No More Learning

Ye may search throughout all the land in vain
For the lion, the desert's own;
In sooth we are settled now, 'tis plain,
In a truly temperate zone.
The palm is borne, in life and in verse,
By neither the Great nor the Few:
The world grows weaker and ever worse,
'Tis the day of the Small and the New.
When we Cats are silenced, ariseth the Mouse,
But she too must pack and begone;
And the Infusoria's Royal House
Shall triumph, at last, alone.
III
NEAR the close of his existence
Hiddigeigei stands and sighs;
Death draws nigh with fell insistence,
Ruthlessly to close his eyes.
Fain from out his wisdom's treasure,
Counsels for his race he'd draw,
That amid life's changeful measure
They might find some settled law.
Fain their path through life he'd soften:
Rough it lies and strewn with stones;
E'en the old and wise may often
Stumble there, and break their bones.
Life with many brawls is cumbered,
Useless wounds and useless pain;
Cats both black and brave unnumbered
Have for naught been foully slain.
Ah, in vain our tales of sorrow!
Hark! I hear the laugh of youth.
Fools to-day and fools to-morrow,
Woe alone will teach them truth.


## p. 12864 (#286) ##########################################

12864
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
All in vain is history's teaching:
Listen how they laugh again!
Hiddigeigei's lore and preaching
Locked in silence must remain.
IV
SOON life's thread must break and ravel;
Weak this arm, once strong and brave;
In the scene of all my travail,
In the granary, dig my grave.
Warlike glory there I won me;
All the fight's fierce joy was mine:
Lay my shield and lance upon me,
As the last of all my line.
Ay, the last! The children's merit
Like their sires' can never grow:
Naught they know of strife of spirit;
Upright are they, dull and slow,
Dull and meagre; stiffly, slowly,
Move their minds, of force bereft;
Few indeed will keep as holy
The bequest their sires have left.
Yet once more, in days far distant,
When at rest I long have lain,
One fierce caterwaul insistent
Through your ranks shall ring again:-
"Flee, ye fools, from worse than ruin! "
Hark to Hiddigeigei's cry:
Hark, his wrathful ghostly mewing:-
"Flee from mediocrity! "


## p. 12865 (#287) ##########################################

12865
EDMOND SCHÉRER
XXII-805
(1815-1889)
BY VICTOR CHARBONNEL
L
DMOND SCHÉRER was at once a very learned theologian, a very
profound philosopher, a very vigorous writer. What makes
him especially interesting is the crisis in his faith and in
his thought which led him to abandon theology for philosophy and
literature. He is one of those great spirits, very numerous in our
century, who have delivered themselves from the formulas of an
unquestioning and passive faith, and sought with absolute sincerity
the religion of the conscience.
Edmond Schérer was born at Paris, in 1815. His family was of
Swiss descent, and held the Protestant faith. He early manifested
an ardent love of reading: his school tasks suffered somewhat from
it. Moreover, his father sent him to England to be with the Rev.
Thomas Loader of Monmouth. This earnest clergyman had a salu-
tary influence upon the young man; he inspired him with the love
of duty and of work, he made a Christian of him. When Edmond
Schérer, after an absence of two years, was about to leave England,
he determined to become a shepherd of souls; and besides, he now
understood the language admirably, and had made a study of Eng-
lish literature.
He then entered upon the course of the Faculty of Theology at
Strasbourg, where celebrated professors were among the instructors,
notably Édouard Reuss. When his theological studies were over, he
retired for several years, and published his first writings.
Owing to the reputation thus achieved, he was elected in 1845
professor in the School of Liberal Theology at Geneva. The instruc-
tion he gave at that time had no small renown. But one of the
fundamental doctrines of the School of Liberal Theology was faith
in the full inspiration of the Bible. He soon declared himself unable
to accept it, and spoke of resigning his chair.
In his remarkable article, the Crisis of the Faith,' he protested
against the abuse of authority in religious things, and affirmed the
duty of personal examination, of unrestricted investigation, of religion
founded on criticism. Thenceforward, according to Sainte-Beuve, he
was "an indefatigable intelligence, ever advancing in ceaseless evo-
lution. "


## p. 12866 (#288) ##########################################

12866
EDMOND SCHÉRER
Having resigned his professorship in 1850, he became, with Colani,
the head of the new French school of liberal Protestantism, and took
a most active part in editing the Review of Theology and Christian
Philosophy, of Strasbourg. His articles and his studies gave rise to
violent discussions. Assuredly he recognized that "if there is any-
thing certain in the world, it is that the destiny of the Bible is
closely linked with the destiny of holiness upon the earth. ” But he
whom he called with full conviction a great Christian-a Goethe or
a Hegel in intellectual power and literary talent, but carrying the
Evangel in his heart-was "he who will let fall like a worn-out gar-
ment all that is temporary in the faith of past ages, all that criticism
has victoriously assailed, all that divides the churches, but who shall
know at the same time how to speak to men's consciences, how to
revive the love of the truth, how to find the word of the future,
while disengaging all that is identical, eternal in the Christianity of
all ages. "
Suddenly in 1860, a volume that he published under the title
'Miscellanies of Religious Criticism,'-containing vigorous studies of
Joseph de Maistre, Lamennais, Le P. Gratry, Veuillot, Taine, Proud-
hon, Renan, revealed in the theologian a very searching critic.
Sainte-Beuve hailed the book with many encomiums, and placed the
author in "the front rank of French writers. "
Also, the contradictions perceptible between different parts of this
work clearly show that Edmond Schérer continually sought his way;
and that he tended towards that philosophical rather than theologi-
cal conception, which makes of Christianity the perfect and defini-
tive religion, but not the absolute and complete truth. Christianity
appeared to him the result of a long elaboration of the human con-
science, destined to prepare further elaborations; in a word, one of
the phases of universal transformation. The theory of the evolu-
tion of the human mind became his new religion.
But if he ceased to be an orthodox believer, Edmond Schérer was
always a man of noble moral faith, a true Christian; and he, was
so throughout his work of literary criticism. When the newspaper
Le Temps was established in 1861, he did a share of the editing; he
wrote for it political articles, and above all studies in literature.
They showed the talent of a writer, the force of a thinker; and the
prodigious extent of knowledge manifested in the care he took to
attack all subjects, to reduce them to two or three essential points,
to discuss them exhaustively, to give a concise opinion in regard
to ideas and a firm judgment in regard to literary qualities, and
that with reference to works that chance brought to his notice. How-
ever, the preoccupations of a high morality of art, frankness and recti-
tude,—in a word, virtue and character,—were still more perceptible


## p. 12867 (#289) ##########################################

EDMOND SCHERER
12867
in his work. "He held," says M. Gréard, "that there is an infection
of the taste that is not compatible with honesty of the soul. He
reckoned among the virtues of a man of letters of the first rank, self-
respect and decency, that supreme grace. " » And Sainte-Beuve consid-
ers him a true judge, who neither gropes nor hesitates, having in
his own mind the means of taking the exact measure of any other
mind.
His literary criticism forms a collection of several volumes, bear-
ing the title 'Studies in Contemporary Literature. ' His other prin-
cipal works are 'Criticism and Belief' (1850), 'Letters to my Pastor'
(1853), Miscellanies of Religious Criticism' (1860), 'Miscellanies of
Religious History' (1864); and a considerable number of articles for
the newspapers and magazines.
Edmond Schérer died in 1889. He had taken for rule the maxim
of Emerson: "Express clearly to-day what thou thinkest to-day; to-
morrow thou shalt say what thou thinkest to-morrow. " To this rule
he was ever faithful.
He was grandly sincere.
Victor Charbonnel.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
FROM REVIEW OF WOMAN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY,' BY THE
GONCOURTS
I
COULD have wished this book of the brothers Goncourt a little
different: not abler, more instructive, better supported with
facts, for no man ever had a firmer grasp on his eighteenth
century than these authors; not juster in its appreciations, be-
cause, captivated as they were by the graces of that corrupt
century, their judgment of it was none the less rigorous. I could
only have wished that they had not proceeded so exclusively by
means of description and enumeration; and that in the many
pictures that pass before our eyes, the characteristic feature,
the association, the anecdote, had not taken the form of simple.
allusions, had not so often been indicated by a simple refer-
ence to some book I had not under my hand, to some engraving
I have no time to look up among the cartoons of the Imperial
Library. In a word, I should have liked more narratives and
more citations. With this reservation, I willingly recognize that


## p. 12868 (#290) ##########################################

12868
EDMOND SCHERER
the volume of the brothers Goncourt is one of those works that
most fully enable us to understand the century of which it treats;
which at least make us enter most fully into its innermost life,
its intellectual character. An epoch is not wholly known when
its literature is known; it does not even suffice us to read the
memoirs of those who lived in it: there are, besides, endless
details of manners, customs, dress; a thousand observations upon
the different classes of society and their condition; a thousand
nothings, unnoticed as the very air we breathe, yet having their
value and making their contribution to the complete effect. Now
the brothers Goncourt, with praiseworthy zeal and discretion, have
brought all this together. They have done for the eighteenth
century what learned pedants with fewer resources but with no
more ability have done for past civilizations: they have recon-
structed it by means of the monuments.
This volume on the woman of the eighteenth century is to
be followed by three others, dealing with man, the State, and
Paris at the same epoch. To say truth, however, the woman is
already the man, she is already the State itself, she is the whole
century. The most striking characteristic of the period under
consideration is, that it personifies itself in its women. This the
brothers Goncourt have recognized. "The soul of this time,"
say they in their somewhat exuberant style, "the centre of the
world, the point whence everything radiates, the summit whence
all descends, the image after which all things are modeled, is
woman. Woman in the eighteenth century is the principle that
governs, the reason that directs, the voice that commands. She
is the universal and inevitable cause, the origin of events, the
source of things. Nothing escapes her, and she holds everything
in her hand: the king and France, the will of the sovereign and
the power of opinion. She rules at court, she is mistress at the
fireside. The revolutions of alliances and systems, peace, war,
letters, arts, the fashions of the eighteenth century as well as its
destinies, all these she carries in her robe, she bends them to
her caprice or her passions. She causes degradations and pro-
motions. No catastrophes, no scandals, no great strokes, that
cannot be traced to her, in this century that she fills up with
prodigies, marvels, and adventures, in this history into which
she works the surprises of a novel. " The book of the brothers
Goncourt furnishes proof of these assertions on every page. It
sets forth on a small scale, but in a complete way, that epoch of
—


## p. 12869 (#291) ##########################################

EDMOND SCHERER
12869
which they have so truly said that it is the French century par
excellence, and that all our roots are found in it. This volume
puts a finger on its meanness, its greatness, its vices and its
virtues. It is the vices that are the most conspicuous. The
corruption of the eighteenth century has become proverbial. To
tell the truth, this corruption is the result of a historical situa-
tion. What is meant by the France of the eighteenth century is
a particular class of society, the polite and brilliant world. The
theme of history has always gone on enlarging. In old times
there was no history save that of conquerors and lawgivers.
Later we have that of the courts and of the nobility. After
the French Revolution, it is the nations and their destinies who
occupy the first plane. In the eighteenth century the middle
class has already raised and enriched itself, the distinction of
ranks is leveled; there is more than one plebeian name among
those that adorn the salons: nevertheless, society is still essen-
tially aristocratic; it is chiefly composed of people who have
nothing to do in the world save to enjoy their hereditary privi-
leges. The misfortune of the French nobility has always been
thus to constitute a dignity without functions. It formed not so
much an organic part of the State as a class of society. Con-
fined within the limits of a narrow caste, it had reduced life to
a matter of elegant and agreeable relations.
Hence the French salon, and all those graces of conversation,
all those refinements of mind and manners, that make up its
inimitable character. Hence at the same time, something arti-
ficial and unwholesome. Life does not easily forego a serious
aim. It offers this eternal contradiction: that, tending to happi-
ness, it nevertheless cannot adopt that as its special object with-
out in that very act destroying the conditions of it.
These men, these women, who seemed to exist only for those
things that appear most enviable,— grace and honor, love and
intelligence, these people had exhausted in themselves the
sources of intelligence and love. This consummate epicurism
defeated its own object. These virtues, limited to the virtues
of good-fellowship, were manifestly insufficient to uphold society.
This activity, in which duty, effort, sacrifice, had no place, con-
sumed itself. Extinguish the soul, the conscience, as useless
lights, and lo, all is utter darkness! The intellect was to have.
taken the place of everything; and the intellect has succeeded
only in blighting everything, and in blighting itself before all.
―――――――


## p. 12870 (#292) ##########################################

12870
EDMOND SCHÉRER
Only one demand was made of human destiny,- pleasure; and it
was ennui that responded.
That incurable evil of ennui - the eighteenth century betrays
it everywhere. That was its essential element, I had almost said
its principle. This explains its agitations, its antipathies, its fur-
tive sadnesses, the boldness of its vices. It floats about, finding
no object worth its constancy. It undertakes everything, always
to fall back into a profounder disenchantment. Each fruit it
gnaws can only leave a more bitter taste of ashes. It shakes
itself in the vain effort to realize that it is alive. It is sorrow-
ful, sorrowful as death, and has not even the dignity of melan-
choly. It finds all things spectacular; it watches itself live, and
that experiment has ceased to interest it. Lassitude, spiritual bar-
renness, prostration of all the vital forces,- this is all that came
of it. Then a well-known phenomenon makes its appearance.
Man never pauses: he goes on digging, he scoops out the very
void; no longer believing anything, he yet seeks an unknown
good that escapes him. Dissipation, even, pursues a fleeting
dream. It demands of the senses what they can never yield.
Irritated by its miscalculations, it invents subtleties. It seasons
libertinism with every kind of infamy. It becomes savage. It
takes pleasure in bringing suffering upon the creatures it annihi-
lates. It enjoys the remorse, the shame, of its victims. Its vanity
is occupied with compromising women, with breaking their hearts,
with corrupting them if it can. Thus gallantry is converted into
a cynicism of immorality. Men make a boast of cruelty and of
calculation in their cruelty. Good style advertises villainy. But
even this is not enough. Insatiable appetites will demand of
crime a certain savor that vice has lost for them. "There is,"
as the brothers Goncourt truly say,- "there is an inexorable logic
that compels the evil passions of humanity to go to the end of
themselves, and to burst in a final and absolute horror. This
logic assigned to the voluptuous immorality of the eighteenth
century its monstrous coronation. The habit of cruelty had be-
come too strong to remain in the head and not reach the senses.
Man had played too long with the suffering heart of woman not
to feel tempted to make her suffer more surely and more visibly.
Why, after exhausting tortures for her soul, should he not try
them upon her body? Why not seek grossly in her blood the
delights her tears had given? The doctrine sprang up, it took
shape: the whole century went over to it without knowing it; it
-


## p. 12871 (#293) ##########################################

EDMOND SCHERER
12871
was, in its last analysis, nothing more than the materialization.
of their appetites: and was it not inevitable that this last word
should be said, that the erethism of ferocity should establish itself
as a principle, as a revelation; and that at the end of this pol
ished and courtly decadence, after all these approaches to the
supreme torture of woman, M. de Sade, with the blood of the
guillotines, should set up the Terror in Love? "
This then is the eighteenth century: a century brilliant rather
than delicate, pleasure-loving without passion, whose void forever
goes on emptying itself, whose blunted vices seek a stimulus in
crime, whose frivolity becomes in the end almost tragical; a cen-
tury of impotence and of decline, a society that is sinking and
putrefying.
Let us not forget, however, that judgments made wholly
from one point of view are like general ideas: they can never
do more than furnish incomplete notions. Things can always
be considered on two sides, the unfavorable and the favorable.
The eighteenth century is like everything else: it has its right
side as well as its wrong. I am sorry for those who see in it
only matter for admiration: its feet slipped in the mire. I am
sorry for those who do not speak of it without crossing them-
selves: the eighteenth century had its noble aspects, nay, its grand
aspects.
And in the first place, the eighteenth century is charming.
Opinions may differ as to the worth of the elegance, but that
its elegance was perfect cannot be denied. The inadequacy of
the comme il faut, and of what is called good society, may be
deplored; but there is no gainsaying that the epoch in question
was the grand model of this good society. France became in
those days its universal school, as it were its native country. It
makes of fine manners a new ethics, composed of horror for
what is common, the desire to find means of pleasing, the art of
attention, of delicacy in beauty, of the refinements of language,
of a conversation that does not commit itself to anything, of a
discussion that never degenerates into a dispute, of a lightness
that is in reality only moderation and grace. The good-breeding
of the eighteenth century does not destroy egoism, but it dissim-
ulates it. Nor does it in the least make up for the lost virtues,
but it vouchsafes an image of them. It gives a rule for souls.
It acquires the dignity of an institution. It is the religion of
an epoch that has no other.


## p. 12872 (#294) ##########################################

12872
EDMOND SCHERER
This is not all. One feels a breath of art passing over this
century. If it does not create, still it adorns. If it does not
seek the beautiful, it finds the charming. Its character is not
grand, but it has a character.
It has set a seal upon all that it has produced: buildings,
furniture, pictures. When, two or three years ago, an exhibition
brought together the works of the principal painters of the
French school in the eighteenth century, the canvases of Greuze,
of Boucher, of Watteau, of Fragonard, of Chardin, great was the
astonishment to find so much frankness under all that affectation,
originality in that mannerism, vitality in that conventional school
of art. We should never lose sight of one thing: the epoch
under consideration had what was lacking in some other epochs,
-in the Empire, for example,- an art and a literature. That
is not enough to make a great century, but it can aid a century
to make a figure in history.
But observe what still better characterizes French society
before the Revolution. That society is animated with intellect-
ual curiosity. It has the taste for letters, and in letters the taste
for new things, for adventures. It devours voyages, history, phi-
losophy. It is concerned about the Chinese and the Hindus;
it desires to know what Rome was, and what England is; it
studies popular institutions and the faculties of the human under-
standing. The ladies have great quartos on their dressing-tables
(that is the accepted size). Nothing discourages them. They
read Raynal's 'Philosophic History,' Hume's 'Stuarts' [History
of England], Montesquieu's 'Spirit of Laws. ' But it is with
the sciences that they are most smitten. It is there that their
trouble of mind is best diverted. Fontenelle discourses to them
on the worlds, and Galiani on political economy. The new arts,
the progress of industry, excite their enthusiasm. They wish to
see all, to know all. They follow courses, they frequent labora-
tories, they assist at experiments, they discuss systems, they read
memoirs. Run after these charming young women,- they go
to the Jardin des Plantes to see a theriac put together; to the
Abbé Mical to hear an automaton speak; to Rouelle to witness
the volatilization of the diamond; to Réveillon, there to salute
Pilâtre de Rozier, before an ascension. This morning they have
paid a visit to the great cactus that only blossoms once in fifty
years, this afternoon they will attend experiments upon inflam-
mable air or upon electricity. Nothing even in medicine or


## p. 12873 (#295) ##########################################

EDMOND SCHÉRER
12873
anatomy is without attraction for their unfettered curiosity: the
Countess de Voisenon prescribes for her friends; the Countess de
Coigny is only eighteen, and she dissects!
This tendency to hyper-enthusiasm is a sign of mobility; and
mobility is one of the distinguishing features of the eighteenth
century. It has had a result that has not been fully noted. The
eighteenth century had its crisis; or if you will, its conversion.
A day came when it turned against itself. The change was per-
haps not very profound, but it was very marked.
From having
the man of nature constantly preached to them, they wished to
resemble him somewhat. The men gave up the French coat
and ceased to carry the sword. The women laid down their hoops,
they covered their bosoms, they substituted caps for towering
head-dresses, low-heeled for high-heeled shoes, linen for brocade.
Simplicity was pushed to pastoralism. Their dreams took the
form of idyls. They had cottages, they played at keeping dai-
ries, they made butter. But the true name of this new cult,
whose prophet was Jean-Jacques, is sensibility. They talked
now only of attraction, affinity, sympathy. It is the epoch of
groups in bisque, symbols: hearts on fire, altars, doves. There
are chains made of hair, bracelets with portraits. Madame de
Blot wears upon her neck a miniature of the church where her
brother is buried. Formerly beauty was piquant, now it aspires
to be "touching. " Its triumph is to "leave an emotion. " The feel-
ings should be expansive. Every woman is ambitious to love like
Julie. Every mother will raise her son like Émile. And since
it is the Genevese philosopher who has revealed to the world
the gospel of sensibility, upon him most of all will that gift
be lavished with which he seems all at once to have endowed
French society. His handwriting is kissed: things that belonged
to him are converted into relics. "There is not a truly sympa-
thetic woman living," exclaims the most yirtuous of the beau-
ties of those days, "who would not need an extraordinary virtue
to keep her from consecrating her life to Rousseau, could she
be certain of being passionately loved by him! "
All this has the semblance of passion, but little depth. It
would seem, in truth, that the eighteenth century was too frivo-
lous ever to be truly moved. And nevertheless it has been moved,
it has had a passion, perhaps the most noble of all- that of
humanity. Pity, in the times that precede it, appears almost as
foreign to polite society as the feeling for nature. Who, in the


## p. 12874 (#296) ##########################################

12874
EDMOND SCHÉRER
seventeenth century, was agitated if some poor devil of a vil-
lager was crushed by the taxes, if a Protestant was condemned
to his Majesty's galleys? Who troubled himself about the treat-
ment of the insane, about the régime of prisons, the barbarities
of the rack and the wheel? The eighteenth century, on the con-
trary, is seized with an immense compassion for all sufferings.
It is kindled with generous ideas; it desires tolerance, justice,
equality. Its heroes are useful men, agriculturists, benefactors
of the people. It embraces all the nations in its reforms. It
rises to the conception of human solidarity. It makes itself
a golden age where the philosopher's theories mingle with the
reveries of the mere dreamer. Every one is caught by the
glorious chimera. The author of 'La Pucelle' has his hours of
philanthropy. Turgot finds support in the salons. Madame de
Genlis speaks like Madame Roland or Madame de Staël. Utopia,
a Utopia at once rational as geometry and blind as enthusiasm,—
the whole of the French Revolution is there already.
The eighteenth century has received the name of the philo-
sophical century, and with good reason if an independent spirit
of inquiry is the distinguishing feature of philosophy. It rejected
everything in the nature of convention and tradition. It declared
an implacable war on what is called prejudice. It desired truths
that stand on their own legs. It sought in man, in the mere
nature of things, the foundation of the true and the good. The
doctrines of this epoch are not exalted, but they have that
species of vigor that the absence of partiality gives. The prob-
lem of problems, for this century, is how to live; and to the
solution of that problem it brings only natural methods. The
men of those times, to use the expression of the brothers Gon-
court, "keep themselves at the height of their own heart, without
aid, by their own strength. Emancipated from all dogma and
system of belief, they draw their lights from the recesses of their
own hearts, and their powers from the same source. " There are
some who "afford in this superficial century the grand spectacle
of a conscience at equilibrium in the void, a spectacle forgotten
of humanity since the Antonines. " The Countess de Boufflers,
with whom M. Sainte-Beuve has lately made us acquainted, had
maxims framed and hung in her chamber; among them might
be read such words as the following: "In conduct, simplicity and
sense. In methods, justice and generosity. In adversity, cour-
age and self-respect. Sacrifice all for peace of mind. When an


## p. 12875 (#297) ##########################################

EDMOND SCHÉRER
12875
important duty is to be fulfilled, consider perils and death only
as drawbacks, not as obstacles. " See what thoughts made up the
daily meditations of a woman of the world. Adversity was sup-
ported with cheerful courage. Old age was accepted without
pride or effort, without surprise or consternation. One detached
oneself little by little, composed oneself, conformed to the changed
condition, extinguished oneself, discreetly, quite simply, with de-
corum, and so to speak with spirit. Let us take care when we
speak of the eighteenth century-let us take care not to forget
the trials of the emigration and the prisons of the Terror!
I have spoken of the greatness and the debasement of the
epoch that the brothers Goncourt set themselves to interpret.
If there is some contradiction between the two halves of the
picture, I am not far from thinking that this very contradiction
might well be a proof of correctness. Human judgments are
true only on the condition of perpetually putting the yes by the
side of the no. The truth is, one can say of the eighteenth cen.
tury what our authors somewhere say of the Duchess of Mirepoix:
in default of esteem it inspires sympathy. The French century
above all others, it has our defects and our qualities. Endowed
with more intelligence than firmness, argumentative rather than
philosophic, didactic rather than moral, it has given lessons rather
than examples to the world, examples rather than models. It
was not entirely fixed, either in good or in evil. However low
it fell, it was far from making an utter failure. Carried to
extremes, it showed its strength most of all in extremity. It is
an assemblage of contradictions where all happens without prece-
dent, and it is safest to take nothing in it too literally. It will
ever be a bad sign in France, when this century is underrated
and when it is overrated; but it would be above all a sinister
day if we should ever adopt its frivolity and corruption, and
leave unappropriated its noble instincts and its capacity for en-
thusiasm.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by Lucy C. Bull.


## p. 12876 (#298) ##########################################

12876
EDMOND SCHÉRER
A LITERARY HERESY
"Here I stand. I cannot otherwise. God help me! Amen. »
- LUTHER at the Diet of Worms.
I
SHALL never cease to protest against the infatuations that in
our day exercise a kind of tyranny in literature. To raise
personal preferences to the dignity of a creed is not enough.
A cult once established, a dogma once accepted,- no more free-
dom of analysis, no more independent criticism, no more per-
missible dissent: the order is to "admire like a beast. " Mental
indolence is of course at the bottom of this fashion: it is easier
to accept an opinion than to form one. But these habits of
mind are an exceedingly curious study, for the reason that never
has the tendency to slavish partisanship been more general, nor
the despotism of ready-made judgments more absolute, than in
these times of pretended emancipation and so-called individual-
ism. Doubtless it is the same with enfranchised intelligence as
with political rights: great efforts are made to secure them, and
when they are secured we no longer care for their exercise.
I will cite the cult of which Goethe is the object in Germany.
as an example of the propensity that I have in mind. This cult
has all the characteristics of superstition. The Germans long
since exhausted their critical acumen upon the Trinity; of the
infallibility of the Church or the Holy Scriptures they have left
standing not a stone: but they have overleaped themselves in
the case of Goethe. They have made a seer, nay, a divinity,
of him. His works have become, beyond the Rhine, the Bible
of cultivated men: a Bible in twenty volumes, but a true Bible,
treated with the superstitious care that befits the study of an
inspired text. If we do not put all the writings of this author
on the same plane, if we admit preferences, we thereby relin-
quish the idea that all are divine, that none of them may be
rejected or deprecated, that we need penetrate only a little fur-
ther to find depths in what looked flat, hidden meanings in what
seemed commonplace or tedious.
Instead of Goethe read Molière, and you will realize that
France is not far from falling into the same habit as Germany.
Among us, admiration for Molière is tending to that state of
orthodoxy outside of which there is no salvation. We read little
nowadays; we read badly, inattentively, without reflecting, without
analyzing, without tasting.


## p. 12876 (#299) ##########################################



## p. 12876 (#300) ##########################################


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SCHILLER.


## p. 12876 (#301) ##########################################

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## p. 12876 (#302) ##########################################



## p. 12877 (#303) ##########################################

12877
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
(1759-1805)
BY E. P. EVANS
J
OHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER was born November
10th, 1759, at Marbach, a small town of Würtemberg situated
near the junction of the Murr and the Neckar. He was the
second child and only son of Johann Caspar Schiller, a worthy man
of humble origin, but of sterling character and superior abilities; who
began his career as barber and cupper, was advanced to surgeon in a
Bavarian regiment of hussars, received the rank of captain and finally
of major, and died as landscape gardener in the service of the Duke
of Würtemberg. Schiller's mother, Elizabeth Dorothea Kodweiss, the
daughter of an innkeeper in Marbach, was a woman of warm affec-
tions, as well as a person of uncommon intelligence and fine taste,
with a special fondness for poetry, in which she showed a discrimi-
nation rare in people of her class. Both parents were sincerely and
even fervently pious, and wished that their son should study theology;
and this desire corresponded to his own early inclinations. He after-
wards abandoned divinity for jurisprudence, and then exchanged law
for medicine, before finding his true vocation in literature.
The dull military drill and preceptorial pedantry of the school
founded by Duke Karl, and entered by Schiller at the age of four-
teen, were extremely irksome to him, and tended to repress and
stunt rather than to cherish and develop the natural propensities
and powers of his mind. His love of letters, and especially his pas-
sion for poetry, could be gratified only by stealth, or by the feint of
a headache or a sore throat, which enabled him to evade for a few
hours the stern eye of the pedagogical task-master and to devote
himself to his favorite pursuits in his own room. But notwithstand-
ing these depressing circumstances, his genius kept its native bent
with laudable firmness, and he succeeded in cultivating the best
literature of his day,- Klopstock's 'Messias,' Goethe's 'Götz von
Berlichingen' and 'Werther,' Miller's 'Siegwart,' Müller's Faust,'
Gerstenberg's 'Ugolino,' Leisewitz's Julius von Tarent,' Lessing's
dramas, Klinger's tragedies, and other products of the "storm and
stress" period; and Shakespeare, through the somewhat imperfect
medium of Wieland's translation. To his over-intense and effusive


## p. 12878 (#304) ##########################################

12878
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
sentimentalism the ruggedly healthy English poet seemed cold and
cynical, and the introduction of clowns and fools with their jests in
the most pathetic scenes of 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' jarred upon
his sensibilities; but as he afterwards confesses, this indignation had
its source in his own limited knowledge of human nature.
He left the Ducal Academy December 14th, 1780, as a doctor of
medicine, and even practiced this profession for a time as assistant
surgeon in a grenadier regiment at a salary of eighteen florins ($7. 50)
a month. Meanwhile, when he was scarcely eighteen years of age,
he had written The Robbers'; the existence of which he prudently
kept secret until after his graduation, and then, not being able to
find a publisher, printed it at his own expense, and even borrowed
the money for this purpose. This play, in which not only his hatred
of the galling personal restraints and daily vexations he had suffered,
but also the restless and impetuous spirit of the storm and stress
movement, found vigorous expression, excited great enthusiasm in
Germany, and was soon translated into the principal languages of
Europe. It also made a strong but by no means favorable impression
on the mind of the Duke of Würtemberg, who punished the author
with a fortnight's arrest for going clandestinely to Mannheim to see
it performed in January 1782, and forbade him "henceforth and for-
ever to compose comedies or anything of the sort. " Having before
his eyes the fate of the poet Schubart, whom for a less heinous
offense the same paternal sovereign had confined for ten years in the
fortress of Hohenasperg, he took advantage of some public festivity
on September 17th, 1782, to slip out of the gates of Stuttgart and flee
to Mannheim, beyond the reach of Würtemberg bailiffs.
"The Robbers' is a work of unquestionable but undisciplined gen-
ius; a generous wine in the first stages of fermentation. The char-
acters are the mental creations of an ardent and enthusiastic youth,
taking shape and color in a great measure from the dramatic litera-
ture on which his imagination had fed. As Schiller himself confessed,
it was an attempt to portray men by one who had not the slightest
knowledge of mankind. Its power and popularity, in spite of all de-
fects, and the firm hold it still has of each rising generation, are due
to the sincere spirit of revolt against social, political, and intellectual
tyranny that permeates it, and is the sole source of its verity and
vitality.
Not feeling himself safe from ducal catchpolls at Mannheim,
Schiller went to Bauerbach near Meiningen, where he was hospitably
received by Frau von Wolzogen, the mother of one of his school-
fellows; and remained for several months under the name of Dr.
Ritter. In this friendly retreat and place of refuge he finished 'The
Conspiracy of Fiesco,' brought in a rough draught from Stuttgart;


## p. 12879 (#305) ##########################################

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12879
and wrote 'Cabal and Love,' or 'Luise Miller' as it was originally
called. The first of these plays marks a decided advance in artistic
execution: the situations are more probable and the characters truer
to life; indeed, the ambitions, intrigues, loves, hatreds, pomp and
pageantry of the Genoese nobility in the sixteenth century are viv-
idly and vigorously delineated, although a certain crudeness in laying
on the glowing colors, and a conspicuous lack of delicacy in blend-
ing them, still betray the hand of the novice. 'Cabal and Love' is
a bold exposure of the selfish greed, corruption, and cruelty of con-
temporary court life in Germany; and puts the Hessian landgrave
(who sold his subjects to England as soldiers to fight against Amer-
ican independence, to get money to squander on his mistresses) in
the pillory forever. The plan of this tragedy formed itself in his
mind while undergoing the fourteen days' arrest already referred to,
and this circumstance doubtless added to the impressiveness of his
protest against the oppression of the middle and lower classes by.
arbitrary power; the enthusiastic applause with which it was received,
proved that it dared to utter the thoughts and feelings timorously
concealed in the bosom of every citizen.
During his stay at Bauerbach he began a new drama, 'Don Carlos,'
based chiefly on a historical novel with the same title published by
the Abbé de Saint-Réal at Paris in 1672. This partially finished piece
he took with him to Mannheim, whither he went as poet to the thea-
tre in July 1783; but he did not complete and print it until 1786,
when he was living with Körner at Loschwitz near Dresden. This is
his first drama in blank verse, and it is in every respect maturer
than the earlier ones, which are all in prose; it follows them also in
its tendency as a fit and logical sequence. In the three former plays
he inveighs vehemently against existing evils; in 'Don Carlos' he
sets forth his own ideas of humanity and liberty, in the utterances of
the Infante and especially of Marquis Posa. Schiller's intention was
to make the prince the hero of the piece, and he did so in the first
three acts: but as the composition was delayed, the marquis gradually
usurped this place in the poet's imagination, and finally overshadowed
Carlos altogether; and although this change may mar the artistic
unity of the plot, it adds immensely to the energy of the action in
the last two acts and to the impressiveness of the whole.
The poet now turned his attention to historical and philosophical
studies, as the best means of correcting the defects — arising from
inadequate acquaintance with human nature and human affairs, and
from imperfect knowledge of æsthetic principles-that had hitherto
characterized his dramatic productions. In 1787 he went to Weimar,
where he enjoyed the friendship of Herder and Wieland. In 1788 he
published The History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands,'


## p. 12880 (#306) ##########################################

12880
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
and in the following year was appointed to a professorship in the
philosophical faculty of Jena. From 1790 to 1793 appeared his 'His-
tory of the Thirty Years' War,' in three volumes. These works,
while showing careful and conscientious research, are most remark-
able for the vivid descriptions of events and lifelike delineations of
individual characters, congenial to the pre-eminently plastic taste and
talent of the dramatist. In the province of æsthetics he wrote a
series of thoughtful and readable dissertations bearing throughout the
visible stamp of Kantean criticism and speculation: 'On Tragic Art,'
'On Grace and Dignity,' On the Sublime,' 'Letters on Man's Æs-
thetic Education,' and finally a less abstract and more distinctively
literary essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry. ' Meanwhile he
did not cease his devotion to the Muses; although exchanging for a
time the service of the buskined Melpomene for that of Euterpe the
delightful goddess of the softly breathing flute, and Erato with the
lyre. Besides some occasional poems and amatory odes to Laura,
evidently suggested by Petrarch's canzoni, he wrote at this time the
exalted and exultant hymn To Joy,' subsequently set to music in
Beethoven's ninth symphony. This was followed by numerous lyrics
and ballads, the most noteworthy of which are 'The Gods of Greece,'
The Artists, The Knight Toggenburg,' The Sharing of the Earth,'
'The Visit (dithyramb), The Power of Song,' 'Worth of Women,'
'German Art,' The Fight with the Dragon,' The Glove,' The
Maiden from Afar,' 'Resignation,' and The Song of the Bell. ' As
a purely lyrical poet Schiller is decidedly inferior to Goethe; and
the best of his minor poems are those in which the qualities of
the historian, the philosopher, and the poet are combined, and epic
narration and didactic meditation are blended and fused with lyrical
emotion, as in The Song of the Bell. '
(
It is the historical drama for which Schiller showed a strong pre-
dilection and peculiar talent, and in which he stands pre-eminent.
While engaged in his 'History of the Thirty Years' War' he was
irresistibly attracted by the imposing form of Wallenstein, and re-
solved to make him the hero of a drama; which was originally
conceived as a single piece in five acts, but was gradually expanded
into three parts: Wallenstein's Camp' (one act), 'The Piccolomini'
(five acts), and Wallenstein's Death' (five acts). In the following
year (1800) appeared 'Maria Stuart'; then 'The Maid of Orleans'
(1801), The Bride of Messina' (1803), and William Tell' (1804),—
of which the last mentioned surpasses all the others in dramatic con-
tinuity and creative power: the individuals are admirably portrayed,
and the idyllic life and occupations of the honest, fearless, freedom-
loving Swiss peasants brought out with wonderful fidelity, in contrast
to the blind brutality of their Austrian oppressors. Indeed, the very


## p. 12881 (#307) ##########################################

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12881
fact (which some critics have regarded as defect) that there is no
outward connection between the deed of Tell and the oath of the
men of Rütli, so far from disturbing the unity of the plot, renders it
more effective; since they both work together, like unconscious forces
of nature, for the attainment of the same noble end. The first part
of 'Wallenstein' is a masterpiece of its kind; in the second part
the action drags somewhat, but in the third moves on with the force
and irresistibility of fate, in a tumult of conflicting aims and inter-
ests, and with touches of tender pathos, as in the relations of Max
to Thekla, to its tragical conclusion. Maria Stuart' violates to some
extent the truth of history, by making the conflict chiefly a matter of
personal animosity instead of an antagonism of political principles
and religious systems; but is distinguished for depth of psychological
insight in the delineation of the characters of the rival queens and
the principal statesmen and courtiers, -Burleigh, Talbot, Leicester,
Mortimer, and Shrewsbury. In 'The Maid of Orleans' the heroine is
the pure-souled and patriotic representative of her people, and the
Divinely chosen defender of her country; and the contest is between
nations. She is here no longer the devil's satellite and sorceress of
her English foes and of Shakespeare, and her memory is cleansed of
the filth with which Voltaire defiled it. In this "romantic tragedy,"
as Schiller called it, he images forth with wonderful accuracy the
romantic spirit of the age, which rendered such apparitions and super-
natural agencies credible. Touchingly human and true is the scene
with Lionel, in which the invincible and inexorable virgin is suddenly
transformed into a tender-hearted and weak-handed woman through
the power of earthly love. The fable of 'The Bride of Messina,' the
fatal enmity of two brothers, rivals in love, was the theme of Greek
tragedy, and forms the plots of Klinger's 'The Twins' and Leisewitz's
'Julius of Tarentum. ' The dialogue is interspersed with choral odes,
suitable to the action and summing up the supposed reflections of
the spectators; and the traditional idea of fate pervades the whole,
although Schiller gives larger scope to free-will, and makes the indi-
vidual in reality the author of his own destiny through the inevita-
ble sequence of cause and effect. The poet comprises it all in the
concluding verse: "Life is not the chief good, and the greatest of
evils is guilt. " Schiller's dramatic style is the grand style, and rather
ornate and oratorical. He is truly eloquent, and in the glittering coils
of his rhetoric there is no pinchbeck; but his speeches are often too
long, and in the mouths of second-rate actors are apt to degenerate
into rant. It would be unjust, however, to hold the poet responsible
for the deficiencies of the player.
While holding his professorship at Jena, Schiller married, on Feb-
ruary 22d, 1790, Charlotte von Lengefeld; by whom he had two sons
(Carl and Ernst) and two daughters (Caroline and Emilie), and who
XXII-806


## p. 12882 (#308) ##########################################

12882
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
died at Bonn July 9th, 1826, thus surviving her husband more than
twenty-one years. In 1799 he settled permanently in Weimar; in
1802 he was raised to the nobility,- a distinction for which he cared
little himself, but which he thought might be of some advantage to
his children. Personally he prized far more highly the honorary
citizenship of the French Republic, which had been conferred upon
him by the National Convention in 1793. In 1797 he was chosen a
member of the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. In 1791 he had a
severe attack of catarrhal fever, from the effects of which he never
wholly recovered. Fortunately his pecuniary anxieties were partially
relieved by the Danish poet Jens Baggesen, who induced the Duke
of Holstein-Augustenburg, and the Danish minister Count von Schim-
melmann, to grant him pension of a thousand speciesdaler (equiva-
lent to about $1000), with the injunction to take care of his health
and not overwork. In the spring of 1804 he went to Berlin to a rep-
resentation of William Tell,' but the exertion caused a recurrence of
his old malady. He grew better, however; translated Racine's 'Phè-
dre' in twenty-six days, and completed two acts of a new play, 'The
False Demetrius,' when a return of catarrhal fever ended his days
on May 9th, 1805.
―
During the last ten years of his life, Schiller's relations to Goethe
were those of cordial friendship and literary co-operation; one of the
most important results of which was the joint production of a series
of satirical epigrams called 'Xenien,' and published in the Musenal-
manach in 1797. The more philosophic and less personal, or what
Schiller called the "harmless" ones, were also collected and printed
under the title of Tabulæ Votivæ (Votive Tablets). 'Xenia' (§ɛívia,
gifts to guests) is the title of the thirteenth book of the epigrams
of the Roman poet Martial, from whom the term was borrowed by
Goethe, who first mentioned it in a letter to Schiller dated December
23d, 1795; Schiller immediately replied that the idea is splendid,
and must be carried out. " The epigrams contain many happy hits at
the isms and ologies of the day, as well as at individual foibles.
They were evidently thrown off hastily, and are not always perfect in
form; but they are full of pointed wit and pungency, and made an im-
mense sensation. Some writers by whom they were fiercely resented,
ought to have been gratified and grateful, since the allusions to them
in these distichs have alone saved their names from oblivion.
In the ordinary relations of life Schiller was a simple-hearted,
noble-minded, and clear-sighted man, all alive with enthusiasm and
full of delicate sensibility, but free from every sort of affectation.
He was endowed with an intellect of high order, which he spared no
pains to cultivate by assiduous and systematic study. The versatility
of his genius was remarkable; and he might have excelled as a phi-
losopher or historian, had it not been for the predominance of his


## p. 12883 (#309) ##########################################

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
12883
(
poetic gifts, to which he made all acquisitions of learning subordi
nate and contributory. Perhaps the least conspicuous of his mental
powers was humor; but the scenes in Wallenstein's Camp,' 'The
Famous Wife, an Epistle from One Husband to Another,' and some
of his epigrams and parables, show that he was by no means des-
titute of this rare faculty. Remembering that he died before he was
forty-six, and suffered severely from sickness during the last decade
of his life, one cannot but wonder at the extent and brilliancy of his
achievements as a poet and scholar.
Е.