Part 14

"--Take ten men, shut them up in ten different islands: neither of them (I have not selected cosmopolites) will love or defend either of the others, if he meets him in his canoe, but will merely, like an innocent uncultivated beast, let him pass unharmed. But throw them together on _one_ island,[84] then they will make mutual conditions of living together, of common defence, &c., i. e. laws; now they have more frequent enjoyment of use and right, consequently of their personality, which distinguishes them from mere tools, consequently of their freedom. Before, on their ten islands, they have been rather _unrestrained_ than _free_. The more the objects of their laws rise in dignity, the more they see that law concerns the inner man more than the rubbish heap it protects, right more than property, and that the noble man fights for his goods, his rights, his life, not on account of their importance, but on account of his own dignity.--I will look at the matter on another side, in order to defend the proposition with which I began the discourse. When a people hates its constitution, then the object of its constitution, i. e. of its union, is lost. Love of the constitution, and love for one's fellow-citizens as fellow-citizens, are one. I start with this principle: If all men were wise and good, then they would be all alike consequently friendly. As that is not so, accordingly Nature makes up for this goodness by similarity of motives, by community of object, by living together, &c., and by these bonds--of connubial, of brotherly and sisterly and of friendly affection--holds our smooth, slippery hearts together at different distances. Thus she educates our heart to the higher warmth. The State gives it a still greater, for the citizen loves the man even more in the citizen, than the brother loves him in the brother, the father in the son. The love of country is nothing but a restricted cosmopolitan love; and the higher philanthropy is the philosopher's enlarged patriotism for the whole earth. In my younger years the mass of men was often painful to me, because I felt myself incapable of loving 1000 millions at once; but the heart of man takes more into itself than his head, and the better man must needs despise himself, if his arms should reach only round a single planet...."

* * * * *

--Now, as in a drama, I set only the names of the players before their remarks. The coldly-philosophical _Balthazar_: "Then must the whole earth become one day a single state, a universal republic; Philosophy must approve wars, misanthropy, in short all possible contradictions to morality, so long as there are still two states. There must one day be a national convention of Humanity; the kingdoms are the municipalities."

_Matthieu_: "We are only just living now, then, in the 11th of October and a little in the 4th of August."[85]

_Victor_: "We see, like David, our Solomon's Temple only in dreams, and in our waking hours the tabernacles of the Covenant; but it were a sorrowful philosophy which should require nothing of men but what they had hitherto rendered without philosophy. We must fit reality to the ideal, not the reverse."

The ardently-philosophical _Melchior_: "Most modern movements are only the starts of one sleeping under the ear-wig[86] and grasping at his bloody scalp.--But the falling stalactite of regentship forms at last with its drops one column with the ascending stalagmite of the people."

_Flamin_: "But do not Spartans imply Helots, Romans and Germans Slaves, and Europeans Negroes?--Must not always the prosperity of the whole be based upon individual victims, just as one class must devote itself to tilling the soil, that another may apply itself to knowledge?"

_Cato_ the elder: "Then I spit on _the whole_ if I am the victim, and despise myself if I am the whole."

_Balthazar_: "It is better that the whole suffer voluntarily for the sake of a single member, than that he should against his just vote suffer for the whole."

_Matthieu_: "Fiat justitia et pereat mundus."

_Victor_: "In plain English: the greatest physical evil must be preferred to the least moral evil, the least unrighteousness."[87]--

_Melchior_: "The physical inequality of men produced by nature no more excuses any political inequality than pestilence does murder, or a failure of crops corn-monopoly. But inversely political equality must be the very compensation for the want of physical. In a despotic state enlightenment as well as prosperity may be greater in inward contents, but in the free state it is greater in outward contents, and is distributed among all; for freedom and enlightenment reciprocally beget each other."--

_Victor_: "As unbelief and tyranny do. Your assertion shows to nations two ways, one slower, but more just, and one which is neither. Wild clutchings at the _dial plate-wheel_ of Time, which is turned by a thousand little wheels, dislocate more than they expedite it; often they break off its teeth.[88] Hang thy own weight on the _weight_ of the clock-work, which drives all the wheels; i. e. be wise and virtuous, then wilt thou be, at the same time, great and innocent, and be building up the city of God, without the mortar of blood, and without the stone blocks of death's-heads."--

Here we strike the bell that closes this political sermon, during which Victor, despite his Socratic continence and moderation, made all these wild heads friends of his own. With Matthieu alone jest was the only object, to which he turned everything serious, instead of the reverse. He had in a characteristic degree that shamelessness of rank, at the same time to commit and to ridicule certain follies, to seek and to despise certain fools, and to avoid and praise at once certain philosophers. Wherever he could, he covered the good Prince of Flachsenfingen with satirical cockle-buttons[89] which he threw at him, and showed hostility to the husband, which is generally the sign of too great a friendship for the wife. Thus he said to-day in reference to Jenner's or January's _penchants_, which contrasted with those of the month and saint from which he derived his name: "For the St. Januarius in Puzzolo[90] a fish was the Dr. Culpepper."--

I confess, I have, during the whole session of the Club, again had the freakish thought, which, wild as it is, I have often before been unable to drive out of my head,--for it is, to be sure, a little confirmed by the fact that, like an atheist, I know not whence I am, and that with my French name, Jean Paul, I was impelled by the most wondrous accidents to a German writing-desk, on which I one day will copiously report them to the world,--as I was saying, I hold it myself to be a folly, my sometimes getting the conceit in my head, that it is possible since thousand-fold examples of the kind are extant in Oriental history--that I might be actually the unknown son of a Kniese[91] or Shah, or something of the sort, that was trained for the throne, and from whom they concealed his noble birth the better to educate him. The very entertaining of such an idea is of itself folly; but so much is nevertheless correct, that the examples are not to be erased from universal history, in which many a one, even to his twenty-eighth year,--I am two years older,--knew not a word of it, that an Asiatic or some other throne awaited him, wherefrom he afterward, when he came to it, wielded a magnificent sway. But let it be assumed I was changed from a Jean Lack-land to a John With-land,--I should go forthwith to the billiard-room, and tell everybody whom he had before him. Were one of my subjects there joining in the game, I should forthwith govern him on the spot; and if it were a female subject, without scruple. I should proceed with considerateness, and invest only subjects from my billiard-shire with the weightier offices, because the Regent must be acquainted with him whom he appoints, which, as is well known, he can best become at the gaming-tables. I would strictly command my vassals and all by a general _règlement_ for all times to be happy and well-off, and whoever was poor, him I would put as a punishment on half-pay; for I think, if I interdicted poverty so emphatically, it would come at last to be the same as if Saturn and I ruled together.--Like a Sultan in his harem, so I in my state, would desire no physical mutes or dwarfs, but, as occasion required, moral ones.--I confess, I should have a peculiar predilection for geniuses, and should appoint to all, even the wretchedest places, the greatest heads. I should fear nothing (enemies excepted) but dropsy on the brain, of which a crowned or mitred head must always be in an agony of dread, if, like me, it has read in Dr. Ludwig's, or else in Tissot's, treatises on the nerves, that it comes on at first with close bindings around the head, which I should fear still more from my crown, especially if the head which was forced into it was _thick_ and _it_ was _tight_....

We come back to the story. The next day Victor and Flamin, in the fair, newly assumed bonds of the covenant of friendship, returned to Flachsenfingen. Now could Victor enter through the heavenly gates of Maienthal, if Clotilda did not bolt them. All depended on Emanuel's answer. The May-airs breathed, the May-flowers exhaled, the May-trees rustled. O how this fanning kindled the longing to enjoy all these blisses in Maienthal, and to get from his friend the admission-ticket to the finest concert-hall of nature. None came; for it had already--come through the Bee-father Lind of Kussewitz, who as feudal-postilion had been sent by Count O. to Matthieu, and had taken the route through Maienthal. It was from Emanuel:--

"Horion!

"Come sooner, beloved! Hasten to our valley of Eden, which is a summer-house of nature, with green-growing walls between nothing but avenues running out of heaven into heaven. The light, flowery hours move by before the eye of man as the stars do before the optic tube of the astronomer. Blossom-snares of honeysuckle are laid for thee, and covered with fragrances; and when thou art caught in them, the up-welling incense envelops thee in a cloud, and unknown arms press through the cloud, and draw thee to three hearts full of love! I have already taken up lilies of the valley out of the wood, and planted them near me.--Thy city is indeed also a wood around thee, still lily of the valley! I have already transplanted two balsamines and five summer carnations; but my first transplanted Balsamine was Clotilda. Thou seest how spring, with its exuberant, swelling juices, penetrates through my budding soul also, and May splits open therein, as I am now doing on the carnations, all the buds.--Appear, appear, ere I become melancholy again, and then tell thy Julius who the angel was that handed him the letter for me.

"EMANUEL."

Julius had probably thought on this occasion of that other letter which a hitherto unknown angel had given him to unseal on this Whitsuntide.--But what have I to do here with angels and letters? Write by courier is what I will now do, that so I may have got through the 32d Chapter before the dog appears with his 33d Whitsuntide Chapter, which, not merely because it has thirty-two ancestral chapters, but on account of the probable effusion therein of a holy spirit of joy, or on account of a whole dove-flock of holy spirits, and on account of the historic pictures it will contain,--and by reason of my own exertions,--must be (it is believed) a chapter like which in each Dionysian[92] period hardly half a one, and in each Constantinopolitan hardly a whole one, can be written.--The Whitsuntide dog-day may turn out long, but it will be good and divine,--Philippine will shake her brother and say (she loves to flatter): "Paul! St. Paul was _also_ in the third heaven, but he never described it like this in his Epistle to the Romans!" I myself could wish that I might read my 33d dog-day before I had made it....

The much in little which, with my previous haste, I have still to throw out, is, according to the gourd-documents, this: Victor set his heart full as much as I do on the Whitsuntide-gospels. His conscience placed not the thinnest pasture-bars, not the lowest boundary-stone, in the way of his enjoyment, and he could go like an innocent pleasure to the beloved Clotilda, and say to her, Accept me. He paid now his farewell and professional visits regularly at court, and cared nothing for any word full of human caustic, or any eye full of basilisk's poison. He redoubled his fairer visits to Flamin, in order to reward his noble reconciliation with a warmer friendship, and he stamped upon the past history and on the subject of jealousy the privy-seal of forbearing silence. His dreams did not, to be sure, on their stage full of shadow-plays and airy apparitions, present Clotilda's form (the most loved faces are just those dream denies), but by conducting him into the old, dark, rainy months, when he was again unhappy and without love and without the dearest soul, they gave him by means of the rained-out night a brighter day, and redoubled melancholy became redoubled love.--And when in the morning after such dreams of the past dream he walked out through the May-frost, and by the swollen joy-drops of the vine-leaves, and under the morning wind, which rather wafted than cooled him, in order to touch with his yearning eyes as precious relics the fixed western woods, which hung a green curtain before the opera-stage of his hope,----a reviewer, who shall put himself in my place, cannot possibly expect me with this shortness of time, and in my extra post-coach to the carriage of Phœbus (now in the shorter days), to give this long antecedent member of the period its conclusion.

Even the perpendicular climax of the barometer, and the horizontal streams of the east wind, swelled the sails of his hope, and wafted him into the silent sea of the Whitsuntide-future, and into the Almanach of 1793, to see whether the moon fulled on Whitsuntide.--By Heaven, it will at least be half full, which is much better still, because one will have it at hand in the middle of heaven when one is about to begin his evening....

I have, after all, by extraordinary racing, brought matters so far, that I have done with the 32d dog-post-day before Spitz with his goblet of joy on his neck has made his way across the Indian Ocean.--And as, besides, according to the _capitulatio perpetua_ with the reader, (at which, notoriously, the benches of princes and cities bite the dust,) I must now make an Intercalary Day: I will spend the Dog's vacation in that way; but I earnestly beg all my day-electors, those of my subscribers who have hitherto skipped across the Intercalary Days on the leaping-pole of the index-finger, not to do it in this case, first, because I agree to be shot, if in this Intercalary Day I in the least exercise my intercalary-day privilege, though confirmed under several governments, of delivering the wittiest and weightiest matters,--and, secondly, because the dog even on the Intercalary day may run into port, and bring me facts which I may serve up not in the 33d Dog-post-day, but already in the----VIIIth _Intercalary day_, or in the VIIIth _Sansculottide_.--The contents of this, like the present, are a rambling overture to the Future.--

I must say, if, in the first place, as Bellarmin (the Catholic champion and contradictor) asserts, every man is his own Redeemer,--whence follows, in my judgment, that he is also his own Eve and serpent for his old Adam,--if, secondly, the pen of an extraordinarily good author is the snuffers of truth, just as, inversely, to Herr von Moser in prison the snuffers were a pen,--if, thirdly, Despotism may at last, instead of the living tree-stems (for it saws right into the world as if blind,) saw into the throne-saw-horse itself,--further, I must say, if, fourthly, every action (even the worst) has, like Christ, two unlike genealogies,--if in fact, fifthly, one and another reviewer carries his critical eye, wherewith he surveys everything, not on the apex of his skull (as Mahomet's saints are said to, in order not to see _beauties_), nor, like Argus, before and behind, but actually in front, under the stomach, over the gut, in the midst of the navel; if this man, in addition thereto, possesses no other heart than the linen one which the seamstress has stitched in the corner of the shirt-frill, and which lies over the pit of the heart, which one would call more sensibly the pit of the stomach,--finally I must say (at least I can do so), if, in the sixth place, true coherence, strict _concatenation_ of paragraphs, is perhaps the greatest ornament and soul of the so-called _unbound discourse_, or prose, which, however, is like a _bound_ harpsichord, and if, therefore, the sense, like an epic action, must begin at the end of the (rhetorical and temporal) period, because otherwise there would not be any at all....

--But neither will there be any to come.--These four points, however, look like the _hare's tracks_ in the snow.--In short: the Pomeranian dog, my biographical hod-bearer and forwarder, is already lying under the table, and has discharged some Elysian fields and heavenly kingdoms.--As, besides, I did not wholly know in the above paragraph what I was after (I hope not to sit a well man before the public, if I knew)--accordingly the dog did me a true labor of love in actually biting off, so to speak, the tail, or second member. It was, besides, my plan merely to make caprioles in a period of an ell's length until the dog should have removed my anxiety about the doubtfulness of the Whitsuntide journey.--In fact, I never wanted to lay out words and thoughts together, but to save the _latter_, while I spent the _former_; Peutzer wrote long ago to the men of Ratisbon and Wetzlar, Many thoughts need a small stream of words, but the greater the brook is, so much the smaller can be the mill-wheel.--An honest reviewer is offended also by a laconic book if only for this reason, (not merely that the public does not understand it but) because a German has in the jurists and theologians the very best models before him for writing prolixly, and indeed with a diffuseness which perhaps--for the thought is the soul, the word the body--establishes among _words_ that higher friendship of men, which, according to Aristotle, consists in this, that _one_ soul (one thought) inhabits several bodies (words) at once.----

--I now begin Victor's vigils, the holy eve of Whitsuntide. It was already Saturday,--the wind (like the sciences) came from the east,--the quicksilver in the barometer-tube (as it does to-day in my nervous-tubes) almost leaped out at the top.--Flamin had parted in peace with his friend on Friday, and was not to return for five days.--Victor will to-morrow, on the first day of Whitsuntide, sally forth before the sun, in order to come back again on the third, when he alights in America.--(I wish he would stay longer.)--It is a fine _blue-Monday_[93] in the soul (every blue day is one), and a fine dispensation from the mourning of life, when one (like my hero) has the good fortune on a holy even-tide, during the tolling for prayers, and when the moon is already up above the houses, to sit tranquil and innocent in Zeusel's balcony in the presence of the prospects of the fairest Whitsuntide-days and the fairest Whitsuntide-faces, to take a first cut of all the preparatory dishes of hope, to gather all the bosom-roses and signs of the fairest morning, and, amidst the noisy booth-preludes to the Festival, to read the second part of the _Mumien_[94] precisely in the Sectors of joy in which I sketch my own and Gustavus's entrance into the heavenly Jerusalem at Lilienbad.----All this, as was said, my hero had....

But when he who found out so much affinity between his Whitsuntide-journey and that journey to the watering-place in the book, came at last with his agitated soul to the destruction of that Jerusalem; then, with the first sad sigh of to-day, he said: "O thou good Destiny, never lay such a sacrificial knife on the heart of my Clotilda; ah, I should die, if she became so unhappy as Beata."--And he further reflected how the ruddy morning clouds of hope are only high, hovering rain, and how often sorrow is the bitter kernel of rapture, like the golden Imperial Apple of the German Emperor, which, to be sure, weighs three marks and three ounces, but inwardly is filled up with earth....

By Heaven! we are here needlessly embittering with night-thoughts the holy evening, and none of us knows why he sighs so.--I assure the reader I have the whole Whitsuntide-festival before me in copy, and there is not a single misfortune there, unless Victor joins on a fourth Whitsuntide-day as after-summer, and in that there should something be developed. I confess I like to be an æsthetic _frère terrible_, and to point the sword at the breast of the world, which is reading deep into my Invisible (mother) Lodge, and play other like tricks,--but that comes from the fact that in youth one reads and owns the Sorrows of Werther, of which, like a mass-priest, one prepares a bloodless victim before one enters the Academy. Nay, if I this very day were composing a romance, I should--as the blue-coated Werther has in every young Amoroso and author a quasi-Christ who on Good-Friday puts on a similar crown of thorns, and ascends a cross--myself also do the same over again....

But it is time I opened my Maienthal, and let every one in. Only I will no longer make a mystery of it that I am minded to present outright this whole Paphos and knightly seat to the reader, as Louis XI. cast the Duchy of Boulogne at the feet of the Holy Mary. I think thereby to tower, perhaps, above other writers, who bestow only their quills upon their readers, full as much as the king does above old Lipsius, who made over to Mary only his silver-pen. In the beginning I meant to retain for myself this Elysium with thrice-mowed meadows and pine-groves, because I am in fact a poor devil, and really have no more income than a Prince of Wurtemberg formerly, namely ninety florins Rhenish of appanage-money, and ten florins for a coat of state, and because, as to the two square miles of land set off to me by God and equity,--for so much does the whole earth at an equal division, according to a good plan, lay off to each man,--verily I make so small account of that, that I would gladly give up my two miles to any one for a miserable sheepfold.--And what most kept me back from making this presentation of my Maienthal to living men, was the fear that I should turn over a _feudum_ to people, readers, provincial deputies, who are possessed of a thousand times greater palatinates and patrimonial estates, and whom one would provoke, if one should make them resemble the holy Mary, who from a Queen of Heaven became a Duchess of Boulogne, or the Roman Emperor who must on the day of his coronation become at the same time a member of the Order of Mary at Aachen.

But what then can all their _majorats_,--their Teutonic-knights' estates,--their mesne-tenures,--and their _patrimonia Petri_ (an allusion to _my patrimonium_ PAULI),--and their grandfathers' estates and all their cargoes stowed into the ship of earth,--in short, their European possessions on the earth,--what, I say, can all these Dutch farms yield, in the way of products, that could stand even at a distance before those of Maienthal? And do there grow on their crown-estates heavenly blue days, evenings full of blissful tears, nights full of great thoughts? No, Maienthal bears loftier flowers than those which cattle pluck off, fairer apples of the Hesperides than are laid up in fruit-cellars, super-terrestrial treasures on subterranean rival-pieces to Eden, like Clotilda and Emanuel, and all that our dreams paint and our tears of joy bedew.--