"O hear me! Look on me! See how my heart Opens at last, after so long a time, To the sweet bliss of kissing that dear brow, Most precious treasure earth yet holds for me, ....
O let me,--let me--for in brighter waves Not from Parna.s.sus leaps the eternal stream From rock to rock down to the golden vale, Than from my bosom joy outgushing flows And like a sea of bliss enclasps me round";--
and when Clotilda mournfully surveyed the greater interval of sorrows and days between herself and her brother; then gushed up the inner fountains and filled her large eyes, so often fixed upon the heavens, and a quick bending forward hid the sisterly tear from all eyes untouched by emotion. But it did not escape the feeling eyes with which her friend beside her imitated her.... And here a virtuous voice said within Victor: "Disclose to her that thou knowest the secret of her relationship,--lift off from this sorely oppressed heart the load of silence: perhaps she is withering under a grief which a confidant may cool and take away!" Ah, to listen to this voice was indeed the least with which he could content his infinite sympathy! He said in an extremely low tone, and which emotion rendered almost unintelligible to her: "My father has long since disclosed to me, that Iphigenia knows the presence of her brother and of my friend." Clotilda turned suddenly and blushingly towards him; for a more minute explanation he let his eyes glide down to Flamin; turning pale; she looked away and said nothing; but during the whole play her heart seemed to be far more compressed, and she was compelled now to stifle still more tears and sighs than before. At last in the midst of her sadness she gave grat.i.tude its rights, and whispered to him for his sympathy and his confidence, as if with a dying smile, her thanks. He laid upon the distaff of the conversation entirely new and foreign material, because he would fain, during the spinning, get a clearer and more certain light upon the sad impression which his confession seemed to have produced. He inquired after the latest letters from Emanuel. She replied: "I only wrote to him yesterday all through the eclipse of the moon; he cannot answer me often, because writing pains his breast."
Now, as the eclipse of the 25th of February began at twenty minutes after ten in the evening, at eleven o"clock and forty-one minutes was at its climax, and at one o"clock and two minutes was over: accordingly Victor, as physician, could fall upon the medical sinner with sermons and hammers of the law and p.r.o.nounce the verdict; now, it was no wonder. Pa.s.s it by, Doctor! These dear creatures can more easily obey a man--the Ten Commandments,--books,--Virtue,--the Devil himself more easily, than the Dietician. Clotilda said: "The midnight hours are simply my only free hours,--and Maienthal, indeed, I can never forget."
"Ah, how could one?" said he.
The music before the last act, and the tragic tone, and the sorrows inspired her, and she continued: "Did not one drink of _Lethe_, when one trod the sh.o.r.es of Elysium and when one left it?" ... She paused.
"I would drink of no Lethe, not in the first case, still less in the _last_,--no!" And never was "No" said in a lower, softer, more slow-drawn tone. In Victor"s heart a three-edged compa.s.sion pa.s.sed painfully to and fro, as he imagined to himself Clotilda mocked by fate, writing and weeping in the midnight under a moon dismembered and beclouded by earth"s shadow; he said nothing, he stared rigidly into the mournful scenes of the stage, and still wept on when the joyous ones had, there, already evolved themselves in their place.
At home he made his brain-fibres Ariadne"s threads to extricate himself from the labyrinth of the causes of her trouble, and particularly of the _new_ one which had seemed to come upon her at his disclosure. But he remained in the labyrinth; undoubtedly grief begat the sickness, but who begat the grief? It would be hard for these poor, tender b.u.t.terflies, if there were more than one mortal affliction; in every lane, in every house, thou wilt find a wife or a daughter who has to go to church or to the Tragedy to sigh, and who must go up into the upper story to weep; but this aggregated trouble is worried away with smiles, and years increase for a long time side by side with the tears. On the contrary, there is a grief which breaks them off,--think of that, dear Victor, in the joyful hours of thy general love,[279] and think of it, all ye who with warm, loving hands draw the throbbing heart of such a delicate creature out of its breast, to take it into your own by the side of your own heart, and warm it forever! When you then throw away this hot heart, which you have torn out like a b.u.t.terfly"s honey-proboscis: still, like that, it continues to quiver, but then it grows cold, and erelong beats no more.
Unhappy love, then, was the gnawing honey-dew on this flower, Sebastian concluded. Naturally he thought of himself first; but all his nicest observations, his now so familiar _ricochet-glances_ out of the _corner of his eye_ had long since convinced him that he had to ascribe the distinction, which she did not deny him, more to her impartiality than to her inclination. Who else it could be at Court,--that was a thing which he in vain applied one electrometer after another to draw out.
And he knew beforehand that he should experiment in vain, since Clotilda would baffle all auscultation of her inner state, if she had an unreciprocated inclination; reason was with her the wax, which they stick to one end of the magnetic needle, in order to obviate or conceal the sinking (_inclination_) of the other. Nevertheless, he made up his mind the next time to hold some divining-rods to her soul.----
I must here utter a thought, which may discover some sense and my general speculation in the matter. My Dog-Post-Master Knef did not probably foresee that I should calculate the year and the duration of this whole story merely from the lunar eclipse of the 25th of February, which he announced, just as, in fact, great astronomers, by means of the moon"s phases, found out so much about the earth"s geographical longitude. 1793 was the year in which what is related in this chapter occurred: I am good for that; for as, at all events, the whole story, as is well known, takes place in the ninth decade of the eighteenth century, and as no lunar eclipse of a 25th of February is to be found there at all, except in the year 1793, i. e. the present year, my proposition is made out. To make a.s.surance doubly sure, I have compared all the changes of moon and weather occurring in this book with those of 1792 and 1793; and all fitted together beautifully;--the reader should also reckon it after me. It is uncommonly gratifying to me, that, consequently, as I write in July, the history follows in a half-year from my description.--
Victor delayed not his visit to the Princess"s, that he might there announce the reserved Clotilda as a complete nervous patient. He himself laughed inwardly at the expression,--and at the Doctors,--and at their nervous cures,--and said, that, as formerly the French kings in their treatment of the goitre had to say, "The King touches thee, but G.o.d heals thee," so should physicians say, The city and country physician feels thy pulse, but G.o.d works the cure. Here, however, he had three good intentions in giving out that she was a nervous sufferer: first, that of gaining for her the abolition of her Court-va.s.salage,--at least her deliverance from the precise office of maid of honor, because the splinter of the reproach was continually festering in his heart, "It is my fault that she is obliged to be here"; further, of securing for her in advance permission to take the spring and country air, in case she should by and by sue for it; finally, of releasing her from her compulsory resemblance to those ladies on whose lead-colored faces, as on the leaden soldiers of children, the red daily wears off and is daily renewed. But as Agnola herself painted, he was obliged, out of courtesy, as physician, to forbid it to both at once. The Princess countersigned all his pet.i.tions very graciously: only as to the rouge-article she gave, in regard to herself, no resolution at all, and in regard to Clotilda the following: she had nothing to say against her appearing in her presence, except on court days and at the play, without rouge; and she would willingly grant her a dispensation from both, unless her health was restored.
He could hardly wait for the moment of taking leave, so impatient was he to carry this imperial-recess or resolution to the beloved patient.
He himself wondered at this complaisance of the Princess, with whom, generally, pet.i.tions were sins, and who refused nothing--except what was asked. His perplexity was now only this,--how to communicate to Clotilda the indulgences of the Princess, without the offensive confession of having made a plea of her illness. But out of this slight evil a great one extricated him: when he came into her presence, she looked ten times as sick as she had day before yesterday, at the disclosure of her relationship: her blossoms, heavy with cold dew, drooped to the earth.
Gait and posture were unchanged; there was the same external joyousness, but the glance was often too fluttering, often too fixed; across the lily-cheeks darted often a hectic flush, through the lower lip at one moment a subdued convulsion.... At this point sympathy frightened her friend out of the bounds of courtesy, and he told her outright the consent of the Princess. He summoned to the aid of his burdened heart his previous court-boldness, and commanded her to make the coming spring her apothecary"s shop, and the flowers her medicinal herbs, and her--fancy her pharmacy. "You seem," said she, smiling, "to count me among the larks, who must always have _green turf_ in their cage. However, that my Princess and you may not have had your kindness for nothing, I will, finally, do it. I confess to you, I am at least a _valide imaginaire_.[280] I feel myself well." ... She interrupted herself to question him, with the frankness of virtue and with an eye swimming in sisterly love, about her brother, whether he was happy and contented, how he worked, how he filled his position? She told him how sad a burden these questions, hitherto locked up so deeply in her soul, had been to her and she thanked him for the gift of his confidence with a warmth which he took as a delicate reproof of his previous silence.
Of old she always loved to stand in a flower-garland of children; but in Flachsenfingen she had gathered still more of these little nebulous stars about her brightness, and indeed for a peculiar reason, namely, to cover the fact, that she drew to herself Giulia, a little five-years-old grandchild of the city Senior, with whom her brother resided, as his unwitting biographer and news-carrier. More than three times he felt as if he must fall at the feet of this lily-white angel, borne higher and higher by her cloud, and say with outspread arms: "Clotilda, be my friend, before thy death,--my old love for thee is long since crushed out, for thou art too good for me and for all of us; but I will be thy friend; my heart will I conquer for thee; for thee will I resign my heaven. O, thou wilt, besides, not live to see the evening dew of age, thou wilt soon close thy eyes, and the morning dew still hangs therein!" For he held her soul to be a pearl, whose mussel-body lies open in the dissolving sun, that the pearl may the earlier be dislodged. On leaving, he could with the frankness of the friend, which had taken the place of the lover"s reserve, offer a repet.i.tion of his visits. Altogether he treated her now more warmly and unconstrainedly; first, because he had so utterly renounced her n.o.ble heart, that he wondered at his former bold claims to it; secondly, because the feeling of his disinterested, self-sacrificing honesty towards her poured balm on his previous stings of remorse.
To this sickness was added an evening or an event, which the reader, I think, will not know how to understand. Victor was to take Joachime to the play, and her brother, was to come and fetch him first. I have already twice set it down, that for some weeks Matthieu had no longer been so repulsive to him as a mouse is to an elephant: he had, after all, found out a single good side, dug out some moral yellow mica attaching to him,--namely, the greatest attachment to his sister Joachime, who alone had the key to his whole heart, closed to his parents, the sole claim on his secrets and his services; secondly, he loved in Matthieu what the Minister condemned,--the spirit-of-salt of freedom; thirdly, it is so with us all: when he have heated our heart for some female one out of a family, we afterwards extend the stove-warmth to the whole kin and trenchership,--brothers, nephews, fathers; fourthly, Matthieu was continually praised and excused by his sister. When Victor arrived at Joachime"s, she had with her headache and dressing-maids,--finery and pain were increasing; at last she sent off the live fitting-machines, and so soon as she was hardened into a Venus out of the foam of powder and jewel boxes, rouge-rags and _mouchoirs de Venus_, _poudres d"odeur_ and lip-pomades, then she sat down and said she should stay at home on account of headache. Victor stayed too, and very gladly. Whoso knows not the framework and cellular work of the human heart will wonder that Victor"s friendship for Clotilda brought a whole honey-comb of love for Joachime into his cells; it was delightful to him when they visited and embraced each other; he sought not in the blessing-fingers of the Pope so much healing virtue as in Clotilda"s; her friendship seemed to him an excuse for his, and to set Joachime on the pedestal of esteem, to which with all his windla.s.ses he had not been able to raise her. Even the sense of his increasing worth gave him new right to love; and to-day even Clotilda"s c.r.a.pe and princely hat would have a.s.serted its helmet ornaments on Joachime"s aching and more than commonly patient head. To her continued flirtation with the pair of fools he had long since adapted himself, because he knew very well _which one_ among the three wise men from the East she had not for a fool, but for an adorer. But to return!
Matthieu, who also stayed at home to please his sister,--he and Victor and she made the entire band of this _concert spirituel_. Joachime on the sofa leaned back her delicate, sick head against the wall and looked at the inlaid floor, and her drooping eyelids made her more beautiful. The Evangelist went out and came in. Victor, as he always did, dashed round the chamber. It was a very fine evening, and I wish this of mine were so. The conversation turned upon love; and Victor a.s.serted the existence of two kinds,--the citizenly, and the _distingue_ or French. He loved the French in books and as a general love, but he hated it the moment it was to be the only love; he described it to-day thus: "Take a little ice,--a little heart,--a little wit,--a little paper,--a little time,--a little incense; pour together and put into two persons of rank; in that way you have a good, true French Fontenellian love." "You forgot," added Mat, "one ingredient,--a small amount of senses, at least a _fifth_ or _sixth_ part, which must be added to the medicine as _adjuvans_ or _const.i.tuens_.[281] Meanwhile, it has at least the merit of shortness; love, like a tragedy, should be restricted to unity of time, namely, to the s.p.a.ce of one day, that it may not take still more resemblance to the tragic. But describe now common love!"
_Victor_: "That I prefer."
_Matthieu_: "Not I. It is merely a longer madness than anger. _On y pleure, on y crie, on y soupire, on y ment, on y enrage, on y tue, on y meurt,--enfin, on se donne a tous les diables, pour avoir son ange_.[282] Our talks are to-day for once full of arabesques and _a la grecque_: I will make you a cookery-book receipt for a good citizenly love: take two young and large hearts,--wash them clean in baptismal water or printer"s ink of German romances,--pour on them warm blood and tears,--set them on the fire and under the full moon, and let them boil,--stir them briskly with a dagger,--take them out and garnish them, like crabs, with forget-me-not or other wild-flowers, and serve them up warm: in that way you have a savory citizenly heart-soup."[283]
Matthieu further added, that "in the ardent commonalty-love there was more agony than amus.e.m.e.nt; in it, as in Dante"s poem, the h.e.l.l was worked out best, and the Heaven worst. The older a maiden or a pickled herring was, so much the darker was the eye in both, and the eye was made dark by love. Every lady in one of the higher circles ought to be glad that she needs to retain nothing of the man"s to whom she is chained but his portrait in the ring, as Prometheus, when Jupiter had once sworn to leave him soldered for thirty thousand years to Caucasus, wore during the whole period only a small bit of this Bastille on his hand in the shape of a finger-ring." Whereupon Matthieu darted out, as he always did after witty explosions. Victor loved the bitterest and most unjust satire in another"s mouth, as a work of art; he forgave all, and continued cheerful.
Joachime then said, jestingly: "If, then, no style of love is good for anything, as you two have proved, there is nothing left for us but to hate."
"Surely not," said he, "your respected brother has simply not said a true word. Imagine to yourself, that I were the poor people"s catechist[284] and in love. I am in love with the second daughter of the _pastor primarius_; her part is that of a listening-sister;[285]
for maidens in citizenly life know not how to talk, at least they can do it better in hatred than in love. The poor"s catechist has little _bel esprit_, but much _saint esprit_, much honesty, much truth, too much soft-heartedness, and infinite love. The catechist cannot spin out any gallant intrigue for several weeks or months, still less can he dispute the Pastor"s second daughter into love, like a _roue_;--he holds his peace to keep up his hope, but with a heart full of eternal love, full of devoted wishes, trembling and silent, he follows every step of the loved and--loving one; but she guesses not his feelings, nor he hers. And then she dies.... But before she dies, comes the pale catechist disconsolate to the side of her dying bed, and presses her trembling hand ere it relaxes, and gives the cold eye one more tear of joy ere it stiffens, and breaks in even upon the pangs of the wrestling soul with the soft spring sound, "I love thee." When he has said it, she dies of the last joy, and then he loves no one on earth any more."
The past had come over his soul. Tears hung in his eyes, and confounded in a singular obscurity the image of the sick Clotilda with that of Joachime;--he saw and conceived a form which was not present;--he pressed the hand of the one that looked on him, and thought not that she might refer all to herself.
Suddenly Matthieu entered, smiling, and his sister smiled with him, in order to explain everything, and said, "The court-physician has been taking the trouble to refute thee."
Victor, suddenly chilled, replied ambiguously and bitterly: "You will comprehend, Herr von Schleunes, that it is easiest for me to put you to flight when you are not in the field."
Mat transfixed him with his eyes; but Victor cast his down and repented his bitterness. The sister continued indifferently: "I think my brother is often in the condition of changing with the fashion." He received it with a sunny smile, and thought, as did Victor, that she alluded to his gallant adventures and sham-fights with women of all ranks that sit at the Diet. But when she had sent him off to inquire of her mother who was coming to the _cercle_ this evening, she said to the Medicus: "You do not know what I meant. We have at court a sick lady, who is the very incarnation of _your_ Pastor"s daughter,--and my brother has not so much nor so little spirit as to act the poor"s catechist." Victor started back, broke off and took his leave.
Why? How so? On what account? But does not the reader perceive, then, that the sick lady must be Clotilda, who seeks to escape Mat"s fine approaches within ear-shot and bow-shot of her heart? In fact, Victor had seen well enough that the Evangelist had been hitherto playing a more devoted part towards Clotilda than before her entrance into his Escurial and robber"s castle he could carry on; but Victor had ascribed this politeness simply to the fact of her having there her quarters.
But now the map of his plan lay open there: he had intentionally met a person who was indifferent towards him with the show of contempt (which, however, he finely directed more at her future small income than at her personal attractions), in order thereby to win her attention,--that next-door neighbor of love,--and afterward, by a sudden change to complaisance, to win something more than attention.
"O, thou canst win nothing!" every sigh in Victor exclaimed. And yet it gave him pain, that this n.o.ble woman, this angel, must strike such an adversary with her wings. Now there were thirty things at once suspicious to him. Joachime"s disclosure and coldness, Matthieu"s smile, and--everything.
So far this chapter, to which I have nothing more to append than some mature thoughts. Of course, one sees plainly, that poor Victor mutilates his soul to the size of every female one, as that tyrant did the bedfellows to the length of their bed.[286] To be sure, respect is the mother of love; but the daughter is often some years older than the mother. He takes back one hope of female worth after another. Latest of all, indeed, did he give up his demand or expectation of that sublime _Indian_ sense of eternity, which imparts to us, shadowy figures hanging in the magic smoke of life, an inextinguishable luminous point for self-consciousness, and which lifts us above more than _one_ earth; but as he saw that women, among all resemblances to Clotilda, acquired this last, and as he bethought himself that a worldly life grinds down all the greatness in man, as the weather gnaws away from statues and gravestones precisely the _relieved parts_, there wanted nothing to his handing over to Joachime the declaration of love which had long been fairly written out, nothing except, on her part, a misfortune,--a wet eye, a storm of the soul, a buskin. In more perspicuous words, he said to himself: "I wish she were a sentimental ninny and absolutely intolerable. Then when, some time or other, she had her eyes right full, and her heart too, and then, when I could not tell, for emotion, where my head was standing,--then I could advance and take out my heart and reach it to her and say, It is poor Bastian"s, only keep it." It seems to me as if I heard him in thought softly add, "To whom else could I give it?"
That he really had the first thought, we see from the fact that he inserted it in his diary, from which my correspondent draws everything, and which he, with the sincerity of the freest soul, made for his father, in order as it were to atone for his faults by protocolling them. His Italian lackey did hardly anything but engross it.---Did it not depend on the dog and his news-box, his declaration of love should take place this very day: I would break an arm of Joachime"s,--or lay her in the sick-bed,--or blow out the Minister"s lamp of life, or bring on some disaster or other in her house,----and then I would conduct my hero to the suffering heroine, and say: "When I have gone, kneel down and hand her thy heart." But in this way the chemical process of his love-making may last full as long as a process at law, and I am prepared for three quires.
But here I will confess something which the reader"s pride conceals: that he and I, at the entrance of every lady in these Dog-Post-Days, have made a _mis-shot_ of _salute_,--every one of them we have taken for the heroine of the hero,--at first Agatha,--then Clotilda,--then, when he enclosed his declaration of love in the watch of the Princess, said, "I see now beforehand through the whole business." Then we both said, "After all, we were right about Clotilda." Then in distress I laid hold on Marie, and said, "I shall not reveal anything further." At last it turns out to be one whom none of us had thought of (at least not I),--Joachime.--So it may fare with myself, when I marry....
Before pa.s.sing from the Post-Day to the intercalary day, the following additional minutes are to be pa.s.sed: Clotilda put off her illegitimate cheeks, her _joues_[287] _de Paris_, her rouge, and seldomer exposed now her withering heart to the shaping of the court napkin-press. The Prince, who for her sake had attended as a transient hearer in the lecture-hall of his consort, stayed away somewhat often, and then called at Schleunes"s: nevertheless, the Princess had magnanimity enough not to make our Victor atone, by the taking back of her grat.i.tude, for the withdrawal of January"s favor.--In Victor there was a long war, whether he should impart to Clotilda"s brother the new proofs of her sisterly love:--at last,--moved by Flamin"s suffering, impoverished heart, stung by reports and rascals and suspicion, and by the thought that he had been able hitherto to give so little pleasure to this ingenuous friend,--he told him almost everything (_except_ the relationship).
P. S.--The undersigned testifies, by request, that the undersigned has completed his 24th Post-Day in due order on the last day of July, or Messidor. On the island of St. John"s, 1793.
JEAN PAUL,
_Mining-Superintendent of Scheerau_.
SIXTH INTERCALARY DAY.
Concerning the Wilderness and the Promised Land of Humanity.
There are vegetable men, animal men, and divine men.--
When we were to be dreamed, an angel grew drowsy and fell asleep and dreamed. Then came _Phantasus_,[288] and swept broken meteorological, phenomena, things like nights, fragments of chaos, conglomerated plants, before him, and disappeared with them.
Then came _Phobetor_, who drove herds of beasts along before him, that murdered and grazed as they pa.s.sed, and disappeared with them.
Then came _Morpheus_ and played before him with happy children, with crowned mothers, with shapes that kissed each other, and with fleeting mortals, and when the angel awoke with ecstasy, Morpheus and the human race and the world"s history had disappeared....
--At present the angel still sleeps and dreams,--we are still in his dream,--only _Phobetor_ is with him, and Morpheus still waits for Phobetor with his beasts to disappear....
But let us, instead of dreaming, think and hope; and for the present ask: will _vegetable_ men, _animal_ men, at last be succeeded by _divine_ men? Does the _going_ of the world-clock betray as much design as the building of it, and has it a _dial-plate_ wheel and an _index hand_?
One cannot (with a well-known philosopher) reason directly from final causes in _Physics_ to final causes in _History_, any more than I, in the individual, can deduce from the teleological (intentional) structure of a man a teleological biography of the same, or any more than, from the ingenious structure of animals, I call infer a continuous plan in their universal history. Nature is iron, always the same, and the wisdom shown in her framework is never obscured; the human race is free, and, like the infusorial animal, the multiform Vorticelle, a.s.sumes every moment, now regular, now anomalous shapes.
Every physical disorder is only the hull of an order, every foul spring is the hull of a fair autumn; but are, then, our vices the buds of our virtues, and is the earthly fall of a continually sinking villain nothing but a disguised ascension of his to heaven?--And is there an object in the life of a Nero? Then I could just as well take back and reverse all and make out virtues to be the heart-leaves of disguised vices. But if, as many a one does, we carry the abuse of language so far as to reverse _moral_ height and depth, like _geometrical_, according to the _point of view_, as _positive_ and _negative_ magnitudes; if, therefore, all gouty k.n.o.bs, spotted fevers, and _lead_-[289] or _silver_-colics of the human race are nothing but a different kind of healthiness: then we certainly need not ask whether man will ever get well; in that case he could never in any possible maladies be anything but well.
If a monk of the tenth century had shut himself up in a fit of melancholy, and meditated on the earth, not however on its end, but on its future: would not, in his dreams, the thirteenth century have been already a brighter one, and the eighteenth merely a glorified tenth?
Our weather-prophesyings from _present_ temperature are logically correct and historically false, because new casualties, an earthquake, a comet, reverse the currents of the whole atmosphere. Can the above-imagined monk correctly calculate, if he does not a.s.sume such future magnitudes as America, Gunpowder, and Printer"s ink?--A new religion, a new Alexander, a new disease, a new Franklin, can break, swallow up, dam, turn back the forest stream whose course and contents we propose to reduce on our parchment. There lie still four quarters of the globe full of enchained savage races;--their chain daily grows thinner,--time unlooses it;--what desolation, at least what changes, must they not bring about on the little _bowling-green_ of our cultivated countries? Nevertheless, all nations of the earth must one day be fused together and be purified in a common fermentation, if ever this atmosphere of life is to be cleared up.
Can we draw from some miniature earthquakes and volcanoes, which we ourselves have produced with iron-filings and aquafortis, (in this case, types and printer"s ink,) conclusions as to the aetna eruptions, i. e. from the revolutions of the few cultivated peoples as to those of the uncultivated? Since we may a.s.sume that the human race lives as many thousands of years as the individual does years, may we venture from the sixth year to set the horoscope of youth and manhood? Add to this that the biography of this childish period is precisely the most meagre, and that awakened nations--almost all quarters of the globe are as yet full of sleeping ones--in _one_ year produce more historical material, and _consequently_ more historians, than a sleep-buried Africa in a century. We shall, therefore, _then_ be best able to prophesy from universal history, when the awaking nations shall have appended to it their million or two supplementary volumes.--All savage nations seem to have been under _one_ stamp; on the contrary, the mint of culture coins each one differently. The North American and the old German resemble each other more strongly than Germans do Germans of neighboring centuries. Neither the Golden Bull, nor the _Magna Charta_, nor the _Code Noir_, could Aristotle inlay into his forms of government and obedience; else he would have extended them; but are we then confident of foreseeing any better the future national convention in Mongolia, or the Decretal Letters and Extravagants of the enlightened Dalai-Lama, or the Recesses of the Arab Imperial Bench of Knights?
Since Nature coins no people with _one_ mint-stamp or one hand alone, but with thousands at once,--hence on the German race is there a greater mult.i.tude of impressions than on the shield of Achilles,--how do we, who cannot even calculate the past, but simpler, revolutions of the globe, expect to look into the moral ones of its inhabitants?
Of all that follows from these premises I believe the opposite, excepting the necessity of prophetic modesty. Scepticism, which makes us, instead of slow to believe, unbelieving, and instead of the _eyes_ proposes to purge the _light_, becomes nonsense and the most fearful philosophical impotence and atony.
Man regards his century or his half-century as the culmination of light, as a festal-day, to which all other centuries lead only as week-days. He knows only two golden ages,--the one at the beginning of the world, and the one at the end of it,--by which he understands only his own; he finds history to be like great woods, in the middle of which are silence, night-birds, and birds of prey, and whose borders only are filled with light and song.--Certainly all things serve me; but I too serve all. As Nature, who in her eternity knows no loss of time, in her inexhaustibleness no loss of power, has no other law of frugality a.s.signed her than that of prodigality,--as she, with _eggs_ and _seed-corns_, ministers equally well to _nourishment_ and to _propagation_,[290] and with an undeveloped germ-world sustains half a developed one,--as her way leads over no smooth bowling-alley, but over alps and seas;--our little heart must needs misunderstand her, whether in its hopes or in its fears; it must, as it becomes enlightened, reciprocally interchange _morning_ and _evening red_; it must, in its contentment, now regard after-summer as _spring_, and now _after-winter_ as _autumn_. _Moral_ revolutions mislead us more than _physical_, because the former according to their nature occupy a _greater_ play-room and s.p.a.ce of time than the latter,--and yet the Dark Ages are nothing but a dipping into the shadow of _Saturn_, or an eclipse of the sun of short duration. A man who should be six thousand years old, would say to the six creation-days of the world"s history, They are very good.