that Russia\u2019s and Saxony\u2019s part in her plans was either a\nneutral or a hostile one. No human being, learned or unlearned, will\never be able to decide whether these plans would ever have become more\nthan plans if it had not been that.... One thing more: a contemporary,\nwho must have known, Count Hertzberg, who at the King\u2019s request\nprepared a paper upon the events of the year 1756 and preceding,\ndeclared, thirty years later: \u201cIt is, to be sure, a fact that plans\nwere in existence for the partition of Frederick\u2019s territories; but\nthey were only provisional, and presupposed the condition that he would\ngive occasion to carry them out; so it will always remain unsettled\nwhether or no those plans would have been executed.\u201d If it had not\nbeen that--what? That Frederick himself began.\n\nIf one turns to the historians to try to discover whether the frightful\nwar which thus began was really an offensive or a defensive war on\nFrederick\u2019s part, one finds that the historians contradict themselves\nto the point of absurdity. All those whose breasts are covered with\norders have one song to sing; everything, they say, is against the\nlibellous hypothesis of a long-prepared war of attack and conquest: the\nbearing of the King, his utterances, public and private, during the\nten years of peace and the last summer months before the catastrophe.\nThose whose breasts are not covered with orders (which of course is\nonly the result and not the cause of the views they hold), who have\na grudge against genius, holding it to be incompatible with virtue,\nin the nature of things: these sing a different song: positively\neverything, they say, that is known to us of the villain speaks for\nthe interpretation of an offensive war. His utterances, forsooth! They\nare just so many subterfuges, just so much dust in people\u2019s eyes. \u201cIf\nI thought my shirt or my skin knew anything of my intentions ...\u201d Yes,\nwe remember. Had he not also said that he had no desire to be like\nthose princes who become famous by reason of one brilliant operation\nand afterwards enjoy peace and quiet? His plans date from far back.\nHe wanted to conquer Saxony and West Prussia, that was all, and he\nspied out the diplomacy of the other powers in order to get pretexts\nfor attack.--Yes, the historians are a mass of contradictions. For my\npart, if anybody asks me, I prefer to say nothing. For it seems to\nme that when the various opinions on his life and deeds cancel each\nother out, silence is what is left. That Frederick began the war is no\nevidence that it was not defensive; for he was encircled, and might\nquite possibly have been attacked the following spring. But did he will\nthe war? The question leads us into the slough of unsolved problems\nconcerning the freedom of the will. He probably understood quite early\nthat he would be forced to will it; and after he had led destiny awhile\nby the nose, he had enough human pride and human spite to will it\nvoluntarily.\n\nSo much is true: that the others, no matter how much they may have\nplotted, began their actual warlike preparations only when those of\nPrussia had turned to certainty the great and general mistrust. As\nearly as the spring of this year 1756 Frederick had sent a corps\nto Stolp under Field-marshal Lehwald; and further, ostensibly to\nsafe-guard Hanover, he took measures to bring up the Westphalian troops\nand strongly provisioned the Silesian fortresses. His own officers had\nshaken their heads. After the middle of June, \u201c_Alarmzustand_\u201d was\ndeclared in East Prussia as well as Silesia, all leaves were cancelled,\nthe reserves called in before the end of the regular man\u0153uvres. One\narmy was by then completely mobilized; it stood in Farther Pomerania\nready to act as reserve in East Prussia. The plan of campaign, drawn\nup by the King together with General von Winterfeld, had long been\nready, save for details. Winterfeld, a sort of general chief of staff,\nsat bent over route plans and lists. Everywhere horses were being\nbought. General von Retzov was intendant in the field. The files were\nformed, the marching order of the army in three great divisions was\nsettled upon. The machine was working smoothly. And Kaunitz smiled and\ncompressed his lips. \u201cHis Majesty of Prussia,\u201d he said, \u201cis already\nmaking the second great mistake in state policy. First Westminster,\nand now these preparations. It is good we have not armed up to now,\nit might have spoilt everything. Now we and Russia have all the\nprovocation in the world to hurl our troops against the boundary.\u201d And\nAustria set up an extraordinary armament commission; it brought its\nregiments on a war footing and concentrated them in Bohemia and Moravia.\n\nOn the tenth of July, Frederick ordered his generals to Potsdam;\nappeared among them and without more ado declared that the war must\nbegin. \u201cThat it must,\u201d Winterfeld supported him. \u201cImpossible!\u201d said\nall the rest; and advised strongly against it. They were Prussian\ngenerals: Haudegen, Schwerin, Keith, Retzov, Schmettau, Ferdinand von\nBraunschweig; but they all most strenuously advised against it. The\nKing\u2019s brother could not trust his ears. \u201cAre we to understand,\u201d cried\nPrince Wilhelm, \u201cthat Your Majesty hopes to conquer this overwhelming\nstrength? The greatest powers in Europe, the public opinion of the\ncontinent, are against us. And justice--ah, Sire, it is not on our\nside!\u201d \u201cTo want to wrest victory from superior power like that is to\ncourt defeat at the hands of Providence!\u201d So cried the princes Henry\nand Ferdinand. Frederick pished and pshawed, and jeered at them and\nsaid they might stop at home if they were afraid. At which they\nnaturally fired up and said that obedience was higher than personal\nopinions.\n\nIn the whole world he had not one moral support. England never ceased\nto warn him not to invoke certain destruction--against which she would\nbe powerless to save him. But when in the middle of July he learned\nthat Austria was mobilizing all along the line, he had the question\nput in Vienna, which sounded dangerously like an ultimatum: was the\nmobilization directed against him? Probably he had in mind to spring\nthe combination by showing a brusque deportment. If they came to blows\nin midsummer, he reckoned, then Russia was not likely to march that\nyear. Perhaps, even, English gold would keep her still, or there would\nbe a change of thrones--for the Little Mother was not in the best of\nhealth, her love-affairs were bad for her. And France: she had signed\nthe Treaty of Versailles, but nothing is easier than to deny the _casus\nf\u0153deris_ if you do not want it and cannot have it. And it seemed to the\nKing like a case of cannot.\n\nBut if France and Russia did fall away, would Austria stand up to him\nalone? Frederick did not think it, he did not hope for it. But if,\nsaid he, they were really with child by war, he was ready to play the\nmidwife. A detestable figure! And another allusion to the sex of his\nopponent.\n\nThey were not ready yet, in Vienna. So they delayed for two weeks\nwith their answer. Then it came. Maria Theresa explained that in the\nuniversal crisis she had taken steps to secure herself and her allies,\nwhich were not intended to injure anybody. Kaunitz told her what to\nsay--disingenuous, time-taking rubbish. Frederick still pressed. He\nsent word that he could not remain in ignorance of Austria\u2019s agreement\nwith Russia. If Her Majesty could not give him, in good set terms,\nwithout employing any of the usual Austrian evasions, the assurance\nthat she would not attack him within the next two years, then she\nwould have her own exalted self to thank for whatever consequences\nmight ensue upon her silence. That this demand did not admit of any\ndiscussion was obvious. Frederick\u2019s own ambassador hardly found\nthe courage to transmit it. But simultaneously with his ultimatum\nFrederick in quick succession mobilized first the Pomeranias, then the\nWestphalias, Silesia, Brandenburg, and lastly the Berlin garrison. In\nsix days the troops were in fighting trim and only needed a few days\nto reach their rendezvous. Schwerin with thirty thousand men was in\nSilesia. The three columns, commanded by the King in person, pushed\ntoward a certain frontier.... Everything was buried in the profoundest\nmystery; not even the divisional commanders were informed. But there\nwas still a delay.... What was Vienna\u2019s answer? After full three weeks\nshe haughtily replied: the first steps toward mobilization had been\nPrussia\u2019s. Further, the alliance with Russia had existed for a decade,\nand was not offensive in its character--from which it followed that\nPrussia\u2019s anxiety was groundless.--Kaunitz again. Between the lines\ncould be read: \u201cIf you swallow that, then you are a fool, and we shall\nbrush you aside. If you don\u2019t, then you are a criminal disturber of the\npeace. Take your choice.\u201d--Frederick gave the order to cross the Saxon\nfrontier.\n\nThe Saxon frontier! Why, but Saxony was neutral, wasn\u2019t she? Saxony\nwas not playing!--That was all one; on the twenty-ninth of August\nFrederick, with sixty thousand moustaches, invaded Saxony.\n\nWhat a hubbub arose in Europe at this unheard-of breach of the peace,\nthis attack on the rights of nations! We have no idea--or, rather,\nyes, perhaps just lately we have had an idea. But let us listen to\nFrederick before we listen to Europe: according to him his breach of\nthe law was due to the following reflections and considerations. He had\nto be absolutely certain of Saxony, in order that she might not fight\non the wrong side when she had the chance. Things must not go as they\nhad in \u201944, when Saxony had stuck a dagger in his back. By occupying\nthe country and disbanding the army or incorporating it in his own,\nhe should have a secure base for his operations against Bohemia. As\nfor neutrality, there was none, in any true sense of the word. In her\nheart, and with all her evil-disposed intentions, Saxony was with the\ncoalition, though cowardice prevented her from admitting where she\nstood. Frederick, in breaking the letter of the law, in violating a\nneutrality that stood on paper, whereas its own betrayal did not so\nstand, was actuated by the sternest necessity. He had to take the guilt\nupon his own shoulders in order to bring it home to his enemies; he\nhad to get hold of the archives of the state of Dresden, that nest of\ntreachery, in order to be able to prove to all the world how Saxony\nhad man\u0153uvred. If Saxony were wise, she would offer no opposition;\nshe would let him get across the mountains without delay. But let her\npersist in carrying her skin to market for Austria, and he would crush\nher once for all. When Schwerin repulsed an invasion into Silesia, and\nFrederick surprised them by appearing in Bohemia, then Maria Theresa\nmight perhaps think better of it? With just one slash, perhaps, he\nwould have cut the web that bound him, so that the severed pieces\nfloated harmless away? Of course, the opposite result was conceivable:\nthe various combinations still in a fluid state about him might\ncrystallize at his touch, just as ice-cold water in a basin will begin\nto freeze when shaken. But one way or the other, things must be brought\nto a head.\n\nThus Frederick. But Europe had no mind at all for such balancings and\nexperimentations. Europe shrieked as with one voice. It was terrific\nto hear her. The public, of course, had no \u201c_Kujons_\u201d in its pay; it\nwas not posted as to preliminaries, and in its eyes the march into\nSaxony had taken place in the middle of the profoundest peace and\nwas a shameless breach of international law, an attack so wanton and\nunprovoked that it put one quite beside oneself. To fall in force\nupon a neutral country, a good, innocent country which was not at all\nexpecting such a barbarous onset and had only lately placed its army on\na pathetically small peace footing, twenty-two thousand men, in order\nto enable Br\u00fchl to buy more wigs and coaches and scent-bottles! It was\ninsufferable, it rent the heart, it could not and must not be that this\nsnuff-taking Satan should tread under the heels of his top-boots all\nmorality, all justice, all humanity, all that ennobled life, all that\nthe upright must needs believe in. So Europe shrieked and continued\nto shriek; and loudest of all shrieked Austria, pointing her finger\nat Frederick and crying over and over again: \u201cNow you see, don\u2019t you?\nThere you are!\u201d\n\nAnd, as a matter of fact, Saxony was not in the least resolved on\nfight. She had plotted, but she was not in the least resolved. However,\nshe was carried away by the general indignation, which confirmed her\nin a false and sentimental conviction of her own innocence and the\njustice of her cause; and she elected to perform the r\u00f4le of martyr in\nthe cause of Austria and the rights of nations--a choice which could\nnot save her from imminent destruction. It was impossible to withstand\nthe masterly entry of the Prussian troops, carried out as it was with\nthe utmost order and discipline. The defence hastily fell back on the\nBohemian frontier, and let Wittenberg, Torgau, Leipsic, let Dresden,\nlet the whole electorate fall without a blow into Frederick\u2019s hands,\ninto the power of Prussia. The Saxon army stopped at Pirna, in a\nfortified position, and thither came Augustus, in flight from Dresden.\n\nThis prince, otherwise rather slack, now displayed an astonishing\nobstinacy, backed up by the moral support of all Europe. What Frederick\ndemanded of him was pretty thick, after all: it was no more, and no\nless, than an offensive alliance against Austria, and the oath of\nfealty of the Saxon troops. In other words, Saxony was to link her\nfate, for better or worse, with Prussia\u2019s; since, as Frederick said,\nSaxony and Prussia were indispensable to each other and it was to their\nmutual advantage to stick together. We have learned since then that\nmutual advantage counsels a permanent alliance not only to Prussia\nand Saxony, but to Prussia and Austria as well. But they had not got\nso far on in those days; and Frederick\u2019s theory, in the circumstances\nunder which it was set up, must have sounded Satanic indeed. \u201cHow\nshould I,\u201d asked Augustus in numerous letters, \u201cturn my sword against\na princess who has never given me any ground for doing so? It is my\nintention not to take any part in this war ... my integrity, which\nI have preserved up to my sixtieth year, encourages me to reply to\nYour Majesty that you have possessed yourself of my territory without\nany justification. Europe will be the judge of my cause, and of the\ngenuineness of the schemes you lay at my door, of the non-existence\nof which all the courts of Europe are convinced.... It seems Your\nMajesty can secure himself in no way save through the destruction of\nmy army, either by the sword or by famine. Until the second happens it\nstill lacks much; and with regard to the first, I have hopes that in\nthe divine protection and in the constancy and loyalty of my troops\nI shall rest secure from the ultimate event.\u201d They were good, moving\nletters that poor King Augustus wrote, prompted by his consciousness\nthat he had Europe with him. He addressed his army just as touchingly.\nThey would, he said, thrust toward Bohemia together--which was sheerly\nimpossible--despite the strength of the enemy. He was resolved to\nsacrifice his life in the attempt; it belonged to his subjects; it was\nfor them to save the honour of their king, and to defend him to the\nlast drop of their blood.\n\nThe camp at Pirna was surrounded, and the pinch was soon felt. But\nuntil hunger enforced surrender (for Frederick wished to shed no blood,\nhe wanted to amalgamate the Saxon troops with his own), much precious\ntime was lost, time of which Austria made good use. Frederick stopped\nin Dresden, where he sought by means of ingratiating forms to make his\nDraconian regulations more palatable; his purpose being to win over\npublic opinion by proving from the Saxon archives the necessity he had\nbeen under. But here too he encountered resistance so embittered that\nin breaking it down he brought the world, if that were possible, even\nmore than ever about his ears. The state papers were in the castle,\nin the custody of the Queen of Poland, who was living there with her\nchildren. Frederick she loathed; and she stoutly resisted all his\nefforts to get hold of the documents. Frederick, however, was not\nthe man to shrink from using force against a lady. He sent a general\nto the Queen, with definite instructions to procure the casket in\nwhich the documents were, using force if necessary. The scene in the\nQueen\u2019s apartments is variously depicted. In any case it must have\nbeen extremely humiliating to Augustus\u2019s wife. She fought with all her\nstrength and with all her pride against surrendering the papers. We are\ntold that she defended with her own body the door to the cabinet; other\naccounts say that she sat on the chest where they were kept; others,\nagain, that the casket was in her bed, and that Frederick\u2019s general,\nafter prostrating himself, did not hesitate to violate this place\ntoo. In the end the Queen had to comply, and Frederick got the papers.\nHe speedily had them published. But the advantage of publication was\noutweighed by the harm done by this fresh evidence of his brutality.\nThe Queen called the foreign ambassadors together, gave them a vivid\naccount of what had happened, and declared that all the rulers of\nEurope had been insulted in her person. Her daughter, who was dauphine\nin France, threw herself publicly at the feet of Louis XV and implored\nhim, with sobs, to avenge her mother\u2019s sufferings--a scene which moved\nall Europe to tears of sympathy and righteous anger. The French envoy\nin Berlin received orders to break off relations peremptorily. The\nPrussian ambassador was forbidden the court at Versailles. Add to all\nthis that the Queen of Poland died soon after, killed, so everybody\nsaid, by the ignominy she had suffered. For Frederick retorted upon her\nconspiracies and agitations by having her closely watched, and she was\nnot spared further affronts. The King of Prussia, so we are told by\nCount Vitzthum, treated the Queen not like a person of royal blood, but\nlike a canteen woman imprisoned in the middle of a hostile army. And it\nkilled her. The indignation against Frederick was boundless.\n\nIt was, in fact, so deep and general that a heart less stout, a temper\nless sardonic than his might have quailed before it--yes, perhaps even\nthis heart did sometimes quail. In France, a country where he had\nclose intellectual ties, he passed for a savage, simply; they called\nhim nothing but the barbarian, the \u201cmonster of the north.\u201d Indeed,\nhe might have searched the whole globe over for a sign of sympathy\nand understanding and found none--no spot on earth where he did not\npass for the enemy of mankind, a ravening beast, to draw whose fangs\nwould be a moral act and a safe-guard to the public. He must be struck\ndown, must be rendered for ever powerless. Not only must Silesia be\ntaken from him; Prussia must be reduced to the position which was hers\nbefore the Thirty Years\u2019 War, the king of it once more a petty marquis,\npowerless for harm. Yes, the hour had struck when the civilized\nstates must root out the Prussian spirit and rid the planet from this\npoisonous growth. Even those who could still think objectively had to\nadmit that there was nothing left for Prussia but to sink under the\nscorn and hatred heaped upon her by the world.\n\nQuite aside from the material resources which such hatred had at its\ndisposition, the hatred remains in and for itself a thing to shudder\nat. To fear that which is of the spirit is no disgrace; it involves\nless cowardice than does fear of physical force. It is upon the\nimponderables that the best hopes of victory are based; thus there is\nnothing weak or foolish about taking cognizance of the imponderable and\nthe irrational where it sides against you. The hatred and revulsion\nwhich Prussia roused might be as uninstructed and misguided as ever;\nbut the question which had to be raised was this: was it conceivable,\nor humanly possible, that one man could bear up against the weight of\nso general a feeling and carry off the victory? It takes more constancy\nof spirit to confront a preponderance of moral feeling than to defy a\nsuperior body of troops. Frederick had to admit to himself that in\ncase of his defeat the world\u2019s rejoicing and the world\u2019s scorn would\nalike be unbounded; that he should get no justice, and not only that,\nbut that he should actually have been in the wrong. Even on this\nground, it was bitterly necessary for him to conquer. He was not in the\nright, in so far as right is a convention, the voice of the majority,\nthe judgment of humanity. His right was the right of the rising\npower, a problematical, still illegitimate, untested right, which had\nfirst to be fought for and won. Defeated, he was the most wretched of\nadventurers--_un fou_, as Louis of France called him. Only when success\nhad shown him to be the agent of destiny, only then would he be in the\nright, and proved to have been always in the right. For every deed that\ndeserves the name is in truth a trial of fate, an effort to create a\nright, to guide destiny and realize the course of development. And the\nhatred felt against the doer of the deed is, psychologically speaking,\nnothing else than an effort to influence the verdict of fate against\nhim--a na\u00efve and irrational effort, because the verdict is settled\nbeforehand, but still a spiritual weight and pressure which might well\nfrighten the bravest. King Frederick is called the Great, not only\nbecause of the audacity with which he laid siege to destiny, but also\nand especially because he had the strength to bear up--alone, with\nalmost superhuman nervous strength--under so heavy a burden of hate.\nBut all the bitterness of soul, all the cynic disbelief in justice,\nwhich characterizes him who thus tempts fate, speaks in those words\nhe uttered: \u201cPoor mortals that we are! The world judges our acts not\naccording to our motives, but according to their success. There is\nnothing left for us but to achieve it.\u201d\n\nSo now they got their forces together, bodies of troops, armies, in\nalmost ridiculous superfluity, to overcome him and carve him up in\nthe shortest possible time at the least expense to each of them.\nEach one looked forward to his share. Elizabeth of Russia displayed\ngreat tenacity, she was far from dead yet, she hastened to join the\nVersailles concordat and signed a special understanding with Austria,\nby virtue of which she was to send eighty thousand men against\nFrederick and harry the Prussian coast with her fleet. France, which\nup to now had let herself be entreated, showed suddenly a hysterical\nzeal. By the invasion of Saxony, she shrieked, the Peace of Westphalia\nhad been violated, shamefully violated, and the honour of all the\nguarantors of that peace demanded that they speedily unite to execute\nthe evil-doer. A second Versailles Treaty arose, stating that France\nwould contribute a hundred thousand men and pay twelve million gulden\nof yearly subsidy to Austria, until such time as the latter was once\nmore secure in the possession of Silesia, and Prussia reduced to the\ndimensions she had before the Thirty Years\u2019 War (according to which\ncontract France ought still to be paying to this day). The war against\nPrussia, the alliance with Austria, was now so popular in Paris that\nthe French Academy offered a prize for the best verses in praise of\nit; but the French government found the idea silly and suppressed\nthe offer. And that was not all. Frederick found that he had fallen\nfoul of the \u201cEmpire.\u201d His act, they said, was a breach of peace of\nthe \u201c_Reich_.\u201d The Emperor commanded him to cease his unheard-of and\nwicked sedition, to indemnify King Augustus and withdraw from Saxony.\nHe ordered all Frederick\u2019s generals to leave their godless lord,\nand not to partake in his hideous crime. And as all that did not\nin the slightest avail, the whole of Germany (that blind Germany!)\nrose against Frederick, sixty princes declared that his proceedings\nconstituted a predatory attack, and an imperial punitive campaign\nwas solemnly resolved upon. Sweden, one of the signatories to the\nWestphalian Peace, and in leading-strings to France, had perforce to\nresign herself to the conquest of Pomerania. And thus populations to\nthe tune of a hundred million rose against some five; fourteen princes\nagainst one; seven hundred thousand of troops against two hundred and\nsixty thousand. Frederick was putting it mildly when he said he was\nrisking his skin. Nobody had any doubt it would be all up with him in\nthe shortest possible time.\n\nIt will give me the very greatest pleasure to cite from his letters of\nthe period. They have a way of making one\u2019s memory act in a contrary\ndirection--namely, forward and not back, a distinctly thrilling kind of\nmemory.\n\nTo the Marquis d\u2019Argens in Berlin: \u201cThe French have gone mad. You\ncannot imagine the disgraceful things they are saying about me. You\nwould think that the whole salvation of France depended on the house\nof Austria; and the Dauphine\u2019s dreams have made much more impression\nthan my manifesto against Saxony and the Austrians. In short, my dear\nfriend, I deplore the consequences of the earthquake that has addled\nthe brains of all the statesmen in Europe, and I wish them peace,\nhealth, and contentment.\u201d\n\nTo Privy Counsellor von Knyphausen of the Paris legation: \u201cIt is due\nto the Austrian intrigues that I am obliged to recall you. When you\nwill have left Paris, nothing will stem the tide of slander against me.\nMy enemies will invent so many stories that the French will only see\nwith their eyes and hear with their ears. Well, if they want to be my\nenemies, very well; it is their own choice.\u201d\n\nTo his sister of Bayreuth: \u201cBut since things have been pushed to this\npoint, we must hope now that Providence, if it deigns to mix in poor\nhuman affairs, will not permit the arrogance and malice of my enemies\nto triumph over my just cause.\u201d\n\nTo Schwerin: \u201cWe shall have, my dear Marshal, to confront many\nfoes--but I am not afraid. I have capital generals, admirable troops,\nand if heaven preserve my understanding I hope also to give a good\naccount of myself.... But we must exert ourselves to the uttermost,\nwe must crush our enemies, we must fear no numbers, but rather count\nit an honour that such a difficult task is ours to perform. We pay\nrope-dancers, but not men who merely walk on solid ground; so in\nthis world all the glory is for those who triumph over difficulties.\nFarewell, my dear Marshal, I embrace you.\u201d\n\nTo his sister Amalie: \u201cThe coming campaign is to me what Pharsalus was\nto the Romans, or Leuctra to the Greeks, or Denain to the French, or\nthe siege of Vienna to the Austrians. Such epochs are decisive, they\nchange the face of Europe. Before the decision one must endure fearful\nhazards; but afterwards the sky is again clear and bright. Our duty\nis now not to despair, but to foresee each event, and bear with quiet\ncountenance what Providence vouchsafes us, without arrogance at good\nfortune, or depression at bad.\u201d\n\nTo his sister of Bayreuth: \u201cGermany is facing a severe crisis. I must\ndefend her freedom, her privileges, and her religion. If I am defeated\nthis time, it will be in this cause. But I am of good cheer; and\nhowever great the number of my foes, I have faith in the goodness of my\ncause, the admirable courage of my troops, and their steadfast will,\nfrom the commanding officer down to the lowest soldier.\u201d\n\nTo the same: \u201cI am in the position of a traveller surrounded by a\nband of rascals and about to be murdered in order that the murderers\nmay divide their booty among themselves. Since the League of Cambrai\nthere has been no instance of a conspiracy such as this villainous\ntriumvirate has forged against me. The thing is contemptible, a\ndisgrace to humanity and human morals. Has the world ever seen such\na spectacle as three powerful princes banding themselves together to\ndestroy a fourth who has never done them any harm? I have never had\nany differences either with France or with Russia, and certainly not\nwith Sweden.... _O tempora, O mores!_ One might as well be living\namong tigers, leopards, and lynxes as in this supposedly so civilized\ncentury, contemporary of the murderers, thieves, and perjurers who\ngovern this poor world. Happy is he, my dear sister, who lives\nunknown, and has been wise enough from his youth up to abjure any kind\nof fame! Since no one knows him, none can envy, and his happiness\ncannot make him the prey of every sharper.... They have laid a plot\nagainst me, and the court of Vienna has been pleased to insult me; this\nwas more than my honour could endure. So the struggle begins and the\nband of rascals fling themselves upon me; such is my fate.\u201d\n\nTo Minister von Finckenstein: \u201cBe not so fearful. Nothing is lost as\nyet and nothing desperate. So long as I am alive I will stand firm and\ndefend myself like a lion.\u201d\n\nTo his sister of Bayreuth: \u201cWe must all console ourselves with the\nthought that our century is an epoch in the history of the world, and\nthat we have witnessed events so extraordinary that the course of\nthings has not for long brought forth their like. That means much for\nour curious minds, but little for our happiness. Well, these villains\nof emperors, empresses, and kings are forcing me this coming year to\ndance upon a tight-rope. I console myself with the hope of giving one\nor another of them a good crack over the nose with the balance-pole.\nBut when that is done, then peace must finally ensue. What a sacrifice\nof men! What horrible butchery! I shudder to think of it. But I must\nsteel my heart and arm myself for murder and massacre; I must face the\nodds heroically; though they are always frightful when you see them\nclose at hand.\u201d\n\nTo Earl Marischal Keith: \u201cYou say my enemies malign me, even in the\nfar-away Escorial. I am used to that. I hear nothing but untruths\nabout myself. I have had more than my fill of the vulgar lies and\ncontemptible libels spread by hatred and venom all over Europe. But\none can get used to anything. Louis XIV must get just as sick of the\nflatteries that are poured into his ears as I am of the shameful things\nthey say about me. These are unworthy weapons, which a great prince\nought never to employ against his peers; for he inevitably lowers\nhimself at the same time and exposes to the scorn of the vulgar things\nwhich it is to the common interest of princes to hold in honour.\u201d\n\nTo Finckenstein: \u201cIt seems unhappily that we are not yet at the end of\nour task. We have too many enemies to be able to gain such superiority\nover them as to enforce peace. All Europe is marching against us; it\nseems to be the fashion to be our enemy, and a title of honour to\ncontribute to our destruction.\u201d\n\nTo Voltaire: \u201cYou, who do not fight yourself, do not for God\u2019s sake\nlaugh at others; be tranquil, be happy, that you have no persecutors,\nand learn to be care-free and enjoy the repose you have at last\nattained after chasing after it for sixty years.... Are you still, at\nsixty, so lacking in common sense? And learn, in your old age, how you\nought to write to me. Please note that certain liberties are permitted\nto writers and wits; but when they become impertinent it is too\nmuch.... But enough, I have forgiven all, in a truly Christian spirit.\nOn the whole, you have given me more pleasure than pain. Your writing\nhas more power to cheer me than your scratches to hurt.... You cry\nout for peace so loudly that I am fain to tell you to turn that lofty\nimpertinence of yours, which so well becomes you, against those who\nare responsible for the delay in concluding peace.... Despite all your\nefforts, I will never sign a peace save on conditions consonant with my\ncountry\u2019s honour. The people of your native land, puffed up as they are\nwith folly and vanity, may rely upon it that I mean what I say.\u201d\n\nTo Ferdinand of Brunswick: \u201cUnless France signs a peace with England\nwe are hopelessly lost; we have too many enemies, too many people\nare disheartened by our disasters, and the morale of our troops has\nplainly deteriorated. There is nothing left but for you to think up\nan inscription for my tombstone. The great calamity will not come to\npass before the middle of August; but by then all will be lost beyond\nrepair. You know that I am usually not a pessimist; but now there is no\npossibility of seeing anything else but black.\u201d\n\nTo d\u2019Argens: \u201cThe French are amusing asses. I like an enemy that makes\nme laugh; I hate my grumpy Austrians, swollen with impudence and pride,\nno good for anything except to make one yawn.\u201d\n\nTo the same: \u201cYou value life as a sybarite, I look at death like a\nstoic. Never will I survive that moment in which I am forced to sign\na disadvantageous peace; no eloquence, no inducement, can drive me to\nsubscribe to my own disgrace. I have told you, and I repeat: never will\nI put pen to a shameful peace. I am firmly resolved to stake all upon\nthis campaign, to perform the most desperate deeds, to conquer or find\nan honourable end.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe defence,\u201d says Rancke, \u201cearned him high esteem in the states of\nEurope. In defending himself, King Frederick became the great man of\nhis century.\u201d--That is true, and yet not true--in so far, that is,\nas it considers Frederick\u2019s war against Europe to have been a purely\ndefensive one. The dispute among historians as to whether it really\nwas that--and not rather a war of aggression--waxes louder than ever\ntoday; but the situation is far too complicated, too involved, to\npermit of a simple and final answer. In its very last analysis this\ngigantic struggle was an offensive war; for the young, the rising\npower is always, psychologically speaking, the aggressor, and the\nothers, the existing powers, are on the defensive against it. Somewhat\nmore superficially speaking, it was a defensive war, for Prussia was\nactually \u201cencircled\u201d and was to be destroyed with all possible speed.\nThen it was, again, an offensive war in that Frederick obligingly\npicked the quarrel. Yet, once more, it was a war of defence, for\nwhen the odds are one to five, that is tantamount to defence, even\nthough it was the one who actually declared war against the five--or,\nrather, as a matter of fact, failed to declare it. And, fifthly,\nit was an offensive war: on the ground that the most desperate and\ndifficult defence must always needs save itself by attacking. \u201cAttack,\nattack! Keep on their heels! _Attaquez donc toujours!_\u201d To that tune,\ninstinctively, he had always disciplined his troops, he had even made\nit instinctive with them; and to it he carried on war, unmindful of the\nvoices of those who urged him to keep on the defensive--in situations\nlike that of the year 1759, when the Russians were on his left, and\nDaun on his right, and Sweden in his rear.\n\nWhat friends he had were not worthy of the name. England regarded him\nas her soldier against France, she was satisfied to have him hold\nFrance in check in Europe while she quietly annexed the French colonies\nin the New World; but, in the interests of business, she refused to\nrelieve him in the Baltic, against Russia; she paid subsidies as\nlong as it pleased her, and when it pleased her no longer she left\noff. As we know, the war lasted seven years--seven is always the\nnumber of years the princes and the miller\u2019s sons have to serve in\nthe fairy-tale; but it was a seven years\u2019 test a little severer than\never falls to their lot; it was, without exaggeration, the severest\ntest ever a human soul has had to stand upon this earth. To stand it\nrequired such passive and active qualities, such a measure of endurance\nand patience, of inventive and resourceful energy, as neither before\nnor since, to my knowledge, a man has ever displayed or had occasion\nto display. Seven years long did King Frederick march hither and yon,\nfighting, beating here one enemy and there another, being beaten\nhimself too, sometimes almost destroyed; staggering erect again because\nhe thought of something else which might still be tried; trying it,\nwith incredible, improbable success and coming safe off once more.\nAlways in his shabby uniform, booted and spurred, with his uniform\nhat on his head, breathing, year in, year out, the dust of his own\ntroops, in an atmosphere of sweat, leather, blood, and powder smoke,\nhe would walk up and down in his tent, between two battles, a dismal\ndefeat and an incredible victory, and play on his flute, or scribble\nFrench verses, or write quarrelsome letters to Voltaire. His mother\ndied, without his even seeing her; he felt now more forsaken than ever.\nHis favourite sister died--\u201c_mon Dieu, ma s\u0153ur de Bayreuth!_\u201d--and\nhis anguish at the loss testifies to the tenderness of his iniquitous\nheart. In time he himself became grotesque; he was not unconscious of\nthe frightful comicality of his existence, he compared himself with Don\nQuixote, with the Wandering Jew. \u201cThe ox must plough the furrow,\u201d he\nwould say, \u201cthe nightingale must sing, the dolphin swim, and I--I must\nmake war.\u201d He imagined himself condemned to carry on war up to the day\nof judgment; he became a spectre to himself. The dreadful weariness of\nspectres he knew, their pathetic yearning for rest. \u201cThe happy dead!\nThey are saved from all cares and troubles.\u201d He kept poison always\nupon him for the last emergency; but though the last emergency seemed\nmany times to have arrived, he did not take it, for always some other\nplan occurred to him, and the emergency passed. Beneath the frightful\npunishment, the cruel vicissitudes, the ceaseless tension, \u201cthe nicest\nlittle creature in the kingdom\u201d aged rapidly. He lost his teeth, his\nhair went white on one side, his back got bent, his figure leaner and\nleaner, he suffered from gout. And besides that, from diarrh\u0153a. It was,\nin fact, the tortures of the damned he suffered. But his fame grew\napace--his transgression, his breach of the rights of nations were\nforgotten, but his fame as of the chosen of God grew and spread like\na tree and overshadowed the century. It was not alone that he routed\nthe hosts of Marshal Soubise at Rossbach--that same Marshal Soubise\nwho stole Alsace and set fire to the Palatinate--and became a hero to\nall Germany, a symbol round which their torn loyalties might once more\ntwine. His deeds, and his sufferings, won him the sympathies of the\npeople of all nations. Yes, his defeats not less than his victories\noccupied near and far the hearts of men, and the grotesque, the\nQuixotic flavour, in his personality helped magnify him in the popular\neye and elevate him to a legendary fame: his picture, with the wry\nmouth, the sparkling blue eyes, the three-cornered hat, the cane, the\nstar, the shoulder-cord--it hung in cottage and hall; while he still\nlived he was a hero of legend. From now on he was called _der alte\nFritz_: an awe-inspiring name, to anybody with a sense of awe; for it\nis really in the highest degree awe-inspiring to find the d\u00e6mon become\na household word and given a nickname.\n\nHe had outlived the hate, the psychic resistance, of the world; and\nthereby had withdrawn an indispensable prop from the morale of his\nfoes. The rest was done by his radicalism, his readiness to go all\nlengths, the depth of his resolution, which seemed to his opponents at\nonce so offensive and so frightful, like a strange and savage dog--in\nthe end they all shuddered before him. His moral advantage was that it\nwas always, with him, a matter of life and death, and that gave him a\nsense of absolute values of which the others knew nothing. I will not\nspeak of his genius as a strategist, being a layman in that field.\nAnd I wish not to speak of his \u201cluck\u201d; for it is always stupid to\ndistinguish luck from a man\u2019s other merits and count it as undeserved,\ninstead of part of all the rest. Still, if you like, he was lucky. He\nwas on the brink of destruction when Elizabeth of Russia surrendered to\nher love-affairs and left a poor simpleton named Peter to reign, said\nPeter admiring Frederick to the point of idolatry, so that he struck\na peace with him at once. But the King had to win a few more battles\nbefore the others saw at last that it was hopeless, and retired from\nthe field tired out. He went back home.\n\nHe had won nothing tangible, and his territories were ravaged,\ndepopulated, impoverished, run wild. But Prussia endured, not a village\nlost; Silesia was safe, and the end and aim of the Great Coalition a\ntotal failure. It was a deep humiliation for the continent at the hands\nof a single man. The verdict of destiny, all the probabilities to the\ncontrary, had been rendered in his favour; it was impossible to dispute\nit in the long run. They had to make way for Prussia, for Germany,\nto follow its own path--a path which has since proved as steep and\nfateful, as full of manifold and instructive turns of fortune, as any\npath a people ever trod.\n\nAs for him, his later course, which continued yet for a long time, was\ndreary, and chilly, and unlovely. After that frightful seven years\nhis nature had grown more sardonic than ever before. He had fought\nand suffered beyond the capacity of ordinary men; and to him they now\nall seemed like a childish breed, an undistinguishable rabble. It\nis incomprehensible why he should have gone on wearing himself out\nin labour for this breed even while he choked with scorn of it. He\npoured himself into the task of making good the harm that he had done,\nof healing the ravaged fields and patching the tattered finances, of\nsummoning whole industries into existence, of adding a whole province\nto his kingdom and rescuing it from neglect by a magnificent system of\ncolonization. And all this would be incomprehensible unless one thinks\nof his sense of duty as a sort of possession and of him as the tool\nof a higher will. His industry was a cold and joyless passion. He was\nburnt out, he was dry and withered and wicked, he loved nobody, and\nnobody loved him; his royal existence was a burden, and no honourable\none, to the rest of the world. And when he needed a little animal\nwarmth, he was fain to share his bed with his favourite greyhound. He\nkept a great many dogs, and it was his wish to be buried near them.\nWhen the last one of these died he wept all day long. He still found\na little pleasure in embroiling his philosophers among themselves;\nthen he sent them all away. For whereas earlier in his life he had\nonly mocked at religion, now he mocked at philosophy as well; saying\nthat a good digestion was more important than knowledge of the essence\nof things. And he had a very bad digestion, it was spoilt by the\nhighly spiced dishes he insisted on eating. When at last he died, at\nseventy-four, after a tormenting and repulsive illness, everything, we\nare told, was deathly still, but no one mourned. There was not a single\nclean, whole shirt in his wardrobe, and his valet gave one of his to\nclothe the corpse--which was tiny as a child\u2019s.\n\nOne is prone to think of him as a sort of hobgoblin, an object of\nhatred and detestation, leading the whole world into a quagmire, a\nspiteful, sexless troll, for the destruction of whom a hundred million\nmen toiled to exhaustion in vain, since he was created and sent to\nbring about great and inevitable events upon this earth. Then, after\nthe performance of them, he vanished, leaving behind him a husk like a\nlittle child\u2019s.\n\nThe riddle of his existence lay in the dualism which Jean Jacques\nRousseau reduced to a formula: \u201c_Il pense en philosophe et se conduit\nen roi._\u201d That is a great antithesis, and comprises many and many a\npair of active opposites: for instance, right and might, thought and\naction, freedom and destiny, reason and d\u00e6mon, bourgeois morality and\nheroic necessity. Such opposites, united in one flesh and blood and\nbecome a strife of instincts, naturally do not make for a comfortable,\nlogical, and harmonious existence. There is a resulting irony on\nboth sides, a radical scepticism, a fanatic zeal for achievement at\nbottom quite nihilistic, a sense of power as melancholy as it is evil.\nFrederick wrote the _Antimachiavelli_, and that was not hypocrisy,\nbut literature. He loved the humane spirit, reason, dry clarity of\natmosphere--loved them by contraries and out of the depth of his\nbeing, which was essentially d\u00e6monic, essentially a slave to the\ndestiny which made him its instrument. Thus he loved Voltaire, the\nson of the spirit, the father of enlightenment and of all anti-heroic\ncivilization. He kissed the lean hand that wrote: \u201cI hate all heroes\u201d;\nand he himself mocked his seven years\u2019 struggle with the words: \u201cheroic\nweakness.\u201d But he set it down in black and white that if he wanted\nto visit a province with the severest punishment, he would sentence\nit to be governed by writers; his enlightenment was so skin-deep that\nhe believed himself bullet-proof; and when he wants to explain why\nhe preferred the frightful strain and bloody horrors of war to the\ntranquil repose of a literary life, he speaks largely of a \u201csecret\ninstinct.\u201d What he means was stronger in him than literature; it guided\nhis acts, conditioned his life; and it is certainly a most German\nthought to think that this secret instinct, this element of the d\u00e6monic\nand super-personal in him, was: the urge of destiny, the spirit of\nhistory.\n\nHe was a sacrifice. He felt, indeed, that he had sacrificed himself:\nhis youth to his father, his manhood to the State. But he erred if he\nbelieved that a choice was open to him. He was a sacrifice. He had to\ndo wrong, he had to lead a life contrary to his thoughts, he had to\nbe not a philosopher but a king, in order that the destiny of a great\npeople might be fulfilled.\n\n1914\n\n\n\n\n                                   III\n\n                       AN EXPERIENCE IN THE OCCULT\n\n\n\n\n                       AN EXPERIENCE IN THE OCCULT\n\n\nFull though this world is of problems--moral, social, intellectual,\nartistic--weighty problems, the treatment of which must redound to\nthe credit of any writer, shedding reflected lustre on his name and\nreaping him the praises of a grateful public; yet I here venture to\napproach you with a theme which even I myself cannot do otherwise than\nregard as preposterous, and, indeed, suspect. Surprise and contempt, I\nknow, will be my portion from the general at my choice of it. But do\npeople choose their subjects, I ask? No, they write and they talk of\nwhat they are ridden by, and nothing else; and that though the themes\na man neglects may lay claim to pre-eminent importance, and the one\nwhich has taken his reason captive be actually mischievous. And all my\ngood, respectable ideas have been vitiated by personal contacts and\nobservations, which are at once so puerile, and yet to such a degree\nunexplainable (if I may talk about degrees of unexplainableness), that\nI cannot get away from them, and find myself, for the moment at least,\nspoilt for the contemplation of those more unsullied, those saner,\nchaster realms of thought where I could move with so much honour and\ncredit to myself. I say spoilt. And truly it is a sort of corruption\nwhich breathes from the region I have in mind: that probably not\ndeep, yet subterraneous region, that turbid and equivocal plane of\nexistence, with which, in my folly, I have put myself in touch; it\nlures me astray from my lawful concerns to those which I know full well\nare none of mine, though they exercise upon my fancy and my brain a\npungent attraction, like the fumes of wood-alcohol (by contrast with\nthe bouquet from the pure wine of the spirit of civilization). Well\ndo I comprehend how a man may fall victim to them as to a vice, and\nthrough that monomaniac, vain-foolish preoccupation be lost for ever to\nthe moral upper world.\n\nMy case is no other than this: I have fallen into the hands of the\noccultists. Not precisely the spiritualists--though there were some of\nthem too in the gathering I lately visited. But we must distinguish.\nThe spiritualistic dogma is by no means obligatory, among the group\nof international scholars--not such a very small group now--whose\nmembers call themselves occultists because they are given to the\nstudy of phenomena which at present seem to us to contradict the\nnatural order as we know it. The whole spirit-theory, as a method of\nexplaining certain puzzles, is even, by many investigators, rejected\nwith a gesture of stern scientific probity. And yet in fairness it\nmust be said that in the production of occult events these scientific\ngentlemen do take advantage of the supra-normal, or at all events\nanormal disposition of certain persons who do not weigh very heavy in\nthe intellectual scale; and that this technique (I refer, of course, to\nthe somnambulistic state of the so-called mediums) constantly passes\nover into the transcendental and metaphysical. But metaphysics, of\ncourse, is not spiritualism; even less is spiritualism metaphysics. The\ndifference in degree is so great as to become a difference in kind;\nand it is surely quite comprehensible that philosophical metaphysics\nshould aim to keep spiritualism at arm\u2019s length. For spiritualism--the\nbelief in spirits, ghosts, _revenants_, spook intelligences with whom\none gets into touch by interrogating a table and getting the most\nutter banalities by way of reply--spiritualism is in fact a kind of\nbackstairs metaphysics, a blind credulity which is on the one hand\nnot up to the conception of idealistic speculation, and on the other\nhand quite incapable of metaphysical orgies of emotion. A good example\nof the first alternative is Schopenhauer\u2019s masterpiece _The World as\nWill and Idea_; while in Wagner\u2019s _Tristan und Isolde_ we possess the\nclassic _opus metaphysicum_. And one only needs to mention these lofty\nflights of intuition to feel at once the lamentable triviality of the\nwhole of that which calls itself spiritualism--though what it is is\nnot so much metaphysics as it is a Sunday afternoon diversion for the\nservants\u2019 hall.\n\nBut is human dignity a criterion of truth? Yes, in a way it is.\nThere is a man, Herr Krall of Elberfeld, well known for his famous\ncalculating horses, a man whose trade and activities hover on the\nborders of the occult. I heard Herr Krall say: \u201cIf there are ghosts,\nthen there is every reason why a man should pray for a long life; for\nthere could not possibly be anything more insipid, childish, futile,\nconfused, and pathetic than the existence of these creatures, to judge\nfrom their supposed manifestations.\u201d One is reminded of the famous\nutterance of the shade of Achilles on the Cimmerian shore, the time\nthat Odysseus held a seance there. Vain and senseless, the son of\nPeleus calls the existence of the dead; and, after all, the pagan world\nmight so conceive the life after death, without making any mistake\nabout this one as truth, fact, or dogma. On the other hand, it would\ngo very much against the grain for a Christian to conceive another\nworld in which things were even paltrier, stupider, and more futile\nthan they are in this our earthly sphere; and when, as indeed it may\neasily happen, an intelligence knocks on a table and introduces itself\nto society as the spirit of Aristotle or Napoleon Bonaparte, only to\nbelie the statement by a hundred blunders, gaucheries, and obviously\nintentional shufflings, then I think we are justified, on grounds\nof taste, in the conclusion that this is not only not Aristotle or\nNapoleon, it is nobody at all, but only acting as though it were;\nand that any complaisance toward such goings-on is beneath all human\ndignity.\n\nNow, this would all be well and good if only there did not linger a\ndoubt whether dignity and good taste are absolute criteria in the field\nof science, in the search for truth, in that process, in short, whereby\nnature explores herself through the mind of man. Dignity there is\nonly in the province of pure spirit; and metaphysics, in the sense of\ntranscendental speculation in the theory of knowledge, belongs to that\nprovince. But when metaphysics becomes empirical; when it condescends,\nor begins to feel the obligation, or yields to the temptation, to track\nout the riddle of the universe _experimentally_--and that is what\nit does in occultism, which is nothing but empirical, experimental\nmetaphysics--then it must not count on keeping its hands clean or\nits bearing stately. The only dignity it has left is the irreducible\nremnant that must cleave to all honourable service in the cause of\ntruth; and it must make up its mind that it will have to deal with a\ngreat deal of filth and foolishness. For mediumism and somnambulism,\nthe sources of occult phenomena, are a mixing of suprasensual mysteries\nwith the mystery of organic life; and the result is turbid. There is\nno longer any talk of taste, of mental or spiritual _niveau_, or of\nthe beauty of rashness. For here nature takes the field; and nature\nis an equivocal element: impure, obscene, spiteful, d\u00e6monic; while\nman, proud man, in his very essence opposed to her, loves to put on an\naristocratic air and find his own peculiar dignity in forgetting that\nhe is a child of nature just as much as he is a child of spirit. And\nyet, if one were seriously, on humane grounds, to forbid metaphysics\nto become experimental--that is, to practise occultism--that would be\nto deny to natural research, to knowledge of nature in general, every\nhuman value and importance, as did the Middle Ages and the Church. As\nthough the exact natural sciences themselves stop at the point where\nan encounter with metaphysics becomes unavoidable! The fact that I\nknow and understand very little of the famous doctrines of Einstein\n(except that, more or less, things have a fourth dimension--namely,\ntime) prevents me as little as it does every other intelligent layman\nfrom seeing that in this doctrine of relativity the border-line between\nmathematical physics and metaphysics has become fluid. Is it still\n\u201cphysics,\u201d or what is it, when they tell us--and they are telling us\ntoday--that matter is ultimately and inmostly not material, it is just\none manifestation of energy, and its smallest parts, which are neither\nsmall nor large, are, though surrounded indeed by time-spatial fields\nof power, themselves timeless and spaceless?\n\nBut enough of theorizing. Let us get on to my experiences. They begin\nat my acquaintance with a man about whom opinions have been of late\nstrongly divided, some finding him a charlatan and traitor betrayed,\nothers respecting him as a genuine and meritorious investigator, and\none of the initiators of a new science. He is Dr. Albert Freiherr von\nSchrenck-Notzing. A practising physician, from a family of physicians,\nspecialist in nervous diseases, sexual pathologist, he more than\nthirty years ago arrived at the study of the occult by the route of\nhypnotism and somnambulism. It appears that for a time he leaned toward\nspiritualism; but today he rejects it, and refers all the unexplainable\nphenomena he evokes and observes to the operation of unknown but\nnatural forces, which will in time be recognized as such.\n\nThe appearance of his book _Phenomena of Materialization_, a few\nyears before the war, produced a full-grown public scandal. From the\nofficial and learned world came a perfect hail of protests against such\na combination of credulity, confused thinking, and fraud. The public,\nin so far as it came to hear about it at all, held its sides with\nlaughter; and really the book was a severe trial of our seriousness,\nas to both text and illustrations--photographs which struck one\nas at once silly and grotesque. Evidence was not lacking that Dr.\nSchrenck-Notzing had been bamboozled--and this was probably true in\nmore than one case. Most unfortunately, the mediumistic faculty,\nhowever genuine, is no guarantee of good character. On the contrary, it\neven seems to have a perfect flair for mystification. Anyhow, it looked\nfor years as though Schrenck-Notzing had irretrievably damaged his good\nname as a scholar.\n\nThe years passed. The war came and with it undreamed-of chances and\nchanges. When the second volume of _Phenomena of Materialization_\ncame out, it was in an entirely altered atmosphere. Not that the\nsecond volume was less crazy than the first, or that the official\nworld of science, the press, or the public welcomed it more cordially\nthan before. No, there was no stinting of scorn and contumely. But\nboth seemed to lack conviction, to be less fortified than before by\ncomfortable self-assurance. There was a mild resignation, a fatalistic\n_laissez-faire_ in the air. People had borne so much they never dreamed\nof bearing, such outrageous experiences had been their lot, that\neven their honest indignation lacked the right ring; it betrayed an\nunmistakable tendency to compound.\n\nIn politics there is always a right and a left wing. So in the\nscientific world there is, with reference to the occult, a strongly\nconservative and a radical-revolutionist position, together with all\nsorts of shadings and gradings between, on the one hand, obstinate\ndenial of all rationally unexplainable but persistently reported\nmanifestations like telepathy, true-dreaming, and second sight, and,\non the other, a fanatical and uncritical credulity, based, this last,\nless on a solid reverence for the mystery than an inhuman prejudice\nagainst all reason and science. And the intransigent conservative\nposition has a good deal on its side--as, after all, it has in politics\ntoo. For between the right and the left lies an inclined plane where\nit is only too easy to slip; to concede belief in one single case\nof the occult is to reach your little finger to a devil who almost\ninfallibly ends by taking the whole hand and therewith the whole man.\n_Principiis obsta!_ There is beginning to prevail in Germany today a\ndangerous liberalism in the camp of orthodox science--in Germany, which\nmight hitherto have been regarded as the stronghold of conservatism\nin this respect. Abroad--in England, in France--there had always been\na more yielding temper, and more often displayed. (I will not speak\nof America, where an unnecessary amount of humbug seems to have got\nmixed up with occult studies.) Perhaps we Germans were influenced by\nthe fact that Schrenck-Notzing\u2019s book was translated into English;\nthat the Society for Psychical Research two years ago summoned to\nLondon his principal medium, a person named Eva C., and published a\nvery serious report of the sittings with her; that French savants like\nRichet, Flammarion, Gustave Geley, Dr. Bourbon, and others supported\nthis report in its boldness, tested its experiments, confirmed\nits results. All in all, a slight shakiness is evident, a certain\ndemoralization of our conservative and sceptical front. There are\ntraitors, and the traitors are secret before they become public. There\nare university professors, and not only philosophers and psychologists,\nbut natural scientists, physicists, physiologists, and physicians,\nwho take advantage of the bad street-lighting in Munich to steal like\nconspirators to the evening sittings of Herr von Schrenck-Notzing to\nsee what it does not profit them to see. For they must know, and they\ndo, that the only way of remaining intact is to shut their eyes and\nnot see. They are lost, or as good as lost, it is all up with their\nscepticism--or, rather, their scepticism _begins_--when they see. There\nare instances. A much-sought-after Munich oculist openly confessed\nthat after what he had seen at Schrenck-Notzing\u2019s he had grown \u201cvery\ncautious in his scepticism.\u201d A charming phrase--the most equivocal\nphrases are usually the charmingest. For I aver that that can be no\ntrue scepticism which is not sceptical of itself; and a sceptic, in\nmy humble view, is not merely one who believes the prescribed things\nand averts his eyes from everything that might imperil his virtue.\nRather your true sceptic will, in ordinary language, find all sorts of\nthings possible, and he will not, for the sake of convention, deny the\nevidence of his sound senses.\n\nAs for me, I have always stood, theoretically, rather far left in this\nbusiness of the occult; holding, in the sense of the thoroughgoing\nscepticism I just defined, that all sorts of things are quite possible;\nbut not boasting any personal or practical experience in suprasensual\nrealms. I have rested in a theoretical benevolence. I have felt, and\nmay have even casually expressed, a desire to attend a sitting, but\nnothing came of it, and that nothing came of it was probably my own\ndoing.\n\nAnd now? At the present moment? Just lately? You must let me tell\nthe tale as it fell out. I had a visitor, an artist man from a comic\npaper, with an order to make a caricature of me. Very good. He drew me\na crooked nose, and one thing led up to another. God knows how we came\nto speak of Herr von Schrenck-Notzing. Had I heard that he was working\nwith a new medium, my guest asked, as he went on cracking jokes with\nhis pencil. It was a youth, hardly a man yet, named Willy S., a dentist\nby profession and a devil of a fellow in the psychical line. Schrenck\ngot perfectly crazy manifestations through him. He had discovered him,\nbrought him to Munich, found him lodgings and a job, besides paying a\ndeposit to ensure Willy\u2019s exclusive services. He had been working with\nhim a year now, and had him so well trained, psychically speaking, that\nWilly, unlike most mediums, could endure an almost constant change\nof audience, with the rarest disappointments. That was important for\nSchrenck-Notzing for the sake of the propaganda.--\u201cMight one get to see\na sitting?\u201d I asked. The artist man thought it quite possible. He knew\nSchrenck-Notzing, and he would like to go to one himself. Leave it to\nhim, he would arrange an invitation.\n\nSo it came about. There followed an appointment by telephone; and one\nwinter evening at eight o\u2019clock, toward Christmas-time, I found myself\non the tram with my caricaturist, bound for the seance. Both of us were\nin high spirits, exhilarated, curious, in a mood between bluster and\nfunk, something like the feelings of a young man going for the first\ntime to a girl.\n\nThe palatial residence of Baron von Schrenck-Notzing is near the\nKarolinenplatz, in an exclusive quarter. We arrived, and a servant led\nus through a marble vestibule and up some steps to an antechamber.\nAs we took off our things we were greeted by our host, with cool,\naristocratic politeness, and ushered into a good-sized library, where\nthe other participants in the coming seance were already gathered.\nOnly one of them was known to me. I addressed him, expressing my\nsurprise at finding him here. This was Professor G., the zoologist,\nan enthusiastic sportsman, ski-runner, yachtsman, and Alpinist, a\nbeardless, young-looking man, though certainly in the middle forties;\ndistinctly out-of-doorish and nature-loving--I should never have taxed\nhim with any hankerings after the occult. Introductions followed. I\nwas delighted to meet Emanuel Reicher, celebrated actor and hyphenated\nAmerican, just then living in Germany. Then there was the medium\u2019s\nhousekeeper and foster-mother, a widow in middle life, named Frau P.\nLikewise a Polish artist, blond and clean-shaven, full of friendly talk\nin a gruff, hearty voice. Then this and that member of the Schwabing\nintelligentsia. But the intellectual laity were outnumbered, on this\noccasion at least, by the medical men and natural scientists. There\nwas another professor of zoology, a typical _Gelehrter_, mild and shy;\na young doctor from Switzerland; a still youthful German physician,\nassistant at a Munich hospital, who had brought along an apparatus to\nmeasure blood-pressure; a jolly, fair-haired lady specialist in nerve\nmassage.... Many of those present were novices, Reicher for one. He\nseemed to have no affiliations with the occult, but merely with the\nsocial circle represented.\n\nThe medium, Willy S., kept rather in the background. The Baron\nintroduced me to him among others. \u201cHere,\u201d he said, \u201cis our star\nperformer.\u201d He repeated the phrase more than once, obviously with the\nidea of stimulating the young man\u2019s sense of importance, but also by\nway of prepossessing me in favour of this precious and delicately\norganic instrument of his experiments. In my case, his concern was\nquite unnecessary. My sympathies were boundless, and I took pains to\nlet our artist feel that I was no hostile onlooker, present with the\nsole idea of pouncing and unmasking, with a bellow of triumph. I was\na sceptic on the positive side, who would rejoice at his success--I\nwished him to know that. Deception? Between deception and reality\nthere were many degrees, and at some point they were one. Perhaps\nthere was a sort of natural deception, which might be just as good to\ntalk to as reality! I had come hither, not humbugging myself in the\nleast, to see what there was to be seen, just that, no more and no\nless. I exchanged a few words with Willy S. and tried to get an idea\nof his personality. I found a dark-haired youth of some eighteen or\nnineteen, not unattractive, certainly with nothing striking about him.\nHis origins were plainly simple; his speech a South-German-Austrian\ndialect, and his manner decent and friendly, with no signs of wanting\nto curry favour by over-politeness. His answers to my matter-of-fact\nquestions were monosyllabic; and he seemed, quite excusably, in a sort\nof stage-fright, a state of suppressed excitement united with the\nshyness natural to his youth.\n\nThe young clinician summoned Master Willy to have his blood-pressure\nmeasured, and I turned away and followed our host\u2019s invitation to have\na look round in the laboratory adjoining. It was a large room, filled\nwith a confusion of photographic apparatus and arrangements for a\nmagnesium flash-light. There were tables and chairs upon which stood\nor lay a variety of objects: a music-box, a little table-bell with a\nhandle, a typewriter, several white felt rings, and so on--objects\nuninteresting in themselves, which yet would be employed by young\nWilly to accomplish strange matters. We shall come back to them. There\nwas a sort of cage made of fine wire in which they had confined the\nyouth during a severely scientific and critical sitting. It had not\nprevented him from doing what they could not explain. Lastly there was\nthe so-called \u201cblack cabinet,\u201d about which so much had been said and\nso much more whispered. Some of Willy\u2019s predecessors had been sorely\nin need of it. I looked within. There was nothing special about it.\nIndifferent lumber stood behind the ceiling-high curtain which shut\noff one corner of the room from the rest. \u201cWe shall not require the\ncabinet,\u201d said Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing. Willy did not need it. He was\nstrong. He sat right out in the room in his operations. So much the\nbetter. My positive scepticism had swallowed the cabinet too--but if\nWilly was strong, why, so much the better. We returned to the library.\nBeyond it lay a study with a writing-table, where Willy made his toilet\nfor the sitting.\n\nHe did not make it by himself. By no means. He made it under the\nargus-eyed control of three persons: the master of the house and\ntwo assistants. This time Dr. von Schrenck appointed as assistants\nthe lively nerve-specialist and myself. And we obliged him--though\nprivately I doubted my fitness for the office. I felt lax and\nbenevolent, and inclined to regard the supervision as a formality. I\nam not at home in the r\u00f4le of misdoubting observer; it embarrasses me,\nit is repugnant to my humanity. You cannot expect a man to turn you\nhis good side when you take his bad one for granted. This youth now\ngirding up his loins to perform marvels--why should I dash his spirits\nby showing him I suspected him of preparing to take me in? I am a\nsceptic, but I want something to happen. Yet might not that be the most\nfundamental and extreme form of scepticism? Perhaps I, in my laxity and\nbenevolence, was the most unbelieving of all?--But no more, for the\nmoment. Make your toilet, young man, I will watch you.\n\nThe Baron showed us the black, one-piece tricot affair in which Willy\nwas to cover himself from neck to ankle. He urged us to subject it\nto a careful scrutiny, to feel it all over. He laid great stress\non a critical attitude. A garment, of cotton tricot. Very good. No\nsign of deception about that; and Willy drew it on over his tanned,\nboyish body. As he did so I caught a shy and solemn look he cast at my\ncolleague, the blonde lady nerve-specialist, who blithely regarded the\nceiling. But in nothing but the tricot the chap would freeze, that was\nhumanly plain; so they gave him a dressing-gown besides, a comfortable\nold wadded kimono of the Baron\u2019s, which likewise we conscientiously\nexamined, pockets, lining, and all. A good-natured old dressing-gown.\nGood. But it had one curious feature: the Baron explained it to us. It\nwas trimmed all over with ribbons, on the sleeves, the seams, the hem,\nsewed on everywhere. And these ribbons had been treated with a luminous\npreparation so that you would be able to see the outline of Willy\u2019s\nfigure even by a dim light and easily keep it in your eye. That seemed\na sensible precaution. More luminous ribbon went like a diadem about\nhis head; he stuck his feet into an old pair of Turkish slippers. They\ncompleted the preparations. Or no. For when he stood arrayed he opened\nhis jaws very wide, like a lion, as though to swallow us. I gasped;\nuntil it was explained to me that this was a matter of controlling the\nmouth cavity. The deuce! And I had been within an ace of forgetting the\nmouth cavity. He already had one gold tooth in it, to the honour of his\ntrade. For the rest, it was an irreproachable mouth cavity. We saw it\nas far down as the glottis. In God\u2019s name, enough. We returned to the\nother room.\n\nA chorus of friendly shouts welcomed us. The old hands hailed their\nWilly in his professional disguise. It was a merry masquerade, and\nWilly himself, in his talar and priestly bands, laughed too, in\ngood-natured embarrassment. _Allons, mes enfants!_ The company trooped\ninto the laboratory and our host shut the door behind us.\n\nThings were looking serious. Unnatural events were to take place in\nthis strange room that was like a photographic studio even down to the\nobjects to distract the children\u2019s minds with. I confess to a little\nfaint-heartedness, an inner resistance, a doubt whether I, personally,\nwas a suitable candidate for the enterprise. But now the conductor of\nthe experiment, all unsolicited, entrusted me with the control of the\nmedium, Willy\u2019s landlady, Frau P., acting as the second control; and\nbegan at once to instruct me in the technique. And technique it was, in\nall seriousness, very thorough and gratifying indeed. I sat opposite to\nthe young man, with my chair close to his, his two knees between mine.\nI held both his hands and my assistant both his wrists. Nobody could\ndeny--and I was far from doing so--that Willy was in safe arrest; we\nsat and looked idiotically at each other, while the rest of the company\ntook their places chattering.\n\nWe were grouped in front of the curtain, in an irregular circle,\nthree-quarters closed. At one end sat the medium, with us \u201ccontrols,\u201d\nand at the other the master of the house. Not all those present found\na place in this circle; two or three people had to move back into a\nsecond row, where they stood or sat as they liked. Among them was the\nsporting zoology professor, who to my astonishment had armed himself\nwith an accordion. It appeared that he was a skilled performer on this\ninstrument, in demand for excursions and summer evening garden-parties,\nand particularly welcome in such gatherings as the present one, for a\nmedium needs music, almost continuous music, for his demonstrations--a\ntemperamental requirement which it would be foolish not to gratify.\nProfessor G. with his concertina added variety to a programme which\nwould otherwise have been furnished only by a music-box that played one\nsingle and not even very pleasing tune.\n\nThe room was still lighted by ordinary white electricity, by which the\nBaron put the finishing touches to his arrangements. A little table\nstood in our circle, not precisely in the middle, rather nearer to our\nhost than to the medium, from whom it was some five feet distant. The\nBaron measured the distance with a yardstick, and then placed several\nobjects upon it: a lamp in a red shade, the table-bell, a plate of\nflour, a little slate and piece of chalk. A sizable wastepaper-basket\nstood upside-down by the table, with a music-box on it; not the one\nthat was to play (that stood on a shelf behind the Baron\u2019s chair), but\na smaller affair on which Herr Willy\u2019s powers were to be displayed.\nThe typewriter the Baron set somewhere on the carpet near himself;\nthen he strewed felt rings about the floor within the circle. They\nwere luminous, like the ribbons on Willy\u2019s clothes, and to one or two\nof them was attached a longish, luminous string. Furthermore, all the\nlarger objects, so far as was practicable, the waste-paper-basket, the\nmusic-box, the table-bell, were marked with luminous ribbons as well.\nThese ribbons were the Baron\u2019s own invention, he rather prided himself\non them and used them in profusion.... The light went out.\n\nBut it was turned on again; for Willy, sitting there in my arrest and\nstill in his waking senses, had remembered something. \u201cThe pins, Herr\nBaron,\u201d he said. He referred, did this honourable youth, to another\nprecautionary measure which had been overlooked. The Baron bestuck the\nsleeves and skirt of the velvet dressing-gown with pins that had thick,\nwhite, illuminated heads. Others of the same kind already stuck in the\ncurtains, right and left of the opening, so that every movement in\ntheir folds must betray itself. Once more the white light was turned\noff. The only illumination now was a dark red shimmer from the shrouded\nceiling light, and from the little lamp on the table, which was\nlikewise shaded. For the unadjusted eye rather a scanty illumination.\nBut the Baron assured us that it was the best he could do. His utmost\nefforts had not succeeded in securing a greater toleration for light.\n\u201cI struggle,\u201d he said, \u201cfor every ray, but this is all I can get, up\nto now.\u201d However, Willy himself gave out light; so did the felt rings,\nthe bands on the other objects, and the pins in the curtains. After\nall, the field of operations was visible; and after a little while the\ntop of the table seemed really quite well lighted. We were asked for a\nlittle silence, in which the music-box performed its single number, a\nclear and childish tune with a brief recurring melody and a tinkling\naccompaniment. We waited. I in particular waited, with Willy\u2019s hands in\nmine, neither too tight nor too loose.\n\nSuddenly, after two or three minutes, he shivered. A shudder ran\nthrough him, and his arms, taking mine along, began to perform pumping\nand thrusting motions. His breath came short and thick.\n\n\u201cTrance,\u201d announced my experienced assistant.\n\nSo the chap had fallen into a trance under my hands! I had never\nobserved this state before, and gave it my profoundest attention,\nconvinced as I am that it is a condition of the most far-reaching\nimplications. While it lasts, Willy\u2019s ego is divided into two symbolic\npersons, for the purposes of his dream-performance, a male and a\nfemale. He calls them Erwin and Minna. Childishness. Hocus-pocus.\nNobody takes Erwin and Minna seriously; but for the sake of the\nbusiness in hand we are fain to humour the whim: from now on we ignore\nWilly\u2019s existence and stick to these two, who have a simple way of\nmaking clear which is which. Erwin is a lout. He manifests himself by\nthe vigour with which Willy lays about him, but seldom does anything\nworth seeing; leaving the serious business to his milder and more\nefficient sister. My assistant thought it was Minna who was now shaking\nus and pumping with our arms.\n\n\u201cIs Minna there?\u201d asked the Baron.\n\nYes, she was there. I receive one quick, firm pressure of Willy\u2019s hand;\nthat is Minna\u2019s way of saying yes. For no there is a sideways motion of\nthe hands and torso, to and fro. Moreover, the somnambulist will speak\nto the controls; his voice is a quick, loud, thick-tongued whisper,\nwith a certain intensity in it.\n\nThe Baron greets Minna. \u201cGood-evening, Minna. There are good friends\nhere, most of them you know, a few are new, but you don\u2019t mind that, do\nyou?\u201d\n\nA to-and-fro movement in denial.\n\n\u201cToday the control is a very sympathetic man, full of the most cordial\ninterest in you and your powers. I hope you will show him something\nnice.\u201d\n\nA squeeze of my hand, a short forward thrust of Willy\u2019s torso. Yes, she\npromises--absurdly enough, one involuntarily says \u201cshe.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell then, Minna, do your best.\u201d\n\nAnd a general conversation begins. It has to begin, the medium exacts\nit. \u201cTalk,\u201d he babbles in my ear, and I pass the word on. The company\nhave formed a chain and are sitting hand in hand. This may be a vestige\nof spiritualistic parlour games, it may be an organic necessity. Hard\nto tell. Anyway, Willy insists on it, and keeps whispering us to keep\nthe chain firm. My neighbour on the left is in touch with me too, his\nright hand rests on my shoulder and arm. We talk into the darkness,\nsaying anything that comes into our heads, scarcely knowing to whom. It\nis not easy. The subject-matter dwindles, the forced conversation keeps\nbreaking off or dying away, for our real attention is not upon it. But\nwe are warned against watching too eagerly for phenomena. Our leader\nrecommends a hovering attitude, a mood of suspension, which may be\nevoked by the music that now mingles with our loud, artificial voices.\nThe zoology professor has struck up behind us on his concertina,\nwheezing out a brisk succession of lively marches. His resources are\napparently endless; and when he falters, the music-box takes up the\nstrain with its tinkling little tune.\n\nA fantastic setting. It is not hard to see why science, which sets\nstore by exact values, is at home in the dry, objective air of the\nlaboratory and used to purely abstract work with apparatus and prepared\nsubjects, should feel put off with this all too human kind of\nexperimentation. It is the same with the layman. He has come keyed up\nto a suggestive atmosphere and a mood of consecration and mystery. He\nis disappointed to find himself in a situation which probably disgusts\nhim both intellectually and \u00e6sthetically, suggesting as it does the\nmawkish revival methods of the Salvation Army. This impression is\nstrengthened by the shouts with which the audience keeps encouraging\nthe medium--or, rather, the officiating Minna: \u201cHullo, Minna, are you\nthere? Buck up, show us what you can do! Get on with it, Minna!\u201d The\none mystical thing about the situation--and that not in any spiritual\nsense, but with reference to organic mysteries, primitive and affecting\nat once--is the medium himself, as he tosses and threshes with his\narms, whispering in quick groans and pants: he is the primary object\nof my curiosity. His condition and actions quite strikingly and\nunmistakably remind me of the act of parturition. The head is now\nthrown far back, now it sinks on my shoulder or on our hands, which are\nso wet with perspiration that I constantly need to renew my grip. His\nefforts come at intervals, like throes; the pauses between are times\nof complete rest and inaccessibility, during which he sleeps, the head\ndrooping sideways on the chest, and assembles new powers. This is deep\ntrance, from which he rouses himself to resume his procreative labour.\n\nA masculine lying-in, in a reddish darkness, amid chatter and shoutings\nand jazz. It was like nothing else in the world. I reflected that\nit would have been quite worth seeing even if nothing else were\nto happen. And really it looked as though nothing else would. The\n\u201cchild\u201d did not come. Nothing supernatural felt inclined to show\nitself. True, some of our audience, in their eagerness to see things,\nanticipated them. Two of the illuminated pins had come out of Willy\u2019s\ndressing-gown, though they had been stuck in deep and firmly. They lay\non the floor, one of them rather far off him. The eager said they had\nbeen taken; but it was quite possible if not probable that Willy\u2019s\nwrithings had forced them out. But then, what about the two lighted\nrings which had lain immediately in front of the curtain? They had\noriginally been visible in all their circumference, not partly hidden\nby the hangings; but in the course of the last few minutes their\nposition had changed, you could see only about a third of them now;\neither the curtain had moved forward or the rings back, while the next\ntime you looked, see, they were once more entirely visible, free of\nthe curtain and not beneath it. And that was a manifestation. A poor,\nuncertain one, but it had to suffice. And had I not felt the breath of\ncooler air the medium exhaled--that always heralded new phenomena? No,\nto be frank, I should have welcomed any breath of cooler air, but I had\nnoticed nothing of the sort.\n\nAnd time passes. It is hard to judge how much has passed already;\nperhaps three-quarters of an hour. Evidently the medium is having a\nhard time. They ask if this is the case, but he denies it and goes\non struggling. They ask if everything is in order, and the answer is\nyes. But I don\u2019t believe him. Privately I take on myself the blame for\nour lack of success. From the first I had doubted whether my nature\nwould be helpful to the good Willy at his work; and now I am certain\nthat there in his beyond he shares my doubts. He denies it, of course;\nthat is the merest politeness--however odd it may sound to speak of\nsomnambulistic politeness. So far as I can observe, it is by no means\nimpossible that civilized and personal considerations have a hampering\neffect in this condition; nor did Willy absolutely deny that this was\nso. He said in a whisper: \u201cDo you want the phenomena to come faster?\u201d\nWell? And what then? Silence. Did he want a pause? Still silence. Then\nhe began to kick with his feet; the Baron counted. Fifteen times. A\nfifteen-minute pause, then. Good. We stop, temporarily.\n\nThe medium is given time to come to before the light is turned on.\nHe made wonderful preparations: scraping motions of hand and arm at\nhis side, which, in his fancy at least, served to draw in the organic\nforces which had been sent out but not yet manifested. He woke in a\nseries of starts and blinked stupidly at the light. We betook ourselves\ninto the next room.\n\nCigarettes were lighted. Willy smoked too, sitting on the sofa in\nhis costume. The position was discussed. It was far from being\ndiscouraging. A temporary hitch. The need of rest was not unusual.\nAn absolutely negative sitting occurred very seldom with our Willy.\nNothing was lost. Willy\u2019s foster-mother diverted us with tales of their\ndomestic experiences. They would probably have to move into another\napartment. People objected to the uncalled-for things that were always\nhappening, wherever Willy was: spontaneous phenomena, signs and\nwonders. Fists knocked on the walls. Hands did things nobody told them\nto. A spook had showed itself most unexpectedly at the dining-room\ndoor. The cook had seen it, and fled with a shriek. All that was to\nthe good. However, as for us we had so far drawn a blank. The young\nclinician took a new measurement with his blood-pressure apparatus, for\npurposes of comparison, and discussed its result with Dr. von Schrenck.\nFifteen minutes. The Baron signed for the renewal of the sitting.\n\nI felt sure that Willy had contrived the pause in order to get the\ncontrol changed, and so I insisted on giving up my office. But our\nhost would not hear to it. No, no. We must not give way to all Minna\u2019s\nlittle whims. For the sake of the impression I should get, it was\nnecessary I should have the medium in my personal charge. But I might\ntake the second place, Frau P.\u2019s, and give the first to someone else,\neither Herr Reicher or Herr von K. Better Herr von K. \u201cCome on, Herr\nvon K. You always manage to get it out of her.\u201d\n\nVon K. was the Polish painter, the man with the gruff and hearty\nvoice. He was a direct and vigorous character and the medium\u2019s\nfavourite control. When a session seemed likely to be a failure,\nthey always called on him. He held Willy\u2019s hands and encouraged him\nwith a geniality of which he alone possessed the secret; and almost\nalways something happened. \u201c_Gr\u00fcss\u2019 Gott, Minna!_ Old friends together\nagain, that\u2019s fine, I think, and surely you think the same? You do,\neh? Right-oh--but listen to me, not so hard! You\u2019ll pull my shoulder\nout. Minna, is that the way you love me?\u201d Like that. Willy requires\nthis sort of thing, and almost always responds to it. Soon after the\nred light went on again, he had fallen into the magnetic trance. The\nmusic-box rippled, the concertina took its turn. The lying-in went on.\n\nMy position was awkward, bent over as I was, without anything to lean\non; but I clutched Willy\u2019s wrists oblivious of all else, and was shaken\nby his wrestling. He pulls us to and fro, he pumps and trembles, tosses\nand writhes, whispers with foaming lips: \u201cTalk, talk!\u201d \u201cThe chain,\nthe chain!\u201d \u201cThe chain,\u201d repeats the devoted von K. \u201cSurely my Minna\nmay ask that the circle be properly closed!\u201d The longer we sit, the\nharder we have to try to keep the dwindling conversation going. The\nBaron encourages us. \u201cTalk, gentlemen. Professor G., you are going\nto sleep. Herr Mann, are you talking?\u201d \u201cYes, Baron, I am talking as\nhard as I can.\u201d The audience pulls itself together and utters the\nsheerest twaddle into the dark. Reicher, the actor, helps himself out\nwith a sonorous \u201c_Rhabarber, Rhabarber!_\u201d The music is painful. We are\nweary to tears of the music-box\u2019s one tinkling little tune, but when\nthe concertina sets in, with wheezing and puffing, then we want the\nharmless tinkling back again. If it is hard for Willy, it is not easy\nfor us. Almost another hour has passed since the intermission. My back\naches, but I ignore it. The medium starts out of deep trance. He gives\na violent jerk, and seems to be trying to expel something by means of\nlurches and lunges. \u201cBrava, Minna,\u201d von K. cajoles her. \u201cYou\u2019re on\nthe way, we can all see that. You\u2019ve only to take hold, it will be\nwonderful, I\u2019ll like you twice as much.\u201d In vain. Not a sign. Even Herr\nvon K.\u2019s blandishments are without result. Resignation glides into all\nour hearts. For my part, I feel I have no luck with the mysteries.\nI shall go on as before, granting the possibility of all sorts of\nthings; but I shall have seen nothing. Well, so much the worse for me.\nDyed-in-the-wool materialists have spent evenings here. So have open\nenemies, protesting that the whole thing was a trick. So have irascible\nphysicists with their insistence on the laws of nature. And one and\nall have come and seen and gone away with their so-called scepticism\nshaken. Whereas my scepticism, which by comparison with theirs is\nbelief, a faith in nothing and everything--what name shall I give\nit?--will have proved essentially unproductive, nihilistic. A slight,\nunmistakable bitterness comes over me. Well, anyhow, the impressions of\nthe evening have been worth taking away.\n\nOur host tries a last expedient. He takes a high tone, and speaks:\n\u201cNow, Minna, let\u2019s be fair. We have been sitting here over two hours,\nyou cannot say we have been impatient. But everything has its limits.\nWe\u2019ll give you another five or ten minutes, and then if nothing happens\nwe will call a halt, and these gentlemen will go home and some of\nthem will certainly think that you can do nothing. They will have no\nfaith in your powers and they will say so, and the sceptics will be\npleased.\u201d--\u201cNo, no,\u201d says von K., and seconds the Baron while seeming\nto contradict him. \u201cNo, Herr Baron, don\u2019t talk like that--isn\u2019t she\njust on the point of doing it? She knows best what she is about, does\nmy Minna; she puts out her little arm, and when she has stretched it\nfar enough--eh, what did you say? Want the music stopped? What did you\nsay, Minna darling?\u201d\n\nThe medium has interrupted him in a whisper. The music is still, we are\nall still. There comes again, in a painful stammer: \u201cThe handkerchief!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe handkerchief,\u201d repeats Herr von K. authoritatively. \u201cShe knows\njust what she is about; she is going to do it for us, is my little\nMinna!\u201d\n\n\u201cBy all means,\u201d says the Baron. \u201cIf that\u2019s all, here is the\nhandkerchief.\u201d He takes a large fresh one out of his pocket, holds it\nby one corner, and drops it on the floor near the table, where it lies,\na white gleam in the twilight. We all lean over and stare at it.\n\n\u201cPush the table further back,\u201d Willy whispers. His face is lying on his\nhands. Is that right? \u201cNo, not that way.\u201d He cannot see, but in his\ndream he knows what is going on, and that something is not as he would\nhave it. Impatiently, just as though he saw, he tells the Baron what\nto do. He wants the table further over, first somewhat to the left and\nthen nearer to our host. There. That is right. There is now more space\nbetween the table and the handkerchief. \u201cThe circle,\u201d whispers Willy;\nwe squeeze each other\u2019s hands. \u201cTalk,\u201d he whispers, and we hasten to\ncomply. I begin to utter some nonsense to my neighbour the Pole, I\nhave turned my head and begun to speak, when I hear somebody say, with\nartificial calm: \u201cIt\u2019s coming.\u201d I jerk my head round.\n\nYou know the place in _Lohengrin_, in the first act, after Else\u2019s\nprayer, when the chorus begins in unison: \u201c_Seht! Welch seltsam\nWunder!_\u201d It was just like that. The handkerchief had got up. It rose\nfrom the floor. Before all our eyes, with a swift, assured, vital,\nalmost beautiful movement it rose out of the shadow into the rays of\nlight, which coloured it reddish; I say rose, but rose is not the word.\nIt was not that it was wafted up, empty and fluttering. Rather it\nwas taken and lifted, there was an active agency in it, like a hand,\nyou could see the outline of the knuckles, from which it hung down\nin folds; it was manipulated from the inside, by some living thing,\ncompressed, shaken, made to change its shape, in the two or three\nseconds during which it was held up in the lamplight. Then, moving with\nthe same quiet assurance it returned to the floor.\n\nIt was not possible--but it happened. May lightning strike me if I\nlie. Before my uncorrupted eyes, which would have been just as ready\nto see nothing, in case nothing had been there, it happened. Indeed,\nit presently happened again. Scarcely had the handkerchief reached the\nfloor when it came back up again into the light, this time faster than\nbefore; plainly and unmistakably we saw something clutching it from\nwithin, the members of something that held it--it looked to be narrower\nthan a human hand, more like a claw. Down, and up again, for the third\ntime up. The handkerchief was violently shaken by the something inside\nit, and tossed toward the table, with a poor aim, for it hung by one\ncorner and then fell to the floor.\n\nLoud shouts of applause and vivas for Minna. Several times the Baron\nleaned over to ask me if I saw, if I could see everything quite\nclearly. I certainly did; how could I have helped it, unless I had\nshut my eyes? And I had never kept them wider open in my life. I\nhad seen greater things on this earth, more beautiful, more worthy\nof admiration. But never before had I seen the impossible happening\ndespite its own impossibility; and so I kept saying in rather a shaken\nvoice: \u201cVery good, very good!\u201d though for my own part I felt anything\nbut good. Here I sat, holding in my very own hands Willy\u2019s wrists in\ntheir tricot sleeves; while immediately next to me I saw his knees in\nthe custody of the Pole. Not a thought, not a notion, not the shadow\nof a possibility that the boy sleeping here could have done what was\nhappening there. And who else? Nobody. And still it was done. It gave\nme a queasy feeling.\n\nThe lifting of the handkerchief, I heard said round me, was regularly\nthe introductory phenomenon. The spell was broken. The medium, who\nhad been strangely still during these events, sat up with a shiver\nand whispered: \u201cPut away the music-box. The bell.\u201d \u201cThe bell,\u201d cries\nvon K., all enthusiasm. \u201cWhere is my Minna\u2019s bell? The bell, on\nthe basket! Good, now we\u2019re off again!\u201d The Baron obeys. He takes\naway the music-box and puts the bell on the wastepaper-basket, its\nribbons gleaming in the dusk, and the metal shining redly. Willy\ncarries his hands and ours to his brow. He sighs. Then the bell is\ntaken--impossible, of course, but it is taken--by a hand, for what\nelse can take a bell by the handle? Taken, lifted up, held high and\nslanting, rung violently, carried in a curve through the air, rung\nagain, and then with a swing and a clatter flung under the chair of one\nof the audience.\n\nSlight seasickness. Profound wonderment, with a tinge, not of horror,\nbut of disgust. Minna\u2019s praises resound, loud and unceasingly.\n\u201cUnbelievable!\u201d one of the novices cries out. Her head--what am I\nsaying? I mean his head, Willy\u2019s head--leans toward mine, like a little\nchild he lays his temple against mine. Good lad, nice lad! You have\ndone marvels. Shaken and respectful, I let his head rest against mine.\nBut the Baron says:\n\n\u201cHere, Minna, is something new for you. You haven\u2019t seen it yet, but\nit is quite easy to use. It is a bell. You press it, strike on it from\nabove, you see. Like this. Then it rings. You do it, Minna. Here is the\nbell.\u201d\n\nAnd he sets it on the basket. Tense expectation. At once we hear a\nfeeling round the bell, as though fingers were touching it uncertainly.\nThey take it up, shake it slightly; it rings, but not in the right way.\n\n\u201cNot like that,\u201d says the Baron. \u201cYou don\u2019t understand. Let me show\nyou. There, that\u2019s how it\u2019s done.\u201d He strikes the button. \u201cThe circle,\u201d\nwhispers Willy, quivering, against my cheek. But the Baron cannot make\nthe circle and strike the bell both at the same time. He asks Minna to\nrealize this. Hardly has he resumed his seat when the fingering and\ntouching begin again. At last the trick is successful. The fingers\nstrike the bell from above, weakly, like a child; but the task is\ndefinitely performed. The clapper sounds.\n\n\u201cBrava, Minna,\u201d shouts the audience. \u201cFantastic!\u201d somebody says. But we\nhave no time to surrender to our sensations; for more follows. Hardly\nhas the Baron taken away the bell, when the basket begins to move.\nSomething knocks it, it totters and tips over; then it is lifted from\nthe floor and held high in the air. It hangs there askew and unsteady\nin the red light, outlined by its illuminated ribbons, for three or\nfour seconds long, then tumbles to the floor.\n\n\u201cDid you see that? Did you see that?\u201d asks the Baron, pridefully. We\nadmit that we are impressed. Willy hangs sideways from his chair,\nin deep trance. Certainly a man must stand in need of profound and\ndreamless sleep, after so intense a dream that the events of it\nare actually projected outside of him! Wait. Let me think. Let me\nwithdraw within myself and try to divine where may be the point, when\nthe magical moment, in which a dream-picture objectivates itself and\nbecomes a spatial reality, before the eyes of other people. Nausea.\nClearly this point does not lie within the plane of our consciousness,\nor of the laws of knowledge as we know them. If anywhere, it is located\nin that state in which I see this lad now before me, and which is\ncertainly a gate--whither? Behind the house, behind the world?... But I\nadmit that this is not thinking at all--only a mild form of seasickness.\n\nTo set things going again, the Baron starts up the music-box. He also\nmakes a change in the control. Von K. and I are released. I grope my\nway in the dark to the other end of the chain and find a seat beside\nReicher, who sits next my host. I have the little table before me.\nAnd scarcely have I taken my chair, and my neighbours\u2019 hands, when a\nfingering begins at the music-box on the table. The Baron hastens to\nstop the music. And in the stillness, before my eyes, that see nothing\nwhatever, there is a scratching, rustling, and mysterious feeling-about\nover the handle of the instrument, a trying to turn it. Ah, you deep\nand immemorially light-shy creature, compact of dream and matter, what\nare you doing there in front of our noses? Crick, the handle is turned,\nthe works go round. \u201cTell it to stop,\u201d says the Baron. At my command it\nstops. \u201cGo on,\u201d I say. And the music plays. This happens several times.\nYou sit there, bending forward, you command the impossible, and you\nare obeyed, by a spook, a panic-striken little monster from behind the\nworld....\n\nA pause. Then arises a varied activity among the light rings on the\nfloor. They are shoved to and fro, tossed from place to place. One\nrises from the floor with its gleaming string hanging down. It is held\nup, carried through space, brought to the table, where it wants to\nbe put down, and is, with a clumsiness which might lead one to think\nthat its motive force was blind. But probably the thing is timid,\nafraid of being seen, afraid of venturing too far into the circle of\nlamplight on the table. The ring is moved to the nearest corner of the\ntable, by a kind of stealthy shove that makes the felt scrape along\nthe wood. It just balances. At the same time the thing, in its blind,\nclumsy trepidation, knocks so hard against the table that it shakes.\nTut, tut, you hole-and-corner fish out of water, why, and with what\nmonstrous knuckles, are you knocking like that on our good table,\nbefore our face and eyes? Just as I am thinking this, plop, a ring\nflies into my face. Something has flung it at me, it drops on my knee\nand thence at my feet. What a playful monster! We all laugh. But it\nis not amusement we feel, rather a sort of sinking sensation at the\nchilling arrogance of this something or other which is perhaps only a\ndistressingly complicated kind of humbug. But, as I said, a civilized.\nIt did not throw the music-box in my face, but tactfully chose one of\nthe soft little rings. People have had their ears boxed, and other\npractical jokes have been played, such as unlacing boots. Somebody had\nhis wristwatch taken off and carried about the room. But nobody, it is\nunanimously affirmed, has ever suffered any serious harm from these\npowers, and that is an indication of good sense and decent feeling.\nOn the other hand, they do unmistakably tend to become demoralized,\nto play silly tricks and make unmotivated displays of strength. The\nneed of constant oversight, guidance, and direction is plain--as,\nfor instance, when the agency now set to work, with a good deal of\npersistence, to upset the music-box standing on the table. The Baron\nwas alarmed for his instrument, and begged Minna to spare him the\nheart-breaking annoyance which any kind of repair work costs in these\ndays. In vain. \u201cIt\u201d obstinately persisted in overturning the box, on\nwhich lay the slate and slate-pencil, likewise in danger of breaking.\n\nSomething had to be done by way of distraction, and the Baron thought\nof the typewriting-machine, which stood on the floor in front of the\ncurtain, with paper inserted ready for use. \u201cWrite, Minna,\u201d he said.\n\u201cDo something useful. We will listen to you, and then we shall have the\nwriting, to prove that we are not hypnotized, as some of your enemies\nsay.\u201d The thing seems able to listen to reason, it desists from its\nefforts at the box. We wait. And, on my honour, the writing-machine\nbegins to click, there on the floor. This is insane. Even after all we\nhave already seen, it is in the highest degree startling, bewildering,\nridiculous; the fantasticality of the thing is even fascinating. Who\nis it writing on the machine? Nobody. Nobody is lying there on the\ncarpet in the dark and playing on the machine, but it is being played\non. Willy\u2019s arms and legs are held fast. Even if he could get an arm\nfree, he could not reach the machine with it; and as for his feet,\neven if they could reach that far they could not touch single types on\nthe machine, they would tread on several at once. No, it is not Willy.\nBut there is nobody else. What else can we do but shake our heads\nand laugh? The writing is being done with the right touch, a hand is\ncertainly touching the keys--but is it really only one hand? No, if you\nask me, there are surely two hands; the sounds are too quick for one,\nthey sound as though proceeding from the fingers of a practised typist;\nwe come to the end of a line, the bell rings, we hear the carriage\nbeing drawn back, the new line begins--the sound breaks off and a pause\nensues.\n\nThen somewhat further back, in front of the dark background of the\ncurtain, suddenly, swiftly, and fleetingly, the following little\napparition. Something appears, a longish something, vague, and whitely\nshimmering; in size and general shape like a human forearm, with closed\nfist--but not certainly recognizable as such. It comes and goes,\nshowing itself before our eyes, lighted by a sort of flash of white\nlightning that issues from its own right side and wholly obscures\nwhatever shape it has--then it is gone.\n\n\u201cThere, there is a materialization for you,\u201d says our host, pointing\nto it. \u201cI\u2019m glad you have seen one. Wait, perhaps it will make an\nimpression for us.\u201d And he pleads with Minna to put her hand into the\nplate of flour on the table. But I did not for a minute believe that\nshe would, and she did not, we waited in vain. It was quite light on\nthe table, the phantom would have exposed itself all too defencelessly\nto our view, and to do that did not in the least correspond to the\nimage I had made to myself of the shy, sly, stealthy, equivocal\ncharacter of our elusive guest: a character too insignificant to\nhave evil intent, on the contrary probably quite well-meaning, but\nweak-minded and embarrassed.--Nothing further happened. General\nfatigue, it seemed, had supervened. Willy whispered: \u201cMerry Christmas!\u201d\nThe sitting was over.\n\nIt was odd to see in the bald white light the felt ring lying there at\nmy feet where it had no business to be. Remarkable, too, to observe\nthe typed writing on the machine, a perfectly nonsensical jumble of\nlarge and small letters; presumably it would have been different\nif Willy himself knew how to type. He still lay drunk with sleep,\nleaning sideways across the arm of one of the controls. I went up to\nhim, tapped him on the shoulder, and told him it had been a brilliant\nsitting. He looked dumbly up at me with his sleepy eyes, and a\ngood-natured, rather sad little smile was on his face.\n\nWe moved back by groups into the library, in animated discussion over\nwhat we had seen. Tea was served, and did us all much good. The evening\nfinished off with stage stories narrated by Reicher.\n\n                 *       *       *       *       *\n\nWell, now, what had I seen? Two-thirds of my readers will answer:\nswindle, sleight-of-hand, deception. Some day, when our knowledge of\nthese matters has progressed, the field will be popularized, and they\nwill deny that such was their judgment. Even now, and even if they take\nme for a credulous and suggestible fad-chaser, the testimony of trained\nexperimenters like the French scholar Gustave Geley ought to make them\nless glib. Geley closes his report with the categorical statement:\n\u201cI do not merely say that there was no deception present in these\nsittings; I say that the possibility of deception was ruled out.\u201d That\nis absolutely my own position. I am in that intriguing and confounded\nstate of mind in which reason commands us to recognize what reason on\nthe other hand would reject as impossible. The nature of the phenomena\nI have described makes it inevitable that the idea of deception should\nafterwards haunt the minds even of those who saw with their own eyes;\nonly to be laid, over and over, by the evidence of the senses, by the\nreflection that deception was definitely impossible.\n\nBut, it will be objected, three-quarters of all the mediums _are_\nswindlers, and have been exposed as such.--That is a fact, a\nbewildering one; the more so that in many of these cases, I might even\nsay in most of them, the _dolus_, the intent to deceive, is absent.\nI am convinced that even our good Willy, if he had had the chance,\nwould have started hocus-pocussing and so have seriously compromised\nhis position; for it is conceivable that in his dream he makes no\ndistinction between what he does with his own hand and what in \u201cother\u201d\nways; and being moved by the quite comprehensible desire to produce\nan effect, he might, if he had been \u201cuncontrolled,\u201d have set to, been\ndiscovered, and so discredited the experiments. And this would not\nhave been any evidence whatever against the genuineness of the occult\nphenomena which were produced when he was in safe arrest.\n\nThe whole affair, however trifling it looks on the surface, is serious\nenough to warrant explanations in a serious and even a solemn key.\nHaving seen what I saw, I consider it my duty to bear witness that in\nthe experiments during which I was present, any mechanical deception\nor sleight-of-hand tricks were humanly impossible. Some may find such\ntestimony reckless; and our reason even obliges and forces us to do\nso; for we do immediately twist and turn to find a middle way out, by\nwhich we may somehow, even verbally, avoid the alternative of deception\nor reality. \u201cDelusion\u201d is such a word; its very vagueness helps by\npreventing us from seeing to the bottom of it. The two conceptions of\nreality and of deception are mingled in it, and perhaps the mingling\nhas more justification than we know, and is less strange in nature\nthan it is to our downright processes of thought. I will say, then,\nthat what I saw had to do with an occult delusion in the domain of\norganic life; with bewilderingly deep and sub-human complexes, at once\nprimitive and involved. These, undignified by nature and trivial in\ntheir activity as they are, are well calculated to be offensive to\nour proud \u00e6sthetic sense, but to deny their abnormal reality would be\nnothing less than unreasonable obstinacy.\n\nFurthermore, the scientific investigation of these phenomena is no\nlonger precisely in its infancy. Science has at least got so far as\nto have invented a terminology, by means of which one can express\noneself respectably on the subject. What I saw were \u201ctelekinetic\u201d\nphenomena, phenomena of motion at a distance. This particular medium,\nyoung Willy S., is especially strong in the production of this kind\nof manifestations, which in their origins are closely related with\nthe occult natural phenomenon of materialization--in other words,\nthe temporary organization of energy outside the medial organism,\nits _exteriorization_, so to speak. Among reasonable people it is\nagreed that the agent which performs the tricks I have described, the\nswinging of the bell, the lifting of the handkerchief, the typing, is\nnot a spiritistic \u201cintelligence\u201d by the name of Minna, neither is it\nAristotle or Napoleon, but the partly exteriorized medium himself. But\neven that does not go far toward making our problem more accessible to\nthe reason. On the contrary, the popular, spiritualistic hypothesis\nis much clearer and simpler than the scientific one; while as for the\nproblem of exteriorization and materialization, the longer one looks\nat it, the more it reveals a complexity apparently calculated for the\nexpress purpose of making a mock of the human intellect. Which is\nnot surprising--considering that after all it is bound up with the\npresumably not occult problem of life itself!\n\n\u201cThat which governs life,\u201d Claude Bernard wrote, \u201cis neither chemistry\nnor physics, nor anything of the kind; but the ideal principle of the\nlife-process.\u201d A strangely indefinite saying for a great scientist,\nhe being a Frenchman to boot; a saying that gropes vaguely after a\nmystery, and shows that it is precisely the great world of scholarship\nwhich never loses an inward feeling for the mystery; and that only\nthe rank and file run the danger of scientific darkness, unmindful\nhow very little complete, how much mingled with mystery--and riddles\nperhaps never-to-be-solved--is all their exact knowledge of nature and\nlife and its functions. It is accepted as an established fact in the\nworld of occultism today that the effective and formative principle\nat work in the psychological processes does in certain cases assume a\n\u201cteleplastic\u201d character: in other words, it passes beyond the limits\nof the organism and operates outside it, \u201cectoplastically.\u201d That is,\nit calls into temporary existence, out of the exteriorized, organic\nbasic substance (the appearance and form of which have already been\nobserved with some degree of exactitude), shapes, limbs, bodily organs,\nparticularly hands, which possess all the properties and functions of\nnormal, physiological, biologically living organs. These teleplastic\nend-organs move apparently free in space, but so far as can be observed\nhave a close physiological and psychological relation with the medium,\nin such a way that any impression received through the teleplasm has\nits effect upon the medial organism, and vice versa. Here we see\nsupra-normal physiology vying with the normal to bear witness to the\nunity of the organic substance. A fluid, in varying degrees of density,\nleaves the body of the medium as an amorphous, unorganized mass;\ntakes form in various teleplastic organs, hands, feet, heads, and so\non; and after a brief existence in this form, during which, however,\nit displays all the attributes of living substance, dissolves and is\nreabsorbed into the medial organism. And this fluid, this substance,\nthis substratum of the various organic formations, is uniform,\nundifferentiated; there is not such a thing as a bone-substance as\ndifferent from a muscular or visceral or nervous one; there is only the\none substance, the basis and substratum of organic life.\n\nProbably all reasoned thinking and talking in this highly speculative\nfield of facts is today premature and can only seem to clarify without\ndoing so. But one thing is certain: we shall be thinking and talking\nmost inadequately about the phenomena of materialization, as about\nthe riddle of life in general, if we regard them from the physical\nand material side alone, and not from the psychical as well. It was\nHegel who said that the idea, the spirit, is the ultimate source of\nall phenomena; and perhaps supra-normal physiology is more apt than\nnormal to demonstrate his statement. Yes, it undertakes to place the\nphilosophic demonstration of the primacy of the idea, of the ideal\norigin of all reality, alongside the biological demonstration of the\nunity of all organic life.\n\nQuite uninstructed, and on my own responsibility, I explained the\ntelekinetic phenomena as the medium\u2019s magically objectivated dreams.\nAnd the literature of the subject confirms my explanation; with an\nawe-inspiring display of technical terms, it explains that the _idea_\nof the phenomenon, present in the subconsciousness of the somnambulist,\nmingled moreover with that of the other persons present, is by the aid\nof psychophysical energy \u201cectoplastically\u201d moved, by a biopsychical\nprojection, to a certain distance, and imprinted--that is to say,\n\u201cobjectivated.\u201d In other words, we call to aid an uninvestigated\n_ideoplastic_ faculty possessed by the medial constitution.\nIdeoplastic--a word, and a conception, of Platonic power and charm, not\nwithout flattering unction to the artist\u2019s ear, who will be ready from\nnow on to characterize, not only his own work, but universal reality as\nideoplastic phenomena. Yet a word, and a conception, of quite as turbid\ndepths as the word \u201cdelusion\u201d itself, and, by virtue of its maddening\nmixture of elements of the real and the dream, leading straight to the\nmorbid and the preposterous.\n\nLet me give in closing one single but striking example. We are\nrepeatedly assured that the ideoplastic formations, for the time\nduring which they are present, possess all the characteristics of\nactual life. When they have been in a good mood they have not only let\nthemselves be seen and touched, and their objective reality established\nby photography and apparatus which registered their telekinetic\nactivities; but plaster casts have been made, hands of transcendental\norigin having been persuaded to dip themselves into basins of warm\nwater with melted wax floating on top. In this way a mould has been\nformed about the spirit member, and hardened by exposure to air. Out of\nsuch a mould no human hand could get free without breaking the mould.\nBut the teleplastic organ frees itself by dematerialization, and the\nexperimenters pour plaster of Paris into the wax glove and thus obtain\na cast of the materialized organ, which should correspond to it in all\nparticulars. It is to be noted that the casts thus obtained show no\nresemblance in shape or lines to the hands of the medium, or to those\nof anyone else present. Now at one of Willy\u2019s sittings the following\nperfectly lunatic thing occurred (and not the only one of its kind).\nThe medium being under the most careful control, a shape like a hand\nappeared, coming from above and behind, and showed itself above a piece\nof grey clay on the little table. It had a forearm, and was lighted\nby a rosy light, and it hovered about over the surface of the clay;\non which, after the sitting, six flat impressions were found, on the\npreviously smooth surface. But at the base of Willy\u2019s little finger on\nhis left hand, and on the back of the fourth finger of the same hand,\n_there were traces of clay_.\n\nNow I ask of nature and spirit, I inquire of reason and of logic on her\nthrone: How, when, and from where came the clay on Willy\u2019s fingers?\n\nNo, I will not go to Herr von Schrenck-Notzing\u2019s again. It leads to\nnothing, or at least to nothing good. I love that which I called\nthe moral upper world, I love the human fable, and clear and humane\nthought. I abhor luxations of the brain, I abhor morasses of the\nspirit. Up to now, indeed, I have seen but a few stray sparks from the\ninfernal fires--but that must suffice me. I should like of course to\nhold, as others have held, a hand like that, a metaphysical delusion\nmade of flesh and blood, in mine. And perhaps there might appear to me,\nas it has to others, Minna\u2019s head, above the shoulder of the sleeping\nWilly: the head of a charming girl, Slavic in type, with lively black\neyes. That, however uncanny, must be a wonderful experience.... After\nall, I will have another try or so with Herr von Schrenck-Notzing;\ntwo or three times, not more. That much could do me no harm; and I\nknow myself, I am a man of ephemeral passions; I shall take care that\nit leads to nothing, and put the whole thing out of my mind for ever\nafter. No, I will not go two or three times, I will only go once, just\nonce more and then not again. I only want to see the handkerchief rise\nup into the red light before my eyes. For the sight has got into my\nblood somehow, I cannot forget it. I should like once more to crane my\nneck, and with the nerves of my digestive apparatus all on edge with\nthe fantasticality of it, once more, just once, see the impossible come\nto pass.\n\n1923\n\n\n\n\n        Thomas Mann is one of the really great contemporary\n        men of letters. He, himself, however roundly\n        resents being labeled a \u201cwriter,\u201d and insists\n        upon considering himself not as an \u201cartist\u201d\n        at all but only \u201ca good bourgeois drifted by\n        chance into literature.\u201d To Mann this is no mere\n        equivocation in terms; rather it represents the\n        very keynote of his philosophy as revealed in his\n        works, springing from a deeply held conviction\n        that the intellectual type is not the ideal\n        toward which evolution moves, but, instead, the\n        man-of-action. All of Mann\u2019s writing indeed, from\n        the epoch-making \u201cBuddenbrooks\u201d of his youth to\n        \u201cThe Magic Mountain,\u201d the masterpiece of his\n        maturity, constitutes the most elaborate rejection\n        in literature of the \u201cintellectual\u201d as an unhealthy\n        growth upon the main body of humanity; but while\n        this theme dominates Mann\u2019s works, it is only the\n        scarlet thread in his design, the whole of which\n        comprises nothing less than the most profound\n        criticism of the modern world yet vouchsafed by any\n        novelist.\n\n\n        _This book was set on the linotype in Bodoni,\n        electrotyped, printed and bound by The Plimpton\n        Press, Norwood, Mass. The paper was made by S. D.\n        Warren Co., Boston_","title":"Three essays","tradition":"ritual-magic","translated_text":null,"word_count":70407}