Chapter 2

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CONTENTS OF VOLUME VII

#Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel#

The Life of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. By J. Loewenberg.

Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree.

The Philosophy of Law. Translated by J. Loewenberg.

Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. Translated by J. Loewenberg.

#Bettina von Arnim#

The Life of Bettina von Arnim. By Henry Wood.

Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. Translated by Wallace Smith Murray.

#Karl Lebrecht Immermann#

Immermann and His Drama _Merlin_. By Martin Schütze.

Immermann's _Münchhausen_. By Allen Wilson Porterfield.

The Oberhof. Translated by Paul Bernard Thomas.

#Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow#

Gutzkow and Young Germany. By Starr Willard Cutting.

Sword and Queue. Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron.

German Lyric Poetry from 1830 to 1848. By John S. Nollen.

#Anastasius Grün#

A Salon Scene. Translated by Sarah T. Barrows.

#Nikolaus Lenau#

Prayer. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

Sedge Songs. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker.

Songs by the Lake. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

The Postilion. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

To the Beloved from Afar. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

The Three Gipsies. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

My Heart. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

#Eduard Mörike#

An Error Chanced. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

A Song for Two in the Night. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

Early Away. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

The Forsaken Maiden. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

Weyla's Song. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

Seclusion. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

The Soldier's Betrothed. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

The Old Weathercock: An Idyll. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

Think of It, My Soul. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

Erinna to Sappho. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

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Mozart's Journey from Vienna to Prague. Translated by Florence Leonard

#Annette Elizabeth von Droste-Hülshoff#

Pentecost. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

The House in the Heath. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

The Boy on the Moor. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

On the Tower. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

The Desolate House. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

The Jew's Beech-Tree. Translated by Lillie Winter

#Ferdinand Freiligrath#

The Duration of Love. Translated by M.G. in _Chambers' Journal_

The Emigrants. Translated by C.T. Brooks

The Lion's Ride. Translated by C.T. Brooks

The Spectre-Caravan. Translated by J.C. Mangan

Had I at Mecca's Gate been Nourished. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

Wild Flowers. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

The Dead to the Living. Translated by Bayard Taylor

Hurrah, Germania! In _Pall Mall Gazette_, London

The Trumpet of Gravelotte. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker

#Moritz Graf von Strachwitz#

Douglas of the Bleeding Heart. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

#Georg Herwegh#

The Stirrup-Cup. Translated by William G. Howard

#Emanuel Geibel#

The Watchman's Song. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman

The Call of the Road. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman

Autumn Days. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman

The Death of Tiberius. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman

ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME VII

Arco. By Benno Becker

Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel. By Schlesinger

Royal Old Museum in Berlin. By Schinkel

Bettina von Arnim

The Goethe Monument. By Bettina von Arnim

Karl Lebrecht Immermann. By C.T. Lessing

The Master of the Oberhof. By Benjamin Vautier

The Oberhof. By Benjamin Vautier

The Freemen's Tribunal. By Benjamin Vautier

Lisbeth. By Benjamin Vautier

Oswald, the Hunter. By Benjamin Vautier

Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow

The Potsdam Guard. By Adolph von Menzel

King Frederick William I of Prussia. By R. Siemering

King Frederick William I and His "Tobacco Collegium". By Adolph von Menzel

Anastasius Grün

Nikolaus Lenau

Evening on the Shore. By Hans am Ende

Eduard Mörike. By Weiss

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff

The Farm House. By Hans am Ende

Ferdinand Freiligrath. By J Hasenclever

Dusk on the Dead Sea. By Eugen Bracht

Death on the Barricade. By Alfred Rethel

George Herwegh

Emanuel Geibel. By Hader

Journeying. By Ludwig Richter

THE LIFE OF GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D.

Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard University

Among students of philosophy the mention of Hegel's name arouses at once a definite emotion. Few thinkers indeed have ever so completely fascinated the minds of their sympathetic readers, or have so violently repulsed their unwilling listeners, as Hegel has. To his followers Hegel is the true prophet of the only true philosophic creed, to his opponents, he has, in Professor James's words, "like Byron's corsair, left a name 'to other times, linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.'"

The feelings of attraction to Hegel or repulsion from him do not emanate from his personality. Unlike Spinoza's, his life offers nothing to stir the imagination. Briefly, some of his biographical data are as follows: He was born at Stuttgart, the capital of Würtemberg, August 27, 1770. His father was a government official, and the family belonged to the upper middle class. Hegel received his early education at the Latin School and the Gymnasium of his native town. At both these institutions, as well as at the University of Tübingen which he entered in 1788 to study theology, he distinguished himself as an eminently industrious, but not as a rarely gifted student. The certificate which he received upon leaving the University in 1793 speaks of his good character, his meritorious acquaintance with theology and languages, and his meagre knowledge of philosophy. This does not quite represent his equipment, however, for his private reading and studies carried him far beyond the limits of the regular curriculum. After leaving the University he spent seven years as family tutor in Switzerland and in Frankfurt-on-the-Main. Soon after, in 1801, we find him as _Privat-Docent_; then, in 1805, as professor at the University of Jena. His academic activities were interrupted by the battle of Jena. For the next two years we meet him as an editor of a political journal at Bamberg, and from 1808 to 1816 as rector of the Gymnasium at Nuremberg. He was then called to a professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg. In 1818 he was called to Berlin to fill the vacancy left by the death of Fichte. From this time on until his death in 1831, he was the recognized dictator of one of the most powerful philosophic schools in the history of thought.

It is no easy task to convey an adequate idea of Hegel's philosophy within the limits of a short introduction. There is, however, one central thought animating the vast range of his whole philosophic system which permits of non-technical statement. This thought will be more easily grasped, if we consider first the well-known concept of permanence and change. They may be said to constitute the most fundamental distinction in life and in thought. Religion and poetry have always dwelt upon their tragic meaning. That there is nothing new under the sun and that we are but "fair creatures of an hour" in an ever-changing world, are equally sad reflections. Interesting is the application of the difference between permanence and change to extreme types of temperament. We may speak loosely of the "static" and the "dynamic" temperaments, the former clinging to everything that is traditional, conservative, and abiding in art, religion, philosophy, politics, and life; the latter everywhere pointing to, and delighting in, the fluent, the novel, the evanescent. These extreme types, by no means rare or unreal, illustrate the deep-rooted need of investing either permanence or change with a more fundamental value. And to the value of the one or the other, philosophers have always endeavored to give metaphysical expression.

Some thinkers have proclaimed change to be the deepest manifestation of reality, while others have insisted upon something abiding behind a world of flux. The question whether change or permanence is more essential arose early in Greek philosophy. Heraclitus was the first one to see in change a deeper significance than in the permanence of the Eleatics. A more dramatic opposition than the one which ensued between the Heracliteans and the Eleatics can scarcely be imagined--both schools claiming a monopoly of reason and truth, both distrusting the senses, and each charging the other with illusion. Now the significance of Hegel's philosophy can be grasped only when we bear in mind that it was just this profound distinction between the permanent and the changing that Hegel sought to understand and to interpret. He saw more deeply into the reality of movement and change than any other philosopher before or after him.

Very early in his life, judging by the recently published writings of his youth, Hegel became interested in various phases of movement and change. The vicissitudes of his own inner or outer life he did not analyze. He was not given to introspection. Romanticism and mysticism were foreign to his nature. His temperament was rather that of the objective thinker. Not his own passions, hopes, and fears, but those of others invited his curiosity. With an humane attitude, the young Hegel approached religious and historical problems. The dramatic life and death of Jesus, the tragic fate of "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome," the discrepancies between Christ's teachings and the positive Christian religion, the fall of paganism and the triumph of the Christian Church--these were the problems over which the young Hegel pondered. Through an intense study of these problems, he discovered that evil, sin, longing, and suffering are woven into the very tissue of religious and historical processes, and that these negative elements determine the very meaning and progress of history and religion. Thereupon he began a systematic sketch of a philosophy in which a negative factor was to be recognized as the positive vehicle in the development of the whole world. And thus his genius came upon a method which revealed to him an orderly unfolding in the world with stages of relative values, the higher developing from the lower, and all stages constituting an organic whole.

The method which the young Hegel discovered empirically, and which the mature rationalist applied to every sphere of human life and thought, is the famous Dialectical Method. This method is, in general, nothing else than the recognition of the necessary presence of a negative factor in the constitution of the world. Everything in the world--be it a religious cult or a logical category, a human passion or a scientific law--is, so Hegel holds, the result of a process which involves the overcoming of a negative element. Without such an element to overcome, the world would indeed be an inert and irrational affair. That any rational and worthy activity entails the encounter of opposition and the removal of obstacles is an observation commonplace enough. A preëstablished harmony of foreseen happy issues--a fool's paradise--is scarcely our ideal of a rational world. Just as a game is not worth playing when its result is predetermined by the great inferiority of the opponent, so life without something negative to overcome loses its zest. But the process of overcoming is not anything contingent; it operates according to a uniform and universal law. And this law constitutes Hegel's most central doctrine--his doctrine of Evolution.

In order to bring this doctrine into better relief, it may be well to contrast it superficially with the Darwinian theory of transformation. In general, Hegel's doctrine is a concept of value, Darwin's is not. What Darwinians mean by evolution is not an unfolding of the past, a progressive development of a hierarchy of phases, in which the later is superior and organically related to the earlier. No sufficient criterion is provided by them for evaluating the various stages in the course of an evolutionary process. The biologist's world would probably have been just as rational if the famous ape-like progenitor of man had chanced to become his offspring-assuming an original environment favorable for such transformation. Some criterion besides the mere external and accidental "struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest" must be furnished to account for a progressive evolution. Does the phrase "survival of the fittest" say much more than that those who happen to survive _are_ the fittest, or that their survival proves their fitness? But that survival itself is valuable: that it is better to be alive than dead; that existence has a value other than itself; that what comes later in the history of the race or of the universe is an advance over what went before-that, in a word, the world is subject to an immanent development, only a comprehensive and systematic philosophy can attempt to show.

The task of Hegel's whole philosophy consists in showing, by means of one uniform principle, that the world manifests everywhere a genuine evolution. Unlike the participants in the biological "struggle for existence," the struggling beings of Hegel's universe never end in slaying, but in reconciliation. Their very struggle gives birth to a new being which includes them, and this being is "higher" in the scale of existence, because it represents the preservation of two mutually opposed beings. Only where conflicts are adjusted, oppositions overcome, negations removed, is there advance, in Hegel's sense; and only where there is a passage from the positive through its challenging negative to a higher form inclusive of both is there a case of real development.

The ordinary process of learning by experience illustrates somewhat Hegel's meaning. An individual finds himself, for instance, in the presence of a wholly new situation that elicits an immediate, definite reaction. In his ignorance, he chooses the wrong mode of behavior. As a consequence, trouble ensues; feelings are hurt, pride is wounded, motives are misconstrued. Embittered and disappointed with himself, he experiences great mental sorrow. But he soon learns to see the situation in its true light; he condemns his deed and offers to make amends. And after the wounds begin to heal again, the inner struggles experienced commence to assume a positive worth. They have led him to a deeper insight into his own motives, to a better self-comprehension. And he finally comes forth from the whole affair enriched and enlightened. Now in this formal example, to which any content may be supplied, three phases can be distinguished. First, we have the person as he meant to be in the presence of the new situation, unaware of trouble. Then, his wrong reaction engendered a hostile element. He was at war with himself; he was not what he meant to be. And finally, he returned to himself richer and wiser, including within himself the negative experience as a valuable asset in the advance of his development.

This process of falling away from oneself, of facing oneself as an enemy whom one reconciles to and includes in one's larger self, is certainly a familiar process. It is a process just like this that develops one's personality. However the self may be defined metaphysically, it is for every self-conscious individual a never-ceasing battle with conflicting motives and antagonistic desires--a never-ending cycle of endeavor, failure, and success through the very agency of failure.

A more typical instance of this rhythmic process is Hegel's view of the evolution of religion. Religion, in general, is based on a dualism which it seeks to overcome. Though God is in heaven and man on earth, religion longs to bridge the gulf which separates man and God. The religions of the Orient emphasize God's infinity. God is everything, man is nothing. Like an Oriental prince, God is conceived to have despotic sway over man, his creature. Only in contemplating God's omnipotence and his own nothingness can man find solace and peace. Opposed to this religion of the infinite is the finite religion of Greece.

Man in Greece stands in the centre of a beautiful cosmos which is not alien to his spirit. The gods on high, conceived after the likeness of man, are the expression of a free people conscious of their freedom. And the divinities worshiped, under the form of Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite--what are they but idealized and glorified Greeks? Can a more complete antithesis be imagined? But Christianity becomes possible after this struggle only, for in Christianity is contained both the principle of Oriental infinity and the element of Hellenic finitude, for in a being who is both God and man--a God-man--the gulf between the infinite and finite is bridged. The Christian, like the Greek, worships man--Jesus; but this man is one with the eternal being of the Orient. Because it is the outcome of the Oriental and Greek opposition, the Christian religion is, in Hegel's sense, a higher one. Viewing the Oriental and the Hellenic religions historically in terms of the biological "struggle for existence," the extinction of neither has resulted. The Christian religion is the unity of these two struggling opposites; in it they are conciliated and preserved. And this for Hegel is genuine evolution.

That evolution demands a union of opposites seems at first paradoxical enough. To say that Christianity is a religion of both infinity and finitude means nothing less than that it contains a contradiction. Hegel's view, strange as it may sound, is just this: everything includes a contradiction in it, everything is both positive and negative, everything expresses at once its Everlasting Yea and its Everlasting No. The negative character of the world is the very vehicle of its progress. Life and activity mean the triumph of the positive over the negative, a triumph which results from absorbing and assimilating it. The myth of the Phoenix typifies the life of reason "eternally preparing for itself," as Hegel says, "a funeral pile, and consuming itself upon it; but so that from its ashes it produces the new, renovated, fresh life." That the power of negativity enters constitutively into the rationality of the world, nay, that the rationality of the world demands negativity in it, is Hegel's most original contribution to thought. His complete philosophy is the attempt to show in detail that the whole universe and everything it contains manifests the process of uniformly struggling with a negative power, and is an outcome of conflicting, but reconciled forces. An impressionistic picture of the world's eternal becoming through this process is furnished by the first of Hegel's great works, the _Phenomenology of Spirit_. The book is, in a sense, a cross-section of the entire spiritual world. It depicts the necessary unfolding of typical phases of the spiritual life of mankind. Logical categories, scientific laws, historical epochs, literary tendencies, religious processes, social, moral, and artistic institutions, all exemplify the same onward movement through a union of opposites. There is eternal and total instability everywhere. But this unrest and instability is of a necessary and uniform nature, according to the one eternally fixed principle which renders the universe as a whole organic and orderly.

Organic Wholeness! This phrase contains the rationale of the restless flow and the evanescent being of the Hegelian world. It is but from the point of view of the whole that its countless conflicts, discrepancies, and contradictions can be understood. As the members of the body find only in the body as a whole their _raison d'être_, so the manifold expressions of the world are the expressions of one organism. A hand which is cut off, as Hegel somewhere remarks, still looks like a hand, and exists; but it is not a real hand. Similarly any part of the world, severed from its connection with the whole, any isolated historical event, any one religious view, any particular scientific explanation, any single social body, any mere individual person, is like an amputated bodily organ. Hegel's view of the world as organic depends upon exhibiting the partial and abstract nature of other views. In his _Phenomenology_ a variety of interpretations of the world and of the meaning and destiny of life are scrutinized as to their adequacy and concreteness. When not challenged, the point of view of common sense, for instance, seems concrete and natural. The reaction of common sense to the world is direct and practical, it has few questions to ask, and philosophic speculations appear to it abstract and barren. But, upon analysis, it is the common sense view that stands revealed as abstract and barren. For an abstract object is one that does not fully correspond to the rich and manifold reality; it is incomplete and one-sided.

Precisely such an object is the world of common sense. Its concreteness is ignorance. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by common sense. Its work-a-day world is not even a faint reflex of the vast and complex universe. It sees but the immediate, the obvious, the superficial. So instead of being concrete, it is, in truth, the very opposite. Nor is empirical science with its predilection for "facts" better off. Every science able to cope with a mere fragmentary aspect of the world and from a partial point of view, is forced to ignore much of the concrete content of even its own realm. Likewise, art and religion, though in their views more synthetic and therefore more concrete, are one-sided; they seek to satisfy special needs. Philosophy alone--Hegelian philosophy--is concrete. Its aim is to interpret the world in its entirety and complexity, its ideal is to harmonize the demands of common sense, the interests of science, the appeal of art, and the longing of religion into one coherent whole. This view of philosophy, because it deals with the universe in its fulness and variety, alone can make claim to real concreteness. Nor are the other views false. They form for Hegel the necessary rungs on the ladder which leads up to his own philosophic vision. Thus the Hegelian vision is itself an organic process, including all other interpretations of life and of the world as its necessary phases. In the immanent unfolding of the Hegelian view is epitomized the onward march and the organic unity of the World-Spirit itself.

The technical formulation of this view is contained in his _Logic_. This book may indeed be said to be Hegel's master-stroke. Nothing less is attempted in it than the proof that the very process of reasoning manifests the same principle of evolution through a union of opposites. Hegel was well aware, as much as recent exponents of anti-intellectualism, that through "static" concepts we transmute and falsify the "fluent" reality. As Professor James says "The essence of life is its continuously changing character; but our concepts are all discontinuous and fixed ... When we conceptualize we cut out and fix, and exclude everything but what we have fixed. A concept means a _that-and-no-other_." But are our concepts static, fixed, and discontinuous? What if the very concepts we employ in reasoning should exemplify the universal flow of life? Hegel finds that indeed to be the case. Concepts we daily use, such as quality and quantity, essence and phenomenon, appearance and reality, matter and force, cause and effect, are not fixed and isolated entities, but form a continuous system of interdependent elements. Stated dogmatically the meaning is this: As concavity and convexity are inseparably connected, though one is the very opposite of the other--as one cannot, so to speak, live without the other, both being always found in union--so can no concept be discovered that is not thus wedded to its contradiction. Every concept develops, upon analysis, a stubbornly negative mate. No concept is statable or definable without its opposite; one involves the other. One cannot speak of motion without implying rest; one cannot mention the finite without at the same time referring to the infinite; one cannot define cause without explicitly defining effect. Not only is this true, but concepts, when applied, reveal perpetual oscillation. Take the terms "north" and "south." The mention of the north pole, for example, implies at once the south pole also; it can be distinguished only by contrast with the other, which it thus _includes_. But it is a north pole only by _excluding_ the south pole from itself--by being itself and not merely what the other is not. The situation is paradoxical enough: Each aspect--the negative or the positive--of anything appears to exclude the other, while each requires its own other for its very definition and expression. It needs the other, and yet is independent of it. How Hegel proves this of all concepts, cannot here be shown. The result is that no concept can be taken by itself as a "that-and-no-other." It is perpetually accompanied by its "other" as man is by his shadow. The attempt to isolate any logical category and regard it as fixed and stable thus proves futile. Each category--to show this is the task of Hegel's _Logic_--is itself an organism, the result of a process which takes place within its inner constitution. And all logical categories, inevitably used in describing and explaining our world, form one system of interdependent and organically related parts. Hegel begins with an analysis of a concept that most abstractly describes reality, follows it through its countless conflicts and contradictions, and finally reaches the highest category which, including all the foregoing categories in organic unity, is alone adequate to characterize the universe as an organism. What these categories are and what Hegel's procedure is in showing their necessary sequential development, can here not even be hinted at.

That the logical development of the categories of thought is the same as the historical evolution of life--and _vice versa_--establishes for Hegel the identity of thought and reality. In the history of philosophy, the discrepancy between thought and reality has often been emphasized. There are those who insist that reality is too vast and too deep for man with his limited vision to penetrate; others, again, who set only certain bounds to man's understanding, reality consisting, they hold, of knowable and unknowable parts; and others still who see in the very shifts and changes of philosophic and scientific opinion the delusion of reason and the illusiveness of reality. The history of thought certainly does present an array of conflicting views concerning the limits of human reason. But all the contradictions and conflicts of thought prove to Hegel the sovereignty of reason. The conflicts of reason are its own necessary processes and expressions. Its dialectic instability is instability that is peculiar to all reality. Both thought and reality manifest one nature and one process. Hence reason with its "dynamic" categories can comprehend the "fluent" reality, because it is flesh of its flesh and bone of its bone. Hegel's bold and oft quoted words "What is rational is real; and what is real is rational," pithily express his whole doctrine. The nature of rationality and the nature of reality are, for Hegel, one and the same spiritual process, the organic process of triumphing over and conquering conflicts and contradictions. Where reality conforms to this process it is rational (that which does not conform to it is not reality at all, but has, like an amputated leg, mere contingent existence); the logical formula of this process is but an abstract account of what reality is in its essence.

The equation of the real and the rational, or the discovery of one significant process underlying both life and reason, led Hegel to proclaim a new kind of logic, so well characterized by Professor Royce as the "logic of passion." To repeat what has been said above, this means that categories are related to one another as historical epochs, as religious processes, as social and moral institutions, nay, as human passions, wills, and deeds are related to one another. Mutual conflict and contradiction appear as their sole constant factor amid all their variable conditions. The introduction of contradiction into logical concepts as their _sine qua non_ meant indeed a revolutionary departure from traditional logic. Prior to Hegel, logical reasoning was reasoning in accordance with the law of contradiction, i. e., with the assumption that nothing can have at the same time and at the same place contradictory and inconsistent qualities or elements. For Hegel, on the contrary, contradiction is the very moving principle of the world, the pulse of its life. _Alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend_, as he drastically says. The deeper reason why Hegel invests contradiction with a positive value lies in the fact that, since the nature of everything involves the union of discrepant elements, nothing can bear isolation and independence. Terms, processes, epochs, institutions, depend upon one another for their meaning, expression, and existence; it is impossible to take anything in isolation. But this is just what one does in dealing with the world in art or in science, in religion or in business; one is always dealing with error and contradiction, because one is dealing with fragments or bits of life and experience. Hence--and this is Hegel's crowning thought--anything short of the whole universe is inevitably contradictory. In brief, contradiction has the same sting for Hegel as it has for any one else. Without losing its nature of "contradictoriness," contradiction has logically this positive meaning. Since it is an essential element of every partial, isolated, and independent view of experience and thought, one is necessarily led to transcend it and to see the universe in organic wholeness.

Thus, as Hegel puts his fundamental idea, "the truth is the whole." Neither things nor categories, neither histories nor religions, neither sciences nor arts, express or exhaust by themselves the whole essence of the universe. The essence of the universe is the _life_ of the totality of all things, not their _sum_. As the life of man is not the sum of his bodily and mental functions, the whole man being present in each and all of these, so must the universe be conceived as omnipresent in each of its parts and expressions. This is the significance of Hegel's conception of the universe as an organism. The World-Spirit--Hegel's God--constitutes, thinks, lives, wills, and is _all_ in unity. The evolution of the universe is thus the evolution of God himself.

The task of philosophy, then, as Hegel conceives it, is to portray in systematic form the evolution of the World-Spirit in all its necessary ramifications. These ramifications themselves are conceived as constituting complete wholes, such as logic, nature, mind, society, history, art, religion, philosophy, so that the universe in its onward march through these is represented as a Whole of Wholes--_ein Kreis von Kreisen_. In Hegel's complete philosophy each of these special spheres finds its proper place and elaborate treatment.

Whether Hegel has well or ill succeeded in the task of exhibiting in each and all of these spheres the one universal movement, whether or no he was justified in reading into logic the same kind of development manifested by life, or in making life conform to one logical formula--these and other problems should arouse an interest in Hegel's writings. The following selections may give some glimpse of their spirit.

In conclusion, some bare suggestions must suffice to indicate the reason for Hegel's great influence. Hegel has partly, if not wholly, created the modern historical spirit. Reality for him, as even this inadequate sketch has shown, is not static, but is essentially a process. Thus until the history of a thing is known, the thing is not understood at all. It is the becoming and not the being of the world that constitutes its reality. And thus in emphasizing the fact that everything has a "past," the insight into which alone reveals its significant meaning, Hegel has given metaphysical expression and impetus to the awakening modern historical sense. His idea of evolution also epitomizes the spirit of the nineteenth century with its search everywhere for geneses and transformations--in religion, philology, geology, biology. Closely connected with the predominance of the historical in Hegel's philosophy is its explicit critique of individualism and particularism. According to his doctrine, the individual as individual is meaningless. The particular--independent and unrelated--is an abstraction. The isolation of anything results in contradiction. It is only the whole that animates and gives meaning to the individual and the particular. This idea of subordinating the individual to universal ends, as embodied particularly in Hegel's theory of the State, has left its impress upon political, social, and economic theories of his century. Not less significant is the glorification of reason of which Hegel's complete philosophy is an expression. Reason never spoke with so much self-confidence and authority as it did in Hegel. To the clear vision of reason the universe presents no dark or mysterious corners, nay, the very negations and contradictions in it are marks of its inherent rationality. But Hegel's rationalism is not of the ordinary shallow kind. Reason he himself distinguishes from understanding. The latter is analytical, its function is to abstract, to define, to compile, to classify. Reason, on the other hand, is synthetic, constructive, inventive. Apart from Hegel's special use of the term, it is this synthetic and creative and imaginative quality pervading his whole philosophy which has deepened men's insight into history, religion, and art, and which has wielded its general influence on the philosophic and literary constellation of the nineteenth century.

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GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY[1] (1837)

TRANSLATED BY J. SIBREE, M.A.

The subject of this course of lectures is the Philosophical History of the World. And by this must be understood, not a collection of general observations respecting it, suggested by the study of its records and proposed to be illustrated by its facts, but universal history itself. To gain a clear idea, at the outset, of the nature of our task, it seems necessary to begin with an examination of the other methods of treating history. The various methods may be ranged under three heads:

I. Original History. II. Reflective History. III. Philosophical History.

I. Of the first kind, the mention of one or two distinguished names will furnish a definite type. To this category belong Herodotus, Thucydides, and other historians of the same order, whose descriptions are for the most part limited to deeds, events, and states of society, which they had before their eyes and whose spirit they shared. They simply transferred what was passing in the world around them to the realm of re-presentative intellect; an external phenomenon was thus translated into an internal conception. In the same way the poet operates upon the material supplied him by his emotions, projecting it into an image for the conceptive faculty.

These original historians did, it is true, find statements and narratives of other men ready to hand; one person cannot be an eye-and-ear witness of everything. But, merely as an ingredient, they make use only of such aids as the poet does of that heritage of an already-formed language to which he owes so much; historiographers bind together the fleeting elements of story, and treasure them up for immortality in the temple of Mnemosyne. Legends, ballad-stories, and traditions must be excluded from such original history; they are but dim and hazy forms of historical apprehension, and therefore belong to nations whose intelligence is but half awakened. Here, on the contrary, we have to do with people fully conscious of what they were and what they were about. The domain of reality--actually seen, or capable of being so-affords a very different basis in point of firmness from that fugitive and shadowy element in which were engendered those legends and poetic dreams whose historical prestige vanishes as soon as nations have attained a mature individuality.

Such original historians, then, change the events, the deeds, and the states of society with which they are conversant, into an object for the conceptive faculty; the narratives they leave us cannot, therefore, be very comprehensive in their range. Herodotus, Thucydides, Guicciardini, may be taken as fair samples of the class in this respect. What is present and living in their environment is their proper material. The influences that have formed the writer are identical with those which have molded the events that constitute the matter of his story. The author's spirit and that of the actions he narrates are one and the same. He describes scenes in which he himself has been an actor, or at any rate an interested spectator. It is short periods of time, individual shapes of persons and occurrences, single, unreflected traits, of which he makes his picture. And his aim is nothing more than the presentation to posterity of an image of events as clear as that which he himself possessed in virtue of personal observation, or lifelike descriptions. Reflections are none of his business, for he lives in the spirit of his subject; he has not attained an elevation above it. If, as in Cæsar's case, he belongs to the exalted rank of generals or statesmen, it is the prosecution of his own aims that constitutes the history.

Such speeches as we find in Thucydides, for example, of which we can positively assert that they are not _bona fide_ reports, would seem to make against our statement that a historian of his class presents us no reflected picture, that persons and people appear in his works in _propria persona_ ... Granted that such orations as those of Pericles--that most profoundly accomplished, genuine, noble statesman--were elaborated by Thucydides, it must yet be maintained that they were not foreign to the character of the speaker. In the orations in question, these men proclaim the maxims adopted by their countrymen and formative of their own character; they record their views of their political relations and of their moral and spiritual nature, and publish the principles of their designs and conduct. What the historian puts into their mouths is no supposititious system of ideas, but an uncorrupted transcript of their intellectual and moral habitudes.

Of these historians whom we must make thoroughly our own, with whom we must linger long if we would live with their respective nations and enter deeply into their spirit--of these historians to whose pages we may turn, not for the purposes of erudition merely, but with a view to deep and genuine enjoyment, there are fewer than might be imagined. Herodotus, the Father, namely the Founder, of History, and Thucydides have been already mentioned. Xenophon's _Retreat of the Ten Thousand_ is a work equally original. Cæsar's _Commentaries_ are the simple masterpiece of a mighty spirit; among the ancients these annalists were necessarily great captains and statesmen. In the Middle Ages, if we except the bishops, who were placed in the very centre of the political world, the monks monopolize this category as naïve chroniclers who were as decidedly isolated from active life as those elder annalists had been connected with it. In modern times the relations are entirely altered. Our culture is essentially comprehensive, and immediately changes all events into historical representations. Belonging to the class in question, we have vivid, simple, clear narrations--especially of military transactions--which might fairly take their place with those of Cæsar. In richness of matter and fulness of detail as regards strategic appliances and attendant circumstances, they are even more instructive. The French "Memoirs" also fall under this category. In many cases these are written by men of mark, though relating to affairs of little note; they not unfrequently contain such a large amount of anecdotal matter that the ground they occupy is narrow and trivial. Yet they are often veritable masterpieces in history, as are those of Cardinal Retz, which, in fact, trench on a larger historical field. In Germany such masters are rare, Frederick the Great in his _Histoire de mon temps_ being an illustrious exception. Writers of this order must occupy an elevated position, for only from such a position is it possible to take an extensive view of affairs--to see everything. This is out of the question for him who from below merely gets a glimpse of the great world through a miserable cranny.

II. The second kind of history we may call the _Reflective._ It is history whose mode of representation is not really confined by the limits of the time to which it relates, but whose spirit transcends the present. In this second order a strongly marked variety of species may be distinguished.

1. It is the aim of the investigator to gain a view of the entire history of a people, of a country, or of the world in short, what we call universal history. In this case the working up of the historical material is the main point. The workman approaches his task with his own spirit--a spirit distinct from that of the element he is to manipulate.

Here a very important consideration is the principles to which the author refers the bearing and motives of the actions and events which he describes, as well as those which determine the form of his narrative. Among us Germans this reflective treatment and the display of ingenuity which it affords assume a manifold variety of phases. Every writer of history proposes to himself an original method. The English and French confess to general principles of historical composition, their viewpoint being more nearly that of cosmopolitan or national culture. Among us, each labors to invent a purely individual point of view; instead of writing history, we are always beating our brains to discover how history ought to be written.

This first kind of Reflective history is most nearly akin to the preceding, when it has no further aim than to present the annals of a country complete. Such compilations (among which may be mentioned the works of Livy, Diodorus Siculus, Johannes von Müller's _History of Switzerland_) are, if well performed, highly meritorious. Among the best of the kind may be included such annalists as approach those of the first-class writers who give so vivid a transcript of events that the reader may well fancy himself listening to contemporaries and eye-witnesses. But it often happens that the individuality of tone which must characterize a writer belonging to a different culture is not modified in accordance with the periods which such a record must traverse. The spirit of the writer may be quite apart from that of the times of which he treats. Thus Livy puts into the mouths of the old Roman kings, consuls, and generals, such orations as would be delivered by an accomplished advocate of the Livian era, and which strikingly contrast with the genuine traditions of Roman antiquity--witness, for example, the fable of Menenius Agrippa. In the same way he gives us descriptions of battles as if he had been an actual spectator; but their salient points would serve well enough for battles in any period, for their distinctness contrasts, even in his treatment of chief points of interest, with the want of connection and the inconsistency that prevail elsewhere. The difference between such a compiler and an original historian may be best seen by comparing Polybius himself with the style in which Livy uses, expands, and abridges his annals in those periods of which Polybius' account has been preserved. Johannes von Müller, in the endeavor to remain faithful in his portraiture to the times he describes, has given a stiff, formal, pedantic aspect to his history. We much prefer the narratives we find in old Tschudi; all is more naïve and natural than when appearing in the garb of a fictitious and affected archaism.

A history which aspires to traverse long periods of time, or to be universal, must indeed forego the attempt to give individual representations of the past as it actually existed. It must foreshorten its pictures by abstractions, and this includes not merely the omission of events and deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that Thought is, after all, the most trenchant epitomist. A battle, a great victory, a siege no longer maintains its original proportions, but is put off with a mere allusion. When Livy, for instance, tells us of the war with the Volsci, we sometimes have the brief announcement: "This year war was carried on with the Volsci."

2. A second species of Reflective history is what we may call the pragmatical. When we have to deal with the past and occupy ourselves with a remote world, a present rises into being for the mind--produced by its own activity, as the reward of its labor. The occurrences are, indeed, various; but the idea which pervades them-their deeper import and connection--is one. This takes the occurrence out of the category of the past and makes it virtually present. Pragmatical (didactic) reflections, though in their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and indefeasibly of the present, and quicken the annals of the dead past with the life of today. Whether, indeed, such reflections are truly interesting and enlivening depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral reflections must here be specially noticed--the moral teaching expected from history; the latter has not infrequently been treated with a direct view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate the soul and are applicable in the moral instruction of children for impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of people and states, their interests, relations, and the complicated tissue of their affairs, present quite another field. Rulers, statesmen, nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history; yet what experience and history teach is this-that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, nor have they acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events a general principle gives no help.

It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the present. Looked at in this light nothing can be shallower than the oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples during the French Revolution; nothing is more diverse than the genius of those nations and that of our times. Johannes von Müller, in his _Universal History_ as also in his _History of Switzerland_, had such moral aims in view. He designed to prepare a body of political doctrines for the instruction of princes, governments, and peoples (he formed a special collection of doctrines and reflections, frequently giving us in his correspondence the exact number of apothegms which he had compiled in a week); but he cannot assert that this part of his labor was among the best he accomplished. It is only a thorough, liberal, comprehensive view of historical relations (such for instance, as we find in Montesquieu's _L'Esprit des Lois_) that can give truth and interest to reflections of this order. One Reflective history, therefore, supersedes another. The materials are patent to every writer; each is prone to believe himself capable of arranging and manipulating them, and we may expect that each will insist upon his own spirit as that of the age in question. Disgusted by such reflective histories, readers have often returned with pleasure to narratives adopting no particular point of view--which certainly have their value, although, for the most part, they offer only material for history. We Germans are content with such; but the French, on the other hand, display great genius in reanimating bygone times and in bringing the past to bear upon the present condition of things.

3. The third form of Reflective history is the _Critical_. This deserves mention as preeminently the mode, now current in Germany, of treating history. It is not history itself that is here presented. We might more properly designate it as a History of History--a criticism of historical narratives and an investigation of their truth and credibility. Its peculiarity, in point of fact as well as intention, consists in the acuteness with which the writer extorts from the records something which was not in the matters recorded. The French have given us much that is profound and judicious in this class of composition, but have not endeavored to make a merely critical procedure pass for substantial history; their judgments have been duly presented in the form of critical treatises. Among us, the so-called "higher criticism," which reigns supreme in the domain of philology, has also taken possession of our historical literature; it has been the pretext for introducing all the anti-historical monstrosities that a vain imagination could suggest. Here we have the other method of making the past a living reality; for historical data subjective fancies are substituted, whose merit is measured by their boldness--that is, the scantiness of the particulars on which they are based and the peremptoriness with which they contravene the best established facts of history.

4. The last species of Reflective history announces its fragmentary character on its very face. It adopts an abstract position; yet, since it takes general points of view (such, for instance, as the History of Art, of Law, of Religion), it forms a transition to the Philosophical History of the World. In our time this form of the history of ideas has been especially developed and made prominent. Such branches of national life stand in close relation to the entire complex of a people's annals; and the question of chief importance in relation to our subject is, whether the connection of the whole is exhibited in its truth and reality, or is referred to merely external relations. In the latter case, these important phenomena (art, law, religion, etc.), appear as purely accidental national peculiarities. It must be remarked, if the position taken is a true one, that when Reflective history has advanced to the adoption of general points of view, these are found to constitute not a merely external thread, a superficial series, but are the inward guiding soul of the occurrences and actions that occupy a nation's annals. For, like the soul-conductor, Mercury, the Idea is, in truth, the leader of peoples and of the world; and Spirit, the rational and necessitated will of that conductor, is and has been the director of the events of the world's history. To become acquainted with Spirit in this, its office of guidance, is the object of our present undertaking.

III. The third kind of history is the _Philosophical_. No explanation was needed of the two previous classes; their nature was self-evident. It is otherwise with the last, which certainly seems to require an exposition or justification. The most general definition that can be given is, that the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it. Thought is, indeed, essential to humanity. It is this that distinguishes us from the brutes. In sensation, cognition, and intellection, in our instincts and volitions, as far as they are truly human, thought is a constant element. To insist upon thought in this connection with history may, however, appear unsatisfactory. In this science it would seem as if thought must be subordinate to what is given, to the realities of fact--that this is its basis and guide; while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced ideas, without reference to actuality. Approaching history thus prepossessed, speculation might be supposed to treat it as a mere passive material, and, so far from leaving it in its native truth, to force it into conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it, as the phrase is, _a priori_. But as it is the business of history simply to adopt into its records what is and has been-actual occurrences and transactions; and since it remains true to its character in proportion as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in philosophy a process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer. This contradiction, and the charge consequently brought against speculation, shall be explained and confuted. We do not, however, propose to correct the innumerable special misrepresentations, whether trite or novel, that are current respecting the aims, the interests, and the modes of treating history and its relation to philosophy.

The only thought which philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of history, is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the sovereign of the world; that the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process. This conviction and intuition is a hypothesis in the domain of history as such; in that of philosophy it is no hypothesis. It is there proved by speculative cognition that Reason--and this term may here suffice us, without investigating the relation sustained by the universe to the Divine Being--is substance, as well as Infinite Power; its own Infinite Material is that underlying all the natural and spiritual life which it originates, as also the Infinite Form--that which sets this material in motion. On the one hand, Reason is the substance of the universe--viz., that by which and in which all reality has its being and subsistence. On the other hand, it is the infinite energy of the universe; since Reason is not so powerless as to be incapable of producing anything but a mere ideal, a mere intention--having its place outside reality, nobody knows where; something separate and abstract in the heads of certain human beings. It is the _infinite complex of things_, their entire essence and truth. It is its own material which it commits to its own active energy to work up--not needing, as finite action does, the conditions of an external material of given means from which it may obtain its support and the objects of its activity. It supplies its own nourishment and is the object of its own operations. While it is exclusively its own basis of existence and absolute final aim, it is also the energizing power realizing this aim, developing it not only in the phenomena of the natural, but also of the spiritual universe--the history of the world. That this "Idea" or "Reason" is the _true_, the _eternal_, the absolutely _powerful_ essence; that it reveals itself in the world, and that in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honor and glory--is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in philosophy and is here regarded as demonstrated.

In entering upon this course of lectures, I may fairly presume, at least, the existence in those of my hearers who are not acquainted with philosophy, of a belief in Reason, a desire, a thirst for acquaintance with it. It is, in fact, the wish for rational insight, not the ambition to amass a mere heap of acquirements, that should be presupposed in every case as possessing the mind of the learner in the study of science. If the clear idea of Reason is not already developed in our minds, in beginning the study of universal history, we should at least have the firm, unconquerable faith that Reason does exist there, and that the world of intelligence and conscious volition is not abandoned to chance, but must show itself in the light of the self-cognizant Idea. Yet I am not obliged to make such a preliminary demand upon your faith. What I have said thus provisionally, and what I shall have further to say, is, even in reference to our branch of science, not to be regarded as hypothetical, but as a summary view of the whole, the result of the investigation we are about to pursue--a result which happens to be known to _me_, because I have traversed the entire field. It is only an inference from the history of the world that its development has been a rational process, that the history in question has constituted the rational necessary course of the World-Spirit--that Spirit whose nature is always one and the same, but which unfolds this, its one nature, in the phenomena of the world's existence. This must, as before stated, present itself as the ultimate result of history; but we have to take the latter as it is. We must proceed historically--empirically. Among other precautions we must take care not to be misled by professed historians who (especially among the Germans, and those enjoying a considerable authority) are chargeable with the very procedure of which they accuse the philosopher--introducing _a priori_ inventions of their own into the records of the past. It is, for example, a widely current fiction that there was an original primeval people, taught directly by God, endowed with perfect insight and wisdom, possessing a thorough knowledge of all natural laws and spiritual truth; that there have been such or such sacerdotal peoples; or, to mention a more specific claim, that there was a Roman Epos, from which the Roman historians derived the early annals of their city, etc....

I will mention only two phases and points of view that concern the generally diffused conviction that Reason has ruled, and is still ruling in the world, and consequently in the world's history; because they give us, at the same time, an opportunity for more closely investigating the question that presents the greatest difficulty, and for indicating a branch of the subject which will have to be enlarged on in the sequel.

1. One of these points is that passage in history which informs us that the Greek Anaxagoras was the first to enunciate the doctrine that [GREEK: nous],--Understanding in general, or Reason, governs the world. It is not intelligence as self-conscious Reason--not a spirit as such that is meant; and we must clearly distinguish these from each other. The movement of the solar system takes place according to unchangeable laws. These laws are Reason, implicit in the phenomena in question; but neither the sun nor the planets which revolve around it according to these laws can be said to have any consciousness of them.

A thought of this kind--that nature is an embodiment of Reason, that is, unchangeably subordinate to universal laws--appears nowise striking or strange to us. We are accustomed to such conceptions and find nothing extraordinary in them; and I have mentioned this extraordinary occurrence partly to show how history teaches that ideas of this kind, which may seem trivial to us, have not always been in the world; that, on the contrary, such a thought makes an epoch in the annals of human intelligence. Aristotle says of Anaxagoras, as the originator of the thought in question, that he appeared as a sober man among the drunken. Socrates adopted the doctrine from Anaxagoras, and it forthwith became the ruling idea in philosophy--except in the school of Epicurus, who ascribed all events to chance. "I was delighted with the sentiment," Plato makes Socrates say, "and hoped I had found a teacher who would show me Nature in harmony with Reason, who would demonstrate in each particular phenomenon its specific aim, and, in the whole, the grand object of the universe. I would not have surrendered this hope for a great deal. But how very much was I disappointed, when, having zealously applied myself to the writings of Anaxagoras, I found that he adduces only external causes, such as atmosphere, ether, water, and the like." It is evident that the defect which Socrates complains of respecting Anaxagoras' doctrine does not concern the principle itself, but the shortcoming of the propounder in applying it to nature in the concrete. Nature is not deduced from that principle; the latter remains, in fact, a mere abstraction, inasmuch as the former is not comprehended and exhibited as a development of it--an organization produced by and from Reason. I wish, at the very outset, to call your attention to the important difference between a conception, a principle, a truth limited to an abstract form, and its determinate application and concrete development. This distinction affects the whole fabric of philosophy; and among other bearings of it there is one to which we shall have to revert at the close of our view of universal history, in investigating the aspect of political affairs in the most recent period.

We have next to notice the rise of this idea that Reason directs the world, in connection with a further application of it well known to us--in the form, viz., of the religious truth that the world is not abandoned to chance and external contingent causes, but that a Providence controls it. I stated above that I would not make a demand on your faith in regard to the principle announced. Yet I might appeal to your belief in it, in this religious aspect, if as a general rule, the nature of philosophical science allowed it to attach authority to presuppositions. To put it in another shape--this appeal is forbidden, because the science of which we have to treat proposes itself to furnish the proof, not indeed of the abstract truth of the doctrine, but of its correctness as compared with facts. The truth, then, that a Providence (that of God) presides over the events of the world consorts with the proposition in question; for Divine Providence is wisdom, endowed with an infinite power, which realizes its aim, viz., the absolute rational design of the world. Reason is thought conditioning itself with perfect freedom. But a difference--rather a contradiction--will manifest itself between this belief and our principle, just as was the case in reference to the demand made by Socrates in the case of Anaxagoras' dictum. For that belief is similarly indefinite; it is what is called a belief in a general providence, and is not followed out into definite application, or displayed in its bearing on the grand total--the entire course of human history. But to explain history is to depict the passions of mankind, the genius, the active powers, that play their part on the great stage; and the providentially determined process which these exhibit constitutes what is generally called the "plan" of Providence. Yet it is this very plan which is supposed to be concealed from our view, which it is deemed presumption even to wish to recognize. The ignorance of Anaxagoras as to how intelligence reveals itself in actual existence was ingenuous. Neither in his consciousness, nor in that of Greece at large, had that thought been further expanded. He had not attained the power to apply his general principle to the concrete, so as to deduce the latter from the former; it was Socrates who took the first step in comprehending the union of the concrete with the universal. Anaxagoras, then, did not take up a hostile position toward such an application; the common belief in Providence does; at least it opposes the use of the principle on a large scale, and denies the possibility of discerning the plan of Providence. In isolated cases this plan is supposed to be manifest. Pious persons are encouraged to recognize in particular circumstances something more than mere chance, to acknowledge the guiding hand of God; for instance, when help has unexpectedly come to an individual in great perplexity and need. But these instances of providential design are of a limited kind, and concern the accomplishment of nothing more than the desires of the individual in question. But in the history of the world, the individuals we have to do with are peoples, totalities that are States. We cannot, therefore, be satisfied with what we may call this "peddling" view of Providence, to which the belief alluded to limits itself. Equally unsatisfactory is the merely abstract, undefined belief in a Providence, when that belief is not brought to bear upon the details of the process which it conducts. On the contrary our earnest endeavor must be directed to the recognition of the ways of Providence, the means it uses, and the historical phenomena in which it manifests itself; and we must show their connection with the general principle above mentioned. But in noticing the recognition of the plan of Divine Providence generally, I have implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day, viz., that of the possibility of knowing God; or rather--since public opinion has ceased to allow it to be a matter of question--the doctrine that it is impossible to know God. In direct contravention of what is commanded in holy Scripture as the highest duty--that we should not merely love, but know God--the prevalent dogma involves the denial of what is there said--namely, that it is the Spirit, _der Geist_, that leads into truth, knows all things, penetrates even into the deep things of the Godhead. While the Divine Being is thus placed beyond our knowledge and outside the limit of all human things, we have the convenient license of wandering as far as we list, in the direction of our own fancies. We are freed from the obligation to refer our knowledge to the Divine and True. On the other hand, the vanity and egoism which characterize our knowledge find, in this false position, ample justification; and the pious modesty which puts far from itself the knowledge of God can well estimate how much furtherance thereby accrues to its own wayward and vain strivings. I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the connection between our thesis--that Reason governs and has governed the world--and the question of the possibility of a knowledge of God, chiefly that I might not lose the opportunity of mentioning the imputation against philosophy of being shy of noticing religious truths, or of having occasion to be so; in which is insinuated the suspicion that it has anything but a clear conscience in the presence of these truths. So far from this being the case, the fact is that in recent times philosophy has been obliged to defend the domain of religion against the attacks of several theological systems. In the Christian religion God has revealed Himself--that is, He has given us to understand what He is, with the result that He is no longer a concealed or secret existence. And this possibility of knowing Him, thus afforded us, renders such knowledge a duty. God wishes for His children no narrow-hearted souls or empty heads, but those whose spirit is of itself indeed, poor, but rich in the knowledge of Him, and who regard this knowledge of God as the only valuable possession. That development of the thinking spirit, which has resulted from the revelation of the Divine Being as its original basis, must ultimately advance to the intellectual comprehension of what was presented, in the first instance, to feeling and imagination. The time must eventually come for understanding that rich product of active Reason which the history of the world offers to us. It was for a while the fashion to profess admiration for the wisdom of God, as displayed in animals, plants, and isolated occurrences. But if it be allowed that Providence manifests itself in such objects and forms of existence, why not also in universal history? This is deemed too great a matter to be thus regarded. But divine wisdom, i. e., Reason, is one and the same in the great as in the little; and we must not imagine God to be too weak to exercise his wisdom on the grand scale. Our intellectual striving aims at realizing the conviction that what was intended by eternal wisdom is actually accomplished in the domain of existent, active Spirit, as well as in that of mere Nature. Our mode of treating the subject is, in this aspect, a Theodicaea--a justification of the ways of God--which Leibnitz attempted metaphysically in his method, i. e., in indefinite abstract categories--so that the ill that is found in the world may be comprehended, and the thinking Spirit reconciled with the fact of the existence of evil. Indeed, nowhere is such a harmonizing view more pressingly demanded than in universal history; and it can be attained only by recognizing the positive existence, in which that negative element is a subordinate and vanquished nullity. On the one hand, the ultimate design of the world must be perceived, and, on the other, the fact that this design has been actually realized in it, and that evil has not been able permanently to establish a rival position. But this conviction involves much more than the mere belief in a superintending [GREEK: nous] or in "Providence." "Reason," whose sovereignty over the world has been maintained, is as indefinite a term as "Providence," supposing the term to be used by those who are unable to characterize it distinctly, to show wherein it consists, so as to enable us to decide whether a thing is rational or irrational. An adequate definition of Reason is the first desideratum; and whatever boast may be made of strict adherence to it in explaining phenomena, without such a definition we get no farther than mere words. With these observations we may proceed to the second point of view that has to be considered in this Introduction.

2. The inquiry into the essential destiny of Reason, as far as it is considered in reference to the world, is identical with the question _What is the ultimate design of the world?_ And the expression implies that that design is destined to be realized. Two points of consideration suggest themselves: first, the _import_ of this design--its abstract definition; secondly, its _realization_.

It must be observed at the outset that the phenomenon we investigate--universal history--belongs to the realm of "spirit." The term "World" includes both physical and psychical nature. Physical nature also plays its part in the world's history, and attention will have to be paid to the fundamental natural relations thus involved. But Spirit, and the course of its development, is our substantial object. Our task does not require us to contemplate nature as a rational system in itself--though in its own proper domain it proves itself such-but simply in its relation to _Spirit_. On the stage on which we are observing it--universal history--Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality. Notwithstanding this (or rather for the very purpose of comprehending the general principles which this, its form of concrete reality, embodies) we must premise some abstract characteristics of the nature of Spirit.

We have therefore to mention here

(1) The abstract characteristics of the nature of Spirit.

(2) What means Spirit uses in order to realize its Idea.

(3) Lastly, we must consider the shape which the perfect embodiment of Spirit assumes--the State.

(1) The nature of Spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct opposite--Matter. As the essence of Matter is gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is freedom. All will readily assent to the doctrine that Spirit, among other properties, is also endowed with freedom; but philosophy teaches that all the qualities of Spirit exist only through freedom; that all are but means for attaining freedom; that all seek and produce this and this alone. It is a result of speculative philosophy that freedom is the sole truth of Spirit. Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency toward a central point. It is essentially composite, consisting of parts that _exclude_ one another. It seeks its unity; and therefore exhibits itself as self-destructive, as verging toward its opposite--an indivisible point. If it could attain this, it would be Matter no longer; it would have perished. It strives after the realization of its Idea; for in unity it exists ideally. Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now this is freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than self-consciousness-consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact _that I know_; secondly, _what I know_. In self-consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realize itself; to make itself actually what it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it may be said of universal history that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that history. The Orientals have not attained the knowledge that Spirit--Man _as such_--is free; and because they do not know this, they are not free. They only know that one is free; but on this very account, the freedom of that one is only caprice; ferocity--brutal recklessness of passion, or a mildness and tameness of the desires, which is itself only an accident of nature--is mere caprice like the former. That _one_ is therefore only a despot, not a _free man_. The consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they were free; but they, and the Romans likewise, knew only that _some_ are free, not man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. The Greeks, therefore, had slaves, and their whole life and the maintenance of their splendid liberty was implicated with the institution of slavery--a fact, moreover, which made that liberty, on the one hand, only an accidental, transient and limited growth, and on the other, a rigorous thraldom of our common nature--of the Human. The Germanic nations, under the influence of Christianity, were the first to attain the consciousness that man is free; that it is the freedom of Spirit which constitutes its essence. This consciousness arose first in religion, the inmost region of Spirit; but to introduce the principle into the various relations of the actual world involves a more extensive problem than its simple implantation--a problem whose solution and application require a severe and lengthened process of culture. In proof of this we may note that slavery did not cease immediately on the reception of Christianity. Still less did liberty predominate in States; or governments and constitutions adopt a rational organization, or recognize freedom as their basis. That application of the principle to political relations, the thorough molding and interpenetration of the constitution of society by it, is a process identical with history itself. I have already directed attention to the distinction here involved, between a principle as such and its application--that is, its introduction and fulfilment in the actual phenomena of Spirit and life. This is a point of fundamental importance in our science, and one which must be constantly respected as essential. And in the same way as this distinction has attracted attention in view of the Christian principle of self-consciousness--freedom, it also shows itself as an essential one in view of the principle of freedom generally. The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom--progress whose development, according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate.

The general statement given above of the various grades in the consciousness of freedom-which we applied in the first instance to the fact that the Eastern nations knew only that one is free, the Greek and Roman world only that _some_ are free, while we know that all men absolutely (man as man) are free--supplies us with the natural division of universal history, and suggests the mode of its discussion. This is remarked, however, only incidentally and anticipatively; some other ideas must be first explained.

The destiny of the spiritual world, and--since this is the substantial world, while the physical remains subordinate to it, or, in the language of speculation, has no truth as against the spiritual--the final cause of the world at large we allege to be the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of Spirit, and, _ipso facto_, the reality of that freedom. But that this term "freedom" is, without further qualification, an indefinite, incalculable, ambiguous term, and that, while what it represents is the _ne plus ultra_ of attainment, it is liable to an infinity of misunderstandings, confusions, and errors, and to become the occasion for all imaginable excesses--has never been more clearly known and felt than in modern times. Yet, for the present, we must content ourselves with the term itself without further definition. Attention was also directed to the importance of the infinite difference between a principle in the abstract and its realization in the concrete. In the process before us the essential nature of freedom--which involves absolute necessity--is to be displayed as coming to a consciousness of itself (for it is in its very nature, self-consciousness) and thereby realizing its existence. Itself is its own object of attainment and the sole aim of Spirit. This result it is at which the process of the world's history has been continually aiming, and to which the sacrifices that have ever and anon been laid on the vast altar of the earth, through the long lapse of ages, have been offered. This is the only aim that sees itself realized and fulfilled, the only pole of repose amid the ceaseless change of events and conditions, and the sole efficient principle that pervades them. This final aim is God's purpose with the world; but God is the absolutely perfect Being, and can, therefore, will nothing other than Himself--His own will. The nature of His will--that is His nature itself--is what we here call the idea of freedom, translating the language of religion into that of thought. The question, then, which we may next put, is What means does this principle of freedom use for its realization? This is the second point we have to consider.

(2) The question of the means by which freedom develops itself to a world conducts us to the phenomenon of history itself. Although freedom is, primarily, an undeveloped idea, the means it uses are external and phenomenal, presenting themselves in history to our sensuous vision. The first glance at history convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, when the occasion seems to call for it--is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle--Plan of Existence--Law--is a hidden, undeveloped essence which, as such--however true in itself--is not completely real. Aims, principles, etc., have a place in our thoughts, in our subjective design only, but not as yet in the sphere of reality. That which exists for itself only is a possibility, a potentiality, but it has not emerged into existence. A second element must be introduced in order to produce actuality--viz., actuation, realization; and its motive power is the will--the activity of man in the widest sense. It is only by this activity that that Idea, as well as abstract characteristics generally, are realized, actualized; for of themselves they are powerless. The motive power that puts them in operation and gives them determinate existence, is the need, instinct, inclination, and passion of man. That some conception of mine should be developed into act and existence, is my earnest desire; I wish to assert my personality in connection with it; I wish to be satisfied by its execution. If I am to exert myself for any object, it must in some way or other be _my_ object. In the accomplishment of such or such designs I must at the same time find _my_ satisfaction; although the purpose for which I exert myself includes a complication of results, many of which have no interest for me. This is the absolute right of personal existence--to find _itself_ satisfied in its activity and labor. If men are to interest themselves for anything, they must, so to speak, have part of their existence involved in it and find their individuality gratified by its attainment. Here a mistake must be avoided. We intend blame, and justly impute it as a fault, when we say of an individual that he is "interested" (in taking part in such or such transactions)--that is, seeks only his private advantage. In reprehending this we find fault with him for furthering his personal aims without any regard to a more comprehensive design, of which he takes advantage to promote his own interest or which, with this view, he even sacrifices. But he who is active in promoting an object is not simply "interested," but interested in that object itself. Language faithfully expresses this distinction. Nothing therefore happens, nothing is accomplished, unless the individuals concerned seek their own satisfaction in the issue. They are particular units of society--that is, they have special needs, instincts, and interests generally, peculiar to themselves. Among these needs are not only such as we usually call necessities--the stimuli of individual desire and volition--but also those connected with individual views and convictions; or--to use a term expressing less decision--leanings of opinion, supposing the impulses of reflection, understanding, and reason, to have been awakened. In these cases people demand, if they are to exert themselves in any direction, that the object should commend itself to them, that, in point of opinion-whether as to its goodness, justice, advantage, profit they should be able to "enter into it" (_dabei sein_). This is a consideration of special importance in our age, when people are less than formerly influenced by reliance on others, and by authority; when, on the contrary, they devote their activities to a cause on the ground of their own understanding, their independent conviction and opinion.

We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and--if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it--we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. Two elements, therefore, enter into the object of our investigation--the first the Idea, the second the complex of human passions; the one the warp, the other the woof of the vast arras-web of universal history. The concrete mean and union of the two is liberty, under the conditions of morality in a State. We have spoken of the idea of freedom as the nature of Spirit, and the absolute goal of history. Passion is regarded as a thing of sinister aspect, as more or less immoral. Man is required to have no passions. Passion, it is true, is not quite the suitable word for what I wish to express. I mean here nothing more than human activity as resulting from private interests, special, or if you will, self-seeking designs--with this qualification, that the whole energy of will and character is devoted to their attainment, and that other interests (which would in themselves constitute attractive aims), or, rather, all things else, are sacrificed to them. The object in question is so bound up with the man's will that it entirely and alone determines the "hue of resolution" and is inseparable from it; it has become the very essence of his volition. For a person is a specific existence--not man in general (a term to which no real existence corresponds); but a particular human being. The term "character" likewise expresses this idiosyncrasy of will and intelligence. But character comprehends all peculiarities whatever, the way in which a person conducts himself in private relations, etc., and is not limited to his idiosyncrasy in its practical and active phase. I shall, therefore, use the term "passion," understanding thereby the particular bent of character, as far as the peculiarities of volition are not limited to private interest but supply the impelling and actuating force for accomplishing deeds shared in by the community at large. Passion is, in the first instance, the subjective and therefore the formal side of energy, will, and activity--leaving the object or aim still undetermined. And there is a similar relation of formality to reality in merely individual conviction, individual views, individual conscience. It is always a question of essential importance--what is the purport of my conviction, what the object of my passion--in deciding whether the one or the other is of a true and substantial nature. Conversely, if it is so, it will inevitably attain actual existence--be realized.

From this comment on the second essential element in the historical embodiment of an aim, we infer--glancing at the institution of the State in passing--that a State is well constituted and internally powerful when the private interest of its citizens is one with the common interest of the State, when the one finds its gratification and realization in the other--a proposition in itself very important. But in a State many institutions must be adopted, and much political machinery invented, accompanied by appropriate political arrangements--necessitating long struggles of the understanding before what is really appropriate can be discovered--involving, moreover, contentions with private interest and passions and a tedious discipline of the latter in order to bring about the desired harmony. The epoch when a State attains this harmonious condition marks the period of its bloom, its virtue, its vigor, and its prosperity. But the history of mankind does not begin with a conscious aim of any kind, as is the case with the particular circles into which men form themselves of set purpose. The mere social instinct implies a conscious purpose of security for life and property; and when society has been constituted this purpose becomes more comprehensive. The history of the world begins with its general aim--the realization of the idea of Spirit--only in an implicit form (_an sich_), that is, as nature--a hidden, most profoundly hidden, unconscious instinct; and the whole process of history (as already observed) is directed to rendering this unconscious impulse a conscious one. Thus appearing in the form of merely natural existence, natural will--that which has been called the subjective side--physical craving, instinct, passion, private interest, as also opinion and subjective conception, spontaneously present themselves at the very commencement. This vast congeries of volitions, interests, and activities, constitute the instruments and means of the World-Spirit for attaining its object, bringing it to consciousness and realizing it. And this aim is none other than finding itself--coming to itself--and contemplating itself in concrete actuality. But that those manifestations of vitality on the part of individuals and peoples, in which they seek and satisfy their own purposes, are, at the same time, the means and instruments of a higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing-which they realize unconsciously might be made a matter of question-rather has been questioned, and, in every variety of form, negatived, decried, and contemned as mere dreaming and "philosophy." But on this point I announced my view at the very outset and asserted our hypothesis--which, however, will appear in the sequel in the form of a legitimate inference--and our belief that Reason governs the world and has consequently governed its history. In relation to this independently universal and substantial existence all else is subordinate, subservient to it, and the means for its development. The union of universal abstract existence generally with the individual--the subjective--that this alone is truth belongs to the department of speculation and is treated in this general form in logic. But in the process of the world's history itself--as still incomplete--the abstract final aim of history is not yet made the distinct object of desire and interest. While these limited sentiments are still unconscious of the purpose they are fulfilling, the universal principle is implicit in them and is realizing itself through them. The question also assumes the form of the union of freedom and necessity, the latent abstract process of Spirit being regarded as necessity, while that which exhibits itself in the conscious will of men, as their interest, belongs to the domain of freedom. As the metaphysical connection (i. e., the connection in the Idea) of these forms of thought, belongs to logic, it would be out of place to analyze it here. The chief and cardinal points only shall be mentioned.

Philosophy shows that the Idea advances to an infinite antithesis--that, namely, between the Idea in its free, universal form, in which it exists for itself, and the contrasted form of abstract introversion, reflection on itself, which is formal existence-for-self, personality, formal freedom, such as belongs to Spirit only. The universal Idea exists thus as the substantial totality of things on the one side, and as the abstract essence of free volition on the other. This reflection of the mind on itself is individual self-consciousness--the polar-opposite of the Idea in its general form and therefore existing in absolute limitation. This polar-opposite is consequently limitation, particularization for the universal absolute being; it is the side of the definite existence, the sphere of its formal reality, the sphere of the reverence paid to God. To comprehend the absolute connection of this antithesis is the profound task of metaphysics. This limitation originates all forms of particularity of whatever kind. The formal volition (of which we have spoken) wills itself and desires to make its own personality valid in all that it purposes and does; even the pious individual wishes to be saved and happy. This pole of the antithesis, existing for itself, is--in contrast with the Absolute Universal Being--a special separate existence, taking cognizance of speciality only and willing that alone. In short, it plays its part in the region of mere phenomena. This is the sphere of particular purposes, in effecting which individuals exert themselves on behalf of their individuality--give it full play and objective realization. This is also the sphere of happiness and its opposite. He is happy who finds his condition suited to his special character, will, and fancy, and so enjoys himself in that condition. The history of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony--periods when the antithesis is in abeyance. Reflection of self--the freedom above described--is abstractly defined as the formal element of the activity of the absolute Idea. The realizing activity of which we have spoken is the middle term of the syllogism, one of whose extremes is the universal essence, the _Idea_, which reposes in the penetralia of Spirit; and the other, the complex of external things--objective matter. That activity is the medium by which the universal latent principle is translated into the domain of objectivity.

I will endeavor to make what has been said more vivid and clear by examples. The building of a house is, in the first instance, a subjective aim and design. On the other hand we have, as means, the several substances required for the work--iron, wood, stones. The elements are made use of in working up this material--fire to melt the iron, wind to blow the fire, water to set the wheels in motion in order to cut the wood, etc. The result is that the wind, which has helped to build the house, is shut out by the house; so also are the violence of rains and floods and the destructive powers of fire, so far as the house is made fire-proof. The stones and beams obey the law of gravity--press downward--and so high walls are carried up. Thus the elements are made use of in accordance with their nature, and yet are made to coöperate for a product by which their operation is limited. It is thus that the passions of men are gratified; they develop themselves and their aims in accordance with their natural tendencies and build up the edifice of human society, thus fortifying a position for Right and Order _against themselves_.

The connection of events above indicated involves also the fact that, in history, an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond what they aim at and obtain what they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness and not included in their design. An analogous example is offered in the case of a man who, from a feeling of revenge--perhaps not an unjust one, but produced by injury on the other's part--burns that other man's house. A connection is immediately established between the deed itself, taken abstractly, and a train of circumstances not directly included in it. In itself it consisted in merely bringing a small flame into contact with a small portion of a beam. Events not involved in that simple act follow of themselves. The part of the beam which was set afire is connected with its remote portions, the beam itself is united with the woodwork of the house generally, and this with other houses, so that a wide conflagration ensues which destroys the goods and chattels of many other persons besides those belonging to the person against whom the act of revenge was first directed, perhaps even costs not a few men their lives. This lay neither in the deed intrinsically nor in the design of the man who committed it. But the action has a further general bearing. In the design of the doer it was only revenge executed against an individual in the destruction of his property, but it is, moreover, a crime, and that involves punishment also. This may not have been present to the mind of the perpetrator, still less in his intention; but his deed itself, the general principles it calls into play, its substantial content, entail it. By this example I wish only to impress on you the consideration that, in a simple act, something further may be implicated than lies in the intention and consciousness of the agent. The example before us involves, however, the additional consideration that the substance of the act, consequently, we may say, the act itself, recoils upon the perpetrator--reacts upon him with destructive tendency. This union of the two extremes--the embodiment of a general idea in the form of direct reality and the elevation of a speciality into connection with universal truth--is brought to pass, at first sight, under the conditions of an utter diversity of nature between the two and an indifference of the one extreme toward the other. The aims which the agents set before them are limited and special; but it must be remarked that the agents themselves are intelligent thinking beings. The purport of their desires is interwoven with general, essential considerations of justice, good, duty, etc.; for mere desire--volition in its rough and savage forms--falls not within the scene and sphere of universal history. Those general considerations, which form at the same time a norm for directing aims and actions, have a determinate purport; for such an abstraction as "good for its own sake," has no place in living reality. If men are to act they must not only intend the Good, but must have decided for themselves whether this or that particular thing is a good. What special course of action, however, is good or not, is determined, as regards the ordinary contingencies of private life, by the laws and customs of a State; and here no great difficulty is presented. Each individual has his position; he knows, on the whole, what a just, honorable course of conduct is. As to ordinary, private relations, the assertion that it is difficult to choose the right and good--the regarding it as the mark of an exalted morality to find difficulties and raise scruples on that score--may be set down to an evil or perverse will, which seeks to evade duties not in themselves of a perplexing nature, or, at any rate, to an idly reflective habit of mind--where a feeble will affords no sufficient exercise to the faculties--leaving them therefore to find occupation within themselves and to expand themselves on moral self-adulation.

It is quite otherwise with the comprehensive relations with which history has to do. In this sphere are presented those momentous collisions between existing, acknowledged duties, laws, and rights, and those contingencies which are adverse to this fixed system, which assail and even destroy its foundations and existence, and whose tenor may nevertheless seem good--on the large scale, advantageous--yes, even indispensable and necessary. These contingencies realize themselves in history; they involve a general principle of a different order from that on which depends the permanence of a people or a State. This principle is an essential phase in the development of the creating Idea, of Truth striving and urging toward (consciousness of) itself. Historical men--world-famous individuals--are those in whose aims such a general principle lies.

Cæsar, in danger of losing a position--not perhaps at that time of superiority, yet at least of equality with the others who were at the head of the State, and of succumbing to those who were just on the point of becoming his enemies--belongs essentially to this category. These enemies--who were at the same time pursuing their own personal aims--had on their side the form of the constitution, and the power conferred by an appearance of justice. Cæsar was contending for the maintenance of his position, honor, and safety; and, since the power of his opponents included the sovereignty over the provinces of the Roman Empire, his victory secured for him the conquest of that entire Empire; and he thus became--though leaving the form of the constitution--the autocrat of the State. What secured for him the execution of a design, which in the first instance was of negative import--the autocracy of Rome--was, however, at the same time an independently necessary feature in the history of Rome and of the world. It was not, then, his private gain merely, but an unconscious impulse that occasioned the accomplishment of that for which the time was ripe. Such are all great historical men, whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will of the World-Spirit. They may be called heroes, inasmuch as they have derived their purposes and their vocation, not from the calm, regular course of things, sanctioned by the existing order, but from a concealed fount--one which has not attained to phenomenal, present existence--from that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which, impinging on the outer world as on a shell, bursts it in pieces, because it is another kernel than that which belonged to the shell in question. They are men, therefore, who appear to draw the impulse of their life from themselves, and whose deeds have produced a condition of things and a complex of historical relations which appear to be only their own interest and their own work.

Such individuals had no consciousness of the general Idea they were unfolding, while prosecuting their aims; on the contrary, they were practical, political men. But, at the same time, they were thinking men, who had an insight into the requirements of the time--_what was ripe for development_. This was the very truth for their age, for their world--the species next in order, so to speak, and which was already formed in the womb of time. It was theirs to know this nascent principle, the necessary, directly sequent step in progress, which their world was to take, to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in promoting it. World-historical men--the heroes of an epoch--must, therefore, be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to satisfy themselves, not others. Whatever prudent designs and counsels they might have learned from others would be the more limited and inconsistent features in their career; for it was they who best understood affairs, from whom others learned, and approved, or at least acquiesced in, their policy. For that Spirit which had taken this fresh step in history is the inmost soul of all individuals, but in a state of unconsciousness which the great men in question aroused. Their fellows, therefore, follow these soul-leaders; for they feel the irresistible power of their own inner Spirit thus embodied. If we go on to cast a look at the fate of these world-historical persons, whose vocation it was to be the agents of the World-Spirit, we shall find it to have been no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labor and trouble; their whole nature was naught else but their master-passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty husks from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered, like Cæsar; transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon. This fearful consolation--that historical men have not enjoyed what is called happiness, and of which only private life (and this may be passed under various external circumstances) is capable--this consolation those may draw from history who stand in need of it; and it is craved by envy, vexed at what is great and transcendent, striving, therefore, to depreciate it and to find some flaw in it. Thus in modern times it has been demonstrated _ad nauseam_ that princes are generally unhappy on their thrones; in consideration of which the possession of a throne is tolerated, and men acquiesce in the fact that not themselves but the personages in question are its occupants. The free man, we may observe, is not envious, but gladly recognizes what is great and exalted, and rejoices that it exists.

It is in the light of those common elements which constitute the interest and therefore the passions of individuals that these historical men are to be regarded. They are great men, because they willed and accomplished something great--not a mere fancy, a mere intention, but whatever met the case and fell in with the needs of the age. This mode of considering them also excludes the so-called "psychological" view, which, serving the purpose of envy most effectually, contrives so to refer all actions to the heart, to bring them under such a subjective aspect, that their authors appear to have done everything under the impulse of some passion, mean or grand, some morbid craving, and, on account of these passions and cravings, to have been immoral men. Alexander of Macedon partly subdued Greece, and then Asia; therefore he was possessed by a morbid craving for conquest. He is alleged to have acted from a craving for fame, for conquest; and the proof that these were the impelling motives is that he did what resulted in fame. What pedagogue has not demonstrated of Alexander the Great, of Julius Cæsar, that they were instigated by such passions, and were consequently immoral men? From this the conclusion immediately follows that he, the pedagogue, is a better man than they, because he has not such passions--a proof of which lies in the fact that he does not conquer Asia, or vanquish Darius and Porus, but, while he enjoys life himself, lets others enjoy it too. These psychologists are particularly fond of contemplating those peculiarities of great historical figures which appertain to them as private persons. Man must eat and drink; he sustains relations to friends and acquaintances; he has passing impulses and ebullitions of temper. "No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre," is a well-known proverb; I have added--and Goethe repeated it ten years later--"but not because the former is no hero, but because the latter is a valet." He takes off the hero's boots, assists him to bed, knows that he prefers champagne, etc. Historical personages waited upon in historical literature by such psychological valets come poorly off; they are brought down by these their attendants to a level with, or, rather, a few degrees below the level of, the morality of such exquisite discerners of spirits. The Thersites of Homer who abuses the kings is a standing figure for all times. Blows--that is, beating with a solid cudgel--he does not get in every age, as in the Homeric one; but his envy, his egotism, is the thorn which he has to carry in his flesh; and the undying worm that gnaws him is the tormenting consideration that his excellent views and vituperations remain absolutely without result in the world. But our satisfaction at the fate of Thersitism also, may have its sinister side.

A world-famous individual is not so unwise as to indulge a variety of wishes to divide his regards. He is devoted to the one aim, regardless of all else. It is even possible that such men may treat other great, even sacred interests, inconsiderately--conduct which is deserving of moral reprehension. But so mighty a form must trample down many innocent flowers and crush to pieces many an object in its path.

The special interest of passion is thus inseparable from the active development of a general principle; for it is from the special and determinate, and from its negation, that the universal results. Particularity contends with its like, and some loss is involved in the issue. It is not the general idea that is implicated in opposition and combat, and that is exposed to danger. It remains in the background, untouched and uninjured. This may be called the cunning of reason--that it sets the passions to work for itself, while that which develops its existence through such impulsion pays the penalty and suffers loss. For it is _phenomenal_ being that is so treated, and, of this, a portion is of no value, another is positive and real. The particular is, for the most part, of too trifling value as compared with the general; individuals are sacrificed and abandoned. The Idea pays the penalty of determinate existence and of corruptibility, not from itself, but from the passions of individuals.

But though we might tolerate the idea that individuals, their desires, and the gratification of them, are thus sacrificed, and their happiness given up to the empire of chance, to which it belongs, and that, as a general rule, individuals come under the category of means to an ulterior end, there is one aspect of human individuality which we should hesitate to regard in that subordinate light, even in relation to the highest, since it is absolutely no subordinate element, but exists in those individuals as inherently eternal and divine--I mean morality, ethics, religion. Even when speaking of the realization of the great ideal aim by means of individuals, the subjective element in them--their interest and that of their cravings and impulses, their views and judgments, though exhibited as the merely formal side of their existence--was spoken of as having an infinite right to be consulted. The first idea that presents itself in speaking of means is that of something external to the object, yet having no share in the object itself. But merely natural things--even the commonest lifeless objects--used as means, must be of such a kind as adapts them to their purpose; they must possess something in common with it. Human beings, least of all, sustain the bare external relation of mere means to the great ideal aim. Not only do they, in the very act of realizing it, make it the occasion of satisfying personal desires whose purport is diverse from that aim, but they share in that ideal aim itself, and are, for that very reason, objects of their own existence--not formally merely, as the world of living beings generally is, whose individual life is essentially subordinate to that of man and its properly used up as an instrument. Men, on the contrary, are objects of existence to themselves, as regards the intrinsic import of the aim in question. To this order belongs that in them which we would exclude from the category of mere means--morality, ethics, religion. That is to say, man is an object of existence in himself only in virtue of the Divine that is in him--the quality that was designated at the outset as Reason, which, in view of its activity and power of self-determination, was called freedom. And we affirm--without entering at present on the proof of the assertion--that religion, morality, etc., have their foundation and source in that principle, and so are essentially elevated above all alien necessity and chance. And here we must remark that individuals, to the extent of their freedom, are responsible for the depravation and enfeeblement of morals and religion. This is the seal of the absolute and sublime destiny of man--that he knows what is good and what is evil; that his destiny is his very ability to will either good or evil--in one word, that he is the subject of moral imputation, imputation not only of evil, but of good, and not only concerning this or that particular matter, and all that happens _ab extra_, but also the good and evil attaching to his individual freedom. The brute alone is simply innocent. It would, however, demand an extensive explanation--as extensive as the analysis of moral freedom itself--to preclude or obviate all the misunderstandings which the statement that what is called innocence imports the entire unconsciousness of evil--is wont to occasion.

In contemplating the fate which virtue, morality, even piety experience in history, we must not fall into the Litany of Lamentations, that the good and pious often, or for the most part, fare ill in the world, while the evil-disposed and wicked prosper. The term prosperity is used in a variety of meanings--riches, outward honor, and the like. But in speaking of something which in and for itself constitutes an aim of existence, that so-called well or ill faring of these or those isolated individuals cannot be regarded as an essential element in the rational order of the universe. With more justice than happiness--or a fortunate environment for individuals--it is demanded of the grand aim of the world's existence that it should foster, nay, involve the execution and ratification of good, moral, righteous purposes. What makes men morally discontented (a discontent, by the way, on which they somewhat pride themselves), is that they do not find the present adapted to the realization of aims which they hold to be right and just--more especially, in modern times, ideals of political constitutions; they contrast unfavorably things as they are, with their idea of things as they ought to be. In this case it is not private interest nor passion that desires gratification, but reason, justice, liberty; and, equipped with this title, the demand in question assumes a lofty bearing and readily adopts a position, not merely of discontent, but of open revolt against the actual condition of the world. To estimate such a feeling and such views aright, the demands insisted upon and the very dogmatic opinions asserted must be examined. At no time so much as in our own, have such general principles and notions been advanced, or with greater assurance. If, in days gone by, history seems to present itself as a struggle of passions, in our time--though displays of passion are not wanting--it exhibits, partly a predominance of the struggle of notions assuming the authority of principles, partly that of passions and interests essentially subjective but under the mask of such higher sanctions. The pretensions thus contended for as legitimate in the name of that which has been stated as the ultimate aim of Reason, pass accordingly for absolute aims--to the same extent as religion, morals, ethics. Nothing, as before remarked, is now more common than the complaint that the ideals which imagination sets up are not realized, that these glorious dreams are destroyed by cold actuality. These ideals which, in the voyage of life, founder on the rocks of hard reality may be in the first instance only subjective and belong to the idiosyncrasy of the individual, imagining himself the highest and wisest. Such do not properly belong to this category. For the fancies which the individual in his isolation indulges cannot be the model for universal reality, just as universal law is not designed for the units of the mass. These as such may, in fact, find their interests thrust decidedly into the background. But by the term "Ideal" we also understand the ideal of Reason--of the good, of the true. Poets--as, for instance, Schiller--have painted such ideals touchingly and with strong emotion, and with the deeply melancholy conviction that they could not be realized. In affirming, on the contrary, that the Universal Reason does realize itself, we have indeed nothing to do with the individual, empirically regarded; that admits of degrees of better and worse, since here chance and speciality have received authority from the Idea to exercise their monstrous power; much, therefore, in particular aspects of the grand phenomenon, might be criticized. This subjective fault-finding--which, however, only keeps in view the individual and its deficiency, without taking notice of Reason pervading the whole--is easy; and inasmuch as it asserts an excellent intention with regard to the good of the whole, and seems to result from a kindly heart, it feels authorized to give itself airs and assume great consequence. It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in States, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value. For in this merely negative fault-finding a proud position is taken--one which overlooks the object without having entered into it, without having comprehended its positive aspect. Age generally makes men more tolerant; youth is always discontented. The tolerance of age is the result of the ripeness of a judgment which, not merely as the result of indifference, is satisfied even with what is inferior, but, more deeply taught by the grave experience of life, has been led to perceive the substantial, solid worth of the object in question. The insight, then, to which--in contradistinction to those ideals--philosophy is to lead us, is, that the real world is as it ought to be--that the truly good, the universal divine Reason, is not a mere abstraction, but a vital principle capable of realizing itself. This Good, this Reason, in its most concrete form, is God. God governs the world; the actual working of His government, the carrying out of His plan, is the history of the world. This plan philosophy strives to comprehend; for only that which has been developed as the result of it possesses _bona fide_ reality. That which does not accord with it is negative, worthless existence. Before the pure light of this divine Idea--which is no mere Ideal--the phantom of a world whose events are an incoherent concourse of fortuitous circumstances, utterly vanishes. Philosophy wishes to discover the substantial purport, the real side of the divine idea, and to justify the so much despised reality of things; for Reason is the comprehension of the divine work. But as to what concerns the perversion, corruption, and ruin of religious, ethical, and moral purposes and states of society generally, it must be affirmed that, in their essence, these are infinite and eternal, but that the forms they assume may be of a limited order, and consequently may belong to the domain of mere nature and be subject to the sway of chance; they are therefore perishable and exposed to decay and corruption. Religion and morality--in the same way as inherently universal essences--have the peculiarity of being present in the individual soul, in the full extent of their Idea, and therefore truly and really; although they may not manifest themselves in it _in extenso_ and are not applied to fully developed relations. The religion, the morality of a limited sphere of life, for instance that of a shepherd or a peasant, in its intensive concentration and limitation to a few perfectly simple relations of life has infinite worth--the same worth as the religion and morality of extensive knowledge and of an existence rich in the compass of its relations and actions. This inner focus, this simple region of the claims of subjective freedom, the home of volition, resolution, and action, the abstract sphere of conscience--that which comprises the responsibility and moral value of the individual--remains untouched and is quite shut out from the noisy din of the world's history--including not merely external and temporal changes but also those entailed by the absolute necessity inseparable from the realization of the idea of freedom itself. But, as a general truth, this must be regarded as settled, that whatever in the world possesses claims as noble and glorious has nevertheless a higher existence above it. The claim of the World-Spirit rises above all special claims.

These observations may suffice in reference to the means which the World-Spirit uses for realizing its Idea. Stated simply and abstractly, this mediation involves the activity of personal existences in whom Reason is present as their absolute, substantial being, but a basis, in the first instance, still obscure and unknown to them. But the subject becomes more complicated and difficult when we regard individuals not merely in their aspect of activity, but more concretely, in conjunction with a particular manifestation of that activity in their religion and morality--forms of existence which are intimately connected with Reason and share in its absolute claims. Here the relation of mere means to an end disappears, and the chief bearings of this seeming difficulty in reference to the absolute aim of Spirit have been briefly considered.

(3) The third point to be analyzed is, therefore: What is the object to be realized by these means--that is, What is the form it assumes in the realm of reality? We have spoken of means; but, in carrying out of a subjective, limited aim, we have also to take into consideration the element of a material either already present or which has to be procured. Thus the question would arise: What is the material in which the Ideal of Reason is wrought out? The primary answer would be: Personality itself, human desires, subjectivity generally. In human knowledge and volition as its material element Reason attains positive existence. We have considered subjective volition where it has an object which is the truth and essence of reality--viz., where it constitutes a great world-historical passion. As a subjective will, occupied with limited passions, it is dependent, and can gratify its desires only within the limits of this dependence. But the subjective will has also a substantial life, a reality, in which it moves in the region of essential being and has the essential itself as the object of its existence. This essential being is the union of the subjective with the rational will; it is the moral whole, the _State_, which is that form of reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom, but on the condition of his recognizing, believing in, and willing that which is common to the whole. And this must not be understood as if the subjective will of the social unit attained its gratification and enjoyment through that common will, as if this were a means provided for its benefit, as if the individual, in his relations to other individuals, thus limited his freedom, in order that this universal limitation, the mutual constraint of all, might secure a small space of liberty for each. Rather, we affirm, are law, morality, government, and these alone, the positive reality and completion of freedom. Freedom of a low and limited order is mere caprice, which finds its exercise in the sphere of particular and limited desires.

Subjective volition, passion, is that which sets men in activity, that which effects "practical" realization. The Idea is the inner spring of action; the State is the actually existing, realized moral life. For it is the unity of the universal, essential will, with that of the individual; and this is "morality." The individual living in this unity has a moral life and possesses a value that consists in this substantiality alone. Sophocles in his _Antigone_ says, "The divine commands are not of yesterday, nor of today; no, they have an infinite existence, and no one could say whence they came." The laws of morality are not accidental, but are the essentially rational. It is the very object of the State that what is essential in the practical activity of men and in their dispositions should be duly recognized; that it should have a manifest existence and maintain its position. It is the absolute interest of Reason that this moral whole should exist; and herein lies the justification and merit of heroes who have founded States, however rude these may have been. In the history of the world, only those peoples can come under our notice which form a State; for it must be understood that the State is the realization of freedom, i. e., of the absolute final aim, and that it exists for its own sake. It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses--all spiritual reality--he possesses only through the State. For his spiritual reality consists in this, that his own essence, Reason, is objectively present to him, that it possesses objective immediate existence for him. Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a partaker of morality, of a just and moral social and political life. For truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, and in its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more definite shape than before--that in which freedom obtains objectivity and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity. For law is the objectivity of Spirit, volition in its true form. Only that will which obeys law is free; for it obeys itself--it is independent and, therefore, free. When the State or our country constitutes a community of existence, when the subjective will of man submits to laws, the contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes. The rational has necessary existence, as being the reality and substance of things, and we are free in recognizing it as law and following it as the substance of our own being. The objective and the subjective will are then reconciled and present one identical homogeneous whole. For the morality (_Sittlichkeit_) of the State is not of that ethical (_moralische_) reflective kind, in which one's own conviction bears sway; the latter is rather the peculiarity of the modern time, while the true antique morality is based on the principle of abiding by one's duty (to the State at large). An Athenian citizen did what was required of him, as it were from instinct; but if I reflect on the object of my activity I must have the consciousness that my will has been called into exercise. But morality is duty--substantial right, a "second nature," as it has been justly called; for the first nature of man is his primary, merely animal, existence.

The development _in extenso_ of the idea of the State belongs to the philosophy of jurisprudence; but it must be observed that in the theories of our time various errors are current respecting it, which pass for established truths and have become fixed prejudices. We will mention only a few of them, giving prominence to such as have a reference to the object of our history.

The error which first meets us is the direct opposite of our principle that the State presents the realization of freedom--the opinion--that man is free by nature, but that in society, in the State, to which nevertheless he is irresistibly impelled, he must limit this natural freedom. That man is free by nature is quite correct in one sense, namely, that he is so according to the idea of humanity; but we imply thereby that he is such only in virtue of his destiny--that he has an undeveloped power to become such; for the "nature" of an object is exactly synonymous with its "idea." But the view in question imports more than this. When man is spoken of as "free by nature," the mode of his existence as well as his destiny is implied; his merely natural and primary condition is intended. In this sense a "state of nature" is assumed in which mankind at large is in the possession of its natural rights with the unconstrained exercise and enjoyment of its freedom. This assumption is not raised to the dignity of the historical fact; it would indeed be difficult, were the attempt seriously made, to point out any such condition as actually existing or as having ever occurred. Examples of a savage state of life can be pointed out, but they are marked by brutal passions and deeds of violence; while, however rude and simple their, conditions, they involve social arrangements which, to use the common phrase, "restrain freedom." That assumption is one of those nebulous images which theory produces, an idea which it cannot avoid originating, but which it fathers upon real existence without sufficient historical justification.

What we find such a state of nature to be, in actual experience, answers exactly to the idea of a merely natural condition. Freedom as the ideal of that which is original and natural does not exist as original and natural; rather must it first be sought out and won, and that by an incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers. The state of nature is, therefore, predominantly that of injustice and violence, of untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings. Limitation is certainly produced by society and the State, but it is a limitation of the mere brute emotions and rude instincts, as also, in a more advanced stage of culture, of the premeditated self-will of caprice and passion. This kind of constraint is part of the instrumentality by which only the consciousness of freedom and the desire for its attainment, in its true--that is, its rational and ideal form--can be obtained. To the ideal of freedom, law and morality are indispensably requisite; and they are, in and for themselves, universal existences, objects, and aims, which are discovered only by the activity of thought, separating itself from the merely sensuous and developing itself in opposition thereto, and which must, on the other hand, be introduced into and incorporated with the originally sensuous will, and that contrarily to its natural inclination. The perpetually recurring misapprehension of freedom consists in regarding that term only in its formal, subjective sense, abstracted from its essential objects and aims; thus a constraint put upon impulse, desire, passion--pertaining to the particular individual as such--a limitation of caprice and self-will is regarded as a fettering of freedom. We should, on the contrary, look upon such limitation as the indispensable proviso of emancipation. Society and the State are the very conditions in which freedom is realized.

We must notice a second view, contravening the principle of the development of moral relations into a legal form. The patriarchal condition is regarded, either in reference to the entire race of man or to some branches of it, as exclusively that condition of things in which the legal element is combined with a due recognition of the moral and emotional parts of our nature, and in which justice, as united with these, truly influences the intercourse of the social units. The basis of the patriarchal condition is the family relation, which develops the primary form of conscious morality, succeeded by that of the State as its second phase. The patriarchal condition is one of transition, in which the family has already advanced to the position of a race of people, where the union, therefore, has already ceased to be simply a bond of love and confidence and has become one of plighted service.

We must first examine the ethical principle of the Family, which may be reckoned as virtually a single person, since its members have either mutually surrendered their individual personality and consequently their legal position toward one another, with the rest of their particular interests and desires, as in the case of the parents, or, in the care of children who are primarily in that merely natural condition already mentioned, have not yet attained such an independent personality. They live, therefore, in a unity of feeling, love, confidence, and faith in one another, and, in a relation of mutual love, the one individual has the consciousness of himself in the consciousness of another; he lives out of self; and in this mutual self-renunciation each regains the life that had been virtually transferred to the other--gains, in fact, the other's existence and his own, as involved with that other. The ultimate interests connected with the necessities and external concerns of life, as well as the development that has to take place within their circle, i. e., of the children, constitute a common object for the members of the family. The spirit of the family--the _Penates_--form one substantial being, as much as the spirit of a people in the State; and morality in both cases consists in a feeling, a consciousness, and a will, not limited to individual personality and interest, but embracing the common interests of the members generally. But this unity is, in the case of the family, essentially one of feeling, not advancing beyond the limits of the merely natural. The piety of the family relation should be respected in the highest degree by the State; by its means the State obtains as its members individuals who are already moral (for as mere persons they are not) and who, in uniting to form a State, bring with them that sound basis of a political edifice--the capacity of feeling one with a whole. But the expansion of the family to a patriarchal unity carries us beyond the ties of blood-relationship--the simply natural elements of that basis; and outside of these limits the members of the community must enter upon the position of independent personality. A review of the patriarchal condition, _in extenso_, would lead us to give special attention to the theocratical constitution. The head of the patriarchal clan is also its priest. If the family in its general relations is not yet separated from civic society and the State, the separation of religion from it has also not yet taken place; and so much the less since the piety of the hearth is itself a profoundly subjective state of feeling.

We have considered two aspects of freedom--the objective and the subjective; if, therefore, freedom is asserted to consist in the individuals of a State, all agreeing in its arrangements, it is evident that only the subjective aspect is regarded. The natural inference from this principle is, that no law can be valid without the approval of all. It is attempted to obviate this difficulty by the decision that the minority must yield to the majority; the majority therefore bears sway; but long ago J.J. Rousseau remarked that, in that case, there would no longer be freedom, for the will of the minority would cease to be respected. At the Polish Diet each individual member had to give his consent before any political step could be taken; and this kind of freedom it was that ruined the State. Besides, it is a dangerous and false prejudice that the people alone have reason and insight, and know what justice is; for each popular faction may represent itself as the people, and the question as to what constitutes the State is one of advanced science and not of popular decision.

If the principle of regard for the individual will is recognized as the only basis of political liberty, viz., that nothing should be done by or for the State to which all the members of the body politic have not given their sanction, we have, properly speaking, no constitution. The only arrangement found necessary would be, first, a centre having no will of its own, but which should take into consideration what appeared to be the necessities of the State, and, secondly, a contrivance for calling the members of the State together, for taking the votes, and for performing the arithmetical operations of reckoning and comparing the number of votes for the different propositions, and thereby deciding upon them. The State is an abstraction, having even its generic existence in its citizens; but it is an actuality, and its simply generic existence must embody itself in individual will and activity. The want of government and political administration in general is felt; this necessitates the selection and separation from the rest of those who have to take the helm in political affairs, to decide concerning them, and to give orders to other citizens, with a view to the execution of their plans. If, for instance, even the people in a democracy resolve on a war, a general must head the army. It is only by a constitution that the abstraction--the State--attains life and reality; but this involves the distinction between those who command and those who obey. Yet obedience seems inconsistent with liberty, and those who command appear to do the very opposite of that which the fundamental idea of the State, viz., that of freedom, requires. It is, however, urged that though the distinction between commanding and obeying is absolutely necessary, because affairs could not go on without it, and indeed, this seems only a compulsory limitation, external to and even contravening freedom in the abstract--the constitution should be at least so framed that the citizens may obey as little as possible and the smallest modicum of free volition be left to the commands of the superiors; that the substance of that for which subordination is necessary, even in its most important bearings, should be decided and resolved on by the people, by the will of many or of all the citizens; though it is supposed to be thereby provided that the State should be possessed of vigor and strength as a reality--an individual unity. The primary consideration is, then, the distinction between the governing and the governed, and political constitutions in the abstract have been rightly divided into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; this gives occasion, however, for the remark that monarchy itself must be further divided into despotism and monarchy proper; that in all the divisions to which the leading idea gives rise, only the generic character is to be made prominent, it being not intended thereby that the particular category under review should be exhausted as a form, order, or kind in its concrete development. But it must especially be observed that the above mentioned divisions admit of a multitude of particular modifications--not only such as lie within the limits of those classes themselves but also such as are mixtures of several of these essentially distinct classes and which are consequently misshapen, unstable, and inconsistent forms. In such a collision, the concerning question is: What is the best constitution--that is, by what arrangement, organization, or mechanism of the power of the State can its object be most surely attained? This object may indeed be variously understood; for instance, as the calm enjoyment of life on part of the citizens, or as universal happiness. Such aims have suggested the so-called ideals of constitutions, and, as a particular branch of the subject, Ideals of the education of princes (Fénelon), or of the governing body, the aristocracy at large (Plato); for the chief point they treat of is the condition of those subjects who stand at the head of affairs, and in these ideals the concrete details of political organization are not at all considered. The inquiry into the best constitution is frequently treated as if not only the theory were an affair of subjective independent conviction, but as if the introduction of a constitution recognized as the best, or as superior to others, could be the result of a resolve adopted in this theoretical manner, as if the form of a constitution were a matter of free choice, determined by nothing else but reflection. Of this artless fashion was that deliberation--not indeed of the Persian people, but of the Persian grandees, who had conspired to overthrow the pseudo-Smerdis and the Magi, after their undertaking had succeeded and when there was no scion of the royal family living--as to what constitution they should introduce into Persia; and Herodotus gives an equally naïve account of this deliberation.

In the present day, the constitution of a country and people is not represented as so entirely dependent on free and deliberate choice. The fundamental, but abstractly and therefore imperfectly, entertained conception of freedom, has resulted in the republic being very generally regarded--in theory--as the only just and true political constitution. Even many who occupy elevated official positions under monarchical constitutions, so far from being opposed to this idea are actually its supporters; only they see that such a constitution, though the best, cannot be realized under all circumstances, and that, while men are what they are, we must be satisfied with less freedom, the monarchical constitution, under the given circumstances and the present moral condition of the people, being even regarded as the most advantageous. In this view also the necessity of a particular constitution is made to depend on the condition of the people as though the latter were non-essential and accidental. This representation is founded on the distinction which the reflective understanding makes between an idea and the corresponding reality. This reflection holding to an abstract and consequently untrue idea, not grasping it in its completeness, or--which is virtually, though not in point of form, the same--not taking a concrete view of a people and a State. We shall have to show, further, on, that the constitution adopted by a people makes one substance, one spirit, with its religion, its art, and its philosophy, or, at least, with its conceptions, thoughts and culture generally--not to expatiate upon the additional influences _ab extra_, of climate, of neighbors, of its place in the world. A State is an individual totality, of which you cannot select any particular side, although a supremely important one, such as its political constitution, and deliberate and decide respecting it in that isolated form. Not only is that constitution most intimately connected with and dependent on those other spiritual forces, but the form of the entire moral and intellectual individuality, comprising all the forces it embodies, is only a step in the development of the grand whole, with its place pre-appointed in the process--a fact which gives the highest sanction to the constitution in question and establishes its absolute necessity. The origin of a State involves imperious lordship on the one hand, instinctive submission on the other. But even obedience--lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler--in itself implies some degree of voluntary connection. Even in barbarous states this is the case; it is not the isolated will of individuals that prevails; individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will is the essential bond of political union. This unity of the general and the particular is the Idea itself, manifesting itself as a State, and which subsequently undergoes further development within itself. The abstract yet necessitated process in the development of truly independent states is as follows: They begin with regal power, whether of patriarchal or military origin; in the next phase, particularity and individuality assert themselves in the form of aristocracy and democracy; lastly, we have the subjection of these separate interests to a single power, but one which can be absolutely none other than one outside of which those spheres have an independent position, viz., the monarchical. Two phases of royalty, therefore, must be distinguished--a primary and a secondary. This process is necessitated to the end that the form of government assigned to a particular stage of development must present itself; it is therefore no matter of choice, but is the form adapted to the spirit of the people.

In the constitution the main feature of interest is the self-development of the rational, that is, the political condition of a people, the setting free of the successive elements of the Idea, so that the several powers in the State manifest themselves as separate, attain their appropriate and special perfection, and yet, in this independent condition, work together for one object and are held together by it--i. e., form an organic whole. The State is thus the embodiment of rational freedom, realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form. For its objectivity consists in this--that its successive stages are not merely ideal, but are present in an appropriate reality, and that in their separate and several workings they are absolutely merged in that agency by which the totality, the soul, the individuate unity, is produced, and of which it is the result.

The State is the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human will and its freedom. It is to the State, therefore, that change in the aspect of history indissolubly attaches itself; and the successive phases of the idea manifest themselves in it as distinct political principles. The constitutions under which world-historical peoples have reached their culmination, are peculiar to them, and therefore do not present a generally applicable political basis. Were it otherwise the differences of similar constitutions would consist only in a peculiar method of expanding and developing that generic basis, whereas they really originate in diversity of principle. From the comparison therefore of the political institutions of the ancient world-historical peoples, it so happens that, for the most recent principle of a constitution for the principle of our own times, nothing, so to speak, can be learned. In science and art it is quite otherwise--that is, the ancient philosophy is so decidedly the basis of the modern that it is inevitably contained in the latter and constitutes its basis. In this case the relation is that of a continuous development of the same structure, whose foundation-stone, walls, and roof have remained what they were. In art, the Greek itself, in its original form, furnishes us the best models, but in regard to political constitution it is quite otherwise; here the ancient and the modern have not their essential principle in common. Abstract definitions and dogmas respecting just government--importing that intelligence and virtue ought to bear sway--are, indeed, common to both, but nothing is so absurd as to look to Greeks, Romans, or Orientals, for models for the political arrangements of our time. From the East may be derived beautiful pictures of a patriarchal condition, of paternal government, and of devotion to it on the part of peoples; from Greeks and Romans, descriptions of popular liberty. Among the latter we find the idea of a free constitution admitting all the citizens to a share in deliberations and resolves respecting the affairs and laws of the commonwealth. In our times, too, this is its general acceptation; only with this modification, that--since our States are so large, and there are so many of "the many," the latter (direct action being impossible) should by the indirect method of elective substitution express their concurrence with resolves affecting the common weal--that is, that for legislative purposes generally the people should be represented by deputies. The so-called representative constitution is that form of government with which we connect the idea of a free constitution; and this notion has become a rooted prejudice. On this theory people and government are separated. But there is a perversity in this antithesis, an ill-intentioned ruse designed to insinuate that the people are the totality of the State. Besides, the basis of this view is the principle of isolated individuality--the absolute validity of the subjective will--a dogma which we have already investigated. The great point is that freedom, in its ideal conception, has not subjective will and caprice for its principle, but the recognition of the universal will, and that the process by which freedom is realized is the free development of its successive stages. The subjective will is a merely formal determination--a _carte blanche_--not including what it is that is willed. Only the rational will is that universal principle which independently determines and unfolds its own being and develops its successive elemental phases as organic members. Of this Gothic-cathedral architecture the ancients knew nothing.

At an earlier stage of the discussion we established the two elemental considerations: First, the _idea_ of freedom as the absolute and final aim; secondly, the _means_ for realizing it, i. e., the subjective side of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity. We then recognized the State as the moral whole and the reality of freedom, and consequently as the objective unity of these two elements. For although we make this distinction in two aspects for our consideration, it must be remarked that they are intimately connected, and that their connection is involved in the idea of each when examined separately. We have, on the one hand, recognized the Idea in the definite form of freedom, conscious of and willing itself, having itself alone as its object, involving at the same time the pure and simple Idea of Reason and, likewise, what we have called Subject, self-consciousness, Spirit, actually existing in the world. If, on the other hand, we consider subjectivity, we find that subjective knowledge and will is thought. But by the very act of thoughtful cognition and volition, I will the universal object--the substance of absolute Reason. We observe, therefore, an essential union between the objective side--the Idea, and the subjective side--the personality that conceives and wills it. The objective existence of this union is the State, which is therefore the basis and centre of the other concrete elements of the life of a people--of art, of law, of morals, of religion, of science. All the activity of Spirit has only this object--the becoming conscious of this union, i. e., of its own freedom. Among the forms of this conscious union _religion_ occupies the highest position. In it Spirit-rising above the limitations of temporal and secular existence--becomes conscious of the Absolute Spirit, and, in this consciousness of the Self-Existent Being, renounces its individual interest; it lays this aside in devotion--a state of mind in which it refuses to occupy itself any longer with the limited and particular. By sacrifice man expresses his renunciation of his property, his will, his individual feelings. The religious concentration of the soul appears in the form of feeling; it nevertheless passes also into reflection; a form of worship (_cultus_) is a result of reflection. The second form of the union of the objective and subjective in the human spirit is art; this advances farther into the realm of the actual and sensuous than religion. In its noblest walk it is occupied with representing, not, indeed, the Spirit of God, but certainly the Form of God; and, in its secondary aims, that which is divine and spiritual generally. Its office is to render visible the divine, presenting it to the imaginative and intuitive faculty. But the true is the object not only of conception and feeling, as in religion--and of intuition, as in art--but also of the thinking faculty; and this gives us the third form of the union in question--philosophy. This is consequently the highest, freest, and wisest place. Of course we are not intending to investigate these three phases here; they have only suggested themselves in virtue of their occupying the same general ground as the object here considered the _State._

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW (1832)

BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard University

THE STATE

IDEA AND AIM OF THE STATE

The State is the realization of the ethical idea. It is the ethical spirit as revealed, self-conscious, substantial will. It is the will which thinks and knows itself, and carries out what it knows, and in so far as it knows. The unreflected existence of the State rests on custom, and its reflected existence on the self-consciousness of the individual, on his knowledge and activity. The individual, in return, has his substantial freedom in the State, as the essence, purpose, and product of his activity.

The true State is the ethical whole and the realization of freedom. It is the absolute purpose of reason that freedom should be realized. The State is the spirit, which lives in the world and there realizes itself consciously; while in nature it is actual only as its own other or as dormant spirit. Only as present in consciousness, knowing itself as an existing object, is it the State. The State is the march of God through the world, its ground is the power of reason realizing itself as will. The idea of the State should not connote any particular State, or particular institution; one must rather consider the Idea only, this actual God, by itself. Because it is more easy to find defects than to grasp the positive meaning, one readily falls into the mistake of emphasizing so much the particular nature of the State as to overlook its inner organic essence. The State is no work of art. It exists in the world, and thus in the realm of caprice, accident, and error. Evil behavior toward it may disfigure it on many sides. But the ugliest man, the criminal, the invalid, and the cripple, are still living human beings. The affirmative, life, persists in spite of defects, and it is this affirmative which alone is here in question.

In the State, everything depends upon the unity of the universal and the particular. In the ancient States the subjective purpose was absolutely one with the will of the State. In modern times, on the contrary, we demand an individual opinion, an individual will and conscience. The ancients had none of these in the modern sense; the final thing for them was the will of the State. While in Asiatic despotisms the individual had no inner self and no self-justification, in the modern world man demands to be honored for the sake of his subjective individuality.

The union of duty and right has the twofold aspect that what the State demands as duty should directly be the right of the individual, since the State is nothing but the organization of the concept of freedom. The determinations of the individual will are given by the State objectivity, and it is through the State alone that they attain truth and realization. The State is the sole condition of the attainment of the particular end and good.

Political disposition, called patriotism--the assurance resting in truth and the will which has become a custom--is simply the result of the institutions subsisting in the State, institutions in which reason is actually present.

Under patriotism one frequently understands a mere willingness to perform extraordinary acts and sacrifices. But patriotism is essentially the sentiment of regarding, in the ordinary circumstances and ways of life, the weal of the community as the substantial basis and the final end. It is upon this consciousness, present in the ordinary course of life and under all circumstances, that the disposition to heroic effort is founded. But as people are often rather magnanimous than just, they easily persuade themselves that they possess the heroic kind of patriotism, in order to save themselves the trouble of having the truly patriotic sentiment, or to excuse the lack of it.

Political sentiment, as appearance, must be distinguished from what people truly will. What they at bottom will is the real cause, but they cling to particular interests and delight in the vain contemplation of improvements. The conviction of the necessary stability of the State in which alone the particular interests can be realized, people indeed possess, but custom makes invisible that upon which our whole existence rests; it does not occur to any one, when he safely passes through the streets at night, that it could be otherwise. The habit of safety has become a second nature, and we do not reflect that it is the result of the activity of special institutions. It is through force this is frequently the superficial opinion-that the State coheres, but what alone holds it together is the fundamental sense of order, which is possessed by all.

The State is an organism or the development of the idea into its differences. These different sides are the different powers of the State with their functions and activities, by means of which the universal is constantly and necessarily producing itself, and, being presupposed in its own productive function, it is thus always actively present. This organism is the political constitution. It eternally springs from the State, just as the State in turn maintains itself through the constitution. If these two things fall asunder, if both different sides become independent of each other, then the unity which the constitution produces is no longer operative; the fable of the stomach and the other organs may be applied to it. It is the nature of an organism that all its parts must constitute a certain unity; if one part asserts its independence the other parts must go to destruction. No predicates, principles, and the like suffice to express the nature of the State; it must be comprehended as an organism.

The State is real, and its reality consists in the interest of the whole being realized in particular ends. Actuality is always the unity of universality and particularity, and the differentiation of the universal into particular ends. These particular ends seem independent, though they are borne and sustained by the whole only. In so far as this unity is absent, no thing is real, though it may exist. A bad State is one which merely exists. A sick body also exists; but it has no true reality. A hand, which is cut off, still looks like a hand and exists, but it has no reality. True reality is necessity. What is real is internally necessary.

To the complete State belongs, essentially, consciousness and thought. The State knows thus what it wills, and it knows it under the form of thought.

The essential difference between the State and religion consists in that the commands of the State have the form of legal duty, irrespective of the feelings accompanying their performance; the sphere of religion, on the other hand, is in the inner life. Just as the State, were it to frame its commands as religion does, would endanger the right of the inner life, so the church, if it acts as a State and imposes punishment, degenerates into a tyrannical religion.

In the State one must want nothing which is not an expression of rationality. The State is the world which the spirit has made for itself; it has therefore a determinate and self-conscious course. One often speaks of the wisdom of God in nature, but one must not believe that the physical world of nature is higher than the world of spirit. Just as spirit is superior to nature, so is the State superior to the physical life. We must therefore adore the State as the manifestation of the divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend nature, it is infinitely harder to grasp the essence of the State. It is an important fact that we, in modern times, have attained definite insight into the State in general and are much engaged in discussing and making constitutions; but that does not advance the problem much. It is necessary to treat a rational matter in the light of reason, in order to learn its essential nature and to know that the obvious does not always constitute the essential.

When we speak of the different functions of the powers of the State, we must not fall into the enormous error of supposing each power to have an abstract, independent existence, since the powers are rather to be differentiated as elements in the conception of the State. Were the powers to be in abstract independence, however, it is clear that two independent things could never constitute a unity, but must produce war, and the result would be destruction of the whole or restoration of unity by force. Thus, in the French Revolution, at one time the legislative power had swallowed up the executive, at another time the executive had usurped the legislative power.

THE CONSTITUTION

The constitution is rational, in so far as the State defines and differentiates its functions according to the nature of its concept.

Who shall make the constitution? This question seems intelligible, yet on closer examination reveals itself as meaningless, for it presupposes the existence of no constitution, but only a mere mass of atomic individuals. How a mass of individuals is to come by a constitution, whether by its own efforts or by those of others, whether by goodness, thought, or force, it must decide for itself, for with a disorganized mob the concept of the State has nothing to do. But if the question does presuppose an already existing constitution, then to make a constitution means only to change it. The presupposition of a constitution implies, however, at once, that any modification in it must take place constitutionally. It is absolutely essential that the constitution, though having a temporal origin, should not be regarded as made. It (the principle of constitution) is rather to be conceived as absolutely perpetual and rational, and therefore as divine, substantial, and above and beyond the sphere of what is made.

Subjective freedom is the principle of the whole modern world--the principle that all essential aspects of the spiritual totality should develop and attain their right. From this point of view one can hardly raise the idle question as to which form is the better, monarchy or democracy. One can but say that the forms of all constitutions are one-sided that are not able to tolerate the principle of free subjectivity and that do not know how to conform to the fully developed reason.

Since spirit is real only in what it knows itself to be, and since the State, as the nation's spirit, is the law permeating all its affairs, its ethical code, and the consciousness of its individuals, the constitution of a people chiefly depends upon the kind and the character of its self-consciousness. In it lies both its subjective freedom and the reality of the constitution.

To think of giving a people a constitution _a priori_, though according to its content a more or less rational one--such a whim would precisely overlook that element which renders a constitution more than a mere abstract object. Every nation, therefore, has the constitution which is appropriate to it and belongs to it.

The State must, in its constitution, permeate all situations. A constitution is not a thing just made; it is the work of centuries, the idea and the consciousness of what is rational, in so far as it is developed in a people. No constitution, therefore, is merely created by the subjects of the State. The nation must feel that its constitution embodies its right and its status, otherwise the constitution may exist externally, but has no meaning or value. The need and the longing for a better constitution may often indeed be present in individuals, but that is quite different from the whole multitude being permeated with such an idea--that comes much later. The principle of morality, the inwardness of Socrates originated necessarily in his day, but it took time before it could pass into general self-consciousness.

THE POWER OF THE PRINCE

Because sovereignty contains in ideal all special privileges, the common misconception is quite natural, which takes it to be mere force, empty caprice, and synonymous with despotism. But despotism means a state of lawlessness, in which the particular will as such, whether that of monarch or people (_ochlocracy_), is the law, or rather instead of the law. Sovereignty, on the contrary, constitutes the element of ideality of particular spheres and functions under lawful and constitutional conditions.

The sovereignty of the people, conceived in opposition to the sovereignty residing in the monarch, stands for the common view of democracy, which has come to prevail in modern times. The idea of the sovereignty of the people, taken in this opposition, belongs to a confused idea of what is commonly and crudely understood by "the people." The people without its monarch and without that whole organization necessarily and directly connected with him is a formless mass, which is no longer a State. In a people, not conceived in a lawless and unorganized condition, but as a self-developed and truly organic totality--in such a people sovereignty is the personality of the whole, and this is represented in reality by the person of the monarch.

The State must be regarded as a great architectonic edifice, a hieroglyph of reason, manifesting itself in reality. Everything referring merely to utility, externality, and the like, must be excluded from its philosophic treatment. That the State is the self-determining and the completely sovereign will, the final decision being necessarily referred to it--that is easy to comprehend. The difficulty lies in grasping this "I will" as a person. By this it is not meant that the monarch can act arbitrarily. He is bound, in truth, by the concrete content of the deliberations of his council, and, when the constitution is stable, he has often nothing more to do than to sign his name--but this name is important; it is the point than which there is nothing higher.

It may be said that an organic State has already existed in the beautiful democracy of Athens. The Greeks, however, derived the final decision from entirely external phenomena, from oracles, entrails of sacrificial animals, and from the flight of birds. Nature they considered as a power which in this wise made known and gave expression to what was good for the people. Self-consciousness had at that time not yet attained to the abstraction of subjectivity; it had not yet come to the realization that an "I will" must be pronounced by man himself concerning the decisions of the State. This "I will" constitutes the great difference between the ancient and the modern world, and must therefore have its peculiar place in the great edifice of the State. Unfortunately this modern characteristic is regarded as merely external and arbitrary.

It is often maintained against the monarch that, since he may be ill-educated or unworthy to stand at the helm of the State, its fortunes are thus made to depend upon chance. It is therefore absurd to assume the rationality of the institution of the monarch. The presupposition, however, that the fortunes of the State depend upon the particular character of the monarch is false. In the perfect organization of the State the important thing is only the finality of formal decision and the stability against passion. One must not therefore demand objective qualification of the monarch; he has but to say "yes" and to put the dot upon the "i." The crown shall be of such a nature that the particular character of its bearer is of no significance. Beyond his function of administering the final decision, the monarch is a particular being who is of no concern. Situations may indeed arise in which his particularity alone asserts itself, but in that case the State is not yet fully developed, or else is ill constructed. In a well-ordered monarchy the law alone has objective power to which the monarch has but to affix the subjective "I will."

Monarchs do not excel in bodily strength or intellect, and yet millions permit themselves to be ruled by them. To say that the people permit themselves to be governed contrary to their interests, aims, and intentions is preposterous, for people are not so stupid. It is their need, it is the inner power of the idea, which, in opposition to their apparent consciousness, urges them to this situation and retains them therein.

Out of the sovereignty of the monarch flows the prerogative of pardoning criminals. Only to the sovereignty belongs the spiritual power to undo what has been done and to cancel the crime by forgiving and forgetting.

Pardon is the remission of punishment, but does not abolish right. Right remains, and the pardoned is a criminal as he was before the pardon. The act of mercy does not mean that no crime has been committed. This remission of punishment may be effected in religion, for by and in spirit what has been done can be made un-done. But in so far as remission occurs in the world, it has its place only in majesty and is due only to its arbitrary decision.

THE EXECUTIVE

The main point upon which the function of the government depends is the division of labor. This division is concerned with the transition from the universal to the particular and the individual; and the business is to be divided according to the different branches. The difficulty lies in harmonizing the superior and the inferior functions. For some time past the main effort has been spent in organizing from above, the lower and bulky part of the whole being left more or less unorganized; yet it is highly important that it should become organic, for only thus is it a power and a force; otherwise it is but a heap or mass of scattered atoms. Authoritative power resides only in the organic state of the particular spheres.

The State cannot count on service which is capricious and voluntary (the administration of justice by knights-errant, for instance), precisely because it is capricious and voluntary. Such service presupposes acting according to subjective opinion, and also the possibility of neglect and of the realization of private ends. The opposite extreme to the knight-errant in reference to public service would be the State-servant who was attached to his task solely by want, without genuine duty and right.

The efficiency of the State depends upon individuals, who, however, are not entitled to carry on the business of the State through natural fitness, but according to their objective qualification. Ability, skill, character, belong to the particular nature of the individual; for a particular office, however, he must be specially educated and trained. An office in the State can, therefore, be neither sold nor bequeathed.

Public service demands the sacrifice of independent self-satisfaction and the giving up of the pursuit of private ends, but grants the right of finding these in dutiful service, and in it only. Herein lies the unity of the universal and the particular interests which constitutes the concept and the inner stability of the State.

The members of the executive and the officials of the State form the main part of the middle class which represents the educated intelligence and the consciousness of right of the mass of a people. This middle class is prevented by the institutions of sovereignty from above and the rights of corporation from below, from assuming the exclusive position of an aristocracy and making education and intelligence the means for caprice and despotism. Thus the administration of justice, whose object is the proper interest of all individuals, had at one time been perverted into an instrument of gain and despotism, owing to the fact that the knowledge of the law was hidden under a learned and foreign language, and the knowledge of legal procedure under an involved formalism.

In the middle class, to which the State officials belong, resides the consciousness of the State and the most conspicuous cultivation: the middle class constitutes therefore the ground pillar of the State in regard to uprightness and intelligence. The State in which there is no middle class stands as yet on no high level.

THE LEGISLATURE

The legislature is concerned with the interpretation of the laws and with the internal affairs of the State, in so far as they have a universal content. This function is itself a part of the constitution and thus presupposes it. Being presupposed, the constitution lies, to that degree, outside the direct province of the legislature, but in the forward development of the laws and the progressive character of the universal affairs of government, the constitution receives its development also.

The constitution must alone be the firm ground on which the legislature stands; hence it must not be created for purposes of legislation. But the constitution not only is, its essence is also to _become_--that is, it progresses with the advance of civilization. This progress is an alteration which is imperceptible, but has not the form of an alteration. Thus, for example, the emperor was formerly judge, and went about the empire administering justice. Through the merely apparent advance of civilization it has become practically necessary that the emperor should gradually yield his judicial function to others, and thus came about the transition of the judicial function from the person of the prince to a body of judges; thus the progress of any condition is an apparently calm and imperceptible one. In this way and after a lapse of time a constitution attains a character quite different from what it had before.

In the legislative power as a whole are operative both the monarchical element and the executive. To the former belongs the final decision; the latter as advisory element possesses concrete knowledge, perspective over the whole in all its ramifications, and acquaintance with the objective principles and wants of the power of the State. Finally, in the legislature the different classes or estates are also active. These classes or estates represent in the legislature the element of subjective formal freedom, the public consciousness, the empirical totality of the views and thought of the many.

The expression "The Many" [Greek: oi polloi] characterizes the empirical totality more correctly than the customary word "All." Though one may reply that, under this "all," children, women, etc., are obviously meant to be excluded, yet it is more obvious that the definite expression "all" should not be used when something quite indefinite is in question.

There are, in general, current among the public so unspeakably many distorted and false notions and phrases about the people, the constitution, and the classes, that it would be a vain task to mention, explain, and correct them. The prevalent idea concerning the necessity and utility of an assembly of estates amounts to the assumption that the people's deputies, nay, the people itself, best understand what would promote the common weal, and that they have indubitably the good will to promote it. As for the first point, the case is just the reverse. The people, in so far as this term signifies a special part of the citizens, stands precisely for the part that does not know what it wills. To know what one wills, and, what is more difficult, to know what the absolute will, viz., reason, wills, is the fruit of deep knowledge and insight; and that is obviously not a possession of the people. As for the especially good will, which the classes are supposed to have for the common good, the usual point of view of the masses is the negative one of suspecting the government of a will which is evil or of little good.

The attitude of the government toward the classes must not be essentially a hostile one. Belief in the necessity of this hostile relation is a sad mistake. The government is not one party in opposition to another, so that both are engaged in wresting something from each other. When the State is in such a situation it is a misfortune and not a mark of health. Furthermore, the taxes, for which the classes vote, are not to be looked upon as gifts, but are consented to for the best interests of those consenting. What constitutes the true meaning of the classes is this--that through them the State enters into the subjective consciousness of the people and thus the people begin to share in the State.

In despotic countries, where there are only princes and people, the people assert themselves, whenever they act, as a destructive force directed against the organization, but the masses, when they become organically related to the State, obtain their interests in a lawful and orderly way. When this organic relation is lacking, the self-expression of the masses is always violent; in despotic States the despot shows, therefore, indulgence for his people, and his rage is always felt by those surrounding him. Moreover, the people of a despotic State pay light taxes, which in a constitutional State are increased through the very consciousness of the people. In no other country are taxes so heavy as they are in England.

There exists a current notion to the effect that, since the private class is raised in the legislature to a participation in the universal cause, it must appear in the form of individuals--either that representatives are chosen for the function, or that every individual exercises a vote. This abstract atomic view prevails neither in the family nor in civic society, in both of which the individual appears only as a member of a universal. The State, however, is in essence an organization of members, and these members are themselves spheres; in it no element shall show itself as an unorganized mass. The many, as individuals, whom one chooses to call the people, are indeed a collection, but only as a multitude, a formless mass, whose movement and action would be elemental, irrational, savage, and terrible.

The concrete State is the whole, organized into its particular spheres, and the member of the State is a member of such a particular class. Only in this objective determination can the individual find recognition in the State. Only in his coöperate capacity, as member of the community and the like, can the individual first find a real and vital place in the universal. It remains, of course, open to him to rise through his skill to any class for which he can qualify himself, including even the universal class.

It is a matter of great advantage to have among the delegates representatives of every special branch of society, such as trade, manufacture, etc.--individuals thoroughly familiar with their branch and belonging to it. In the notion of a loose and indefinite election this important matter is left to accident; every branch, however, has the same right to be represented as every other. To view the delegates as representatives has, then, an organic and rational meaning only if they are not representatives of mere individuals, of the mere multitude, but of one of the essential spheres of society and of its large interests. Representation thus no longer means substitution of one person by another, but it means, rather, that the interest itself is actually present in the representative.

Of the elections by many separate individuals it may be observed that there is necessarily an indifference, especially in large States, about using one's vote, since one vote is of such slight importance; and those who have the right to vote will not do so, no matter how much one may extol the privilege of voting. Hence this institution turns into the opposite of what it stands for. The election becomes the business of a few, of a single party, of a special interest, which should, in fact, be neutralized.

Through the publicity of the assembly of classes public opinion first acquires true thoughts and an insight into the condition and the notion of the State and its affairs, and thus develops the capacity of judging more rationally concerning them; it learns, furthermore, to know and respect the routine, talents, virtues, and skill of the authorities and officers of the State. While publicity stimulates these talents in their further development and incites their honorable display, it is also an antidote for the pride of individuals and of the multitude, and is one of the greatest opportunities for their education.

It is a widespread popular notion that everybody already knows what is good for the State, and that it is this common knowledge which finds expression in the assembly. Here, in the assembly, are developed virtues, talents, skill, which have to serve as examples. To be sure, the ministers may find these assemblies onerous, for ministers must possess large resources of wit and eloquence to resist the attacks which are hurled against them. Nevertheless, publicity is one of the best means of instruction in the interests of the State generally, for where publicity is found the people manifest an entirely different regard for the State than in those places where there are no assemblies or where they are not public. Only through the publication of every one of their proceedings are the chambers related to the larger public opinion; and it is shown that what one imagines at home with his wife and friends is one thing, and what happens in a great assembly, where one feat of eloquence wrecks another, is quite a different thing.

PUBLIC OPINION

Public opinion is the unorganized way in which what a people wants and thinks is promulgated. That which is actually effective in the State must be so in an organic fashion. In the constitution this is the case. But at all times public opinion has been a great power, and it is particularly so in our time, when the principle of subjective freedom has such importance and significance. What shall now prevail, prevails no longer through force, little through use and custom, but rather through insight and reasons.

Public opinion contains, therefore, the eternal substantial principles of justice, the true content, and the result of the whole constitution, legislation, and the universal condition in general. The form underlying public opinion is sound common sense, which is a fundamental ethical principle winding its way through everything, in spite of prepossessions. But when this inner character is formulated in the shape of general propositions, partly for their own sake, partly for the purpose of actual reasoning about events, institutions, relations, and the recognized wants of the State, there appears also the whole character of accidental opinion, with its ignorance and perversity, its false knowledge and incorrect judgment.

It is therefore not to be regarded as merely a difference in subjective opinion when it is asserted on the one hand--

"Vox populi, vox dei";

and on the other (in Ariosto, for instance)--[2]

"Che'l Volgare ignorante ogn' un riprenda E parli piü di quel che meno intenda."

Both sides co-exist in public opinion. Since truth and endless error are so directly united in it, neither one nor the other side is truly in earnest. Which one is in earnest, is difficult to decide--difficult, indeed, if one confines oneself to the direct expression of public opinion. But as the substantial principle is the inner character of public opinion, this alone is its truly earnest aspect; yet this insight cannot be obtained from public opinion itself, for a substantial principle can only be apprehended apart from public opinion and by a consideration of its own nature. No matter with what passion an opinion is invested, no matter with what earnestness a view is asserted, attacked, and defended, this is no criterion of its real essence. And least of all could public opinion be made to see that its seriousness is nothing serious at all.

A great mind has publicly raised the question whether it is permissible to deceive a people. The answer is that a people will not permit itself to be deceived concerning its substantial basis, the essence, and the definite character of its spirit, but it deceives itself about the way in which it knows this, and according to which it judges of its acts, events, etc.

Public opinion deserves, therefore, to be esteemed as much as to be despised; to be despised for its concrete consciousness and expression, to be esteemed for its essential fundamental principle, which only shines, more or less dimly, through its concrete expression. Since public opinion possesses within itself no standard of discrimination, no capacity to rise to a recognition of the substantial, independence of it is the first formal condition of any great and rational enterprise (in actuality as well as in science). Anything great and rational is eventually sure to please public opinion, to be espoused by it, and to be made one of its prepossessions.

In public opinion all is false and true, but to discover the truth in it is the business of the great man. The great man of his time is he who expresses the will and the meaning of that time, and then brings it to completion; he acts according to the inner spirit and essence of his time, which he realizes. And he who does not understand how to despise public opinion, as it makes itself heard here and there, will never accomplish anything great.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

The freedom of public utterance (of which the press is one means, having advantage over speech in its more extended reach, though inferior to it in vivacity), the gratification of that prickling impulse to express and to have expressed one's opinion, is directly controlled by the police and State laws and regulations, which partly hinder and partly punish its excesses. The indirect guarantee lies in its innocuousness, and this again is mainly based on the rationality of the constitution, the stability of the government, and also on the publicity given to the assemblies of the classes. Another security is offered by the indifference and contempt with which insipid and malicious words are, as a rule, quickly met.

The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write what one pleases, is parallel to the one of freedom in general, viz., as freedom to do what one pleases. Such views belong to the uneducated crudity and superficiality of naïve thinking. The press, with its infinite variety of content and expression, represents what is most transient, particular, and accidental in human opinion. Beyond the direct incitation to theft, murder, revolt, etc., lies the art of cultivating the expression which in itself seems general and indefinite enough, but which, in a measure, conceals a perfectly definite meaning. Such expressions are partly responsible for consequences of which, since they are not actually expressed, one is never sure how far they are contained in the utterances and really follow from them. It is this indefiniteness of the content and form of the press which prevents the laws governing it from assuming that precision which one demands of laws. Thus the extreme subjectivity of the wrong, injury, and crime committed by the press, causes the decision and sentence to be equally subjective. The laws are not only indefinite, but the press can, by the skill and subtlety of its expressions, evade them, or criticise the judgment of the court as wholly arbitrary. Furthermore, if the utterance of the press is treated as an offensive deed, one may retort that it is not a deed at all, but only an opinion, a thought, a mere saying. Consequently, impunity is expected for opinions and words, because they are merely subjective, trivial, and insignificant, and, in the same breath, great respect and esteem is demanded for these opinions and words--for the opinions, because they are mine and my mental property, and for the words, because they are the free expression and use of that property. And yet the basic principle remains that injury to the honor of individuals generally, abuse, libel, contemptuous caricaturing of the government, its officers and officials, especially the person of the prince, defiance of the laws, incitement to revolt, etc., are all offenses and crimes of different grades.

However, the peculiar and dangerous effect of these acts for the individuals, the community, and the State depends upon the nature of the soil on which they are committed, just as a spark, if thrown upon a heap of gunpowder, has a much more dangerous result than if thrown on the mere ground, where it vanishes and leaves no trace. But, on the whole, a good many such acts, though punishable by law, may come under a certain kind of nemesis which internal impotence is forced to bring about. In entering upon opposition to the superior talents and virtues, by which impotence feels oppressed, it comes to a realization of its inferiority and to a consciousness of its own nothingness, and the nemesis, even when bad and odious, is, by treating it with contempt, rendered ineffectual. Like the public, which forms a circle for such activity, it is confined to a harmless malicious joy, and to a condemnation which reflects upon itself.

MEANING OF WAR

There is an ethical element in war. It must not be regarded as an absolute ill, or as merely an external calamity which is accidentally based upon the passions of despotic individuals or nations, upon acts of injustice, and, in general, upon what ought not to be. The recognition of the finite, such as property and life, as accidental, is necessary. This necessity is at first wont to appear under the form of a force of nature, for all things finite are mortal and transient. In the ethical order, in the State, however, nature is robbed of its force, and the necessity is exalted to a work of freedom, to an ethical law. The transient and negative nature of all things is transformed in the State into an expression of the ethical will. War, often painted by edifying speech as a state in which the vanity of temporal things is demonstrated, now becomes an element whereby the ideal character of the particular receives its right and reality. War has the deep meaning that by it the ethical health of the nations is preserved and their finite aims uprooted. And as the winds which sweep over the ocean prevent the decay that would result from its perpetual calm, so war protects the people from the corruption which an everlasting peace would bring upon it. History shows phases which illustrate how successful wars have checked internal unrest and have strengthened the entire stability of the State.

In peace, civic life becomes more extended, every sphere is hedged in and grows immobile, and at last all men stagnate, their particular nature becoming more and more hardened and ossified. Only in the unity of a body is health, and, where the organs become stiff, there is death. Eternal peace is often demanded as an ideal toward which mankind should move. Thus Kant proposed an alliance of princes, which should settle the controversies of States, and the Holy Alliance probably aspired to be an institution of this kind. The State, however, is individual, and in individuality negation is essentially contained. A number of States may constitute themselves into a family, but this confederation, as an individuality, must create an opposition and so beget an enemy. Not only do nations issue forth invigorated from their wars, but those nations torn by internal strife win peace at home as a result of war abroad. War indeed causes insecurity in property, but this real insecurity is only a necessary commotion. From the pulpits much is preached concerning the insecurity, vanity, and instability of temporal things, and yet every one, though he may be touched by his own words, thinks that he, at least, will manage to hold on to his possessions. Let the insecurity finally come, in the form of Hussars with glistening sabres, and show its earnest activity, and that touching edification which foresaw all this now turns upon the enemy with curses. In spite of this, wars will break out whenever necessity demands them; but the seeds spring up anew, and speech is silenced before the grave repetitions of history.

The military class is the class of universality. The defense of the State is its privilege, and its duty is to realize the ideality contained in it, which consists in self-sacrifice. There are different kinds of bravery. The courage of the animal, or the robber, the bravery which arises from a sense of honor, the chivalrous bravery, are not yet the true forms of it. In civilized nations true bravery consists in the readiness to give oneself wholly to the service of the State, so that the individual counts but as one among many. Not personal valor, but the important aspect of it, lies in self-subordination to the universal cause.

To risk one's life is indeed something more than mere fear of death, but this is only negative; only a positive character--an aim and content--gives meaning to bravery. Robbers and murderers in the pursuit of crime, adventurers in the search of their fanciful objects, etc., also possess courage, and do not fear death. The principle of the modern world--the power of thought and of the universal--has given to bravery a higher form; the higher form causes the expression of bravery to appear more mechanical. The brave deeds are not the deeds of any particular person, but those of the members of a whole. And, again, since hostility is directed, not against separate individuals, but against a hostile whole, personal valor appears as impersonal. This principle it is which has caused the invention of the gun; it is not a chance invention that has brought about the change of the mere personal form of bravery into the more abstract.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Just as the individual is not a real person unless related to other persons, so the State is no real individuality unless related to other States. The legitimate power of a State, and more especially its princely power, is, from the point of view of its foreign relations, a wholly internal affair. A State shall, therefore, not interfere with the internal affairs of another State. On the other hand, for a complete State, it is essential that it be recognized by others; but this recognition demands as a guarantee that it shall recognize those States which recognize it, and shall respect their independence. Hence its internal affairs cannot be a matter of indifference to them.

When Napoleon, before the peace of Campoformio, said, "The French Republic requires recognition as little as the sun needs to be recognized," his words suggest nothing but the strength of existence, which already carries with it the guarantee of recognition, without needing to be expressed.

When the particular wills of the State can come to no agreement their controversy can be decided only by war. What offense shall be regarded as a breach of a treaty, or as a violation of respect and honor, must remain indefinite, since many and various injuries can easily accrue from the wide range of the interests of the States and from the complex relations of their citizens. The State may identify its infinitude and honor with every one of its single aspects. And if a State, as a strong individuality, has experienced an unduly protracted internal rest, it will naturally be more inclined to irritability, in order to find an occasion and field for intense activity.

The nations of Europe form a family according to the universal principle of their legislation, their ethical code, and their civilization. But the relation among States fluctuates, and no judge exists to adjust their differences. The higher judge is the universal and absolute Spirit alone--the World-Spirit.

The relation of one particular State to another presents, on the largest possible scale, the most shifting play of individual passions, interests, aims, talents, virtues, power, injustice, vice, and mere external chance. It is a play in which even the ethical whole, the independence of the State, is exposed to accident. The principles which control the many national spirits are limited. Each nation as an existing individuality is guided by its particular principles, and only as a particular individuality can each national spirit win objectivity and self-consciousness; but the fortunes and deeds of States in their relation to one another reveal the dialectic of the finite nature of these spirits. Out of this dialectic rises the universal Spirit, the unlimited World-Spirit, pronouncing its judgment--and its judgment is the highest--upon the finite nations of the world's history; for the history of the world is the world's court of justice.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART (1820-21)

BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard University

THE MEANING OF ART

The appropriate expression for our subject is the "Philosophy of Art," or, more precisely, the "Philosophy of Fine Arts." By this expression we wish to exclude the beauty of nature. In common life we are in the habit of speaking of beautiful color, a beautiful sky, a beautiful river, beautiful flowers, beautiful animals, and beautiful human beings. But quite aside from the question, which we wish not to discuss here, how far beauty may be predicated of such objects, or how far natural beauty may be placed side by side with artistic beauty, we must begin by maintaining that artistic beauty is higher than the beauty of nature. For the beauty of art is beauty born--and born again--of the spirit. And as spirit and its products stand higher than nature and its phenomena, by so much the beauty that resides in art is superior to the beauty of nature.

To say that spirit and artistic beauty stand higher than natural beauty, is to say very little, for "higher" is a very indefinite expression, which states the difference between them as quantitative and external. The "higher" quality of spirit and of artistic beauty does not at all stand in a merely relative position to nature. Spirit only is the true essence and content of the world, so that whatever is beautiful is truly beautiful only when it partakes of this higher essence and is produced by it. In this sense natural beauty appears only as a reflection of the beauty that belongs to spirit; it is an imperfect and incomplete expression of the spiritual substance.

Confining ourselves to artistic beauty, we must first consider certain difficulties. The first that suggests itself is the question whether art is at all worthy of a philosophic treatment. To be sure, art and beauty pervade, like a kindly genius, all the affairs of life, and joyously adorn all its inner and outer phases, softening the gravity and the burden of actual existence, furnishing pleasure for idle moments, and, where it can accomplish nothing positive, driving evil away by occupying its place. Yet, although art wins its way everywhere with its pleasing forms, from the crude adornment of the savages to the splendor of the temple with its marvelous wealth of decoration, art itself appears to fall outside the real aims of life. And though the creations of art cannot be said to be directly disadvantageous to the serious purposes of life, nay, on occasion actually further them by holding evil at bay, on the whole, art belongs to the relaxation and leisure of the mind, while the substantial interests of life demand its exertion. At any rate, such a view renders art a superfluity, though the tender and emotional influence which is wrought upon the mind by occupation with art is not thought necessarily detrimental, because effeminate.

There are others, again, who, though acknowledging art to be a luxury, have thought it necessary to defend it by pointing to the practical necessities of the fine arts and to the relation they bear to morality and piety. Very serious aims have been ascribed to art. Art has been recommended as a mediator between reason and sensuousness, between inclination and duty, as the reconcilor of all these elements constantly warring with one another. But it must be said that, by making art serve two masters, it is not rendered thereby more worthy of a philosophic treatment. Instead of being an end in itself, art is degraded into a means of appealing to higher aims, on the one hand, and to frivolity and idleness on the other.

Art considered as means offers another difficulty which springs from its form. Granting that art can be subordinated to serious aims and that the results which it thus produces will be significant, still the means used by art is deception, for beauty is appearance, its form is its life; and one must admit that a true and real purpose should not be achieved through deception. Even if a good end is thus, now and then, attained by art its success is rather limited, and even then deception cannot be recommended as a worthy means; for the means should be adequate to the dignity of the end, and truth can be produced by truth alone and not by deception and semblance.

It may thus appear as if art were not worthy of philosophic consideration because it is supposed to be merely a pleasing pastime; even when it pursues more serious aims it does not correspond with their nature. On the whole, it is conceived to serve both grave and light interests, achieving its results by means of deception and semblance.

As for the worthiness of art to be philosophically considered, it is indeed true that art can be used as a casual amusement, furnishing enjoyment and pleasure, decorating our surroundings, lending grace to the external conditions of life, and giving prominence to other objects through ornamentation. Art thus employed is indeed not an independent or free, but rather a subservient art. That art might serve other purposes and still retain its pleasure-giving function, is a relation which it has in common with thought. For science, too, in the hands of the servile understanding is used for finite ends and accidental means, and is thus not self-sufficient, but is determined by outer objects and circumstances. On the other hand, science can emancipate itself from such service and can rise in free independence to the pursuit of truth, in which the realization of its own aims is its proper function.

Art is not genuine art until it has thus liberated itself. It fulfils its highest task when it has joined the same sphere with religion and philosophy and has become a certain mode of bringing to consciousness and expression the divine meaning of things, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most universal truths of the spirit. Into works of art the nations have wrought their most profound ideas and aspirations. Fine Art often constitutes the key, and with many nations it is the only key, to an understanding of their wisdom and religion. This character art has in common with religion and philosophy. Art's peculiar feature, however, consists in its ability to represent in _sensuous form_ even the highest ideas, bringing them thus nearer to the character of natural phenomena, to the senses, and to feeling. It is the height of a supra-sensuous world into which _thought_ reaches, but it always appears to immediate consciousness and to present experience as an alien _beyond_. Through the power of philosophic thinking we are able to soar above what is merely _here_, above sensuous and finite experience. But spirit can heal the breach between the supra-sensuous and the sensuous brought on by its own advance; it produces out of itself the world of fine art as the first reconciling medium between what is merely external, sensuous, and transient, and the world of pure thought, between nature with its finite reality and the infinite freedom of philosophic reason.

Concerning the unworthiness of art because of its character as appearance and deception, it must be admitted that such criticism would not be without justice, if appearance could be said to be equivalent to falsehood and thus to something that ought not to be. Appearance is essential to reality; truth could not be, did it not shine through appearance. Therefore not appearance in general can be objected to, but merely the particular kind of appearance through which art seeks to portray truth. To charge the appearance in which art chooses to embody its ideas as deception, receives meaning only by comparison with the external world of phenomena and its immediate materiality, as well as with the inner world of sensations and feelings. To these two worlds we are wont, in our empirical work-a-day life, to attribute the value of actuality, reality, and truth, in contrast to art, which is supposed to be lacking such reality and truth. But, in fact, it is just the whole sphere of the empirical inner and outer world that is not the world of true reality; indeed it may be called a mere show and a cruel deception in a far stricter sense than in the case of art. Only beyond the immediacy of sense and of external objects is genuine reality to be found. Truly real is but the fundamental essence and the underlying substance of nature and of spirit, and the universal element in nature and in spirit is precisely what art accentuates and makes visible. This essence of reality appears also in the common outer and inner world, but it appears in the form of a chaos of contingencies, distorted by the immediateness of sense perception, and by the capriciousness of conditions, events, characters, etc. Art frees the true meaning of appearances from the show and deception of this bad and transient world, and invests it with a higher reality, born of the spirit. Thus, far removed from being mere appearances, the products of art have a higher reality and a more genuine being than the things of ordinary life.

THE CONTENT AND IDEAL OF ART

The content of art is spiritual, and its form is sensuous; both sides art has to reconcile into a united whole. The first requirement is that the content, which art is to represent, must be worthy of artistic representation; otherwise we obtain only a bad unity, since a content not capable of artistic treatment is made to take on an artistic form, and a matter prosaic in itself is forced into a form quite opposed to its inherent nature.

The second requirement demands of the content of art that it shall be no abstraction. By this is not meant that it must be concrete, as the sensuous is alleged to be concrete in contrast to everything spiritual and intellectual. For everything that is genuinely true, in the realm of thought as well as in the domain of nature, is concrete, and has, in spite of universality, nevertheless, a particular and subjective character. By saying, for example, that God is simply One, the Supreme Being as such, we express thereby nothing but a lifeless abstraction of an understanding devoid of reason. Such a God, as indeed he is not conceived in his concrete truth, can furnish no content for art, least of all for plastic art. Thus the Jews and the Turks have not been able to represent their God, who is still more abstract, in the positive manner in which the Christians have represented theirs. For in Christianity God is conceived in his truth, and therefore concrete, as a person, as a subject, and, more precisely still, as Spirit. What he is as spirit appears to the religious consciousness as a Trinity of persons, which at the same time is One. Here the essence of God is the reconciled unity of universality and particularity, such unity alone being concrete. Hence, as a content in order to be true must be concrete in this sense, art demands the same concreteness; because a mere abstract idea, or an abstract universal, cannot manifest itself in a particular and sensuous unified form.

If a true and therefore concrete content is to have its adequate sensuous form and shape, this sensuous form must--this being the third requirement--also be something individual, completely concrete, and one. The nature of concreteness belonging to both the content and the representation of art, is precisely the point in which both can coincide and correspond to each other. The natural shape of the human body, for example, is a sensuous concrete object, which is perfectly adequate to represent the spiritual in its concreteness; the view should therefore be abandoned that an existing object from the external world is accidentally chosen by art to express a spiritual idea. Art does not seize upon this or that form either because it simply finds it or because it can find no other, but the concrete spiritual content itself carries with it the element of external, real, yes, even sensuous, representation. And this is the reason why a sensuous concrete object, which bears the impress of an essentially spiritual content, addresses itself to the inner eye; the outward shape whereby the content is rendered visible and imaginable aims at an existence only in our heart and mind. For this reason alone are content and artistic shape harmoniously wrought. The mere sensuously concrete external nature as such has not this purpose for its only origin. The gay and variegated plumage of the birds shines unseen, and their song dies away unheard; the torch-thistle which blossoms only for a night withers without having been admired in the wilds of southern forests; and these forests, groves of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, with the most odorous and fragrant perfumes, perish and waste, no more enjoyed. The work of art is not so unconsciously self-immersed, but it is essentially a question, an address to the responsive soul, an appeal to the heart and to the mind.

Although the sensuous form in which art clothes its content is not accidental, yet it is not the highest form whereby the spiritually concrete may be grasped. A higher mode than representation through a sensuous form, is thought. True and rational thinking, though in a relative sense abstract, must not be one-sided, but concrete. How far a definite content can be adequately treated by art and how far it needs, according to its nature, a higher and more spiritual form, is a distinction which we see at once if, for example, the Greek gods are compared with God as conceived in accordance with Christian notions. The Greek god is not abstract but individual, closely related to the natural human form. The Christian God is also a concrete personality, but he is pure spiritually, and can be known only as spirit and in spirit. His sphere of existence is therefore essentially inner knowledge, and not the outer natural shape through which he can be represented but imperfectly and not in the whole depth of his essence.

But the task of art is to represent a spiritual idea to direct contemplation in sensuous form, and not in the form of thought or of pure spirituality. The value and dignity of such representation lies in the correspondence and unity of the two sides, of the spiritual content and its sensuous embodiment, so that the perfection and excellency of art must depend upon the grade of inner harmony and union with which the spiritual idea and the sensuous form interpenetrate.

The requirement of the conformity of spiritual idea and sensuous form might at first be interpreted as meaning that any idea whatever would suffice, so long as the concrete form represented this idea and no other. Such a view, however, would confound the ideal of art with mere correctness, which consists in the expression of any meaning in its appropriate form. The artistic ideal is not to be thus understood. For any content whatever is capable, according to the standard of its own nature, of adequate representation, but yet it does not for that reason lay claim to artistic beauty in the ideal sense. Judged by the standard of ideal beauty, even such correct representation will be defective. In this connection we may remark that the defects of a work of art are not to be considered simply as always due to the incapacity of the artist; defectiveness of form has also its root in defectiveness of content. Thus, for instance, the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, in their artistic objects, their representations of the gods, and their idols, adhered to formlessness, or to a vague and inarticulate form, and were not able to arrive at genuine beauty, because their mythological ideas, the content and conception of their works of art, were as yet vague and obscure. The more perfect in form works of art are, the more profound is the inner truth of their content and thought. And it is not merely a question of the greater or lesser skill with which the objects of external nature are studied and copied, for, in certain stages of artistic consciousness and artistic activity, the misrepresentation and distortion of natural objects are not unintentional technical inexpertness and incapacity, but conscious alteration, which depends upon the content that is in consciousness, and is, in fact, demanded by it. We may thus speak of imperfect art, which, in its own proper sphere, may be quite perfect both technically and in other respects. When compared with the highest idea and ideal of art, it is indeed defective. In the highest art alone are the idea and its representation in perfect congruity, because the sensuous form of the idea is in itself the adequate form, and because the content, which that form embodies, is itself a genuine content.

The higher truth of art consists, then, in the spiritual having attained a sensuous form adequate to its essence. And this also furnishes the principle of division for the philosophy of art. For the Spirit, before it wins the true meaning of its absolute essence, has to develop through a series of stages which constitute its very life. To this universal evolution there corresponds a development of the phases of art, under the form of which the Spirit--as artist--attains to a comprehension of its own meaning.

This evolution within the spirit of art has two sides. The development is, in the first place, a spiritual and universal one, in so far as a gradual series of definite conceptions of the universe--of nature, man, and God--finds artistic representation. In the second place, this universal development of art, embodying itself in sensuous form, determines definite modes of artistic expression and a totality of necessary distinctions within the sphere of art. These constitute the particular arts.

We have now to consider three definite relations of the spiritual idea to its sensuous expression.

SYMBOLIC ART

Art begins when the spiritual idea, being itself still indefinite and obscure and ill-comprehended, is made the content of artistic forms. As indefinite, it does not yet have that individuality which the artistic ideal demands; its abstractness and one-sidedness thus render its shape defective and whimsical. The first form of art is therefore rather a mere search after plasticity than a capacity of true representation. The spiritual idea has not yet found its adequate form, but is still engaged in striving and struggling after it. This form we may, in general, call the _symbolic_ form of art; in such form the abstract idea assumes a shape in natural sensuous matter which is foreign to it; with this foreign matter the artistic creation begins, from which, however, it seems unable to free itself. The objects of external nature are reproduced unchanged, but at the same time the meaning of the spiritual idea is attached to them. They thus receive the vocation of expressing it, and must be interpreted as if the spiritual idea were actually present in them. It is indeed true that natural objects possess an aspect which makes them capable of representing a universal meaning, but in symbolic art a complete correspondence is not yet possible. In it the correspondence is confined to an abstract quality, as when, for example, a lion is meant to stand for strength.

This abstract relation brings also to consciousness the foreignness of the spiritual idea to natural phenomena. And the spiritual idea, having no other reality to express its essence, expatiates in all these natural shapes, seeks itself in their unrest and disproportion, but finds them inadequate to it. It then exaggerates these natural phenomena and shapes them into the huge and the boundless. The spiritual idea revels in them, as it were, seethes and ferments in them, does violence to them, distorts and disfigures them into grotesque shapes, and endeavors by the diversity, hugeness, and splendor of such forms to raise the natural phenomena to the spiritual level. For here it is the spiritual idea which is more or less vague and non-plastic, while the objects of nature have a thoroughly definite form.

The incongruity of the two elements to each other makes the relation of the spiritual idea to objective reality a negative one. The spiritual as a wholly inner element and as the universal substance of all things, is conceived unsatisfied with all externality, and in its _sublimity_ it triumphs over the abundance of unsuitable forms. In this conception of sublimity the natural objects and the human shapes are accepted and left unaltered, but at the same time recognized as inadequate to their own inner meaning; it is this inner meaning which is glorified far and above every worldly content.

These elements constitute, in general, the character of the primitive artistic pantheism of the Orient, which either invests even the lowest objects with absolute significance, or forces all phenomena with violence to assume the expression of its world-view. This art becomes therefore bizarre, grotesque, and without taste, or it represents the infinite substance in its abstract freedom turning away with disdain from the illusory and perishing mass of appearances. Thus the meaning can never be completely molded into the expression, and, notwithstanding all the aspiration and effort, the incongruity between the spiritual idea and the sensuous form remains insuperable. This is, then, the first form of art-symbolic art with its endless quest, its inner struggle, its sphinx-like mystery, and its sublimity.

CLASSICAL ART

In the second form of art, which we wish to designate as the _classical_, the double defect of symbolic art is removed. The symbolic form is imperfect, because the spiritual meaning which it seeks to convey enters into consciousness in but an abstract and vague manner, and thus the congruity between meaning and form must always remain defective and therefore abstract. This double aspect disappears in the classical type of art; in it we find the free and adequate embodiment of the spiritual idea in the form most suitable to it, and with it meaning and expression are in perfect accord. It is classical art, therefore, which first affords the creation and contemplation of the completed ideal, realizing it as a real fact in the world.

But the congruity of idea and reality in classical art must not be taken in a formal sense of the agreement of a content with its external form; otherwise every photograph of nature, every picture of a countenance, landscape, flower, scene, etc., which constitutes the aim of a representation, would, through the conformity of content and form, be at once classical. The peculiarity of classical art, on the contrary, consists in its content being itself a concrete idea, and, as such, a concrete spiritual idea, for only the spiritual is a truly essential content. For a worthy object of such a content, Nature must be consulted as to whether she contains anything to which a spiritual attribute really belongs. It must be the World-Spirit itself that _invented_ the proper form for the concrete spiritual ideal--the subjective mind--in this case the spirit of art--has only _found_ it, and given it natural plastic existence in accordance with free individual spirituality. The form in which the idea, as spiritual and individual, clothes itself when revealed as a temporal phenomenon, is _the human form_. To be sure, personification and anthropomorphism have frequently been decried as a degradation of the spiritual; but art, in so far as its task is to bring before direct contemplation the spiritual in sensuous form, must advance to such anthropomorphism, for only in its body can mind appear in an adequately sensuous fashion. The migration of souls is, in this respect, an abstract notion, and physiology should make it one of its fundamental principles that life has necessarily, in its evolution, to advance to the human shape as the only sensuous phenomenon appropriate to the mind.

The human body as portrayed by classical art is not represented in its mere physical existence, but solely as the natural and sensuous form and garb of mind; it is therefore divested of all the defects that belong to the merely sensuous and of all the finite contingencies that appertain to the phenomenal. But if the form must be thus purified in order to express the appropriate content, and, furthermore, if the conformity of meaning and expression is to be complete, the content which is the spiritual idea must be perfectly capable of being expressed through the bodily form of man, without projecting into another sphere beyond the physical and sensuous representation. The result is that Spirit is characterized as a particular form of mind, namely, as human mind, and not as simply absolute and eternal; but the absolute and eternal Spirit must be able to reveal and express itself in a manner far more spiritual.

This latter point brings to light the defect of classical art, which demands its dissolution and its transition to a third and higher form, to wit, the _romantic_ form of art.

ROMANTIC ART

The romantic form of art destroys the unity of the spiritual idea and its sensuous form, and goes back, though on a higher level, to the difference and opposition of the two, which symbolic art left unreconciled. The classical form of art attained, indeed, the highest degree of perfection which the sensuous process of art was capable of realizing; and, if it shows any defects, the defects are those of art itself, due to the limitation of its sphere. This limitation has its root in the general attempt of art to represent in sensuous concrete form the infinite and universal Spirit, and in the attempt of the classical type of art to blend so completely spiritual and sensuous existence that the two appear in mutual conformity. But in such a fusion of the spiritual and sensuous aspects Spirit cannot be portrayed according to its true essence, for the true essence of Spirit is its infinite subjectivity; and its absolute internal meaning does not lend itself to a full and free expression in the confinement of the bodily form as its only appropriate existence.

Now, romantic art dissolves the inseparable unity which is the ideal of the classical type, because it has won a content which goes beyond the classical form of art and its mode of expression. This content--if familiar ideas may be recalled--coincides with what Christianity declares to be true of God as Spirit, in distinction to the Greek belief in gods which constitutes the essential and appropriate subject for classical art. The concrete content of Hellenic art implies the unity of the human and divine nature, a unity which, just because it is merely _implied_ and _immediate_, permits of a representation in an immediately visible and sensuous mold. The Greek god is the object of naïve contemplation and sensuous imagination; his shape is, therefore, the bodily shape of man; the circle of his power and his essence is individual and confined. To man the Greek god appears as a being and a power with whom he may _feel_ a kinship and unity, but this kinship and unity, are not reflected upon or raised into definite knowledge. The higher stage is the _knowledge_ of this unconscious unity, which underlies the classical form of art and which it has rendered capable of complete plastic embodiment. The elevation of what is unconscious and implied into self-conscious knowledge brings about an enormous difference; it is the infinite difference which, for example, separates man from the animal. Man is an animal, but, even in his animal functions, does not rest satisfied with the potential and the unconscious as the animal does, but becomes conscious of them, reflects upon them, and raises them--as, for instance, the process of digestion--into self-conscious science. And it is thus that man breaks through the boundary of his merely immediate and unconscious existence, so that, just because he knows himself to be animal, he ceases in virtue of such knowledge to be animal, and, through such self-knowledge only, can characterize himself as mind or spirit.

If in the manner just described the unity of the human and divine nature is raised from an _immediate_ to a _conscious,_ unity, the true mold for the reality of this content is no longer the sensuous, immediate existence of the spiritual, the bodily frame of man, but self-consciousness and internal contemplation. For this reason Christianity, in depicting God as Spirit--not as particularized individual mind, but as absolute and universal Spirit--retires from the sensuousness of imagination into the sphere of inner being, and makes this, and not the bodily form, the material and mold of its content; and thus the unity of the human and divine nature is a conscious unity, capable of realization only by spiritual knowledge. The new content, won by this unity, is not dependent upon sensuous representation; it is now exempt from such immediate existence. In this way, however, romantic art becomes art which transcends itself, carrying on this process of self-transcendence within its own artistic sphere and artistic form.

Briefly stated, the essence of romantic art consists in the artistic object being the free, concrete, spiritual idea itself, which is revealed in its spirituality to the inner, and not the outer, eye. In conformity with such a content, art can, in a sense, not work for sensuous perception, but must aim at the inner mood, which completely fuses with its object, at the most subjective inner shrine, at the heart, the feeling, which, as spiritual feeling, longs for freedom within itself and seeks and finds reconciliation only within the inner recesses of the spirit. This _inner_ world is the content of romantic art, and as such an inner life, or as its reflection, it must seek embodiment. The inner life thus triumphs over the outer world--indeed, so triumphs over it that the outer world itself is made to proclaim its victory, through which the sensuous appearance sinks into worthlessness.

On the other hand, the romantic type of art, like every other, needs an external mode of expression. But the spiritual has now retired from the outer mode into itself, and the sensuous externality of form assumes again, as it did in symbolic art, an insignificant and transient character. The subjective, finite mind and will, the peculiarity and caprice of the individual, of character, action, or of incident and plot, assume likewise the character they had in symbolic art. The external side of things is surrendered to accident and committed to the excesses of the imagination, whose caprice now mirrors existence as it is, now chooses to distort the objects of the outer world into a bizarre and grotesque medley, for the external form no longer possesses a meaning and significance, as in classical art, on its own account and for it own sake. Feeling is now everything. It finds its artistic reflection, not in the world of external things and their forms, but in its own expression; and in every incident and accident of life, in every misfortune, grief, and even crime, feeling preserves or regains its healing power of reconciliation.

Hence, the indifference, incongruity, and antagonism of spiritual idea and sensuous form, the characteristics of symbolic art, reappear in the romantic type, but with this essential difference. In the romantic realm, the spiritual idea, to whose defectiveness was due the defective forms of symbolic art, now reveals itself in its perfection within mind and feeling. It is by virtue of the higher perfection of the idea that it shuns any adequate union with an external form, since it can seek and attain its true reality and expression best within itself.

This, in general terms, is the character of the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art, which stand for the three relations of the spiritual idea to its expression in the realm of art. They consist in the aspiration after, and the attainment and transcendence of, the ideal as the true idea of beauty.

THE PARTICULAR ARTS

But, now, there inhere in the idea of beauty different modifications which art translates into sensuous forms. And we find a fundamental principle by which the several particular arts may be arranged and defined--that is, the species of art contain in themselves the same essential differences which we have found in the three general types of art. External objectivity, moreover, into which these types are molded by means of a sensuous and particular material, renders them independent and separate means of realizing different artistic functions, as far as each type finds its definite character in some one definite external material whose mode of portrayal determines its adequate realization. Furthermore, the general types of art correspond to the several particular arts, so that they (the particular arts) belong each of them _specifically_ to _one_ of the general types of art. It is these particular arts which give adequate and artistic external being to the general types.

ARCHITECTURE

The first of the particular arts with which, according to their fundamental principle, we have to begin, is architecture. Its task consists in so shaping external inorganic nature that it becomes homogeneous with mind, as an artistic outer world. The material of architecture is matter itself in its immediate externality as a heavy mass subject to mechanical laws, and its forms remain the forms of inorganic nature, but are merely arranged and ordered in accordance with the abstract rules of the understanding, the rules of symmetry. But in such material and in such forms the ideal as concrete spirituality cannot be realized; the reality which is represented in them remains, therefore, alien to the spiritual idea, as something external which it has not penetrated or with which it has but a remote and abstract relation. Hence the fundamental type of architecture is the _symbolical_ form of art. For it is architecture that paves the way, as it were, for the adequate realization of the God, toiling and wrestling in his service with external nature, and seeking to extricate it from the chaos of finitude and the abortiveness of chance. By this means it levels a space for the God, frames his external surroundings, and builds him his temple as the place for inner contemplation and for reflection upon the eternal objects of the spirit. It raises an inclosure around those gathered together, as a defense against the threatening of the wind, against rain, the thunder-storm, and wild beasts, and reveals the will to gather together, though externally, yet in accordance with the artistic form. A meaning such as this, the art of architecture is able to mold into its material and its forms with more or less success, according as the determinate nature of the content which it seeks to embody is more significant or more trivial, more concrete or more abstract, more deeply rooted within its inner being or more dim and superficial. Indeed, it may even advance so far as to endeavor to create for such meaning an adequate artistic expression with its material and forms, but in such an attempt it has already overstepped the bounds of its own sphere, and inclines towards sculpture, the higher phase of art. For the limit of architecture lies precisely in this, that it refers to the spiritual as an internal essence in contrast with the external forms of its art, and thus whatever spirit and soul are possessed it must point to as something other than itself.

SCULPTURE

Architecture, however, has purified the inorganic external world, has given it symmetric order, has impressed upon it the seal of mind, and the temple of the God, the house of his community, stands ready. Into this temple now enters the God himself. The lightning-flash of individuality strikes the inert mass, permeates it, and a form no longer merely symmetrical, but infinite and spiritual, concentrates and molds its adequate bodily shape. This is the task of sculpture. Inasmuch as in it the inner spiritual element, which architecture can no more than hint at, completely abides with the sensuous form and its external matter, and as both sides are so merged into each other that neither predominates, sculpture has the _classical_ form of art as its fundamental type. In fact, the sensuous realm itself can command no expression which could not be that of the spiritual sphere, just as, conversely, no spiritual content can attain perfect plasticity in sculpture which is incapable of being adequately presented to perception in bodily form. It is sculpture which arrests for our vision the spirit in its bodily frame, in immediate unity with it, and in an attitude of peace and repose; and the form in turn is animated by the content of spiritual individuality. Therefore the external sensuous matter is here not wrought, either according to its mechanical quality alone, as heavy mass, nor in forms peculiar to inorganic nature, nor as indifferent to color, etc., but in ideal forms of the human shape, and in the whole of the spatial dimensions. In this last respect sculpture should be credited with having first revealed the inner and spiritual essence in its eternal repose and essential self-possession. To such repose and unity with itself corresponds only that external element which itself persists in unity and repose. Such an element is the form taken in its abstract spatiality. The spirit which sculpture represents is that which is solid in itself, not variously broken up in the play of contingencies and passions; nor does its external form admit of the portrayal of such a manifold play, but it holds to this one side only, to the abstraction of space in the totality of its dimensions.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMANTIC ARTS

After architecture has built the temple and the hand of sculpture has placed inside it the statue of the God, then this sensuously visible God faces in the spacious halls of his house the _community_. The community is the spiritual, self-reflecting element in this sensuous realm, it is the animating subjectivity and inner life. A new principle of art begins with it. Both the content of art and the medium which embodies it in outward form now demand particularization, individualization, and the subjective mode of expressing these. The solid unity which the God possesses in sculpture breaks up into the plurality of inner individual lives, whose unity is not sensuous, but essentially ideal.

And now God comes to assume the aspect which makes him truly spiritual. As a hither-and-thither, as an alternation between the unity within himself and his realization in subjective knowledge and individual consciousness, as well as in the common and unified life of the many individuals, he is genuinely Spirit--the Spirit in his community. In his community God is released from the abstractness of a mysterious self-identity, as well as from the naïve imprisonment in a bodily shape, in which he is represented by sculpture. Here he is exalted into spirituality, subjectivity, and knowledge. For this reason the higher content of art is now this spirituality in its absolute form. But since what chiefly reveals itself in this stage is not the serene repose of God in himself, but rather his appearance, his being, and his manifestation to others, the objects of artistic representation are now the most varied subjective expressions of life and activity for their own sake, as human passions, deeds, events, and, in general, the wide range of human feeling, will, and resignation. In accordance with this content, the sensuous element must differentiate and show itself adequate to the expression of subjective feeling. Such different media are furnished by color, by the musical sound, and finally by the sound as the mere indication of inner intuitions and ideas; and thus as different forms of realizing the spiritual content of art by means of these media we obtain painting, music, and poetry. The sensuous media employed in these arts being individualized and in their essence recognized as ideal, they correspond most effectively to the spiritual content of art, and the union between spiritual meaning and sensuous expression develops, therefore, into greater intimacy than was possible in the case of architecture and sculpture. This intimate unity, however, is due wholly to the subjective side.

Leaving, then, the symbolic spirit of architecture and the classical ideal of sculpture behind, these new arts in which form and content are raised to an ideal level borrow their type from the _romantic_ form of art, whose mode of expression they are most eminently fitted to voice. They form, however, a totality of arts, because the romantic type is the most concrete in itself.

PAINTING

The first art in this totality, which is akin to sculpture, is painting. The material which it uses for its content and for the sensuous expression of that content is visibility as such, in so far as it is individualized, viz., specified as color. To be sure, the media employed in architecture and sculpture are also visible and colored, but they are not, as in painting, visibility as such, not the simple light which contrasts itself with darkness and in combination with it becomes color. This visibility as a subjective and ideal attribute, requires neither, like architecture, the abstract mechanical form of mass which we find in heavy matter, nor, like sculpture, the three dimensions of sensuous space, even though in concentrated and organic plasticity, but the visibility which appertains to painting has its differences on a more ideal level, in the particular kinds of color; and thus painting frees art from the sensuous completeness in space peculiar to material things only, by confining itself to a plane surface.

On the other hand, the content also gains in varied particularization. Whatever can find room in the human heart, as emotion, idea, and purpose, whatever it is able to frame into a deed, all this variety of material can constitute the many-colored content of painting. The whole range of particular existence, from the highest aspirations of the mind down to the most isolated objects of nature, can obtain a place in this art. For even finite nature, in its particular scenes and aspects, can here appear, if only some allusion to a spiritual element makes it akin to thought and feeling.

MUSIC

The second art in which the romantic form finds realization, on still a higher level than in painting, is music. Its material, though still sensuous, advances to a deeper subjectivity and greater specification. The idealization of the sensuous, music brings about by negating space. In music the indifferent extension of space whose appearance painting admits and consciously imitates is concentrated and idealized into a single point. But in the form of a motion and tremor of the material body within itself, this single point becomes a concrete and active process within the idealization of matter. Such an incipient ideality of matter which no longer appears under the spatial form, but as temporal ideality, is sound the sensuous acknowledged as ideal, whose abstract visibility is transformed into audibility. Sound, as it were, exempts the ideal from its absorption in matter.

This earliest animation and inspiration of matter furnishes the medium for the inner and intimate life of the spirit, as yet on an indefinite level; it is through the tones of music that the heart pours out its whole scale of feelings and passions. Thus as sculpture constitutes the central point between architecture and the arts of romantic subjectivity, so music forms the centre of the romantic arts, and represents the point of transition between abstract spatial sensuousness, which belongs to painting, and the abstract spirituality of poetry. Within itself music has, like architecture, an abstract quantitative relation, as a contrast to its inward and emotional quality; it also has as its basis a permanent law to which the tones with their combinations and successions must conform.

POETRY

For the third and most spiritual expression of the romantic form of art, we must look to poetry. Its characteristic peculiarity lies in the power with which it subjugates to the mind and to its ideas the sensuous element from which music and painting began to set art free. For sound, the one external medium of which poetry avails itself, is in it no longer a feeling of the tone itself, but is a sign which is, by itself, meaningless. This sign, moreover, is a sign of an idea which has become concrete, and not merely of indefinite feeling and of its _nuances_ and grades. By this means the tone becomes the _word_, an articulate voice, whose function it is to indicate thoughts and ideas. The negative point to which music had advanced now reveals itself in poetry as the completely concrete point, as the spirit or the self-consciousness of the individual, which spontaneously unites the infinite space of its ideas with the time-element of sound. But this sensuous element which, in music, was still in immediate union with inner feelings and moods, is, in poetry, divorced from the content of consciousness, for in poetry the mind determines this content on its own account and for the sake of its ideas, and while it employs sound to express them, yet sound itself is reduced to a symbol with out value or meaning. From this point of view sound may just as well be considered a mere letter, for the audible, like the visible, is now relegated to a mere suggestion of mind. Thus the genuine mode of poetic representation is the inner perception and the poetic imagination itself. And since all types of art share in this mode, poetry runs through them all, and develops itself independently in each. Poetry, then, is the universal art of the spirit which has attained inner freedom, and which does not depend for its realization upon external sensuous matter, but expatiates only in the inner space and inner time of the ideas and feelings. But just in this, its highest phase, art oversteps the bounds of its own sphere by abandoning the harmoniously sensuous mode of portraying the spirit and by passing from the poetry of imagination into the prose of thought.

SUMMARY

Such, then, is the organic totality of the several arts the external art of architecture, the objective art of sculpture, and the subjective arts of painting, music, and poetry. The higher principle from which these are derived we have found in the types of art, the symbolic, the classical, and the romantic, which form the universal phases of the idea of beauty itself. Thus symbolic art finds its most adequate reality and most perfect application in architecture, in which it is self-complete, and is not yet reduced, so to speak, to the inorganic medium for another art. The classical form of art, on the other hand, attains its most complete realization in sculpture, while it accepts architecture only as forming an inclosure round its products and is as yet not capable of developing painting and music as absolute expressions of its meaning. The romantic type of art, finally, seizes upon painting, music, and poetry as its essential and adequate modes of expression. Poetry, however, is in conformity with all types of the beautiful and extends over them all, because its characteristic element is the esthetic imagination, and imagination is necessary for every product of art, to whatever type it may belong.

Thus what the particular arts realize in individual artistic creations are, according to the philosophic conception, simply the universal types of the self-unfolding idea of beauty. Out of the external realization of this idea arises the wide Pantheon of art, whose architect and builder is the self-developing spirit of beauty, for the completion of which, however, the history of the world will require its evolution of countless ages.

THE LIFE OF BETTINA VON ARNIM

BY HENRY WOOD, PH.D. Professor of German, Johns Hopkins University

The ten years succeeding the publication of _Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde_ (1835) coincided in point of time with the awakening in England, through Thomas Carlyle, and in America as well, of an intense if not yet profound interest in German Literature. It must remain a tribute to the ideal enthusiasm of the movement that, among the first German works to receive a permanent welcome and become domiciled in American literary circles, was that strange and glittering mass, flotsam of a great poet's life dislodged and jettisoned from his personality by the subtle arts of the "Child" who had now gathered it up again and was presenting it to the astonished world. At a time when the _Foreign Quarterly Review_ in England (1838) was vainly endeavoring to persuade "Madame von Arnim" not to undertake the translation of her work, "whose unrestrained effusions far exceed the-bounds authorized by English decorum," Margaret Fuller was preparing in Boston to translate Bettina's _Günderode_, and soon felt herself in a position to state[3] that "_Goethe's Correspondence with a Child_ is as popular here as in Germany." In one respect, indeed, Bettina's vogue in America remained for the rest of her lifetime more secure than in her own country, where the publication of her later politico-sociological works, _Dies Buch gehört dem König_ (1843) and _Gespräche mit Dämonen_ (1852), was followed by a temporary eclipse of her popularity, and where also her fate, in persistently associating her with Rahel, the wife of Varnhagen, as a foil for Rahel's brilliant but transitory glitter, had tarnished her own fame.[4]

For these things American readers of the _Correspondence_ seem to have cared but little. While German critics were deliberating as to what grouping of characteristics could best express Bettina as a type, the American public had already discovered in her a rare personality--the recipient and custodian of Frau Rat's fondest memories of Goethe's childhood; the "mythological nurse-maid,"[5] to whom, though in her proper name as well as to her first-born son, successive editions of Grimm's _Fairy Tales_ had been dedicated; the youthful friend of Beethoven, from whom she had received treasured confidences as to the influence exerted by Goethe's verse upon his mind and art; at times the haunting Muse of Germany's greatest poet and, since 1811, the wife of the most chivalrous of German poets, Achim von Arnim. If we add to these characteristics the circumstance that, as Arnim's wife and as the mother of their rarely endowed children, she had become the centre of a distinguished and devoted circle in the Mark Brandenburg and in the Prussian capital, the distance separating us from Ben Jonson's attitude in his Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke is no longer very great: "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother."[6]

It is, nevertheless, not through the aid of Ben Jonson's line, "fair and wise and good as she," that Bettina may be described. She suggests far rather an electrical, inspired, lyrical nature. The spokesman of this literary estimate of Bettina was Margaret Fuller, and it is interesting to note that this best of American critics at once instituted a comparison between Bettina and Karoline von Günderode, in which the former was made to stand for Nature and the latter for Art. But it appears to have escaped notice that Margaret Fuller, in presenting her example of the artistic type, has, with no express intention, given us a picture of herself.[7] The subtle harmonies, the soft aerial grace, the multiplied traits, the soul delicately appareled, the soft dignity of each look and gesture, the silvery spiritual clearness of an angel's lyre, drawing from every form of life its eternal meaning--these are all lineaments of the Countess of Pembroke type, and these characteristics Margaret Fuller herself shared. How different is her description of Bettina!

"Bettina, hovering from object to object, drawing new tides of vital energy from all, living freshly alike in man and tree, loving the breath of the damp earth as well as the flower which springs from it, bounding over the fences of society as well as over the fences of the field, intoxicated with the apprehension of each new mystery, never hushed into silence by the highest, flying and singing like a bird, sobbing with the hopelessness of an infant, prophetic, yet astonished at the fulfilment of each prophecy, restless, fearless, clinging to love, yet unwearied in experiment--is not this the pervasive vital force, cause of the effect which we call Nature?"

On the part of both Goethe and Bettina, there was always a recognition of such a natural force operating in her. As Günderode once put it, "Bettina seems like clay, which a divine artificer, preparing to fashion it into something rare, is treading with his feet." On the 13th of August, 1807, Bettina wrote: "Farewell, glorious one, thou who dost both dazzle and intimidate me. From this steep cliff [Goethe] upon which my love has risked the climb, there is no possible path down again. That is not to be thought of; I should simply break my neck." Goethe's reply, in this as in other cases, was characteristic: "What can one say or give to thee, which thou hast not after thy own fashion already appropriated? There is nothing left for me but to keep still, and let thee have thy way." In this passage-at-arms, the whole of the _Correspondence_, though not its charm, is concentrated. Goethe was intent on keeping the relationship within its first limitations, that is to say, as a friendship in which his mother, Frau Rat, was included as a necessary third party. The impetuous young _confidante_ was already transmitting to Goethe chapters from the history of his childhood, as seen through the communications of his mother to her. These had given the poet the purest pleasure, and he intended making use of them for his Autobiography.[8] But, on the other hand, as soon as Bettina risked independent judgments on his creations, as in the case of the _Elective Affinities_ (1809), her inadequacy and her presumption in claiming for herself the rôle of a better Ottilie were both painfully apparent. Her attitude toward the adored object was a combination of meekness and pretension, the latter predominating as time went on. "It was sung at my cradle, that I must love a star that should always remain apart. But thou [Goethe] hast sung me a cradle song, and to that song, which lulls me into a dream on the fate of my days, I must listen to the end of my days." To this humility succeeded the self-deception of the so-called later Diary. Under date of March 22, 1832, Bettina relates that Goethe, at their last interview in the early days, had called her his Muse. Hence, on learning of his death, she reproached herself for ever having left him--"the tree of whose fame, with its eternally budding shoots, had been committed to my care. Alas for the false world, which separated us, and led me, poor blind child, away from my master!" Margaret Fuller[9] called Goethe "my parent." But how sharp is the contrast between her tone of reverent affection and the umbrageous jealousy of Bettina!

And Goethe? While the poet safeguarded his fatherly relation to Bettina, up to the break in 1811, in a hundred ways, we find him already, in 1807, inclosing in a letter to his mother the text of Sonnet I., which had been inspired, in the first instance, by his friendship with Minna Herzlieb. Bettina, left to draw her own conclusions, at once identified herself with "Oreas" in the sonnet, and reproached herself for having plunged, like a mountain avalanche, into the broad, full current of the poet's life. From the letter of September 17th it is plain that Bettina indulged, in all seriousness, the fanciful notion that her inspiration was, in a sense, necessary to Goethe's fame. In her fond, mystical interpretation of the sonnets, her heart seems to her the fruitful furrow, the earth-womb, in which Goethe's songs are sown, and out of which, accompanied by birth-pangs for her, they are destined to soar aloft as heavenly poems. She closes with a partial application to herself of the Biblical text (Luke 1. 40): "Blessed art thou among women."

Goethe's detractors, particularly among the literary school called Young Germany, were fond of repeating the insinuation of Fanny Tarnow (1835), that the poet prized in Bettina only her capacity for idolizing him. But Goethe's attitude toward the "Child" was far removed from that of poet-pasha, and Bettina had nothing of the vacuous odalisque in her composition. G. von Löper has well said of her composite traits: "The tender radiance of first youth hovers over her descriptions; but, while one is beholding, Bettina suddenly changes into a mischievous elf, and, if we reach out to grasp the kobold, lo! a sibyl stands before us!" Behind all Bettina's mobility there is a force of individuality, as irresistible and as recurrent as the tides. Her brother Clemens and her brother-in-law Savigny tried in vain to temper the violence of her enthusiasm for the insurgent Tyrolese, of her flaming patriotism, of her hatred of philistinism in every form, of her scorn for the then fashionable neutrality and moderation in the expression of political opinion.

She was by nature and choice the advocate of the oppressed, whenever and wherever met with. The aristocratic _élégant_ Rumohr was obliged to put up with the following from her: "Why are you not willing to exchange your boredom, your melancholy caprices, for a rifle? With your figure, slender as a birch, you could leap over abysses and spring from rock to rock; but you are lazy and infected with the disease of neutrality. You cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the enemy? On, on, for God, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero, fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, they must lack thee awhile."

The end of poets' friendships with literary women is not always marked by an anticlimax. Of Margaret Fuller, Emerson wrote in the privacy of his Journal: "I have no friend whom I more wish to be immortal than she. An influence I cannot spare, but would always have at hand for recourse." Words like these Bettina was continually listening for from her poet-idol, but she heard instead only the disillusioning echo of her own enthusiasms. Possessing neither stability of mind nor any consistent roundness of character, she was incapable of rendering herself necessary to Goethe. In her case, however, the gifts that were denied at her cradle seem to have been more than made up to her. Her ardent and aspiring soul, shutting out "all thoughts, all passions, all delights" else, was distilled into longing to share in the unending life of Goethe's poesy.[10]

Through the possession of this quality, Bettina, though not herself of heroic mold, enters the society of the great heroines and speaks to posterity. Ariadne on the island of Naxos lives not more truly in Ovid's poetical _Epistles_, than Bettina in the _Correspondence_. But Bettina has not, like Ariadne, had immortality conferred upon her through the verses of two great poets. She has rather taken it for herself, as Goethe said she was wont to do, in anticipating every gift. It is accordingly not in the _Elegiacs_ of Ovid, flowing as a counter-stream to Lethe, that we may discern Bettina's gesture of immortal repose as a metamorphosed heroine. She is a type of the inspired lyrical nature, a belated child of the Renaissance. A graceful English song-writer of the Elizabethan period, Thomas Campion, who was as fond as Bettina of the figure of the flower and the sun, through which she symbolized her relation to Goethe, has in his verses anticipated her pose and her tone of agitated expectancy:

"Is [he] come? O how near is [he]? How far yet from this friendly place? How many steps from me? When shall I [him] embrace?

These armes I'll spread, which only at (his) sight shall close, Attending, as the starry flower that the sun's noone-tide knowes."

Campion termed his verses _Light Conceits of Lovers_. It is difficult to weigh Bettina's fancies, for she has, as it were, taken the scales with her when she closed the _Correspondence:_ but it is only just to say of her Letters, that they realize, as a whole, Tasso's description of the permanent state of the true lover: "Brama assai, poco spera e nulla chiede" (Desire much, hope little and nothing demand).

GOETHE'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH A CHILD (1835)

BY BETTINA VON ARNIM TRANSLATED BY WALLACE SMITH MURRAY

LETTERS TO GOETHE'S MOTHER

May 11, 1807.

Dear Frau Rat:

I have been lying in bed for some time, but shall get up now to write you all about our trip. I wrote you that we passed through the military lines in male attire. Just before we reached the city gate my brother-in-law made us get out, because he wanted to see how becoming the clothes were. Lulu looked very well in them, for she has a splendid figure and the fit was perfect, whereas all my clothes were too loose and too long and looked as if I had bought them at a rag fair. My brother-in-law laughed at me and said I looked like a Savoyard boy and could be of great service to them. The coachman had driven us off the road through a forest, and when we came to a cross-road he didn't know which way to turn. Although it was only the beginning of the four weeks' trip, I was afraid we might get lost and then arrive in Weimar too late. I climbed up the highest pine and soon saw where the main road lay. I made the whole trip on the driver's box, with a fox-skin cap on my head and the brush hanging down my back. Whenever we arrived at a station, I would unharness the horses and help hitch up the fresh ones, and would speak broken German with the postilions as though I were a Frenchman. At first we had beautiful weather, just as though spring were coming; but soon it turned very cold and wintry. We passed through a forest of huge pines and firs all covered with frost; everything was spotless, for not a soul had driven along the road, which was absolutely white. Moreover the moon shone upon this deserted paradise of silver; a death-like stillness reigned-only the wheels creaked from the cold. I sat up on the box and wasn't a bit cold; winter weather strikes sparks from me! Along toward midnight we heard some one whistling in the forest. My brother-in-law handed me a pistol out of the carriage and asked whether I should have the courage to shoot in case robbers came along. I said "Yes," and he answered, "But don't shoot too soon." Lulu, who was inside the carriage, was frightened nearly to death, but where I was, out under the open sky, with my pistol cocked and my sabre buckled on, countless stars twinkled above me, the glistening trees casting their gigantic shadows on the broad, moon-lit way--all that made me brave away up on my lofty seat! Then I thought of _him_ and wondered, if he had met me under such circumstances in his youthful years, whether it would not have made so poetic an impression on him that he would have composed sonnets to me and never have forgotten me. Now perhaps he thinks differently, and has probably risen above such a magic impression. It may be that higher qualities--how shall I ever attain them?--will maintain a right over him, unless eternal fidelity, cleaving to his threshold, finally wins _him_ for me! Such was my mood on that cold, clear, winter night, in which I found no occasion to shoot off my pistol. Not until daybreak did I receive permission to fire it. The carriage stopped and I ran into the forest and bravely shot it off into the dense solitude, in honor of your son. In the meantime our axle had broken; we felled a tree with an axe we had with us and bound it securely with ropes; then my brother-in-law discovered how handy I was and complimented me. Thus we went on to Magdeburg. Precisely at seven o'clock in the evening the fortress gates are closed; we arrived just a minute late and had to wait outside till seven the next morning. It wasn't very cold, and the two inside the chaise went to sleep. In the night it began to snow; I had pulled my cloak over my head and sat quietly in my exposed seat. In the morning they peeped out of the carriage at me and beheld a snow man; but before they could get thoroughly frightened I threw off the cloak under which I had kept quite warm. In Berlin I was like a blind man in a throng and was so absent-minded that I could take no interest in anything. I only longed for a dark place where I shouldn't be disturbed and could think of the future that was so near at hand. Oh, mother, mother, think of your son! If you knew you were to see him in a short time, you too would be like a lightning-rod attracting every flash of lightning. When we were only a few miles from Weimar, my brother-in-law said he did not wish to make the detour through Weimar, but would rather take another road. I remained silent, but Lulu would not hear of it; she said it had been promised me and he would have to keep his word. Oh, mother, the sword hung by a hair over my head, but I managed to escape from under it.

We reached Weimar at twelve o'clock and sat down to dinner, but I couldn't eat. The other two lay down on the sofa and went to sleep, for we hadn't slept in three nights. "I advise you," said my brother-in-law, "to take a rest too; it won't make much difference to Goethe whether you go to see him or not, and there's nothing remarkable to see in him anyway." Can you imagine how these words discouraged me? Oh, I didn't know what to do, all alone in a strange town. I had changed my dress and stood at the window and looked at the town clock; it was just striking half-past two. It seemed to me, too, that Goethe wouldn't care particularly about seeing me; I remembered that people called him proud. I compresses my heart to quell its yearning. Suddenly the clock struck three, and then it seemed exactly as though he had called me. I ran down for the servant, but there was no carriage to be found. "Will a sedan chair do?" "No," I said, "that's an equipage for the hospital"--and we went on foot. There was a regular chocolate porridge in the streets and I had to have myself carried over the worst bogs. In this way I came to Wieland, not to your son. I had never seen Wieland, but I pretended to be an old acquaintance. He thought and thought, and finally said, "You certainly are a dear familiar angel, but I can't seem to remember when and where I have seen you." I jested with him and said, "Now I know that you dream of me, for you can't possibly have seen me elsewhere!" I had him give me a note to your son which I afterwards took with me and kept as a souvenir. Here's a copy of it: "Bettina Brentano, Sophie's sister, Maximilian's daughter, Sophie La Roche's granddaughter wishes to see you, dear brother, and pretends that she's afraid of you and that a note from me would serve as a talisman and give her courage. Although I am pretty certain that she is merely making sport of me, I nevertheless have to do what she wants and I shall be astonished if you don't have the same experience. W.

April 23, 1807."

With this note I sallied forth. The house lies opposite the fountain--how deafening the waters sounded in my ears! I ascended the simple staircase; in the wall stand plaster statues which impose silence--at any rate I couldn't utter a sound in this sacred hallway. Everything is cheery and yet solemn! The greatest simplicity prevails in the rooms, and yet it is all so inviting! "Do not fear," said the modest walls, "he will come, and he will be, and he will not claim to be _more_ than you." And then the door opened and there he stood, solemnly serious, with his eyes fixed upon me. I stretched out my hands toward him, I believe, and soon I knew no more. Goethe caught me up quickly to his heart. "Poor child, did I frighten you?"--those were the first words through which his voice thrilled my heart. He led me into his room and placed me on the sofa opposite him. There we sat, both mute, until at last he broke the silence. "You have doubtless read in the paper that we suffered a great bereavement a few days ago in the death of the Duchess Amalia."

"Oh," I said, "I do not read the papers."

"Why, I thought everything that goes on in Weimar interests you."

"No, nothing interests me but you alone, and therefore I'm far too impatient to pore over the papers."

"You are a kind child." A long pause--I, glued in such anxiety to the odious sofa; you know how impossible it is for me to sit up in such well-bred fashion. Oh, mother, is it possible for any one to forget herself thus?

Suddenly I said, "I can't stay here on this sofa any longer," and jumped up.

"Well," said he, "make yourself comfortable;" and with that I flew into his arms. He drew me on his knee and pressed me to his heart. Everything was quiet, oh, so quiet, and then all vanished. I hadn't slept for so long--years had passed in longing for him--and I fell asleep on his breast. When I awoke a new life began for me. I'll not write you more this time.

BETTINA.

May, 1807.

* * * Yes, man has a conscience; it exhorts him to fear nothing and to leave no demand of the heart unsatisfied. Passion is the only key to the world and through it the spirit learns to know and feel everything, for how could he enter the world otherwise? And so I feel that only through my love for him am I born into the spirit, that only through him the world is opened to me where the sun shines and day becomes distinct from night. The things I do not learn through this love, I shall never comprehend. I wish I were a poor beggar girl and might sit at his door-step, and take a morsel of bread from him, and that in my glance my soul would be revealed to him. Then he would draw me close to him and wrap me in his cloak, that I might grow warm. Surely he would not bid me depart; I could remain, wandering on and on in his home. And so the years would roll by and no one would know who I am and no one would know what had become of me, and thus the years and life itself would go by. The whole world would be mirrored in his face, and I should have no need of learning anything more.* * *

October, 1808.

* * * I hadn't yet seen him at that time when you used to while away for me those hours of ardent longing by picturing to me in a thousand different ways our first meeting and his joyous astonishment. Now I know him and I know how he smiles and the tone of his voice--how calm it is and yet so full of love; and his exclamations--how they come swelling from the depths of his heart like the tones of a melody, and how gently he soothes and affirms what surges forth in wild disorder from an overflowing heart. When I met him so unexpectedly again last year, I was so beside myself and wanted to speak, but simply could not compose myself. Then he placed his fingers on my lips and said, "Speak with your eyes--I understand it all"; and when he saw that they were full of tears he pressed my eyelids down and said; "Quiet, quiet, that is best for both of us!" Yes, dear mother, quiet was instantly suffused through my whole being, for didn't I possess everything for which I had longed for years! Oh, mother, I shall never cease thanking you for bearing this friend; where else could I have found him? Now don't laugh at me, but remember that I loved him before I knew the least thing about him, and if you had not borne him what would have become of him? That is a question you cannot answer.

* * * Thus a part of the winter passed. I was in a very happy frame of mind--others might call it exaltation, but it was natural to me. By the fortress wall that surrounded the large garden there was a watch-tower with a broken ladder inside. A house close by had been broken into, and though the thieves could not be traced it was believed they were concealed in the tower. I had examined it by day and seen that it would be impossible for a strong man to climb up this very high ladder, which was rotten and lacked many rungs. I tried it, but slid down again after I had gone up a short distance. In the night, after I had lain in bed awhile and Meline was asleep, the thought left me no peace. I threw a cloak about my shoulders, climbed out of the window, and walked by the old Marburg castle, where the Elector Philip and Elizabeth peeped laughingly out of the window. Often enough in the daytime I had observed this marble couple leaning far out of the window arm in arm, as though they wanted to survey their lands; but now at night I was so afraid of them that I jumped quickly into the tower. There I seized the ladder and helped myself up, heaven knows how; what I was unable to do in the daytime I accomplished at night with anxiously throbbing heart. When I was almost at the top, I stopped and considered that the thieves might really be up there and that they might attack me and hurl me from the tower. There I hung, not knowing whether to climb up or down, but the fresh air I scented lured me to the top. What feelings came over me when I suddenly, by snow and moonlight, surveyed the landscape spread out beneath me and stood there, alone and safe, with the great host of stars above me! Thus it is after death; the soul, striving to free itself, feels the burden of the body most as it is about to cast it off, but it is victorious in the end and relieved of its anguish. I was conscious only of being alone and nothing was closer to me at that moment than my solitude; all else had to vanish before this blessing. * * *

LETTERS _to_ GOETHE.

May 25, 1807.

* * * Ah, I can impart nothing else to thee than simply that which goes on in my heart! "Oh, if I could be with him now!" I thought, "the sunlight of my joy would beam on him with radiance as glowing as when his eye meets mine in friendly greeting. Oh, how splendid! My mind a sky of purple, my words the warm dew of love; my soul must issue like an unveiled bride from her chamber and confess: "Oh, lord and master, in the future I will see thee often and long by day, and the day shall often be closed by such an evening as this."

This I promise--that whatever goes on in my soul, all that is untouched by the outer world, shall be secretly and faithfully revealed to him who takes such loving interest in me and whose all-embracing power assures abundant, fruitful nourishment to the budding germs within my breast!

Without faith the lot of the soul is hard; its growth is slow and meagre like that of a hot-plant between rocks. Thus am I--thus I was until today--and this fountain of my heart, always without an outlet, suddenly finds its way to the light, and banks of balsam-breathing fields, blooming like paradise, accompany it on its way.

Oh, Goethe! My longing, my feelings, are melodies seeking a song to cling to! May I cling to thee? Then shall these melodies ascend high enough to accompany _thy_ songs!* * *

June 20, 1807.

* * * I cannot resist telling thee what I have dreamed of thee at night--as if thou wert in the world for no other purpose. Often I have had the same dream and I have pondered much why my soul should always commune with thee under the same conditions. It is always as though I were to dance before thee in ethereal garments. I have a feeling that I shall accomplish all. The crowd surrounds me. Now I seek thee, and thou sittest opposite me calm and serene as if thou didst not observe me and wert busy with other things. Now I step out before thee with shoes of gold and my silvery arms hanging down carelessly--and wait. Then thou raisest thy head, involuntarily thy gaze is fixed upon me as I describe magic circles with airy tread. Thy eye leaves me no more; thou must follow me in my movements, and I experience the triumph of success! All that thou scarcely divinest I reveal to thee in the dance, and thou art astonished at the wisdom concealed in it. Soon I cast off my airy robe and show thee my wings and mount on high! Then I rejoice to see thy eye following me, and I glide to earth again and sink into thy embrace. Then thou sighest and gazest at me in rapture. Waking from these dreams I return to mankind as from a distant land; their voices seem so strange and their demeanor too! And now let me confess that my tears are flowing at this confession of my dreams. * * *

March 15, 1808.

When in a few weeks I go into the Rhine country, for spring will be here then, I shall write thee from every mountain; I am always so much nearer thee when I am outside the city walls. I sometimes seem to feel thee then with every breath I take. I feel thee reigning in my heart when it is beautiful without, when the air caresses; yes, when nature is good and kind like thee, then I feel thee so distinctly! * * *

* * * All other men seem to me as one and the same--I do not distinguish between them, and I take no interest in the great universal sea of human events. The stream of life bears thee, and thou me. In thy arms I shall pass over it, and thou wilt bear me until the end--wilt thou not? And even though there were thousands of existences yet to come, I can not take wing to them, for with thee I am at home. So be thou also at home in me--or dost thou know anything better than me and thee in the magic circle of life? * * *

March 30, 1808.

* * * The vineyards were still partially covered with snow. I was sitting on a broken window-bar and freezing, yet my ardent love for thee permeated my being. I was trembling for fear of falling, yet I climbed still higher because it occurred to me too venturesome for thy sake; thus thou often inspirest me with daring. It was fortunate that the wild wolves from the Odenwald[11] did not appear, for I should have grappled with them had I thought of thy honor. It seems foolish, but it's true.--Midnight, the evil hour of spirits, awakens me, and I lie at the window in the cold winter wind. All Frankfurt is dead, the wicks in the street lamps are on the point of expiring, and the old rusty weather-vanes cry out to me, and I ask myself, is that the eternal tune? Then I feel that this life is a prison where we all have only a pitiful vision of real freedom; that is one's own soul. Then a tumult rages in my breast and I long to soar above these old pointed gabled roofs that cut off heaven from me. I leave my chamber, run through the wide halls of our house, and search for a way through the old garrets. I suspect there are ghosts behind the rafters, but I do not heed them. Then I seek the steps to the little turret, and, when I am at last on top, I look out through the small window at the wide heavens and am not at all cold. It seems to me then as if I must give vent to all my pent-up tears, and the next day I am so cheerful and feel new-born, and I look with cunning for a prank to play. And--canst thou believe it?--all this is--thou!

May, 1808.

If it pleases thee to see me at thy feet in deep shame and confusion, then look down upon me now. Thus does the poor shepherd-maiden fare, on whose head the king places a crown; even though her heart be proud to love him, yet the crown is too heavy and her little head staggers under the burden. And besides, she is intoxicated with the honor and the homage which her beloved pays her.

Oh, I shall be careful never to complain again or to pray for fine weather, for I cannot bear the blinding sunbeams! No, rather sigh in silent darkness than be led by thy muse into the brilliant daylight, confused and crowned--that breaks my heart. O, do not gaze on me so long; remove the crown and press me to thy heart! Teach me to forget in thee that thou returnest me, glorified, to myself.

July 7, 1808.

* * * Ah, the rainbow even now setting its diamond foot on the meadow at Ingelheim and reaching over the house to Mount St. John is just like the blissful illusion I have of thee and me! The Rhine, spreading out its net to catch the vision of its banks of paradise, is like this flame of life nourished by reflections of the unattainable. Let it then win nothing more from reality than this illusion; it will give to me the peculiar spirit and the character expressive of my own self, just as the reflection does to the river in which it is mirrored. * * *

July 18, 1808.

* * * Yesterday evening I went up the Rochus mountain alone and wrote thee thus far; then I dreamed a little, and when I came to myself I thought the sun was just going down, but it was the rising moon. I was astonished and should have been afraid, but the stars wouldn't let me--these hundreds of thousands and _I_ together on that night. Who am I, then, that I should be of raid? Am I not numbered with them? I didn't dare descend and, besides, I shouldn't have found a boat to cross in. The nights aren't so very long now, anyway, so I turned over on the other side, said "good night" to the stars and was soon fast asleep. Now and then I was awakened by flitting breezes, and then I thought of thee. As often as I awoke I called thee to me and always said in my heart: "Goethe be with me, that I may not be afraid." Then I dreamed that I was floating along the reedy banks of the Rhine, and where it is deepest between black rocky cliffs the ring thou gavest me slipped off. I saw it sinking deeper and deeper till it reached the bottom. I wanted to call for help, but then I awoke in the radiance of the morning, rejoicing that the ring was still on my finger. Ah, prophet, interpret my dream for me! Anticipate fate, and let no dangers beset our love after this beautiful night when, betwixt fear and joy, in counsel with the stars, I thought of thy future!

* * * No one knows where I was--and, even if they did, could they imagine why I was there? Thou tamest toward me through the whispering forest, enveloped in a soft haze, and when thou wert quite near me my tired senses could not endure it, so strong was the fragrance of the wild thyme. Then I fell asleep--it was so beautiful--all blossoms and fragrance! And the great boundless host of stars and the flickering silver moon that danced near and far upon the stream, the intense stillness of nature in which one hears all that stirs--ah, I feel my soul implanted here in this nocturnal trembling! Future thoughts are blossoming here; these cold dew-pearls that weigh down grass and herbs, from these the spirit grows! Oh, it hastens to blossom for _thee_, Goethe! It will unfold its gayest colors before thee! It is for love of thee that I wish to think, that I struggle with the inexpressible. Thou lookest upon me in spirit and thy gaze draws thoughts from me, and then I am often compelled to say things I do not understand but only see.

The spirit also has senses. Just as there is much that we only hear, or only see, or only feel, so there are thoughts which the spirit also perceives with only one of these senses. Often I only see what I am thinking; often I only feel it, and when I hear it I experience a shock. I do not know how I come by this knowledge which is not the fruit of my own meditation. I look about me for the author of this opinion and then conclude that it is all created from the fire of love. There is warmth in the spirit; we feel it; the cheeks glow from our thoughts and cold chills come over us, which fan our inspiration into new flame. Yes, dear friend, this morning when I awoke it seemed to me as though I had experienced great things, as though the pledges of my heart had wings and soared over hill and dale into the pure, serene, radiant ether. No vow, no conditions--nothing but appropriate motion, pure striving for the divine. This is my pledge: Freedom from all ties, and that I will have faith only in that spirit which reveals the beautiful and prophesies eternal bliss. * * *

We were on the road five days, and since then it has rained incessantly. The whole house full of guests, and not even a little corner where I could enjoy solitude and write thee!

As long as I have anything to tell thee, I firmly believe that thy spirit is fixed upon me as upon so many enigmas of nature. In fact, I believe that every human being is such an enigma, and that the mission of love between friends is to solve that enigma so that each shall learn to know his deeper nature through and in his friend. Yes, dearest, it makes me happy that my life is gradually developing through thee, and for that reason I do not want to seem what I am not; I should prefer to have all my faults and weaknesses known to thee rather than give thee a false conception of what I am, for then thy love would not concern me but rather an illusion that I had substituted for myself. For that reason, also, a feeling often warns me that I must avoid this or that for love of thee, because I should deny it in thy presence.

From the Rochusberg.

Oh, Goethe, thy letters are so dear to me that I have tied them up in a silk kerchief embroidered with bright flowers and golden ornaments. The last day before our Rhine trip I did not know what to do with them. I did not want to take them along, since we had only one portmanteau between us, and I did not want to leave them in my little room, which I could not lock because it was being used; I thought the boat might sink and I drown--and then these letters, one after the other of which has reposed close to my heart, would fall into strange hands. At first I wanted to leave them with the nuns in Vollratz (they are St. Bernard nuns who were driven from their convent and are now living there), but I changed my mind afterwards. The last time I was up here on the mountain I found a spot. Beneath the confession-chair still standing in the Rochus chapel, in which I'm also in the habit of keeping my writings, I dug a hole and lined it on the inside with shells from the Rhine and beautiful little pebbles that I found on the mountain. I placed the letters in it, wrapped in their silken covering, and before the spot planted a thistle which I had pulled up carefully by the roots together with the earth about them. On the journey I was often worried about them; what a shock it would have been if I had not found them again! My heart stands still at the very thought of it!

August 24, 1808.

* * * It was midnight; the moon rose dim. The ship, whose shadow sailed along beside it, like a monster, upon the illuminated Rhine, cast a dazzling light upon the woody meadow of Ingelheim along which it was moving. The moon appeared behind the meadow, mild and modest, and gradually wrapped itself in a thin cloud of mist as in a veil. Whenever we contemplate nature in calm meditation, it always lays hold of our heartstrings. What could have turned my senses more fervently to God, what could have more easily freed me from the trivial things that oppress me? I am not ashamed to confess to thee that at that moment thy image flamed up impetuously in my soul. It is true: Thy radiance pierces me as the sun pours into the crystal of the grape and, like the sun, thou dost ripen me with ever increasing fire and ever increasing purity. * * *

February 23, 1809.

If thy imagination is supple enough to accompany me into all the recesses of ruined walls, over mountains and chasms, then I shall venture farther and introduce thee to the recesses of my heart.

I beg thee, therefore, to climb up here, still higher, up three flights to my room; sit on the blue stool by the green table opposite me. I merely want to gaze at thee--and, Goethe--does thy imagination still follow me?--then thou must discover the most constant love in my eyes, and must draw me lovingly into thy arms, and say, "Such a faithful child is given me as a reward, as amends, for much! This child is dear to me, 'tis a treasure, a precious jewel that I do not wish to lose." Dost thou understand? And thou must kiss me, for that is what _my_ imagination bestows on thine!

I shall lead thee still farther! Step softly into the chamber of my heart-here we are in the vestibule--utter stillness--no Humboldt--no architect--no barking dog. Thou art not a stranger; go up and knock; it will be alone and call to thee "Come in!" Thou wilt find it on a cool, quiet couch, and a friendly light will greet thee. All will be peace and order, and thou wilt be welcome! What is that? Heavens! See the flames shooting up over him! Whence this conflagration? Who can save here? Poor heart! Poor, suffering heart! What can reason accomplish here? It knows everything better and yet can not help; its arms drop helpless by its side. * * *

Good night, good night until tomorrow! Everything is quiet and all in the house are asleep dreaming of the things they desire when awake; but I alone am awake with thee. Outside, on the street, all is still. I should like to be assured that at this moment no soul besides mine is thinking of thee, that no other heart gives a throb for thee, and that I alone in the wide world am sitting at thy feet, my heart beating with full strokes. And while all are asleep I am awake in order to press thy knee to my breast--and thou?--the world need not know that thou lovest me!

October 23, 1809.

The moon is shining from afar over the mountains and winter clouds drive by in droves. I have been standing at the window awhile and watching the tumult in the heavens. Dear Goethe! Good Goethe! I am all alone; it has taken me out of myself again and up to thee. I must nurse this love between us like a new-born babe. Beautiful butterflies balance themselves on the flowers I have planted about his cradle, golden fables adorn his dreams; I jest and play with him, and employ all my cunning to gain his favor. But thou dost master it without effort by the splendid harmony of thy spirit; with thee there is no need of tender outbursts, of protestations. While I look after each moment of the present, the power of blessing emanates from thee that transcends all reason and all the universe. * * *

Last night I dreamed of thee! What could have been more beautiful? Thou wast serious and very busy and didst ask me not to disturb thee. That made me sad and then thou didst press my hand tenderly to my bosom and didst say, "Be quiet; I know thee and understand all." Then I awoke, and thy ring, which I had pressed to myself in my sleep, had left its imprint on my bosom. I pressed it more firmly against the same spot, since I could not embrace thee. Is there nothing, then, in a dream? To me it is everything, and I will gladly give up the activities of the day if I can be with thee and speak with thee at night. Oh, be thou my happiness in my dreams!

Munich, November 9, 1809.

* * * This is my vow: I will gather flowers for thee and bright garlands shall adorn thy entrance; should thy foot stumble, it will be over the wreaths which I have laid on thy threshold, and shouldst thou dream, it is the balsam of magic blossoms that intoxicates thee--flowers of a strange and distant world where I am at home and not a stranger as in this book[12] where a ravenous tiger devours the delicate image of spiritual love. I do not understand this cruel riddle; I cannot comprehend why they all make themselves unhappy and why they all serve a malicious demon with a thorny sceptre, why Charlotte, who strews incense before him daily, yes, hourly, should prepare misfortune for them all with mathematical precision! Is not love free? Are those two not affinities? Why should she prevent them from living this innocent life with and near each other? They are twins; twined round each other they ripen on to their birth into the light, and she would separate these seedlings because she cannot believe in innocence, which she inoculates with the monstrous sin of prejudice! O what a fatal precaution!

Let me tell you: No one seems to comprehend ideal love; they all believe in sensual love, and consequently they neither experience nor bestow any happiness that springs from that higher emotion or might be fully realized through it. Whatever may fall to my lot, let it be through this ideal love that tears down all barriers to new worlds of art, divination, and poetry. Naturally it can live only in a noble element just as it feels at home only in a lofty mind.

Here thy Mignon occurs to me--how she dances blindfolded between eggs. My love is adroit; you can rely thoroughly on its instinct; it will also dance on blindly, and will make no misstep. * * *

November 29, 1809.

I had written thus far yesterday, when I crept into bed from fear, but I could not succeed yesterday in falling asleep at thy feet, lost in contemplation of thee as I do every evening. I was ashamed that I had chattered so arrogantly, and perhaps all is not as I mean it. Maybe it is jealousy that excites me so and impels me to seek a way to draw thee to me again and make thee forget _her_.[13]

Well, put me to the test, and, be it as it may, do not forget my love. Forgive me also for sending thee my diary. I wrote it on the Rhine and have spread out before thee my childhood years and shown thee how our mutual affinity drove me on like a rivulet hastening on over crags and rocks, through thorns and mosses, till thou, mighty stream, didst engulf me. Yes, I wanted to keep this book until I should at last be with thee again, so that I might tell by looking into thy eyes in the morning what thou hadst read in it the evening before. But now it torments me to think of thee substituting my diary for Ottilie's, and loving the living one who remains with thee more than the one who has departed from thee.

Do not burn my letters, do not tear them up, for it might give thee pain--so firmly, so absolutely, am I joined to thee. But do not show them to any one; keep them concealed like a secret beauty, for my love is becoming to thee; thou art beautiful because thou feelest thyself loved!

February 29, 1810.

I will confess to thee and honestly acknowledge all my sins--first, those for which thou art partly responsible and which thou too must expiate with me, then those which weigh most heavily on me, and finally those in which I actually rejoice.

First: I tell thee too often that I love thee, yet I know nothing else, no matter how, much I turn it one way or the other; that's all there is.

Secondly: I am jealous of all thy friends, the playmates of thy youth, the sun that shines into thy room, thy servants, and, above all, thy gardener that lays out the asparagus-beds at thy command.

Thirdly: I begrudge thee all pleasure because I am not along. When any one has seen thee and speaks of thy gaiety and charm, it does not please me particularly; but when he says thou wast serious, cool, and reserved, then I am delighted!

Fourthly: I neglect every one for thy sake; nobody is anything to me, and I don't care anything about their love; indeed, if any one praises me, he displeased me. That is jealousy of thee and me, and by no means a proof of a generous heart; it is a sign of a wretched character that withers on one side when it would blossom on the other.

Fifthly: I have a great inclination to despise everybody, especially those that praise thee, and I cannot bear to hear anything good said of thee. Only a few simple persons can I allow to speak of thee, and it need not be praise at that. No, they may even make fun of thee a little, and then, I can tell thee, an unmerciful roguishness comes over me when I can throw off the chains of slavery for a brief spell.

Sixthly: I have a deep resentment in my soul that it is not thee with whom I live under the same roof and with whom I breathe the same air. I am afraid to be near strangers. In church I look for a seat on the beggars' bench, because they are the most neutral; the finer the people, the stronger my aversion. To be touched makes me angry, ill, and unhappy, and so I cannot stand it long in society at dances. I am fond of dancing, could I but dance alone in the open where the breath of strangers would not touch me. What influence would it have on the soul if one could always live near one's friend?--all the more painful the struggle against that which must remain forever estranged, spiritually as well as physically.

Seventhly: When I have to listen to any one reading aloud in company, I sit in a corner and secretly hold my ears shut or, at the first word that comes along, completely lose myself in thoughts. Then, when some one does not understand, I awaken out of another world and presume to supply the explanation, and what the rest consider madness is all reasonable enough to me and consistent with an inner knowledge that I cannot impart. Above all, I cannot bear to hear anything read from thy works, nor can I bear to read them aloud; I must be alone with me and thee.

Vienna, May 28, 1810.

It is Beethoven of whom I want to speak now, and in whom I have forgotten the world and thee. I may not be qualified to judge, but I am not mistaken when I say (what perhaps no one now realizes or believes) that he is far in advance of the culture of all mankind, and I wonder whether we can ever catch up with him! I doubt it. I only hope that he may live until the mighty and sublime enigma that lies in his soul may have reached its highest and ripest perfection. May he reach his highest ideal, for then he will surely leave in our hands the key to a divine knowledge which will bring us one step nearer true bliss!

To thee I may confess that I believe in a divine magic which is the element of spiritual nature, and this magic Beethoven employs in his music. All he can teach thee about it is pure magic; every combination of sounds is a phase of a higher existence, and for this reason Beethoven feels that he is the founder of a new sensuous basis in the spiritual life. Thou wilt probably be able to feel intuitively what I am trying to say, and that it is true. Who could replace this spirit? From whom could we expect anything equivalent to it? All human activity passes to and fro before him like clockwork; he alone creates freely from his inmost self the undreamed of, the untreated. What would intercourse with the outside world profit this man, who is at his sacred work before sunrise and scarcely looks about him before sunset, who forgets bodily nourishment, and who is borne in his flight by the stream of inspiration past the shores of superficial, everyday life. He himself said to me, "Whenever I open my eyes I cannot but sigh, for all I see is counter to my religion and I must despise the world which does not comprehend that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. It is the wine which inspires new creations, and I am the Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and intoxicates their spirit! * * * I have no friend and must ever be alone, but I know that God is nearer to me in my art than to others, and I commune with him without fear; I have always recognized Him and understood Him. Nor have I any fears for my music; it can meet no evil fate, for he to whom it makes itself intelligible will be freed from all misery with which others are burdened."

All this Beethoven said to me the first time I saw him, and I was penetrated with a feeling of reverence when he expressed himself to me with such friendly candor, since I must have seemed very unimportant to him. Besides, I was astonished, for I had been told that he was exceedingly reticent and avoided conversation with any one; in fact, they were afraid to introduce me to him, so I had to look him up alone. He has three dwellings in which he alternately conceals himself--one in the country, one in the city, and the third on the bastion, in the third story of which I found him. I entered unannounced and mentioned my name. He was seated at the piano and was quite amiable. He inquired whether I did not wish to hear a song that he had just composed. Then he sang, in a shrill and piercing voice, so that the plaintiveness reacted upon the listener, "Knowest thou the land?" "It is beautiful, isn't it, very beautiful!" he cried, enraptured; "I'll sing it again;" and was delighted at my ready applause. "Most people are stirred by something good, but they are not artistic natures; artists are fiery--they do not weep." Then he sang one of thy songs that he had composed lately, "Dry not, Tears of Eternal Love."

Yesterday I went for a walk with him through a beautiful garden at Schönbrunn that was in full blossom; all the hothouses were open and the fragrance was overpowering. Beethoven stopped in the burning sun and said, "Goethe's poems exercise a great power over me, not alone through their content, but also through their rhythm, and I am incited and moved to compose by his language, which is built up as if by the aid of spirits into a sublime structure that bears within it the mystery of harmonies. Then from the focus of my inspiration I must let the melody stream forth in every direction; I pursue it, passionately overtake it again, see it escaping me a second time and disappearing in a host of varying emotions; soon I seize it with renewed ardor; I can no longer separate myself from it, but with impetuous rapture I must reproduce it in all modulations, and, in the final moment, I triumph over the musical idea--and that, you see, is a symphony! Yes, music is truly the mediator between the spiritual and the sensuous world. I should like to discuss this with Goethe; I wonder whether he would understand me! Melody is the sensuous life of poetry. Does not the spiritual content of a poem become sensuous feeling through melody? Do we not in the song of Mignon feel her whole sensuous mood through melody, and does not this sensation incite one in turn to new creations? Then the spirit longs to expand to boundless universality where everything together forms a channel for the _feelings_ that spring from the simple musical thought and that otherwise would die away unnoted. This is harmony; this is expressed in my symphonies; the blending of manifold forms rolls on to the goal in a single channel. At such moments one feels that something eternal, infinite, something that can never be wholly comprehended, lies in all things spiritual; and although I always have the feeling of success in my compositions, yet with the last stroke of the drum with which I have driven home my own enjoyment, my musical conviction, to my hearers, I feel an eternal hunger to begin anew, like a child, what a moment before seemed to me to have been exhausted.

"Speak to Goethe of me; and tell him to hear my symphonies. Then he will agree with me that music is the sole incorporeal entrance into a higher world of knowledge which, to be sure, embraces man, but which he, on the other hand, can never embrace. Rhythm of the spirit is necessary to comprehend music in its essence; music imparts presentiments, inspirations of divine science, and what the spirit experiences of the sensuous in it is the embodiment of spiritual knowledge. Although the spirits live upon music as man lives upon air, it is a very different matter to _comprehend_ it with the spirit. But the more the soul draws its sensuous nourishment from it, the riper the spirit becomes for a happy mutual understanding.

"But few ever attain this understanding, for just as thousands marry for love and yet love is never once revealed to them, although they all pursue the trade of love, so do thousands hold communion with music and yet do not possess its revelation. For music also has as its foundation the sublime tokens of the moral sense, just as every art does; every genuine invention indicates moral progress. To subject oneself to its inscrutable laws, to curb and guide one's spirit by means of these laws, so that it will pour forth the revelations of music--this is the isolating principle of art. To be dissolved by its revelation--that is the surrender to the divine, which quietly exercises its mastery over the delirium of unbridled forces and thus imparts the greatest efficacy to the imagination. Thus art always represents divinity, and the human relationship to art constitutes religion. Whatever we acquire through art comes from God; it is a divine inspiration, which sets up an attainable goal for human capacities.

"We do not know whence our knowledge comes; the firmly inclosed seed requires the warm, moist, electric soil to sprout, to think, to express itself. Music is the electric soil in which the soul lives, thinks, invents. Philosophy is a precipitation of its electric spirit, and the need that philosophy feels of basing everything on an ultimate principle is in turn relieved by music. Although the spirit is not master of what it creates through the mediation of music, yet it experiences ecstasy in this creation. In this way every genuine creation of art is independent, mightier than the artist himself, and through its expression it returns to its divine source; it is concerned with man only insomuch as it bears witness to divine mediation in him.

"Music gives the spirit its relation to harmony. A thought, even when isolated, still senses the totality of relationship in the spirit; thus every thought in music is most intimately and inseparably related to the totality of harmony, which is unity. Everything electric stimulates the spirit to fluent, precipitous, musical creation. I myself am of an electrical nature." * * *

He took me to a grand rehearsal with full orchestra, and I sat back in a box all alone in the large, unlighted hall, and saw this mighty spirit wield his authority. Oh, Goethe I No emperor, no king, is so conscious of his power, so conscious that all power radiates from him, as this same Beethoven is, who only now in the garden was searching for the source of his inspiration. If I understood him as I feel him, I should be omniscient. There he stood, so firmly resolved, his gestures and features expressing the perfection of his creation, anticipating every error, every misconception; every breath obeyed his will, and everything was set into the most rational activity by the superb presence of his spirit. One might well prophesy that such a spirit will reappear in a later reincarnation as ruler of the universe!

November 4, 1810.

Dost thou want me to tell thee of bygone days, how, when thy spirit was revealed to me, I gained control over my own spirit in order the more perfectly to embrace and love thine? And why should I not become dizzy with ecstasy? Is the prospect of a fall so fearful after all? Just as the precious jewel, touched by a single ray of light, reflects a thousand colors, so also thy beauty, illumined only by the ray of my enthusiasm, will be enriched a thousandfold.

It is only when everything is comprehended that the Something can prove its full worth, and so thou wilt understand when I tell thee that the bed in which thy mother brought thee into the world had blue checkered hangings. She was eighteen years old at the time, and had been married a year. In this connection she remarked that thou wouldst remain forever young and that thy heart would never grow old, since thou hadst received thy mother's youth into the bargain. Thou didst ponder the matter for three days before thou didst decide to come into the world, and thy mother was in great pain. Angry that necessity had driven thee from thy nature-abode and because of the bungling of the nurse, thou didst arrive quite black and with no signs of life. They laid thee in a so-called butcher's tray and bathed thee in wine, quite despairing of thy life. Thy grandmother stood behind the bed, and when thou didst open thine eyes she cried out, "Frau Rat, he lives!" "Then my maternal heart awoke and it has lived in unceasing enthusiasm to this very hour," said thy mother to me in her seventy-fifth year. Thy grandfather, one of the most honored citizens of Frankfurt and at that time syndic, always applied good as well as bad fortune to the welfare of the city, and so thy difficult birth resulted in an accoucher being appointed for the poor. "Even in his cradle he was a blessing to mankind," said thy mother. She gave thee her breast but thou couldst not be induced to take nourishment, and so a nurse was procured for thee. "Since he drank from her with such appetite and comfort and we discovered that I had no milk," she said, "we soon noticed that he was wiser than all of us when he wouldn't take nourishment from me."

Now that thou art born at last I can pause a little; now that thou art in the world, each moment is dear enough to me to linger over it, and I have no desire to call up the second moment, since it will drive me away from the first. "Where'er thou art are love and goodness, where'er thou art is nature too." Now I shall wait till thou writest me again, "Pray go on with thy story." Then I shall first ask, "Well, where did we leave off?" and then I shall tell thee of thy grandparents, thy dreams, thy beauty, pride, love, etc. Amen.

"Frau Rat, he lives!" These words always thrilled me through and through whenever thy mother uttered them in exultant tones. Of thy birth we may well say:

The sword that threatens danger Hangs often by a thread; But the blessing of eternity On us one gracious glance may shed.

Extract from a letter written in 1822, ten years after the breach in their relations.

To give perfect expression to thee would probably be the most powerful seal of my love, indeed, being a creation of divine nature, it would prove my affinity to thee. It would be an enigma solved, like unto a long restrained mountain torrent which at last penetrates to the light, enduring the tremendous fall in voluptuous rapture, at a moment of life through which and after which a higher existence begins.

Thou destroyer, who hast taken my free will from me; thou creator, who hast produced within me the sensation of awakening, who hast convulsed me with a thousand electric sparks from the realm of sacred nature! Through thee I learned to love the curling of the tender vine, and the tears of my longing have fallen on its frost-kissed fruits; for thy sake I have kissed the young grass, for thy sake offered my open bosom to the dew; for thy sake I have listened intently when the butterfly and the bee swarmed about me, for I wanted to feel _thee_ in the sacred sphere of thy enjoyments. Oh, thou; toy in disguise with thy beloved--could I help, after I had divined thy secret, becoming intoxicated with love for thee?

Canst thou divine the thrills that shook me when the trees poured down their fragrance and their blossoms upon me? For I thought and felt and firmly believed that it was _thy_ caressing of nature, _thy_ enjoyment of her beauty, that it was _her_ yearning, _her_ surrender to thee, that loosened these blossoms from their trembling boughs and sent them gently whirling into my lap.

BETTINA.

IMMERMANN AND HIS DRAMA "MERLIN"

BY MARTIN SCHÜTZE, PH.D. Associate Professor of German Literature, University of Chicago

Karl Lebrecht Immermann was born in Magdeburg, in April, 1796. His father, who held a good position in the Civil Service, was a very severe and domineering man; his mother, imaginative and over-indulgent. Karl's childhood and early youth were uneventful. After passing through the regular course of preparatory education in a "Gymnasium," he entered, in 1813, the University of Halle. During his first year there, Germany rose up to throw off the yoke of Napoleon, and the King of Prussia issued a proclamation calling the nation to arms, to which the people responded with unprecedented unanimity and enthusiasm. Schoolboys and bearded men, laborers and professional men, merchants and soldiers, united in one patriotic purpose. The regular army was everywhere supplemented by volunteer organizations. An epoch began which in its enthusiasm, its idealism, the force and richness of its inspiration, and its overwhelming impetus deserved, more than any other in modern history, its title: "The Spring of Nations."

Immermann's sensitive and responsive nature thrilled with the general impulse, and he asked his father to let him join the army, but was told, peremptorily, not to interrupt the first year of his studies. He submitted, and plunged into the study of the literature of the Romanticists, which, in its remoteness from actuality, offered distraction from his disappointment. During this time he fell ill of typhoid fever, from which he did not fully recover until the campaign had victoriously ended in the battle of Leipzig. He joined, however, after Napoleon's escape from Elba, the second campaign, in which he took part in two battles. At the end of the war, having retired as an officer of the reserves, he returned to Halle to finish his study of the law.

He found a new spirit dominant among the students. This spirit, characterized by a strongly democratic desire for national unity, pride of race, and impatience with external and conventional restraints, had a rich network of roots in the immediate past: in the individualism and the humanism of the Storm and Stress Movement and the Classic Era of the eighteenth century; in the subjective idealism of the Romantic school; in the nationalism of Klopstock, Herder, Schiller, and Fichte, and in the self-reliant transcendentalism of Kant's philosophy and Schleiermacher's theology. This spirit had received its political direction principally through the genius of the Baron von Stein, the Prussian statesman, whose aim was the restoration of German national unity. He believed that the political unity of Germany must rest on the soundness of the common people, rather than on the pretensions of the aristocracy whose corruption he held responsible for the decadence of the nation. Following the example of Frederick the Great, he tried to foster the simple virtues of the common man. He was, however, opposed to radicalism, seeing permanent progress only in order, self-discipline, and moderation. His leading idea, which was shared by such men as Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Niebuhr, and others, was that the principal task of the time was to arouse the whole nation to independent political thinking and activity, in order to develop self-confidence, courage, and devotion to a great unselfish ideal. These ideas became a national ideal, an active passion, under the pressure and stress of the Napoleonic usurpation and in the heat and fervor of war and victory.

It was unavoidable that this spirit produced among the younger men, and especially among the university students, traditionally unaccustomed to patience with restraints, many excesses, absurdities and follies. An extreme and tyrannical nativism, a tasteless archaism in dress, manner, and speech, an intolerant and aggressive democratic propaganda offended and bullied the more conservative. This spirit spread particularly through the agencies of the student fraternities called "Burschenschaften," and the athletic associations, the "Turners," advocated and fostered by Jahn.

Immermann became the mouthpiece of the conservatives among the students, and he went so far as to publish some pamphlets denouncing specific acts of violence of the leading radical fraternity, the "Teutonia." When the university authorities, who to a considerable extent sympathized with the radicals, neglected to act, Immermann addressed a complaint to the King. This move resulted in the dissolution of the accused fraternity and in governmental hostility to all fraternities, and brought the hatred and contempt of the radicals on Immermann.

Immermann acted undoubtedly from sincere motives, yet deserved much of the condemnation he suffered. He had not sufficient vision to penetrate through the objectionable and tasteless externalities of the liberal movement--with which he was unfairly preoccupied even at the time of _Die Epigonen_, a score of years later--to the greater and enduring core of the aspirations of the modern age. The petty things were too near to his eye and obscured the greater things which were further removed. He thought he upheld a higher principle of morality by applying the principles of von Stein to a new situation; but be failed to see the new, larger morality imbedded in much confusion. History has reversed his judgment.

After completing his studies he received a government appointment in the provincial capital of Westphalia, Muenster. Here, in this conservative old town, began one of the most extraordinary relations between man and woman in modern German literary history. Immermann fell in love with Countess Elisa von Luetzow-Ahlefeldt, wife of the famous old commander of volunteers, Brigadier-General von Luetzow. Elisa, an extremely gifted and spirited woman, had formed a circle of interesting people, in which her husband, a dashing soldier but a man of uninteresting mentality, played a very subordinate part. Immermann and Elisa struggled along against the tyranny of the affinity that drew them together. Immermann wrote a number of dramas, highly romantic, in which the passion and strife within him found varied expression. The play which made him known beyond his immediate circle, was _Cardenio and Celinde_, the conflict of which was suggested by his own.

Elisa was finally divorced from Luetzow. Immermann was appointed a judge in Magdeburg, and later in Duesseldorf. He asked Elisa to marry him. She refused, but offered to live with him in free companionship. They joined their lives, pledging themselves not to enter other relations. They remained together until 1839, less than a year before Immermann's death, when he married a young girl of nineteen. Elisa left his house in sorrow and bitterness. Immermann characterized his relation to her thus in a letter to his fiancée, in 1839: "I loved the countess deeply and purely when I was kindled by her flame. But she took such a strange position toward me that I never could have a pure, genuine, enduring joy in this love. There were delights, but no quiet gladness. I always felt as if a splendid comet had appeared on the horizon, but never as if the dear warm God's sun had risen."

His life with Elisa in Duesseldorf was rich in friends and works. The sculptor Schadow, the founder of the art school there, the dramatists von Uechtritz and Michael Beer, brother of Meyerbeer, were among his friends. He had intimate relations with Mendelssohn during the years of the latter's stay in Duesseldorf. He tried to assist Grabbe, the erratic and unfortunate dramatist. During three years he was manager of the Duesseldorf theatre, trying many valuable and idealistic experiments. He died August 25, 1840.

The most important of his works are _Das Trauerspiel in Tirol_, 1826, treating of the tragic story of Andreas Hofer; _Kaiser Friedrich II_., 1827, a drama of the Hohenstaufen; the comic heroic epic, _Tulifaentchen_, 1830, a satiric version of an heroic Tom Thumb; _Alexis_, 1832, a trilogy setting forth the destruction of the reforms begun by Peter the Great; _Merlin_, 1832; and his two novels, _Die Epigonen_, 1836, and _Münchhausen_, 1838-9.

In _Die Epigonen_, one of the long list of representatives of the species of novels which began with Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_, Immermann tried to present the development of a young man and a picture of the principal social forces of his period. But he was too imitative in following his great model, and too much confused by subjective preoccupations, to comprehend and to state clearly the substance of the matter.

Only two of his works have enduring value, his mystical tragedy _Merlin_, and the part of _Münchhausen_ called "Der Oberhof" (The Upper Farm), which deals with the lives and types of the small freehold farmers. Immermann, following Baron von Stein, believed that the health and future of society, endangered by the corrupt and dissipated nobility, rested, on the sturdy, self-reliant, individualistic yet severely moral and patriotic, small peasant. In the main character of the story, the rugged, proud, inflexibly honorable old farmer, who has inherited the sword of Charles the Great, he has drawn one of the most living characters in early modern German fiction. The other figures, too, are full of life and reality. The story has, aside from its importance in the history of the German novel, an enduring value of its own.

Immermann, in spite of his unremitting endeavor, failed to attain literary or moral greatness. He lacked the fundamental and organic unity of great natures. He had more qualities of mind than most of his important contemporaries, but in not one of these qualities did he attain to the degree which assures distinction. In his _Merlin_ he treated a conflict which was fundamentally similar to that of Grillparzer's _Libussa_. Yet Grillparzer, much more one-sided than he, possessed the true Romantic-mystic quality, whereas Immermann had to elaborate his symbolism with the patchwork of careful, allegoric analysis. He had a richer contact with social forces than Heine, yet his realizations of them were awkward and meagre, his humor wooden, his imagery derived. He had much greater intellectual force than Platen, yet he lacked the incisive and controlled critical sense of the latter. Having no one faculty to a distinguished degree, he constantly had to substitute the strained labor of one faculty for the spontaneous production of another. Predominantly rationalistic, he labored at the symbolistic vision of Romanticism; preëminently a man of prose, he endeavored all his life to be a great poet. He mistook the responsive excitement produced by the ideas and visions of others for authentic inspiration, the vivacity of a sociable and conversational gift for the creative force of genius, and the immobility of obvious and established conventional judgments for an extraordinary soundness and incisiveness of fundamental analysis.

There was in him, as he himself once said, a certain "aftertaste of a worthy philistinism." The dominant bent of his mind was toward the immediate actualities, and this bent in the end, as in his antagonism against the radical students in Halle, always overcame his endeavor to grasp the more remote realities of a larger vision.

The purposes of his literary works, like the beginning and purpose of his intimacy with Elisa, are always large, comprehensive, and idealistic, but they always, even in his most important work, _Merlin_, dwindle to petty details of actuality. His significance for the present age does not so much rest on his objective achievement, as on some of his qualities which prevented achievement. He was perhaps the most considerable representative of the literary "Epigones" intervening between the esthetic individualistic humanism of the eighteenth, and the economic-coöperative humanism of the nineteenth century. He, more fully perhaps than any of his contemporaries, represented the peculiar border-type of literary personality which is both compounded and torn asunder by all the principal conflicting forces of a period of historic transition. He was a victim of the manifold division of impulses, the ill-related patchwork of impressions, and the disconcerting refractions of vision, which characterized his contemporaries. It is in the fact that he united in himself the principal factors which made up the complexion of his age, to an extraordinary degree, that he has his strongest claim upon the sympathetic and studious interest of the modern age.

MERLIN: A MYTH

The principal dramatic agencies in _Merlin_ are Satan, Klingsor, Titurel, King Artus and his Round Table, Niniana, and Merlin. In them, Immermann tried to embody the dominant moral and intellectual tendencies, as he saw them in history and his own times. Satan, the demiurgos, is to him no theological devil, but a princely character, the "Lord of Necessity," the non-moral, irresistible, cosmic force of physical creation. He demands, expressing the faith of Young-Germany:

"O! naked bodies, insolent art, O! wrath of heroes, and heroic voice!"

The pride of life in him and in Lucifer, who personifies the creative fire, is aroused against the narrow asceticism of orthodox Christianity, embodied in the wan and feeble Titurel. Satan decides to imitate the Lord of Christianity, by begetting upon a virgin, Candida, a son who is to save the world from the sterility of asceticism. Candida is briefly introduced, acknowledging the power of the mighty spirit and bewailing her fate in one of the finest passages in the play. Merlin is born, combining the supernatural creative powers of his father with the tenderness and sympathy of his mother. His purpose is to reconcile the true principles of primitive Christianity with the natural impulses of life. Merlin thus is opposed to his father as well as to Titurel and his dull and narrow "guild" who keep the true spirit of humanity captive. He is both anti-Satan and anti-Christ.

He next comes into conflict with the third fundamental force, Klingsor. The latter is really only a variant of Satan and, while interesting, is somewhat less fundamental, being more a philosophic and literary, than an active, antagonist. His symbol is the circled serpent, the embodiment of permanence within the changing world of actuality. He represents the nature-philosophy of Romanticism and especially of Schelling, a philosophy so vast and unsubstantial that all values of conduct and all incentives to action disappeared in its featureless abyss. Immermann intensely disliked it. He was, as he said, a lover of men; the worship of nature drained and exhausted the sympathies, the wills and the spirits of men. The passages in which Klingsor himself, in his moments of despair, and Merlin expose the emptiness of this philosophy, are among the best philosophic statements of the play. They are, how ever, too exhaustive. But they are good philosophy, if they are bad drama and poetry. Klingsor says of the "nature book"

"It asserts: all is vain; nought but stale mediocrity--while we are shaken from, shell to core by the breath of the times." He is worshipped by the dwarfs because he has opened the mysteries of inanimate nature, and he commands the spirits of classical life represented by Antinous, and the pagan' gods and demi-gods, the personifications of the naïve impulses of nature. But he realizes that his wisdom, while it makes dwarfs happy, is inadequate for human beings.

The teaching of Merlin is essentially the humanism of the moderate liberalism of Baron von Stein and his followers. Klingsor, voicing the sentiments of Romantic aristocratism, accuses him:

"You tell the mob: Be your own Savior; seek inspiration in your own work. The people like to be told of their majesty. Keep on bravely lying, sweetly flattering, and the prophet is complete."

Merlin retorts:

"You describe yourself, not me. Men have a deep sense of truth, and pay in false coin only him that offers them false gifts." He then continues, lashing the transcendent egotism of the Romantic conception of man in the universe: "To you the earth, the ocean, the firmament, are nothing but a ladder for your own elevation, and you must absolutely reject the thing called humility. In order to maintain yourself strong and whole you have to find men weak and only partial beings," etc. Later, in lines _1637ff_., he proceeds, in what are probably the finest and richest passages in the work, to state his own purpose of combining all that is great, true, beautiful, human, and noble, into one comprehensive and rational faith of humanity.

Merlin tries to teach his faith to King Artus and his circle, who embody the frivolous, irresponsible, though refined, conduct of the nobility, essentially the same nobility whom von Stein accused of injuring the nation and Immermann satirized and exposed in _Münchhausen_. They decide to seek salvation in the primitive idealism of India, appointing Merlin their guide. Merlin, however, succumbs to the silly Niniana, the personification of wanton desire. She makes him tell her a fated word, after promising not to repeat it. She thoughtlessly repeats it. He now loses his superhuman power, i. e., the power of absolute spiritual integrity, and becomes subject to the limitations of earth, like a common man. He can no longer lead Artus and his court, who perish of their own spiritual vacuity.

The end of the play is unsatisfactory. The hero's surrender to the lust of the flesh, undoubtedly suggested by Goethe's _Faust_ and consistent in Goethe's poem, is foreign to the conflict of this play, which, not being human, as is that of _Faust_, but an abstract antagonism of general historic principles, should have been solved without the interference of the mere creature weaknesses of the hero and the mere creature sympathies of the reader. Immermann planned to untie the knot in a second part, which was to treat of the salvation of Merlin; but he never carried his purpose beyond a few slight introductory passages.

IMMERMANN'S "MÜNCHHAUSEN"

BY ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD, PH.D. Instructor in German, Columbia University

Immermann first thought of writing a new _Münchhausen_ in 1821, the year of his satirical comedy, _The Princes of Syracuse_, which contains the embryonic idea of this "history in arabesques." Conscientious performance of his duties as a judge and incessant activity as a writer along other lines forced the idea into the background until 1830, the year of his satirical epic, _Tulifäntchen_, in which the theme again received attention. In 1835 he finished _Die Epigonen_, a novel portraying the social and political conditions in Germany from 1815 to 1830, and in 1837 he began systematic work on _Münchhausen_, continuing, from a different point of view and in a different mood, his delineation of the civic and intellectual status of Germany of his own time. The last part of the entire work was published in 1839, having occupied, intermittently, eighteen of his twenty years of literary productivity. The first edition was exhausted one year after publication, a second appeared in 1841, a third in 1854, and since 1857 there have been many of all kinds, ranging from the popular "Reclam" to critical editions with all the helps and devices known to modern scholarship.

In so far as the just appreciation of a literary production is dependent upon a study of its genesis, the reading of _Die Epigonen_ is necessary to a complete understanding of _Münchhausen_, for through these two works runs a strong thread of unbroken development. Hermann, the immature hero of the former, and his associates, bequeath a number of characteristics to the title-hero and his associates of the latter; but where the earlier work is predominantly sarcastic, political, and pessimistic, the later one is humorous, intellectual, and optimistic. It would seem, therefore, that, in view of its bright outlook, mature view, and sympathetic treatment, Immermann's greatest epic in prose was destined to be read in its entirety, frequently, and with pleasure.

This is, however, not the case. Starting from a long line of models, Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_ among others, _Münchhausen_ resembles the diffusive works of similar title by Raspe (1785) and Bürger (1787). It takes its name from Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Baron of Münchhausen (1720-1797), and satirizes many of the whimsicalities of Herman Ludwig Heinrich, Prince of Pückler-Muskau (1785-1871). And it flagellates again and again such bizarre literary and intellectual phenomena of the time as Raupach's Hohenstaufen dramas, Görres' mysticism, Menzel's calumniations, Eduard Gans' liberalism, Bettina's pretensions, Young Germany's reaction, even the Indian studies of the Schlegels and Alexander von Humboldt's substantial scholarship, so that, for the general reader, the larger part of the work is a sealed book. Its references are obscure, its satire abstruse, its humor vague. Even Ferdinand Freiligrath, Immermann's contemporary and friend, declined, on the ground of lack of familiarity with the allusions, to write a commentary to it.

According to Immermann's own statement, he began _Münchhausen_ without a shimmer of an idea as to how he would finish it; but he finished it, having in the meantime gone through a complete inner transformation, in a way that surprised even himself and greatly pleased his readers. We have here, consequently, a novel which, though written as a whole, falls naturally into two parts, the one negative and satirical, the other positive and human. And odd indeed is the situation in the negative part.

As in _Die Epigonen_, the scene is laid in Westphalia. The impoverished Baron Schnuck-Puckelig-Erbsenscheucher, a faithful representative of the narrow-minded and prejudiced nobility, lives with his prudish, sentimental daughter, Emerentia, in the dilapidated castle, Schnick Schnack-Schnurr. Their sole companion is the daft school-teacher, Agesel, who, having lost, from too much study of phonetics, the major part of his never gigantic mind, imagines that he is a direct descendant of the Spartan King Agesilaus. With these occupants and no more, the castle resembles a harmless home for the insane. But one day Münchhausen, the prince of liars and chief of swindlers, accompanied by his servant, Karl Buttervogel, the Sancho Panza of the story, comes to the castle. His presence enlivens; his interminable stories, through which Immermann satirizes the tendencies of the time, delight at first, then tire, then become intolerable. To maintain his influence, he suggests to the old Baron the establishment of a stock company for the selling of compressed air, assuring this gullible old soul that hereby his fortunes can be retrieved and his appointment as Privy Councilor can be realized. The Baron, though pleased, enters into the proposition with caution. But Münchhausen, unable to execute his scheme, finds himself in an embarrassing dilemma from which he disentangles himself by mysteriously disappearing and never again coming to light. Emerentia has in the meantime fallen in love with Karl Buttervogel, whom she erroneously looks upon as a Prince in disguise. At the prospect of so humble a son-in-law, the Baron becomes frantic, violently removes Buttervogel from the castle, which, as a result of the Baron's ravings, falls to the ground with a crash and a roar--a catastrophe which reminds one of Poe's _Fall of the House of Usher_--and the Baron and Agesel are restored to their senses.

The chief trouble with this fantastic story is that it lacks artistic measure and objective plausibility. Immermann, omnivorous reader that he was, wrote this part of his book, not from life, but from other books. And even granting that he carried out his plan with a reasonable degree of cleverness, the average reader is not sufficiently acquainted with Kerner and Platen and their long line of queer contemporaries to see the point, so he skips over this part of the work and turns at once to _Der Oberhof_.

It is needless to state that Immermann never wrote a work with such a title. Editors and publishers have simply followed the lead of readers and brought out separately the best parts of the complete novel under the heading of the third chapter of the second book. There is not even final agreement as to how much of the original work should be included in order to make a well-rounded story. The editions, of which there are many, vary in size from seventy-five to three hundred and seventy-five octavo pages. The best arrangement is that which includes the second, fifth, seventh and eighth books.

Here again we meet with three leading characters--the very honest and reliable Hofschulze, the owner of the "Upper Farm," in whom are personified and glorified the best traditions of Westphalia; Lisbeth, the daughter of Münchhausen and Emerentia, the connecting link between romantic and realistic Germany; and Oswald, the Suabian Count disguised as a hunter, a thoroughly good fellow. But this by no means exhausts the list of pleasing personalities. The good Deacon, who had lost interest in life and faith in men while tutoring a young Swedish Count, and who was made over by his new work among the solid middle class of Westphalia, is a character of real charm; his ideals are humanitarian in the best sense, his wisdom is sound, his help generous. Jochem, Oswald's servant, is the incarnation of fidelity; the old Captain, who finds himself today in a French and tomorrow in a Prussian mood, is instructive at least, for such dualistic patriotism was not unknown at the time; the Collector follows his vocation with inspiring avidity, the Sexton is droll without knowing it, and each of the Hofschulze's servants has something about him that separates him from his confederates even though he be nameless. There are no supernumeraries among the characters.

By reason of her common sense and energy, Lisbeth had for some time kept the old Baron's head above water. One of her duties was to collect taxes, a business which frequently brought her to the "Upper Farm," where she was always sure of a kind reception. Oswald, too, came to the Farm one day to settle an affair of honor with Münchhausen. Instead of finding him, however, he meets Lisbeth, and here the love story begins.

While waiting at the Farm for Jochem to find Münchhausen, Oswald agrees to recompense the Hofschulze for his hospitality by keeping the wild deer away from the grain fields. His duties are nominal; he exchanges views with the men of the Farm, corresponds with his friends in Suabia, wanders over the fields and occasionally shoots at some game without ever hitting. His room must have been occupied before his arrival by a beautiful girl, for in it he finds a tidy hood and kerchief that betray the charms of their wearer, and he dreams of her at night. And one day, while wandering through the woods, he catches sight of a lovely girl looking into the calyx of a wonderful forest flower. He is on the point of going up to her when her very charm holds him back, and that night he dreams again of his beautiful predecessor in the Hofschulze's corner room.

And then, while wandering again through the pathless woods, he shoots at a roe but hits Lisbeth, the girl of his dreams. The wound is, however, slight, and by the time it has healed their love has become perfect, so that, immediately after the wedding of the Hofschulze's daughter, for whom Lisbeth had been a bridesmaid, and before the same altar at which the ceremony had just been performed, the good Deacon pronounces the blessing upon the newly betrothed pair.

With the Deacon's official act over, imaginary troubles cease and real ones begin. Oswald, grieved beyond expression to learn that Lisbeth is the daughter of Münchhausen and Emerentia, is on the point of leaving the Farm immediately and Lisbeth forever; Lisbeth, having thought all the time that her lover was a plain hunter, is in complete despair when told that he is a real Count; the Hofschulze does not take kindly to the idea of their marriage, for Oswald has not always revered Westphalian traditions, the secret tribunal, for example, as he should have done; Oswald's friends in Suabia object to his marrying a foundling, and advise him to come home and straighten out a love affair he has there before entering into a new and foreign one; the doctor is not even certain that the wedding is hygienically wise. But love dispels all fears and doubts, and the good Deacon makes Oswald and Lisbeth man and wife.

Immermann's lifelong attempts at the studied poetizations of traditional, aristocratic, high-flown themes brought him but scant recognition even in his day, and they have since been well-nigh forgotten. But when, one year before his death, he wrote an unpretentious love story taken from the life of simple people whom he met on his daily walks, he thereby assured himself of immortality. Few works prove more convincingly than _Der Oberhof_ that great literature is neither more nor less than an artistic visualization and faithful reflection of life. The reading of this unassuming "village story," the first of its kind in German literature, warms the heart and stirs the springs of living fancy, simply because it relates in terse and direct language a series of incidents in the lives of very possible and very real human beings.

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KARL LEBRECHT IMMERMANN

THE OBERHOF (1839) TRANSLATED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS