OF THE 
 
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 Of ILLINOIS 
 
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THE 
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 IN GERMANY: 
 
 H fragment. 
 
 By HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 JOHN SNODGRASS, 
 
 TRANSLATOR OF “ WIT, WISDOM, AND PATHOS FROM THE PROSE OF 
 HEINRICH HEINE.” 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 REGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO. L T J> 
 
 PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD 
 1891. 
 

 The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved. 
 
Cf/fr IT a* 
 
 mi 
 
 
 . 2 - 
 
 TO MY FATHER 
 
 5 Dedicate 
 
 THIS ATTEMPT 
 
 FAITHFULLY TO RENDER INTO ENGLISH 
 
 A FRAGMENT 
 
 OF 
 
 J. S. 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE’S BRILLIANT PROSE. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/religionphilosop00hein_0 
 
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. 
 
 In the beginning of the year 1833, Heine contributed 
 to the newly-founded and short-lived Parisian journal, 
 “ Europe Litteraire,” a series of articles on modern German 
 literature. The object of these articles was to assist French- 
 men to a more accurate acquaintance with the productions 
 of the German Eomantic School than it was possible for 
 them to acquire from Madame de S tael’s celebrated book, 
 “ De l’Allemagne.” Political topics being excluded from 
 the programme of the “ Europe Litteraire,” it was only 
 in a very guarded manner that Heine could, in the pages 
 of this Journal, direct the shafts of his satire against the 
 despotic rulers of Germany. But in the series of three 
 articles published in 1834 in the “ Eevue des Deux 
 Mondes,” and afterwards collected together under the 
 title, “ A Contribution to the History of Eeligion and 
 Philosophy in Germany,” Heine felt himself at liberty to 
 deal in the most unrestrained manner with the political 
 condition of his native country. When, however, in 
 January 1835, Hoffmann and Campe of Hamburg pub- 
 lished the German version of the work, the mutilation it 
 
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 
 
 viii 
 
 had suffered at the hands of the censor was so great as 
 to call forth from Heine a protest in the German press. 
 How keenly he resented the treatment to which his work 
 had been submitted will be seen from the Preface to the 
 second German edition (page io of the present volume). 
 In the French version of Heine's works, the book now 
 translated appears as the first part of the two volumes 
 entitled “De l’Allemagne.” These volumes were care- 
 fully revised by Heine during the latter years of his life, 
 but the later German editions had not the benefit of such 
 revision. The French version, as finally revised by the 
 author, must therefore be regarded as the definitive form 
 in which he desired the work to appear. The translator 
 of this volume has therefore been confronted with the 
 difficulty of a French and a German version, presenting 
 considerable variations of text. Some of these variations 
 are so slight as to render it unnecessary to draw special 
 attention to them ; indeed to indicate every little change 
 of phrase would prove an annoyance to any but devoted 
 students of Heine’s works. Other alterations consist of 
 corrections of errors, a few short passages are materially 
 changed, and several paragraphs appearing in the one 
 version are omitted in the other. Where the alteration 
 in the text seems of importance it is indicated in this 
 volume either by a footnote or in the Appendix, and 
 passages omitted from either version are restored. The 
 actual translation, however, has been made rather from 
 the German than from the French. And for this reason: 
 
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. 
 
 IX 
 
 it is doubtful whether Heine, wonderful though his 
 mastery of the Trench language was, wrote the French 
 text without receiving at least partial assistance from 
 some eminent French writer. It certainly was his practice, 
 when preparing French translations of his works which 
 had previously been published in German, to obtain such 
 assistance. It is very probable indeed that the present 
 work also was first written in German, and then rewritten 
 in French for the pages of the “Revue des DeuxMondes.” 
 The method of translation here adopted seems therefore 
 to be fully warranted by the circumstances under which 
 the original was composed. 
 
 The somewhat cumbrous title in the German version, 
 “Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutsch- 
 land,” is altered on the title-page of this translation in 
 accordance with the remark of Heine, that the book “ is 
 and must remain a fragment.” The translator has 
 scrupulously refrained from taking any liberties with 
 the language of his author. Only in a single case has 
 he felt himself compelled to omit a few lines, and in 
 this case the passage omitted is not Heine’s own, but 
 a quotation. 
 
 The interest in Heine’s prose works may now be said 
 to be awakened in this country ; thanks in the first place 
 to Matthew Arnold’s just and graceful tribute in “Essays 
 in Criticism,” and next to the writers of various magazine 
 articles which have of late appeared in England and in 
 America. Mention must specially be made of a recent 
 
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 
 
 admirable contribution towards an enlightened estimate 
 of Heine’s work, by Mr. Charles Grant in the “Con- 
 temporary Eeview” (September 1880). 
 
 It is proper to state that a number of selected pas- 
 sages from “ Eeligion and Philosophy in Germany,” 
 appeared in the translator’s previous volume, “Heine’s 
 Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos.” It was the reception 
 accorded to that volume of extracts that induced the 
 translator to undertake the present work. 
 
 J. S. 
 
 March 1882 . 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Translator’s Note vii 
 
 Preface to first French Edition i 
 
 Preface to first German Edition 8 
 
 Preface to second German Edition .... 9 
 
 Part First : Germany till Luther’s Time . . .19 
 Part Second : From Luther to Kant . . . .59 
 
 Part Third : From Kant to Hegel 105 
 
 Appendix 165 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST FRENCH EDITION. 
 
 When the Emperor Otho III. visited the tomb in which 
 had reposed for many years the mortal remains of Charle- 
 magne, he entered the vault accompanied by two bishops 
 and by the Count de Laumel, the narrator of these details. 
 The body was not lying stretched out like the other dead, 
 but was seated erect on a bench like a living person. 
 There was a crown of gold on the head and a sceptre 
 was held between the hands, w T hich were gloved; but 
 the nails having grown, had pierced through the leather 
 of the gloves. The vault had been solidly walled round 
 with marble and limestone. In order to obtain access, it 
 was necessary to make a breach in the wall. A very 
 strong odour was perceptible at the moment of entering 
 the tomb. Every one quickly bent the knee and testified 
 his respect for the dead. Otho invested the body of the 
 emperor with a white rohe, cut the nails, and repaired 
 whatever had become dilapidated. No portion of the 
 body had suffered decomposition, with the exception of 
 the nose, the point of which was broken off. Otho re- 
 placed it with a golden point: he then took from the 
 mouth of the illustrious dead a tooth, caused the wall of 
 the vault to be built up again, and departed. The follow- 
 
 A 
 
PREFACE TO THE 
 
 ing night Charlemagne, it is said, appeared to him in a 
 dream, and announced that he, Otho, had not long to live, 
 and that he should leave no heirs. 
 
 Such is the story told in the “ German Traditions;” but 
 it is not the only story of its kind. It was thus that your 
 King Francis I. caused the tomb of the celebrated Eoland 
 to be opened, that he might judge for himself whether 
 this hero had been as great as poets would have us believe. 
 This took place shortly before the battle of Pavia. A like 
 visit was paid by King Sebastian of Portugal to the tombs 
 of his ancestors before embarking for that disastrous 
 African campaign, in which the sands of Alcanzar-Kebir 
 became his shroud. He caused each coffin to be opened, 
 and examined minutely the features of the ancient kings. 
 
 Strange and horrible curiosity that often urges men to 
 gaze into the tombs of the past ! This curiosity is excited 
 at certain extraordinary periods, at the close of an epoch, 
 or immediately before a catastrophe. We have in our 
 time beheld a similar phenomenon : this was when a great 
 sovereign, the French People, took a fancy, one fine morn- 
 ing, to open the tomb of the past, and to examine by the 
 light of day ages long since dead and forgotten. Skilful 
 gravediggers were not wanting, who set to work with 
 shovel and mattock to remove the rubbish and to make a 
 breach in the vaults. A strong odour was perceptible, 
 a Gothic richness of savour that affected very agreeably 
 noses satiated with classical perfumes. French authors 
 knelt down respectfully before the exhumed Middle Ages. 
 One covered the body with a new cloak, another dressed 
 its nails, a third repaired the nose ; after these came seve- 
 ral poets, who extracted teeth, just as had been done by 
 the Emperor Otho. 
 
FIRST FRENCH EDITION. 
 
 3 
 
 Did the ghost of the Middle Ages appear in a dream to 
 these extractors of teeth and restorers of noses ? Did it 
 prophesy to them the speedy end of their Romantic sove- 
 reignty ? Of this I am ignorant. My chief purpose in 
 speaking of this event in French literature is merely to 
 declare that I have no intention of cavilling at it directly 
 or indirectly when I speak in this book, somewhat harshly, 
 of a similar occurrence that took place in Germany. The 
 German authors who sought to reanimate the Middle 
 Ages had, as will be seen in these pages, another object 
 in view; and the effect produced by them on the great 
 body of the people served to compromise the liberty and 
 the happiness of my country. But in all their efforts, 
 French authors were concerned only about artistic inte- 
 rests, and the French public merely desired to gratify its 
 curiosity. The great majority came to gaze into the 
 sepulchre of the past with no more serious intention than 
 of seeking for an interesting carnival costume. The Gothic 
 mode was, in France, merely a mode that served but to 
 heighten the delights of the present time. Its followers 
 wore their hair flowing in long Middle Age curls ; yet a 
 passing remark of the hairdresser to the effect that the 
 mode was unbecoming, was all that was necessary to 
 cause them to cut off by the same snip of the scissors the 
 curled locks of the Middle Ages and the ideas that were 
 attached to them. Alas ! it was quite another affair in 
 Germany. The reason of this was, that there the Middle 
 Ages were not utterly dead and decomposed as with you. 
 The German Middle Age period does not lie in its tomb 
 a mere rotten thing; it is often animated by a wicked 
 phantom; it appears amongst ns in the full light of day, 
 and sucks the reddest life-blood from our hearts. 
 
4 
 
 PREFACE TO THE 
 
 Alas ! see you not how pale and sad is Germany, and 
 with her all our German youth, hut lately so joyously 
 enthusiastic ? See you not the blood on the lips of the 
 vampire plenipotentiary, whose residence is at Frankfort, 
 where he sucks with such horrible and wearisome patience 
 at the heart of the German people ? 
 
 What I have said of the Middle Ages also applies quite 
 specially to the religion of this epoch. The sense of pro- 
 bity demands that I should, as accurately as possible, 
 distinguish the party called Catholic in France from the 
 rogues that bear the same name in Germany. It is only 
 of the latter I have spoken in this book, and in terms, 
 indeed, that appear to me to be far too mild. These are 
 the enemies of my country, — reptiles full of insolent hypo- 
 crisy and of incurable baseness. They are to be heard 
 hissing at Berlin as at Munich ; and whilst you are tran- 
 quilly strolling along the Boulevard Montmartre, you may 
 suddenly feel their sting in your heel. But we shall 
 bruise the head of the old serpent. Its emissaries are the 
 militia of falsehood, they are the familiars of the Holy 
 Alliance, the restorers of all the miseries, of all the horrors, 
 of all the follies of the past. 
 
 What an immense distance separates them from the 
 men of the Catholic party in this country, men whose 
 leaders rank amongst the most remarkable writers in 
 France ! Though they may not be our brethren in arms, 
 they are fighting on behalf of the same interests as our- 
 selves, the interests of humanity. By this common bond 
 of affection we are united : we are separated only on the 
 question as to what best serves the cause of humanity. 
 They, for their part, believe that humanity has need only 
 of spiritual consolation ; whilst we, on the contrary, for 
 
FIRST FRENCH EDITION. 
 
 5 
 
 our part, hold that corporeal satisfaction is above all 
 things necessary for humanity. When the French Ca- 
 tholic party, ignoring its real mission, proclaims itself 
 the party of the past, the restorer of the faith of the 
 old time, it becomes our duty to protect it against its 
 own assertions. The eighteenth century had so com- 
 pletely destroyed Catholicism in France as to leave it with 
 hardly a sign of life, so that whoever seeks to re-establish 
 Catholicism amongst you has the aspect of one preaching 
 an entirely new religion. By France I mean Paris and 
 not the provinces ; for what the provinces think is of as 
 little consequence as what one’s legs think. It is the 
 head that is the seat of our thoughts. I have been told 
 that the French of the provinces are good Catholics : I can 
 neither affirm nor deny it. The men of the provinces 
 with whom I have conversed have impressed me like 
 milestones, bearing inscribed on their foreheads the dis- 
 tance, more or less great, from the capital. The women 
 of the provinces try perhaps to find in Catholicism a con- 
 solation for their grief at not being able to live in Paris. 
 In Paris itself Catholicism ceased in fact to exist at the 
 Eevolution, and long previous to that event it had lost 
 all real importance. It still lay in wait in the recesses of 
 the Churches, crouching like a spider in its web, ready to 
 spring precipitately from its retreat whenever it had a 
 chance of seizing a child in its cradle, or an old man in his 
 coffin. It was only at these two periods of life, on arriv- 
 ing in the world and on quitting it, that a Frenchman fell 
 into the hands of the Christian priest. During all the 
 intermediate period of his existence he was the servant of 
 reason, and laughed at holy water and consecrated oil. 
 Could this then, I ask, be called the reign of Catholicism ? 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE TO THE 
 
 It is because Catholicism was completely extinct in Trance 
 that it had the power, under Louis XVIII. and Charles X., 
 of attracting to itself, by the charm of novelty, a few dis- 
 interested spirits. Catholicism then appeared as some- 
 thing so unheard of, so new, so unexpected ! Previous 
 to this period the paramount religion in France was the 
 classical mythology, and this beautiful religion had been 
 so successfully preached to the French people by its 
 authors, its poets, and its artists, that at the close of the 
 preceding century the social and intellectual life of France 
 wore a completely pagan costume. During the Devolution 
 the classical religion flourished in its most vigorous splen- 
 dour. This was no mere aping of the original after the 
 manner of the Greek Alexandrians. Paris presented the 
 aspect of a natural continuation of Athens and of Pome. 
 Under the empire this antique spirit became insensibly 
 extinguished; the gods of Greece no longer held sway 
 except on the stage, and Eoman virtue was in possession 
 only of the battlefield. A new faith had sprung up, a 
 faith summed up in the single name, Napoleon! This 
 faith still rules the masses. It is an error, then, to say 
 that the French people is irreligious because it no longer 
 believes in Christ and his saints ; say rather, the irreligion 
 of the French consists, nowadays, in believing in a man, 
 instead of believing in the immortal gods. Say further, 
 the French are irreligious because they have ceased to 
 believe in Jupiter, in Diana, in Minerva, in Venus. The 
 assertion as to Venus may be disputed; at least I know 
 that, as regards the Graces, France has always remained 
 orthodox. 
 
 I hope these observations will not be misinterpreted. 
 Their aim is to warn the reader against grievous miscon- 
 
FIRST FRENCH EDITION. 
 
 7 
 
 ceptions. In the first three parts of this hook I have 
 spoken with some detail of the conflicts between religion 
 and philosophy in Germany. It was necessary to explain 
 this intellectual revolution in my country, about which 
 Madame de Stael has spread abroad in France so many 
 erroneous ideas. I frankly admit that I have constantly 
 had in view the work of this grandmother of doctrinaires, 
 and it is with the intention of making reparation that I 
 have given to my book the same title ; “ On Germany .’ 5 * 
 
 Paris, 8th April , 1833. 
 
 * This preface appears in the 
 French version of Heine’s works, 
 prefixed to the two volumes bearing 
 the title “ De 1’ Allemagne,” of which, 
 what is called in the German version 
 “ Religion and Philosophy in Ger- 
 many,” forms the first part. It does 
 not appear in any German edition. 
 Its interest, however, is not lessened 
 by that circumstance, and it is the 
 
 natural introduction to the fragment 
 now presented to the English reader. 
 It also throws light on Heine’s second 
 German preface. The dates of the 
 prefaces are themselves significant : 
 1833, when Heine was in the full 
 vigour of early manhood, and 1852, 
 when he had already lain for several 
 years on his mattress -grave.” — T r. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION. 
 
 I must draw the special attention of German readers to 
 the circumstance that these pages were originally con- 
 tributed to a Trench journal, the Berne des deux Mondes, 
 and that they were composed with a distinctly temporary 
 object in view. They, in fact, form part of a general 
 survey of intellectual events in Germany, whereof I had 
 already presented a portion to the French public, and this 
 had likewise appeared in German as “ A Contribution to 
 the History of Polite Literature in Germany.” The exi- 
 gencies of the periodical press, its defective organisation, 
 the absence of scientific appliances, the inadequateness of 
 French expedients, a newly promulgated law with regard 
 to works printed abroad — a law whose application is 
 found to be limited to myself — these and other obstacles 
 have hindered me from presenting the various parts of 
 my survey in chronological order and under a general 
 title. The present volume therefore, despite its aspect of 
 internal unity and of external completeness, is hut the 
 fragment of a greater whole. 
 
 I greet my native country with the friendliest of 
 greetings. 
 
 Written at Paris , 
 in the month of December, 1834 . 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION. 
 
 When the first edition of this hook was published, on 
 taking up a copy of it I was not a little horrified at 
 the mutilation it had suffered, a mutilation of which 
 traces were everywhere visible. Here an adjective was 
 wanting, there a parenthesis, entire passages were omitted 
 regardless of the context, so that not only the meaning, 
 but frequently the intention of the writer, was lost. It 
 was much more the fear of Caesar than the fear of God 
 that directed the mutilating hand; and whilst all that 
 was insidious from a political point of view was anxi- 
 ously cast aside, statements the most suspicious regarding 
 religion were permitted to stand. Thus the real ten- 
 dency of the book — a patriotic democratic tendency — 
 had vanished, and there stared at me from its pages, 
 like an unholy thing, quite a strange apparition that 
 recalled scholastic theological polemics, and that was 
 deeply offensive to the humanistic toleration of my 
 disposition. At first I flattered myself with the hope 
 that in a second impression I should be able to fill up 
 the gaps in the book ; but no restoration of this kind is 
 now possible, as the original manuscript disappeared 
 from the house of my publisher during the great fire in 
 
10 
 
 PREFACE TO THE 
 
 Hamburg ■* My memory is too weak to afford me assist- 
 ance through an effort of recollection ; and besides, on ac- 
 count of the state of my eyes, any minute revision of the 
 book is impossible. I therefore content myself with re- 
 translating from the French version, published before the 
 German version, several of the longer passages omitted, 
 and with intercalating them here. One of these passages, 
 which has been reprinted in innumerable French journals, 
 which has been debated about, and which was even dis- 
 cussed in last year’s session of the Chamber of Deputies 
 by one of the greatest of French statesmen, Count Mole, is 
 to be found at the end of this new edition. It may serve 
 to show the true state of the case as to the detraction and 
 degradation of Germany in the eyes of other nations, for 
 which, as certain worthy people asserted, I had been to 
 blame. When, in the sadness of my soul, I gave vent 
 to my feelings regarding the old official Germany, that 
 musty land of Philistines — though it brought forth no 
 Goliath, no, not one great man — there were those that 
 knew 7 how to represent me as speaking of the actual 
 Germany, of the great, mysterious, as it may be called, 
 anonymous Germany of the German people, the sleeping 
 sovereign with whose crown and sceptre the apes are at 
 play. This insinuation of the worthy folk found the 
 readier acceptance, as it was absolutely impossible for me, 
 during a long period, to make any declaration of my real 
 opinion. Particularly was this the case at the time when 
 the decrees of the Germanic Confederacy against “ Young 
 
 * The conflagration of 1842. The the complete German edition of 
 manuscript, was however, subse- Heine’s works, published by Hoff- 
 quently recovered, and Dr. Strodt- mann and Campe, Hamburg. — T r. 
 mann made use of it in preparing 
 
SECOND GERMAN EDITION. 
 
 H 
 
 Germany” appeared — decrees directed mainly against 
 myself — which brought me into an exceptional condi- 
 tion of restraint such as had been hitherto unheard of 
 in the annals of press bondage. When, by-and-by, I was 
 at liberty to loosen the muzzle a little, my thoughts still 
 remained gagged. 
 
 The book now before the reader is and must remain a 
 fragment. To confess frankly, I had rather that I could 
 leave the book altogether unpublished. And for this 
 reason, that since its first appearance my views on many 
 subjects, especially with regard to sacred things, have 
 undergone important change, and much that was then 
 asserted is now opposed to my better convictions. But 
 the arrow ceases to belong to the archer as soon as it 
 speeds from the string of his bow, and the word ceases to 
 belong to the speaker as soon as it springs from his lips 
 and is multiplied by the press. Besides, I should, by 
 leaving this book unpublished, and by withdrawing it 
 from the complete series of my works, incur the opposition 
 of those having urgent claims upon me. I might, it is 
 true, as is customary with authors in such cases, have 
 recourse to the expedient of toning down expressions, of 
 throwing a veil of phrases over my thoughts ; but, from 
 the depth of my soul I abhor all equivocal language, 
 hypocritical flowers of speech, cowardly fig-leaves. Yet, 
 to an honourable man, there remains under all circum- 
 stances the inalienable right of openly acknowledging his 
 error — a right that I shall here fearlessly exercise. I 
 therefore candidly confess that everything contained in 
 this book having reference to the great question of the 
 existence of God is as false as it is unadvised. As unad- 
 vised and as false is also the assertion, mimicked from the 
 
12 
 
 PREFACE TO THE 
 
 schools, that Deism is in theory destroyed, and that it 
 now only drags out a miserable existence in the material 
 world. No, it is not true that the Critique of Reason , 
 which has destroyed the arguments for the existence of 
 God, familiar to mankind since the time of Anselm of 
 Canterbury, has likewise made an end of God himself. 
 Deism lives, lives its most living life ; it is not dead, and 
 least of all has it been killed by the newest German 
 philosophy. This fine-spun Berlin dialectic is incapable of 
 enticing a dog from the fireside, it has not power to kill a 
 cat, how much less a God. I have in my own body had 
 experience how slight is the danger of its killing; it is 
 continually at its work of killing, and yet folk remain 
 alive. The doorkeeper of the Hegelian school, the grim 
 Euge, once obstinately maintained that he had slain me 
 with his porter’s staff in the Halle Chronicle , though at 
 that very time I was strolling along the boulevards of 
 Paris, healthy and gay, and more unlike dying than ever. 
 Poor worthy Euge ! He himself, at a later period, could 
 not restrain the most honest outburst of laughter when I 
 made him the confession, here, in Paris, that I had never 
 so much as seen that terribly homicidal journal, the Halle 
 Chronicle; and my full ruddy cheeks, as well as the 
 hearty appetite with which I swallowed oysters, con- 
 vinced him how little like a corpse I looked. In fact, in 
 those days I was still healthy and sleek, I stood in the 
 zenith of my fat, and was as arrogant as Nebuchadnezzar 
 before his fall. 
 
 Alas ! a few years later, a physical and mental change 
 began to take place. How often since those days have 
 I thought of the history of the Babylonian king, who 
 esteemed himself as no less than God, but who, having 
 
SECOND GERMAN EDITION. j 3 
 
 miserably, fallen from the summit of his infatuation, 
 crawled like an animal on the ground eating grass — 
 which would no doubt be salad! This story is to be 
 found in the grandiose and splendid book of Daniel, a 
 story which I recommend to the edifying contemplation, 
 not only of the worthy Euge, but to that of my far more 
 unregenerate friends, these godless self-gods, Feuerbach, 
 Daumer, Bruno Bauer, Hengstenberg, and whatever else 
 be their names. Besides this one, there are indeed many 
 other beautiful and noteworthy narratives in the Bible 
 which would be worthy their attention, as, for example, 
 just at the beginning, there is the story of the forbidden 
 tree in Paradise and of the serpent, that little private 
 tutoress who lectured on Hegelian philosophy six thou- 
 sand years before Hegel’s birth. This blue-stocking 
 without feet demonstrated very ingeniously how the 
 absolute consists in the identity of being and knowing, 
 how man becomes God through cognition, or, what is the 
 same thing, how the God in man thereby attains self- 
 consciousness. This formula is not so clear as the 
 original words: When ye eat of the tree of knowledge 
 ye shall be as God! Mother Eve understood only one 
 thing in the whole demonstration, that the fruit was 
 forbidden, and because it was forbidden, the good woman 
 ate of it. But she had scarcely eaten the enticing apple 
 when she lost her innocence, her naive ingenuousness, 
 and discovered that she was much too naked for a person 
 of her position, the ancestress of so many future emperors 
 and kings, and she desired a dress. Truly but a dress of 
 fig-leaves, because in her day no Lyonese silk manufac- 
 turers had yet come into the world, and because there 
 were in Paradise no milliners and dressmakers. 0 Para- 
 
14 
 
 PREFACE TO THE 
 
 dise ! Strange, as soon as woman attains reasoning self- 
 consciousness, her first thought is of a new dress ! And 
 this same Biblical narrative, particularly the saying of 
 the serpent, keeps running in my mind, so that I should 
 like to place it at the beginning of my book by way of 
 motto, in the same manner as one often sees at the gates 
 of princely gardens a board with the warning inscription : 
 Here are man-traps and spring-guns. 
 
 In my latest book, “ Bomancero,” I have explained the 
 transformation that took place within me regarding sacred 
 things. Since its publication many inquiries have been 
 made, with zealous importunity, as to the manner in 
 which the true light dawned upon me. Pious souls, 
 thirsting after a miracle, have desired to know whether, 
 like Saul on the way to Damascus, I had seen a light 
 from heaven ; or whether, like Balaam, the son of Beor, 
 I was riding on a restive ass, that suddenly opened its 
 mouth and began to speak as a man? Ho; ye credulous 
 believers, I never journeyed to Damascus, nor do I know 
 anything about it, save that lately the Jews there were 
 accused of devouring aged monks of St. Francis ; and I 
 might never have known even the name of the city had 
 I not read the Song of Solomon, wherein the wise king 
 compares the nose of his beloved to a tower that looketh 
 towards Damascus. Hor have I ever seen an ass, at least 
 any four-footed one, that spake as a man, though I have 
 often enough met men who, whenever they opened their 
 mouths, spake as asses. In truth, it was neither a vision, 
 nor a seraphic revelation, nor a voice from heaven, nor 
 any strange dream or other mystery that brought me into 
 the way of salvation ; and I owe my conversion simply to 
 the reading of a book. A book ? Yes, and it is an old, 
 
SECOND GERMAN EDITION. 
 
 liomely-looking book, modest as nature and natural as it ; 
 a book that has a work-a-day and unassuming look, like 
 the sun that warms us, like the bread that nourishes us ; 
 a book that seems to us as familiar and as full of kindly 
 blessing as the old grandmother who reads daily in it 
 with dear, trembling lips, and with spectacles on her nose. 
 And this book is called quite shortly — the Book, the 
 Bible. Bightly do men also call it the Holy Scripture ; 
 for he that has lost his God can find Him again in this 
 Book, and towards him that has never known God it 
 sends forth the breath of the Divine Word. The Jews, 
 who appreciate the value of precious things, knew right 
 well what they did when, at the burning of the second 
 temple, they left to their fate the gold and silver imple- 
 ments of sacrifice, the candlesticks and lamps, even the 
 breastplate of the High Priest adorned with great jewels, 
 but saved the Bible. This was the real treasure of the 
 Temple, and, thanks be to God ! it was not left a prey to 
 the flames or to the fury of Titus Vespasian, the wretch 
 who, as the Rabbin tells us, met with so dreadful a death. 
 A Jewish priest, who lived at Jerusalem two hundred 
 years before the burning of the second temple, during the 
 splendid era of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and who was called 
 Joshua ben Siras ben Eliezer, has written down for us, in 
 a collection of apophthegms, or Meschalim , the thoughts 
 of his time about the Bible, and I will here impart to you 
 his beautiful words. There is in them a sacerdotal 
 solemnity, and yet they are as refreshing as if they had 
 but yesterday welled forth from a living human breast; 
 and the words are as follows : — 
 
 “ All this is the Book of the Covenant made with the 
 Most High God, namely, the Law that Moses commanded 
 
1 6 PREFACE TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION. 
 
 as a precious treasure to the house of Jacob. Wisdom 
 floweth therefrom as the water of Pison when it is great, 
 and as the water of Tigris when it overspreadeth its banks 
 in spring. Instruction floweth from it as the Euphrates 
 when it is great, and as Jordan in the harvest. Correc- 
 tion breaketh forth from it as the light, and as the water 
 of the Nile in autumn. There is none that hath ever 
 made an end of learning it, there is none that will ever 
 find out all its mystery. Eor its wisdom is richer than 
 any sea, and its word deeper than any abyss.” 
 
 Written at Paris , 
 in the month of May, 1852 . 
 
RELIGION 
 
 IN 
 
 AND PHILOSOPHY 
 GERMANY. 
 
 B 
 
PART FIRST. 
 
 After labouring for a long time at the work of making 
 France understood in Germany, at the work of destroying 
 those national prejudices that despots so well know how 
 to turn to their account, I am about to undertake a simi- 
 lar and not less useful labour in interpreting Germany to 
 Frenchmen. 
 
 Providence, in appointing me this task, will also bestow 
 on me the needful light to perform it. I shall accomplish 
 a work profitable for both countries, and I have entire 
 faith in my mission. 
 
 Formerly there prevailed in France the most complete 
 ignorance regarding the intellectual condition of Germany, 
 an ignorance that was most disastrous in times of war. 
 Nowadays, on the other hand, there is springing up a 
 kind of half-knowledge, an erroneous conception of the 
 genius of the German nation, a confusion of old Teu- 
 tonic doctrines, ominous and most dangerous in times of 
 peace. 
 
 Most Frenchmen had persuaded themselves that, in 
 order to comprehend German thought, an acquaintance 
 with the masterpieces of German art was sufficient. But 
 art represents only one side of German thought, and to 
 understand even this requires a knowledge of the other 
 two sides of that thought — Beligion and Philosophy. 
 
 Only by studying the history of the religious reform 
 proclaimed by Luther, is it possible to comprehend how 
 
20 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 philosophy reached its development among us, and only 
 by means of a systematic exposition of our philosophical 
 systems can you appreciate that great literary revolution, 
 which, commencing with a theory, with the principles of 
 a new method of criticism, produced the Bomanticism 
 that has become the theme of your admiration. You 
 have been admiring flowers about whose roots you knew 
 as little as about the meaning of their symbolical lan- 
 guage. You have only seen the colours ; you have only 
 breathed the perfumes. 
 
 In order then to unveil German thought I must first 
 speak of religion. This religion is Christianity ." 1 
 
 Bear not, pious souls! your ears will be offended by no 
 profane pleasantries. These may still be of some service 
 in Germany, where perhaps it is necessary to neutralise, 
 for the moment, the influence of religion. Bor we Ger- 
 mans are in the same position that you were in previous to 
 the Bevolution, when Christianity was inseparably allied 
 to the old order of things. The latter was indestructible 
 so long as the former continued to exercise its influence 
 over the masses. Voltaire’s keen laughter must be heard 
 before Samson could strike with the headsman’s axe. 
 Yet Voltaire’s laugh proved nothing; it produced only a 
 brutal effect, just as did Samson’s base axe. Voltaire 
 could only wound the body of Christianity. All his 
 sarcasms derived from ecclesiastical history ; all his witti- 
 cisms on dogma and worship, on the Bible, that most 
 sacred book of humanity, on the Virgin Mary, that fairest 
 flower of poetry; the whole dictionary of philosophical 
 arrows which he discharged against the clergy and the 
 priesthood, could only wound the mortal body of Chris- 
 tianity, but were powerless against its interior essence, its 
 deeper spirit, its immortal soul. 
 
 1 The small figures throughout the work refer to the Notes in the 
 Appendix. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 21 
 
 For Christianity is an idea, and as such it is indestruc- 
 tible and eternal, as all ideas are. What then is this 
 idea ? 
 
 It is because this idea has not yet been clearly com- 
 prehended, because the external forms it has assumed 
 have been taken for the reality, that we are still without 
 a history of Christianity. Although Church history has 
 been written by two opposing parties that are perpetually 
 contradicting each other, yet these parties are so far of 
 one mind, that neither the one nor the other will distinctly 
 declare wherein, after all, consists this idea that is the 
 central point of Christianity ; this idea that strives to 
 reveal itself in the symbolism, the dogma, and the worship 
 of the Christian Church, and that has manifested 'itself in 
 the actual life of Christian peoples. Neither Baronius, 
 the Catholic cardinal, nor Schrockh, the Protestant aulic 
 counsellor, approaches this idea. Though you were to 
 run over the whole collection of the Acts of the Councils, 
 the Code of the Liturgy, and the entire Ecclesiastical 
 History of Sacarelli, you would gain no insight into what 
 constitutes the idea of Christianity. What then do we 
 find in the so-called histories of the Eastern and Western 
 Churches ? In the former nothing but dogmatic subtilties, 
 a revival of the old Greek sophistry ; in the latter mere 
 questions of discipline and disputes concerning eccles- 
 iastical interests, in which the legal casuistry and state- 
 craft of the ancient Ptomans endeavour to reassert them- 
 selves by the aid of new forms and coercive measures. In 
 fact, as men had disputed at Constantinople about the logos, 
 so in Eome they contended about the relation between the 
 temporal and the spiritual power: as there they had 
 attacked one another about homousios, so here they fought 
 about investiture. But the Byzantine questions — Whether 
 the logos is homousios to God the Father ? Whether Mary 
 is to be called mother of God or mother of man ? Whether 
 
22 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Christ, in the absence of food, suffered hunger, or only 
 hungered because he desired to hunger ? — all these ques- 
 tions were in reality based upon court intrigues ; and their 
 solution depended on what was secretly passing in the 
 private apartments of the Palatium Sacrum. Everything 
 might be traced to the prattling of women and of eunuchs. 
 Under the name of dogma it is a man, and in the man it 
 is a party that is preferred or persecuted. So likewise in 
 the West. Borne always desired to rule; when her 
 legions fell she sent dogmas into the provinces. Every 
 discussion on matters of faith had reference to Eoman 
 usurpations ; it w~as a question of consolidating the supre- 
 macy of the Bishop of Borne, who was always very tolerant 
 regarding mere articles of faith, but fretted and fumed 
 whenever the rights of the Church were assailed. He 
 did not indulge in much disputation about the persons in 
 Christ, but he was very eager about the consequences of 
 the decretals of Isidore. He centralised his power by 
 canonical law, by installation of bishops, by abasement of 
 the authority of princes, by the establishing of monastic 
 institutions, by celibacy of the priesthood, and so forth. 
 But was this Christianity ? Does the idea of Christianity 
 reveal itself to us in reading this kind of history ? And 
 again I ask, what is this idea ? 
 
 We may discover in what manner this idea had already 
 taken historical form, and manifested itself in the world 
 during the first centuries of the Christian era, by survey- 
 ing, with minds free from prejudices, the history of the 
 Manicheans and the Gnostics. Though the former were 
 branded as heretics and the latter were decried, though 
 both sects were equally condemned by the Church, their 
 influence on dogma still remained ; Christian art was de- 
 veloped from their symbolism, and their mode of thought 
 permeated the whole life of Christian peoples. In the 
 ultimate grounds of their beliefs Manicheans did not greatly 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 23 
 
 differ from Gnostics. The doctrine of the two principles, 
 good and evil, at conflict with one another, is common to 
 both. The one sect, the Manicheans, borrowed this 
 doctrine from the ancient Persian religion, in which 
 Ormuzd, light, is opposed to Ahriman, darkness. The 
 other sect, Gnostics properly so called, believed rather in 
 the pre-existence of the principle of good, and explained 
 the origin of the principle of evil by emanation, by gene- 
 ration of ceons, which deteriorate in proportion as they 
 remove from their source. According to Cerinthus, the 
 Creator of our world was by no means the Most High God, 
 but only an emanation from Him, one of those ceons , the 
 veritable Demiourgos, that has insensibly degenerated, and 
 that now stands, as evil principle, in hostile opposition to 
 the logos, the good principle, emanating directly from the 
 Supreme God. This Gnostic cosmogony is of Indian 
 origin, and embodies the doctrine of the incarnation of 
 God, of the mortification of the flesh, of the contemplative 
 life; it has given birth to asceticism, to monastic abne- 
 gation, the purest flower of the Christian idea. This idea 
 manifested itself, very confusedly however, in dogma, and 
 very vaguely in worship. Still we find everywhere ap- 
 pearing the doctrine of these two principles ; the perverse 
 Satan is opposed to the good Christ ; the spiritual world is 
 represented by Christ, the material world by the devil; 
 the soul belongs to the former, the body to the latter. 
 The whole external world, Nature, is therefore by its origin 
 wicked, and Satan, the prince of darkness, seeks by its 
 means, to entice us to destruction ; and we must renounce 
 all the pleasures of the senses, we must torture the body, 
 the fief of Satan, in order that the soul may soar more 
 majestically towards the heavenly light, towards the radiant 
 kingdom of Christ. 
 
 This cosmogony, the veritable idea of Christianity, spread 
 with incredible rapidity throughout the extent of the 
 
24 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 ltoman empire. It raged like a disease ; its sufferings, 
 its fever, its extreme tension continued during the whole 
 of the Middle Ages ; and we moderns often feel even yet 
 its spasms and its lassitude in all our members. If some 
 one amongst us has meantime been cured, yet is it im- 
 possible for him to escape the all-pervarling lazaretto 
 atmosphere, and he feels himself unhappy as the only 
 healthy being amidst the multitude of languishing mortals. 
 One day, when humanity will have regained robust health, 
 when peace will have been once more established between 
 body and soul, and they again live together in primal 
 harmony, it will scarce be possible for men to comprehend 
 the unnatural enmity that Christianity has set between 
 them. Happier and fairer generations, born of free unions, 
 and nurtured in a religion of joy, will smile with pity 
 when thinking of their poor ancestors, whose lives were 
 passed in melancholy abstinence from all the enjoyments 
 of this beautiful world, and who mortified the warm, rosy- 
 hued flesh till they became mere pale, cold ghosts. Yes ! 
 I declare it with full conviction : our descendants will be a 
 fairer and happier race than we are. For I believe in pro- 
 gress; I believe that happiness is the goal of humanity, and 
 I cherish a higher idea of the Divine Being than those pious 
 folk who suppose that man was created only to suffer. 
 Even here on earth I would strive, through the blessings 
 of free political and industrial institutions, to bring about 
 that reign of felicity which, in the opinion of the pious, is 
 to be postponed till heaven is reached after the day of 
 judgment. The one expectation is perhaps as vain as the 
 other; there may be no resurrection of humanity either 
 in a political or in a religious sense. Mankind, it may be, 
 is doomed to eternal misery ; the nations are perhaps under 
 a perpetual curse, condemned to be trodden under foot by 
 despots, to be made the instruments of their accomplices 
 and the laughing-stocks of their menials. Yet, though all 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 25 
 
 this be the case, it will be the duty even of those who 
 regard Christianity as an error still to uphold it ; and men 
 must journey barefoot through Europe, wearing monks’ 
 cowls, preaching the doctrine of renunciation and the 
 vanity of all earthly possessions, holding up before the 
 gaze of a scourged and despised humanity the consol- 
 ing Cross, and promising, after death, all the glories of 
 heaven 2 . 
 
 The duration of religions has always been dependent on ■ 
 human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing 
 for suffering humanity during eighteen centuries ; it has 
 been providential, divine, holy. All that it has done in the 
 interest of civilisation, curbing the strong and strength- 
 ening the weak, binding together the nations through a 
 common sympathy and a common tongue, and all else 
 that its apologists have urged in its praise — all this is as 
 nothing compared with that great consolation it has be- 
 stowed on man. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of 
 that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, 
 the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm 
 that flowed into the wounds of humanity. The poet 
 especially must acknowledge with reverence the terrible 
 sublimity of this symbol. The whole system of symbolism 
 impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must 
 awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, 
 what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in 
 its architecture ! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmo- 
 niously they accord with the worship of which they are 
 the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself 
 in them ! Everything about them strives upwards, every- 
 thing transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into 
 branches and foliage, and becomes a tree ; the fruit of the 
 vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the 
 man becomes God ; God becomes a pure spirit. For the 
 poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious { 
 
26 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity 
 could the circumstances of life combine to form such 
 striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, 
 that one almost fancies such things can never have had 
 any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream — 
 the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during 
 this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have 
 put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, 
 absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with 
 abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so 
 mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so power- 
 fully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and 
 smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death. 
 The story of the nightingale of Basle comes here into my 
 recollection, and as it is probably unknown to you I will 
 relate it. 
 
 One day in May, 1433, at the time of the Council of 
 Basle, a company of clerics, composed of prelates, doctors, 
 monks of every colour, were walking in a wood near the 
 town. They were disputing about points of theological 
 controversy, distinguishing and arguing, contending about 
 annates, expectatives, and reservations, inquiring whether 
 Thomas Aquinas was a greater philosopher than Bonaven- 
 tura, and so forth. But suddenly, in the midst of their 
 dogmatic and abstract discussions, they all became silent, 
 and remained as if rooted to the spot before a blossoming 
 lime-tree, wherein sat a nightingale carolling and sobbing 
 forth her tenderest and sweetest melodies. These learned 
 men began to feel in a strangely blessed mood as the warm 
 spring notes of the bird penetrated their scholastic and 
 monastic hearts ; their sympathies awoke out of their 
 dreary winter sleep, and they looked on one another in 
 raptured amazement. But at last one of them shrewdly 
 remarked that herein must be some wile of the evil one, 
 that this nightingale could be none other than an emissary 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 27 
 
 of the devil, seeking to divert them by its seducing strains 
 from their Christian converse, and to entice them into 
 voluptuousness or other alluring sin, and he thereupon 
 proceeded to exorcise the evil spirit, probably with the 
 customary formula of the time : — Adjuro te per eum, qui 
 venturus est, judicare vivos et mortuos. To this adjuration 
 it is said that the bird replied, “ Yea, I am an evil spirit,” 
 and flew away laughing. They, however, that had listened 
 to its song fell sick that same day, and died shortly 
 thereafter. 
 
 This story needs no commentary. It bears the terrible 
 impress of a time when all that was sweet and lovely was 
 decried as the agency of the devil. The nightingale 
 itself was declared a bird of evil fame, and men made the 
 sign of the cross when it sang. The true Christian walked 
 abroad with his sentient being wrapped in anxious reserve, 
 like an abstraction, like a spectre in the midst of smiling na- 
 ture. I shall perhaps, in a later work, speak more at length 
 of the relation established between the Christian soul and 
 nature ; for in order to elucidate the spirit of modern 
 romantic literature, I shall be obliged to discuss minutely 
 German popular superstitions.* Tor the present I can 
 only remark that Trench authors, misled by certain Ger- 
 man authorities, have fallen into gross error in supposing 
 that during the Middle Ages popular superstitions were 
 identical throughout the whole of Europe. It was only 
 with regard to the principle of good, the kingdom of Christ, 
 that the same views were universally entertained in 
 Europe. The Church of Eome took care that it should be 
 so, and whoever deviated on this subject from the pre- 
 scribed opinion was a heretic. But with regard to the 
 principle of evil, the empire of Satan, opinions varied in 
 the various countries. In the Teutonic north, men’s con- 
 
 * Heine (in part at least) fulfilled this promise in his “ Elementary 
 Spirits.” — T r. 
 
28 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 
 ceptions of this principle differed entirely from those held 
 in the Latin countries of the south. This difference arose 
 from the fact that the Christian priesthood did not reject 
 as idle dreams the old national divinities, but conceded to 
 them a real existence, asserting however, that all these 
 deities were hut male or female devils, who through the 
 triumph of Christ had lost their power over men, and were 
 now seeking to allure them back to sin by wiles and sen- 
 sual delights. All Olympus had become an aerial hell ; 
 and if a poet of the Middle Ages celebrated the epos of the 
 Greek divinities, sang he ever so sweetly, the pious Chris- 
 tian beheld in his song only goblins and demons. The 
 dismal anathema of the monks fell most rudely on poor 
 Venus; she especially was held to be a daughter of Beel- 
 zebub, and the good knight Tanhauser tells her even to 
 her face — 
 
 “ 0 Venus, 0 thou goddess mine, 
 
 Tliou’rt but a devil fair and fine ! ” 
 
 For Venus had enticed this knight Tanhauser into that 
 wonderful cavern in what is called the Mountain of 
 Venus, wherein, as the legend tells, the beautiful goddess 
 and her attendants lead, amidst pastime and dance, the 
 most dissolute life. Poor Diana, too, despite her chastity, 
 was not exempt from a like fate, and was accused of scour- 
 ing the woods by night with her nymphs; hence the 
 legends of the fierce huntsman and the wild nightly chase. 
 Here we have indications of the true Gnostic conception 
 as to the deterioration of the previously divine, and in this 
 transformation of ancient national beliefs the idea of Chris- 
 tianity most profoundly manifests itself. 
 
 National faith in Europe, though more strongly marked 
 in the northern than in the southern countries, was pan- 
 theistic. Its mysteries and symbols were referable to a 
 worship of nature ; in every element men adored some 
 marvellous being, every tree revealed a deity, all the phe- 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 29 
 
 nomena of the universe were informed by divinity. Chris- 
 tianity reversed this view; nature, ceasing to bear the 
 impress of the divine, became diabolised. But the joyous 
 and artistically beautiful forms of Greek mythology that 
 were still potent side by side with Latin civilisation in the 
 south, could not so readily be transformed into the hideous 
 and repulsive features of Satan as the Teutonic gods, over 
 whose creation certainly no artistic thought had presided, 
 and who were always as dreary and as sad as their northern 
 abodes. Thus in France you could produce no such gloomy 
 and terrible kingdom of Satan as we in Germany, and the 
 world of apparitions and sorcery even assumed with you 
 a genial aspect. How beautiful, how distinct and many- 
 coloured are the popular legends of France compared with 
 those of Germany ; those monstrosities of blood and cloud 
 that glare at us with such wan and cruel countenances. 
 Our poets of the Middle Ages, selecting in general such 
 materials as had either been first imagined or first treated 
 in Brittany and Normandy, imparted to their works, per- 
 haps intentionally, as much as possible of the genial old 
 French spirit. But our national poetry and our traditional 
 folk-lore preserved that dismal northern spirit of which 
 you can hardly form any idea. Like us you have many 
 kinds of elementary spirits, but ours differ as widely from 
 yours as a German differs from a Frenchman. How 
 brightly coloured and especially how cleanly are the 
 demons of your fabliaux and wizard romances in compari- 
 son with the rabble-rout of our colourless and very often 
 filthy ghosts ! Your fays and sprites, whether borrowed 
 from Cornwall or from Arabia, become quite naturalised 
 among you, and a French ghost is distinguished from a 
 German ghost much as a dandy wearing kid gloves and 
 dawdling along the Boulevard Coblence is distinguished 
 from a clumsy German porter. Your water sprites, such 
 as Melusine, have as little resemblance to ours as a princess 
 
30 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 lias to a washerwoman. How horrified your fay Morgana 
 would be did she chance to meet a German witch, naked, 
 smeared with ointment, riding on a broomstick to the 
 Brocken ! This mountain is no fair Avallon, but a meet- 
 ing-place for all that is abominable and hideous. On the 
 summit of the mountain sits Satan in the form of a black 
 goat. Each witch approaches him bearing a lighted candle, 
 and kisses the spot where the back ceases. Thereafter the 
 whole crazy sisterhood dances round him, singing donder- 
 em/us , donderemus ! the goat bleats, the infernal rabble 
 shouts. It is an evil omen for a witch to lose a shoe in 
 this dance ; it betokens that she will be burnt that same 
 year. But the mad sabbat-music, worthy of Berlioz, over- 
 powers all foreboding anxiety, and when the poor witch 
 wakes in the morning from her intoxication, it is to find 
 herself lying naked and exhausted among the ashes of the 
 dying fire. 
 
 The best information concerning these witches is to be 
 found in the “ Demonology ” of the honourable and learned 
 Doctor Nicolas Bemigius, criminal judge to his serene 
 highness the Duke of Lorraine. This sagacious man had 
 certainly the best opportunity for becoming acquainted 
 with the doings of the witches, for he conducted the prose- 
 cutions against them, and in his time eight hundred women 
 in Lorraine alone were burnt at the stake, after being 
 convicted of witchcraft. Proof of their guilt was mainly 
 established in this wise : their feet and hands being bound 
 together, they were thrown into the water. If they sank 
 and were drowned, they were innocent; but if they 
 remained floating on the surface, they were pronounced 
 guilty, and were burnt. Such was the logic of the time. 
 
 The main feature in the character of German demons 
 is that everything ideal has been stripped from them, 
 and thus they exhibit a mixture of the vile and the 
 horrible. The more coarsely familiar the form in which 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 31 
 
 they present themselves the more terrible the effect they 
 produce. Nothing can be weirder than our hobgoblins, 
 cobolds, and gnomes. Prsetorius, in his Anthropodemus 
 Plutonicus, has a passage on this subject which I quote 
 from Dobeneck.* 
 
 “ The ancients could not conceive hobgoblins (Polter- 
 geister) as other than veritable men of the stature of 
 diminutive children wearing parti-coloured little coats or 
 dresses. Some add that they have a knife sticking from 
 their backs, they having been done to death with this 
 instrument ; and as thus represented they have a hideous 
 aspect. The superstitious believe them to be the souls of 
 former occupants of their houses, who had been murdered. 
 They tell, also, many a story as to how these cobolds, after 
 rendering good service to the maids and cook- wenches in 
 the house, so won their affections that many of these 
 servants became enamoured of the cobolds to such a 
 degree that they experienced an ardent desire to see the 
 manikins, and eagerly longed for their appearance. But 
 the spirits would never willingly gratify this longing, 
 making the excuse that they could not be seen without 
 inspiring horror. Though, when the maids persisted in 
 their desire to behold them, the cobolds would indicate 
 some part of the house where they would present them- 
 selves corporeally. The persons wishing to see the cobolds 
 must, however, bring with them a pail of cold water. 
 Now it sometimes happened that one of these cobolds 
 would lay himself down naked and as if dead on the 
 ground with a long knife sticking in his back. On seeing 
 the creature thus lying, many a servant became so sorely 
 terrified that she would fall down fainting. Thereupon 
 the thing would immediately spring up, seize the water- 
 pail and souse the girl with its contents in order to bring 
 
 * Dobeneck’s “ German Popular Superstitions and Heroic Legends of 
 the Middle Ages.” 
 
32 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 her to her senses. After this the maid would lose all 
 desire for the creature, and would never again seek to 
 behold little Chim. For you must know the coholds all 
 have particular names, though generally called Chim. It 
 is said also that for the men and maid servants to whom 
 they are devoted they will perform all kinds of house- 
 work : currying and feeding the horses, cleaning the 
 stable, scouring up everything, tending the cows, doing 
 whatever is necessary in and about the house, and paying 
 such attention that the cattle grow fat and sleek under 
 their care. In return the cobolds require to be much 
 indulged by the domestics, who dare not cause them the 
 slightest offence either by laughing at them or by neglect- 
 ing to provide their food. And a cook-wench having 
 taken one of these little creatures into her secret service, 
 must set down for it daily at the same hour and in an 
 appointed place in the house, a dish of well prepared and 
 well seasoned food, and then go her way without looking 
 behind ; after that she may pass her time in idleness, and 
 go to bed when she pleases ; yet at early morning she will 
 find all her work carefully performed. But should she on 
 a single occasion neglect her duty, as by omitting to set 
 down the food, she will be obliged to do her work without 
 assistance, and will meet with all kinds of mishaps: 
 either getting herself burned with hot water, or breaking 
 the pots and dishes, or spilling the sauce and so forth — 
 misadventures that infallibly bring upon her a scolding 
 from the master or mistress of the house, at which the 
 cobold may often be heard tittering and laughing. And 
 such a cobold is accustomed to remain in a house even 
 though the servants are changed. Indeed, a maid when 
 she is leaving a house ought to recommend the cobold to 
 her successor, so that it may continue its services in the 
 household. Should the new servant pay no heed to 
 the recommendation she will not fail to meet with per- 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 33 
 
 petual misfortunes and will speedily be forced to quit the 
 house.” 
 
 The following anecdote is perhaps one of the most 
 terrible of its kind. 
 
 A maid-servant had during many years an invisible 
 familiar spirit that sat beside her by the hearth, where 
 she had set apart for it a little place, entertaining herself 
 with the creature during the long winter evenings. Now 
 the maid once begged Heinzchen (for so the spirit was 
 called) to show himself to her in his natural form. 
 Heinzchen, however, refused to do so. At last, after 
 much entreaty, he consented, and bade the maid descend 
 into the cellar and there she would see him. The girl, 
 taking a candle, goes down into the cellar, and there in an 
 open cask she beholds a dead infant swimming in its 
 blood. Now this servant had many years before given 
 birth to a child, and had secretly murdered and concealed 
 it in a cask. 
 
 Such is the idiosyncrasy of the Germans that they often 
 seek in the horrible their merriest jests, and the popular 
 legends relating to cobolds are frequently characterised by 
 diverting traits. The most amusing of such stories are 
 those about Hiideken, a cobold that carried on his pranks 
 at Hildesheim in the twelfth century, of whom there is 
 so much talk amongst our gossiping spinsters and in our 
 romances of the spirit- world. I borrow from the Chronicle 
 of the Monastery of Hirschau, by the Abbot Tritheim, the 
 following narrative : — 
 
 “In the year 1132 there appeared to many persons in 
 the bishopric of Hildesheim, being seen of them during a 
 considerable time, an evil spirit in the form of a peasant 
 with a hat on his head ; whence the country people called 
 it, in the Saxon language, Hucleken (little hat). This spirit 
 took delight in haunting people, being sometimes visible, 
 sometimes invisible, in asking questions and in replying- 
 
34 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 to their queries. He gave offence to no one without cause. 
 When, however, any one mocked at or otherwise insulted 
 him, he avenged the injury done him in the completest 
 manner. The Count Burchard of Luka having been killed 
 by the Count Hermann of Weissenburg, and the territory 
 of the latter being in danger of falling into the hands of 
 the avengers of the murdered count, Hiideken awoke the 
 Bishop of Hildesheim out of sleep, and spoke to him in 
 these words : ‘ Arise, bald-head ! the county of Weissen- 
 burg is abandoned and become vacant through the mur- 
 derous deed of its seigneur, and thou may’st easily obtain 
 possession of it.’ The bishop speedily assembled his 
 men-at-arms, fell upon the land of the guilty count, and 
 united it, with permission of the emperor, to his bishopric. 
 The spirit repeatedly and importunately gave warning to 
 the said bishop of impending dangers, and frequently 
 appeared in the kitchens of the episcopal palace, where he 
 conversed with the scullions and rendered them all manner 
 of service. The domestics having by degrees become very 
 familiar with Hiideken, a young scullion was daring enough 
 to tease him and even to souse ‘him with dirty water as 
 often as he made his appearance. The spirit besought the 
 chief cook or steward of the kitchens to forbid the imper- 
 tinent boy’s indulgence in such mischief. To this request 
 the chief cook answered, ‘ Thou art a spirit and yet art 
 thou afraid of a mere boy ! ’ Whereupon Hiideken replied 
 in a menacing tone, ‘ Since thou wilt not punish the boy, 
 I shall show thee within a few days how far I am afraid of 
 him.’ Soon after this it happened that the boy who had 
 offended the spirit was in the kitchen quite alone and 
 asleep. In this condition the spirit seized him, stabbed 
 him, cut the body in pieces and threw the fragments into 
 the pots placed over the fire. When the cook discovered 
 what had been done, he cursed the spirit ; and next day 
 Hiideken spoiled all the roasts that were on the spits, by 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 35 
 
 pouring over them the venom and blood of vipers. The 
 thirst for revenge suggested to the cook new insults, until 
 finally the spirit enticed him on to an enchanted false 
 bridge, thus causing him to fall into the castle moat. After 
 this Hiideken made the walls and towers of the town his 
 nightly haunt, causing much anxiety to the sentinels, and 
 obliging them to keep a diligent watch. A citizen that 
 had an unfaithful wife said jestingly, one day as he was 
 about to set out on a journey, ‘ Hiideken, my good friend, 
 I commend my wife to thy charge ; guard her carefully ! ’ 
 As soon as the husband had gone his faithless wife per- 
 mitted her lovers, one after another, to visit her. But 
 Hiideken did not let a single one of them approach her, 
 and threw them all out of bed on to the floor. When the 
 husband returned from his journey, the spirit went to meet 
 him, and said to him, ‘ I am heartily glad of thy return, 
 whereby I am relieved of the burdensome duty thou didst 
 lay on me. I have with unspeakable difficulty preserved 
 thy wife from actual disloyalty, and I beg thee never again 
 to place her under my care. I had rather have the keep- 
 ing of all the swine in the whole Saxon land than of a 
 woman that seeks by deceit to throw herself into the arms 
 of her lovers.’ ” 
 
 I ought, for the sake of historical accuracy, to remark 
 that the hat worn by Hiideken differs from the ordinary 
 costume of cobolds. They are generally clad in grey, and 
 wear a red cap ; at least this is the garb they assume in 
 Denmark, where nowadays they are to be met with in 
 greatest numbers. I used to be of opinion that they had 
 chosen Denmark as their favourite resort from their fond- 
 ness for red groats. But a young Danish poet, Herr Ander- 
 sen, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Paris this 
 summer, positively assured me that the favourite food of 
 the nissen (as the cobolds are called in Denmark) is fru- 
 menty with butter. Once these cobolds have taken up 
 
36 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 their abode in a house they are not disposed readily to 
 quit it again. Yet they never come without previous 
 announcement, and when desiring to settle down anywhere 
 they give notice of their intention to the master of the 
 house in the following manner: — They carry into the 
 house by night a great quantity of wood-chips and strew 
 the ordure of cattle in the milk-cans. If the master of 
 the house does not throw out the wood-chips, if he and 
 his family consume the milk thus made foul, then the 
 cobolds instal themselves permanently in his house. A 
 poor Jutlander became at last so much annoyed at the en- 
 forced companionship of such a cobold, that he determined 
 to abandon his whole house to the creature. Loading his 
 goods and chattels on a cart, he drove off with them 
 towards the next village, in order to settle there. But on 
 the way thither, chancing to look round, he espied, peeping 
 out of one of the empty milk-churns, the little red-capped 
 head of the cobold, who called out to him complacently, 
 “ Wi flutten ! ” (we are flitting). 
 
 I have perhaps lingered too long over these little demons, 
 and it is time that I should return to the great ones. Yet 
 all these legends illustrate the character and the beliefs 
 of the German people. These beliefs were formerly just 
 as powerful in influence as was the creed of the Church. 
 By the time the learned doctor Bemigius had completed 
 his great work on witchcraft, he believed himself to be so 
 completely master of his subject as to imagine that he 
 could himself exercise the power of sorcery; and, con- 
 scientious man that he was, he did not fail to denounce 
 himself to the tribunals as a sorcerer, and was- burned as 
 such on the strength of his own testimony. 
 
 These atrocities did not originate directly in the Chris- 
 tian Church, though indirectly such was their origin ; for, 
 the Church had so cunningly inverted the old Teutonic 
 religion, that the pantheistic cosmogony of the Germans 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 37 
 
 was transformed into a pandemonic conception ; the former 
 popular divinities were changed into hideous fiends. But 
 man does not willingly abandon that which has been dear 
 to his forefathers, and his affections secretly cling firmly 
 thereto, even when it has been mutilated and defaced. 
 Hence popular superstitions, travestied as they have be- 
 come, may in Germany outlive the official creed of our 
 days, which is not, like them, rooted in the ancient 
 nationality. At the time of the Beformation, faith in the 
 Catholic legends disappeared with great rapidity ; but not 
 so belief in enchantments and sorcery. Luther ceases to 
 believe in Catholic miracles ; but he still believes in the 
 power of the devil. His “ Table-Talk ” is full of curious 
 anecdotes of Satanic art, of cobolds and witches. He 
 himself, in his distress, often fancies that he is engaged 
 in combat with the devil in person. On the Wartburg, 
 where he translated the Hew Testament, he was so much 
 disturbed by the devil that he threw the inkstand at his 
 head. The devil has ever since that day had a great 
 dread of ink, and a still greater dread of printing-ink. Of 
 the craftiness of the devil many a diverting anecdote is 
 told in this same book of “ Table-Talk ; ” and I cannot 
 forbear here quoting one of these — 
 
 “ Dr. Martin Luther related that one day certain boon 
 companions were sitting together in a tavern. How 
 amongst them was a wild disorderly fellow, who said, 
 were any one to offer him a stoup of good wine, he was 
 ready to sell his soul therefor. 
 
 “ A little while afterwards there comes into the room 
 one that seats himself beside him that had been so fool- 
 hardy, drinks with him, and amidst other talk, says to 
 him — ‘ Listen, said’st thou not but a little ago, if any one 
 should give thee a stoup of wine thou would’st sell him 
 thy soul therefor ? * 
 
38 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 “ Then said the other — ‘ Yea, and I hold to it ; let me 
 drink and carouse and be right merry to-day.’ 
 
 “ The man, who was the devil, said ‘ Yes,’ and soon 
 slipped away again from him. Now when this same drinker 
 had passed the whole day jovially, and had at last become 
 drunk, then the aforesaid man, the devil, returns, seats 
 himself again beside him, and says to the other topers — 
 4 Good sirs, what think you ; when one buys a horse, do 
 not saddle and bridle also become his ? ’ They were all 
 taken with great fear. At last the man said, * Come, tell 
 me without more ado.’ Then they all avowed it was so, 
 and said, ‘ Yea, saddle and bridle also are his.’ Whereupon 
 the devil takes hold of that same wild unruly fellow and 
 carries him off through the roof, and no one could tell 
 whither he went.” 
 
 Although I entertain the highest respect for our great 
 master, Martin Luther, still I cannot but think he has 
 quite mistaken the character of the devil. The devil does 
 not look upon the body with such contempt as is here 
 represented. And, however evil-spoken of the devil may 
 be, he can never be accused of being a spiritualist. 
 
 But Martin Luther misjudged the sentiments of the 
 Pope and the Catholic Church even more seriously than 
 he did those of the devil. In my strict impartiality, I 
 must take the two former, as I have taken the devil under 
 my protection, against the all-too-zealous man. In truth, 
 if asked as a matter of conscience, I should admit that 
 Pope Leo X. was in reality far more reasonable than 
 Luther ; and that the Pieformer had quite misunderstood 
 the fundamental principles of the Catholic Church. For 
 Luther did not perceive that the idea of Christianity, the 
 annihilation of the life of the senses, was too violent a 
 contradiction of human nature ever to be capable of com- 
 plete realisation. He did not comprehend that Catho- 
 licism was a species of concordat between God and the 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 39 
 
 devil, between spirit and matter, whereby the autocracy 
 of the spirit was theoretically admitted, whilst matter was 
 placed in the position of carrying out in practice all its 
 annulled rights. Hence a subtle system of concessions 
 devised by the Church for the benefit of the senses, though 
 so conceived as to stigmatise every act of sensuality and 
 to preserve to the spirit its arrogant usurpation. Thou 
 art permitted to lend an ear to the tender emotions of the 
 heart and to embrace a pretty girl, but thou must ac- 
 knowledge that it is an abominable sin, and for this sin 
 thou must do penance. That such penance might take 
 the form of money payment was as advantageous for 
 humanity as it was profitable for the Church. The Church 
 ordained, so to speak, a ransom to be paid for every fleshly 
 indulgence ; and thus was established a tariff for every 
 species of sin. There were religious pedlars offering for 
 sale throughout the land, in the name of the Eomish 
 Church, indulgences for every taxable sin. Such a pedlar 
 w^as Tetzel, upon whom Luther made his first onslaught. 
 Our historians hold the opinion that this protest against 
 the traffic in indulgences was an insignificant event, and 
 that it was only through Eomish obstinacy that Luther 
 (whose zeal was at first directed merely against an eccles- 
 iastical abuse) was driven to attack the authority of the 
 Church in its most important position. But this is cer- 
 tainly an error ; indulgence-mongering w r as not an abuse, 
 it was a consequence of the whole ecclesiastical system, 
 and in attacking it Luther attacked the Church itself, and 
 the Church must condemn him as a heretic. Leo X., the 
 subtle Florentine, the disciple of Politian, the friend of 
 Eaphael, the Greek philosopher with the tiara conferred 
 on him by the conclave, possibly because he was suffering 
 from a disease in no wise caused by Christian abstinence, 
 and which was still very dangerous — how must this Leo 
 de Medicis have laughed at the poor, chaste, simple monk 
 
40 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 who imagined the Gospel to be the charter of Christen- 
 dom, and that this charter must be a truth ! He may 
 perhaps have quite overlooked what Luther was seeking, 
 much busied as he then was with the building of St. 
 Peter’s, the cost of which was to be defrayed by this very 
 sale of indulgences, vice being thus made contributory to 
 the erection of this edifice, which thereby became a kind 
 of monument of sensual desire, like the pyramid of Pdio- 
 dope, constructed by an Egyptian courtesan from the 
 profits of prostitution. Of this house of God it may with 
 more justice be asserted than of the Cathedral of Cologne, 
 that it was built by the devil. This triumph of spiritu- 
 alism, that compelled sensualism to rear for it its fairest 
 temple; that derived from innumerable concessions 
 granted to the flesh, the means of glorifying the spirit — 
 this triumph was a thing incomprehensible in the German 
 North. Eor there, more easily than under the glowing 
 sky of Italy, it was possible to practise a Christianity that 
 makes the least possible concessions to sensuality. We 
 Northerners are of colder blood, and we needed not so 
 many indulgences for carnal sins as were sent by Leo in 
 his fatherly concern for us. Our climate facilitates the 
 practice of Christian virtues; and on the 31st October, 
 1516, as Luther nailed his theses against indulgences to 
 the door of the Augustin Church, the moat that sur- 
 rounded Wittenberg was perhaps already frozen over, and 
 one could have skated on it, which is a very cold sort 
 of pleasure, and consequently no sin. 
 
 I have been making use repeatedly of the words 
 spiritualism and sensualism. I shall explain them later 
 on when I come to speak of German philosophy. It suf- 
 fices here to remark that I do not employ these expres- 
 sions to designate philosophical systems, but merely to 
 distinguish two social systems of which one, spiritualism, 
 is based on the principle that it is necessary to annul all 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 41 
 
 the claims of sense in order to accord exclusive authority 
 to the spirit ; that it is necessary to mortify, to stigmatise, 
 to crush the flesh that we may the better glorify the soul : 
 whilst the other system, sensualism, revindicates the rights 
 of the flesh, which neither ought to be nor can be abrogated . 3 
 
 The beginnings of the Eeformation revealed at once 
 the whole extent of its range. No Frenchman has ever 
 yet comprehended the significance of this great event. 
 The most erroneous ideas prevail in France regarding the 
 Eeformation ; and I must add that these views will per- 
 haps prevent Frenchmen ever arriving at a just apprecia- 
 tion of German life . 4 The French understood only the 
 negative side of the Eeformation ; they beheld in it merely 
 a war against Catholicism, and often imagined that the 
 combat that took place on the opposite side of the Ehine 
 was waged with the same motives as a similar combat 
 here in France. But the motives were totally different. 
 The conflict with Catholicism in Germany was nothing 
 else than a war begun by spiritualism when it perceived 
 that it possessed merely the title of authority and ruled 
 only de jure, whilst sensualism by means of a long estab- 
 lished system of fraud was exercising actual sovereignty 
 and was governing de facto. The retailers of indulgences 
 were expelled, the fair concubines of the priests were 
 replaced by cold legitimate spouses, the alluring images 
 of the Madonna were dashed to pieces and a Puritanism 
 utterly hostile to all pleasures of the senses took possession 
 of the land. The conflict with Catholicism in France 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was, on 
 the contrary, a war begun by sensualism, when, though 
 de facto sovereign, it beheld every act of its authority 
 derided as illegitimate, and reviled in the most cruel 
 manner by a spiritualism that existed only de jure. But 
 whereas in Germany the battle was waged with chaste 
 earnestness, in France it was fought with wanton jests, 
 
42 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 and whilst yonder men engaged in theological discussions, 
 here they composed merry satires. Usually the object of 
 these satires was to show the contradiction into which 
 man falls when he seeks to be wholly spiritual: hence 
 delicious stories of pious men succumbing involuntarily 
 to sensual appetites, or striving to save the appearance of 
 sanctity by taking refuge in hypocrisy. The Queen of 
 Navarre had already portrayed in her novels such per- 
 plexities. Her customary theme is the relation of monks 
 to women, and her aim is not merely to convulse with 
 laughter but to shake the foundations of monasticism. 
 Moli&re’s “Tartuffe” is indisputably the most malicious 
 production of this merry polemic; for this comedy is 
 directed not merely against the Jesuitism of its age but 
 against Catholicism itself, nay, against the idea of Chris- 
 tianity, against spiritualism. Tartuffe’s paraded dread of 
 the naked bosom of Dorine, his language to Elmire : — 
 
 “ Le ciel defend, de vrai, certains contentements, 
 
 Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements : ” — 
 
 all these things tend to bring into ridicule not only 
 ordinary hypocrisy, but also the universal falsehood that 
 necessarily arises from the impossibility of carrying out 
 the Christian idea, along with the whole system of con- 
 cessions that spiritualism is forced to make to sensualism. 
 Truly, the Jansenists had far greater cause than the Jesuits 
 for feeling aggrieved at the performance of the comedy of 
 “ Tartuffe,” and Moliere may well be as insupportable to 
 Protestant Methodists of our day as he was to the Catholic 
 devotees of his own time. It is this that makes Moliere 
 so grand ; for, like Aristophanes and Cervantes, he ridicules 
 not merely the eccentricities of his contemporaries, but the 
 eternal absurdities and the primal weaknesses of humanity. 
 Voltaire, whose attacks were always upon things temporary 
 and unessential, stands in this respect far below Moliere. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 43 
 
 But this species of ridicule, the Voltairean, has fulfilled 
 its mission in France, and any attempt to continue it 
 would be both unseasonable and impolitic. For were it 
 sought to extirpate the last visible remnants of Catholicism 
 it might readily happen that the idea of Catholicism would 
 assume a new form, clothe itself with a new body, and 
 laying aside the very name of Christianity might, thus 
 transformed, become more vexatious and oppressive than 
 in its present shattered, ruined, and discredited condition. 
 Yea, it is not without its advantage that spiritualism is 
 represented by a religion that has already lost the better 
 part of its strength, and by a priesthood that is in complete 
 antagonism with the enthusiasm for liberty that charac- 
 terises our time. 
 
 But why then is spiritualism so repugnant to us ? Is 
 it so bad a thing ? By no means ! Attar of roses is a 
 precious thing, and a phial of this essence is refreshing for 
 those that are obliged to wear out their days in the closed 
 chambers of a harem. But we would not that all the 
 roses of this life should be crushed and trampled down in 
 order to obtain a few drops of such essence, how T ever great 
 the solace it might afford. We resemble rather the 
 nightingales that delight in the roses themselves and 
 derive as great an ecstasy from their crimson blossoming 
 as from their ethereal perfume. 
 
 I have asserted that the attack upon Catholicism in 
 Germany was delivered by spiritualism. But this applies 
 only to the commencement of the Beformation. As soon 
 as spiritualism had made a breach in the old edifice of the 
 Church, sensualism with all its long restrained fervour of 
 passion threw itself into it, and Germany became the 
 tumultuous arena of combatants intoxicated with liberty 
 and sensual delights. The oppressed peasantry had found 
 in the new doctrine intellectual weapons with which to 
 wage war against the aristocracy ; for centuries they had 
 
44 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 nourished the desire for such a combat. At Munster 
 sensualism, in the person of John of Leyden, ran naked 
 through the streets and laid itself down with its twelve 
 wives in the huge bed, to be seen to this day, in the 
 council house of the town. Everywhere the doors of 
 monasteries flew open, and monks and nuns rushed billing 
 and cooing into each other’s arms. In truth the history of 
 Germany at this time consists of little else than sensualistic 
 riots. We shall presently see how small was the result of 
 this reaction, how spiritualism succeeded in overpowering 
 these rioters, how it gradually secured its authority in the 
 north, and how it was mortally wounded by philosophy, 
 the enemy that it had nurtured in its bosom. It is a very 
 complicated history, most difficult to unravel. For the 
 Catholic party it is easy to assign at pleasure the worst 
 motives ; and to hear them speak one would suppose that 
 the sole objects were to legitimise the most shameless 
 sensuality and to plunder the goods of the Church. 
 Doubtless in order to obtain the victory intellectual 
 interests must always form an alliance with material 
 interests ; but the devil had so oddly shuffled the cards 
 that it is now impossible to affirm with certainty anything 
 about intentions. 
 
 The illustrious personages who, on the 17th of April, 
 1521, were assembled in the Diet Hall at Worms might 
 well cherish in their hearts many a thought at variance 
 with the words on their lips. There sat a young Emperor, 
 who, as he wrapped himself with the ecstasy of youthful 
 sovereignty in the folds of his new purple mantle, secretly 
 rejoiced that the proud Eoman Pontiff who had so often 
 dealt hardly with his imperial predecessors, nor had even 
 yet resigned his arrogant pretensions, was about to receive 
 a most effectual reprimand. The representative of the 
 proud Roman had, on his side, ground for secret joy that 
 disunion had betrayed itself amongst those Germans, who, 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 45 
 
 like drunken barbarians, bad so often invaded and plun- 
 dered fair Italy, and still threatened her with new inva- 
 sions and plunderings. The temporal princes rejoiced that, 
 whilst embracing the new doctrine, they might at the same 
 time work their will with the old Church domains. High 
 prelates began to reflect whether they might not marry 
 their cooks, and transmit their electoral dignities, bishop- 
 rics, and abbacies to their male offspring. The towns’ 
 deputies rejoiced at the prospect of increased independence. 
 Each had here something to gain, and the secret thoughts 
 of each were directed to earthly advantages. 
 
 But one man was there of whom I am convinced that 
 he regarded not his own, but the Divine interests which 
 he represented. This man was Martin Luther, the poor 
 monk chosen by Providence to shatter the world-empire 
 of Rome, against which the mightiest emperors and the 
 boldest sages had already vainly struggled. But Provi- 
 dence well knows upon what shoulders it lays its burdens. 
 Here, not only spiritual, but also physical power was 
 necessary. It needed a frame steeled from youth upwards 
 in monastic chastity and severity to endure the hardships 
 of such a task. Our dear master was still very thin and 
 pale, insomuch that the ruddy, well-fed lords of the Diet 
 looked down almost with compassion on the poor emaciated 
 man in the monk’s black dress. Yet was he quite healthy, 
 and his nerves were so strong that all the brilliant throng 
 inspired in him not the slightest fear. His lungs, too,, 
 must have been right lusty, for, after having delivered his 
 long defence, he was obliged to repeat it in Latin, as the 
 Emperor did not understand High -German. I become 
 quite angry every time I think of this ; for our dear master 
 stood beside an open window, exposed to a draught, whilst 
 the perspiration dropped from his forehead. After such 
 long speaking, he might well feel much exhausted, and his 
 lips were no doubt sorely parched. The Duke of Bruns- 
 
46 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 wick must have bethought himself that the man would be 
 very thirsty — at least, we read that he ordered for Martin 
 Luther from the inn three jugs of the best Eimbeck beer. 
 I shall never forget this noble deed of the House of 
 Brunswick. 
 
 As of the Reformation, so of its hero, you have in France 
 quite false ideas. The immediate cause of this failure to 
 comprehend the principal actor in that event lies in the 
 fact that Luther is not only the greatest, but that he is also 
 the most German, man in our history; that in his char- 
 acter are united in their most intensified forms all the 
 virtues and all the faults of the Germans ; that he repre- 
 sents in his own personality the wonderful German land. 
 He also possessed qualities that we seldom see associated 
 — nay, that we usually find in the most hostile anta- 
 gonism. He was at once a dreamy mystic and a practical 
 man of action. His thoughts had not only wings, but also 
 hands. He spoke and he acted; he was not only the 
 tongue, but also the sword of his time. He was both a 
 cold, scholastic wordsifter, and an inspired, God-drunk 
 prophet. After a long day spent in laboriously working 
 out dogmatic distinctions, at evening time he would take 
 his flute and go out to gaze at the stars, and his soul would 
 dissolve in melody and devotion. This same man, who 
 could scold like a fishwife, could also be as gentle as a 
 sensitive maiden. He was often as fierce as the storm 
 that uproots the oak-tree, and then again he was as mild 
 as the breeze that caresses the violet. He was full of the 
 awful reverence of God, full of self-sacrificing devotion to 
 the Holy Spirit, he could lose himself entirely in pure 
 spirituality. And yet he was fully acquainted with the 
 glories of this earth : he knew how estimable they are ; it 
 was his lips that uttered the famous maxim — 
 
 “Who loves not woman, wine, and song, 
 
 Remains a fool his whole life long.” 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 47 
 
 He was a complete man, I might say, an absolute man, in 
 whom there was no discord between matter and spirit. 
 To call him a spiritualist, therefore, would be as erroneous 
 as to call him a sensualist. How shall I describe him ? 
 He had in him something primordial, incomprehensible, 
 miraculous, such as we find in all providential men ; some- 
 thing naively terrible, something boorishly wise, something 
 lofty yet circumscribed, something invincibly dsemoniacal. 
 
 Luther’s father was a miner at Mannsfeld, and the boy 
 was often with him in his subterranean workplace, in the 
 laboratory of the giant metals, where are the gurgling 
 sources of the great fountains. Perhaps the young heart 
 unconsciously absorbed something of the mysterious forces 
 of Nature, or was bewitched by the pixies. This may 
 have been the cause, too, why so much earthy matter, so 
 much of the dross of passion remained adhering to him, 
 which has so often been made a reproacli against him. 
 But the reproach is unjust, for without that earthy ad- 
 mixture he could not have become a man of action. Pure 
 spirit cannot act. Do we not learn from Jung Stilling’s 
 “ Theory of Ghosts,” * that spirits can indeed make them- 
 selves visible in distinct form and colour, and can walk, 
 and run, and dance, and otherwise comport themselves like 
 human creatures, but that they are powerless to move any 
 material object, even the smallest table, from its place ? 
 
 Praise to Luther ! eternal praise to the dear man whom 
 we have to thank for the deliverance of our most precious 
 possessions, and on whose benefits our life still depends! 
 It little becomes us to complain of the narrowness of his 
 views. The dwarf standing on the shoulders of the giant 
 can indeed see farther than his supporter, especially if he 
 puts on spectacles ; but to such a lofty survey is wanting 
 the elevated feeling, the giant-heart, to which we cannot 
 lay claim. Still less does it become us to pronounce an 
 
 * “ Theorie der Geisterkunde.” — Tit. 
 
48 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 austere judgment on his failings ; these failings have 
 profited us more than the virtues of a thousand others. 
 Neither the subtilty of Erasmus, nor the benignity of 
 Melancthon, would ever have brought us so far as the 
 divine brutality of Brother Martin. Yea, these very errors 
 to which I have already referred have borne the most pre- 
 cious fruits — fruits that are still a solace to all humanity. 
 Erom the date of the Diet at which Luther disowned the 
 authority of the Pope, and publicly declared that “his 
 doctrine could be refuted only by an appeal to the autho- 
 rity of the Bible itself, or on grounds of reason,” a new era 
 dawned in Germany. The chain by which the holy Boni- 
 face had bound the German Church to Eome was that day 
 severed. This Church, which had hitherto formed an 
 integral portion of the great hierarchy, broke up into reli- 
 gious democracies. Eeligion itself underwent a change ; 
 the Indo-Gnostic element disappears, and we see the 
 Judaic- Deistic element again rising into prominence. 
 Evangelical Christianity emerges. Whenever the most 
 essential claims of matter are not merely recognised, but 
 legitimised, religion once more becomes a truth ; the priest 
 becomes a man, and takes a wife and begets children as 
 God has ordained. On the other hand, God becomes once 
 more a celestial celibate; the legitimacy of His Son is 
 disputed ; the saints are relieved of their saintship ; the 
 angels have their wings clipped ; the Mother of God loses 
 all claim to the crown of heaven, and is forbidden to work 
 miracles. In fine, from this time forward, especially since 
 the natural sciences have made such great progress, mi- 
 racles cease. Be it that God is chagrined to find natural 
 philosophers watching His manipulations with such an air 
 of suspicion, or be it from some other motive ; certain it is, 
 that even in these latter days, wherein religion is in so 
 great peril, He has disdained to support it by any striking 
 miracle. Perhaps the new religions that He may hence- 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 49 
 
 forth establish on earth are to be based solely on reason, 
 which indeed will be much more reasonable. At least in 
 the case of Saint Simonianism, which is the newest reli- 
 gion, no miracle has occurred, with this exception, per- 
 haps, that an old tailor’s bill left owing by Saint Simon 
 himself, was paid by his disciples ten years after his death. 
 I still see before me the worthy Pere Olinde rising with 
 enthusiasm in the salle Taitbout, and exhibiting to the 
 astonished congregation the receipted tailor’s bill. Young 
 grocers were amazed at such supernatural testimony ; but 
 the tailors began at once to believe ! 
 
 Yet, if we in Germany, with the loss of miracles through 
 the triumph of Protestantism, also lost much else that 
 was poetic, we have still obtained manifold compensa- 
 tion. Men have become more virtuous, more noble-souled. 
 Protestantism has most favourably influenced that purity 
 of manners and that rigorous performance of duties usually 
 called morality ; nay, Protestantism in many communities 
 has taken a direction that identifies it completely with 
 morality. In the lives of the clergy especially do we see 
 a gratifying change. With the abolition of vows of 
 celibacy disappeared likewise the vices and debaucheries 
 of the monks. Amongst the Protestant clergy are often 
 to be found men of such exemplary virtue that even the 
 old Stoics would have had respect for them. One must 
 have travelled on foot as a poor student through North 
 Germany in order to know how much virtue, and, to 
 qualify the word virtue by a really beautiful epithet, 
 how much evangelical virtue is frequently to be found in 
 an unassuming parsonage. How often of a winter evening 
 have I found therein a hospitable welcome — I, a stranger, 
 whose only recommendations were hunger and weariness ! 
 When I had well eaten and slept soundly, and was pre- 
 paring on the morrow morning to set forth again, the old 
 pastor was sure to appear in his dressing-gown to bestow 
 
 D 
 
50 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 his blessing on my journey — a good act that never brought 
 me misfortune. His kindly and loquacious wife would 
 thrust into my pocket several slices of buttered bread, 
 which proved not less comforting. Behind the mother 
 stood in modest silence the fair daughters of the pastor, 
 with their ruddy cheeks and violet eyes, and the recollec- 
 tion of their timid glances kept my heart warm through- 
 out the whole winter day. 
 
 In declaring that his doctrine could be refuted only by 
 an appeal to the Bible or on grounds of reason, Luther 
 conceded to human intelligence the right to explain the 
 Scriptures, and reason was acknowledged as the supreme 
 judge in all religious controversies. Thus was established 
 in Germany spiritual freedom, or, as it is also called, free- 
 dom of thought. Thought became a right, and the deci- 
 sions of reason became legitimate. Ho doubt for several 
 centuries back men had been permitted to think and to 
 speak with tolerable freedom, and the scholastics had dis- 
 puted about matters that we can hardly conceive possible 
 to have been mooted in the Middle Ages. But the 
 explanation of this is to be found in the distinction that 
 was made between theological and philosophical truth, a 
 distinction whereby the disputants explicitly guarded 
 themselves against heresy. Besides, such controversies 
 were confined to the lecture-rooms of universities, and 
 were held in a Gothic and abstruse Latin of which the 
 people could not understand a word. The Church had, 
 therefore, little to fear from such discussions. Yet the 
 Church had never expressly sanctioned these proceedings, 
 and so, now and then, by way of protest, she caused a 
 poor scholastic to be burnt. But since Luther’s time no 
 such distinction between theological and philosophical 
 truth has been recognised, and men have disputed in the 
 market-place, in the German popular tongue, without 
 reserve or fear. The princes who accepted the Beforma- 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 51 
 
 tion legitimised this freedom of thought, of which one of 
 the most important results is German philosophy. 
 
 In fact nowhere, not even in Greece, was the human 
 intellect permitted to develop itself and to express its 
 thought so freely as in Germany from the middle of last 
 century till the French Revolution. In Prussia espe- 
 cially an unrestrained liberty of thought prevailed. The 
 Marquis of Brandenburg perceived that, in becoming 
 the legitimate king of Prussia by mere strength of the 
 Protestant principle, he must maintain in its integrity 
 Protestant freedom of thought. Truly since those days 
 the state of affairs has changed, and the natural protector 
 of our Protestant liberty has come to an understanding 
 with the Ultramontane party to stifle that liberty, and to 
 this end has traitorously availed himself of a weapon 
 devised and first directed against us by the Papacy : the 
 censorship. 
 
 Singular! We Germans are the strongest and most 
 ingenious of nations. Princes of our race sit on every 
 European throne; our Rothschilds govern the exchanges 
 over the whole earth ; our learned men are sovereigns in 
 all the sciences; we have invented gunpowder and the 
 printing-press; and yet whoever fires off a pistol in our 
 country is subjected to a fine of three thalers; and if any 
 of us wishes to insert in the Hamburg Correspondent these 
 words : “ My dear spouse has given birth to a daughter 
 beautiful as Freedom !” straightway Dr. Hoffmann * seizes 
 his red pencil and strikes out “ Freedom.” 
 
 Will this continue much longer ? I know not. But I 
 know that the question of freedom of the press, at present 
 so vehemently discussed in Germany, is significantly asso- 
 ciated with all the questions of which I have just spoken; 
 
 * The Hamburg censor. As a ing, are not to be found in the early 
 matter of course, this paragraph, the German editions. — Tit. 
 one preceding it, and the one follow- 
 
52 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 and I believe its solution will not be difficult, if we reflect 
 that freedom of the press is nothing else than a conse- 
 quence of freedom of thought, and therefore a Protestant 
 right. Germany has already given its best blood for 
 rights of this kind, and she may yet again be called upon 
 to enter the lists in defence of the same cause. 
 
 This remark is applicable to the question of academical 
 freedom, at present so passionately rousing men’s minds in 
 Germany. Since the supposed discovery was made that 
 political agitation, that is to say the love of liberty, is 
 most rampant in the universities, it has on all sides been 
 insinuated to the sovereigns that these institutions ought 
 to be suppressed, or at least converted into ordinary 
 schools of instruction. New schemes have been devised, 
 and the pro and contra eagerly discussed. But the avowed 
 adversaries of the universities do not seem to have under- 
 stood any better than such avowed defenders as have 
 hitherto presented themselves, the fundamental principles 
 of the question. They do not comprehend that youth 
 everywhere, and under all forms of discipline, is animated 
 by enthusiasm for liberty ; and that, though the univer- 
 sities were closed, this enthusiasm of the young would 
 assert itself all the more energetically elsewhere, and this, 
 perhaps, in coalition with the youth of the commercial 
 and of the industrial classes. The defenders of the uni- 
 versities content themselves with showing that, with the 
 closing of the universities, German scientific learning also 
 would be swept away; that it is precisely freedom of 
 academic study that is of value, as affording to the young 
 the best opportunity for varied development : as if a few 
 Greek vocables, or a few rude customs, more or less, had 
 aught to do with the matter ! And what do princes care 
 about science, study, and culture if the sacred security of 
 their thrones is imperilled ! They would be heroic enough 
 to sacrifice all such relative benefits for a single absolute 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 53 
 
 good, for absolute sovereignty. For this possession has 
 been intrusted to them by God, and where Heaven com- 
 mands, all earthly considerations must give place. There 
 is also misunderstanding of the question on the part of the 
 poor professors, who defend, as well as on the part of the 
 delegates of authority, who attack, the universities. It is 
 only the Catholic propagandists in Germany that rightly 
 comprehend the matter. These pious obscurantists are 
 the most dangerous enemies of our university system, 
 assailing it by lying and fraud; and, when one of them 
 assumes the semblance of taking an affectionate interest 
 in the universities, some Jesuitical intrigue is speedily 
 revealed. Well do these cowardly hypocrites know how 
 much is to be won in the game. For with the fall of the 
 universities would fall the Protestant Church, the Church 
 that since the Reformation has been so dependent on the 
 universities that the whole Protestant Church history of 
 these last centuries consists almost exclusively of the 
 records of theological discussions of the learned at Witten- 
 berg, Leipzig, Tubingen, and Halle. The consistories pre- 
 sent but a feeble reflection of the theological faculty ; with 
 the disappearance of the latter they would lose all support 
 and all character, and sink into a desolate dependence on 
 the ministry, or even on the police. 
 
 But let us not indulge too freely in such melancholy 
 reflections, especially as we have still to speak of the 
 providential man by whom so great things were wrought 
 for the German people. I have already shown how 
 through him we attained, the widest liberty of thought. 
 For Martin Luther gave us not only freedom of move- 
 ment, but also the means of movement. To the spirit he 
 gave a body ; he gave word to the thought ; he created the 
 German language. 
 
 This he did by translating the Bible. 
 
 The Divine Author of this book seems to have known 
 
54 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 as well as we do that the choice of a translator is by no 
 means a matter of indifference. He himself chose His 
 translator, and endowed him with the marvellous faculty 
 of translating out of a dead and already buried language, 
 into a tongue that had not as yet come into existence. 
 
 We had, it is true, the Vulgate, which was understood, 
 and the Septuagint, which men were beginning to under- 
 stand ; but the knowledge of Hebrew was quite extinct 
 throughout the Christian world. Only the Jews, who 
 managed to conceal themselves here and there in corners 
 of the earth, still preserved the traditions of this language. 
 Like a ghost that keeps watch over some treasure in- 
 trusted to it during its lifetime, so this massacred nation, 
 this ghost-like people cowering in its obscure ghettos, kept 
 watch there over the Hebrew Bible. Into these evil- 
 reputed hiding-places German men of learning might be 
 seen secretly stealing down in order to discover the 
 treasure, to acquire a knowledge of Hebrew. As soon as 
 the Catholic priesthood perceived the danger that thus 
 threatened them, that the people might by such a side- 
 way attain an acquaintance with the true Word of God, 
 and thereby discover the Bomish falsifications, they would 
 fain have suppressed Jewish tradition, and they set to 
 work to destroy all Hebrew books. Thus began on the 
 banks of the Khine that book-persecution, against which 
 our admirable Doctor Beuchlin so gloriously fought. The 
 theologians of Cologne, who were active in the matter, 
 particularly Hochstraaten, were by no means so devoid of 
 intelligence as Ulrich von Hutten, Beuchlin’s valiant 
 champion, represents them in his Litterce Obscurorum 
 Virorum. They attempted nothing less than the sup- 
 pression of the Hebrew language. When Beuchlin was 
 victorious, Luther was able to begin his work. From a 
 letter written by him at this time to Beuchlin, Luther 
 seems already to have felt how important was the victory 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 55 
 
 that had been gained, — gained too by one in a dependent 
 and difficult position, — whereas he, the Augustin monk, 
 was perfectly independent. Very naively does Luther say 
 in this letter : “ Ego nihil timeo , quia nihil habeo.” 
 
 But how Luther succeeded in creating the language 
 into which he translated the Bible, remains a mystery to 
 me even to this hour. The old Suabian dialect had totally 
 disappeared, along with the chivalrous poetry of the 
 Hohenstaufen imperial era. The old Saxon dialect, so- 
 called low- German, was in use throughout only a por- 
 tion of Northern Germany, and despite all efforts that 
 have been made it has never been found possible to adapt 
 it to literary purposes. Had Luther employed for his 
 translation of the Bible the language that is spoken to-day 
 in Saxony, Adelung would have been right in maintaining 
 that Saxon, especially the dialect of Meissen, was the 
 true high-German, that is to say, our literary language. 
 But this error was long ago refuted, though I must here 
 draw special attention to it on account of its being still 
 quite current in France. Modern Saxon never was a 
 dialect of the Germans, — as little was it so as Silesian ; the 
 former like the latter, having a strong Slavonian admix- 
 ture. I therefore frankly confess that I know not what 
 was the origin of the language we find in Luther’s Bible. 
 But this I know that, through his Bible which the new- 
 born press, the black art, scattered by thousands of copies 
 amongst the people, the Lutheran language spread in a 
 few years over the whole of Germany, and was raised to 
 the rank of a written tongue. This written tongue holds 
 its place to this day in Germany, and gives to that politi- 
 cally and religiously dismembered nation a literary unity. 
 Such an inestimable gain may well make amends to us 
 for any loss in the later development of the language of 
 that internal expressiveness we are accustomed to find in 
 languages having their origin in a single dialect. There 
 
56 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 is no want, however, of such expressiveness in the lan- 
 guage of Luther’s Bible, and this old book is a perennial 
 source of rejuvenescence for our tongue. Every expres- 
 sion and every idiom to be found in Luther’s Bible is 
 essentially German ; an author may unhesitatingly employ 
 it ; and as this book is in the hands of the poorest classes, 
 they have no need of any special learned instruction to 
 enable them to express themselves in a literary style. 
 This circumstance will, when the political revolution takes 
 place in Germany, result in strange phenomena. Liberty 
 will everywhere be able to speak, and its speech will be 
 Biblical. 
 
 Luther’s original writings have also contributed to fix 
 the German language. Owing to their polemical passion- 
 ateness, they pierced deeply into the heart of his time. 
 Their tone is not always delicate ; but not even a religious 
 revolution can be made with orange blossom. Oftentimes 
 the stubborn tree root can be cleft only by the stubborn 
 wedge. In the Bible Luther’s speech is always restrained 
 within the bounds of a certain dignity by reverence for the 
 ever-present Spirit of God. In his controversial writings, 
 on the contrary, he abandons himself to a plebeian vulgarity 
 that is often as repulsive as it is grandiose. His expres- 
 sions and his metaphors resemble the colossal stone images 
 to be seen in Hindoo or Egyptian temple grottos; their 
 gaudy colouring and fantastic hideousness both repel and 
 fascinate us. By reason of this uncouth granite style 
 the daring monk often appears like a religious Danton, 
 a preacher of the Mountain, who from his lofty elevation 
 hurls down his strange word-blocks on the heads of his 
 adversaries. 
 
 But more remarkable and more significant than these 
 prose works are Luther’s poems, the hymns that budded 
 forth in his soul amidst the conflicts and troubles of his 
 days. Oftentimes they resemble a flower blooming on a 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 57 
 
 bare rock; oftentimes they are like a moonbeam shim- 
 mering across a tossing sea. Luther loved music ; he even 
 wrote a treatise on the art ; and his songs are extremely 
 melodious. In this respect also he merits the name of 
 the Swan of Eisleben. He was, however, anything but a 
 mild swan in many of the songs in which he rouses the 
 courage of his followers and inspires himself with fiercest 
 ardour for the combat. A true war-song was that defiant 
 lay with which he and his companions entered Worms. 
 The old cathedral trembled at such unwonted strains, 
 and the ravens were terrified in their obscure nests up in 
 the church towers. This song — the Marseillaise Hymn of 
 the Reformation — preserves even yet its power of inspir- 
 ing men, and perhaps we may ere long have need in similar 
 combats of the old mail-clad words : — 
 
 A strong tower is the Lord our God, 
 
 A trusty shield and weapon ; 
 
 He frees us in our mighty need 
 From all the ills that happen. 
 
 The old and wicked fiend 
 Now earnestly has meaned ; 
 
 Great power, much deceit, 
 
 His dreadful armour meet ; 
 
 On earth is not his fellow. 
 
 For our own power could not avail, 
 
 We soon should find an ending ; 
 
 Yet bravely for us will prevail 
 The man of God’s own sending. 
 
 Seek’st, who this may be ? 
 
 Jesus Christ, ’tis He, 
 
 The Lord Sabaoth, 
 
 And sure no other God 
 For us the field maintaineth. 
 
 And though the devils filled all lands, 
 
 Seeking our soul’s devouring ; 
 
 We need not greatly fear their bands, 
 
 Our help is overpowering. 
 
58 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 The prince of this earth, 
 
 Though full of grim wrath, 
 
 Must yet fail of his plan ; 
 
 He lieth under a ban, 
 
 A mere W'ord can o’erthrow him. 
 
 This word they may not take away, 
 
 N or yet have thanks for leaving ; 
 
 God’s on our side with grace and power, 
 
 To Him our souls are cleaving. 
 
 Take, if ye choose, our life, 
 
 Goods, honour, child, and wife, 
 
 Let go as they may ; 
 
 Your gain’s but small, we say, — 
 
 The Kingdom ours remaineth. 5 
 
 I have shown how we have to thank our dear Doctor 
 Martin Luther for the intellectual freedom that was needed 
 for the development of modern literature. I have shown 
 how he also created for us the word, the speech wherein 
 this new literature might express itself. I have still to 
 add that he was himself the precursor of this literature ; 
 that our polite literature properly so-called begins with 
 Luther; that his spiritual songs prove themselves to he 
 its first important monument and already reveal its 
 distinctive character. Whoever would speak of modern 
 German literature must therefore begin with Luther, and not 
 with that narrow-souled citizen of Nuremberg called Hans 
 Sachs, as has been done through the bad faith of certain 
 writers of the Eomantic school. Hans Sachs, the trou- 
 badour of the honourable guild of shoemakers, whose 
 master-song is but a crude parody of the ancient lays of 
 minstrelsy, and his dramas mere clumsy travesties of the 
 old mysteries; — this pedantic buffoon, with his painful 
 aping of the free simplicity of the Middle Ages, may 
 perhaps be regarded as the last poet of the olden time, 
 but can in no sense be considered the earliest poet of the 
 
 new age/ 
 
PART SECOND. 
 
 In the first part of this hook we have treated of the great 
 religious revolution represented in Germany by Martin 
 Luther. We have now to speak of the philosophic revo- 
 lution which, as the offspring of the religious revolution, 
 is nothing else than the last consequence of Protestantism. 
 
 But before proceeding to relate how this revolution 
 found its outburst through Immanuel Kant, it is necessary 
 to refer to the philosophical events that preceded it abroad, 
 to the significance of Spinoza, to the fate of the philosophy 
 of Leibnitz, to the mutual relations between this philo- 
 sophy and religion, and to their discords. We shall, how- 
 ever, keep constantly in view those questions of philosophy 
 to which we attach a social significance, and towards whose 
 solution the social co-operates with the religious element. 
 
 We have here to deal with the question of the nature of 
 God. God is the beginning and the end of all wisdom, 
 say believers in their humility, and the philosopher in all 
 the pride of his knowledge is compelled to assent to this 
 pious axiom. 
 
 Not Bacon, as we are accustomed to be taught, but Bene 
 Descartes is the father of modern philosophy, and we shall 
 proceed to demonstrate very clearly the degree of affinity 
 between him and German philosophy. 
 
 Bene Descartes is a Frenchman, and to great Prance 
 belongs the fame of the initiative. But great Prance, the 
 noisy, stirring, talkative land of the French, has never been 
 
6o RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 a fitting abode for philosophy, which perhaps will never 
 flourish on French soil. So assuredly felt Rene Descartes, 
 who betook himself to Holland, to the peaceful, silent land 
 of track-boats and Dutchmen. Here he wrote his philoso- 
 phical works. Only in that country was it possible for 
 him to free his intellect from traditional formalism, and to 
 construct a complete system of philosophy out of pure 
 thought, indebted neither to faith nor to empiricism — a 
 condition ever since demanded of all true philosophy. 
 Only in such a country could he plunge deeply enough 
 into the intellectual abyss to be able to surprise thought 
 in the ultimate grounds of self-consciousness, and thus 
 establish self-consciousness through the process of thought 
 in the world-famed axiom, Cogito , ergo sum. 
 
 But perhaps nowhere else than in Holland could Des- 
 cartes have ventured to teach a philosophy that conflicted 
 openly with every tradition of the past. To him is due 
 the honour of having established the autonomy of philo- 
 sophy : philosophy no longer needed to solicit from theo- 
 logy permission to think for itself ; it could now take its 
 place alongside the latter as an independent science. I 
 do not say in opposition to the latter ; for, in Descartes’ 
 time, it was an acknowledged principle that the truths at 
 which we arrive through philosophy are ultimately iden- 
 tical with those transmitted by religion. The scholastics, 
 as I have already remarked, had, on the contrary, not only 
 conceded to religion the supremacy over philosophy, but 
 had also declared the latter, from the moment it came into 
 conflict with the dogmas of religion, to be mere futile 
 pastime, mere wordy contention. The prime object of the 
 scholastics was to express their thoughts, no matter under 
 what conditions. They said, “ Once one is one ; ” but they 
 added with a smile, “yet this is only another error of 
 human reason, which is always at fault when it leads to 
 contradiction of the decisions of the (Ecumenical Councils; 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 61 
 
 ‘Once one is three/ and that is the absolute truth, long since 
 revealed to us in the name of the Father, of the Son, and 
 of the Holy Ghost ! ” The scholastics secretly formed a 
 philosophic opposition to the Church ; publicly, however, 
 they feigned the meekest submissiveness ; in many in- 
 stances they even fought the battles of the Church, and 
 paraded as attendants at its processions, somewhat as the 
 French deputies of the opposition did at the ceremonies of 
 the Eestoration. 
 
 The comedy of the scholastics lasted more than six 
 centuries, and it became more and more trivial. In de- 
 stroying scholasticism Descartes likewise destroyed the 
 effete opposition of the Middle Ages ; the old brooms were 
 worn out with long usage, they were too thickly covered 
 with offscourings, and the new age had need of new brooms. 
 After every revolution the former opposition must abdi- 
 cate, otherwise great follies will be perpetrated. We have 
 had experience of such things. In the times of which I 
 speak, it was not so much the Catholic Church herself as 
 her old adversaries, the rearguard of scholasticism, that 
 took up arms against the Cartesian philosophy. For not 
 till 1663 did the Pope anathematise this philosophy. 
 
 I may presuppose that Frenchmen are sufficiently 
 acquainted with the philosophy of their great countryman, 
 and it is here unnecessary for me to show how two doc- 
 trines, the most directly opposed, have both derived from 
 that philosophy the necessary framework of their systems. 
 I refer to the doctrines of Idealism and Materialism. 
 
 As these two doctrines have usually been designated, 
 especially in France, Spiritualism and Sensualism, and as I 
 am accustomed to employ these latter terms in a different 
 acceptation, it is necessary, in order to prevent con- 
 fusion of ideas, that I should more clearly define these 
 expressions. 
 
 Since the earliest times two opposite views have existed 
 
62 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 regarding the nature of human thought, that is to say, 
 concerning the ultimate sources of intellectual cognition, 
 concerning the origin of ideas. Some hold that we receive 
 ideas only from without, that the mind is merely an empty 
 alembic wherein the impressions gathered in by the senses 
 are elaborated, much as the food we partake of is assimi- 
 lated in the stomach. To employ a better metaphor, this 
 class of thinkers considers the mind as a tabula rasa, 
 whereon experience is daily writing something new in 
 accordance with certain determined rules of caligraphy. 
 Others, holding the opposite view, assert that ideas are 
 horn with man, that the human mind is the primary seat 
 of ideas, and that the external world, experience, and the 
 intermediary senses only bring us to the knowledge of 
 what was already present in the mind, only awaken there 
 the dormant ideas. 
 
 The former view has received the name of sensualism, 
 sometimes that of empiricism ; the latter has been called 
 spiritualism, sometimes also rationalism. But misconcep- 
 tions may easily result from this nomenclature. For these 
 two names, spiritualism and sensualism, have for some 
 time been employed to designate two social systems that 
 assert themselves in every manifestation of existence. We 
 assign, then, the name spiritualism to that outrageous 
 assumption of the human spirit, which, striving after ex- 
 clusive glorification of itself, endeavours to trample under 
 foot, or at least to stultify, matter. We bestow the name 
 sensualism on that opposition, which, revolting against 
 this pretension, has for its aim the rehabilitation of matter 
 and the vindication of the inalienable rights of the senses, 
 without thereby denying to the spirit its rights or even its 
 supremacy. 
 
 These two systems have stood opposed as far back as 
 human memory can reach. For in all ages are to be found 
 men in whom the capacity for enjoyment is incomplete, 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 63 
 
 men with stunted senses and compunctious frames, for 
 whom all the grapes in this garden of God are sour, who 
 see in every paradise-apple the enticing serpent, who seek 
 in abnegation their triumph, and in suffering their sole joy. 
 On the other hand, we find in all ages men of robust 
 growth, natures filled with the pride of life, who fain carry 
 their heads right haughtily ; all the stars and the roses 
 greet them with sympathetic smile ; they listen delightedly 
 to the melodies of the nightingale and of Eossini ; they are 
 enamoured of good fortune and of the flesh of Titian’s 
 pictures ; and to their hypocritical companions for whom 
 such things are a torment, they answer, in the words of 
 Shakespeare’s character, “ Dost thou think because thou 
 art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale ? ” * 
 
 I leave, then, to these two social systems the names 
 Spiritualism and Sensualism. But when speaking of the 
 philosophical opinions regarding the origin of our know- 
 ledge I prefer the terms Idealism and Materialism, desig- 
 nating by the former the doctrine of innate ideas, of ideas 
 a priori, and by the latter the doctrine of cognition through 
 experience, through the senses, the doctrine of ideas a 
 posteriori. 
 
 It is a very significant fact that the idealistic side of the 
 Cartesian philosophy has never been successfully followed 
 up in Trance. Some celebrated Jansenists pursued for a 
 time this direction ; but they quickly lost themselves in 
 Christian spiritualism. It may have been this circum- 
 stance that brought discredit on idealism amongst the 
 Trench. Nations have an instinctive presentiment of 
 what they require in order to fulfil their mission. The 
 
 * This characteristic paragraph 
 does not appear in any but the most 
 recent German editions of Heine’s 
 works. Heine had himself deleted 
 it in the original manuscript re- 
 
 covered by Dr. Strodtmann, who 
 suggests as the cause of its omission 
 that the quotation with which it con- 
 cludes is employed in a different ap- 
 plication further on. — Tit. 
 
64 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 French were already on the march towards that political 
 revolution which did not break out till the close of the 
 eighteenth century, and for which they had need of a 
 headsman’s axe and of a materialistic philosophy equally 
 cold and keen. Christian spiritualism was a combatant in 
 the ranks of their enemies ; sensualism therefore became 
 their natural ally. French sensualists being ordinarily 
 materialists, the erroneous notion came to obtain that sen- 
 sualism was but a product of materialism. No ; sensualism 
 may with equal right claim to be the result of pantheism, 
 and as such it appears beautiful and imposing. Yet we 
 would not seek in the least to detract from the services 
 rendered by French materialism. It was an efficacious 
 antidote against the evil of the past, a desperate remedy 
 for a desperate disease, a sovereign panacea for an infected 
 people. French philosophers chose John Locke as their 
 master ; he was the saviour of whom they had need. His 
 “ Essay on the Human Understanding ” became their 
 gospel ; they were ready to swear by it. John Locke had 
 gone to the school of Descartes, and from him had learned 
 all that an Englishman can learn — mechanics, analytical 
 method, and the art of reckoning. There was but one 
 thing that he could not understand ; namely, innate ideas. 
 He therefore brought to perfection the doctrine according 
 to which all our knowledge is derived from wdthout by 
 means of experience. He reduced the human mind to a 
 species of calculating machine ; in his hands the whole 
 man became a piece of English mechanism. Tins also 
 applies to man as constructed by the disciples of Locke, 
 though they sought to distinguish themselves from their 
 master under various denominations. They had a perfect 
 dread of the ultimate results of their leading principle, 
 and the disciple of Condillac was horror-stricken at being 
 classed in the same category with Helvetius, even with 
 Holbach, or possibly with Lametrie. Yet such a classifi- 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 65 
 
 cation was inevitable, and I may therefore give to one and 
 all of the French philosophers of the eighteenth century, 
 and to their successors in our time, the name of materialists. 
 L'homme machine is the most consistent result of French 
 philosophy, and the title of this book betrays it at once as 
 the last word of this conception of the universe. 
 
 Most of these materialists were also partisans of deism ; 
 for a machine presupposes a mechanician, and the highest 
 perfection of such a machine consists in its capacity for 
 recognising and appreciating the technical skill of such 
 an artificer, as displayed either in its own construction or 
 in his other works. 
 
 Materialism has fulfilled its mission in France. It is 
 perhaps at the present moment busy accomplishing the 
 same task in England ; and it is on the system of Locke 
 that the revolutionary sects in that country, especially 
 the Benthamites, the apostles of utility, take their stand. 
 These latter are men of powerful intellect ; they have pos- 
 sessed themselves of the right lever with which John Bull 
 may be set in motion. John Bull is a born materialist, 
 and his Christian spiritualism is for the most part tradi- 
 tional hypocrisy, or even mere material dulness ; his flesh 
 resigns itself because the spirit does not come to its aid. 
 In Germany it is quite otherwise, and German revolu- 
 tionists deceive themselves in supposing that a material- 
 istic philosophy is favourable to their projects. 
 
 Germany has always manifested a repugnance towards 
 materialism; hence she remained during a century and 
 a half the true home of idealism. The Germans also 
 went to the school of Descartes, whose great disciple is 
 called Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. As Locke pursued the 
 materialistic tendency of his master, so Leibnitz followed 
 the idealistic tendency. In Leibnitz we find the doctrine 
 of innate ideas in its most decisive form. In his “New 
 Essays on the Human Understanding” he combated the 
 
 E 
 
66 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 principles of Locke. With Leibnitz there sprang np 
 amongst Germans a great ardour for philosophical studies. 
 He awakened the minds of men, and led them into new 
 paths. On account of the natural suavity, the religious 
 sentiment that animated his writings, his opponents 
 became partially reconciled to the boldness of his views, 
 and the effect was prodigious. The hardihood of this 
 thinker exhibited itself especially in his theory of Monads, 
 one of the most remarkable hypotheses that have ever 
 proceeded from the brain of a philosopher. It is also the 
 best service he has rendered, for it embodies a presenti- 
 ment of the most important laws that have been accepted 
 by modern philosophy. The theory of monads was but a 
 crude method of formulating those laws that are now 
 proclaimed in better formulas by natural philosophers. 
 But here, instead of the word “ law,” I ought, properly 
 speaking, to employ the word “formula;” for Newton 
 observes with great truth that what we call law in nature 
 has no real existence, and that it is merely formulas that 
 come to the aid of intelligence as explaining a succession 
 of phenomena in nature. Of all the works of Leibnitz, 
 the “ Theodicee ” is the one most spoken of in Germany. 
 Yet it is his feeblest production. This book, like several 
 other writings in which Leibnitz expresses his religious 
 sentiments, has obtained for its author an evil reputation, 
 and has caused him to be cruelly misunderstood. His 
 enemies have accused him of maudlin sentimentality and 
 weakness of intellect; his friends, in defending, have 
 proved him an accomplished hypocrite. The character of 
 Leibnitz was for long a subject of controversy amongst us : 
 the most partial critics could not absolve him from the 
 accusation of duplicity ; his most eager detractors were 
 the freethinkers and the men of enlightenment. How 
 could they pardon in a philosopher defence of the Trinity, 
 eternal punishment, and the divinity of Christ! Their 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 67 
 
 tolerance did not extend so far as that. But Leibnitz 
 was neither fool nor knave, and by the lofty harmony of 
 his intellect he was well able to defend Christianity in 
 its integrity. I say, in its integrity, for he defended it 
 against semi- Christianity. He established the consistency 
 of the orthodox as opposed to the inconsistency of their 
 adversaries. More than this he never attempted. He 
 thus stood at that point of indifference where diverse 
 systems appear as merely different sides of the same truth. 
 Schelling afterwards acknowledged this standpoint, and 
 Hegel has scientifically established it as a system of 
 systems. In a similar manner Leibnitz engaged in an 
 attempt at a harmony between Plato and Aristotle. In 
 these latter days the attempt has been often enough 
 renewed. Is the problem solved ? 
 
 No, assuredly not! for this problem is nothing less 
 than an adjustment of the quarrel between idealism and 
 materialism. Plato is a thorough idealist and knows only 
 inborn, or rather with - born ideas; man brings his ideas 
 with him into the world, and when he becomes conscious 
 of them, they appear to him as recollections of a former 
 state of existence. Hence the vagueness and mysticism 
 of Plato : he merely recollects more or less clearly. With 
 Aristotle, on the contrary, everything is clear, intelligible, 
 certain ; for his cognitions are not reminiscences of a pre- 
 mundane state; he receives everything from experience, 
 and knows how to classify everything in the most precise 
 manner. He stands out therefore as the model for all 
 empiricists ; and the latter cannot sufficiently thank God 
 that He made him the teacher of Alexander, whose con- 
 quests afforded him so many opportunities for the advance- 
 ment of science ; and that his victorious scholar should 
 have presented him with so many thousand talents of gold 
 for zoological researches. The old master employed the 
 money very conscientiously, and was thereby enabled to 
 
68 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 dissect numerous specimens of mammals, and to obtain a 
 great collection of stuffed birds ; all which afforded him 
 scope for the most important observations. But the great 
 biped which he had right before his eyes, which he had 
 himself reared, and which was far more remarkable than 
 all the rest of the world-menagerie, he unfortunately over- 
 looked and omitted to investigate. In fact, he has left us 
 totally without information regarding the nature of that 
 youthful king, the wonder and enigma of whose life and 
 deeds still awaken our amazement. What was Alexander ? 
 What sought he ? Was he a madman or a god ? To this 
 day we cannot tell. But Aristotle’s information is ail the 
 more complete concerning Assyrian quadrupeds, Indian 
 parrots, and Greek tragedies, which latter he also dissected. 
 
 Plato and Aristotle ! They are not merely the repre- 
 sentatives of two systems, they are the types of two dif- 
 ferent species of humanity, which since time immemorial, 
 under every variety of garb, have stood opposed to each 
 other in more or less hostile attitude. Especially through- 
 out the Middle Ages, and down to our own time, has the 
 conflict been maintained ; and the progress of this conflict 
 forms the essential part of Christian Church history. The 
 talk is always of Plato and Aristotle, though disguised 
 under other names. Dreamy, mystical, Platonic natures 
 find revealed in the depths of their being the Christian 
 idea and its corresponding symbols. Practical, methodical, 
 Aristotelian natures construct out of this idea and its 
 symbols a definite system, a dogma, and a worship. The 
 Church in the end embraces within its pale both classes 
 — the one taking its position as a secular clergy, the other 
 intrenching itself in a monastic life, yet each continuing 
 to wage incessant warfare upon the other. In the Pro- 
 testant Church the same conflict exhibits itself in the 
 schism between pietists and the followers of orthodoxy, 
 who correspond in a certain degree to the mvstics and the 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 69 
 
 dogmatists of Catholicism. The Protestant pietists are 
 mystics without imagination, and the Protestant orthodox 
 are dogmatists without intelligence. 
 
 We find these two Protestant parties engaged in desperate 
 conflict in the time of Leibnitz, whose philosophy after- 
 wards intervened when Christian Wolf, having made him- 
 self master of it, adapted it to the necessities of the time, 
 and, what was of the utmost importance, lectured on it in 
 the German language. But before speaking of this pupil 
 of Leibnitz, of the results of his labours, and of the later 
 destiny of Lutheranism, we must make mention of the 
 providential man who, simultaneously with Locke and 
 Leibnitz, formed himself in the school of Descartes, who 
 was for long regarded with derision and hatred, but who 
 in our day has been raised to the throne of intellectual 
 supremacy. * 
 
 I speak of Benedict Spinoza, 
 
 One great genius forms itself from another less by 
 assimilation than by friction. One diamond polishes 
 another. Thus the philosophy of Descartes in no sense 
 originated, it merely advanced that of Spinoza. Hence 
 we find in the disciple the method of the master; this is 
 a great gain. We also find in Spinoza, as in Descartes, 
 a mode of demonstration borrowed from mathematics; 
 this is a grievous fault. The mathematical form gives to 
 Spinoza’s writings a harsh exterior. But this is like the 
 hard shell of the almond; the kernel is all the more agree- 
 able. In reading Spinoza’s works we become conscious of 
 a feeling such as pervades us at the sight of great Nature 
 in her most life-like state of repose ; we behold a forest 
 of heaven-reaching thoughts whose blossoming topmost 
 boughs are tossing like waves of the sea, whilst their im- 
 movable stems are rooted in the eternal earth. There is 
 a peculiar, indescribable fragrance about the writings of 
 Spinoza. We seem to breathe in them the air of the future. 
 
70 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Perhaps the spirit of the Hebrew prophets still hovered 
 over their late-born descendant. There is, withal, an 
 earnestness in him, a self-conscious bearing, a solemn 
 grandeur of thought that certainly seems as though it 
 were inherited; for Spinoza belonged to one of those 
 martyr-families driven into exile by the most Catholic 
 kings of Spain. Added to this was the patience of the 
 Dutchman, which never belies itself either in the life or in 
 the writings of the man. 
 
 It is beyond a doubt that the whole course of Spinoza’s 
 life was free from blame, and pure and spotless as the life 
 of his divine cousin, Jesus Christ. Like him, too, he 
 suffered for his doctrine ; like him he wore the crown of 
 thorns. Wherever a great spirit utters its thought, there 
 is Golgotha. 
 
 Dear reader, if ever thou shouldst visit Amsterdam, bid 
 some cicerone show thee the Spanish synagogue. It is a 
 beautiful building, having its roof resting on four colossal 
 pillars. In the midst stands the pulpit from which was 
 pronounced the curse on the despiser of the Mosaic law, 
 the Hidalgo don Benedict de Spinoza. On such an occa- 
 sion, a buck’s-horn, called the Shofar, was blown. There 
 must be something quite terrible about this horn ; for, as 
 I once read in the life of Solomon Maimon, as the Babbi 
 of Altona was endeavouring to lead him, the pupil of Kant, 
 back to the old faith, and as he stubbornly persisted in his 
 philosophical heresies, the Rabbi resorted to threats and, 
 holding up the Shofar, inquired in tones of awe, “ Know’st 
 thou what this is ? ” But when the pupil of Kant replied 
 with calm indifference, “It is the horn of a buck,” the 
 horror-stricken Rabbi fell backwards on the ground. 
 
 At the excommunication of Spinoza there was a solemn 
 accompaniment on this horn ; he was ceremoniously ex- 
 pelled the communion of Israel, and declared unworthy 
 henceforth to bear the name of Jew. His Christian 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 71 
 
 enemies were magnanimous enough to leave him the name. 
 But the Jews, the Swiss-guard of Deism, were inexorable, 
 and the spot is still pointed out in front of the Spanish 
 synagogue at Amsterdam where they attempted to stab 
 Spinoza with their long daggers. 
 
 I could not refrain from drawing special attention to 
 these personal misfortunes of the man. He was trained 
 not merely in the lessons of the school, but also in those 
 of life. Herein is he distinguished from most philosophers, 
 and in his writings we recognise the indirect influence of 
 his life-training. Theology was for him something more 
 than a mere science. So also was politics ; for with this too 
 he made practical acquaintance. The father of his be- 
 trothed was hung for political offences in the Netherlands ; 
 and nowhere else in the world are people so badly hung 
 as in the Netherlands. You have no idea with what pre- 
 parations and ceremonies the operation is accompanied. 
 The delinquent is already dead with ennui , and the 
 spectator has abundant leisure for reflection. I am per- 
 suaded, then, that Benedict Spinoza reflected very deeply 
 on the execution of the old Yan Ende, and as previously 
 he had comprehended religion with its daggers, so now he 
 comprehended politics with the cord. Evidence of this is 
 to be found in his “ Tractatus Politicus 
 
 My task consists merely in pointing out how these phi- 
 losophers come to be more or less nearly related, and I 
 confine myself to indicating their degrees of relationship 
 and their genealogy. The philosophy of Spinoza, third 
 son of Bene Descartes, as he enunciates it in his principal 
 work, the “ Ethics,” is as widely different from the mate- 
 rialism of his brother Locke as from the idealism of his 
 brother Leibnitz. Spinoza does not torment himself with 
 analytical inquiry into the ultimate grounds of our cogni- 
 tions. He gives us his grand synthesis, his explanation 
 of Deity. 
 
72 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Benedict Spinoza teaches : there is but one substance, 
 which is God. This one substance is infinite ; it is abso- 
 lute : all finite substances emanate from it, are contained 
 in it, emerge out of it, are submerged in it ; they have only 
 a relative, transient, accidental existence. The absolute 
 substance reveals itself to us as clearly in the form of 
 infinite thought as in the form of infinite extension. These 
 two, infinite thought and infinite extension, are the two 
 attributes of the absolute substance. We recognise only 
 these two attributes; but God, the absolute substance, 
 has perhaps many other attributes that we do not know. 
 “ Non dico, me Beum omnino cognoscere, sed me qucedam ejus 
 attributa, non autem omnia , neque maximam intelligere 
 partem.” 
 
 Nothing but sheer unreason and malice could bestow 
 on such a doctrine the qualification of “ atheism.” No one 
 has ever spoken more sublimely of Deity than Spinoza. 
 Instead of saying that he denied God, one might say that 
 he denied man. All finite things are to him but modes of 
 the infinite substance ; all finite substances are contained 
 in God the human mind is but a luminous ray of infinite 
 thought ; the human body but an atom of infinite exten- 
 sion : God is the infinite cause of both, of mind and of 
 body, natura naturans. 
 
 In a letter to Madame du Defiant, Voltaire professes 
 himself quite charmed at a sally of this lady’s, who had 
 said that everything that man cannot know is assuredly 
 of such a nature that it would profit him nothing to know. 
 I might apply this remark to the passage from Spinoza 
 just quoted in his own words, according to which, besides 
 the two knowable attributes of thought and extension, 
 there may pertain to Deity other attributes that cannot be 
 known. What we cannot know has no value for us, at 
 least no value from a social point of view, where it is a 
 question of realising in sensible fact what the intellect 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY . 73 
 
 perceives. In our explanation of the being of God, we 
 have therefore regard only to these two knowable attri- 
 butes. And, besides, everything that we call attribute of 
 Deity is, after all, but a different form of our intuition, 
 and these different forms are identical in the absolute 
 substance. Thought is, after all, but invisible extension, 
 and extension is but visible thought. Here we come into 
 contact with the leading axiom of the German Philosophy 
 of Identity, which in reality does not differ from the doc- 
 trine of Spinoza. Let Schelling protest as eagerly as he 
 may that his philosophy is something else than Spinozism, 
 that it is rather “ a living amalgam of the ideal and the 
 real,” that it is distinguishable from Spinozism “ as the per- 
 fection of Greek statuary is distinguishable from the rigid 
 Egyptian originals ; ” I must none the less emphatically 
 declare that in his first period, at the time when he was 
 still a philosopher, Schelling is not to be distinguished in 
 the slightest degree from Spinoza. He has only taken a 
 different road to arrive at the same philosophy. I have 
 yet to elucidate this when I come to explain how Kant 
 opened up a new path, how Eichte followed him, how 
 Schelling, in pursuing still further the footsteps of Eichte, 
 having gone astray in the gloomy forest of the Philosophy 
 of Nature, at last found himself face to face with the great 
 figure of Benedict Spinoza. 
 
 The only merit of the modern Philosophy of Nature lies 
 in demonstrating, in the clearest manner, the eternal paral- 
 lelism that exists between spirit and matter. I say spirit 
 and matter, and I employ these expressions as equivalents 
 for what Spinoza calls thought and extension ; I also 
 regard these expressions as synonymous with what our 
 German philosophers call spirit and nature, or the ideal 
 and the real. 
 
 In what follows I shall designate by the word Pan- 
 theism, not so much the system as the point of view of 
 
74 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Spinoza. Pantheism, like Deism, assumes the unity of 
 God ; but the God of the pantheists is in the world itself, 
 not by informing it with his divinity, as St. Augustin 
 endeavoured to explain by comparing God to a great lake 
 and the world to a sponge floating in the middle of it 
 and absorbing Deity : no, the world is not merely God- 
 distended, God-impregnated, it is identical with God. 
 God, called by Spinoza the Sole Substance, and by Ger- 
 man philosophers the Absolute, “ is All that is ; ” He is 
 matter as well as spirit, both are equally divine, and he 
 that insults the sanctity of matter is as impious as he 
 that sins against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The God of the pantheists, then, is distinguished from 
 the God of the deists by being in the world itself, whereas 
 the latter is outside of, or, what is the same thing, is above 
 the world. The God of deism governs the world from 
 above as an establishment apart from him. It is only 
 with regard to the mode of this government that deists 
 differ among themselves. The Hebrews conceive God as a 
 tyrant armed with thunder ; Christians, as a loving father ; 
 the disciples of Eousseau and the whole Genevese school 
 regard him as a skilful artist, who has fashioned the world 
 somewhat as their fathers constructed watches, and as 
 experienced critics they admire the work and praise the 
 celestial workman. 
 
 In the eyes of the deist, who assumes an extra-mundane 
 or supra-mundane God, the spirit alone is holy, because he 
 regards it as the divine breath which the Creator of the 
 universe has breathed into the human body, the work of 
 his hands formed of the dust of the earth. Hence the Jews 
 looked on the body as a despicable thing, as the pitiful en- 
 velope of the Rouach hakodasch, of the divine breath, of the 
 spirit ; and to the latter only would they accord considera- 
 tion, reverence, and worship. The Jews are therefore in quite 
 a special sense the people of the spirit, chaste, temperate, 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 75 
 
 serious, abstract, stiff-necked, fit to be martyrs ; and tbeir 
 sublimest flower is Jesus Christ. He is, in the true sense of 
 the word, the incarnate spirit ; and full of deepest signi- 
 ficance is the beautiful legend that he is the offspring of a 
 pure virgin conceived by the sole operation of the Spirit. 
 
 But if the Jews regarded the body merely with con- 
 tempt, Christians, the Ultras of spiritualism, have gone 
 much farther on the same road, and look upon the body 
 as something to be reprobated, as wicked, as the evil 
 thing itself. Thus, several centuries after the birth of 
 Christ we see a religion arise that will form an eternal 
 subject of astonishment to the historian, and that will 
 compel the shuddering amazement of latest generations. 
 Yes, Christianity is a grand, a holy religion, full of infinite 
 blessedness, a religion that seeks to conquer for the spirit 
 the most absolute domination on earth. But such a 
 religion was far too sublime, far too pure, far too good for 
 this world, where its idea could only be proclaimed in 
 theory, but could never be realised in practice. The 
 attempt to realise it has produced in human history an 
 infinite number of heroic deeds, which will afford to poets 
 of all ages ample themes for story and song. But the 
 endeavour to realise the Christian idea has, as we at last 
 come to see, most lamentably failed, and the abortive 
 attempt has cost humanity incalculable sacrifices ; sacri- 
 fices whose calamitous effects are visible in the social dis- 
 temper that afflicts all Europe at the present day. If, as 
 many believe, humanity is still in its adolescence, then 
 Christianity is doubtless one of the most generous illu- 
 sions of youth, though it does far more honour to the 
 heart than to the head. Christianity having abandoned 
 to Caesar and to his Jewish chamberlains matter and all 
 temporal things, contented itself with denying the supre- 
 macy of the former, and with stigmatising the latter in 
 public opinion. But lo ! the detested sw T ord and the 
 
76 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 despised riches obtain in the end supreme power, and the 
 representatives of spiritualism are obliged to come to an 
 understanding with them. Yes, and this understanding 
 has even become a mutual alliance. Not the priests of 
 Eome only, but those also of England and of Prussia, in 
 short, all privileged priesthoods have associated them- 
 selves with Caesar and his confederates for the oppression 
 of the peoples. The result of this alliance is but to 
 hasten the overthrow of the religion of spiritualism. A 
 portion of the priesthood already comprehends this, and 
 in order to save religion they assume the pretence of 
 renouncing the pernicious alliance and seek to range 
 themselves in our ranks by adopting our colours. 
 
 Vain efforts, futile endeavours ! Humanity yearns after 
 more solid food than the symbolic blood and flesh of the 
 Eucharist. Humanity smiles compassionately at the 
 ideals of its youth, that have failed in realisation in spite 
 of all its painful attempts ; and it grows manfully prac- 
 tical. Humanity in our day worships a system of earthly 
 utility ; it has serious thoughts about establishing itself in 
 citizen prosperity, about a reasonably ordered household, 
 about securing comfort for its old age. The thing of prime 
 importance at the moment is its restoration to health, for 
 we still feel a great weakness in all our members; the 
 holy vampires of the Middle Ages have sucked out of us 
 so much life-blood ! And after this it will still be neces- 
 sary to offer grand expiatory sacrifices to matter, in order 
 to atone for old offences against it. It might even be 
 expedient to institute holy-day revels, and to indemnify 
 matter for its past sufferings ; for Christianity, unable to 
 annihilate, has on all occasions sought to bring disgrace 
 upon matter : it has depreciated the noblest delights, the 
 senses have been forced to become hypocritical, and 
 everywhere there has been deceit and sin. We must 
 reclothe women in new chemises and in new sentiments. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 77 
 
 and all our emotions must be passed through a process of 
 disinfection as after having undergone the ravages of a 
 plague. 
 
 Thus the immediate aim of all our modern institutions 
 is the rehabilitation of matter, its restoration to former 
 dignity, its moral recognition, its religious sanctification, 
 its reconciliation with the spirit ; Purusa is re-wedded to 
 Pakriti ; from their violent separation, as the Indian myth 
 so ingeniously symbolises, the great laceration of the world, 
 Evil, has arisen. 
 
 Can you tell us, then, what the evil of the world signi- 
 fies ? The spiritualists have always made it a reproach 
 against us that, in the pantheistic view, the distinction 
 between good, and evil is lost. But evil is in part merely' 
 an erroneous conception of the world by the spiritualists; 
 and in part it is an actual product of their arrangement 
 of mundane affairs. According to their view, matter is 
 in itself an evil thing ; which is surely nothing less than 
 a calumny and fearful blasphemy against God. Matter 
 becomes evil only when it is forced into secret conspiracy 
 against the usurpation of the spirit, when it is stigmatised 
 by the spirit and then degrades itself through loss of self- 
 respect, or when with the hatred of despair it avenges 
 itself on the spirit ; and thus evil is a result of the arrange- 
 ment of the world by the spiritualists. 
 
 God is identical with the world : he manifests himself 
 in plants, which unconsciously live a cosmic-magnetic 
 life; he manifests himself in animals which, in the dream 
 of their sensuous life, experience an existence more or less 
 torpid. But he manifests himself most gloriously in man, 
 who feels and thinks at the same time, who is capable of 
 distinguishing his own individuality from objective nature, 
 whose intellect already bears within itself the ideas that 
 present themselves to him in the phenomenal v 7 orld. In 
 man Deity reaches self-consciousness, and this self- con- 
 
78 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 sciousness Deity again reveals through man. But this 
 revelation does not take place in and through individual 
 man, hut in and through collective humanity ; and this in 
 such wise that each man comprehends and represents but a 
 portion of the God-universe ; whereas collective humanity 
 comprehends and represents in idea and in reality the whole 
 God-universe. Every nation is perhaps endowed with 
 the mission of recognising and manifesting a portion of 
 this God-universe, of comprehending a series of facts and 
 of realising a series of ideas, and of transmitting the result 
 to succeeding races on whom a like mission is imposed. 
 God is therefore the real hero of universal history : history 
 is but his eternal thought, his eternal action, his word, 
 his deed; and of entire humanity we may justly say it is 
 an incarnation of God. 
 
 It is an error to suppose that this religion, Pantheism, 
 leads men to indifference. On the contrary, the conscious- 
 ness of his divinity will inspire man with enthusiasm for 
 its manifestation, and from this moment will the really 
 noble achievements of true heroism glorify the earth. 
 
 The political revolution, based on the principles of French 
 materialism, will find in the pantheists not opponents but 
 allies ; allies, however, who have drawn their convictions 
 from a deeper source — from a religious synthesis. We 
 promote the welfare of matter, the material happiness of 
 nations, not, like the materialists, from a contempt for the 
 spirit, but because we know that the divinity of man reveals 
 itself also in his corporeal form, that misery destroys or 
 debases the body, God’s image, and that thereby the spirit 
 likewise is involved in ruin. The great word of the revo- 
 lution pronounced by St. Just, “Bread is the right of 
 the people,” is translated by us, “ Bread is the divine 
 right of man.” We are fighting not for the human rights 
 of the people, but for the divine rights of humanity. In 
 this and in much else we differ from the men of the revo- 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 79 
 
 lution. We do not wish to be sans-culottists, nor frugal 
 citizens, nor unassuming presidents ; we are for founding a 
 democracy of terrestrial gods, equal in glory, in blessed- 
 ness, and in sanctity. You demand simple modes of dress, 
 austere morals, and unspiced pleasures ; we, on the con- 
 trary, desire nectar and ambrosia, purple mantles, costly per- 
 fumes, luxury and splendour, dances of laughing nymphs, 
 music and comedies. Be not therefore angry with u.s, 
 virtuous republicans ! To your censorious reproaches 
 we reply in the words of Shakespeare’s character : — 
 “ Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall 
 be no more cakes and ale ? ” 
 
 The Saint Simonians comprehended and desired some- 
 thing analogous ; but the soil was. unfavourable, and they 
 were repressed, for the time at least, by the surrounding 
 materialism. They have been better appreciated in Ger- 
 many, for Germany is now the fertile soil of pantheism. 
 This is the religion of our greatest thinkers, of our best 
 artists, and in Germany deism, as I shall presently explain, 
 was long ago theoretically destroyed. No one says it, but 
 every one knows it : pantheism is the open secret of Ger- 
 many. We have, in fact, outgrown deism. We are free, 
 and we want no thundering tyrants ; we have reached 
 majority and can dispense with paternal care. Neither 
 are we the work of a great mechanician. Deism is a 
 religion for slaves, for children, for Genevese, for watch- 
 makers. 
 
 Pantheism is the occult religion of Germany, and this 
 result was foreseen by those German writers who, fifty 
 years ago, let loose their zealotry against Spinoza. The 
 most furious of these adversaries of Spinoza was P. H. 
 Jacobi, who is occasionally honoured by being ranked 
 among German philosophers. He was but a gossiping old 
 woman, disguised in the mantle of philosophy, who, having 
 insinuated himself amongst philosophers, began by whin- 
 
8o RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 ing to them about his affection and his sensibility, and 
 ended by inveighing against reason. His perpetual refrain 
 was, that philosophy, knowledge acquired by reason, was 
 a vain illusion; that reason herself knew not whither she 
 led ; that she but conducted mankind into a dark labyrinth 
 of error and contradiction ; and that faith alone was their 
 sure guide. Mole that he was, he saw not that reason, 
 like the eternal sun, whilst pursuing in the heavens an 
 appointed course, illumines its path with its own rays. 
 Nothing can compare with the fanatical hatred of the 
 little Jacobi towards the great Spinoza. 
 
 It is curious to observe how the most opposite parties 
 arrayed themselves against Spinoza. The aspect of this 
 army of adversaries is highly amusing. Near a swarm of 
 black and white Capuchins bearing cross and censer, 
 marches the phalanx of the Encyclopaedists, who also 
 take aim at this “ daring thinker ” ( jpenscur temeraire) ; 
 by the side of the Eabbi of the synagogue of Amsterdam, 
 who sounds the attack with the sacred buck’s-horn, ad- 
 vances Arouet de Yoltaire playing obligato on the shrill 
 pipe of irony for the benefit of deism ; in the midst 
 whimpers the old woman Jacobi, the sutler of this army 
 of the faith. 
 
 Let us escape as quickly as possible from this charivari. 
 Beturning from our pantheistic excursion we come back 
 to the Leibnitzian philosophy, of whose ulterior destiny in 
 Germany we have now to speak. 
 
 In writing his works, which are familiar to you, 
 Leibnitz employed partly the Latin and partly the French 
 language. Christian Wolf is the name of the admirable 
 man who not only systematically taught the ideas of 
 Leibnitz, but did so in the German language. His real 
 merit consists not in having formulated Leibnitzian ideas in 
 a solid system, still less does it consist in rendering them 
 accessible to a wider public by translation into German : 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 81 
 
 his special merit lies in having incited us to philosophise 
 in our mother-tongue. Till Luther’s time we were unable 
 to treat of theology except in Latin ; till the time of Wolf 
 we were obliged to philosophise in that language. The 
 example of a few rare scholars, who had previously 
 essayed to teach such subjects in German, led to no re- 
 sult. Yet the literary historian must accord to these few 
 a special eulogy. In particular, we recall John Tauler, 7 a 
 Dominican monk, who was born at the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century on the banks of the Ehine, and died 
 at Strasburg in 1361. He was a pious man, one of that 
 body of mystics whom I have designated the Platonic 
 party of the Middle Ages. In the last years of his life 
 this man, renouncing all pride of learning, was not ashamed 
 to preach in the humble language of the people ; and these 
 sermons, which he committed to writing, as well as German 
 translations of some of his former homilies in Latin, are 
 to be reckoned amongst the monuments of the German 
 language. For this language already proved itself not 
 only appropriate for metaphysical investigations, but also 
 far better adapted for this purpose than Latin. This 
 latter, the language of the Eomans, can never belie its 
 origin. It is a language of command for generals ; a 
 language of decree for administrators; an attorney lan- 
 guage for usurers; a lapidary speech for the stone-hard 
 Eoman people. It became the appropriate language of 
 Materialism. Though Christianity, with true Christian 
 patience, tormented itself for more than a thousand years 
 with the attempt to spiritualise this tongue, its efforts 
 remained fruitless ; and when John Tauler sought to 
 fathom the awful abysses of thought, and his heart over- 
 flowed with religious emotion, he was impelled to speak 
 German. His speech is like a mountain spring that wells 
 forth from the granite rock, marvellously impregnated 
 with strange aroma and mysterious metallic virtues. It 
 
82 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 was not, however, till recent times that the rare appro- 
 priateness of German for philosophic purposes became 
 fully apparent. In no other language than in our dear 
 German mother-tongue could Nature have revealed her 
 most intimate secret. Only on the robust oak can the 
 sacred mistletoe thrive. 
 
 This would indeed be the fitting place to speak of 
 Paracelsus, or, as he styled himself, Aureolus Theophrastus 
 Paracelsus Bombastus of Hohenheim; for he also wrote 
 chiefly in German. But I shall have occasion to speak 
 of him later on from a still more important standpoint. 
 His philosophy was what in our day we call the Philo- 
 sophy of Nature ; and this doctrine of a nature animated 
 by ideas, so mysteriously according with the spirit of 
 German thought, would have taken root amongst us in 
 the time of Paracelsus, had not the lifeless and mecha- 
 nical theories of the Cartesians, through foreign influence, 
 usurped universal authority. Paracelsus was a great 
 charlatan, always tricked himself out in scarlet coat and 
 breeches, red stockings and a red hat, and asserted that 
 he had power to create little men, homunculi ; at any rate 
 he stood on the most familiar footing with the invisible 
 beings that people the various elements. Yet he was also 
 one of the profoundest of naturalists, who, with an ardour 
 for investigation altogether German, comprehended pre- 
 Christian popular beliefs, German pantheism, and what 
 he did not know he very accurately divined. 
 
 Of Jacob Bohme I ought also to say something. He 
 too applied the German language to philosophical demon- 
 strations, for which he has been much praised. But I 
 have never yet been able to bring myself to read his 
 works. I do not like being made a fool of. I have, 
 in fact, a suspicion that the panegyrists of this mystic 
 have a desire to mystify the public. As regards the 
 nature of his speculations, Saint Martin has given you a 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 83 
 
 taste in Trench. In England also his works have been 
 translated. Charles I. had so high an opinion of this 
 theosophical shoemaker that he sent expressly a man of 
 learning to Gorlitz in order to study him. This learned 
 man was more fortunate than his royal master ; for whilst 
 the latter lost his head at Whitehall under Cromwell’s axe, 
 the former merely lost his reason at Gorlitz through the 
 theosophy of Jacob Bohme . 8 
 
 As I have said, Christian Wolf first successfully applied 
 the German language to philosophy. His least merit was 
 the reducing to a system and the popularising of Leib- 
 nitzian ideas. In both of these respects he has incurred 
 the gravest censure, a censure that must not be passed 
 over in silence. His systematising was merely a deceptive 
 appearance and the most important element of the philo- 
 sophy of Leibnitz — the best part of the theory of monads 
 — was sacrificed to this appearance. Leibnitz had, it 
 is true, left behind him no systematic edifice, only the 
 necessary ideas towards its construction. It needed the 
 might of a giant to fit together the colossal blocks and 
 columns that a giant had raised from the deep marble 
 quarries of thought and had hewn into symmetrical form. 
 The result might have been a magnificent temple ; but 
 Christian Wolf was far too short of stature, and was 
 unable to possess himself of more than a portion of the 
 materials, with which he patched together a miserable 
 tabernacle of deism. Wolf’s intellect was more encyclo- 
 paedic than systematic ; he could not comprehend the 
 unity of a doctrine except as a completed whole. He was 
 content with the construction of a cabinet in which the 
 compartments were arranged in the most orderly manner, 
 conveniently filled, and legibly ticketed. In this way he 
 has given us an Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences. 
 As descended from Descartes through Leibnitz, it is easy 
 to understand that he inherited from his grandfather 
 
84 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 the mathematical form of demonstration. I have already 
 reprobated this mathematical form in Spinoza. In the 
 hands of Wolf it became a source of great mischief ; 
 amongst his disciples it degenerated into insufferable 
 methodising and a ludicrous mania for demonstrating 
 everything in mathematical fashion. Thus arose the so- 
 called dogmatism of Wolf. All profound investigation 
 ceased and was replaced by wearisome zeal for perspi- 
 cuity; the philosophy of Wolf became more and more 
 aqueous and finally inundated all Germany. The traces 
 of this deluge are visible even down to our own day, and 
 here and there on our most sterile academical summits 
 may still be found old fossils of the Wolfian school. 
 
 Christian Wolf was born at Breslau in 1679, and died 
 at Halle in 1754. His intellectual supremacy in German 
 lasted during more than half a century. His relation to 
 German theologians deserves special attention, and a notice 
 of it forms the complement to our sketch of the fate of 
 Lutheranism. 
 
 Ho field in the whole history of the Church is more 
 perplexing than the quarrels of Protestant theologians 
 since the Thirty Years’ War. They can only be compared 
 with the puerile wranglings of the Byzantines. Yet the 
 latter were less wearisome, for behind them were con- 
 cealed political interests and court intrigues, whereas 
 Protestant polemics were traceable, for the most part, 
 to the pedantry of narrow-minded dons and freshmen. 
 The universities, especially Tubingen, Wittenberg, Leipzic, 
 and Halle, are the arenas of these theological combats. 
 The two parties, whom we have seen contending in Catholic 
 costume throughout the entire Middle Ages — the Platonists 
 and the Aristotelians — have merely changed their mode 
 of dress, and continue to wrangle as before. These are 
 the pietists and the orthodox, of whom I have already 
 spoken, and whom I designated as mystics without imagi- 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 8 5 
 
 nation and as dogmatists without intelligence. Philipp 
 Jakob Spener* was the Scotus Erigena of Protestantism; 
 and as the latter, by his translation of the legendary 
 Dionysius the Areopagite, became the founder of Catholic 
 mysticism, the former by his Conventicles for Edification, 
 Collegia pietatis, from which, perhaps, the name “ Pietists” 
 still remains amongst his followers, founded Protestant piet- 
 ism. He was a godly man, — reverence be to his memory. 
 A Berlin Pietist, E. Horn, has written an excellent bio- 
 graphy of him. The life of Spener was an incessant martyr- 
 dom for the Christian idea. In this respect he was pre- 
 eminent among his contemporaries. He enforced the 
 merits of godliness and good works ; he was a preacher of 
 the spirit rather than of the word. His homilies are very 
 laudable, considering his time ; for, all theology, as taught 
 in the universities just mentioned, consisted in mere 
 strait-laced dogmatism and hair-splitting polemic : exe- 
 gesis and the study of Church history were completely 
 ignored. 
 
 One of Spener’s pupils, Hermann Franke, began to 
 lecture at Leipzic after the example and method of his 
 teacher. He read in German, a merit we are always 
 ready to acknowledge with gratitude. The approbation 
 with which these lectures were received excited the envy 
 of his colleagues, and thus caused much bitterness in the 
 life of our poor Pietist. Obliged to quit the field, he 
 betook himself to Halle, where he taught Christianity by 
 word and deed. His memory is there imperishable, for 
 he was the founder of the Orphan Institute of Halle. The 
 university of Halle soon became the headquarters of the 
 
 * In all the German editions, manner in which his works were 
 and even in the latest edition of the printed ; and his letters to Campe, 
 French version, the founder of the the publisher, are full of reproaches 
 Pietists is erroneously called Jo- on the subject. Collegia pietatis is 
 hannes Spener. Heine had frequent transformed in all the editions into 
 occasion to complain of the careless Colloquia pietatis . — Tb. 
 
86 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Pi'etists, who were called “ the Sect of the Orphanage ” 
 (“ Waisenhauspartei”). Let it be said, in passing, that 
 this sect flourishes there till the present day; Halle is 
 still the mole-hill of the Pietists, whose quarrels with 
 the rationalist Protestants created but a few years ago 
 a scandal that became noised abroad throughout the 
 whole of Germany. Happy Frenchmen, who have heard 
 nothing of all this ! You have remained ignorant of even 
 the existence of those tattling evangelical journals in 
 which the pious fishwives of the Protestant Church so 
 lustily abused one another. Happy Frenchmen, who can 
 form no idea of the malice, the pettiness, the bitterness 
 with which our evangelical clergy can traduce one another ! 
 You know that I am no partisan of Catholicism. In 
 the present state of my religious convictions there still 
 survives, not indeed the dogmatism, but the spirit of Pro- 
 testantism .* I still retain, therefore, my partiality for the 
 Protestant Church ; and yet must I honestly confess that 
 nowhere in the annals of the Papacy have I discovered 
 anything so contemptible as might be found in “The 
 Berlin Evangelical Church Record ” during the progress 
 of this quarrel. The most dastardly knavery of the monks, 
 the meanest intrigues of the cloister, are noble and gene- 
 rous compared to the Christian exploits of our pietist and 
 orthodox Protestants during their combat with the hated 
 Rationalists. You Frenchmen have no idea of the hatred 
 
 * In the French version the fol- 
 lowing is substituted for this sen- 
 tence : — “ Protestantism was for me 
 more than a religion, it was a mis- 
 sion ; and for fourteen years I have 
 been fighting in its interests against 
 the machinations of the German 
 Jesuits. My sympathy for dogma 
 has, it is true, of late become ex- 
 tinguished, and I have frankly de- 
 clared in my writings that my whole 
 
 Protestantism consists in the fact 
 that I was inscribed as an evangelical 
 Christian in the church registers of 
 the Lutheran communion. But a 
 secret predilection for the cause in 
 which we formerly fought and suf- 
 fered always continues to nestle in 
 our hearts, and my present religious 
 convictions are still animated by the 
 spirit of Protestantism.” — T r. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 87 
 
 that is displayed on such occasions ; for the Germans are 
 more vindictive than the peoples of Latin origin. The 
 reason is, they are idealists even in their hatred. We 
 do not hate each other as you French do about outward 
 things, because of wounded vanity, on account of an 
 epigram, or of an unreturned visiting-card ; no, we hate 
 in our enemies the deepest, most vital possession they 
 have, their thought. As in your love so in your hatred, 
 you French are hasty, superficial. We Germans hate 
 thoroughly, lastingly. Too honest, perhaps too unskilful, 
 to revenge ourselves by speedy perfidy, we hate till our 
 last breath. “ I have had experience, sir, of this German 
 tranquillity,” said a lady to me not long ago, regarding me 
 at the same time with a look of open-eyed incredulity and 
 horror; “ I know that in your language you employ the same 
 word for begging pardon and for poisoning.” And indeed 
 she was right, the word vergeien has this twofold meaning. 
 
 It was, if I mistake not, the orthodox of Halle who, in 
 their disputes with the Pietist refugees, called to their 
 assistance the philosophy of Wolf; for religion when it 
 can no longer burn us comes to beg from us an alms. Yet 
 all our gifts profit it but little. The mantle of mathe- 
 matical demonstration in which Wolf affectionately in- 
 vested poor Religion fitted her so badly that she felt more 
 straitened than before, and made herself very ridiculous 
 through her discomfort. Weak seams gave way at all 
 points. Original sin especially showed itself in its most 
 glaring nakedness. Ho logical fig-leaf could avail it 
 anything. Christian- Lutheran original sin and Leibnitz- 
 Wolfian optimism are incompatible. French persiflage, at 
 the expense of optimism, was therefore the least displeas- 
 ing to our theologians. Voltaire’s wit came to the aid of 
 original sin, but the German Pangloss lost much by the 
 overthrow of optimism, and he searched long for a doc- 
 trine equally consoling until the Hegelian axiom, “ All 
 
88 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 that is, is reasonable ! ” afforded him some slight com- 
 pensation. 
 
 From the moment that a religion solicits the aid of 
 philosophy its ruin is inevitable. In the attempt at 
 defence it prates itself into destruction. Eeligion, like 
 every absolutism, must not seek to justify itself. Prome- 
 theus is bound to the rock by a silent force. Yea, iEschylus 
 permits not personified power to utter a single word. It 
 must remain mute. The moment that a religion ventures 
 to print a catechism supported by arguments, the moment 
 that a political absolutism publishes an official news- 
 paper, both are near their end. But therein consists our 
 triumph : we have brought our adversaries to speech, and 
 they must reckon with us. 
 
 It is certainly indisputable that religious, as well as 
 political, absolutism has found powerful organs of expres- 
 sions. Still do not let this alarm us. If the word lives, 
 it may be carried by dwarfs; if it is dead, no giant can 
 hold it upright. 
 
 Now, as I have just said, since Eeligion took to seeking 
 aid from philosophy, German scholars, besides the pro- 
 viding of new garments, have made all sorts of experi- 
 ments with her. They conceived the idea of bestowing 
 on her a new youth, and they attempted this somewhat 
 after the manner of Medea with the old king iEson. 
 First a vein was opened and all superstitious blood 
 allowed to trickle slowly out. To speak without meta- 
 phor, an endeavour was made to empty Christianity of all 
 historical content, and thus leave nothing but morality. 
 By this process Christianity was reduced to pure deism. 
 Christ ceased to be co-regent with God ; he was in a sense 
 mediatised, and only as a private person did becoming 
 reverence continue to be paid him. His moral character 
 was extolled beyond measure, nor could eulogy strong 
 enough be found to express what an excellent man he 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 89 
 
 must have been. As regards the miracles he wrought, 
 they were either explained according to physical theories, 
 or people made as little to do as possible about them. 
 Miracles, said some, were necessary in those superstitious 
 times, and a sensible man having a truth of any kind 
 to proclaim, made use of miracles as an advertisement. 
 Those theologians that sought entirely to eliminate the 
 historical element from Christianity were called Ration- 
 alists. and upon them was poured out the wrath alike of 
 Pietists and of the Orthodox. These sects are now less 
 hostile to one another, and frequently even become con- 
 federates. What Christian love could not do was effected 
 by a common hatred — hatred towards the Ptationalists. 
 
 This tendency in Protestant theology * began with the 
 peaceful Semler, whom you do not know, rose to a dis- 
 quieting height with the clear-sighted Teller, whom also 
 you do not know, and reached its culminating point with 
 the shallow-brained Bahrdt, in the loss of whose acquaint- 
 ance you have nothing to regret. The strongest impetus 
 came from Berlin, where ruled Frederick the Great, and 
 bookseller Nicolai. 
 
 As regards the first — crowned Materialism — you are 
 sufficiently informed. You know that he composed 
 French verses, played very well on the flute, won the 
 battle of Rossbach, was a prodigious snuffer, and believed 
 in nothing but cannon. Some of you have doubtless 
 visited Sans-Souci, and the old pensioner who attends at 
 the castle has pointed out to you in the library the French 
 novels which Frederick when crown prince used to read in 
 church, and which he caused to be bound in black morocco 
 in order that his stern father might suppose him to be 
 reading the Lutheran hymnal. Ye know him, that royal 
 worldly-wise-man, whom you have named the Solomon 
 of the North. France was the Ophir of this northern 
 
 * The French version has, “ This reform of Protestant theology.”— T r. 
 
90 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Solomon, whence he obtained his poets and philosophers, 
 for whom he cherished great favour, just like the Solomon 
 of the South, who, as we read in the tenth chapter of the 
 First Book of Kings, got his friend Hiram to bring from 
 Ophir whole shiploads of gold and silver, ivory, poets, and 
 philosophers.* This preference for foreign talent certainly 
 hindered Frederick the Great from gaining any consider- 
 able influence over the German spirit. On the contrary, 
 he insulted and wounded German national feeling. The 
 contempt shown by him for our literature cannot but 
 offend us the descendants of these writers. Except old 
 Gellert none of them had reason to enjoy any mark of 
 Frederick’s most gracious favour. Gellert’s interview 
 with him is remarkable. 
 
 But if Frederick the Great jeered at us without offer- 
 ing to protect us, so much the more did we receive the 
 protection of bookseller Nicolai, without having on that 
 account any scruple about scoffing at him. This man 
 was during his whole life incessantly active for the 
 welfare of his country. He spared neither money nor 
 pains where he hoped to further a good cause ; and yet 
 never has any one in Germany been so cruelly, so unre- 
 lentingly, so utterly ridiculed as this same man. Although 
 we, the later-horn, know right well that old Nicolai, the 
 friend of enlightenment, was in the main in the right ; 
 though we know that it was chiefly our own enemies, the 
 Obscurantists, that quizzed him to death, yet we cannot 
 think of him with perfectly grave faces. Old Nicolai 
 tried to do in Germany what the French philosophers had 
 done in France : he endeavoured to destroy the past in 
 
 * In the French version Heine elephantorum, et simias et pavos.” 
 here quotes the Vulgate: “ Classis For the “ apes and peacocks,” sought 
 regis per mare cum classe Hiram after by the wise king, Heine sub- 
 semel per tres annos ibat, deferens stitutes (French) “poets and philo- 
 inde aurum et argentum, et dentes sophers.” — T r. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 91 
 
 the spirit of the people ; a praiseworthy preparatory task, 
 without which no radical revolution is possible. But in 
 vain ; he was not robust enough for such a labour. The 
 old ruins still stood too securely, and the phantom of the 
 past arose out of them, and mocked his efforts ; then, 
 losing his temper, he struck blindly at them, and the spec- 
 tators laughed as the bats whizzed about his ears and got 
 entangled in his powdered wig. Sometimes it happened 
 that he mistook windmills for giants, and valiantly 
 attacked them. But it fared worse with him when he 
 mistook real giants for windmills, — a Wolfgang Goethe for 
 example. He wrote a satire on Werther in which he 
 utterly misapprehended its author’s intentions. Yet, after 
 all, he was right in the main. If he did not exactly 
 understand Goethe’s real object in Werther, he at least 
 comprehended very clearly the tendency of that work — 
 the effeminate dreaminess, the barren sentimentality it 
 brought into vogue, which were in complete contradic- 
 tion to every rational feeling of which we stood in need. 
 Here Nicolai was entirely at one with Lessing, who wrote 
 to a friend the following estimate of Werther : — 
 
 “ In order that such an impassioned production may 
 not be the means of producing more evil than good, do 
 you not think it should have been provided with a short 
 but very chilling epilogue, a few hints as to the causes 
 that produced in Werther such a strange character, a 
 contrast with some other young man on whom nature had 
 bestowed a like temperament but who has power to over- 
 rule it ? Do you suppose that a Greek or Boman youth 
 would ever have killed himself in such a manner and 
 from the same cause ? Assuredly not. The latter knew 
 how to protect themselves in quite a different fashion 
 from the extravagancies of love. It was reserved for 
 Christianity, which can so beautifully transform a phy- 
 sical necessity into a spiritual perfection, to give birth to 
 
92 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 eccentricities at once so mean and so great, so con- 
 temptible and so estimable. And so, dear Goethe, let ns 
 have a short concluding chapter, and the more cynical 
 the better.” 
 
 The worthy Nicolai has actually given us an edition of 
 Werther amended in accordance with this suggestion. In 
 this version the hero does not commit suicide, but only 
 smudges himself with chicken blood ; for the pistol, 
 instead of being charged with lead, is loaded with nothing 
 more deadly than a blood-clot. Werther renders himself 
 ridiculous, continues to live, marries Charlotte, in short, 
 ends even more tragically than in Goethe’s original. 
 
 “The Universal German Library” was the name of the 
 journal founded by Nicolai, wherein "he and his friends 
 did battle with superstition, the Jesuits, the court lackeys, 
 &c. It cannot be denied that many a blow aimed at 
 superstition unfortunately fell on poetry. It was thus, 
 for example, that Nicolai made war on the nascent en- 
 thusiasm for old German popular poetry, and in the main 
 here again he was right ; for these songs, with all possible 
 excellences, contained many reminiscences that were 
 unseasonable ; these old strains, the ranz des vaches of the 
 Middle Ages, had power to entice hack the sensibilities of 
 people to the cowsheds of the past. Like Ulysses, he 
 tried to stop the ears of his companions that they might 
 not hear the song of the Syrens, heedless whether hence- 
 forth they remained deaf also to the innocent warbling of 
 the nightingale. In order radically to clear the soil of 
 the present from old wxeds, this practical man concerned 
 himself little whether with the weeds he also uprooted 
 the flowers. But the party of the flowers and the night- 
 ingales, with all that belonged to that party, beauty, grace, 
 wit, and pleasantry, indignantly rose up against him, and 
 poor Nicolai had to succumb. 
 
 In our day circumstances in Germany are changed, and 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 93 
 
 the party of the flowers and the nightingales is intimately 
 allied with the revolution. The future belongs to us, and 
 already the rosy morn of victory begins to dawn. If ever 
 this beautiful day should shed its light over the whole 
 Fatherland, then shall we call to mind the dead; we shall 
 think of thee too, old Nicolai, poor martyr of reason ! We 
 shall bear thy ashes to the German pantheon in the midst 
 of a triumphant procession accompanied by a choir of 
 music, and amongst the wind instruments shall certainly 
 be no shrill fife ; we shall lay upon thy bier a befitting 
 crown of laurel, and as we perform this act we shall do 
 our utmost not to smile. 
 
 As it is my desire to give an idea of the philosophic and 
 religious condition of those times, I must here refer to the 
 thinkers who laboured at Berlin in more or less intimate 
 association with Nicolai, and who occupied a sort of mean 
 between philosophy and polite literature. They had no 
 special system, only a special tendency. They resembled 
 the English moralists as to their style and in their first 
 principles. They wrote without observing strict scientific 
 form ; and moral consciousness was the sole origin of their 
 knowledge. Their tendency is precisely that which we 
 find in the French philanthropists. In religion they are 
 rationalists, in politics cosmopolitans ; in morals they are 
 men, noble and virtuous men, severe towards themselves, 
 indulgent towards others. In respect of talent, Mendels- 
 sohn, Sulzer, Abt, Moritz, Garve, Engel, and Biester may 
 be named as the most distinguished amongst them. I 
 have a peculiar liking for Moritz ; he did good service in 
 experimental psychology; his artlessness was charming, 
 though but little appreciated by his friends ; his memoirs 
 form one of the most remarkable landmarks of the time. 
 Mendelssohn,* however, has a social significance far be- 
 
 * For what is by far the best cessible to English readers, we are 
 account of Moses Mendelssohn ac- indebted to “ German Life and Lite- 
 
94 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 yond all the others. He was the reformer of the German 
 Israelites, his co-religionists; he destroyed the authority 
 of the Talmud; he founded pure Mosaism. This man, 
 whom his contemporaries called the German Socrates, and 
 whom they so reverently admired for his nobility of soul 
 and force of intellect, was the son of a poor sacristan of 
 the synagogue at Dessau. In addition to this misfortune 
 of birth, Providence sent him into the world hunchbacked, 
 as if to teach the rabble in a striking manner that men are 
 to be judged, not by their external appearance, but by 
 their intrinsic worth. Or, did Providence allot him a 
 hunchback in order that he might ascribe many an 
 insult of the rabble to a misfortune for which a wise 
 man readily consoles himself ? 
 
 As Luther had overthrown the Papacy, so Mendelssohn 
 overthrew the Talmud; and he did so after the same 
 fashion, namely, by rejecting tradition, by declaring the 
 Bible to be the source of religion, and by translating the 
 most important part of it. By these means he shattered 
 Judaic, as Luther had shattered Christian, Catholicism ; 
 for the Talmud is, in fact, the Catholicism of the Jews. 
 It is a Gothic cathedral, overladen no doubt with childish 
 and superfluous ornament, yet awakening our astonish- 
 ment by its heaven- aspiring, gigantic proportions. It 
 is a hierarchy of religious laws, often relating to the 
 most fanciful and ridiculous subtilties, but so ingeniously 
 superimposed and subordinated, each part sustaining and 
 supporting another, and so terribly consistent as to form 
 an awe-inspiring, colossal whole. 
 
 Christian Catholicism once overthrown, the Catholicism 
 
 rature in a Series of Biographical besides accurate biography, con- 
 Studies,” by Alexander Hay Japp, tains much sound criticism, and the 
 LL.D. Marshall, Japp, & Co., Lon- author’s enthusiasm for his subject 
 don. No better introduction to the never betrays him into mere hero- 
 study of modern German literature worship. — T b. 
 could be desired. Dr. Japp’s book, 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 95 
 
 of the Jews, the Talmud, must also succumb : for the 
 Talmud had henceforth lost its significance; it served 
 merely as a bulwark against Rome, and it enabled the 
 Jews to offer as heroic a resistance to Christian Rome 
 as formerly they had offered to Pagan Rome. And they 
 have not only resisted ; they have been victorious. The 
 poor Rabbi of Nazareth over whose dying head the Pagan 
 Roman inscribed the scoffing words, “King of the Jews,” 
 even this King of the Jews in mockery, thorn-crowned 
 and clad in ironical purple, became at last the God of 
 the Romans, and before him they had to bend the knee ! 
 As heathen Rome had been, so Christian Rome was van- 
 quished and has even become tributary. If you have a 
 mind, dear reader, to betake yourself on one of the first days 
 of the quarter to the Rue Laffitte, No. 15, you will there 
 see a lumbering carriage draw up before the high door- 
 way, and from it steps down a stout man. He mounts a 
 staircase leading to a small room in which is seated a 
 younger fair-haired man, though he is really older than 
 he looks — a man with the distinguished, negligent air of 
 a grand seigneur, underlying which, however, there is 
 something so solid, so positive, so absolute, that he might 
 be thought to have all the world’s wealth in his pocket. 
 And truly he has all the world’s wealth in his pocket, 
 for his name is Mr. James Rothschild, and the stout man 
 is Monsignor Grimbaldi, legate of his holiness the Pope, 
 in whose name he brings the interest on the Roman loan, 
 the tribute of Rome. 
 
 Of what use, now, the Talmud ? 
 
 Moses Mendelssohn, then, deserves the highest praise 
 for having destroyed in Germany, at any rate, Jewish 
 Catholicism ; for what is superfluous is injurious. But in 
 rejecting tradition he endeavoured to maintain as a reli- 
 gious duty the Mosaic ceremonial law. Was this timidity 
 or was it prudence? Was it the sorrowful constraint of 
 
96 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 lingering affection that forbade his laying destructive 
 hands on objects that had been the most sacred in the 
 eyes of his forefathers, and for which so much blood and 
 so many martyr tears had flowed ? I do not believe it. 
 Like the sovereigns of material kingdoms, the sovereigns 
 of the spirit must harden their hearts against family affec- 
 tions; and on the throne of thought men dare not give 
 way to tender sensibilities. I am much rather of opinion 
 therefore that Moses Mendelssohn saw in pure Mosaism 
 an institution that might serve as a last intrenchment of 
 deism ; for deism was his inmost faith, his most profound 
 conviction. When his friend Lessing died and was 
 accused of Spinozism, he defended him with the most 
 anxious zeal, and fretted himself to death over the accu- 
 sation. 
 
 I have already, for the second time, mentioned a name 
 that no German can pronounce without waking in his 
 bosom an echo more or less loud. Since Luther, Germany 
 has produced no greater, no better man than Gotthold 
 Ephraim Lessing. These two men are our pride and our 
 joy. Amidst the gloom of this present time we look 
 upwards towards these consoling figures, and they beckon 
 to us with signs of glorious promise. Yea, the third man 
 will also come, who will complete what Luther began, 
 what Lessing carried forward, and of whom the German 
 Eatherland has such dire need, the third emancipator! 
 I see already the gleam of his golden armour shining 
 through his imperial purple mantle, like the sun through 
 the ruddy dawn ! 
 
 Like Luther’s, Lessing’s work consisted not merely in 
 positive achievement, but in rousing to its very depths 
 the German nation, and in giving a beneficial impulse 
 to intellectual movement by his criticism and by his 
 polemic. Lessing was the living criticism of his time, 
 and his whole life was a polemic. His criticism made 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 97 
 
 itself felt throughout the whole range of thought and of 
 feeling — in religion, in science, in art ; his polemic over- 
 came every adversary and waxed stronger with every 
 victory. As he himself avowed, conflict was necessary to 
 his mental development. He resembled the legendary 
 Norman, who inherited the talents, the skill, and the vigour 
 of the enemies slain by him in combat, and thus at last 
 became endowed with every possible advantage and excel- 
 lence. We may well suppose that such an unwearied 
 champion caused no small stir in Germany, in that tran- 
 quil Germany where, in those days, an even greater Sabbath 
 stillness reigned than in our time. The majority were 
 struck dumb by such literary daring. But his hardihood 
 stood Lessing in good stead ; for to dare is the secret of 
 success in literature as well as in revolution and in 
 love. Lessing’s sword inspired terror in every breast ; no 
 head was secure from its strokes. Yea, he struck off many 
 a skull out of pure wantonness, and then was malicious 
 enough to pick it up again and to show the public that it 
 was quite empty. Him whom he could not reach with 
 the sword of his logic he slew with the arrows of his wit. 
 Friends admired the gay feathers with which his arrows 
 were winged ; enemies felt their points rankling in their 
 breasts. Lessing’s wit had nothing in common with that 
 playfulness, that gaiety, those bounding sallies that French- 
 men so well know. His wit was no little French spaniel 
 chasing its own shadow ; it was more like a great German 
 tomcat playing with a mouse before strangling it. 
 
 Polemic was truly Lessing’s delight, and therefore he 
 never considered very attentively whether his opponent 
 was worthy of him. Thus it comes that by his polemic 
 many a name has been snatched from well-merited obli- 
 vion. He has enveloped with- the most spiritual irony, 
 with the most delicious humour, not a few paltry scribblers, 
 who are preserved for all future time in Lessing’s works, 
 
 G 
 
98 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 like insects embedded in a piece of amber. In the act of 
 putting bis adversaries to death he has bestowed on them 
 immortality. Who amongst us would ever have heard 
 anything of that Klotz on whom Lessing lavished so much 
 derision and acumen ? The granite blocks that he hurled 
 down upon this miserable antiquary, and with which he 
 crushed him to atoms, form an indestructible monument 
 to the object of his satire. 
 
 It is remarkable that this man, the most redoubtable 
 wit in Germany, was also our most honest man. There is 
 nothing comparable to his love of truth. He would not 
 grant the slightest concession to a lie, even though by 
 doing so, after the manner of the wise men of the world, 
 he might promote the triumph of truth. He dared do 
 everything for the truth except lie. Whoever, he once 
 said, supposes that he may bring truth to market under 
 all sorts of artifices and disguises, may indeed be the 
 pander, but he has never been the lover, of truth. 
 
 The admirable saying of Buffon, “ The style is the man 
 himself,” finds in Lessing its best exemplification. His 
 manner of writing is, like his character, truthful, firm, 
 without ornament, beautiful and imposing by reason of 
 inherent strength. His style is altogether like that of 
 Boman architecture ; it combines the greatest solidity with 
 greatest simplicity ; the sentences rest one upon another 
 like blocks of square-hewn masonry. As for the latter the 
 law of gravity, so in Lessing’s writings logical sequence, 
 is the invisible binding power. In his prose, therefore, 
 there are but few of those redundancies and artificial 
 turns of expression which we employ as mortar in the 
 construction of our periods. Still less do we find in it 
 any of those caryatides of thought which you French call 
 la belle phrase. 
 
 That such a man as Lessing could never be happy you will 
 readily understand. Even though he had not loved truth, 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 99 
 
 though he had not obstinately defended it on all occasions, 
 he would still have been unhappy, for he was a genius. 
 Men will forgive you everything, said a poet lately, with 
 a sigh : they will forgive you wealth, they will forgive 
 you noble birth, they will forgive you a handsome form, 
 they will even admit that you are talented ; but they are 
 inexorable in their enmity towards genius. And alas ! 
 even though it encounter no malignant enemy from with- 
 out, genius will be sure to find within itself an enemy 
 ready to bring calamity upon it. This is why the history 
 of great men is always a martyrology ; when they are not 
 sufferers for the great human race, they suffer for their own 
 greatness, for the grand manner of their being, for their 
 hatred of philistinism, for the discomfort they feel amidst 
 the pretentious commonplaces, the mean trivialities of their 
 surroundings — a discomfort that readily leads them to 
 extravagances, to the playhouse, for example, or even to 
 the gambling-house, as happened to poor Lessing. 
 
 But evil rumour could find no other reproach to lay to 
 his charge than this, and all we learn from his biography 
 on the subject is, that pretty actresses seemed to him more 
 amusing than Hamburg clergymen, and that mute cards 
 afforded him better entertainment than the prating of 
 Wolfian philosophers. 
 
 It is heartrending to read in his biography how fate 
 denied this man every source of joy, and would not even 
 permit him to find solace in the peace of family life at the 
 close of his daily conflicts. Once only did fortune appear 
 desirous of smiling on him by bestowing on him a beloved 
 wife and a child. Yet this joy was but as the sunbeam 
 that gilds the wing of a bird in passing flight. Even as 
 quickly did it disappear. His wife died from the effects 
 of her confinement, and his child immediately after its 
 birth. Of his child he wrote to a friend those words of 
 bitter irony : — 
 
ioo RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 “ My joy was but brief, and I lost him with such regret, 
 this son ! Tor he showed so much intelligence — so much 
 intelligence ! Do not suppose that my few hours of 
 paternity had already made me an ape of a father. I 
 know what I say. Did it not show intelligence on his 
 part that they had to bring him into the world by means 
 of iron forceps, and that he so quickly perceived what 
 a troublous world it is? Was it not intelligence that 
 caused him to seize the first opportunity of making his 
 escape out of it again ? I too wanted for once to be as 
 highly favoured as other men; but I have come badly 
 out of it.” 
 
 There was one misfortune about which Lessing never 
 spoke to his friends : this was his terrible isolation, his 
 intellectual solitariness. A few of his contemporaries 
 loved him ; none understood him. Mendelssohn, his 
 dearest friend, defended him with zeal against the charge 
 of Spinozism. Defence and zeal were as ridiculous as 
 they were superfluous. Eest in peace in thy grave, old 
 Moses ! Thy Lessing was indeed on the highroad to- 
 wards that dreadful heresy, that pitiful misfortune called 
 Spinozism ; but the Almighty, the Lather in heaven, saved 
 him through death at the right moment. Eest in peace ! 
 thy Lessing was no Spinozist, as calumny asserted; he 
 died a good deist, like thyself, and Nicolai, and Teller, 
 and “ The Universal German Library ” ! 
 
 Lessing was but the prophet pointing out the way from 
 the second to the third Testament. I have called him the 
 continuator of Luther, and it is specially in this relation 
 that I have now to speak of him. Of his importance as 
 influencing German art I shall afterwards deal. In art, 
 not merely by his criticism but also by his example, he 
 effected a wholesome reform, and this side of his activity 
 is the one usually illustrated and brought into prominence. 
 We, however, regard him from another standpoint, and his 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY, ioi 
 
 philosophical and theological contests are of more import- 
 ance to us than his dramaturgy and his dramas. Yet the 
 latter, like all his writings, have a social significance, and 
 “ Nathan the Wise ” is in reality not only a good comedy 
 but also a philosophico-theological treatise in favour of 
 pure deism. Art was for Lessing also a tribune, and when 
 thrust from the pulpit or driven from the philosopher’s 
 chair, he sprang upon the boards of the theatre and spoke 
 there in still plainer language, and gained a still more 
 numerous audience. 
 
 I say that Lessing continued the work of Luther. After 
 Luther had emancipated us from the power of tradition 
 and set up the Bible as the only source of Christianity, 
 there arose a frigid literalism, and the letter of the Bible 
 became as great a tyranny as tradition had formerly been. 
 From this tyranny of the letter Lessing was our great 
 liberator. As Luther was certainly not alone in the 
 combat with tradition, so Lessing was not indeed the only, 
 though by far the most valiant, combatant of the letter. 
 It is in this conflict that his battle-cry resounds most 
 loudly; it is here that he wields his sword with most 
 vigorous delight, and it is a sword that flashes and slays. 
 But it is here also that he is most sorely beset by the 
 black phalanx, and in the midst of such straits he once 
 cried out : — 
 
 “ 0 sanda simplicitas ! But I have not yet come to the 
 place where the good man who thus exclaimed could utter 
 only this exclamation. (These were the words pronounced 
 at the stake by John Huss.) We must first be heard ; we 
 must first be judged by those who can and will hear and 
 judge us. 
 
 “ Ob, that he might do so, he whom I would most gladly 
 have as my judge ! Luther ! thou great misunderstood 
 man ! and misunderstood by none more than by those ob- 
 stinate ones who, with thy shoes in their hand, clamorous 
 
102 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 but indifferent, go jogging along the road thou hast opened 
 for them ! Thou hast redeemed us from the bondage of 
 tradition : who shall redeem us from the more intolerable 
 bondage of the letter ? Who shall at length bring to us a 
 Christianity such as thou wouldst teach to-day, such as 
 Christ himself would teach ? ” 
 
 Yes, the letter, said Lessing, is the last husk that en- 
 velops Christianity, and only after its destruction will 
 the spirit of Christianity stand revealed. This spirit, 
 however, is nothing else than what the philosophy of 
 Wolf undertook to demonstrate, what philanthropists 
 feel in their hearts, what Mendelssohn found in Mosaism, 
 what Freemasons have chanted, what poets have sung, 
 what was in Lessing’s day making itself felt under every 
 variety of form throughout Germany — pure Deism. 
 
 Lessing died at Brunswick in 1781, misunderstood, 
 hated, and decried. In the same year appeared at Konigs- 
 berg Immanuel Kant’s “ Critique of Pure Reason.” With 
 this book (which through a singular delay did not become 
 generally known till the close of the decade) there begins 
 in Germany an intellectual revolution which offers the 
 most striking analogies to the material revolution in 
 France, and which must to the deeper thinkers appear of at 
 least as great importance as the latter. It developed itself 
 in the same phases, and between both revolutions there 
 exists the most remarkable parallelism. On each side of 
 the Rhine we see the same breach with the past; all 
 respect for tradition is withdrawn. As here, in France, 
 every privilege, so there, in Germany, every thought, must 
 justify itself; as here, the monarchy, the keystone of the 
 old social edifice, so there, deism, the keystone of the old 
 intellectual regime, falls from its place. 
 
 Of this catastrophe, the 21st of January,* for deism, 
 we shall speak in the concluding part of this volume. 
 
 * Louis XVI. was beheaded on the 21st of January 1793 . — Tr. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 103 
 
 A peculiar awe, a mysterious piety, forbids our writing 
 more to-day. Our heart is full of shuddering compassion : 
 it is the old Jehovah himself that is preparing for death. 
 We have known him so well from his cradle in Egypt, where 
 he was reared among the divine calves and crocodiles, 
 the sacred onions, ibises, and cats. We have seen him bid 
 farewell to these companions of his childhood and to the 
 obelisks and sphinxes of his native Nile, to become in 
 Palestine a little god-king amidst a poor shepherd people, 
 and to inhabit a temple-palace of his own. We have 
 seen him later coming into contact with Assyrian-Baby- 
 lonian civilisation, renouncing his all-too-human passions, 
 no longer giving vent to fierce wrath and vengeance, at 
 least no longer thundering at every trifle. We have seen 
 him migrate to Eome, the capital, where he abjures all 
 national prejudices and proclaims the celestial equality of 
 all nations, and with such fine phrases establishes an op- 
 position to the old Jupiter, and intrigues ceaselessly till he 
 attains supreme authority, and from the Capitol rules the 
 city and the world, urbem et orbem. We have seen how, 
 growing still more spiritualised, he becomes a loving father, 
 a universal friend of man, a benefactor of the world, a 
 philanthropist ; but all this could avail him nothing ! 
 
 Hear ye not the bells resounding ? Kneel down. They 
 are bringing the sacraments to a dying god ! 
 

 
 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PART THIRD. 
 
 It is related that an English mechanician, who had already- 
 invented the most ingenious machines, at last took it into 
 his head to construct a man ; and that he succeeded. The 
 work of his hands deported itself and acted quite like a 
 human being ; it even contained within its leathern breast 
 a sort of apparatus of human sentiment, differing not 
 greatly from the habitual sentiments of Englishmen ; it 
 could communicate its emotions by articulate sounds, and 
 the noise of wheels in its interior, of springs and escape- 
 ments, which was distinctly audible, reproduced the genuine 
 English pronunciation. This automaton, in short, was an 
 accomplished gentleman, and nothing was wanting to render 
 it completely human except a soul. But the English mecha- 
 nician had not the power to bestow on his work this soul, 
 and the poor creature, having become conscious of its 
 imperfection, tormented its creator day and night with 
 supplication for a soul. This request, daily repeated with 
 growing urgency, became at last so insupportable to the 
 poor artist that he took to flight in order to escape from 
 his own masterpiece. But the automaton also took the 
 mail coach, pursued him over the whole continent, travelled 
 incessantly at his heels, frequently overtook him, and then 
 gnashed and growled in his ears, Give me a soul ! These 
 two figures may now be met with in every country, and he 
 only who knows their peculiar, relationship to each other 
 can comprehend their unwonted haste and their haggard 
 
io6 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 anxiety. But as soon as we are made aware of their strange 
 relationship, we at once discover in them something of a 
 general character ; we see how one portion of the English 
 people is becoming weary of its mechanical existence, and 
 is demanding a soul, whilst the other portion, tormented 
 by such a request, is driven about in all directions, and 
 that neither of them can endure matters at home any 
 longer. 
 
 The story is a terrible one. It is a fearful thing when 
 the bodies we have created demand of us a soul ; but it is 
 a far more dreadful, more terrible, more awful thing when 
 we have created a soul, to hear that soul demanding of us 
 a body, and to behold it pursuing us with this demand. 
 The thought to which we have given birth is such a soul, 
 and it leaves us no rest until we have endowed it with a 
 body, until we have given it sensible reality. Thought 
 strives to become action, the word to become flesh, and, 
 marvellous to relate, man, like God in the Bible, needs 
 only to express his thought and the world takes form ; 
 there is light or darkness ; the waters separate themselves 
 from the dry land ; or it may even be that wild beasts 
 are brought forth. The world is the sign-manual of the 
 word. 
 
 Mark this, ye proud men of action : ye are nothing but 
 unconscious hodmen of the men of thought who, often in 
 humblest stillness, have appointed you your inevitable task. 
 Maximilian Robespierre was merely the hand of Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau, the bloody hand that drew from the 
 womb of time the body whose soul Rousseau had created. 
 May not the restless anxiety that troubled the life of J ean 
 Jacques have caused such stirrings within him that he 
 already foreboded the kind of accoucheur that was needed 
 to bring his thought living into the world ? * 
 
 Old Fontenelle may have been right when he said : “ If 
 
 * This paragraph is wanting in the French version. — T r. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 107 
 
 I held all the truths of the universe in my hand, I 
 would he very careful not to open it.” I, for my part, 
 think otherwise. If I held all the truths of the world in 
 my hand, I might perhaps beseech you instantly to cut 
 off that hand ; but, in any case, I should not long hold it 
 closed. I was not born to be a gaoler of thoughts; by 
 Heaven! I would set them free. What though they were to 
 incarnate themselves in the most hazardous realities, what 
 though they were to range through all lands like a mad 
 bacchanalian procession, what though they were to crush 
 with their thyrsus our most innocent flowers, what though 
 they were to invade our hospitals and chase from his bed 
 the old sick world — my heart would bleed, no doubt, and I 
 myself would suffer hurt thereby ! For alas ! I too am part 
 of this old sick world, and the poet says truly, one may 
 mock at his crutches yet not be able to walk any better 
 for that. I am the most grievously sick of you all, and 
 am the more to be pitied since I know what health is ; but 
 you do not know it, you whom I envy ; you are capable of 
 dying without perceiving your dying condition. Yea, many 
 of you are already long since dead, though maintaining that 
 your real life is just beginning. When I try to dispel 
 such a delusion, then you are angry with me and rail at 
 me, and, more horrible still, the dead rush upon and mock 
 at me, and more loathsome to me than their insults is 
 the smell of their putrefaction. Hence, ye spectres ! I 
 am about to speak of a man whose mere name has the 
 might of an exorcism; I speak of Immanuel Kant. 
 
 It is said that night-wandering spirits are filled with 
 terror at sight of the headsman’s axe. With what mighty 
 fear, then, must they be stricken when there is held up 
 to them Kant’s “ Critique of Pure Eeason ” ! This is the 
 sword that slew deism in Germany. 
 
 To speak frankly, you French have been tame and 
 moderate compared with us Germans. At most, you could 
 
io8 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 but kill a king, and he had already lost his head before 
 you guillotined him. For accompaniment to such deed 
 you must needs cause such a drumming and shrieking 
 and stamping of feet that the whole universe trembled. 
 To compare Maximilian Eobespierre with Immanuel Kant 
 is to confer too high an honour upon the former. Maxi- 
 milian Eobespierre, the great citizen of the Eue Saint 
 Honore, had, it is true, his sudden attacks of destructive- 
 ness when it was a question of the monarchy, and his 
 frame was violently convulsed when the fit of regicidal 
 epilepsy was on ; but as soon as it came to be a question 
 about the Supreme Being, he wiped the white froth from 
 his lips, washed the blood from his hands, donned his blue 
 Sunday coat with silver buttons, and stuck a nosegay in 
 the bosom of his broad vest. 
 
 The history of Immanuel Kant’s life is difficult to por- 
 tray, for he had neither life nor history. He led a mecha- 
 nical, regular, almost abstract bachelor existence in a little 
 retired street of Konigsberg, an old town on the north- 
 eastern frontier of Germany. I do not believe that the 
 great clock of the cathedral performed in a more passion- 
 less and methodical manner its daily routine than did 
 its townsman, Immanuel Kant. Eising in the morning, 
 coffee-drinking, writing, reading lectures, dining, walking, 
 everything had its appointed time, and the neighbours 
 knew that it was exactly half-pUst three o’clock when 
 Immanuel Kant stepped forth from his house in his grey, 
 tight-fitting coat, with his Spanish cane in his hand, and 
 betook himself to the little linden avenue called after 
 him to this day the “ Philosopher’s Walk.” Summer and 
 winter he walked up and down it eight times, and when 
 the weather was dull or heavy clouds prognosticated rain, 
 the townspeople beheld his servant, the old Lampe, trudg- 
 ing anxiously behind him with a big umbrella under his 
 arm, like an image of Providence. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 109 
 
 What a strange contrast did this man’s outward life 
 present to his destructive, world-annihilating thoughts ! 
 In sooth, had the citizens of Konigsberg had the least 
 presentiment of the full significance of his ideas, they 
 would have felt a far more awful dread at the presence of 
 this man than at the sight of an executioner, who can but 
 kill the body. But the worthy folk saw in him nothing 
 more than a Professor of Philosophy, and as he passed 
 at his customary hour, they greeted him in a friendly 
 manner and set their watches by him. 
 
 But though Immanuel Kant, the arch-destroyer in the 
 realm of thought, far surpassed in terrorism Maximilian 
 Bobespierre, he had many similarities with the latter, 
 which induce a comparison between the two men. In 
 the first place, we find in both the same inexorable, keen, 
 poesyless, sober integrity. We likewise find in both the 
 saipe talent of suspicion, only that in the one it mani- 
 fested itself in the direction of thought and was called 
 criticism, whilst in the other it was directed against man- 
 kind and was styled republican virtue. But both pre- 
 sented in the highest degree the type of the narrow-minded 
 citizen. Nature had destined them for weighing out 
 coffee and sugar, but fate decided that they should weigh 
 out other things, and into the scales of the one it laid a 
 king, into the scales of the other a God. . . . And they 
 both gave the correct weight ! 
 
 The “ Critique of Pure Beason ” is Kant’s principal 
 work; and as none of his other writings is of equal im- 
 portance, in speaking of it we must give it the right of 
 preference. This book appeared in 1781, but, as already 
 said, did not become generally known till 1789. At the 
 time of its publication it was quite overlooked, except for 
 two insignificant notices, and it was not till a later period 
 that public attention was directed to this great book by 
 the articles of Schiitz, Schultz, and Beinhold. The cause 
 
no RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 of this tardy recognition undoubtedly lay in the unusual 
 form and bad style in which the work is written. As 
 regards his style, Kant merits severer censure than any 
 other philosopher, more especially when we compare this 
 with his former and better manner of writing. The 
 recently published collection of his minor works contains 
 his first attempts, and we are surprised to find in these an 
 excellent and often very witty style. These little treatises 
 were trilled forth while their author ruminated over his 
 great work. There is a gleefulness about them like that 
 of a soldier tranquilly arming for a combat in which he 
 promises himself certain victory. Especially remarkable 
 amongst them are his “ Universal Natural History and 
 Theory of the Heavens,” composed as early as 1755 ; “ Ob- 
 servations on the Emotions of the Sublime and Beautiful,” 
 written ten years later; and “ Dreams of a Ghostseer,” full 
 of admirable humour after the manner of the Erench 
 essay. Kant’s wit as displayed in these pamphlets is of 
 quite a peculiar sort. The wit clings to the thought, and 
 in spite of its tenuity is thus enabled to reach a satis- 
 factory height. Without such support wit, be it ever so 
 robust, cannot be successful; like a vine- tendril wanting 
 a prop, it can only creep along the ground to rot there 
 with all its most precious fruits. 
 
 But why did Kant write his “ Critique of Pure Beason ” 
 in such a colourless, dry, packing-paper style ? I fancy 
 that, having rejected the mathematical form of the Cartesio- 
 Leibnitzo-Wolfian school, he feared that science might lose 
 something of its dignity by expressing itself in light, 
 attractive, and agreeable tones. He therefore gave it a 
 stiff, abstract form, which coldly repelled all familiarity 
 on the part of intellects of the lower order. He wished 
 haughtily to separate himself from the popular philosophers 
 of his time, who aimed at the most citizen-like clearness, 
 and so clothed his thoughts in a courtly and frigid official 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY, in 
 
 dialect. Herein he shows himself a true philistine. But 
 it might also be that Kant needed for the carefully 
 measured march of his ideas a language similarly precise, 
 and that he was not in a position to create a better. It is 
 only genius that has a new word for a new thought. 
 Immanuel Kant, however, was no genius. Conscious of 
 this defect, Kant, like the worthy Maximilian, showed 
 himself all the more mistrustful of genius, and went so 
 far as to maintain, in his “ Critique of the Faculty of 
 Judgment,” that genius has no business with scientific 
 thought, and that its action ought to be relegated to the 
 domain of art. 
 
 The heavy, buckram style of Kant’s chief work has 
 been the source of much mischief ; for brainless imitators 
 aped him in his external form, and hence arose amongst 
 us the superstition that no one can be a philosopher who 
 writes well. The mathematical form, however, could not, 
 after the days of Kant, reappear in philosophy ; he has 
 mercilessly passed sentence of death upon it in his 
 “Critique of Pure Keason.” The mathematical form in 
 philosophy, he says, is good for nothing save the building 
 of houses of cards, in the same way that the philosophic 
 form in mathematics produces nothing but twaddle, for 
 in philosophy there can be no definitions such as those 
 in mathematics, where the definitions are not discursive 
 but intuitive, that is to say, capable of being demon- 
 strated by inspection ; whilst what are called definitions 
 in philosophy are only tentatively, hypothetically put 
 forth, the real definition appearing only at the close, as 
 result. 
 
 How comes it that philosophers display so strong a 
 predilection for the mathematical form ? This predilec- 
 tion dates from the time of Pythagoras, who designated 
 the principles of things by numbers. This was the idea 
 of a genius : all that is sensible and finite is stripped off 
 
1 12 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 in a number, and yet it denotes something determined, 
 and the relation of this thing to another determined 
 thing, which last, designated in turn by a number, re- 
 ceives the same insensible and infinite character. In this 
 respect numbers resemble ideas that preserve the same 
 character and relation to one another. We can indicate 
 by numbers in a very striking manner ideas, as they are 
 produced in our mind and in nature ; but the number still 
 remains the sign of the idea, it is not the idea itself. 
 The master is always conscious of this distinction, but the 
 scholar forgets it, and transmits to other scholars at second 
 hand merely a numerical hieroglyph, dead ciphers, which 
 are repeated with parrot-like scholastic pride, but of which 
 the living significance is lost. This applies likewise to 
 the other methods of mathematical demonstration. The 
 intellect in its eternal mobility suffers no arrest; and 
 just as little can it be fixed down by lines, triangles, 
 squares, and circles, as by numbers. Thought can neither 
 be calculated nor measured. 
 
 As my chief duty is to facilitate in Trance the study 
 of German philosophy, I always dwell most strongly on 
 the external difficulties that are apt to dismay a stranger 
 who has not already been made aware of them. I would 
 draw the special attention of those who desire to make 
 Trenchmen acquainted with Kant to the fact, that it is 
 possible to abstract from his philosophy that portion 
 which serves merely to refute the absurdities of the 
 Wolfian philosophy. This polemic, constantly reappear- 
 ing, will only tend to produce confusion in the minds of 
 Trenchmen, and can be of no utility to them. 
 
 The “Critique of Pure Eeason ” is, as I have said, 
 Kant’s principal work, and his other writings are in a 
 measure superfluous, or may at least be considered as 
 commentaries. The social importance that attaches to 
 his chief work will be apparent from what follows. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 113 
 
 The philosophers who preceded Kant reflected, doubt- 
 less, on the origin of our cognitions, and followed, as we 
 have seen, two different routes, according to their view 
 of ideas as a priori or as a posteriori ; but concerning the 
 faculty of knowing, concerning the extent and limits of 
 this faculty, they occupied themselves less. Now this 
 was the task that Kant set before himself ; he submitted 
 the faculty of knowing to a merciless investigation, he 
 sounded all the depths of this faculty, he ascertained all 
 its limits. In this investigation he certainly discovered 
 that about many things, wherewith formerly we supposed 
 ourselves to be most intimately acquainted, we can know 
 nothing. This was very mortifying; but it has always 
 been useful to know of what things we can know nothing. 
 He who warns us against a useless journey performs as great 
 a service for us as he who points out to us the true path. 
 Kant proves to us that we know nothing about things 
 as they are in and by themselves, but that we have a 
 knowledge of them only in so far as they are reflected in 
 our minds. We are therefore just like the prisoners of 
 whose condition Plato draws such an afflicting picture 
 in the seventh book of his Republic. These wretched 
 beings, chained neck and thigh in such a manner that 
 they cannot turn their heads about, are seated within a 
 roofless prison, into which there comes from above a 
 certain amount of light. This light, however, is the light 
 from a fire, the flame of which rises up behind them, and 
 indeed is separated from them only by a little wall. 
 Along the outer side of this wall are walking men bearing 
 all sorts of statues, images in wood and stone, and con- 
 versing with one another. Now the poor prisoners can 
 see nothing of these men, who are not tall enough to 
 overtop the wall ; and of the statues, which rise above the 
 wall, they see only the shadows flitting along the side of 
 the wall opposite them. The shadows, however, they take 
 
1 14 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 for real objects, and, deceived by the echo of their prison, 
 believe that it is the shadows that are conversing. 
 
 With the appearance of Kant former systems of philo- 
 sophy, which had merely sniffed about the external aspect 
 of things, assembling and classifying their characteristics, 
 ceased to exist. Kant led investigation back to the human 
 intellect, and inquired what the latter had to reveal. Not 
 without reason, therefore, did he compare his philosophy 
 to the method of Copernicus. Formerly, when men con- 
 ceived the world as standing still, and the sun as revolv- 
 ing round it, astronomical calculations failed to agree 
 accurately. But when Copernicus made the sun stand 
 still and the earth revolve round it, behold ! everything 
 accorded admirably. So formerly reason, like the sun, 
 moved round the universe of phenomena, and sought to 
 throw light upon it. But Kant bade reason, the sun, 
 stand still, and the universe of phenomena now turns 
 round, and is illuminated the moment it comes within the 
 region of the intellectual orb. 
 
 These few 7 words regarding the task that presented itself 
 to Kant will suffice to show that I consider that section of 
 his book wherein he treats of phenomena and noumena as 
 the most important part, as the central point, of his philo- 
 sophy. Kant, in effect, distinguishes between the appear- 
 ances of things and things themselves. As w r e can know 
 nothing of objects except in so far as they manifest them- 
 selves to us through their appearance, and as objects do 
 not exhibit themselves to us as they are in and by them- 
 selves, Kant gives the name phenomena to objects as 
 they appear to us, and noumena to objects as they are in 
 themselves. We know things, therefore, only as pheno- 
 mena ; we cannot know them as noumena. The latter are 
 purely problematic ; we can neither say that they exist 
 nor that they do not exist. The word noumena has been 
 correlated with the word phenomena merely to enable us 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 115 
 
 to speak of things in so far as they are cognisable by ns, 
 without occupying our judgment about things that are not 
 cognisable by us. Kant did not therefore, as do many 
 teachers whom I will not name, make a distinction of 
 objects into phenomena and noumena, into things that for 
 us exist and into things that for us do not exist. This 
 would be an Irish bull in philosophy. He wished merely 
 to express a notion of limitation. 
 
 God, according to Kant, is a noumen. As a result of 
 his argument, this ideal and. transcendental being, hitherto 
 called God, is a mere fiction.* It has arisen from a 
 natural illusion. Kant shows that we can know nothing- 
 regarding this noumen, regarding God, and that all reason- 
 able proof of his existence is impossible. The words of 
 Dante, “ Leave all hope behind ! ” may be inscribed over 
 this portion of the “ Critique of Pure Keason.” 
 
 My readers will, I think, gladly exempt me from at- 
 tempting a popular elucidation of that portion of his work 
 in which Kant treats “ of the arguments of speculative 
 reason in favour of the existence of a Supreme Being.” 
 Although the formal refutation of these arguments occu- 
 pies but a small space, and is not taken in hand till the 
 second part of the book is reached, there is already a very 
 evident intention of leading up to this refutation, which 
 forms one of the main points of the work. It connects 
 itself with the “ Critique of all Speculative Theology,” 
 wherein the last phantoms of deism are put to flight. I 
 cannot help remarking that Kant, in attacking the three 
 principal kinds of evidence in favour of the existence of 
 God, namely, the ontological, the cosmological, and the 
 physico-theological, whilst successful, according to my 
 opinion, in refuting the latter two, fails with regard to the 
 first. I am not aware whether the above terms are under- 
 stood in this country, and I therefore quote the passage 
 
 * In the French version, “ is only an assumption.” — T r. 
 
i \6 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 from the “ Critique of Pure Pieason ” in which Kant for- 
 mulates the distinction between them. 
 
 “ There are hut three kinds of proof possible to specu- 
 lative reason of the existence of God. All the routes that 
 may be selected with this end in view start, either from 
 definite experience and the peculiar properties of the 
 external world, as revealed by experience, and ascend from 
 it according to the laws of causality up to the supreme 
 cause above the world ; or, they rest merely on an indefi- 
 nite experience, as, for example, on an existence or being 
 of some kind or other ; or, lastly, they make an abstraction 
 from all experience, and arrive at a conclusion entirely a 
 priori from pure ideas of the existence of the supreme 
 cause. The first of these is the physico-theological proof, 
 the second the cosmological, and the third the ontological. 
 Other proofs there are none, nor can other proofs exist.” 
 
 After repeated and careful study of Kant’s chief work, 
 I fancied myself able to recognise everywhere visible in 
 it his polemic against these proofs of the existence of 
 God ; and of this polemic I might speak at greater length 
 were I not restrained by a religious sentiment. The mere 
 discussion by any one of the existence of God causes me 
 to feel a strange disquietude, an uneasy dread such as I 
 once experienced in visiting New Bedlam in London, 
 when, for a moment losing sight of my guide, I was sur- 
 rounded by madmen. “ God is all that is,” and doubt of 
 His existence is doubt of life itself, it is death. 
 
 The more blameworthy any dispute regarding the exist- 
 ence of God may be, the more praiseworthy is meditation 
 on the nature of God. Such meditation is a true worship 
 of God ; the soul is thereby detached from the perishable 
 and finite, and attains to consciousness of innate love and 
 of the harmony of the universe. It is this consciousness 
 that sends a thrill through the heart of the emotional man 
 in the act of prayer or in the contemplation of the sacred 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 117 
 
 symbols ; and the thinker realises this holy fervour in the 
 exercise of that sublime faculty of the mind called reason, 
 a faculty whose highest function is to inquire into the 
 nature of God. Men of specially religious temperament 
 concern themselves with this problem from childhood 
 upwards; they are mysteriously troubled about it even 
 at the first dawnings of reason.* The author of these 
 pages is most joyfully conscious of having possessed this 
 early primitive religious feeling, and it has never forsaken 
 him. God was always the beginning and the end of all 
 my thoughts. If I now inquire : What is God ? what is 
 his nature ? — as a little child I had already inquired : 
 How is God ? what is he like ? In that childish time I 
 could gaze upwards at the sky during whole days, and 
 was sadly vexed at evening because I never caught a 
 glimpse of God's most holy countenance, but saw only the 
 grey silly grimaces of the clouds. I was quite puzzled 
 over the astronomical lore with which in the “ enlighten- 
 ment period ” even the youngest children were tormented, 
 and there was no end to my amazement on learning that all 
 those thousand millions of stars were spheres as large and 
 as beautiful as our own earth, and that over all this glitter- 
 ing throng of worlds a single God ruled. I recollect once 
 seeing God in a dream far above in the most distant 
 firmament. He was looking contentedly out of a little 
 window in the sky, a devout hoary-headed being with a 
 small Jewish beard, and he was scattering forth myriads 
 of seed-corns, which, as they fell from heaven, burst open 
 in the infinitude of space, and expanded to vast dimen- 
 sions till they became actual, radiant, blossoming, peopled 
 worlds, each one as large as our own globe. I could never 
 forget this countenance, and often in dreams I used to 
 see the cheerful-looking old man sprinkling forth the 
 
 * The remainder of this paragraph, with the first two sentences of the 
 succeeding one, is omitted in the French version. — T r. 
 
i j 8 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 world-seeds from his little window in the sky; once I 
 even saw him clucking like our maid when she threw 
 down for the hens their barley. I could only see how the 
 falling seed-corns expanded into great shining orbs ; but 
 the great hens that may by chance have been waiting 
 about with eager open bills to be fed with the falling orbs 
 I could not see. 
 
 You smile, dear reader, at the notion of the big hens. 
 Yet this childish notion is not so very different from the 
 view of the most advanced deists. In the attempt to 
 provide a conception of an extra-mundane God, orient 
 and Occident have exhausted themselves in hyperbole. 
 The imagination of deists has, however, vainly tormented 
 itself with the infinitude of time and space. It is here 
 that their impotence, the inadequacy of their cosmology, 
 and the untenableness of their explanation of the nature 
 of God becomes fully apparent. We are not greatly dis- 
 tressed, therefore, at beholding the subversion of their 
 explanation. Kant has actually wrought this affliction 
 upon them by refuting their demonstration of the exist- 
 ence of God. 
 
 Nor would the vindication of the ontological proof 
 specially benefit deism, for this proof is equally available 
 for pantheism. To render my meaning more intelligible, 
 I may remark that the ontological proof is the one em- 
 ployed by Descartes, and that long before his time, in the 
 Middle Ages, Anselm of Canterbury had expressed it in 
 the form of an affecting prayer. Indeed, St. Augustin 
 may be said to have already made use of the ontological 
 proof in the second book of his work, “ De Libero Arbi- 
 trio.” 
 
 I refrain, as I have said, from all popular discussion of 
 Kant’s polemic against these proofs. Let it suffice to give 
 an assurance that since his time deism has vanished from 
 the realm of speculative reason. It may, perhaps, be 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 119 
 
 several centuries yet before this melancholy notice of 
 decease gets universally bruited about ; we, however, have 
 long since put on mourning. JDe Profundis ! 
 
 You fancy, then, that we may now go home! By 
 my life, no ! there is yet a piece to be played ; after the 
 tragedy comes the farce. Up to this point Immanuel 
 Kant has pursued the path of inexorable philosophy ; he 
 has stormed heaven and put the whole garrison to the 
 edge of the sword; the ontological, cosmological, and 
 physico-theological bodyguards lie there lifeless ; Deity 
 itself, deprived of demonstration, has succumbed ; there 
 is now no All-mercifulness, no fatherly kindness, no other- 
 world reward for renunciation in this world, the immorta- 
 lity of the soul lies in its last agony — you can hear its 
 groans and death-rattle ; and old Lampe is standing by 
 with his umbrella under his arm, an afflicted spectator of 
 the scene, tears and sweat-drops of terror dropping from 
 his countenance. Then Immanuel Kant relents and 
 shows that he is not merely a great philosopher but also 
 a good man; he reflects, and half good-naturedly, half 
 ironically, he says : “ Old Lampe must have a God, 
 otherwise the poor fellow can never be happy. Now, 
 man ought to be happy in this world ; practical reason 
 says so;— well, I am quite willing that practical reason 
 should also guarantee the existence of God.” As the 
 result of this argument, Kant distinguishes between the 
 theoretical reason and the 'practical reason , and by means 
 of the latter, as with a magician’s wand, he revivifies 
 deism, which theoretical reason had killed. 
 
 But is it not conceivable that Kant brought about this 
 resurrection, not merely for the sake of old Lampe, but 
 through fear of the police ? Or did he act from sincere 
 conviction ? Was not his object in destroying all evidence 
 for the existence of God to show us how embarrassing it 
 might be to know nothing about God ? In doing so, he 
 
120 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 acted almost as sagely as a Westphalian friend of mine, 
 who smashed all the lanterns in the Grohnder Street in 
 Gottingen, and then proceeded to deliver to us in the dark 
 a long lecture on the practical necessity of lanterns, which 
 he had theoretically broken in order to show how, without 
 them, we could see nothing. 
 
 I have already said that on its appearance the “ Critique 
 of Pure Eeason ” did not cause the slightest sensation, and it 
 was not till several years later, after certain clear-sighted 
 philosophers had written elucidations of it, that public 
 attention was aroused regarding the book. In the year 
 1789, however, nothing else was talked of in Germany but 
 the philosophy of Kant, about which were poured forth in 
 abundance commentaries, chrestomathies, interpretations, 
 estimates, apologies, and so forth. We need only glance 
 through the first philosophic catalogue at hand, and the 
 innumerable works having reference to Kant will amply 
 testify to the intellectual movement that originated with 
 this single man. In some it exhibited itself as an ardent 
 enthusiasm, in others as an acrid loathing, in many as a 
 gaping curiosity regarding the result of this intellectual 
 revolution. We had popular riots in the world of thought, 
 just as you had in the material world, and over the demoli- 
 tion of ancient dogmatism we grew as excited as you did 
 at the storming of the Bastille. There w T as also but a 
 handful of old pensioners left for the defence of dogmatism, 
 that is, the philosophy of Wolf. It was a revolution, and 
 one not wanting in horrors. Amongst the party of the 
 past, the really good Christians showed least indignation 
 at these horrors. Yea, they desired even greater, in order 
 that the measure of iniquity might be full, and the 
 counter-revolution be more speedily accomplished as a 
 necessary reaction. We had pessimists in philosophy as 
 you had in politics. As in Prance there were people who 
 maintained that Eobespierre was the agent of Pitt, with us 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 121 
 
 there were many who went so far in their wilful blindness 
 as to persuade themselves that Kant was in secret alliance 
 with them, and that he had destroyed all philosophic 
 proofs of the existence of God merely in order to convince 
 the world that man can never arrive at a knowledge of 
 God by the help of reason, and must therefore hold to 
 revealed religion. 
 
 Kant brought about this great intellectual movement 
 less by the subject-matter of his writings than by the 
 critical spirit that pervaded them, a spirit that now began 
 to force its way into all sciences. It laid hold of all 
 constituted authority. Even poetry did not escape its 
 influence. Schiller, for example, was a strong Kantist, 
 and his artistic views are impregnated with the spirit of 
 the philosophy of Kant. By reason of its dry, abstract 
 character, this philosophy was eminently hurtful to polite 
 literature and the fine arts. Fortunately it did not inter- 
 fere in the art of cookery. 
 
 The German people is not easily set in motion ; but let 
 it be once forced into any path and it will follow it to its 
 termination with the most dogged perseverance. Thus we 
 exhibited our character in matters of religion, thus also 
 we now acted in philosophy. Shall we continue to 
 advance as consistently in politics? 
 
 Germany was drawn into the path of philosophy by 
 Kant, and philosophy became a national cause. A brilliant 
 troop of great thinkers suddenly sprang up on German 
 soil, as if called into being by magical art. If German 
 philosophy should some day find, as the French revolution 
 has found, its Thiers and its Mignet, its history will afford 
 as remarkable reading as the works of these authors. 
 Germans will study it with pride, and Frenchmen with 
 admiration. 
 
 Among the followers of Kant, John Gottlieb Fichte 
 soon rose into pre-eminence. 
 
122 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 I almost despair of being able to convey an accurate 
 impression of this man. In the case of Kant we had 
 merely a book to examine ; but here, besides the book, we 
 have to take account of the man. In this man thought 
 and purpose are one, and in this splendid unity they affect 
 the contemporary world. We have therefore to investi- 
 gate not a philosophy merely, but also the type by which 
 that philosophy is conditioned, and in order thoroughly to 
 comprehend this twofold influence we should have to 
 pass in review the situation of this epoch. What a wide- 
 reaching task ! We shall, no doubt, be readily excused for 
 offering merely an imperfect outline. 
 
 At the outset there is the greatest difficulty in stating 
 explicitly the nature of Fichte’s ideas. We have here to 
 encounter peculiar obstacles, obstacles connected not only 
 with the subject-matter but also with the form and 
 method of its presentation — two things with which we 
 are specially desirous of making foreigners acquainted. 
 Let us begin, then, with the method of Fichte. At first 
 he borrowed the method of Kant, but it soon underwent a 
 change, resulting from the nature of the subject. Kant 
 had merely to produce a critique, that is to say, some- 
 thing negative; whilst Fichte had by and by to develop a 
 system, that is, something positive. This want of a defi- 
 nite system in the philosophy of Kant was the reason why 
 it was sometimes refused the name philosophy. As regards 
 Immanuel Kant himself, there was justice in this ; but 
 not as regards the Kantists, who constructed from Kant’s 
 propositions quite a sufficient number of definite systems. 
 In his earlier writings, Fichte remained, as I have said, 
 quite faithful to the method of his master, so much so 
 that his first treatise, which was published anonymously, 
 was attributed to Kant. But when Fichte afterwards 
 produced a system he was seized with an ardent and per- 
 sistent passion for construction, and after constructing the 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 123 
 
 universe he sets about demonstrating, in all its aspects, 
 with the same ardour and persistency, that which he has 
 constructed. Whether constructing or demonstrating, 
 Fichte manifests, so to speak, an abstract passion. As in 
 his system, so, soon afterwards in his exposition, subjec- 
 tivity is dominant. Kant, on the other hand, stretches 
 out thought before him, analyses it, dissects it down to 
 its minutest fibrils, and his “ Critique of Pure Eeason ” is 
 a kind of anatomical theatre of the human intellect; he 
 himself, however, stands by, cold and insensible, like a 
 true surgeon. 
 
 The form of Fichte’s writings resembles his method ; it 
 is living, but it has also all the faults of life : it is restless 
 and confused. That he may always remain thoroughly 
 animated, Fichte disdains the customary terminology of 
 philosophers, which seems to him a dead thing; but the 
 effect of this is to make him still less comprehensible. 
 About intelligibility in general he had quite a peculiar 
 caprice. As long as Eeinhold was of the same opinion 
 with him, Fichte declared that no one understood him 
 better than Eeinhold. But when the latter differed from 
 him in opinion, Fichte declared that he had never been 
 understood by him. When he himself took a different 
 view from Kant, he had it put in print that Kant did not 
 understand himself. I am here touching upon the comical 
 aspect of our philosophers, who are perpetually lamenting 
 that they are misunderstood. When Hegel was lying on 
 his deathbed, he said : “ Only one man has understood 
 me,” but shortly afterwards he added fretfully: “And 
 even he did not understand me.” 
 
 Considered as to its substance, its intrinsic value, the 
 philosophy of Fichte is of no great significance. It has 
 afforded society no result. Only in so far as it exhibits 
 above all other systems one of the most remarkable phases 
 of German philosophy, only in so far as it attests the 
 
124 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 sterility of idealism in its last consequences, and only in 
 so far as it forms the necessary transition to the philosophy 
 of our day, does the substance of Fichte’s doctrine possess 
 a certain interest. This doctrine, being then of more im- 
 portance in an historical and scientific than in a social 
 aspect, I shall merely indicate it in a few words. 
 
 The question proposed by Fichte is, What grounds have 
 we for assuming that our conceptions of objects correspond 
 with objects external to us ? And to this question he 
 offers the solution : All things have reality only in our 
 mind. 
 
 The “ Critique of Pure Eeason ” was Kant’s chief work, 
 the “ Theory of Knowledge ” 9 was the chief work of 
 Fichte. The latter book is a kind of continuation of the 
 former. The “Theory of Knowledge” likewise refers the 
 intellect back to itself. But where Kant analyses, Fichte 
 constructs. The “ Theory of Knowledge ” opens with an 
 abstract formula (1 = 1); it re-creates the world out of 
 the recesses of mind; it fits the disjointed parts together 
 again ; intelligence retraces its steps over the road it had 
 travelled towards abstraction till it regains the world of 
 phenomena. Thereafter reason is enabled to declare the 
 phenomenal world to be a necessary operation of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 The philosophy of Fichte also presents the peculiar 
 difficulty that it requires the mind to observe itself in the 
 midst of its activity; the Ego is to investigate its own 
 intellectual acts during the process of thinking; thought 
 is to play the spy on itself whilst it thinks, whilst it grows 
 gradually warmer until at last it is boiling. This opera- 
 tion reminds us of the monkey seated on the hearth 
 before a copper kettle cooking its own tail ; for it is of 
 opinion that the true art of cookery consists not merely 
 in the objective act of cooking, but also in the subjective 
 consciousness of the process of cooking. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 125 
 
 It is a singular circumstance that the philosophy of 
 Fichte has always had to endure much from satire. I 
 once saw a caricature representing a Fichtean goose. The 
 poor bird has a liver so large that it no longer knows 
 whether it is goose or liver. O11 its belly is inscribed 
 I-I. Jean Paul has most wickedly quizzed the Fichtean 
 philosophy in a book entitled Clavis Fichteana. That 
 idealism pursued to its ultimate consequences should end 
 by denying even the reality of matter seemed, to the great 
 mass of the public, to be carrying the joke too far. We 
 grew rather merry over the Fichtean Ego, which produced 
 by its mere thinking the whole external world. The 
 laughter of our wits was increased through a misappre- 
 hension that became too popular to permit of my passing 
 it over in silence. The great mass really supposed that 
 the Fgo of Fichte was the Ego of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 
 and that this individual Ego implied a negation of all 
 other existences. What an impertinence ! exclaimed the 
 worthy folk ; this fellow does not believe that we exist, 
 we who are much more corpulent than himself, and who, 
 as burgomasters and bailiffs, are actually his superiors ! 
 The ladies inquired, Does he not at least believe in the 
 existence of his wife ? No ! And Madam Fichte suffers 
 this ! 
 
 The Ego of Fichte, however, is not the individual but 
 the universal Ego, the world-Ego awakened to self-con- 
 sciousness. The Fichtean process of thought is not the 
 thinking act of an individual, of a certain person called 
 Johann Gottlieb Fichte ; it is rather the universal thought 
 manifesting itself in an individual. As we say, “ It rains,” 
 “ it lightens,” and so on ; so Fichte ought not to say, “ I 
 think,” but, “it thinks,” “the universal world-thought 
 thinks in me.” 
 
 In a parallel between the French revolution and Ger- 
 man philosophy I once compared, more in jest than in 
 
126 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 earnest, Fichte to Napoleon. But there are, in fact, certain 
 remarkable analogies between them. After the Kantists 
 had accomplished their work of terrorism and destruction, 
 Fichte appeared, as Napoleon appeared after the Conven- 
 tion had demolished the whole past by the help of another 
 sort of Critique of Pure Eeason. Napoleon and Fichte 
 represent the great inexorable Ego for which thought and 
 action are one ; and the colossal structures raised by both 
 men testify to a colossal will. But through the bound- 
 lessness of this will their structures soon fall to the 
 ground, and both the “ Theory of Knowledge ” and the 
 Empire crumble to pieces and disappear as quickly as they 
 were reared. 
 
 The Empire is now nothing more than matter of history, 
 but the commotion caused by the emperor in the world 
 has not yet calmed down, and from this commotion our 
 present Europe draws its vitality. It is the same with 
 the philosophy of Fichte ; it has completely perished, but 
 men’s minds are still agitated by the thoughts that found 
 a voice in Fichte, and the after-effect of his teaching is 
 incalculable. Even supposing all transcendental idealism 
 to be an error, still the writings of Fichte are animated 
 by a proud independence, by a love of liberty, by a virile 
 dignity that have exercised, especially on the young, a 
 wholesome influence. The Ego of Fichte was in complete 
 accord with his inflexible, stubborn, stern character. The 
 notion of an Ego so all-powerful could perhaps germinate 
 only in such a character, and such a character intertwin- 
 ing its roots about such a doctrine could not but become 
 more inflexible, more stubborn, more stern. 
 
 With what aversion must this man have been regarded 
 by aimless sceptics, by frivolous ecclectics, and by mode- 
 rates of all shades ! His whole life was a combat. The 
 story of his youth, like that of almost all our distinguished 
 men, is the record of a series of afflictions. Poverty sits 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 127 
 
 by their cradle and rocks them up to manhood, and this 
 meagre nurse remains their faithful companion through 
 life. 
 
 Nothing is more touching than the sight of the proud- 
 willed Fichte struggling miserably through the world by 
 the aid of tutorship. Nor can he obtain even thus the 
 bitter bread of servitude in his own country, but has to 
 migrate to Warsaw. There the old story repeats itself ; 
 the tutor displeases the gracious lady of the house, or 
 perhaps only the ungracious lady’s-maid. He cannot 
 scrape a leg with sufficient gentility, is not French enough, 
 and is no longer judged worthy to superintend the educa- 
 tion of a young Polish squire. Johann Gottlieb Fichte is 
 dismissed like a lackey, receives from his dissatisfied 
 master hardly the meagre expenses of his journey, leaves 
 Warsaw and betakes himself, full of youthful enthusiasm, 
 to Konigsberg, in order to make the acquaintance of Kant. 
 The meeting of these two men is in every respect note- 
 worthy. Perhaps I can present no clearer idea of their 
 everyday life and circumstances than by citing a frag- 
 ment from Fichte’s journal, to be found in a biography of 
 him, recently published by his son.* 
 
 “ On the twenty- fifth of June I set out for Konigsberg 
 with a carrier of this town, and arrived there, without 
 experiencing any remarkable incident, on the first of July. 
 The fourth. — Yisited Kant, who did not, however, receive 
 me with any special distinction. I attended his lecture 
 as an invited stranger, and again my expectation was dis- 
 appointed. His delivery is drowsy. Meantime I have 
 begun this journal. 
 
 “ I have long felt a desire for a more serious interview 
 with Kant, but could find no means of bringing this about. 
 At last I hit upon the plan of writing a ‘ Critique of all 
 
 * “ Fichte’s Life and Literary Correspondence,” by Immanuel Hermann 
 von Fichte, published in 1830-1831 . — Tr. 
 
128 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Bevelation/ and of presenting it to him instead of a letter 
 of introduction. I made a beginning with it about the 
 thirteenth, and have since worked at it without inter- 
 mission. — On the eighteenth of August I at last sent my 
 finished work to Kant, and on the twenty-fifth paid him 
 a visit in order to hear his opinion of it. He received me 
 with the most marked kindness, and appeared very well 
 satisfied with my dissertation. We did not come to any 
 close philosophical discourse. With regard to my philo- 
 sophical doubts, he referred me to his ‘ Critique of Pure 
 Keason,’ and to the court chaplain, Schulz, whom I shall 
 at once find out. On the twenty-sixth I dined with 
 Kant in the company of Professor Sommer, and I found 
 Kant to be a very pleasant and very intellectual man. I 
 now for the first time recognised in him traits worthy of 
 the great intellect that has found embodiment in his 
 writings. — 
 
 “ On the twenty-seventh I brought this journal to a 
 close, after completing the excerpts from Kant’s lectures 
 on anthropology, lent to me by Herr von S. I also make 
 a resolution henceforth regularly to continue this journal 
 every evening before going to bed, and to record therein 
 everything of interest that occurs to me, but especially 
 noting all characteristic traits and observations. — 
 
 “ The twenty-eighth ; evening. Yesterday I began to 
 revise my Critique, and fell upon right good and profound 
 ideas, which, however, made me unhappily conscious that 
 my first treatment of the subject was exceedingly super- 
 ficial. To-day I was desirous of continuing the new line 
 of investigation, but found myself so carried away by my 
 imagination that I have not been able to do anything all 
 day. In my present position this is, unfortunately, not to 
 be wondered at. I have calculated that, counting from 
 to-day, my means of subsistence will not suffice me here 
 for more than fourteen days. I have, it is true, already 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 129 
 
 experienced the like embarrassment, but it was in my own 
 country ; and, besides, with increase of years and a more 
 acute sense of honour, the case is always a harder one. 
 I have formed no resolution, nor can form any. To Pastor 
 Borowski, to whom Kant addressed me, I shall not reveal 
 my situation : if I reveal it to any one, it will be to no 
 other than to Kant himself. 
 
 “ On the twenty-ninth I visited Borowski, in whom I 
 found a truly good and honourable man. He made me a 
 proposal of a situation, but it is not yet quite an assured 
 one ; and besides, it is one for which 1 have no great liking. 
 At the same time, by his frankness of manner he extorted 
 from me the admission that it was urgent for me to obtain 
 
 an appointment. He advised me to see Professor W . 
 
 Work has been an impossibility for me. On the following 
 
 day I did in fact call on W , and afterwards visited 
 
 the court chaplain, Schulz. The prospects held out by the 
 former are very uncertain ; still he spoke of a tutorship 
 in Courland, which certainly nothing but the direst neces- 
 sity will induce me to accept ! Later, I went to the house 
 of the court chaplain, where I was at first received by 
 his wife. Her husband by and by appeared, but he was 
 absorbed in mathematical circles. Afterwards, when he 
 understood more distinctly who I was, Kant’s recom- 
 mendation rendered him very friendly. He has an 
 angular Prussian countenance, but the very spirit of 
 loyalty and good-heartedness shines through its features. 
 I also made the acquaintance at his house of Herr Braun- 
 lich, and of his charge, Count Danhof, of Herr Biittner, 
 the court chaplain’s nephew, and of a young savant of 
 Nurnberg, Herr Ehrliard, a youth of good and excellent 
 parts, though wanting in manners and without knowledge 
 of the world. 
 
 “ On the first of September I formed a decided resolu- 
 tion, which I wished to communicate to Kant. A situa^ 
 
 1 
 
130 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 tion as tutor, however regretfully I might be obliged to 
 accept it, is not to be had, and the uncertainty of my 
 position hinders me from working with freedom of mind, 
 and from profiting by the instructive intercourse of my 
 friends. I must away, then, back to my own country ! 
 The small loan of which I stand in need for this purpose 
 may perhaps be obtained through the mediation of Kant ; 
 but as I was in the act of going to him with the object of 
 declaring my intention, courage failed me. I decided to 
 write to him. Tor the evening I was invited to the house 
 of the court chaplain, where I spent a very pleasant 
 evening. On the second I finished my letter to Kant and 
 despatched it.” 
 
 Despite the remarkableness of this letter, I cannot bring 
 myself to give it here. I fancy the red blood is mounting 
 to my cheeks, and I feel as though I were relating in the 
 presence of strangers the most shamefaced miseries of my 
 own family. In spite of my striving after Trench urbanity, 
 in spite of my philosophic cosmopolitanism, old Germany, 
 with all its Philistine sentiments, still holds its place in 
 my bosom. Enough, I cannot transcribe this letter, and 
 merely relate this much : — Immanuel Kant was so poor 
 that, notwithstanding the pathetic, heart-rending tone of 
 this letter, he could lend Johann Gottlieb Tichte no 
 money. But the latter showed no trace of ill-humour on 
 that account, as may be gathered from the language of 
 his journal, from which I continue to quote: — 
 
 “ I was invited to dine with Kant on the third of Sep- 
 tember. He received me with his usual cordiality, telling 
 me, however, that he had not as yet formed any resolution 
 as to my proposition ; that he was not in a position to do 
 so for a fortnight. What amiable frankness ! Tor the 
 rest, he started objections to my plans, which betrayed 
 that he was not sufficiently acquainted with our position 
 in Saxony. . . . During all these days I have done nothing. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 13 
 
 I will, however, set to work again, and simply leave the 
 rest to God. The sixth : — I was asked to visit Kant, who 
 proposed to me the disposing of my manuscript on ‘ The 
 Critique of all Revelation ’ to the publisher Hartung, 
 through the intervention of Pastor Borowski. ‘ It is well 
 written/ said he, when I spoke of revising it. Is this the 
 case ? And yet it is Kant that says so ! For the rest, he 
 declined the object of my first request. On the tenth I 
 dined with Kant. Nothing said about our affair. Master 
 of Arts Gensichen was there, and, though only general, the 
 conversation was in part very interesting. Kant’s dis- 
 position towards me remains quite unchanged. . . . The 
 thirteenth : — I was anxious to work to-day, and yet I get 
 nothing done. I am overcome by dejection. How will 
 this end ? How will it be with me eight days hence ? 
 My money will then be quite exhausted.” 
 
 After much wandering about, after a long sojourn in 
 Switzerland, Fichte at last finds a settled position at Jena, 
 and from this time dates his period of splendour. Jena 
 and Weimar, two little Saxon towns lying within short 
 distance of each other, were then the central points of 
 the intellectual life of Germany. At Weimar were the 
 court and poetry; at Jena, the university and philosophy. 
 There were the greatest poets, here the most learned men 
 of Germany. In the year 1794 Fichte commenced his 
 lectures at Jena. The date is significant, and explains 
 the spirit of his writings at this period, as well as the 
 tribulations to which he was henceforth exposed, and to 
 which four years later he succumbed. For in the year 
 1798 were raised those accusations of atheism that 
 drew down upon him insufferable persecutions, and 
 occasioned his departure from Jena. This, the most 
 noteworthy event in the life of Fichte, possesses also a 
 general significance, and we cannot pass it over in silence. 
 
132 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Here, too, is naturally the place to speak of Fichte’s views 
 concerning the nature of God. 
 
 In the periodical called The Philosophical Journal, at 
 that time edited by himself, Fichte published an article 
 entitled “ Development of the Notion of Beligion,” sent 
 to him by a certain Forberg, a schoolmaster at Saalfield. 
 To this article Fichte added a short explanatory disserta- 
 tion, under the title, “ On the Ground of our Belief in a 
 Divine Government of the World.” 
 
 Both articles were suppressed by the Government of 
 the Electorate of Saxony, under the pretext that they 
 were tainted with atheism. Simultaneously there was 
 despatched from Dresden a requisition to the court of 
 Weimar enjoining upon it the serious punishment of Pro- 
 fessor Fichte. The court of Weimar did not, it is true, 
 permit itself to be misled by such a demand; but as 
 Fichte on this occasion committed the gravest blunders, 
 amongst others that of writing an “ Appeal to the Public ” 
 without the sanction of official authority, the Government 
 of Weimar, offended at this step and importuned from 
 other quarters, had no alternative but to administer a 
 mild reproof to the professor who had imprudently ex- 
 pressed his views. Fichte, however, considering himself 
 in the right, was unwilling to submit to such reproof, and 
 left Jena. To judge from his letters written at this time, 
 he was especially piqued at the conduct of two persons, 
 whose official positions lent much weight to their voice in 
 this affair; — these two persons were His Eeverence the 
 President of the Consistorial Council, Herr von Herder, 
 and His Excellence the Privy Councillor, Herr von 
 Goethe ; but both are sufficiently excusable. It is 
 pathetic to read in the posthumous letters of Herder how 
 the poor man was embarrassed by the candidates of theo- 
 logy, who, after studying at Jena, came before him at 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 133 
 
 Weimar to undergo examination as Protestant preachers. 
 About Christ the Son he no longer dared to put a single 
 question ; he was glad enough to have their mere acknow- 
 ledgment of the existence of the Father. As for Goethe, 
 he expresses himself in his Memoirs, regarding this occur- 
 rence, to the following effect : — 
 
 “ After Eeinhold’s departure from Jena, an event justly 
 considered a great loss for the University, the appoint- 
 ment of successor to him was rashly, even audaciously, 
 conferred on Fichte, who in his writings had manifested 
 a certain grandeur, though not perhaps the requisite tact 
 for dealing with the most important topics of morality 
 and politics. He was a man of as strong a personality 
 as had ever been known, and, considered in their higher 
 aspects, there was nothing censurable in his views ; but 
 how could he maintain himself on a footing of equality 
 with a world that he regarded as his own created pos- 
 session ? 
 
 “ The hours that he desired to set apart during week- 
 days for his public lectures being objected to, he under- 
 took to hold on Sundays the prelections regarding which 
 objections were raised. The lesser adverse circumstances 
 and the greater obstacles arising from these had scarcely 
 been smoothed down and adjusted, when the assertions of 
 Professor Fichte concerning God and sacred things (about 
 which he would have done better to have maintained 
 profound silence) attracted in outside circles troublesome 
 observation. 
 
 “ Fichte had ventured in his Philosophical Journal to 
 express himself about God and sacred things in a manner 
 that seemed contradictory to the language customarily 
 employed in dealing with such mysteries. He was called 
 in question for it; his defence did not improve matters, for 
 it was undertaken with passion and without any sus- 
 picion how well disposed towards him people here were. 
 
134 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 although they knew what interpretation to put on his 
 ideas and language — an interpretation of his opinions 
 that could not indeed be explained to him in crude 
 words, just as little as he could be brought to under- 
 stand how help might he afforded him in the kindliest 
 spirit. Discussion for and against, doubts and assertions, 
 confirmations and resolutions, surged about the university 
 in many-sided uncertain discourse : there was talk of 
 ministerial remonstrance, of nothing short of a public 
 reprimand which Fichte might have to expect. There- 
 upon, throwing aside all moderation, he considered him- 
 self justified in addressing to the ministry a violent 
 letter, in which, assuming the certainty of proceedings 
 being taken against him, he haughtily and vehemently 
 declared that he would never submit to such treatment ; 
 that he preferred, without more ado, to quit the university, 
 in which case he would not do so alone, as several other 
 influential teachers were in accord with him to leave 
 the place. 
 
 “ As a result of this step, all friendly intentions that 
 had been aroused on his behalf were now restrained, nay, 
 even paralysed. No expedient, no compromise, was now 
 possible, and the gentlest measure that could be adopted 
 was to dismiss him without delay. Then, for the first 
 time, after the affair was beyond remedy, Fichte per- 
 ceived the turn his friends had sought to give the affair, 
 and he was forced to regret his precipitation, whilst we 
 had reason to compassionate him.” 
 
 Have we not here his very self, the ministerial Goethe 
 with his conciliations and prudent reticences ? In reality 
 he censures Fichte only for having said what he thought, 
 and for not having said it with the customary disguises 
 of expression. He does not find fault with the thought, 
 but with the word. That deism had been annihilated in 
 the world of German philosophy was, as I have already 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 135 
 
 said, a secret known to every one; a secret, however, that 
 must not be proclaimed on the housetops. Goethe was 
 as little a deist as Fichte ; for he was a pantheist. But 
 his very position on the heights of pantheism enabled 
 Goethe with his sharp eyes to perceive very clearly the 
 untenableness of the Fichtean philosophy, and his gra- 
 cious lips could not forbear to smile at what he saw. To 
 the Jews (and every deist is, after all, a Jew) the doc- 
 trine of Fichte was an abomination : to the great pagan 
 it was only a folly. The “ great pagan ” is, you must 
 understand, the name bestowed on Goethe in Ger- 
 many. Yet this name is not quite appropriate. The 
 paganism of Goethe is wonderfully modernised. His 
 
 vigorous heathen nature manifests itself in his clear 
 penetrating conception of all external facts, of all forms 
 and colours ; but Christianity has endowed him also with 
 a profounder intelligence. Christianity, in spite of his 
 militant antipathy towards it, has initiated him into the 
 mysteries of the spiritual world; he has drunk of the 
 blood of Christ, and this has made him comprehend the 
 most secret voices of nature, like Siegfried, the hero of the 
 “Nibelungen,” who understood the language of the birds the 
 instant that his lips were moistened by a drop of the slain 
 dragon’s blood. It is a remarkable thing that Goethe’s 
 pagan nature should have been so thoroughly pervaded 
 by our modern sentimentality, that the antique marble 
 of his temperament should have pulsated with so much 
 modern feeling, and that he should have sympathised as 
 deeply with the sufferings of young Werther as with the 
 joys of an ancient Greek god. The pantheism of Goethe 
 differed, therefore, very widely from that of paganism. 
 To express my ideas briefly : Goethe was the Spinoza of 
 poetry. The whole of Goethe’s poetry is animated by the 
 same spirit that is w'afted towards us from the writings 
 of Spinoza. That Goethe paid undivided allegiance to 
 
136 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 the doctrine of Spinoza is beyond doubt. At any rate, he 
 occupied himself with it throughout his life ; in the in- 
 troductory passages of his Memoirs, as in the concluding 
 volume recently published, he has frankly acknowledged 
 this to be the case. I cannot now recollect where I have 
 read that Herder, losing his temper at finding Goethe 
 perpetually engaged with Spinoza’s works, once exclaimed, 
 “ If Goethe would just for once take up some other Latin 
 book than one of Spinoza’s ! ” But this applies not only 
 to Goethe ; quite a number of his friends, who afterwards 
 became more or less celebrated as poets, devoted them- 
 selves at an early period of their lives to pantheism ; and 
 this doctrine assumed a practical form in German art 
 before it attained to supremacy amongst us as a philo- 
 sophic theory. Even in Fichte’s time, when idealism 
 was flourishing most sublimely in the domain of philo- 
 sophy, in the region of art it was being violently de- 
 stroyed, and there had already begun in Germany that 
 celebrated revolt in art — a revolt not yet terminated — 
 which traces its origin to the conflict of Romanticism with 
 the ancient Classical Regime. 
 
 Our first Romanticists were, in fact, moved by a panthe- 
 istic instinct, which they did not themselves comprehend. 
 The sentiment, which they mistook for a yearning towards 
 the Catholic mother Church, was of deeper origin than they 
 suspected. Their veneration and affection for the tradi- 
 tions of the Middle Ages, for the popular beliefs, the 
 diablerie, the sorcery, and the witchcraft of former times, 
 — all this was a suddenly reawakened, though uncompre- 
 hended, predilection for the pantheism of the old Ger- 
 mans, and, in its foully stained and spitefully mutilated 
 form, what they really loved was the pre-christian reli- 
 gion of their ancestors. I must here recall what was said 
 in the first part of this book, where I showed how Chris- 
 tianity absorbed the elements of the old Germanic religion, 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 137 
 
 — how, after undergoing the most outrageous transforma- 
 tion, these elements were preserved in the popular beliefs 
 of the Middle Ages in such a way that the old worship of 
 nature came to be regarded as mere wicked sorcery, the 
 old gods as odious demons, and their chaste priestesses as 
 profligate witches. From this point of view the aberra- 
 tions of our earliest Romanticists can be more leniently 
 judged than is usually the case. They wished to restore 
 the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, for they felt that in 
 this Catholicism there still survived many sacred recollec- 
 tions of their first ancestors, many splendid memorials of 
 their earliest national life. It was these mutilated and 
 defiled relics that attracted the sympathies of the Roman- 
 ticists, and they detested a Protestantism and a Liberalism 
 whose aim was to destroy these relics and to efface the 
 whole Catholic past. 
 
 I shall return, however, to this subject. At present it 
 is sufficient merely to mention that pantheism began in 
 Fichte’s time to force its way into German art ; that even 
 Catholic Romanticists unconsciously followed this ten- 
 dency, and that Goethe was its foremost spokesman. 
 This is already apparent in his “ Werther,” wherein he 
 aspires after a beatific identification with nature. In 
 “Faust” he seeks to establish relationship with nature 
 by a method daringly direct and mystical : he conjures 
 the secret forces of the earth by the magic spell of the 
 Hollenzwang* But it is in his songs that Goethe’s pan- 
 theism reveals itself with greatest purity and charm. 
 The doctrine of Spinoza has escaped from its chrysalid 
 mathematical form, and flutters about us as a lyric of 
 Goethe. Hence the wrath displayed by our orthodox 
 believers and pietists against Goethe’s song. With their 
 pious bears’ paws they make clumsy efforts to seize this 
 butterfly that constantly eludes their grasp ; so delicately 
 
 * Influence of evil spirits over men. — Tr. 
 
138 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 ethereal, so lightly winged is Goethe’s song. Frenchmen 
 can form to themselves no conception of it unless they 
 possess a knowledge of our language. These songs of 
 Goethe’s have a coquettish charm that is indescribable : 
 the harmonious verses entwine themselves about the heart 
 like a tenderly loved one ; the word embraces whilst the 
 thought kisses thee. 
 
 For our part, we do not see in Goethe’s conduct regard- 
 ing Fichte any of those base motives indicated in even 
 baser language by his contemporaries. They failed to com- 
 prehend the different natures of the two men. The most 
 moderate amongst them misinterpreted Goethe’s passive- 
 ness when, at a later time, Fichte was sorely pressed and 
 persecuted. They did not correctly appreciate Goethe’s 
 situation. This giant was minister in a liliputian German 
 state. He could never indulge in natural movements. It 
 was said of the seated Jupiter of Phidias at Olympia that, 
 if he were suddenly to stand erect, he would shatter the 
 dome of the temple. This was precisely Goethe’s position 
 at Weimar; were he suddenly to have risen from his tran- 
 quil sitting posture, he would have shattered the gable 
 ridge of the state, or, what is more probable, would have 
 broken his head against it. And was he, then, to encounter 
 this risk for a doctrine that was not merely erroneous, 
 but actually ridiculous ? The German Jupiter remained 
 calmly seated, and permitted himself to be tranquilly 
 adored and perfumed with incense. 
 
 It would lead me too far from my subject were I to 
 seek from the standpoint of the artistic interests of this 
 epoch more completely to justify Goethe’s conduct with 
 regard to the accusation against Fichte. In Fichte’s 
 favour there is the sole circumstance that the accusation 
 was a mere pretext behind which political motives were 
 concealed ; for a theologian may with reason be accused 
 of atheism, since he has accepted the obligation of teaching 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 139 
 
 certain doctrines. A philosopher, however, does not and 
 cannot enter into snch an obligation, and his thought re- 
 mains free as the bird of the air. It is, perhaps, unjust of 
 me that, partly in order to spare my own, partly in order 
 to spare the feelings of others, I have not stated here all 
 the circumstances on which the accusation against Fichte 
 was founded and justified. I will cite .only one of the 
 dubious passages in the incriminating treatise : — 
 
 “ The living and active moral order is God himself ; 
 we need no other God, nor can we comprehend any other. 
 There is no ground in human reason for going beyond this 
 moral order of the universe, and for admitting, as a con- 
 clusion from effect to cause, some special being as the 
 source of this effect. The primitive intelligence of man 
 certainly does not confirm this conclusion, and is ignorant 
 of such a being ; only a philosophy capable of self-mis- 
 apprehension can deduce it.” 
 
 With characteristic obstinacy, Fichte, in his “ Appeal to 
 the Public” and in his “ Judicial Vindication,” reiterated 
 his views more strongly and more glaringly, and in lan- 
 guage, too, that wounds our deepest feelings. We, who 
 believe in a real God, a God that reveals himself to 
 our senses in infinite space and to our spirit in infinite 
 thought ; we, who adore in nature a visible God, and who 
 recognise in our inmost soul his mysterious voice ; we 
 are repelled by the harsh, even ironical terms in which 
 Fichte declares our God to be a mere chimera. It is 
 doubtful, indeed, whether there is irony or mental extra- 
 vagance in Fichte’s endeavour to eliminate from the being 
 of God all sentient attributes, and thus to deny his very 
 existence, since existence is a sentient notion, and is only 
 possible as such ! “ The theory of knowledge,” he says, 
 
 “ knows no other mode of existence than a sentient one, 
 and, as existence is attributable only to the phenomena of 
 
140 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 experience, this predicate cannot apply to God.” Fichte’s 
 God, therefore, has no existence; he is not; he manifests 
 himself only as pure action, as a sequence of events, as 
 ordo ordinans, as the law of the universe. 
 
 It is thus that idealism has filtered deity through every 
 possible abstraction, until at last no residuum is left. 
 Henceforth, as with you, in place of a king, with us, in 
 place of a God, law is sovereign. 
 
 But which is more absurd, a law of atheism, that is, a 
 law without God, or a God-law, that is, a God that is only 
 a law ? 
 
 The idealism of Fichte ranks as one of the most colossal 
 errors ever hatched in the human brain. It is more god- 
 less and more worthy of condemnation than the coarsest 
 materialism. What is called in France the atheism of 
 the materialists, is, as I might easily show, an edifying 
 and devout doctrine when compared with the consequences 
 of Fichte’s transcendental idealism. This I know: both 
 systems are repugnant to me. Both are also anti-poetic. 
 The French materialists have written quite as bad verses 
 as the German transcendental idealists ; but the doctrine 
 of Fichte was in no respect dangerous to the State, and 
 still less merited being persecuted as such. In order to 
 be capable of being led astray by this heresy, one must 
 have been endowed with speculative acumen in a degree 
 to be found amongst few men. The great mass, with its 
 thousands of thick heads, was quite impervious to this 
 erroneous doctrine. The views of Fichte concerning God 
 should have been attacked, therefore, by the path of reason, 
 and not through aid of the police. The accusation of 
 atheism in philosophy was a thing so strange in Germany, 
 that Fichte at first really did not understand what it 
 meant. Quite justly did he remark that the question 
 whether a system of philosophy is atheistical or not 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 141 
 
 sounds to a philosopher as extraordinary as the question 
 whether a triangle is green or red would sound to a 
 mathematician. 
 
 This accusation had, then, its secret motives, as Fichte 
 soon perceived. Being of all men the most truthful, we 
 may implicitly believe what he says in a letter to Beinhold 
 with respect to these secret motives. As this letter, dated 
 the 22d of May 1779, depicts the character of the entire 
 epoch, and conveys a clear idea of all the affliction of the 
 man, we shall here quote a portion of it : — 
 
 “Weariness and disgust determine me to adopt the 
 resolution, whereof I have already spoken to you, of dis- 
 appearing completely for a few years. From the view I 
 took of the state of affairs, I was convinced that duty itself 
 demanded this resolution : for in the midst of the present 
 ferment I shall certainly not obtain a hearing, and I should 
 only increase the agitation ; but after a few years, when 
 the first feelings of surprise have calmed down, I shall be 
 able to speak with all the more emphasis. At the present 
 moment I think differently. I ought not now to remain 
 mute, for if I preserve silence now, I shall never again 
 dare to speak. Since the alliance of Prussia with Austria, 
 I have long thought probable what is now become a oer- 
 tainty for me after recent events, and especially after 
 the atrocious murder of the French Ambassador, an affair 
 about which people here are jubilant, and with reference 
 to which Schiller and Goethe exclaimed, ‘ Quite right ; 
 these dogs must be slain ! ’ I am convinced that from 
 this time forward despotism will defend itself with the 
 energy of despair, that it will become consistent through 
 Paul * and Pitt, that the basis of its plan is to root out 
 liberty of opinion, and that the Germans will not impede 
 the attainment of this object. 
 
 “ Do not fancy, for example, that the court of Weimar 
 
 * The Czar Paul I., 1796-1801 . — Tk. 
 
142 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 feared a diminution in the number of students at the uni- 
 versity on account of my presence there ; it was too well 
 assured of the contrary ; it was obliged to remove me in 
 consequence of a general agreement, strongly supported 
 by the Electorate of Saxony. Burscher of Leipzig, who 
 was privy to these secrets, laid a wager of a considerable 
 sum so long ago as the end of last year, that I would be 
 exiled before the expiry of the present year. Yogt was 
 long since won over to my enemies through Burgsdorf. 
 The department of sciences at Dresden has made it known 
 that no one who devotes himself to the new philosophy 
 will receive promotion, or, if already promoted, he shall 
 be incapable of further advancement. In the Free School 
 at Leipzig, Bosenmuller’s 10 ‘ Explanatory Criticisms ’ were 
 held to be of a suspicious tendency. Luther’s Cate- 
 chism has lately been reintroduced into this school, and 
 the teachers have been referred back to the symbolical 
 books. This will not end here, and it will extend. . . . 
 To sum up : Nothing is more certain than the absolute 
 certainty that, unless the French gain a tremendous ascen- 
 dancy, and unless, within a few years, they carry through 
 important changes in Germany, or at least in a very 
 considerable portion of it, no man that has been known 
 during the course of his life to have thought a free thought 
 will be able to find in Germany a resting-place. . . . There 
 is for me, however, one thing more certain than certainty 
 itself, namely this, that though I were presently to find 
 somewhere a hole wherein to conceal myself, I should, in 
 two years at furthest, be hunted out of it again, and it is 
 a dangerous thing to run the risk of being chased from 
 place to place : of this we have an historical example in 
 the case of Bousseau. 
 
 “ Suppose I remain quite silent and write not another 
 line ; shall I be left in peace on this condition ? I do not 
 believe it ; and admitting that, as regards the courts, I 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 143 
 
 might hope for this, would not the clergy, wherever I 
 might turn my steps, hound on the populace against me, 
 suffer me to be stoned by it, and then solicit the govern- 
 ments to banish me as a person that excited tumults ? 
 But ought I then to be silent ? No, verily, I ought not ; 
 for I have reason for believing that, if anything of the 
 German spirit can be saved, it can be saved through my 
 speech, whilst by my silence philosophy will be totally and 
 prematurely ruined. Of those of whom I do not expect 
 that they will leave me to exist in silence, do I still less 
 expect that they will permit me freedom of speech. 
 
 “ But I shall convince them of the harmlessness of my 
 doctrine. Dear Beinhold, how canst thou suppose these 
 men to be well-intentioned towards me ? The fairer my 
 character is shown to be, the more innocent it appears, 
 the blacker do these men grow, and the more aggravated 
 does my real crime appear. I never supposed them to 
 be persecuting me for so-called atheism : what they per- 
 secuted in me was the free-thinker, who begins to make 
 himself intelligible (the obscurity of his style was Kant’s 
 good fortune) ; what they persecuted in me was the decried 
 democrat ; they were terrified as by a spectre at that in- 
 dependence which, as they had a dim presentiment, my 
 philosophy awakens.” * 
 
 I once more remark that this letter is not of yesterday, 
 but bears date the 2 2d of May 1799. The political cir- 
 cumstances of that time present an even melancholy 
 resemblance to the most recent condition of Germany; 
 with this single point of difference, that during the former 
 period the spirit of liberty flourished among the learned, 
 among poets and men of letters generally, whereas nowa- 
 days this spirit finds a far more ready utterance among the 
 
 * The whoie of the long paragraph that follows was struck out by the 
 censor in the first German editions. It is restored in the later editions. 
 — Tr 
 
144 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 active masses, among artisans and tradespeople. During 
 the epoch of the first revolution, whilst a leaden, altogether 
 Teutonic somnolence weighed down the people, whilst all 
 Germany seemed overcome by a species of brutal repose, 
 our literary life revealed the wildest commotion and fer- 
 ment. The most solitary author, living in the remotest 
 nook of Germany, took part in this movement ; possessed 
 of no accurate knowledge of political occurrences, by a 
 kind of secret affinity he felt their social importance and he 
 expressed it in his writings. This phenomenon reminds 
 me of those large sea- shells sometimes placed as ornaments 
 on the mantel-shelf, which, however distant they may be 
 from the sea, at once begin to murmur when the hour of 
 flood-tide arrives and when the waves are dashing against 
 the shore. When the revolutionary tide began to flow in 
 Paris, that great human ocean, when its waves surged and 
 roared amongst you here, German hearts across the Ehine 
 were resounding and murmuring in response. . . . But 
 they were so isolated, surrounded as they were by mere 
 unfeeling pieces of porcelain, tea-cups and coffee-pots and 
 Chinese pagods, that nodded their heads mechanically as 
 though they understood what the talk was about ! Alas ! 
 our poor German predecessors had to atone most bitterly 
 for their revolutionary sympathy. Petty nobles and cant- 
 ing priests played on them the coarsest and basest of their 
 spiteful tricks. Some of them fled to Paris, and have 
 disappeared or died here in poverty and misery. I lately 
 saw an old blind compatriot who has remained in Paris 
 since that time. I saw him at the Palais-Boy al, whither 
 he had come to warm himself a little in the sun. It was 
 pitiful to behold how pale and thin he was, and how he 
 groped his way along the sides of the houses. They told 
 me he was the old Danish poet Heiberg . 11 I also saw not 
 long since the garret in which citizen George Forster 12 
 died. But it would have fared even worse with the 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 145 
 
 friends of liberty who remained in Germany had not 
 Napoleon and the French made haste to conquer us. 
 Napoleon certainly never fancied that he had himself 
 been the saviour of ideology. Without his aid our philo- 
 sophers, and with them their ideas, would have been 
 exterminated by the gibbet and the wheel. But the 
 German friends of liberty, too republican in their senti- 
 ments to do homage to Napoleon, and too magnanimous 
 to ally themselves with a foreign domination, wrapped 
 their thoughts in profound silence. They went about 
 sorrowfully with broken hearts and sealed lips. When 
 Napoleon fell they were seen to smile, though it was a 
 mournful smile, and they still remained silent. They 
 took scarcely the slightest interest in the patriotic enthu- 
 siasm which, with the sanction of the supreme powers, 
 then broke forth jubilantly throughout Germany. They 
 knew what they knew, and were silent. As these Be- 
 publicans lead a very chaste and simple life, they usually 
 attain a great age, and when the Revolution of July took 
 place, many of them were still alive. We were not a 
 little astonished then at beholding the old fellows, whom 
 we had always been accustomed to see going about bowed 
 down and in almost imbecile silence, suddenly raise their 
 heads and smile amicably at us youngsters, and seize each 
 other’s hands, and begin to tell merry tales. I even heard 
 one of them singing; for he sang to us in a cafe the 
 Marseillaise Hymn, and we learnt the melody and the 
 beautiful words, and it was not long till we sang it better 
 than the old man himself ; for in the middle of the best 
 stanzas he would often laugh like a fool or weep like a 
 child. It is always a fortunate thing when such old 
 people remain alive to teach young ones songs. We 
 young ones shall not forget these songs, and some of us 
 will one day teach them by heart to grandchildren yet 
 unborn; but many of us will have rotted by that time, 
 
 K 
 
146 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 some in the prisons of home, some in the garrets of 
 exile. 
 
 Let us speak of philosophy again ! I have shown how 
 the philosophy of Fichte, though constructed of the most 
 attenuated abstractions, presented a rigid inflexibility in 
 its consequences, which were pursued to the most auda- 
 cious extremes. But one fine morning we perceived a 
 great change in this philosophy ; it began to blossom 
 with innocent flowers and to weep childishly ; it became 
 tender and modest. The Titan of idealism, who had 
 climbed up to heaven by the ladder of thought, and had 
 groped about with daring hand in its empty chambers, 
 now becomes a creature bowed down with Christian 
 humility, who sighs much about love. This is Fichte’s 
 second period, and concerns us little here. His entire 
 system of philosophy undergoes the strangest modifica- 
 tions. About this time he wrote a book, lately translated 
 into French, “ The Destiny of Man.” A book of a similar 
 character, “ Instruction towards Attaining the Celestial 
 Life,” also belongs to this period. 
 
 Fichte, the opinionative man, would, of course, never 
 admit this great transformation. He maintained that his 
 philosophy was always the same, that it was merely its 
 mode of expression that had undergone change and im- 
 provement; people had never understood him. He con- 
 tended, too, that the Philosophy of Nature , which had 
 sprung up in Germany and which was supplanting idealism, 
 was in principle precisely the same as his own system, and 
 that his pupil, Herr Joseph Schelling, in detaching himself 
 from his master and in introducing this new philosophy, 
 had merely remodelled the nomenclature of the old philo- 
 sophy, and had merely amplified his old doctrine by the 
 addition of barren accessories. 
 
 This brings us to a new phase of German thought. 
 We have just mentioned the names Joseph Schelling and 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 147 
 
 Philosophy of Nature ; but as the former is almost quite 
 unknown in France, and as the expression Philosophy of 
 Nature is not very generally understood, I must explain 
 the significance of both names. It will certainly not 
 be possible to do so exhaustively in this sketch ; at pre- 
 sent we shall only utter a warning against certain insi- 
 dious errors, and merely draw attention to the social 
 importance of this philosophy. 
 
 At the outset it may be said that Fichte was not very far 
 wrong in contending that Herr Joseph Schelling’s doctrine 
 was in reality his own merely amplified and formulated in 
 different terms. Precisely like Herr Joseph Schelling does 
 Fichte teach : — there exists but one being, the Ego, the 
 absolute ; he also teaches the identity of the ideal and the 
 real. In the “ Theory of Philosophy,” as already shown, 
 Fichte sought by means of an intellectual act to construct 
 the real out of the ideal. Joseph Schelling, however, has 
 reversed the process ; he endeavours to explain the ideal 
 by the real. To express my meaning more clearly : Start- 
 ing from the axiom that thought and nature are one, 
 Fichte, by an operation of the intellect, arrives at the 
 external world; by thought he creates nature, by the 
 ideal the real. For Schelling, on the contrary, though he 
 starts from the same axiom, the external world resolves 
 itself into pure ideas; nature for him becomes thought, 
 the real becomes ideal. Each of these tendencies, that of 
 Fichte and that of Schelling, is to a certain extent the 
 complement of the other. For, accepting as ultimate the 
 axiom just referred to, philosophy naturally falls into two 
 parts, in one of which it would be shown how from the 
 idea nature rises to phenomenal reality ; in the other, 
 how nature resolves itself into pure ideas. Philosophy 
 may therefore be divided into Transcendental Idealism 
 and into Philosophy of Nature. Now both of these sides 
 were really acknowledged by Schelling: the latter he 
 
148 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 followed out in his “ Ideas towards a Philosophy of 
 Nature,” the former in his ‘'System of Transcendental 
 Idealism.” 
 
 I refer to these works (of which one appeared in 1797, 
 the other in 1800) merely because those two reciprocally 
 complementary sides are expressed in their very titles, 
 and not because they contain a complete system. No; 
 such a system is to be found in none of Schelling’s works. 
 He, unlike Kant and Pichte, has no chief work that may 
 be regarded as the central point of his philosophy. It 
 would be an injustice to judge Schelling by the contents 
 of a book, and by a rigorous interpretation of the letter. 
 One should rather read his works in chronological order, 
 follow up the gradual development of his thought, and 
 then take firm grasp of his fundamental idea. Indeed, it 
 seems to me often necessary, in reading his works, to dis- 
 tinguish where thought ceases and where poetry begins ; 
 for Schelling is one of those beings endowed by nature 
 with more poetic temperament than poetic power — one 
 who, incapable of satisfying the daughters of Parnassus, 
 has fled to the woodlands of philosophy, where he has con- 
 tracted with abstract hamadryads a barren union. The 
 sentiment of such natures is poetic, but the instrument, 
 the word, is feeble ; they strive in vain after an artistic 
 form wherein to communicate their thoughts and their 
 knowledge. Poetry is at once Schelling’s strength and his 
 weakness. It is here that he is distinguished from Fichte 
 as much to his advantage as to his disadvantage. Fichte 
 is merely a philosopher ; his power consists in his dialectic, 
 and his strength in ability to demonstrate. This, how- 
 ever, is Schelling’s weak side ; he lives in a world of 
 intuition ; he does not feel at home on the cold heights of 
 logic ; he stretches forth eager hands towards the flowery 
 valleys of symbolism, and his philosophical strength lies 
 in the art of construction. But this is an intellectual 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 149 
 
 aptitude found as frequently amongst mediocre poets as 
 amongst the best philosophers. 
 
 From this last indication it becomes clear that Schelling, 
 in so much of his philosophy as is pure transcendental 
 idealism, remained, and could not hut remain, a mere 
 echoer of Fichte; whilst in the philosophy of nature, 
 where he has to deal with flowers and stars, he cannot 
 help blossoming and shining radiantly. Not only he him- 
 self, hut also like-minded friends attached themselves by 
 preference to this side of his philosophy, and the com- 
 motion thereby aroused was only a kind of reaction of 
 poetasters against the former abstract philosophy of the 
 intellect. Like school-children freed from their tasks after 
 sighing all day in close rooms under the burden of syntax 
 and arithmetic, the scholars of Schelling rushed out of 
 doors to nature, to the fragrant sunny world of the real, 
 and huzzaed and turned summersaults and made a great 
 disturbance. 
 
 The expression “ scholars of Schelling ” must certainly 
 not be taken in its customary sense. Schelling himself 
 tells us it was only a school such as existed among 
 the ancient poets that he desired to found, a school of 
 poetry in which no one was bound to accept a particular 
 doctrine or to submit to a special discipline, but one in 
 which each was to obey the idea, and to manifest it in 
 his own manner. He might also have said that he wished 
 to found a school of prophets, where the inspired should 
 begin to prophesy as fancy moved them, and in whatever 
 dialect they pleased. This, indeed, was done by those 
 disciples whom the master’s spirit had deeply moved; the 
 most shallow-brained began to prophesy each in a different 
 tongue, and philosophy had its great day of Pentecost. 
 
 Things gravest and most sublime may be turned into 
 masquerade and buffoonery ; a rabble of cowardly knaves 
 and melancholy clowns is capable of compromising a great 
 
150 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 idea : this we see in the case of the philosophy of nature. 
 But the ridicule brought upon this philosophy by Schel- 
 ling’s school of the prophets or school of the poets ought 
 not really to be imputed to it, for the idea on which the 
 philosophy of nature rests is indeed nothing else than the 
 idea of Spinoza, than pantheism. 
 
 The doctrine of Spinoza and the philosophy of nature, 
 as explained by Schelling during his best period, are 
 essentially one and the same thing. The Germans having 
 reached the stage of despising the materialism of Locke, 
 and having pursued to its last consequences the idealism 
 of Leibnitz and found it equally unfruitful, arrived finally 
 at the third son of Descartes — at Spinoza. Philosophy 
 had once more described a great circle, the same, it may 
 be said, that it had already traversed two thousand years 
 before in Greece. But a closer comparison of these two 
 circuits of human thought reveals an essential difference. 
 Amongst the Greeks there were as daring sceptics as 
 amongst ourselves ; the Eleatics were as decided in their 
 denial of the reality of the external world as our modern 
 transcendental idealists. Plato rediscovered the world 
 of thought in the phenomenal world as plainly as did 
 Schelling. But we had this advantage over the Greeks 
 as well as over the Cartesian school : we commenced our 
 philosophic circuit by an investigation of the sources of 
 human knowledge, by the “ Critique of Pure Eeason ” of 
 our Immanuel Kant. 
 
 The mention of Kant affords me an opportunity of 
 adding to the foregoing observations, that one species of 
 evidence in favour of the existence of God, the so-called 
 moral evidence, with which Kant did not interfere, was 
 overthrown with great Mat by Schelling. I have already 
 remarked, however, that this evidence was not very con- 
 clusive, and that Kant perhaps allowed it to subsist from 
 promptings of good-nature. The God of Schelling is the 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 151 
 
 God-universe of Spinoza — at least he was so in the year 
 1801, in the second volume of the Journal of Specula- 
 tive Physics. Here God is the absolute identity of nature 
 and thought, of matter and mind ; and absolute identity 
 is not the cause of the universe, but is the universe itself, 
 consequently the God-universe. In it there exist neither 
 opposites nor divisions. Absolute identity is also absolute 
 totality. A year later Schelling still further developed 
 his God in a work entitled, “Bruno; or, Concerning the 
 Divine and Natural Principles of Things.” This title 
 recalls the most noble martyr of our doctrine, Giordano 
 Bruno of Nola, of glorious memory. The Italians asserted 
 that Schelling borrowed all his best ideas from old Bruno, 
 and they accused him of plagiarism. They were wrong, 
 for there is no such thing as plagiarism in philosophy. 
 In the year 1804 the God of Schelling appeared at last in 
 His complete form in a work entitled “ Philosophy and 
 Beligion.” It is here that we have in its completed form 
 the theory of the absolute expressed in three formulas. 
 The first of these is the categorical : The absolute is 
 neither the ideal nor the real (neither mind nor matter), 
 but is the identity of both. The second formula is the 
 hypothetical : When subject and object are present, the 
 absolute is the essential equality of both. The third 
 formula is the disjunctive : There is only one being, but 
 this unity of being may be regarded at one and the same 
 time, or by turns, as wholly ideal or as wholly real. The 
 first formula is strictly negative ; the second supposes a 
 condition more difficult to comprehend than the hypo- 
 thesis itself ; and the third formula is exactly that of 
 Spinoza : absolute substance is cognisable either as 
 thought or as extension. Along the path of philosophy, 
 then, Schelling could proceed no further than Spinoza, 
 since the absolute can be comprehended only under the 
 form of these two attributes, thought and extension. But 
 
152 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 at this point Schelling leaves the philosophical route, and 
 seeks by a kind of mystical intuition to arrive at the con- 
 templation of the absolute itself ; he seeks to contemplate 
 it in its central point, in its essence, where it is neither 
 ideal nor real, neither thought nor extension, neither sub- 
 ject nor object, neither mind nor matter, hut ... I know 
 not what ! 
 
 Here philosophy ceases with Schelling, and poetry — I 
 may say folly — commences. But it is here that he meets 
 with the greatest sympathy from a number of silly admirers 
 whom it suits admirably to abandon calm reflection, and 
 who, as if in imitation of the dancing dervishes described 
 by our friend Jules David, continue spinning round in a 
 circle until objective and subjective worlds become lost to 
 them, — until both worlds melt into a colourless nothing- 
 ness, that is neither real nor ideal, until they see things 
 invisible, hear what is inaudible, until they hear colours 
 and see tones, until the absolute reveals itself to them. 
 
 I am of opinion that with this attempt intellectually to 
 conceive the absolute Schelling’s philosophic career comes 
 to a close. A greater thinker now steps on the scene, one 
 who rounds into a completed system the philosophy of 
 nature, explains from this synthesis the whole world of 
 phenomena, supplements the great ideas of his predeces- 
 sors by yet greater ideas, subjects their philosophy to every 
 form of discipline, and thus establishes it on a scientific 
 basis. He is the scholar of Schelling, a scholar, however, 
 who, making himself by degrees possessor of all his mas- 
 ter’s might in the realm of philosophy, outgrows his mas- 
 ter, and finally thrusts him into obscurity. This is the 
 great Hegel, greatest of philosophers begotten by Ger- 
 many since Leibnitz. There can be no doubt that he far 
 overtops Kant and Fichte. To the penetration of the for- 
 mer and to the vigour of the latter he adds the tranquil- 
 lity of a mind that works by constitutional methods, a 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 153 
 
 harmony of thought not to he found in either Kant or 
 Fichte, in both of whom the revolutionary spirit is pre- 
 dominant. No comparison is possible between this man 
 and Joseph Schelling; for Hegel was a man of character. 
 And though, like Schelling, he may have given support 
 by certain suspicious vindications to the existing order of 
 affairs in church and state, he did so in favour of a state 
 that, in theory at least, rendered homage to the principle 
 of progress, and in favour of a church that regarded the 
 principle of unrestrained inquiry as its vital element ; and 
 he made no secret of this ; he avowed all his intentions. 
 Schelling, on the contrary, goes cringing about in the 
 ante- chambers of practical and theoretical absolutism, in 
 the dens of Jesuitism he lends a hand in forging intellec- 
 tual manacles, and all the while he tries to make believe 
 he is still the same unperverted child of light that he 
 once was ; he apostatises his apostasy, and to the shame 
 of deserting his cause he adds the cowardice of lying ! 
 
 We may not disguise it, either from motives of piety or 
 of prudence; we will make no secret of it; the man who 
 was once the boldest exponent in Germany of the religion 
 of pantheism, he who proclaimed most loudly the sanc- 
 tification of nature and the redintegration of man in his 
 divine rights, has become apostate to his own doctrine ; 
 he has forsaken the altar consecrated by his own hands ; 
 he has slunk back to the religious kennels of the past; he 
 is now a good Catholic, and preaches an extra-mundane 
 personal God, “ who has committed the folly of creating 
 the world.” The followers of the old orthodoxy may, if 
 they choose, ring their church-bells and sing “ Kyrie 
 Eleison ” over such a conversion ; it proves nothing, how- 
 ever, in favour of their doctrine ; it merely proves that man 
 turns to religion for support when he grows old and weary, 
 when his physical and intellectual powers fail him, when 
 he can no longer either enjoy or reason. So many free- 
 
154 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 thinkers, you say, have been converted on their deathbed ! 
 But, at any rate, do not boast of this ! Such stories be- 
 long at best to pathology, and are very bad evidence for 
 your case. After all, they only prove that it was impos- 
 sible for you to convert these free-thinkers so long as 
 they went about under God’s free sky in the enjoyment 
 of their healthy senses and in full possession of their rea- 
 soning faculty. 
 
 It is Ballanche, I think, who says, that it is a law of 
 nature that initiators die as soon as they have completed 
 the work of initiation. Alas ! worthy Ballanche, that is 
 only part of the truth, and I might with more reason 
 assert that, when the work of initiation is complete, the 
 initiator dies — or becomes apostate. And so we may, 
 perhaps, mitigate to a certain extent the severe judgment 
 pronounced by intelligent Germany on Herr Schelling; 
 we may, perhaps, commute the heavy sentence of con- 
 tempt under which he lies into silent commiseration ; and 
 his desertion of his own doctrine we may explain as a 
 consequence of the natural law in accordance with which, 
 whenever any one has devoted all his energies to the ex- 
 pression or to the carrying out of an idea and has accom- 
 plished his task, that person falls exhausted, either into 
 the arms of death, or into the embrace of his former 
 opponents. 
 
 Such an explanation as the foregoing may enable us to 
 understand certain other more terrible phenomena of our 
 day which deeply afflict us. It may enable us to com- 
 prehend why men who have sacrificed everything for their 
 opinion, who have fought and suffered for that opinion, 
 should, after the victory is gained, abandon it and pass 
 over into the enemy’s camp ! I may be permitted also, 
 after such an explanation, to draw attention to the fact 
 that not Joseph Schelling only, but, in some sort, both 
 Kant and Fichte, may likewise be accused of defection. 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 155 
 
 Fichte died opportunely enough before his desertion of 
 his own philosophy had time to become very notorious ; 
 but Kant is unfaithful to the “ Critique of Pure Reason,” 
 even whilst writing the “ Critique of Practical Reason.” 
 The initiator dies or becomes apostate ! 
 
 I know not how it comes that this last sentence affects 
 my soul with such a melancholy influence that I do not 
 feel sufficient strength here to record the other bitter 
 truths regarding the present Herr Schelling. Let us 
 rather say something in praise of that dear former Schel- 
 ling, whose memory blossoms perennially in the annals of 
 German thought; for the former Schelling, like Kant and 
 Pichte, represents one of the great phases of our philoso- 
 phical revolution, compared by me in these pages to the 
 political revolution in France. In truth, while in Kant 
 we see the terrorist Convention, and in Fichte the Napo- 
 leonic Empire, in Schelling we behold the reaction of the 
 Restoration which followed the Empire. But it was at 
 first a restoration in a better sense. Schelling re-estab- 
 lished nature in its legitimate rights ; he aimed at a recon- 
 ciliation between mind and nature; he sought to reunite 
 them in the eternal soul of the world. He restored that 
 great philosophy of nature which we find in the old Greek 
 philosophers, which Socrates first drew into closer relation 
 with the human spirit, and which thereafter flowed forth 
 again as the ideal. He restored that great philosophy of 
 nature which, after unobtrusively budding out of the old 
 pantheistic religion of the Germans, displayed during the 
 age of Paracelsus its fairest flowers, but was stifled by 
 the introduction of Cartesianism. Alas ! he ended by 
 restoring things whereby he may in the worst sense be 
 compared with the French Restoration. But public reason 
 did not long endure such things ; he was ignominiously 
 driven from the throne of thought. Hegel, his major- 
 domo, carried off his crown and shaved his head, and since 
 
156 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 then the deposed Schelling has lived as a poor shaveling 
 in Munich, a city that preserves in its very name its 
 monkish character, and in Latin is called Monacho mona- 
 chorum. There I saw him, with his large pale eyes and 
 depressed, stupefied countenance, moving about irreso- 
 lutely like a spectre, a miserable picture of fallen royalty. 
 Hegel, however, had himself crowned at Berlin, unfor- 
 tunately with some slight ceremony of anointing, and he 
 has ever since held sway over German philosophy. 
 
 Our philosophical revolution is concluded; Hegel has 
 closed its great circle. Henceforth we see only the 
 developing and perfecting of the philosophy of nature. 
 This philosophy has, as I have already said, forced its 
 way into all sciences, and has produced the most extra- 
 ordinary and the most grandiose results. Much that is 
 distressing, as I have also indicated, has of necessity come 
 to light. These phenomena are so numerous that the 
 mere record of them would fill an entire hook. This is 
 the really interesting and richly coloured part of our 
 philosophical history. I am convinced, however, that it 
 will be more profitable for Frenchmen to know nothing 
 about it, for knowledge of this sort could only tend to pro- 
 duce greater confusion in French intellects; many of the 
 propositions of the philosophy of nature, if detached from 
 their connection, might cause much mischief amongst you. 
 Of this at least I am certain, had you been acquainted in 
 the year 1830 with the German philosophy of nature, you 
 could not have produced the Bevolution of J uly. There 
 was necessary for the accomplishment of this act a con- 
 centration of ideas and of forces, a generous partiality, a 
 certain virtue, a self-sufficing absence of reflection such as 
 only your old school of philosophy rendered possible. 
 Perverse philosophical ideas, which might in case of need 
 have served to justify legitimacy and the doctrine of the 
 incarnation, would have damped your enthusiasm, would 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN, GERMANY. 157 
 
 liave paralysed your courage. I regard it therefore as an 
 important fact in the history of the world that your great 
 eclectic * who at that epoch was desirous of giving you 
 instruction in German philosophy, had not the slightest 
 comprehension of the subject. His providential ignorance 
 was salutary for France and for the whole of humanity. 
 
 Alas ! the philosophy of nature, which in many regions 
 of knowledge, especially in the natural sciences strictly so 
 called, produced the most splendid fruits, would elsewhere 
 have brought forth the most obnoxious weeds. Whilst 
 Oken, one of the most highly gifted thinkers, and one of 
 the greatest citizens of Germany, was discovering his new 
 worlds of ideas, and was inspiring the youth of Germany 
 with enthusiasm for the imprescriptible rights of humanity, 
 for freedom and equality, — alas ! at that very time Adam 
 Muller was lecturing on the stall-feeding of nations ac- 
 cording to the principles of natural philosophy; at that 
 very time Herr Gorres was preaching the obscurantism of 
 the Middle Ages from the physical science point of view, and 
 was declaring the state to be only a tree which ought also 
 to have in its organic distribution a stem, branches, and 
 leaves, all as may be beautifully seen in the hierarchic 
 corporations of the Middle Ages ; at that very time Herr 
 Steffens was proclaiming the law of philosophy in virtue 
 of which the peasantry is distinguished from the nobility, 
 the peasant being by nature destined to labour without 
 enjoying, whereas the noble is entitled to enjoy without 
 labouring ; yea, only a few months since, as I am told, a 
 dolt of a country squire in Westphalia, an arrant block- 
 head, bearing, I believe, the cognomen Haxthausen, pub- 
 lished a pamphlet wherein he solicited the Government of 
 the King of Prussia to have regard to the consistent parallel 
 demonstrated by philosophy as existing in the organisation 
 of the world, and to mark more strictly political distinc- 
 
 * Victor Cousin. — [Tr] 
 
158 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 tions ; for as in nature there are four elements, fire, air, 
 earth, and water, so in society there are four analogous 
 elements, the nobility, the clergy, the burgesses, and the 
 peasants. 
 
 When such melancholy follies were seen to spring from 
 the tree of philosophy and to expand into poisonous 
 flowers, when in particular it was observed that young 
 Germany, absorbed in metaphysical abstractions, was ob- 
 livious to the most urgent questions of the time and had 
 become unfit for practical life, well might patriots and friends 
 of liberty feel a righteous indignation against philosophy, 
 whilst some of them went the length of utterly condemn- 
 ing it as a vain and profitless pursuit of shadows . 13 
 
 We shall not commit the folly of seriously confuting 
 these malcontents. German philosophy is an important 
 fact ; it concerns the whole human race, and only our 
 latest descendants will be in a position to decide whether 
 we are to be praised or blamed for having first worked 
 out our philosophy and afterwards our revolution. It 
 seems to me that a methodical people, such as we are, 
 must begin with the reformation, must then occupy itself 
 with systems of philosophy, and that only after their com- 
 pletion could it pass to the political revolution. I find this 
 sequence quite rational. The heads that have first served 
 for the speculations of philosophy can afterwards be 
 struck off by the revolution for whatever object it pleases ; 
 but philosophy would not have been able to utilise the 
 heads struck off by a revolution that preceded it. Give 
 yourselves no anxiety however, ye German Republicans ; 
 the German revolution will not prove any milder or 
 gentler because it w T as preceded by the “ Critique ” of 
 Kant, by the “ Transcendental Idealism” of Fichte, or even 
 by the Philosophy of Nature. These doctrines served 
 to develop revolutionary forces that only await their 
 time to break forth and to fill the world with terror 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 159 
 
 and with admiration. Then will appear Rantians as little 
 tolerant of piety in the world of deeds as in the world of 
 ideas, who will mercilessly upturn with sword and axe 
 the soil of our European life in order to extirpate the 
 last remnants of the past. There will come upon the 
 scene armed Fichteans whose fanaticism of will is to he 
 restrained neither by fear nor by self-interest; for they 
 live in the spirit ; they defy matter like those early Chris- 
 tians who could be subdued neither by bodily torments 
 nor by bodily delights. Yea, in a time of social revolu- 
 tion these transcendental idealists will prove even more 
 pertinacious than the early Christians ; for the latter 
 endured earthly martyrdom in the hope of attaining 
 celestial blessedness, whilst the transcendental idealist 
 looks on martyrdom itself as a vain show, and is invul- 
 nerable within the intrenchment of his own thought. 
 But most of all to be feared would be the philosophers 
 of nature were they actively to mingle in a German 
 revolution, and to identify themselves with the work of 
 destruction. For if the hand of the Kantian strikes with 
 strong unerring blow, his heart being stirred by no feeling 
 of traditional awe; if the Fichtean courageously defies 
 every danger, since for him danger has in reality no 
 existence; — the Philosopher of Nature will be terrible in 
 this, that he has allied himself with the primitive powers 
 of nature, that he can conjure up the demoniac forces of 
 old German pantheism; and having done so, there is 
 aroused in him that ancient German eagerness for battle 
 which combats not for the sake of destroying, not even 
 for the sake of victory, but merely for the sake of the 
 combat itself. Christianity — and this is its fairest merit 
 — subdued to a certain extent the brutal warrior ardour of 
 the Germans, but it could not entirely quench it; and 
 when the cross, that restraining talisman, falls to pieces, 
 
i6o RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 then will break forth again the ferocity of the old com- 
 batants, the frantic Berserker rage whereof Northern poets 
 have said and sung so much. The talisman has become 
 rotten, and the day w T ill come when it will pitifully 
 crumble to dust. The old stone gods will then arise from 
 the forgotten ruins and wipe from their eyes the dust of 
 centuries, and Thor with his giant hammer will arise 
 again, and he will shatter the Gothic cathedrals. . . . 
 When ye hear the trampling of feet and the clashing of 
 arms, ye neighbours’ children, ye French, be on your 
 guard, and see that ye mingle not in the fray going on 
 amongst us at home in Germany. It might fare ill with 
 you. See that ye take no hand in kindling the fire ; see 
 that ye attempt not to extinguish it. You might easily 
 burn your fingers in the flame. Smile not at my counsel, 
 at the counsel of a dreamer, who warns you against 
 Kantians, Fichteans, Philosophers of Nature. Smile not 
 at the fantasy of one who foresees in the region of reality 
 the same outburst of revolution that has taken place in the 
 region of intellect. The thought precedes the deed as the 
 lightning the thunder. German thunder is of true Ger- 
 man character : it is not very nimble, but rumbles along 
 somewhat slowly. But come it will, and when ye hear a 
 crashing such as never before has been heard in the 
 world’s history, then know that at last the German thun- 
 derbolt has fallen. At this commotion the eagles will 
 drop dead from the skies and the lions in the farthest 
 wastes of Africa will bite their tails and creep into their 
 royal lairs. There will be played in Germany a drama 
 compared to which the French Bevolution will seem but 
 an innocent idyl. At present, it is true, everything is 
 tolerably quiet; and though here and there some few 
 men create a little stir, do not imagine these are to be the 
 real actors in the piece. They are only little curs chasing 
 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. i6r 
 
 one another round the empty arena, barking and snapping 
 at one another, till the appointed hour when the troop of 
 gladiators appear to fight for life and death. 
 
 And the hour will come. As on the steps of an amphi- 
 theatre, the nations will group themselves around Germany 
 to witness the terrible combat. I counsel you, ye French, 
 keep very quiet, and, above all, see that ye do not applaud. 
 We might readily misunderstand such applause, and, in 
 our rude fashion, somewhat roughly put you to silence. 
 For, if formerly in our servile, listless mood we could 
 oftentimes overpower you, much easier were it for us to 
 do so in the arrogance of our new-born enthusiasm for 
 liberty. Ye yourselves know what, in such a case, men 
 can do ; and ye are no longer in such a case. Take heed, 
 then ! I mean it well with you ; therefore it is I tell you 
 the bitter truth. Ye have more to fear from a free Ger- 
 many than from the entire Holy Alliance with all its 
 Croats and Cossacks. For, in the first place, they do not 
 love you in Germany, w T hich is almost incomprehensible, 
 since ye are so amiable, and during your stay amongst us 
 took such pains to please at least the better and fairer 
 half of the German people. But even though this half 
 still loved you, it is precisely the half that does not bear 
 arms, and whose friendship, therefore, would be of little 
 help to you. What you are really accused of I could never 
 understand. Once in a beer-cellar at Gottingen I heard 
 a young Old-German assert that it was necessary to be 
 revenged on France for Conradin of Hohenstaufen, whom 
 you beheaded at Naples. Doubtless ye have long since 
 forgotten that : we, however, forget nothing. Ye see, then, 
 that whenever we have a mind to quarrel with you there 
 will be no lack of valid grounds. In any case, I advise 
 you to be on your guard. Happen what may in Germany, 
 though the Crown Prince of Prussia or Dr. Wirth should 
 attain supremacy, be ye ever armed ; remain quietly at 
 
162 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY, 
 
 your post, your weapons in your hands. I mean it well 
 with you, and I w^as seized with dismay when I heard it 
 said lately that your Ministry proposed to disarm France. 
 
 As ye are, despite your present romantic tendency, a 
 horn classical people, ye know Olympus. Amongst the 
 joyous gods and goddesses quaffing and feasting of nectar 
 and ambrosia, ye may behold one goddess, who, amidst 
 such gaiety and pastime, wears ever a coat of mail, the 
 helm on her head and the spear in her hand. 
 
 She is the goddess of Wisdom. 
 
APPENDIX 
 

 
( i6 5 ) 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 1 Page 20. 
 
 In translating these introductory paragraphs, the latest 
 edition of the French version has been followed. In the 
 Revile des Deux Mondes a single short paragraph stood 
 in place of the amplified and more explicit statement in 
 the later editions. In the German version, again, the 
 corresponding paragraphs vary from the text of the 
 French version. The book is introduced to German 
 readers in the following manner : — 
 
 “ Frenchmen have lately been in the habit of supposing 
 that an acquaintance with the productions of our polite 
 literature is sufficient to enable them to comprehend 
 Germany. Such an acquaintance, however, has only 
 served to raise them from a condition of total ignorance 
 to a condition of superficial knowledge ; for the produc- 
 tions of our literature remain for them mere dead flowers, 
 and the whole circle of German thought presents but a 
 dreary enigma to them so long as they do no not 
 understand the significance of Eeligion and Philosophy 
 in Germany. 
 
 “ In endeavouring to elucidate to a certain extent these 
 two subjects, I believe that I am undertaking a useful 
 work. For me it is no light task. It is of primary im- 
 portance to avoid the technicalities of a scholastic lan- 
 guage with which Frenchmen are totally unacquainted. 
 
1 66 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 Besides, I have not studied deeply enough the subtilties 
 either of theology or of metaphysics to he in a position 
 to formulate them in a manner sufficiently simple and 
 brief to meet the requirements of the French public. I 
 shall therefore deal only with the great questions that are 
 discussed in German divinity and philosophy; I shall 
 attempt to illustrate merely their social importance, and 
 throughout this book I shall keep clearly in view the 
 limited nature of my own resources as an expositor, and 
 the capacity of French readers for comprehending the 
 subject. 
 
 “ Great German philosophers who may happen to glance 
 at these pages will haughtily shrug their shoulders at the 
 inadequate treatment of whatever is here presented. May 
 I beg them, however, kindly to bear in mind that the 
 little I have to say will be quite clearly and intelligibly 
 expressed ; whereas their works, though doubtless very 
 erudite, vastly erudite, very profound, stupidly profound, 
 are likewise as incomprehensible as they are profound. 
 What do locked granaries profit the people so long as it 
 has no key wherewith to open them ? The people hungers 
 for bread, and is ready to thank me for the morsel of 
 intellectual food which I honestly share with them. 
 
 “ I do not believe that it is want of talent that restrains 
 most of our German men of learning from giving popular 
 expression to their views on religion and philosophy. I 
 believe that it is dread of the consequences of their own 
 intellectual research that prevents them communicating 
 its results to the people. I, however, do not possess this 
 dread, for I am no man of learning ; I am myself of the 
 people. I am no learned man, I am not among the num- 
 ber of the seven hundred wise men of Germany. I am 
 one of the great crowd standing before the gates of their 
 wisdom, and should any truth chance to slip through and 
 find its way to me, then it has come far enough : I write 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 1 67 
 
 it down on paper in fair characters, and give it to the 
 compositor ; he sets it up in leaden type and passes it to 
 the printer, who prints it, and then it belongs to the 
 whole world. 
 
 “ The religion in which we in Germany rejoice is Chris- 
 tianity. It will be my duty then to explain what 
 Christianity is, how it became Eoman Catholicism, how 
 from this it became Protestantism, and how German 
 philosophy is the offspring of Protestantism. 
 
 “In beginning with the discussion of religion I pre- 
 monish all pious souls not on any account to entertain 
 the slightest anxiety. 
 
 “ Pear not, pious souls ! ” &c. 
 
 2 Page 25. 
 
 A short paragraph is here omitted in the latest Prench 
 edition. Its omission is no doubt due to the fact that 
 Heine’s views about democracy underwent considerable 
 change between the date when he wrote and the date 
 when he last revised his book. 
 
 “ It is, perhaps, because the great ones of this earth are 
 certain of their supremacy, and because they are at heart 
 resolved to go on for ever abusing this supremacy by 
 turning it to our misfortune, that they are convinced of 
 the necessity of Christianity for their peoples ; and it is 
 in reality a tender impulse of benevolence that prompts 
 them to take so much trouble in upholding this religion ! ” 
 
 The succeeding paragraph begins with the words — “The 
 ultimate fate of Christianity depends, then, on whether 
 we still have need of it,” altered in the latest Prench 
 edition to : “The duration of religions,” &c., as at page 25. 
 
1 68 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 3 Page 41. 
 
 This paragraph reads as follows in the German ver- 
 sion : — 
 
 “ I have already frequently made use of the words 
 spiritualism and sensualism. These words, however, have 
 here no reference, such as they have when employed by 
 French philosophers, to the two different sources of our 
 knowledge: I employ them, as may be gathered from 
 the general drift of the foregoing remarks, to designate 
 those two different modes of thought, of which one mode 
 desires, by the destruction of matter, to glorify the spirit, 
 whilst the other mode seeks to vindicate the natural rights 
 of matter against the usurpations of the spirit.” 
 
 4 Page 41. 
 
 Instead of these opening sentences this paragraph in 
 the latest German edition begins thus : — 
 
 “ To the above-mentioned beginnings of the Lutheran 
 Eeformation — beginnings which already revealed the 
 whole spirit of that event — I must draw special attention, 
 since there are still current here in France regarding the 
 Eeformation the old misconceptions which were spread 
 abroad by Bossuet through his ‘ Histoire des Variations/ 
 and which are even repeated by modern writers.” 
 
 5 Page 58. 
 
 Luther’s Hymn has found several English translators, 
 Thomas Carlyle being the earliest of them. Catherine 
 Winkworth’s translation — probably the one best known — 
 is to be found in her “ Christian Singers of Germany,” and 
 in various collections of hymns. The present rendering is 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 169 
 
 a very halting attempt to preserve the form as well as 
 the spirit of the original. Headers of German will at 
 once perceive how greatly superior would be a translation 
 that accurately reproduced the rugged metre without 
 sacrificing the fervour and vigour of the “ mail-clad 
 words ” to a merely rhythmical version, however skilfully 
 achieved. But the former task would be far more diffi- 
 cult of accomplishment than the latter. 
 
 6 Page 58. 
 
 At this point the first part of the French version closes, 
 but in the German version Heine goes on to draw a 
 comparison between modern and early German literature. 
 This comparison is made to turn chiefly on the distinc- 
 tion between the “ Classical ” and the “ Bomantic ” treat- 
 ment of the subject-matter in literature. A more general 
 and more inclusive definition of these much-abused terms 
 is given by Heine in his “Romantic School.” For the 
 sake of completeness, however, a translation of what 
 follows in the German version is here given. 
 
 [“In order to show that modem German literature 
 begins with Luther and not with Hans Sachs], it is suffi- 
 cient to indicate clearly the contrast between our new 
 and our older literatures. 
 
 “ In surveying German literature as it flourished before 
 Luther’s time, we arrive at the following conclusions : — 
 
 “ 1. Its material, its subject-matter, like the life itself 
 of the Middle Ages, consists of a mingling of two hetero- 
 geneous elements, which during a long period struggled 
 with each other in such close contact that at last they 
 became blended together : these two elements were 
 Germanic nationality and Indo-Gnostic, so-called Catholic 
 Christianity. 
 
170 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 “ 2. The treatment of the subject-matter, or rather the 
 spirit in which it was treated, in this older literature, was 
 Eomantic. The term ‘ Romantic * is erroneously applied 
 also to the material of that literature, as it is to all 
 manifestations of the Middle Ages that spring from the 
 blending of the two elements referred to — Germanic 
 nationality and Catholic Christianity. Tor as certain 
 poets of the Middle Ages treated Greek history and 
 mythology in a spirit truly Romantic, so Mediseval 
 customs and legends may be represented in a classical 
 form. The terms ‘ Classic * and ‘ Romantic ’ refer, there- 
 fore, merely to the spirit of the treatment. The treat- 
 ment is Classic when the form of the representation is 
 identical with the idea to be represented, as is the case 
 in Greek works of art in which the closest harmony 
 exists between form and idea. The treatment is Romantic 
 when the form does not reveal the idea through identity 
 with it, but leaves the idea to be conjectured paraboli- 
 cally. I here use the word ‘ parabolically ’ in preference 
 to the word ‘ symbolically.’ Greek mythology possessed 
 an array of deities, each of whom, besides identity of form 
 and idea, might acquire a symbolic signification. But in 
 this Greek religion it was only the outward fashion of 
 the divinities that presented anything definite, — all else, 
 their life and conduct, was left to the voluntary caprice 
 of the poet. In the Christian religion, on the other hand, 
 there are no such definite personalities, — there are only 
 definite facts, definite sacred events and actions into 
 which the creative faculty of man might import a para- 
 bolic significance. It has been said that Homer invented 
 the Greek gods ; this is not true : they already existed 
 in definite outlines; what Homer did was to invent 
 their history. Artists of the Middle Ages, on the other 
 hand, never dared to invent the slightest detail in the 
 historical part of their religion: — the fall of man, the 
 
APPENDIX . 
 
 171 
 
 incarnation, the baptism, the crucifixion, and so forth, 
 were indisputable facts which could not be moulded anew, 
 but to which the creative genius of man might impart a 
 parabolic signification. In this parabolic spirit all the 
 arts of the Middle Ages worked, and their treatment is 
 Eomantic. Hence the mystical universalism of the poetry 
 of the Middle Ages; the figures are shadowy, all their 
 actions are indefinite, everything about them has a twi- 
 light aspect as if illuminated by uncertain moonlight; 
 the idea is signified in the form only as an enigma, and 
 we see merely vague forms such as were appropriate to a 
 spiritualistic literature. There is not, as with the Greeks, 
 a sunbright harmony between form and idea ; but often- 
 times the idea towers above the given form to which the 
 latter strives despairingly to attain, and thus we have a 
 fantastic and strange sublimity; oftentimes the form 
 quite overtops the idea when some foolish paltry thought 
 drags itself along encumbered by a colossal form, and 
 then we have a grotesque farce; almost always do we 
 find deformity. 
 
 “3. It was a universal characteristic of the older litera- 
 ture of which we speak that in all its productions it 
 manifested the firm and settled faith that dominated all 
 things temporal as well as spiritual during its epoch. Every 
 opinion of the time was based on authorities; the poet 
 trod with the surefootedness of a mule paths that lay 
 among the precipices of doubt, and his works are per- 
 vaded by a daring calm, by a holy confidence that became 
 impossible in a later age when the highest authority — 
 the authority of the pope — was overthrown, and when 
 all other authorities toppled down after it. All the 
 poetry of the Middle Ages possesses the same character ; 
 it seems as though it had not been composed by individual 
 men, but by the whole people; it is objective, epic, naif. 
 
 “ But in the literature that burst into blossom under the 
 
172 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 influence of Luther we find quite the opposite of all 
 this. 
 
 “ i. Its material, the subject-matter with which it has 
 to deal, is the conflict between the interests and opinions 
 of the Reformation and the old order of things. To the 
 new spirit of the age the mongrel creed springing from 
 the two elements referred to — German nationality and 
 Indo- Gnostic Christianity — is utterly repugnant. The 
 latter element it regards as heathen idolatry, which 
 must give place to the true religion of the Judaic-Deistic 
 gospel. A new order of things takes shape, the spirit 
 makes discoveries that promote the well-being of matter ; 
 by the development of industrial pursuits and by philo- 
 sophy spiritualism becomes discredited in public opinion ; 
 the third estate emerges ; the roar of the revolution begins 
 to echo in human hearts and heads ; and what the age 
 feels and thinks, what it needs and will have, it gives 
 expression to, and this is the material of modern literature. 
 
 “ 2. The spirit of treatment is no longer Romantic, but 
 Classic. Through the revival of ancient literature a joy- 
 ous enthusiasm for Greek and Latin authors diffused 
 itself over all Europe, and men of learning, the only men 
 who in those days wrote, strove to possess themselves of 
 the spirit of classical antiquity, or at any rate sought in 
 their writings to imitate classical forms of art. If, unlike 
 the Greeks, they failed to attain harmony of form and 
 idea, all the more strictly did they hold to the externals 
 of Greek treatment: they distinguished, according to 
 Greek precept, the species of form ; they refrained from 
 all Romantic extravagance; and in this respect we call 
 them classical. 
 
 “ 3. The universal characteristic of modern literature is 
 the predominance in it of individuality and of scepticism. 
 The authorities are dethroned; reason is now the only 
 lamp to illumine the steps of man ; conscience his only 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 1 73 
 
 guiding-staff in the dark labyrinth of this life. Man 
 now stands face to face alone with his creator and sings 
 to him his lay. Thus our modern literature begins with 
 spiritual songs. Later on, however, as literature becomes 
 secular, the intensest self-consciousness, the feeling of 
 personality, predominates. Poetry is no longer objective, 
 epic, and naif ; it is subjective, lyrical, and reflective.” 
 
 7 Page 8 1. 
 
 John Tauler was horn at Strasburg in 1 290. In 1 308 
 he entered the Dominican order, and for some time studied 
 theology at Paris. On his return to his native city he 
 came under the influence of Master Eckhart, called “ the 
 Father of German Speculation,” and the most celebrated 
 of the so-called mystics of the Middle Ages. Whilst, 
 however, the mysticism of Eckhart led to quietism, Tauler’s 
 whole life was spent in practical religious activity. He 
 was the greatest preacher of his time, and is even held by 
 some writers to have been the greatest preacher of Medi- 
 seval times. When about fifty years of age, Tauler was 
 brought under an influence more powerful than that of 
 Eckhart, namely, that of Nicolas of Basle, who was styled 
 “ the Friend of God.” At the instigation of Nicolas, 
 Tauler passed two years in religious seclusion and in 
 the practice of the severest ascetic discipline. He then 
 resumed his preaching, braved the interdict laid by Pope 
 John XXII. on Strasburg, and the horrors of the “black 
 death” that devastated the city in 1348. Obliged for a 
 time to betake himself to Cologne, he afterwards returned 
 to Strasburg, and died there in 1361. Besides the three 
 volumes of sermons published at Frankfort in 1826, many 
 of Tauler’s homilies still remain unprinted. The authen- 
 ticity of the sacred songs attributed to him is doubtful. 
 
174 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 8 Page 83. 
 
 William Law, author of the “ Serious Call to a Devout 
 and Holy Life,” was the English translator and expositor 
 of Jacob Bohme’s works. Jane Lead, one of the most 
 celebrated of English mystics, possessed an intimate 
 acquaintance with Bohme’s writings, — an acquaintance 
 obtained probably through Dr. John Pordage, who presided 
 over an English society of “Illuminati.” In 1697 Jane 
 Lead founded the sect of the “ Philadelphians,” of which 
 Francis Lee, the poet of mysticism, was a member. Such 
 was the influence of Bohme’s works and system of theosophy 
 in this country. But far more remarkable is the influence 
 they exercised on German philosophy. Schelling, though 
 reluctant to admit the fact, owed much to the writings of 
 the shoemaker of Gorlitz. Hegel not only acknowledged 
 that the title “ Philosophicus Teutonicus” had been justly 
 bestowed on Bohme, from whom he dates the beginning 
 of modern philosophy, but he also declares his substantial 
 agreement with Bohme’s first principles. Louis Claude de 
 Saint Martin (1743-1803), called “ Le Philosophe Incon- 
 nue,” translated into French Bohme’s first work “ Aurora.” 
 Franz Xaver von Baader (1765-1841) was the most 
 recent German expositor of Bohme, though his own specu- 
 lations were of far too original a nature to permit of his 
 being styled a disciple of Bohme. 
 
 9 Page 1 24. 
 
 Mr. Adamson’s rendering of the term Wissensehaftslehre 
 is here gratefully adopted, though, as he justly says, we have 
 no English equivalent for the German. In the French 
 version of “ Beligion and Philosophy in Germany,” Wissen- 
 schaftslehre is very inadequately translated Doctrine de la 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 175 
 
 Science. In his excellent short biography of Fichte (Black- 
 wood’s Philosophical Classics), Mr. Adamson does not fail 
 to do justice to what Heine calls the social significance 
 of Fichte. In his introductory chapter he says : “ There 
 exists not now, there never did exist to any extent, a 
 school of followers of Fichte ; it may well be doubted if 
 there are at present half-a-dozen students of his works. 
 As a patriot, as a representative of what seems noblest 
 and loftiest in the German character, he lives, and will 
 doubtless continue to live, in the grateful remembrance 
 of his countrymen ; as a metaphysician, he lives not at all 
 beyond the pages of the historians of philosophy.” 
 
 10 Page 142. 
 
 J. H. Bosenmiiller (1736-1815), a celebrated German 
 preacher. In 1785 he was appointed pastor of the 
 Thomaskirche, and a professor of theology at the Univer- 
 sity of Leipzig. His most important service to his age 
 and country consisted in the improvements he was the 
 means of bringing about in the methods of teaching in 
 the schools at Leipzig. His voluminous writings are 
 partly of a devotional and partly of a critical character. 
 Heine was here probably referring either to the “ Scholia 
 in Novum Testamentum ” or to the “ Historia interpreta- 
 tionis Librorum Sacrorum in Ecclesia Christiana.” 
 
 11 Page 144. 
 
 Peter Andreas Heiberg, dramatist and political writer, 
 was born at Bordinborg, in Denmark, in 1758. Banished 
 from his native country on account of his political opinions, 
 he betook himself to Paris, where a great part of his life 
 was spent. During the First Empire he held an appoint- 
 
176 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 
 
 nient in the French Foreign Office, and at the Eestoration 
 he was awarded a pension. He died at Paris in 1841. 
 Heiberg’s fame rests chiefly on his comedies, of which 
 ‘ Heckingborn ’ is the best known. He also wrote 
 ‘ Political Aphorisms/ and a ‘ Precis Historique et 
 Critique de la Constitution de la Monarchie Danoise ’ 
 (Paris, 1820). In imitation of the Letters of Junius, he 
 wrote ‘ Lettres d’un FTorvegien de la Yielle Eoche’ 
 (Paris, 1822). 
 
 12 Page 144. 
 
 John George Forster was born near Danzig in 1754. 
 At an early age he accompanied his father, John Eeinhold 
 Forster, the traveller and naturalist, to Eussia. Father and 
 son afterwards came to England, where the former settled 
 for a time as a teacher of languages at Warrington. In 1772 
 John Eeinhold Forster was appointed naturalist to Captain 
 Cook’s second expedition, and was again accompanied by 
 his son, who in 1777 published an account of the expedi- 
 tion (“A Voyage Eound the World in His Britannic 
 Majesty’s Sloop Resolution ”). After holding during 
 several years a professorship of natural history, first at 
 Cassel and afterwards at Wilna in Germany, John 
 George Forster was called to Mainz, as librarian to the 
 Elector, in 1788. On the taking of Mainz by the French 
 in 1792, Forster, who had become deeply imbued with 
 the principles of the Eevolution, was sent to Paris as the 
 deputy of his like-minded fellow-townsmen to sue for the 
 union of their city with the French Eepublic. He died at 
 Paris in 1794. Forster’s political career is treated as 
 material by H. Hoenig in his novel ‘‘Die Clubisten in 
 Mainz.” 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 1 77 
 
 13 Page 158. 
 
 At this point the first German edition comes to a close. 
 What follows was struck out by the censor. It is restored 
 in the later editions. A portion of Heine’s remarkable pro- 
 phecy has already been fulfilled in the events of 1870- 
 1871. The fantastic and reactionary policy of Prince 
 Bismarck seems not unlikely to aid in bringing about 
 that catastrophe in Germany “compared to which the 
 French revolution will seem but an innocent idyl.” It is 
 to this singular prophecy, in part already fulfilled and in 
 part perhaps about to be fulfilled, that Heine refers in 
 the “ Preface to the Second German Edition,” (See page 
 10 of the present volume.) 
 
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