SC

The
German-American
Goethe Library
University of Michigan.
4
838
G6
1885
+ C 6
Spare Minute Series.
THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE.
From Dean Stanley. Introduction by Phillips Brooks.
CHEERFUL WORDS.
From George MacDonald. Introduction by James T. Fields.
THE MIGHT OF RIGHT.
From Rt. IIon. Wm. E. Gladstone. Introduction by John D.
Long, LL. D.
TRUE MANLINESS.
From Thomas IIughes. Introduction by Hon. James Russell
Lowell.
LIVING TRUTHS.
From Charles Kingsley. Introduction by W. D. Howells.
RIGHT TO THE POINT.
From Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D. Introduction by New-
man Hall, LL. B.
MANY COLORED THREADS.
From Goethe. Introduction by Alexander McKenzie, D.D.
Each volume, 12mo, cloth, $1.00.
D. LOTHROP & CO., Publishers,
Franklin and Hawley Streets, Boston.
27 873
SPARE MINUTE SERIES.
MANY COLORED THREADS
FROM THE WRITINGS OF GOETHE
SELECTED BY
CARRIE ADELAIDE COOKE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
REV. ALEXANDER MCKENZIE, D.D.
BOSTON
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY
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Copyright by
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1885
THE
INTRODUCTION.
HERE is little need of a formal introduction to this
book. The name of the man from whose writings
these selections have been made is of itself enough to at-
tract the reader and to create an expectation which can-
not be disappointed. It is a book of selections, and the
choice having been made with carefulness and intelli-
gence, the simple purpose which the compiler has had in
mind will be fulfilled. The reader will pass some pleas-
ant hours in turning over the pages and reading the
sentences at his leisure, while his mind will be quickened
and the horizon of his thoughts will be enlarged by con-
tact with one of the great thinkers of modern times.
Goethe is an author from whose writings good selec-
tions can be well taken for the reader's profit.
He was
able by virtue of his own genius to see more than the
common man and to put his visions and his reflections
in such form that others who would never have seen the
things for themselves, or been able to think deeply upon
them, can have the benefit of his generous study and
thought. One of the high purposes of men of his ex-
alted power is to see for their fellows, and to translate
the things which are high and deep into the language of
the people. A few words from such a man, holding in
compact sentences the result of prolonged study, observa-
tion and experience, will suffice for the use of others for
8
INTRODUCTION.
many days. Sentences, therefore, chosen with discrimi
nation, have a place which pages and volumes may not
fill so effectively.
Goethe had a good inheritance from both his father
and his mother — from the robust character of the one,
and the affectionate, imaginative disposition of the other.
His native capacity, and his early training, made him a
precocious boy, while his life in Frankfort and his inter-
course with men of note, developed all his powers and
increased his acquisitions. It was a fine start.
It is painful to remember how far his early life was
alien to these higher influences, and his career affected
by associations of a baser sort. Genius is no mantle for
wrong. But he was too great not to be great in spite of
his weaker self and his follies. The power was in him
and asserted itself. He studied hard and became profi-
cient in many departments of learning. He was many-
sided. His mind took a wide range and seemed almost
equally at home in many places. The real and the
ideal both interested him and were cherished by him.
Science and art, philosophy and poetry, engaged his at-
tention and were enriched by his handiwork. In this
versatility of his powers and the manifoldness of their
application he was remarkable. Out of this breadth of
study came varied and large thoughts of the world and
of human life. He had the faculties with which nature
and humanity and divine power could breathe their in-
spiration for the world's instruction and delight. These
selections from his writings should make this evident.
It is natural that such a man should attain fame and that
to the recognition of his power by his countrymen, should
be added that of men of other lands; that his writings.
INTRODUCTION.
5
should be translated and read by the people; that his
name should be one of the few which live in the school
and the home.
This book will but carry forward what more assuming
works have been doing, if it brings the thoughts of the
master to the minds and hearts of men, and wins for
them the reverence which they have elsewhere received.
ALEXANDER MCKENZIE.
CAMBRIDGE, 1885.
WHATEVER may be said against collections which give
authors in a fragmentary form, they nevertheless pro-
duce many good results. We are not always so collected
and so ready that we can take in a whole book accord-
ing to its merits.
Do we not, in a book, mark passages which have an
immediate reference to ourselves? Young people espe-
cially are laudably excited by brilliant sayings. Noble
peculiarities, happy descriptions, humorous traits-all
strike us singly and powerfully.
GOETHE.
JOHANN WOLFGANG
GOETHE.
OLFGANG GOETHE was born in Frankfort-
WOLFGANG GOETHE
1749.
on-the-Main, on the twenty-eighth of August,
His father, who was imperial councillor in Frank-
fort, was a stern, formal man, inspiring respect, but win-
ning little love, even from wife and children. It is
around the little mother, only eighteen when her son was
born, that our thoughts like best to linger. Having
known her, one could understand Goethe. We fail to
wonder at certain characteristics of the son, when we find
the mother saying, “I never bemoralize any one always
seek out the good that is in them, and leave what is bad to
Him who made mankind, and knows how to round off the
angles."
While we are looking, with fast-dimming eyes, at the
pictured face of one we have loved but to lose, we do not
stop to analyze it as a work of art, but rather take the
whole gracious impression home to our hearts and
cherish it there. So I find it difficult to give outlines of
Goethe's life and literary labors. The warmth of the
great loving, loyal heart that pulses alike through letter
and poem, thrills me strangely as I lay them down one
by one.
In his private life, where he laid aside the reserve so
often called coldness, "what he lived was more beautiful
than what he wrote." Of his marriage much has been
7
8
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE.
written, much conjectured. He has been alternately
blamed and pitied for this mésalliance, but we catch
many glimpses of a tender, beautiful home-life, made such
by the devotion of his wife, who is spoken of as "less
the mistress of his mind than of his affections." "There
are few poems in any language which approach the pas-
sionate gratitude of those in which he recalls the happi-
ness she gave him." Of what he was, judged from the
world's standpoint, perhaps no one can speak more justly
than G. H. Lewes, whose Life of Goethe charms with
every page:
"There may be some among my readers who will dis-
pute Goethe's claim to greatness. They will admit that
he was a great poet, but deny that he was a great man.
In denying it, they will set forth the qualities which con-
stitute their ideal of greatness, and finding him deficient
in some of these qualities, will dispute his claim. But
in awarding him that title, I do not mean to imply that
he was an ideal man; I do not present him as the ex-
emplar of all greatness. No man can be such an ex-
emplar. Humanity reveals itself in fragments. One
man is the embodiment of one kind of excellence, an-
other of another. Achilles wins the victory, and Homer
immortalizes it; we bestow the laurel crown on both.
In virtue of a genius such as modern times have only
seen equalled once or twice, Goethe deserves the epi-
thet of great. Nor is it in virtue of genius alone that he
deserves the title. His life amid all its weaknesses and
all its errors, presents a picture of a certain grandeur of
soul, which cannot be contemplated unmoved. I shall
make no attempt to conceal his faults. Let them be
dealt with as harshly as severest justice may dictate, they
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE.
9
will not eclipse the central light that shines throughout
his life. And without wishing to excuse or to conceal
faults which he assuredly had, we must always bear in
mind that the faults of a celebrated man are apt to carry
an undue emphasis; they are thrown into stronger relief
by the very splendor of his fame.”
Those of his works most favorably known are Elective
Affinities, Werther, Wilhelm Meister and the Autobiography,
in prose, and Faust, Hermann and Dorothea, and Wallen-
stein, in poetry. The Correspondence with a Child has
been proved to be unreliable, therefore no selections.
have been made therefrom. It is somewhat of a blow,
after the tender association of the two names in our
minds for years, to realize that Bettina never had a right
to the place she has held before the world as Goethe's
child-friend. This little book is a delightful romance, and
as such cannot fail to charm and refresh all who read
it, while recognizing it as such has lifted a cloud from
the fair fame of a noble man against whom many injuri-
ous charges have been brought because of it.
During his eighty-second year Goethe completed
Faust, wrote the preface to Carlyle's Life of Schiller,
beside much work of minor importance, but his health
failed perceptibly, and at last, the craving of his life
was answered, and "more light" was given even while
he asked.
CAMBRIDGE, 1885.
C. A. C.
MANY COLORED THREADS.
*
GENIUS is that power of man which by its deeds and
actions gives laws and rules. All passion supplies the
place of genius, and is really full of genius.
* *
Every highly-gifted man is called upon to diffuse what-
ever there is of divine within him. In attempting this,
however, he comes in contact with the rough world, and,
in order to act upon it, he must put himself upon the same
level. Thus in a great measure, he compromises his
high advantages, and finally forfeits them together.
The heavenly, the eternal, is buried in a body of earthly
designs, and hurried with it to the fate of the transient.
It is a pardonable whim in men of consequence, to
place their exterior advantages in concealment now and
then, so as to allow their own internal human nature to
operate with the greater purity.
Every talent which rests on a decided natural gift,
seems from our inability to subordinate either it or its
operations to any idea, to have something of magic in it.
11
12
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It is the greatest and most genuine of pleasures to
observe a great mind in sympathy with our own.
*
Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the
thought that genius is not immortal.
But what chiefly vindicates the practice of strict requi-
sitions, of decided laws, is that genius, that native talent,
is precisely the readiest to seize them, and yield them
willing obedience. It is only the half-gifted that would.
wish to put his own contracted singularity in the place
of the unconditional whole, and justify his false attempts
under cover of an unconstrainable originality and inde-
pendence.
*
How difficult it is to prevail on a man to venture
boldly on making a sacrifice for an after-advantage!
How hard to get him to desire an end and not to hesi-
tate at the means! So many people confuse means
with ends; they keep hanging over the first, without hav-
ing the other before their eyes. Every evil is to be
cured at the place where it comes to the surface, and
they will not trouble themselves to look for the cause
which produces it, or the remote effect which results from
it. This is why it is so difficult to get advice listened to
especially among the many: they can see clearly enough
from day to day, but their scope seldom reaches beyond
the morrow; and if it comes to a point where with some
general arrangement one person will gain while another
will lose, there is no prevailing on them to strike a bal-
ance.
MANY COLORED THREADS.
13
* *
"No man is a hero to his valet," the proverb says.
But that is only because it requires a hero to recognize
The valet will probably know how to value the
a hero.
valet-hero.
When ordinary men allow themselves to be worked up
by common everyday difficulties into fever-fits of passion,
we can give them nothing but a compassionate smile.
But we look with a kind of awe on a spirit in which the
seed of a great destiny has been sown, which must abide
the unfolding of the germ, and neither dare or can do
anything to precipitate either the good or the ill, either
the happiness or the misery which is to arise out of it.
*
*
The greatest men are connected with their own cen-
tury always through some weakness.
* *
As it is the character of our countrymen to do good
and cause it, without pomp or circumstance, so they
seldom consider that there is likewise a mode of doing
what is right with grace and dignity; more frequently, in-
deed, they yield to the spirit of contradiction and fall.
into the error of deforming their dearest virtue by a
surly mode of putting it in practice.
*
All men of a good disposition feel, with increasing
cultivation, that they have a double part to play in the
world—a real one, and an ideal one, and in this feeling
14
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is the ground of everything noble to be sought. The real
part which has been assigned to us we experience but too
plainly; with respect to the second, we seldom come to
a clear understanding about it. Man may seek this
higher destination on earth or in heaven, in the present
or in the future, he yet remains on this account exposed
to an eternal wavering, to an influence from without
which ever disturbs him, until he once for all makes a
resolution to declare that that is right which is suitable
to himself.
* *
Man is never perfectly master of himself. As he lives
in utter ignorance of the future, as indeed what the next
moment may bring forth is hidden from him, conse-
quently, when anything unusual falls beneath his notice.
he has often to contend with involuntary sensations,
forebodings, and dream-like fancies, at which shortly
afterwards he may laugh outright, but which at the deci-
sive moment are often extremely oppressive.
Such is man; he is always either anticipating or re-
gretting.
*
The most eminent man lives only by the day, and
enjoys but a sorry entertainment, when he throws him-
self back upon himself, and neglects to grasp into the
fulness of the external world, where alone he can find
nourishment for his growth, and at the same time a
standard for its measurement.
Men, whom Nature, after endowing them with un-
common advantages, has placed in a narrow circle of
MANY COLORED THREADS.
15
action, or at least in one disproportioned to their pow-
ers, generally fall into eccentricities; and as they have
no opportunity of making direct use of their gifts, seek
to employ them in an extraordinary or whimsical man-
ner.
The word "vain" carries with it the idea of empti-
ness, and we can properly designate by it only the man
who cannot conceal his joy at his Nothing, his content-
ment with a hollow phantom.
Of sun and worlds I've nought to tell worth mention,
How men torment themselves takes my attention.
The little God o' the world jogs on the same old way
And is as singular as on the world's first day.
*
The man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in
silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, but
must wait and hope for their recognition and apprecia-
tion by others, will generally find himself but badly off,
because it is but too well-known a fact that men are very
niggard of their applause; that they rather love to mingle
alloy with praise, and where it can in any degree be
done, to turn it into blame.
Whoever comes before the public without being pre-
pared for this, will meet with nothing but vexation;
since, even if he does not over-estimate his own produc-
tion, it still has for him an unlimited value, while the re-
ception it meets with in the world, is in every case quali-
fied.
16
MANY COLORED THREADS.
The human race is but a monotonous affair. Most of
them labor the greater part of their time for mere sub-
sistence, and the small portion of freedom which re-
mains unemployed so troubles them that they use every
exertion to get rid of it. O, the destiny of man!
And what is man - that boasted demigod? Do not
his powers fail when he most requires their use? And
whether he soar in joy or sink in sorrow, is not his
career in both inevitably arrested? And whilst he fondly
dreams that he is grasping at infinity, does he not feel
compelled to return to a consciousness of his cold, mo-
notonous existence?
What is that which distinguishes the blockhead from
the really clever man, but the peculiar quickness and
vividness with which the latter discerns the nicer shades
and proprieties of all that comes before him, and ex-
presses himself thereon with facility; whereas the former
(just as we all do with a foreign language), is forced on
every occasion to have recourse to some ready-found con-
versational phrase or other.
A man may turn whither he pleases, and undertake
anything whatsoever, but he will always return to the
path which Nature has once prescribed for him.
Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and
misled in a way peculiar to himself.
*
*
A world of folly in one little soul,
Man loves to think himself a whole.
MANY COLORED THREADS.
17
A man's name is not like a mantle, which merely
hangs about him, and which, perchance, may be safely
twitched or pulled; but is a perfectly fitting garment,
which has grown over and over him like his very skin,
at which one cannot rake and scrape without wounding
the man himself.
Man cares for nothing except what flatters him and
promises him fair; and his faith is alive exclusively for
the sunny side.
* *
It seems to me, that if we examine ourselves, or ob-
serve others, we shall find that men are seldom influenced
by their own reflections either to pursue or to abandon
a certain course, but are generally impelled by extrane-
ous circumstances.
When a great man has a dark corner in him, it is
terribly dark.
Man is only called upon to act in the present.
* *
It will not do to measure one's self with artists; every
one must go on in his own style. Nature has made pro-
vision for all her children; the meanest is not hindered
in its existence even by that of the most excellent.
little man is still a man."
"A
18
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Every condition is good that is founded on reason and
nature.
Many are man's desires, yet little it is that he needeth;
Seeing the days are short and mortal destiny bounded.
As the man who commits some evil deed has to fear,
that, notwithstanding all precautious, it will one day come
to light-so too, he must expect who has done some
good thing in secret, that it also, in spite of himself, will
appear in the day.
* *
Man has need of patience, and needful to him are also
Calmness and clearness of mind, and a pure and right
understanding.
* *
No greater good fortune can befall a city, than when
several educated men, like-minded in what is good and
right, live together in it.
* *
In moral and religious, as well as in physical and civil
matters, man does not like to do anything on the spur
of the moment; he needs a sequence from which results
habit; what he is to love and to perform, he cannot rep-
resent to himself as single or isolated.
*
Men who are complete strangers, and wholly indiffer-
ent to one another, if they live a long time together, are
sure both of them to expose something of their inner
nature, and thus a kind of intimacy will arise between
them.
MANY COLORED THREADS.
19
Men love to dally with and exaggerate the evils which
circumstances have once begun to inflict upon them.
* *
What habitually befalls any person repeats itself more
often than one is apt to suppose, because his own nature
gives the immediate occasion for it.
Character, individuality, inclination, tendency, local-
ity, circumstance and habits, form together a whole, in
which every man moves as in an atmosphere, and where
only he feels himself at ease in his proper element.
And so we find men, of whose changeableness so
many complaints are made, after many years, to our
surprise, unchanged, and in all their infinite tendencies,
outward and inward, unchangeable.
Man is naturally active wherever he is; and if you
know how to tell him what to do, he will do it immedi-
ately and keep straight in the direction in which you set
him. I myself, in my own circle, am far better pleased
to endure faults and mistakes, till I know what the oppo-
site virtue is that I am to enjoin than to be rid of the
faults and to have nothing good to put in their places.
A man is really glad to do what is right and sensible, if
he only knows how to get at it.
It is no such great matter with him; he does it be-
cause he must have something to do, and he thinks no
more about it afterward than he does of the silliest freak
which he engaged in out of purest idleness.
*
* *
Man is but man, and whatever be the extent of his
reasoning powers, they are of little avail when passion
20
MANY COLORED THREADS.
rages within, and he feels himself confined by the narrow
limits of nature.
Is he indeed a man to be prized, who, in good and in
evil,
Takes no thought but for self, and gladness and sorrow
with others
Knows not how to divide, nor feels his heart so impel
him?
*
Authority is so delightful a word, and it sounds so noble
to promise to control ourselves, men speak of it with
pleasure, and would persuade us that they can seriously
practice the virtue. I wish I had ever known a man
capable of subduing himself in the smallest particular.
In indifferent matters they affect resolution, as if the
loss occasioned actual suffering; whilst their real desires
are considered as supremely essential, unavoidable, and
indispensable. I have never known a man capable of
enduring privation.
What beings are men, whose whole thoughts are occu-
pied with form and ceremony, who for years together de-
vote their mental and physical exertions to the task of
advancing themselves but one step. Not that such per-
sons would otherwise want employment; on the contrary,
they give themselves much trouble by neglecting impor-
tant business for such pretty trifles.
The silly creatures cannot see that it is not place
which constitutes real greatness, since the man who oc-
cupies the first place but seldom plays the principal part.
How many kings are governed by their ministers - how
MANY COLORED THREADS.
21
many ministers by their secretaries? Who, in such cases,
is really the chief? He, as it seems to me, who can see
through the others, and possesses strength or skill enough
to make their power or passions subservient to the ex-
ecution of his own designs.
*
Fools and modest people are alike innocuous. It is
only the half-fools and the half-wise who are really and
truly dangerous.
I know very well that we are not and cannot be equal;
but in my opinion he who avoids the common people in
order to command their respect, is as culpable as a
coward who hides himself from his enemy because he
fears defeat.
*
“Do you suppose that I am in the world to give ad-
vice? Of all occupations which man can pursue, that is
the most foolish. Every man must be his own counsellor,
and do what he cannot let alone. The most prudent
plans I have seen miscarry, and the most foolish succeed.
"Don't split your brains about it; and if, one way or
the other, evil comes of what you settle, don't fret."
For he chooses not always the best who longest con-
siders.
*
Intercourse with the great is always advantageous to
him who knows properly how to use it.
* *
Man is ever the most interesting object to man, and
perhaps should be the only one that interests. What-
22
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ever else surrounds us is but the element in which we
live, or else the instrument which we employ. The more
we devote ourselves to such things, the more we attend
to and feel concern in them, the weaker will our sense
of our own dignity become.
Surrounded by enemies we may at any rate cut our
way through them; the meshes of state policy are harder.
to break through.
How glad are men when they get rid of an opponent,
or only of a guardian; and the herd does not reflect that
where there is no dog, it is exposed to wolves.
It is not difficult to remark in the world, that man
feels himself most freely and perfectly rid of his own
failings when he represents to himself the faults of oth-
ers and expatiates upon them with complacent censori-
ousness.
An angry man may easily be appeased if we can suc-
ceed in making him smile.
*
We should not in all things, transcend the notions
which men have already formed; it is good that much
should be in accordance with the common way of think-
ing.
All presentiments, when confirmed by the event, give
man a higher opinion of himself, whether it be that he
MANY COLORED THREADS.
23
thinks himself in possession of so fine a susceptibility as
to feel a relation in the distance, or acute enough to
perceive necessary but still uncertain associations.
*
No one willingly concedes superiority to another, so
long as he can in any way deny it.
When any man pretends to mix in manifold activity
or manifold enjoyment, he must also be enabled, as it
were, to make his organs manifold and independent of
each other. Whoever aims at doing or enjoying all and
everything with his entire nature; whoever tries to link
together all that is without him by such a species of en-
joyment will only lose his time in efforts that can never
be successful. How difficult, though it seems so easy,
is. it to contemplate a noble disposition, a fine picture
simply in and for itself; to watch the music for the
music's sake; to admire the actor in the actor; to take
pleasure in a building for its own peculiar harmony and
durability! Most men are wont to treat a work of art,
though fixed and done, as if it were a piece of soft clay.
The hard and polished marble is again to mold itself,
the firm-walled edifice is to contract or to expand itself,
according as their inclinations, sentiments, and whims
may dictate; the picture is to be instructive, the play to
make us better, everything is to do all. The reason is
that most men are themselves unformed, they cannot
give themselves and their being any certain shape; and
thus they strive to take from other things their proper
shape, that all they have to do with may be loose and
wavering like themselves. Everything is, in the long
run, reduced by them to what they call effect; everything
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is relative, say they; and so, indeed, it is; everything
with them grows relative, except absurdity and platitude,
which truly are absolute enough.
He in whom there is much to be developed will be
later in acquiring true perceptions of himself and of
the world. There are few who at once have thought
and the capacity of action. Thought expands, but
lames; action animates, but narrows.
It is the pleasure one has in himself, the desire to com-
municate this consciousness of his to others, that makes
a man agreeable; the feeling of his own grace that
makes him graceful. Would to Heaven all men were
vain! that is, were vain with clear perception, with
moderation and in a proper sense; we should then, in
the cultivated world, have happy times of it. Women,
it is told us, are vain from the very cradle; yet does it
not become them, do they not please us the more?
How can a youth form himself, if he is not vain? An
empty, hollow nature, will, by this means, at least con-
trive to give itself an outward show; and a proper man
will soon train himself from the outside inwards.
It is all men that make up mankind; all powers taken
together that make up the world. These are frequently
at variance and as they endeavor to destroy each other,
Nature holds them together, and again produces them.
From the first animal tendency to handicraft attempts,
up to the highest practicing of intellectual art; from
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25
the inarticulate crowings of the happy infant, up to the
polished utterance of the orator and singer; from the
first bickerings of boys up to the vast equipments by
which countries are conquered and retained; from the
slightest kindliness and the most transitory love, up to
the fiercest passion and the most earnest covenant;
from the merest perception of sensible presence up to
the faintest presentiments and hopes of the remotest
spiritual future; all this and much more also lies in
man, and must be cultivated; yet not in one, but in
many. Every gift is valuable, and ought to be unfolded.
When one encourages the beautiful alone, and another
encourages the useful alone, it takes them both to form
a man. The useful encourages itself; for the multitude
produce it, and no one can dispense with it: the beauti-
ful must be encouraged; for few can set it forth and
many may need it.
How can men judge rightly of our actions, which ap-
pear but singly or in fragments to them; of which they
see the smallest portion; while good and bad take place
in secret, and for most part nothing comes to light but
an indifferent show?
Man has quite a peculiar pleasure in making prose-
lytes; in bringing what he values in himself into view
also without himself on others; causing others to enjoy
what he enjoys; finding in others his own likeness, rep-
resented and reflected back to him. In sooth, if this is
selfishness, it is of the most laudable and lovable sort,
that selfishness which has made us men and keeps us so.
26
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*
How utterly these men are unacquainted with them-
selves, how thoughtlessly they carry on their trade, how
boundless their pretentions are, no mortal can conceive.
Each not only would be first, but sole; each wishes to
exclude the rest, and does not see that even with them,
he can scarcely accomplish anything. Each thinks him-
self a man of marvelous originality, yet with a ravening
appetite for novelty, he cannot walk a footstep from the
beaten track. How vehemently they counterwork each
other! It is only the pitifulest self-love, the narrowest
views of interest that unite them. Of reciprocal accom-
modation they have no idea; backbiting and hidden spite-
fulness maintain a constant jealousy among them. In
their lives they are either rakes or simpletons. Each
claims the loftiest respect, each writhes under the slight-
est blame. "All this he knew already," he will tell you.
Why then did he not do it? Ever needy, ever unconfid-
ing, they seem as if their greatest fear were reason and
good taste, their highest care were to secure the majesty
of their self-will.
:
Most men, even the most accomplished, are but
limited each prizes certain properties in others and him-
self; these alone he favors, these alone will he have cul-
tivated.
The natural man repeats this operation millions of
times in the course of his life; from fear he struggles to
freedom; from freedom he is driven back to fear and so
makes no advancement. To fear is easy, but grievous;
!
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to reverence is difficult, but satisfactory. Man does not
willingly submit himself to reverence; or rather he never
so submits himself; it is a higher sense, which must be
communicated to his nature; which only in some pecul-
iarly favored individuals unfolds itself spontaneously,
who on this account too have of old been looked upon
as saints and gods.
So strangely is man tempered, that he may be per-
suaded of the worthlessness of any darling object, may
turn away from it, nay, even execrate it; but yet will not
see it treated in this way by others; and perhaps the
spirit of contradiction which dwells in all men, never
rouses itself more vehemently and stoutly than in such
cases.
Are not the mass of men so marred and stinted, be-
cause they take pleasure only in the element of evil-
wishing and evil-speaking? Whoever gives himself to
this soon comes to be indifferent towards God, contempt-
uous towards the world, spiteful towards his equals; and
the true, genuine, indispensable sentiment of self-estima-
tion corrupts into self-conceit and presumption.
* *
A man whose clear intellect could form a just and rig-
orous decision about present things; but who erred
withal in enunciating these particular decisions with a
kind of universal application; whereas in truth, the judg-
ments of the understanding are properly of force but
once, and that in the strictest cases, and become inac-
curate in some degree when applied to any other.
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Man is of a companionable, conversing nature his
delight is great when he exercises faculties that have
been given him, even though nothing farther came of it.
How often in society do we hear the complaint, that one
will not let the other speak; and in the same manner also
we might say, that one would not let the other write,were
not writing an employment commonly transacted in pri-
vate and alone.
How much people write one could scarcely ever con-
jecture. I speak not of what is printed, though that in
itself is abundant enough; but of all that, in the shape
of letters and memorials and narratives, anecdotes, de-
scriptions of present circumstances in the life of individ-
uals, sketches and larger essays, circulate in secret; of
this you can form no idea till you have lived for some
time in a community of cultivated families.
I know enough of them, in truth, who beside the
greatest works of art and nature, forthwith recollect
their own most paltry insufficiency; who take their con-
science and their morals with them to the opera: who
bethink them of their loves and hatreds in contemplating
a colonnade. The best and greatest that can be pre-
sented to them from without, they must first, as far as
possible diminish, in their way of representing it, that
they may in any measure be enabled to combine it with
their own sorry nature.
Men I wished to avoid. To them we can give no
help, and they hinder us from helping ourselves. Are
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20
they happy, we must let them persevere in their stolidi-
ties; are they unhappy, we must save them without dis-
turbing these stolidities; and no one ever asks whether
thou art happy or unhappy.
I prefer always to learn from the author himself how
he did think, than to hear from another how he ought to
have thought.
How often the cursory reading of a book, which irre-
sistibly carries one with it, exercised the greatest influ-
ence on a man's whole life, and produced at once a
decisive effect, which neither a second perusal nor earn-
est reflection can either strengthen or modify.
:
I turn back towards the beloved ancients who still
constantly, like distant blue mountains, distinct in their
outlines and masses, but indiscernible in their parts and
internal relations, bound the horizon of my intellectual
wishes.
* *
Always fortunate is that epoch in a literature when
the great works of the past again rise up as if thawed,
and come into notice, because they then produce a per-
fectly fresh effect.
The different literatures, as it seems to me, have
seasons, which alternating with each other, as in nature,
bring forth certain phenomena, and assert themselves
in due order. Hence, I do not believe that any epoch
of a literature can be praised or blamed on the whole;
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especially it displeases me when certain talents, which
are brought out by their time, are praised and vaunted
so highly, while others are censured and depreciated.
The throat of the nightingale is excited by the spring,
but at the same time also that of the cuckoo. The but-
terflies, which are so agreeable to the eye, and the
gnats, which are so painful to the feelings, are called
into being by the same heat of the sun.
If this were duly considered, we should not hear the
same complaints renewed every ten years, and the vain
trouble which is taken to root out this or that offensive
thing, would not so often be wasted.
* *
True poetry announces itself thus, that, as a worldly
gospel, it can by internal cheerfulness and external
comfort free us from the earthly burdens which press
upon us.
I revere the rhythm as well as the rhyme, by which
poetry first becomes poetry; but that which is really,
deeply, and fundamentally effective that which is
really permanent and furthering, is that which remains.
of the poet when he is translated into prose. Then
remains the pure, perfect substance, of which, when ab-
sent, a dazzling exterior often contrives to make a false
show, and which, when present, such an exterior con-
trives to conceal.
I therefore consider prose translations more advanta-
geous than poetical, for the beginning of youthful cul-
ture; for it may be remarked that boys, to whom every-
thing must serve as a jest, delight themselves with the
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1
sound of words, and the fall of syllables, and by a sort
of parodistical wantonness, destroy the deep contents of
the noblest work.
In poetry a certain faith in the impossible, and in reli-
gion a like faith in the inscrutable, must have a place.
Men may say what they will in favor of a written and
oral communication; it is only in a very few cases indeed
that it is at all adequate, for it never can convey the true
character of any object soever no, not even of a purely
intellectual one. But if one has already enjoyed a sure
and steady view of the object, then one may profitably
hear or read about it, for then there exists a living im-
pression around which all else may arrange itself in the
mind; and then one can think or judge.
*
Far nobler joy to soar through thought's dominions
From page to page, from book to book!
Ah! winter nights, so dear to mind and soul!
Warm, blissful life through all the frame is thrilling,
And when thy hands unfold a genuine ancient scroll,
It seems as if all heaven the room were filling.
* *
There are few biographies which can represent a pure,
quiet, steady progress of the individual. Our life, as
well as all in which we are contained, is, in an incompre-
hensible manner composed of freedom and necessity.
Our will is a prediction of what we shall do, under all
circumstances. But these circumstances lay hold on us
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in their own fashion. The what lies in us, the how sel-
dom depends on us, after the wherefore we dare not ask
and on this account we are rightly referred to the quia.
If we heard the encyclopædists mentioned, or opened
a volume of their monstrous work, we felt as if we were
going between the innumerable moving spools and looms
in a great factory, where what with the mere creaking
and rattling what with all the mechanism, embarrass-
ing both eyes and noses — what with the mere incompre-
hensibility of an arrangement, the parts of which work
into each other in the most manifold way what with
the contemplation of all that is necessary to prepare a
piece of cloth, we feel disgusted with the very coat which
we wear upon our backs.
The wind which blows from the graves of the ancients,
comes fragrantly over hills of roses.
* *
It is not wonderful, but yet it excites wonder, when,
in contemplating a literature, especially the German, one
observes how a whole nation cannot get free from a sub-
ject which has been once given and happily treated in a
certain form, but will have it repeated in every manner,
until, at last the original itself is covered up, and stifled
by the heaps of imitations.
A leading conviction, which was continually revived
within me, was that of the importance of the ancient
tongues; since from amidst this literary hurly-burly, thus
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much constantly forced itself upon me, that in them were
preserved all the models of oratory, and at the same
time everything else of worth that the world has ever
possessed.
The first page of Shakespeare's that I read made me
his for life; and when I had finished a single play, I
stood like one born blind on whom a miraculous hand
bestows sight in a moment. I saw, I felt, in the most
vivid manner, that my existence was infinitely expanded,
everything was now unknown to me, and the unwonted
light pained my eyes.
Shakespeare my friend! if thou wert yet amongst us,
I could live nowhere but with theẻ; how gladly would
I play the subordinate character of a Pylades if thou
wert Orestes; yes, rather than be a venerated high-
priest in the temple of Delphos.
*
Shakespeare's dramas are a beautiful casket of rari-
ties, in which the history of the world passes before our
eyes on the invisible thread of time. His plays all turn
upon the hidden point (which no philosopher has yet
seen and defined) in which the peculiarity of our ego,
the pretended freedom of our will, clashes with the nec-
essary course of the whole.
What noble philosophers have said of the world, ap-
plies also to Shakespeare; namely, that what we call
evil is only the other side, and belongs as necessarily
to its existence and to the Whole, as the torrid zone
must burn and Lapland freeze, in order that there may
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be a temperate region. He leads us through the whole
world, but we, enervated, inexperienced men, cry at
every strange grasshopper that meets us: "He will de-
vour us!"
* **
The German, having run wild for nearly two hundred
years in an unhappy, tumultuary state, went to school.
to the French to learn manners, and to the Romans in
order to express himself properly.
The first true and really vital material of the higher
order came into German poetry through Frederick the
Great and the deeds of the Seven Years' War. All na-
tional poetry must be shallow or become shallow which
does not rest on that which is most universally human
- upon the events of nations and their shepherds, when
both stand for one man. Kings are to be represented
in war and danger, where, by that very means, they ap-
pear as the first, because they determine and share the
fate of the very least, and thus become much more in-
teresting than the gods themselves, who, when they
have once determined the fates, withdraw from all par-
ticipation in them. In this view of the subject, every
nation, if it would be worth anything at all, must possess
an epopee, to which the precise form of the epic poem
is not necessary.
You ask if you shall send me books. My dear friend,
I beseech you, for the love of God, relieve me from
such a yoke. I need no more to be guided, agitated,
heated. My heart ferments sufficiently of itself. I
want strains to lull me, and I find them to perfection in
my Homer.
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1
"As you require," said he, "of every musical per-
former, that he shall, in some degree, be able to play from
the book; so every actor, every educated man, should
train himself to recite from the book, to catch immedi-
ately the character of any drama, any poem, any tale he
may have been reading, and exhibit it with grace and
readiness. No committing of the piece to memory will
be of service, if the actor have not in the first place pen-
etrated into the sense and spirit of his author; the mere
letter will avail him nothing."
*
"Yes!" exclaimed our friend; "I cannot recollec
that any book, any man, any incident of my life, has pro-
duced such important effects on me, as the preciou
works, to which by your kindness I have been directed.
They seem as if they were performances of some celes-
tial genius, descending among men, to make them, by the
mildest instructions, acquainted with themselves. They
are no fictions! You would think, while reading them,
you stood before the unclosed awful books of fate, while
the whirlwind of most impassioned life was howling
through the leaves, and tossing them fiercely to and
fro."
In the novel, it is chiefly sentiments and events that are
exhibited; in the drama, it is characters and deeds. The
novel must go slowly forward; and the sentiments of the
hero, by some means or another, must restrain the ten-
dency of the whole to unfold itself and to conclude. The
drama,on the other hand, must hasten, and the character
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of the hero must press forward to the end; it does not
restrain but is restrained. The novel-hero must be suf-
fering, at least he must not in a high degree be active;
in the dramatic one, we look for activity and deeds.
Grandison, Clarissa, Pamela, the Vicar of Wakefield,
Tom Jones himself, are, if not suffering, at least retard-
ing personages; and the incidents are all in some sort
modeled by their sentiments. In the drama the hero
models nothing by himself; all things withstand him,
and he clears and casts away the hindrances from off
his path, or else sinks under them."
Our friends were also of opinion, that in the novel
some degree of scope may be allowed to chance; but
that it must always be led and guided by the sentiments
of the personages; on the other hand, that fate, which,
by means of outward unconnected circumstances, carries
forward men, without their own concurrence, to an un-
foreseen catastrophe, can have place only in the drama;
that chance may produce pathetic situations, but never
tragic ones; fate, on the other hand, ought always to be
terrible; and is in the highest sense tragic, when it
brings into a ruinous concatenation the guilty man, and
the guiltless that was unconcerned with him.
*
All the anticipations I have ever had regarding man
and his destiny, which have accompanied me from youth
upwards, often unobserved by myself, I find developed
and fulfilled in Shakespeare's writings. It seems as if
he cleared up every one of our enigmas to us, though
we cannot say: Here or there is the word of solution.
His men appear like natural men, and yet they are not.
These, the most mysterious and complex productions of
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37
creation, here act before us as if they were watches,
whose dial-plates and cases were of crystal; which
pointed out, according to their use, the course of the
hours and minutes; while, at the same time, you could
discern the combination of wheels and springs that
turned them. The few glances I have cast over Shake-
speare's world incite me, more than anything beside, to
quicken my footsteps forward into the actual world, to
mingle in the flood of destinies that is suspended over
it; and at length if I shall prosper, to draw a few cups
from the great ocean of true nature, and to distribute
them from off the stage among the thirsting people of
my native land.
* *
How finely has Shakespeare painted out such things
to us! Fidelity, in this case, is the effort of a noble soul
struggling to become equal with one exalted above it.
By steadfast attachment and love, the servant is made
equal to his lord, who but for this is justified in looking
on him as a hired slave. Yes, these virtues belong to the
lower class of men alone; that class cannot do without
them, and with them it has a beauty of its own. Who-
ever is enabled to requite all favors easily, will likewise
easily be tempted to raise himself above the habit of ac-
knowledgment. Nay, in this sense, I am of opinion, it
might almost be maintained, that a great man may pos-
sess friends, but cannot be one.
A young author, who has not yet seen himself in
print, will, in such a case, apply no ordinary care to
provide a clear and beautiful transcript of his works. It
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is like the golden age of authorship; he feels transported
into those centuries when the press had not inundated
the world with so many useless writings, when none but
excellent performances were copied and kept by the
noblest men; and he easily admits the illusion, that his
own accurately ruled and measured manuscript may it-
self prove an excellent performance, worthy to be kept
and valued by some future critic.
*
Besides, secrecy itself has many advantages; for when
you tell a man at once and straightforward the purpose
of any object, he fancies there is nothing in it. Certain
secrets, even if known to every one, men find that they
must still reverence by concealment and silence, for this
works on modesty and good morals.
Whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us.
that he possesses one.
Self-complaisance over the con-
cealed destroys its concealment.
*
*
*
The taste of youth for secrecy, for ceremonies, for im-
posing words, is extraordinary; and frequently bespeaks
a certain depth of character. In those years, we wish ɩ0
feel our whole nature seized and moved, even though it
be but vaguely and darkly. The youth who happens to
have lofty aspirations and forecastings, thinks that
secrets yield him much, that he must depend much on
secrets, and effect much by means of them.
*
*
Genuine love matures in a moment the youth into
manhood.
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There is no affection, no habit so strong, that it can
hold out in the long run against the animadversions of
eminent men in whom one places confidence. Something
always cleaves to us, and if one cannot love uncondition-
ally, love is already in a critical condition.
I went on, with that enigmatic feeling in my heart, with
which passion always nourishes itself; for the Child
Cupid clings obstinately to the garment of Hope, even
when she is preparing with long steps to flee away.
*
The relation to that which one loves is so decided, that
the surrounding objects have little to do with it, but
nevertheless the heart desires that these shall be the
suitable, natural, and usual objects.
*
*
Thus one ordinary day followed another, and all
seemed to be holidays — the whole calendar should have
been printed red. He will understand me who recol-
lects what was predicted by the happily unhappy friend
of the "New Heloise." "And sitting at the feet of his
beloved, he will break hemp, and he will wish to break
hemp to-day, to-moriow, and the day after, nay, for his
whole life."
It is a very pleasant sensation when a new passion
begins to stir in us, before the old one is quite extinct.
Thus, when the sun is setting, one often likes to see the
moon rise on the opposite side, and one takes delight in
the double lustre of the two heavenly luminaries.
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.
The first love, it is rightly said, is the only one, for in
the second, and by the second the highest sense of love
is already lost. The conception of the eternal and infi-
nite, which elevates and supports it, is destroyed, and it
appears transient like everything else that recurs.
The every-day life of a family, which is composed of
given persons, and is shaped out of necessary circum-
stances, may easily receive into itself an extraordinary
affection, an incipient passion — may receive it into it-
self as into a vessel; and a long time may elapse before.
the new ingredient produces a visible effervescence, and
runs foaming over the edge.
Growing affection troubles itself about no antecedents,
and as it spring up like genius with the rapidity of
lightning, it know nothing either of past or future.
Lovers consider all that they have felt before only as
preparation for their present bliss, only as the founda-
tion on which the structure of their future life is to be
reared. Past attachments seem like spectres of the
night, which glide away before the break of day.
*
Love does not rule, but controls, and that is better.
Hatred is a partisan, but love is even more so.
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Not in our season of joy did we choose one another;
Rather the saddest of hours it was that bound us
together.
How delicious a sensation is the hope of seeing again
those we love! And we, when our coddled heart is a
little sorrowful, at once bring it medicine and say:
"Dear little heart, be quiet, you will not long be away
from her you love; be quiet, dear little heart!" Mean-
while we give it a chimera to play with, and then is it
good and still as a child to whom the mother gives a
doll instead of the apple which it must not eat.
The most lovable heart is that which loves the most
readily; but that which easily loves also easily forgets.
Courage urges us to confront difficulties and dangers,
and only by great labor are great joys obtained. That,
perhaps, is the worst I have to allege against love. They
say it gives courage; never! The heart that loves is
weak. When it beats wildly in the bosom and tears
fill our eyes, and we sit in an inconceivable rapture as
they flow — then, oh! then, we are so weak that flower-
chains bind us, not because they have the strength of
any magic, but because we tremble lest we break them.
Passion is both raised and softened by confession.
In nothing, perhaps, were the middle way more desira-
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ble than in knowing what to say and what not to say to
those we love.
Lock your hearts as carefully as your doors.
This love, then, this constancy, this passion, is no
poetical fiction. It is actual, and dwells in its greatest
purity amongst that class of mankind whom we term
rude, uneducated.
The presence of the beloved one always shortens
time.
Nothing is more touching than the first disclosure of
a love which has been nursed in silence, of a faith grown
strong in secret, and which at last comes forth in the
hour of need, and reveals itself to him who formerly has
reckoned it of small account.
*
If love be able to bear all things, it is able to do yet
more; it can restore all things.
Of all the pleasant things which imagination pictures
to us, perhaps, there is none more charming than when
lovers and young married people look forward to enjoy-
ing their new relation to each other in a fresh, new world,
and test the endurance of the bond between them in so
many changing circumstances.
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43
"Wilhelm ! what is the world to our hearts without
love? What is a magic lantern without light? You have
but to kindle the flame within, and the brightest figures
shine on the white wall; and if love only show us fleet-
ing shadows, we are yet happy when, like mere children,
we behold them, and are transported with the splendid
phantoms.
It is said that the Bonona stone, when placed in the
sun, attracts the rays, and, for a time, appears luminous
in the dark."
*
There can be no doubt that in this world nothing is so
indispensable as love.
*
Much lively talking led them at length to speak about
the earliest period of their acquaintance; the recollec-
tion of which forms always one of the most delightful
topics between two lovers. The first steps that intro-
duce us to the enchanted garden of love are so full of
pleasure, the first prospects so charming, that every one
is willing to recall them to his memory. Each party seeks
a preference above the other; each has loved sooner,
more devotedly; and each, in this contest, would rather
be conquered than conquer.
All that till now had slumbered, in the most secret
corners of his soul, at length awoke. He painted for
himself a picture of his manifold ideas, in the colors of
love, upon a canvas of cloud: the figures of it, indeed,
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ran sadly into one another; yet the whole had an air but
the more brilliant on that account.
"Without any prominent passion his love was a still
presentiment of sweet wants."
It must be confessed that travellers upon removing to
a distance from the restraints of home are only too apt
to think they are stepping not only into an unknown but
into a perfectly free world; a delusion which it was the
more easy to entertain where there were few hindrances
to the freedom of the traveller.
*
**
Fugitives, for the most part, carry their faults and
ridiculous peculiarities along with them, and we wonder
at this circumstance. But as the English traveller never
leaves his teakettle behind in any quarter of the globe,
so are the generality of mankind invariably accompanied
by their stock of proud pretensions, vanity, intolerance,
impatience, obstinacy, prejudices, and envy.
*
I had remarked how important it is in travelling to
inquire after the course of the waters, and even to ask
with respect to the smallest brook, whither in reality it
runs. One thus acquires a general survey of every
stream-region, in which one happens to be, a conception
of the heights and depths which bear relation to one
another, and by these leading lines, which assist the
contemplation as well as the memory, extricates one's
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45
self, in the surest manner, from the geological and polit-
ical labyrinth.
In each land the sun doth visit
We are gay whate'er betide ;
To give room for wand'ring is it
That the world was made so wide.
Alcamor is gloriously situated on a height, at a tol-
erable distance from an arm of the sea, The magnifi-
cence of the country quite enchanted us. Lofty rocks
with deep valleys at their feet, but withal wide, open
spaces, and great variety. Beyond Mow Reale you look
upon a beautiful double valley, in the centre of which a
hilly ridge again raises itself. The fruitful fields lie green
and quiet, but on the broad roadway the wild bushes
and shrubs are brilliant with flowers the broom one
mass of yellow, covered with its papilionaceous blos-
soms, and not a single green leaf to be seen; the white-
thorn cluster on cluster; the aloes are rising high and
promising to flower; a rich tapestry of an amaranthine-
red clover, of orchids and the little Alpine roses,
hyacinths with unopened bells, asphodels and other
wild flowers.
Between sky and sea, the white flag on the mast, as a
talisman, is singular enough. As parting friends greet
each other with, their white, waving handkerchiefs, and
so excite in their bosoms a mutual feeling - which noth-
ing else could call forth — of love and affection divided
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for awhile, so here in this simple flag the custom is con-
secrated.
It is even as if one had fixed a handkerchief upon the
mast to proclaim to all the world, "Here comes a friend
over the sea."
The leaning tower of Pisa has a frightful look, and
yet it is most probable that it was built so by design.
The following seems to me the explanation of this ab-
surdity. In the disturbed times of the city every large
edifice was a fortress, and every powerful family had its
tower. By and by the possession of such a building be-
came a mark of splendor and distinction, and as, at last,
a perpendicular tower was a common and everyday
thing, an oblique one was built. Both architect and
owner have obtained their object; the multitude of
slender, upright towers are just looked at, and all hurry
to see the leaning one. The bricks are all arranged
horizontally. With clamps and good cement one may
build any mad whim.
I have been standing some time at the door, observ-
ing the character and look of the clouds, which are beau-
tiful beyond description. It is not yet night, but at in-
tervals the clouds veil the whole sky and make it quite
dark. They rise out of the deep ravines until they reach
the highest summits of the mountains; attracted by
these they seem to thicken, and being condensed by the
cold they fall in the shape of snow.
It gives you an inexpressible feeling of loneliness to
find yourself here at this height, as it were in a sort of
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47
well, from which you scarcely can suppose there is even
a footpath to get out by, except down the precipice be-
fore you.
The clouds which gather here in this valley, at one
time completely hiding the immense rocks, and absorb-
ing them in a waste, impenetrable gloom, or at another
letting a part of them be seen like huge spectres, give
to the people a cast of melancholy. In the midst of such
natural phenomena the people are full of presentiments
and forebodings. Clouds- a phenomenon remarkable
to every man from his youth up- are, in the plain coun-
tries, generally looked upon at most as something foreign,
something super-terrestrial. People regard them as
strangers, as birds of passage, which, hatched under a
different climate, visit this or that country for a moment
or two im passing- as splendid pieces of tapestry where-
with the gods part off their pomp and splendor from hu-
man eyes. But here, where they are hatched, man is
enclosed in them from the very first, and the eternal and
intrinsic energy of his nature feels itself at every nerve
moved to forebode and to indulge in presentiments.
The line of glittering glaciers was continually drawing
the eye back again to the mountains. The sun made
his way towards the west, and lighted up their great flat
surfaces, which were turned towards us. How beauti-
fully before them rose from above the snow the varie-
gated rows of black rocks — towers walls! Wild,
vast, inaccessible vestibules! and seeming to stand there
in the free air in the first purity and freshness of their
manifold variety! Man gives up at once all pretensions
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•
to the infinite, while he here feels that neither with
thought nor vision is he equal to the finite!
Before us we saw a fruitful and populous plain. The
spot on which we were standing was a high, bare moun-
tain rock, which, however, produces a sort of grass as
food for the cattle, which are here a great source of gain.
This, the conceited lord of creation may yet make his
own: but those rocks before his eyes are like a train
of holy virgins which the spirit of heaven reserves for
itself alone in these inaccessible region.
We tarried awhile, tempting each other in turn to try
to discover cities, mountains, and regions, now with the
naked eye, now with the telescope, and did not begin to
descend till the setting sun gave permission to the mist
his own parting breath to spread itself over the
lake.
Suddenly the summit of a very high peak glowed like
molten brass in a furnace, and above it rose a red
smoke. This singular phenomenon was the effect of the
setting sun which illuminated the snow and the mists
which ascended from it.
It seemed to us as if the sun had, first of all, at-
tracted the light mists which evaporated from the tops
of the glaciers, and then a gentle breeze had, as it were,
combed the fine vapors, like a fleece of foam over the
atmosphere.
Before long the ice-covered mountains from which it
rose lay before us; the valley began to close in; the
Arve was gushing out of the rocks; we now began to
ascend a mountain, and went up higher and higher, with
!
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the snowy summits right before us. Mountains and old
pine forests, either in the hollows below or on a level
with our track, came out one by one before the eye as
we proceeded.
On our left were the mountain-peaks, bare and pointed.
We felt that we were approaching a mightier and more
massive chain of mountains.
The masses became constantly more imposing, nature
seems to have begun here with a light hand, to prepare
her enormous creations. The darkness grew deeper and
deeper as we approached the valley of Chamouni, and
when at last we entered it, nothing but the larger masses
were discernible. The stars came out one by one, and
we noticed above the peaks of the summits right before
us, a light which we could not account for. Clear, but
without brilliancy, like the milky way, but closer, some-
thing like that of the Pleiades; it riveted our attention
until at last, as our position changed, like a pyramid illu-
minated by a secret light within, which could best be com-
pared to the gleam of a glow-worm, it towered high
above the peaks of all the surrounding mountains, and
at last convinced us that it was the summit of Mont
Blanc. The beauty of this view was extraordinary. For
while, together with the stars which clustered round it,
it glimmered, not indeed with the same twinkling light,
but in a broader and more continuous mass, it seemed
to belong to a higher sphere, and one had difficulty in
thought to fix its roots again in the earth. Before it we
saw a line of snowy summits, sparkling as they rested on
the ridges covered with the black pines, while between
the dark forests vast glaciers sloped down to the valley
below.
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We felt as glad and comfortable to have a roof over
our heads, as children do when with stools, table-leaves
and carpets, they construct a roof near the stove, and
therein say to one another that outside, “it is raining or
snowing," in order to excite a pleasant or imaginary
shudder in their little souls. It is exactly so with us on
this autumnal evening in this strange and unknown re-
gions.
*
Were, then, these Switzers free? Free, these opulent
burghers in their little pent-up towns-free, those poor
devils on their rocks and crags? What is it that man
cannot be made to believe, especially when he cherishes
in his heart the memory of some old talk of marvel?
Once, forsooth, they did break a tyrant's yoke, and might
for the moment fancy themselves free; but out of the
carcass of the single oppressor, the good sun, by a strange
new birth, has hatched a swarm of petty tyrants. And
so now they are ever telling that old tale of marvel: one
hears it till one is sick of it. They formerly made them-
selves free, and have ever since remained free! and now
they sit behind their walls, hugging themselves with their
customs and laws their philandering and philistering.
And these, too, on the rocks, it is surely fine to talk of
liberty, when for six months of the year they, like the
marmot, are bound hand and foot by the snow!
*
When we had reached the summit of the mountain
(Rigi) we found ourselves in the clouds, this time doubly
disagreeable to us, since they both hindered the pros
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51
pect and drenched us with mist. But when, here and
there, they opened and showed us, framed as it were by
their ever-varying outline, a clear, majestic, sun-lit world,
with the changing scenes of a diorama, we no longer
lamented these accidents; for it was a sight we had
never seen before and should never behold again, and
we lingered long in this somewhat inconvenient position,
to catch, through the chinks and crevices of the ever-
shifting masses of cloud, some little point of sunny
earth, some little strip of shore, or pretty nook of the
lake.
They, the immovable mountains, stand there as quietly
as the side-scenes of a theatre; success or failure, joy
or sorrow, merely pertain to the persons who for the day
successively strut upon the stage.
ཟླ་
Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight
it is impossible to form a conception, without having
witnessed it. All single objects are swallowed up by
the great masses of light and shade, and nothing but
grand and general outlines present themselves to the
eye. For three several days we have enjoyed to the
full the brightest and most glorious of nights. Peculiarly
beautiful at such a time is the Coliseum. At night it is
always closed; a hermit dwells in a little shrine within
its range, and beggars of all kinds nestle beneath its
crumbling arches; the latter had lit a fire on the arena,
and a gentle wind bore down the smoke to the ground,
so that the lower portion of the ruins was quite hid by
it, while above, the vast walls stood out in deeper dark-
ness before the eye.. As we stopped at the gate to con-
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template the scene through the iron gratings, the moon
shone brightly in the heavens above. Presently the
smoke found its way up the sides, and through every
chink and opening, while the moon lit it up like a cloud.
The sight was exceedingly glorious.
In such a light one ought also to see the Pantheon,
the Capitol, the Portico of St. Peter's, and the other
grand streets and squares; and thus sun and moon,
like the human mind, have quite a different work to do
here from elsewhere, where the vastest and yet the most
elegant of masses present themselves to their rays.
*
One can study history here (in Rome) quite differ-
ently from what one can in any other spot. In other
places, one has, as it were, to read one's self into it
from without; here, one fancies that he reads from
within outwards.
Yet these glorious objects are still like new acquaint-
ances to me. One has not yet lived with them, nor
got familiar with their peculiarities. Some of them at-
tract us with irresistible power, so that for a time one
feels indifferent, if not unjust, towards all others. Thus,
for instance, the Pantheon, the Apollo Belvedere, some
colossal heads, and very recently the Sistine Chapel,
have by turns, so won my whole heart, that I scarcely
saw anything besides them. But, in truth, can man,
little as man always is, and accustomed to littleness,
ever make himself equal to all that here surrounds him
of the noble, the vast, and the refined? Even though
he should in any degree adapt himself to it, then how
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53
vast is the multitude of objects that immediately press
upon
him from all sides, and meet him at every turn, of
which each demands for itself the tribute of his whole
attention.
In Rome, I believe, is the high school for all the
world. Out of Rome, no one can have an idea how one
is schooled in Rome. One must, so to speak, be new
born, and one looks back on one's earlier notions, as a
man does on the little shoes which fitted him when a
child. The most ordinary man learns something here,
at least he gains one uncommon idea, even though it
never should pass into his whole being.
I certainly thought that I had something really to
learn here; but that I should have to take so low a
place in the school, that I must forget so much that I
had learned, or rather absolutely unlearn so much, that
I had not the least idea of.
Now, however, that I am once convinced of its neces-
sity, I have devoted myself to the task; and the more I
am obliged to renounce my former self, the more de-
lighted I am. I am like an architect who has begun to
build a tower, but finds he has laid a bad foundation.
He becomes aware of the fact betimes, and willingly
goes to work to pull down all that he has raised above
the earth; having done so he proceeds to enlarge his
ground plan, and now rejoices to anticipate the un-
doubted stability of his future building.
Heaven grant that, on my return, the moral conse-
quences may be discernible of all that this living in a
wider world has effected within me!
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It is only in Rome one can duly prepare one's self for
Rome.
On one's travels one usually rakes together all that
he meets on his way; every day brings something new,
and one then hastens to think upon and to judge of it.
In Rome, however, we come into a very great school
indeed, where every day says so much that we cannot
venture to say anything of the day itself. Indeed, peo-
ple would do well if, tarrying here for years together,
they observed awhile a Pythagorean silence.
In the evening we came upon the Coliseum when it
was already twilight. When one looks at it, all else
seems little; the edifice is so vast that one cannot hold
the image of it in one's soul—in memory we think it
smaller, and then return to it again to find it every time
greater than before.
One must have seen the Carnival in Rome to get en-
tirely rid of the wish to see it again.
I know of nothing more beautiful than to wake before
dawn, and between sleeping and waking, to seat one's
self in one's car, and travel on to meet the day.
*
*
*
Venice can only be compared with itself.
Venice succumbs to time, like everything that has a
phenominal existence.
Venice, that grand creation that sprang out of the
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bosom of the sea, like Minerva out of the head of Jupi-
ter!
*
Let man talk, describe, and paint as he may to be
here is more than all. It is said that people who have
once seen a ghost, are never afterwards seen to smile, so
it may be said of one, that he never could become per-
fectly miserable, so long as he remembered Naples.
•
Every one is in the streets, or sitting in the sun as long
as it shines. The Neapolitan believes himself to be in
possession of Paradise, and entertains a very melancholy
opinion of our Northern lands. Sempre neve, caso di
legno, gran ignoranza, ma danari assai. Such is the pic-
ture they draw of our condition. Interpreted for the
benefit of our German folks, it means - Always snow,
wooden houses, great ignorance, but money enough.
*
On Sunday we were in Pompeii. Many a calamity has
happened in the world, but never one that has caused so
much entertainment to posterity as this one. I scarcely
know of any thing that is more interesting. The houses
are small and close together, but within they are all most
exquisitely painted.
The gate of the city is remarkable, with the tombs
close to it. The tomb of a priestess, a semicircular
bench with a stone back, on which was the inscription.
cut in large characters. Over the back you have a
sight of the sea and the setting sun-a glorious spot,
worthy of the beautiful idea.
My companions asserted that without a sight of the sea
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it was impossible to live. To me it is quite enough that
I have its image in my soul, and so, when the time
comes, may safely return to my mountain home.
Italy without Sicily leaves no image on the soul— here
is the key to all.
I shall yet gather a few more shells from the shore of
the great ocean, and so my most urgent needs will have
been appeased.
I sought to free myself internally from all that was
foreign to me, to regard the external with love, and to
allow all beings from man downwards as low as they were
comprehensible, to act upon me, cach after its own kind.
Thus arose a wonderful affinity with the single objects
of nature, and a hearty concord, a harmony with the
whole, so that every change, whether of place and region,
or of the times of the day and year, or whatever else
could happen, affected me in the deepest manner.
*
He was one of those persons whose principal interest
in travelling lay in gathering up the strange occurrences
which arose from the natural or artificial relations of so-
ciety, which were produced by the conflict of the re-
straint of law with the violence of will, of the understand-
ing with the reason, of passion with prejudice.
A fresh glance into a new land in which we are to
abide for a time, has the peculiarity, both pleasant and
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foreboding, that the whole lies before us like an un-
written tablet. As yet no sorrows and joys which relate
to ourselves are recorded upon it; this cheerful, varied,
animated plain is still mute for us; the eye is only fixed
upon the objects so far as they are intrinsically impor-
tant, and neither affection nor passion have especially to
render prominent this or that spot. But a presentiment
of the future already disquiets the young heart, and an
unsatisfied craving secretly demands that which is to
come and may come, and which, at all events, whether for
good or ill, will imperceptibly assume the character of
the spot in which we find ourselves.
*
There is, I have heard, a curious contrivance in the
service of the English marine. The ropes in use in the
royal navy, from the largest to the smallest, are so
twisted that a red thread runs through them from end to
end, which cannot be extracted without undoing the
whole; and by which the smallest pieces may be recog-
nized as belonging to the crown.
•
Now at last I have reached the summit, the summit
of the mountains, which will place a stronger separation
betwixt us than all the tract I had passed over before.
To my feeling, one is still in the neighborhood of those
he loves, so long as the streams run down from him to-
wards them. To-day I can still fancy to myself that the
twig which I cast into the forest-brook, may perhaps
float down to her, may in a few days land at her garden;
and thus our spirit sends its images more easily, our
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heart its sympathies, by the same downward course.
But over on the other side, I fear, there rises a wall of
division against the imagination and the feelings.
The Bible is so full of matter, that, more than any
other book, it offers material for reflection and oppor-
tunity for meditation on human affairs.
As for myself, I loved and valued it; for almost to it
alone did I owe my moral culture, and the events, the
doctrines, the symbols, the similes, had all impressed
themselves deeply upon me, and had influenced me in
one way or another.
**
In anything which is handed down to us, especially
in writing, the real point is the ground, the interior, the
sense, the tendency of the work; here lies the original,
the divine, the effective, the intact, the indestructible; no
time, no external operation or condition can in any de-
gree affect this internal, primeval nature, at least no
more than the sickness of the body affects a well-culti-
vated soul. Thus, according to my view, the language,
the dialect, the peculiarity, the style, and finally the
writing, were to be regarded as the body of every work
of mind; this body, although nearly enough akin to the
internal, was yet exposed to deterioration and corruption;
as, indeed, altogether no tradition can be given quite pure,
according to its nature; nor indeed, if one were given
pure, could it be perfectly intelligible at every following
period- the former, on account of the insufficiency of
the organs through which the tradition is passed the
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latter, on account of the difference of time and place —
but especially the diversity of human capacities and
modes of thought; for which reason the interpreters
themselves never agree.
Hence it is everybody's affair to seek for what is in-
ternal and peculiar in a book which particularly inter-
ests us, and at the same time, above all things, to weigh
in what relation it stands to our own inner nature, and
how far, by that vitality, our own is excited and rendered
fruitful. On the contrary, everything external that is
ineffective with respect to ourselves, or is subject to a
doubt, is to be consigned over to criticism, which, even
if it should be able to dislocate and dismember the
whole, would never succeed in depriving us of the only
ground to which we hold fast, nor even in perplexing us
for a moment with respect to our once formed confi-
dence.
•
The combined arts appear to me like a family of sis-
ters, of whom the greater part were inclined to good
economy, but one was light-headed, and desirous to ap-
propriate and squander the whole goods and chattels of
the household. The theatre is this wasteful sister; it
has an ambiguous origin, which, in no case, whether as
art or trade or amusement, it can wholly conceal.
*
"True art," cried he, "is like good company; it con-
strains us in the most delightful way to recognize the
measure by which, and up to which, our inward nature
has been shaped by culture."
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If you are destined for an artist, you cannot long
enough retain the dim-sightedness and innocence of
which I speak; it is the beautiful hull upon the young
bud; woe to us if we are forced too soon to burst it!
Surely it were well, if we never knew what the people
are, for whom we work and study.
As all nature's thousand changes
But one changeless God proclaims;
So in art's wide kingdom ranges
One sole meaning still the same :
This is truth, eternal reason,
Which from beauty takes its dress,
And serene through time and season
Stands for aye in loveliness.
It is with art as with the world: the more we study it
the larger we find it. The more we look, the more dis-
tant becomes the horizon of art; and he who would step
surely must step slowly.
My old gift of seeing the world with the eyes of that
artist whose pictures have most recently made an im-
pression on me, has occasioned me some peculiar reflec-
tions. It is evident that the eye forms itself by the ob-
jects which, from youth up, it is accustomed to look upon,
and so the Venetian artist must see all things in a
clearer and brighter light than other men. We, whose
eye when out of doors, falls on a dingy soil, which when
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61
not muddy, is dusty, and which, always colorless,
gives a sombre hue to the reflected rays, or at home
spend our lives in close, narrow rooms, can never attain
to such a cheerful view of nature.
The highest problem of any art is to produce by ap-
pearance the illusion of a higher reality.
Well-known paintings are like friends which one has
made in the distance by means of letters, and which for
the first time one sees face to face. To live with them,
however, is something quite different; every true rela-
tion and false relation becomes immediately evident.
How much an accurate knowledge of the material em-
ployed in the arts must contribute to a right estimate of
them, must be obvious to every one.
It causes us so agreeable a sensation to occupy our-
selves with what we can only half do, that no person
ought to find fault with the dilettante, when he is spend-
ing his time over an art which he can never learn; nor
blame the artist if he chooses to pass out over the border
of his own art, and amuse himself in some neighboring
field.
If it be a bliss to enjoy the good, it is still greater
happiness to discern the better; for in art the best only
is good enough.
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This confirmed me in my resolution of adhering for
the future entirely to nature. She alone is inexhausti-
ble, and capable of forming the greatest masters. Much
may be alleged in favor of rules, as much may be like-
wise advanced in favor of the laws of society; an artist
formed upon them will never produce anything abso-
lutely bad or disgusting, as a man who observes the laws
and obeys decorum, can never be an absolutely intoler-
able neighbor, nor a decided villain; but yet say what
you will of rules, you destroy the genuine feeling of na-
ture as well as its true expression.
Do not tell me "that this is too hard, that they only
restrain and prune superfluous branches, etc." My good
friend, I will illustrate this by an analogy. These things
resemble love. A warm-hearted youth becomes strongly
attached to a maiden, he spends every hour of the day
in her company, wears out his health and lavishes his
fortune, to afford continual proof that he is wholly de-
voted to her. Then comes a man of the world, a man
of place and respectability, and addresses him thus:
"My good young friend, love is natural, but you must
love within bounds. Divide your time, devote a portion
to business, and give the hours of recreation to your
mistress. Calculate your fortune, and out of the super-
fluity you may make her a present, only not too often,
on her birthday and such occasions.”
Pursuing this advice, he may become a useful mem-
ber of society, and I should advise some prince to give
him an appointment; but his love is annihilated, and if
he be an artist, his genius is fled. Oh, my friends, why
is it that the torrent of genius so seldom bursts forth, so
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seldom rolls in full flowing stream, overwhelming your
wondering soul? Because, on either side of this stream,
cold and respectable persons have taken up their abodes,
and forsooth their summer-houses and tulip-beds would
suffer from the torrent, wherefore they dig trenches and
raise embankments betimes, in order to avert the im-
pending danger.
So true it is, that the life which presses forth out of
a "fine soul" works with the greater freedom the less it
appears to be drawn by criticism into the department of
art.
I have been struck by an observation of the young
architect.
"In the case of the creative artist, as in that of the
artisan, it is clear that man is least permitted to appro-
priate to himself what is most entirely his own. His
works forsake him as the birds forsake the nest in
which they were hatched.
The fate of the Architect is the strangest of all in
this way. How often he expends his whole soul, his
whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into
which he himself may never enter.
The halls of kings may indeed owe their magnificence to
him; but he has no enjoyment of them in their splendor.
In the temple he draws a partition line between himself
and the Holy of Holies; he may never more set his
foot upon the steps which he has laid down for the
heart-thrilling ceremonial; as the goldsmith may only
adore from far off the monstrance whose enamel and
whose jewels he has himself set together. The builder
4
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surrenders to the rich man, with the key of his palace,
all pleasure and all right there, and never shares with
him in the enjoyment of it.
And must not art in this way, step by step, draw off
from the artist, when the work, like a child who is pro-
vided for, has no more to fall back upon its father?
And what a power there must be in art itself, for its own
self-advancing, when it has been obliged to shape itself al-
most solely out of what was open to all, out of what was
the property of every one, therefore also of the artist."
In my opinion the noblest of our sentiments is the
hope of continuing to live, even when destiny seems to
have carried us back into the common lot of non-exist-
ence.
This life is much too short for our souls; the
proof is that every man, the lowest as well as the
highest, the most incapable as well as the most merito-
rious, will be tired of anything sooner than of life, and
that no one reaches the goal towards which he set out;
for however long a man may be prosperous in his career,
still at last, and often when in sight of the hoped-for
object, he falls into a grave, which God knows who dug
for him, and is reckoned as nothing.
Reckoned as nothing? I? who am everything to
myself, since I know things only through myself! So
cries every one who is truly conscious of himself; and
makes great strides through this life-a preparation
for the unending course above. Each, it is true, ac-
cording to his measure. If one sets out with the sturdi-
est walking pace, the other wears seven-leagued boots
and outstrips him; two steps of the latter are equal to
a day's journey of the former.
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Be it as it may with him of the seven-leagued boots,
this diligent traveller remains our friend and compan-
ion, while we are amazed at the gigantic strides of the
other and admire them, follow his footsteps and measure
them with our own. To watch a solitary march like this
enlarges and animates our souls more than to stare at
the thousand footsteps of a royal procession.
*
The marionette fable of Faust murmured with many
voices in my soul. I too had wandered into every de-
partment of knowledge, and had returned early enough
satisfied with the vanity of science. And life, too, I
had tried under various aspects, and always came back
sorrowing and unsatisfied.
The instructive part of many moral communications,
is that a man may learn how it has gone with others,
and what he also has to expect from life; and that
whatever comes to pass, he may consider that it hap-
pens to him as a man, and not as one specially fortu-
nate or unfortunate. If such knowledge is of little use
for avoiding evils, it is very serviceable so far as it qual-
ifies us to understand our condition, and bear or even
to overcome it.
*
From life I experienced many disagreeable trifles, as
indeed one must always pay the entrance-fee when one
changes one's place and comes into a new position.
Everything which is properly business we must keep
carefully separate from life. Business requires earnest-
ness and method; life must have a freer handling. If
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you are firm in the first, you can afford yourself more
liberty in the second; while if you mix them, you will
find the free interfering very much with and breaking
in upon the fixed.
Deal with Life no longer by halves, but work it out
in its totality, beauty and goodness.
"I am too old to live for folly,
Too young to wish for nothing new."
*
*
*
Enter with gratitude into the joys that fate shall prepare
thee;
Love those purely who love thee; be grateful to them
who show kindness.
Blessings attend thy life; but value existence no higher
Than thine other possessions, and all possessions are
cheating!
When one is on the eve of a departure, every earlier
separation, and also that last one of all which is yet to
be, comes involuntarily into one's thoughts; and so, on
this occasion, the reflection enforces itself on my mind
more strongly than ever, that man is always making far
too great and too many preparations for life.
Life resembles the Sybilline Books; it becomes dearer
the less there remains of it.
All comfort in life is based upon a regular recurrence
of external things. The change of day and night - of
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the seasons, of flowers and fruits, and whatever else
meets us from epoch to epoch, so that we can and should
enjoy it these are the proper springs of earthly life.
The more open we are to these enjoyments, the happier
do we feel ourselves; but if the changes in these phe-
nomena roll up and down before us without our taking
interest in them, if we are insensible to such beautiful
offers, then comes on the greatest evil, the heaviest dis-
ease we regard life as a disgusting burden.
When once you trust yourself, you know the art of
living.
*
Real life frequently loses its brilliancy to such a de-
gree, that one is many a time forced to polish it up again
with the varnish of fiction.
Plunge into human life's full sea of passion.
Each lives it, few its meaning ever guessed,
Touch where you will, 'tis full of interest.
Bright shadows fleeting o'er a mirror,
A spark of truth, and clouds of error,
By means like these a drink is brewed
To cheer and edify the multitude.
In truth the web of life is of a mingled yarn.
*
While life is sweeping us forwards, we fancy that we
are acting out our own impulses; we believe that we
choose ourselves what we will do, and what we will en
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joy. But in fact, if we look at it closely, our actions are
no more than the plans and the desires of the time,
which we are compelled to carry out.
He only deserves freedom and life who is daily com-
pelled to conquer them for himself.
First of all, conquer yourself.
To see the difficult easily handled, gives us the feeling
of the impossible.
Difficulties increase the nearer we are to the end.
Sowing is not so difficult as reaping.
A life without love, without the presence of the be-
loved, is but a poor comédie à tiroir. We draw out slide
after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to
make haste to the next. Even what we know to be good
and important, hangs but wearily together; every step
is an end, and every step is a fresh beginning.
Is life to be calculated only by its gains and losses?
who has not made arrangement on arrangement, and
has not seen them broken in pieces? How often does
not man strike into a road and lose it again! How often
are we not turned aside from one point which we had
sharply before our eye, but only to reach some higher
stage! The traveller, to his greatest annoyance, breaks
a wheel upon his journey, and through this unpleasant
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69
accident makes some charming acquaintance, and forms
some new connection, which has an influence on all his
life. Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way,
in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
Assuredly we spend far too much labor and outlay in
preparation for life. Instead of beginning at once to
make ourselves happy in a moderate condition, we spread
ourselves out wider and wider, only to make ourselves
more and more uncomfortable.
Even with large means, we are ever but half and half
at home, especially in the country, where we miss many
things to which we have become accustomed in town.
The book for which we are most anxious is not to be had,
and just the thing which we most wanted is forgotten.
We take to being domestic, only again to go out of our-
selves; if we do not go astray of our own will and caprice,
circumstances, passions, accidents, necessity, and one
does not know what besides, manage it for us.
I look upon my-
I think I am now in the right way.
self steadily as a traveller, who renounces many things
in order to enjoy more. I am accustomed to change;
it has become, indeed, a necessity to me; just as in the
opera, people are always looking out for new and new
decorations, because there have already been so many.
I know very well what I am to expect from the best
hotels, and what from the worst.
It may be as good or
it may be as bad as it will, but I nowhere find anything
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to which I am accustomed, and in the end it comes to
much the same thing whether we depend for our enjoy-
ment entirely on the regular order of custom, or entirely
on the caprices of accident. I have never to vex myself
now, because this thing is mislaid, or that thing is lost;
because the room in which I live is uninhabitable, and
I must have it repaired; because somebody has broken
my favorite cup, and for a long time nothing tastes well
out of any other other. All this I am happily raised
above. If the house catches fire about my ears, my
people quietly pack my things up, and we pass away
out of the town in search of other quarters. And con-
sidering all these advantages, when I reckon carefully,
I calculate that, by the end of the year, I have not sac-
rificed more than it would have cost me to be at home.
-learning to fling away everything that he might have
nothing to lose.
*
*
*
I do not think it right to describe every distinguished
man as if one wanted to furnish materials for advertis-
ing a runaway.
To me it always seems like a trick, a piece of espion-
age, to attempt to analyze a man into his elements be-
fore his face, and so to get upon the track of his hid-
den moral peculiarities.
*
*
One ought not to be picking and pulling, or forever in-
troducing new elements among the conditions of our life.
*
* *
Every day I observe more and more the folly of judg-
ing of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble
MANY COLORED THREADS.
71
with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agi-
tation, that I am well content to let others pursue their
own course, if they only allow me the same privilege.
Do not believe that I am indifferent to the great
ideas Freedom, Fatherland and People. No; these
ideas are in us; they form a portion of our life which
no one can cast off.
Indeed, my life has lately taken in some ballast,
which gives it the necessary gravity. I do not now
frighten myself with the spectres which used so often
to play before my eyes.
Under, the weight of such a stroke, old habits and
fancies come out again to assist to kill the time and fill
up the chasms of life.
*
*
That the life of man is but a dream is the opinion of
many, and this feeling pursues me everywhere. When
I consider the narrow limits within which our active
and inquiring faculties are confined — when I see how
all our energies are wasted in providing for mere neces-
sities, which again have no further end than to prolong
a wretched existence - and then that all our satisfac-
tion upon certain subjects of investigation ends in noth-
ing better than a passive resignation, whilst we amuse
ourselves with painting our prison-walls in divers ways
with bright figures and brilliant landscapes — when I
consider all this, I am silent. I examine my own being,
and find there a world, but a world rather of imagina-
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tion and dim desires, than of distinctness and living
power. Then everything swims before my senses; I
smile and dream my way back into existence.
All learned professors and doctors are agreed, that
children do not comprehend the cause of their desires;
but that grown people should wander about this earth
like children, without knowing whence they come or
whither they go, influenced as little by fixed motives,
but guided like them by biscuits, sugar-plums, and
chastisements this is what nobody is willing to ac-
knowledge, and yet I think it can be made palpable.
I know what you will say in reply, and I am ready to
admit, that the happiest are those who, like children,
amuse themselves with their playthings, dress and un-
dress their doll, and attentively watch the cupboard.
where mamma has locked her sweet things, and when
at last they get a delicious morsel, eat it greedily and
cry for more. These are certainly happy beings; but
others also are objects of envy, who dignify their paltry
employments, and sometimes even their passions, with
pompous titles, representing them to mankind as
achievements of superior order, accomplished for their
welfare and glory. But the man who humbly acknowl-
edges the vanity of all this, who observes with what
pleasure the thriving citizen converts his little garden
into a paradise, and how patiently even the poor man
pursues his weary way under his burden, and how all
wish equally to behold the light of the sun a little longer;
yes, such a man is at peace, and creates his own world
within himself. However limited his sphere, he still
preserves in his bosom the sweet feeling of liberty, and
knows that when he will he can burst his prison.
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73
A young man soon perceives in others if not in him-
self, that moral epochs change as well as the seasons of
the year. The graciousness of the great, the favor of
the strong, the encouragement of the active, the attach-
ment of the multitude, the love of individuals, all this
changes up and down, and we can no more hold it fast
than the sun, moon, and stars. And yet these things are
not mere natural events; they escape us either by our
own or by another's fault; but change they do, and we
are never sure of them.
We cannot now prevent this moment from forming an
epoch in our lives; but it depends on us to bear our-
selves in a manner which shall be worthy of us.
Whatever frees the intellect without, at the same time,
giving us command over ourselves, is pernicious.
It was maintained that the path was opened, forgetting
that in earthly things a path can very rarely be spoken
of, for, as the water that is dislodged by a ship, instantly
flows in again behind it, so by the law of its nature, when
eminent spirits have once driven error aside, and made
a place for themselves, it very quickly closes upon them
again.
It is a source of mingled feelings of pleasure and re-
gret to know that people are sorry to part with you.
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The year dies away, the wind sweeps over the stubble,
and there is nothing left to stir under its touch. But
the red berries on yonder tall tree seem as if they would
still remind us of brighter things; and the stroke of the
thresher's flail awakes the thought how much of nourish-
ment and life lies buried in the sickled ear.
*
Now, however, as generally happens with the wilful-
ness of glad and peaceful times, we could not casily
do anything in the direct way, but, like genuine chil-
dren, sought to make a jest even out of what was neces-
sary.
**
In this life one is seldom reduced to make a selection
between two alternatives. There are as many varieties
of conduct and opinion as there are turns of feature be-
tween an aquiline nose and a flat one.
* *
Our moral impressions invariably prove strongest in
those moments when we are most driven back upon our-
selves.
(C
Every beginning is hard; but most the beginning a
household.
Many are human wants, and everything daily grows
dearer!"
Emigration takes place in the treacherous hope of an
improvement in our circumstances; and it is too often
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75
counterbalanced by subsequent emigration; since, go
where you may, you still find yourself in a conditional
world, and if not constrained to a new emigration, arc
yet inclined in secret to cherish such a desire.
* *
In general, our mountain life has something more
humane in it than the life of lowlanders. The inhabi-
tants here are nearer, and, if you will, more remote also.
Our wants are smaller, but more pressing. Each man is
placed more on his own footing; he must learn to de-
pend on his own hands, on his own limbs. The laborer,
the poet, the porter, all unite in one person; each of us
is more connected with the other, meets him oftener, and
lives with him in joint activity.
Nothing that surrounded him could he lay hold of or
let go; all things reminded him of all; the whole ring of
his existence lay before him; but it was broken into
fragments, and seemed as if it would never unite again.
*
It is right that a man, when he first enters upon life,
should think highly of himself, should determine to at-
tain many eminent distinctions, should endeavor to make
all things possible; but when his education has pro-
cceded to a certain pitch, it is advantageous for him that
he learn to lose himself among a mass of men, that he
learn to live for the sake of others, and to forget him-
self in an activity prescribed by duty. It is then that he
first becomes acquainted with himself; for it is conduct
alone that compares us with others.
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"Decided inclination, early opportunity, external im-
pulse, and continued occupation in a useful business,"
said she, “make many things which were at first far
harder, possible in life."
He alone is worthy of respect, who knows what is
of use to himself and others, and who labors to control
his self-will. Each man has his own fortune in his
hands; as the artist has a piece of rude matter, which
he is to fashion to a certain shape. But the art of liv-
ing rightly is like all arts: the capacity alone is born
with us; it must be learned, and practiced with inces-
sant care.
For certain equable, continuous modes of life, there
is nothing more than judgment necessary, and we study
to attain nothing more; so we become unable to discern
what extraordinay services each vulgar day requires of
us; or if we do discern them, we find abundance of ex-
cuses for not doing them. A judicious man is valuable
to himself; but of little value for the general whole..
It is painful to be always seeking; but far more pain-
ful to have found, and to be forced to leave. What
now shall I ask for farther in the world? What now
shall I look for farther? Is there a country, a city that
contains a treasure such as this? And I must travel
on, and ever find inferiority? Is life, then, like a race-
course, where a man must rapidly return, when he has
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77
reached the utmost end? Does the good, the excellent
stand before us like a firm unmoving goal, from which
with fleet horses we are forced away, the instant we ap-
peared to have attained it? Happier are they who
strive for earthly wares? They find what they are seek-
ing in its proper climate, or they buy it in the fair.
Of ill-wishers there are many, of ill-doers not few;
and to live fitly, well-doing will not always suffice.
*
It is the property of crime to extend its mischief over
innocence, as it is of virtue to extend its blessings over
many that deserve them not; while frequently the
author of the one or of the other is not punished or re-
warded at all.
The man that discerns, with lively clearness, what in-
finite operations art and nature must have joined in,
before a cultivated human being can be formed; the
man that himself as much as possible takes interest in
the culture of his fellow-men, is ready to despair when
he sees how lightly mortals will destroy themselves, will
blamelessly or blamably expose themselves to be de-
stroyed. When I think of these things, life itself ap-
pears to me so uncertain a gift, that I could praise the
man who does not value it beyond its worth.
We were forced to resign ourselves, if not forever,
at least for a long season. The first thing that occurs
to a stout-hearted man, under such circumstances, is to
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begin a new life. New objects will not suffice him;
these serve only for diversion of thought; he requires a
new whole, and plants himself in the middle of it.
*
In every new department, one must, in the first place,
begin again as a child; throw a passionate interest over
the subject; take pleasure in the shell, till one has the
happiness to arrive at the kernel.
* *
"Early a woman should learn to serve, for that is her
calling;
Since through service alone she finally comes to the
headship,
Comes to the due command that is hers of right in the
household.
Life must be always with her a perpetual coming and
going,
Or be a fetching and carrying, making and doing for
others.
Happy for her be she wonted to think no way is too
grievous,
And if the hours of the night be to her as the hours of
the daytime;
If she find never a needle too fine, nor a labor too
trifling;
Wholly forgetful of self, and caring to live but in
others!
Twenty men bound into one were not able to bear such
a burden;
Nor is it meant that they should, yet should they with
gratitude view it."
Maou
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79
*
*
*
Men think most of the present — the immediate; and
rightly, their calling being to do and to work. Women,
on the other hand, more of how things hang together in
life;
and rightly too, because their destiny- the des-
tiny of their families-is bound up in this interdepend-
ence, and it is exactly this which it is their mission to
promote.
* *
Men will always be hasty, their thoughts to extremes
ever running:
Easily out of their course the hasty are turned by a
hindrance.
Whereas a women is clever in thinking of means, and
will venture
E'en on a roundabout way, adroitly to compass her
object.
* *
"What men possess naturally, women have to ac-
quire, and property attained by a laborious struggle will
always be more obstinately held than that which is
inherited."
"But women, I think, have no reason to complain on
that score.
As the world goes, they inherit as much as
men, if not more, and in my opinion it is a much more
difficult task to become a perfect man than a perfect
woman. The phrase 'He shall be thy master,' is a
formula characteristic of a barbarous age long since
passed away. Men cannot claim a right to become
educated and refined without conceding the same priv-
ilcge to women. As long as the process continues, the
balance is even between them; but as women are more
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capable of improvement than men, experience shows
that the scale soon turns in their favor."
"There is no doubt that in all civilized nations women
in general are superior to men, for where the two sexes
exert a corresponding influence over each other, man
becomes effeminate, and that is a disadvantage, but when
a woman acquires any masculine virtue, she is the gainer,
for if she can improve her own peculiar qualities by the
addition of masculine energy, she becomes an almost
perfect being."
A heart which seeks, feels well that it wants some-
thing; a heart which has lost, feels that something is
gone-its yearning and longing changes into uneasy
impatience — and a woman's spirit, which is accustomed
to waiting and to enduring, must now pass out from its
proper sphere; become active, and attempt and do
something to make its own happiness.
Intercourse with women is the element of good man-
ners.
There is in all women a peculiar circle of inward in-
terests, which remain always the same, and from which
nothing in the world can divorce them. In outward, so-
cial intercourse, on the other hand, they will gladly and
easily allow themselves to take their tone from the per-
son with whom at the moment they are occupied; and
thus by a mixture of impassiveness and susceptability,
by persisting and by yielding, they continue to keep the
government to themselves, and no man in the cultiva-
ted world can ever take it from them.
MANY COLORED THREADS.
81
*
"The women in our house," said he, "are satisfied
and happy; we are never short of money. One half of
their time they spend in dressing; the other in showing
themselves when dressed. They are as domestic as a
reasonable man can desire."
"Women should go about in every sort of variety of
dress; each following her own style and her own lik-
ings, that each may learn to feel what sits well upon
her and becomes her. And for a more weighty reason
as well — because it is appointed for them to stand alone
all their lives, and work alone.
"Observe a young lady as a lover, as a bride, as a
housewife, as a mother. She always stands isolated.
She is always alone and will be alone. Even the most
empty-headed woman is in the same case. Each one of
them excludes all others. It is her nature to do so;
because of each one of them is required everything
which the entire sex have to do. With a man it is
altogether different. He would make a second man if
there were none. But a woman might live to an eter-
nity, without even so much as thinking of producing a
duplicate of herself.
"You women are invincible in this way. You are so
sensible, that there is no answering you, then so affec-
ționate, that one is glad to give way to you; full of feel-
ings which one cannot wound, and full of forebodings,
which terrify one."
"I am not superstitious," she said; "and I care noth-
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ing for these dim sensations, merely as such; but in gen-
eral they are the result of unconscious recollections of
happy or unhappy consequences, which we have expe-
rienced as following on our own or others' actions. Noth-
ing is of greater moment, in any state of things, than the
intervention of a third person. I have seen friends,
brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, whose rela-
tions to each other, through the introduction of a third
person, has been altogether changed-whose whole
moral condition has been inverted by it."
*
**
*
"It is very strange," cried he, "that men are blamed for
their proceeding here: they have placed woman on the
highest station she is capable of occupying. And where
is there any station higher than the ordering of a house?
While the husband has to vex himself with outward
matters while he has wealth to gather and secure, while
perhaps he takes part in the administration of the State,
and everywhere depends on circumstances; ruling noth-
ing, I may say, while he conceives that he is ruling much ;
compelled to be but politic where he would willingly be
reasonable, to dissemble where he would be open, to be
false where he would be upright; while thus, for the
sake of an object which he never reaches, he must every
moment sacrifice the first of objects, harmony with him-
self, a reasonable housewife is actually governing in
the interior of her family; has the comfort and activity
of every person in it to provide for, and make possible.
What is the highest happiness of mortals, if not to exe-
cute what we consider right and good; to be really
masters of the means conducive to our aims? And where
should or can our nearest aims be, but in the interior of
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83
our home? All those indispensable, and still to be re-
newed supplies, where do we expect, do we require to
find them, if not in the place where we rise and where
we go to sleep, where kitchen and cellar, and every
species of accommodation for ourselves and ours is to be
always ready? What unvarying activity is needed to con-
duct this constantly recurring series in unbroken living
order! How few are the men, to whom it is given to re-
turn regularly like a star, to command their day as they
command their night; to form for themselves their house-
hold instruments, to sow and to reap, to gain and to ex-
pend, and to travel round their circle with perpetual suc-
cess and peace and love! It is when a woman has at-
tained this inward mastery, that she truly makes the hus-
band whom she loves a master; her attention will ac-
quire all sorts of knowledge; her activity will turn them
all to profit. Thus is she dependent upon no one; and
she procures her husband genuine independence, that
which is interior and domestic; whatever he possesses,
he beholds secured; what he earns, well employed; and
thus he can direct his mind to lofty objects, and if for-
tune favors, he may act in the State the same character
which so well becomes his wife at home."
*
A thousand times have I heard the complaint that
the objects for a knowledge of which we are originally
indebted to description, invariably disappoint us when.
we see them with our own eyes. The cause is, in every
case, the same. Imagination and reality stand in the
same relation to each other that poetry and prose do;
the former conceives of its object as powerful and ele-
vated, the latter loves to dilate and expand them.
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Writing is an abuse of language, reading silently to
one's self is a pitiful substitute for speech.
*
Studies must not only be pursued with seriousness
and diligence, but also with cheerfulness and freedom
of mind.
Medical students are, as is well known, the only
students who zealously converse about their science
and profession out of the hours of study. This lies in
the nature of the case. The objects of their endeavors
are the most obvious to the senses, and at the same
time the highest, the most simple and the most compli-
cated. Medicine employs the whole man, for it occu-
pies itself with the whole man.
All that the young
man learns refers directly to an important, dangerous.
indeed, but yet in many respects lucrative practice.
He therefore devotes himself passionately to whatever
is to be known and to be done, partly because it is in-
teresting in itself, partly because it opens to him the
joyous prospect of independence and wealth.
*
What at first furnishes a hearty enjoyment, when we
take it superficially only, often weighs on us afterwards
most oppressively, when we see that without solid
knowledge the true delight must be missed.
*
Anything can be maintained when one permits one's
self to use words altogether vaguely, and to employ and
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85
apply them in a sense now wider, now narrower, now
closer, now more remote.
Long evenings and universal stillness are the ele-
ments in which writing thrives merrily.
The other natural studies which I had begun, I en-
deavored to continue, and as one always has time
enough, if one will apply it well, so amongst them all I
succeeded in doing twice or thrice as much as usual.
In times of peace there is no more interesting read-
ing for the multitude than the public papers, which fur-
nish early information of the latest doings in the world.
The quiet opulent citizen exercises thus in an innocent
way a party spirit, which in our finite nature we neither
can nor should get rid of. Every comfortable person
thus gets up a factitious interest, like that which is often
felt in a bet, experiences an unreal gain or loss, and as
in the theatre, feels a very lively, though imaginary
sympathy in the good or evil fortune of others. This
sympathy seems often arbitrary, but it rests on moral
grounds. For now we give to praiseworthy designs the
applause they deserve; and now again, carried away by
brilliant successes, we turn to those whose plans we
should otherwise have blamed.
Countless stars are blinking
In the waters here,
On the mountains drinking
Clouds of mist appear;
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Round the cool bay flying
Morning breezes wake,
Ripened fruits are lying
Mirror'd in the lake.
*
* *
The sky, so infinitely fine and clear, looked down no-
bly and innocently upon mummeries.
* *
There is not a moment but preys upon you, and upon
all around you— not a moment in which you do not
yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk
deprives of life thousands of poor insects; one step de-
stroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and.converts a
little world into chaos. Great and rare calamities of the
world, floods which sweep away whole villages, earth-
quakes which swallow up our towns, do not affect me.
My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive
power which lies concealed in every part of universal
nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not con-
sume itself, and every object near it; so that, surrounded
by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on
my way with aching heart, and the universe is to me a
fearful monster, forever devouring its own offspring.
*
*
Spring's warm look has unfettered the fountains,
Brooks go tinkling with silvery feet;
Hope's bright blossoms the valley greet;
Weakly and sickly up the rough mountains,
Pale old Winter has made his retreat.
Thence he launches, in sheer despite
Sleet and hail in impotent showers,
O'er the green lawn as he takes his flight.
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87
With the things of nature it is as with those of art;
much as is written about them, every one who sees them
forms them into new combinations for himself.
*
*
What awaited me was certainly well worth all the
trouble of climbing up these mountain heights, of wan-
dering through these valleys, and seeing this blue sky
of discovering that there is a nature which exists by an
eternal, voiceless necessity, which has no wants, no feel-
ings, and is divine, whilst we, whether in the country or
in the towns, have alike to toil hard to gain a miserable
subsistence, and at the same time struggle to subject
everything to our lawless caprice, and call it liberty!
As no man, not even the most ordinary character, was
ever a witness, even for once, of great and unusual
events, without their leaving behind in his soul some
traces or other, and making him feel himself also to be
greater for this one little shred of grandeur, so that he
is never weary of telling the whole tale of it over again,
and has gained at any rate a little treasure for his whole
life; just so is it with the man who has seen and become
familiar with the grand phenomena of nature. He who
manages to preserve these impressions and to combine
them with other thoughts and emotions, has a treasury
of sweets wherewith to season the most tasteless parts of
life, to give a pervading relish to the whole of existence.
One fact I think I have everywhere observed; the far-
ther one moves from the highroad and the busy marts of
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men; the more people are shut in by the mountains,
isolated and confined to the simplest wants of life; the
more they draw their maintenance from simple, humble
and unchangeable pursuits; so much the better, the
more obliging, the more friendly, unselfish and hospita-
ble are they.
The book of Nature is after all the only one which has
in every page important meanings.
New draughts of strength and youthful blood,
From this free world I've pressed;
Here nature is so mild, so good —
Who clasps me to her breast.
The billows rock our little boat,
The oars in measure beat,
The hills while clouds around them float
Approach our barque to meet.
Plants and flowers of the commonest kind may form
a charming diary for us, because nothing that calls back
the remembrance of a happy moment can be insignifi-
cant.
Nature works after such eternal, necessary, divine
laws, that the Deity himself could alter nothing in them.
The natural sciences are so human, so true, that I
wish every one luck who occupies himself with them.
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1
They teach us that the greatest, the most mysterious,
and the most magical phenomena, take place openly,
orderly, simply, unmagically; they must finally quench
the thirst of poor, ignorant man for the dark Extraor-
dinary, by showing him that the Extraordinary lies so
near, so clear, so familiar, and so determinately true.
I daily beg my good genius to keep me from all other
observation and learning, and guide me always on the
calm, definite path which the student of Nature has to
tread.
From the mountains to the champaign,
By the glens and hills along,
Comes a rustling and a tramping,
Comes a motion as of song:
And this undetermined roving
Brings delight, and brings good heed;
And thy striving, be't with loving
And thy living, be't in deed.
He who has never seen himself surrounded on all
sides by the sea, can never possess an idea of the world,
and of his own relation to it.
How legible the book of Nature becomes to me I
cannot express to thee; my long lessons in spelling it
out have helped me and now my quiet joy is inexpressi-
ble. Much as I find that is new, I find nothing unex-
pected; everything fits in, because I have no system
and desire nothing but the pure truth.
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I am very happy here. Solitude in this terrestrial
paradise is a genial balsam to my mind, and the young
spring cheers with its bounteous promises my often-
times misgiving heart. Every tree, every bush, is full
of flowers, and one might wish himself transformed into
a butterfly, to float about in this ocean of perfume and
find his whole existence therein.
I leave behind me field and meadow
Veiled in the dusk of holy night,
Whose ominous and awful shadow
Awakes the better soul to light.
To sleep are lulled the wild desires,
The hand of passion lies at rest;
The love of man the bosom fires,
The love of God stirs up the breast.
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my
entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I
enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the
charm of existence in this spot, which was created for
the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear
friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tran-
quil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be
incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present
moment, and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist
than now.
When the lovely valley teems with vapor around me,
and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the
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impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray
gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, then I throw
myself down in the tall grass by the trickling stream, and
as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants
discovered themselves to me. When I hear the buzz of
the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with
the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies,
then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed
us in His own image, and the breath of that universal
love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us
in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when dark-
ness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem
to dwell in my soul, and absorb its power, like the idea
of a beloved mistress, then I often long and think: Oh!
that you could describe these conceptions, that you could
impress upon paper all that lives so full and warm within
you, that it might be the mirror of your soul, as your soul
is the mirror of the infinite God! O, my friend — but it
is too much for my strength—I sink under the weight
of the grandeur of these visions.
So, then, once more the old story of the year is being
repeated. We are come now, thank God, again to its
most charming chapter. The violets and the May-
flowers are as its superscriptions and its vignettes. It
always makes a pleasant impression on us when we
open again at these pages in the book of life.
* *
When standing upon an eminence which presents a
wide, extended view, I have thought how pure and
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peaceful is the look of Holy Nature, and the impres
sion comes upon me, that the world beneath must be
free from strife and care; but returning to the dwellings
of men, be they cottage or palace, be they wide or cir-
cumscribed, we find that there is in truth ever some-
thing to subdue, to struggle with, to quiet and allay.
O full, round Moon, didst thou but shine
For the last time on this woe of mine!
Thou whom so many a midnight I
Have watched, at this desk, come up the sky:
O'er books and papers, a dreary pile,
Then, mournful friend! uprose thy smile!
Oh that I might on the mountain-height
Walk in the noon of thy blessed light,
Round mountain-caverns with spirits hover,
Float in thy gleamings the meadows over,
And freed from the fumes of a lore-crammed brain,
Bathe in thy dew and be well again!
We are able to tolerate the winter. We fancy that we
can extend ourselves more freely when the trees are so
spectral, so transparent. They are nothing, but they con-
ceal nothing; but when once the germs and buds begin
to show, then we become impatient for the full foliage
to come out, for the landscape to put on its body, and
the tree to stand before us as a form.
How does the winter's advancing day
Softly illumine the lake! The night has cast
The glittering frost, like stars, upon it.
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We first observe how dreary and disagreeable an over-
clouded day is, when a single sunbeam pierces through,
and offers to us the exhilarating splendor of a serene
nour.
What is it that keeps men in continual discontent and
agitation? It is, that they cannot make realities cor-
respond with their conceptions, that enjoyment steals
away from among their hands, that the wished-for comes
too late, and nothing reached and acquired produces on
the heart the effect which their longing for it at a distance
led them to anticipate. Now fate has exalted the poet
above all this, as if he were a god. He views the con-
flicting tumult of the passions; sees families and king-
doms raging in aimless commotion; sees those inexpli-
cable enigmas of misunderstanding, which frequently a
single monosyllable would suffice to explain, occasioning
convulsions unutterably baleful. He has a fellow-feel-
ing of the mournful and the joyful in the fate of all hu-
man beings. When the man of the world is devoting
his days to wasting melancholy, for some deep disap-
pointment; or, in the ebullience of joy, is going out to
neet his happy destiny, the lightly-moved and all-con-
ceiving spirit of the poet steps forth, like the sun from
ight to day, and with soft transitions tunes his heart to
oy or woe. From his heart, his native soil, springs up
he lovely flower of wisdom; and if others, while wak-
ng, dream, and are pained with fantastic delusions from
:heir every sense, he passes the dream of life like one
awake, and the strangest of incidents is to him but a
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part both of the past and of the future.
And thus the
poet is at once a teacher, a prophet, a friend of gods
and men.
*
One alters so much what one has heard from others
in repeating it, only because one has not understood it.
Even the prudent and the good have, before now,
hesitated to explain their mutual differences, and have
dwelt in silence upon their imaginary grievances until
circumstances have become so entangled, that in that
critical juncture, when a calm explanation would have
saved all parties, an understanding was impossible.
And thus if domestic confidence had been earlier estab-
lished between them, if love and kind forbearance had
mutually animated and expanded their hearts, it might
not, perhaps, even yet have been too late to save them.
* *
Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mis-
chief in the world than even malice and wickedness.
Nothing puts me so completely out of patience as
the utterance of a wretched commonplace, when I am
talking from my inmost heart.
*
"Had I not," he would often say, "from youth, with-
stood myself, and striven to form my judgment upon
wide and general principles, I had been the narrowest
and most intolerable person living. For nothing can
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95
be more intolerable than circumscribed peculiarity, in
one from whom a pure and suitable activity might be
required."
We cannot always shun the things we blame; in spite
of us, our feelings and our actions sometimes strangely
swerve from their natural and right direction; yet there
are certain duties which we should never lose sight of.
To my mind, he who does not help us at the needful
moment, never helps; he who does not counsel at the
needful moment, never counsels. I also reckon it essen-
tial that we lay down and continually impress on chil-
dren certain laws, to operate as a kind of hold in life. Nay,
I could almost venture to assert that it is better to be
wrong by rule, than to be wrong with nothing but the
fitful caprices of our dispositions to impel us hither and
thither and in my way of viewing men, there always.
seems to be a void in their nature, which cannot be
filled up, except by some decisive and distinctly settled
law.
Our principles are just a supplement to our peculiar
manner of existence. We delight to clothe our errors
in the garb of universal laws; to attribute them to irre-
sistibly appointed causes.
"Alas!" said Wilhelm, "I have nothing to relate but
error on the back of error, deviation following deviation;
and I know none from whom I would more gladly hide
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$
my present and my past embarrassments than from your-
self. Your look, the scene you move in, your whole
temperament and manner, prove to me that you have
reason to rejoice in your by-gone life; that you have trav-
elled by a fair, clear path, in constant progress; that you
have lost no time, that you have nothing to reproach
yourself withal."
The lords of the earth are such, principally, because
they can assemble around them, in war, the bravest and
most resolute, and in peace, the wisest and most just.
In war we bear the rude force as well as we can, we
feel ourselves physically and economically, but not mor-
ally, wounded; the constraint shames no one, and it
is no disgraceful service to serve the time; we accus-
tom ourselves to suffer from foes and friends; we have
wishes, but no particular views.
In peace, on the contrary, man's love of freedom
becomes more and more prominent, and the more free
one is, the more free one wishes to be. We will not
tolerate anything over us; we will not be restrained;
and this tender, nay, morbid feeling, appears in noble
souls under the form of justice.
Let not man prattle for freedom, as if himself he could
govern!
Soon as the barriers are torn away, then all of the evil
Seems let loose, that by law had been driven deep back
into corners.
The word freedom sounds so beautiful, that we can-
not do without it, even though it designates an error.
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A man has only to declare that he is free, and the
next moment he feels the conditions to which he is a
subject. Let him venture to declare that he is under
conditions, and then he will feel that he is free.
No man is more a slave than the man who thinks
himself free while he is not.
"Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that in-
stinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated
and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe
more freely. I am tempted to open a vein to procure
for myself everlasting freedom."
But what a task was it, not only to be patient with
the earth, and let it lie beneath us, we appealing to a
higher birthplace; but also to recognize humility and
poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace and wretched-
ness, suffering and death, to recognize these things as
divine; nay, even on sin and crime to look not as hin-
drances, but to honor and love them as furtherances of
what is holy. Of this, indeed, we find some traces in
all ages; but the trace is not the goal; and this being
now attained, the human species cannot retrograde;
and we may say, that the Christian religion having once
appeared, cannot again vanish; having once assumed
its divine shape, can be subject to no dissolution.
"If we can conceive it possible," he once observed,
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"that the Creator of the world himself assumed the
form of his creature, and lived in that manner for a
time upon earth, this creature must appear of infinite
perfection, because susceptible of such a combination.
with its Maker. Hence, in our idea of man there can
be no inconsistency with our idea of God: and if we
often feel a certain disagreement with him and remote-
ness from him, it is but the more on that account our
duty, not like advocates of the wicked spirit, to keep
our eyes continually upon the nakedness and weakness
of our nature, but rather to seek out every property
and beauty, by which our pretension to the similarity
with the Divinity may be made good."
"Permit me one question," said Wilhelm: "as you
have set up the life of this divine Man for a pattern and
example, have you likewise selected his sufferings, his
death, as a model of exalted patience?"
Undoubtedly we have," replied the eldest. “Of
this we make no secret; but we draw a veil over those
sufferings, even because we reverence them so highly.
We hold it a damnable audacity to bring forth that
torturing cross and the Holy One who suffers on it,
or to expose them to the light of the sun, which hid
its face when a reckless world forced such a sight on
it; to take these mysterious secrets, in which the di-
vine depth of sorrow lies hid, and play with them, fon-
dle them, trick them out, and rest not till the most
reverend of all solemnities has the appearance of being
vulgar and paltry."
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99
Keep thyself firm in the faith, and firm abide in this
temper;
For it makes steadfast and wise when fortune is fair, and
when evil,
Furnishes sweet consolation and animates hopes the
sublimest.
The happy believe not
Miracles yet can be wrought; for only in need we ac-
knowledge
God's own hand and finger, that leads the good to show
goodness.
"I believe in God," is a beautiful and praiseworthy
phrase; but to recognize God in all His manifestations,
that is true holiness on earth.
*
Let mental culture go on advancing, let science go on
gaining in depth and breadth, and the human intellect
expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation
and moral culture of Christianity as it shines forth in
the Gospels. As soon as the pure doctrine and love of
Christ are comprehended in their true nature, and have
become a living principle, we shall feel ourselves great
and free as human beings, and not attach special impor-
tance to a degree more or less in the outward forms of
religion. Besides, we shall all gradually advance from a
Christianity of words and faith to a Christianity of feel-
ing and action.
*
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* *
I have meant honestly all my life both with myself
and others, and in all my earthly strivings have ever
looked upwards to the Highest. Let us continue to work
thus while there is daylight for us; for others, another
sun will shine by which they will work, while for us a
brighter Light will shine. And so let us remain un-
troubled about the future! In our Father's kingdom
there are many provinces, and as He has given us here
so happy a resting-place, so will He certainly care for us
above; perhaps we shall be blessed with what here on
earth has been denied us, to know one another merely
by seeing one another, and thence more thoroughly to
love our friends.
If certain phenomena of nature, looked at from the
moral standpoint, force us to assume the existence of a
primitive evil, so, on the other hand, many phenomena
force us to assume a primitive Good. This spring of good-
ness, when flowing into life, we name Piety; as the ancients
did, who regarded it as the basis of all virtue. It is the
force which counterbalances egoism; and if by a miracle
it could for a moment suddenly be active in all men, the
earth would at once be free from evil.
Christ hath arisen!
Joy to humanity!
No more shall vanity,
Death and inanity
Hold thee in prison!
Christ hath arisen
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101
Out of corruption's gloom.
Break from your prison
Burst every tomb!
Livingly owning him,
Lovingly throning him,
Feasting fraternally,
Praying diurnally,
Bearing his messages,
Sharing his promises,
Find ye your master near
Find ye him here!
All unsuccessful attempts at conversion leave him who
has been selected for a proselyte stubborn and obdu-
rate.
One may remark, that all religions which enlarge their
worship or their speculations must at last come to this,
of making the brute creation in some degree partakers
of spiritual favors.
At this time the Christian religion was wavering be-
tween its own historically positive base and a pure deism,
which grounded on morality, was in its turn to lay the
foundation of ethics. The diversity of characters and
modes of thought here showed itself in infinite grada-
tions, especially when a leading difference was brought
into play by the question arising as to how great a share
the feelings could and should bear in such convictions.
The most lively and ingenious men showed themselves,
in this instance, like butterflies, who, quite regardless of
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their caterpillar state, throw away the chrysalis veil in
which they have grown up to their organic perfection.
Others, more honestly, and modestly minded, might
be compared to the flowers which, although they unfold
themselves to the most beautiful bloom, yet do not tear
themselves from the root, from the mother stalk, nay,
rather through this family connection first bring the de-
sired fruit to maturity.
It is exactly in the moment of its earliest formation
that a positive religion possesses its greatest attraction.
*
Who dares express Him?
And who confess Him,
Saying, I do believe?
A man's heart bearing,
What man has the daring
To say I acknowledge Him not?
The All-enfolder,
The All-upholder,
Enfolds, upholds He not
Thee, me, Himself?
In Faith, I said, everything depends on the fact of be-
lieving; what is believed is perfectly indifferent. Faith
is a profound sense of security for the present and future,
and this assurance springs from confidence in an im-
mense, all-powerful, and inscrutable Being. The firm-
ness of this confidence is the one grand point; but what
we think of this Being depends on our other faculties, or
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103
even on circumstances, and is wholly indifferent. Faith
is a holy vessel into which every one stands ready to
pour his feelings, his understanding, his imagination
as perfectly as he can. With knowledge, it is directly
the opposite. There, the point is not whether we know,
but what we know, how much we know, and how well
we know it. Hence it comes that men may dispute about
knowledge because it can be corrected, widened, and
contracted. Knowledge begins with the particular, is
endless and formless, can never be all comprehended,
or at least but dreamily, and thus remains exactly the
opposite of Faith.
One easily sees how the Redemption is not only
decreed from eternity, but is considered as eternally
necessary, nay, that it must ever renew itself through
the whole time of generation and existence. In this
view of the subject, nothing is more natural than for the
Divinity himself to take the form of man, which had
already prepared itself as a veil, and to share his fate
for a short time, in order, by this assimilation, to en-
hance his joys and alleviate his sorrows. The history
of all religions and philosophies teaches us that this
great truth, indispensable for man, has been handed
down by different nations, in different times, in various
ways, and even in strange fables and images, in accord-
ance with their limited knowledge.
Here two decided Christians stood in contrast to
each other, and it was quite plain how the same belief
may take a different shape according to the sentiments
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of different persons. I could, in the present case, per-
ceive that men and women need a different Saviour.
Fräulein von Klettenberg looked towards hers as to
a lover to whom one yields one's self without reserve,
concentrating all joy and hope on him alone, and with-
out doubt or hesitation confiding to him the destiny of
life.
Lavater, on the other hand, treated his as a friend, to
be imitated lovingly and without envy, whose merits he
recognized and valued highly, and whom, for that very
reason, he strove to copy, and even to equal.
What a difference between these two tendencies,
which in general exhibit the spiritual necessities of the
two sexes!
I feel that God does not grant sunshine or rain to
our importunate entreaties. And O those by-gone days,
whose memory now torments me, why were they so for-
tunate? Because I then waited with patience for the
blessings of the Eternal, and received his gifts with the
grateful feelings of a thankful heart.
Man, throwing off his load of crimes, has a claim
upon Heaven. He who has exhausted every effort of
his own, may, as a last resource, appeal to God.
*
Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are lit-
tle. From the inaccessible mountains, across the desert
which no mortal foot has trod, far as the confines of the
unknown ocean, breathes the spirit of the eternal Crea-
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105
tor, and every atom to which he has given existence finds
favor in his sight.
A politico-religious ceremony possesses an infinite
charm. We behold earthly majesty before our eyes,
surrounded by all the symbols of its power; but while
it bends before that of Heaven, it brings to our minds
the communion of both. For even the individual can
only prove his relationship with the Deity by subjecting
himself and adoring.
*
"Only when danger is nigh do we see how great is
His power."
In the
I
I received the usual instructions in religion.
latter many thoughts and feelings were awakened, but
nothing properly relating to my own condition. I liked
to hear the people speak of God; I was proud that I
could speak on these points better than my equals.
zealously read many books which put me in a condition
to talk about religion; but it never once struck me to
think how matters stood with me, whether my soul was
formed according to these holy precepts, whether it was
like a glass from which the everlasting sun could be
reflected in its glancing. From the first, I had pre-
supposed all this.
The gaudy imagery of a thoughtless life, which used
to hover day and night before my eyes, was at once
blown away. My soul again began to awaken; but the
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greatly interrupted intimacy with my Invisible Friend
was not so easy to renew. We still continued at a frigid
distance: it was again something; but little to the
times of old.
*
In this manner was I kept in constant practice. I
could trust my thoughts to no mortal; and from God I
was too far removed. Him I had quite forgotten, those
four wild years: I now again began to think of him occa-
sionally; but our acquaintance had grown cool; they
were visits of mere ceremony these; and as, moreover,
in waiting on him, I used to dress in fine apparel, to
set before him self-complacently my virtue, honor and
superiorities to others, he did not seem to notice me, or
know me in that finery.
A courtier would have been exceedingly distressed,
if the prince who held his fortune in his hands had
treated him in this way; but for me, I did not sorrow
at it. I had what I required, health and conveniences;
if God should please to think of me, well; if not, I
reckoned I had done my duty.
This, in truth, I did not think at that period; yet it
was the true figure of my soul. But, to change and
purify my feelings, preparations were already made.
The softer these experiences were, the oftener did I
endeavor to renew them; I hoped continually to meet
with comfort where I had so often met with it. Yet I
did not always meet with it: I was as one that goes to
warm him in the sunshine, while there is something
standing in the way that makes a shadow.
"What is
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this?" I asked myself. I traced the matter zealously,
and soon perceived that it all depended on the situation
of my soul: if this was not turned in the straightest
direction towards God, I still continued cold; I did not
feel his counter-influence; I could obtain no answer.
The second question was: "What hinders this direc-
tion?" Here I was in a wide field; I perplexed myself
in an inquiry.
With God I had again become a little more ac-
quainted. Earthly love itself concentrated my soul, and
put its powers in motion; nor did it contradict my in-
tercourse with God. I naturally complained to him of
what alarmed me; but I did not perceive that I myself
was wishing and desiring it. In my own eyes I was
strong; I did not pray, "Lead us not into temptation!”
My thoughts were far beyond temptation. In this
flimsy tinsel work of virtue I came to God; he did not
drive me back. On the smallest movement toward
him, he left a soft impression on my soul; and this im-
pression caused me always to return.
I very soon discovered that the straight direction of
my soul was marred by foolish dissipations, and em-
ployment with unworthy things. The how and where
was clear enough to me. Yet by what means could I
help myself, or extricate my mind from the calls of a
world where everything was either cold indifference or
hot insanity? Gladly would I have left things stand-
ing as they were, and lived from day to day, floating
down with the stream, like other people whom I saw
quite happy; but I durst not; my inmost feelings con-
tradicted me too often. Yet if I determined to re-
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nounce society, and alter my relations to others, it was
not in my power. I was hemmed in as by a ring drawn
round me; certain connections I could not dissolve;
and, in the matter which lay nearest to my heart, fatali-
ties accumulated and oppressed me more and more. I
often went to bed with tears; and, after a sleepless
night, arose again with tears; I required some strong
support; and God would not vouchsafe it me, while I
was running with the cap and bells.
Deeply as I was convinced that such a temperament
of soul, as I now saw mine to be, could never be adapted
for that union with the Invisible Being, which I hoped
for after death, I did not, in the smallest, fear that I
should finally be separated from him. With all the wick-
edness which I discovered in my heart, I still loved him ;
I hated what I felt, nay, wished to hate it still more earn-
estly; my whole desire was to be delivered from this
sickness, and this tendency to sickness; and I was per-
suaded that the Great Physician would at length vouch-
safe his help.
The sole question was: What medicine will cure this
malady? The practice of virtue? This I could not
for a moment think. For ten years, I had already prac-
ticed more than mere virtue; and the horrors now first
discovered had, all the while, lain hidden at the bottom
of my soul. Might they not have broken out with me,
as they did with David when he looked on Bathsheba ?
Yet was not he a friend of God; and was I not assured
in
my inmost heart that God was my friend?
Was it then an unavoidable infirmity of human
nature? Must we just content ourselves in feeling and
acknowledging the sovereignty of inclination? And
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with the best will, is there nothing left for us but to
abhor the fault we have committed, and on the like
occasion to commit it again?
From systems of morality I could obtain no comfort.
Neither their severity, by which they try to bend our
inclinations, nor their attractiveness, by which they try
to please our inclinations on the side of virtue, gave me
any satisfaction. The fundamental notions, which I had
imbibed from intercourse with my Invisible Friend, were
of far higher value to me.
Once, while I was studying the songs composed by
David after that tremendous fall, it struck me very much
that he traced his indwelling corruption even in the sub-
stance out of which he had been shaped; yet that
he wished to be freed from sin, and that he earnestly
entreated for a pure heart.
But how was this to be attained? The answer from
Scripture I was well aware of: "that the blood of Jesus
cleanseth us from all sin," was a Bible truth which I had
long known. But now for the first time, I observed that
as yet I had never understood this oft-repeated saying.
The questions: What does it mean? How is it to be?
were, day and night, working out their answers in me.
At last I thought I saw, by a gleam of light, that what I
sought was to be found in the incarnation of the ever-
lasting Word, by whom all things, even we ourselves,
were made. That the Eternal descended as an inhabi-
tant to the depths in which we dwell, which he surveys
and comprehends; that he passed through our lot from
stage to stage, from conception and birth to the grave;
that by this marvelous circuit he again mounted to those
shining heights, whither we too must rise in order to be
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happy; all this was revealed to me, as in a dawning
remoteness.
Oh! why must we, in speaking of such things, make
use of figures, which can only indicate external situa-
tions! Where is there in His eyes aught high or deep,
aught dark or clear! It is we only that have an under
and upper, a night and day. And even for this did He
become like us, since otherwise we could have had no
part in him.
((
But how shall we obtain a share in this priceless ben-
efit? "By faith," the Scripture says. And what is
faith? To consider the account of an event as true,
what help can this afford me? I must be enabled to
appropriate its effects, its consequences. This appro-
priating faith must be a state of mind peculiar, and to
the natural man unknown.
(6
Now, gracious Father, grant me faith!" so prayed I
once, in the deepest heaviness of heart. I was leaning
on a little table, where I sat; my tear-stained counte-
nance was hidden in my hands. I was now in the con-
dition in which we seldom are, but in which we are
required to be, if God is to regard our prayers.
O, that I could but paint what I felt then! A sudden
force drew my soul to the cross where Jesus once ex-
pired; it was a sudden force, a pull, I cannot name it
otherwise, such as leads our soul to an absent loved one;
an approximation, which perhaps is far more real and
true than we imagine. So did my soul approach the
Son of Man, who had died upon the cross; and that
instant did I know what faith was.
"This is faith!" said I, and started up as if half
frightened. I now endeavored to get certain of my feel-
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111
ing, of my view; and shortly I became convinced that
my soul had acquired a power of soaring upwards, which
was altogether new to it.
Words fail us in describing such emotions. I could
most distinctly separate them from all phantasy: they
were entirely without phantasy, without image; yet they
gave us just such certainty of their referring to some
object, as our imagination gives us when it paints the
features of an absent lover.
When the first rapture was over, I observed that my
present condition of mind had formerly been known to
me; only I had never felt it in such strength; I had
never held it fast, never made it mine. I believe, indeed,
every human soul at intervals feels something of it.
Doubtless it is this which teaches every mortal that there
is a God.
With such faculty, wont from of old to visit me now
and then, I had hitherto been well content; and had not,
by a singular arrangement of events, that unexpected
sorrow weighed upon me for a twelvemonth; had not
my own ability and strength, on that occasion, altogether
lost credit with me; I perhaps might have remained
content with such a state of matters all my days.
By several unexpected deaths, some offices fell vacant
which Narciss might make pretensions to. The instant
was at hand, when my whole destiny must be decided;
and while Narciss, and all our friends, were making every
effort to efface some impressions which obstructed him
at court, and to obtain for him the wished-for situation,
I turned with my request to my Invisible Friend. I was
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received so kindly, that I gladly came again. I con-
fessed, without disguise, my wish that Narciss might ob-
tain the place; but my prayer was not importunate; and
I did not require that it should happen for the sake of
my petition.
The place was obtained by a far inferior competitor.
I was dreadfully troubled at this news; I hastened to
my room, the door of which I locked behind me. The first
fit of grief went off in a shower of tears; the next thought
was, "Yet it was not by chance that it happened;" and
instantly I formed the resolution to be well content with
it, seeing even this apparent evil would be for my true
advantage. The softest emotions then pressed in upon
me, and divided all the clouds of sorrow. I felt that,
with help like this, there was nothing one might not en-
dure.
My health was feeble; I kept myself in peace, and, by
a quiet mode of life, in tolerable equilibrium. I was not
afraid of death; nay, I wished to die; yet I secretly per-
ceived that God was granting time for me to prove my
soul, and to advance still nearer to himself. In my many
sleepless nights, especially, I have at times felt some-
thing which I cannot undertake to describe.
It was as if my soul were thinking separately from the
body; she looked upon the body as a foreign substance,
as we look upon a garment. She pictured with extreme
vivacity events and times long past, and felt by means
of this, events that were to follow. Those times are all
gone by; what follows likewise will go by; the body too
will fall to pieces like a vesture; but I, the well-known
I, I am.
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The thought is great, exalted and consoling; yet an
excellent friend, with whom I every day became more
intimate, instructed me to dwell on it as little as I could.
This was the physician whom I met in my uncle's house,
and who had since accurately informed himself about
the temper of my body and my spirit. He showed me
how much these feelings, when we cherish them within
us independently of outward objects, tend as it were to
excavate us, and to undermine the whole foundation of our
being.
"To be active," he would say, "is the primary voca-
tion of man; all the intervals in which he is obliged to
rest, he should employ in gaining clearer knowledge of
external things, for this will in its turn facilitate ac-
tivity."
This friend was acquainted with my custom of look-
ing on my body as an outward object; he knew also
that I pretty well understood my constitution, my dis-
order, and the medicines of use for it; nay, that by
continual sufferings of my own or other people's, I had
really grown a kind of half doctor; he now carried for-
ward my attention from the human body, and the drugs
which act upon it, to the kindred objects of creation;
he led me up and down as in the paradise of the first
man; only, if I may continue my comparison, allowing
me to trace, in dim remoteness, the Creator walking in
the garden in the cool of the evening.
How gladly did I now see God in nature, when I bore
him with such certainty within my heart! How inter-
esting to me was his handiwork; how thankful did I
feel that he had pleased to quicken me with the breath
of his mouth!
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It was now that I could try whether the path, which I
had chosen, was the path of phantasy or truth; whether
I had merely thought as others showed me, or the object
of my trust had a reality. To my unspeakable support,
I always found the latter. The straight direction of my
heart to God, the fellowship of the "Beloved ones," I
had sought and found; and this was what made all
things light to me. As a traveller in the dark, my soul,
when all was pressing on me from without, hastened to
the place of refuge, and never did it return empty.
In later times, some champions of religion, who seem
to be animated more by zeal than feeling for it, have
required of their brethren to produce examples of prayers
actually heard; apparently as wishing to have seal and
signature, that so they might proceed juridically in the
matter. How unknown must the true feeling be to
these persons; how few real experiences can they
themselves have made!
I can say that I never returned empty, when in straits
and oppressions I called on God. This is saying infi-
nitely much; more I must not and cannot say. Impor-
tant as each experience was at that critical moment for
myself, the recital of them would be flat, improbable and
insignificant, were I to specify the separate cases. Happy
was I, that a thousand little incidents in combination
proved, as clearly as the drawing of my breath proved
me to be living, that I was not without God in the world.
He was near to me, I was before him. This is what,
with a diligent avoidance of all theological systematic
terms, I can with the greatest truth declare.
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Much do I wish that, in those times too, I had been
entirely without system. But which of us arrives early
at the happiness of being conscious of his individual
self, in its own pure combination, without extraneous
forms? I was in earnest with religion. I timidly trusted
in the judgments of others; I entirely gave in to the
Halle system of conversion; but my nature would by no
means tally with it.
According to this scheme of doctrine, the alteration of
the heart must begin with a deep terror on account of
sin; the heart in this agony must recognize, in a less or
greater degree, the punishment which it has merited,
must get a foretaste of hell, and so embitter the delight
of sin. At last it feels a very palpable assurance of
grace; which, however, in its progress often fades away,
and must again be sought with earnest prayer.
Of all this no jot or tittle happened with me. When
I sought God sincerely, he let himself be found of me,
and did not reproach me about by-gone things. On
looking back, I saw well enough where I had been un-
worthy, where I still was so; but the confession of my
faults was altogether without terror. Not for a moment
did the fear of hell occur to me; nay, the very notion
of a wicked spirit, and a place of punishment and tor-
ment after death, could nowise gain admission into the
circle of my thoughts. I considered the men who lived
without God, whose hearts were shut against the trust
in and the love of the Invisible, as already so unhappy
that a hell and external pains appeared to promise
rather an alleviation than an increase of their misery.
I had but to look upon the persons, in this world, who
in their breasts gave scope to hateful feelings; who
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hardened their hearts against the good of whatever
kind, and strove to force the evil on themselves and
others; who shut their eyes by day, that so they might
deny the shining of the sun. How unutterably wretched
did these persons seem to me! Who could have formed
a hell to make their situation worse?
*
I am still advancing, never retrograding; that my con-
duct is approximating more and more to the image I
have formed of perfection; that I every day feel more
facility in doing what I reckon proper, even while the
weakness of my body so obstructs me; can all this be
accounted for upon the principles of human nature,
whose corruption I have so clearly seen into? For me,
at least, it cannot.
I scarcely remember a commandment; to me there
is nothing that assumes the aspect of law; it is an im-
pulse that leads me, and guides me always aright. I
freely follow my emotions, and know as little of con-
straint as of repentance. God be praised that I know
to whom I am indebted for such happiness, and that I
cannot think of it without humility!
*
The sum of my existence seemed to have enlarged
itself into infinitude.
Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues.
The conflict in which the Church—the publicly rec-
ognized worship of God-finds itself, and always will
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find itself, in two different directions, has always deeply
interested me. For now it lies in an eternal conflict with
the State, over which it will exalt itself; now with the
individuals all of whom it will gather to itself.
The State, on its side, will not yield the superior
authority to the Church, and the individuals oppose its
restraints. The State desires everything for public,
universal ends; the individual for ends belonging to the
home, heart, and feelings.
*
*
Difficulties, for which no real satisfaction is attainable,
compel us to faith.
*
This mixing up of the holy and sensuous is anything
but pleasing to my taste; I cannot like men to set apart
certain especial places, consecrate them, and deck them
out, that by so doing they may nourish in themselves a
temper of piety. No ornaments, not even the very sim-
plest, should disturb in us that sense of the Divine Being
which accompanies us wherever we are, and can conse-
crate every spot into a temple.
What pleases me is to see a home-service of God held
in the saloon where people come together to eat, where
they have their parties, and amuse themselves with games
and dances. The highest, the most excellent in men, has
no form; and one should be cautious how one gives it
any form except noble action.
The sacraments are the highest part of religion, and
symbols to our senses of an extraordinary divine favor
and grace. In the Lord's Supper earthly lips are to
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receive a divine Being embodied, and partake of an
heavenly under the form of an earthly nourishment.
This sense is just the same in all Christian churches;
whether the Sacrament is taken with more or less sub-
mission to the mystery, with more or less accommoda-
tion as to that which is intelligible; it always remains:
a great holy thing, which in reality takes the place of
the possible or the impossible, the place of that which
man can neither attain nor do without.
But such a sacrament should not stand alone; no
Christian can partake of it with the true joy for which
it is given, if the symbolical or sacramental sense is not
fostered within him. He must be accustomed to regard
the inner religion of the heart and that of the external
Church as perfectly one, as the great universal sacra-
ment, which again divides itself into so many others, and
communicates to these parts its holiness, indestructible-
ness, and eternity.
It is possible that every false step should lead to an
inestimable good.
Man, despite all his follies and errors, being led by a
higher hand, reaches some happy goal at last.
We may imagine ourselves in what situation we please,
we always conceive ourselves as seeing. I believe men
only dream, that they may not cease to see.
Some day,.
I think, the inner light will come out from within us, and
we shall not any more require another.
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With a cheerfulness, which he never used to show,
and which now mounted to a lively joy, he said to me:
"Where is the fear of death which I once felt? Shall
I shrink at departing? I have a gracious God; the grave
awakens no terror in me; I have an eternal life."
To recall the circumstances of his death, which shortly
followed, forms one of the most pleasing entertainments
of my solitude: the visible workings of a higher power
in that solemn time, no one shall ever argue from me.
Friends will not consider bad that which is undertaken
out of affection for them. From such obligations, arises,
at last, the expressions of an empty satisfaction with each
other, in the phrases of which a character is easily lost,
if it is not from time to time steeled to higher excellence.
A friend who makes it too perceptible that he designs
to form you, excites no feeling of comfort; while a wo-
man who is forming you, while she seems to spoil you, is
adored as a heavenly, joy-bringing being.
*
Till thou a bushel of salt with a new acquaintance hast
eaten,
Be not too ready to trust him; for time alone renders
thee certain
How ye shall fare with each other, and how well your
friendships shall prosper.
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J
The confidence which new friends repose in each other
usually develops itself by degrees. Common occupa-
tions and tastes are the first things in which a mutual
harmony shows itself; then the mutual communication
generally extends over past and present passions, espe-
cially over love-affairs; but it is a lower depth which opens
itself if the connection is to be perfected; the religious.
sentiments, the affairs of the heart which relate to the
imperishable, are the things which both establish the
foundation and adorn the summit of a friendship.
Friends and relations, and all persons living in the
same house together, are apt, when life is going smoothly
and peacefully with them, to make what they are doing
or what they are going to do, even more than is right or
necessary, a subject of constant conversation.
They talk to each other of their plans and their occupa-
tions, and, without exactly taking one another's advice,
consider and discuss together the entire progress of
their lives.
But this is far from being the case in serious moments;
just when it would seem men most require the assistance
and support of others, they all draw singly within them-
selves, every one to act for himself, every one to work in
his fashion; they conceal from one another the particu-
lar means which they employ, and only the result, the
object, the thing which they realize, is again made com-
mon property.
It is dangerous to make a friend acquainted with the
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perfections of one's beloved, because he also may find
her charming and desirable; no less is the reverse dan-
ger, that he may perplex us by his dissent.
I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose
presence I seemed to be more than I really was, be-
cause I was all that I could be.
God bless you, my dear friend, and may He grant you
the happiness denied to me.
Think of you! do I not ever think of you? And yet
mine are not thoughts; you live within my soul.
Presence, in the moment of need, discerns, alleviates,
and strengthens. The absent friend comes with the
hose when the fire is extinguished.
My being is so intimately bound and interwoven with
my brother's that he feels no sorrow which I do not feel,
no joy which does not likewise gladden me. Nay, I
may truly say, through him alone I have experienced
that the heart can be affected and exalted; that in the
world there may be joy, love and an emotion which con-
tents the soul beyond its utmost want.
It is not enough that we can risk our life to serve a
friend; in the hour of need we should also yield him our
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convictions. Our dearest passions, our best wishes we
are bound to sacrifice in helping him.
** *
i
As the grace of a fair scene encircles us of itself with
soothing influences; so when the mildness of tender-
hearted friends conspires with it, there comes over sense
and soul a peculiar mood of softness, that recalls to us,
as in dreaming visions, the past and the absent, and with-
draws the present, as if it were but a show, into spiritual
remoteness.
Oftentimes a man when approaching some develop-
ment of his powers, capacities and conceptions, gets into
a perplexity, from which a prudent friend might easily
deliver him. He resembles a traveller, who, at but a
short distance from the inn he is to rest at, falls into the
water; were any one to catch him then, and pull him to
the bank, with one good wetting it were over; whereas,
though he struggles out himself, it is often at the side.
where he tumbled in, and he has to make a wide and
weary circuit before reaching his appointed object.
There is a conception among old nations which is
awful, and may almost seem terrible. They pictured
their forefathers to themselves sitting around on thrones,
in enormous caverns, in silent converse; when a new-
comer entered, if he were worthy enough, they rose up,
and inclined their heads to welcome him. Yesterday,
as I was sitting in the chapel, and other carved chairs
stood around like that in which I was, the thought of
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123
Why
this came over me, with a soft, pleasant feeling.
cannot you stay sitting here? stay here sitting medi-
tating with yourself long, long, long, till at last your
friends come, and you rise up to them, and with a gentle
inclination direct them to their places. The coloured
window-panes convert the day into a solemn twilight;
and some one should set up for us an ever-burning lamp,
that the night might not be utter darkness.
*
I feel certain, and every day I become more certain,
that the existence of anything whatever is of very little
consequence.
((
My friends esteem me; I often contribute to their
happiness, and my heart seems as if it could not beat
without them; and yet if I were to die, if I were to
be summoned from the midst of this circle, would they
feel, or how long would they feel, the void which my
loss would make in their existence? How long! Yes,
such is the frailty of man, that even there, where he has
the greatest consciousness of his own being, where he
makes the strongest and most forcible impression even
in the memory, the heart of his beloved, there also he
must perish vanish- and that quickly."
—
What is death? We do but dream in our discourse
upon it. I have seen many human beings die, but so
straitened is our feeble nature, we have no clear con-
ception of the beginning or the end of our existence.
One lifts up the curtain and passes to the other side,
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1
that is all! And why all these doubts and delays?
Because we know not what is behind because there is
no returning and because our mind infers that all is
darkness and confusion where we have nothing but
uncertainty.
"To rest hereafter at the side of those whom we love
is the most delightful thought which man can have
when once he looks out beyond the boundary of life.
What a sweet expression that 'He was gathered to
his fathers!'"
'But after all, why should we take it so much to
heart? Is all that we do done for eternity? Do we
not put on our dress in the morning, to throw it off
again at night? Do we not go abroad to return home
again? And why should we not wish to rest by the side
of our friends, though it were but for a century?"
His untimely death sharpened the attention paid to
the value of his life. Perhaps, indeed, the effect of his
activity, if he had continued it to a more advanced age,
would probably not have been so great as it now nec-
essarily became, when, like many other extraordinary
men, he was distinguished by fate through a strange
and calamitous end.
"Past eleven o'clock! All is silent around me, and
my soul is calm. I thank thee, O God, that thou be-
stowest strength and courage upon me in these last
moments.
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"I approach the window, and through the clouds, which
are at this moment driven rapidly along by the impetu-
ous winds, I behold the stars which illumine the eternal
heavens! No, you will not fall, celestial bodies! the
hand of the Almighty supports both you and me!
"With cold, unflinching hand I knock at the brazen
portals of Death.
"Peace! I pray you, peace!'
So lay the heart, which but a short time before had
been so swift and eager, at rest now, where it could
never be disturbed; and falling asleep as he did, with
his thoughts on one so saintly, he might well be called
blessed.
So lie the lovers, sleeping side by side. Peace hovers
above their resting-place. Fair angel-faces gaze down
upon them from the vaulted ceiling, and what a happy
moment that will be when one day they wake again
together!
"It is right for the lowest as well as the highest to
mark the spot which holds those who are dearest to
him. The poorest peasant, who buries a child, finds
it some consolation to plant a light wooden cross upon
the grave, and hang a garland upon it, to keep alive
the memorial, at least as long as the sorrow remains;
although such a mark, like the mourning, will pass
away with time.
"Those better off change the cross of wood into iron,
and fix it down, and guard it in various ways; and here
we have endurance for many years. But because this
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too will sink at last, and become invisible, those who
are able to bear the expense see nothing fitter than to
raise a stone which shall promise to endure for gen-
erations, and which can be restored and made fresh
again by posterity.
"Yet this stone it is not which attracts us; it is that
which is contained beneath it, which is entrusted, where
it stands, to the earth. It is not the memorial so much
of which we speak, as of the person himself; not of
what once was, but of what is.
"Far better, far more closely, can I embrace some
dear departed one in the mound which rises over his
bed, than in a monumental writing which only tells us
that once he was. In itself, indeed, it is but little; but
around it, as around a central mark, the wife, the hus-
band, the kinsman, the friend, after their departure, shall
gather in again; and the living shall have the right to
keep far off all strangers and evil-wishers from the side
of the dear one who is sleeping there."
*
Drawing nearer to the grave, my perceptions be-
come clearer. We shall exist; we shall see each other
again."
He now bitterly reproached himself, that after so
great a loss he could yet enjoy one painless, restful,
indifferent moment. He despised his own heart, and
longed for the balm of tears and lamentation.
To awaken these again within him, he would recall to
memory the scenes of his by-gone happiness. He would
paint them to his fancy in the liveliest colors, transport
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127
himself again into the days when they were real; and
when standing on the highest elevation he could reach,
when the sunshine of past times again seemed to ani-
mate his limbs and heave his bosom, he would look back
into the fearful chasm, would feast his eye on its dis-
membering depth, then plunge down into its horrors,
and thus force from nature the bitterest pains. With
repeated cruelty did he tear himself in pieces; for youth,
which is so rich in undeveloped force, knows not what
it squanders, when to the anguish which a loss occa-
sions, it adds so many sorrows of its own producing, as
if it meant then first to give the right value to what is
gone forever. He likewise felt so convinced that his
present loss was the sole, the first, the last which he
ever could experience in life, that he turned away from
every consolation which aimed at showing that his sor-
rows might be less than endless.
"You never long'd and loved,
You know not grief like mine :
Alone and far remov'd
From joys or hopes, I pine:
A foreign sky above,
And a foreign earth below me,
To the south I look all day;
For the hearts that love and know me
Are far, are far away.
I burn, I faint, I languish,
My heart is waste, and sick, and sore;
Who has not long'd in baffled anguish
Cannot know what I deplore."
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One knows not whether it is better to let sorrow take
its natural course, or to
which culture offers us.
repress it by the various aids
If one decides upon the latter
method, as I always do, one is only strengthened for a
moment; and I have observed that nature always asserts
her right through some other crisis.
*
Alas! our very deeds, and not our sufferings only,
How do they hem and choke life's way!
Must I perchance a thousand books turn over,
To find that men are everywhere distrest,
And here and there one happy one discover?
*
The source of our happiness must also be the founda-
tion of our misery.
The common burden of humanity which we have all
to bear falls most heavily on those whose intellectual
powers expand early. We may grow up under the pro-
tection of parents, we may lean for awhile upon our
brothers and friends, be amused by acquaintances, ren-
dered happy by those we love, but in the end man is
always driven back upon himself, and it seems as if the
Divinity had so placed himself in relation to man as not
always to respond to his reverence, trust and love, at
least not in the terrible moment of need.
Early and often had I learned that the call to us is,
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"Physician, heal thyself;" and how frequently have I
been compelled to exclaim in my pain, "I tread the wine-
press alone!"
It is well for us that man can only endure a certain
amount of unhappiness; what is beyond that, either
annihilates him, or passes by him, and leaves him
apathetic.
There are situations in which hope and fear run to-
gether, in which they mutually destroy one another, and
lose themselves in a dull indifference. If it were not so,
how could we bear to know of those who are most dear
to us being in hourly peril, and yet go on as usual with
our ordinary, every-day life?
Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping and watching for the morrow,
He knows ye not, ye gloomy powers.
It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing
to which we have been accustomed. In serious things
such a loss becomes miserably painful.
How hollow and empty do we feel in the melancholy,
atheistical half-night, in which earth vanishes with all its
images, heaven with all its stars.
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"What important personages we conceive ourselves to
be! We think that it is we alone that animate the circle
that we move in; that, in our absence, life, nourishment
and breath will make a general pause; and, alas, the
void which occurs is scarcely remarked, so soon is it
filled up again; nay, it is often but the place, if not for
something better, at least for something more agreeable.”
"And the sorrows of our friends we are not to take
into account?"
"For our friends, too, it is well, when they soon re-
cover their composure, when they say each to himself:
There where thou art, there where thou remainest,
accomplish what thou canst; be busy, be courteous, and
let the present scene delight thee.”
An epoch, which includes in it the change of all earthly
things, is necessary for a feeling heart, to alleviate the
painful impressions of a great loss. We see the flowers
fade and the leaves fall; but we likewise see fruits ripen,
and new buds shoot forth. Life belongs to the living;
and he who lives must be prepared for vicissitudes.
Not in thy condition, but in thyself lies the mean
impediment over which thou canst not gain the mastery.
What mortal in the world, if without inward calling he
take up a trade, an art, or any mode of life, will not feel
his situation miserable? But he who is born with
capacities for any undertaking, finds in executing this
the fairest portion of his being. Nothing upon earth
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without its difficulties! It is the secret impulse within;
it is the love and the delight we feel, that help us to
conquer obstacles to clear out new paths, and to over-
leap the bounds of that narrow circle in which others
poorly toil. For thee the stage is but a few boards; the
parts assigned thee are but what a task is to a schoolboy.
The spectators thou regardest as on work-days they
regard each other. For thee, then, it may be well to
wish thyself behind a desk, over ruled ledgers, collect-
ing tolls, and picking out reversions. Thou feelest not
the co-operating, co-inspiring whole, which the mind
alone can invent, comprehend and complete; thou feel-
est not that in man there lives a spark of purer fire,
which, when it is not fed, when it is not fanned, gets
covered by the ashes of indifference and daily wants;
yet not till late, perhaps never, can be altogether
quenched. Thou feelest in thy soul no strength to fan
this spark into a flame, no riches in thy heart to feed it
when aroused. Hunger drives thee on, inconveniences
withstand thee; and it is hidden from thee, that, in every
human condition, foes lie in wait for us, invincible except
by cheerfulness and equanimity. Thou dost well to
wish thyself within the limits of a common station; for
what station that required soul and resolution couldst
thou rightly fill! Give a soldier, a statesman, a divine
thy sentiments, and as justly will he fret himself about
the miseries of his condition. Nay, have there not been
men so totally forsaken by all feeling of existence, that
they have held the life and nature of mortals as a noth-
ing, a painful, short and tarnished gleam of being? Did
the forms of active men rise up living in thy soul; were
thy breast warmed by a sympathetic fire; did the voca-
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tion which proceeds from within diffuse itself over all thy
frame; were the tones of thy voice, the words of thy
mouth, delightful to hear; didst thou feel thy own being
sufficient for thyself, then wouldst thou doubtless
seek place and opportunity likewise to feel it in others.
*
Of the various memorials and tokens which bring
nearer to us the distant and the separated— none is so
satisfactory as a picture. To sit and talk to a beloved
picture, even though it be unlike, has a charm in it like
the charm which there sometimes is in quarrelling with
a friend. We feel in a strange, sweet way, that we are
divided and yet cannot separate.
We entertain ourselves often with a present person
as with a picture. He need not speak to us, he need
not look at us, or take any notice of us; we look at him,
we feel the relation in which we stand to him; such
relation can even grow without his doing anything
towards it, without his having any feeling of it: he is to
us exactly as a picture.
* *
One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that
one knows. I have always felt for the portrait-painter
on this account. One so seldom requires of people
what is possible, and of them we do really require
what is impossible; they must gather up into their
picture the relation of everybody to its subject, all
their likings and all their dislikings; they must not only
paint a man as they see him, but as everybody else sees
him.
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Copies only serve to refresh and vivify the im-
pressions shortly before received. They seem trifling
in comparison, and at the best only a melancholy
substitute. But as the remembrance of the original
forms fades more and more, the copies imperceptibly
assume their place, they become as dear to us as those
once were, and what we at first contemned, now gains
esteem and affection. Thus it is with all copies, and
particularly with portraits. No one is easily satisfied
with the counterfeit of an object still present, but how
we value every silhouette of one who is absent or
departed.
"What a life," exclaimed he, "in this hall of the past!
One might with equal justice name it hall of the present
and the future. Such all were, such all will be. There
is nothing transitory but the individual who looks at and
enjoys it. Here, this figure of the mother pressing her
infant to her bosom, will survive many generations of
happy mothers. Centuries hence, perhaps some father
will take pleasure in contemplating this bearded man,
who has laid aside his seriousness, and is playing with
his son.
Thus shamefaced will the bride sit for ages,
and amid her silent wishes, need that she be comforted,
that she be spoken to; thus impatient will the bride-
groom listen on the threshold whether he may enter."
The figures Wilhelm was surveying with such rapture
were of almost boundless number and variety. From
the first jocund impulse of the child, merely to employ
its every limb in sport, up to the peaceful sequestered
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earnestness of the sage, you might, in fair and living
order, see delineated how man possesses no capacity or
tendency without employing and enjoying it. From the
first soft conscious feeling, when the maiden lingers in
pulling up her pitcher, and looks with satisfaction at
her image in the clear fountain, to those high solemnities
when kings and nations invoke the gods at the altar to
witness their alliances, all was depicted, all was forcible
and full of meaning.
Soon after this comes a wonderfully beautiful picture.
You observe a quantity of timber lying dressed; it is
just to be put together, and by chance two of the pieces
form a cross. The Child has fallen asleep on the cross;
his mother sits by, and looks at him with heartfelt love;
and the foster-father pauses with his labor, that he may
not awaken him.
A keen impression is like any other wound: we do
not feel it in receiving it. Not till afterwards does it
begin to smart and gangrene.
What is useful forms but a part of the important.
Fully to possess, to command, and rule an object, we
must first study it for its own sake.
Variety, without dissipation, is the best motto for both
teaching and life.
us.
We flatter ourselves on into life; but life flatters not
How many men would like to acknowledge at the
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135
outset, what at the end they must acknowledge whether
they like it or not?
We are obliged to give our pupils an outward cultiva-
tion. It is indispensable, it is necessary, and it may be
really valuable, if we do not overstep the proper measure
in it. Only it is so easy, while one is proposing to cul-
tivate the children for a wider sweep, to drive them out
into the indefinite, without keeping before our eyes the
real requisites of the inner nature. Here lies the prob-
lem which more or less must be either solved or blun-
dered over by all educators.
Many things, with which we furnish our children at
school, do not please me; because experience tells me
of how little service they are likely to be in after-life.
Another education there is which will speedily recom-
mence, and work on well-nigh through all the years of
our life
the education which circumstances will give
us, if we do not give it to ourselves.
It might be of serious advantage to her if she would
go back for some little time to school, in order methodi-
cally and thoroughly to make her own forever what the
world was only imparting to her in fragments and
pieces, rather perplexing her than satisfying her, and
often too late to be of service.
*
Individuals may be left to occupy themselves with
*
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whatever amuses them, with whatever gives them plea-
sure, whatever they think useful; but the proper study
of mankind is man.
A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single
good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes
more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of
natural objects, classified with name and form. For
what is the result of all these, except what we know as
well without them, that the human figure preeminently
and peculiarly is made in the image and likeness of
God?
A cabinet of natural curiosities we may regard like
an Egyptian burying-place, where the various plant gods
and animal gods stand about embalmed. It may be
well enough for a priest-caste to busy itself with such
things in a twilight of mystery. But in general instruc-
tion, they have no place or business; and we must
beware of them all the more, because what is nearer to
us and more valuable, may be so easily thrust aside by
them.
Many times when a certain longing curiosity about
these strange objects has come over me, I have envied
the traveller who sees such marvels in living, every-day
connection with other marvels. But he, too, must have
become another man. Palm-trees will not allow a man
to wander among them with impunity; and doubtless
his tone of thinking becomes very different in a land
where elephants are at home.
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137
Whatever lives, finds nourishment and finds assist-
ance; and if the son who has early lost his father, does
not spend so easy, so favored a youth, he profits, per-
haps, for that very reason, in being trained sooner for
the world, and comes to a timely knowledge that he
must accommodate himself to others, a thing which
sooner or later we are all forced to learn.
What a difference is there between him who wishes to
investigate principles, and one whose highest object is
to work on the world and to teach them for their mere
private amusement.
Every one is apt to believe that what he possesses
himself may be communicated to others.
Take any subject, a substance, an idea, whatever you
like; keep fast hold of it; make yourself thoroughly
acquainted with it in all its parts, and then it will be
easy for you, in conversation, to find out, with a mass of
children, how much about it has already developed itself
in them; what requires to be stimulated, what to be
directly communicated. The answers to your questions.
may be as unsatisfactory as they will, they may wander
wide of the mark; if you only take care that your
counter-question shall draw their thoughts and senses
inward again; if you do not allow yourself to be driven
from your own position - the children will at last reflect,
comprehend, learn only what the teacher desires them to
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learn, and the subject will be presented to them in the
light in which he wishes them to see it. The greatest
mistake which he can make is to allow himself to be
run away with from the subject; not to know how to
keep fast to the point with which he is engaged.
If elderly persons wish to play the pedagogue properly,
they should neither prohibit nor render disagreeable to
a young man anything which gives him pleasure, of what-
ever kind it may be, unless at the same time, they have
something else to put it its place, or can contrive a sub-
stitute.
The country people have knowledge enough, but their
way of imparting it is confused. The students from the
towns and universities are sufficiently clever and orderly,
but they are deficient in personal experience.
It is nature to communicate one's self; it is culture
to receive what is communicated as it is given.
Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity
transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act
according to our thought is troublesome. Every begin-
ning is cheerful; the threshold is the place of expec-
tation. The boy stands astonished; his impressions.
guide him; he learns sportfully; seriousness comes
on him by surprise. Imitation is born with us; what
should be imitated is not easy to discover. The excel
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139
lent is rarely found, more rarely valued. The height
charms us, the steps to it do not: with the summit in
our eye, we love to walk along the plain. It is but a
part of art that can be taught; the artist needs it all.
Who knows it half, speaks much, and is always wrong;
who knows it wholly, inclines to act, and speaks seldom
or late.
The former have no secrets and no force: the instruc-
tion they can give is like baked bread, savory and sat-
isfying for a single day; but flour cannot be sown, and
seed-corn ought not to be ground. Words are good,
but they are not the best. The best is not to be ex-
plained by words. The spirit in which we act is the
highest matter. Action can be understood and again
represented by the spirit alone. No one knows what
he is doing while he acts aright; but of what is wrong.
we are always conscious. Whoever works with symbols
only, is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There
are many such, and they like to be together. Their
babbling detains the scholar; their obstinate medioc-
rity vexes even the best. The instruction which the
true artist gives us, opens the mind; for where words
fail him, deeds speak. The true scholar learns from
the known to unfold the unknown, and approaches more
and more to being a master.
as
"We look upon our scholars," said the overseer,
so many swimmers, who, in the element which threatened
to swallow them, feel with astonishment that they are
lighter, that it bears and carries them forward and so it
is with everything that man undertakes."
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"On our plan, song is the first step in education; all
the rest are connected with it, and attained by means
of it. The simplest enjoyment, as well as the simplest
instruction, we enliven and impress by song; nay, even
what religious and moral principles we lay before our
children, are communicated in the way of song. Other
advantages for the excitement of activity spontaneously
arise from this practice; for, in accustoming the children
to write the tones they are to utter, in musical characters,
and as occasion serves, again to seek these characters in
the utterance of their own voice; and besides this, to
subjoin the text below the notes, they are forced to prac-
tice hand, ear and eye at once, whereby they acquire the
art of penmanship sooner than you would expect; and as
all this, in the long run, is to be effected by copying pre-
cise measurements and accurately settled numbers, they
come to conceive the high value of mensuration and arith-
metic much sooner than in any other way. Among all
imaginable things, accordingly, we have selected music
as the element of our teaching; for level roads run out
from music towards every side."
Any good thought which we have read, anything strik-
ing which we have heard, we commonly enter in our
diary; but if we would take the trouble, at the same
time, to copy out of our friends' letters the remarkable
observations, the original ideas, the hasty words so
pregnant in meaning, which we might find in them, we
should then be rich indeed. We lay aside letters never
to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of
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141
discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the
most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves.
and for others. I intend to make amends in future for
such neglect.
It is, indeed, a glorious thing to be able, with our
newest thoughts, to reach into the distance, and by
words to convey thither an idea of one's immediate state
and circumstances.
Another employment was reading the letters which I
had written home from Leipzig. Nothing reveals more
with respect to ourselves, than when we again see before
us that which has proceeded from us years before, so that
we can now consider ourselves as an object of contem-
plation.
As in our younger years we do not in general cast off
a certain self-complacent conceit, this especially shows
itself in despising what we have been but a little time
before; for while, indeed, we perceive, as we advance
from step to step, that those things which we regard as
good and excellent in ourselves and in others do not
stand their ground, we think we can best extricate our-
selves from this dilemma by ourselves throwing away
what we cannot preserve.
Argument and flattery are but poor elements out of
which to form a conversation.
The pleasantest society is when the members of it
have an easy and natural respect for one another.
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There is nothing in which people more betray their
character than in what they find to laugh at.
*
People will allow their faults to be shown them; they
will let themselves be punished for them; they will
patiently endure many things because of them; they
only become impatient when they have to lay them aside.
Certain defects are necessary for the existence of
individuality. We should not be pleased if old friends
were to lay aside certain peculiarities.
What kind of defects may we bear with and even
cultivate in ourselves? Such as rather give pleasure to
others than injure them.
*
We accept every person in the world as that for
which he gives himself out, only he must give himself
out for something. We can put up with the unpleasant
more easily than we can endure the insignificant.
*
We venture upon anything in society except only
what involves a consequence.
We never learn to know people when they come to
us. we must go to them to find out how things stand
with them.
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143
When we are living with people who have a delicate
sense of propriety, we are in misery on their account
when anything unbecoming is committed.
In life generally, and in society no one has such high
advantages as a well-cultivated soldier.
True individuality can only be properly made prom-
inent through good manners.
com-
How true is the saying: the public is ever
plaining that it is ill-served, and never knows how to
set about getting better served.
*
One alone can do but little, but he can avail who in
the proper hour unites his strength with others.
After all the world is nothing but a wheel; in its
whole periphery it is everywhere similar, but, never-
theless, it appears to us so strange, because we ourselves
are carried around with it.
*
We first know that we exist, when we recognize
ourselves in others.
I have made all sorts of acquaintances, but as yet
have found no society.
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Trust not the people's fickle favor!
However much thou mayst for them have done.
Nations, as well as women, ever
Worship the rising, not the setting sun.
The public interests itself sooner for a faulty indi-
viduality than for that which is produced or amended
according to a universal law of taste.
We who depend upon society must act according to its
rules, and it would be safer to provoke its resentment than
its ennui, by requiring it to think or reflect. We must
avoid everything that would tend to this result, and pur-
sue by ourselves in private whatever would prove unpal-
atable to the public.
The world runs on from one folly to another, and the
man who, solely from regard to the opinion of others, and
without any wish or necessity of his own, toils after gold,
honor, or any other phantom, is no better than a fool.
As we may sometimes preserve our composure even
during the performance of a farce, without smiling at the
most positive drolleries, though we find it impossible to
restrain our laughter when anything absurd occurs in the
representation of a tragedy, so in this real world, the gen-
erality of accidents of a serious nature are accompanied
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145
by circumstances either ridiculous at the moment, or in-
fallibly productive of subsequent mirth.
1
"To please the crowd my purpose has been steady,
Because they live and let one live at least."
Oh! the brilliant wretchedness, the weariness that one
is doomed to witness among the silly people whom we
meet in society. The ambition of rank; how they watch,
how they toil to gain precedence! What poor and con-
temptible passions are displayed in their utter nakedness.
No one would talk much in society, if he only knew
how often he misunderstands others.
Mystifications are and will continue to be an amuse-
ment for idle people, whether more or less ingenious. A
venial wickedness, a self-complacent malice, is an enjoy-
ment for those who have neither resources in themselves
nor a wholesome external activity.
We can look upon ourselves as members of a union
belonging to the world. Simple and grand is the
thought; easy is its execution by understanding and
strength. Unity is all powerful; no division, therefore,
no contention among us! Let a man learn, we say, to
figure himself as without permanent external relation ;
let him seek consistency and sequence not in circum-
stances but in himself; there will he find it; there let
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him cherish and nourish it. He who devotes himself
to the most needful will in all cases advance to his pur-
pose with greatest certainty; others, again, aiming at
the higher, the more delicate, require greater prudence
even in the choice of their path. But let a man be
attempting or treating what he will, he is not, as an
individual, sufficient for himself; and to an honest mind
society remains the highest want. All serviceable per-
sons ought to be related with each other, as the build-
ing proprietor looks out for an architect, and the archi-
tect for masons and carpenters.
In society, all things are easier, more certain in their
accomplishment, than to an individual.
The world, we are often told, is unthankful; I have
never yet discovered that it was unthankful, if one knew
how, in the proper way, to do it service. My whole soul
burns at the idea that I shall at length step forth and
speak to the hearts of men something they have long
been yearning to hear. How many thousand times has
a feeling of disgust passed through me, alive as I am to
the nobleness of the stage, when I have seen the poor-
est creatures fancying they could speak a word of power
to the hearts of the people! The tone of a man's voice
singing treble sounds far pleasanter and purer to my
ear: it is incredible how these blockheads, in their
coarse ineptitude, deform things beautiful and vener-
able.
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147
*
The great public should be reverenced, not used as
children are, when peddlers wish to hook the money
from them. By presenting excellence to the people,
you should gradually excite in them a taste and feeling
for the excellent; and they will pay their money with
double satisfaction, when reason itself has nothing to
object against this outlay. The public you may flatter,
as you do a well-beloved child, to better, to enlighten
it; not as you do a pampered child of quality, to per-
petuate the error you profit from.
The herd of people dread sound understanding more
than anything; they ought to dread stupidity, if they
had any notion what was really dreadful. Understand-
ing is unpleasant, they must have it pushed aside; stupid-
ity is but pernicious, they can let it stay.
The public is large; true judgment, true feeling, are
not quite so rare as one believes; only the artist ought
not to demand an unconditional approval of his work.
Unconditional approval is always the least valuable.
I knew enough about the world to understand that
one's conduct is often censured by the very persons who
would have advised it, had one consulted them.
*
*
In life, as in art, I know well, a person must take
counsel with himself when he purposes to do or to pro-
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duce anything; but when it is produced, or done, he
must listen with attention to the voices of a number,
and with a little practice, out of these many votes he
will be able to collect a perfect judgment. The few,
who could themselves pronounce one, for the most part
hold their peace.
It is a false compliance with the multitude, to raise
in them emotions which they wish, when these are not
emotions which they ought to feel.
*
In all provinces of life, it is unhappily the case, that
whatever is to be accomplished by a number of coöp-
erating men and circumstances, cannot long continue
perfect. Of an acting company as well as of a king-
dom, of a circle of friends as well as of an army, you
may commonly select the moment when it may be said
that all was standing on the highest pinnacle of har-
mony, perfection, contentment and activity. But altera-
tions will ere long occur: the individuals that compose
the body often change; new members are added; the
persons are no longer suited to the circumstances, or
the circumstances to the persons; what was formerly
united, quickly falls asunder.
Their conversation naturally turned upon the various
modes of treating the insane.
Except physical derangements," observed the clergy-
man, "which often place insuperable difficulties in the
way, and in regard to which I follow the prescriptions
of a wise physician, the means of curing madness seem
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149
to me extremely simple. They are the very means by
which you hinder sane persons from becoming mad.
Awaken their activity; accustom them to order; bring
them to perceive that they hold their being and their
fate in common with many millions; that extraordinary
talents, the highest happiness, the deepest misery, are
but slight variations from the general lot; then no insan-
ity will enter; or if it has entered, will gradually disappear.
*
*
I can now really enjoy the solitude for which I have
longed so ardently, for nowhere does a man feel him-
self more solitary than in a crowd, where he must push
his way unknown to every one. One must possess a
rare amount of self-control not to be carried away.
*
To pass through such a countless multitude, with its
restless excitement, is strange but salutary. Here they
are all crossing and recrossing one another, and yet
every one finds his way and his object. In so great a
crowd and bustle I feel myself perfectly calm and soli-
tary; the more bustling the streets become, the more
quietly I move.
*
Nothing important can be produced without self-
isolation.
"The youth matures into manhood:
Better in stillness oft ripening to deeds than when in the
tumult
Wildering and wild of existence, that many a youth has
corrupted."
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“I think thee very happy, that, in solitude, thou canst
employ and entertain thyself so pleasantly; that, being
everywhere a stranger, thou findest in thy own heart
agreeable society."
He was drawn forth from the quiet, the twilight, the
obscurity, which alone can favor pure creation, into the
noise of daylight where one is lost in others, where one
is led astray, alike by sympathy and by coldness, by
praise and by blame, because outward contact never
accords with the epoch of our inner culture, and there-
fore, as it cannot further us, must necessarily injure us.
*
"I see but too plainly that Heaven has destined me to
severe trials; but, courage! a light heart may bear any-
thing. A little more light-heartedness would render me
the happiest being under the sun. But must I despair
of my talents and faculties, whilst others of far inferior
abilities parade before me with the utmost self-satisfac-
tion? Gracious Providence! to whom I owe all my pow-
ers, why didst thou not withhold some of these blessings
I possess, and substitute in their places a feeling of self-
confidence and contentment?
"But patience! all will yet be well; since I have been
obliged to associate continually with other people, and
observe what they do, and how they employ themselves,
I have become far better satisfied with myself. For we
are so constituted by nature, that we are ever prone to
compare ourselves with others, and our happiness or mis-
ery depends very much on the objects and persons
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around us. On this account nothing is more dangerous
than solitude; there, our imagination, always disposed to
rise, taking a new flight on the wings of fancy, pictures
to us a chain of beings, of whom we seem the most infe-
rior. All things appear greater than they really are, and
all seem superior to us. This operation of the mind is
quite natural; we so continually feel our own imperfec-
tions, and fancy we perceive in others the qualities we do
not possess, attributing to them also all that we enjoy our-
selves, that by this process we form the idea of a perfect,
happy man a man, however, who only exists in our own
imagination.
"But when, in spite of weakness and disappointments,
we set to work in earnest, and persevere steadily, we
often find that, though obliged continually to tack, we
make more way than others who have the assistance of
wind and tide; and in truth, there can be no greater
satisfaction than to keep pace with others, or outstrip
them in the race.'
But
Thus was I often solitary in the midst of company;
and real solitude was generally acceptable to me.
my busy soul could neither sleep nor dream; I felt and
thought; and acquired, by degrees, some faculty to speak
about my feelings and my thoughts with God.
For my part, I never see persons so lively and so
animated either at a learned meeting or at a public
lecture convened for general instruction, as in a society
where some piece of scandal is introduced which reflects
on the character of a neighbor. Ask yourself, or ask
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others, what invests a piece of news with its greatest
charm? Not its importance, not its influences, but its
mere novelty.
Nothing old is cared for; novelty by itself excites our
surprise, awakens the imagination, gently agitates the
feelings, and requires no exertion of the reasoning
powers.
Every man can take the most lively interest in a piece
of news with the least trouble to himself; indeed, since
a succession of new events carries us rapidly from one
circumstance to another, nothing is more welcome to the
generality of mankind than this inducement to constant
dissipation, and this opportunity of venting their spleen
and malice in an agreeable and varied manner.
The passions are defects or excellencies only in
excess.
Violent passions are incurable diseases; the means
which will cure them are what first made them danger-
ous.
Opportunity is to passion what a spark is to gun-
powder, and those desires which we gratify contrary to
conscience always rule with the most ungovernable
power.
How keenly grateful people are to us when we are able
by stilling and calming them to help them out of the
entanglements of passion.
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Young people have the happiness or unhappiness, that,
when once anything has produced an effect on them,
this effect must be wrought out within themselves; from
which much good as well as much mischief arises.
Children and youths wander on in a sort of happy
intoxication which betrays itself especially in the fact,
that the good, innocent creatures are scarcely able to
notice, and still less to understand, the ever-changing
state of things around them. They regard the world as
raw material which they must shape, as a treasure which
they must take possession of. Everything, they seem
to think, belongs to them, everything must be subservient
to their will; indeed, on this account, the greater part
lose themselves in a wild, uncontrollable temper. With
the better part, however, this tendency unfolds itself
into a moral enthusiasm, which occasionally moves of
its own accord after some actual or seeming good, but
still oftener suffers itself to be prompted, led or even
misled.
Youth still retains this trait of childhood, that it
harbors no malice against good companions; that its
unsophisticated good-nature may be brushed somewhat
roughly indeed, to be sure, but cannot be permanently
injured.
*
How sedulously are we shaped and moulded in our
youth—how constantly are we then called on to lay
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aside now this, now that bad feeling! But what, in fact,
are our so called bad feelings, but so many organs by
means of which man is to help himself in life? How is
not the poor child worried in whom but a little spark of
vanity is discovered! and yet what a poor miserable
creature is the man who has no vanity at all.
That which pains a sensitive youth is the unceasing
return of our faults; for how late do we learn to see
that while we cultivate our virtues, we rear our faults at
the same time. The former depends upon the latter
as upon their root, and the latter send forth secret rami-
fications as strong and as various as those which the
former send forth in open light.
Because now we generally practise our virtues with
will and consciousness, but are unconsciously surprised
by our faults, the former seldom procure us any pleas-
ure, while the latter constantly bring trouble and pain.
Here lies the most difficult point in self-knowledge
that which makes it almost impossible.
Nothing is more unsatisfactory than a mature judg
ment adopted by an immature mind.
A youthful affection, cherished at random, may be
compared to a bombshell thrown at night, which rises
with a soft, brilliant light, mingles with the stars, nay,
for a moment, seems to pause among them, then, in
descending, describes the same path in the reverse
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direction, and at last brings destruction to the place
where it has terminated its course.
The quiet fruitfulness is quite inestimable of those.
impressions which are received with enjoyment and
without dissecting judgment. Youth is capable of this
highest happiness if it will not be critical, but allows
the excellent and the good to act upon it without inves-
tigation and division.
Youth should be allowed its own course; it does not
stick to false maxims very long; life soon tears or
charms it away again.
Ay, give me back the joyous hours,
When I, myself, was ripening, too,
When song, the fount, flung up its showers.
Of beauty ever fresh and new.
When a soft haze the world was veiling,
Each bud a miracle bespoke,
And from their stems a thousand flowers I broke,
Their fragrance through the vales exhaling.
I nothing and yet all possessed,
Yearning for truth and in illusion blest.
Give me the freedom of that hour,
The tears of joy, the pleasing pain,
Of hate and love the thrilling power,
Oh, give me back my youth again!
Happy narrow-mindedness of youth!-nay, of men
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in general, that they can, at every moment of their exist-
ence, fancy themselves finished, and inquire after neither
the true nor the false, after neither the high nor the
deep, but merely after that which is suited to them.
*
Children of talent, whose mental gifts have, at an
early period, been cultivated to an extraordinary degree,
return, if they can, to the simplest sports of youth.
* *
፡፡ for much did I suffer,
Ever remembering with cordial respect the kindness of
parents,
Solely intent on increasing for us their goods and pos-
sessions,
Much denying themselves in order to save for their
children.
But, alas! saving alone, for the sake of a tardy enjoy-
ment,
That is not happiness; pile upon pile, and acre. on
acre,
Make us not happy, no matter how fair our estate may
be rounded.
For the father grows old, and with him will grow old
the children,
Losing the joy of the day, and bearing the care of to-
morrow."
As a family picnic in summer is vexatiously disturbed
by a sudden storm, which transforms a pleasant state
of things into the very reverse, so the diseases of child-
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he asked whence came the wind and whither went the
flame, his father for the first time truly felt the limi-
tation of his own powers; and wished to understand
how far man may venture with his thoughts, and what
things he may hope ever to give account of to himself
or others.
*
Wilhelm was still in that happy season, when one
cannot understand how, in the woman one loves, in the
writer one honors, there should be anything defective.
The feeling they excite in us is so entire, so accordant
with itself, that we cannot help attributing the same
perfect harmony to the objects themselves.
If the first love is indeed, as I hear it everywhere
maintained to be, the most delicious feeling which the
heart of man, before it or after, can experience then
our hero must be reckoned doubly happy, as permitted
to enjoy the pleasure of this chosen period in all its
fullness. Few men are so peculiarly favored; by far
the greater part are led by the feelings of their youth
into nothing but a school of hardship, where, after a
stinted and checkered season of enjoyment, they are at
length constrained to renounce their dearest wishes,
and to learn forever to dispense with what once hovered
before them as the highest happiness of existence.
The sight of the child exceedingly enlivened and
cheered him; at the christening, contrary to his custom,
he seemed as if inspired; nay, I might say, like a
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¡
genius with two faces. With the one, he looked joyfully
forward to those regions which he soon hoped to enter;
with the other, to the new, hopeful, earthly life which
had arisen in the boy descended from him.
66
Any species of activity," continued he, "attracts the
fondness of a child; for everything looks easy that is
practiced to perfection. All beginnings are hard, says
the proverb. This, in a certain sense, may be true; but
we might say, with a more universal application: All
beginnings are easy; and it is the last steps that are
climbed most rarely and with greatest difficulty."
Everything that happens to us leaves some trace
behind it, everything contributes imperceptibly to form
us. Yet often it is dangerous to take a strict account of
that. For either we grow proud and negligent, or down-
cast and dispirited; and both are equally injurious in
their consequences. The safe plan is, always simply to
do the task that lies nearest us.
In all things to serve from the lowest station upwards
is necessary. To restrict yourself to a trade is best.
For the narrow mind, whatever he attempts is still a
trade; for the higher an art; and the highest, in doing
one thing does all; or, to speak less paradoxically, in the
one thing which he does rightly, he sees the likeness of
all that is done rightly.
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*
Happy is he to whom his business itself becomes a
puppet, who at length can play with it, and amuse him-
self with what his situation makes his duty.
*
* *
It is not, my friend, in figures of arithmetic alone that
gain presents itself before us; fortune is the goddess of
breathing men; to feel her favors truly, we must live and
be men who toil with their living minds and bodies, and
enjoy with them also.
I had it in my power to bestow my care and industry
on many other things, as I did not occupy myself with
changing these external necessaries, a task which con-
sumes so many people's time and resources. An affec-
tionate attention to what we possess makes rich, for
thereby we accumulate a treasure of remembrances
connected with indifferent things.
*
Practical activity and expertness are far more com-
patible with sufficient intellectual culture than is gener-
ally supposed.
*
To labor for his own moral culture, is the simplest
and most practicable thing which man can propose to
himself; the impulse is inborn; while in social life both
reason and love prompt or rather force him to do so.
*
*
I, too, could be happy on moderate means
could be
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quite as happy as any one elseif only I knew a trade,
an exciting one, indeed, but yet one which had no
consequences for the morrow, which required nothing
but industry, and attention at the time, without calling
for either foresight or retrospection. Every mechanic
seems to me the happiest of mortals; all that he has to
do is already settled for him, what he can do is fixed and
known. He has not to rack his brains over the task
that is set him; he works away without thinking, with-
out exertion or haste, but still with diligence and pleas-
ure in his work, like a bird building its nest, or a bee
constructing its cells. He is but a degree above the
beasts, and yet he is a perfect man. How do I envy
the potter at his wheels, or the joiner behind his bench.
One always feels an inclination to sweep one's neigh-
bor's door.
Everywhere there is something to learn and to do,
something to be delighted with.
We are always hoping to do more than we ever
accomplish.
The fault of all dilettantes · that of beginning with
what is most difficult, and ever wishing to perform the
impossible.
By faithful observation, by continued occupation,
something may be gained from all things.
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Let every one, according to his talents, according to
his tendencies, and according to his position, do his
utmost to increase the culture and development of the people,
to strengthen and widen it on all sides, that this people
may not lag behind other peoples, but may become
competent for every great action when the day of its
glories arrives.
Men are so constituted that everybody would rather
undertake himself what he sees done by others, whether
he has aptitude for it or not.
Up, gentlemen! sound the alarm to all noble souls
who are in the elysium of so-called good taste, where
drowsy in tedious twilight, they are half alive, half not
· alive, with passions in their hearts, and no marrow in
their bones; and because they are not tired enough to
sleep, and yet are too idle to be active, loiter and yawn
away their shadowy life between myrtle and laurel
bushes.
Unjustly are men considered fools who add to their
wealth by ceaseless activity-for activity itself is hap-
piness, and riches themselves are valueless in compari-
son with the delight of the toil by which they are
acquired.
How much had she not gained for herself since that
time! but, alas! how much had she not also since that
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time, lost again! Never had she been so rich, and
never so poor. The feelings of her loss and of her
gain alternated momentarily one with another, chasing
each other through her heart; and she could find no
other means to help her herself, except always to set to
work again at what lay nearest to her, with such inter-
est and eagerness as she could command.
One form of activity may be woven into another, but
it cannot be pieced on to it.
*
Solitude would not give me the resource for which I
wish.
The one true and valuable resource is to be looked
for where we can be active and useful; all the self-denials
and all the penances on earth will fail to deliver us from
an evil-omened destiny, if it be determined to persecute
us. Let me sit still in idleness and serve as a spectacle
for the world, and it will overpower and crush me. But
find me some peaceful employment, where I can go
steadily and unweariedly on doing my duty, and I shall be
able to bear the eyes of men, when I need not shrink
under the eyes of God.
I think it a happy destination to train up others in the
beaten way, after having been trained in the strangest
way myself. And do we not see the same great fact in
history? some moral calamity drives men out into the
wilderness; but they are not allowed to remain as they
had hoped in their concealment there. They are sum-
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165
moned back into the world, to lead the wanderers into
the right way; and who are fitter for such a service than
those who have been initiated into the labyrinths of life?
They are commanded to be the support of the unfortu-
nate; and who can better fulfill that command than those
who have no more misfortunes to fear upon earth?
It is only when we suffer ourselves, that we feel truly
the real nature of all the high qualities which are required
to bear suffering.
The unfortunate who has himself recovered, knows
best how to nourish, in himself and in others, the feel-
ing that every moderate good ought to be enjoyed with
rapture.
A man who has right work in mind
Must choose the instruments most fitting.
Consider what soft wood you have for splitting,
And keep in view for whom you write.
The modes of living and of writing become as varied
as they are, from the fact that every one wavers theoret-
ically between knowledge and error, and practically
between creation and destruction.
Just as one embraces the determination to become a
soldier, and go to the wars, and courageously resolves
to bear danger and difficulties, as well as to endure
wounds and pains and even death-but at the same
time never calls to mind the particular cases in which
those generally anticipated evils may surprise us in an
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extremely unpleasant manner. So it is with every one
who ventures out into the world, especially an author.
'And so I, in tale adjoining,
Lift old treasures into day:
If not gold or perfect coining,
They are metals anyway:
Thou canst sort them, thou canst sunder,
Thou canst melt and make them one
Then take that with smiling wonder,
Stamp it like thyself, my son."
this first and
Tilling the soil is not to my liking
most necessary of man's occupations is disagreeable to
me. In it, man does but ape nature, who scatters her
seeds everywhere, whereas man would choose that a
particular field should produce none but one particular
fruit. But things do not go on exactly so the weeds
spring up luxuriantly the cold and wet injures the
crop, or the hail cuts it off entirely. The poor hus-
bandman anxiously waits throughout the year to see how
the cards will decide the game with the clouds, and
determine whether he shall win or lose his stakes.
Such a doubtful, ambiguous condition may be right
suitable to man, in his present ignorance, while he knows
not whence he came, nor whether he is going. It may
then be tolerable to man to resign all his labors to
chance and thus the parson, at any rate, has an oppor-
tunity, when things look thoroughly bad, to remind him
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of Providence, and to connect the sins of his flock with
the incidents of nature.
Many a time and oft I wish I were a common laborer;
that awakening in the morning, I might have but one
prospect, one pursuit, one hope, for the day which has
dawned.
"It is being without occupation which is really fret-
ting him. The many accomplishments which he has
cultivated in himself, it is his only pleasure indeed, it
A pa
is his passion to be daily and hourly exercising for
the benefit of others. And now, to sit still, with his
arms folded; or to go on studying, acquiring and acquir-
ing, when he can make no use of what he already pos-
sesses; — it is a painful situation; and, alone as he is,
he feels it doubly and trebly."
I find a great advantage in being much occupied, and
the number of persons I meet, and their different pursuits,
create a varied entertainment for me.
Strange enough that even in one's most independent
actions, one expects, nay, requires a stimulus.
One must first accomplish something one's self, nay,
fail in something, to learn to know one's own capacities
and those of others.
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Works of public interest can only be carried through
by an uncontrolled absolute authority.
*
He maintained that with man the first and last con-
sideration was activity, and that we could not act on
anything without the proper gifts for it, without an
instinct impelling us to it. "You admit," he used to say,
"that poets must be born such; you admit this with
regard to all professors of the fine arts; because you
must admit it, because those workings of human nature
cannot very plausibly be aped. But if we consider well,
we shall find that every capability, however slight, is
born with us; that there is no vague general capability in
men. It is our ambiguous, dissipating education that
makes men uncertain; it awakens wishes, when it should
be animating tendencies; instead of forwarding our real
capacities, it turns our efforts towards objects which are
frequently discordant with the mind that aims at them.
I augur better of a child, a youth who is wandering astray
on a path of his own, than of many who are walking
aright upon paths which are not theirs. If the former,
either by themselves, or by the guidance of others, ever
find the right path, that is to say, the path which suits.
their nature, they will never leave it; while the latter
are in danger every moment of shaking off a foreign
yoke, and abandoning themselves to unrestricted license.
There is something terrible in the sight of a highly
gifted man lying under obligations to a fool.
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169
If we meet a person who is under an obligation to us,
we remember it immediately. But how often may we
meet people to whom we are ourselves under obligation
without its even occurring to us!
*
* *
Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are
either debtors or creditors before we have had time to
look around.
Thus, in a short time, by her merciless criticism, the
beautiful variegated meadows at the foot of the German
Parnassus where I was fond of luxuriating, were merci-
lessly mowed down, and I was even compelled to toss
about the dying hay myself, and to ridicule that as
lifeless which, a short time before, had given me such
lively joy.
Satire and criticism two hereditary foes of all com-
fortable life.
The presence of danger generally exercises on man a
kind of attraction, and calls forth a spirit of opposition
in the human breast to defy it.
Danger, alas! will take from a man all power of
reflection,
So that he grasps things worthless and leaves what is
precious behind him.
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This much is certain, that the undetermined, widely
expanding feelings of youth and of uncultivated nations.
are alone adapted to the sublime, which, if it is to be
excited in us through external objects, formless, or
moulded into incomprehensible forms, must surround us
with a greatness to which we are not equal.
All men, more or less, feel such a disposition of the
soul, and seek to satisfy this noble necessity in various
ways. But as the sublime is easily produced by twilight
and night, when objects are blended, it is, on the other
hand, scared away by the day, which separates and
sunders everything, and so must it also be destroyed by
every increase of cultivation, if it be not fortunate
enough to take refuge with the beautiful, and unite itself.
closely with it, by which both become equally undying
and indestructible.
The sublime produces a beautiful calmness in the
soul which entirely possessed by it, feels as great as it
ever can feel. When we compare such a feeling with
that we are sensible of, when we laboriously harass our-
selves with some trifle, and strain every nerve to gain
as much as possible for it, and as it were to patch it
out, striving to furnish joy and aliment to the mind
from its own creation, we then feel sensibly what a
poor expedient, after all, the latter is.
It lies in my nature to admire, willingly and joyfully,
all that is great and beautiful, and the cultivation of
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this talent, day after day, hour after hour, by the inspec-
tion of beautiful objects, produces the happiest feelings.
We ought to acquaint ourselves with the beautiful;
we ought to contemplate it with rapture, and attempt to
raise ourselves up to its height. And in order to gain
strength for that we must keep ourselves thoroughly
unselfish- we must not make it our own, but rather
seek to communicate it: indeed, to make a sacrifice of
it to those who are dear and precious to us.
You resemble the spirit which you understand.
When we know how to appreciate a merit we have
the germ of it within ourselves.
We know that men will treat with derision
Whatever they cannot understand.
*
The thoughts we have had, the pictures we have seen,
can be again called up before the mind and the imag-
ination; but the heart is not so complaisant; it will not
repeat its agreeable emotions. And least of all are we
able to recall moments of enthusiasm; they come upon
us unprepared, and we yield to them unconsciously.
For this reason, others who observe us at such moments
have a better and clearer insight into what passes within
us, than we ourselves.
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Who understands his master, more easily gives satis-
faction.
*
It is, indeed, a tedious and withal a melancholy busi-
ness to take too much care of ourselves, and of what
injures and benefits us; but there is no question but
that with the wonderful idiosyncrasy of human nature
on the one side, and the infinite variety in the mode of
life and pleasure on the other, it is a wonder that the
human race has not worn itself out long ago. Human
nature appears to possess a peculiar kind of toughness
and many-sidedness, since it subdues everything which
approaches it, or which it takes into itself, and if it can-
not assimilate, at least makes it indifferent.
Could we, without being morbidly anxious, keep watch
over ourselves as to what operates favorably or unfa-
vorably upon us in our complicated civil and social life,
and would we leave off what is actually pleasant to "s as
an enjoyment, for the sake of the evil consequences, we
should thus know how to remove with ease many an
inconvenience which, with a constitution otherwise sound,
often troubles us more than even a disease.
Unfortunately, it is in dietetics as in morals; we
cannot see into a fault until we have got rid of it; by
which nothing is gained, for the next fault is not like the
preceding one, and therefore cannot be recognized
under the same form.
Werner was one of those tired sedate persons, with
fixed principles and habits, whom we usually denominate
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cold characters, because in emergencies they do not
burst forth quickly or very visibly.
A Protestant country clergyman is, perhaps, the most
beautiful subject for a modern idyl; he appears, like
Melchizedek, as priest and king in one person. To the
most innocent situation which can be imagined on earth,
to that of a husbandman, he is, for the most part, united
by similarity of occupation, as well as by equality in fam-
ily relationships; he is a father, a master of a family, an
agriculturist, and thus perfectly a member of the commu-
nity. On this pure, beautiful, earthly foundation, rests
his higher calling; to him is it given to guide men through
life, to take care of their spiritual education, to bless
them at all the leading epochs of their existence, to
instruct, to strengthen, to console them, and, if con-
solation is not sufficient for the present to call up and
guarantee the hope of a happier future. Imagine such
a man with pure human sentiments, strong enough not to
deviate from them under any circumstances, and by this
elevated above the multitude, of whom one cannot expect
purity and firmness; give him the learning necessary for
his office, as well as a cheerful, equable activity, which is
even passionate, as it neglects no moment to do good,
and you will have him well endowed. But at the same
time add the necessary limitation, so that he must not
only pause in a small circle, but may also perchance pass
over to a smaller, grant him good nature, placability,
resolution, and everything else praiseworthy that springs.
from a decided character, and over all this a cheerful
spirit of compliance, and a smiling toleration of his own
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failings and those of others, then you will have put
together pretty well the image of our excellent vicar of
Wakefield.
The delineation of this character on his course of life
through joys and sorrows, the ever-increasing interest of
the story, by the combination of the entirely natural with
the strange and the singular, make this novel one of the
best that has ever been written; besides this, it has the
great advantage that it is quite moral, nay, in a pure
sense, Christian
represents the reward of a good will
and perseverance in the right, strengthens an uncondi-
tional confidence in God, and attests the final triumph
of good over evil; and all this without a trace of cant or
pedantry. The author was preserved from both of these.
by an elevation of mind that shows itself throughout in
the form of irony, by which this little work must appear
to us as wise as it is amiable.
The author, Dr. Goldsmith, has without question great
insight into the moral world, into its strength and its
infirmities; but at the same time he can thankfully ac-
knowledge that he is an Englishman, and reckon highly
the advantages that his country and his nation afford
him.
The family, with the delineation of which he occupies
himself, stands upon one of the last steps of citizen com-
fort, and yet comes in contact with the highest; its
narrow circle, which becomes still more contracted,
touches upon the great world through the natural and
civil course of things; this little skiff floats on the agi-
tated waves of English life, and in weal or woe it has to
expect injury or help from the vast fleet which sails
around it.
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I may suppose that my readers know this work and
have it in memory; whoever hears it named for the
first time here, as well as he who is induced to read it
again, will thank me.
Considered both from the sensual and moral side,
Klopstock was a pure young man. Seriously and
thoroughly educated, he places, from his youth upwards,
a great value upon himself and upon whatever he does,
and while considerately measuring out beforehand the
steps of his life, turns, with a presentiment of the whole
strength of his internal nature, towards the loftiest and
most grateful theme. The Messiah, a name which beto-
kens infinite attributes, was to be glorified afresh by
him. The Redeemer was to be the hero whom the poet
thought to accompany through earthly lowliness and
sorrows to the highest heavenly triumphs. Everything
Godlike, angelic, and human that lay in the young soul
was here called into requisition. Brought up by the
Bible and nourished by its strength, he now lives with
patriarchs, prophets, and forerunners, as if they were
present; yet all these are only evoked from ages to
draw a bright halo round the One whose humiliation
they behold with astonishment, and in whose exaltation
they are gloriously to bear a part. For at last, after
gloomy and horrible hours, the everlasting judge will
unveil his face, again acknowledge his Son and fellow-
God, who, on the other hand, will again lead to Him
alienated men, nay, even a fallen spirit. The living
heavens shout with a thousand angel voices round the
throne and a radiance of love gushes out over the uni-
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verse, which shortly before had fastened its looks upon
a fearful place of sacrifice.
The heavenly peace which Klopstock felt in the con-
ception and execution of this poem, communicates itself
even now to every one who reads the first ten cantos,
without allowing certain requisitions to be brought for-
ward, which an advancing cultivation does not willingly
abandon.
The dignity of the subject elevated in the poet the
feeling of his own personality. That he himself would
enter hereafter into those choirs, that the God-man
would distinguish him, nay, give him face to face the
reward for his labors, which even here every feeling,
pious heart had fondly paid in many a pure tear-
these are such innocent, childlike thoughts and hopes,
as only a well-constituted mind can conceive and
cherish. Thus Klopstock gained the perfect right to
regard himself as a consecrated person, and thus in his
actions he studied the most scrupulous purity.
Klopstock had something of the diplomatist in his
bearing. Such a man undertakes the difficult task of
supporting, at the same time, his own dignity and that
of a superior to whom he is responsible; of advancing
his own interest, together with the much more inpor-
tant interest of a prince, or even of a whole State; and
of making himself, beyond all things, pleasing to other
men while in this critical position.
*
It was one of the points on which he was most res-
olute with himself, never to leave anything which he
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had taken in hand uncompleted, unless he could see
his place satisfactorily supplied. And he could not but
hold in small respect, persons who introduce confusion
around themselves only to make their absence felt, and
are ready to disturb in wanton selfishness what they will
not be at hand to restore.
I always had a great desire to be good myself, and
to find good in others.
He could only live in a moral religious atmosphere
of love; without sympathy, without hearty response, he
could not exist; he demanded mutual attachment;
where he was not known, he was silent; where he was
only known, not loved, he was sad; accordingly he got
on best with those well-disposed persons who can set
themselves down for life in their assigned vocation and
go to work to perfect themselves in their narrow but
peaceful sphere.
Such persons succeed pretty well in stifling vanity, in
renouncing the pursuit of outward power, in acquiring
a circumspect way of speaking, and in preserving a
uniformly friendly manner towards companions and
neighbors.
Frequently we may observe in this class traces of a
certain form of mental character, modified by individual
varieties; such persons, accidentally excited, attach
great weight to the course of their experience; they
consider everything a supernatural determination, in the
conviction that God interferes immediately with the
course of the world.
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With all this there is associated a certain disposition
to abide in his present state, and yet at the same time
to allow themselves to be pushed or led on, which re-
sults from a certain indecision to act of themselves. The
latter is increased by the miscarriage of the wisest
plans, as well as by the accidental success brought
about by the unforeseen concurrence of favorable oc-
currences.
By his cast of mind, Lavater was a decided realist,
and knew of nothing ideal except in a moral form. The
conception of Humanity which had been formed in him,
was so completely akin to the living image of Christ
which he cherished in his heart, that it was impossible
for him to understand how a man could live and breathe
without being a Christian. Pure himself, he created.
around him a pure circle. At his side one became like
a maiden, for fear of presenting before him anything
repulsive.
*
He did not know how to curb himself, and so his life,
like his poetry, melted away with him.
She had learned, among the lessons of her life, how
highly true regard is to be prized in a world where
indifference or dislike are the common natural residents.
Any friend whose favor she had need of, she could
flatter with peculiar adroitness; could give in to his ideas
so long as she could understand them; and, when they
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went beyond her own horizon, could hail with ecstasy
such new and brilliant visions. She understood well
when to speak and when to keep silence; and though
her disposition was not spiteful, she could spy out with
great expertness where another's weak side lay.
-she had the gift of seeing an opportunity.
When she cast her serene glance over earthly things,
what was confusion to us children of earth, at once grew
plain before her, and she could almost always point out
the right way, because she looked at the labyrinth from
above, and was not herself entangled in it.
I am repeatedly told that the people who have met me
on my journey are little satisfied with me. I can readily
believe that, for neither has any one of them contributed
to my satisfaction. I cannot tell how it comes to pass
that society oppresses me; that the forms of politeness.
are disagreeable to me; that what people talk about
does not interest me; that all that they show to me
is either quite indifferent, or else produces quite an
opposite impression to what they expect.
* *
With men I get on rather better; for I feel that one
can weigh them by avoirdupois weight, and not by the
jeweller's scales as, unfortunately, friends too often
weigh one another in their hypochondriacal humours
and in an over-exacting spirit.
Generally known is that torture of self-examination
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which in the lack of all outward grievances, had now
become fashionable, and which disturbed the very best.
minds. That which gives but a transient pain to ordin-
ary men who never themselves meditate on that which
they seek to banish from their minds, was, by the better
order, acutely observed, regarded, and recorded in
books, letters, and diaries. But now men united the
strictest moral requisitions on themselves and others.
with an excessive negligence in action; and vague
notions arising from this half self-knowledge misled
them into the strangest habits and out-of-the-way prac-
tices.
This painful work of self-contemplation was justified
by the rising empirical psychology which, while it was
not exactly willing to pronounce everything that pro-
duces inward disquiet to be wicked and objectionable,
still could not give it an unconditional approval, and
thus was originated an eternal and inappeasable contest.
In carrying on, and sustaining this conflict, Lenz
surpassed all the other idlers and dabblers who were
occupied in mining into their own souls. He had a
decided inclination to intrigue, and, indeed, to intrigue.
for its own sake, without having in view any special.
object, any reasonable, attainable end to be gained.
In this way all his life long his imagination made
him play a false part; his love, as well as his hate, was
imaginary; he dealt with his thoughts and feelings in a
wilful manner, so as always to have something to do.
He never benefited any one whom he loved, and never
injured any one whom he hated. In general he seemed
to sin only to punish himself, and to intrigue for no pur-
pose but to graft a new fable upon an old one.
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He belonged to the many to whom life offers no
results, and who, therefore, from first to last, exert
themselves on individual objects.
When I was a boy, I planted a cherry-tree, and
watched its growth with delight. Spring frosts killed
the blossoms, and I had to wait another year before
the cherries were ripe then the birds ate them;
another year the caterpillars; then a greedy neighbor;
then the blight. Nevertheless when I have a garden
again, I shall again plant a cherry-tree!
He poured himself out forever upon details, and
span an endless thread without any purpose.
- One of those men who dream away their lives in a
comfortable state of being busy.
He called to memory the time when his spirit, rich
in hope and full of boundless aims, was raised aloft
and encircled with the liveliest enjoyments of every
kind as with its proper element. He now clearly saw
that of late he had fallen into a broken, wandering
path, where, if he tasted, it was but in drops what he
once quaffed in unrestricted measure. But he could not
see what want it was that nature had made the law of
his being; and that this want had been but half-satis-
fied, and mis-directed by the circumstances of his life.
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The principle to which all of Hamann's expressions
may be referred is this, "All that man undertakes to
perform, whether by deed, by word, or otherwise, must
proceed from all his powers united; everything isolated
is worthless." A noble maxim but hard to follow. To
life and art, it may indeed be applied, but in every
communication by words, that is not exactly poetic,
there is, on the contrary, a grand difficulty; for a word
must sever itself, isolate itself, to say or signify any-
thing. Man, while he speaks, must for the moment
become one-sided; there is no communication, no
instruction, without severing.
He (Hamann) feeling the superiority of his mental
gifts, in the most naïve manner, always considered him-
self somewhat wiser and more shrewd than his cor-
respondents, whom he treated rather ironically than
heartily.
This strong-willed, resolute person was only too well
aware that there is a certain moment in which alone it
will answer to smite the iron.
* *
He lived much within himself, and when he was with
others, his only relation to them generally was in active
employment on their behalf; but if once, when among
friends, his tongue broke fairly loose, he rolled out his
words in utter recklessness, whether they wounded or
whether they pleased, whether they did evil or whether
they did good.
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It required the peremptory resolution of this man to
set aside the innumerable considerations, arguments,
hesitations, difficulties; what this person knew, and
that person knew better; the opinions, up and down,
and backwards and forwards, which every friend volun-
teered. It always happens on such occasions that
when one inconvenience is removed, a fresh inconven-
ience seems to arise; and in wishing to spare all sides,
we inevitably go wrong on one side or the other.
Though he knew very well what was really valuable,
he never, as so many persons do, made people who were
showing him things of their own, uncomfortable by re-
quiring more than the circumstances admitted of, or by
mentioning anything more perfect, which he remem-
bered having seen elsewhere. He did not like bringing
his own notions in collision with those of others.
had learned by experience that the motives and pur-
poses by which men are influenced, are far too various
to be made to coalesce upon a single point, even on
the most solid representations.
He
By her repentance and her resolution she felt herself
freed from the burden of her fault and her misfortune.
In the bottom of her heart she had forgiven herself
solely under condition of the fullest renunciation, and
is was a condition which would remain binding for all
time to come.
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Her strength and the various discipline in which,
through life, she had trained herself, came to her assist-
ance in the conflict. Accustomed as she had always
been to look steadily into herself and to control herself,
she did not now find it difficult, with an earnest effort,
to come to the resolution which she desired.
Strengthened by her love for him in all good, more
light and happy in her work for his sake, and more
frank and open towards others, she found herself in a
heaven upon earth.
The great purpose of her life seemed to consist in
rendering services to others, and it is easy to suppose
that her numerous friends never failed to provide her
with employment.
He does not fancy himself over-wise, but believes he
knows more than other people.
Both were thoughtful, clear in their wills, and firm in
their purposes. Each, separately, was beloved and re-
spected by his or her companions, but whenever they
were together they were always antagonists. Forming
separate plans for themselves, they only met mutually to
cross and thwart one another; never emulating each
other in pursuit of one aim, but always fighting for a
single object. Good-natured and amiable everywhere
else, they were spiteful and even malicious whenever
they came in contact.
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With her, as with all people who employ themselves
on such matters simply as amateurs, the important
thing is, rather that she shall do something than that
something shall be done. Such persons feel their way ;
they have fancies for this plan or that; they do not
venture on removing obstacles. They are not bold
enough to make a sacrifice. They do not know before-
hand in what their work is to result. They try an ex-
periment—it succeeds it fails; they alter, perhaps,
what they ought to leave alone, and leave what they
ought to alter; and so, at last, there always remains.
but a patchwork, which pleases and amuses, but never
satisfies.
*
Her old plans she could not give up, the new she
would not quite throw from her; but, divided as she
was, for the present she put a stop to the work, and
gave herself time to think the thing over, and let it
ripen by itself.
We will not attempt to describe what she went
through, or how she wept. She suffered infinitely. She
prayed that God would help her only over this one day.
The day passed, and the night, and when she came to
herself again she felt herself a changed being.
She had not grown composed. She was not resigned,
but after having lost what she had lost, she was still
alive and there was still something for her to fear.
Although she knew well how little words can do
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against the power of passion, yet she knew, too, the
sure though slow influence of thought and reflection.
*
The French, who generally aim at good behavior,
are indulgent towards foreigners who begin to speak
their language; they will not laugh any one out of
countenance at a fault, or blame him in direct terms.
However, since they cannot endure sins committed
against their language, they have a manner of repeat-
ing, and, as it were, courteously confirming what has
been said with another turn, at the same time making
all arrange itself around you, and seem to proceed from
you.
*
"I tell thee, friend, a speculating churl
Is like a beast, some evil spirit chases
Along a barren heath in one perpetual whirl,
While round about lies fair, green pasturing places."
For a week past we have had the most wretched
weather, but this to me is a blessing, for during my
residence here, not a single fine day has beamed from
the heavens, but has been lost to me by the intrusion
of somebody. During the severity of rain, sleet, frost
and storm, I congratulate myself that it cannot be
worse in doors than abroad, nor worse abroad than it
is within doors, and so I become reconciled. When
the sun rises bright in the morning and promises a glo-
rious day, I never omit to exclaim, "There now, they
have another blessing from Heaven, which they will be
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187
sure to destroy; " they spoil everything health, fame,
happiness, amusement and they do this generally
through folly, ignorance or imbecility, and always, ac-
cording to their own account, with the best intentions.
I could often beseech them, on my bended knees, to
be less resolved upon their own destruction.
Many men as I have seen, I still regard my father as
a very extraordinary person. His character was noble.
and upright; his ideas were enlarged, I may even say
great; to himself he was severe; in all his plans there
was a rigid order, in all his operations an unbroken
perseverance. In one sense, therefore, it was easy to
transact and live with him: yet owing to the very qual-
ities which made it so, he never could accommodate
himself to life; for he required from the State, from his
neighbors, from his children and his servants, the obser-
vance of all the laws which he had laid upon himself.
His most moderate demands became exorbitant by his
rigor: and he never could attain to enjoyment, for
nothing ever was completed as he had forecast it.
* *
He had too little knowledge of the world to under-
stand that persons, quite unstable and incapable of all
improvement, frequently accuse themselves in the bit-
terest manner, confessing and deploring their faults.
with extreme ingenuousness, though they possess not
the smallest power within them to retire from that
course, along which the irresistible tendency of their
nature is dragging them forward.
•
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At length, after a stormy March and April, the love-
liest May weather seemed to be allotted me. With
good health, I enjoyed an indescribable composure of
mind: look around me as I pleased, my loss appeared
a gain to me. Young, and full of sensibility, I thought
the universe a thousand times more beautiful than for-
merly, when I required to have society and play, that
in the fair garden tedium might not overtake me. And
now, as I did not conceal my piety, I likewise took
heart to own my love for the sciences and arts. I
drew, painted, read; and found enough of people to
support me instead of the great world, which I had
left, or rather which had left me, a smaller one formed
itself about me, which was infinitely richer and more
entertaining.
For many years, he has not felt the smallest interest
in anything without him, scarcely paid the smallest
notice to it: wrapped up in himself, he has looked at
nothing but his own hollow empty Me, which seemed
to him like an immeasurable abyss.
He taught us, that we never should inspect the con-
duct of men, unless we at the same time took an inter-
est in improving it; and that through action only could
we ever be in a condition to inspect and watch our-
selves.
*
There is an oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which
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should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom;
the roots expand, the jar is shivered.
A lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature, with-
out the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks
beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not
cast away. All duties are holy for him; the present is
too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him;
not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He
winds, and turns, and torments himself; he advances.
and recoils; is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in
mind; at last does all but lose his purpose from his
thoughts; yet still without recovering his peace of mind.
Every cultivated person knows how he has had to
strive against a certain rudeness both in himself and
others; how much his culture costs him; how apt he is,
after all, in certain cases, to recollect himself alone, for-
getting what he owes to others. How often has a wor-
hy person to reproach himself for having failed to act
with proper delicacy! And when a fair nature too
delicately, too conscientiously cultivates, nay, if you
will, overcultivates itself, there seems to be no tolera-
ion, no indulgence for it in the world. Yet such
;ersons are, without us, what the ideal of perfection is
within us: models not for being imitated, but for
›eing aimed at.
As the aspect of a well-formed person pleases us, so
lso does a fair establishment, by means of which the
resence of a rational intelligent mind is manifested.
Ve feel a joy in entering even a cleanly house, though
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it may be tasteless in its structure and its decorations;
because it shows us the presence of a person cultivated
in at least one sense. Doubly pleasing is it, therefore,
when from a human dwelling, the spirit of higher though
merely sensual culture speaks to us.
*
* *
Let us merely keep a clear and steady eye on what
is in ourselves; on what endowments of our own we
mean to cultivate; let us be just to others; for we our-
selves are only to be valued in so far as we can value.
It is inconceivable how much a man of true culture
can accomplish for himself and others, if, without
attempting to rule, he can be the guardian over many;
can induce them to do that in season, which they are
at any rate disposed enough to do; can guide them to
their objects, which in general they see with due dis-
tinctness, though they miss the road to them. Let us
make a league for this; it is no enthusiasm; but an
idea which may be fully executed, which indeed is often
executed, only with imperfect consciousness, by people
of benevolence and worth.
*
"Yes, he has thy noble searching and striving for the
better, whereby we of ourselves produce the good which
we suppose we find. How often have I blamed thee,
not in silence, for treating this or that person, for act-
ing in this or that case, otherwise than I should have
done; and yet in general the issue showed that thou
wert right. When we take people,' thou wouldst say,
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191
'merely as they are,' we make worse; when we treat
them as if they were what they should be, we improve
them as far as they can be improved."
*
*
*
Our wishes are presentiments of the capabilities which
lie within us, and harbingers of that which we shall be
in a condition to perform. Whatever we are able and
would like to do, presents itself to our imagination, as
without us and in the future; we feel a longing after
that which we already possess in secret.
Thus a
passionate, anticipating grasp changes the truly possible
into a dreamed reality.
Now if such a bias lies decidedly in our nature, then,
with every step of our development will a part of the
wish be fulfilled — under favorable circumstances in
the direct way, under unfavorable in the circuitous way,
from which we always come back again to the other.
I am contented. I am happy. That I feel; and yet
the whole centre of my joy is an overflowing yearning
toward something which I have not, something which
my soul perceives dimly.
may
God give me, this new year, what is good for me;
He do the same for all, and if we pray for nothing
more than this, we may certainly hope that He will give
it us.
So many accidental hindrances are associated with
human limitations, that here, a thing once begun
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remains unfinished, there, that which is already grasped
falls out of the hand, and one wish after another is
dissipated. But had these wishes sprung out of a pure
heart, and in conformity with the necessities of the
times, one might composedly let them lie and fall
right and left, and be assured that these must not only
be found out and picked up again, but that also many
kindred things, which one has never touched and never
even thought of, will come to light.
If now, during our own lifetime, we see that performed
by others to which we ourselves felt an earlier call but
had been obliged to give up with much besides; then
the beautiful feeling enters the mind, that only mankind.
together is the true man, and that the individual can
only be joyous and happy when he has the courage to
feel himself in the whole.
Our wishes oft hide from ourselves the object we wish
for;
Gifts come down from above in the shapes appointed by
Heaven.
We are never further from our wishes than when we
imagine that we possess what we have desired.
In order that our enjoyment may be perfect, we must
always have something behind still to wish for.
We like to look into the future, because the un-
determined in it, which may be affected this or that
way, we feel as if we could guide by our silent wishes in
our own favor.
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And thus, as has often been the case, a vague desire
of practical improvement, brought me a secret peace of
mind, at a time when it could scarcely be hoped for.
The greatest happiness rests on a sense of longing,
and genuine longing can only be directed to something
unattainable.
Everything which is perfect in its kind, must pass out
beyond and transcend its kind. It must be an in-
imitable. something of another and higher nature. In
many of its tones the nightingale is only a bird; then it
rises up above its class, and seems as if it would teach
every feathered creature what singing really is.
God help me further, and give me light that I may
not so much stand in my own way, but see to do from
morning till evening the work which lies before me
and obtain a clear conception of the order of things;
that I be not as those who spend the day in complaining
of headache, and the night in drinking the wine which
gives the headache!
Direct irony should be used but extremely seldom ;
for in the long run, it becomes annoying to clear-sighted
men, perplexes the weak, while indeed it pleases the
great middle class, who, without any special expanse of
mind, can fancy themselves more knowing than others.
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*
The boldly hazarded stroke of wit has this peculiarity,
that at the moment it pleases us while it astonishes us
by its boldness, but when told afterwards it sounds
offensive and disgusts us.
* *
Suicide is an event of human nature which, whatever
may be said and done with respect to it, demands the
sympathy of every man, and in every epoch must be
discussed anew.
Whoever strikes at marriage, either by word or act,
undermines the foundation of all moral society. Mar-
riage is the beginning and end of all culture. It makes
the savage mild; and the most cultivated has no better
opportunity for displaying his gentleness. Indissoluble
it must be, because it brings so much happiness that
what small exceptional unhappiness it may bring counts
for nothing in the balance. And what do men mean by
talking of unhappiness? Impatience it is which from
time to time comes over them, and then they fancy
themselves unhappy. Let them wait till the moment is
gone by, and then they will bless their good fortune
that what has stood so long remains standing. There
never can be any adequate ground for separation.
The condition of man is pitched so high, in its joys and
in its sorrows, that the sum which two married people
owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite
debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.
Its annoyances marriage may often have; I can well
believe that, and it is as it should be. We are all mar-
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195
ried to our consciences, and there are times when we
should be glad to be divorced from them; mine gives
me more annoyance than ever a man or woman can give.
*
In a comedy we see a marriage as the last aim of a
desire which is hindered and crossed through a number
of acts, and at the instant when it is reached, the
curtain falls, and the momentary satisfaction continues
to ring on in our ears. But in the world it is very
different. The play goes on still behind the scenes,
and when the curtain rises again we may see and hear,
perhaps, little enough of the marriage.
We are not always youths; we ought not always to
be children. To the man who knows the world, who
understands what he should do in it, what he should
hope from it, nothing can be more desirable than meet-
ing with a wife who will everywhere coöperate with
him, who will everywhere prepare his way for him;
whose diligence takes up what his must leave; whose
occupation spreads itself on every side, while his must
travel forward on its single path.
Not the heaven of an enthusiastic bliss, but of a sure
life on earth; order in prosperity, courage in adversity,
care for the smallest, and a spirit capable of compre-
hending and managing the greatest. Oh! I saw in her
the qualities which, when developed, make such women
as we find in history; whose excellence appears to us
far preferable to that of men; this clearness of view;
this expertness in all emergencies; this sureness in
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details, which brings the whole so accurately out,
although they never seem to think of it.
"I am yours, as I am and as you know me. I call
you mine, as you are and as I know you. What in our-
selves, what in our connection wedlock changes, we
shall study to adjust, by reason, cheerfulness and
mutual good will."
*
In the marriage state, even this is not the case; for
although it is but a duett, and you might think two
voices, or even two instruments, might in some degree
be attuned to each other, yet this happens very seldom;
for while the man gives out one tone, the wife directly
takes a higher one, and the man again a higher; and
so it rises from the chamber to the choral pitch, and
farther and farther, till at last wind instruments them-
selves cannot reach it.
Festivities are fit for what is happily concluded; at
the commencement, they but waste the force and zeal
which should inspire us in the struggle, and support us
through a long-continued labor. Of all festivities, the
marriage festival appears the most unsuitable; calm-
ness, humility and silent hope befit no ceremony more
than this.
*
From of old, I had looked on a promise as in the
highest degree sacred. Whoever asked anything of
me embarrassed me. I had so accustomed myself to
refuse, that I did not even promise what I purposed to
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perform. Why do we presume to promise anything
depending on an unknown future? The most slight
engagement we have not power to keep; far less a
purpose of importance.
Untruth may bring us into embarrassment quite as
well as truth; and when we reckon up how often the
former or the latter profits us, it really seems most pru-
dent, once for all, to devote ourselves to what is true.
All hearts, too, in all places,
Wherever Heaven pours down the day's broad blessing,
Each in its own way the truth is confessing;
And why not I in mine, too?
*
In a well-ordered state even the right must not be
brought about in a wrong way.
Whatever does not possess an intrinsic vitality can-
not live long, and can neither be nor ever become
great.
He made me look upon it as a duty that I too, in my
own department, should be true, spirited, enlivening.
For, each man commonly defends himself as long as
possible from casting out the idols which he worships.
in his soul, from acknowledging a master error, and
admitting any truth which brings him to despair.
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He looked again at the beggar. "Happy wretch!"
he cried, "you can still feed upon the alms of yesterday
- and I cannot any more on the happiness of yesterday."
Can any one blame an unfortunate man because he is
unable to rejoice? My wretchedness has made me
dead to the good which still remains to me. I am in dull,
inactive repose; that is not happiness. And in this
quietude my imagination is so stagnant, that I can no
longer picture to myself what was once dearest to me.
* *
"Heart, my heart, O, what hath changed thee?
What doth weigh on thee so sore?
What hath from myself estranged thee,
That I scarcely know thee more?
Gone is all which once seemed dearest,
Gone the care which once was nearest,
Gone thy toils and tranquil bliss,
Ah! how couldst thou come to this?"
*
*
*
Happy mortal, who can ascribe your wretchedness to
an earthly cause! You do not know, you do not feel,
that in your own distracted heart, and disordered brain,
dwells the source of that unhappiness, which all the
potentates on earth cannot relieve.
I enjoy no single moment of happiness; all is vain
-nothing touches me. I stand, as it were, before the
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raree-show, I see the little puppets move, and I ask
whether it is not an optical delusion. I am amused with
these puppets, or rather, I am myself one of them, but
when I sometimes grasp my neighbor's hand, I feel that
it is not natural, and I withdraw mine with a shudder.
In the evening I say I will enjoy the next morning's
sunrise, and yet I remain in bed; in the day I promise
to ramble by moonlight, and I, nevertheless, remain at
home. I know not why I rise, nor why I go to sleep.
To all the mind conceives of great and glorious.
A strange and baser mixture still adheres ;
Striving for earthly good are we victorious?
A dream and cheat the better part appears.
The feelings that could once such noble life inspire
Are quenched and trampled out in passion's mire.
Where Fantasy, evenwhile, with daring flight
Out to the infinite her wings expanded,
A little space can now suffice her quite,
When hope on hope time's gulf has wrecked and
stranded."
"I am reduced to the condition of those unfortunate
wretches who believe they are pursued by an evil spirit.
Sometimes I am oppressed-not by apprehension or
fear but by an inexpressible internal sensation, which
weighs upon my heart and impedes my breath! Then
I wander forth at night, even in this tempestuous
season, and feel pleasure in surveying the dreadful
scenes around me. Yesterday evening I went forth.
I beheld a fearful sight. The foaming torrents rolled
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from the mountains in the moonlight,- fields and
meadows, trees and hedges, were confounded together,
and the entire valley was converted into a deep lake,
which was agitated by a roaring wind! And when the
moon shone forth and tinged the black clouds with
silver, and the impetuous torrent at my feet foamed and
resounded with awful and grand impetuosity, I was
overcome by a mingled sensation of apprehension and
delight.
"With extended arms I looked down into the yawning
abyss and cried,' Phinge!' For a moment, my senses
forsook me, in the intense delight of ending my sorrows
and my sufferings by a plunge into that gulf. And then
I felt as if I were rooted to the earth, and incapable of
seeking an end to my woes! But my hour is not yet
come; I feel it is not. O Wilhelm, how willingly could
I abandon my existence to ride the whirlwind or to
embrace the torrent! and then might not rapture per-
chance be the portion of this liberated soul?"
Let that man die unconsoled who can deride the
invalid for undertaking a journey to distant healthful
springs, where he often finds only a heavier disease, and
a more painful death, or who can exult over the de-
spairing mind of a sinner who to obtain peace of con-
science and an alleviation of misery, makes a pilgrimage
to the Holy Sepulchre! Each laborious step which galls
his wounded feet in rough and untrodden paths pours a
drop of balm into his troubled soul, and the journey of
many a weary day brings a mighty relief to his anguished
heart.
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Will you dare call this enthusiasm, ye crowd of
pompous declaimers? Enthusiasm! O God! thou
seest my tears. Thou hast allotted us our portion of
misery; must we also have brethren to persecute us, to
deprive us of our consolation, of our trust in thee, and
in thy love and mercy? For our trust in the virtue of the
healing root, or in the strength of the vine, what is it
else than a belief in Thee, from whom all that surrounds
us derives its healing and restoring powers.
Father, whom I know not - who wert once wont to
fill my soul, but who now hidest thy face from me call
me back to thee; be silent no longer; thy silence shall
not delay a soul which thirsts after thee.
་
What man, what father, could be angry with a son
for returning to him suddenly, for falling on his neck,
and exclaiming, "I am here again, my father! forgive
me if I have anticipated my journey, and returned before
the appointed time! The world is everywhere the
same a scene of labor and of pain, of pleasure and
reward; but what does it all avail? I am happy only
where thou art; and in thy presence am I content to
suffer or enjoy. And wouldst thou, Heavenly Father,
banish such a child from thy presence?"
"It is well," he cried; "for the man who is happy,
who has all that he desires, to talk; but he would be
ashamed of it if he could see how intolerable it was to
the sufferer. Nothing short of an infinite endurance
would be enough, and easy and contented as he was,
what could he know of an infinite agony!
"There are cases, yes, there are, where comfort is a
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lie, and despair is a duty. Go, heap your scorn upon
the noble Greek, who well knows how to delineate
heroes, when in their anguish, he lets those heroes weep.
He has even a proverb, 'Men who can weep are good.'
Leave me, all you with dry heart and dry eyes. Curses
on the happy to whom the wretched serve but as a
spectacle. When body and soul are torn to pieces with
agony, they are to bear it—yes, to be noble and bear
it, if they are to be allowed to go off the scene with
applause. Like the gladiators, they must die gracefully
before the eyes of the multitude."
"For all the world a devil in despair
Is just the insipidest thing I know of."
Human nature has its limits. It is able to endure a
certain degree of joy, sorrow, and pain, but becomes
annihilated as soon as this measure is exceeded. The
question, therefore, is, not whether a man is strong or
weak, but whether he is able to endure the measure of
his sufferings? The suffering may be moral or phys-
ical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man
a coward who destroys himself as to call a man a cow-
ard who dies of a malignant fever.
*
* *
Observe a man in his natural, isolated condition, con-
sider how ideas work, and how impressions fasten upon
him till at length a violent passion seizes him, destroy-
ing all his powers of calm reflection, and provoking his
utter ruin.
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It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool tem-
per understands the condition of such a wretched being,
in vain he counsels him! He can no more communicate
his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instill his
strength into the invalid, by whose bedside he is seated.
"To yonder spheres I dare no more aspire,
Whence the sweet tidings downward float;
And yet, from childhood heard, the old, familiar note
Calls back, e'en now to life my warm desire.
Ah! once how sweetly fell on me the kiss
Of heavenly love in the still Sabbath stealing!
Prophetically rang the bells with solemn pealing;
A prayer was then the ecstasy of bliss.
-Remembrance holds me now, with childhood's fond
appealings,
Back from the fatal step, the last."
*
"I thank you for your cordial sympathy, for your
excellent advice, and I implore you to be quiet. Leave
me to my sufferings. In spite of my wretchedness, I
have still strength enough for endurance. I revere
religion - you know I do. I feel that it can impart
strength to the feeble, and comfort to the afflicted; but
does it affect all men equally? Consider this vast uni-
verse; you will see thousands for whom it has never
existed, thousands for whom it will never exist, whether
it be preached to them or not; and must it then neces-
sarily exist for me? Does not the Son of God himself
say, that they are his whom the Father has given to him?
Have I been given to him? What if the Father will
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retain me for himself, as my heart sometimes suggests?
I pray you do not misinterpret this. Do not extract
derision from my harmless words. I pour out my whole
soul before you.
Silence were otherwise preferable to
me: but I need not shrink from a subject of which few
know more than I do myself.
"What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure
of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitter-
ness? And if that same cup proved bitter to the God
of Heaven, under a human form, why should I affect a
foolish pride, and call it sweet? Why should I be
ashamed of shrinking at that fearful moment, when my
whole being will tremble between existence and annihi-
lation; when a remembrance of the past, like a flash of
lightning, will illuminate the dark gulf of futurity, when
everything shall dissolve around me, and the whole world
vanish away?
"Is not this the voice of a creature oppressed beyond
all resource, self-deficient, about to plunge into inevitable
destruction, and groaning deeply at its inadequate
strength My God! my God! why hast thou for-
saken me?' And should I feel ashamed to utter the
same expression? Should I not shudder at a prospect
which had its fears, even for him who spread out the
heavens like a garment?"
It was
With silent satisfaction, I continued neutral.
irksome to me to converse about such feelings and
objects, even with well-affected people, when they could
not penetrate the deepest sense, and lingered merely on
the surface. But to strive with adversaries, about things
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on which even friends could scarcely understand each
other, seemed to me unprofitable, nay, pernicious. For
I soon perceived that many amiable noblemen, who on
this occurrence could but shut their hearts to enmity and
hatred, had rapidly passed over to injustice; and in
order to defend an outward form, had almost sacrificed
their most substantial duties.
Partly by nature, partly by old habit, it was his way to
collect the purpose of the man he had to treat with before
stating his own.
*
The latter spoke with a feeling of melancholy anger
rather than of sorrow; but of anger spiritual, slow and
inexhaustible. It was the mistemper of a noble soul,
that is severed from all earthly things, and yet devoted
to unbounded woe.
*
"I should be loath," he replied, "to censure an in-
nocent instinct,
Which to mankind by good mother Nature has always
been given.
What understanding and reason may sometimes fail to
accomplish,
Oft will such fortunate impulse, that bears us resistlessly
with it.
Did curiosity draw not man with its potent attraction,
Say, would he ever have learned how harmoniously
fitted together
Worldly experiences are? For first what is novel he
covets;
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Then with unwearying industry follows he after the
useful;
Finally longs for the good by which he is raised and
ennobled.
He is indeed to be praised, who, out of this gladness of
temper,
Has in his ripening years a sound understanding de-
veloped."
*
Gratitude and ingratitude belong to those events
which appear every moment in the moral world, and
about which men can never agree among themselves.
I usually distinguish between non-thankfulness, ingrat-
itude, and aversion from gratitude.
The first is innate with men, nay, created with them;
for it arises from a happy, volatile forgetfulness of the
repulsive as well as of the delightful, by which alone
the continuation of life is possible. Man needs such an
infinite quantity of previous and concurrent assistance
for a tolerable existence, that if he would always pay
to the sun and to the earth, to God and to Nature, to
ancestors and parents, to friends and companions the
thanks due them, he would have neither time or feeling
left to receive and enjoy new benefits.
But if the natural man suffers this volatility to get the
control in and over him, a cold indifference gains more
and more the ascendency, and one at last regards one's
benefactor as a stranger to whose injury, perhaps, any-
thing may be undertaken, provided it be advantageous
to ourselves. This alone can properly be called in-
gratitude, which results from the rudeness into which
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the uncultivated nature must necessarily lose itself at
last.
Aversion from gratitude, however, the rewarding of a
benefit by ill-natured and sullen conduct, is very rare,
and occurs only in eminent men, such as, with great
natural gifts, and a presentiment of them, being born in
a lower rank in society or in a helpless condition, must,
from their youth upwards, force themselves along, step
by step, and receive at every point, aids and supports,
which are often embittered and repulsive to them
through the coarseness of their benefactor since that
which they receive is earthly, while that which, on the
other hand, they give, is of a higher kind, so that what
is, strictly speaking, a compensation, is out of the
question.
The spirit of contradiction and the love of paradoxes
stick fast in us all.
Our passions are true phoenixes: as the old burn out,
the new straight rise up out of the ashes.
When self-esteem expresses itself in contempt of
another, be it the meanest, it must be repellant. A
flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may con-
trovert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect.
for himself seems to have renounced the right of
thinking meanly of others. What are we all that we can
dare to raise ourselves to any height?
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Errors and misunderstandings are the springs of
action, of life, and of amusement.
The
The imagination is a divine gift, but I do not like to
see it employed about the actualities of life. The airy
forms to which it gives birth are delightful to contem-
plate, if we view them as beings of a peculiar order, but
connected with truth, they become prodigies and are
disapproved of by our reason and judgment.
imagination should not deal in facts, nor be employed
to establish facts. Its proper province is art, and there
its influence should operate like sweet music, which
awakens our emotions, and makes us forget the cause
by which these emotions are awakened.
We have weaknesses, both by birth and education,
and it may be questioned which of the two gives us the
most trouble
The preponderance of his contradictory, bitter, biting
humor was certainly derived from his disease and the
sufferings arising from it. This case often occurs in
life; one does not sufficiently take into consideration
the moral effect of sickly conditions, and one therefore
judges many characters very unjustly, because it is
assumed that all men are healthy, and required of
them that they should conduct themselves accordingly.
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Our nature seems to have two sides, which cannot
exist separately. Light and darkness, good and evil,
height and depth, virtue and vice, and a thousand.
other contradictions unequally distributed, appear to
constitute the component parts of human nature.
Generosity is a manly virtue, but parsimony is becom-
ing in a woman. This is the rule of nature, and our
judgments must be subservient thereto.
*
Habit is a strange thing -
Birth and habit forge strong fetters.
One should not speak, publicly at least, of one's own
faults, or those of others, if one does not hope to effect
some useful purpose by it.
*
We like authority because we are human. For what
else is authority, in the sense in which we use it, than
a desire for independence, and for the enjoyment of
existence as much as possible.
He values my understanding and talents more highly
than he does my heart, and I am alone proud of the
latter. It is the sole source of everything, of our
strength, of our happiness, and our misery. All the
knowledge I possess, every one else can acquire, but
my heart is exclusively my own.
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Every province loves its own dialect; for it is, prop-
erly speaking, the element in which the soul draws its
breath.
*
Care builds her nest far down the heart's recesses,
There broods o'er dark, untold distresses,
Restless she sits, and scares thy joy and peace away;
She puts on some new mask with each new day,
Herself as house and home, as wife and child presenting,
As fire and water, bane and blade ;
What never hits makes thee afraid,
And what is never lost, she keeps thee still lamenting.
* *
The man of understanding finds almost everything
ridiculous; the man of thought scarcely anything.
* *
Most readily fear steals into the heart of us mortals,
And anxiety, worse to me than the actual evil.
* *
Order and arrangement increase the desire to save
and get. A man embarrassed in his circumstances, and
conducting them imprudently, likes best to continue in
the dark; he will not gladly reckon up the debtor
entries he is charged with. But on the other hand,
there is nothing to a prudent manager more pleasant
than daily to set before himself the sums of his grow-
ing fortune. Even a mischance, if it surprise and vex,
will not affright him; for he knows at once what gains
he has acquired to cast into the other scale.
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Singular enough! We seem to be so intimate with
nothing as we are with our own wishes and hopes,
which have long been kept and cherished in our hearts;
yet when they meet us, when they as it were press for-
ward to us, then we know them not, then we recoil
from them.
There is just as much self-conceit in giving pain to
others when they are comfortable, as in showing an
excess of kindness to one's self or to one's friends.
So true it is that whatever inwardly confirms man in
his self-conceit or flatters his secret vanity, is so highly
desirable to him, that he does not ask further, whether
in other respects it may turn to his honor or his disgrace.
Nothing is more ridiculous to the strong and powerful,
than to see weakness and inefficiency setting up its pre-
tentions to equality, wrapped in the obscurity of its own
fancies and in the ignorance of itself, its powers and its
qualities.
We receive but little thanks from men when we would
elevate their internal aspirations, give them a great idea.
of themselves, and make them feel the grandeur of a
really noble existence. But when one cajoles them, tells
them tales, and helping them on from day to day, makes
them worse, then one is just the man they like; and
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hence it is that modern times takes delight in so many
absurdities.
Whoever indulges long in monologue in the presence
of others, without flattering his listeners, provokes ill-will.
It is a pious wish of all fathers to see what they have
themselves failed to attain, realized in their sons, as if
in this way they could live their lives over again, and, at
last, make a proper use of their early experience.
He resembled both parents, and one could distinguish
in his mind the separate dispositions of each. He pos-
sessed the gay, thoughtless manner of his father, in his
strong inclination to enjoy the present moment, and, in
most cases, to prefer himself to others; but he also
inherited the tranquil and reflective mind of his mother,
no less than her love for honesty and justice, and a will-
ingness, like her, perpetually to sacrifice himself for the
advantage of others. To explain his contradictory con-
duct upon many occasions, his companions were often.
reduced to the necessity of believing that he had two
souls.
The children of a family usually copy those members
of a household who seem to live most happily, and most
enjoy themselves.
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To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go,
Then leave repentance fierce to wring us :
A moment's guilt, an age of woe!
It was not the first time that so singular a character
had come across her, although she had never seen any
in which the unusual features were so largely developed ;
and she had had experience enough to show her that such
persons after having felt the discipline of life, after hav-
ing gone through something of it, and been in intercourse
with older people, may come out at last really charming
and amiable; the selfishness may soften, and eager, rest-
less activity find a definite direction for itself.
Where strangers only desire to enjoy, or at least not
to have their taste offended, the business of parents is
rather to hope.
*
Man is not meant, forsooth, to grow from the ground
like a mushroom,
Quickly to perish away on the spot of ground that begot
him,
Leaving no trace behind of himself and his animal action.
We have no power to fashion our children as suiteth
our fancy:
As they are given by God, we so must have them and
love them;
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Teach them as best we can, and let each of them follow
his nature.
One will have talents of one sort, and different talents
another,
Every one useth his own; in his own individual fashion,
Each must be happy and good.
*
* *
"Thrice happy are they to be esteemed, whom their
birth of itself exalts above the lower stages of mankind;
who do not need to traverse those perplexities, not
even to skirt them, in which many worthy men SO
painfully consume the whole period of life. Far-ex-
tending and unerring must their vision be, on that higher
station; easy each step of their progress in the world!
From their very birth, they are placed as it were in a
ship, which, in this voyage we have all to make, enables
them to profit by the favorable winds, and to ride out
the cross ones; while others, bare of help, must wear
their strength away in swimming, can derive little profit.
from the favorable breeze, and in the storm must soon
become exhausted and sink to the bottom. What con-
venience, what ease of movement does a fortune we are
born to, confer upon us! How securely does a traffic
flourish, which is founded on a solid capital, where the
failure of one or of many enterprises does not of ne-
cessity reduce us to inaction! Who can better know
the worth and worthlessness of earthly things, than he
that has had within his choice the enjoyment of them.
from youth upwards; and who can earlier guide his
mind to the useful, the necessary, the true, than he that
may convice himself of so many errors in an age when
his strength is yet fresh to begin a new career!"
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A burgher may acquire merit; by excessive efforts he
may even educate his mind; but his personal qualities
are lost, or worse than lost, let him struggle as he will.
Since the nobleman, frequenting the society of the most
polished, is compelled to give himself a polished manner;
since this manner, neither door nor gate being shut
against him, grows at last an unconstrained one; since,
in court or camp, his figure, his person, are a part of his
possessions, and it may be the most necessary part,
he has reason enough to put some value on them, and
to show that he puts some. A certain stately grace in
common things, a sort of gay elegance in earnest and
important ones, becomes him well; for it shows him to
be everywhere in equilibrium. He is a public person,
and the more cultivated his movements the more so-
norous his voice, the more staid and measured his
whole being is, the more perfect is he. If to high and
low, to friends and relations, he continues still the same,
then nothing can be said against him, none may wish
him otherwise. His coldness must be reckoned clear-
ness of head, his dissimulation prudence. If he can
rule himself externally at every moment of his life, no
man has aught more to demand of him; and whatever
else there may be in him or about him, capacities, talents,
wealth, all seem gifts of supererogation.
There is a courtesy of the heart. It is akin to love.
Out of it arises the purest courtesy in the outward
behavior. There is no outward sign of courtesy that
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The proper
does not rest on a deep, moral foundation. The
education would be that which communicated the sign
and the foundation of it at the same time.
Free-and-easiness, where there ought to be respect, is
always ridiculous.
Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his
own image.
All politeness, when it does not present itself as the
flowering of a great and comprehensive mode of life,
must appear restrained, stationary, and from some
points of view, perhaps, absurd.
That which we call politeness and good-breeding
effects what otherwise can only be obtained by violence,
or not even by that.
Do not accustom yourself to act in a hard and
unfriendly manner towards others even in jest, as they
may take it ill. We have no need to increase our evil
habits by practising them for entertainment.
"A well-bred carriage,” he would say, “is difficult to
imitate; for in strictness it is negative; and it implies a
long-continued previous training. You are not required
to exhibit in your manner anything that specially beto-
kens dignity; for, by this means, you are like to run into
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formality and haughtiness; you are rather to avoid
whatever is undignified and vulgar. You are never to
forget yourself; are to keep a constant watch upon
yourself and others; to forgive nothing that is faulty in
your own conduct, in that of others neither to forgive
too little nor too much. Nothing must appear to touch
you, nothing to agitate: you must never overhaste your-
self, must ever keep yourself composed, retaining still
an outward calmness, whatever storms may rage within.
The noble character at certain moments may resign
himself to his emotions; the well-bred never. The
latter is like a man dressed out in fair and spotless.
clothes: he will not lean on anything; every person
will beware of rubbing on him. He distinguishes him-
self from others, yet he may not stand apart; for as in
all arts, so in this, the hardest must at length be done
with ease the well-bred man of rank, in spite of every
separation, always seem united with the people round
him; he is never to be stiff, or uncomplying; he is
always to appear the first, and never to insist on so
appearing.
"It is clear, then, that to seem well-bred, a man
must actually be so. It is also clear why women gen-
erally are more expert at taking up the air of breeding
than the other sex; why courtiers and soldiers catch it
more easily than other men.”
There are in man very many intellectual capacities
which in this life he is unable to develop, which there-
fore point to a better future, and to a more harmonious
state of existence.
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For the sake of the future, one may well postpone or
lose the present.
* *
Deep minds are compelled to live in the past as well
as in the future.
It is impossible to understand the present without a
knowledge of the past; and to compare the two, requires
both time and leisure.
We tried to cheer ourselves up under a joyless pres-
ent, by remembrances of a better past.
Some men have the advantage of being double bene-
factors; once to the present which they make happy,
and then to the future, the feelings and courage of
which they nourish and sustain.
*
* *
I will improve; I will no longer, as has ever been
my habit, continue to ruminate on every petty vexation
which fortune may dispense; I will enjoy the present,
and the past shall be to me the past. There would be
far less suffering among mankind, if men-and God
knows why they are so fashioned- did not employ their
imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of
past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with
equanimity.
*
There are but few men who care to occupy themselves
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with the immediate past. Either we are forcibly bound
up in the present, or we lose ourselves in the long gone-
by, and seek back for what is utterly lost, as if it were
possible to summon it up again, and rehabilitate it.
For one thing, the evil was already done; and though
people of a singularly strict and harsh temper are wont
to set themselves forcibly against the past, and thus to
increase the evil that cannot now be remedied; yet, on
the other hand, what is actually done exerts a resistless
effect upon most minds; an event which lately appeared
impossible takes its place, so soon as it has really oc-
curred, with what occurs daily.
Here comes superstition, which of all things I hate the
worst the most mischievous and accursed of all the
plagues of mankind. We trifle with prophecies, with
forebodings, and give a seriousness to our every-day life
with them; but when the seriousness of life itself begins
to show, when everything around us is heaving and roll-
ing, then come in these spectres to make the storm more
terrible.
Superstition, like many other fancies, very easily loses
its power, when, instead of flattering our vanity, it stands
in its way, and would fain produce an evil hour to this
delicate being. We then see well enough that we can
get rid of it when we choose; we renounce it the more
easily, as all of which we deprive ourselves turns to our
own advantage.
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My days are as happy as those reserved by God for
his elect, and whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never
say that I have not tasted joy, — the purest joy of life.
There can be no greater delight than is experienced
by a man who, by his own unaided resources, frees him-
self from the consequences of error. Heaven looks
down with satisfaction upon such a spectacle, and we
cannot deny the force of the seeming paradox, which
assures us there is more joy before God over one return-
ing sinner than over ninety-nine just.
*
Content and peace of mind are valuable things. I
could wish, my dear friend, that these precious jewels
were less transitory.
* *
I like those authors best whose scenes describe my
own situation in life, and the friends who are about me
whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling
my own homely existence, which, without being absolutely
paradise, is on the whole a source of indescribable happi-
ness.
Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness
is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our minds
are as obscure as those of our vision, and we desire earn-
estly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be
filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious
emotion. But, alas! when we have attained our object,
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when the distant there becomes the present here, all is
changed again; we are as poor and circumscribed as
ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happi-
ness.
So the restless traveller pants for his native soil, and
finds in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the
affection of his children, and in the labor necessary for
their support, that happiness which he has sought in vain
through the whole world.
Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable
of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the
peasant, whose table is covered with food of his own
raising, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers
with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when
he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and
the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth.
Renounce ! renounce! Renunciation
Such is the everlasting song
That in the ears of all men rings,
Which every hour, our whole life long,
With brazen accents hoarsely sings.
You have taught me that we possess within ourselves
an antidote equivalent to the force of our passions; that
we are capable of renouncing luxuries to which we have
been accustomed, and of suppressing our strongest incli-
nations. You have made me acquainted with the exist-
ence of that ever-living conscience, which, in peaceful
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silence dwells within our souls, and never ceases with
gentle admonitions to remind us of its presence, till its
sway becomes irresistibly acknowledged.
* *
Our physical as well as our social life, manners, customs,
wordly wisdom, philosophy, religion, and many an acci-
dental event, all call upon us, to deny ourselves. Much
that is most inwardly peculiar to us, we are not allowed
to develop; much that we need from without for the
completion of our character is withheld; while, on the
other hand, so much is forced upon us which is as alien
to us as it is burdensome.
We are robbed of all that we have laboriously acquired
for ourselves, or friendly circumstances have bestowed
upon us; and before we can see clearly what we are, we
find ourselves compelled to part with our personality,
piece by piece, till at last it is gone altogether.
Indeed, the case is so universal that it seems a law of
society to despise a man who shows himself surly on
that account. On the contrary, the bitterer the cup we
have to drink, the more pleasant face must one make in
order that composed lookers-on may not be offended by
the least grimace.
To solve this painful problem, however, nature has
endowed man with ample power, activity, and endurance.
But especially is he aided therein by his volatility, a boon
to man which nothing can take away. By its means he
is able to renounce the cherished object of the moment,
if only the next presents him something new to reach at ;
and thus he goes on unconsciously, remodelling his
whole life. We are continually putting one passion in
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223
the place of another; employments, inclinations, tastes,
hobbies we try them all, only to exclaim at last, All is
vanity.
No one is shocked by this false and murmuring speech ;
nay, every one thinks while he says it, that he is utter-
ing a wise and indisputable maxim. A few men there
are, and only a few, who anticipate this insupportable
feeling, and avoid all calls to such partial resignation, by
one grand act of total self-renunciation.
I wish, for my part, that we were not obliged to deny
ourselves anything, and that we had no knowledge of
these blessings which we are not allowed to possess.
But unfortunately we walk in an orchard, where, though
all the trees are loaded with fruit, we are compelled to
leave them untouched, to satisfy ourselves with the
enjoyment of the shade, and forego the greater indul-
gence.
Limit your wants; the Must is hard, and yet solely by
this Must can we show how it is with us in our inner
man. To live according to caprice requires no peculiar
talent.
We are strange creatures. If we can only put out of
sight anything which troubles us, we fancy at once we
have got rid of it. We can give up much in the large
and general; but to make sacrifices in little things is a
demand to which we are rarely equal.
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How rare is the display of that pure virtue, which
incites us to live and to sacrifice ourselves for others.
I will be lord over myself. No one who cannot mas-
ter himself is worthy to rule, and only he can rule.
*
The mind can be highly delighted, in two ways, by
perception and conception. But the former demands at
worthy object, which is not always at hand, and a pro-
portionate culture, which one does not immediately
attain.
Conception, on the other hand, requires only suscept-
ibility; it brings its subject-matter with it, and is itself
the instrument of culture.
All great cortrasts confound the mind and senses.
The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
In order to form an idea of the highest achievements.
of the human mind, the soul must first attain to perfect
freedom from prejudice and prepossession.
It is a singular fact, that it is easy enough to clearly
see and to acknowledge what is good and excellent, but
when one attempts to make them one's own, and to
grasp them, somehow or other they slip away as it were,
from between one's fingers; and we apprehend them,
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225
not by the standard of the true and right, but in accord-
ance with our precious habits of thought and taste.
To apprehend quickly is, forsooth, the attribute of the
mind, but correctly to execute, that requires the practice
of a life.
How quick to know, but how slow to put in practice
is the human creature.
There are certain things on which destiny obstinately
insists. In vain may reason, may virtue, may duty, may
all holy feelings place themselves in its way. Some-
thing shall be done which to it seems good, and which
to us seems not good; and it forces its own way through
at last, let us conduct ourselves as we will.
To be misunderstood is the fate of us all.
"It gives me pain to hear this word destiny in the
mouth of a young person, just at the age when men are
commonly accustomed to ascribe their own violent incli-
nations to the will of higher natures."
"Do you, then, believe in no destiny? No power
that rules over us, and directs all for our ultimate advan-
tage ? ”
"The question is not now of my belief; nor is this
the place to explain how I may have attempted to form
for myself some not impossible conception of things
which are imcomprehensible to all of us; the question
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here is: What mode of viewing them will profit us the
most? The fabric of our life is formed of necessity and
chance; the reason of man takes its station between
them, and may rule them both it treats the necessary
as the groundwork of its being; the accidental it can
direct and guide and employ for its own purposes; and
only while this principle of reason stands firm and inex-
pugnable, does man deserve to be named the god of
this lower world. But woe to him who, from his youth,
has used himself to search in necessity for something of
arbitrary will; to ascribe to chance a sort of reason,
which it is a matter of religion to obey! Is conduct like
this aught else than to renounce one's understanding,
and give unrestricted scope to one's inclinations? We
think it is a kind of piety to move along without consid-
eration; to let accidents that please us determime our
conduct; and finally, to bestow on the result of such a
vacillating life the name of providential guidance.”
Cradle and grave
A limitless deep —
An endless weaving
To and fro,
A restless heaving
Of life and glow,
So shape I, on Destiny's thundering loom,
The Godhead's live garment, eternal in bloom.
The coursers of time, lashed, as it were, by invisible
spirits, hurry on the light car of our destiny, and all that
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227
we can do, is, in cool self-possession to hold the reins.
with a firm hand, and to guide the wheels, now to the
left, now to the right, avoiding a stone here, or a preci-
pice there. Whither it is hurrying who can tell? and
who, indeed, can remember the point from which it
started?
*
Fate is pitiless, and man but little.
me;
*
66 what trials are before
"Oh! who knows," cried he,
who knows how sharply bygone errors will yet pun-
ish me; how often good and reasonable projects for the
future shall miscarry! But this treasure, which I call
my own, continue it to me, thou exorable or inexorable
fate! Were it possible that this best part of myself
were taken from me, that this heart could be torn from
my heart, then farewell sense and understanding; fare-
well all care and foresight; vanish thou tendency to per-
severance! All that distinguishes us from the beasts,
pass away! And if it is not lawful for a man to end his
heavy days by the act of his own hand, may speedy mad-
ness banish consciousness, before death, which destroys
it forever, shall bring on his own long night."
By appointed laws we enter into life; the days are
numbered which make us ripe to see the light; but for
the duration of our life there is no law. The weakest
thread will spin itself to unexpected length; and the
strongest is cut suddenly asunder by the scissors of the
fates, delighting, as it seems, in contradictions.
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Neither earthly nor infernal thing may bring about
what is reserved for fate alone. The hour of judgment
comes; the wicked falls with the good; one race is
mowed away, that another may spring up.
* *
Let no one think that he can conquer the first impres-
sions of his youth. If he has grown up in enviable free-
dom, surrounded with beautiful and noble objects, in
constant intercourse with worthy men; if his masters.
have taught him what he needed first to know, for com-
prehending more easily what followed; if he has never
learned anything which he requires to unlearn; if his
first operations have been so guided, that without alter-
ing any of his habits, he can more easily produce what is
excellent in future; then such a one will lead a purer,
more perfect and happier life, than another man who
has wasted the force of his youth in opposition and
error. A great deal is said and written about educa-
tion; yet I meet with very few who can comprehend,
and transfer to practice, this simple yet vast idea, which
includes within itself all others connected with the sub-
ject.
"That may well be true," said Wilhelm, "for the gen-
erality of men are limited in their conceptions to sup-
pose that every other should be fashioned by education
according to the pattern of themselves. Happy, then,
are those whom fate takes charge of, and educates ac-
cording to their several natures!"
"Fate," said the other, smiling, "is an excellent, but
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229
most expensive schoolmaster. In all cases, I would
rather trust to the reason of a human tutor. Fate, for
whose wisdom I entertain all imaginable reverence,
often finds in Chance, by which it works, an instrument
not over manageable. At least the latter very seldom
seems to execute precisely and accurately what the for-
mer had determined."
The threads of his destiny had become so strangely
entangled, he wished to see its curious knots unraveled
or cut in two.
*
With the alkalies and acids, for instance, the affinities
are strikingly marked. They are of opposite natures;
very likely their being of opposite natures is the secret
of their effect on one another — they seek one another
eagerly out, lay hold of each other, modify each other's
character, and form in connection, an entirely new sub-
stance. Their relations will be different according to
the natural differences of the things themselves. Some-
times they will meet like friends and old acquaintances;
they will come rapidly together, and unite without either
having to alter itself at all—as wine mixes with water.
Others, again, will remain as strangers, side by side,
and no amount of mechanical mixing or forcing will suc-
ceed in combining them. Oil and water may be shaken
up together and the next moment they are separate
again, each by itself.
*
**
It appears to me that if you choose to call these
creatures of yours related, the relationship is not so
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much a relationship of blood as of soul and spirit. It
is the way in which we see all really deep friendships
arise among men; opposite peculiarities of disposition
being what best makes internal union possible.
It is just the most complicated cases which are the
most interesting. In these you come first to see the
degrees of the affinities, to watch them as their power of
attraction is weaker or stronger, nearer or more remote.
Affinities only begin really to interest when they bring
about separations. The title with which chemists were
supposed to be most honorably distinguished was, artists
of separation.
Opportunity makes relations as it makes thieves.
Our relations are those of character to character.
*
It is with work as with dancing; persons who keep
the same step must grow indispensable to one another.
*
*
The closest unions are those of opposites.
*
*
**
Living, as they were under one roof, without even so
much as thinking of each other, although they might be
occupied with other things, or diverted this way or that
by the other members of the party, they always drew
together. If they were in the same room, in a short
time they were sure to be either standing or sitting near
each other; they were only content when close together,
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231
but were then perfectly easy. To be near was enough;
there was no need for them either to look or to speak;
they did not seek to touch one another, or make sign or
gesture, but merely to be together. Then there were
not two persons, there was but one person in uncon-
scious and perfect content, at peace with itself and with
the world.
Everything in this world depends on distinctness of
idea and firmness of purpose.
An existence full of purpose and highly comfortable —
*
*
Even in these few days, the circumstance that I have
had to wait upon myself, and have always been obliged
to keep my attention and presence of mind upon the
alert, has given me quite a new elasticity of intellect.
**
An energetic nature feels itself brought into the
world for its own development, and not for the approba-
tion of the public.
"Believe me, love, most part of all the misery and
mischief, or all that is denominated evil in the world,
arises from the fact that men are too remiss to get a pro-
per knowledge of their aims, and when they do know
them, to work intensely in attaining them. They seem
to me like people who have taken up a notion, that they
must and will erect a tower, and who yet expend on the
foundation not more stones and labor than would be
sufficient for a hut. If you, my friend, whose highest
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want is to perfect and unfold your moral nature, had,
instead of those bold and noble sacrifices, merely
trimmed between your duties to yourself and to your
family, your bridegroom, or perhaps your husband, you
must have lived in a constant contradiction with your
feelings, and never could have had a peaceful moment."
* *
"Whatever it may be," said he, "reason or feeling,
that commands us to give up the one thing for the other,
to choose the one before the other, decision and perse-
verance are, in my opinion, the noblest qualities of man.
You cannot have the ware and the money both at once;
and he who always hankers for the ware without having
heart to give the money for it, is no better off than he who
repents him of the purchase when the ware is in his
hands. But I am far from blaming men on this ac-
count; it is not they that are to blame; it is the difficult,
entangled situation they are in; they know not how to
guide themselves in its perplexities. Thus, for instance,
you will on the average find fewer bad economists in the
country than in towns, and fewer again in small towns
than in great; and why? Man is intended for a limited
condition; objects that are simple, near, determinate,
he comprehends, and he becomes accustomed to employ
such means as are at hand: but on entering a wider
field, he now knows neither what he would nor what he
should; and it amounts to quite the same, whether his
attention is distracted by the multitude of objects, or
is overpowered by their magnitude and dignity. It is
always a misfortune for him, when he is induced to
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233
struggle after anything, with which he cannot connect
himself by some regular exertion of his powers.
66
Certainly," pursued he, "without earnestness there
is nothing to be done in life; yet among the people.
whom we name cultivated men, little earnestness is to
be found; in labors and employments, in arts, nay, even
in creations, they proceed, if I may say so, with a sort
of self-defense; they live, as they read a heap of news-
papers, only to have done with it.”
Whoever strives in our sight with vehement force to
reach an object, be it one that we praise or that we
blame, may count on exciting an interest in our minds;
but when once the matter is decided, we turn our eyes
away from him; whatever once lies finished and done,
can no longer at all fix our attention, especially if we at
first prophesied an evil issue to the undertaking.
I am not downcast about the issue. What is begun
with so much cheerfulness must reach a happy end. I
have never doubted that a man may force his way
through the world if he really is in earnest about it.
*
The Israelitish people never was good for much, as
its own leaders, judges, rulers, prophets have a thousand
times reproachfully declared; it possesses few virtues,
and most of the faults of other nations; but in cohesion,
steadfastness, valor, and when all this would not serve,
in obstinate toughness, it has no match. It is the most
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perseverant nation in the world: it is, it was and will
be, to glorify the name of Jehovah, through all ages.
*
For as man and wife are plighted,
And the better half the wife ;
So is night to day united,
Night's the better half of life.
Can you joy, in bustling daytime,
Day when none can get his will?
It is good for work, for haytime,
For much other, it is ill.
But when, in the nightly gloaming,
Social lamp on table glows,
Face for faces dear illuming
And such jest and joyance goes;
With a heart how lightsome feeling
Do ye count the kindly clock,
Which, twelve times deliberate pealing,
Tells you none to-night shall knock.
It is strange, and it is an experience which perhaps
you also know, the remembrance of the absent, though
not extinguished by time, is veiled.
The distractions of our life, acquaintance with new
objects, in short every change in our circumstances, do
to our hearts what smoke and dirt do to a picture,— they
make the delicate touches quite undiscernible, and in
such a way that one does not know how it comes to pass.
+
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235
Time is infinitely long, and each day is a vessel into
which a great deal may be poured, if one will actually
fill it up.
Patience, time and distance will do that which noth-
ing else can do; they will annihilate every unpleasant
impression.
- a laudable design, frustrated by the rushing flight
of time.
The moment alone is decisive;
Fixes the life of man, and his future destiny settles.
After long taking of counsel, yet only the work of a mo-
ment
Every decision must be; and the wise alone seizes the
right one.
Dangerous always it is comparing the one with the
other
When we are making our choice, and so confusing our
feelings.
Who can tell the caterpillar creeping on the branch,
of what its future food will be! Who can help the
grub upon the earth to burst its shell? The time comes
when it presses out and hurries winged into the bosom
of the rose. Thus will the years bring us also the right
direction of our strength.
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How is it that the year sometimes seems so short,
and sometimes so long? How is it that it is so short
when it is passing, and so long as we look back over it?
When I think of the past (and it never comes so power-
fully over me as in the garden), I feel how the perishing
and the enduring work one upon the other, and there is
nothing whose endurance is so brief as not to leave
behind it some trace of itself, something in its own like-
ness.
* *
One should gather nothing before it is ripe, and a
fortnight sooner or later makes a great difference.
"To-day," said he, "I feel through my whole heart
how foolishly we let our time pass on. How many things
have I proposed to do, how many have I planned; yet
how we loiter in our noblest purposes!"
"One who lives long," said the old man,
collected and much cast asunder."
sees much
"You always want to oppress me with evidences. Where-
fore? Do I need evidences of my own existence? Evi-
dence that I feel? I only treasure, love and demand
evidences that convince me that thousands (or even one)
have felt before me that which strengthens and invigo
rates me. And thus to me the word of man becomes like
unto the word of God. With my whole soul I throw
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237
myself upon the neck of my brothers: Moses, Prophet,
Evangelist, Apostle, Spinoza, or Machiavelli! To each,
however, I would say: 'Dear Friend, it is with you as it
is with me. Certain details you apprehend clearly and
powerfully, but the whole can no more be conceived by
you than by me.””
*
I could tear open my bosom with vexation to think
how little we are capable of influencing the feelings of
each other. No one can communicate to me those sen-
sations of love, joy, rapture, and delight, which I do not.
naturally possess; and though my heart may glow with
the most lively affection, I cannot make the happiness
of one in whom the same warmth is not inherent.
Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment
each other; particularly when in the flower of their age,
in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short
days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only per-
ceive their error when it is too late to repair it.
If we think how many people we have known, and
consider how little we have been to them and how little
they have been to us, it is no very pleasing reflection.
We have met a man of genius without having enjoyed
much with him — a learned man without having learned
from him — a traveller without having been instructed
a man to love without having shown him any kindness.
And, unhappily, this is not the case only with acci-
dental meetings. Societies and families behave in the
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same way towards their dearest members, towns towards
their worthiest citizens, people towards their most admir-
able princes, nations towards their most distinguished
men.
I have heard it asked why we heard nothing but good
spoken of the dead, while of the living it is never with-
out some exception. It should be answered, because
from the former we have nothing any more to fear, while
the latter may still, here or there, fall in our way. So
unreal is our anxiety to preserve the memory of others
generally no more than a mere selfish amusement; and
the real, holy, earnest feeling would be what should
prompt us to be more diligent and assiduous in our
attentions towards those who still are left to us.
My grandmother used to tell us a story of a mountain
of loadstone. When any vessels came near it, they
were deprived instantly of their ironwork, the nails flew
to the mountain, and the unhappy crew perished amongst
the disjointed planks.
"We are apt to complain, but with very little cause,
that our happy days are few, and our evil days many.
If our hearts were always disposed to receive the bene-
fits which Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength
to support evil when it comes."
"But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always
commannd our tempers, so much depends upon the con-
stitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease.”
"I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must
ས་
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consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and
inquire whether there is no remedy for it."
“I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte.
"Ill-humour resembles indolence," I replied; “it is
natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert our-
selves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and
we experience in the activity from which we shrank, a
real enjoyment."
"You call ill-humour a crime," she said; "but I think
you use too strong a term."
"Not at all," I replied; "if that deserves the name
which is pernicious to ourselves and our neighbors. Is
it not enough that we want the power to make one an-
other happy,― must we deprive each other of the plea-
sure which we can all make for ourselves? Show me
the man who has the courage to hide his ill-humour,
who bears the whole burden himself, without disturbing
the peace of those around him. No; ill-humour arises
from an inward consciousness of our own want of merit,-
from a discontent which ever accompanies that envy
which foolish vanity engenders. We see people happy,
whom we have not made so, and we cannot endure the
sight.
"Woe unto those, who use their power over a human
heart, to destroy the simple pleasures it would naturally
enjoy! All the favours, all the attentions in the world
cannot compensate for the loss of that happiness which
a cruel tyranny has destroyed.
"We should daily repeat to ourselves, that we should
not interfere with our friends, unless to leave them in
possession of their own joys, and increase their happi-
ness by sharing it with them."
¢
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*
For my part, in the development and the expressions
of my ideas, I perhaps experienced far more hindrance
and check from the false co-operation and interference
of the like-minded, than by the opposition of those whose
turn of mind was directly contrary to my own.
Every word a man utters provokes the opposite
opinion.
It is always a misfortune to step into new relations
to which one has not been inured; we are often against
our will lured into a false sympathy, the incompleteness
of such positions troubles us, and yet we see no means
either of completing them or of removing them.
*
*
There is depth and significance in the old remark:
on the summit of fortune one abides not long.
Misfortune is also a good. I have learned much in
illness which I could have learned nowhere else in life.
*
*
*
A small evil, which follows closely upon a greater, can
fill the cup.
*
Great misfortune is often the harbinger of intense joy.
*
*
It is a real misery to be pursued and hunted by many
spirits.
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241
What people say of misfortunes that they never
come alone
may with almost as much truth be said
also of good fortune, and, indeed, of other circumstances.
which often cluster around us in a harmonious way;
whether it be by a kind of fatality, or whether it be that
man has the power of attracting to himself all mutually
related things.
As every little circumstance combines to favor the
fortunate, and every accident contributes to elate him;
so do the most trifling occurrences love to unite to crush
and overwhelm the unhappy.
Misfortune when we look upon it with our eyes is
smaller than when our imagination sinks the evil down
into the recesses of the soul.
*
With unshaken mind be thou ready for good or evil.
To-morrow will not do what is not done to-day.
Let not a day be lost in dallying,
But seize the possibility
Right by the forelock, courage rallying,
And forth with fearless spirit sallying,—
Once in the yoke, and you are free.
*
Even on the firm land there are frequent enough ship
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wrecks, and the true, wise conduct is to recover ourselves,
and refit our vessel as fast as possible.
At certain epochs, children part from parents, ser-
vants from masters, protégés from their patrons; and
whether it succeed or not, such an attempt to stand on
one's own feet, to make one's self independent, to live
for one's self, is always in accordance with the will of
nature.
necessity's pressure
Brings forth the angel in man, and makes him a god of
deliv'rance.
* *
Submit to what is unavoidable, banish the impossible
from the mind, and look around for some new object of
interest in life.
*
Say what you will of fortitude, but show me the man
who can patiently endure the laughter of fools,`when
they have obtained an advantage over him. 'Tis only
when their nonsense is without foundation that we can
suffer it without complaint.
We should not forget that the highest honor is to
command ourselves in misfortune; to bear pain if it
must be so, with equanimity and self-collectedness.
Art
Affinities
Aspiration
Bible, The
Beautiful, The
Criticism
•
Comprehension
Culture
·
Character Sketches
Courage
Destiny
Death
Despair
Danger
Education.
Execution.
Freedom
•
Friendship.
Genius
Hope
Health
Happiness.
Inheritance
Irony
Insanity
·
Influence
•
Literature.
Love
Letters
Life
•
•
INDEX.
59-60
229-30
190-93
58
170-71
169
171-72
189-90
172-89
241-42
225-29
122-25
•
198-203
169
134-40
224
95-97
119-22
11-12
117-18
172
220-21
212-14
193-94
148-49
235-40
84-86
248
38-44
140-41
64-78
244
INDEX.
Misunderstandings
Men.
Marriage
Mind
Misfortune.
93-94
12-92
194-96
224
240-41
85-92
Nature
Obligations
Occupation
Poet, The
Principles
168-69
160-68
93-94
94-96
Pictures
132-54
Passion
152
Politeness
215-17
Past, Present and Future.
217-19
Purpose
231-34
Religion
97-118
Renunciation
Secrecy
221-24
•
38
Study
83-85
Sorrow
126-30
Society
141-48
Solitude
149-51
Scandal
•
Superstition
Sublime, The
Suicide
Self-conceit
Travelling
Truth
Traits of Character
Time
Vocation
151-52
219
176
194
211-12
44-58
196-97
204-II
234-36
130-32
Women
Youth
78-83
153-60

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and Women, Never fails to carry de- Edited by the famous
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NEW PUBLICATIONS.
•
THE LIFE AND EXPLORATIONS OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE,
LL. D. By John S. Roberts. Including Extracts from Dr.
Livingstone's Last Journal. By Rev. E. A. Manning, with
Portrait on steel and illustrations. Boston: D. Lothrop &
Co. Price $1.50. So long as there exists in the humau
mind an admiration for heroism in a good cause, for cour-
age under extraordinary difficulties, for inflexible persever-
ance in the face of obstacles seemingly insurmountable, and
for faith remaining unshaken amidst disheartening sur-
roundings, so long will the memory of David Livingstone
be held in respect and reverence. The simple and un-
adorned story of the wanderings and sufferings of the mis-
sionary explorer in the wilds of Africa possesses a stronger
fascination than the most skilfully-devised romance. More
than thirty of the most active years of the life of Living-
stone were spent in Africa. Going to that country at the
early age of twenty-seven to engage in missionary work, for
nine years he mingled with the native tribes, acquiring
their language, teaching, and making such explorations as
were incidental to his labors. At the end of that time,
fired with the desire of opening up the mysteries of that
almost unknown country, he set out upon a journey of
exploration, the particular aim being the discovery of Lake
Ngami. He succeeded, and collected, besides, a vast
3gant of scientific and geographical information which
was entirely new. In 1852, having sent his family to Eng-
land, he started on another journey of exploration, being
absent four years, and traversing in that time over eleven
thousand miles On his return he published his first book,
in which he detailed his discoveries. He paid a short visit
to England, where he was received with open armis by
scholars and scientific men, and every honor was accorded
him. In 1858 he began his third voyage of exploration, ac-
companied by his wife, who died on the way. He returned
in 1868, but immediately set cut with a more extended plan
in view. For more than four years nothing was heard from
him except in the way of rumors. Then letters came, long
delayed, detailing his plans, followed by a silence of two
years. In 1871 he was found at Ujiji, alive and well, by
Пenry M. Stanley, who had been sent in search of him by
the New York Herald. He joined Stanley, who had been
given a carte blanche for explorations, and was with him
until he died, May 1, 1873, at Ilala, in Central Africa. The
present volume is an intensely interesting account of these
several journeys compiled from the most authentic sources,
the chief being Livingstone's own descriptions and journals,
.
NEW
PUBLICATIONS.
SINNER AND SAINT: A story of the Woman's Crusade:
by A. A. Hopkins, author of "John Bremm: Ilis Prison
Bars," etc. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.25. This
is a notable addition to temperance literature and combines,
in style and treatment, some of the strongest charac
teristics of that unique temperance narrative, with
salient features peculiar to itself. It is both a live,
progressive, radical reform story, quite abreast with
the
an intense,
temperance thought of to-day, and
absorbing record of heart experiences, reading as if
they were all real. In its delineation of scenes und inci-
dents in the Woman's Crusade, it traverses a field rich in
suggestion, in feeling and in fact, and hitherto ignored by
the novelist. The Crusade marked an epoch in temperance
activities, and Sinner and Saint vividly reflects the wonder-
ful spirit of that movement, while as cividly portraying the
strange methods and the remarkable faith that gave it suc-
cess. This is a broader, more comprehensive story than its
predecessor from the same pen, more abundant in charac-
ters, and stronger in the love elements which these contrib-
ute. The religious tone of it also, is more decidedly
pronounced. Baylan (New York?), Worrom, Ohio, and a
Rocky mountain mining camp, form the locali. Of all
these Mr. Hopkins writes like one familiar with his ground,
as he is confessedly familiar with the different phases of
temperance endeavor and need. To the women who work
and pray, for love's dear sake and home's, that fallen
manhood may come to its own again," he dedicates his
work. It should win the early perusal of all that noble
ariny, and of a wide circle besides of all, indeed, who
sympathize with human weakness and admire womanly
strength.
•
KINGS, QUEENS AND BARBARIANS; or, Talks about
Seven Historic Ages. By Arthur Gilman, M. A. New Edi-
tion, enlarged. Ill. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00.
This handsome little volume, prepared for young readers, is
a pleasant condensation of the main facts in the world's his-
tory from the time of the Golden Age of Greece, which
dates back to five hundred years before Christ, down to the
Golden Age of England, or the time of the Puritans. The
information is conveyed in the form of a family dialogue, in
which the father entertains his children evening after eve-
ning, in a series of talks, taking up in a natural way one
subject after another, giving just enough of each to creaté
an appetite among the young listeners to know more about
them and to bring the various volumes of history in the fan-
ily library into active. demand. Young readers will find it
a delightful volume.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
66
THE TEMPTER BEHIND. By the Author of "Israel Mort.
Overman." Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.25. Most
readers of fiction will remember "Israel Mort, Overman," a
book which created several years ago a profound sensation
both in this country and in England. It was a work of in-
tense strength and showed such promise on the part of the
anonymous author that a succeeding work from the same
hand has ever since been anxiously looked for, in the belief
that, should it be written, it would make a yet more decided
impression. The Tempter Behind," now just brought out
in this country, shows that the estimate of the public as to
the ability of the author was not too high. It is in every
way a higher and stronger work, and one that cannot but
have a marked effect wherever it is read. It is not merely an
intensely interesting story; something more earnest than
the mere excitement of incident underlies the book. It is
the record of the struggles of a young and ambitious student
against the demon of drink. He is an orphan the ward of
a rich uncle who proposes to settle his entire property upon
him in case he conforms to his wishes. It is the desire of
the uncle that he shall become a clergyman, a profession for
which the young man has a strong and natural preference.
Unknown to his uncle, he has formed the habit of social
drinking at college from which he cannot extricate himself.
The terrible thirst for intoxicants paralyses his will, and
renders him a slave to the cup. Every effort he makes is
unsuccessful. He loses rank at college, and is afterwarċ
dismissed from his post as private secretary to an official of
the government, on account of the neglect of his studies and
duties, but without exposure. His uncle knows his failures,
but not their cause, and demands that he either enter the
ministerial profession for which he has prepared himself, oi
leave the shelter of his roof. The young man, who has toc
much principle to assume a position which he fears he may
disgrace, does not confide in his uncle, and secretly departs
from the house, leaving behind him a letter of farewell, de
termined to make one more trial by himself, and among
strangers, to break the chains which bind him so closely
The story of his experiences, trials and temptations are viv
idly and almost painfully told, with their results. The book
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE TENT IN THE NOTсII. By Edward A. Rand. A
Sequel to "Bark Cabin on Kearsarge." Ill. Boston: D.
Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. The boys and girls who last
year read Mr. Rand's charming book, Bark Cabin on
Kearsarge, will hail this present volume with genuine de-
light. It is a continuation of that story, with the same
characters, and relates the adventures of the Merry family
during the vacation season, the camping-out place being
changed from Kearsarge to the Notch, and the bark cabin
giving place to a large tent for a summer residence. The
location selected for the camp is a short distance down the
Notch road, within easy walk of the Crawford IIouse where
the ladies of the family have a room, although their days
are spent at the tent. From this point excursions are
made in all directions, every known point of attraction being
visited and others eagerly searched for. One day they make
the ascent of Mt. Washington, the ladies going up by rail
and the boys taking the Crawford bridlepath. Another
they climb Mt. Willard to enjoy the magnificent panorama
spread out below, and one day the boys take part in an ex-
citing but unsuccessful bear hunt. The author has inter-
woven with his story many of the local traditions of the
mountains, and his descriptions of the natural scenery of the
region are so vivid and accurate that one who has gone over
the same ground almost feels as if the book were a narrative
of real occurrences Like the first voluem of the series,
The Tent in the Notch is capital reading, even for old folks.
To the boys and girls who expect to make the mountains a
visit this summer, it is, aside from its interest as a story, as
good as a guide book, and what they will learn from its
pages will add greatly to their enjoyment.
OVER SEAS: or, Here, There, and Everywhere. Ill
Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. Twenty-one bright,
sparkling sketches of travel and sight-seeing make up the
contents of this handsome volume, which every boy and girl
will delight to read. The various stories are all by popular
authors, and cover adventures in Italy, Germany, France,
and other countries of Europe, China, Mexico, and some out
of the way corners of the world where travellers seldom get,
and which young readers know little about. They are full
of instructive information, and the boy or girl who reads
them will know a great deal more about foreign countries
and the curious things they contain than could be gained
from many larger and more pretentious books. The volume
is profusely illustrated.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
1
some,
Doctor Dick: A sequel to "Six Little Rebels. By
Kate Taunatt Woods. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price,
$1.50. Ever since the publication of that charming story,
Six Little Rebels, there has been a constant demand from all
quarters for a continuation of the adventures of the bright
young Southerners and their Northern friends. The hand-
well-illustrated volume before us is the result. The
story begins with Dick and Reginald at Harvard, with Miss
Lucinda as their housekeeper, and a number of old friends
as fellow-boarders. Dolly and Cora are not forgotten, and
hold conspicuous places in the narrative, which is enlivened
by bright dialogue and genuine fun. What they all do in
their respective places the boys at college, Cora at Vassar,
Dolly with her father, Mrs. Miller at Washington, and the
others at their posts of duty or necessity, is entertainingly
described. The story of the fall of Richmond and the assas
sination of Lincoln are vividly told. One of the most
interesting chapters of the book is that which describes the
visit, after the fall of the Confederacy, of Reginald's father,
General Gresham, to Cambridge, and the rejoicings which
followed. The whole book is full of life and incident, and
will be thoroughly enjoyed by young readers.
YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF RUSSIA. By Nathan Haskell
Dole, editor and translator of " Rambaud's Popular History
of Russia." Fully illustrated. 12mo, cloth, $1.50; half
Russia, $2.00. Mr. Dole has for several years made a care-
ful and special study of Russian history, and the volume
before us bears testimony to the critical thoroughness of
the knowledge thus gained. Russia has no certain history
before the ninth century, although there is no lack of
legend and tradition. Some attention is given to these, but
the real record of events begins just after the time Vladimir
became Prince of Kief, about the beginning of the tenth
century. The contents are divided into two books, the first
being sub-divided into "Heroic Russia," "Russia of the
Princes,'
"The Enslavement of Russia," and "The Russia
of Moscow." The second book deals with Russia after its
establishment as an empire, and its sub-divisions have for
their special subjects, Ivan the Tyrant," "The Time of
the Troubles," The House of the Romanoffs," and
"Modern Russia." It would have been in place had Mr.
Dole given the reader a chapter on modern Russian politics,
a thing which could easily have been done, and which is
absolutely necessary to enable the reader to understand
current events and prospective movements in the empire.
The volume is profusely illustrated, and contains two double-
page colored maps.
-
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
GRANDMOTHER NORMANDY. By the Author of "Silent
Tom." V. I. F. series. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price
$1.25. The series of which this volume is the third issue,
has already achieved a remarkable popularity, and Grand-
mother Normandy will find a host of leaders the moment it
takes its place upon the counters of the booksellers. It deals
more directly with some of the vital points of Christianity,
than either of its predecessors, and shows how the bitter things
in every one's experience may be turned to good and lasting
account. It teaches that life lived selfishly is a curse; but
that giving sympathy, love, help, and hope to others makes
one grow grandly strong, and fits one for great things in the
hereafter. It shows that to one who works earnestly and
conscientiously life is a vast, undiscovered country, full of
marvels, attainments, golden opportunities and industries,
rich with mines of unexplored thought, and bright with
usefulness. The story itself is fascinatingly told. The
character of Grandmother Normandy, stern, relentless, and
unforgiving, almost to the last, is strongly drawn, and the
author has shown her skill in the means she has devised for
softening the old lady's heart and melting the pride which
has wrought so much unhappiness in her family. The
book is written in an entertaining style, and without any
flagging of interest from the first chapter to the last.
YOUNG FOLKS' SPEAKER. A Collection of Prose and
Poetry for Declamations, Recitations, and Elocutionary
Exercises. Selected and arranged by Carrie Adelaide Cooke.
Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. Here
is the book for which school children have long been wait-
ing; a book not thrown together of any and all kinds of
material, simply to meet the popular demand, but a care-
fully compiled collection of pieces suitable for reading and
speaking, most of which have never before been included
in any work of the kind. The oft expressed wishes of the
children for something new "Something that hasn't been
read to pieces" is here fully met. Some of the old
favorites, without which no book of declamation would be
complete, are given; selections from Longfellow, Whittier,
and Holmes; but as has been already said, the bulk of
the volume is made up of fresh and unhackneyed pieces,
chosen for their poetic merit, pure sentiment, and the
opportunity they offer for elocut.onary display. No
collection of the kind that has yet been published presents
so many excellences, or is better adapted to the wants of
the class for which it has been especially prepared. It
deserves to become a standard in the schools of the counter
The illustrations are many and attractive.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
She
YENSIE WALTON'S WOMANHOOD. By Mrs. S. R. Graham
Clark. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50. Nine out
of ten Sunday-school scholars have read Yensie Walton, one
of the best and most interesting books that ever went into a
Sunday-school library. The present volume introduces
Tensie in a new home and under new conditions.
enters the family of a friend as an instructor of the younger
members, and the narrative of her experiences will especially
interest those who have to do with the moral and mental
training of children. The author shows that all children
are not made after the same pattern, and that one line of
treatment is not of universal application. In one of her
pupils, a boy of brilliant mental endowments, whose mind
has become embittered because of a physical deformity,
Yensie finds much to interest as well as to discourage her.
She perseveres, however, and by studying his character
carefully and working upon him from the right side, she
gradually works a change in his disposition and brings his
better qualities into active exercise. This is scarcely accom-
plished when a call from Valley Farm reaches her. Ever
prompt to do duty's bidding, Yensie quits this happy home
for the sterner requirements of her unele's family, where
she lavored with unflagging interest and determination until
that much-loved relative says his last good-by. It is then
that the hitherto silenced wooer refuses to be longer quiet,
aud our heroine goes out from the old red farm-house to her
wedded home, where as a wife and mother she makes duty
paramount to pleasure, and every circumstance of life is
met with that same fortitude characteristic of the Yensie
Walton you so much admire. Besides the characters with
which the reader is already familiar through the former
work, others are introduced which are equally well drawn,
and which serve to round out the story to completeness.
THE MOTHER'S RECORD OF THE MENTAL, MORAL AND
PHYSICAL LIFE OF HER CHILD. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co.
Quarto $1.00. This work is valuable as it is unique. It is
prepared by a Massachusetts woman, and though originally
intended for her own benefit, has been published for the
help of mothers everywhere. It is intended for a yearly
chronicle of the child's growth and development, mental
and physical, and will be an important aid to mothers who
devote themselves to conscientious training of their little
ones.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
OUT AND ABOUT. By Kate Tannatt Woods. Illustrated.
Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50. Every boy and
girl in the country used to delight in the Bodley books,
and here is a volume which is in all respects their worthy
successor. It is based upon something like the same plan,
in that it takes a whole family, instead of a single memver
of it, about the country sight-seeing. We might rather sav
two whole families, for that is just what the author does.
The Hudsons and the Marstons are neighbors in the vicinity
of Boston, and the children are great friends. They all go
to Cape Cod and Nantucket to spend the summer, and from
there the Hudsons are called away to San Francisco by Col.
Hudson, who is an army officer, and is stationed there.
The book describes their stay on the Cape, and their long
overland journey to the Pacific coast. Its interest is not
wholly confined to the members of the party, for the author
takes special pains to give correct and vivid pictures of the
various places visited. The illustrations are some of the
best ever put into a children's book, and are many from
drawings and photographs made on the spot.
CHRONICLES OF THE STIMPCETT FAMILY. By Abby
Morton Diaz. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.25.
Some one once said, "Give a Frenchman an onion and a
beef-bone, and he will make a dozen different kinds of
delicious soup." Give Mrs. Diaz two or three simple inci-
dents, and she will manufacture half a dozen stories so
sprightly and jolly, and so full of every day human nature
withal, that to the young they are a source of perennial
delight, while the old people can get as much enjoyment out
of them as from a volume of Scott or Dickens.
This new
book, which has never seen the light in any newspaper or
magazine, will be ready in ample time for the holidays, and
the father who wants to make his little ones perfectly happy
at that time will take good care to secure a copy. The
Stimpcetts have a Family Story Teller," and the wonder-
ful, queer, strange and funny stories which this individual
has treasured up in his memory, and retails to the children
on various occasions, will be laughed over, and talked over,
and thought over, until the author is ready with another
volume,
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
NEXT THINGS. By Pansy. A Story for Little Folks,
Fully illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00,
This is a bright little story with two heroes, and the lesson
it tries to teach young readers is to do the work that
lies nearest to them first; in other words, "What to do
next. No one can do the second thing; he can do the first."
Bound up in the same cover is a capital story called
"Dorrie's Day," in which are related the adventures of a
little girl who went to sleep in the cars and got carried out
of her way. The history of what she did, and how she got
home, will interest the children.
A Missionary
MRS. HARRY HARPER'S AWAKENING.
story by Pansy. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00.
This is one of Pansy's "lesson books," in which, under the
guise of a story, she drives home a truth so thoroughly that
the dullest and most unimpressible reader cannot help seeing
and feeling it. Mrs. Harry Harper was a young wife in a
strange city, without acquaintances, and with nothing to do
during the long hours of the day while her husband was ab-
sent at his business. One day in walking aimlessly along
the street she follows a crowd of ladies into what she sup-
poses is a bazar, but what she soon discovers to be a mis-
sionary meeting. Her attention is excited by what she sees
and hears; her sympathies and religious feelings are
awakened, and she enters into practical Christian work with
all her heart and soul. The book is one of serious purpose
and falling into the hands of people like Mrs. Harper will be
a means of undoubted good.
Pizarro; or, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru. Il-
lustrated. Edited by Fred H. Allen. Boston: D. Lothrop
& Co. Price $1.00. This is the third volume in Mr. Allen's
valuable little series, and is a concise and interesting history
of a country which at this very moment is undergoing a
conquest as bloody and exhaustive as that which occurred
350 years ago, when the Spanish ancestors of the present
race of Peruvians carried fire and slaughter into the homes
of the native inhabitants. The story is told with spirit,
and with enough detail to enable the reader to get a clear
and connected idea of the different campaigns of Pizarro in
South America from the time of his landing on its shores in
1509 until his assassination by his own countrymen in his
house in Lima in 1541.


THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
JUN CA
JAN 17 1988
100%
DATE DUE
DEC 3 0 1998

NOV 30 1998
APR 19 RECD
APR 19 RECD


DEC 18 1906
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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