Part 14

In 1832 the house in the Goethe-platz was left vacant by its great occupant. Its art treasures, its library, its various collections, showing how comprehensive Goethe’s mind was, and how many things he had investigated, were abandoned, as all human efforts must be abandoned, when the silent messenger calls the soul into the presence of its Great Creator. If self-denial is required of those on earth who hope to enter into his rest, then who can answer for Goethe? But surely the choir of angels in “Faust” sing beautifully of it:

“Christ is arisen, Praised be his name; His love shared our prison Of guilt and of shame; He hath borne the hard trial of self-denial, And triumphant ascends To the hills whence he came.”

This house still stands as he left it, and is shown every Friday afternoon to visitors. It has been occupied by his grandson for years.

The church in which Lucas Cranach’s great picture is to be seen, and in which Herder preached, is a cold, heartless structure to a stranger, but its very stones and walls must respond to the prayers of the old inhabitants. The _brunnen_, or town well, in front of Lucas Cranach’s house, when surrounded by a crowd of peasants offers a _genre_ picture for an artist. The picture gallery is new and good. A large fresco representing Weimar celebrities is in the front entrance. Bettina Von Arnim is the only woman in the group. Perhaps her correspondence, which is by many considered spurious, will make the artist regret that he has given her so important a position in this fresco. To take an early breakfast in some lovely arbor, overlooking some historic grounds, then spend the morning in the gallery and the afternoon in the park, and the evening at the concert, is about the happiest program one can follow in a small German town.

Eisenach, the capital of Saxe-Weimar, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, will always remain associated with Martin Luther. It is the principal town in the Thuringian forest. The old “Wartburg,” one and a half miles south of the town, is famous for its architecture and history. Martin Luther, the Elector of Saxony, who rescued him, and earlier the saintly Elizabeth and her cruel husband, are only a few names which are associated with it. Of course the story of the Elector of Saxony rescuing Luther, after the Diet of Worms, is well known. Yet who can resist dwelling upon this bold character at this period. After the Pope’s excommunication Luther defies all threats and starts out on his return journey, with the emperor’s promise of a safe-conduct; the decree for arrest follows closely every step. What a picture! to have these armed knights attack him and carry him prisoner to the old Wartburg. Then to discover afterward that a friend’s hand, and not an enemy’s, had done this thing. There he remained ten months, and there still remain the traces on the wall of the ink he threw at the devil. Perhaps the chapel, where he preached on Sundays, is a more becoming and decorous place to associate him with than this little room, always pointed out first.

The Wartburg has been so beautifully renovated of late at the expense of the government, it is really worth a second visit to those who may have seen it years ago. The banquet hall is certainly superb, and the St. Elizabethangeng, with its beautiful frescoes and long narrow proportions, almost enables one to see the good woman walking up and down with her prayer-book, in deep meditation, before starting out through the forest with her attendants, and her apron full of provisions for the poor. It is told that once, when her liege-lord met her, and inquired what she had in her apron (he had strictly forbidden her taking things to the poor), she, with legendary faith, opened her apron and forthwith the bread became roses.

Taking your faithful donkey which has brought you up the hill, and your Wartburg album collection of photographs, you find yourself soon wandering through the lovely and fantastic _Annenthal_, and finally resting near the depot at Eisenach. There the untiring finger of your old guide points to Fritz Reuter’s house, and at last to his own little bill, which he has carefully prepared and which he expects you as carefully to pay. Never goes money from your pocket more liberally!

The Harz Mountains, their legends and songs, have been so often written of there is danger of stupid repetition if one goes over the ground.

A novel experience for an American is to have an attack of rheumatism in the house of an old Polish major in midsummer, in Wernigerode, and be attended by the physician of Count Von Stolberg. To inform those who may be so unfortunate as to meet with a similar fate what will become of them, I would simply remark that the subterfuge of every German doctor, when he finds a case getting beyond his control, is to recommend a water-cure. The one at Magdeburg being the nearest to Wernigerode, is the one which Count Von Stolburg’s physician would be best acquainted with, so off to the old city and farewell to the Harz! What rheumatic patient cares for a view of a fine old cathedral from a window, or to be informed that the city has existed since the eighth century? Do these facts lessen the pain or quiet the nerves? After the bath has restored the patient, and he or she can walk out and examine the cathedral, and read of the sufferings of the people in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, and again how the Austrian army was resisted by Wallenstein for seven months, and how the French besieged and took it in 1806, and again in 1813—thus there is diversion in finding oneself on such historic grounds and picturesque surroundings.

[To be continued.]

IN FLOWERY FIELDS.

By MARY HARRISON.

Ye flowers in your wonderful silence, Ye birds with your wonderful sound, The love of my God are declaring; For ye are the language he found.

Ye smile to the eye of my spirit, Ye sing to the ear of my soul; Ye waken soft echoes of anthems Which over God’s Paradise roll.

Ye bloom as ye bloomed once in Eden, Make holy and sacred the sod; Ye sing as you sang when in rapture Man counted you angels of God.

By you—common things of the desert— God’s love has this miracle wrought: Ye fill me with exquisite gladness, With worship which silences thought. —_London Sunday Magazine._

* * * * *

REPUBLICS where high birth gives no right to the government of the state, are in that respect the most happy; for the people have less reason to envy an authority which they confer on whom they will, and which they can again take away when they choose.—_Montesquieu._

FAILINGS.

By J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE.

We all have our _failings_, and for the most part we regard them tenderly. They do not count as offences; scarcely are they held to be faults. It is always a probable conjecture that an error of omission has been unintentional; not unfrequently it seems possible it was unavoidable. A sentiment of pity for, and even sympathy with, weakness overpowers the sense of grievance; the voice of the inward monitor is silenced, and the self-excused conscience sleeps. Meanwhile failings are the worst and most mischievous, the deadliest and least curable, of the ills to which the moral nature of man is heir. They are the sources of evil whence spring the blackest vices of human character, the false roots that nourish and sustain its parasites, and steal the sap of its inner life. A failing is not merely negative; its sinister aspect is one of positive wrong-doing, wherein some behest of the will is disobeyed, a measure of moral power wasted, a rebel habit formed or fostered. To compassionate failings in others is to beg the question of fact for the sake of politeness; to look with leniency on the errors which self would fain palliate, by assuming that they are unavoidable, is to play the traitor to Truth, and let the enemy into the citadel; whereas conscience is set to guard the nature of man from treachery not less carefully than to protect it against assault.

Failings may be moral, mental, or physical, as they show themselves in the character, the intellect, or the bodily habit and powers. It generally happens that what strikes the observer as a failing is compounded of errors in feeling, thought, and action combined. The practical question is how the overt evil came into existence; or, if happily the failing should be detected in an earlier stage of growth, before it has betrayed its presence by ugly consequences, we may ask: what are the mischievous forces, where are they at work, how can they be counteracted? Why has this person the “failing” of a tendency to excessive indulgence in drink or the gratification of some unbridled passion; and that individual a seeming inability to recognize and pursue the right and honest course of conduct in the presence of any so-called “temptation” or difficulty?

Some of the most regrettable and injurious failings which disfigure and defame the character run through families, appearing in successive generations and seeming to be inherited. This theory of their perpetuation is well founded; and it has been adduced as conclusive evidence of the truth of the hypothesis that mind, and, of course, character, is the mere outcome of matter. The force of the argument obviously rests on the assumption that nothing more than, or outside, matter can be transmitted from parent to child; that a particular constitution of brain and nerve centres, a special arrangement or combination of the elements which compose the mind-organ, may be reproduced, and, if it is, a similarity of character will be entailed; but as for the independent existence of mind, or spirit, that is a pure figment of the imagination, which science will sooner or later drive beyond the pale of credulity, and to which, even now, only a few thinkers avowedly cling!

Let us examine this proposition at close quarters. It may be stated thus. All we know of mind is expressed, and understood, by physical agencies and in the formulæ of material force. Speech communicates thought, and we think in words. The faculty of forming and employing words is a brain function. If a particular region of the brain be injured or diseased, the power of using language, at least in speech, is _generally_ lost. The materialist argues from this and many similar facts that mind is the product of matter. He fails to perceive that the only warrantable deduction from his own data is that mind or spirit, call it what we will, _can only express itself_ through the brain as an instrument. As well deny the skill or independent existence of a musician because he can not play the full score of an opera on a flute, as infer the non-existence of a soul from the fact that man cannot perform intellectual work without the organ of thought—the brain!

The capacity of the instrument doubtless limits the expression, but it supplies no measure of the power or skill of the performer, except in so far as the use he makes of the instrument may be a bad one. This exception is of great significance, and there will be something more to say about it presently. Meantime it is evident that, while the range of brain-power determines the _manifestation_ of mind, it neither measures, nor affirms, nor disproves the independent existence of mind. The anatomist, the physiologist, and the chemist declare their inability to discover the traces of a soul in the physical organism. That no more proves the non-existence of a soul than the failure to recognize more than a certain number of planets at any stage in the history of astronomy demonstrated that there was nothing further to find.

The appeal against materialism lies to the instinct of common sense. If mind were the mere outcome of matter, science would long since have discovered some tolerably constant relation between peculiarities of physical development and manifestations of character; whereas every step onward in the progress of research tends to disprove the existence of any certain dependency or connection between morals and matter. Even such links as compose the stock-in-trade of the physiognomist and phrenologist are shown to be illusory, except in so far as they may be the effects, rather than the causes, of character, and are produced by culture—witness the effects of education on facial expression in the case of criminals. The theory of a criminal conformation of cranium has been abandoned like the silly affectation of being able to detect an offender by his “hang-dog” or “murderous” look.

“Failings” must be studied in the light of the lessons these facts and considerations combine to teach. The moral question involved is one of responsibility for the use each individual may make of the brain-power allotted to him. The neglect to employ gifts and capacities is as grave an error, from an ethical point of view, as their application to a bad purpose. The servant who buried his talent in the earth was held accountable for the failure to use it, and thereby increase its value. The parable sets forth a truth of the highest practical interest. We are responsible for the development, by use, of the faculties vouchsafed to us. If they are allowed to remain in abeyance, or a rudimentary state, we are to blame for the deficiencies and the failings to which this neglect gives rise, and are without excuse. The obligation to act up to the level of known duty cannot be avoided. A “failing” is an act of contempt for the law of development by use. It is disobedience to an understood command. The fact that it is recognized makes a failing an offence. There may be short-coming in the performance of a good resolve. Few, if any, merely human efforts are entirely successful; but the failure which occurs when an endeavor is made in the energy of a resolute and well-aimed purpose is not so much a fault as insufficiency. The rising tide reaches its highest level by successive efforts. Self-improvement is effected in the same fashion. The motive power of persistent good endeavor is accumulative—ever advancing like the great tidal wave of the ocean—though the ground is conquered by short and seemingly only half-successful advances.

Failings, however, as we are now regarding them, are excused faults in the character which the individual makes no serious effort to repair. Some defects, as we have seen, are inherited, and upon them it is the custom to bestow great commiseration and little blame. Now, in truth, these are the least pardonable, because, if they are known to have been transmitted from parent to child, the latter has, generally, the advantage of an example, ever present to memory, by which to correct his personal deficiencies. If the “failing” be a vicious propensity, he can recall its hideousness, and thus stimulate will and conscience to aid him in eradicating the fault. If it be some form of deficiency, as indolence, lack of perseverance, want of principle, or the like, he can study, as in the pages of history, the evil consequences entailed by the defect, and with diligence order his own conduct in better courses. Inherited failings are the least excusable. Even the materialist, who claims them as the fruit of physical peculiarities, must concede that by special culture they can be remedied, the healthy organism being susceptible of increased development in any particular direction when the proper stimuli are intelligently applied with a view to its improvement. The apologist for failings which have been inherited can find no comfort in the philosophy of materialism.

Failings which are peculiar to the individual may be less easy to detect, and the subject of these defects is, in a measure, dependent upon experience and the monitions of those around him for the information needed to correct them. This should keep the wise teachable and apt to profit by the lessons life is ever reading for their instruction. A self-reliant spirit is manly, and therefore commendable; a self-sufficient spirit is unreasonable, and therefore despicable. It is strange how few of us grow really wiser as we grow older. The work of self-improvement is seldom commenced until forced upon the judgment by some awakening experience, and this is rarely vouchsafed until the ductile period of youth has gone by. Early in the adult age of man his habits become rigidly formulated, and failings are then hard to mend. A world of unhappiness and disappointment might be spared the later years of life if the young would be warned to begin the business of training the character before it is firmly set in the mould of circumstances, with all the coarse elements—inherited and contracted—uneliminated, and the errors of inconsistency and imperfect development uncorrected.

It is in the period of youth and adolescence that the mind may be most hopefully cultivated and the moral character intelligently formed. No greater mistake can be made by a young and vigorous mind than to treat the faculty of reason and the instinct of moral judgment as parts of the being which may be left to their own devices. The young man bestows some thought on his muscular system—he trains his eye, cultivates his ear, and takes credit for prudence when he strives to develop the vigor and to foster the healthy growth of his body. Is it wise—nay, is it not rather the worst of folly and shortsightedness—to neglect the ordinary development of those higher powers which man possesses in a more exalted degree than any of the lower animals? Taking care for the body while the mind is neglected is the worst of failings—the most calamitous and the least excusable.

GONE!

By E. G. CHARLESWORTH.

Alas! and have I lost thy voice, Lost the sweet face that in my youth Shone from my breast on things to be— Hope-making, changing hope to truth, Thy face, sweet love, That madest beautiful the plainest thing Below, above?

No; like the priest in times of old, Who drew the temple’s sacred veil, Thou art gone into an inner fold; And now, thy face turned heaven’s way, A paler face, and yet not pale, Looks for the sunset in the west; Thy form appears with outspread wings, I hear thee from thine altar say, With angel-breath o’er former things, _How beautiful is rest!_ —_London Sunday Magazine._

SOCIAL WRECKAGE.

By ELLICE HOPKINS.

Mr. Francis Peek has recently published a useful but saddening little book, whose title I have attached to this article. Not that it tells anything new to one who has studied deeply the pages of that terrible book of modern life, with its gilded leaves, but its unutterably dark contents; it only focuses the scattered knowledge into alarmingly clear vision. Indeed, in reading it, it is difficult to resist the old nightmare feeling, that after all this little planet may be the small rotary Vaudeville theater of the universe, where we poor actors in life’s scene are playing out a series of farces for the amusement of the angels, or more probably of darker and more distant visitants. The admirably logical social life that religiously shuts all the museums and picture-galleries on the Lord’s Day, and opens all the gin-shops; that is never tired of iterating that the proper sphere of woman is home, and brings up its 20,000 female orphans in large pauper barracks, from which the last touch of home-life has disappeared; that goes to meetings and loudly preaches thrift to the people, and then gruffly whispers in their ear by guardians of the poor, “Only be drunk and spendthrift enough, and we will house you and provide for your old age;” that goes to church and preaches that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and leaves the people to litter down like pigs at night—men and women, girls and boys, together in tenements where no rich man would think of stabling his horses; that goes to school and teaches its children the three R’s, and leaves them in dens of infamy to learn a fourth R, by every sight and sound of the day and night, ruin of body and soul; that virtuously declaims against the harlot, yet leaves its little girls to be brought up in brothels; that believes a fatal disorder is undermining the national health, and shuts the doors of its hospitals against it, and denies it the public means of cure; that legally protects the heiress up to twenty-one, and refuses to protect the poor man’s daughter, even at sixteen, from the trade of vice; that holds that the man is the responsible head of the woman, and throws the blame and disgrace on the woman—alas! alas! what a heap of anomalies is here—what real cause to complain of the methods of our moral life! No wonder that the poor Dissenting minister, much entangled in our social difficulties, and led on all sides to contradictory conclusions, threw in a deprecatory clause in his prayer, “Paradoxical as it may seem to thee, O Lord, it is nevertheless true.”

And what are the results of such methods as these? What must be the results?

That we read that in the wealthiest nation in the world, one in every thirty-one of our countrymen is a pauper; this, moreover, without including any of that vast number of destitute persons who are maintained in charitable institutions or by private benevolence.

That in the richest city in the world there were in one year 101 deaths from actual starvation, in full sight of well-stocked shops.

That there are about 180,000 apprehensions each year for drunkenness, and over 15,000 persons yearly charged with indictable crimes, and over half a million convicted summarily before the magistrates, of which latter nearly 100,000 are guilty of personal assaults, about 2,500 being aggravated assaults upon women and children.

That there are extensive districts in London, Liverpool, and all our large towns, where our people are living in little more than half the area of ground required for a corpse, and which they could claim if they were dead, in tenements which are the graves of all decency and chastity.

That “in Liverpool alone, by a rough estimate, there are some 10,000 or more children who are neither properly fed, clothed nor housed, and surrounded by such evil associations at home, or in the low lodging-houses where they herd, that there is small chance of their leading afterwards a useful life, and we can predict with certainty that many of them will enter our prisons, penitentiaries and workhouses.”

Surely it must create an uneasy feeling in the most careless to realize this mass of misery and sin on which the life of the well-to-do classes in England is based—

“This deep dark underworld of woe, That underlies life’s shining surfaces, Dim populous pain and multitudinous toil, Unheeded of the heedless world that treads Its piteous upturned faces underfoot, In the gay rout that rushes to its ends.”

It is impossible for me to deal adequately with the subject in the narrow space of a short article, but let me touch on three of our greatest problems—overcrowding, pauperism, and the care of the young.