No More Learning

285
truth; but those who know and conceal
their knowledge, are hypocrites, or, at least,
are most arrogant and most irreligious beings.
Most arrogant; for what right have they to
think themselves of the class of the initiated,
and the rest of the world excluded from it ? --
Most irreligious; for if there is a philoso-
phical or natural truth, a truth, in short,
which contradicts religion, religion would
not be what it is, the light of lights.
We must be very ignorant of Christianity,
that is to say, of the revelation of the moral
laws of man and the universe, to recommend to
those who wish to believe in it, ignorance, se-
crecy, and darkness. Open the gates of the
temple; call to your support genius, the fine
arts, the sciences, philosophy; assemble
them in one focus to honour and to com-
prehend the Author of creation; and if Love
has said, that the name of those we love
seems written on the leaves of every flower,
how should not the impress of the Godhead
appear in every thought that attaches itself
to the eternal chain?
The right of examining what we ought to
believe, is the foundation of Protestantism.
The first reformers did not so understand it:
they thought they could fix the pillars of
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? 286 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
Hercules of the human mind at the boundary
of their own knowledge; but they were
wrong in fancying that men would submit to
their decisions as if they were infallible;--
they who rejected all authority of this sort
in the Catholic religion. Protestantism then
was sure to follow the developement and the
progress of knowledge; while Catholicism
boasted of being immoveable in the midst of
the waves of time.
Among the German writers of the Pro-
testant religion, different ways of thinking
have prevailed, which have successively oc-
cupied attention. Many learned men have
made inquiries, unheard of before, into the
Old and New Testament. Michaelis has
studied tire languages, the antiquities, and
the natural history of Asia, to interpret the
Bible; and while the spirit of French phi-
losophy was making a jest of the Christian
religion, they made it in Germany the object
of erudition. However this sort of labour
may, in some respects, insure religious
minds, what veneration does it not imply
for the book which is the object of so se-
rious an inquiry! These learned men at-
tacked neither doctrines, nor prophecies, nor
miracles; but a great number of writers
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? PROTESTANTISM.
287
have followed them, who have attempted to
give an entirely physical explanation to the
Old and New Testament; and who, con-
sidering them both in the light only of good
writings of an instructive kind, see nothing
in the mysteries but oriental metaphors.
These theologians called themselves rational
interpreters, because they believed they could
disperse every sort of obscurity: but it was
a wrong direction of the spirit of inquiry to
attempt applying it to truths, of which we
can have no presentiment, except by eleva-
tion and meditation of soul. The spirit of
inquiry ought to serve for the demarcation
of what is superior to reason, in the same
manner that an astronomer defines the
heights to which the sight of man cannot
attain: thus therefore to point out the in-
comprehensible regions, without pretending
to deny their existence, or to describe them
by words, is to make use of the spirit of in-
quiry, according to its measure, and its
destination.
The learned mode of interpretation is not
more satisfactory than dogmatic authority.
The imagination and the sensibility of the
Germans could not content itself with this
sort of prosaic religion, which paid the
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? 288 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
respect of reason to Christianity. Herder
was the first to regenerate faith by poetry:
deeply instructed in the eastern languages,
he felt a kind of admiration for the Bible
like that which a sanctified Homer would in-
spire. The natural bias of the mind in Ger-
many is to consider poetry as a sort of
prophetic gift, the forerunner of divine en-
joyments; so that it was not profanation to
unite to religious faith the enthusiasm which
poetry inspires.
Herder was not scrupulously orthodox;
but he rejected, as well as his partisans, the
learned commentaries which had the simpli-
fication of the Bible for their object, and
which, by simplifying, annihilated it. A
sort of poetical theology, vague but animated,
free but feeling, takes the place of that pe-
dantic school which thought it was advancing
towards reason, when it retrenched some of
the miracles of this universe; though, at the
same time, the marvellous is, in some
respects, perhaps, still more easy to con-
ceive, than that which it has been agreed to
call the natural.
Schleiermacher, the translator of Plato, has
written discourses of extraordinary eloquence
upon religion; he combatted that indiffer-
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? ^ROTfeSTANTlSM. 289
ence which has been called toleration, and
that destructive labour which has passed
for impartial inquiry. Schleiermacher is
not the more on this account an orthodox
theologian; but he shows, in the religious
doctrines which he adopts, the power of
belief, and a great vigour of metaphy-
sical conception. He has developed, with
much warmth and clearness, the feeling
of the infinite, of which I have spoken
in the preceding chapter. We may call
the religious opinions of Schleiermacher,
and of his disciples, a philosophical the-
ology.
At length Lavater, and many men of ta-
lent, attached themselves to the mystical
opinions, such as Fenelon in France, and
different writers in all countries, conceived
them. Lavater preceded some of the authors
whom I have cited; but it is only for these
few years past, that the doctrine, of which
he may be considered one of the principal
supporters, has gained any great popularity
among the Germans. The work of Lavater
upon physiognomy is more celebrated than
his religious writings; but that which ren-
dered him especially remarkable was his per-
sonal character. There was in this man a
vol. in. v
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? 290 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
rare mixture of penetration and of enthu-
siasm; be observed mankind with a peculiar
sagacity of understanding, and yet aban-
doned himself, with entire con6dence, to a
set of ideas which might be called supersti-
tious. He had sufficient self-love; and this
self-love, perhaps, was the cause of those
whimsical opinions about himself, and his
miraculous calling. Nevertheless, nothing
could equal the religious simplicity and the
candour of his soul. W e could not see with-
out astonishment, in a drawing-room of our
own times, a minister of the holy Gospel
inspired like an apostle, and animated as a
man of the world. The warrant of Lavater's
sincerity was to be found in his good actions,
and in his 6ne countenance, which bore the
stamp of inimitable truth.
The religious writers of Germany, pro-
perly so called, are divided into two very
distinct classes--the defenders of the Re-
formation, and the partisans of Catholicism.
I shall examine separately the writers who
are of these different opinions; but the as-
sertion which it is important to make before
every thing is this, that if northern Ger-
many is the country where theological ques-
tions have been most agitated, it is also that
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? PROTESTANTISM. 291
in which religious sentiments are most uni-
versal; the national character is impressed
with them, and it is from them that the ge-
nius of the arts and of literature draws all
its inspiration. In short, among the lower
orders, religion in the north of Germany
bears an ideal and sweet character, which
singularly surprises us in a country where we
have been accustomed to think the manners
very rude.
Once, as I was travelling from Dresden to
Leipsic, I stopped for the evening at Meissen,
a little village placed upon an eminence over
the river, and the church of which contains
tombs consecrated to illustrious recollections.
I walked upon the Esplanade, and suffered
myself to sink into that sort of reverie which
the setting sun, the distant view of the land-
scape, and the sound of the stream that flows
at the bottom of the valley, so easily excite
in our souls:--I then caught the voices of
some common persons, and I was afraid of
hearing such vulgar words as are elsewhere
sung in the streets. What was my astonish-
ment, when I understood the burthen of
their song ! --4* They loved each other, and
"they died, hoping one day to meet again V
v2
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? 292 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
Happy that country where such feelings are
popular; and spread abroad, even into the
air we breathe, I know not what religious
fellowship, of which love for heaven, and
pity for man, form the touching union!
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? MORAVIAN MODE OF WORSHIP. 293
CHAPTER HI.
? f ?
. Moravian Mode of Worship.
There is perhaps too much freedom in
Protestantism to satisfy a certain religious
austerity, which may seize upon the man
who is overwhelmed by great misfortunes;
sometimes even in the habitual course of
life, the reality of this world disappears all
at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle
of its interests as we should at a ball, where
we did not hear the music; the dancing that
we saw there would appear insane. A species
of dreaming apathy equally seizes upon the
bramin and the savage, when one by the
force of thought, and the other by the force
of ignorance, passes entire hours in the dumb
contemplation of destiny. The only activity
of which the human being is then suscepti-
ble, is that which has divine worship for its
object. He loves to do something for Hea-
ven every moment; and it is this disposition
which gives their attraction to convents, how-
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? 594 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
ever great may be their inconvenience in
other respects.
The Moravians are the monks of Pro-
testantism; and the religious enthusiasm of
northern Germany gave them birth, about a
hundred years ago. But although this asso-
ciation is as severe as a Catholic convent,
it is more liberal in its principles. No vows
are taken there; all is voluntary; men and
women are not separated, and marriage is
not forbidden. Nevertheless the whole so*
ciety is ecclesiastical i that is to say, every
thing is done there by religion and for it;
the authority of the church rules this com-
munity of the faithful, but this church is
without priests, and the sacred office is ful-
filled there in turn, by the most religious and
venerable persons.
Men and women, before marriage, live
separately from each other in assemblies,
where the most perfect equality reigns. The
entire day is filled with labour; the same for
every rank; the idea of Providence, con-
stantly present, directs all the actions of the
life of the Moravians.
When a young man chooses to take a
companion, he addresses himself to the fe-
male superintendants of girls or widows,
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? MORAVIAN" MODE OF WORSHIP. 295
and demands of them the person he wishes
to espouse. They draw lots in the church,
to know whether he ought to marry thg
woman whom he prefers; and if the lot is
against him, he gives up his demand. The
Moravians have such a habit of resignation,
that they do not resist this decision; and as
they only see the women at church, it costs
them less to renounce their choice. This
manner of deciding upon marriage, and upon
many other circumstances of life, indicates
the general spirit of the Moravian worship.
Instead of keeping themselves submitted' td
the will of Heaven, they fancy they can
learn it by inspirations, or, what is still more
strange, by interrogating Chance. Duty and
events manifest to man the views of God
concerning the earth; how can we flatter
ourselves with the notion of penetrating
them by other means?
We observe, in other respects, among the
generality of Moravians, evangelical man-
ners, such as they must have existed from
the time of the Apostles, in Christian com-
munities. Neither extraordinary doctrines
nor scrupulous practices constitute the bond
of this association: the Gospel is there in-
terpreted in the most natural and clear
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? 296 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
manner; but they are there faithful to the
consequences of this doctrine, and they
make their conduct, under all relations, har-
monize with their religious principles. The
Moravian communities serve, above all, to
prove that Protestantism, in its simplicity,
may lead to the most austere sort of life,
and the most enthusiastic religion; death
and immortality, well understood, are suffi-
cient to occupy and to direct the whole of
existence.
I was some time ago at Dintendorf, a
little village near Erfurtb, where a Moravian
community is established. This village is
three leagues distant from every great road;
it: is situated between two mountains, upon
the banks of a rivulet; willows and lofty
poplars environ it: . there is something tran-
quil and sweet in the look of the country,
which prepares the soul to free itself from
the turbulence of life. The buildings and
the streets are marked by perfect cleanliness;
the women, all clothed alike, hide their hair,
and bind their head with a riband, whose
colour indicates whether they are married,
maidens, or widows: the men are clothed
in brown, almost like the Quakers, Mer-
cantile industry employs nearly all of them;
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? MORAVIAN MODE OF WORSHIP. 297
but one does not hear the least noise in the
village. Every body works in regularity
and silence; and the internal action of re-
ligious feeling lulls to rest every other im-
pulse. ? . ;. '>. . ';
The girls and widows live together in a
large dormitory, and, during the night, one
of them has her turn to watch, for the pur-
pose of praying, or of taking care of those
who" may be ill. The unmarried men Jive
in the same manner. Thus there exists a
great family for him who has none of his
own; and the name of brother and sister is
common to all Christians. ? ? !
Instead of bells, wind instruments, of a
very sweet harmony, summon them to di-
vine service. As we proceeded to church,
by the sound of this imposing music, we felt
ourselves carried away from the earth; we
fancied that we heard the trumpets of the
last judgment, not such as remorse makes
us fear them, but such as a pious confidence
makes us hope them; it seemed as if the
divine compassion manifested itself in this
appeal, and pronounced beforehand the par-
don of regeneration.
The church was dressed out in white roses,
and blossoms of white thorn: pictures were
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?
RE1IGION AtfD EKTHUSIASM*
not banished from the temple; and music
was cultivated as a constituent part of re-
ligion: they only sang psalms; there was
neither sermon, nor mass, nor argument,
nor theological discussion; it was the wor-
ship of God in spirit and in truth. The
women, all in white, were ranged by each
other without any distinction whatever; they
looked like the innocent shadows who were
about to appear together before the tribunal
of the Divinity.
The burying-ground of the Moravians is
a garden, the walks of which are marked
out by funeral stones; and by the side of
each is planted a flowering shrub. All these
grave-stones are equal; not one of these
shrubs rises above the other; and the same
epitaph serves for all the dead. "He was
"born on such a day; and on such another<.
"he returned into his native country/'
Excellent expression to designate the end
of our life! The ancients said, " He lived f
and thus threw a veil over the tomb, to divest
themselves of its idea; the Christians place
over it the star of hope.
On Easter-day, divine service is performed
in the burying-ground, which is close to the
church, and the resurrection is announced
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? Mtfft,AV<*sr ftor>? of Worship.
in the middle of the tombs. All those who
are present at this act of worship, know the
stone that is to be placed over their coffin;
and already breathe the perfume of the
young tree, whose leaves and flowers will
penetrate into their tombs. It is thus that
we have seen, in modern times, an entire
army assisting at its own funeral rites, pro-
nouncing for itself the service of the dead,
decided in belief that it was to conquer hm
mortality*.
The communion of the Moravians danrrot
adapt itself to the social state, such a3 Cir-
cumstances ordain it to be; but as it has
been long and frequently asserted that Ca-
tholicism alone addressed the imagination, it
is of consequence to remark, that what truly
touches the soul in religion is common to all
. Christian churches. A sepulchre and a
prayer exhaust all the power of the pathetic;
and the more simple the faith, the more
emotion is caused by the worship.
* The allusion in this passage is to the siege of Saragossa.
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? 300 EELIOI0N AND ENTHUSIASM.
CHAPTER IV. . ;
. . . . . . Of Catholicism. , .
? >> ? > a?
''>> ? ? . "'' ". . ? .
The Catholic religion is more tolerant in
Germany than in any i other country. The
peace of Westphalia having fixed the rights
of the different religions, they no longer
feared their mutual invasions; and, besides,
this mixture of modes of worship, in a great
number of towns, has necessarily induced
the occasion of observing and judging each
other. In religious as well as in political
opinions, we make a phantom of our adver-
saries, which is almost always dissipated by
their presence; sympathy presents a fellow-
creature in him whom we believed an enemy.
Protestantism being much more favour-
able to knowledge than Catholicism, the
Catholics in Germany have put themselves
in a sort of defensive position, which is very
injurious to the progress of information.
In the countries where the Catholic religion
reigned alone, such as France and Italy,
they have known how to unite it to litera-
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? CATHOLICISM. T 301
ture and to the fine arts; but in Germany,
where the Protestants have taken possession,
by means of the universities, and by their
natural tendency to every thing which be-
longs to literary and philosophical study,
the Catholics have fancied themselves obliged
to oppose to them a certain sort of reserve,
which destroys almost all the means of dis-
tinction, in the career of imagination and of
reflection. Music is the only one of the
fine arts which is carried to a greater degree
of perfection in the south of Germany than
in the north; unless we reckon in the number
of the fine arts a certain convenient mode of
life, the enjoyments of which agree well
enough with repose of mind.
Among the Catholics in Germany there is
a sincere, tranquil, and charitable piety;
but there are no famous preachers, nor reli-
gious authors who are quoted: nothing there
excites the emotions of the soul; they con-
sider religion as a matter of fact, in which
enthusiasm has no share; and one might say,
that in a mode of religious worship so well
consolidated, the future life itself became a
positive truth, upon which we no longer
exercise our thoughts.
The revolution. which has taken place
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? 302 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
among the philosophical minds in Germany*
during the last thirty years, has brought
them almost all back to religious sentiments,
Thpy had wandered a little from them;
when the impulse necessary to propagate
toleration had exceeded its proper bounds:
butj by recalling idealism in metaphysics,
inspiration ia poetry, contemplation in the
faiences, they have restored the eiftpire of
religion; and the reform of the Reformation,
or rather the philosophical direction of liberty
which it has occasioned, has banished for
ev,er ((at least in. theory) materialism, and
all it? fetal consequences. In the midst of
th*s intellectual revolution, so fruitful in
noble results, some writers have gone too
far? ; as it always happens in the oscillations
of thought.
>Ve might say, that the human mind is
continually hurrying from one extreme to
another; as if the opinions which it lias just
desested. , were changed into regrets to pursue
}i. The Reformation, according to some
authors of the new school, has been the
cause of many religious wars; it has sepa-
rated the north from the south of Germany;
it has given the Germans the fatal habit of
fighting with each other; and these divisions
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? CATHOLICISM. SQ$
have robbed them of the right of being
denominated one nation. Lastly, the Re-
formation, by giving birth to the spirit of
'inquiry, has dried up the imagination, and
introduced scepticism in the place of faith;
it is necessary then, say the same advocates,
to return to the unity of the church, by re-
turning to Catholicism.
In the first place, if Charles the Fifth had
adopted Lutheranism, there would Jhave
been the same unity in Germany; and the
whole country, like the northern portion of
it, would have formed an asylum for the
arts and sciences. Perhaps this harmony
would have given birth to free institutions,
combined with a real strength; and perhaps
that sad separation of character and know-
ledge would have been avoided, which has
yielded up the north to reverie, and kept the
south in ignorance. But without losing
ourselves in conjectures as to what would
have happened, a sort of calculation always
very uncertain, we cannot deny that the
sera of the Reformation was that in which
learning and philosophy were introduced
into Germany. This country is not perhaps
raised to the first rank in war, in the arts,
in political liberty: it is knowledge of
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? 304 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
which Germany has a right to be proud>>
and its influence upon the thinking part of
Europe takes its date from Protestantism.
Such revolutions neither proceed nor are
brought to an end by arguments; they be-
long to the historical progress of the human
mind; and the men who appear to be their
authors, are never more than their conse-
quences.
Catholicism, disarmed in the present day,
has the majesty of an old lion, which once
made the world tremble;--but when the
abuses of its power brought on the Refor-
mation, it put fetters on the human mind;
and far from want of feeling being then the
cause of the opposition to its ascendancy, it
was in order to make use of all the faculties
of the understanding and of the imagination
that the freedom of thought was so loudly
demanded again. If circumstances, of en-
tirely divine origin, and in which the hand
of man was not in the least operative, were
hereafter to bring about a reunion between
the two churches, we should pray to God,
it appears to me, with new emotion, by
the side of those venerable priests, who, in
the latter years of the last century, have
suffered so much for conscience sake. But,
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? Catholicism. '305
assuredly, it is not the change of religion in
a few individuals, nor, above all, the unjust
discredit which their writings have a tend-
ency to throw upon the reformed religion,
that can lead to the unity of religious opi-
nions.
There are in the human mind two very
distinct impulses; one makes us feel the
want of faith, the other that of examination.
One of these tendencies ought not to be
satisfied at the expense of the other: Pro-
testantism and Catholicism do not arise from
the different character of the Popes, and of
a Luther: it is a poor mode of examining
history to attribute it to accidents. Protest-
antism and Catholicism exist in the human
heart;--they are moral powers which are
developed in nations, because they are in-
herent in every individual. If in religion,
as in other human affections, we can unite
what the imagination and the reason sug-
gest, there is harmony in the whole man;
but in man, as in the universe, the power
of creating and that of destroying, faith and
inquiry, succeed and combat each other.
It has been attempted, in order to har-
monize these two inclinations, to penetrate
deeper into the soul; and from that attempt
VOL. III. x
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? 306 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
have arisen the mystical opinions of which
we shall speak in the following chapter; but
the small number of persons who have ab-
jured Protestantism have done nothing but
revive resentments. Ancient denominations
reanimate ancient quarrels; magic makes use
of certain words to call up apparitions; we
may say, that upon all subjects there are
terms which exert this power; these are the
watch-words which serve for a rallying
point to party spirit; we cannot pronounce
them without agitating afresh the torches of
discord. The German Catholics have, to the
present moment, shown themselves very ig-
norant of what was passing upon these points
in the North. The literary opinions seemed
to be the cause of the small number of per-
sons who changed their religion; and the
ancient church has hardly regained any pro-
selytes.
Count Frederic Stolberg, a man of great
respectability, both from his character and
his talents, celebrated from his youth as a
poet, as a passionate admirer of antiquity,
and as a translator of Homer, was the first
in Germany to set the example of these new
conversions, and he has had some imitators.
The most illustrious friends of the Count
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? CATHOLICISM.
Stolberg, Klopstock, Voss, and Jacobi, sepa-
rated themselves from him in consequence of
this action, which seemed to disavow the
misfortunes and the struggles which the re-
formed have endured during three centuries;
nevertheless, M. de Stolberg has lately pub-
lished a History of the Religion of Jesus
Christ, which is calculated to merit the ap-
probation of all Christian communities. It is
the first time that we have seen the Catholic
opinions defended in this manner; and if
Count Stolberg had not been educated as a
Protestant, perhaps he would nothavehad that
independence of mind which enables him to
make an impression upon enlightened men.
We find in this book a perfect knowledge of
the Holy Scriptures, and very interesting re-
searches into the different religions of Asia,
which bear relation to Christianity. The
Germans of the North, even when they sub-
mit to the most positive doctrines, know
how to give them the stamp of their philo-
sophy.
Count Stolberg, in his publication, attri. j
buted to the Old Testament a much greater
importance than Protestant writers in general
assign to it. I consider sacrifices as the basis
of all religion; and the death. of Abel as the
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? 308 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
first type of that sacrifice which forms the
groundwork of Christianity. In whatever
way we decide upon this opinion, it affords
much room for thought. The greater part
of ancient religions instituted human sacri-
fices; but in this barbarity there was some-
thing remarkable, namely, the necessity
of a solemn expiation. Nothing, in effect,
can obliterate from the soul the idea, that
there is a mysterious efficacy in the blood of
the innocent, and that heaven and earth are
moved by it. Men have always believed
that the just could obtain, in this life or the
other, the pardon of the guilty. There are
some primitive' ideas in the human species
which re-appear with more or less disfigure-
ment, in all times, and among all nations.
These are the ideas upon which we cannot
grow weary of reflecting; for they assuredly
preserve some traces of the lost dignities of
our nature.
The persuasion, that the prayers and the
self-devotion of the just can save the guilty,
is doubtless derived from the feelings that
we experience in the relations of life; but
nothing obliges us, in respect to religious
belief, to reject these inferences. What do
we know better than our feelings? and why
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? CATHOLICISM. 3Q9
should we pretend that they are inapplicable
to the truths of religion? What can there be
in man but himself, and why, under the
pretext of anthropomorphism, hinder him
from forming an image of the Deity after
his own soul? No other messenger, I think,
can bring him news from heaven.
Count Stolberg endeavours to show, that
the tradition of the fall of man has existed
among all the nations of the earth, and par-
ticularly in the East; and that all men have
in their hearts the remembrance of a happi-
ness of which they have been deprived. In
effect, there are in the human mind two
tendencies as distinct as gravitation and at-
traction in the natural world; these are the
ideas of decay, and of advance to perfection.
One should say, that we feel at once a regret
for the loss of some excellent qualities which
were gratuitously conferred upon us, and a
hope of some advantages which we may
acquire by our own efforts; in such a manner,
that the doctrine of perfectibility, and that of
the golden age, united and confounded, excite
at the same time in man grief for having lost
these blessings, and emulation to recover
them. The sentiment is melancholy, and
the spirit is daring; and from this reverie
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