Part III.

System of the Particular Arts.

Under the head of “System of the Particular Arts,” Hegel sets forth, in this third part, the theory of each of the arts—_Architecture_, _Sculpture_, _Painting_, _Music_ and _Poetry_.

Before proceeding to the division of the arts, he glances at the different _styles_ which distinguish the different epochs of their development. He reduces them to three styles: the _simple_ or severe, the _ideal_ or beautiful, and the graceful.

1. At first the simple and natural style presents itself to us, but it is not the truly natural or true simplicity. That supposes a previous perfection. Primitive simplicity is gross, confused, rigid, inanimate. Art in its infancy is heavy and trifling, destitute of life and liberty, without expression, or with an exaggerated vivacity. Still harsh and rude in its commencements, it becomes by degrees master of form, and learns to unite it intimately with content. It arrives thus at a severe beauty. This style is the Beautiful in its lofty simplicity. It is restricted to reproducing a subject with its essential traits. Disdaining grace and ornament, it contents itself with the general and grand expression which springs from the subject, without the artist’s exhibiting himself and revealing his personality in it.

2. Next in order comes the beautiful style, the _ideal_ and pure style, which holds the mean between simple expression and a marked tendency to the graceful. Its character is vitality, combined with a calm and beautiful grandeur. Grace is not wanting, but there is rather a natural carelessness, a simple complacency, than the desire to please—a beauty indifferent to the exterior charms which blossom of themselves upon the surface. Such is the ideal of the beautiful style—the style of Phidias and Homer. It is the culminating point of art.

3. But this movement is short. The ideal style passes quickly to the graceful, to the agreeable. Here appears an aim different from that of the realization of the beautiful, which pure art ought to propose to itself, to wit: the intention of pleasing, of producing an impression on the soul. Hence arise works of a style elaborate with art, and a certain seeking for external embellishments. The subject is no more the principal thing. The attention of the artist is distracted by ornaments and accessories—by the decorations, the trimmings, the simpering airs, the attitudes and graceful postures, or the vivid colors and the attractive forms, the luxury of ornaments and draperies, the learned making of verse. But the general effect remains without grandeur and without nobleness. Beautiful proportions and grand masses give place to moderate dimensions, or are masked with ornaments. The graceful style begets the style _for effect_, which is an exaggeration of it. The art then becomes altogether conspicuous; it calls the attention of the spectator by everything that can strike the senses. The artist surrenders to it his personal ends and his design. In this species of _tête-à-tête_ with the public, there is betrayed through all, the desire of exhibiting his wit, of attracting admiration for his ability, his skill, his power of execution. This art—without naturalness, full of coquetry, of artifice and affectation, the opposite of the severe style which yields nothing to the public—is the style of the epochs of decadence. Frequently it has recourse to a last artifice, to the affectation of profundity and of simplicity, which is then only obscurity, a mysterious profundity which conceals an absence of ideas and a real impotence. This air of mystery, which parades itself, is in its turn, hardly better than coquetry; the principle is the same—the desire of producing an effect.

The author then passes to the _Division of the Arts_. The common method classes them according to their means of representation, and the senses to which they are addressed. Two senses only are affected by the perception of the beautiful: _sight_, which perceives forms and colors, and _hearing_, which perceives sounds. Hence the division into _arts of design_ and _musical art_. _Poetry_, which employs speech, and addresses itself to the imagination, forms a domain apart. Without discarding this division, Hegel combines it with another more philosophical principle of classification, and one which is taken no longer from the external means of art, but from their internal relation to the very content of the ideas which it is to represent.

Art has for object the representation of the ideal. The arts ought then to be classed according to the measure in which they are more or less capable of expressing it. This gradation will have at the same time the advantage of corresponding to historic progress, and to the fundamental forms of art previously studied.

According to this principle, the arts marshal themselves, and succeed one another, to form a regular and complete system, thus:

1. First _Architecture_ presents itself. This art, in fact, is incapable of representing an idea otherwise than in a vague, indeterminate manner. It fashions the masses of inorganic nature, according to the laws of matter and geometrical proportions; it disposes them with regularity and symmetry in such a manner as to offer to the eyes an image which is a simple reflex of the spirit, a dumb symbol of the thought. Architecture is at the same time appropriated to ends which are foreign to it: it is destined to furnish a dwelling for man and a temple for Divinity; it must shelter under its roof, in its enclosure, the other arts, and, in particular, sculpture and painting.

For these reasons architecture should, historically and logically, be placed first in the series of the arts.

2. In a higher rank is Sculpture, which already exhibits spirit under certain determinate traits. Its object, in fact, is spirit individualized, revealed by the human form and its living organism. Under this visible appearance, by the features of the countenance, and the proportions of the body, it expresses ideal beauty, divine calmness, serenity—in a word, the classic ideal.

3. Although retained in the world of visible forms, Painting offers a higher degree of spirituality. To form, it adds the different phases of visible appearance, the illusions of perspective, color, light and shades, and thereby it becomes capable, not only of reproducing the various pictures of nature, but also of expressing upon canvas the most profound sentiments of the human soul, and all the scenes of ethical life.

4. But, as an expression of sentiment, _Music_ still surpasses painting. What it expresses is the soul itself, in its most intimate and profound relations; and this by a sensuous phenomenon, equally invisible, instantaneous, intangible—sound—sonorous vibrations, which resound in the abysses of the soul, and agitate it throughout.

5. All these arts culminate in Poetry, which includes them and surpasses them, and whose superiority is due to its mode of expression—_speech_. It alone is capable of expressing all ideas, all sentiments, all passions, the highest conceptions of the intelligence, and the most fugitive impressions of the soul. To it alone is given to represent an action in its complete development and in all its phases. It is the universal art—its domain is unlimited. Hence it is divided into many species, of which the principal are _epic_, _lyric_ and _dramatic_ poetry.

These five arts form the complete and organized system of the arts. Others, such as the _art of gardening, dancing, engraving, etc._, are only accessories, and more or less connected with the preceding. They have not the right to occupy a distinct place in a general theory; they would only introduce confusion, and disfigure the fundamental type which is peculiar to each of them.

Such is the division adopted by Hegel. He combines it, at the same time, with his general division of the forms of the historic development of art. Thus architecture appears to him to correspond more particularly to the _symbolic_ type; sculpture is the _classic_ art, _par excellence_; painting and music fill the category of the _romantic_ arts. Poetry, as art universal, belongs to all epochs.

I. ARCHITECTURE.—In the study of architecture, Hegel follows a purely historic method. He limits himself to describing and characterizing its principal forms in the different epochs of history. This art, in fact, lends itself to an abstract theory less than the others. There are here few principles to establish; and when we depart from generalities, we enter into the domain of mathematical laws, or into the technical applications, foreign to pure science. It remains, then, only to determine the sense and the character of its monuments, in their relation to the spirit of the people, and the epochs to which they belong. It is to this point of view that the author has devoted himself. The division which he adopts on this subject, and the manner in which he explains it, are as follows:

The object of architecture, independent of the positive design and the use to which its monuments are appropriated, is to express a general thought, by forms borrowed from inorganic nature, by masses fashioned and disposed according to the laws of geometry and mechanics. But whatever may be the ideas and the impressions which the appearance of an edifice produces, it never furnishes other than an obscure and enigmatic emblem. The thought is vaguely represented by those material forms which spirit itself does not animate.

If such is the nature of this art, it follows that, essentially symbolic, it must predominate in that first epoch of history which is distinguished by the symbolic character of its monuments. It must show itself there freer, more independent of practical utility, not subordinated to a foreign end. Its essential object ought to be to express ideas, to present emblems, to symbolize the beliefs of those peoples, incapable as they are of otherwise expressing them. It is the proper language of such an epoch—a language enigmatic and mysterious; it indicates the effort of the imagination to represent ideas, still vague. Its monuments are problems proposed to future ages, and which as yet are but imperfectly comprehended.

Such is the character of oriental architecture. There the end is valueless or accessory; the symbolic expression is the principal object. Architecture is _independent_, and sculpture is confounded with it.

The monuments of Greek and Roman architecture present a wholly different character. Here, the aim of utility appears clearly distinct from expression. The purpose, the design of the monument comes out in an evident manner. It is a dwelling, a shelter, a temple, etc.

Sculpture, for its part, is detached from architecture, and assigns its end to it. The image of the god, enclosed in the temple, is the principal object. The temple is only a shelter, an external attendant. Its forms are regulated according to the laws of numbers, and the proportions of a learned eurythmy; but its true ornaments are furnished to it by sculpture. Architecture ceases then to be independent and symbolic; it becomes dependent, subordinated to a positive end.

As to Christian architecture or that of the Middle Ages, it presents the union of the two preceding characteristics. It is at once devoted to a useful end, and eminently expressive or symbolic—_dependent_ and _independent_. The temple is the house of God; it is devoted to the uses and ceremonies of worship, and shows throughout its design in its forms; but at the same time these symbolize admirably the Christian idea.

Thus the symbolic, classic and romantic forms, borrowed from history, and which mark the whole development of art, serve for the division and classification of the forms of architecture. This being especially the art which is exercised in the domain of matter, the essential point to be distinguished is whether the monument which is addressed to the eyes includes in itself its own meaning, or whether it is considered as a means to a foreign end, or finally whether, although in the service of a foreign end, it preserves its independence.

The _basis_ of the division being thus placed, Hegel justifies it by describing the characters of the monuments belonging to these three epochs. All this descriptive part can not be analyzed: we are obliged to limit ourselves to securing a comprehension of the general features, and to noting the most remarkable points.

(_a_) Since the distinctive characteristic of symbolic architecture is the expression of a general thought, without other end than the representation of it, the interest in its monuments is less in their positive design than in the religious conceptions of the people, who, not having other means of expression, have embodied their thought, still vague and confused, in these gigantic masses and these colossal images. Entire nations know not how otherwise to express their religious beliefs. Hence the symbolic character of the structures of the Babylonians, the Indians and the Egyptians, of those works which absorbed the life of those peoples, and whose meaning we seek to explain to ourselves.

It is difficult to follow a regular order in the absence of chronology, when we review the multiplicity of ideas and forms which these monuments and these symbols present. Hegel thinks, nevertheless, that he is able to establish the following gradations:

In the first rank are the simplest monuments, such as seem only designed to serve as a bond of union to entire nations, or to different nations. Such gigantic structures as the tower of Belus or Babylon, upon the shores of the Euphrates, present the image of the union of the peoples before their dispersion. Community of toil and effort is the aim and the very idea of the work; it is the common work of their united efforts, the symbol of the dissolution of the primitive family and of the formation of a vaster society.

In a rank more elevated, appear the monuments of a more determined character, where is noticeable a mingling of architecture and sculpture, although they belong to the former. Such are those symbols which, in the East, represent the generative force of nature; the _phallus_ and the _lingam_ scattered in so great numbers throughout Phrygia and Syria, and of which India is the principal seat; in Egypt, the obelisks, which derive their symbolic significance from the rays of the sun; the Memnons, colossal statues which also represent the sun and his beneficent influence upon nature; the sphinxes, which one finds in Egypt in prodigious numbers and of astonishing size, ranged in rows in the form of avenues. These monuments, of an imposing sculpture, are grouped in masses, surrounded by walls so as to form buildings.

They present, in a striking manner, the twofold character indicated above: free from all positive design, they are, above all, symbols; afterward, sculpture is confounded with architecture. They are structures without roof, without doors, without aisles, frequently forests of colums where the eye loses itself. The eye passes over objects which are there for their own sake, designed only to strike the imagination by their colossal aspect and their enigmatic sense, not to serve as a dwelling for a god, and as a place of assemblage for his worshippers. Their order and their disposition alone preserve for them an architectural character. You walk on into the midst of those human works, mute symbols which remind you of divine things; your eyes are everywhere struck with the aspect of those forms and those extraordinary figures, of those walls besprinkled with hieroglyphics, books of stone, as it were, leaves of a mysterious book. Everything there is symbolically determined—the proportions, the distances, the number of columns, etc. The Egyptians, in particular, consecrated their lives to constructing and building these monuments, by instinct, as a swarm of bees builds its hive. This was the whole life of the people. It placed there all its thought, for it could no otherwise express it.

Nevertheless, that architecture, in one point, by its chambers and its halls, its tombs, begins to approach the following class, which exhibits a more positive design, and of which the type is a house.

A third rank marks the transition of symbolic to classic architecture. Architecture already presents a character of utility, of conformity to an end. The monument has a precise design; it serves for a particular use taken aside from the symbolic sense. It is a temple or a tomb. Such, in the first place, is the subterranean architecture of the Indians, those vast excavations which are also temples, species of subterranean cathedrals, the caverns of Mithra, likewise filled with symbolic sculpture. But this transition is better characterized by the double architecture, (subterranean and above ground) of the Egyptians, which is connected with their worship of the dead. An individual being, who has his significance and his proper value; the dead one, distinct from his habitation which serves him only for covering and shelter, resides in the interior. The most ancient of these tombs are the pyramids, species of crystals, envelopes of stone which enclose a kernel, an invisible being, and which serve for the preservation of the bodies. In this concealed dead one, resides the significance of the _monument_ which is subordinate to him.

Here, then, _Architecture_ ceases to be independent. It divides itself into two elements—the end and the means; it is the means, and it is subservient to an end. Further, sculpture separates itself from it, and obtains a distinct office—that of shaping the image within, and its accessories. Here appears clearly the special design of architecture, conformity to an end; also it assumes inorganic and geometric forms, the abstract, mathematical form, which befits it in particular. The pyramid already exhibits the design of a house, the rectangular form.

(_b_) Classic architecture has a two-fold point of departure—symbolic architecture and necessity. The adaptation of parts to an end, in symbolic architecture, is accessory. In the house, on the contrary, all is controlled, from the first, by actual necessity and convenience. Now classic architecture proceeds both from the one and from the other principle, from necessity and from art, from the useful and from the beautiful, which it combines in the most perfect manner. Necessity produces regular forms, right angles, plane surfaces. But the end is not simply the satisfaction of a physical necessity; there is also an idea, a religious representation, a sacred image, which it has to shelter and surround, a worship, a religious ceremonial. The temple ought then, like the temple fashioned by sculpture, to spring from the creative imagination of the artist. There is necessary a dwelling for the god, fashioned by art and according to its laws.

Thus, while falling under the law of conformity to an end, and ceasing to be independent, architecture escapes from the useful and submits to the law of the beautiful; or rather, the beautiful and useful meet and combine themselves in the happiest manner. Symmetry, eurythmy, organic forms the most graceful, the most rich, and the most varied, join themselves as ornaments to the architectural forms. The two points of view are united without being confounded, and form an harmonious whole; there will be, at the same time, a useful, convenient and beautiful architecture.

What best marks the transition to Greek architecture, is the appearance of the column, which is its type. The column is a support. Therein is its useful and mechanical design; it fulfils that design in the most simple and perfect manner, because with it the power of support is reduced to its minimum of material means. From another side, in order to be adapted to its end and to beauty, it must give up its natural and primitive form. The beautiful column comes from a form borrowed from nature; but carved, shaped, it takes a regular and geometric configuration. In Egypt, human figures serve as columns; here they are replaced by caryatides. But the natural, primitive form is the tree, the trunk, the flexible stock, which bears its crown. Such, too, appears the Egyptian column; columns are seen rising from the vegetable kingdom in the stalks of the lotus and other trees; the base resembles an onion. The leaf shoots from the root, like that of a reed, and the capital presents the appearance of a flower. The mathematical and regular form is absent. In the Greek column, on the contrary, all is fashioned according to the mathematical laws of regularity and proportion. The beautiful column springs from a form borrowed from nature, but fashioned according to the artistic sense.

Thus the characteristic of classic architecture, as of architecture in general, is the union of beauty and utility. Its beauty consists in its regularity, and although it serves a foreign end, it constitutes a whole perfect in itself; it permits its essential aim to look forth in all its parts, and through the harmony of its relations, it transforms the useful into the beautiful.

The character of classic architecture being subordination to an end, it is that end which, without detriment to beauty, gives to the entire edifice its proper signification, and which becomes thus the principal regulator of all its parts; as it impresses itself on the whole, and determines its fundamental form. The first thing as to a work of this sort, then, is to know what is its purpose, its design. The general purpose of a Grecian temple is to hold the statue of a god. But in its exterior, the character of the temple relates to a different end, and its spirit is the life of the Greek people.

Among the Greeks, open structures, colonnades and porticoes, have as object the promenade in the open air, conversation, public life under a pure sky. Likewise the dwellings of private persons are insignificant. Among the Romans, on the contrary, whose national architecture has a more positive end in utility, appears later the luxury of private houses, palaces, villas, theatres, circuses, amphitheatres, aqueducts and fountains. But the principal edifice is that whose end is most remote from the wants of material life; it is the temple designed to serve as a shelter to a divine object, which already belongs to the fine arts—to the statue of a god.

Although devoted to a determinate end, this architecture is none the less free from it, in the sense, that it disengages itself from organic forms; it is more free even than sculpture, which is obliged to reproduce them; it invents its plan, the general configuration, and it displays in external forms all the richness of the imagination; it has no other laws than those of good taste and harmony; it labors without a direct model. Nevertheless, it works within a limited domain, that of mathematical figures, and it is subjected to the laws of mechanics. Here must be preserved, first of all, the relations between the width, the length, the height of the edifice; the exact proportions of the columns according to their thickness, the weight to be supported, the intervals, the number of columns, the style, the simplicity of the ornaments. It is this which gives to the theory of this art, and in particular of this form of architecture, the character of dryness and abstraction. But there dominates throughout, a natural eurythmy, which their perfectly accurate sense enabled the Greeks to find and fix as the measure and rule of the beautiful.

We will not follow the author in the description which he gives of the particular characteristics of architectural forms; we will omit also some other interesting details upon building in wood or in stone as the primitive type, upon the relation of the different parts of the Greek temple. In here following Vitruvius, the author has been able to add some discriminating and judicious remarks. What he says, in particular, of the column, of its proportions and of its design, of the internal unity of the different parts and of their effects as a whole, adds to what is already known a philosophical explication which satisfies the reason. We remark, especially, this passage, which sums up the general character of the Greek temple: “In general, the Greek temple presents an aspect which satisfies the vision, and, so to speak, surfeits it. Nothing is very elevated, it is regularly extended in length and breadth. The eye finds itself allured by the sense of extent, while Gothic architecture mounts even beyond measurement, and shoots upward to heaven. Besides, the ornaments are so managed that they do not mar the general expression of simplicity. In this, the ancients observe the most beautiful moderation.”

The connection of their architecture with the genius, the spirit, and the life of the Greek people, is indicated in the following passage: “In place of the spectacle of an assemblage united for a single end, all appears directed towards the exterior, and presents us the image of an animated promenade. There men who have leisure abandon themselves to conversations without end, wherein rule gayety and serenity. The whole expression of such a temple remains truly simple and grand in itself, but it has at the same time an air of serenity, something open and graceful.” This prepares and conducts us to another kind of architecture, which presents a striking contrast to the preceding Christian or Gothic architecture.

(_c_) We shall not further attempt to reproduce, even in its principal features, the description which Hegel gives, in some pages, of Romantic or Gothic architecture. The author has proposed to himself, as object, in the first place, to compare the two kinds of architecture, the Greek and the Christian, then to secure the apprehension of the relation of this form of architecture to the Christian idea. This is what constitutes the peculiar interest of this remarkable sketch, which, by its vigor and severity of design, preserves its distinctive merit when compared with all descriptions that have been made of the architecture of the Middle Ages.

_Gothic_ architecture, according to Hegel, unites, in the first place, the opposite characters of the two preceding kinds. Notwithstanding, this union does not consist in the simple fusion of the architectural forms of the East and of Greece. Here, still more than in the Greek temple, the house furnishes the fundamental type. An architectural edifice which is the house of God, shows itself perfectly in conformity with its design and adapted to worship; but the monument is also there for its own sake, independent, absolute. Externally, the edifice ascends, shoots freely into the air.

The conformity to the end, although it presents itself to the eyes, is therefore effaced, and leaves to the whole the appearance of an independent existence. The monument has a determinate sense, and shows it; but, in its grand aspect and its sublime calm, it is lifted above all end in utility, to something infinite in itself.

If we examine the relation of this architecture to the inner spirit and the idea of Christian worship, we remark, in the first place, that the fundamental form is here the house wholly closed. Just as, in fact, the Christian spirit withdraws itself into the interior of the conscience, just so the church is an enclosure, sealed on all sides, the place of meditation and silence. “It is the place of the reflection of the soul into itself, which thus shuts itself up materially in space. On the other hand, if, in Christian meditation, the soul withdraws into itself, it is, at the same time, lifted above the finite, and this equally determines the character of the house of God. Architecture takes, then, for its independent signification, elevation towards the infinite, a character which it expresses by the proportions of its architectural forms.” These two traits, depth of self-examination and elevation of the soul towards the infinite, explain completely the Gothic architecture and its principal forms. They furnish also the essential differences between Gothic and Greek architecture.

The impression which the Christian church ought to produce in contrast with this open and serene aspect of the Greek temple, is, in the first place, the calmness of the soul which reflects into itself, then that of a sublime majesty which shoots beyond the confines of sense. Greek edifices extend horizontally; the Christian church should lift itself from the ground and shoot into the air.

The most striking characteristic which the house of God presents, in its whole and its parts, is, then, the free flight, the shooting in points formed either by broken arches or by right lines. In Greek architecture, exact proportion between support and height is everywhere observed. Here, on the contrary, the operation of supporting and the disposition at a right angle—the most convenient for this end—disappears or is effaced. The walls and the column shoot without marked difference between what supports and what is supported, and meet in an acute angle. Hence the acute triangle and the ogee, which form the characteristic traits of Gothic architecture.

We are not able to follow the author in the detailed explication of the different forms and the divers parts of the Gothic edifice, and of its total structure.

THE METAPHYSICS OF MATERIALISM. By D. G. BRINTON.

_Ubi tres physici, ibi duo athei_,—the proverb is something musty. Natural science is and always has been materialistic. The explanation is simple. There is as great antagonism between chemical research and metaphysical speculation, as there is between what

“Youthful poets dream, On summer’s eve by haunted stream,”

and book-keeping by double entry, and nothing is more customary than to deny what we do not understand. Of late years this scientific materialism has been making gigantic strides. Since the imposing fabric of the Hegelian philosophy proved but a house built on sands, the scales and metre have become our only gods.

Germany—mystic, metaphysical Germany—strange to say, leads the van in this crusade against all faith and all idealism. Vogt, the geologist, Moleschott, the physiologist, Virchow, the greatest of all living histologists, Büchner, Tiedemann, Reuchlin, Meldeg, and many others, not only hold these opinions, but have left the seclusion of the laboratory and the clinic to enter the arena of polemics in their favor. We do not mention the French and English advocates of “positive philosophy.” Their name is Legion.

It is not our design to enter at all at large into these views, still less to dispute them, but merely to give the latest and most approved defence of a single point of their position, a point which we submit is the kernel of the whole controversy, and which we believe to be the very Achilles heel and crack in the armor of their panoply of argument—that is, the _Theory of the Absolute_. Demonstrate the possibility of the Absolute, and materialism is impossible; disprove it, and all other philosophies are empty nothings,—_vox et præterea nihil_. Here, and only here, is materialism brought face to face with metaphysics; here is the combat _à l’outrance_ in which one or the other must perish. No one of its apostles has accepted the proffered glaive more heartily, and defended his position with more wary dexterity, than Moleschott, and it is mainly from his work, entitled _Der Kreislauf des Lebens_, that we illustrate the present metaphysics of materialism.

Our first question is, What is the test of truth, what sanctions a law? Until this is answered, all assertion is absurd, and until it is answered correctly, all philosophy is vain. The response of the naturalist is: “The necessary sequence of cause and effect is the prime law of the experimentalist—a law which he does not ask from revelation, but will find out for himself by observation.” The source of truth is sensation; the uniform result of manifold experience is a law. Here a double objection arises: first, that the term “a necessary sequence” presupposes a law, and begs the question at issue; and, secondly, that, this necessity unproved, such truth is nothing more than a probability, for it is impossible to be certain that our next experiment may not have quite a different result. Either this is not the road to absolute truth, or absolute truth is unattainable. The latter horn of the dilemma is at once accepted; we neither know, nor can know, a law to be absolute; to us, the absolute does not exist. Matter and force with their relations are there, but what we know of them is a varying quantity, is of this age or the last, of this man or that, dependent upon the extent and accuracy of empirical science; we cannot speak of what we do not know, and we know no law that conceivable experience might not contradict.

But how, objects the reader, can this be reconciled with the pure mathematics? Here seem to be laws above experience, laws admitting no exception.

The response leads us back to the origin of our notions of _Space_ and _Time_, on the the former of which mathematics is founded. The supposition that they are innate ideas is of course rejected by the materialist; for he looks upon innate ideas as fables; he considers them perceptions derived positively from the senses, but they do not belong to the senses alone, nor are they perceptions merely; “they are ideas, but ideas that without the sensuous perceptions of proximity and sequence could never have arisen. Nay, more—the perception of space must precede that of time,” for it is only through the former that we can reach the latter. The plainest laws of space, those which were the earliest impressions on the _tabula rasa_ of the infant mind, and which the hourly experience of life verifies, are called, by the mathematician, _axioms_, and on these simplest generalizations of our perceptions he bases the whole of his structure. Axioms, therefore, are the uniform results of experiments, the possible conditions of which are extremely limited, and the factors of which have been subjected to all these conditions.

It follows from a denial of the absolute that all existence is concrete. Indeed, we may say that the corner stone of the edifice of materialism is embraced in the terse sentence of Moleschott—_all existence is existence through attributes_. Existence _per se_ (_Fürsichsein_) is a meaningless term, and substance apart from attribute, the _ens ineffabile_, is a pedantic figment and nothing more. Finally, there can be no attribute except through a relation.

Let this trilogy of existence, attribute and relation, be clearly before the mind, and the position that the positive philosophy bears to all others becomes at once luminous enough. There is no existence apart from attributes, no attributes but through relations, no relations but to other existences. To exemplify: a stone is heavy, hard, colored, perhaps bitter to the taste. Now, says the idealist, this weight, this hardness, this color, this bitterness, these are not the stone, they are merely its properties or attributes, and the stone itself is some substance behind them all, to which they adhere and which we cannot detect with our senses; further, he might add, if a moderate in his school, these attributes are independently existent, the bitterness is there when we are not tasting it, and the attribute of color, though there be no light. All this the materialist denies. To him, the attributes and nothing else constitute the stone, and these attributes have no existence apart from their relations to other objects. The bitterness exists only in relation to the organs of taste, and the color to the organs of sight, and the weight to other bodies of matter. Nothing, in short, can be said to exist to us that is not cognizable by our senses. But, objects some one, there may be an existence which is not _to us_, which is as much beyond our ken as color is beyond the conception of the born blind. The expression was used advisedly: no such existence can become the subject of rational language. “Does not all knowledge predicate a knower, consequently a relation of the subject to the the observer? Such a relation is an attribute. Without it, knowledge is inconceivable. Neither God nor man can raise himself above the knowledge furnished by these relations to his organs of apprehension.”

A disagreeable sequence to this logic will not fail to occur to every one. If all knowledge comes from the organs of sense, then differently formed organs must furnish very different and contradictory knowledge, and one is as likely to be correct as another. The radiate animal, who sees the world through a cornea alone, must have quite another notion of light, color, and relative size, from the spider whose eye is provided with lenses and a vitreous humor. Consonantly with the theory, each of these probably opposing views is equally true. This ugly dilemma is foreseen by our author, for he grants that “the knowledge of the insect, its knowledge of the action of the outer world, is altogether a different one from that of man,” but he avoids the ultimate result of this reasoning.

To sum up the views of this school: matter is eternal, force is eternal, but each is impossible without the other; what bears any relation to our senses we either know or can know; what does not, it is absurd to discuss; the highest thought is but the physical elaboration of sensations, or, to use the expression of Carl Vogt, “thought is a secretion of the brain as urine is of the kidneys. Without phosphorus there is no thought.” “And so,” concludes Moleschott, “only when thought is based on fact, only when the reason is granted no sphere of action but the historical which arises from observation, when the perception is at the same time thought, and the understanding sees with consciousness, does the contradiction between Philosophy and Science disappear.”

This, then, is the last word of materialism, this the solution it now offers us of the great problem of Life. We enter no further into its views, for all collateral questions concerning the origin of the ideas of the true, the good and the beautiful, the vital force, and the spiritual life, depend directly on the question we have above mentioned. Let the reader turn back precisely a century to the _Système de la Nature_, so long a boasted bulwark of the rationalistic school, and judge for himself what advance, if any, materialism has made in fortifying this, the most vital point of her structure. Let him ask himself anew whether the criticism of Hume on the law of cause and effect can in any way be met except after the example of Kant, by the assumption of the absolute idea, and we have little doubt what conclusion he will arrive at in reference to that system which, while it boasts to offer the only method of discovering truth, starts with the flat denial of all truth other than relative.

LETTERS ON FAUST. By H. C. BROCKMEYER.

I.

DEAR H.—Yours of a recent date, requesting an epistolary criticism of “Goethe’s Faust,” has come to hand, and I hasten to assure you of a compliance of some sort. I say a compliance of some sort, for I cannot promise you a criticism. This, it seems to me, would be both too little and too much; too little if understood in the ordinary sense, as meaning a mere statement of the _relation_ existing between the work and myself; too much if interpreted as pledging an expression of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, in the terms of the understanding, and submitting the result to the canons of art.

The former procedure, usually called criticism, reduced to its simplest forms, amounts to this: that I, the critic, report to you, that I was amused or bored, flattered or satirized, elevated or degraded, humanized or brutalized, enlightened or mystified, pleased or displeased, by the work under consideration; and—since it depends quite as much upon my own humor, native ability, and culture acquired, which set of adjectives I may be able to report, as it does upon the work—I cannot perceive what earthly profit such a labor could be to you. For that which is clear to you may be dark to me; hence, if I report that a given work is a “perfect riddle to me,” you will only smile at my simplicity. Again, that which amuses me may bore you, for I notice that even at the theatre, some will yawn with _ennui_ while others thrill with delight, and applaud the play. Now, if each of these should tell you how _he_ liked the performance, the one would say “excellent,” and the other “miserable,” and you be none the wiser. To expect, therefore, that I intend to enter upon a labor of this kind, is to expect too little.

Besides, such an undertaking seems to me not without its peculiar danger; for it may happen that the work measures or criticises the critic, instead of the latter the former. If, for example, I should tell you that the integral and differential calculus is all fog to me—mystifies me completely—you would conclude my knowledge of mathematics to be rather imperfect, and thus use my own report of that work as a sounding-lead to ascertain the depth of my attainment. Nay, you might even go further, and regard the work as a kind of Doomsday Book, on the title page of which I had “written myself down an ass.” Now, as I am not ambitious of a memorial of this kind, especially when there is no probability that the pages in contemplation—Goethe’s Faust—will perish any sooner than the veritable Doomsday Book itself, I request you, as a special favor, not to understand of me that I propose engaging in any undertaking of this sort.[16]

Nor are you to expect an inquiry into the quantity or quality of the author’s food, drink or raiment. For the present infantile state of analytic science refuses all aid in tracing such _primary_ elements, so to speak, in the composition of the poem before us; and hence such an investigation would lead, at best, to very secondary and remote conclusions. Nor shall we be permitted to explore the likes and dislikes of the poet, in that fine volume of scandal, for the kindred reason that neither crucible, reagent nor retort are at hand which can be of the remotest service.

By the by, has it never occurred to you, when perusing works of the kind last referred to, what a glowing picture the pious Dean of St. Patrick’s, the _saintly Swift_, has bequeathed to us of their producers, when he places the great authors, the historical Gullivers of our race, in all their majesty of form, astride the public thoroughfare of a Liliputian age, and marches the inhabitants, in solid battalions, through between their legs? you recollect what he says?

Nor yet are you to expect a treat of that most delightful of all compounds, the table talk and conversation—or, to use a homely phrase, the _literary dishwater_ retailed by the author’s scullion. To expect such, or the like, would be to expect too little.

On the other hand, to expect that I shall send you an expression, in the terms of the understanding, of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, and submit the result to the canons of art, is to expect too much. For while I am ready, and while I intend to comply with the first part of this proposition, I am unable to fulfil the requirement of the latter part—that is, I am not able to submit the result to the canons of art. The reason for this inability it is not necessary to develop in this connection any further than merely to mention that I find it extremely inconvenient to lay my hand upon the aforementioned canons just at this time.

I must, therefore, content myself with the endeavor to summon before you the _Idea_ which creates the poem—each act, scene and verse—so that we may see the part in its relation to the whole, and the whole in its concrete, organic articulation. If we succeed in this, then we may say that we _comprehend_ the work—a condition precedent alike to the beneficial enjoyment and the rational judgment of the same.

II.

In my first letter, dear friend, I endeavored to guard you against misapprehension as to what you might expect from me. Its substance, if memory serves me, was that I did not intend to write on Anthropology or Psychology, nor yet on street, parlor or court gossip, but simply about a work of art.

I deemed these remarks pertinent in view of the customs of the time, lest that, in my not conforming to them, you should judge me harshly without profit to yourself. With the same desire of keeping up a fair understanding with you, I must call your attention to some terms and distinctions which we shall have occasion to use, and which, unless explained, might prove shadows instead of lights along the path of our intercourse.

I confess to you that I share the (I might say) abhorrence so generally entertained by the reading public, of the use of any general terms whatsoever, and would avoid them altogether if I could only see how. But in reading the poem that we are to consider, I come upon such passages as these:

(_Choir of invisible Spirits._)

“Woe! Woe! Thou hast destroyed it, The beautiful world! It reels, it crumbles, Crushed by a demigod’s mighty hand!”

and I cannot see how we are to understand these spirits, or the poet who gave them voice, unless we attack this very general expression “The beautiful world,” here said to have been destroyed by Faust.

I am, however, somewhat reconciled to this by the example of my neighbor—a non-speculative, practical farmer—now busily engaged in harvesting his wheat. For I noticed that he first directed his attention, after cutting the grain, to collecting and tying it together in bundles; and I could not help but perceive how much this facilitated his labor, and how difficult it would have been for him to collect his wheat, grain by grain, like the sparrow of the field. Though wheat it were, and not chaff, still such a mode of handling would reduce it even below the value of chaff.

Just think of handling the wheat crop of these United States, the two hundred and twenty-five millions of bushels a year, in this manner! It is absolutely not to be thought of, and we must have recourse to agglomeration, if not to generalization. But the one gives us general _masses_, and the other general _terms_. The only thing that we can do, therefore, is, in imitation of our good neighbor of the wheat field, to handle bundles, bushels, and bags, or—what is still better, if it can be done by some daring system of intellectual elevators—whole ship loads of grain at a time, due care being taken that we tie wheat to wheat, oats to oats, barley to barley, and not promiscuously.

Now, with this example well before our minds, and the necessity mentioned, which compels us to handle—not merely the wheat crop of the United States for one year, but—whatever has been raised by the intelligence of man from the beginning of our race to the time of Goethe the poet, together with the ground on which it was raised, and the sky above—for no less than this seems to be contained in the expression “The beautiful world”—I call your attention first to the expression “form and matter,” which, when applied to works of intelligence, we must take the liberty of changing into the expression “form and content,” for since there is nothing in works of this kind that manifests gravity, it can be of no use to say so, but may be of some injury.

The next is the expression “works of art,” which sounds rather suspicious in some of its applications—sounds as if it was intended to conceal rather than reveal the worker. Now I take it that the “works of art” are the works of the intelligence, and I shall have to classify them accordingly. Another point with reference to this might as well be noticed, and that is that the old expressions “works of art” and “works of nature” do not contain, as they were intended to, all the works that present themselves to our observation—the works of science, for example. Besides, we have government, society, and religion, all of which are undoubtedly distinct from the “works of art” no less than from the “works of nature,” and to tie them up in the same bundle with either of them, seems to me to be like tying wheat with oats, and therefore to be avoided, as in the example before our minds. This seems to be done in the expression “works of self-conscious intelligence,” and “works of nature.”

But if we reflect upon the phrases “works of self-conscious intelligence” and “works of nature,” it becomes obvious that there must be some inaccuracy contained in them; for how can two distinct subjects have the same predicate? It would, therefore, perhaps be better to say “the works of self-conscious intelligence” and the “_products_ of nature.”

Without further rasping and filing of old phrases, I call your attention, in the next place, to the most general term which we shall have occasion to use—“the world.”

Under this we comprehend:

I. The natural world—Gravity.; II. The spiritual world—Self-determination.

I. Under the natural world we comprehend the terrestrial globe, and that part of the universe which is involved in its processes; these are:

(_a_) (1.) Mechanic=Gravity, } Meteorologic=Electricity. (2.) Chemic=Affinity, } (_b_) (1.) Organic=Galvanism, } Vital=Sensation. (2.) Vegetative=Assimilation, }

II. Under “The Spiritual World,” the world of conscious intelligence, we comprehend:

(_a_) The real world=implement, mediation. (_b_) The actual world=self-determination.

(_a_) The real world contains whatever derives the end of its existence only, from self-conscious intelligence.

(1.) The family=Affection. (2.) Society=Ethics, } Mediation. (3.) State=Rights, }

(_b_) The actual world contains whatever derives the end and the _means_ of its existence from self-conscious intelligence.

(1.) Art=Manifestation, } (2.) Religion=Revelation, } Self-determination. (3.) Philosophy=Definition, }

From this it appears that we have divided the world into three large slices—the Natural, the Real, and the Actual—with gravity for one and self-determination for the other extreme, and mediation between them.

III.

In my last, I gave you some general terms, and the sense in which I intend to use them. I also gave you a reason why I should use them, together with an illustration. But I gave you no reason why I used these and no others—or I did not advance anything to show that there are _objects_ to which they _necessarily apply_. I only take it for granted that there are some objects presented to your observation and mine, that gravitate or weigh something, and others that do not. To each I have applied as nearly as I could the ordinary terms. Now this procedure, although very unphilosophical, I can justify only by reminding you of the object of these letters.

If we now listen again to the chant of the invisible choir,

“Thou hast destroyed it, The beautiful world,”

it will be obvious that this can refer only to the world of mediation and self-determination, to the world of spirit, of self-conscious intelligence, for the world of gravitation is not so easily affected. But how is this—how is it that the world of self-conscious intelligence is so easily affected, is so dependent upon the individual man? This can be seen only by examining its genesis.

In the genesis of Spirit we have three stages—manifestation, realization, and actualization. The first of these, upon which the other two are dependent and sequent, falls in the individual man. For, in him it is that Reason manifests itself before it can realize, or embody itself in this or that political, social, or moral institution. And it is not merely necessary that it should so manifest itself in the individual; it must also realize itself in these institutions before it can actualize itself in Art, Religion, and Philosophy. For in this actualization it is absolutely dependent upon the former two stages of its genesis for a content. From this it appears that Art _shows_ what Religion _teaches_, and what Philosophy _comprehends_; or that Art, Religion, and Philosophy have the same content. Nor is it difficult to perceive why this world of spirit or self-conscious intelligence is so dependent upon the individual man.

Again, in the sphere of manifestation and reality, this content, the self-conscious intelligence, is the _self-consciousness_ of an individual, a nation, or an age. And art, in the sphere of actuality, is this or that work of art, this poem, that painting, or yonder piece of sculpture, with the self-consciousness of this or that individual, nation, or age, for its content. Moreover, the particularity (the individual, nation, or age) of the content constitutes the individuality of the work of Art. And not only this, but this particularity of the _self-consciousness_ furnishes the very contradiction itself with the development and solution of which the work of art is occupied. For the self-consciousness which constitutes the content, being the self consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age, instead of being self-conscious intelligence in its pure universality, contains in that very particularity the contradiction which, in the sphere of manifestation and reality, constitutes the collision, conflict, and solution.[17]

Now, if we look back upon the facts stated, we have the manifestation, the realization, and the actualization of self-conscious intelligence as the three spheres or stages in the process which evolves and involves the entire activity of man, both practical and theoretical. It is also obvious that the realization of self-conscious intelligence in the family, society, and the state, and its actualization in Art, Religion, and Philosophy, depend in their genesis upon its manifestation in the individual. Hence a denial of the possibility of this manifestation is a denial of the possibility of the realization and actualization also.

Now if this denial assume the form of a conviction in the consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age, then there results a contradiction which involves in the sweep of its universality the entire spiritual world of man. For it is the self-consciousness of that individual, nation, or age, in direct conflict with itself, not with this or that particularity of itself, but with its entire content, in the sphere of manifestation, with the receptivity for, the production of, and the aspiration after, the Beautiful, the Good, and the True, within the individual himself; in the sphere of realization with the Family, with Society, and with the State; and finally, in the sphere of actuality with Art, Religion, and Philosophy.

Now this contradiction is precisely what is presented in the proposition, “Man cannot know truth.” This you will remember was, in the history of modern thought, the result of Kant’s philosophy. And Kant’s philosophy was the philosophy of Germany at the time of the conception of Goethe’s Faust. And Goethe was the truest poet of Germany, and thus he sings:

“So then I have studied philosophy, Jurisprudence and medicine, And what is worse, Theology, Thoroughly, but, alas! in vain, And here I stand with study hoar, A fool, and know what I knew before; Am called Magister, nay, LL.D.,

And for ten years, am busily Engaged, leading through fen and close, My trusting pupils by the nose; Yet see that nothing can be known. This burns my heart, this, this alone!”

Here, you will perceive in the first sentence of the poem, as was meet, the fundamental contradiction, the theme, or the “argument,” as it is so admirably termed by critics, is stated in its naked abstractness, just as Achilles’ wrath is the first sentence of the Iliad.

This theme, then, is nothing more nor less than the self-consciousness in contradiction with itself, in conflict with its own content. Hence, if the poem is to portray this theme, this content, in its totality, it must represent it in three spheres: first, Manifestation—Faust in conflict with himself; second, Realization—Faust in conflict with the Family, Society, and the State; thirdly, Actualization—Faust in conflict with Art, Religion, and Philosophy.

Now, my friend, please to examine the poem once more, reflect closely upon what has been said, and then tell how much of the poem can you spare, or how much is there in the poem as printed, which does not flow from or develop this theme?

IV.

In my last, dear friend, I called your attention to the theme, to the content of the poem in a general way, stating it in the very words of the poet himself. To trace the development of this theme from the abstract generality into concrete detail is the task before us.

According to the analysis, we have to consider, first of all, the sphere of _Manifestation_.

In this we observe the three-fold relation which the individual sustains to self-conscious intelligence, viz: Receptivity for, and production of, and aspiration for, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Now if it is true that man cannot know truth, then it follows that he can neither receive nor produce the True. For how shall he know that whatever he may receive and produce is true, since it is specially denied that he can know it. This conclusion as conviction, however, does not affect immediately the third relation—the aspiration—nor quench its gnawing. And this is the first form of conflict in the individual. Let us now open the book and place it before us.

The historic origin of our theme places us in a German University, in the professor’s private studio.

It is well here to remember that it is a German University, and that the occupant of the room is a _German_ professor. Also that it is the received opinion that the Germans are a _theoretical_ people; by which we understand that they act from conviction, and not from instinct. Moreover, that their conviction is not a mere holiday affair, to be rehearsed, say on Sunday, and left in charge of a minister, paid for the purpose, during the balance of the week, but an actual, vital fountain of action. Hence, the conviction of such a character being given, the acts follow in logical sequence.

With this remembered, let us now listen to the self-communion of the occupant of the room.

In bitter earnest the man has honestly examined, and sought to possess himself of the intellectual patrimony of the race. In poverty, in solitude, in isolation, he has labored hopefully, earnestly; and now he casts up his account and finds—what? “That nothing can be known.” His hair is gray with more than futile endeavor, and for ten years his special calling has been to guide the students to waste their lives, as he has done his own, in seeking to accomplish the impossible—to know. This is the worm that gnaws his heart! As compensation, he is free from superstition—fears neither hell nor devil. But this sweeps with it all fond delusions, all conceit that he is able to know, and to teach something for the elevation of mankind. Nor yet does he possess honor or wealth—a dog would not lead a life like this.

Here you will perceive how the first two relations are negated by the conviction that man cannot know truth, and how, on the wings of aspiration, he sallies forth into the realm of magic, of mysticism, of subjectivity. For if reason, with its mediation, is impotent to create an object for this aspiration, let us see what emotion and imagination, _without_ mediation, can do for subjective satisfaction.

And here all is glory, all is freedom! The imagination seizes the totality of the universe, and revels in ecstatic visions. What a spectacle! But, alas! a spectacle only! How am I to know, to comprehend the fountain of life, the centre of which articulates this totality?

See here another generalization: the practical world as a whole! Ah, that is my sphere; here I have a firm footing; here I am master; here I command spirits! Approach, and obey your master!

“_Spirit._ Who calls?

_Faust._ Terrific face!

_Sp._ Art thou he that called?

Thou trembling worm!

_Faust._ Yes; I’m he; am Faust, thy peer.

_Sp._ Peer of the Spirit thou comprehendest—not of me!

_Faust._ What! not of thee! Of whom, then? I, the image of Deity itself, and not even thy peer?“

No, indeed, Mr. Faust, thou dost not include within thyself the totality of the practical world, but only that part thereof which thou dost comprehend—only thy _vocation_, and hark! “It knocks!”

Oh, death! I see, ’t is my vocation; indeed, “It is my famulus!”

And this, too, is merely a delusion; this great mystery of the practical world shrinks to this dimension—a bread-professorship.

It would seem so; for no theory of the practical world is possible without the ability to know truth. As individual, you may imitate the individual, as the brute his kind, and thus transmit a craft; but you cannot seize the practical world in transparent forms and present it as a harmonious totality to your fellow-man, for that would require that these transparent intellectual forms should possess objective validity—and this they have not, according to your conviction. And so it cannot be helped.

But see what a despicable thing it is to be a bread-professor!

And is this the mode of existence, this the reality, the only reality to answer the aspiration of our soul—the aspiration which sought to seize the universe, to kindle its inmost recesses with the light of intelligence, and thus illumine the path of life? Alas, Reason gave us error—Imagination, illusion—and the practical world, the _Will_, a bread-professorship! Nothing else? Yes; a bottle of laudanum!

Let us drink, and rest forever! But hold, is there nothing else, really? No emotional nature? Hark! what is that? Easter bells! The recollections of my youthful faith in a revelation! They must be examined. We cannot leave yet.

And see what a panorama, what a strange world lies embedded with those recollections. Let us see it in all its varied character and reality, on this Easter Sunday, for example.

V.

I have endeavored before to trace the derivation of the content of the first scene of the poem, together with its character, from the abstract theme of the work. In it we saw that the fundamental conviction of Faust leaves him naked—leaves him nothing but a bare avocation, a mere craft, and the precarious recollections of his youth (when he believed in revealed truths) to answer his aspirations. These recollections arouse his emotions, and rescue him from nothingness (suicide)—they fill his soul with a content.

To see this content with all its youthful charm, we have to retrace our childhood’s steps before the gates of the city on this the Easter festival of the year—you and I being mindful, in the meantime, that the public festivals of the Church belong to the so-called external evidences of the truth of the Christian Religion.

Well, here we are in the suburbs of the city, and what do we see? First, a set of journeymen mechanics, eager for beer and brawls, interspersed with servant girls; students whose tastes run very much in the line of strong beer, biting tobacco, and the well-dressed servant girls aforesaid; citizens’ daughters, perfectly outraged at the low taste of the students who run after the servant girls, “when they might have the very best of society;” citizens dissatisfied with the new mayor of the city—“Taxes increase from day to day, and nothing is done for the welfare of the city.” A beggar is not wanting. Other citizens, who delight to speak of war and rumors of war in distant countries, in order to enjoy their own peace at home with proper contrast; also an “elderly one,” who thinks that she is quite able to furnish what the well-dressed citizens’ daughters wish for—to the great scandal of the latter, who feel justly indignant at being addressed in public by such an old witch (although, “between ourselves, she did show us our sweethearts on St. Andrew’s night”); soldiers, who sing of high-walled fortresses and proud women to be taken by storm; and, finally, farmers around the linden tree, dancing a most furious gallopade—a real Easter Sunday or Monday “before the gate”—of any city in Germany, even to this day.

And into this real world, done up in holiday attire, but not by the poet—into this paradise, this very heaven of the people, where great and small fairly yell with delight—Faust enters, assured that here he can maintain his rank as a man; “here I dare to be a man!” And, sure enough, listen to the welcome:

“Nay, Doctor, ’tis indeed too much To be with us on such a day, To join the throng, the common mass, You, you, the great, the learned man! Take, then, this beaker, too,” &c.

And here goes—a general health to the Doctor, to the man who braved the pestilence for us, and who even now, does not think it beneath him to join us in our merry-making—hurrah for the Doctor; hip, hip, &c.

And is not this something, dear friend? Just think, with honest Wagner, when he exclaims, “What emotions must crowd thy breast, O great man, while listening to such honors?” and you will also say with him:

“Thrice blest the man who draws such profits rare, From talents all his own!”

Why, see! the father shows you to his son; every one inquires—presses, rushes to see you! The fiddle itself is hushed, the dancers stop. Where you go, they fall into lines; caps and hats fly into the air! But a little more, and they would fall upon their knees, as if the sacred Host passed that way!

And is not this great? Is not this the very goal of human ambition? To Wagner, dear friend, it is; for the very essence of an avocation is, and must be, “success in life.” But how does it stand with the man whose every aspiration is the True, the Good, and the Beautiful? Will a hurrah from one hundred thousand throats, all in good yelling order, assist him? _No._

To Wagner it is immaterial whether he _knows_ what he _needs_, provided he sees the day when the man who has been worse to the people than the very pestilence itself, receives public honors; but to Faust, to the man really in earnest—who is not satisfied when he has squared life with life, and obtained zero for a result, or who does not merely _live to make a living_, but demands a rational end for life, and, in default of that rational end, spurns life itself—to such a man this whole scene possesses little significance indeed. It possesses, however, _some_ significance, even for him! For if it is indeed true that man cannot know truth—that the high aspiration of his soul has no object—then this scene demonstrates, at least, that Faust possesses power over the practical world. If he cannot _know_ the world, he can at least swallow a considerable portion of it, and this scene demonstrates that he can exercise a great deal of choice as to the parts to be selected; do you see this conviction?

Do you see this conviction? Do you see this dog? Consider it well; what is it, think you? Do you perceive how it encircles us nearer and nearer—becomes more and more certain, and, if I mistake not, a luminous emanation of gold, of honor, of power, follows in its wake. It seems to me as if it drew soft magic rings, as future fetters, round our feet! See, the circles become smaller and smaller-’tis almost a certainty—’tis already near; come, come home with as!

The temptation here spread before us by the poet, to consider the dog “_well_,” is almost irresistible; but all we can say in this place, dear friend, is that if you will look upon what is properly called an _avocation_ in civil society, eliminate from it all higher ends and motives other than the simple one of making a living—no matter with what pomp and circumstance—no doubt you will readily recognize the POODLE. But we must hasten to the studio to watch further developments, for the conflict is not as yet decided. We are still to examine the possibility of a divine revelation to man, who cannot know truth.

And for this purpose our newly acquired conviction, that we possess power over the practical world—although not as yet in a perfectly clear form before us—comfortably lodged behind the stove, where it properly belongs, we take down the original text of the New Testament in order to realize its meaning, in our own loved mother tongue. It stands written: “In the beginning was the Word.” Word? Word? Never! _Meaning_ it ought to be! Meaning what? Meaning? No; it is _Power_! No; _Deed_! Word, meaning, power, deed—which is it? Alas, how am I to know, unless I can know truth? ’Tis even so, our youthful recollections dissolve in mist, into thin air—and nothing is left us but our newly acquired conviction, the restlessness of which during this examination has undoubtedly not escaped your attention, dear friend. (“Be quiet, there, behind the stove.” “See here, poodle, one of us two has to leave this room!”) What, then, is the whole content of this conviction, which, so long as there was the hope of a possibility of a worthy object for our aspiration, seemed so despicable? What is it that governs the practical world of finite motives, the power that adapts means to ends, regardless of a final, of an infinite end? Is it not the Understanding? and although Reason—in its search after the _final end_, with its perfect system of absolute means, of infinite motives and interests—begets subjective chimeras, is it not demonstrated that the understanding possesses objective validity? Nay, look upon this dog well; does it not swell into colossal proportions—is no dog at all, in fact, but the very power that holds absolute sway over the finite and negative—the understanding itself—Mephistopheles in proper form?

And who calls this despicable? Is it not Reason, the power that begets chimeras, and it alone? And shall we reject the real, the actual—all in fact that possesses objective validity—because, forsooth, the power of subjective chimeras declares it negative, finite, perishable? Never. “No fear, dear sir, that I’ll do this. Precisely what I have promised is the very aim of all my endeavor. Conceited fool that I was! I prized myself too highly”—claimed kin with the infinite. “I belong only in thy sphere”—the finite. “The Great Spirit scorns me. Nature is a sealed book to me; the thread of thought is severed. Knowing disgusts me. In the depths of sensuality I’ll quench the burning passion.”

Here, then, my friend, we arrive at the final result of the conflict in the first sphere of our theme—in the sphere of manifestation—that of the individual. We started with the conviction _that man cannot know truth_. This destroyed our spiritual endeavors, and reduced our practical avocation to an absurdity. We sought refuge in the indefinite—the mysticism of the past—and were repelled by its subjectivity. We next examined the theoretical side of the practical world, and found this likewise an impossibility and suicide—a mere blank nothingness—as the only resource. But here we were startled by our emotional nature, which unites us with our fellow-man, and seems to promise some sort of a bridge over into the infinite—certainly demands such a transition. Investigating this, therefore, with all candor, we found our fellow-men wonderfully occupied—occupied like the kitten pursuing its own tail! At the same time it became apparent that we might be quite a dog in this kitten dance, or that the activity of the understanding possessed objective validity. With this conviction fairly established, although still held in utter contempt, we examined the last resource: the possibility of a divine revelation of truth to men that cannot know truth. The result, as the mere statement of the proposition would indicate, is negative, and thus the last chance of obtaining validity for anything except the activity of the understanding vanishes utterly. But with this our contempt for the understanding likewise vanishes. For whatever our aspiration may say, it has no object to correspond to it, and is therefore merely subjective, a hallucination, a chimera, and the understanding is the highest attainable for us. Here, therefore, the subjective conflict ends, for we have attained to objectivity, and this is the highest, since there is nothing else that possesses validity for man. Nor is this by any means contemptible in itself, for it is the power over the finite world, and the net result is: That if you and I, my friend, have no reason, cannot know truth, we do have at least a stomach, a capacity for sensual enjoyment, and an understanding to administer to the same—to be its servant. This, at least, is demonstrated by the kitten dance of the whole world.

Footnote 16:

In this connection, permit me, dear friend, to mention a discovery which I made concerning my son Isaac, now three years old. Just imagine my surprise when I found that every book in my possession—Webster’s Spelling-book not excepted—is a perfect riddle to him, and mystifies him as completely as ever the works of Goethe, Hegel, Emerson, or any other thinking man, do or did the learned critics. But my parental pride, so much elated by the discovery of this remarkable precocity in my son—a precocity which, at the age of three years, (!) shows him possessed of all the incapacity of such “learned men”—was shocked, nay, mortified, by the utter want of appreciation which the little fellow showed of this, his exalted condition!

Footnote 17:

From this a variety of facts in the character and history of the different works of art become apparent. The degree of the effect produced, for example, is owing to the degree of validity attached to the two sides of the contradiction. If the duties which the individual owes to the family and the state come into conflict, as in the Antigone of Sophocles, and the consciousness of the age has not subordinated the ideas upon which they are based, but accords to each an equal degree of validity, we have a content replete with the noblest effects. For this is not a conflict between the abstract good and bad, the positive and the negative, but a conflict within the good itself. So likewise the universality of the effect is apparent from the content. If this is the self-consciousness of a nation, the work of art will be national. To illustrate this, and, at the same time, to trace the development of the particularity spoken of into a collision, we may refer to that great national work of art—the Iliad of Homer. The particularity which distinguishes the national self-consciousness of the Greeks is the preëminent validity attached by it to one of the before-mentioned modes of the actualization of self-conscious intelligence—the sensuous. Hence its worship of the Beautiful. This preëminence and the consequent subordination of the moral and the rational modes to it, is the root of the contradiction, and hence the basis of the collision which forms the content of the poem. Its motive modernized would read about as follows: “The son of one of our Senators goes to England; is received and hospitably entertained at the house of a lord. During his stay he falls in love and subsequently elopes with the young wife of his entertainer. For this outrage, perpetrated by the young hopeful, the entire fighting material of the island get themselves into their ships, not so much to avenge the injured husband as to capture the runaway wife.”

But—now mark—adverse winds ensue, powers not human are in arms against them, and before these can be propitiated, a princess of the blood royal, pure and undefiled, must be sacrificed!—is sacrificed, and for what? That all Greece may proclaim to the world that pure womanhood, pure manhood, family, society, and the state, are nothing, must be sacrificed on the altar of the Beautiful. For in the sacrifice of Iphigenia, all that could perish in Helen, and more too—for Iphigenia was pure and Helen was not—was offered up by the Greeks, woman for woman, and nothing remained but the Beautiful, for which she henceforth became the expression. For in this alone did Helen excel Iphigenia, and all women.

But how is this? Have not the filial, the parental, the social, the civil relations, sanctity and validity? Not as against the realization of the Beautiful, says the Greek. Nor yet the state? No; “I do not go at the command of Agamemnon, but because I pledged fealty to Beauty.” “But then,” Sir Achilles, “if the Beautiful should present itself under some individual form—say that of Briseis—you would for the sake of its possession disobey the will of the state?” “Of course.” And the poet has to sing, “Achilles’ wrath!” and not “the recovery of the runaway wife,” the grand historical action.

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY.