Part 27

I awoke, and instead of the cloud there was a green meadow around me, and above me glittered the stars. The first night of summer had followed the last night of spring. The moon was rising like a silver bow in the ghostly air. And in the north the sunset colors of the spring were changing upon the mountain-tops into the morning glow of the summer. My heart still clung to the eternal stars, where now awake I lingered in my dream, and I sighed, "Alas! each day above is the beginning of spring." Then I heard the voice in me repeat the old words, "Child of man, sacrifice time to eternity,"--and I sighed no more.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: I need not tell any one that the valley itself is situated in the departments of the Upper Pyrenees.]

[Footnote 2: It is well known that the Symplegadian rocks continually dashed against each other, and destroyed every passing ship, until Orpheus's lyre subdued and tranquillized them.]

[Footnote 3: Alluding to a painting by Reynolds, in which Garrick, invited by both Muses, follows Thalia.]

[Footnote 4: A kind of jelly-fish.]

[Footnote 5: Ten drops of this instantly sweeten half a pound of sour beer.]

[Footnote 6: The cave is twenty feet high, but the entrance only five feet.]

[Footnote 7: French miles. The valley is about two German miles--ten English miles--long.]

[Footnote 8: The Hoefersche heaven-path, or how to learn the way to eternal salvation in twenty-four hours.]

[Footnote 9: A market-place in Rome where deformed beings were sold, and fetched a higher price the uglier they were.]

[Footnote 10: A Parisian dentist wrote this over his door.]

[Footnote 11: In the same Sec. Kant says: "Everything that Newton has written in his immortal _Principia_, though such a large head was required to invent it, can be learned; but to compose spirited poems cannot be taught, however complete the instructions for learning the art may be. The reason is, that Newton can explain all the steps he had to take, from the first elements of geometry to his grandest and most profound inventions; he can explain them, not alone to himself, but to others, even to the remote descendants, while no Homer or Wieland can show how his ideally rich, and yet thoughtful characters, came forth from his brain; for he knows it not himself, and therefore cannot teach it others."

I had hoped that I could depend upon Kant, who has a million times more intelligence than I have, as upon a mental _Charge d'Affaires_; but when I came to this passage (and to those upon repentance, music, the origin of evil, &c), I saw I must myself follow him, and not only pray after him, as I had before done, but reflect. But to return! Certainly Newton's "Principles" can be learned, that is, the new ones may be repeated, but that also can happen to the invented poems; yet you can be taught to invent them as little as Newton's Principles. A new philosophic idea seems, after its birth, to lie more clearly in its former seed-vessels and organic molecules than a poetic one; but why was Newton the first to see it? He and Kant can discover, no better than Shakespeare or Leibnitz, how the beginning of a new idea suddenly bursts from the cloud of old ones; they can show their _Nexus_ (else they would not be human ones) with the old ones, but not their conception from it; the same holds of the poetic. Let Kant teach us to _invent systems_ and truths (not to prove them, though, strictly speaking, the one is closely allied to the other), then he shall be taught to invent epics, and I will be responsible for it. He seems to me to confound the difficulty of forming ideas with the less important one of forming new ones; the difficulty of transition with the inexplicability of the matter. I fear and wonder at the latent almightiness with which man orders, that is, creates his range of ideas. I know no better symbol of creation than the regularity and causality of the creation of ideas in us, which no will and no mind can regulate and create, for any such arrangement and intention would presuppose the unborn idea. And in this creation the grand enigma of our moral freedom is veiled.]

[Footnote 12: Gold dissolved in strong acid, mixed with a small quantity of quicksilver in a vial, forms a tree with foliage.]

[Footnote 13: The male glowworms are black.]

[Footnote 14: Rameses caused his son to be fastened to the topmost point of an obelisk, that they who had to raise it should risk a more valuable life than their own.]

[Footnote 15: It lives more than two years, though it does not long survive the period of its leaving the grub-state, just as other insects, to whom nature has given the rose period of youth, only _after_ the thorny age of reproduction.]

[Footnote 16: It is well known that the sight of blood damps courage, and that the Jews are not permitted to eat blood.]

[Footnote 17: Beauty in this connection, I adopt in the same sense which Schiller gives to it in his aesthetic critique, a prize essay of his genius on Beauty, which here, like Longinus, is at once the subject and the delineator of the exalted.]

[Footnote 18: If he had been, I would have read page 224 in the third part of Hesperus to him.]

[Footnote 19: The sun reflected in the water.]

[Footnote 20: At a circumcision, the Jews place one chair for the operator, and another for the prophet Elias, who is supposed invisibly to occupy it.]

[Footnote 21: These animals shine by night. Care must be taken not to draw them into the brain from the flower calyxes with the perfume.]

[Footnote 22: The Guernsey lily from Japan has its name from the Island of Guernsey, on which some roots of it were cast by a wrecked vessel.]

[Footnote 23: For the climatic dissimilarity of the planets must produce, as the climatic difference between the zones, Negroes, Greeks, Indians, etc., but always human beings.]

[Footnote 24: One ought, therefore, not to say _mundus intelligibilis_, but _mundus intellectus_.]

[Footnote 25: It may be said, that in this manner every Utopia, which is also a copy, must be realized, for the original of all dreams and Utopias does indeed exist,--though partially and disconnectedly; but the Original of the Eternal cannot exist in pieces and by parcels.]

[Footnote 26: This applies chiefly to the higher and richer orders, with whom the saturation of the five camel stomachs, the senses, and the starving of Psyche or the soul, at last determines into a horrible horror of life, and into a repulsive mingling of _high aspirations and grovelling desires_. The savage, the beggar, and the provincialist far surpass the rich and high in spiritual enjoyment, for in these, as in the houses of the Jews, (in memory of the destruction of Jerusalem) there must always be something incomplete, and the poor have too many of their earthly wants assuaged to be overwhelmed and pained by the demands of their ethereal nature.]

[Footnote 27: The new moon always rises with the sun, although dark and invisible.]

[Footnote 28: There are three kinds of men. To some, a heaven is granted even on this earth; to others, a _limbus patrum_ in which joy and sorrow reign equally; and, lastly, to some a hell in which grief predominates. Beings who have suffered for twenty years on the sick-bed of bodily pain, which is not, like mental sorrow, worn out by time, have certainly had more unhappiness than happiness, and, but for immortality, would be an eternal reproach to the highest moral being. And if there exists no such unhappy being, it is yet in the power of a tyrant to make one, on a clinical torture-bed, with the assistance of a physician and a philosopher. Such a one, at least, has a right to demand a future indemnity for his sufferings, because the Creator cannot have formed a creature to mourn more than it can rejoice.

Besides, though the object of our grief may seem but a deception in the eyes of the Eternal One, our grief itself cannot. Human suffering is also distinguished from brutish pain, because the animal only feels the wound, as we perhaps do in sleep, but it sees it not. Its pain is not trebled and increased by _anticipation_, _recollection_, and _sensibility_; it is an evanescent sting, and nothing more. Therefore tears were only given to human eyes.]

[Footnote 29: Ignorance concerning our connection with the body and our connection with the second world.]

[Footnote 30: The yearly destruction of the slowly developed, beautiful flower-world does not argue against this; for to the tangible world each condition of its parts is as indifferent and perfect as the other, and rose-ashes are as good as rose-buds (without, of course, considering the organic soul). Nothing is beautiful but our appreciation of the beautiful, not the object itself. If it should be said that nature destroys so many developments, for whose growth she had already provided, that she breaks many thousand eggs, tears so many buds, crushes men in all stages of life with her blind tread, I would reply that the interrupted development is yet a condition of the perfected one, and that every position of its parts is indifferent to material objects, and, as coverings of the spiritual being, they still testify to a compensating immortality of the latter.]

[Footnote 31: Methinks the folly of spiritual mortality has not been sufficiently considered from this point of view. The living or spiritual whole (for the lifeless one has no other object than to be a means for the living), as such, can attain no object which each portion of it does not attain, for each one is one whole, and every other whole can only exist as a collective idea, and not as a reality. To consider the untenability of a progress contained in a course of vanishing shadows more vividly, one might shorten the life of a soul so that he, e. g. could only read one page of Kant's Critic, and then die. For the second page another soul must be created, and so for the new edition 884 souls. The mistake will perhaps become perceptible to most people by the increasing moonlight of liberality which has gradually risen over the past centuries; but the necessity for compensation demands immortality.]

[Footnote 32: Raphael died when he had finished the painting of the resurrection, and Haman died while his essay on resurrection and disembodiment was being printed.]

[Footnote 33: So are the Vampires called.]

[Footnote 34: _Fixlein_ stands in the middle of the volume; preceded by _Einer Mustheil fuer Maedchen_ (A Jelly-course for young Ladies); and followed by _Some_ Jus De Tablette _for Men_. A small portion of the Preface relating to the first I have already omitted. Neither of the two have the smallest relation to _Fixlein_.--Ed.]

[Footnote 35: _J. P. H_., _Jean Paul_ Hasus, _Jean Paul_, &c., have in succession been Richter's signatures. At present even, his German designation, either in writing or speech, is never _Richter_, but _Jean Paul_.--Ed.]

[Footnote 36: For understanding many little hints which occur in this _Life of Fixlein_, it will be necessary to bear in mind the following particulars: A German _Gymnasium_, in its complete state, appears to include eight Masters; Rector, Conrector, Subrector, Quintus, Quartus, Tertius, &c., to the _first_ or lowest. The _forms_, or classes, again, are arranged in an inverse order; the _Primaner_ (boys of the _Prima_, or first form) being the most advanced, and taught by the Rector; the _Secundaner_, by the Conrector, &c.; and therefore the _Quartaner_ by the Quintus. In many cases, it would seem, the number of Teachers is only six; but in this Flachsenfingen Gymnasium we have express evidence that there was no curtailment.--Ed.]

[Footnote 37: A university beer.]

[Footnote 38: From Peter I will copy one or two of these privileges; the whole of which were once, at the origin of universities, in full force. For instance, a student can compel a citizen to let him his house and his horse; an injury, done even to his relations, must be made good fourfold; he is not obliged to fulfil the written commands of the Pope; the neighborhood must indemnify him for what is stolen from him; if he and a non-student are living at variance, the latter only can be expelled from the boarding-house; a Doctor is obliged to support a poor student; if he is killed, the next ten houses are laid under interdict till the murderer is discovered; his legacies are not abridged by _falcidia_, &c., &c.]

[Footnote 39: _Literary Germany_, a work (I believe of no great merit) which Richter often twitches in the same style.--Ed.]

[Footnote 40: See _Schmelzle's Journey_, p. 289--Ed.]

[Footnote 41: As in the State.--[V. or Von, _de_, _of_, being the symbol of the nobility, the middle order of the State.--Ed.]]

[Footnote 42: In Erlang, my petition has been granted. The _Bible Institution_ of that town have found instead of the 116,301 As, which Fixlein at first pretended with such certainty to find in the Bible-books (which false number was accordingly given in the first Edition of this Work, p. 81), the above-mentioned 323,015; which (uncommonly singular) is precisely the sum of all the letters in the Koran put together. See _Luedeke's Beschr. des Turk. Reichs_ (Luedeke's Description of the Turkish Empire. New edition, 1780).]

[Footnote 43: _Paravicini Singularia de viris claris_, Cent. I. 2.]

[Footnote 44: _Ejusd_., Cent. II. Philelphus quarrelled with the Greek about the quantity of a syllable; the prize or bet was the beard of the vanquished. Timotheus lost his.]

[Footnote 45: Their prayer-barrel, Kueruedu, is a hollowed shell, a calabash, full of unrolled formulas of prayer; they sway it from side to side, and then it works. More philosophically viewed, since in prayer the feeling only is of consequence, it is much the same whether this express itself by motion of the mouth or of the calabash.]

[Footnote 46: In German, as in some other languages, the common mode of address is by the _third_ person; plural, it indicates respect; singular, command; the _second_ person is also used; plural, it generally denotes indifference; singular, great familiarity, and sometimes its product, contempt. _Dutzenfreund_, _Thouing-friend_, is the strictest term of intimacy; and among the wild _Burschen_ (Students) many a duel (happily however, often ending like the _Polemo-Middinia_ in one drop of blood) has been fought, in consequence of saying _Du_ (thou) and _Sie_ (they) in the wrong place.--Ed.]

[Footnote 47: These antique Christmas festivities Richter describes with equal _gusto_ in another work (_Briefe und Zukuenftige Lebenslemf_); where the Christ-child (falsely reported to the young ones to have been seen flying through the air, with gold wings); the Birch-bough fixed in a corner of the room, and by him made to grow; the fruit of gilt sweetmeats, apples, nuts, which (for good boys) it suddenly produces, &c., &c., are specified with the same fidelity as here.--Ed.]

[Footnote 48: Which he purposed to make for his Island of St. Pierre in the Bienne Lake.]

[Footnote 49: Borrowed from the "Imperial Mine-product-sale-Commission," in Vienna. In their very names these Vienna people show taste.]

[Footnote 50: As, by the evidence at present before us, we can found on no other presumption, than that he must die in his thirty-second year; it would follow, that, in case he died two-and-thirty years after the death of the testatrix, no farthing could be claimed by him; since, according to our fiction, at the making of the testament he was not even one year old.]

[Footnote 51: In St. Paul's Church at London, where the slightest whisper sounds over, across a space of 143 feet.]

[Footnote 52: So much, according to Political Economists, a man yearly requires in Germany.]

[Footnote 53: This singular tone of my address to a Prince can only be excused by the equally singular relation wherein the Biographer stands to the Flachsenfingen Sovereign, and which I would willingly unfold here were it not that, in my Book, which, under the title of _Dog-post-days_, I mean to give to the world at Easter-fair, 1795, I hoped to expound the matter to universal satisfaction.]

[Footnote 54: His _Clerical Law_, p. 551.]

[Footnote 55: Eichhorn's _Einleitung ins A. T_. (Introduction to the Old Testament), Vol. II.]

[Footnote 56: Both have the same sound. _Fuechslein_ means Foxling, Fox-whelp.--Ed.]

[Footnote 57: Campe, a German philologist, who, along with several others of that class, has really proposed, as represented in the text, to substitute for all Greek or Latin derivatives corresponding German terms of the like import. _Geography_, which may be _Erdbeschreibung_ (Earth-description), was thenceforth to be nothing else; a _Geometer_ became an _Earth-measurer_, &c., &c. _School-undergovernor_, instead of _Subrector_, is by no means the happiest example of the system, and seems due rather to the Schadeck Lawyer than to Campe, whom our Author has elsewhere more than once eulogized for his project in similar style.--Ed.]

[Footnote 58: _New Universal German Library_, a reviewing periodical, in those days conducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to what has since been called the New School.--Ed.]

[Footnote 59: Superstition declares, that on the spot where the rainbow rises a golden key is left.]

[Footnote 60: To the Spring, namely, which begins with snow-drops, and ends with roses and pinks.]

[Footnote 61: This Christian superstition is not only a Rabbinical, but also a Roman one. _Cicero de Senectute_.]

[Footnote 62: For, according to the Jurists, fifteen persons make a people.]

[Footnote 63: A long philosophical elucidation is indispensably requisite; which will be found in this Book, under the title, _Natural Magic of the Imagination_. [A part of the _Jus de Tablette_ appended to this Biography, unconnected with it, and not given here.--Ed.]]

[Footnote 64: This pygmy piece of ordnance, with its cunningly devised burning-glass, is still to be seen on the south side of the Paris Vanity-Fair; and in fine weather, to be heard, on all sides thereof, proclaiming the conversion (so it seems to Richter) of the Day from Forenoon to Afternoon.--Ed.]

[Footnote 65: The Wild Hunter, _Wilde Jaeger_, is a popular spectre of Germany.--Ed.]

[Footnote 66: Indicating to the congregation what Psalm is to be sung.--Ed.]

[Footnote 67: Salerno was once famous for its medical science; but here, as in many other cases, we could desire the aid of Herr Reinhold with his _Lexicon-Commentary_.--Ed.]

[Footnote 68: This hospitable Potentate is as unknown to me as to any of my readers.--Ed.]

[Footnote 69: A little work printed in manuscript types; and seldom given by him to any but Princes. This piece of print-writing he intentionally passes off to the great as a piece of hand-writing; these persons being both more habituated and inclined to the reading of manuscript than of print.]

[Footnote 70: Thus defined by Adelung in his Lexicon: "_Kraeutermuetze_, in Medicine, a cap with various dried herbs sewed into it, and which is worn for all manner of troubles in the head."--Ed.]

[Footnote 71: Linne formed in Upsal a flower-clock, the flowers of which, by their different times of falling asleep, indicated the hours of the day.]

[Footnote 72: The good Professor of Catechetics is out here. _Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Schmelzle_.--Ed.]

[Footnote 73: Passenger so placed in the huge German Postwagen, that he cannot look out.--Ed.]

[Footnote 74: _Titan_ is also the title of this Legations-Rath Jean Pierre or Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter)'s chief novel.--Ed.]

[Footnote 75: Bruehl, I suppose; but the historical edition of the matter is, that Bruehl's treasonable secrets were come at by the more ordinary means of wax impressions of his keys.--Ed.]

[Footnote 76: Cities of Richter's romance kingdom. Flachsenfingen he sometimes calls _Klein-Wien_, Little Vienna.--Ed.]

[Footnote 77: The campaign of 1813-14 was the holy war of Germany, or Freiheitskampf, to which Jean Paul here alludes.--Translator.]

THE END

Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.