No More Learning

Just as
Friedrich Vischer gave us his in a word, so has
David Strauss handed us his in a book; and both
that word and that book are cynical.
III.
Concerning Culture-Philistinism, David Strauss
makes a double confession, by word and by deed;
that is to say, by the word of the confessor, and
the act of the writer. His book entitled The Old-
Faith and the New is, first in regard to its contents,
and secondly in regard to its being a book and a
literary production, an uninterrupted confession;
while, in the very fact that he allows himself to
write confessions at all about his faith, there already
lies a confession. Presumably, every one seems to


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DAVID STRAUSS. 23
have the right to compile an autobiography after
his fortieth year; for the humblest amongst us may
have experienced things, and may have seen them
at such close quarters, that the recording of them
may prove of use and value to the thinker. But
to write a confession of one's faith cannot but be
regarded as a thousand times more pretentious,
since it takes for granted that the writer attaches
worth, not only to the experiences and investiga-
tions of his life, but also to his beliefs. Now, what
the nice thinker will require to know, above all
else, is the kind of faith which happens to be
compatible with natures of the Straussian order,
and what it is they have "half dreamily conjured
up " (p. 10) concerning matters of which those alone
have the right to speak who are acquainted with
them at first hand. Whoever would have desired
to possess the confessions, say, of a Ranke or a
Mommsen? And these men were scholars and
historians of a very different stamp from David
Strauss. If, however, they had ever ventured to
interest us in their faith instead of in their scientific
investigations, we should have felt that they were
overstepping their limits in a most irritating fashion.
Yet Strauss does this when he discusses his faith.
Nobody wants to know anything about it, save,
perhaps, a few bigoted opponents of the Straussian
doctrines, who, suspecting, as they do, a substratum
of satanic principles beneath these doctrines, hope
that he may compromise his learned utterances by
revealing the nature of those principles. These
clumsy creatures may, perhaps, have found what
they sought in the last book; but we, who had no


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24 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
occasion to suspect a satanic substratum, dis-
covered nothing of the sort, and would have felt
rather pleased than not had we been able to discern
even a dash of the diabolical in any part of the
volume. But surely no evil spirit could speak as
Strauss speaks of his new faith. In fact, spirit in
general seems to be altogether foreign to the book—
more particularly the spirit of genius. Only those
whom Strauss designates as his "We," speak as
he does, and then, when they expatiate upon their
faith to us, they bore us even more than when
they relate their dreams; be they " scholars, artists,
military men, civil employes, merchants, or landed
proprietors; come they in their thousands, and not
the worst people in the land either! " If they do
not wish to remain the peaceful ones in town or
country, but threaten to wax noisy, then let not
the din of their unisono deceive us concerning the
poverty and vulgarity of the melody they sing.
How can it dispose us more favourably towards
a profession of faith to hear that it is approved
by a crowd, when it is of such an order that if
any individual of that crowd attempted to make
it known to us, we should not only fail to hear
him out, but should interrupt him with a yawn?
If thou sharest such a belief, we should say unto
him, in Heaven's name, keep it to thyself! Maybe,
in the past, some few harmless types looked for
the thinker in David Strauss; now they have dis-
covered the " believer" in him, and are disappointed.
Had he kept silent, he would have remained, for
these, at least, the philosopher; whereas, now, no
one regards him as such. He no longer craved


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DAVID STRAUSS. 2$
the honours of the thinker, however; all he wanted
to be was a new believer, and he is proud of his
new belief. In making a written declaration of it,
he fancied he was writing the catechism of" modern
thought," and building the "broad highway of the
world's future. " Indeed, our Philistines have ceased
to be faint-hearted and bashful, and have acquired
almost cynical assurance. There was a time, long,
long ago, when the Philistine was only tolerated
as something that did not speak, and about which
no one spoke; then a period ensued during which
his roughness was smoothed, during which he
was found amusing, and people talked about him.
Under this treatment he gradually became a prig,
rejoiced with all his heart over his rough places
and his wrongheaded and candid singularities, and
began to talk, on his own account, after the style
of Riehl's music for the home.
"But what do I see? Is it a shadow? Is it
reality? How long and broad my poodle grows! "
For now he is already rolling like a hippopotamus
along "the broad highway of the world's future,"
and his growling and barking have become trans-
formed into the proud incantations of a religious
founder. And is it your own sweet wish, Great
Master, to found the religion of the future ? " The
times seem to us not yet ripe (p. 7). It does not
occur to us to wish to destroy a church. " But
why not, Great Master? One but needs the
ability. Besides, to speak quite openly in the
matter, you yourself are convinced that you
possess this ability. Look at the last page of
your book. There you actually state, forsooth,


## p. 26 (#116) #############################################

26 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
that your new way " alone is the future highway
of the world, which now only requires partial
completion, and especially general use, in order
also to become easy and pleasant. "
Make no further denials, then. The religious
founder is unmasked, the convenient and agree-
able highway leading to the Straussian Paradise
is built. It is only the coach in which you wish
to convey us that does not altogether satisfy
you, unpretentious man that you are! You tell
us in your concluding remarks: "Nor will I pre-
tend that the coach to which my esteemed readers
have been obliged to trust themselves with me
fulfils every requirement, . . . all through one is
much jolted" (p. 438). Ah! you are casting about
for a compliment, you gallant old religious founder!
But let us be straightforward with you. If your
reader so regulates the perusal of the 368 pages
of your religious catechism as to read only one
page a day—that is to say, if he take it in the
smallest possible doses—then, perhaps, we should
be able to believe that he might suffer some evil
effect from the book—if only as the outcome of
his vexation when the results he expected fail to
make themselves felt. Gulped down more heartily,
however, and as much as possible being taken at
each draught, according to the prescription to be
recommended in the case of all modern books, the
drink can work no mischief; and, after taking it,
the reader will not necessarily be either out of
sorts or out of temper, but rather merry and
well-disposed, as though nothing had happened;
as though no religion had been assailed, no world's


## p. 27 (#117) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 27
highway been built, and no profession of faith been
made. And I do indeed call this a result! The
doctor, the drug, and the disease—everything for-
gotten! And the joyous laughter! The continual
provocation to hilarity! You are to be envied, Sir;
for you have founded the most attractive of all re-
ligions—one whose followers do honour to its founder
by laughing at him.
IV.
The Philistine as founder of the religion of the
future—that is the new belief in its most emphatic
form of expression. The Philistine becomes a
dreamer—that is the unheard-of occurrence which
distinguishes the German nation of to-day. But
for the present, in any case, let us maintain an
attitude of caution towards this fantastic exalta-
tion. For does not David Strauss himself advise
us to exercise such caution, in the following pro-
found passage, the general tone of which leads
us to think of the Founder of Christianity rather
than of our particular author? (p. 92): "We know
there have been noble enthusiasts—enthusiasts of
genius; the influence of an enthusiast can rouse,
exalt, and produce prolonged historic effects; but
we do not wish to choose him as the guide of
our life. He will be sure to mislead us, if we do
not subject his influence to the control of reason. "
But we know something more: we know that there
are enthusiasts who are not intellectual, who do
not rouse or exalt, and who, nevertheless, not only
expect to be the guides of our lives, but, as such, to


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28 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
exercise a very lasting historical influence into the
bargain, and to rule the future;—all the more reason
why we should place their influence under the
control of reason. Lichtenberg even said: "There
are enthusiasts quite devoid of ability, and these
are really dangerous people. " In the first place,
as regards the above-mentioned control of reason,
we should like to have candid answers to the three
following questions: First, how does the new
believer picture his heaven? Secondly, how far
does the courage lent him by the new faith extend?
And, thirdly, how does he write his books? Strauss
the Confessor must answer the first and second ques-
tions; Strauss the Writer must answer the third.
The heaven of the new believer must, perforce, be
a heaven upon earth; for the Christian "prospect
of an immortal life in heaven," together with the
other consolations, "must irretrievably vanish" for
him who has but "one foot" on the Straussian
platform. The way in which a religion represents
its heaven is significant, and if it be true that
Christianity knows no other heavenly occupations
than singing and making music, the prospect of the
Philistine, a la Strauss, is truly not a very comfort-
ing one. In the book of confessions, however,
there is a page which treats of Paradise (p. 342).
Happiest of Philistines, unroll this parchment scroll
before anything else, and the whole of heaven will
seem to clamber down to thee! " We would but
indicate how we act, how we have acted these many
years. Besides our profession—for we are members
of the most various professions, and by no means
exclusively consist of scholars or artists, but of


## p. 29 (#119) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 29
military men and civil employes, of merchants and
landed proprietors; . . . and again, as I have said
already, there are not a few of us, but many
thousands, and not the worst people in the
country;—besides our profession, then, I say, we
are eagerly accessible to all the higher interests of
humanity; we have taken a vivid interest, during
late years, and each after his manner has partici-
pated in the great national war, and the reconstruc-
tion of the German State; and we have been
profoundly exalted by the turn events have taken, as
unexpected as glorious, for our much tried nation.
To the end of forming just conclusions in these things,
we study history, which has now been made easy,
even to the unlearned, by a series of attractively and
popularly written works; at the same time, we
endeavour to enlarge our knowledge of the natural
sciences, where also there is no lack of sources of in-
formation; and lastly, in the writings of our great
poets, in the performances of our great musicians, we
find a stimulus for the intellect and heart, for wit
and imagination, which leaves nothing to be desired.
Thus we live, and hold on our way in joy. "
"Here is our man ! " cries the Philistine exultingly,
who reads this: "for this is exactly how we live;
it is indeed our daily life. " * And how perfectly he
understands the euphemism! When, for example,
he refers to the historical studies by means of which
we help ourselves in forming just conclusions re-
garding the political situation, what can he be
thinking of, if it be not our newspaper-reading?
* This alludes to a German student-song.


## p. 30 (#120) #############################################

30 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
When he speaks of the active part we take in the
reconstruction of the German State, he surely has
only our daily visits to the beer-garden in his
mind; and is not a walk in the Zoological Gardens
implied by 'the sources of information through
which we endeavour to enlarge our knowledge of
the natural sciences'? Finally, the theatres and
concert-halls are referred to as places from which
we take home ' a stimulus for wit and imagination
which leaves nothing to be desired. '—With what
dignity and wit he describes even the most
suspicious of our doings! Here indeed is our
man; for his heaven is our heaven! "
Thus cries the Philistine; and if we are not quite
so satisfied as he, it is merely owing to the fact that
we wanted to know more. Scaliger used to say:
"What does it matter to us whether Montaigne
drank red or white wine? " But, in this more
important case, how greatly ought we to value
definite particulars of this sort! If we could but
learn how many pipes the Philistine smokes daily,
according to the prescriptions of the new faith, and
whether it is the Spener or the National Gazette
that appeals to him over his coffee! But our curi-
osity is not satisfied. With regard to one point only
do we receive more exhaustive information, and
fortunately this point relates to the heaven in
heaven—the private little art-rooms which will be
consecrated to the use of great poets and musicians,
and to which the Philistine will go to edify himself;
in which, moreover, according to his own showing,
he will even get "all his stains removed and wiped
away " (p. 433); so that we are led to regard these


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DAVID STRAUSS. 31
private little art-rooms as a kind of bath-rooms.
"But this is only effected for some fleeting moments;
it happens and counts only in the realms of
phantasy; as soon as we return to rude reality, and
the cramping confines of actual life, we are again
on all sides assailed by the old cares,"—thus our
Master sighs. Let us, however, avail ourselves of
the fleeting moments during which we remain in
those little rooms; there is just sufficient time to
get a glimpse of the apotheosis of the Philistine—
that is to say, the Philistine whose stains have been
removed and wiped away, and who is now an
absolutely pure sample of his type. In truth, the
opportunity we have here may prove instructive:
let no one who happens to have fallen a victim to
the confession-book lay it aside before having read
the two appendices, "Of our Great Poets" and
"Of our Great Musicians. " Here the rainbow of
the new brotherhood is set, and he who can find no
pleasure in it "for such an one there is no help,"
as Strauss says on another occasion; and, as he
might well say here, "he is not yet ripe for our
point of view. " For are we not in the heaven of
heavens? The enthusiastic explorer undertakes
to lead us about, and begs us to excuse him if, in
the excess of his joy at all the beauties to be seen,
he should by any chance be tempted to talk too
much. "If I should, perhaps, become more gar-
rulous than may seem warranted in this place, let
the reader be indulgent to me; for out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Let
him only be assured that what he is now about to
read does not consist of older materials, which I


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32 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
take the opportunity of inserting here, but that
these remarks have been written for their present
place and purpose" (pp. 345-46). This confession
surprises us somewhat for the moment. What can
it matter to us whether or not the little chapters
were freshly written? As if it were a matter of
writing! Between ourselves, I should have been
glad if they had been written a quarter of a century
earlier; then, at least, I should have understood
why the thoughts seem to be so bleached, and why
they are so redolent of resuscitated antiquities.
But that a thing should have been written in 1872
and already smell of decay in 1872 strikes me as
suspicious. Let us imagine some one's falling
asleep while reading these chapters—what would
he most probably dream about? A friend answered
this question for me, because he happened to have
had the experience himself. He dreamt of a wax-
work show. The classical writers stood there,
elegantly represented in wax and beads. Their
arms and eyes moved, and a screw inside them
creaked an accompaniment to their movements.
He saw something gruesome among them—a mis-
shapen figure, decked with tapes and jaundiced
paper, out of whose mouth a ticket hung, on which
"Lessing" was written. My friend went close up
to it and learned the worst: it was the Homeric
Chimera; in front it was Strauss, behind it was
Gervinus, and in the middle Chimera. The tout-
ensemble was Lessing. This discovery caused him
to shriek with terror: he waked, and read no more.
In sooth, Great Master, why have you written such
fusty little chapters?


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DAVID STRAUSS. 33
We do, indeed, learn something new from them;
for instance, that Gervinus made it known to the
world how and why Goethe was no dramatic genius;
that, in the second part of Faust, he had only pro-
duced a world of phantoms and of symbols; that
Wallenstein is a Macbeth as well as a Hamlet; that
the Straussian reader extracts the short stories out of
the Wanderjahre " much as naughty children pick
the raisins and almonds out of a tough plum-cake ";
that no complete effect can be produced on the
stage without the forcible element, and that Schiller
emerged from Kant as from a cold-water cure.
All this is certainly new and striking; but, even so,
it does not strike us with wonder, and so sure as it
is new, it will never grow old, for it never was
young; it was senile at birth. What extraordinary
ideas seem to occur to these Blessed Ones, after
the New Style, in their aesthetic heaven! And
why can they not manage to forget a few of them,
more particularly when they are of that unaesthetic,
earthly, and ephemeral order to which the scholarly
thoughts of Gervinus belong, and when they so
obviously bear the stamp of puerility? But it
almost seems as though the modest greatness of a
Strauss and the vain insignificance of a Gervinus
were only too well able to harmonise: then long live
all those Blessed Ones! may we, the rejected, also
live long, if this unchallenged judge of art continues
any longer to teach his borrowed enthusiasm, and
the gallop of that hired steed of which the honest
Grillparzer speaks with such delightful clearness,
until the whole of heaven rings beneath the hoof
of that galumphing enthusiasm. Then, at least,
C


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34 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
things will be livelier and noisier than they are at
the present moment, in which the carpet-slippered
rapture of our heavenly leader and the lukewarm
eloquence of his lips only succeed in the end in
making us sick and tired. I should like to know
how a Hallelujah sung by Strauss would sound:
I believe one would have to listen very carefully,
lest it should seem no more than a courteous
apology or a lisped compliment. Apropos of this,
I might adduce an instructive and somewhat for-
bidding example. Strauss strongly resented the
action of one of his opponents who happened to
refer to his reverence for Lessing. The unfortunate
man had misunderstood;—true, Strauss did de-
clare that one must be of a very obtuse mind
not to recognise that the simple words of para-
graph 86 come from the writer's heart. Now, I
do not question this warmth in the very least; on
the contrary, the fact that Strauss fosters these
feelings towards Lessing has always excited my
suspicion; I find the same warmth for Lessing
raised almost to heat in Gervinus—yea, on the
whole, no great German writer is so popular
among little German writers as Lessing is; but
for all that, they deserve no thanks for their pre-
dilection; for what is it, in sooth, that they praise
in Lessing? At one moment it is his catholicity—
the fact that he was critic and poet, archaeologist
and philosopher, dramatist and theologian. Anon,
"it is the unity in him of the writer and the man, of
the head and the heart. " The last quality, as a rule,
is just as characteristic of the great writer as of the
little one; as a rule, a narrow head agrees only too


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DAVID STRAUSS. 35
fatally with a narrow heart. And as to the catho-
licity; this is no distinction, more especially when,
as in Lessing's case, it was a dire necessity. What
astonishes one in regard to Lessing-enthusiasts
is rather that they have no conception of the
devouring necessity which drove him on through
life and to this catholicity; no feeling for the fact
that such a man is too prone to consume himself
rapidly, like a flame; nor any indignation at the
thought that the vulgar narrowness and pusil-
lanimity of his whole environment, especially of his
learned contemporaries, so saddened, tormented,
and stifled the tender and ardent creature that he
was, that the very universality for which he is
praised should give rise to feelings of the deepest
compassion. "Have pity on the exceptional
man! " Goethe cries to us; "for it was his lot
to live in such a wretched age that his life was one
long polemical effort. " How can ye, my worthy
Philistines, think of Lessing without shame? He
who was ruined precisely on account of your
stupidity, while struggling with your ludicrous
fetiches and idols, with the defects of your theatres,
scholars, and theologists, without once daring to
attempt that eternal flight for which he had been
born. And what are your feelings when ye think
of Winckelman, who, in order to turn his eyes from
your grotesque puerilities, went begging to the
Jesuits for help, and whose ignominious conversion
dishonours not him, but you? Dare ye mention
Schiller's name without blushing? Look at his
portrait. See the flashing eyes that glance con-
temptuously over your heads, the deadly red


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36 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
cheek—do these things mean nothing to you? In
him ye had such a magnificent and divine toy
that ye shattered it. Suppose, for a moment, it
had been possible to deprive this harassed and
hunted life of Goethe's friendship, ye would then
have been reponsible for its still earlier end. Ye
have had no finger in any one of the life-works of
your great geniuses, and yet ye would make a
dogma to the effect that no one is to be helped in
the future. But for every one of them, ye were
"the resistance of the obtuse world," which Goethe
calls by its name in his epilogue to the Bell; for
all of them ye were the grumbling imbeciles, or
the envious bigots, or the malicious egoists: in
spite of you each of them created his works, against
you each directed his attacks, and thanks to you
each prematurely sank, while his work was still
unfinished, broken and bewildered by the stress of
the battle. And now ye presume that ye are
going to be permitted, tamquam re bene gesta, to
praise such men! and with words which leave no
one in any doubt as to whom ye have in your
minds when ye utter your encomiums, which there-
fore " spring forth with such hearty warmth " that
one must be blind not to see to whom ye are
really bowing. Even Goethe in his day had to cry:
"Upon my honour, we are in need of a Lessing,
and woe unto all vain masters and to the whole
aesthetic kingdom of heaven, when the young tiger,
whose restless strength will be visible in his every
distended muscle and his every glance, shall sally
forth to seek his prey 1"


## p. 37 (#127) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 2)7
How clever it was of my friend to read no further,
once he had been enlightened (thanks to that
chimerical vision) concerning the Straussian Les-
sing and Strauss himself. We, however, read on
further, and even craved admission of the Door-
keeper of the New Faith to the sanctum of music.
The Master threw the door open for us, ac-
companied us, and began quoting certain names,
until, at last, overcome with mistrust, we stood
still and looked at him. Was it possible that we
were the victims of the same hallucination as that to
which our friend had been subjected in his dream?
The musicians to whom Strauss referred seemed
to us to be wrongly designated as long as he spoke
about them, and we began to think that the talk
must certainly be about somebody else, even
admitting that it did not relate to incongruous
phantoms. When, for instance, he mentioned
Haydn with that same warmth which made us
so suspicious when he praised Lessing, and when
he posed as the epopt and priest of a mysterious
Haydn cult; when, in a discussion upon quartette-
music, if you please, he even likened Haydn to
a "good unpretending soup" and Beethoven to
"sweetmeats" (p. 432); then, to our minds, one
thing, and one thing alone, became certain—namely
that his Sweetmeat-Beethoven is not our Beethoven,
and his Soup-Haydn is not our Haydn. The
Master was moreover of the opinion that our
orchestra is too good to perform Haydn, and that


## p. 38 (#128) #############################################

38 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
only the most unpretentious amateurs can do
justice to that music—a further proof that he was
referring to some other artist and. some other work,
possibly to Riehl's music for the home.
But whoever can this Sweetmeat-Beethoven of
Strauss's be? He is said to have composed nine
symphonies, of which the Pastoral is "the least re-
markable "; we are told that " each time in com-
posing the third, he seemed impelled to exceed his
bounds, and depart on an adventurous quest," from
which we might infer that we are here concerned
with a sort of double monster, half horse and half
cavalier. With regard to a certain Eroica, this
Centaur is very hard pressed, because he did not
succeed in making it clear " whether it is a question
of a conflict on the open field or in the deep heart
of man.
" In the Pastoral there is said to be "a
furiously raging storm," for which it is "almost too
insignificant" to interrupt a dance of country-folk,
and which, owing to "its arbitrary connection with
a trivial motive," as Strauss so adroitly and
correctly puts it, renders this symphony "the least
remarkable. " A more drastic expression appears
to have occurred to the Master; but he prefers to
speak here, as he says, " with becoming modesty. "
But no, for once our Master is wrong; in this case
he is really a little too modest. Who, indeed, will
enlighten us concerning this Sweetmeat-Beethoven,
if not Strauss himself—the only person who seems
to know anything about him? But, immediately
below, a strong judgment is uttered with becoming
non-modesty, and precisely in regard to the Ninth
Symphony. It is said, for instance, that this


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DAVID STRAUSS. 39
symphony "is naturally the favourite of a pre-
valent taste, which in art, and music especially,
mistakes the grotesque for the genial, and the
formless for the sublime" (p. 428). It is true that
a critic as severe as Gervinus was gave this work a
hearty welcome, because it happened to confirm one
of his doctrines; but Strauss is " far from going to
these problematic productions" in search of the
merits of his Beethoven. "It is a pity," cries our
Master, with a convulsive sigh, "that one is com-
pelled, by such reservations, to mar one's enjoyment
of Beethoven, as well as the admiration gladly
accorded to him. " For our Master is a favourite
of the Graces, and these have informed him that
they only accompanied Beethoven part of the way,
and that he then lost sight of them. "This is a
defect," he cries, "but can you believe that it may
also appear as an advantage? " "He who is
painfully and breathlessly rolling the musical idea
along will seem to be moving the weightier one,
and thus appear to be the stronger" (pp. 423-24).
This is a confession, and not necessarily one con-
cerning Beethoven alone, but concerning "the
classical prose-writer" himself. He, the celebrated
author, is not abandoned by the Graces. From the
play of airy jests—that is to say, Straussian jests —
to the heights of solemn earnestness—that is to say,
Straussian earnestness—they remain stolidly at his
elbow. He, the classical prose-writer, slides his
burden along playfully and with a light heart,
whereas Beethoven rolls his painfully and breath-
lessly. He seems merely to dandle his load; this is
indeed an advantage. But would anybody believe


## p. 40 (#130) #############################################

40 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
that it might equally be a sign of something
wanting? In any case, only those could believe
this who mistake the grotesque for the genial, and
the formless for the sublime—is not that so, you
dandling favourite of the Graces? We envy no
one the edifying moments he may have, either in
the stillness of his little private room or in a new
heaven specially fitted out for him; but of all
possible pleasures of this order, that of Strauss's is
surely one of the most wonderful, for he is even
edified by a little holocaust. He calmly throws
the sublimest works of the German nation into the
flames, in order to cense his idols with their smoke.
Suppose, for a moment, that by some accident,
the Eroica, the Pastoral, and the Ninth Sym-
phony had fallen into the hands of our priest
of the Graces, and that it had been in his power to
suppress such problematic productions, in order to
keep the image of the Master pure, who doubts
but what he would have burned them? And it is
precisely in this way that the Strausses of our time
demean themselves: they only wish to know so
much of an artist as is compatible with the service
of their rooms; they know only the extremes—
censing or burning. To all this they are heartily
welcome; the one surprising feature of the whole
case is that public opinion, in matters artistic,
should be so feeble, vacillating, and corruptible as
contentedly to allow these exhibitions of indigent
Philistinism to go by without raising an objection;
yea, that it does not even possess sufficient sense of
humour to feel tickled at the sight of an unsesthetic
little master's sitting in judgment upon Beethoven.


## p. 41 (#131) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 41
As to Mozart, what Aristotle says of Plato ought
really to be applied here: "Insignificant people
ought not to be permitted even to praise him. " In
this respect, however, all shame has vanished—from
the public as well as from the Master's mind: he is
allowed, not merely to cross himself before the
greatest and purest creations of German genius, as
though he had perceived something godless and
immoral in them, but people actually rejoice over
his candid confessions and admission of sins—more
particularly as he makes no mention of his own,
but only of those which great men are said to have
committed. Oh, if only our Master be in the right!
his readers sometimes think, when attacked by a
paroxysm of doubt; he himself, however, stands
there, smiling and convinced, perorating, condemn-
ing, blessing, raising his hat to himself, and is at
any minute capable of saying what the Duchesse
Delaforte said to Madame de Stael, to wit: " My
dear, I must confess that I find no one but myself
invariably right. "
VI.
A corpse is a pleasant thought for a worm, and a
worm is a dreadful thought for every living creature.
Worms fancy their kingdom of heaven in a fat
body; professors of philosophy seek theirs in
rummaging among Schopenhauer's entrails, and as
long as rodents exist, there will exist a heaven for
rodents. In this, we have the answer to our first
question: How does the believer in the new faith
picture his heaven? The Straussian Philistine


## p. 42 (#132) #############################################

42 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
harbours in the works of our great poets and
musicians like a parasitic worm whose life is
destruction, whose admiration is devouring, and
whose worship is digesting.
Now, however, our second question must be
answered: How far does the courage lent to its
adherents by this new faith extend? Even this
question would already have been answered, if
courage and pretentiousness had been one; for
then Strauss would not be lacking even in the just
and veritable courage of a Mameluke. At all
events, the "becoming modesty" of which Strauss
speaks in the above-mentioned passage, where he
is referring to Beethoven, can only be a stylistic
and not a moral manner of speech. Strauss has
his full share of the temerity to which every
successful hero assumes the right: all flowers grow
only for him—the conqueror; and he praises the
sun because it shines in at his window just at the
right time. He does not even spare the venerable
old universe in his eulogies—as though it were
only now and henceforward sufficiently sanctified
by praise to revolve around the central monad
David Strauss. The universe, he is happy to
inform us, is, it is true, a machine with jagged iron
wheels, stamping and hammering ponderously,
but: "We do not only find the revolution of pitiless
wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding
of soothing oil" (p. 435). The universe, provided
it submit to Strauss's encomiums, is not likely to
overflow with gratitude towards this master of
weird metaphors, who was unable to discover
better similes in its praise. But what is the oil


## p. 43 (#133) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 43
called which trickles down upon the hammers and
stampers? And how would it console a workman
who chanced to get one of his limbs caught in the
mechanism to know that this oil was trickling over
him? Passing over this simile as bad, let us turn
our attention to another of Strauss's artifices,
whereby he tries to ascertain how he feels disposed
towards the universe; this question of Marguerite's,
"He loves me—loves me not—loves me ? " hanging
on his lips the while. Now, although Strauss is
not telling flower-petals or the buttons on his
waistcoat, still what he does is not less harmless,
despite the fact that it needs perhaps a little more
courage. Strauss wishes to make certain whether
his feeling for the "All" is either paralysed or
withered, and he pricks himself; for he knows that
one can prick a limb that is either paralysed or
withered without causing any pain. As a matter
of fact, he does not really prick himself, but selects
another more violent method, which he describes
thus: "We open Schopenhauer, who takes every
occasion of slapping our idea in the face" (p. 167).
Now, as an idea—even that of Strauss's concerning
the universe—has no face, if there be any face in
the question at all it must be that of the idealist,
and the procedure may be subdivided into the
following separate actions:—Strauss, in any case,
throws Schopenhauer open, whereupon the latter
slaps Strauss in the face. Strauss then reacts re-
ligiously; that is to say, he again begins to belabour
Schopenhauer, to abuse him, to speak of absurdities,
blasphemies, dissipations, and even to allege that
Schopenhauer could not have been in his right


## p. 44 (#134) #############################################

44 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
senses. Result of the dispute: "We demand the
same piety for our Cosmos that the devout of old
demanded for his God"; or, briefly, "He loves
me. " Our favourite of the Graces makes his life a
hard one, but he is as brave as a Mameluke, and
fears neither the Devil nor Schopenhauer. How
much " soothing oil" must he use if such incidents
are of frequent occurrence!
On the other hand, we readily understand
Strauss's gratitude to this tickling, pricking, and
slapping Schopenhauer; hence we are not so very
much surprised when we find him expressing him-
self in the following kind way about him: "We
need only turn over the leaves of Arthur Schopen-
hauer's works (although we shall on many other
accounts do well not only to glance over but to study
them), etc. " (p. 166). Now, to whom does this
captain of Philistines address these words? To him
who has clearly never even studied Schopenhauer,
the latter might well have retorted, "This is an
author who does not even deserve to be scanned,
much less to be studied. " Obviously, he gulped
Schopenhauer down "the wrong way," and this
hoarse coughing is merely his attempt to clear his
throat. But, in order to fill the measure of his
ingenuous encomiums, Strauss even arrogates to
himself the right of commending old Kant: he
speaks of the latter's General History of the
Heavens of the Year 1J55 as of "a work which
has always appeared to me not less important
than his later Critique of Pure Reason. If in the
latter we admire the depth of insight, the breadth
of observation strikes us in the former. If in the


## p. 45 (#135) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 45
latter we can trace the old man's anxiety to secure
even a limited possession of knowledge—so it be
but on a firm basis—in the former we encounter
the mature man, full of the daring of the discoverer
and conqueror in the realm of thought. " This
judgment of Strauss's concerning Kant did not
strike me as being more modest than the one con-
cerning Schopenhauer. In the one case, we have
the little captain, who is above all anxious to
express even the most insignificant opinion with
certainty, and in the other we have the famous
prose-writer, who, with all the courage of ignorance,
exudes his eulogistic secretions over Kant. It is
almost incredible that Strauss availed himself of
nothing in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason while
compiling his Testament of modern ideas, and
that he knew only how to appeal to the coarsest
realistic taste must also be numbered among the
more striking characteristics of this new gospel,
the which professes to be but the result of the
laborious and continuous study of history and
science, and therefore tacitly repudiates all connec-
tion with philosophy. For the Philistine captain
and his "We," Kantian philosophy does not exist.
He does not dream of the fundamental antinomy
of idealism and of the highly relative sense of all
science and reason. And it is precisely reason
that ought to tell him how little it is possible to
know of things in themselves. It is true, however,
that people of a certain age cannot possibly under-
stand Kant, especially when, in their youth, they
understood or fancied they understood that
"gigantic mind," Hegel, as Strauss did; and had


## p. 46 (#136) #############################################

46 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
moreover concerned themselves with Schleier-
macher, who, according to Strauss, "was gifted
with perhaps too much acumen. " It will sound
odd to our author when I tell him that, even
now, he stands absolutely dependent upon Hegel
and Schleiermacher, and that his teaching of the
Cosmos, his way of regarding things sub specie
biennii, his salaams to the state of affairs now
existing in Germany, and, above all, his shameless
Philistine optimism, can only be explained by an
appeal to certain impressions of youth, early habits,
and disorders; for he who has once sickened on
Hegel and Schleiermacher never completely re-
covers.
There is one passage in the confession-book
where the incurable optimism referred to above
bursts forth with the full joyousness of holiday
spirits (pp. 166-67). "If the universe is a thing
which had better not have existed," says Strauss,
"then surely the speculation of the philosopher, as
forming part of this universe, is a speculation which
had better not have speculated. The pessimist
philosopher fails to perceive that he, above all,
declares his own thought, which declares the world
to be bad, as bad also; but if the thought which
declares the world to be bad is a bad thought, then
it follows naturally that the world is good. As a rule,
optimism may take things too easily. Schopen-
hauer's references to the colossal part which sorrow
and evil play in the world are quite in their right
place as a counterpoise; but every true philosophy
is necessarily optimistic, as otherwise she hews
down the branch on which she herself is sitting. "


## p. 47 (#137) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 47
If this refutation of Schopenhauer is not the same
as that to which Strauss refers somewhere else
as "the refutation loudly and jubilantly acclaimed
in higher spheres," then I quite fail to understand
the dramatic phraseology used by him elsewhere
to strike an opponent. Here optimism has for
once intentionally simplified her task. But the
master-stroke lay in thus pretending that the refu-
tation of Schopenhauer was not such a very difficult
task after all, and in playfully wielding the burden
in such a manner that the three Graces attendant
on the dandling optimist might constantly be
delighted by his methods. The whole purpose of
the deed was to demonstrate this one truth, that it
is quite unnecessary to take a pessimist seriously;
the most vapid sophisms become justified, provided
they show that, in regard to a philosophy as
"unhealthy and unprofitable" as Schopenhauer's,
not proofs but quips and sallies alone are suitable.
While perusing such passages, the reader will
grasp the full meaning of Schopenhauer's solemn
utterance to the effect that, where optimism is not
merely the idle prattle of those beneath whose flat
brows words and only words are stored, it seemed
to him not merely an absurd but a vicious attitude
of mind, and one full of scornful irony towards
the indescribable sufferings of humanity. When a
philosopher like Strauss is able to frame it into a
system, it becomes more than a vicious attitude of
mind—it is then an imbecile gospel of comfort for
the "I" or for the "We," and can only provoke
indignation.
Who could read the following psychological


## p. 48 (#138) #############################################

48 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
avowal, for instance, without indignation, seeing
that it is obviously but an offshoot from this vicious
gospel of comfort? —"Beethoven remarked that he
could never have composed a text like Figaro or
Don Juan. Life had not been so profuse of its
snubs to him that he could treat it so gaily, or deal
so lightly with the foibles of men" (p. 430). In
order, however, to adduce the most striking instance
of this dissolute vulgarity of sentiment, let it
suffice, here, to observe that Strauss knows no
other means of accounting for the terribly serious
negative instinct and the movement of ascetic
sanctification which characterised the first century
of the Christian era, than by supposing the exist-
ence of a previous period of surfeit in the matter
of all kinds of sexual indulgence, which of itself
brought about a state of revulsion and disgust.
"The Persians call it bidamag buden,
The Germans say 'Katzenjammer. '"*
Strauss quotes this himself, and is not ashamed.
As for us, we turn aside for a moment, that we
may overcome our loathing.
VII.
As a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is
brave, even audacious, in words; particularly when
* Remorse for the previous night's excesses. —Translator's
note.


## p. 49 (#139) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 49
he hopes by such bravery to delight his noble
colleagues—the "We," as he calls them. So the
asceticism and self-denial of the ancient anchorite
and saint was merely a form of Katzenjammer'i
Jesus may be described as an enthusiast who
nowadays would scarcely have escaped the mad-
house, and the story of the Resurrection may be
termed a "world-wide deception. " For once we
will allow these views to pass without raising any
objection, seeing that they may help us to gauge
the amount of courage which our " classical Philis-
tine" Strauss is capable of. Let us first hear his
confession: "It is certainly an unpleasant and a
thankless task to tell the world those truths which
it is least desirous of hearing. It prefers, in fact,
to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving
and spending after the magnificent fashion of the
great, as long as there is anything left; should any
person, however, add up the various items of its
liabilities, and anxiously call its attention to the
sum-total, he is certain to be regarded as an im-
portunate meddler. And yet this has always been
the bent of my moral and intellectual nature. " A
moral and intellectual nature of this sort might
possibly be regarded as courageous; but what still
remains to be proved is, whether this courage is
natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather
acquired and artificial. Perhaps Strauss only
accustomed himself by degrees to the rdle of an
importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired
the courage of his calling. Innate cowardice,
which is the Philistine's birthright, would not be
incompatible with this mode of development, and
D


## p. 49 (#140) #############################################

48
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
THO
avowal, for instance, without indignation, seeing
that it is obviously but an offshoot from this vicious
gospel of comfort ? —“Beethoven remarked that he
could never have composed a text like Figaro or
Don Juan. Life had not been so profuse of its
snubs to him that he could treat it so gaily, or deal
so lightly with the foibles of men” (p. 430). In
order, however, to adduce the most striking instance
of this dissolute vulgarity of sentiment, let it
suffice, here, to observe that Strauss knows no
other means of accounting for the terribly serious
negative instinct and the movement of ascetic
sanctification which characterised the first century
of the Christian era, than by supposing the exist-
ence of a previous period of surfeit in the matter
of all kinds of sexual indulgence, which of itself
brought about a state of revulsion and disgust.
“The Persians call it bidamag buden,
The Germans say 'Katzenjammer. '”*
Strauss quotes this himself, and is not ashamed.
As for us, we turn aside for a moment, that we
may overcome our loathing.
VII.
As a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is
brave, even audacious, in words; particularly when
* Remorse for the previous night's excesses. -Translator's
note.


## p. 49 (#141) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS.
49
he hopes by such bravery to delight his noble
colleagues—the “We," as he calls them. So the
asceticism and self-denial of the ancient anchorite
and saint was merely a form of Katzenjammer?
Jesus may be described as an enthusiast who
nowadays would scarcely have escaped the mad-
house, and the story of the Resurrection may be
termed a “world-wide deception. ” For once we
will allow these views to pass without raising any
objection, seeing that they may help us to gauge
the amount of courage which our" classical Philis-
tine” Strauss is capable of. Let us first hear his
confession: “It is certainly an unpleasant and a
thankless task to tell the world those truths which
it is least desirous of hearing. It prefers, in fact,
to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving
and spending after the magnificent fashion of the
great, as long as there is anything left; should any
person, however, add up the various items of its
liabilities, and anxiously call its attention to the
sum-total, he is certain to be regarded as an im-
portunate meddler. And yet this has always been
the bent of my moral and intellectual nature,” A
moral and intellectual nature of this sort might
possibly be regarded as courageous; but what still
remains to be proved is, whether this courage is
natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather
acquired and artificial. Perhaps Strauss only
accustomed himself by degrees to the role of an
importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired
the courage of his calling. Innate cowardice,
which is the Philistine's birthright, would not be
incompatible with this mode of development, and
D


## p. 50 (#142) #############################################

JO THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
it is precisely this cowardice which is perceptible
in the want of logic of those sentences of Strauss's
which it needed courage to pronounce. They
sound like thunder, but they do not clear the air.
No aggressive action is performed: aggressive
words alone are used, and these he selects from
among the most insulting he can find. He more-
over exhausts all his accumulated strength and
energy in coarse and noisy expression, and when
once his utterances have died away he is more of
a coward even than he who has always held his
tongue. The very shadow of his deeds — his
morality—shows us that he is a word-hero, and
that he avoids everything which might induce him
to transfer his energies from mere verbosity to
really serious things. With admirable frankness,
he announces that he is no longer a Christian, but
disclaims all idea of wishing to disturb the content-
ment of any one: he seems to recognise a contra-
diction in the notion of abolishing one society by
instituting another—whereas there is nothing con-
tradictory in it at all. With a certain rude self-
satisfaction, he swathes himself in the hirsute
garment of our Simian genealogists, and extols
Darwin as one of mankind's greatest benefactors;
but our perplexity is great when we find him con-
structing his ethics quite independently of the
question, "What is our conception of the uni-
verse? " In this department he had an opportunity
of exhibiting native pluck; for he ought to have
turned his back on his "We," and have established
a moral code for life out of bellum omnium contra
omnes and the privileges of the strong. But it is to


## p. 51 (#143) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. SI
be feared that such a code could only have emanated
from a bold spirit like that of Hobbes', and must
have taken its root in a love of truth quite different
from that which was only able to vent itself in
explosive outbursts against parsons, miracles, and
the "world-wide humbug" of the Resurrection.
For, whereas the Philistine remained on Strauss's
side in regard to these explosive outbursts, he
would have been against him had he been con-
fronted with a genuine and seriously constructed
ethical system, based upon Darwin's teaching.
Says Strauss: "I should say that all moral
action arises from the individual's acting in con-
sonance with the idea of kind" (p. 274). Put quite
clearly and comprehensively, this means: "Live
as a man, and not as an ape or a seal. " Unfortu-
nately, this imperative is both useless and feeble;
for in the class Man what a multitude of different
types are included—to mention only the Patagonian
and the Master, Strauss; and no one would ever
dare to say with any right, "Live like a Pata-
gonian," and "Live like the Master Strauss"!
Should any one, however, make it his rule to live
like a genius—that is to say, like the ideal type 01
the genus Man—and should he perchance at the
same time be either a Patagonian or Strauss him-
self, what should we then not have to suffer from
the importunities of genius-mad eccentrics (con-
cerning whose mushroom growth in Germany even
Lichtenberg had already spoken), who with savage
cries would compel us to listen to the confession
of their most recent belief! Strauss has not yet
learned that no "idea" can ever make man better


## p. 52 (#144) #############################################

52 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
or more moral, and that the preaching of a morality
is as easy as the establishment of it is difficult.
His business ought rather to have been, to take
the phenomena of human goodness, such — for
instance—as pity, love, and self-abnegation, which
are already to hand, and seriously to explain them
and show their relation to his Darwinian first
principle. But no; he preferred to soar into the
imperative, and thus escape the task of explaining.
But even in his flight he was irresponsible enough
to soar beyond the very first principles of which
we speak.
"Ever remember," says Strauss, "that thou art
human, not merely a natural production; ever re-
member that all others are human also, and, with
all individual differences, the same as thou, having
the same needs and claims as thyself: this is the
sum and the substance of morality" (p. 277). But
where does this imperative hail from? How can it be
intuitive in man, seeing that, according to Darwin,
man is indeed a creature of nature, and that his
ascent to his present stage of development has been
conditioned by quite different laws—by the very
fact that he was continually forgetting that others
were constituted like him and shared the same
rights with him; by the very fact that he regarded
himself as the stronger, and thus brought about the
gradual suppression of weaker types. Though
Strauss is bound to admit that no two creatures
have ever been quite alike, and that the ascent of
man from the lowest species of animals to the
exalted height of the Culture-Philistine depended
upon the law of individual distinctness, he still sees


## p. 53 (#145) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 53
do difficulty in declaring exactly the reverse in his
law: "Behave thyself as though there were no such
things as individual distinctions. " Where is the
Strauss-Darwin morality here? Whither, above
all, has the courage gone?
In the very next paragraph we find further
evidence tending to show us the point at which
this courage veers round to its opposite; for Strauss
continues: "Ever remember that thou, and all that
thou beholdest within and around thee, all that
befalls thee and others, is no disjointed fragment,
no wild chaos of atoms or casualties, but that,
following eternal law, it springs from the one
primal source of all life, all reason, and all good:
this is the essence of religion " (pp. 277-78). Out
of that "one primal source," however, all ruin and
irrationality, all evil flows as well, and its name,
according to Strauss, is Cosmos.
Now, how can this Cosmos, with all the con-
tradictions and the self-annihilating characteristics
which Strauss gives it, be worthy of religious
veneration and be addressed by the name "God,"
as Strauss addresses it? —"Our God does not,
indeed, take us into His arms from the outside
(here one expects, as an antithesis, a somewhat
miraculous process of being " taken into His arms
from the inside"), but He unseals the well-springs
of consolation within our own bosoms. He shows
us that although Chance would be an unreasonable
ruler, yet necessity, or the enchainment of causes
in the world, is Reason itself. " (A misapprehension
of which only the "We" can fail to perceive the
folly; because they were brought up in the Hegelian


## p. 54 (#146) #############################################

54 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
worship of Reality as the Reasonable—that is to
say, in the canonisation of success. ) "He teaches
us to perceive that to demand an exception in the
accomplishment of a single natural law would
be to demand the destruction of the universe"
(pp. 435-36). On the contrary, Great Master: an
honest natural scientist believes in the uncondi-
tional rule of natural laws in the world, without,
however, taking up any position in regard to the
ethical or intellectual value of these laws. Wherever
neutrality is abandoned in this respect, it is owing
to an anthropomorphic attitude of mind which
allows reason to exceed its proper bounds. But it
is just at the point where the natural scientist
resigns that Strauss, to put it in his own words,
"reacts religiously," and leaves the scientific and
scholarly standpoint in order to proceed along less
honest lines of his own. Without any further
warrant, he assumes that all that has happened
possesses the highest intellectual value; that it
was therefore absolutely reasonably and intention-
ally so arranged, and that it even contained a
revelation of eternal goodness. He therefore has
to appeal to a complete cosmodicy, and finds
himself at a disadvantage in regard to him who
is contented with a theodicy, and who, for instance,
regards the whole of man's existence as a punish-
ment for sin or a process of purification. At this
stage, and in this embarrassing position, Strauss
even suggests a metaphysical hypothesis—the driest
and most palsied ever conceived—and, in reality,
but an unconscious parody of one of Lessing's
sayings. We read on page 255: "And that other


## p. 55 (#147) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS.