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born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.'
'Es leuchtet mir ein,4 I see a glimpse of it!' cries he elsewhere: 'there is in man a HIGHE R than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach-forth this same HIGHE R that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite, and learn it! O, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever- paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Diseases, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God.5 This is the EVERLASTIN G YE A wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.'
And again: 'Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno6 trained thee: thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that 'Worship of Sorrow''? 7 the Temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures:8 nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burning.'
Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without bursts of splendour; on the 'perennial continuance of Inspiration'; on Prophecy; that there are 'true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests,9 in our own day': with more of the like sort. We select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago.
'Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,'' thus apostrophises the Professor: 'shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently has thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-andthirty thousand other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what next? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then, and?thyself away.
4. An exclamation of Wilhelm Meister's (German). 5. Adapted from 2 Timothy 3.4. 6. Stoic philosopher (3rd century B.C.E.), who, after being injured in a fall, is reputed to have struck the earth with his hand as if the earth were responsible for his injury. Afterward he committed suicide. Hence he is said to 'trample the Earth.'
7. Christianity. 8. Isaiah 34.13-15. 9. False priests, mentioned in 1 Kings 18.17?40. 1. French philosopher, satirist, and encyclopedist (1694?1778), famously hostile to superstition, injustice, and organized religion.
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'Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me? To the 'Worship of Sorrow' ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship originated, and been generated; is it not here} Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion,?for which latter whoso will let him worry and be worried.'
'Neither,' observes he elsewhere, 'shall ye tear-out one another's eyes, struggling over 'Plenary Inspiration,'2 and suchlike: try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One BIBL E I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay with my own eyes I saw God's-Hand writing it: thereof all other Bibles are but leaves,?say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weaker faculty.'
Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible passage:
'To me, in this our life,' says the Professor, 'which is an internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a Contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this: 'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the world, something from my share: which, by the Heavens, thou shalt not; nay I will fight thee rather.'? Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,'3 for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them!?Can we not, in all such cases, rather say: 'Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough for thee!'?If Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre4 be, 'to a certain extent, Applied Christianity,' surely to a still greater extent, so is this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man,5 yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it!
'But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices: only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action.' On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: 'Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,'6 which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.
'May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement is even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in
2. Doctrine that all statements in the Bible are 4. The doctrine of knowledge (German); the supernaturally inspired and authoritative. Voltaire shortened title of the 1798 work by Johann Got- had sought to demonstrate that this doctrine was tlieb Fichte (1762?1814), German philosopher. absurd. 5. Title of an anonymous book of religious instruc3. Empty eggshells. The phrase appears in both tion first published in 1659. lire phrase is from James Macpherson's Fingal (1761) and Byron's Ecclesiastes 12.13. imitation of it, 'The Death of Calmer and Orla' 6. This and the previous quotation are from Goe( 1806). the's Wilhelm Meister.
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