No More Learning

The
old philosophy had been so diluted, in making it a book of instruc-
tion for students and immature persons, that the insight into its
speculative necessity had been lost or become a tradition. The pro-
fessor is obliged to keep in mind the capacity of the pupil, in pre-
paring his text-book. In striving to make the subject clear to the
immature mind, which is not able to think except in images and
pictures, the professor changes his attitude from that of a discoverer
of truth to that of an expounder of truth. He is obliged to suppress
the strictly logical deduction, and substitute for it analogies and illus-
trations that flow from it; thus, to offer baked bread instead of seed
corn to his pupils. But by-and-by his pupils, nurtured on this thin
philosophical diet, become professors themselves. They have never
heard that Plato and Aristotle ever had any other meaning than the
commonplace doctrines learned in their text-books. Hence the de-
generacy of philosophy in the schools. On the other hand, eccentric
philosophers off the lines of the traditional school wisdom, like Bruno,
Spinoza, Boehme, and Swedenborg, have never been reduced to a text-
book form, and they still preserve a power to arouse original thought.
Schelling's writings have this power. They reveal the morning red
of truth, and the student becomes a mystic and beholds the truth for
himself. But it does not often occur to him that there is also clear
daylight behind the commonplace dogmas of school wisdom.


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7168
GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
Hegel profited more by the example of Schelling in this matter
of interpreting the past systems of philosophy, than by anything else.
He became the great philosophical interpreter.
I have already mentioned his first original work, the 'Phenome-
nology of Spirit,' a book that he finished during the battle of Jena
(1806). It appeared from the press in the following year. This work
may be best described as an interpretation of the different stand-
points at which the mind arrives, successively, on its way from the
mere animal sense-perception up to the highest stage of thinking,
which sees the world to be a manifestation of Divine reason, and
reads its purpose in everything. One must not, however, understand
this book to be an attempt to present the contents of the world of
nature and of human history in a systematic form, for it is nothing
of the kind. It is rather a subjective clearing-up of the contents of
his own mind than an objective treatment of the contents of the
world, systematically. But the first part of it has something of
a very general character; namely, the exhibition of the dialectic
by which sense-perception passes from an immediate knowledge of
the here and now, to a knowledge of force, and further on, to the
insight that force must in all cases be a fragment of will-activity.
This part of the track of development must be common to all peo-
ples who have progressed up to, and beyond, the dynamic view of
the world. And again, in the next phase of it, where he develops
in order, one after the other, the germs of the several institutions of
the social life of man; namely, beginning with slavery, on through
the patriarchal despotism, up to free, constitutional forms of govern-
ment. He shows the rise of the moral idea, first in the mind of the
slave who, purified by his own sufferings, learns to see the import-
ance of moral conduct on the part of his master, not only for his
own (the slave's) well-being, but also for the accomplishment of any-
thing reasonable by his master himself. This deep insight is a key
to the explanation of the authorship of Æsop's Fables, the Enchiridion
of Epictetus, and the Hitopadesa, by slaves. In general, it explains
how it is that in Asia, in the realm of arbitrary power and despot-
ism, the moral systems of the world have arisen. It does not indicate
any lofty superiority on the part of the Asiatic mind, but rather its
backwardness in developing civil institutions such as we enjoy in
the Roman law, the English local self-government, and the American
Constitution. Hegel uses this key, not only to explain the history and
arrested development of civilization among the Oriental peoples, but
to explain the moral ideas of the Stoics, the Skeptics, and the Epi-
cureans.
The first part of the Phenomenology treats of consciousness, the
second part of self-consciousness, or the arrival at the certainty that


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7169
a self is behind every total phenomenon, and that the self is an in-
dependent, originating being, and therefore morally responsible. He
shows how this idea prompts man to a study of nature, with a view
to understand how nature is a manifestation or revelation of mind.
This is the third study of the Phenomenology under the general title
of reason.
«
In Hegel's technique, reason" means the recognition of
mind as the outcome of the world-process. Absolute reason is creat-
ing individual beings, and endowing them with reason. The world
of nature and human history is a process whose object is the develop-
ment of individuality. Side by side with this theoretical or intellect-
ual side of the recognition of reason, Hegel places the actual struggle
of the will, and traces its ascent from mere caprice, up to the con-
sciousness of laws and obedience to them.
The fourth step of the Phenomenology he calls "spirit. " It is the
consciousness that makes institutions for the establishment and pres-
ervation of what is rational in the world. According to Hegel, rea-
son includes the discovery of rational laws in nature and rational
laws in human history and development; but in all this the individual
acts as individual, and his seeing and knowing is individual. Spirit
names the product of society, and not of the mere individual. In
social combinations, according to Hegel, there is a higher manifesta-
tion of intelligence and will than in the mere individual, and he calls
this manifestation "spirit. " Spirit is therefore man acting as a social
whole. His insight into this is used as a key to explain the phe-
nomena of his own time, particularly the French Revolution, in its
entire cycle from revolt against the State to a restoration of the State
under Napoleon.
He closes his Phenomenology by a brief study into the nature of
religion. He commences with the lowest forms of fetishism and
idolatry, and rising through the art religion of the Greeks, comes to
a third and highest religion, revealed religion; signifying by the word
"revealed," not so much that the Scriptures are divinely inspired, as
that they make known a God who reveals himself to men,—not an
inscrutable God, like that of the pantheistic religions, but a Divine-
human God, an absolute, conscious reason, and above all, a moral
God. For Hegel finds that the Hebrew insight in the Old Testament
reaches to such a knowledge of the absolute as is presupposed by
psychology, by the philosophy of nature, and by the philosophy of
history. It was reached by the intuition of that wonderful people in
Palestine.
Of many things man may be uncertain, but he can be absolutely
certain that the fundamental Being in the universe must respect the
moral law, otherwise he would destroy his own personality. Hav-
ing convinced himself of this, Hegel has arrived at his final chapter,
XII-449


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7170
GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
absolutely knowing, and his "voyage of discovery" is done. He is
certain that there must be absolute science, because the highest of
religions presupposes this knowledge that the Divine being is ethical,
and necessarily possesses goodness and righteousness. Now Hegel is
ready to commence on his next work, the Logic, which will show
how the mind reaches the moral ideal. It is a thorough explora-
tion of the thoughts of the mind which arise in it through its own
activity, and not through mere experience. The category of being,
for instance, is a category that underlies all experience, and it re-
mains in the mind after having abstracted all that one has learned
through each and all his special senses; for all things learned by
experience are really qualities of being, but not being itself.
the categories of negation and of becoming. Such categories as
"somewhat," and "other," and "limit," "the finite," "the infinite,"
and all the other categories of quality; such categories as "quantity,"
"extensive" and "intensive," and "ratio,”—all these categories of
quality and quantity form a sort of surface to the thinking mind.
Underneath this it thinks categories of "phenomenon and noume-
non," categories of "positive and negative," "identity and difference,
"force and manifestation," "substance and attribute,» « cause and
effect," in short, the world of relativity.
Hegel goes on in his Logic to discuss - besides these categories
of quality and quantity which belong to immediate being, and which
constitute our superficial or surface thinking-the categories of es-
sence, such as cause and effect, which are the chief categories of
reflection, or the understanding; and finally comes to a third realm
of thinking, which deals with life and mind, showing up the laws of
the judgment and syllogism as found in Aristotle's Logic, and work-
ing out, along lines that Schelling first explored, into the realization of
mind in the mechanism, chemism, and teleology of the world; finally
considering the life of animal and plant, and then intellect and will
of man, and lastly the union of intellect and will in one being,- the
being of God, or as Hegel calls it, the "absolute idea. " This abso-
lute idea has the form of perfectly altruistic action. Its Divine occu-
pation is the creating of other beings, and the nurturing of the same
up to their immortal individuality.
With the appearance of conscious self-determination in the world,
there begins responsibility, and consequently conscious discrimination
between evil and righteousness. The institutions of civilization arise
in order to conserve the conscious practice of the right and the sup-
pression of evil.
In this his first work, the
Phenomenology,' we find the keys
which Hegel applies to the several departments of philosophy; his
work after 1807 lay in the lines therein mapped out. While in charge


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7171
of a classical high school in Nuremberg, he elaborated and published
his 'Science of Logic,' in three volumes (1812 to 1816). The outline
of the Philosophy of Nature' he published in his Encyclopædia of
Philosophical Sciences' in 1817 at Heidelberg, whither he had gone.
in October 1816 to assume a professorship in the University. The
first volume of the Encyclopædia' contains a compend of his logic,
and the third volume contains the 'Philosophy of Spirit,' which is
mostly a systematic arrangement of materials to be found in his
"Phenomenology. '
In October 1818 Hegel became a professor in the University of
Berlin, occupying the chair formerly occupied by Fichte. In his Ber-
lin period he elaborated the details of the Philosophy of Spirit,' and
expanded its contents into a large number of volumes. In 1821 he
published his Philosophy of Right,' containing the science of juris-
prudence, morals, and politics. In the following years he lectured on
the philosophy of history, on the science of the fine arts and poetry,
on the philosophy of religion, and on the history of philosophy.
His manuscripts were edited by his disciples after his death, additions
being made to the manuscripts from the notes of the pupils taken
during the lectures. While engaged on a new edition of his complete
Logic, having finished the revision of the first volume, he died of
cholera, November 14th, 1831.
The edition of his complete works by his disciples contains in
Vol. i. his writings of the Schelling period; Vol. ii. , Phenomenology
of Spirit'; Vols. iii. , iv. , and v. , Science of Logic'; 'Outlines of the
Philosophy of Right' (one volume), Philosophy of History' (one vol-
ume), Esthetics,' including the Philosophy of the Fine Arts and
Poetry (three volumes), Philosophy of Religion' (two volumes),
"History of Philosophy' (three volumes), the Encyclopædia' (three
volumes), Miscellaneous Writings' (two volumes). To this list should
be added the Life of Hegel' by Rosenkranz (one volume). English
translations now exist of the Philosophy of History,' the Encyclo-
pædia,' the Philosophy of Right,' the Philosophy of Religion,' the
'History of Philosophy,' and a considerable portion of the 'Esthetics. '
<
Of these works, the Philosophy of Right' gives by far the best
philosophy of the family, industrial society, political economy, and
the State, that has been produced by the Kantian critical school. It
contains a brief but very luminous treatise on the science of morals
as distinct from ethics in general, which Hegel construes as the
science of institutions. Hegel's 'Philosophy of Esthetics,' including
the fine arts and poetry, treats of the three epochs of art, symbolic
(Oriental), classic (Greek and Roman), and romantic (Christian), as
well as the special arts, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and
poetry. It shows, in accordance with broad principles, how the ideal


## p. 7172 (#574) ###########################################

7172
GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
of the beautiful is realized within the three great epochs of civiliza.
tion; and gives the student a philosophical basis by which to criticize
the merits and defects of each phase of art. It shows also the ad-
vantages and the defects of each of the special arts in revealing the
beautiful; architecture having one kind of limitation, sculpture another,
painting, music, and poetry still others. If Hegel had left us only
this work on the philosophy of art, says Bénard, it would have been
sufficient to give him first rank among the thinkers of his century.
But this may be truthfully said of four of his other works.
His 'Philosophy of Religion' commences with a discussion of the
nature of religion, defining its limitations and showing its central
value. The first part of his 'Philosophy of Art,' in the same way,
shows the nature of art and its significance. The Philosophy of
Religion' then proceeds to take up historically the religions of the
chief nations, showing the Church from its earliest beginnings to its
culmination in Christianity. The Philosophy of History' is the cen-
tral book of this group. It takes up the nations of the world, and
analyzes the fundamental idea of the civilization of each; then shows
how this idea gets realized in the manners and customs of the peo-
ple, and especially in their governmental form. He then shows how
the colliding elements of this great idea get reconciled and harmo-
nized within the nation itself; and then how it comes into collision
with nations outside of it; and finally how it is overcome by the
world-historical nation which is to become its successor as leader in
civilization. The works on æsthetics and religion reinforce the
'Philosophy of History' by showing how the national idea gets real-
ized in the art and literature of the people, and also in its religious
creed and methods of worship. It seems to be a tacit conviction of
Hegel that in order to seize the truth of the individuality of a nation,
and understand its career in the world, you must investigate not only
its form of government and its manners and customs, but also its
view of the world as found in religion, and its celebration of that
view of the world, in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and
poetry. A mistake in any one of these spheres would get corrected
while investigating other spheres.
Hegel's 'History of Philosophy' is the most remarkable work of
its kind, inasmuch as it has the advantage of the wonderful interpret-
ing power of the master. His pupils have numerously attempted
writings in the history of philosophy, and have made great success in
it, but no success equal to that of Hegel himself. His work is pro-
foundly suggestive. He studies the thought of a nation always in
the light of its institutions, its art, its literature, and its religion. By
his very method he is protected against attributing to thinkers ideas
which could not have arisen in their historical epoch. Hegel has


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7173
done more than any other thinker to give the student what is called
a historical sense, and thus guard him against misinterpreting the
earlier forms of ideas for later ones.
In each of these works, which stand for the four greatest contri-
butions to human thought in this century,- Hegel's treatises on art,
religion, history, and philosophy, - the great contrast between Asiatic
contributions and those of Europe is brought out with ever-fresh
illustrations and profound suggestions. The difference of these two
epochs of human history is shown to be the deepest possible. The
Oriental thought is not strong enough in its synthetic power to grasp
the idea of an absolute, as an ethical personality, but remains stand-
ing at the idea of an empty infinite, devoid of all attributes. This
impotency it illustrates in its works of art, its forms of civil govern-
ment, its religious creeds, and its philosophy. The correspondence
between the abstract theories of a civilization and its concrete results
is worked out by Hegel so felicitously as to awaken the highest en-
thusiasm in the intelligent reader.
W. Dans
SELECTIONS FROM HEGEL'S WRITINGS
THE
HE following extracts from English translations from Hegel will
serve to illustrate his difficulties of style, which appear through
a translation somewhat exaggerated on account of the impossi-
bility of rendering his technical terms into corresponding terms in
English. His writings are built up systematically, and somewhere in
his works each technical term will be found to be explained fully;
but unfortunately for his readers, he uses these terms anywhere in
their full technical significance, assuming that the reader is acquainted
with the detailed exposition which he has given somewhere else.
Such simple words as "reason," "spirit," "self-consciousness," are
used as glibly as if they meant only the ordinary mental pictures
called up by the reading public at sight of these words. But we
have seen that "spirit" implies an investigation occupying five or six
hundred pages in that most abstruse and exasperating work The
Phenomenology of Spirit. ' (1) It implies the psychological demon-
stration that self-activity is the true first principle, presupposed not
only as the basis of all life but as the basis of all inorganic nature.
(This is the step called "self-consciousness. ") (2) It presupposes the


## p. 7174 (#576) ###########################################

GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7174
long investigation through experience of untold centuries into the
objects of nature, discovering finally their purpose in creation; and
the other phase of investigation into the action of the human will,
by which it arrives at moral and ethical forms of action. (This is
the process called "reason. ") (3) Finally, it presupposes a like inves-
tigation on the part of human experience into institutions best calcu-
lated to realize human nature, the family, civil society, the State and
the Church. (This process is called "spirit. ")
This style resembles in some degree that of treatises in higher
mathematics, wherein a simple formula of two or three terms quotes
a result which has been arrived at after one or two hundred pages
of close analytical reasoning.
In the following extracts I preface each by a brief explanation
indicating the general result, and calling attention to some of the
technical terms which contain the compendious reference here de-
scribed.
W. T. H.
TRANSITION TO THE GREEK WORLD
From the Philosophy of History
[The following passage, on the transition from the history of Egypt to
that of Greece, shows how a national consciousness which expresses itself
only in symbols passes over to one that expresses itself in the language of
thought. ]
THE
HE Egyptian Spirit has shown itself to us as in all respects
shut up within the limits of particular conceptions, and
as it were, imbruted in them; but likewise stirring itself
within these limits,-passing restlessly from one particular form
into another. This Spirit never rises to the Universal and
Higher, for it seems to be blind to that; nor does it ever with-
draw into itself: yet it symbolizes freely and boldly with partic
ular existence, and has already mastered it. All that is now
required is to posit that particular existence- which contains the
germ of ideality—as ideal, and to comprehend Universality itself,
which is already potentially liberated from the particulars involv
ing it. It is the free, joyful Spirit of Greece that accomplishes
this, and makes this its starting-point. An Egyptian priest is
reported to have said that the Greeks remain eternally children.
We may say on the contrary that the Egyptians are vigorous
boys, eager for self-comprehension, who require nothing but clear
understanding of themselves in an ideal form in order to become


## p. 7175 (#577) ###########################################

GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7175
Young Men. In the Oriental Spirit there remains as a basis
the massive substantiality of Spirit immersed in Nature. To the
Egyptian Spirit it has become impossible-though it is still in-
volved in infinite embarrassment-to remain contented with that.
The rugged African nature disintegrated that primitive Unity, and
lighted upon the problem whose solution is Free Spirit.
THE PROBLEM
From the Philosophy of History>
[Hegel uses with great effect a quotation from a Neo-Platonist philosopher
who used the clear thoughts of Aristotle and Plato to explain the symbolic
consciousness of the Greeks. ]
THA
HAT the Spirit of the Egyptians presented itself to their con-
sciousness in the form of a problem, is evident from the
celebrated inscription in the sanctuary of the Goddess Neith
at Sais: "I am that which is, that which was, and that which
will be no one has lifted my veil. " This inscription indicates the
principle of the Egyptian Spirit; though the opinion has often
been entertained, that its purport applies to all times. Proclus
supplies the addition, "The fruit which I have produced is Helios. "
That which is clear to itself is therefore the result of, and the
solution of, the problem in question. This lucidity is Spirit —
the Son of Neith the concealed night-loving divinity. In the
Egyptian Neith, Truth is still a problem. The Greek Apollo
is its solution; his utterance is: "Man, know thyself. " In this
dictum is not intended a self-recognition that regards the special-
ties of one's own weaknesses and defects: it is not the individual
that is admonished to become acquainted with his idiosyncrasy,
but humanity in general is summoned to self-knowledge. This
mandate was given for the Greeks; and in the Greek Spirit,
humanity exhibits itself in its clear and developed condition.
Wonderfully, then, must the Greek legend surprise us, which
relates that the Sphinx- the great Egyptian symbol-appeared
in Thebes, uttering the words: "What is that which in the morn-
ing goes on four legs, at midday on two, and in the evening
on three? " Edipus, giving the solution Man, precipitated the
Sphinx from the rock. The solution and liberation of that Ori-
ental Spirit, which in Egypt had advanced so far as to propose
the problem, is certainly this: that the Inner Being (the Essence)


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7176
GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
of Nature is Thought, which has its existence only in the human
consciousness. But that time-honored antique solution given by
Edipus - who thus shows himself possessed of knowledge-is
connected with a dire ignorance of the character of his own
actions. The rise of spiritual illumination in the old royal house
is disparaged by connection with abominations, the result of ignor-
ance; and that primeval royalty must-in order to attain true
knowledge and moral clearness-first be brought into shapely
form, and be harmonized with the Spirit of the Beautiful, by
civil laws and political freedom.
THE GREEK WORLD
From the Philosophy of History'
[In explaining the general characteristics of the Greek national mind,
Hegel calls attention to the fact that Greek civilization is the first appearance
of "spirit" in the world, using the word in the technical sense above described;
namely, that it is the first nationality which adopts free institutions, that is to
say, institutions which embody reason and are adapted to assist the individual
citizen to attain free reasonable action. He uses the expression, "In Greece
advancing spirit makes itself the content of its volition and its knowledge;">
meaning, as he explains later, that the Greek citizen makes it his personal
interest to adopt as his own will the will of the State; for this is the essence
of freedom. The individual citizen, too, understands the motive of the State;
that is to say, it is not a motive of some mere ruler or tyrant, but the motive
that arises in the mind of the individual citizen, as such, and declared by his
vote. He contrasts this form of spirit with a further developed one, in which
the individual citizen lays less stress upon his individual satisfaction, and looks
more to the reasonable result, even if at the cost of his individuality. One of
the finest passages in Hegel is the paragraph upon Achilles and Alexander. ]
Α
MONG the Greeks we feel ourselves immediately at home,
for we are in the region of Spirit; and though the origin
of the nation, as also its philological peculiarities, may be
traced farther, even to India, the proper Emergence, the true
Palingenesis of Spirit, must be looked for in Greece first. At an
earlier stage I compared the Greek world with the period of ado-
lescence; not indeed in that sense, that youth bears within it a
serious anticipative destiny, and consequently by the very condi-
tions of its culture urges towards [rests on] an ulterior aim,—
presenting thus an inherently incomplete and immature form, and
being then most defective when it would deem itself perfect,—but
in that sense, that youth does not yet present the activity of work,


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GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7177
does not yet exert itself for a definite intelligent aim, but rather
exhibits a concrete freshness of the soul's life. It appears in the
sensuous actual world as Incarnate Spirit and Spiritualized Sense
[i. e. , æsthetic art], in a unity which owed its origin to Spirit.
Greece presents to us the cheerful aspect of youthful freshness,
of Spiritual vitality. It is here first that advancing Spirit makes
itself the content of its volition and its knowledge; but in such
a way that State, Family, Law, Religion, are at the same time
objects aimed at by individuality, while the latter is individuality
only in virtue of those aims. The [full-grown] man, on the other
hand, devotes his life to labor for an objective aim; which he
pursues consistently, even at the cost of his individuality.
The highest form that floated before the Greek imagination
was Achilles, the Son of the Poet, the Homeric Youth of the
Trojan War. Homer is the element in which the Greek world
lives, as man does in the air. The Greek life is a truly youthful
achievement. Achilles, the ideal youth of poetry, commenced
it; Alexander the Great, the ideal youth of reality, concluded it.
Both appear in contest with Asia: Achilles, as the principal
figure in the national expedition of the Greeks against Troy, does
not stand at its head, but is subject to the Chief of Chiefs; he
cannot be made the leader without becoming a fantastic, unten-
able conception. On the contrary, the second youth, Alexander,
-the freest and finest individuality that the real world has ever
produced,- advances to the head of this youthful life that has
now perfected itself, and accomplishes the revenge against Asia.
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIANITY
From the Philosophy of History'
[After treating Rome as a kingdom and a republic, Hegel takes up, in the
chapter on the Roman Empire, the subject of the introduction of Christianity,
making one of his profoundest (and obscurest) analyses in his discussion of
the doctrine of Christianity as related to the previous standpoints in the world
history. There is no passage in all his writings more worthy of study than
this discussion of the elements of Christianity. It contains one of his best
statements of the superiority of those forms of the State, religion, or philoso-
phy, which give the individual independent subsistence, and do not make him a
transient wave to be swallowed up by the ocean of being. Hegel has unfolded
in the Philosophy of Right,' the Philosophy of Religion,' and the Phenom-
enology of Spirit,' this insight into the substantial and permanent character
of the individual man, who possesses personal immortality. Here he treats of


## p. 7178 (#580) ###########################################

7178
GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
it as the essential element in Christianity, which recognizes individual per-
sonality in the absolute, and the reflection of that permanent individuality
in human beings. In fact, Hegel sees in the doctrine of the incarnation, cruci-
fixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the adequate religious statement
of this final doctrine of the creation of the individual for immortality and
reconciliation with God. It is the doctrine of the divine-human. «The Abso-
lute Object, Truth, is Spirit; " that is to say, the object of God's thinking is
man in the highest institutional form, called in revelation the "invisible
Church" or the "City of God. » This, however, is not only the object of
God's consciousness, but also of man's as a member of the invisible Church;
and thus, as Hegel goes on to say, man realizes that the essential being of the
world is his own essential being, and thus he removes its mere objectivity,
its existence as an alien being outside of himself, which he adopts merely on
external authority, and thus comes to make it internal, subjective, seeing its
truth by his own insight and not on mere hearsay. ]
T HAS been remarked that Cæsar inaugurated the Modern
World on the side of reality, while its spiritual and inward
existence was unfolded under Augustus. At the beginning of
that empire whose principle we have recognized as finiteness and
particular subjectivity exaggerated to infinitude, the salvation of
the World had its birth in the same principle of subjectivity,—
viz. , as a particular person, in abstract subjectivity, but in such a
way that conversely, finiteness is only the form of his appear-
ance, while infinity and absolutely independent existence con-
stitute the essence and substantial being which it embodies. The
Roman World as it has been described-in its desperate condi-
tion and the pain of abandonment by God-came to an open
rupture with reality, and made prominent the general desire for
a satisfaction such as can only be attained in "the inner man,"
the Soul, thus preparing the ground for a higher Spiritual
World. Rome was the Fate that crushed down the gods and all
genial life in its hard service, while it was the power that puri-
fied the human heart from all specialty. Its entire condition is
therefore analogous to a place of birth, and its pain is like the
travail-throes of another and higher Spirit, which manifested
itself in connection with the Christian Religion. This higher
Spirit involves the reconciliation and emancipation of Spirit;
while man obtains the consciousness of Spirit in its universality
and infinity. The Absolute Object, Truth, is Spirit; and as man
himself is Spirit, he is present [is mirrored] to himself in that
object, and thus in his Absolute Object has found Essential
Being and his own essential being. But in order that the object-
ivity of Essential Being may be done away with, and Spirit be
-


## p. 7179 (#581) ###########################################

GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7179
no longer alien to itself,-may be with itself [self-harmonized],
the Naturalness of Spirit, that in virtue of which man is a
special empirical existence, must be removed; so that the alien
element may be destroyed, and the reconciliation of Spirit be
accomplished.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
From the Philosophy of History>
[Hegel goes on to show the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity, as
a symbol of this deep truth. He discusses the appearance of concrete sub-
jective caprice in the Greek national mind, and the abstract subjective mind
in the Roman national mind, especially in the right of private property, in
goods and chattels, and in land,- a right which realized for the citizen a
sphere of free individuality.
]
G
OD is thus recognized as Spirit only when known as the Tri-
une. This new principle is the axis on which the History
of the World turns. This is the goal and the starting-point
of History. "When the fullness of the time was come, God sent
his Son," is the statement of the Bible. This means nothing else
than that self-consciousness had reached the phases of development
[momente] whose resultant constitutes the Idea of Spirit, and had
come to feel the necessity of comprehending those phases abso-
lutely. This must now be more fully explained. We said of the
Greeks, that the law for their Spirit was "Man, know thyself. "
The Greek Spirit was a consciousness of Spirit, but under a lim-
ited form, having the element of Nature as an essential ingre-
dient. Spirit may have had the upper hand, but the unity of
the superior and the subordinate was itself still Natural. Spirit
appeared as specialized in the idiosyncrasies of the genius of the
several Greek nationalities and of their divinities, and was repre-
sented by Art, in whose sphere the Sensuous is elevated only to
the middle ground of beautiful form and shape, but not to pure
Thought. The element of Subjectivity that was wanting in the
Greeks we found among the Romans; but as it was merely
formal and in itself indefinite, it took its material from passion
and caprice; - even the most shameful degradations could be here
connected with a divine dread [vide the declaration of Hispala
respecting the Bacchanalia, Livy xxxix. 13]. This element of
subjectivity is afterwards further realized as Personality of Indi-
viduals a realization which is exactly adequate to the principle,


## p. 7180 (#582) ###########################################

7180
GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
and is equally abstract and formal. As such an Ego [such a per-
sonality], I am infinite to myself, and my phenomenal existence
consists in the property recognized as mine, and the recognition
of my personality. This inner existence goes no further; all
the applications of the principle merge in this. Individuals are
thereby posited as atoms; but they are at the same time subject
to the severe rule of the One, which, as monas monadum, is a
power over private persons [the connection between the ruler
and the ruled is not mediated by the claim of Divine or of Con-
stitutional Right, or any general principle, but is direct and indi-
vidual, the Emperor being the immediate lord of each subject in
the Empire]. That Private Right is therefore, ipso facto, a nul-
lity, an ignoring of the personality; and the supposed condition of
Right turns out to be an absolute destitution of it. This contra-
diction is the misery of the Roman World.
THE NATURE OF EVIL
From the Philosophy of History'
[This free individuality, founded on the ownership of property, was not
balanced by a freedom in the Roman imperial government. In relation to the
Emperor everything was uncertain. All the nations of Europe, Asia, and
Africa were brought under the yoke of the Roman law. Deprived of his
local religion, of his local rulers, and of all his special aims, Rome and the
Roman Empire were placed before man as supreme object of his will, and
there arose a feeling of longing, an unsatisfied aspiration. Hegel compares this
feeling to that expressed in the Psalms of David and in the Prophets. This
is a remarkable commentary on the expression "The fullness of time was
come. " He makes a discrimination between the consciousness of sin revealed
in the Old Testament, and the shallow idea of error or evil, giving a profound
significance to the idea of the Fall. ]
THE
HE higher condition in which the soul itself feels pain and
longing-in which man is not only "drawn," but feels that
the drawing is into himself [into his own inmost nature]—
is still absent. What has been reflection on our part must arise
in the mind of the subject of this discipline in the form of a
consciousness that in himself he is miserable and null. Outward
suffering must, as already said, be merged in a sorrow of the
inner man. He must feel himself as the negation of himself; he
must see that his misery is the misery of his nature-that he
is in himself a divided and discordant being. This state of mind,


## p. 7181 (#583) ###########################################

GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7181
this self-chastening, this pain occasioned by our individual noth-
ingness, the wretchedness of our [isolated] self, and the longing
to transcend this condition of soul,- must be looked for else-
where than in the properly Roman World. It is this which
gives to the Jewish People their World-Historical importance and
weight; for from this state of mind arose that higher phase in
which Spirit came to absolute self-consciousness-passing from
that alien form of being which is its discord and pain, and
mirroring itself in its own essence. The state of feeling in ques-
tion we find expressed most purely and beautifully in the Psalms
of David, and in the Prophets; the chief burden of whose utter-
ances is the thirst of the soul after God; its profound sorrow
for its transgressions, the desire for righteousness and holiness.
Of this Spirit we have the mythical representation at the very
beginning of the Jewish canonical books, in the account of the
Fall. Man, created in the image of God, lost, it is said, his state
of absolute contentment, by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge
of Good and Evil. Sin consists here only in Knowledge; this
is the sinful element, and by it man is stated to have trifled
away his Natural happiness. This is a deep truth, that evil lies
in consciousness: for the brutes are neither evil nor good; the
merely Natural Man quite as little. Consciousness occasions
the separation of the Ego, in its boundless freedom as arbitrary
choice, from the pure essence of the Will,— i. e. , from the Good.
Knowledge, as the disannulling of the unity of mere Nature,
is the "Fall"; which is no casual conception, but the eternal
history of Spirit. For the state of innocence, the paradisiacal
condition, is that of the brute. Paradise is a park, where only
brutes, not men, can remain. For the brute is one with God
only implicitly [not consciously]. Only Man's Spirit [that is]
has a self-cognizant existence. This existence for self, this
consciousness, is at the same time separation from the Universal
and Divine Spirit. If I hold in my abstract Freedom, in contra-
position to the Good, I adopt the standpoint of Evil.


## p. 7182 (#584) ###########################################

7182
GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
THE FALL
From the Philosophy of History>
[The Fall is the eternal mythus of man, stating the arrival of man to a
deeper consciousness of his true self,- his union with the divine-human and
his wide separation between his real and his ideal; the necessity for a recon-
ciliation of the two. A further interpretation of the Old Testament doctrine
of the fall of man and the history of the chosen people. ]
THE
HE Fall is therefore the eternal Mythus of Man; in fact, the
very transition by which he becomes man. Persistence in
this standpoint is, however, Evil, and the feeling of pain at
such a condition, and of longing to transcend it, we find in David,
when he says: "Lord, create for me a pure heart, a new stead-
fast Spirit. " This feeling we observe even in the account of
the Fall; though an announcement of reconciliation is not made
there, but rather one of continuance in misery. Yet we have in
this narrative the prediction of reconciliation in the sentence,
"The Serpent's head shall be bruised;" but still more profoundly
expressed where it is stated that when God saw that Adam had
eaten of that tree, he said, “Behold, Adam is become as one of
us, knowing Good and Evil. " God confirms the words of the
Serpent. Implicitly and explicitly, then, we have the truth that
man through Spirit-through cognition of the Universal and the
Particular comprehends God himself. But it is only God that
declares this, not man; the latter remains, on the contrary, in
a state of internal discord. The joy of reconciliation is still dis-
from humanity; the absolute and final repose of his whole
being is not yet discovered to man. It exists, in the first in-
stance, only for God. As far as the present is concerned, the
feeling of pain at his condition is regarded as a final award.
The satisfaction which man enjoys at first, consists in the finite
and temporal blessings conferred on the Chosen Family and the
possession of the Land of Canaan. His repose is not found in
God. Sacrifices are, it is true, offered to Him in the Temple,
and atonement made by outward offerings and inward penitence.
But that mundane satisfaction in the Chosen Family, and its
possession of Canaan, was taken from the Jewish people in the
chastisement inflicted by the Roman Empire. The Syrian kings
did indeed oppress it, but it was left for the Romans to annul
its individuality. The Temple of Zion is destroyed; the God-
serving nation is scattered to the winds. Here every source of
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬


## p. 7183 (#585) ###########################################

GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
7183
satisfaction is taken away, and the nation is driven back to the
standpoint of that primeval Mythus, the standpoint of that pain-
ful feeling which humanity experiences when thrown upon itself.
Opposed to the universal Fatum of the Roman World, we have.
here the consciousness of Evil and the direction of the mind
Godwards. All that remains to be done is, that this fundamental
idea should be expanded to an objective universal sense, and be
taken as the concrete existence of man as the completion of
his nature. Formerly the Land of Canaan, and themselves as
the people of God, had been regarded by the Jews as that con-
crete and complete existence. But this basis of satisfaction is
now lost, and thence arises the sense of misery and failure of
hope in God, with whom that happy reality had been essentially
connected. Here, then, misery is not the stupid immersion in a
blind Fate, but a boundless energy of longing. Stoicism taught
only that the Negative is not—that pain must not be recognized
as a veritable existence: but Jewish feeling persists in acknowl-
edging Reality and desires harmony and reconciliation within its.
sphere; for that feeling is based on the Oriental Unity of Nature,
-i. e. , the unity of Reality, of Subjectivity, with the substance
of the One Essential Being. Through the loss of mere outward
reality Spirit is driven back within itself; the side of reality is
thus refined to Universality, through the reference of it to the
One.
―
――――――――――
THE ATONEMENT
From the Philosophy of History>
<
[The Persian idea of good and evil (Ormuzd and Ahriman) is not much
deeper than that of light and darkness, but in the Old Testament it becomes
the distinction between holiness and sin. Hegel points out the infinite depth
of subjectivity or personal self-realization that is involved in consciousness of
sin. He shows how "that unrest of infinite sorrow" passes over into a con-
sciousness of the infinite gain of reconciliation with the Divine when "The
fullness of time was come. "]
THE
HE Oriental antithesis of Light and Darkness is transferred to
Spirit, and the Darkness becomes Sin. For the abnegation
of reality there is no compensation but Subjectivity itself —
the Human Will as intrinsically universal; and thereby alone
does reconciliation become possible. Sin is the discerning of
Good and Evil as separation; but this discerning likewise heals.


## p. 7184 (#586) ###########################################

7184
GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HEGEL
the ancient hurt, and is the fountain of infinite reconciliation.
The discerning in question brings with it the destruction of that
which is external and alien in consciousness, and is consequently
the return of subjectivity into itself. This, then, adopted into
the actual self-consciousness of the World, is the Reconciliation
[atonement] of the World. From that unrest of infinite sorrow
in which the two sides of the antithesis stand related to each
other is developed the unity of God with Reality [which latter
had been posited as negative],-i. e. , with Subjectivity which had
been separated from Him. The infinite loss is counterbalanced
only by its infinity, and thereby becomes infinite gain. The rec
ognition of the identity of the Subject and God was introduced
into the World when the fullness of Time was come: the con-
sciousness of this identity is the recognition of God in his true
essence. The material of Truth is Spirit itself inherent vital
movement. The nature of God as pure Spirit is manifested to
man in the Christian Religion.
-


## p. 7185 (#587) ###########################################

7185
HEINRICH HEINE
(1799-1856)
BY RICHARD BURTON
I
F QUALITY is to decide a writer's position, Heinrich Heine
stands with the few great poets and literary men of Ger-
many. His lyrics at their best have not been surpassed in
his own land, and rank with the masterpieces of their kind in world
literature. As a prose writer he had extraordinary brilliancy, vigor
of thought, and grace of form, and as a thinker he must be regarded
as one of the pioneers of modern ideas in our century. In German
criticism, because of his Semitic blood-his pen not seldom dipped
in gall when he wrote of the Fatherland—and his defects of char-
acter, full justice has not been done to him as singer and sayer. It
remained for an English critic, Matthew Arnold, to define his true
place in the literature of our time. A brief survey of his life will
make this plainer.
A main thing to remember of Heine the man is, that he was an
upper-class Jew. The services of this wonderful people to art, let-
ters, and philosophy, as well as to politics and finance, are familiar.
This boy of Düsseldorf was one of the most gifted of the race of
Mendelssohn and Rothschild, Rachel and Rubinstein, Chopin and
Disraeli. Born in that picturesque old Rhine town, December 12th
(or 13th), 1799,- he just missed, as he said, being one of the first
men of the century,- his father was a wealthy merchant, his mother
a Van Geldern, daughter of a noted physician and statesman. He
received a good education, first in a Jesuit monastery, then-after
an attempt to establish him at Hamburg in mercantile life, which to
the disappointment of his family proved utterly distasteful in the
German universities of Bonn and Göttingen. The law was thought
of as a profession; but this necessitated his becoming a Christian, for
at the time in Germany all the learned callings were closed to Jews.
Heine, though not a believer in the religion of his people, was in
thorough sympathy with their wrongs, always the champion of their
cause: deeply must he have felt the humiliation of this enforced
apostasy, which was performed in 1825, in his twenty-sixth year, the
baptismal registry reading "Johann Christian Heine," names he
never made use of as a writer. Doubtless the iron entered his soul
XII-450


## p. 7186 (#588) ###########################################

7186
HEINRICH HEINE-
in the act. Before his study at Göttingen, which resulted in his
securing a law degree, Heine spent several years in Berlin, and pub-
lished a volume of verse there in 1822 without success. Letters
which he carried from the poet Schlegel secured him, however, the
entrée of leading houses, where he met in familiar intercourse Cha-
misso, Hegel, and like noted folk, and became the centre of social
interest as he read from manuscript, essays and poems which were
later to give him fame when grouped together in the volume en-
titled 'Reisebilder' (Sketches of Travel), containing his most famous
work in the essay form; his Buch der Lieder' (Book of Songs),
which followed soon thereafter, performing the same service for his
reputation as poet. He made no professional use of his legal lore,
but traveled and tasted life. The years from 1827 to 1830 were spent
mostly in Munich and Berlin. Heine took an active part in the jour-
nalistic and literary life of these cities, and drove his pen steadily as
a doughty free-lance of letters in the cause of intellectual emanci-
pation. A satiric pamphlet against the nobility in 1830, the year of
the July Revolution in France, made him fear for his personal lib-
erty; and the next year he removed to Paris, and began the life
there which was to end only in his death a quarter-century later.
A liaison with a grisette resulted in his marriage with her; and
their quarrelsome, affectionate life together has been often limned.
In the capital that has fascinated so many distinguished spirits-at
first well, and happy, and seen in society, making occasional journeys
abroad; later poor, sick, with gall in his pen and with a swarm of
enemies- Heine passed this long period of his life, chained during
the ten final years to what he called in grim metaphor his "mattress
grave. "
His disease was a spinal affection, resulting in slow paraly-
sis, loss of sight, the withering of his limbs. No more terrible picture
is offered in the personal annals of literature than that of the once
gay poet, writhing in his bed through sleepless nights, the sight of
one eye gone, the drooping lid of the other lifted by the hand that
he might see to use the pen. "I saw the body all shrunk together,
from which his legs hung down without signs of life," says his sister,
who visited him in Paris the year before he died. "I had to gather
all my powers of self-control in order to support in quiet the horri-
ble sight. " The volumes of letters and other memorabilia published
in recent years plainly set forth the dual nature of this man: his
querulousness, equivocations, and jealousies; his impulsive affection.
towards his near of kin. The French government granted him a
pension for his services as revolutionary writer, and it came in the
nick of time; for on the death in 1844 of his rich uncle Solomon
Heine, who for years had granted him an allowance, it was found
that no provision for its maintenance had been made in the will.


## p. 7187 (#589) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
7187
Heine's bitterness under the heavy hand of Fate comes out pathet-
ically in his latest poems and letters. "I am no longer," he wrote,
"a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down
upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor, fatally ill Jew,
an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man. " His mind remained
wonderfully clear to the end, as his literary work testifies; and at
least he had the courage of his convictions, contemptuously repudiat-
ing the rumor that his former skepticism had been changed in the
fiery alembic of suffering. His impious jest on his death-bed is typi-
cal, whether apocryphal or not: "God will forgive me: it is his line
of business" ("c'est son métier »).
It may be said that there is a touch of heroism in the fact that
for so long he refused to end an existence of such agony by his own
violent act, enduring until Nature gave him release, which she did
but tardily, when he had passed his fifty-sixth year, February 17th,
1856. He was buried in the cemetery of Montmartre, without any
religious ceremony, as he wished,- a conclusion in key with his whole
manner of life,-preserving his Bohemianism to the very grave's
edge. It is likely that this terrible closing couplet from his poem on
Morphine summed up his feeling honestly enough:-
"Lo, sleep is good; better is death; in sooth,
The best of all were never to be born. »
Yet skepticism was not his constant attitude; a man of moods, he
could write shortly before his taking-off: "I suffer greatly, but sup-
port my wretchedness with submission to the unfathomable will of
God. " And it is but justice to add that in his will he declared that
his intellectual pride was broken, and that he had come to rest in
the truths of religion. It is by these inconsistencies and warring emo-
tions that glimpses of the man's complex, elusive nature are gained.
In his younger days Heine is described as a handsome fellow, slight
of figure, blond, with a poetic paleness and an air of distinction.
Later he became corpulent: his sad physical presentment during the
final years is finely indicated in the Hasselriis statue of the poet
erected at Corfu by the Empress of Austria.
Heine's long Parisian residence, his Gallic inoculation, have been
the theme of countless animadversions. He has been painted as a
man without a country, a turncoat, and a traitor. Certain facts must
be borne in mind in passing judgment upon him. As a boy in Düs-
seldorf he breathed the atmosphere of the French Revolution, and
grew up an enthusiast of the cause, calling himself its "child. " The
French, again, were the people who, as Arnold remarks, made it pos-
sible for the Jews in Germany to find wide activities for the exercise
of their talents. His own land proscribed his works: in France, when


## p. 7188 (#590) ###########################################

7188
HEINRICH HEINE
he had mastered the tongue, his works which appeared in French
won him speedy applause, and he was hailed as the wittiest writer
since Voltaire. And to pass from external to internal, there was much
in Heine to respond to the peculiarly French traits: flashing wit,
lightness of touch, charm of form, lucidity of expression. Small
wonder, then, that he crossed the Rhine and took up his abode in
the city which has always been a centre of enlightened thinking. In
spite of all his sympathy, temperamental and intellectual, for things.
French, Heine never forgot that he was a German poet, nor was love
for the Fatherland killed in his soul. There is a proud ring in his
well-known lines:-
"I am a German poet
Of goodly German fame:
Where their best names are spoken,
Mine own they are sure to name. »
The estimates of Heine on his personal side range from parti-
san eulogium to savage and sweeping condemnation. Perhaps it is
safest to regard him as a man of complex nature and warring tend-
encies, in whom faults of character were accentuated by the events
of his career. He was sensitive to morbidity, irascible, dissolute in
his youth, paying in after days for his excesses the fearful penalty
of a slow torturous disease. He had a waspish tendency to sting an
enemy, and was quick to take offense from friends. His mocking
spirit of contradiction was not above sacrificing justice and purity
to its ends; he was at times, in his writings, sensual, ribald, blas-
phemous. It is fair to plead in partial extenuation the early mis-
appreciation of his kinsfolk, the hostility towards his race, and the
exigencies of his subsequent battle for bread, reputation, and the
victory of ideas. On the other hand, it is weak sentimentality or
purblind favoritism to represent Heine as a hero ill-starred by for-
tune. He was far from an admirable character, and no whitewashing
can make him so: his greatest enemy came from within. He was
one who, like Louie in 'David Grieve,' was at death "freed from the
fierce burden" of himself.
As a lyric poet Heine is incomparable. It is in this form that
the German genius finds finest, freest expression, and the student of
German literature must still point to Goethe and Heine as its chief
exponents; nor in lyric expression need the latter yield to the former.
The representative pieces hereinafter printed, with others of like
quality, are among the precious bits of poetry which the world has
taken forever to its heart. No translation can give an adequate idea
of their haunting perfection, their magic of diction and witchery of
music. The reader unfamiliar with German and making Heine's
acquaintance at second hand needs to understand this impossibility;


## p. 7189 (#591) ###########################################

HEINRICH HEINE
7189
otherwise the poet's due praise may seem rhetorical and excessive.
It is said to take a thief to catch a thief: quite as truly does it take
a poet to catch a poet, and the task is far more difficult.
To get a
first-hand knowledge of Heine lends in itself a zest to the learning
of his tongue. The characteristics of these lyrics may be defined in
few words. As to form, the poet wisely seized upon the popular
ballad measures of older German literature, and in rhythms, stanzas,
and diction, clung for the most part to those homely creations,
thereby giving his work a natural touch and archaic flavor, blending
to produce an effect of simplicity and directness which really hide.
consummate art. No lyrist has had more genuine songfulness, the
last test of the true lyric; in proof, witness the frequency with which
his most familiar poems have been set to music by the gifted com-
posers of his own and other lands.
But Heine was not alone the singer: he was critic and satirist as
well. Even the exquisite deep romanticism of his lyrics is sometimes
rudely broken by his own sneering laugh; it is as if the critical in
him had of a sudden made him ashamed of his own emotion. One
of his German critics has said that he bore a laughing tear-drop on
his escutcheon: the flowery phrase denotes this mingling of song and
satire in his work. The impish anticlimax of some of his loveliest
utterances is one of the grievous things his admirers have to forgive.
Heine, in his earlier spontaneous poetry a romanticist of the roman-
ticists, came to perceive intellectually that the work of the so-called
Romantic school in Germany must give way to an incoming age of
scientific learning and modern ideas; that because it looked backward
to the Middle Ages, the movement was wrong. And in this convic-
tion he set himself to fight the old and hail the new. However this
perception may prove his prophetic insight, it would have been bet-
ter for his poetry had he remained in bondage to romanticism. When
in a love poem which opens tenderly, he concludes with this stanza:
"Dearest friend, thou art in love,
And that love must be confessed;
For I see thy glowing heart
Plainly scorching through thy vest,"-
-
one feels that the poet gets his effect of fun at too costly a price.
Parody, to pay, must gain more than it loses. The doubt of the
singer's sincerity is never quite shaken off. There is reason for call-
ing Heine "the mocking-bird of the singing grove. "
As an essay-writer, Heine's substantial reputation rests upon the
'Reisebilder,' those gay, audacious, charming, bitter travel sketches
of mingled verse and prose, in the main descriptive of his wander-
ings through Germany, and of the most varied theme and tone:


## p. 7190 (#592) ###########################################

7190
HEINRICH HEINE
now beautiful rhapsodies on the scenes of nature; now quaint pict-
ures of life in city or country, painted with Dutch-like fidelity and
realism; now rapier thrusts of wit; again powerful diatribes against
existing conventions, or personal attacks upon fellow writers, as in
his ill-judged and wanton onslaught upon the romantic bard, the
Count von Platen. Far from being all of a piece, these phantasy
sketches are of very unequal merit, ranging from the exquisite lyric
work of the opening section and the delightful narrative of his expe-
riences in the Hartz Mountains, to the sparkling indecencies of the
division dealing with Italy, and the more labored argument and sat-
ire of the English Fragments. Of the 'Reisebilder' as a whole it
may be said that inspiration grows steadily less in the successive
parts. The portion penned in Heine's early twenties deservedly
caught the fancy of Europe by the polish and poetry, the striking
manner and daring thought it possessed. The writer laughs at the
traditions of learning in his native land, he pricks with the sword of
satire the ponderous German sentimentality, and he fights with all
the weapons in the arsenal of a gifted wit for that modern thing,
Liberty, liberty of conscience, action, opinion. The point of view
was new in the literature of the early century, dosed as it was with
heavy romanticism and in awe of the old for its own sake. The
style was of unprecedented vigor and brilliance: it is easy to under-
stand why he took his wide audience by storm, and became the liter-
ary force of the day. To say a wise, keen thing in a light way, to
say it directly yet with grace, calls for a beautiful talent. To accom-
plish this in and with the German language is a double triumph. All
Heine's later writings, prose or poetry,- and during his residence in
Paris he published numerous works,-are developments or after-
echoes of his travel sketches and Book of Songs. Some of them
are simply high-class journalism: his critical faculty and graces of
manner are best represented by the critique on the Romantic school,
which is wise in forecasting the new literary ideals, and a model of
clearness and elegance. But for the general reader it will suffice to
make the acquaintance of the inimitable 'Reisebilder' and the 'Buch
der Lieder,' born of his youth and meridian of genius.
As a thinker, a force in the development of modern ideas,— the
ideas of liberty in its application to politics, science, education, and
religion, Heine was a torch-bearer of his time. In his remarkable
essay upon the German poet, Matthew Arnold gives him full credit
for this influence,- possibly exaggerating it.