The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Born on October 25, 1800

There are few works of history whose reading evokes such a sure feeling that they take us into the spirit of the epochs described as Macaulay's "History of England". Undoubtedly there are historians who are able to shape their material more artfully, to bring out the personalities more vividly, and those who are able to apply even greater diligence in the collection of details than Macaulay. The harmonious interaction of these three skills, as found in his work, can only be found in the same way in very few historians. The first two volumes of the work were published in November 1848. The publication was awaited in England with the highest hopes. The most extraordinary things were expected from the man who had been held in the highest esteem as an essayist and politician for more than twenty years. Macaulay surpassed everything that had been expected. In the shortest possible time, translations into German, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Bohemian, Hungarian and Persian were available. Such a rapid spread of the book throughout the educated world is perfectly understandable when one considers the aforementioned sense of security that its study arouses. It is one of those literary achievements in which one gains complete confidence as soon as one first becomes acquainted with them. The first two volumes cover the short period of English history from 1685 to 1689; in the later volumes Macaulay succeeded in describing events up to 1704. Ten years of careful study preceded their publication. Even if one does not learn about this care from Macaulay's biography, one soon gets to know it from the work. Every sentence expresses it forcefully. The description of the facts is so vivid that one almost believes one is listening to a contemporary; the characterization of the personalities portrayed often lulls us into the illusion that someone is telling the story on the basis of personal acquaintance. This perfect maturity of his historical judgment is a result of the course of Macaulay's life and his quite unique character. He was almost always in situations in life that offered him the widest conceivable horizon of experience. His father was sent to Jamaica by a Scottish trading house when he was sixteen. There he experienced the horrors of slavery. This prompted him to devote part of his life to fighting it. After his return home, a company founded for the purpose of freeing slaves commissioned him to colonize freed slaves on the coast of Sierra Leone. The mindset of such a personality, who had matured in cultural tasks on a grand scale, must have contributed to the development of a great, free spirit in his son. The father certainly influenced the young Macaulay in this direction. The parental home often brought together numerous men who were involved in a wide range of activities. The old Macaulay did everything he could to arouse his son's interest in the negotiations and work of these men. - When Macaulay was twenty-five years old, his first important piece of writing appeared in the "Edinburgh Review" on Milton. It made the author a famous man in one fell swoop. Fame at such a young age raises those who have the prerequisites for it to a higher level of activity. It gives the strength necessary to bring talent into the right relationship with things and with one's contemporaries. In a country like England, the attention of those interested in public life was soon to be drawn to the young writer. In 1830 he was elected Member of Parliament for Wiltshire. He was a representative of the people at a turbulent time. The French July Revolution sparked calls everywhere for the expansion of freedom. Macaulay was privileged to participate as a Member of Parliament in the debate on Lord Russell's reform bill in 1831. The preservation of the English constitution was in question. Macaulay acted in a way that added to his reputation as a great writer that of an important politician. Three years later, his field of work expanded again. He was elected a member of the High Council of India. He administered his office in England's colonies on the basis of a highly ethical view of life. His activities in India lasted until 1837 and left a beneficial mark on both the material and spiritual culture of the country. - Until 1847, Macaulay led a quieter life, devoting himself almost exclusively to extensive studies for his "History of England". In 1847 he once again entered Parliament. The extent of his influence, which was based on nothing more than the persuasive effect of his words and reasons, can be seen from the fact that in 1853 he succeeded in defeating a bill relating to the exclusion of the Chief Archivist from Parliament, which had been as good as passed before his speech, by a majority of over a hundred votes.

The fact that Macaulay was able to exploit the fortunate circumstances in which he found himself for the purpose of comprehensive effectiveness is explained by the extraordinary qualities of his mind. In addition to an almost miraculous memory, he had a rare gift for combining information, which, as a historian, allowed him to illuminate one event through another, often quite distant one, and which, in the field of practical activity, allowed him to energetically find the appropriate means to achieve the goals he had in mind. I would like to cite one of his brilliant historical analogies to characterize his intellectual capacity. It is to be found in the essay "Burleigh and His Times": "The only event of modern times which can be conveniently compared with the Reformation is the French Revolution, or, to express it more definitely, that great revolution in political views which took place during the eighteenth century in almost all the countries of the civilized world, and which celebrated its greatest and most terrible triumph in France. Each of these memorable events would be most correctly described as an outrage of human reason against a caste. One was a struggle for spiritual liberty, waged by the laity against the clergy; the other was a struggle for political liberty, waged by the people against princes and nobility. In both cases, the spirit of innovation was initially encouraged by a class of society that one would have expected to be in the forefront of prejudice. It was under the protection of Frederick, Catherine, Joseph, and the French greats that the philosophy which later threatened all the thrones and aristocracies of Europe with destruction received its terrible development. The zeal with which scholarly studies began to be pursued towards the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century found warm encouragement from the heads of the same church to which the scientific enlightenment was to become so pernicious. When it broke out, it happened in both cases with such violence that even some of those who had at first distinguished themselves by the freedom of their views turned away in horror and disgust. The violence of the democratic party transformed Burke into a Tory and Alfieri into a courtier. The passion of the men at the head of the religious movement in Germany made Erasmus a defender of the abuses, and caused Thomas More, the author of the Utopia, to act as a persecutor against the followers of the innovations."

When one reads the character sketches of historical figures that Macaulay has provided, one is often reminded of the monumental style of Emerson. But whereas the latter, as a rhetorician and moral writer, worked towards the finely elaborated thought and preferred the faithfulness of the apergus to the naturalistic depiction of reality, the reverse is the case with Macaulay. But his immersion in reality is so mature, so thorough and thoughtful that his historical fidelity is automatically transformed into a striking apergus. Thus, when he characterizes Burleigh, Queen Elizabeth's statesman, with the words: "He never left his friends until it became unpleasant to stay with them any longer. He was an excellent Protestant, so long as there was no great advantage in being a Papist. He recommended to his mistress, as strongly as he could without risking her favor, the observance of a tolerant policy. He allowed no one to be put to the torture unless it was likely to extort a useful confession. He was so moderate in his covetousness that he left only three hundred different estates, although, as his honest servant tells us, he could have left many more if he had wanted to take money from the treasury for his own use, as many a treasurer has done."

In Macaulay's "History of England", the chapter on the state of England in 1685 is a model of historical representation. It is a modern trend in historiography to replace the former, purely diplomatic-political method with the cultural-historical method. In this chapter Macaulay becomes a perfect cultural historian, because the intrinsic truth of his subject induces him to do so, and his comprehensive sense makes it impossible for him not to trace the relations which connect things into their remotest corners. - It was not possible for the indefatigable man to continue his historical work beyond the year 1704. A heart condition swept away this strong life in 1858.

On October 28, 1900, one of the most popular scholars of our time died. The way Max Müller was spoken about after the death notice was received was reminiscent of the words of esteem that could be heard a few years ago when Hermann Helmholtz passed away. Today, the names of both scholars are associated with similar ideas by those who lay claim to a certain general education. And yet it is not the same thing that goes on in the minds of contemporaries when they mention one name as the other. In the case of Hermann Helmholtz, people knew that he was one of the greatest physicists. He was one of those who, according to an old saying, are more praised than read. Many people still remember that we had to see the monument to the great physicist on the Potsdamer Bridge in Berlin adorned with the incorrect title of one of his books. The situation is different with Max Müller. He really is read. Countless of the ideas he set down in his charmingly written works on the development of language, mythology and religion have become an integral part of contemporary education. He conveyed the intellectual development of the Oriental peoples to the general education of the Occident. He knew how to do this in such a way that even those who were not part of a scholarly profession were interested in his work. He was one of the most important intellectual stimulators of the present day. His peers, the linguists and religious scholars, did not value his work as highly as the others. As a Sanskrit scholar and Sanskrit mythologist, he is not even regarded as a scholar who should be mentioned first and foremost. They say that hardly any of his basic ideas can hold their own against the current state of scholarship. Anyone who is not an expert in the field of linguistic research should not presume to pass any judgment on this.

However, the non-expert can say one thing about Max Müller: what he has achieved for our western cultural life is, purely in terms of the scope of his work, as significant as the creations of very few writers. He has published the oldest monument of Indian intellectual life (Rigveda) in six large volumes (London 1849-1874); he has arranged for the publication of one of the most monumental works of our time, the complete "Holy Books of the East", on which scholars of almost all cultural nations are working, and to which he himself has made important contributions. And while he was so incessantly endeavoring to present the educational treasures of the Orient to Europeans, in his lectures on "The Science of Language" (published in German in 1875), in his "Essays" and in a large number of other works and treatises, he sought to explain the laws of the spiritual development of mankind.

The way in which Max Müller did all this corresponded to a large extent to the needs and inclinations of the second half of the century. The historical approach was congenial to this period. It differed significantly from the age that preceded it. The latter believed that it could arrive at conclusions about human nature, about the laws of language, morality and religion by observing the nature of the present human being as a finished individual being. This changed as the century progressed. People wanted to explain the man of the present from the man of the past. It was no longer believed that the observation of the fully developed human being could, for example, provide information on how religious needs arise, from which moral concepts spring.

They wanted to get to know the first beginnings of such ideas and gradually ascend from the understanding of undeveloped cultures to that of the present. They also wanted to learn how different civilizations came to be formed in order to be able to fathom the laws of human development through comparison. People increasingly moved away from viewing man as an individual; they learned to see him as a member of humanity as a whole. Max Müller's thoughts lie entirely within such a conceptual direction. He opened up the Orient to us in order to show the similarities and differences between the various cultures and in this way to arrive at an understanding of the great laws that govern them all.

It was only towards the end of the century that people began to realize that this approach was also one-sided. One of Friedrich Nietzsche's most inspiring writings is "Unzeitgemäße Betrachtung: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben". He sought to show how man spoils his life in the present by always looking at historical development. It is Nietzsche's opinion that life is higher than the knowledge of life. If I ask myself with every one of my ideas how it has become, I paralyze my free, go-it-alone life. I believe that with every step I take, I must first think about whether it is in line with the previous lawful development. We have heard so often in recent decades that when a new impulse wanted to assert itself somewhere, the advocates of the historical approach immediately came and said that it was unhistorical. The philosophical approach has gradually been lost to us above the historical approach. We have experienced this in the worst possible way in philosophy itself. Our time has become poor in new philosophical ideas. Indeed, those who still want to put forward such ideas are looked down upon with contempt. Our time has even been denied the ability to create new laws before we have fully penetrated the process of legal development.

The spread of such an attitude is the dark side of the work of Max Müller. And here we have reached the point where this important writer leaves the forward-looking among our contemporaries unsatisfied. To what extent he has been overtaken by contemporary linguistics and religious research is something we can leave to the experts to decide. The fact that his philosophical dispositions were not very significant is what must disturb those who look for elements in the literary achievements of the present that are relevant to the great questions of worldview. Max Müller could not understand why Ernest Renan regretted that he had become a historian and not a naturalist. This has to do with Max Müller's characteristic philosophical disposition. He always remained very distant from the natural sciences. He could not decide to cross the "Rubicon of the spirit", which leads from man to the rest of nature. He pursued the historical development of language as far as history, the science of man, can do. If one wants to learn about the emergence of language from lower faculties, one must abandon the historical approach and move on to the scientific one. Müller lists 121 linguistic roots on which the language of the Aryans is based. They are supposed to express just as many original terms. This is as far as the historian gets. The natural scientist goes further. He looks for the origin of everything that occurs in humans in animal abilities. Those who reject everything that is not accessible to history will never arrive at such origins. The natural scientist examines the laws of nature in the present. He illuminates the past from the present. The historical way of looking at things will gradually have to expand into the scientific way if it is to be fruitful for our world view. We can never understand the present merely from its becoming; rather, we must also understand the becoming, the development, from the present. The geologist researches the causes that are still changing the surface of the earth today. From there, a perspective into the past opens up for him. A shift in this direction will also have to be made in our view of mankind. However, there is little evidence of such an insight in Max Müller's writings. This separated him from the way natural scientists thought. It will be increasingly recognized as a shortcoming of his work.

Anyone who is able to observe themselves just a little knows what the so-called "impartiality" of historical observations is all about. We all make judgments from a personally colored point of view, to which the place and time of our birth and life have brought us. This is most evident when we look at spiritual creations. It would be vain self-deception if we did not want to admit to ourselves that ultimately no two people can be of the same opinion about a painting or a piece of poetry. And the different opinions also flow into our historical judgment. The person who sees Lessing as the great pathfinder of the new literature will describe the historical context in which he places him quite differently; and the person who, with Eugen Dühring, sees him as nothing more than an illusory greatness elevated by "Judaism" will see him quite differently. Those who have this introspection will have a milder view of many a work of intellectual history than those who believe in the fairy tale of "impartiality".

This must be borne in mind when approaching a book that is in many respects characteristic of our current way of writing literary history, Adolf Bartels' "History of German Literature" (Verlag Eduard Avenarius, Leipzig 1901), of which the first volume has so far been published. Adolf Bartels is, it should be said at the outset, a man of spirit and taste. He has so much of both, in fact, that his measure at least entitles him to view the development of German literature from his point of view. But the way in which Bartels expresses his point of view is decidedly repulsive to someone who is self-observant and self-critical. I need only add a single sentence here to justify this feeling. In discussing Goethe, Bartels applies a word of Jacob Burckhardt's to "Faust": "Faust is a true and just myth, that is, a great primeval image in which everyone has to divine his nature and his fate in his own way." To this sentence by the great historian, Mr. Bartels adds: "Yes, and especially if he is a Germanic man". We read something like this again and again in this literary history. Adolf Bartels wants to write his book as a "Germanic man". What he is actually trying to say comes to light if you know how to read between the lines. It does not occur to me to equate Mr. Bartels with the flat party people who invented the "Germanic man" in order to have a word that sounds as good as possible to justify their anti-Semitism. I have too much respect for Bartels' knowledge and taste to fall into the error that would lie in such an equation. But one thing seems certain to me: Bartels' remarks about the "Germanic man" have grown up on similar ground to the nonsensical ramblings of the anti-Semites.

His entire book gains something untrue from the fact that he wants to talk us into believing that the judgments that only Mr. Bartels makes are made from the standpoint of "Germanic man". And what is much worse, this gives his book something dangerous. For the untruth that lies in the fact that he reinterprets his personal opinion as that of someone who feels "Germanic" becomes a danger to himself. He becomes petty and - also from his point of view - unjust. One need not be an unconditional follower of Wilhelm Scherer, one can certainly recognize the errors of this man's view of literature; but one must nevertheless find it petty when Bartels writes on the occasion of his review of the Christ e;pos "Heliand": "On the other hand, Scherer leaves little good in the poetry: to him it is a mere didactic poem... "The Jews are put in the most unfavorable light". One realizes that Scherer's literary history was originally written for the audience of the "Neue Freie Presse"." This sentence by Bartels is only understandable if it is understood in such a way that the audience of the "Neue Freie Presse" is thought to be Jewish. In the end, these are the blossoms of the "Germanic" spirit, that a Marin, who by his scientific seriousness and his spirit is absolutely entitled to a different assessment, is suspected of writing for a certain audience.

It is just as petty when Moses Mendelssohn is characterized with the words: "With Moses Mendelssohn, his "Phaedon", his "Morgenstunden", his "Jerusalem", the Jewish influence on German literature begins, his basically sober deism becomes the creed of wide circles and is still called by Hettner "beseligende (!) Vernunftreligion". It will be necessary to completely rewrite the chapter on Mendelssohn and to shed light on what is specifically Jewish in Moses' nature and work - as a human being, I believe he should not lose too much. - You can see how much Mr. Bartels has to go to great lengths to ensure that the noble humanity, which even he does not dare to deny in Moses Mendelssohn, makes a portrayal possible in which - the Jew loses something.

It goes without saying that Bartels' viewpoint puts Lessing's "Nathan" in a skewed light. He says that it is a tendency poem with the "faults of the tendency poem". How little Mr. Bartels understands himself can be seen from the words he attaches to his reflections on "Nathan". "We no longer doubt for a moment that Christianity as a religion, not merely as a moral doctrine, is decidedly superior to Judaism and Mohammedanism, and in an objective work - and that is what all dramatic works should be - we would rightly demand that the representative of Christianity be placed alongside those of the other two religions as the spiritually highest personality .... .". Mr. Bartels would therefore prefer a Christian tendency poem to Lessing's "Nathan". That is his personal judgment. But he should confess this and not fib that every work of poetry should be "objective". That is narrow-mindedness after all. And this narrow-mindedness, this limited scope of vision, is a major flaw in Bartels' entire book. What can one say about the way this literary scholar tackles Schiller? Mr. Bartels has a lot to say against Schiller. He seems overrated to him. We don't want to argue with Mr. Bartels about that. If he simply said that Schiller is "indispensable as an educator for the people and youth" to this day "and, at a certain stage of education, is still the great poet and man who carries us forward; for the time being, the stage must hold on to him for lack of a complete replacement, but the development of literature has gone beyond him....", there might be much to object to, but it could be discussed seriously. The seriousness ends, however, and the comedy begins when Mr. Bartels becomes "Germanic" with Schiller: "He is the only important dramatist of his tribe, and even if I believe in a law of contrast that imperiously demands the opposite type to the type, i.e. the dramatic man of will to the Iyrian man of feeling, I still find Schiller's drama not corresponding to Swabian poetry, find, here in agreement with numerous other judges, something un-Germanic, even un-Germanic in it. This has also led to the assumption of a Celtic bloodline in Schiller...". So, because Schiller does not quite satisfy the "Germanic" Bartels, Schiller does not have to be a "pure Germanic".

Whoever sees through things from all sides has only a smile for such statements as those of Mr. Bartels. The danger, however, lies in the fact that many who have an - even narrower circle of vision than Bartels must feel "Germanically" at home with his narrow-mindedness. However, I only find anti-Semitic gnats in the book. But I wouldn't be surprised if these gnats were to grow into quite respectable anti-Semitic elephants in many readers. And I don't believe that such an effect would be very unpleasant for Mr. Bartels. His entire work cannot at least save me from this belief.

A gentleman who conceals his name has written a reply in the "Post" of September 23 to my article about Mr. Bartels, the literary historian, published with his full name. The gentleman also omits my name. His omissions are characteristic of the way members of a certain press view their journalistic duties. Either this gentleman is so uneducated that he cannot understand a simple train of thought, or he understands his journalistic duty to mean that he does not need to read an article he opposes properly. Because his reply is nothing more than a series of distortions of what I said. I claimed that Mr. Bartels was merely judging from his personal point of view and decreeing this point of view to be a "Germanic" one. There is something untrue in that. And that would be dangerous for Mr. Bartels because it would lead him to narrow-mindedness and injustice. The "Post" claims that I attacked Mr. Bartels because of his Germanic point of view. It is clear to any reasonable person that I was just trying to prove that Mr. Bartels is wrong to call his point of view a "Germanic" one. It would be useless to fight with people who are not fighting against what you have said, but against the distortions they have created. The critic of the "Post" is not intelligent enough to tell him that - according to my explanations - I would have exactly the same thing to say if another literary historian were to judge from his personal point of view and then claim that he had judged from a "Jewish" point of view.

How the author of the "Post" article reads is clear from another passage. He says that I accused Mr. Bartels of wanting to find something un-Germanic in Schiller's poetry. In the relevant passage of my essay, I am not talking about Schiller's poetry, but about his drama.

It is often said that great men have the weaknesses of their virtues. It is no less true, however, that those who emulate great men inherit the weaknesses of their vices to an outstanding degree. The first sentence is applicable to the great aesthete and literary historian Friedrich Theodor Vischer, who was for a long time an ornament of the Stuttgart Technical University; the other truth comes to mind when one looks at his successor on the teaching pulpit, Mr. Carl Weitbrecht. Vischer's broad view of artistic matters was tinged with a certain philistinism; the fine humorist, who gave us the heart-warming novel "Also One", is constantly spoiled by an "inner philistine". And as gratifying as it is that Vischer has given Goethe's idolatry of the judgmentless a good rap on the knuckles with his third part of "Faust", the fact that the honest Swabian goes about his "dispatching" in a rather too bourgeois manner makes a rather uncomfortable impression amidst all this joy. But these are the faults of great virtues. Carl Weitbrecht lacks these virtues; he has shown this sufficiently in his many writings. There is no doubt that he learned a lot from Vischer. And that is why his book "This side of Weimar" has many good points. He has pointed out some of the advantages of Goethe's nature, some of which were lost to the great spirit in later life. However, the flip side of Vischer's merits appears quite repulsive in the two volumes that Carl Weitbrecht recently had published as "Deutsche Literaturgeschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts" in the "Sammlung Göschen" (no. 134 and 135 of this collection, G. J. Göschensche Verlagshandlung, Leipzig 1901).

You don't have to be very suspicious when reading these two volumes to come to the conclusion that the first was written to accuse the "German Jew" Heine of every conceivable evil; the second to vent a bitter resentment against everything so-called "modern". Among the various judgments that emerge, this appears again and again, in the most diverse paraphrases: a poet, a writer is all the more well-behaved the less he does it like the evil Heine. Here are just a few examples. "When Goethe died, Heine was the man of the time - that characterizes the situation: the old man in Weimar has fallen silent, and a German Jew in Paris sets the tone." Just in passing, I would like to point out a small thoughtlessness on the part of Mr. Weitbrecht. According to his statements on page 8, the "Old Man of Weimar" had nothing more to say at the beginning of the nineteenth century. "The life that he" (Goethe) "lived and expressed in literature in the first third of the century had little more in common with what the nation lived and fought for at that time; just as he had brought his personal life over from the previous century, so he lived it to the end in the new century... a lonely greatness, certain of his immortality, but more and more alienated from the present." What is Carl Weitbrecht's fault that he has Goethe spiritually dead by the end of the eighteenth century: in order to have an "elegant" entrance for a butchery of Heine, one can behead Goethe's genius twice.

What has poor Heine, in Weitbrecht's opinion, had on his conscience! "From Heine, as from hardly anyone else, the Germans have learned for generations to despise their own nation and to speak ill of it, because their governments did criminally stupid things, because the freedom that the French Revolution meant could not be introduced so quickly in Germany; from him they have learned to regard criticism and joking about German things as a higher sign of intellectual development and freedom of thought than patient, self-denying work on these things; from him they have learned the vain tone that trumpets the pains and dissatisfactions of the individual as the pains of humanity and forgets that the nation stands between the individual and humanity". Mr. Carl Weitbrecht may think about Heinrich Heine as he is able, according to his talent. People who understand Heine can hardly be upset by Weitbrecht's private opinion. But what you have to have a serious word with gentlemen like Carl Weitbrecht about is the, to put it mildly, offensive presumption with which he labels "the Germans" as fools. For only fools could prove to be "docile" in the sense described in Weitbrecht's sentence above. Does Carl Weitbrecht's Swabian soul not have anything that would make it ashamed of such a characterization of its nation?

Weitbrecht often refers to Heine to say how others were different. "What was witty, self-satisfied play in Heine was serious, incurable suffering in Lenau". Learn, Mr. Weitbrecht, to characterize the spirits out of themselves, because what Lenau was has nothing to do with what Heine was. But it continues in this tone. It is true that Mr. Weitbrecht must himself acknowledge Menzel's scurrilous denunciation, which contributed to Gutzkow's punishment, as such; but he cannot get past this acknowledgement without the tasteless sentence: "Heine felt very flattered to see himself most solemnly placed at the head of the whole movement... and coined the poisonously dishonest title of "denunciator" for Wolfgang Menzel, whose unnecessarily clamorous criticism of Gutzkow's trivial novel "Wally" had, however, given the Bundestag the external occasion for its folly."

Even Freiligrath's manly way of bearing the suffering of exile inspires Mr. Weitbrecht to lash out at the "German Jew": "He did not blubber softly or flirt with exile" (Freiligrath) "for that reason." Weitbrecht's idea of how Heine led the spirits by the reins is quite amusing. "It was Heine who made Platen and Immermann enemies." So the good Platen would not have been taken in by the "Jew in Paris": he would not have portrayed the "Nimmermann" as the "vain fop" in his "Romantic Oedipus". Gustav Schwab and Paul Pfizer were, in Weitbrecht's sense, called to do quite different things than what they achieved, but they "were no match for Heine's dishonest fencing tricks". In his review of Emanuel Geibel, our literary historian makes the beautiful statement: "Wherever he seemed to achieve or strive for the brevity of the simple lyrical mood or the very compact song in his earlier poems, he was mostly dependent on role models, including even Heine; the more he gave of himself, however, the more effort he needed." Oh misery upon misery: poor Geibel, it must be said of you that you once wrote some decent poetry; but that's nothing, because Heinrich Heine seduced you into such skill.

I think we can take leave of Mr. Weitbrecht after these rehearsals. To write the right words about the further course of his remarks would be to be cruel.

It is just a pity that a "collection" like Göschen's, which contains so much good stuff, has absorbed Weitbrecht's two volumes of ranting.

We understand,¹ when the anti-Semites try to put their program on a scientific basis. After all, we have seen the Social Democrats at work these days trying to save their party doctrine, scientifically endangered by Bernstein, from being undermined. This is certainly a laudable endeavor, provided it is not based on pontificating, as in Lübeck, or the evidence is based on fallacies and cleverly concealed truth, as in the "Staatsbürger-Zeitung" (September 22), where Professor Paulsen is invoked as the key witness of anti-Semitism.

The article in question is based on Paulsen's "System of Ethics", a widely read and older work that was already available in its 4th edition in 1896. Anyone who has ever studied Paulsen's works with an objective understanding, be it the aforementioned "System of Ethics", the "History of Teaching", his "Philosophia militans" or even his "Introduction to Philosophy", cannot possibly believe that Paulsen had a tendency such as the one attributed to him by anti-Semites. The aforementioned scholar is protected from this by the fine historical sense that runs through all his works. Everything Paulsen says in his "System of Ethics" about the nationality and religion of the Jews has grown out of this historical understanding, and so he can rightly say: "The awareness of being the chosen people of God permeates religion and nationality". Of course, this is a historical reconstruction of Judaism from its gray past. If the writer of the article in the "Staatsbürger-Zeitung" had learned to see objectively, then the concept of Jewish "nationality" must have already indicated this to him. But such an admission would have destroyed the whole tendency of the anti-Semitic article. At the very moment when the Jews lost the "down-to-earthness" of their old homeland, their rigid nationalism was struck to the heart, and true to all human laws of development and adaptation, the process of new "down-to-earthness" began among them.

History should prove to our anti-Semites that we are only dealing with a historically possible and even necessary event. The Slavs of eastern Germany have become "native" in places where Germanic peoples once lived, and Germanic language islands (the Saxons of Transylvania) have survived in the middle of Slavic countries. All the migrations of prehistoric times are a tearing of the old homeland bond and a new contract with nature. Part of the story is, one might say, a shifting groundedness, sometimes unsuccessful, in many cases also successful. The mixture between Slavs and Germanic peoples as we know it will roughly correspond to the ethnological state in which Judaism finds itself in the midst of European or other cultural states. If the process of assimilation had not been artificially halted, the Jew among us would in any case not suffer from any greater exclusivity than the Slavs in Germanic countries, for example. The author of the above-mentioned anti-Semitic article is hopefully familiar enough with German Jewish legislation up to the middle of the nineteenth century to prove us right. Even the century of "enlightenment" and "humanity" came up with paragraphs in this regard that are reminiscent of the conditions of slavery. Every police law of the eighteenth century provides information on this. These things certainly gave the Jews a certain "mobility and internationality" that Paulsen talks about. But are these characteristics so thoroughly un-German, "unteutsch" our anti-Semites would say? Haven't hundreds of thousands of Germans left their homeland to try their luck on the other side of the ocean? And it is precisely among these emigrants that a considerable percentage are Upper Germans, i.e. unadulterated Germanic people. If these hundreds of thousands were to make a national profession of faith, it would or should, judging by their actions, read: "Ubi bene, ibi patria", "Where it is well with me, there is my fatherland". And don't "national" papers, to which the "Staatsbürger-Zeitung" surely also belongs, sing the lament that many Germans living abroad so soon deny their Germanness? Yes, this national immersion is even said to be one of the characteristics of the German "Michels". So "mobility and internationality" on both sides, not just as a specific feature of Judaism.

The feeling of being linked "for life and death" with the people to which one belongs is not based on race, but on the moral fitness of the individual. The "Staatsbürger-Zeitung" pretends that "standing and falling" with one's own people has always been found among Germans, otherwise the contrast to Judaism would make no sense. The apparently historically untrained writer of the "Staatsbürger-Zeitung" is probably unaware that seven Prussian ministers with illustrious noble names offered their services to Napoleon, that in 1808 no fewer than seven senior officers were sentenced to death by the courts martial for cowardice before the enemy. Names such as von Lindener, von Ingersleben, von Poser, von Hacke and von Romberg were probably not Jewish. The author is probably also unaware that after the retreat from Jena and Auerstädt, liberated Prussians, at least half of whom were "down-to-earth", refused to take up arms. German princes courted Napoleon I, and they glorified his day as prince. In the "Confidential Letters", the "Fires of Fire" and the "Gallery of Prussian Characters" from the days after 1806/07, there was a lot of truth alongside some vituperation. Did the accusations concern Jews? Stein's angriest letter was addressed to a German imperial prince, that of Nassau-Usingen. The depth of Stein's confession: "I have only one fatherland, that is Germany", can only be expressed by a moral concept of duty, as Stein knew it. First and foremost, moral responsibility is the deciding factor when it comes to going along "to the death". And this moment was also lacking in the racial Germans when Napoleon trampled on the fatherland. No amount of "down-to-earthness" helped.

Now the "Staatsbürger-Zeitung" believes that the Jew could never enter into this pact of life and death "without abandoning the old national religious ceremonial". The ceremonial thus seems to be essential to the writer of the article. What does he say about the sects that form outside of national churches? Finally, what about the Protestant regional church, which broke away from the womb of the Roman Catholic Church not least because of its ceremonial. So the ceremonial really can't be the deciding factor: no, it's the religion itself.

Paulsen is supposed to be the scientific savior of the anti-Semites. In any case, it is not without significance for them when the meritorious scholar says of the Jewish religion in his "Introduction to Philosophy", 4th edition, p. 294, that "the special talent of the Israelite people lies in the seriousness and depth" with which they grasp moral and religious matters. "Seriousness and depth" are what made Stein, Blücher, Fichte, Scharnhorst and others act when life and death were at stake. A lack of "seriousness" gave rise to the wretched treachery of those days, despite the racial purity of Germanism and membership of the state, which had been gloriously ruled by Frederick the Great only a short time before. The "seriousness and depth" of Judaism is really not as specifically Jewish as the anti-Semites would like us to believe.

The Jewish religion has all the elements that make it capable of assimilation, which are especially useful for Christianity: these are the elements of denaturalization and denationalization. Paulsen, the classic proof of the "Staatsbürger-Zeitung", says on $. 295 of his "Introduction to Philosophy": "As moments in this development" (of the Jews' conception of God and the world) "there emerge first the centralization of the cult through kingship and priesthood, then the moralization, denaturalization and finally denationalization of the concept of God through prophethood." But the "Staatsbürger-Zeitung" knows for which circles it is writing, otherwise it could not play such an unscientific jugglery as in its leading article in the September 22 issue. It does not matter to her that Paulsen himself rejects the accusation of anti-Semitism. Nor does she see that the ethicist Paulsen generally castigates the degenerate, naturally also in Judaism. Science or no science! Science here! says the writer of the article in the "Staatsbürger-Zeitung".

• 1. we are happy to give this article, which we received from a friend, space without identifying ourselves with the view it expresses about Prof. Paulsen's position on anti-Semitism, and we reserve the right to return to the question. The editors

I

Antisemitism does not exactly have a great store of ideas, not even of witty phrases and catchphrases. One has to hear the same stale platitudes over and over again when the advocates of this "view of life" express the dull feelings of their breast. One experiences peculiar phenomena. You may think what you like about Eugen Dühring, but those who know him must be clear about one thing: he is a thinker who is thoroughly versed in many scientific fields, highly stimulating in mathematical and physical questions and original in many respects. As soon as he starts talking about things in which his anti-Semitism comes into play, he becomes as flat as a little anti-Semitic agitator in what he says. He differs from such a person only in the way he presents his platitudes, in the brilliance of his style.

Having such paragon writers is of particular value to the anti-Semites. There is hardly any other party tendency where there is more constant reference to authorities than in this one. This or that person has said this or that derogatory word about the Jews; this is something that is always recurring in the publications of the anti-Semites.

So it was particularly convenient for these people when they were able to track down some of the old glittering phrases of anti-Semitism in a book by a German university lecturer, and one who enjoys a certain reputation in the widest circles, in the "System der Ethik mit einem Umriß der Staats- und Gesellschaftslehre" by the Berlin professor Friedrich Paulsen. - Indeed, in the first chapter of the fourth book of the aforementioned ethics, one encounters sentences that could have been said - perhaps somewhat less elegantly - by an anti-Semitic agitator among beer philistines in a small town or written - albeit also less elegantly - by the corner editor of an anti-Semitic newspaper. And they can be read in a philosophical theory of morals, written by a German professor of philosophy and pedagogy who gives well-attended lectures, who writes books that are widely acclaimed, and who is even considered by many to be one of the best philosophers of our time. He writes what we have heard so often:

"Different by descent, religion and historical past, they" (the Jews) "formed a foreign protective citizenship in the European states for centuries. Admission to citizenship was apparently based on equality not only of language and education, but above all of their political aspirations with those of the population group that had gained decisive influence on state life since 1848. With the change in the political constellation since 1866, the view of the position of the Jews in relation to the nation states has changed in wide circles of the population. If I am not mistaken, the mood of antipathy towards the Jews depends in no small measure on the instinctive feeling that the Jew does not see his future, the future of his family, as exclusively connected with the future of the state or people under which he lives, as other citizens do: If Hungary were to become Russian today, the hitherto Hungarian Jew would soon find himself in being a Russian Jew now, or he would shake the Hungarian soil from his feet and move to Vienna or Berlin or Paris, and be an Austrian, German or French Jew for the time being."

If I happened to open Paulsen's "System of Ethics" at the place where these remarks appear, without knowing the whole context in which they are found, I would first be astonished that a contemporary philosopher would dare to write things of this kind in a serious book. For, first of all, there is something striking about these sentences that would suggest anything other than that they originate from a philosopher whose first and most necessary tool is supposed to be an uncontradictory logic. But to be logical means above all to examine the contradictions in real life more closely, to trace them back to their real causes. One may ask: may a philosopher do what Professor Paulsen does: simply register the change in two successive moods of the times, which contradict each other thoroughly, without uncovering the causes of this change or at least making an attempt to uncover them? The liberal views that came to the surface of historical development in 1848 brought with them the conviction that the Jews were "equal in language and education" and even in "political aspirations" with the Western peoples. A later period created a "mood averse to the Jews" in many circles. Paulsen makes it easy to understand this change. He attributes it to an "instinctive feeling", which he then describes in more detail.

We will see in a sequel to this essay what this "instinctive feeling" is really all about. For now, let us just point out the inadmissibility of referring to "instinctive feelings" in a philosophical presentation of the "doctrine of morals", the basis and justification of which are not examined. After all, it is precisely the business of the philosopher to bring to clear conceptions what settles in other people's minds as unclear ideas. But Paulsen does not even attempt to do this. He simply makes the "instinctive feelings" that he thought he perceived his own and then says, quite worthy of the vague, unphilosophical pre-sentences: "Only when the Jews become completely settled... will the feeling of the abnormality of their citizenship disappear completely. Whether this can happen without the abandonment of the old national religious practice is, however, doubtful. After reading this sentence, I have only one question: whether it is not outrageous to say something so irrelevant in such a place, in a book that is intended for so many in an important matter? For one wonders what Professor Paulsen actually claimed. He has said nothing but that he believes he perceives "instinctive feelings" and that he cannot form an opinion about what is to become. If you want to take that as philosophical, you can. I think it is more philosophical to remain silent about things in which I have to confess so openly that I have no opinion.

As I said, someone who only reads one passage in Paulsen's book would have to say that. And he would be right at first. In a second part of this article, we want to show how Paulsen's version appears in the light of the rest of his thought, and then how it appears in the light of German intellectual life in recent decades. I hope that in such an examination one will find a not uninteresting chapter on the "psychology of anti-Semitism".

II

Those dull sentiments from which, among all other things, anti-Semitism springs, have the peculiarity that they undermine all straightforwardness and simplicity of judgment. Perhaps no social phenomenon in recent times has demonstrated this better than anti-Semitism itself. I was in a position to do so during my years as a student in Vienna some twenty years ago. It was the time when the Lower Austrian landowner Georg von Schönerer, who until then had mainly been a radical democrat, became a "national" anti-Semite. It will not be easy to explain this change in Sch6nerer himself. Anyone who has had the opportunity to observe this man in his public activities knows that he is a completely unpredictable character, for whom personal whim is more important than political thought, who is completely dominated by an unlimited vanity. It is not this man's own transformations, but rather the transformations of those who became his followers, that are a significant fact in the history of the development of the new anti-Semitism. Before Schönerer's appearance, it was easy to talk to young people in Vienna who had grown up under the influence of liberal sentiments. There was a genuine sense of freedom based on reason in this part of the youth. Anti-Semitic instincts also existed at that time. These instincts were not lacking in the more distinguished part of the German bourgeoisie either. But everywhere they were on the way to seeing such instincts as unjustified and overcoming them. It was clear that such things were remnants of a less advanced age that should not be indulged. In any case, it was clear that everything that was said with the claim to public validity should not have grown out of the kind of sentiment that anti-Semitism had, of which a person with a true claim to education would have been truly ashamed.

Schönerer had an effect on the student youth and, moreover, initially on classes of the population that were not very intellectually advanced. The people who switched from freer views of life to his unclear manner suddenly began to speak in a completely different key. People who had previously been heard to declaim about "true human dignity", "humanity" and the "liberal achievements of the age" now began to speak unreservedly of feelings, of antipathies, which were like black and white to their earlier declamations and to which they would not have confessed shortly before without blushing with shame. A point had been reached in the spiritual life of such people which I would prefer to characterize by saying that strict logic has been removed from the ranks of the powers that rule man inwardly. You can see this for yourself at any moment. None of those who had just crossed over into the anti-Semitic camp dared to seriously argue against their former liberal principles. On the contrary, each of them claimed that in essence he was still committed to these principles, but as far as the application of these principles to the Jews was concerned, yes... And then came some kind of phrase that smacked every sane person in the face. Logic has been dethroned by anti-Semitism.

For someone who, like me, has always been very sensitive to sins against logic, dealing with such people has now become particularly embarrassing. Lest one or the other think they can make bad jokes about this sentence, I would like to say that I am allowed to confess my nervousness about illogic without any immodesty. For I regard "logical thinking" as a general human duty and the particular nervousness in such matters as a disposition for which one can do as little as for one's muscular strength. But because of my nervousness, I myself was able to study the development of anti-Semitism using a particular example - I would say intimately. Every day I saw countless examples of the corruption of logical thinking by dull feelings.

I know that I am only talking about one example here. Things have happened differently in many other places. But I believe that you can only truly understand something if you have experienced it intimately somewhere. And I am perhaps particularly well prepared to judge the "Paulsen case" through these "studies" of mine. All due respect to the professor. But there is a worrying logical conflict in his case. Not as blatant as with my peers who converted from liberalism to Schönererianism. That goes without saying. But I think: the milder case of Paulsen is put into perspective by the more blatant case.

In the second book of his "System of Ethics", in the essay on the concepts of "good and evil", Paulsen writes: "A person's behavior is morally good if it objectively tends to promote the overall welfare, and subjectively if it is accompanied by a sense of duty or moral necessity." Shortly before this, Paulsen writes about the sentence "The end justifies the means": "If one understands the sentence in this way: not just any permitted end, but the end justifies the means; but there is only one end from which all determination of value proceeds, namely the highest good, the welfare or the most perfect organization of human life."

Can there be a bridge from these two sentences to the views that the aversion to the Jews brings about? Should one not, in the truly logical progress of thought, energetically demand the purification of such aversion through reason? What does Paulsen do instead? He says: "With the change in the political constellation since 1866, the view of the position of the Jews in relation to the nation states has changed in wider circles of the population." Should he not now regard this change as a departure from his moral ideal, from devotion to the one end that truly justifies the means? Liberalism has taken the belief in the "most perfect organization of human life" as a moral ideal seriously. This seriousness, however, does not permit a change such as that which has occurred since 1866. It makes it impossible to arbitrarily limit humanity in any way.

This is where Paulsen, in order not to become bitter against anti-Semitism, becomes lukewarm against logic.

I will save further elaboration on this logical fissure for the end of this article.

III

There must be deeper reasons in the intellectual culture of the present for the fact that a judgment such as that of Professor Paulsen on the Jews is possible within a work that claims to be at the height of contemporary philosophical education. Anyone who follows the course of intellectual development in the nineteenth century will, with some impartiality, easily be led to these reasons. There were always two currents in this development. One was in a straight line the successor to the "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century; the other was a kind of counter-current to the results of the Enlightenment. The eternal merit of the latter will be to have held up the "pure, harmonious humanity" itself to man as the highest ideal. It is a moral demand of incomparable height to say that one should refrain from all accidental contexts in which man is placed and seek to emphasize the "pure human being" in everything, in the family, society, nation, and so on. Of course, those who say this know just as well as the wise philistines that ideals cannot be realized in direct life. But is it nonsensical to speak of the circle in geometry, because you can only draw a very imperfect circle on paper with a pencil? No, it is not absurd at all. Rather, it is extremely foolish to emphasize such a self-evident fact. It is equally foolish to speak in ethics of what cannot be because of the incompleteness of everything that is real. What is truly valuable here is only to state the goals that one wants to approach. This is what the Enlightenment did.

This view was contrasted with the other, which sought its roots in the consideration of historical development. When one speaks of this, one touches on great errors in the education of the nineteenth century, which are connected with great virtues. One need only mention the names of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to recall the full meaning of the phrase: nineteenth-century man learned to understand his own past, he learned to understand what he is now through what he once was. The Brothers Grimm introduced us to our linguistic, our mythical past. Their conviction is contained in the beautiful words: "A good angel is given to man from his native land, who, when he sets out into life, accompanies him under the familiar guise of a fellow traveler; he who does not suspect what good will befall him as a result may feel it when he crosses the border of his fatherland, where he is left by that angel. This benevolent companionship is the inexhaustible wealth of fairy tales, legends and history." We know that in the nineteenth century such views were vigorously pursued. The arbitrary ideas that Rousseau's contemporaries had formed about the original states of mankind were replaced by observations of real conditions. Linguistics, religious studies, general cultural history and the history of peoples made the greatest progress. Research was carried out in all directions to find out how man had developed.

Only a fool could underestimate all this. But it also revealed a deficiency in our views of life that must not be overlooked. Knowledge of the past should have merely enriched our knowledge; instead, it influenced the motives of our actions. Thinking about what happened to me yesterday becomes a stumbling block if it robs me of the impartiality of my decisions today. If I do not act today according to the circumstances that confront me, but according to what I did yesterday, then I am on the wrong track. If I want to act, I should not look at my diary, but at reality. The present can be seen from the perspective of the past, but it cannot be controlled from it. In one of his interesting writings, Friedrich Nietzsche's "Unzeitgemäßen Betrachtung" (Untimely Reflection) on the "benefits and harms of history for life" sheds light on the damage that occurs when the present is to be mastered through the past.

Whoever has open eyes for the present knows that it is wrong to think that the solidarity of the Jews among themselves is greater than their solidarity with modern cultural endeavors. Even if this has been the case in recent years, anti-Semitism has made a significant contribution to this. Anyone who, like me, has seen with horror what anti-Semitism has done to the minds of noble Jews must have come to this conclusion. When Paulsen expresses a view such as that of the special interests of the Jews, he only shows that he does not know how to observe impartially. Let us not allow our judgment of how we should live together in the present to be clouded by our ideas that we have undergone separate developments in the past. Why do we encounter a certain bashful anti-Semitism within the educated world where the study of history is taken as a starting point? The future will certainly bring nothing other than the effects of the past; but where does the rule prevail in nature that the effects are equal to their causes?

Whoever considers Paulsen's entire way of thinking will have to admit that he is an isolated phenomenon within the circles of so-called historical education. I will substantiate this in particular in a concluding statement.

IV

Friedrich Paulsen once characterized the dark sides of our present day in treacherous words. In his essay "Kant, the philosopher of Protestantism", he says: "The signature of our century, which is drawing to a close, is: belief in power, disbelief in ideas. At the end of the last century, the hands of time stood the other way round: belief in ideas was dominant, Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, Schiller were the great powers of the time. Today, after the failure of the ideological revolutions of 1789 and 1848, after the successes of power politics, the keyword is the will to power." There is no doubt that our time does not understand the mission of true idealism. Goethe once said that anyone who has really grasped the meaning of an idea will not allow any apparent contradiction with experience to rob him of his faith in it. Experience must submit to the idea once it has been recognized as correct. At present, such an idea has little appeal. Ideas have lost their power in our imagination. People point to "practical interests", to what "can prevail". One should consider that the history of intellectual progress itself, when seen from the right point of view, proves the power of ideas. Let me point to a striking example. When Copernicus put forward the great idea of the orbits of the planets around the sun, anything could be objected to it from the point of view of astronomical practice. Some of the facts about which people had experience contradicted the doctrine that Copernicus put forward. From the point of view of the practical astronomer, it was not Copernicus who was right at the time, but Tycho Brahe, who replied: "The earth is a coarse, heavy mass that is awkward to move, so how can Copernicus make a star out of it and guide it around in the skies?" Historical developments proved Copernicus right because, seeing through the correctness of the idea he had once conceived, he rose to the belief that later facts would eliminate the apparent contradiction.

As it is with ideas in scientific progress, so it must be with them in moral life. Paulsen also admits this in theory by defending the above-mentioned proposition. He deviates from it in practice when he presents anti-Semitism as a partially justified phenomenon. Those who believe in the ideas cannot allow themselves to be distracted by the historical development of the last decades in the unconditional validity of these ideas. He would have to say to himself: things may be such for the time being that reality seems to contradict the absolutely liberal ideas; these ideas are independent of such contradiction. Anti-Semitism is a mockery of all faith in ideas. Above all, it makes a mockery of the idea that humanity is higher than any individual form (tribe, race, people) in which humanity lives itself out.

But where are we heading if the philosophers, these bearers of the world of ideas, these appointed advocates of idealism, no longer have the proper trust in the ideas themselves? What will happen if they allow themselves to be robbed of this trust by the fact that, for a few decades, the instincts of a certain mass of people take a different path to that indicated by these ideas? A man like Paulsen can only be led to assertions such as those for which I have written these remarks by an excessive respect for historical reality. In the contradiction in which he sets himself to his own assertions, Paulsen shows quite clearly that he is under the spell of the false historical education I have characterized. He does not set out to criticize the historical development of popular instincts; on the contrary, he allows these popular instincts to have their say. That this is the case is also sufficiently expressed in the vague way in which Paulsen talks about antipathies towards the Jews. This way of speaking can certainly be recognized as "bashful anti-Semitism". Nowhere is it more necessary than in this area to document one's belief in the ideas through a decisive, unambiguous statement.

One rightly complains that philosophy enjoys a low reputation in the present day. It would deserve this low esteem if it lost faith in what it has to guard above all, the ideas. The philosopher must understand his time. He does not understand it by making concessions to its perversities, but only by opposing these perversities with the criticism that comes to him from his world of ideas. The philosophical moral teacher should treat everything that the anti-Semites claim about the Jews in the same way as the mineralogist, who will also claim that salt forms cube-shaped crystals if someone shows him a salt crystal that has had its corners chipped off due to some circumstances.

Antisemitism is not only a danger for Jews, it is also a danger for non-Jews. It stems from a mindset that is not serious about sound, straightforward judgment. It promotes such an attitude. And anyone who thinks philosophically should not stand by and watch. Belief in ideas will only come into its own again when we fight the unbelief that opposes it as vigorously as possible in all areas.

It is painful to see a philosopher contradicting the very principles that he himself has clearly and excellently characterized. I do not believe that it is easy for a man like Paulsen to be intensely committed to anti-Semitism. Like so many others, the philosophical spirit protects him from this. But at present more is needed in this matter. Any vague attitude is evil. The anti-Semites will use the utterances of any personality as grist to their mill if that personality gives them cause to do so even by an indeterminate utterance. Now the philosopher can always say that he is not responsible for what others make of his teachings. That is undoubtedly to be admitted. But if a philosophical moral teacher intervenes in the current issues of the day, then in certain matters his position must be clear and unambiguous. And with anti-Semitism as a cultural disease, the situation today is such that no one who meditates in public matters should be in doubt as to how to interpret his statements about it.

The book "Heine, Dostojewskij und Gorkij" by Dr. J. E. Poritzky (published by Richard Wöpke in Leipzig), which has just appeared, offers, among many other noteworthy remarks, an examination of Heine literature at the end of the nineteenth century. One is reminded of the fundamental evils of our literary present when reading Poritzky's thoughts. In particular, the independence of judgment of many literary figures of our time becomes questionable when one follows Heine's reflections. For what Poritzky points out is undoubtedly correct (p. 6): "The Germanic judgments of Julian Schmidt and Heintich v. Treitschke have still not been overcome; on the contrary, they continue their effect in silence." Unfortunately, there are many "writers" today who have neither the ability nor the will to examine such judgments impartially for their value. These "writers", who can sometimes occupy quite prestigious positions, certainly need to make a judgment; they are more likely to do without one. Heine's literature is a good basis for making observations in these directions.

You only need to follow things carefully and you will find that the phrases used by Heine's opponents are always the same. Now there is something quite special about Heine. There may be people who are otherwise not insignificant and who are denied an unbiased judgment of Heine. Poritzky aptly points out one such example (p. 6 fl.): "The otherwise witty Hehn calls Heine a Jewish slacker."

Victor Hehn wrote a book about Goethe that is highly regarded. The following sentences can be found in this book: "Heine has no mind, only a great talent for imitation. Just as some of his fellow tribesmen can click their tongues so artfully that one really believes one can hear a nightingale, just as another can accurately reproduce the manner and style of "famous patterns", just as in the long years of Kladderadatsch he indulged in all the Iyrian forms of all poets and schools of poetry, so Heine also knew the simple-minded fidelity of the folk song, the fantasies of E. Th. A. Hoffmann and E. Th. A. Hoffmann. Th. A. Hoffmann's and Romanticism's fantasies, Goethe's heartfelt lute and melodious song with such virtuoso art that one was deceived and thought the similes were genuine." Poritzky shows that such an accusation can, if one wishes, be leveled at any creative spirit; but that, on the other hand, nothing is said at all if one proves a model for this or that intellectual product.

But one wonders: how do such absurdities come among the many healthy, witty remarks that Hehn makes in his "Thoughts on Goethe"? One can find no other reason for this than that Hehn immediately lost his sound judgment when he came across the "Jew" Heine. He had a general judgment, which of course should better be called prejudice, about the "Jew", and that made it impossible for him to make a special examination of the individual personality of Heine. Now there is something in Victor Hehn that Poritzky could not emphasize according to the task he set himself, but which I would like to add here.

Goethe once speaks of the spirits who have exerted the greatest influence on his development and names them as such: Shakespeare, Spinoza and Linn. That Spinoza's Judaism is not only not indifferent to the whole structure of his world view, but has exerted a profound influence on it, has been proved by Lazarus in his excellent book on the "Ethics of Judaism". It is now beyond doubt that Spinoza's effect on Goethe was quite extraordinary. We can only understand some of Goethe's feelings and ideas if we realize that he immersed himself again and again in Spinoza's world of ideas, indeed that Goethe's stormy passions often found their inner balance by immersing himself in the philosophical calm of the Amsterdam sage. Goethe, and we with him, owe much of what Hehn admires in Goethe to Spinoza. And after passing through Goethe's mind, Victor Hehn also accepts the "Jewish" philosophy of Spinoza as something great. - But if he believes he can prove a very similar relationship to Goethe in Heine, then - Heine croaks like a nightingale.

In the face of such phenomena, isn't it glaringly obvious how non-judgmental even important personalities can become if they are more or less openly anti-Semitic? Incidentally, on page 7 of his pamphlet, Poritzky has provided a compilation of recent assessments of Heine, which shows in a truly delightful way how all sound judgment can cease in literature when the temptation arises to no longer apply the same yardstick.

Two strange books appeared in quick succession. The first was called "Law, Freedom and Morality of Artistic Creation". The author is Lothar von Kunowski. He has now followed up the first with a second book entitled "A Nation of Geniuses". Both volumes are intended to be only parts of an extensive complete work entitled: "Dutch Art for Life". In certain circles, Lothar von Kunowski is regarded as a prophet. One can hear expressions of the most unreserved admiration. What he says about the nature of art and the moral life is praised like a new gospel.

Although for those who really know the development of German intellectual life in the nineteenth century, there is no new thought contained therein, such a person can also agree with the judgment that has recently been passed on Kunowski from important quarters. His book is described as one in which "a serious man speaks out about questions that have tormented him for years: the cry of pain of an artist groping aimlessly in the dark; the jubilant cry of one who finally sees the goal".

There is certainly much that is immature in the two books; certainly everything Kunowski says has been said more thoroughly and comprehensively in the past: but there is something about the two books that is extremely refreshing, even for those who know the relevant literature. For decades, art and its relationship to life have not been discussed with the kind of idealism brought about by knowledge that Kunowski does.

Kunowski ascribes a great cultural mission to the German people. It should bring about a renewal of the moral worldview through a true understanding of art. "A new doctrine of art will have to be a new doctrine of life and vice versa, a new conception of life will have to be rooted in a rejuvenated doctrine of art... Few know what they are saying with the demand for a people's art, an art that makes every member of the people an artist in all acts of life." It could seem as if the way Kunowski talks about "art and the people" is to be exploited for their own purposes by those who want to spread all kinds of ethnic and racial antipathies under this slogan. And the first volume of the work, published a few months ago, has also been exploited in this sense - quite unjustifiably.

The second volume, which has now appeared, has thoroughly disappointed many who previously believed they could count Kunowski among their own. In many places, he speaks clearly and unambiguously about the "racial question". And what he says in such places shows how an idealistically-minded person must think about this "question". In particular, Kunowski rejects all anti-Semitism. He sharply rebukes the Englishman Chamberlain for his outbursts against the "Semites" in the book "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century." And from the same point of view, judgments are made that make it impossible for the anti-Semites to refer to Kunowski, whom they would otherwise certainly like to cite when they, in their sense, talk about the strong roots of education and culture in the "Volkstum". But Kunowski understands the term "Volk" in such a way that any anti-Semitism is incompatible with his view. "We Germans are determined," he said, "to reserve the form of the world to be remodeled for all peoples, to summon them all to carry out the work, especially the Romans and Semites, to whom we owe infinite things, with whom we, united in the infinite, will also jointly expand the finiteness of the earthly. In this loving justice lies the future of the German, lies its world empire, its rejuvenation into a new man, into a new people". Kunowski does not want a racial struggle; he wants to transfer what is significant about all races into the culture of the future: "The moral law of the Jew, the state of the Roman, the art of the Greek, the pyramid of the Egyptian" must be united in us so that we can "work independently in the world forge". This idea is expressed particularly beautifully in the following statement: "At our altars rest the cross, the crescent and the ark of the covenant, in our forests walk Zarathustra, Moses, Socrates, Dante, Rousseau, in our meadows grow anew Jerusalem, Athens, Sparta, Florence and Paris."

Kunowski contrasts this narrow-minded racial point of view with his own with the words: "The aim of world conquest is not to spread the unchanged German type, but rather to create a new cultural man who is neither Germanic, nor Romani, nor Semitic." This idea culminates in the sentence: "Peoples are created through the fusion of peoples in the embers of a new culture that burns racial hatred."

Kunowski's book can be seen as a significant symptom of the times. We want idealism again. Not a vague one that is only created by fantasy, but one that is based on knowledge and education. Kunowski makes himself the spokesman for such an idealism. It is significant that in doing so he automatically becomes an opponent of anti-Semitism, which is hostile to knowledge and education, of narrow-minded "Germanism".

With explanatory notes by Rudolf Steiner

Fichte wrote the first seven of the nine letters given here to Schiller during the first months of his work at the university entrusted to Goethe's care. Time is a circumstance that essentially determines their significance. They show us that Fichte's personal appearance and his way of approaching the teaching and philosophical profession had to give Goethe's relationship with him the character at the very beginning of their acquaintance that it subsequently retained. Fichte's way of working had something violent about it. A certain pathos of the idea, which accompanied his scientific as well as his political ideas, always led him to seek to achieve his goals by the straightest, shortest route. And if something stood in his way, his unyieldingness turned into brusqueness, his energy into ruthlessness. Fichte never learned to understand that old habits are stronger than new ideas, and thus constantly came into conflict with the people he had to deal with. The reason for most of these conflicts was that he alienated people through his personal nature before he had elevated them to his ideas. Fichte lacked the ability to come to terms with everyday life. All of this made it impossible for Goethe to always stand up for Fichte as energetically as he would have liked in recognition of his scientific achievements and abilities.

The book that Fichte sends to Goethe in Letter No. 1 is the first edition of the "Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre", which was published in sheets at the time (see J. G. Fichte's Life and Literary Correspondence, 2nd edition, Leipzig 1862, Volume I, p. 211).

The work in which Fichte hoped to be united with Goethe was Schiller's "Horen". On June 13, 1794, Schiller had invited Goethe to collaborate with him, noting at the same time that H. H. Fichte, Woltmann and von Humboldt had joined forces with him to publish this journal. Goethe only sent his acceptance to Schiller on June 24 (cf. correspondence between Schiller and Goethe, 4th ed., vol. I, p. I ff.).

Fichte had arrived in Jena on May 8, 1794, and on June 24 he was already forced to call upon Goethe's and the Duke's protection against slanderous rumors that had spread about his public lectures on "Morality for Scholars" (cf. letter no. 2). The energetic way in which Fichte confronted his slanderers and the firmness with which he asked the Duke to take care of him led, apparently through Goethe's mediation . (Letter No. 3), led to a temporary strengthening of his position, as the Duke did not allow his esteem for the philosopher to be dampened by the rumors. Fichte felt compelled to prove the inaccuracy of what was said about his lectures by having them printed word for word (cf. letter no. 2). They appeared under the title: "Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten" (Jena, Gabler 1794). Fichte's wish to be allowed to dedicate the reprint to the Duke was not carried out, but the latter praised the recently appointed teacher at every opportunity (cf. Fichte's Life I. 216 f.). Fichte's remarks about the Duke (Letter No. 2) are an important contribution to Karl August's characterization. One need only consider that this prince is admired in this way by a man who, a year earlier, wrote of the princes of Europe: "They, who are for the most part educated in indolence and ignorance, or, when they learn something, learn a truth expressly prepared for them; they, who are known not to continue their education once they reign, who read no new writing other than, at most, watery sophistries, and who are always behind their age at least by the years of their reign." This passage belongs to the anonymous writing mentioned in the first letter, namely Fichte's "Beiträge zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische Revolution." This and the other anonymous pamphlet, "The Reclaiming of Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe Who Hitherto Suppressed It (A Speech, Heliopolis in the Last Year of the Old Darkness)", had appeared before Fichte's appointment to Jena. And according to Fichte's statements in the second letter, it cannot be doubted that the people who worked for Fichte's appointment, including first and foremost the jurist Hufeland, knew of these writings. This also seems to be the case for Goethe, as he calls Fichte's appointment "an act of boldness, indeed audacity" (Tag- und Jahreshefte 1794). Fichte himself probably made no secret of his way of thinking to the people who mediated between him and the Weimar government; hence the irritated tone in which he speaks of the accusations relating to his anonymous writings.

It is clear from Letter No. 6 that Fichte attached particular importance to being understood by Goethe. Consistent with this is a communication by W. v. Humboldt (correspondence between Schiller and W. v. Humboldt, September 22, 1794) about a conversation with Fichte, in which the latter had stated that he wished to win Goethe over to speculation and that he had to explain his feeling as one that guided him correctly in philosophical matters: "The other day, he (Fichte) continued, he (Goethe) explained my system to me so succinctly and clearly that I could not have explained it more clearly myself." That Goethe had a lively interest in Fichte's philosophy and did not take a negative attitude towards it is proven not only by the passage in a letter to Fichte dated June 24, 1794 (Briefe W. A. X. p. 167), in which he says of the first sheets of the "Wissenschaftslehre": "What has been sent contains nothing that I did not understand or at least thought I understood, nothing that would not readily fit in with my usual way of thinking", but also the fact that Goethe made extensive extracts from this work, which are still preserved in the Goethe Archive.

Fichte had also announced public lectures similar to those mentioned above from the summer of 1794 for the winter of 1794/95. These lectures were among the most popular at the university and were received with great enthusiasm by the students. As Fichte could not find another suitable hour, he read on Sunday mornings from 9 to 10. The Jena Consistory took offense at this, and the Weimar High Consistory could not "deny unanimous approval" to the reasons of the former, "since it seems, however, that this undertaking is an intended step against the public national service, even if this intention were not the case, or that such an intention could not be achieved, such an unlawful and disorderly act would nevertheless always have very bad consequences, especially for the reputation of the Academy itself, because of the unpleasant impression it would reliably make on the Jena and neighboring public as well as abroad". These are the words of the submission from the Oberkonsistorium to the state government. Fichte wrote a detailed letter to the academic senate. He explained the reasons why he had to choose the hour in question and explained that the character of his public lectures made them very suitable to be held on Sundays, as they were not aimed at instruction through science, but at moral edification and character refinement. At the same time, Fichte also called on Goethe's assistance in this matter; and the letter in which he does so is the one reported here under no. 6. The Academic Senate reported to the Duke on this matter to the effect that "although Professor Fichte is not to be blamed for taking an appalling step against public worship, he should be instructed not to hold his moral lectures on Sundays; if, however, in the middle of the half-year, he could not find another suitable time, as we neither believe nor wish, he could be permitted to hold them on Sunday for the remainder of the current winter semester and without consequence, but in this case it must be made an absolute condition that he should not be permitted to do so before the afternoon service is completely finished". The Duke made the following decision: "We have therefore resolved, following your request, that the aforementioned Professor Fichte should only be permitted to continue his moral lectures on Sundays in the hours after the end of the afternoon service. However, it was only the fact that "something as unusual as the scheduling of lectures of this kind on Sunday during the hours designated for public worship" prompted Karl August to make his decision. Of the lectures themselves, the ducal decree addressed to the academic senate says: "We have gladly convinced ourselves that, if his (Fichte's) moral lectures are in accordance with the ... ... stapled trefflichen essay, they can be of excellent use". Fichte's opponents, on the other hand, intended to make the lectures completely impossible, as they were uncomfortable with their content. When Fichte resumed the lectures on February 3, which had been suspended since the beginning of November due to the incident, he scheduled them for Sunday afternoon at 3-4 p.m.

The Professor Woltmann mentioned in letter no. 7 was a historian and a favorite student of Spittler. He was appointed to Jena at the same time as Fichte, aged only 23, was one of the philosopher's most intimate friends and later also came into contact with Schiller.

It is perhaps not superfluous to note that Fichte's two letters to Schiller differ from those to Goethe in that they are written in German, while the latter are written in Fichte's more legible Latin script.

In July 1799, Fichte moved to Berlin. The well-known accusation of atheism led to his dismissal from Jena. He sought a new sphere of activity. Among the plans that emerged in him for the future was that of founding a scientific journal that would better meet the demands Fichte made of such an institute than the Jenaische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, with which both he and Schelling were dissatisfied. During the winter of 1799/1800, Fichte again spent a short time in Jena, where he had temporarily left his family behind. Here he met Schelling. The two agreed to found and establish the journal, for which Goethe and Schiller were also to be recruited as contributors. The first of the two letters addressed to Schiller contains an invitation to become a contributor and at the same time a detailed discussion of the purpose and structure of the journal. This matter, for which, as the letter indicates, Cotta was to be won as publisher, came to nothing. The plan was then taken up again with J. F. G. Unger as publisher, who also sent a printed circular promising the publication of the "Jahrbücher der Kunst und der Wissenschaft" from New Year 1801. This time, too, the matter did not come to fruition. Goethe viewed such an undertaking on Fichte's part with suspicion. He wrote to Schiller on September 6, 1801, apparently referring to this (the circular is dated July 28, 1800): "The tone of the announcement is entirely Fichtian. I only fear that the gentlemen idealists and dynamists will soon appear as dogmatists and pedants and occasionally get into each other's hair." The document sent is: "The closed commercial state."

The first part of Fichte's second letter to Schiller, dated August 18, 1803, deals with a private matter concerning Fichte (sale of his house in Jena and other matters relating to the time of his stay in Jena), in which he had appealed to Goethe and Schiller for assistance. On August 29, Goethe wrote to Zelter about this (correspondence ı, 80): "Tell him (Fichte) that we are taking his matter to heart. Unfortunately, a curse so easily rests on what advocate's hands touch." The second part of the letter refers to the performance of Goethe's "Natural Daughter" in Berlin. The first performance of this play took place there on July 12, 1803. The letter was published in a form differing in many respects from the above in "Schillers und Fichtes Briefwechsel aus dem Nachlassen des Erstern" in 1847 by I. H. Fichte (pp. 70-75). This justifies the reprint. Schiller probably sent it to Goethe to read through, and it was neglected to be returned, so that it remained among Goethe's papers. Consequently, what is printed here is the final version, whereas what I. H. Fichte published can only have been taken from the brouillon, which the editor may have revised in a few places. What left the large audience cold about the play, indeed downright repulsed them: the fact that a high art form had eradicated all materiality attracted Fichte as well as Schiller (cf. his letter of August 18, ı803 to Wilhelm von Humboldt). What classical aesthetics (namely Schiller in his "aesthetic letters") demanded: The eradication of interest in the depicted event by elevating it to the pure enjoyment of what the artistic imagination has made of it, Fichte saw fulfilled here. He therefore also wanted to advise against any shortening of the play. On July 28, 1803 (correspondence I. p.67) Goethe writes to Zelter that he would like to "shorten some scenes which must seem long, even if they are excellently acted". To this Zelter replied on August 10: "Fichte does not agree with an abridgment of The Natural Daughter; he believes the play is whole, round and can only suffer by abbreviation." The philosopher regarded the art form as the only decisive factor, while the poet wanted to count on the taste of the audience. Fichte demanded to a far greater extent than Goethe that the public should be educated to enjoy the highest aesthetic productions. The fulfillment of ideal demands was his first priority. If the public did not exist for this, then in his opinion it had to be improved. Goethe was inclined to bring people closer to art; Fichte wanted to transform people according to the ideas he considered right.

I was commissioned to annotate these letters by Bernhard Suphan, who had already worked through them beforehand and provided me with his notes on the points of view from which the documents are to be viewed, as well as on various individual points.

Fichte to Goethe

I.

Honored man,

I looked for you soon after your departure to give you the first sheet I had just finished. I did not find you; and I am sending what I would have preferred to hand over.

Philosophy has not yet reached its goal as long as the results of reflective abstraction do not yet conform to the purest spirituality of feeling. I regard you, and have always regarded you, as the representative of the latter at the presently attained stage of humanity. Philosophy rightly turns to you: your feeling is the same touchstone.

The correctness of my system is vouched for, among other things, by the intimate concatenation of all with one, and one with all, which I have not produced, but which already exists; as well as the immense fertility, which surpasses all expectation, and which I have just as little introduced myself; so that it has very often astonished and enthralled me. Both are not discovered at the beginning of science, but only gradually, as one progresses in it.

I do not know whether I am still recommending a clearer presentation. This much I know, that I could raise it to a higher, and to any clarity, if the necessary time were given: - but I have, with my public lectures, at least three printed sheets a week to work with, other business accounted for; and therefore expect indulgence.

I hoped - perhaps because I longed for it - to see myself united with you in one work. I do not know whether I can still hope so. At least a few days ago Mr. Schiller had not yet made up his mind. Schiller had not yet made up his mind.

I am with true admiration

Your most devotedJ. G. Fichte
Jena, d. 2x. Jun. 1794

II

Most venerable patron and friend,

In my last letter I merely claimed the friendship of this noble man and great spirit; I believed

not to be able to claim your political reputation within a few days.

I was informed from Weimar that "there were disgraces (to be precise, only stupidities) being bandied about that I was supposed to have presented in my lectures. My position was dangerous. A certain class had formed a formal alliance against me. The Duke hears you, and what other men there are, less often than others who belong to that alliance; I should not be so sure, for the sake of the consequences, - in short, I could be deposed before I miss it, etc., etc." I am given advice that I would certainly follow if I were Parmenio. - "I should disavow a certain anonymous writing that is attributed to me." Let someone else take the liberty of doing so; I do not consider it permissible. I will not recognize an anonymous writing either. Whoever wants to acknowledge his writings does so as soon as they are published. Those who write anonymously do not want to acknowledge them.

"I should just be careful not to touch politics for at least half a year." I don't read politics and am not called to do so. I will, of course, read natural law when it is my turn in my course, according to my convictions, I am expressly forbidden to do so, and publicly; but it will certainly not be my turn in the first year. I am acting this half year according to rules that I will always act according to; and will always act as I am acting this half year. I have no particular summer and no particular winter morality.

"I should hide so that I can do all the more good." That is Jesuit morality. I am there to do good if I can; but I may not do evil under any condition, and not even under the condition of doing good in the future.

If I consider myself completely isolated in this, I would be the last among men if I were to fear anything with my principles and with the strength with which I have grasped them, and therefore wanted to deviate from my path even by a foot's breadth. Whoever does not fear death, what under the moon should he fear? - In any case, it would be ridiculous if I were to consider these things worthy of serious consideration.

But unfortunately I am no longer isolated. The fate of several people is tied to my fate. I'm not talking about my wife. She wouldn't be if I didn't trust her with the same principles. But a 74-year-old old man, her father, is inextricably linked to her. His age requires rest; he cannot expose himself to the danger of being driven about, to which I myself may well expose myself. So the question is, and it is necessary that this question be answered in good time: Can and will the prince to whom I have entrusted myself protect me? Will he do so under the following conditions?

I will come to Weimar next Saturday and put myself in the faces of people who might have something to say to me, to see if they have enough courage to tell me what they say about me to others. I will have the 4 lectures held in public in which I am supposed to have said these foolish things, and which I am writing down verbatim with good forethought and reading out verbatim, printed verbatim at the earliest. It would be the greatest favor to me if the duke would allow me to appropriate them to him. In all truth I could assure this prince of an unlimited veneration, which all I have ever heard of him, later that he entrusted me with a lectureship at his university in the opinion which the public has now formed of me, has founded in me, and which my personal acquaintance with him has increased infinitely. It would give me great pleasure to be able to show before the whole public that I can venerate a great man, even if he is a prince; and I should believe that this prince, who can place his highest value in his humanity, could not be displeased by the assurance of a veneration which applies to the man in him, and not to the prince. - In this case, I am willing to submit to you, or to the duke himself, the writing in proof form beforehand; as well as, if requested, the dedication: although, I confess, I would be even more pleased if I were trusted to know how to behave in such a delicate matter without a preliminary examination.

I will promise, if it is required, that a certain anonymous writing shall not be continued; nay, I will even promise not to write any anonymous writing on political subjects within any time (unless self-defense makes it necessary). - That I can easily promise this and yet do what I like afterwards, since I can hope to remain undiscovered - I do not expect this objection from anyone with whom I am to negotiate. What I promise, I keep, and even if no one but myself knows that I keep it.

But in my lectures I can change nothing; and if they are not approved, they must be forbidden to me in public. I shall, and will say what I consider to be true after my best investigation; I may err; I tell my hearers daily that I may err; but I can only yield reason. (At least no one has yet even pretended to be able to refute on principle what they consider to be my errors). I will say it in its place, and in its time, i.e. : when it comes to the science I teach. In my lectures, in its own time, there will also be talk of respect for established order, etc.; and these duties will be inculcated with no less emphasis.

Under these conditions I now expect protection, and peace in Jena, at least as long as my old father-in-law lives; and I ask for the word of the bland prince about this.

May I add a few observations to show the fairness of my request. I have made no move to obtain the reputation I have received. I was known when I was called; they knew what writings were attributed to me; they knew what opinion the public had formed of me; I wrote to the proper man, and the letter must still exist, "that I had been a man rather than an academic teacher, and hoped to remain so longer, and that I was not disposed to abandon the duties of the former, and that, if that were the opinion, I must renounce the reputation I had received"; I wrote this when certain principles were spoken of.

I was warned; I was told from various places in Switzerland that they were calling me simply to get me under their control. I despised these threats; I trusted the honor of the prince who called me. He will protect me; or if He cannot do so under the conditions mentioned, at least until the appointed time, He will tell me frankly. In that case, I will write to my friends, whom I have not without forethought left behind in Switzerland, to remain where they are; and after completing my six-month lecture, I will return to my quiet private life.

Pardon the decided tone in which I have spoken. I knew that I was speaking to a man, and to a man who was kindly disposed towards me. My request would be ridiculous if it were only about me; I must fear no danger: but my reason for moving excuses me before my heart, and will excuse me before yours.

With true warm esteem

Your most sincerely devoted Fichte
Jena, June 24, 1794

III.

I can now, Venerable Privy Councillor, only express my heartfelt thanks to you and accept your kind invitation for next Saturday.

I hope you will kindly provide me with a more detailed explanation of various things that are not entirely clear to me. - I cannot defend myself, for I am not accused; I am only deliberately slandered; and slandered behind my back, and I do not know whether anyone will tell me themselves what compelled me to defend myself.

III. My public lectures have often been attended by around 500 people. Last summer I requested the Griesbach Auditorium, which has always been used for numerous meetings. Mr. G. K. R. Griesbach has since found that the benches have been worn out and he is taking it away from me with his full rights. I, likewise with my full right, ask for a public philosophical auditorium; assuming that this must be a possible place for people to stay, I go there last Sunday at 9 o'clock in the morning in the heaviest rain. I find my audience at the door, who tell me that the windows are smashed in the auditorium, that it is full of rubbish, etc., and they ask me to go to my house and read there. I go back in this heavy rain because I find their request humane; and the troop of my listeners with me. If this has made a noise in the streets, where is the fault?

IV. It will be said that the hour from 9 to ı0 falls during church meetings. - 1) Just tell me another one. It would be most unhealthy for me to read at 9 o'clock, immediately after table; I also want the open mind of my listeners for my reflections in the morning hours; not their full bellies, which have no ears. In the late afternoon and evening hours there are also church meetings, concerts and clubs. - In the early morning hours the students are still asleep because they have this only day to sleep in. 2) The city church is not for the students, but the Colleagues' Church. This is from 11 to ı2 o'clock; and that is why I did not choose this most convenient hour. From now on, I myself will be attending my colleagues' church, and perhaps some of my listeners with me. 3) The Physical Society also has its meetings on Sundays during the afternoon sermon, and I would not know that anyone has done it a crime. No doubt it has had to move its meetings to this day for the same reason, because there is no time for numerous meetings on weekdays. At our university, thank God, all hours are occupied.

From the moral point of view, however, it would have to turn every intelligent man against me if he could believe that I wanted to afflict I know not what enlightenment through this undertaking; and indeed, many among the reproachful, according to the analogy of their own small-mindedness, might believe me capable of such a thing. Such a suspicion is so ridiculous to me that I have no patience to refute it. I went to school when I was already past such enlightenment. - I went to it with difficulty before I chose Sunday. This is proved by my postponement of the opening of these lectures, notwithstanding I was very often requested by the students to do so; because I still hoped to find out an hour in the week: this is proved by my diligent repeated inquiries to several.

6 These people are not interested in either real or imaginary religion. My real crime is that I have influence and respect among students and listeners. Would that I could always read on the highest holidays, if it were before empty benches! Therefore they take every pretext to hinder me; and out of mere odio academico become old-orthodox Christians even.

My profound and complete confidence in you, my most reverend Privy Councillor, prompted me to turn to you without further formality. Notwithstanding this, I request you to make every useful use of this letter, and to regard it, in so far as it can be, as official; or to let me know most graciously what course I have to pursue in order to achieve my purpose within here and Sunday.

My mind is quite made up, by the way. Without prejudice to my honor, I cannot, after these events, secretly and in silence give myself a denial; but I will obey the law without reluctance, without remarks, with joy, like a good citizen; now, as always. -- Except in the case of the law, however, I am prepared for the utmost.

With sincere and true respect

Your most obedient servant

J. G. Fichte, Prof.
Jena, November 19, 1794

Fichte to Schiller

VIII

Berlin, February 2, 1800

Thank you, my dear friend, for the prospects you have opened up for me and for literature.

Without being able to present a specific plan, my thoughts for a critical institute were as follows.

Science in general, it seems to me, must be taken under strict supervision as soon as possible, if the few good seeds that have been sown are not to perish in a short time among the abundant weeds that are springing up. In the field of the first science, philosophy, which should help all others out of their confusion, the old sermon is being chattered away as if nothing had ever been remembered against it, and the new is being twisted so that it is no longer at all like itself. Fortunately one is so cowardly that one is frightened and pulls oneself together as soon as someone seriously rebukes the mischief, but drives it away again as soon as the supervision seems to fall asleep. I think it very possible, by two or three years of continued severe criticism, to silence the babblers in the field of philosophy and make way for the better ones. Now that it is possible, it must be done.

In order to have a firm point, I am currently working on a new exposition of the doctrine of science, which I hope will be so clear that anyone with a scientific mind will be able to understand it. I will continue to observe and report on what it does in the scientific literature. I shall spread myself over the whole field of science as far as my own ability and collaborators, whom a similar attitude will gradually bring to us, allow, without claiming universality. What cannot be done thoroughly must rather be omitted.

I am thinking of beginning with a report on the present state of German literature, in which I would like to highlight the rotten

spots of it, - the factory-like operation of writing by booksellers and authors, the ridiculousness of the reviewing institutes, the miserable motives for writing, etc., and make suggestions for improvement. In this report, I will state the critical measures of our institute from a scientific point of view. I will submit it in manuscript to your and Goethe's judgment.

I do not presume to judge what can be done from the side of criticism in art, in which we now know what is important through Goethe's and your example and through some quite good philosophers of modern philosophy. It falls to you both to decide what the most necessary lessons are for the art disciples of our time, and how these must be illustrated by the phenomena of the time. Goethe, in his Propylaea and other of his latest writings, has also set up models in this respect. Universality, I believe, should not be the intention here either, but only to say what is necessary now.

Schelling insists that a scientific journal by both of us should begin at Easter next year and, as I cannot deliver anything by then, has offered to provide the first part himself. Since, however, I am also of the opinion that immediately after the appearance of an elementary philosophy, which claims to be generally comprehensible, the supervision must begin and one must observe the first statements, I will join in immediately afterwards. If it is not possible for you and Goethe to join so soon, let us at least hope for a later union. The former will then only be allowed to enter into a scientific institute, will be given a different title, etc.

I have no doubt that Cotta should not eagerly accept the proposal. Would you not have the kindness to suggest to me what conditions I should demand for you and Goethe

if you would not prefer to negotiate with him directly in his own time.

I enclose two copies of my latest writing for you and Goethe, both in Cotta's name and mine. This writing makes no pretensions at all and was prompted by the occasional silly conversations that I had to listen to around me about the subject in question.

I beg your pardon for including the destiny of man, which is no longer a novelty.

Live well with yours, enjoy the best of health and keep me dear.

All yours, Fichte

IX.

Berlin, August 18, 1803

One point of this letter to you, my venerable friend, was addressed by Hr. Zelter in a letter to Hırrr. G. R. Goethe, and I hastily accepted the commission, although I suspect that Goethe was more concerned with Zeiters judgment than with a judgment at all. The second concerns my affair; and I beg your pardon for interrupting you with it. I would have written about it either to the Government Councillor (not Privy Councillor, as Z. wrote to Goethe by mistake) Voigt, who has already been kind in the matter, or to D. Niethammer, if I did not doubt whether the former was already back from his journey to Dresden, and suspected that the latter was also absent. I am writing about this on a separate sheet so that it can be communicated to Mr. Voigt or, in the event of his absence, to another legal friend whom you or Goethe are interested in my matter; I am only asking and imploring you and Goethe here not to let your interest in this matter tire yet, so that what has happened so far does not merely accelerate the loss of it, as Mr. Salzmann's reply suggests. The matter seems fair to me, it seems to me to be of general example, and I would like you and Goethe to find an hour to read through my enclosed instructions together, which are of course initially calculated for the comprehension of an advocate and are therefore somewhat too clear.

I have seen Goethe's "Natural Daughter" twice, since it was performed here, with all my attention, and I believe that I have risen to every possible view of the work through this medium. As much as I have revered and loved Goethe's Iphigenia, Tasso and, from another subject, Hermann and D., and have hardly thought anything higher possible, I prefer this work to all his others and consider it the master's highest masterpiece to date. It is as clear as light and just as unfathomable, drawing itself together vividly in each of its parts into absolute unity, at the same time melting into infinity, like the latter. This strictly organic connection makes it quite impossible for me to think of or want to do without any part of it. What is not yet fully explained in the first part, as the mysterious hints of a hidden relationship between the duke and his son, both of them, and still other, secret machinations, undoubtedly prepare the future and already fill the mind with a wonderful shiver.

There is no doubt that a work of this depth and simplicity at the same time should be grasped and represented in its inner spirit by any existing company of actors. But the right spectator should see the ideal of the representation through the limitations of the representation and the work through this. This is the path I have had to take, and it seems to me the right one for dramatic works of art. Hence it may be that Zelter, who began by reading and from this formed his own idealized representation, was less frugal in seeing the real than I, who otherwise cannot boast of great frugality. - Now to the common spectator this elevation above the narrowness of the representation is first of all expected - in the case of common works he is relieved of it, where the representation and the matter, because both are common and shallow, coincide very properly - furthermore, he is expected to pay strict attention for 2 to 3 hours, because the whole is a whole, and he does not understand any part if he does not understand all - whereas in the case of common plays he can be absent, if he wants to, and again pay attention if he wants to, and yet always a whole grain of sand, - happily encounters - finally, he is suspected of a completely lacking sense for the internal in man, and the plot that takes place on this stage - therefore the management, city and court believe that there is no plot in the last two acts of this work, and indeed Goethe would have had no plot for these two acts, through the simple narration: Eugenia gives her hand to a councillor of justice, could have spared - all these graces, it is understandable with what faces they are received. For my part, however, the older I grow, and the more some stupidity presses me here every day, and the more masterpieces they send us from there, the more I am strengthened in the merciless opinion that the highest, and only the highest, should be brought before the eyes of the public, without all pity for boredom, and discomfort of uneducation, that one should not patch up the bad and attach the good to it, God willing, but destroy it purely and create the good purely, and that it will never get better with the bad until one takes no further notice of the fact that the bad exists.

Among the actors, in my opinion, Madame Fleck as Eugenie won the prize by far. Her acting was particularly enthusiastic and inspiring in the second act, in the expression of joyful expectation in the sonnet, in the poetic fantasy that followed - then when she put on the jewels, when her aristocratic, generous disposition came to the fore, and so on. She did not actually spoil anything that I remember. Ifland portrayed the tender father very well, especially in the third act, the one melting in the thought of the believed loss, and made a powerful impression on his audience: but it always remained a tender father from one of his mountain family plays: the nobility of the first vassal, secret husband of the proud princess, father of the high daughter, the importance of the darkly threatening star on the political horizon of this realm, were lost - not to the detriment of the play, as it seems to me, with the true spectator; for whoever knows Ifflanden besides, will not take him for identical with such a person, and at the poet's hint will gladly supplant dignity, and majesty, and depth. Mattausch, as king, was quite handsome. Bessel (who otherwise plays insignificant roles) also deserves mention as a clergyman. He did not play without strength; and the favorable spectator might attribute some roughness in his behavior to the village life of the spiritual lord. Bethmann, as a court physician, did not play carelessly, as he has been accused of, but what can be made of this clumsy, monotonous organ? Herdt, as a monk, did not allow his nature to set the accents as natural breathing requires; yet one understood him completely, and one could now speak the role differently and correctly. Beschart played the Governor smoothly and gallantly, as is his manner; and this did the role no harm. The part of the court mistress was given to a singer, Madame Schiel, who, out of a very laudable caution for the time when her singing voice might come to an end, wanted to concentrate on recitation. She brought the gesticulation from the opera theater, but she was not allowed to sing, and she could not speak. I think I have guessed the intention and meaning of this role, but I did not hear the words either time; therefore, there is a gap in my knowledge. No Goethean character can be made out of Schwadke's - who played the secretary - thorough shallowness. This man would have to be exiled entirely to the English conversation pieces.

Another anecdote that was very edifying and instructive for me. The role of the nun was played the first day by Madame Herdt, who behaved in such a way that the audience burst out laughing - and this time with perfect justification. How does the management help itself on the second day? Well, it leaves out this role completely - only one of the useless characters, it might think, who appear in the last two acts - (how first, in increasing fear, all means of salvation must be tried before the last strange one is resorted to, and how, in addition, all the estates of the kingdom approaching its downfall are to be passed before the spectator's eyes according to their least spirit, such judges certainly do not realize), - but leaves the role of Eugenia unchanged; in such a way that now the daring glance into the companion's violent letter takes place without an intermediary and directly upon the refusal to see it, for fear of seeing one of the two beloved names. Let Goethe now learn from this how to do it in order to make the plot, so often hesitant in his works, proceed more quickly!

One question: how does the author conceive the external representation of the nation in the group, this chorus, from which its individual representatives wriggle free and intertwine themselves in the plot? (which, in passing, local people do not grasp either, and in the Ungersche Zeitung, for example, it is said that they come and disappear like idle strollers). Should at least a beginning of the immeasurable life and activity really be visible, which the imagination now continues into the infinite; or should the spectator see this heap as if with the eye of fantasy? In the performance here, it was only towards the end of the fourth act, when Eugenia was preparing to call the people, that two or three ragged fellows suddenly carried a suitcase of student's goods and a few small bales decorated with merchant's signs to the back of the stage, which remained empty of living beings for the rest of the time. This seemed to me either too much or too little. Am I right or wrong?

Since I mentioned in my last letter that the "Auspochen" were at the first performance, I would like to correct this - for I myself would not like to accuse the Berlin crowd of more evil than is true - the following: it is quite notorious that Schadow ordered the "Auspocher", properly recruited and organized them beforehand. I am writing this to you for any use, if you do not already know it, for it is common knowledge; only I would not like to be the one who would have written it to you. It is also claimed that Ifland, not Woltmann, is the author of the recently mentioned assessment in the Ungersche Zeitung. Similarly, both historical partisanship for good and bad.

I commend myself to your benevolence.

Yours sincerely, Fichte