GIFT OF Grace E.Barnard 1 Education Dep t n . /f^^ ctW-^'^^^^^ *^' L E V A N A. LEVANA; OB, THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION. BY JEAN PAUL FRIEDIIICH RICHTER. tonalatcb from tljc (l^crman. PRECEDED BY A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR, AND HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, A FRAGMENT. BOSTON : D. C. HEATH & COMPANY. 1890. LBloJS ^. /^^yi^u^A^X EDUCATION DEPX, PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION OF LEVANA. At a time when the public mind is so fully awakened to the importance of education, it appeared to the Translator that the thoughts of one of the greatest Germans on the subject were worthy of deep consideration ; and he offers them with the more satisfaction because he believes it impossible either for the advocates or for the opponents of the government scheme of education to draw offensive weapons from this arsenal. For Lev ANA treats neither of national nor congregational education ; it elevates neither state nor priest into educator ; but it devolves that duty, where the interest ever ought to be, on the parents, and particularly on the mother. It is far from the Translator's object to disparage the great efforts now making to improve the state of popular education ; but he believes that, in propounding general systems, it is too much forgotten that real education is i^e work of individuals on individuals. ] It may be necessary — it is necessary — to provide instruction, and, as far as possible, education, for the classes who are too ignorant to seek it for themselves. But let us not, in the mania for systems, forget how little these alone can effect. And, farther we would ask, is the education of the upper classes so perfect that they may leave all care for it to watch over only that of the lower ? If there be much of crime— the acknowledged consequence of ignorance— among the masses, is there less of vice— the equally sure accompaniment of bad edacation— among the higher grades of society ? In the belief that Levana may tend much to ameliorate that department of education which is most neglected and needs most care — home training — the Translator makes no apology for clothing it in an English dress. He is, indeed, surprised that it has not previously been presented to the English reader. But 56772G vi translator's preface. like all Eichter's writings, Levana is peculiarly characterised by that union of qualities called in England — " German." This feature, especially when displayed in a work on so serious a subject as education, and being most strongly marked in the introductory chapters, on which the reception of a book so much depends, may have led to its being considered unsuitable to English taste. The early part indeed, may cause many to close the book who would find much both to interest and instruct in a patient perusal of the whole work, combining as it does, in a remarkable degree, sound practical sense with fanciful and varied illustration. The acknowledged difficulty of Eichter's style has also, doubtless, had a deterring effect. Those who are acquainted with liis writings will be able to appreciate the difficulties which have beset the Translator, and will be the least inclined to judge harshly the shortcomings of the translation, as compared with its 'great original. For who — save Carlyle — can hope to do justice to the humorous, pathetic, poetic Eichter ; to him whom his countrymen call " Jean Paul, der Einzige " ? The Translator thinks it right to add that he has occasionally omitted, or compressed, a few sentences, where the general usefulness of the work was obviously increased by so doing. This discretion has, however, been very sparingly used, and in no case so as to interfere with the scope of the original. A.H. Liverpool, 1848. PREFACE TO THIS EDITION. In this edition, the passages alluded to above have been inserted in full, and the whole work has undergone a careful revision under the eye of the original translator. The Autobiography is here for the first time published in this country ; as it deals only with the earlier portion of the author's life it has been supplemented by a short memoir condensed from the enthusiastic biography by E. Forster Both these are by another translator. CONTENTS PAOB PREFACE TO TUE Original Translation op Levana . t PREFACE TO THIS Edition ...... vi BIOGRAPHY . xi AUTOBIOGKAPHY. LECTURE I. Wonsiedel— Birth— Grandfather ... a TiECTURE II. Embracing the period from Ist of August, 1765, to the 9th of January, 1776— Joditz— Village Idyls . 14 LECTURE III. (with three Supplements). Schwarzonbach- on-the-Saale — Kiss — Rector — Lord's Supper . . .52 LEVANA; OR, THE D CTEINE OF EDUCATION. FIRST FRAGMENT. CnAP. I. Importance of Education 83 II. Inaugural Discourse at the Johanneum-Paullinum ; or Proof that Education effects little . . .80 IIL lin|)ortanoe of Education 9d Vlll CONTENTS. SECOND FRAGMENT. pagb Chap. I. Spirit and Principle of Education .... lUCi II. To discover and to appreciate the Individuality of the Ideal Man Ill III. On the Spirit of the Age 117 IV. Religious Education 125 THIRD FRAGMENT. / I. The Beginning of Education / II. The Joyousness of Children III. Games of Children IV. Children's Dances V. Music . VI. Commands, Prohibitions VII. Punishments VIII. Screaming and Crying of Children IX. On the Trustfulness of Children Punishments, and Crying 137 146 151 162 164 166 173 179 183 Appendix to the Thikd Fragment. On Physical Education . 188 CoMio Appendix and Epilogue to the Fikst Volume. A dreamed Letter to the late Professor Gellert, in which the Author begs for a Tutor 205 FOURTH FRAGMENT. On Female Education. Chap. 1 216 II. On the Destination of the Female Sex . . .222 III. Nature of Girls ... ... 227 IV. Education of Girls 238 V. Private Instructions of a Prince to the Governess of his Daughter 269 FIFTH FRAGMENT. Chap. I. On the Education of a Prince 281 SIXTH FRAGMENT. On the Moral Education op Boys. Chap. 1 311 — II. Truthfulness 329 III. Education of the Affections 338 IV. Supplementary Appendix to Moial Education . . 350 CONTENTS. IX BEVENTH FRAGMENT. hagb Chap. I. On the De\elopnient of the Desire for Intellectual Progress ........ 86(j II. Speech and Writing 309 III. Attention, and the Power of Adaptive Combination . 875 IV. Development of Wit 382 V. Development of Reflection, Abstraction, and Self- Knowledge ; together with an extra Paragraph on the Powers of Action and Business . . . 3^7 VI. On the Education of the Recollection — not of the Memory . . . . . . . . 3S9 EIGHTH FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Development of the Sense of Beauty . . . 31>5 II. Classical Education . . . . . .400 NINTH FRAGMENT, or Key-stone 40S BIOGRAPHY. § 1. Birth. — Parentage. —Early Years. In the spring of the year 1763 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter was born at Wonsiedel, a town of Baireuth, in Bavaria, on the range of hills known as the Fichtelgebirge. His father, Johann Christian Giiristoph Richter, was the son of a schoolmaster of Neustadt, of whom little is known but that he was " poor and pious in a high degree." Both these characteristics Paul's father appears to have inherited, though perhaps in a somewhat modified measure. He was a man of stern and uncompromising but cheerful and kind disposition, with a vigorous nature which could hold its own against the ills of life. Paul's mother, Sophia Rosina, was the daughter of Johann Paul Kuhn, a clotii- weaver of the neighbouring village of Hof. About two years after Paul's birth his father received a clericcd appointment at Joditz, a village not far distant, which gave him a small increase of income. Here he remained for ten years, during which time Paul appears to have enjoyed a happy childhood, or one at any rate to which he looked back with feelings of much pleasure. That he made small progress in book-learning was doubt- lessly owing more to the shortcomings of the teachers than of the taught, since he showed much fondness for books and eagerly read such literature as fell into his hands This consisted mainly of a few theological books of his father's — of which he understojd not a word — and some old newspapers. For a short time he went to school, but Xll BIOGRAPHY. his father soon withdrew him on account of some ill-treat- ment which he had received at the hands of another boy, and he and his brother Adam were in future taught at home. The instruction they received seems to have consisted entirely of learning by heart — either pages of Latin words or grammar, or Scripture texts. With so little intellectual nourishment, it is not surpriising that he showed no signs of remarkable mental growth while at Joditz. It was in Paul's thirteenth year that his father received what promised to be a better living in Schwarzenbach-on- the-Saale. For the boy this was a decided gain. Here he had many advantages v/hich had before been v^ anting, not the least of which was access to a more plentiful supply of books in the library of a friend, a young man named Vogel. The master too of the school seems to have taken pride in his promising pupil, and under his tuition Paul acquired some little knowledge of Latin and Greek, and even made a beginning with Hebrew. Now too he first had some leshons in music, for which he bad decided talent, inherited from his father who, Paul tells us, was a composer of church music and had erred in not devoting himself entirely to the Tone Muse. A young curate also took an inteie.^t in Paul and obtained his father's permission to have him for two hours in the afternoon to give him instruction in geography, philo- sophy, and theology. For the former of these he appears however to have had little liking, and consequently to have made no progress therein, but in the study of v^j philosophy and theology he was as it were in his natural element. The exercises which he did for the curate were his first attempts at composition.* The reader is here recommended to turn to the Autobiography, where he will find a full account of tlie firet fourteen years of Ricliter'a life. BIOGRAPHY. xui ^" 2. High School. — Frien-ds. — Fjrst Literary Effo:its. 1779—1781. In the Easter of the year 1779, Richter, being then sixteen years of age, was sent to the high school at Hof. In Schwarzenbach he had unconsciously acquired know- ledge and developed a power of thought which raised him far above his school-fellows, above the school — certainly not a very remarkable one — and beyond his own years. Werner the kind old Rector* of the school and Volkel the curate, a younger man of much ability, doubtlessly con- tributed considerably to this precocious development, but perhaps he owed most to Vogel, the pastor of the neighbouring village of Rehau, a man of wit and bene- volence, who took an interest in the clever boy, and gave him the range — though with certain limitations — of a well-storei library. The high school at Hof offered scanty means for intellectual development. Neither the Rector* nor the Conrector evinced any particular talent for teaching, and Richter was thus thrown almost entirely on himself and his former studies, in following up his predilec- tion for philosophy ; the study of history to which he had before been indifferent now became thoroughly distasteful through the dryness and tediousness of the lectures. In addition to this intellectual want he had also othei trials, as the following anecdote will show, which though flight and iusignifi'-ant in themselves were bitter and painful fur a hcnsitive disposition such as his. After the entrance examination Kichter was pro- nounced fit for the upper Prima* but at the request of his father, who feaied the envy of his school -fellows, he wa^j enrolled among the middle Primaners. Even this * For tlie explanation of thb and following titles see Autobiogrupby P *• XIV BIOGRAPHY. degree of preference was unheard of and awakened the feelings, which his father had feared, in some of the other boys, who resolved in school-boy fashion to have their revenge. This they did by idling him that it was the cubtom and duty of all new members of the Prima to kiss the hand of the master at the firist French lesson, and Eichter, in fulfilment of this supposed duty, innocently and respectfully sought the reluctant hand, but his master, who, being no favourite, supposed it to hxy some fresh in.^ult, all the more stinging as coming from a new boy, rushed at the innocent lad in a burst of passion and then left the room with a volley of oaths, whilst the new Primaner stood there outwitted and derided by the companions in whom he had hoped to find friends. One only of them, Christian Otto, took no part in the general uproar, and sowed in that hour the seed of a friendship which lasted throughout their lives. An occurrence of a different sort however soon raised Eichter again to his right place among his school-fellows. It was the custom at the school for the boys to hold debates under the presidency of the Eector, who decided on the respective merits of the two parties. When Eichter's turn came to lead the opposition, the Eector had chosen a theological subject. Partly from natural bent and partly from intercourse with his decidedly rationalistic old friends in Schwarzenbach and Eehau, Eichter already inclined to heterodoxy, and had acquired through his private reading, an amount of knowledge of which no one, least of all the Eector, had any idea and which in the debate — to him no school exercise, but a matter of feeling — he used as w^eapons against his opponent and against the Eector with his sacred and infallible doctrines. His opponent with ordinary schoolboy knowledge was Boon reduced to silence, while the Eector himself from BIOGRAPHY. XV lack of means, strove equally vainly against tlie young rationalist, who, encouraged by his success, proceeded more and more boldly until at last the Eector in despair took refuge in the authority of his office, and commanding silence, left the chair and the room without the usual concluding ceremony. Eichter was thus acknow- ledged victorious by the whole class and respected accordingly. The first friendship which Eichter made was with the above-mentioned Christian Otto, who was the Fon of a well-to-do commercial man and a youth whose thought- fulness and appreciation of right and duty were supple- mented by cordial manners and an aflectionate disposition. He afterwards became Eichter's chief confidant in his literary plans and undertakings, and his censor and adviser, as may be eeen from their correspondence.* The honour of being chosen to speak at the yearly Actus or Speech-day was conferred on Eichter in both the years that he was at school. I'he speeches recited on these days were the original compositions of the boys who were also allowed to select their own subjects. Those chosen by Eichter, viz., " The Value of the early Study of Philosophy," and " The Importance of the Dis- covery of New Truths "f are characteristic. The peculiar tendency of his mind, — an enthusiasm for knowledge, a keenness of thought and tenderness of feeling are very apparent in both, but in the latter is especially seen a maturity of mind in his zeal for universal culture and progress which even in his sixteenth year he lainly distinguished from the superficial and transitory desire for radical destruction. Jean PauTt BrieftcechMl mit seinem Freunde Otto. Berlin, 1829. Otto outlived his friend some years, and is the editor of one of hie biographies. (Wahrheit aua Jean Paul's Leben.) t The former is printed in Jean Paul's Sammtliche Werke, Ist ed. Tol. Uiii. ; the last named appears to be the earlier in date. \^ V XVI BIOGRAPHY. In addition to his school classes and school work, Richter employed himself in a manner which, although he was still quite unconscious of it himself, decidedly foreshadowed his future vocation and which laid the foundation both of a comprehensive knowledge and of an unexampled wealth of thought. He made a library — a double one we may say — with his own hand. First he took copious extracts from all the books that he read, the contents of which he thought of any importance, and entered them carefully in note books, providing each with two indexes, one of the writings from which he took the extracts, and one of the subjects of the extracts. At Schwarzenbach-on-the-Saale, when still a lad, he had already begun this work, and in the year 1778, he had filled two quarto books of above two hf ndred closely written pages. At the commencement of the year 1779 he completed another in Schwarzenbach and two more in Hof ; in 1780 five more, and so on, with untiring zeal. Throughout his life he continued this method of retaining in his memory all that he read, but in later years he did it more briefly. He himself says, in one of the books of a later period, "To have my life's history, I need only open my extract books; with each one is connected a portion of my life." The extracts treat chiefly of such subjects as the Eternity of Hell Punish- ment — the Works of . the Devil — the Connection Natural and Christian Religions — Love towards Enemies — the Atonement — Faith — Original Sin — and so on ; also epigrams and poems, comic and sentimental. In the second volume are: Connexion of the Body and Soul — the Diversity of the Senses — What is Beauty? — Blind religious Zeal — Eating and Drinking — What would^ Man be, if he were not immortal? — Spinoza's Divinity,] It wo'dd require too great a space to give these in de-4 tail ; each book contained on an average several hundred] BIOGRAPHY. XV 11 snbjects; it is enougli that we compreliend what a mass of knowledge he acquired in his earliest youth, how he selected it in accordance with the bent of his mind, and arranged it for study and future use. Not less important to him, and to us more significant, was the second part of his MS. library — the records of his own thoughts and researi hes. With the same order and neatness he com- menced these books for "Exercises in Thinking," in which he wrote do\NTi his philosophical speculations and religious reflections. These he kept with the same care as his extracts, although he expressly denied that they had any value for other people. The first volume begins in November 1780. Besides a number of disconnected notes it contains seven treatises with such titles as, " The Nature of our Conception of God," "A Thing without Force is an Impossibility," " Is the World a perpetuum mobile ? " A second volume, with similar contents, was added in December of the same year, and many others followed. The following extracts will serve as specimens : Fools and Wise Men, Blockheads and Geniuses. " These appellations do not indicate the same things, though they are often confounded. Their difference is easily detected. " The Blockhead is a being to be pitied ; one whose intellect never grasps more than a small number of ideas ; and who, enshrouded in deep darkness, is never illumined by the beams of truth ; the Blockhead is the polypus between man and the animals. 1'he Fool is not so at all. Most are fools because they know too much or more than is good for them. They know much, but become fools just because they apply it all badly. The Blot^khead is bom, the Fool made. The Blockhead creeps along like the snail for slowness, for he is far behind on the road of tmth and incapable of advancing. He is on the right I. h XMll BIOGRAPHY. road perhaps, but is it to be wocdered at, that he who has gone only a few steps from the gate has not yet lost his way? I'he Fool is on in front, but he has left the right road and wanders without guidance. Ihe Block- head is not recognised at once, for in common with the Wise Man, he says little and does not betray himself. Often, too, he adopts the mask of the Wise Man, as the donkey as>unies the lion's skin — the dress is not becoming to either, but only the sharpnighted can unmask them. The Fool, on the contrary, is apparent at once ; for he bears a mark of his own, which distinguishes liim from others, as the uniform does the soldier. In fact he is not as others are. The Fool says all that he thinks — and this betrays him at once. We should find more Blockheads in the world if more people were open enough to give utterance to their thoughts. The Blockhead is a Block- head for this reason, that he is not one of the animals ; among them be would pass for a Genius. The Fool is a Fool for this reason, that he does not live in a particular "^"^orld which is not the real one, namely, in that or e which exists in his own head, where he would be con- sidered clever. The Blockhead cannot be cured, because he is born one — he is a feeble creature, whose powers cannot be increased. Ihe Fool can be rendered better just because he is able to become worse. He is a strong man, whose powers are badly employed; nothing is necessary but to turn them in another direction. Mad- ness is the highest degree of foolishness — and this is cured now-a-days. In sleep we are all Fools, and this because we have lost our guides, the senses. The Blockhead is not one when in sleep — he is then an embryo— he does not think at all. The fault in the Blockhead is that he has no imagination ; the Fool, on the contrary, is one because he has too much imagination. Thus is the poet in danger of becoming a Fool. Hence comes the much praised furoi BIOGRAPHY. XIX poeticus. The Blockhead has his counterpart among the animals ; not so the Fool. This indicates that the latter is more nearly allied to man than the former. All men are subject at tiiues to foolishness and the greatest oftenest of any ; but only a small number are stupid. One is stupid continually, but one is a fool for a short time only. The heart of the Blockhead is little capable of noble emotions ; that of the Fool is open to all, pro- vided only that they do not touch the whims which render him a fool. Fools are confined or put in fetters ; but Blockheads are allowed full liberty. They often till the lecturer's chair, or the pulpit — they sit on thrones. Often nothing more is necessary in order to obtain an office than to be a Blockhead ; for he who has to bestow it has sympathy for those who resemble himself— he appre- ciates in others that which he values in himself. Fools and Blockheads are alike only in this, that neither of them thinks he is what he is." From the " Inquiry into the various Religions of the World," we will give only the conclusion. " And what then is the result of all ? This ! that all religions are good — and for the places where they are — the best. They are different means to the same end. Any religion to which I cleave with conviction is the best for me. For another it is not so, because he is not convinced by it. Christianity is so little spread through the world because excellence is more rare than mediocrity. Kidicule then no religion which thou pronouncest false— thou wilt ridicule Him who suffered that religion to arise. Let "OS be tolerant towards those whom we may surpass in intellect, but whose hearts are perhaps better, kinder, and more loving than ours. Let us not as formerly, murder our brethren in order to please a Preserver of Life — not by stakes and inquisitions propagate a religion which ia h 2 XX BIOGRAPHY. ruled by Love. How glorious are these prospects ! All are our brethren — all our relations in faith — all are called to one Heaven — all loved by one Father ! " The following " Observations " from the first two books may be added to the foregoing " Inquiries." " Many a one thinks himself pious when he calls the world a ' vale of misery.' But I think he would be more so if he called it a ' valley of joy.' God will be better pleased with him who finds everything good in the world, than with him who is content with nothing. With so many thousand joys in the world — is it not black ingratitude to call it a place of sorrow and affliction? I could the sooner forgive such an expression in a child of misfortune who in the gloomy hours of melancholy relieves his oppressed heart in lamentations, but in a fat-bellied abbot who spends his days luxuriously on the soft sofa, who knows no other burden than that of having a restless soul which interrupts the sweetness of his rest by feelings of ennui^ — to hear such an expression from him is insufferable, it is mocking the Creator, and re- paying His kindness with ingratitude. " Our Creator has employed every means to awaken and to nourish in us a love towards one another — the love which makes life so sweet to us, which enables us to bear each suffering with double strength. A flame burns unceasingly in our bosom, kindling joy in us when we see others joyous and filling our hearts with sadness when others weep — we call it love of mankind. I see one means thereto in that attraction in faces which we call * beauty.' This external charm which so attracts our souls, this power which melts our hearts in melancholy and draws soft tears from our eyes, this divinity in the human face knits more firmly and closely the bond which an ever active impulse ties. 0, rather would I fall down before the Maker of all that is beautiful and perfect and BIOGRAPHY. XXI weep before Him, when I see a t<)ucliing beanty, than cherish a voluptuous thought." What must strike us particularly in these earliest utterances of Jean Paul, is that no trace of that quality which was afterwards so prominent in his writings, namely satiric humour, is yet to be found in them. Religious reflections, philosophical researches, observations of nature and human life, form the chief substance of his thoughts and productions, the kejTiote of which is love and joy. That tenderness of feeling peculiar in so high a degree to our author sought expression in a story written at this time which, with an allusion easily seen, he named *' Abelard and Heloise." This novel, in the form of a series of letters, was found among his papers after his death, neatly written with his own hand and dated January 1781. The tone of the book is sufficiently shown by the motto prefixed to it : *' The sensitive man is too good for this earth, on which are vain scofifers; — only in j^onder world where are sympathising angels does he find the reward for his tears." The following note written on the reverse side of the title-page will tell us in what estimation he himself held the book a few months after it was written, and show also that he had already commenced the healthful practice of selforiticism. " Faults : This story is wholly without plan. The plot is a complete failure ; it is commonplace and uninteresting. The characters are not so much badly described as wholly nndescribed. Of Abelard and Heloise one sees nothing but the hearts, none of their thoughts ; none of their charac- teristics are painted ; their love itself is not even correctly represented; besides this, the whole is exaggerated; in many passages one feels nothing just because it is meant to be exceedingly touching. It is also contrary to pro- bability, it is i'ery shallow, etc., etc. The language is not Gocthesian, but a bad imitation of it. XXU BIOGRAPHY. *' Beauties : The language of the feelings is not every- where misrepresented, the descriptions of natural scenes are not a complete failure. The German is not quite pitiable, it is not at any rate like that, which the Force- Geniuses (Kraft-Genies) of the present time write. There are also a few isolated good remarks to be found, and I should have made more, if I had striven less after senti- ment. Finally this booklet has for me the beauty, that it represents a certain condition of my heart at a par- ticular time, which I now consider as folly, because I have not the happiness to bo the same fool still." In spite of these indications of diligence on Richter's 2^art, his external life at this time was far from favourable to the pursuit of his studies. Shortly after their arrival in Hof in 1779, he had lost his father, who left their mother with her five children entirely destitute. Their grandparents with whom Paul was living, and on whose support his mother was entirely dependent, died soon afterwards within a short time of one another. About the heritage, itself insignificant, there arose a lawsuit among the relations, who thought themselves badly treated, and almost the whole of it was swallowed up. Eichter then began first to feel the pressure of poveity and want, and it was only by his unceasing mental activity and the cheerfulness with which he resigned himself to circumstances that he preserved himself free from their fatal efiects. §. III. University Life. — " Greenland Lawsuits." 1781—1784. In the spring of the year 1781, Eichter left the high school and went to Baireuth for his matriculation examination. A humorous description of his ride thither is given in the " Flegeljahre " (Wildoats), After passing his examination successfully, he started on the 11th May, BIOGRAPHY. XXlll 1781, on liis journey to the University of Leipzig. Here turning to his father's profession, more because he was the eldest son of a clerg^^man, than fiom his oxNTi choice, Eichter at first attended the theological lectures at Leipzig, but also at the same time in pursuance of his natural taste he attended those on philosophy and mathematics. The following extracts from his letters at this time may help to show us his impression of Leipzig and universit}^ life. '' I have arrived here safely. It is a fine town, if a town with large houses and long streets is called fine. For my part I think it monotonous. And the beautiful neighbourhood too, which you promised me, I do nA)t find anywhere round about Leipzig. Everywhere a per- petual sameness, — no valleys and hills — wanting in all the charms which have always rendered the neighbour- hood where yon still live so plea-ing to me. In many respects things here are as you told me, in others they are different. I get a dinner for 18 pfennigs.* And besides this, I have got the Inscrijpzion\ with Eector Clodius gratis, and the lectures too. I have only to pay It) thalersj for a nice room in the Three Roses Inn in I'eteistrasse No. 2, on the second floor, but this is under the condition that I turn out during Fair times. The students too are as polite and polished as j'ou told mo. But in the following matter your prophecy does not seem as if it would be re-alised. Private tutorships (In/or- mazionen) are scarce here and the crowd of applicants is innumerable. In large houses those students only are taken who have recommendations. An Informazion is thus not such a common thing, and a good one is rare. I have this myself from the lips of several professors. All have told me that not very consolatory proverb of Leipzig: Lipaia vult expectari. And the expectari is so • About twopenoc. f College fees. J About 2/. 8«. V XXIV BIOGRAPHY. indefinite that when one has been fifty years and has not got a place after all, they still continue to say, ' He has only to wait, something will be sure to turn up ! ' " Herr Kirsch* of Hof travelled with us to Leipzig. His presence has been of great assistance to me. He has recommended me most favourably to several people, and he has also written me a very good Testimonium panpertatis. I need only to show this in order to get all my lectures free." Later he writes : " My supposition about the expectari has not been dis- proved so far, it has rather been confirmed. I still have no pupils here, no table to dine at ;f no acquaintance among the students, no anything at all. It is by no means easy to get access to the professors. Those who are really celebrated and whose favour would satisfy me, are sur- rounded by the amount of work and besieged by a crowd of other distinguished persons and a swarm of base flatterers, so that any one who is not recommended by his coat or his rank can only with difficulty become acquainted with them. If anyone should want to speak with a professor without having a special request to make, he would lay himself open to the suspicion of vanity. When I consider the crowd of students who deceive the professors and embitter them against the better ones, then I am able to explain to myself the wdiole phenomenon. But I do not on this account give up hope. I shall overcome all these difficulties — I can already do so partly, but after all, I do not need it. I come now to the mystery, the explanation of which you have so eagerly awaited, and which I only vaguely stated to my mother. * The Kector of liis school. * Einen Tisch hahen , lit. to have a table, i.e. to have a free dinner. It is customary for families to invite poor students with whom they are acquainted, to dine with them on a fixed day in each week during thtir res deu3e at the University. BIOGRAPHY. XXV But it is just as little solved now as then, only this I can tell you, that it has nothing to do with a Stipendium, or a Tisch, an Informazion or anything else of the kind. It concerns something of which you have no suspicion, of which I cannot tell you until the result answers my expectation. So much for that. " Fashion is here the tyrant befellers, attempts at mediation through others had all miscarried entirely. For a long time he had not received anything from home and liad even grieved his good mother, who always hoped that he would go into the Church, in being unable to do anything to help her ; assistance from his friends could not be asked to an unlimited extent, and he was ngw reduced to the choice BIOGRAPHY. XXXIU tetween debts and hunger. One evening, accompanied by a friend, he went at dusk to the town-gate to await tho stage-coach which took him back to Hof, and thus in November 1784 brought his university career to an end. " A gladdening and enchanting time was that of my youth and one to which I ever look back with yearning, though not the external life, the barrenest that a youth ever endured, but the internal which bore a complete spring-time with blossoms and flowers under the deep snow of the external." § IV. TUTORSHIP. — " THE INVISIBLE LODGE." 1784 — 1792. Poverty had driven Eichter from Leipzig and poverty awaited him in Hof. There, in a little room with his mother and younger brothers, he continued his work amid a variety of annoyances and privations. But those things which would have reduced another to despair — the washing and scouring, the cooking, the ironing, and the continual buzzing of the spinning-wheel, by the aid of which his mother gained their scanty livelihood — to him these all became materials for poetry and study, with which he afterwards characterised the " Good Lenette ;'^ and the privations through which they passed, whether serious or comic, he hoarded up for "Siebenkas," his Advocate of the Poor. Like him, Richter was employed while under the pressure of wants from all sides in elaborating his " Devil's Papers." With this work when complete he applied to several publishers, but in vain ; and after numerous other equally fruitless efforts to obtain literary work of any kind, he was at length glad to accept the first offer which promised him freedom from absolute want. This came from the father of one of his friends named von Oertel, who asked him to come to Topen, and undertake the instruction of his youngest son. L e XXXIV BIOGRAPHY. With tlie new year of 1787, Eichter entered on his office with hopes of better times than he had hitherto enjoyed. But though he may well have breathed freely on quitting Hof, it was no paradise to which he came. Herr von Oertel was far from being a genial man, nor did Eichter ever succeed in gaining the confidence or affection of his pupil. He felt too the want of his Hof friends, since there was hardly anyone at Topen with whom he could associate ; and he missed the library of his old friend Vogel. Had it not been for the kindness of the Frau von Oertel, which he always remembered with gratitude, his new life would hardly have been more endurable than the old. In May of this year, Eichter at length succeeded in getting a publisher for the "Devil's Papers," but the honorarium which he received was a mere nothing, and the book seems to have been carelessly and badly printed and remained unnoticed. After the lapse of two years his engagement at Topen came to an end, in what seems to have been not quite a friendly manner, and he returned to his mother at Hof in V the summer of 1789. Necessity, however, forced him again to accept the office of tutor. Seven childen of both sexes and diverse ages and abilities were intrusted to his care, and we now see the author of the " Invisible Lodge " as the teacher of the multiplication table and the rudiments of grammar. At the same time, however, we may see him sketching the outline of his "Levana," while bringing these young plants to a fruitful maturity. His energy and activity at this time are truly astonish- ing. Besides instructing these seven children in ele- mentary knowledge of all kinds, and superintending their work out of school hours which at times was no easy task — one of the boys once did a voluntary composition of 135 pages — he still found time and strength for his BIOGRAPHY. XXXV own development. He continued reading the most im- portant and, as far as possible, the most recent works of all kinds, and, in accordance with his usual custom, made copious extracts from them in his note-books. Of these note books, to which there seems to be no end, he now began several fresh ones, on all kinds of subjects — philo- sophical, historical, sesthetical, geographical, satirical, humorous, etc. By this means he kept himself in constant practice in writing; but these books do not appear to have had an}- further use, for he seldom or never referred to them afterwards in composing his works. In June 1790, he sent Otto a list of thirty-two subjects which he intended to work up. Most of them were finished in the course of this and the following year. We here give a few to show of what kind they were. "Description of the Public and Private Libraries" (comic appendix to " Titan"). " Devilocracy, instead of Theocracy " (unprinted). " Critique of the Opera of the holy Kingdomcome." ** That Women are our Popes " ("Invisible Lodge"). "Grimaces" (unprinted). "Law- courts of Love." " Description of my Epitaph " (un- printed). " Female Fainting Fits " (" Invisible Lodge "). In the same year, 1790, he also wrote the "Bavarian Kreuzer Comedy," which strangely enough remained un- printed, and eventually found place in " The Paper Kite," Frankfort, 1845. But it must not be supposed that he wrote his works off-hand. For the smallest of them he kept special books, and carefully worked out the i:)lan8, characters, and descriptions beforehand, so that each separate work occupied at least as much, time in prepara- tion as in execution. When we see that with all these many and various occupations Kichter found time to keep a written account in his diary of his daily life, and to enter with his own hand all his letters in a correspondence book; it ia 2 XXXVl BIOGRAPHY. difBcTilt to imagine where his material life, with its necessities, can have found a place. His productions still met with no success, but in spite of all difficulties he worked on with obstinate perseverance and in February 1792, after eleven months' labour, he completed his first novel, the " Invisible Lodge." This lie sent to one Moritz, at Berlin, in whose work, " Anton Eeisser," he had recognised a kindred spirit, with a letter, from which the following is an extract : — " I would that you had already read this sheet, that I might not blush under your astonishment on seeing this volume. The black oilskin contains, like life, a man's character, his joys and griefs; a half-broken plan; in short a novel — I had almost written a man. * Why,' I ask myself, ' dost thou send a German novel — for this species of literary spawn, begotten by generatio cequivoca, is repulsive to a man of taste — to one whom thou lovest ; who has so often made thee sad by showing thee what life is, and what man, who casts his leaves therein, what the pointed moment of time is on which we stand ; and how a world lies between our short sleep and dream, and a little earth between those who are sleeping and dreaming somewhat longer.* One is sad when one finishes a book, for one thinks of all other things which one will finish — I am not now in good enough spirits to be clear. " As I send you the book, I should in vain endeavour to hide from you the opinion which I have of it, and which has not allowed me to put it in circulation, like a defaced Louis d'or, on the book exchange and to offer it to the unfeeling touch of intellectual slave-dealers, who are unknown to me. It is sweet to me to know that I send, it to a heart which— excepting its superiority — is like the one under which it has been born and nourished. If after reading it you should think it worthy to be read by the few who are like you, I beg you, either through BIOGRAPHY. XXXVU your opinion, or by a few pages or the whole, to procure for it a commercial hand who will conduct it from the written into the printed world. ^^ j p -p -p »» After so many vain attempts, Richter's hopes for the success of this despatch were not very high; and the greater, therefore, was his surprise when Moritz at once wrote, heartily congratulating him on his work and desiring to make the acquaintance of the author without delay. A publisher was found in Matzdorff, the brother- in-law of Moritz, and Eichter before long had the grati- fication of laj^ng a sum of 100 ducats in the lap of his poor and much astonished mother. End of the Tutorship. — Weimar. — Illness. — Death. 1792—1824. In the autumn of 1792 Jean Paul began his second important work, the " Hesperus." He still, however, retained his post as tutor until the spring of 1 794« when the eldest of his pupils entered the high school at Baireuth, and he returned to his mother's little room at Hof. To make the life of this good woman happier, was now his first object. With the "Invisible Lodge" he had entered on his proper path. For though he could not entirely renounce either jesting or sarcasm, he never again wrote a book wholly of satires like the " Devil's Paper" or the " Green- land Lawsuits." A number of fresh projects now arose in his mind, to all of which he made a beginning. The '* Hesperus,' begun in September 1792, was finished in June 1794. "Siebenkiis" was commenced in the mean- time, and the groundwork to "Titan" was also laid. "Quintus Fixlein," with its jocular and touching ap- pendices was now written and at the end of a year it passed into a second edition together with the " History n/ XXX\lll BIOGEAPHl. of its Prefaces," and the "Annihilation." At the same time too appeared the "Biographical Diversions." His rising fame brought him many invitations to vihit Weimar, the centre of German literature and when, in June 1796, he made a journey thither, he appears to have been welcomed with enthusiasm. He there became per- sonally acquainted with Herder, Knebel, Einsiedel and Frau von Kalb. Wieland who at that time was absent in Switzerland wrote to express his pleasure in the prospect of making Richter's acquaintance. By Schiller and Goethe, who had already expressed unfavourable opinions about his writings, he was not so cordially welcomed, but his presence seems so far to have had an effect, that Goethe declared himself, " favourably disposed towards him on account of his love of truth and desire of improvement," while Schiller not only invited him to become a contributor to the " Horen," but even wished him to settle down permanently at Jena. He also became acquainted with the Duchess Amalie, at whose castle at Tieffurth near Weimar he was a frequent visitor. His increasing fame and the appreciation which he met with wherever he went, began to make him dissatisfied with the limited life in the village of Hof, and on the death of his mother which occurred at this time, he removed to Leipzig. He did not however remain there long, and in 1798 removed to Weimar. Here, through the influence of Jacobi and Herder whose " Metakritik" he read over with him in manuscript, his interest in philosophy was again roused. The negative doctrines of Kant and the idealism of Fichte found no favour with him. His nature demanded a belief in God, and a faith in the im- mortality of the soul, and he appears to have had a much greater sympathy with Herder and Jaccbi. In the Letters to his future son Hans Paul he opposed the critical school with much philosophical acuteness and also with his own BIOGRAPHY. XXX IX peculiar weapons of humour and satire ; against Fichte he directed his " Claris Fichtina." ^Vhile at Weimar he appears to have been a frequent visitor at the court of Hildburghausen. " Imagine," ho writes to Otto, " the angelic duchess with her beautiful childlike eyes, her whole face filled with love and youth and grace, with a nightingale's voice and a mother's heart, then her sister, the Princess of Solms, still more beautiful and just as good, and the third, the Princess of 'J'hurn and Taxis, both of whom arrived with their healthy, happy children the same day as I did. Thes6 people love me and read my books most heartily and wish only that I would remain another week, to see the fourth noble and beautiful sister, the Queen of Prussia. I am always invited to dinner and supper. Yesterday I iiuprovised on the piano before the court." One result of the visit to Hildburghausen was that the Duke conferred on him the title and privileges of a Leijazionsrath ( Councillor of Legation), and another that he dedicated his " 1'itan," upon which he was now engaged, to the "four sisters upon the throne," and a third that he became engaged to one of the court ladies, Fraulein Caroline von Feuchtersleben. This engagement howevePj like a former one, appears to have been amicably broken off, both parties recognising that the difference in their posi- tions and lives threw difficulties in the way of their union. It was in the following }ear, when in Berlin, that he met the lady who was to be his wife. This was Caro* line, the second daughter of the Ohertrihunatrath Maier. 1 heir marriage was celebrated in May 1801. While at Meiningen where they first settled, and after- wards at Coburg, Kichter devoted himself diligently to reading and working. The six volumes of the " Titan,'* of which two had already appeared, were completed. Between the second and third he wrote a few small ei Xl BIOGRAPHY. works. "The secret Complaint of Men of the present Time," and "Strange Company on New Year's Night," and also the second comic appendix to " Titan." About this time too he was working at the " Wildcats " which he at first intended to publish with the title "History of my Brother," and the " Death in the other World." Kequests from all sides for small contributions for albums and periodicals threatened to overwhelm him ; however much he might desire to withstand these, he could not return a negative to all the demands, and we owe many valuable essays to these applications. In February 1802, he wrote to Otto that, after the " Wildcats," he would finish the "Biographical Diversions," and then write "Sieben- kas' Marriage with Natalie," and after that nothing but critical and philosophical works. The " Biographical Diversions " was intended as a companion novel to " Titan," and Eichter made preparations for it with this inten- tion ; for " Siebenkas' Second Marriage " also the plan and many studies still exist, but neither of these works was completed, though many a humorous and elevating work followed besides the critical and philosophical ones. While at Coburg, Jean Paul suffered a severe loss in the death of Herder. To his grief for his friend is probably due the change which we notice at this time in his writings. The " Wildcats," which he had been working at with great pleasure, was now laid aside, and with it all imaginative writing. He turned to the " Introduction to iiEsthetics," and after the completion of that, commenced preparations for the " Levana." In 1804 he removed to Baireuth, where he devoted himself, if possible, with more energy than ever to his work. After the completion of the "Levana," we find him next writing on political subjects. His admiration for Napoleon's greatness struggled for some time with his patriotism. For humanity he would BIOGRAPHY. xli have sacrificed his nationality; but when the conqueror showed himself the enemy of both, Eichter no longer hesitated on which side to place himself. But he sympathised as little in the dirge of the despondent as in the cry of hatied against the enemy, and least of all did he share in the fear of Germany's annihilation. Hope seems to have been the keynote of his compositions, and in the midst of the din of war he cheered his countrymen with " The Chicken-hearted Attila Schmelzle," " Fibel the Coxcomb," and " The Droll Cjmic Katzenberger." While with the more serious " Twilight " and the '' Peace " and "Lent Sermons" he warned, admonished and soothed them. The following letter to Otto in May 1808 gives one a glimpse of his feelings and opinions at this time : " My heart is now rigid, barren and cold. The spring with all its starry heavens is nothing to me. I shall remain rigid and cold until the great world-game has been won. This however does not withhold me— it spurs me on — from working zealously with my individual powers for the general good. Let him whom the time strikes down, first raise himself again, and then it with him. If the plurality of devils has some power, that of angels has still more. Still more, I say, for human nature gives ten angels the balance against one hundred devils. , . If this were not so, humanity instead of rising would long since have sunk under the preponderance of the weak, the stupid and the bad." W hilo his opinions strengthened the love of many of his old friends and also gained him many new ones, they did not fail, on the other hand, to estrange many from him. Among these latter was the Duke Emil August of Gotha, who had formerly been one of his great admirers. The loss of his favour, however, was compensated for by Xlii BIOGRAPHY. the frlendsliip of another German Prince, namely, Carl von Dalberg, Prince of Primas. He was the first who remembered the princely privilege of showing gratitude in the name of his people to their benefactor, and not content with admiring Richter's genins and praising his powers, he thought also of the conditions necessary for the development of these powers and granted him a yearly pension of 1000 guldens. Such assistance was the more wel- come as the King of Prussia had withdrawn a promise, given some years before, that he would grant him a prebendary. The "Autumn Flowers," published in 1810, is a collection of essays and short pieces on political and other subjects, which had first appeared in magazines and which he now collected into a volume. Two years later, after the termination of the war, he commenced " Nicolaus Margraf " (The Comet), a comic novel. He appears to have made more extensive preparations for this than for any other of his books, and worked at it with much pleasure. " I am now boiling and roasting over a large comic work," he writes in July 1813. " But in it I have vowed I will not again do as I have done hitherto, for in all my comic works, like a child born ball-shape and straightway crucified on a pillow, I have yielded to the strict rules of art, and have, alas ! been only too proper ; now I will give myself the reins and go where I will — up, down, in flights and springs— with real boldness. My friend, I will retrieve and postscript my youth in age." Too much work and anxiety began about this time to tell on Eichter's robust health, and we find him making frequent little tours for the sake of change of scene. On one of these trips in 1812, he met with F. H. Jacobi in Nurnberg, with whom he had long corres- ponded but not met personally. Four years later, when visiting Regensburg, he made the acquaintance of Prince Primas Carl von Dalberg, whom we have already men- BIOGRAPHY. Xliii tioned. With him Richter seems to have been on good terms. He writes to Otto, "I have never in so short a time become one-eighth part so fond of a prince. Of an evening we often sit until dusk before the half-emptied bottle and talk of religion, philosophy and scientific topics of all kinds." The following year (1817), Eichter visited Heidelberg, where he made the acquaintance of such men as Yoss, Paulus, Hegel, Schwarz. He here received his , doctor's degree, and was feted by professors and students as he had never been before. To his wife he writes, "I have passed hours here such as I have never ex- perienced under the brightest heaven of my life, in particular the water-party, the students' Ykats and the songs from the old Italian music, but I thank the Allgood as well as I can by gentleness, modesty, love and justice to all." The piece called " The Evergreen of our Feelings " which is a memorial of this visit, was written soon after his return home. Besides new editions of some of his other works, he now at the request of his friends began the Auto- biography, for which however he appears to have had no zest. In 1818 he wrote to Voss, " At present I am writing my life, though I would rather write that of any one else, yet I must do it for no one knows my inner life but God and the devil ; the form however of the Biography will be different from that of all former ones." And again, " I have little pleasure in the Biography because there is no scope for imagination in it, and I have never even in novels liked to let the bare history flow on without the two banks of jest and feeling, and also because I care for no one less than myself. I wish I could relate my life to you, and you could put it in proper shape ; but I doubt not I shall find or make the right vehicle for it." In this frame of mind he attempted to weave his life into the story, " Nicolaus Margraf," already mentioned, which he was now writing, or to bring it in some other way in con- xliv BIOGRAPHY. nexion with the store of thoughts and ideas which he nad hoarded in his brain. But the work does not appear to have become less distasteful, and he laid it aside before he had proceeded far and devoted himself with more energy to the " Comet." We now fast approach the end. In 1821, he received a blow from which he never recovered, in the death of his son Max, a promising young man, who died while at the university, of a nervous fever brought on by overwork, and aggravated by a despondent state of mind induced by the study of philosophy. After his son's death, Eichter appears to have lost his taste for satirical humorous v/riting. The Autobiography and " Comet " were laid aside and he began immediately the " Selina," a work on the immortality of the soul, which however he did not live to finish. In the spring following his son's death while he was staying at Dresden whither he had gone to recruit his health, he found that he was fast losing the sight of one of his eyes. Doctors and opticians were unable to help him, and symptons of dropsy which showed themselves necessitated a course of treatment which increased the malady in his eyes. The last weeks of his life were spent with his nephew, Otto Spazier, in revising his works for a complete edition. He does not appear to have thought that his end was so near, and looked forward with much pleasure to completing the work he had already begun. But towards the last his strength failed him rapidly, and on the 14th of November, 1824, hia^ spirit found its rest. %i JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER, AUTOBIOGEAFHY. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. FIKST LECTUEE. WONSiEDEL — BIRTH — GRANDFATHER. My dear Friends, — It was in the year 1763, on February loth, that the peace of Hubertsbiirg came to this world, and after it the present Professor of the history of him- self; and this in the month in which the yellow and grey wagtails, the redbreasts, the cranes, and other snipes and waders, arrived with him, namely, in the month of March, — and this, too, on that day of the month on which the spoonwort and the trembling poplar the speedwell and the henbit, just come opportunely into blossom for anyone who may wish to strew flowers on the cradle, namely, on the 21st of March, — and this, too, in the earliest, freshest time of day, namely, at 1.30 a.m.; but what crowns all, is, that the beginning of his life was at the same time the beginning of that Spring. This last idea, that I, the Professor, and the Spring were bom together, has been introduced by me in conver- sation, I suppose, a hundred times already ; but 1 inten- tionally discharge it here, like a cannon-shot, for the 101st time, in order that by the discharge I may be incapaci- tated from offering again as a honmoi-bonbon that which has already been handed round to the whole world through the printer's devil. It is a misfortune when Fate herself has laid a pun, like a nest-egg, in the history of anyone, Ixi he the wittiest of men, and let him hatch now ideas Jjy bushels; for on this egg he sits and broods a whole lifetime, in hopca of hatching something. For instance, I B 2 4 -. JEAN/^AXp-.-FSIEDRlCH RICHTER. once knew a barber and a coachman, both of v^ horn, on being asked Tvhat thej^ 'vror.e called, invariably answered, neither differently, nor more simply or less wittily, than, Ihr gehorsamer Diener (Your humble servant) ; or else, Lir Diener Diener (Your servant Diener) ; now the cause was that each had the misfortune to be called Diener (servant), and thus the indelible mark (character indehilis) of a standard joke was, as it were, tonsured on their heads, or they were both condemned to one perpetual idea ; the trade wind of their wit blew continually in one direction. And still less, my honoured friends, let us hope to sur- prise a man who bears a name, common and proper at the same time, such as Ochs (Ox) and Bapinat (Plunder) both formerly in Switzerland — Wolf^—Schlegel (Mallet) — Bichter (judge) — to surprise, I say, such a double-named man with a pun, be it ever so brilliant ; for he has lived long enough with his name for any pun to be quite stale to him, which, to his new acquaintance, appears new, fresh and witty. Milliner, now, was more successful with his pun on Sclwtten (Scotchmen) and Schatten (shadows); for no Svhotten ever considered themselves Schatten, and no Schatten Schotten : they are eternally separated by two vowels. I return to my story, and find myself among the dead ; for all are now out of the world who saw my entrance into it. My father, J ohann Christian Christoph Eichter, was Terzius * and organist in Wonsiedel ; my mother, Sophia Eosina, was the daughter of a cloth- weaver, Johann Paul Kuhn, in Hof. On the day following my birth, I was baptized by the senior Apel. One godfather was the above-mentioned Johann Paul; the other was Johann Friedrich Thieme, a bookbinder, who did not know at that time on what a Maecenas of his handicraft he bestowed his name; from these two sprang the compound name Johann Paul Friedrich, the grandfather's half of which I translated into French, and thus made of' it one complete name — Jean * To understand this title and others occurring afterwatds, the reader must know that a German gymnasium, or high school, has eight masters — the Bector, or headmaster, Conrector, Subrector, Quintus, Qvartus, Tertius, Secundum, Primus. The classes are arranged in the inverse order ; the first class, or Prima, being the highest. Boys in the Prirria are called Primaners, in the Secunda Secunda- nere, and so on. — Tr. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 5 Paul, for reasons which will be fully explained in later lectures of this winter season. But for the present we will let the hero and subject of these historical lectures lie unheeded in the cradle and on the mother's breast, and sleep long enough — from the long morning-sleep of life there is little of general historical in- terest to be learned — sleep long enough for me to speak, if only shortly and insufficiently, of those towards whom my heart inclines itself and my pen — of my relations, my father, mother, and grandparents. My father was the son of the Eector,* Johann Richter, in Neustadt at Culm. Little is known of him except that he was poor and pious in the highest degree. When either of his surviving grandchildren goes to Neustadt, he is still received with grateful love and joy by the in- habitants ; the old ones tell how conscientious and strict were his life and his tuition, and yet how cheerful. A little bench behind the organ is still shown where he knelt every Sunday in prayer, and a cave, too, made by himself in the so-called Culm, wherein to pray, which still remained until the time when his fiery son — although only for him too fiery — played with the Muses and Penia. The evening twilight was a daily autumn to him, in which pacing up and down the scantily furnished school- room, he would reap the harvest of the day and prayer- fully think over the sowing for the morrow. His school- house was a i)ri8on, not with bread-and-water, but with bread-and-beer fare ; more than this — with perhaps a little pious contentment thrown in — was not allowed by a rectorate, though united with the offices of Cantor "f and Organist ; for, in spite of this lion-society of three offices, it did not yield more than 150 guldens per annum. At this hunger-well, not uncommon for Baireuth schoolmen, stood the man who had formerly been Cantor at Rehau, for five-and-thirty long years, — and drew. He might assuredly have got a few more scraps and halfpennies if he had been promoted, say, to the post of country clergy- man. Whenever the schoolmasters change their clothes — when they exchange the school-gown for the priest's gown, — they receive better victuals, just as the silkworms, at each • See note above. t The leader of the choir. — Tr. JEAN PAUL FRTEDKICH EICHTEK. fresh skinning, get better food ; and in this manner snch a man, by increase of his work, may increase his income to such an extent, that he may come up with those state officials with their pensions and gratuities, whose five- note lines of prizes are carried through the complete score of the cabinet, in spite of all pauses of the instrument. When my grandfather called on the boys' parents, which he did occasionally, more for the pupils' than the parents' sake, he would take of the above-mentioned beer and bread, at which he remained all his life, a piece of the latter in his pocket, and expect only a tankard of beer from his host. At length, in the year 1763 — just the year of my birth — it fell out that he was elected, probably thrt»ugh special connexions with some Higher Powers, to an important position, one for which the rectorate, the town, and the Culmberg were very readily given up. He was exactly seventy-six years four months and eight days of age when he actually received the Faid place in the Neustadt — graveyard; his wife had already gone twenty years before to her place beside him. My parents were called with me to his death-bed when I was a child of five months old. He was dying, when a clergyman (as my father has often told me) said to my parents : " Let the old Jacob lay his hand on the child's head and bless him ;" and thus 1 was put on his death-bed, and he laid his hand on my head. pious grandfather ! Often have I thought of thy hand bleesing me while already growing cold in death, when fate has led me out of dark hours into brighter ; and I can, too, hold firm to my belief in thy blessing in a world permeated and animated by Miracles and Spirits. My father was bom in Neustadt on the 16th of December, 1727 — bom, I might say, rather for the winter of life than, like me, for a spring, had not his vigorous nature been able to carve a safe haven for him even among the icebergs. He could only afford to enjoy, or rather endure, the Lyceum at Wonsiedel, as Luther did his school in Eisen- ach, as a so-called Alumnus (poor scholar) ; for when a yearly income of 150 guldens had to be divided between father, mother, and several sisters, nothing at all, or at best only J.Zwwwwa-bread, (jould fall to his share. Later he entered the Gymnasium poeticum at Regensburg in order, not AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 7 only to hungerin a larger town, but also to cultivate the real blossom of his nature instead of the leaves, — which blossom was music. In the chapel of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis — the well-known connoisseur and patron of music — he could do homage to the saint for whose service he was bom ; and twenty years later he became a favourite composer of church music in the principality of Baireuth. On the eve of Good Friday he would perform, to the delight of us children as well as of himself, the heilige Allmacht, with which the Catholics edified and purified their souls at that time. To my grief, 1 must confess that when some years ago 1 was in Kegensburg, amongst all its antiquities and remembrances — not excepting even the Imperial Diet — my father's hard life was the most important of all to me ; and often in the palace of Thurn and Taxis, and in the narrow streets, where a couple of stout fellows would have hard work to get by each other, I have thought of the confined wixys and narrow paths of his youthful days. Later, at Jena and Erlangen, he studied, not music, but theology, perhaps merely for the sake of worrying himself for a time, namely, until his thirty-second year, as a private tutor at Baireuth, in which town his son has collected the whole of this information. For by the year 1760 he had already wrested from the state the post of Organist and Terzius in the town of Wonsiedel, and thus in this matter had more and earlier good-luck, under the Markgraf of Baireuth, than that candidate in Hanover (of whom we read), who, being seventy years old, received no other posi- tion in the church than the one close by in the churchyard. But now, I pray, let not any of my audience fear, from what has been alread)^ said, that they are going to be introduced to a pitiable object of a father, who, like many a modem hypocrite, goes about swaddled in tear-soaked handkerchiefs ; he lived on wings, and was sought in the families of Brandenburg, and Schopf as the pleasantest and most amusing companion. This power of social humour accompanied him throughout his life, though in his minis- terial duties he was known as one of the strictest of divines, and in the pulpit as a so-called law-preacher. He won the hearts of his relations in his native town by his enthusiastic sermons, and in Hof in the Voigtland he won 8 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICII KICHTER. something still more important — a bride, and, what was yet more difficult, her rich parents into the bargain. When a citizen, who has become wealthy by cloth-making and veil- selling, does not refuse the prettiest, and most loved of his two delicately nurtured daughters to a needy Terzius, who, together with his creditors, lives within a day's journey of him, — then, I say, this Terzius on the one hand can only have overcome daughter and parents by much merit of his personal attractions, and by the fame and im- pressiveness of his great pulpit gifts ; and on the other hand there must have dwelt in the cloth-weaver a soul above his cloth and money, for which talent and clerical worth shone with more lustre than did the glittering silver of an ordinary being. On the 13th of October, 1761, the beloved went as bride with her treasures to the cramped little school-house, which luckily was not made any smaller by house-furniture. His cheerful disposition, his indifference to money, united with his confidence in his housekeeper, left abundance of superfluous empty room in the Terzius conch-shell for all moveable possessions from Hof which might wish to take up their abode with him; but my mother — in those days married people were so, and a few are still — minded the bareness throughout her married life as little as my father himself did. The strong man should have courage to wed either the rich landowner, or, just as well, the poor housekeeper. In my historical lectures, I warn you, hunger will occur with ever-increasing power — in the case of the hero it reaches a very high pitch — and as often, I daresay, as the feasting in Thiimmel's " Travels," and the tea-drinking in Richardson's " Clarissa ; " yet I cannot help saying to poverty, " Be welcome ! provided only that thou comest not quite too late in life." Riches fetter talent more than poverty : many an intellectual giant may lie stifled under thrones and golden mountains. When the oil of wealth is poured on the flames of youth, and especially of the more ardent, stronger youth, then will little more be left of the Phoenix than the ashes ; only a Goethe has the power to keep his Phoenix wings unsinged in the sun of pros- perity. The poor historical Professor would not, for much money, have had much money in his youth. Fate does with AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 9 poets, as we do with birds — it darkens the warbler's cage until he has caught the oft-played air that he is to sing. But spare, just Fate, the old man from want, for he it is who ought not — must not — be without. The heavy- years have bent his back too much already, he can no more erect himself as the youth, and carry his burdens lightly on his head. The old man, while still on the earth, already needs the rest within it ; of the world he can use only the present and but little future, for now he has no more the planting, blooming future as foil for his present. Two steps from the last and lowest bed, with no other curtains than the flowers, he wishes still to rest and to slumber a little in the old grandfather's chair ; and, half asleep, to open his eyes once more, and gaze on the old stars and meadows of youth. And I have little objection — for he has done the most important part for the next as well as this world — if, in the evening, he looks forward to his breakfast next morning, and in the morning to his bed, and if the world lets him depart, in his second childhood, amid those harmless pleasures of the senses, with which she received him in his first. Only one single error on my father's part may be laid to the charge of poverty, namely, that he sacrificed himself like a monk to his ministerial office, instead of devoting himself with his whole musical soul to the tone- muse ; that he suffered his genius to be buried in a village church. The Church-ship was in those days, it is true — particularly in the opinion of Burger parents-in-law — the Provision-ship or Air-ship, and the needy son of music strove to run into the haven of the pulpit. But whoever feels in himself a declination and inclination of his magnet- needle, not urged on him by wants or education, but growing up with him, let him follow its pointing with confidence, as that of a compass through the desert. Had the present Professor of history imitated his father, as the latter wished, he now, instead of giving these lectures, would be delivering sacred official discourses and Bpeeches, both casual and othei'wise ; and would probably be enrolled in the universal " Magazine for Preachers/* only, alas, to swell it more immoderately. But my father was not in reality unfaithful either to 10 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH RICHTER. himself or his muse ; for did she not visit him, as his old love, in the cloister attire of the Blessed Virgin, bringing him the church music every week to the lonely, toneless parish of Joditz ? And, on the other hand, there dwelt in him also another power besides his musical talent, which sought play-room in the pulpit ; for although, as the old saying tells us, great musicians are generally given to the sensual pleasure of drinking, and, as Lavater says, to that of eating, and in this way the Kapellmeister* may appear as his own cellar-master and steward, yet one does not hear that they were particularly good pulpit orators in addition to this. Eloquence, the prosaic wall-and-door neighbour to poetry, dwelt in my father's ministerial heart; and the same sunbeams of genius, which in the morning of his life awakened melodious strains, as in a Memnon's statue, united afterwards in the pulpit a genial light with the thunder of the law. I am quite aware, my friends, that I am talking a long time of my relations and praising them highly ; but I will immediately begin, I assure you, to speak of myself, and then I shall with difficulty stop again. This very praise which I bestow on my father would appear to him, if he was still living, just as important as it appears vain to me, when I picture him to myself in Eternity, where he will not be particularly proud, amongst the blessed, that in the year 1818 he was again announced from my lecturing chair as a composer of church music in the principality of Baireuth — and just this and a similar coldness must my son expect of me, if ever on some future day, after I have become a spirit, he shall eagerly tell to the world the universal applause which my works have won, — but let him on this account paint them, as little as I have done, either more coldly or more shortly. The fact is, most honoured sirs, I would ten times rather give you historical lectures on my forefathers than on myself. What a different form does the past take, which otherwise were so unfamiliar to us, when our relations pass through it and link it in brotherly alliance with our present! That man is to be envied whose * The Kapellmeister, or Capellmeister, is the director of the royaJ orchestral band. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 11 history accompanies him back from bis forefathers to tlieir forefathers, and thus colours a grey time with green. For we cannot paint the times in which our grandparents and great-grandparents lived, even when they themselves were old, otherwise than in the brightness and freshness of youth ; just as in reality we compose our future world of old men and not of youths. 1 return at length to the hero and subject of our lectures, and call particular attention to the fact that I was bom in Wonsiedel (wrongly called Wunsiedel), a town on the Fichtelgebirge. The Fichtelgebirge, one of the highest regions of Germany, gives health to its inhabitants (they would be the first to dispense with the Alexanderbad), and strong, tall figures ; and the Professor leaves ir, to his audience to decide whether he appears in his chair of office as a confirmation of, or an exception to this. It is vexatious, I may add, for a man who would best like to make himself a name in his native town, that the Wonsiediers swallow the r at the beginning and end of the words with which, as every one knows, the name " Richter " must commence and finish. The an- cestors of the Wonsiediers, moreover, have been crowned from all times with laurel wreaths for their bravery in war, which is what I must wish for them as my village ancestors ; 'and from history* it is sufficiently well known how they withstood and defeated the Hussites ; and if for "Hussites" we put "critics," anyone who will count my victories over the enemies from Hussite Nikolai to Hussite Merkel, will perhaps think that the race has not de- generated in bravery. In Wonsiedel, the sixth town of the six so-called Con- federate States, there was always, at any rate for Patriotism and for societies for help and justice, a sixth creation day, and German love, fidelity, and strength took up their abode there. I am glad to have been born in thee, thou little town under the long and lofty mountain-range, According to the detailed account of the Fichtel-berg (Leipzig, 1716), p. 52, the Hussites had laid waste the whole of the land aoove the mountain range ; but on the Friday before Pentecost the Wonsiediers repulsed 18,000 of the Bohemians, who had stormed their town throe timea. 12 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RIOHTER. whose tops look down on ns like eagle-heads. Thou hast adorned thy mountain throne by the steps thereto, and thy healing spring gives strength — not to thee — but to the sick, to climb to the c^^nopy above him and to the command of the distant villages and plains. I am glad to have been born in thee, thou little but good and bright to 'An. It has often been remarked that the first-born are geneially of the female sex. To this observation the subject of our history is no exception, in spite of his right of primogeniture ; for as his parents were married in October, 1761, and he was born in March, 1763, another little being (as he has heard), for this world only a shadow, had gone before him and begun its existence in the light of another world, perhaps without having seen the light of this one. The far-reaching memories of childhood bring joy to the tottering man, striving in this wave-existence to get a firm hold anywhere ; yes, they elevate him more than one can say — much more than the memories of his later and more busy life ; and this perhaps for these two reasons, — firstly, that he thinks, by thus looking back, to force his way neaier to the gates of life guarded by spirits and darkness ; and, secondly, he hopes in the mental power of early consciousness to find, as it were, an independence of this contemptible little mortal body. I am glad that I am still able to recall a dim, faint recollection of the time when I was twelve or ar, most fourteen months old, like the first mental snowdrop out of the dark soil of childhood. I still remember that one of the poor scholars was very fond of me, and that he used always to carry me about in his arms — whi(;h is more pleasant than being carried on the hands* in later life — and used to give me milk to drink in the large gloomy room of the Alumni. His distant fading picture and his love for me hovered over many years. Now alas ! I know his nnme no more ; but yet it is possible that he is still living, far on towards his seventieth year, and the wide-read scholar may meet * The German expression, auf den Hdnden tragen (to carry on the hands), means "to treat with great affection" or "regard." Eichter was more sought after in later life than he cared to be. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 13 with these lectures, and may then call to mind a little Professor whom he carried about and kissed. Ah ! if it should be so, and he should write — or if to the old man the older man should come ! This little morning-star of earliest memory still shone brightly in the low heaven of boyhood, but has grown more and more pale the higher the daylight of life h^s risen ; and now in reality I remember only this one thing clearly, that I formerly remembered all more cleaily. As my father had already received his appointment as pastor at Joditz in the year 1765, 1 can the more exactly separate the reliquary of my Wonsiedler childhood from the early remembrances and reliques of Joditz. This village is the second scene of this little historical melodrama; where, most honoured ladies and gentlemen, you will meet the hero of the piece under entirely new circumstances in our second lecture; for each lecture is laid in a new place of residence. Indeed, the whole history of these lectures, or the lectures of this history, are 80 skilfully and successfully aiTanged, that of the three usual unities of an historical drama, besides the first one of place — for of course I must make my appearance in the various places where I sojourned — besides this one, I say, no other unity but that of time is transgressed, for the hero from his entrance into life to his entrance on his professorship, must always be passing from one time to another; not to mention that while representing and acting the piece he must offend the unity of time by him- self growing older ; but in return for this he holds firmly the unity of interest running throughout, which can hardly be imagined greater than it is. But our hero's upward ascent has already begun, and we have the pleasure in our second lecture of meeting again, after two years, as the pastor's son, the historical personage whom in the first we left as the son of a Terzius only ; for in 1765 my father was called to Joditz by the Baroness von Plotho (a Bodenhausen by birth) of Zedtwitz, the wife of the same Plotho who was ambassador to Frederic the Only at the Imperial Diet of Regensburg, in the beginning of the Seven Years' War. 14 JEAN PAUi. FRIEDRICH EICHTER. SECOND LECTUEE. EMBRACING THE PERIOD FROM THE IST OF AUGUST, 1765, TO THE 9tH of JANUARY, 1776 — JODITZ VILLAGE IDYLS. Much honoured Ladies and Gentlemen, — You now in«et the Professor of his Autobiographical History iu the village of Joditz, whither he accompanied his parents in woman's hood and girl's frock. The Saale, which took its rise, like myself, in the Fichtelgebirge, had followed me thither, just as in later years it flowed past Hof when I went to live there. This river is the most beautiful, or at any rate the longest, river in Joditz, flowing round the town by the mountain side. The village itself is crossed by a little brook, with a wooden bridge. A commonplace castle and parsonage might well be the most important buildings here. The suburbs were not more than twice the size of the village itself, if one did not climb the mountain side ; and yet to the Professor of his own history that village is of yet more importance than the town of his birth, for in it he passed the most important time of his life, namely, the boy-Olympiads. I never could give my sympathy to those nineteen towns which quarrelled (according to Suidas) for the honour of being the birthplace of Homer, just as little as with those Dutch places, all of which would wish (according to Bayle) to have given birth to Erasmus. What can there be of such importance in the first day before or after nine months. At the place of the grave the inhabitants might have more share in the merit — and also in the blame — than at the place of the cradle. Although, on the whole, many princes are loom in capital towns, yet London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna are not proud of this ; for if they were, then, by converse reasoning, would all those towns and villages where great rogues have been born have to be ashamed. The birth-lands might, at the most, be allowed to presume on the honour of the birth- towns in theiQ, if AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 15 any favourable judgment could be formed of their climate or inhabitants on account of their number of notable births ; but one Pindar in Boeotia does not make a swallow-summer of it. The real native town, namely, the mental one, is the place where the education begins and continues longest; and if it is so for world-renowned men, who seldom need education and seldom make use of it, how much more is it so for village- and town-renowned, mediocre men, like my hero, who gained so much his from bringing-up and spoiling, and who, by means of both, combined with his readings (which is only a more extensive educating and spoiling institution), has really become that which he now is — a Councillor-of-Embassy of Hildburghausen, a Heidelburg Doctor of Philosophy, a threefold Member of various Societies, and the present unworthy Possessor of this Autohistorical Professorship. Let no poet, I pray, get himself bom and reared in a Capital ; but rather, if possible, in a village, or, at most, in a small town. The super-abundance and over-fascination of a large town are to the delicate, excitable, young soul a feasting at dessert, a drinking of burning spirits, a bathing in glowing wine. Life is exhausted in him during boyhood ; and after the greatest he has nothing left for which to wish, but that which at any rate is smaller, namely, the village. One does not gain or acquire so much in coming from the town to the village, as vice versa, — from Joditz to Hof. Consider, too, that most important element for poets — Love. In the town he must draw around the torrid zone of his parents, friends, and acquaintance, the larger temperate and frigid zones of unloved men, who pass by him unknown, and for whom he is as little able to kindle and warm his love as is a ship's crew in meeting and passing another vessel. But in a village one loves the whole population : no babe is buried but each one knows its name, its illness, and the mourning it has called forth. The inhabitants of Joditz thus lived and grew into one another ; and this glorious sympathy for every one in the form of a man, which thus extends even to the stranger and the beggar, gives birth to a >olid love for mankind and to the right 16 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH PJCHTER. pulsation of the heart. And then, when the poet wanders forth from his village, he brings to each whom he meets a portion of his heart, and he will have far to travel ere he has thus spent the whole of it among the streets and alleys. Undoubtedly, there is a still greater misfortune than that of being reared in a metropolis ; namely, the being reared on the road, like a child of the aristocracy, which journeys for years amid strange towns and people, and knows no other home than the travelling-coach. We now come again to the pastor's son, whose life in Joditz, I think, I shall best represent to you if I pass it before you by-and-by, in one complete year of Idyls. But first, like mist, let that precede which does not belong to the bright days ; the mist is the instruction I received, which, however, was not till after ten years. Learning of all sorts was life to me, and I would gladly have submitted myself, prince-like, to the instruction of half-a-dozen tutors ; but I scarcely had one proper one. Still do I remember the delight of that winter-evening when I received into my hand the A, B, C book from the town, with the pencil to serve as pointer attached to it, on the cover of which were written (not without right) in real gold letters, the contents of the first page, which consisted of alternate red and black letters : a gambler derives less ecstacy before his gold and rouge et noir than I did before mine from that book whose pencil even I did not once stake. After this, — when I had taken enough private instruc- tion, with my inner Privatissima as master, to pass through the lowest classes of the school, — I was taken in a green taffeta cap, but already in short trousers (for which the schoolmistress openly supplemented my weak little fingers) to the high school that is, the school which stood opposite the parsonage, and there with the pencil I recited my letters to them all. As usual, I became fond of every living thing in the school, and, most of all, of the thin, consumptive, but cheerful schoolmaster ; whose anxiety I always shared when on the watch for an unwary goldfinch behind the finch-trap which stood outside his window, or when he was about to throw the draw-net over the yellow-hammers on the fowling-floor out in the AUTOBIOGRAPHY 17 Bnow. In the Greenland winter-closeness of the crowded schoolroom, I remember still, with pleasure, the long linen stoppers which were stujfted into small air-holes bored in the wall, and which one only needed to draw out to receive into the open mouth a refreshing stream of frosty air from outside. Each fresh letter which the schoolmaster gave me to write rein vigora ted me — as a picture would others — and I envied the rest for reciting their lessons, for I would fain have enjoyed the bliss of spelling as well as of singing in chorus. Was it twelve o'clock and dinner not yet ready, there was then nothing left to be wished for by me and my brother Adam (who is now dead). For although he was much fonder ot" a bird's nest than of a whole colony of muses, we flew to the schoolroom, carrying our hunger with us — putting off the appeasing of it until later — in order not to lose a minute. People made much of this knowledge-craving self-sacrifice, but I remember very well that the common childish inclination to es aije from the regular daily round had most of all to do with it. We wanted to have our dinners a few hours later, just as on fast-days and repentance-days we always looked forward to the late dinners. When all in the house is in a state of confusion on account of white-washing, for example, or perhaps from moving to another house, or from the arrival of several guests, then the little human fools are at their zenith of delight. Unluckily I shut to myself for ever the schoolroom door, by an untimely complaint to my father about a big peasant lad (Zah was his name — that posterity may know it), who had struck me on the knuckles with his clasp-knife. In proud anger, my father henceforth gave my brothers and myself our instruction alone, and every winter I had to see the children over the way sailing into the harbour which was closed to me. But stiil I had left to me the little by- pleasure of carrying over to the schoolmaster the frequent bulls and decrees of his village pope, and the Christmas gifts or presents from the newly-killed ])ig, or any other little plateful of eatables in place of the Komish Atjnua Dei or the consecrated roses and baby-napkins. I. c 18 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH EICHTER. Four hours before and three hours after dinner our father used to give us our lessons, which consisted entirely of learning by rote — verses, catechism, Latin words, and Lange's grammar. We had to learn the long rules of the genders for each declension, together with the exceptions and the adjoined Latin examples, without understanding a word of it all. If on a bright summer day my father went into the country, we got some such confounded exceptions as panis and piscis to learn for the next morning ; but my brother Adam, for whom the whole day hardly sufficed fcT his frolics and games of all kinds, seldom had an eighth part of them left in his head, fo" it was not often that he was lucky enough to get such delightful words to decline as scamnum, or, better still, cornu, in the singular, of which he could at any rate say the Latin half. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, it was no easy matter, on a bright June day, when the all- powerful ruler was not at home, to arrest and imprison oneself in a corner, there to stamp and impress two or three pages of words into one's head ; on a bright summer- day, I say, it was no easy matter — but it was harder still on a short, snowy one in December ; and you must not be surprised that my brother on this account always carried away a few stripes after such days. The Professor of his own history can, however, make this general declaration, — that never throughout his whole school-life was he flogged either in part or completely ; the Professor always knew his part. But let not this rote-learning system throw a false light on my indefatigable and loving father, who would sacrifice the whole day in writing out and committing to memory the sermons for his country parishioners, merely from overstrict conscientiousness, as several times he had had proofs of his extempore eloquence; my good father, who, in his weekly visits to the schoolroom and in his doubling the public instruction for children, and in all other things exceeded his duty by self-sacrifice, and who gave his tender, warm, fatherly heart chiefly to me, and who would break out into joyful tears over any little signs of talent and progress in me. In the whole of his jducational system he committed no other faults, however AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 19 strange are some which may occur, than those of the head — none of the will. This method is to be recommended to the regular school- master, for by no other is so much time and trouble spared as by this really convenient one, by which the pupil gains in his book a vicarius or adjunctus of the teacher, or his curator ahsentis, and magnetises himself like a powerful clairvoyant. Yes, this mental self-nourishing of children is capable of such extension, that I myself would undertake to superintend, through the letter-post, a whole school in North America, or fifty days' journey distant in the old world, merely by writing to my school- children what they were to learn each day, and keeping some or other insignificant person there to whom they should repeat it, while I myself would enjoy the con- sciousness of their beautiful intellectual reminiscere* Lenten Sunday. In Speccius I translated, by order, a good deal at the begining into Latin with that pleasure with which I climbed onto and stripped each fresh branch of learning. I turned the latter half into Latin by myself, but was unable to find anyone to correct the mistakes. 1 divined the meaning of the Colloquia (conversations) in Lange's grammar from longing to know what they were about, but in Joditz my fatner did not allow me to translate anything. The Greek alphabet I studied hungrily and thirstily, in a Greek grammar written in Latin, and at the end I wrote Greek fairly — that is, as far as the handwriting was concerned. How willingly would 1 have learned more, and how easily. If the body did not, yet the spirit of a language easily entered into me, as the third lecture of this winter half-year will, i daresay, best show to tht; world. Once only, on a winter's afternoon — I might be from eight to nine years old — when my father was going to study a little La*in vocabulary book with me, that is, was going to set me to learn it by heart, and I had to read the first page over to him ; — I read the word lingua, in spite of • The reminigcere Sunday is the second Sunday in Lent. As people on that day are to recall the sufferings of Clirbt, so here the pupils arc to reoall to their memories the lessons which they hare learned.— Tr. c 2 20 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. his corrections, not lingwa, but always lin-gua ; and repeated the same mistake, regardless of all corrections, so often, that he became infuriated, and in angry impatience deprived me of the vocabulary book and its instruction for ever. I am still unable to this day to get to the bottom of this obstinate stupidity ; but my heart was not influenced — this it has alwaj^s said to me throughout my life — by any ill- temper, as, indeed, it never was and certainly would not have been in this case, towards the father, who by a new lesson-book had just offered me a fresh boyish pleasure. This historical feature has, however, been intentionally related in this hall, in order that the impartiality of the historical researcher and Professor may be proved by those shadows which he points out, while acknowledging a hero whom he otherwise likes to display in the brightest light. But how often is it in life that poor innocent men, not understood and misunderstood, say lin-gua instead of the more correct lingwa, and that, too, with the tongue {lingua) which at the same time means language (lingua). With history, too, — both ancient and modern — natural history, besides the most important facts of geography, arithmetic, astronomy, and orthography — with all these branches of knowledge I became quite sufftciently ac- quainted ; but not in Joditz — where 1 got on very well for twelve years without a word of them — but many years afterwards, when I acquired them piecemeal from the Allgemeine Bibliotheh. All the more ardent Wi*s my thirst for books in this intellectual Sahara. Each one was a fresh green oasis, especially the Orhis Pictus and the Gesprdche im Beiche der Todten ; but my father's library, like many another open one, was seldom open ; except when he was not at home and in it. At any rate, I often lay on the flat top of a wooden grating (like a magnified wild- beast cage), and crept upon books, like the great jurist Baldus, in order to get one for myself. Let any one only consider: in a village destitute of people, in a solitary parsonage, for such a listening soul books must have been speaking beings, wealthy foreign guests, Maecenases, tra- velling princes, and inhabitants of the new world or the first Americans for a European. It is true that I, as an A-B-C-historian, did not in the least AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 21 understand the quarto volume of Gesprdche im Reiclie der Todten, but I read it as I also did the newspaper, though only an A-B-C-geographer also, and could retail much in- formation from both of them. I used to relate portions of the former to my father — one evening, the love-story of Roxana and the Turkish emperor, which I had read during his absence, — without his disapprobation, and I did the same for my newspaper extracts with an old Baroness whom we knew. My father used to have the Baireuth paper given him by his patroness, the Baroness Plotho of Zedtwitz ; every month or quarter — as often as he went to Zedtwitz — he brought the monthly or quarterly numbers home altojz;ether, and he and X read this huge pile with profit, just because we got them more as volumes than as single sheets. A political paper supplies one with true information, when it is read, not in separate sheets, but in monthly numbers or in volumes ; because, in the compass of a comiDlete part, it has collected a sufficient number of sheets to counteract each other ; like the air, it cannot at once show its colour in single puffs and blows, but only in its whole extent, as the said air, shows its sky-blue colour only when in a large mass. Of a morning I usually carried my news-atlas over to the castle to the old Frau von Reitzenstein, and expounded at the coffee-table this or that portion of news which I had brought with me, and listened to my own praises. I still remember a plural word, " Confdderirte," which occurred frequently at that time. Most probably this plural was in Poland, but I cannot recollect that I took the slightest interest in it, probably because I understood nothing about the matter. Thus calmly and impartially were the Polish affairs judged in our village, as well by mo as by the old Frau von Reitzenstein, my auditress. The fibres of our hero's mind, thirsting for knowledge, forced and curved themselves about in all directions to get a hold and suck in nourishment. He manufactured clocks, of which the faces were the most successful part, and which had a pendulum, one wheel, and a weight, and which stood well. A sun-dial too he devised, by marking a dial-face in ink on a wooden plate, and then sotting the dial-pin >/ the church clock, and fixing it there ; thus ho 22 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH KICUTEE. frequently knew what time it was. He liked best tc make the figures, — as many States do, — on the clock faces, and that, too, beforehand ; and like Lichtenberg, who made the title ])cfore the book. The present author showed in miniature a cardboard box, in which he arranged a iiminutive library of 16mo books made from the margins of his father's 8vo sermons, which he sewed together and cut into shape. The contents were theological and pro- iestant, and consisted in every case of short explanatory notes on verses copied from Luther's Bible; the verses themselves he omitted in his little book. Thus in our Friedrich Eichter, there already lay a little Friedrich von Schlegel, who, in just the same way in his extract " Lessing's Geist," picked out Lessing's opinion on cer- tain authors, but was not particular to state the passages themselves. In the same way our hero threw himself into the art of painting also ; many a mounted Potentate sat, or rather lay, to him while he traced round his features with a fork in such a way that a piece of paper underneath, covered with grease and soot, and with the reverse side down- wards, left striking likenesses of them printed on a sheet of white paper under it. That, under sunnier circumstances, he might have unfolded into a second Kaphael Mengs, who, unlike the first one, had to be whipped from his painting, not to it, I hardly think at present, however brightly coloured the first white and red balls, the square red bricks, the rounded slate pencil, and the splendid colour-shells in the paint-box, and the green rose-beetles may still shine in my memory; and though something may be inferred from the fact that on the receipt of a paint-box, he coloured the whole of the Orhis Picius after life ; the supposition would only be a little more correct, than if one should predict a great financial correspondent from his skill in making herrings in winter. This art of his, of supplying herrings on the land at such a distance from the sea-coast, was as follows : when he had to go for the bread, he would wade in the brook and would there gently raise one of the stones under which a grundel, or any other still smaller fish, was to be caught. He then put these into a hollow cabbage-stalk (this represented the AUTOBIOGRArHY. 23 herring-tun), and duly salted them ; and as soon as the little tun was full, he would have had herrings to eat, had not they all smelt so badly. Not more suitable, but rather less so, when considered as precursors of a youthful financial correspondent, would be such surrogate con- trivances as the following, viz., that he served up the halves of dried pears for little hams, and pigeons' feet, cut off and roasted in a potsherd, for a complete dinner, or that he drove snails to pasture. In fact, any future historical investigator of the present historical investiga- tor, would be considered by me to be in the highest degree ridiculous, who should wish to deduce anything extraordinary by selecting such fragmentary pieces as are scattered throughout the childhood of anyone else ; the foolish man would seem to me just like that Parisian quack, who, with the assistance of a Jesuit, fitted together some elephant bones, and sold them as the true skeleton of the German giant, Teutobach. The beard does not make a philosopher, though it may make a sailor or a malefactor, when they come from the ship or prison with it, because, while there, they do not come under the barber's razor. As the boundless activity of our hero threw itself more into intellectual than bodily exercises — all of which, however, he followed with indescribable avidity, he invented, not new languages, but new letters. He took the symbols of the calendar, or geometrical signs from an old book, and chemical ones or the latest ones out of his own head, and, by putting them together, made himself a new alphabet out of them. When this was done, the next thing was to make some use of his alphabetical solitaire^ by clothing in it a few pages of copied matter. In this way ho was his own secret writer, and a player at hide- and-seek with himself; but he could, too, without peeping into Biittner's Comparative Tables of Written Characters, read off his new ones on the spot as easily as ordinary ones, because he had placed the latter, like a warrant of apprehension, letter for letter, ULder the secret ones, and only needed to refer to them. This time one c^uld perhaps blame the so-called historical investigator less, if he would see the foundation of a Councillor-of-Em 24 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICHTER. bassy, or of an ambassador himself, in this ciphering and deciphering, which, so early as this, songht merit less in the contents than in the external clothing of them. I have, in fact, since then acquired the character of a Councillor- :-f-Embassy, and I could do a bit of ciphering to this day. My soul, perhaps taking after that of my father, was thoroughly open to music, and for it I had a hundred Argus-ears. When the schoolmaster played the church- goers out with his final cadenzas, my whole little being laughed and skipped with joy, as in the spring-time ; or on the morning after the night dancing at the Kirchweihe (at which my father used to send loud thunders of ex- communication on the Sunday following), when, to his vexation, the foreign musicians, together with the be- ribboned village youths drew up in front of the parsonage with their shawms and fiddles, then I would climb on to the yard wall, and a world of jubilation sounded through my yet small breast and the spring-time of pleasure played therein with the spring, and I thought not a word of my father's sermons. I devoted hours, on an old untuned piano, whose only tuning-hammer and tuning-master was the weather, to my fantasias, which certainly were freer than the most daring in the whole of Europe, as I knew neither note nor chord nor anything else ; for my father, though such a finished player, had shown me neither note nor key. But when by chance I hit at times on a short melody or harmony of three to six notes — like some good modern composer of tunes for rope-dancing, witch-dancing, or finger-dancing on the piano strings — then I was indeed a happy being, and repeated my finger-hit as everlastingly as any good modern German poet repeats the brain-hit with which he gained his first applause. Heliogabalus con- demned the cook who made him some bad broth to eat nothing else but it until he had discovered a better one ; but the poet, on the other hand, acting more generously, treats the reading world to an excellent broth at so many a Leipzig book-fair, that at last it tastes as stale as the bad broth of the emperor's cook. In the future literary history of our hero, it will become doubtful whether he was not perhaps born for philosophy AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 25 rather than poetry. In earliest times the word " philo- sophy" — though there was also a second word, " orient"' — was to me an open Heaven's gate, through which I looked onto long, long gardens of joy. Never shall I forget the inner sensation, hitherto untold to any, when I was present at the birth of my self- consciousness, of which I , can specify both time and place. One morning, when still j quite a young child, I was standing under the doorway, 1 and looking towards the woodstack on the left, when j suddenly the internal vision, " I am an ego,'' passed before 1 me like a lightning flash from heaven, and has remained ' with me shining brightly ever since, ; my ego had seen itself then for the first time and for ever. Deceptions of the memory are here hardly conceivable, since no story related to me could mingle its additions with an occur- rence which took place in the shrouded Holy-of-Holies of a human being, and whose strangeness alone has given per- manence to such everyday circumstances as those which accompanied it. In order to represent most truthfully the Joditz life of niir Hans Paul (for so we will call him for a time, alwa.vs however subject to change with other names), we shall do best, I think, if we conduct it through a complete year of Idyls, breaking up the normal year into four seasons, like so many Idylic quarters : four Idyls exhaust his happiness. Let none wonder at an Idylic kingdom and an Arcadian world in a little hamlet and its parsonage. In the smallest flower-bed one can rear a tulip-tree which will stretch its flowery branches over the whole garden ; and the life-giving air can be inhaled as well at the window as in the wide wood under the open sky. Nay, is not the man's spirit itself (with all its infinite heavenly courts') con- fined in a body five feet high, with membranes, Malpighian glands and capillaries, and having only the five narrow windows of the senses to open on that immense round-eyed, round-sunned — All ? — and yet it sees and reproduces an All. I hardly know with which of the four Idylic quarters to begin ; for each is a little fore-heaven of the next ; but, I think, on the whole, the progression of happiness will beet appear if we begin with Winter and January. In the cold weather my father, like the Swiss flocks, 26 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH EICHTER. was "brought down from tlie heights of his study upstairs, and, to the joy of the children, sojourned in the plain ot the parlour. In the morning he sat in the window- corner, committing his Sunday sermon to memory, while his three sons — Fritz, that is myself, Adam, and Gottlieb (for Heiurich did not come until near the end of the Joditz Idylic life), carried the full coffee-cup to him by tui ns, in order to enjoy the greater pleasure of bringing back the empty one, as the bearer was allowed to take out the unmelted candy-sugar which he used as a remedy for his cough. Out of doors truly all was wrapped in silence : the brook by the ice, the village by the snow; but in our room there was life — a dovecote under the stove, siskin and goldfinch cages at the windows, the invincible bull-dog, our Bonne and night-watcher of the parsonage, on the floor, besides a Spitzbergen dog and the pretty Scharmantel, a present from the Frau von Plotho — and, next door to us, the kitchen with two maids in it ; and in addition to these, at the farther end of the house, the stable, with all possible kinds of cattle, pigs and feathered things, with their accompanying noises ; the threshers too, with their flails, at work in the courtyard, I might add to the number. Thus surrounded by noisy society, the whole masculine portion of the parlour passed the morning in learning, in close proximity to the cooking of the feminine portion. No business in the world is without its holidays, and so I too had the fresh-air holidays — like mineral spring holidays — of being allowed to go out in the snow into the yard, and to the threshing-floor. And when, too, any im- portant verbal business had to be transacted in the village, at the schoolmaster's, for instance, or the tailor's, I was sent off in the midst of my lessons, and thus got out into the free and cold air and could measure myself with the newly fallen snow. At noon, too, before our dinner-time, we children had the hungry satisfaction of seeing the threshers fall- to and devour theirs in the kitchen. The afternoon again was still more important and richer in joys. Winter shortened and sweetened the lesson hours. In the long twilight our father walked to and fro, and we children, holding his hand, trotted as well as we could AUTOBIOGEAPHT. 27 under his dressing-gown. At the tolling of the vesper bell all arranged themselves in a circle, and with one voice sang the hymn, Die finstre Nachi hricht stark herein. Only in villages — not in to'^^^as, where there is in reality more night- than day-work — is there a meaning and beauty in this evening tolling, this swan-song of the dying day; the vesper bell is, as it were, a muffler to our over-loud hearts, and, like the Manz des VacJies of the plain, it calls men from their toils and troubles to the land of quiet and dreams. After a pleasant watching for the moonrise ot the tallow candle under the kitchen-door, our large room was at once lighted up and barricaded, that is, the shutters were put in and bolted, and the children felt themselves safe behind these window breastworks and ramparts, and secured against the Knecht BuprecJit, who could not now get in, but could only grumble harmlessly outside. This, too, was the time when we children were allowed to undress and hop about in our long, trailing night-gowns. Idylic joys of all sorts alternated with one another. My father either entered in an interleaved quarto Bible, opposite to each verse, the reference to any book in which he had read anything concerning it, or else, as was more frequently the case, he had his ruled folio copying book before him, and composed complete oratorios of church- music in full score, undisturbed by the children's din : in both cases, but in the latter with most pleasure, I watched the writing and was particularly delighted when whole pages were quickly filled by the pausing of several of the instruments. He composed his internal melodies quite ^^ without help from external notes, — as Eeichard recom- X mended — and in harmony undisturbed by the noise of th^^ children. We all sat playing at the long wiiting and dining table — and also under it. Among the pleasures which sink for ever with the beautiful time of childhood is this one, that sometimes, when a severe frost set in, the long table was pushed up to the bench by the stove for the sake of the warmth ; we children were on the watch for this joyful event the whole winter. Now, round the ill-shaped coach-like stove were two wooden benches, and our gain was that we could sit or run on them, and that M*e had stove-summer close to us even at meal times. 28 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH EICHTEE. But what a climax of worth did the winter evenings reach once a week, when the old errand-woman arrived in the kitchen covered with snow, and carrying her basket of meat, fruit, and other provisions from the town ; and we all had the distant town in miniature before our eyes in the room, and before our noses by means of the butter- cakes. In the earlier part of childhood a pleasure-dessert was allowed by our father of a winter evening, after the eaidy suppers. The farm-maid served it up at her distaff in the kitchen, with as much illumination as the pine-splinters could give, which from time to time we stuck lighted into the pine-stick, as they did in Westphalia. On this dessert- table stood — besides many other plates of sweetmeats and folk-lore ice-glasses, such as Cinderella — the pine-apple ot a story of the maid's own forcing, about a shepherd and his combats with the wolves, in which at one time the danger was on the increase, and at another his resources. I still feel the success of that shepherd, as if it was my own, and in this I see, from my own experiencCy^hat children are much more affected in stories by the progression of pro- sperity than of adversity, and that they wish the heavenly J)ath to lead upwards to infinity, but the other one only so far downwards as is necessary for the exaltation and glorification of the heavenly throne. These children's wishes become men's wishes, and we would more strongly demand their fulfilment from the poet, if a new heaven were as easy to create as a new hell. But any t3^rant can give unheard-of pains, while for the discovery of unheard- of joys he himself must offer prizes. The skin is the foundation of this ; upon it, inch by inch, a hundred hells can pitch their camps, but the five sense-heavens hover airy and uniform above us. Only the end of the winter evening contained a horrid wasp sting, or vampire tongue, for our hero. The children, you must know, had to betake themselves at nine o'clock to the guest-room, in the second floor ; my brothers were together in one room, and I shared the guest-room with my father. Until he had finished his reading downstairs, which lasted for two hours, I lay ujd above, with my head under the bedclothes, in a perspiration for fear of ghostSj AUT0BI0G11A.PHT. 29 and in the darlcness I saw the lightninji; in the cloudy Spiiit-heaven, and it seemed to me as if man himself was spun of Spirit-caterpillars. Every night I helplessly suffered thus for two hours, until my father at length camo U]istairs and drove away the ghosts, like a morning sun chasing away the dreams. The next morning all fear was quite forgotten, as if it had been a dream, though it always returned again in the evening. Vet I have never said a word about this, — except to the world this day. 1'his terror of ghosts was certainly — if not created, yet — fostered by my father. He spared us not one of all the ghostly apparitions and tricks of which he had heard, and even on some occasions believed himself to have ex- perienced ; but, like the old theologians, to a firm belief in them he joined a firm courage against them, and Christ and the Cross were his shield against the whole ghostly universe. ]\Iany a child, physically very timid, displays at the same time great spiritual bravery, but merely from lack of imagination ;* while a second child, on the other hand — like myself — trembles at the invisible world, because the imagination gives it a visible form, but easily takes courage against the visible, as that never reaches the depth and height of the other. Thus any sudden appearance of physical danger — for example, a horse running away, a thunder-clap, war, or the fire alarm — made me only collected and calm, because I fear only with the imagina- tion, not with the senses ; and to mo, even a ghostly form would at once congeal to an ordinary earthly body, if I had once got over the first shudder, so long as it did not drive me again, by grimaces and noises, into the endle^^s realm of fancy. But how, then, is the instructor to guard against the preponderance of the tragic spirit-invokiiig imagination ? Not by refutation or Biesterian and AVag- nerian resolutions of the supernatural into the com- monplace — for the possibility of unresolved exceptions still remains firmly grasped by the deepest feelings — but partly by prosaically leading up to, quartering on, and familiarizing with the times and places, which otherwise kindle the bewitching flames of the imagination, and • Into many prosaic souls one ought to instil a little spiritual fear, frran religion or poetry. 30 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH EICUTER. S partly by arming tlie fancy against fancy, by opposing the ( spirit to the spirit, and to the devil — God. J Even in the day-time, on particular occasions, this ghostly dread would sometimes come over me. At a burial, I always had to carry my father's Ijible through the church into the sacristy, before the procession with pastor, schoolmaster, children, cross and myself, set out amid psalms from the church to the cemetery near the village. Willing and courageous enough did I gallop through the gloomy silently-hearkening church into the little sacristy ; but which of us can picture to himself i he fear- ful, trembling flight-leaps with the whole spirit world pursuing at my heels, and that frightful shoot from the church-door ? And if one did describe it, who would not laugh? And still I always accepted the office of Bible- bearer without a word, and silently kept my fear to myself. We come now to a larger Idylic period, to the Joditz spring and summer. The two seasons, particularly in the country, fall for various reasons into one Idyl. The spring (in reality) dwells only in the mind ; outside in the iields there is only summer, which everywhere is con- trived only for the fruits and the present. The snow is the curtain which meroly requires to be drawn up from the stage, or the eartn, that the summer pleasures may begin in the village — the town takes its pleasures only in the winter — for ploughing and sowing are themselves a spring harvest to the countryman, and for a parson who farms his own fields, and for his cooped-up sons they bring fresh scenes upon the stage. We poor children, shut up in the parsonage by our gaoler and the winter, were then freed by the heaven-sent angel of spring, and let out into the open fields, and meadows and gardens. Then there was ploughing, sowing, planting, mowing, hay- making, corn-cutting, and harvesting everywhere. Our father was there and helped, and the children helped him, I particularly, as the eldest. You should only know, my friends, what it is to escape suddenly, — not from town walls, which enclose many a tield within them, but — from parsonage walls, out over the whole village, and beyond it, into th'^5 un walled space and to look down from above into the village, which one has never seen into from below. AHTOBIOGKAPHY. 31 My father did not superintend the field-labours as an overseer or taskmaster (although they were carried on by socmen), but as a kindly pastor, who wished to take part alike witn nature and his flock. When I see other ecclesiastics, land possessors and avaricious men, equipped so plentifully from head to foot with sucking-trunks, sucking-stings, and all kinds of sucking appliances, i find in my father's case, on the other hand, that the sucking-in system was in altogether a too languishing and weak condition; ten times a day he would think of giving, — he had but little to do it with,— but hardly once of taking, by which, however he himself might have been enabled to give ; since then, I have had cause to admire the good food- forceps of many a human insect, but my father held nothing in his hand but the birth-forceps, which bring and preserve the life of others. Heavens ! how different — and how is it that people do not understand this better ? — are the regular commercial, clerical, and noble men, who, although they know what is fitting, use their hands as good bird-traps, which open and shut only to catch something, and who only open their hands in order to shut them. Now began our life in, that is under, the heavens. Those mornings still twinkle with fresh-fallen dew on which I used to carry my father's coffee to him in the parsonage garden, beyond the village, where he was learning his sermon in the little summerhouse, with windows opening on all sides, just as we children used afterwards to learn our Lange in the grass. The evening took us a second time into the garden among the currant and gooseberry bushes, to gather the salad with our mother. Being able to have supper without candles is one of the unrecognised pleasures of the country. When we had enjoyed this, mj' father used to take his pipe out of doors, that is, into the walle«l court of the parsonage, while I and my brothers sprang about in our long night-gowns in the fresh evening air, and behaved like the swallows, still crossing each other, above our heads, and flew nimbly hither and t liither, just as though collecting for our nests. The most lovely of summer birds (a delicate bin 3 butter- fly) fluttered around our hero in this beautiful season ; it was his firut love. She was a blue eyed peasant girl of his own age, with slim figure, oval face, slightly marked 32 JEAN PAUL FHIEDRICH RIOHTER. with small-pox, but with a thousand looks which take captive the heart as in a magic-circle. Augusta, or Augustina, lived with her brother Eomer, a fine young fellow, known as a choral singer and reckoner, it did not indeed come to a declaration on the part of Paul, — unless this lecture shall fall into her hands, — but he played out his love-story with spirit at a distance, she in the women's seats in church, and he in the vicar's pew, by looking at her closely enouglx, and not growing tired of it. But this was the beginning only ! for when of an evening she drove her milch cows homo, which he always knew b} the unforgetable bell, he used to climb on the wall to seb and beckon to her, and then ran again to the door, to the speaking-grating, — she the nun without, he the monk within, — in order to screw his hand through a chink, (no more than this was allowed outside,) and to drop something eatable into her hand, sugar-almonds, or some other dainty, which he had brought from the town. Man}- a summer, alas! he did not three times attain to such happiness, — generally he had to consume all the good things himself, and the vexation into the bargain. Yet when for once his almonds did fall, not on stony ground, but in the Eden of his eyes, then these grew from them in his imagination a whole blossoming garden full of fragrance, wherein he would walk for weeks. For pure love wishes only to give and to become happy by making so ; and if there was an eternity of perpetually-increasing capability of giving happiness, what would be more blissful than love ? The cow-bells remained for a long time the Manz des Vaches of the high and distant Alps of his childhood, and still his old heart's-blood would stir and boil if these sounds were again wafted to him. " They are tones," he would say, " brought by an ^olian harp out of the far, far beautiful distance, and I almost could cry with longing when I hear them." For let one associate with love even the smallest tone, if a cow even is the bell-ringer, and it redoubles its Orphic power of edifying and enchanting, and its invisible waves cradle his heart and bear it along to infinity ; he knows not whether he is at home or far away, and the man weeps for joy as well for what he has as for what he lfiok«. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 3Sl In this focus of lov« Augustine remained towards Paul; and never during many years did he live to see the time when he so much as pressed her hand. Of a kiss we will not think. Even when he sometimes flew shamefaced and hastily to the lips of a plain servant girl of his parents, whom he did not love a bit, both body and soul boiled up unconsciously and innocently in the kiss ; but the actual lips of a beloved one, who shone down just at the hottest, in the aphelion, on his deepest, most spiritual love would have immersed him in burning heavens, and melted and volatilized him therein into a glowing aether. And I could wish that he had been volatilized once or a few times while still at Joditz. When in his thirteenth year, he, or much more, his eye, was driven eight miles from the beloved one, as his father had received a better living, he burdened a young Joditz tailor, whom his father had taken with him, for love of the dear village he had left, and had kept for some weeks in the new and capacious parsonage,' with a number of petty potentates, whom he had drawn from painted life, with grease and soot, and had coloured with deceptive exactness, with the help of his paint-box ; these he commissioned the tailor to deliver to Augustine with the message that the knights and princes were from him, and he gave them as an everlasting keepsake. Another love affair of the same period, which did not last longer than a dinner, was spun by him — the 3'oung lady did not know a word about it— quite secretly in the depth of his bosom. Once at Kciditz he sat at a table of grown-up people, opposite the said lady and stared at her incessantly. There sprang up in him a love unutterable in sweetness, inexhaustible to the gazer, a fermentation of the heart, a heavenly annihilation and dissolution of the whole being into the eye only. She did not say a word to the bewitched boy, and much less did he to her ; but had she stooped, and it might be kissed the poor youth, he/ would have gone straight to heaven for very bliss. y He retained the feeling however more than the face, of which nothing remained but the small-pox marks. Now as this l^eauty is already the second one marked with the small-pox — in future lectures others will follow -the Professor thinks it his duty to explain to all fair, vaocin- 34 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. ated hearers, that he knows how to appreciate them just as much and as well as anyone else, but that at that time there was a different fashion in faces. Paul has this pecu- liarity—and he pledges himself to-day in this assemblage of beauty — that he can make any female face — whose so- called ugliness must only not be moral ugliness — in the highest degree charming and enchanting, without all cosmetic artifices, without rouge-pots and salve-boxes, without starch or soapy water, and without night-masks, if he is allowed for the purpose, a few evenings — songs — heart-words, and that no one shall appear more beautiful than the person in question — naturally only in his own eyes ; for who can speak for others ? The lady just mentioned is a strong confirmation of this ; for when he met her again at Hof twenty years afterwards, as she was living opposite to him, he found only the marks left, nothing else ; she herself was plain and crooked, and I will not tell her name. Pure love has such unlimited power to create and elevate — just as low love has to destroy and suppress — that the representation of it would have more influence on us, had it not been described to us so often; but it is for this reason alone that it has been able to bear the many thousand volumes which paint it. Let anyone deprive a man, who in the time of love looks on the landscapes — the stars — the flowers and mountains — the tones, the songs — the pictures and poems — yes, and humanity and death — with poetic enjoyment — deprive this man, I say, of love, and he will have lost the tenth Muse, or rather the mother of the Muses ; each one feels in after years when this sacred intoxication is forbidden, that to all the Muses the tenth one is lacking. We come now to our hero's Sundays, on which days the Idyls visibly make progress. Sundays seem made for pastors and pAstors' children. A good lot of Trinity Sundays, or the greatest number of them, twenty-seven, gave special delight to our Paul, although by the whole twenty-seven not a single summer day more came to the world or the church than in other years. In towns th© birthdays of princes and magistrates and fair-days are the true Trinity Sundays. On a bright Sunday morning AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35 Paul commenced his enjoyment by walking through the village before church -time with a bunch of keys, — he used to jingle them on the way to show the village that he was there — and unlocking the parsonage garden with one of them to get some roses for the pulpit desk. In the church all was bright enough, for the long windows inter- sected the cold floor and the women's pews with broad bands of light, and the sunshine fell around the enchant- ress Augustina. A pleasure, too, not to be despised v\ as the being allowed (with his colleagues in office) after church-time and before dinner to carry the regular half- ix)und of bread and the money to the labourers of the week, particularly as his father always liked to send the peasants an extra large piece of bread, and thus give them a pleasure, which children always like to carry, and Paul in particular. Sometimes, too, he had to carry the slice of bread to Komer, and then he used to look around him for the saint of his church and his heart — but always in vain. For in his perspective love-painting ten steps more or less were of some consequence ; and granted that through the intervention of some particularly favourable goddess, he had stood only half a step from her — but at such un realized bliss I will not so much as hint, for he would K9t then have been content without audible speech. I maintain that no occupant of the sheriff's, prince's, lecturer's, pontiff's, or any other chair has any idea how pastors' children enjoy a Sunday evening (only a member of the clergy himself can know it), when, with the two services over, they, as it were, celebrate with their father the late Sabbath rest after the church-trouble and the exchange of the surplice for the light dressing-gown — particularly in the villages where in the summer the whole population feasts and enjoys the pleasures of the eye. I should perhaps be accused of remissness if I neglected tf> mention another Trinity pleasure merely because it was a rare one ; on this account it was so much the more a pleasure when Hagen, the pastor of Koditz appeared with his family at the sermon to hear my father and pay him a call, and Paul's playmate, his little sen, showed himself at the church door. When Paul and his brother cauglit sight of him at a distance through the grating of the choir D 2 36 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH EICHTER. seats, there began on both sides a fidgetting and shuffling, heart-leaping and signalling, and any attention to the sermon was now quite out of the question, even had pro- paganda, ten chief court-preachers and pastores primarii stationed themselves in the pulpit and talked them- selves hoarse. The present fore-Sabbath, the fore-land of brightest hopes, the luncheon of the day, must now alone be enjoyed at a distance and in church. But he who now demands a description of the holy zephyrs and calm of the evening after the first joyous storm of youthful and parental preparations, forgets that I have not unlimited powers. I. should, however, like to add that late in the evening the Joditz parsonage accompanied the Koditz far beyond the vil- lage, and that consequently this tour over the village into the distance, enhanced by the parents and the little friends, especially at such a late hour, must have conferred and left behind it many blessings, of which more in the future. We now come, ladies and gentlemen, to those Joditz Idyls which were enjoyed by Paul, more without Joditz than within, and which will perhaps be most conveniently divided into those when he himself was not at home and those when his father was not. I will begin with the latter, as I reckon the absence of fathers on journeys among the unrecognized pleasures of childhood ; for at these times the mothers dispense a glorious academic freedom from reports and a full liberty of action. Paul and his brother could slip out behind their mother's back while she was deep in her business and get over the yard door (to which was attached a bell) to hunt some of the forbidden game of the village, i.e., butterflies, grundels, and birch-juice, or reeds for whistles ; or they would fetch, a new playmate, the schoolmaster's Fritz, or help to toll the midday bell for the pleasure of being swung into the air by the rope. There was also another pleasure of con- siderable importance within the court-yard — only Paul might easily have broken his neck at it, and so put an end beforehand to my whole professorship. It consisted in this : Paul climbed on to the cross-beam in the barn with a ladder and then sprang into the hay lying down below to the height of a storey and a half for the pleasure of the flight through the air. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37 Sometimes he would place his harpsichord at the open window in an upper storey and thump violently on it that the passers-by might hear him. To make the tones louder down below, he would draw a quill sharply with the right hand across the strings, which he held down at the same time with the left on the key board. borne strokes of the quill, too, he tried on the strings beyond the bridge, but there was not much melody to be got out of that. The Joditz summer Idyls naturally occur still oftener when one entirely leaves that village and goes to another or into the town. Is there a more blessed order on a bright summer day after the repetition of the Lange "s Grammar than this : "Get yourself ready to go with me to Koditz after dinner " ? Never was the dinner more tasteless. Paul had to run to keep up with his father's long strides. After an hour he had his out-door games with the play- mate and his mother — whose voice still sounds from the distance like the strains of a lute or like harmonic bells — and sometimes, too, one or another laurel wreath, large enough for his little head. His father, in paternal delight at the way in which Paul caught up and retained h's sermons, of which on Sunday evening he would repeat the subject and the diflferent headings straight off, used to tell him to repeat them again to their friends ; — and the little fellow, may I say it, stood the test firmly. In a boy who all his life had seen nothing greater — not a count — not a general — not a superintendent — and very seldom a nobleman, at the most, twice in a year (the Herr von Beitztein, who was living in concealment having been a long time under arrest) — in such a boy, it displayed courage to speak so publicly before the pastor's f.jmily. But fire and courage always came to him when he began speaking, however shy he might be when silent. Yes, did he not venture once during his fathers absence, on something still more bold? Did he not one afternoon, when his father was out, take his hymn book and go forth with it to an old woman, who for years had been bedridden, and there place himself by the bedside, as if he were a full-grown pastor making a sick visit, and begin to read 38 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. such of the hymns as were appropriate ? But he was soon interrupted by the weeping and sobbing with which, not the old woman — she remained coldly indiiferent to every- thing — but he himself, listened to the hymns. One day, his father took our hero with him to the Court at Versailles, as one may call Zedtwitz without exagger- ation, since it was the residence of the patron of the Joditz pastors. Whenever he had been at Court, which often happened twice in a month during the summer, he aroused the provincial astonishment of his wife and child in the evening to the utmost, by tales about great people and their court ceremonies, and the court feasts, and ice-cellars, and Swiss cows, and how he himself was quickly taken from the " domestics' " room to the old Herr von Plotho, then to the young lady, to whom he gave a few preliminary exercises on the piano, and finally to the Baroness von Plotho, bom a Bodenhausen, and how on account of his vivacity he was always invited to the dinner table, even when (this made no difference) the most distinguished landowners of the Yoigtland were dining there. But, like an old Lutheran court preacher, he acknowledged the illimitable greatness of rank, as he did the apparitions, without trembling before either. And yet, I say, h(jw much happier are ye, children of the present time, who are brought up so self-dependently, who are taught no prostration before rank,(^and are strengthened from within against the external glitter !> That mile-distant prostration of the Joditz pastor's sonsHbefore the Zedtwitz throne was strengthened each year by a magnificent carriage which came always on Maundy Thursday to fetch my father, in the capacity of Confessor, to administer the sacrament to the family. The children can talk of the carriage, for they always had the delight of a drive round the village in it before starting home in the evening. You will now perhaps have some idea of our hero's undertaking when he accompanied the Court Confessor — who had talked of him among the great people with too much love and praise — to Zedtwitz to be introduced to the reigning house. After he had walked to and fro for a long time before the ancestral pictures down below in the castle, the Baroness von Plotho received him on the stairs AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 39 sts in a reception room ; Paul immediately darting up, grasped her dress according to court regulations and imprinted the ceremonial kiss upon it. And thus the audience was happily got over without either Knights or Courtmarshalls and the lad was free to run about again. And this he did in the magnificent garden. Scarcely has any other Ambassador than our little Hildburghausen Councillor of Legation ever inhaled and imbibed such romantic hours immediately after the stiff formal audience, as those avenues, springs, hot-beds, and arbours must have afforded to a village child, more internally than externally imaginative, who wandered alone for the first time amid these splendoui-s with oppressed and expanding breast. What brought the soaring Paul down again to vulgar reality was a wooden bird on a string with an iron beak, which he could shoot into the black of a target. A delicious fruit cake sent down from the castle preserved the happy medium between flying and standing; the sweet flavour of it still remains in the reliquary of our hero. ye lovely, lonely hours and walks for that hungering village child, whose heart would so fain have filled itself with — nay, even have longed for — the outer world. With less of court glitter come now, under the summer Idyls, those frequent errands which Paul, with fitting wallet on his back, had to make to his grandparents at Hof, to fetch meat and coffee and all the other things which either were not to be had at all in the village or at any rate not at the very lowest town prices. His mother supplied him with a few little coins to take with him — it must not seem as if the whole was given, — so that his grandmother, generous to her daughter and son-in-law, and stingy only to the rest of the world, might fill his wallet with anything that might then be on the bill of fare. The two hours' road led him over a commonplace, uninteresting country, through a wood, and therein over a foaming stony river, till at last from a hill-slope, the view of the town down below in the plain, with its two anited towers and the Saale, filled to overflowing the heart of the little messenger who was easily satisfied. With childish dread of all times of war and tribulation, he passed the mouth of a cave on the outskirts of the town, whore, / 40 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRTCH RICHTER. according to the legend, the people of Hof had hidden themselves in the thirty years' war ; the neighbouring fulling-mill with its ceaseless thunderstrokes and pon- derous beams expanded his little village soul sufficiently for it to take in the town more comfortably. When now he had kissed the hand of this tall serious grandfather, sitting behind his loom, and of the joyous little grandmother, and had delivered his mother's official letter — his father was too proud to ask for anything — the .^canty money was publicly handed over and the secret articles of petition were delivered up behind the door in the passage ; and in the afternoon he trotted back home with his knapsack full, and with some su^ar almonds foi Augustine, in high delight over the parental provision ship on his back. He still remembers one summer-day, when on bis home- ward journey, about two o'clock, as he v\as looking down on the sunlit mountain-slopes, the gliding waves of t e corn-fields, and the hastening shadows of the clouds, an unknown indefinite longing came over him, with more of grief in it than of pleasure, a longing for someth ng he had never known. It was the whole being yearning for the heavenly goods of life, which still lay undefined and colourless in the dark depths of the heart, and which brightened momentarily under the penetratins:: sunbeams. There is a time of longing when the object as yet bears no name, the longing knows only its own name. In later life, too, the power of this painful, searching longing has been asserted less by the moonshine whose silvery sea softly melts the heart and thus gently leads it to the Infinite, than by the afternoon sun, shining over a broad landscape ; in Paul's works this is several times introduced and described. In the winter's snow also, Paul had frequently to make a journey as Hof and Holland* messenger in times of pecuniary want ; at these times he had to use his wit in ne^ociating loans with his grandfather; so, too, in the coldest weather he was allowed to accompany his father to the hospitable parsonages in the neighbourhood. To * Holland at tliis time had become proverbial foi its pecuuiary omoarrassmeuta. — Tr. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 41 these weekly gymnastic exercises he ovrn the other hand he would be quite capaWe of living and writing continually on jMont Blanc or ^^tna, if the wherewithal was provided for him there ; only the limited and human can never be small enough for him, the greatne.'^s of Nature cannot be too much enlarged : the smallness of man's works is made smaller by enlargement. By what I have now said the Joditz autumn Idyl is pretty well painted. "Jhe autumn leads people home- wards, and there leaves them its horn of pl« nty for the winter's nest, which they build, like the crossbill, who makes her nest and hatches her young in the month of ice. It must be on account of that time that Taul still hears with pleasure the first threshing, or the noisy flocks of crows in the woods, and the calling and signalling of the birds of passage before their departure, as the preludes to a cosy homely winter nesting ; nnd I am sorry for his Hake that in the autumn, when the geese are flying in flocks, he hears them with real pleasure cackling as the foretellers of the winter-time. By this homely and wintery disposition I have always accounted for the unusual enjoyment with which he read all descriptions of travels in wintry countries, as Spitzbergen or (Green- land, for the representation on paper merely of distress can scarcely be an exi'lanation of his pleasure, because if it were so. he would have had the same feelings on reading of the distresses in the hot countries. Thu well- known pleasure, on the other hand, which one feels over each quarter of an hour by which the days are diminished in autumn may, I think, be attributed more to the liking 46 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH RICHTER. for superlatives — even though they be the antipodes of one another — the liking for what is infinitely great or infinitely small, in short for the Maxima and Minima, and this the more so, as he had just as much pleasure when the days were increasing in length ; then he had no other wish than for long Swedish days. One sees from all with what economy and skill God has armed and equipped man for the path of life, on which there is little to be found either on the right or left, so that however black it may be around him, he can always find some white in it, and with an amphibious instinct for land and water can neither drown nor thirst. It is just these autobiographical features, gentlemen, which a future biographer will easily work up into a life and for which he will perhaps thank me. I know besides of nothing but this home-and- winter-loving disposition which can make intelligible to me why Paul tastes again with so much relish another autumn pleasure, very insipid in itself. In the autumn evenings (the gloomy ones, too), my father, in dressing gown, used to take Paul and Adam to the potato field, lying above the Saale. One youngster cai ried the hoe and the other a hand basket. When we arrived on the field our father dug up as many new potatoes as were wanted for supper, Paul picking them up and throwing them into the basket, while Adam was allowed to climb the hazel bushes after the nuts. After a little time he had to come down to the potato-bed, and Paul in his turn climbed up. And then they went happily home with potatoes and nuts, — and I will let each one paint for himself as brilliantly as the partaker himself, the joy of a quarter of a mile walk, and an hour's run in the open air, and of the return home and celebration of the harvest festival by candlelight. Two other autumn flowers of joy which have been preserved in the store-room of his memory are still particularly fresh and green, and they are both trees. The one is a thick tall muscatel pear-tree in the parsonage yard, the fall of whose fruit we children endeavoured to hasten all the autumn by artificial means, until at length on the most important day of the season our father himself climbed by a ladder into the forbidden tree, and brought AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 47 down a sweet paradise for the whole house and for the oven. The other tree, always green and always blooming more beautifully still than the former, is, however, smaller than it. It is the felled birch-tree which every year, on St. Andrew's Eve, was dragged trunk first into the room by the old woodcutter, and planted in a large flower-pot in lime-and-water, so that the green leaves might be ready just at Christmas-time, when the golden fruits were hung upon it. This birch-tree (it was no mourning but a rejoicing birch) had the peculiarity that it strewed the dark December road up to Christmas with flowers of joy, namely with the little forced leaves, each fresh one of which pointed like a watch-hand to another day left behind ; and that each child could celebrate (under this winter May-tree) its Tabernacle feast of hope. All will willingly exempt me from a description of Paul's Christmas Festival who have met with pictures of it in his works, which I least of anyone am able to surpass. 1'wo additions only may here be made to the picture. When Paul on Christmas morning stood before the lighted tree, and the new world of gold, glitter, and gifts lay in front of him, and he found and received one new and costly present after another, — not a tear — namely, of joy, but a sigh,— namely, over life — was what first arose in him ; in one word the step, or spring, or flight, out of the swelling, sporting, boundless sea of imagination on to the limited, limiting, immoveable shore expressed itself in the boy by a sigh for a larger, more beautiful land. But ere this sigh was breathed forth and the happy reality had asserted its strength, Paul felt that out of gratitude he must show himself happy before his mother, and so put on the appearance ; only for a short time however, for the rays of the breaking morning of reality immediately extinguished and dispersed the moonlight of fancy. Here, too, may be mentioned a peculiarity of my father's which was shown just at the same time. It was this. My father, who took part so joyfully in everything, permitting and giving every pleasure so willingly, came down from his rfx)m on Christmas morning into the gaily lighted parlour, as if decked in mourning crape. Our mother assured us of her own ignorance of the cause of this annual 4:8 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. melancholy, and no one had the courage to ask. To onr mother, too, he left the whole of the tiouble and pleasure of decking the table on Christmas Eve, and in this respect perhaps he remained consideiably behind his son Paul, who always helped his wife, — if it was not she who only helped him, — at the children's Christmas play ; for in fact — particularly in their earlier years, when they were more foolish — for many months before the performance of this fairy play, he had acted the False Informer, the Playwriter, and the Scene Painter on the sofa, and at length on the evening had appeared as complete Opera Director and practical Manager — and for each of his three children he had carefully marked off a portion of the table by lights, the presents for the maid being placed on a side table, in fact he had laid out and arranged everything on table and tree so brightly and with such judgment that the whole scene sparkled, as did his own eyes. In spite of this, the father and the father's sadness are to be explained from the son, and in this way ; the latter himself with all his outward activity has had for many years to veil a similar feeling. In both cases it is only a melancholy feeling, tender from church chants and novels, which comes with the cou^'oarison of the mature autumn of reality with the spring (.f childhood before one's eyes, in which the blossoms of the ideal grow directly on the stem of the real without the intervention of leaves and branches. I'he wine and honey of childish joy required then even the ideal, ethereal addition of a belief in the Holy Child who gave them. For as soon as Paul had seen with his own eyes that they were only people, not supernatural beings, who had gathered the flowers and fruits and placed them on the table ; the Eden fragrance and Eden splendour ~ were gone, brushed away, and the every-day flower bed was there. It is too incredible how, like all children, he defended himself against every assaulter of his heavenly faith, and how long he held to his supernatural revelations against all the enlightenment of his increasing years, against all the hints of fortune, until at last he saw and conquered, less than he was conquered. So difficult is it for people of all religions to bring down to humanity those' AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 49 who, in their fancied heaven, play the part of beneficent deities tc» them. Thus far the Joditz Idyls extend; they lasted long enough for parents and children, namely, as long as the Trojan ^Var. 'I 'he expenses for the four sons were in- creasing and the promised school became more and more necessary for them. At times, too, a feeling of dis- satisfaction came over our fathe^r that he was exhausting and using up his best years and best strength in such a small village church. At length Barnikel, the pastor of Schwarzenbach-on-the-Saale, a small city or large market town, died. Death is the real play director and manager of the world. He takes a man like a ciplier from the row of figures, from the beginning, the middle or the end, and, lo, the whole row closes up with new positions and values. The living, which was in the gift of the Count von Schonburg-Waldenburg and the Baroness von Plotho by turns, fell this time to Richter's patroness, who had long and openly looked forward to this opportunity of helping and rewarding the good, cheerful, disinterested, and im- poverished pastor. But he went not more but rather less often to Zedtwitz on this account. To send a written petition or even so mnch as a verbal request for a pastorship would have stained him as an act of simony, believing orthodoxly as he did that the Holy Ghost alone must call one to a sacred office. And thus the birth-proud patroness had to give way to the firm, poor, and office-proud Blackcoat without request or solicitation. I am letting you into a secret of the Joditz Court — which it has itself long since forgotten — when I relate from the lips of the old pastor that which happened on the day of his appointment. He was as usual shown in at first to the old Herr von Plotho, and he for love and joy could not keep back from my father the news of his good fortune, but told him straight out, and even gave him the presentation, while properly his wife as the real patroness was alone able to do so. Afterwards, when the newly created pastor came to her to present his thanks there was a little ill-temper on the part of the baiuness towards her husband which she could not wholly conceal from the Court. Both with similar intention had M^ished, I. fc 50 JEAN PAUL FKIEDEICH RICHTER. by delivering the presentation personally, to spare their moneyless friend all the various gratuities and doTicenrs — fatal words for one party concerned — of the messengers. As I know so well your benevolent disposition towards father and son, I would guess that you are now inwardly exclaiming with joy, " Th^'o is indeed glorious, that the moon-change of the parsonages at last brings him finer weather, and we now see the glad musician duly leaving the company earlier than usual (he w^ould gladly have talked longer with them out of gratitude) and hurrying home with his bulldog, to tell and share his own delight as soon as possible with all his family, and particularly with his poor wife, who of a truth, has already endured enough in the ear-gleaning and tithe-collecting on the paternal fields." I have nothing to say against this, except that you are all very wide of the mark and I am surprized at your mistake. He brought the glad tidings seriously and sadly not only because on the flower-and-fruit-wreath of good fortune, as on the bridal wreath, a few dew-drops always hang, looking like tears, but also because the departure from his loved and loving parish, which for many years had been his second family in the larger family hall of the church began to shed tears, and lastly, too, because now the quiet, peaceful, sequestered, simple village-life would hang in his memory only as a distant picture. Country-life, like sea-life, is indeed monotonous, without variety of small or great events ; but there is a kind of uniform joy, which strengthens, just as the monotonous sea air strengthens the consumptive patient because there are no dust clouds to inhale, and no insects which torment. I think that I have now so far fulfilled my obligations as my own historical Professor, in all that concerns Joditz, the village of my education, that in my next lecture I may move with my hero and his family to Schwarzenbach-on- the-Saale, where undoubtedly the curtain goes up a few feet higher, and rather more of the chief actor comes in view than merely the child's shoes, as hitherto. For indeed we send him from to-day's lecture into the next, as a human being of upwards of twelve years of age with ten times less knowledge than the five-year-old Christian AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 51 Heinrich Heineke von Liibeck,* whose nnrse laid him again to her breast after his examination, — so ignorant of all natural, or geographical, or world history, except of that little part which he himself was — so ignorant of French and music ; in Latin provided with just a little bit of Lange and Speccius — in short, such an empty, trans- parent skeleton or framework, with no nourishment or flesh of learning, that, with you all, I can hardly await the place and time when, in Schwarzenbach-on-the-Saale, he must at length begin to know something, and clothe his skeleton with flesh. With him we now leave that unknown little village ; although it has not, like many another village, put on a laurel crown won in war, j^et still, I think, he can give it a high place in his heart and say, even to-day, as if he was just leaving it — " Loved little village, thou art still dear and precious to me. Two little sisters have I left in thy bosom. My father contentedly spent in thee his fairest Sundaj'-s; and in the morning of life 1 have seen the radiance of thy meadows. Truly thy well-known in- habitants, whom I will now thank, are long since gone like my father, but for their unknown children and grand- children, my heart's wish is that they may be prosperous and that warfare may pass by them at a distance." * Christian von Schonoich, the tutor ami biographer of this prodigy who was born February 6th, 1721, tells us (1726), in his ' Life, Deeds, Journeys, and Death,' that he understood Latin, French, History, Geography, and the Institutions of the Roman Law, that he was well- informed in Theology and Anatomy, was witty and acute in mind, and was nourished entirely by the milk of bis nurse. 2 52 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICHTER. THIED LECTUEE (WITH THEEE SUPPLEMENTS). schwarzenbach-on-the-saale — kiss — rector — lord's supper. Would you believe, my friends, that Paul retained nothing in his memory of all the packing-up, moving, and leaving; no parting either of parents or children ; no object on the two-miles journey, excepting only the above-mentioned tailor's son, to whose pocket he intrusted his six drawings of the kings for his beloved ? But so it is in childhood and boyhood ; the most trivial is retained, the most important forgotten ; one knows not why, in either case. Childhood, too, ever restless and impatient, remembers the departure lees than the arrival ; a child leaves ten times more easily the long-accustomed surroundings than the more recent ones ; only in manhood does • the exact opposite become the case. For children there are no partings, for they acknowledge no past, but only a present filled with the future. Schwarzenbach-on-the-Saale was indeed in the pos- session of many things. A pastor and a curate ; a rector and a cantor ; and a parsonage with many little rooms and two big ones. Opposite were two large bridges and the accompanying Saale, and close by was the schoolhouse, as big as (if not bigger than) the wholeJoditz parsonage, and among the houses was also a townhall — not to mention the large empty castle. A new rector entered on his office just at the same time as my father ; Werner from Merseburg, a handsome man with broad brow and high nose ; full of fire, and with much feeling ; of overwhelming natural eloquence, replete with questions, allegories and harangues, like Father Abraham, but quite without depth either in languages or other branches of knowledge. H e helped out the poverty of this reverse side, however, by a heart full of enthusiasni and zeal; his tongue was the lever of our childish minds. ALTOBIOGEAPHY. 53 His plan of teaching was to let one learn from tho grammar only the most necessary forms of inflexion — by this he understood only the declensions and conjugations — and then to spring at once to the reading of some author. Paul had to make the spring at once, far over Lange's *Colloquia,' into ' Cornelius' and it was successful. The schoolroom, or much more the school-ark, contained A, B, C students, young spellers, Latin learners, big and little girls — who sat in tiers from the floor up to the wall, as if on the shelves of a greenhouse or in an old Koman theatre — and the rector and cantor, together with all the ace impanying crying, buzzing, reading and whipping. The Latin learners formed, as it wei e, a school within the school. Soon after Latin, the Greek grammar also was commenced, by learning the declensions and the most necessary verbs, and then without further delay we wei e translated to the transition of the New Testament. Werner, who often in the warmth of speaking praised himself so much that he was astonished at his OAvn great- ness, thought this faulty method of his was original, but in reality it was only that of Basedow. Paul's winged progress was a fresh proof to him of its success. About a year later a few declensions and verbs from D.inze*s Hebrew Grammar, written in Latin, were put together to form a boat-bridge to the First Book of Moses, the be- ginning of which — ^just the exegesis threshold of young Hebraists — was not permitted to be read by the un- cultivated Jews. 1 will immediately proceed chronologically with the life of our hero when I have cast a cursory view forward, just for one moment, and have shown you how much he suddenly could and had to do. I will then become statary again immediately. He had to translate the Greek and Hebrew Testaments viva voce into Latin like a Vulyiato maker. During his translation lesson (ho was the only Hebrew scholar in tho school), the rector had a printed translation lying by his side. When our hero was not successful in the analysis of the words, a second misfortune often occurred, namely, the master was no better oil*. 54 JEAN PAUL FEIEDKICK KICHTER. The present writer of novels was regularly in love with the Hebrew grammatical and analytical trash and trifling — this too was in reality a secret indication of his love of domesticity — and borrowed Hebrew grammars from all corners of Schwarzenbach, in order to hoard up all the in- formation on diacritical points, vowels, accents, and so on, which could be served up in the analysis of each single word. Then he sewed himself a quarto book together, and began in it with the first word of the first verse of the First Book of Moses, and wrote several pages of such copious information from all the borrowed grammars about, its few letters, its vowels and the first Dagesh and Sheva, that at the first words "In the beginning," (he intended to continue thns from chapter to chapter), he also made an end, unless indeed it was with the next. What has been written (in the first Letter-box), about Quintiis Fixlein's chase in a folio Hebrew Bible after larger, smaller, and reversed letters applies literally in all par- ticulars to Paul's own life. In just as droll a fashion he treated the now superan- nuated Hofmann, who, with the German translation sen- tences or Latin-rule examples was a great cross Speccius for the scholars, by winding his way like a screw, — the man going deeper and deeper into Syntaxis Ornata, — into such endless participial straits that the good rector had to think more about understanding than correcting him. Immediately after coming to Schwarzenbach — I am still in the cursory — I had pianoforte lessons from Gressel the Cantor ; and here, too, when he had learnt a few dance tunes and the usual choral chords and General Bass nota- tion, — would God but give the poor boy for once a thorough teacher, is my wish, however little prospect there appears to be anywhere of that, — he fell into his self-absolution from instruction, into extemporizing on the piano and collecting and playing off all the pieces which were to be found anywhere in the place. Thorough bass, the grammar of music, he acquired by continual extemporizing and playing from sight, in much the same way as we acquire the German grammar by talking. At this time, too, he applied himself to the reading of German literature, but as there was none other to be had AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 55 in Schwarzenbach than the romantic type, and of this only the worthless novels of the first half of the last century, he built himself a small Babylonian tower out of these bricks, though he could only extract from it one brick at a time to read. But of all histories standing on book- shelves, not one — for Schiller's ' Armenians ' later produced only half the impression — poured such oil of joy and nectar through all the veins of his being,— even to bodily ecstacy— as old ' Eobinson Crusoe ;' he still remembers hour and spot, (it was evening, by the window, looking on to the bridge) when the ecstasy occurred; and only after some time did a second novel, ' Veil Bosenstock,' by Otto — read and forbidden by my father — repeat the half of this enthusiasm. Only as plagiarist and book-thief did he enjoy it from his father's study so long as his father was not there — once he read it lying on his stomach in the empty gallery during one of his father's week-day sermons. I little envy children now-a-days, to whom the first im- pression of the childlike and childish Eobinson is denied and compensated for by the modern remodellers of the man, who metamorphose the quiet island into a lecture room or a worn-out snipe valley, and send the shipwrecked Robinson about with a precept book in his hand and their own dictata in his mouth, that in every nook he may found a private academy for the young, although he has so much to do for himself that it is only with the greatest difficulty that he can keep his own life. At this time, that is, just after this, the young curate Volkel begged the lad's father to let him come for two hours every day after dinner in order to instil into him a little of all sorts from philosophy and geography. By what means I, with my village awkwardness, became of such value to him, who was not fired with any particular pedagogic talent, that he sacrificed his napping hour for me, I do not know. In philosophy, he read, or more properly I read to him, that of Gottsched, which, with all its dryness and barren- ness, refreshed me like fresh water with its novelty. Then he showed me a number of towns and frontiers on a map — of Germany I believe ; but how much of this I retained I do not know, and search in vain for it in my 56 JEAN PAUL FKIEDllICH KICHTEE. memory to this day ; I dare aver — what of a truth sounds strong — that I, of all living authors am perhaps the ono who knows the least about geographical maps. An atlas of maps would bear for me a hell instead of the mytholo- gical heaven, if 1 had to carry them in my head. W hatever of the geography of towns and countries may by chance remain hanging in it (the head) is the little which has flown against it on the way, on the geographical instruc- tion courses, which, to express myself in good high-school Cierman, partly the post-chaises staterically, and partly the Hauderer (coachman) cursorily, have taken with me. All the more do I thank the good curate for his instruc- tion in German composition, which consisted of nothing but instruction in so-called theology. He set me for instance to give the evidence without a Bible, of the existence of a God or a Providence, &c. To f^o this I received an octavo sheet, on which were written the proofs and suggestions taken from Nosselt, ' Jerusalem,' and others, in incomplete sentences, even in single words separated by dashes. The disguised suggestions were then explained to me, and from this leaf, in accordance with Goethe's botanical theory, were my leaves developed. I began each composition with warmth, and finished it in a glow, for at the end there came always the end of the world, of life, the joys of heaven, and all that super- abundance which bursts from the young vine-shoots in the warmth of spring, and which only in autumn attains any intellectual value. To whom belong the praise and merit that these writing hours were not hours of toil, but of pleasure and freedom, if not to him who chose the right blofisoming and fruit-bearing themes? For, let anyone consider a moment and compare these suggestive and satisfying exercises with those ordinarily set by school- masters, which are so wide and undefined, so uncongenial to the young heart, or which reach so far beyond the sphere of youthful life — in jest I should like to give you a thousand in a note * — that I wish seriously that some man with * Out of such Tiniversal, cold, empty siabjects, demanding everything and nothing, — for example, " Praise of Industry," '' Importance of Youth," the richest, maturest head could hardly hatch anything living. Other Bubjei.-ts again, too broad, as " Comparison of tlie Heroes of A^rrOBIOGRAPHY. 57 leisure and a knowledge of youth would sit himself down, in spite of all the beautiful thoughts and elaborations which he might otherwise produce, and would write nothing for the present but a small volume of prize subjects, aiTanged after the pattern of the innumerable dissertations on the Sunday texts, for teachers, whose sole work would be to choose among them those which the} would give to their pupils. Better perhaps than all subjects are none at all. Let the youth choose each time that subject, as a mistress, for which his heart is warm and full, and with which alone he is able to create that which has life. Leave the young spirit free with a few hours and a few sheets of paper — which maturer writers require too — that he may freely give forth his tones undisturbed by your hand, otherwise he is a bell standing firmly on the ground and unable to sound until hung freely in the air. But men are thus throughout all offices up from the lowest ; they find the greater glory in making servile machines out of free spirits, thus showing their creating, governing, and producing powers ; they think to give proof of this, if they are able to bring into the same track and couple on to the intellectual machine next above them an intermediate midway machine, and to the intermediate one to couple another, until at length there appears a mother Marion- ette leading a Marionette daughter, who again in her turn is able to carry a poodle — all is only a couj)ling together by the same machine master — God ; the free will only rear the free ; the devil, the unfree, will rear only his like. I would not exchange my weekly exercises for any of those of the present time, how much soever these may enlighten the world, particularly as the subjects opened the lists to my philosophizing tendency and let it have its nin out ; a tendency which had already sought to overflow from my small head into a thin octavo booklet in which Antiquity," " Weighing of the Old Forms of Religion,** are ostrich- eggs on which the pupil with too short wings sits and broods in vain, making none worm but himself. Between these two kinds are the better ones, rich in sensuous and historical material, such as " Descrip- tion of a Conflagration, of the Last Day, of the Deluge ; Proof of its Non-universality." 58 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH RICHTER. Stieing and Hearing endeavoured and thought to give a logical account of themselves, and of which 1 related a part to my father, who blamed and misunderstood me just as little as I did myself. Can one, then, repeat too often to the teacher of youth — very often must I have said it \ already — that /all hearing and reading does not strengthen land stimulate the spirit half so much as writing and \ speaking Jbecause the former, like conception in the female, exercises only the receptive faculties, while the latter like begetting in the male, demands and brings into action the creative powers. Do not the translators of the most learned and pithy writers, — for example, Ebert, the trans- lator of Young, — keep on all their lives writing their pre- faces, notes and poems with inborn washiness, when one might have expected a little improvement, since of all reading tianslating is the most repeated as well as the most accurate and penetrating, and thus the translator of a work of merit enjoys it more and gets at the kernel better than any other reader. Eeading is like collecting for the school money-box or the poor-bag; writing is the founding of a mint, the stamping die enriches one more than the bell- bag. Writing, like a Socratic midwifery which one practises on oneself, is to reading as speaking is to hearing. In England and among people of the court and world, talking is a means of education, and helps out the paucity of the reading. Finally I staked these lessons with the curate on a gacae at chess and lost, because — we did not play. To explain ; the curate would sometimes conclude the lesson in geo- graphy with one in chess, still to this day my favourite game, though in it and all games I have remained the beginner that I was when I first made my debut. Once I went to my lesson in spite of a headache, because a game at chess had been promised, and as, through forgetfulness, the game never came, so I also never came again. That my father silently allowed this desertion of mine unoc- casioned by one single word, is more difficult of compre- hension to me than the other natural circumstance that I was a fool and fled from the curate at the same time that I continued to love him. I was still very pleased to act A.UTOBIOGRAPHY. 59 the little foot-messenger between him and my father, and with glances of love and joyfully beating pulses would see him turn into our house after almost all the baptisms (for this reason the baptism bell tolled a joyous mass on my ears) to chat away a half or the whole of the evening while I read or worked at the table ; but, as I have said, I had got the chessboard in my head, and kept away. Heavens ! who is it that gathers into the best honey cells of mine and of many another poetical and feminine nature Buch a summer honey (if not honey vinegar) of love and ill- will, such a conflicting mish-mash, which often poisons and cankers the most beautiful days, yes, and the most beau- tiful hearts, perhaps ? Truly, could one often but add an additional half grain of brain-aether or reason to the warmest hearts, I should know of nothing better than the hottest love, but, as it is, the sweetness congeals to bitter lees and its own reverse. Kiss. As I lost my heart before in a churcn pew, so now I could not do otherwise than fall in love up the raised school benches — for she sat quite up at the top, Katherine Barin — with her dainty, round, red, little, small-pox- marked face and sparkling eyes, and the pretty haste with which she spoke and ran off. At the school carnival, which occupied the whole of the forenoon of Shrove Tuesday, and consisted in dancing and playing, I had the pleasure of dancing the irregular hop- dance and thus, as it were, of practising and dancing beforehand the regular dance. Yes, too, at the game of " How do you like your neighbour?" where, on a favourable answer one is ordered to kiss, and on an unfavourable one to run oif, amid accoUades from the knotted handkerchief, and make place for others, I carried off plenty of the latter ; a gold- beating, by which my love, like pure gold, inoreased, and an entertaining variety always prevailed, as she invariably forbad me the court, and I always called her to it. All these malicious desertions {desertioiies malitioscB) could not deprive me of the bliss of seeing her every day, as, with little white apron and cap, she ran over the h>ng bridge towards the parsonage, where I weis at the window 60 JEAN PAITL FKIEDRICH EICHTER. looking out. To catcli her and not so much to say as to give to her something sweet, a mouthful of fruit for example, this, as far as I know I was never able to do, let me run as quickly as I would through the yard and down the few steps to receive her in her flight past. But I enjoyed enough in being able to love her on the bridge from tbe window, which, I think, was near enough for me who usually stood with heart and mouth behind long seeing- and hearing-trumpets. Distance is less harmful to true love than proximity; if I had got a shj^h^. of Venus in the planet Venus, 1 should have loved the heavenly being ardently, particularly as at such a distance she would be very bewitching with her charms, and I would have chosen it without hesitation to be revered as my morning and evening star. I now have the pleasure of freeing from their error all those who expect a mere repetition of the Juditz love affair in the Schwarzenbach one; and of announcing to them that I brought it to something. One winter evening when 1 had already provided my princess-tax of sweet gifts, which usually lacked only the recipient, the pastor's son, who was the worst boy among all my school companions, persuaded me to a forbidden, deed of daring. While a call from the curate occupied my father, I left the parson- ai;e in the dark, crossed the bridge (which I had never dared before) went straight up to the house where the beloved one lived with her poor mother in a little corner- room, and there made my way into a kind of tap-room down below. Whether Katherine was down there by chance and was going upstairs again, or whether the rogue with his ofiBcious planning had enticed her half-way down under some pretence or other, in short, how it happened that I found her on the stairs, has all become a dreamy recollection to me, for a Present, which flashes forth suddenly, renders dim in the memory all that has preceded it. Hurriedly as a thief, I first gave her my food -presents, and then I, who never in Joditz could come to the heaven of a first kiss, and never dared to touch the beloved hand, for the first time pressed a long-loved beitjg to my heart and lips. I know not what more to say ; it was a single pearly minute, which had never been before, AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61 and never came again ; a whole longing past and a future dream were compressed into one moment : and in the darkness behind my closed eyes the tire work of life was displayed for one moment and llien was gone. Like H clairvoyant, I return from heaven back again to earth, remarking only that the Ku|)rechr followed, since he had not preceded, this second Christmas festivity, for on Dfiy way home, 1 already found the messenger, and was soundly scolded when I got there for running out. Such a hailstorm and dross-stream fall usually with the hot silver beams of the sun of happiness. What did it matter to me ? The stream of words could not mar my paradise, for does it not bloom to this very day, even to this pen and forth from it ? It was, as I have said, the first kiss, and at the same time, I believe, the last, unless, — for she still lives, — I purposely make a journey to Schwarzenbach and give her a second. As usual, I contented myself throughout my Schwarzenbach life with my telegraphic love, which, too, had to sustain and reply to itself without an answering telegraph. But truly none blames the good maiden less than I do that she then kept silence and does so still — after her husband's death ; for in later life I have always had to find my way slowly to the unknown heart and its love ; it was of no use that I immediately stood there with ready face and exterior; afterwards I always had to underlay these bodily charms with the intellectual for them sufficiently to glitter, dazzle, and kindle the fire. But this was just the defect in my innocent love time, that, without intercourse with the loved one, without conversation or prelude, I suddenly, with barren exterior, showed the whole of my love bursting forth, in short, that I stood before her like the Judas-tree which produces its blossoms without the intervention of branches and leaves. 62 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. Joke with the Rector. As the Joke-playing Society* knew that the rector read the newspaper in school, and introduced the current events in his school sermons, they sent him an old number of the Erlanger Bealzeitung, which he took in, containing an account of the horrors of the terrible famine in Italy, particularly in Naples. The date they had covered up well enough by dropping an ink blot on it. All heard into their rooms how, inflamed by the Fidihus paperf (scarcely could he await the withdrawal of the organist), he burst forth with his exposition, and how vividly he brought before the eyes of the Schwar- zenbach youth in fire colours — the Erlanger writer gave only the water colours — the begging, shrieking, fainting, and starving in all the streets, until it became doubtful whether they would return home with more burning tears or hunger. And in reality in such descriptions one hardly believes that there is still anything left to eat on the earth. Each one may imagine for himself under what kind of triumphal gates (or on what triumphal beds) the good herald of hunger was taken that evening by the Joke-playing Society for his touching and warning words, when they had seen the children and questioned them about it. I can give no account, for I heard only dimly and some time afterwards of the recall of the paper. Good, well-meaning old rector! be not much ashamed or angry with birds of joke or prey, who wish to pounce down on your pulpit-doves! The holy dove had still hovered and brooded over our hearts with warm wings. For the warmed heart it is just the same whether it has trembled with the pulses of compassion for a near or a distant famine. * This society consisted of the friends of the rector who permitted such Jokes between themselves as the one here related, t Properly a small strip of paper used for lighting cigars, &c. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 63 Thb Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is considered in the country, or more properly among good Christians, not merely as a Christian moral /0,7a virilis ; not as in towns amongst girls, less as the putting on the nun's clothing, than the young lady's ; but it is the highest and first spiritual act, the entrance on citizenship in God's city. It is only now that the former water-baptism becomes a real fire-baptism, the first sacrament rises again in the second glorified and more living. The children of a pastor, who have been eye- and ear-witnesses of the preparation of others so often for this Sunday approach it with the greater reverence. This reverence rose still higher in me on account of the post- ponement of the ceremony for a year, as my father did not consider that the legal age of twelve years had com- pletely elapsed by the 21st of March. Add now to these days of religious warmth, a fire- preacher, as was our rector, who presented to our souls the awful conditions peculiar to this religious act, that the unrepentant who partakes of the sacrament, like a perjurer, eats his Hell instead of Heaven, and that when a Kedeemer and Saint enters into the impure sinner, the saving power of his presence must be turned into a poisoning power. Warm tears, which he, too, shed with us, were the least which his heartfelt words drew forth from myself and the rest ; burning repentance for the past and passionate vows for a blameless future filled our breasts and continued their work there after he had ceased to speak. How often did I go to the garret before the Confession Saturday, and kneel down to repent and atone. And how sweet it was on the Confession day itself to ask forgiveness with stammering lips and over- flowing heart for one's faults from all the dear ones, parents, and teachers, and thus to atone for them and absolve oneself. On this evening there came, too, a mild, light, clear heaven of peace over my soul, an unutterable never-returning blessedness in feeling myself quite clean, purified and freect from sin ; in having made with God and man a joyful 64 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKTCH RICHTER. far-reaching peace, and still, from these evening hours of mild and warm soul-rest, I looked onward to the heavenly enthusiasm and rapture at the altar next morning. blessed time ! when one has stripped off the unclean past, and stands pure and white, free and fresh in the present, and thus steps forth courageously into the future. But to whom but children can this time return ? In the happy time of childhood this complete peace of soul is more easy to gain, because the circle of sacrifices which it demands is smaller and the sacrifices themselves less im- portant, while the complicated and widened circumstances of later years, either through deficiencies or delay in complete resignation, admit the heavenly rainbow of peace only incomplete and not rounded to a perfect circle, as in the time of youth. In the twelfth year enthusiasm can render one perfectly pure, but not so in age. The youth, too, and the maiden with all their fiery impulses have less to overcome in their circle, and have an easier and shorter way to the highest moral purity, than that which the man or w-oman have to traverse with their colder and more selfish strivings, through the wilderness of troubles, cares, and toils. The true man is, at some period in his earliest time, a diamond of the first water, crystal clear, and without colour, then he becomes one of second quality and glitters with many colours, until at last he darkens into a coloured stone. On Sunday morning the boys and girls, adorned for the sacrificial altar, met at the parsonage for the solemn entrance into the church amid singing and bell-ringing. All this, together with the festive attire and the nosegays, and the narkened fragrant birch-trees, both at home and in the church, became for the young soul a powerful breeze in its outspread wings, which were already raised and in motion. Even during the long sermon the heart expanded with its fire, and inward struggles were carried on against all thoughts which were worldly or not sufficiently holy. A t length I received the bread from my father and the cup from my purely loved teacher, but the ceremony did not receive any additional value from the thought of what these two were to me ; my heart and mind and soul AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 65 were devoted alone to heaven, to happiness, and to the re- ception of the Most Holy, which was to unite itself vnth my being, and my rapture rose to a physical lightning- feeling of miraculons union. I thus left the altar with a clear blue infinite heaven in my heart ; this heaven revealed itself to me by an un- limited, stainless tender love which I now felt for all, all mankind. To this day I have preserved within my • heart with loving and youthful freshness the remembrance of the happiness when I looked on the church members with love, and took them all to my innermost heart. The maiden companions at the holy altar with their bridal wreaths became not only dearer, but also more holy, to me as the brides of Christ, and I included them all in such a wide, pure love, that even my beloved Katharina as far as I can remember was not otherwise loved than the rest. The whole earth remained for me throughout the day an unlimited love-repast, and the whole tissue and web of life appeared to me to be an iEolian or setherial harp played by the breath of love. When even the misanthrope can extract an artificial delight from his universal dislike, of what indescribably sweet happiness must be a universal love for all hearts in the beautiful time of youth, untram- melled and untainted by circumstances, the horizon of which is still limited, the arms short but the ardour so much the more intense. And shall we not allow ourselves the joy of dreaming out the dream of this overflowing heaven, which would receive us if, in a higher and hotter locus of a second youth, we should grasp a larger spiritual world, loving with higher power, and should widen the heart from life to life for the All. But in inconstant man all else remains more easily on the surface than the purest and the best, as in quicksilver all metals remain at the top — the gold alone sinks. Life, like the sun (according to Goethe), admits no white. After a few days this precious consciousness of innocence deserted me, for I thought that I had sinned in throwing a stone and wrestling with a schoolfellow, though I did neither out of ill-feeling, but in harmless love of play. But eternal thanks are due for ever to the all-kind spirit. Every holiday is followed by working days, but we go I ¥ 66 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. into tliem newly-clad, and tlie past holiday leads us on over them to a fresh one. This spring festivity of the heart returned later in the years of youth, but only as a quiet, serene sabbath, when for the first time the great old stoical spirits of Plutarch, Epictetus, and Antoninus arose and appeared before me, and freed me from all the pains of this earth and all anger ; but from this one Sabbalh I hope I have gathered together a whole year of Sabbaths, or am able to make up that which may still be wanting. LEVANA; OR, THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION. V2 TO HER MAJESTYJ, CAROLINE, QUEEN OF BAVARIA. WITH THE PROFOUNDEST RESPECT OF THE AUTHOR. Most Gracious Queen ! The author would consecrate Levana to mothers by your royal name— as the banners which a princess has worked receive fresh victorious power. Your Majesty will graciously pardon the dedication of a work which Germany, by the approbation expressed in the demand for a new, improved edition, has already dedicated to a Princess, who, in its best parts, will but find her own recollections. If, even in the lowest ranks, a mother's heart be woman's honour, — the sun which gently warms and dries the dewdrops of early tears, — this sun delights the beholder most when it stands highest and cherishes the distant future, and when a noble mother multiplies her heart as well as her beauty, and blesses distant ages and countries with her image. 70 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH KICHTER. This delight becomes still greater if the mother be also the mother of her country, and raise her sceptre like a magic \\'and which converts tears of sorrow into tears of joy ere it dries them. Should the profound respect of a subject forbid him to express this joy in a dedication ? With most profound respect, Your Majesty's Most obedient, humble servant, Jean Paul 1'r. Kichter. AUTHOR'S PEEFACE. NovERRE only required from a good director of the ballet — besides the art of dancing — geometry, music, poetry, painting, and anatomy. But to write upon education, means to write upon almost everything at once ; for it has to care for and watch over the development of an entire, though miniature, world in little — a microcosm of the microcosm. All the energies mth which nations have laboured and signalized themselves once existed as germs in the hand of the educator. If we carried the subject still farther every century, every nation, and even every boy and eveiy girl, woidd require a distinct system of education, a different primer, and domestic French governess, &c. If, consequently, on a subject like this, only acta sanctorum, or more correctly, sanctificandorum (acts less of saints than of those to be made saints) can be written, and if a folio be nothing more than a fragment, there cannot be, on such an inexhaustible subject, one book too much, even after the best, except the worst ; and where frag- ments alone are possible, all that are possible complete the whole. The Author trusts thus to excuse his boldness as well as his poverty ; for both, as in the state, are nearly connected. Ho has not read every thing which has been written upon education, but here and there something. First and last he names Rousseau's Emile. No preceding work can be compared with his ; the succeeding imitators and transcribers seem to resemble him more. Not Rous- seau's individual rules, many of which may be erroneous without injury to the whole, but tho spirit of education which fills and animates tho work has shaken to their foundations and purified all tho school- rooms and even tho 72 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH RICHTER. [PREFACE, nurseries in Europe. In no previous work on educatiop was the ideal so richly and beautifully combined with actual observation as in his. He was a man, could therefore easily become a child, and so he manifested and saved the nature of children. Basedow was his intelligent translator and publisher in Germany — this land of peda- gogopaedists (of education of children's educators) and of love or children — and Pestalozzi is now confirming Kousseau among the people. Individual rules, without the spirit of education, rese:uble a dictionary without a grammar of the language. A book of rules is not merely incapable of exhausting and distinguishing the infinite variety of individual dis- positions and circumstances ; but, even granting it were perfect itself and able to make others perfect, it yet would but be like a system of remedies labouring to counteract some one symptom of a disease ; recommending, for instance, something of a reducing nature to be taken before faint- ing, and to prevent tingling in the ears and unnatural brilliancy of eye ; a tonic to cure paleness and coldness of the face ; an aperient for nausea. But this is worthless ' Do not, like common cultivators, water the individual branches, but the roots, and they will moisten and unfold the rest. Wisdom and morality are no ants' colonies of separate, co-operating workmen, but organic parents of the mental future which only require life-giving nourishment. We merely reverse the ignorance of the savages, who sowed gunpowder instead of making it, when we attempt to compound what can only be developed. But although the spirit of education, always watching over the whole, is nothing more than an endeavour to liberate, by means of a free man, the ideal human being which lies concealed in every child ; and though, in the application of the divine to the child's nature, it must scorn some useful things, some seasonable, individual, or immediate ends ; yet it must incorporate itself in the most definite applications, in order to be clearly mani- fested. Here the Author differs — but to his philosophical dis- advantage — from those transcendental superintendents of the school-room slates, who write thereon with so round FIRST ED.] LEVANA. 73 a piece of chalk that one may find in their broad strokes whatever one desires, and who lay down a complete Brownian system of education in the two words — strong, weak ; though, indeed. Brown's disciple, Schmidt, only uttered one word — strong. Dr. Tamponet declared that he would trace heresies in the Lord's Prayer, if any one desired it ; our age, on the contrary, knows how to find a Lord's Prayer in every heresy. A mother who has a particular child to educate can certainly extract no advan- tage from such philosophical indifierentism; although that class of fine, high-sounding compilations always bears witness to a certain amount of artistic talent in their sonorousness and their theft; hence. Gall justly found for this sense a place between the organs of music and stealing. But this language does not belong to the Preface, and the object of this work has forbidden it to find a place in the book itself; wherefore, this may be regarded in form as my most serious production, to which only a short, occasional, comic Appendix shall be added. The reader will please to take it patiently if he find what has been already printed again printed here. What has been printed is necessary'- as the bond and bast-matting of what has not been printed ; but the bast-matting must not cover the whole garden instead of merely tying up the trees. But there are two still better excuses. Kno^ni rules in education gain new force if new experience verify them. The Author has three times been in the position of trying them upon different children of all ages and talents ; and he now enjoys with his own the pedagogic jti8 trium liberorum (law of three children) ; and every other person's experience, related in this book, has been made nis own. Secondly, printing ink now is like sympathetic ink, it becomes as quickly invisible as visible ; wherefore it is good to repeat old thoughts in the newest books, because the old works in which they stand are not read. New translations of many tniths, as of foreign standard w';rks, must be given forth every half century. And, indeed, I wish that even old German standard books were turned into new German from time to time, and so could find their way into the circulating libraries. 74 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH KICHTER. [PKEI'ACE, Why are there flower and weed gleanings of every thing, but no wine or corn gleanings of the innumerable works on education? Why should one single good observation or rule be lost because it is imprisoned in some monstrous folio, or blown away in some single sheet ? For dwarfs and giants, even in books, do not live long. Our age, this balloon, or air-ship, which, by simultaneous lighting of new lamps and throwing out of old ballast, has constantly mounted higher and higher, might now, I should think, <5ease to throw out and rather lovingly endeavour to collect than to disperse the old. HoT^ever little so disjointed a collection of thoughts could teach rules, it would yet arouse and sharpen the educational sense from which they originally sprung. Therefore every mother — still better every bride — ought to read the many-volumed and, in another sense, many- sided revision of education to which no nation can oppose any thing similar ; she should read it, and cut and polish herself, like a precious stone, by it on every side, so that her individuality of character may all the more readily discover, protect, revere and cherish the dim manifestay> tions of it in her child. Something very different from such a progressive cabinet of noble thoughts, or even from my weak LirvANA, with her fragments in her arms, is the usual kind of com- plete system of education which one person after another has written, and will write. It is difficult — I mean the end, not the means. For it is very easy to proceed with bookbinder's and bookmaker's paste, and fasten together a thousand selected thoughts with five of your own, espe- cially if you conscientiously remark in the preface that you have availed yourself of the labours of your prede- cessors, yet make no mention of one in the work itself, but sell such a miniature library in one volume to the reader as a mental facsimile of yourself. How much better in this case were a hole-maker than a hole-hider ! How much better were it if associated authors (I mean those friendly hundreds who move along one path uttering precisely the same sound) entirely died out, — as Humboldt tells us that in the tropical regions there are none of those sociable plants which make our forests monotonous, but FIRST ED.] LEV ANA. 75 next each tree a perfectly different one grows. A diary about an ordinary child would be much better than a book upon children by an ordinary writer. Yes, every man's opinions about education would be valuable if he only wrote what he did not copy. The author, unlike a partner, onould always only say " I," and no other word. The first part of this work treats at large of the budding, the second and third of the blossoming, season of childhood. In the first, the three early years, like the academic triennium, after which the gate of the soul, language, is opened, are the object of care and observation. Here, educators are the Hours who open or close the gates of heaven. Here, true education, the developing ^ is yet possible; by whose means the long second, the curative, may be spared. For the child — yet in native innocence, before his parents have oecome his serpents on the tree — speechless, still unsusceptible of verbal empoisonment — led by customs, not by words and reasons, therefore all the more easily moved on the narrow and small pinnacle of sensuous experience ; — for the child, I say, on this boundary line between the monkey and the man, the most important era of life is contained in the years which immediately follow his non-existence, in which, for the first time, he colours and moulds himself by companionship with others. The parent's hand may cover and shelter the germinating seed, but not the luxuriant tree; con- sequently, first faults are the greatest; and mental maladies, unlike the small-pox, are the more dangerous the earlier they are taken. Every new educator effects less than his predecessor ; until at last, if we regard all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the world is less influenced by all tha nations he has seen than by his nurse. At least this book has been composed with warmest love for the little beings, the delicate flower-gods of a soon fading Eden. May Levana, the motherly goddess who was formerly entreated to give a father's heart to fathers, hear the prayer which the title of this book addresses to her, and, in doing so, justify both it and this. The demands of the state or of learning, unfortunately, rob the child of half its father. The education of mos* 76 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRIOH RICHTER. [PREFACE, fathers is but a system of rules to keep the child at a respectful distance from them, and to form him more with regard to their quiet than Ms powers ; or at most, under a tornado of wrath, to impart as much meal of instruction as he can scatter. But I would ask men of business what education of souls rewards more delight- fully and more immediately than that of the innocent, who resemble rosewood which imparts its odour even while being carved and shaped ? Or what now remains to the decaying world — among so many ruins of what is noblest and ancientest — except children, the pure beings yet unfalsified by the age and the world ? Only they, with a higher object than that for which they were formerly used, can behold futurity and truth in the magic mirror, and with bandaged eyes draw the precious lot from the wheel of chance. The words that the father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world ; but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end and by posterity. It would be my greatest reward if, at the end of twenty years, some reader as many years old should return thanks to me that the book which he is then reading was read by his parents. Juan Paul Fe. Eichter. Baibeuth, May 2, 1806. SECOND ED.J ( 77 ) AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. The second edition of a work on education is presented with love and respect to readers of both sexes : for the complete sale of the first is regarded as a proof that whilst the warlike Vesuvius and Etna were playing fire and thunder against each other, yet still the German fatherly and motherly heart was sufficiently endued with peace- fulness, solicitude and love to attend to the mental re- quirements of the child- world, even in like manner as the parents take these children in their arms when saving them as best may be from flames and water. May only Lev ana be right worthy of this participation in parental love ! This edition includes — besides small corrections, and besides the large local interpolations of certain contri- butions in education scattered throughout two journals, and also others not printed — many more exact conclusions to which I found myself urged by the opinion of one or another friendly critic, more especially those of Jena and Halle. For perhaps no reproof is more to be considered than that of the well-disposed and like-minded : the ap- probation of enemies is nothing to it in point of weight, since it may just as often be a snare as a safeguard ; and before a friendly critic, too, one wishes to defend neither the yes nor no of one's self, but only the matter itself. To only one critical reviewer have I nothing to say, because he himself has said nothing : although this ex- pression would do him too much honour, had ho not interspersed his criticisms amongst tlie literary news of Gottingen, of which such as is scholarly continues to preserve its reputation for thoroughness, no less than that 78 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH KICHTEK. [prEFACE, which is aesthetic and philosophical has continued to furnish the successive instalments of the "Nicolai- Library " * (which after long lullings has now sunk into slumber) so artfully that a limited intellect may already have had enough of these universal German- library filibusters. For the rest, the author of this gains in maturity less through other writers than through his own children. Life enlivens life, and children train us into trainers better than all trainers. Long before the first Levana, children (that is, experiences) were in fact his teachers, and books occasionally his " reminders." Yet experiences, since they can never be gained in sufficient number to amount to the strength of universal demonstration, can express anything only through a disposition of mind which imputes to them, from out of itself, and learns from them what is spiritual and universal. Hence educational writings, on account of the inexhaustible number of rules and the difficulty of choosing between them in each case, can only successfully and practically help by means of the stimulus and fostering of parental love and by a peculiar strength : all real strength, be it of the heart or head, can, if accompanied with love for children, educate with success even at the distance of ordinary methods. The large number and sale of writings on education is explained from the circumstance that of all vocations that of education is most thickly beset with fcilowers : amongst them all are both sexes at once, parents, yes, even those who have never been parents ; so that consequently the instructor writes, not for one case, like one learned in theology, law or such- like, but for all cases of all people. But we Germans especially, partly from abundance of philanthrop}^ partly from want of money, partly from want of members mutually assisting, do spiritually tor children by writing on paper that which the hospital lor children in Paris, les enfants malades, and the " Club-of- Help " in Madrid try to do physically for the vagabond * Nicolai was a publisher and second-rate writer of Berlin. The " Library " was a periodical which continued to appear during a space of twenty-seven years. — Tb. SECOND ED.] LEV ANA. 71) cliildren of the streets — we wish to cure and teach their souls. The author allows himself only to mention four im- portant works on education which he has read since the publication of his own. The teaching of the general apart from the particular is, just as much as the teaching of the particular apart from the general, a departure irom the correct instruction which comprises both : but this fruitful combination is found in Schwarz's " Erziehungs- lehre" (lessons in education) especially in the copious classification of the different species of dispositions (vol. iii. part i.). Of such flower-catalogues of child-souls we cannot have too many ; they are, as it were, the little Linnaean labels on the seedlings of a tree and flower nursery. All our parti tioned-cases for the characters of children are, however, as comprehensive and therefore as little classifying as a high book-case with only two shelves in it might be. The bud-indications of future genius, for example, we have scarcely at all, except only from themselves when they have already borne flowers and fruit ; but the early watching of them by another would give a richer and purer return than their own after- recollection : it is a pity only that the teachers seldom know beforehand which child will be greater than them- selves. It is true that through this ignorance on the part of the teachers the powers of the spirit of not even one genius will run wild, grow deformed, or become weakened — for such a one (for example Winckelmann) breaks like the moth from its chrysalis through the hard earth of all restraints without damage to the tender wings — but the powers of the heart, which often it little knows itself how to rule, can easily by unskilful hands be contorted into lasting errors. Thus it would be best that a father should always look upon his children as endowed with genius if at all possible (and this is easy, since he desires it only too much), and therefore keep, upon chance, a harvest register of their developing power. Whilst Schwarz in his "Lessons," by a detailed treatment of the subject, and by a noble kindliness of disposition appeals more to the mothers, NiETHAMMEP. in the " Streite des Philanthropismus und Humanismus " 80 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEIOH EICHTER. fPEEFACE, (Conflict of PliilaDthropkm and Humanism), addresses himself more lo the fathers ; inasmuch as he recommends and prefers the formal education by means of languages as being the education of the whole correctly, rather than the material instruction through objects, as being piece- meal education ; and would strengthen and steel the inner man more by intellectual labour than by intellectual feed- ing. With his pleasing enmity towards the i)re.sent time — which by natural histories, Bertuchian picture-books, and other apparatus for the eye, transforms school-rooms into alps, where the plant is forced till it is meagre and small and its blossom over-large — I sympathized joyfully, as early as the first and second chapters of the seventh section, and I do so still. The educational powei- of philology becomes its own proof by means of his masterly logical demonstration. He is only wrong, as it seems, in excluding from the fellow-workers in the vineyard of formal education the deep-planting Pestalozzi, who, it maj^ be, belongs even to its pioneers. As Pestalozzi's earliest harvests are invisible, that is to say, are only roots which cannot be disclosed to view, so his formal plan of education by means of mathematics differs from that of " Humanism " through philology only in respect to the tool employed. Both teachers are driven in their harvest-wagon towards the saiue point, but as they sit opposite to each other they look only at each other and at contrary roads. G RASER in his work " Divinitat der Menschenbildung '* (Divineness of Human Education), sets out the four gre^t means of advance towards Divinity (like the four gospels). Justice, Love, Truth, and Art or Beauty, as the four edu- cational elements. Certainly, instead of the word " Di- vinitat " (divineness), as unusual as it is supermundane, he might with more conformity to language and life have said " Gottahnlichkeit " (likeness to God), seeing that the best education, as a second after-creation of the God-like image in man, can only leave us all as vapoury cold mock- suns to the primeval Sun of the world, standing no higher than tiae clouds of earth. In truth, the educational principle of Divineness existed already in the earlier one of Humanit}^ since only as God-Man do we find and know 8EC0ND ED.J LEVANA. 81 diviDity in mankind ; but the radiance of the Ideal dwell- ing in pure eternity throws ns the light upon our path more clearly than the human-reality dimmed by time For the rest, the author, who has not so much woven-in as woven-on the definite to the most general, surprises us pleasantly at the conclusion with definite embodyings, in fact, with hints so practical that one would willingly have given them a good deal more space and room for play, by clearing away earlier sheets of transcendentalism. But can he not take some ordinary white sheets, and give us upon them as long a continuation of his Education- praxis as we have already desired to have in our hands? In the " Allgemeine Padagogik " (Universal-Pedagogic) of Herbart the beautiful language beguiling with bril- liancy and charms cannot, however, divert the wish that he had not used the title-privilege " universal " so univer- sally, and carried it throughout, so that the reader is obliged to fill in the too spacious forms with supplementary contents. In a philosopher, if he be a teacher, one finds often enough, to be sure, only the polar star which, it is true, (serves well for a long voyage round the world, but not for a short one in the world : even as philosophers in general resemble the Jewish prophets (or even weather- prophets), who predict more easily of a century than their own approaching death-day, just as in history (if I may allow myself a too ponderous comparison) even Providence unveils itself not in years, but in centuries— and scarcely in them, since the revealing century becomes again the veil of the next. But when Herbart wishes to strengthen and to stretch the muscle-strings and bowstrings of the character, then he enters powerfully into the special and definite, and with good reason, since the drift of his words and thoughts bear witness that he possesses one himself. Certainly for education, the character is the true elemental- fire : if only the instructor has it, it will, if not enkindle at any rate give warmth and bring out abilities. The present centurj' — a volcanic isle that glows, works, trembles, and heaves— should at length have learnt and discovered from the political colossus who is now stand- ing on the borders of two centuries, through the victoriob v^ver his sea-fishers toiling hither and thither, the con o 82 JEAN PAUL rKIEDMCH RICHTER. (PREFACE. tents and worth of a character : for a character is a rock on which stranded sailors land, and the headstrong are wrecked, Ko happy future for a nation was ever yet to be built up but by hands of which the first and second fingers could, intellectually, clench themselves into fists. So says hoary History to this very day, but she speaks as a chattering woman and sibyl more and more year by year, and knows not how to stop. This most recent, computed wealth of educational works, even with the omission of many other sources of profit, elevates the German, amongst European nations, to the position of the teaching one ; and German schools, like several towns in France, ought to bear the honourable title of " the good." Even as Lessing called the insignifi- cant-seeming Jews the educators of the human race, so in the Germans perhaps we may be promised the educators of the future.<^Love and strength, or inner harmony and courage, are the poles of education : so Achilles learnt rom the centaur to play the lyre and at the same time to draw the bow. Yet let us above all consider, before we invert the delu- sion of sailors — who often take ice-fields for land— and take the land of the future for an ice-field, that to all nations of the earth, even the more servile (to say nothing of those more free), the nursery of education has remained as a sunny spot and a refuge for freedom undestroyed by time and circumstance. Amongst all secret societies and clubs which the State in critical times often prohibits, the family-clubs of as many children as one has had baptized are yet endured without hesitation. Let us then, with the short child- arm — that is to say with the long arm of the lever — build and move the future, and unweariedly and bravely help to work out the good of the present, and to bury-in the bad. Yes, even he, whose children's fruit-harvest may tarry too long, let him say to himself, " my grandchildren too are human beings," and let him continue to sow. Jean Paul Ft Kichter. Baireuth, 21 «f November , 1811. ( 83 ) LEVANA; OK, THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION. FIEST FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Importance of Education, § 1—3. Chap. IT. Discourse against its Influence, § 4 — 15. Chap. III. Discourse for the same, § 16-20. CHAPTER I IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. §1. When Antipater demanded fifty children as hostages from the Spartans, they offered him, in their stead, a hundred men of distinction ; unlike ordinary educators, who pre- cisely reverse the offering. The Spartans thought rightly and nobly. In the world of childhood all posterity stands liefore us, upon which we, like Moses upon the promised 1 and, may only gaze, but not enter ; and at the same time it renews for us the ages of the young world behind which we must appear ; for the child of the most civilised ctipital is a bom Otaheitan, and the one-year-old Sans- culotte a first Christian, and the last children of the fiarth came upon the world with the paradise of our first parents. So, according to Bruyn, the children of the Samojeds are beautiful and only the parents ugly. If there were a perfect and all-powerful system of educatioTi, and a unity of educators with themselves and with one o 2 84 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH KICHTER. [fRAG. I. another ; then^ince each generation of children begins / the history of me world anew, the immediate, and througli ^^ it the distant future, in which we cac now gaze and grasp so little, would stand much more fairly in our power. For deeds and books — the means by which we have hitherto been able to work upon the world — always find it already defined and hardened and full of people like ourselves ; only by education can we sow upon a pure, soft soil the seeds of poison or of honey-bearing flowers ; and as the gods to the first men, so do we, physical and spiritual giants to children, descend to these little ones, and form them to be great or small. It is a touching and a mighty thought that now before their educator, the great spirits and teachers of our immediate posterity creep, as the sucklings of his milk-store — that he guides future suns, like little wandering stars, in his leadiug- strings. And it is all the more important because he can neither know whether he has before him, to unfold to good or evil, a hell-god for humanity, or a protecting and light- giving angel ; nor can foresee at what dangerous moment of futurity the magician, who, transformed into a little child, now plays before him, will rise up a giant. § 2. Our immediate future demands thought : our earth is filled with gunpowder — like the age of the migration of nations, ours prepares itself for spiritual and political wanderings, and under all state buildings, professorial chairs and temples the earth quakes. Do you know whether the little boy who plucks flowers at your side may not one day, from his island Corsica, descend as a war-god into a stormy universe, to play witl storms and to destroy, or to purify and to sow ? Would it then be indiflerent \\hether, in educating him, you had been his Fenelon, his Cornelia, or his Dubois ? For although you might not be able to break or bend the power of genius — the deeper the sea, the more precipitous the coast ; — yet in the most important initiatory decade of life, in the first, at the opening dawn of all feelings, you might surround and overlay the slumbering lion energies with CHAP. I.] LEV ANA. 85 all the tender habits of a gentle heart and all the bands of love. Whether an angel or a devil educate that great genius is of far more importance than whether a learned doctor or a Charles the Simple teach him. Although a system of education must, in the first instance, provide for the beings endowed with genius — since these, though they seldom arise, yet alone rule the world's history, eithei- as leaders of souls, or of bodies, or of both — yet would such a system too much resemble a practical exposition of how to conduct one's self in case of winning the great prize, if it did not observe that the multitude of mediocre talents on which a great one can act are quite as important in the mass as the man of genius is in the individual. And therefore, since, on the one hand, you give to posterity, as alms to a beggar, through children ; and, on the other, must send these last, like unarmed men, into a hidden period whose poisonous gales you know not : so there is nothing more important to posterity than whether you send forth your pupil as the seed-corn of a harvest, or the powder- train of a mine which destroys itself and everything with it : and nothing is more important to the child than whether you have or have not given him a magic jewel which may preserve and conduct him uninjured. Let a child be more holy to you than the present which consists of things and matured men. By means of the child — although with difficulty — by means of the short lever arm of humanity, you ^et in motion the long one, whose mighty arc you can scarcely define in the height and depth of time. But there is something else you certainly know ; namely, that the moral development — which i£ educatio n, as the intellectual is instruction — knows and fears no time nor futurity. In this you give to the child a heaven with a pole-star, which may ever guide him in whatever new countries he may afterwards reach. § 3. A perfect child would be a heavenly Aurora of the soul ; at least ita appearance would not be so variously restrained and so difficult as that of a perfect man, 86 JEA PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. 1. On him everything, from the state down to himself, exercises a forming influence ; but on the fresh child, parents repeat with full power the lawgiving, moulding character of Lycurgus and of Moses; they can separate their pupil from others, and form him without interference, better than a Spartan or Jewish state could d<». Con- sequently one ought to expect more from the unlimited monarchy of parents. Children living in this kingdom, without Salic law, and in such an overflow of laws and lawgivers that the rulers are often more numerous than the ruled, and the governing house larger than the governed — having everywhere before them cabinet orders, and offended majesties, and most rapid mandata sine clau- sula, and behind the glass the exalted sceptre of the rod — possessing in their sovereign their bread-master, as well as their pain and pleasure master — and protected against him by no foreign power ; for mal-treatment of slaves is punished in many countries, even of cattle in England, but nowhere of children, — children, then, thus absolutely governed without opposition party, or anti-ministerial gazette, and without representatives, should issue, one would think, out of this smallest state within the state, far better educated than grown-up persons educated in the greatest of all educational establishments, the state itself. Nevertheless, both educational establishments and states seem to work so uniform^, that it is worth while, next to the necessity of education, to consider, in the two following discourses, its jpossihility. CHAPTER 11. INAUGURAL DISCOURSE AT THE JOHANNEUM-PAULLINUM ; OK, PROOF THAT EDUCATION EFFECTS LITTLE. § 4. Most honoured Inspector of schools, Rector, Con- and Sub- rector, master of the third class ! most wortliy teacher of the lower classes and fellow-labourers! I hope I shall, CHAR II.J LEVANT. 87 to the best of my abilities, express my pleasure at being inducted as lowest teacher into your educational estab- lishment by entering on my post of honour with the proof that school education, as well as home education, has neither evil consequences, nor any other. If I am so fortunate as to lead us all to a quiet conviction of this absence of consequences, I may also possibly obtain that we shall all fill our laborious offices easily and cheerfully, without boasting, and with a certain confidence that needs fear nothing ; every day we shall walk in and out among the pupils, sit on our teaching- chair as on an easy chair, and let ever)- thing take its own course. First, I believe, I must set forth who are the educators and complete fashioners of children, — for fashioned, in one way or another, they are ; and in which way rests with and in us ; — and afterwards I will naturally touch upon ourselves, and point out the easy change -which may be eflfected. Whence comes it that hitherto no age has spoken, coun- selled and done so much about education as our own ; and again, among nations, none so much as Germany, into which Rousseau's winged seeds have been blown out of France and ploughed in? The ancients wrote and did little for it ; their schools were rather for young men than children, and in the philosophical schools of Athens the learner frequently was, or might be, older than the teacher. Sparta was a Stoa, or garrison-school, at once for parents and children. The Romans had Grecian slaves for their schoolmasters, and yet their children became neither Greeks nor slaves. In the ages when the great and glorious deeds of Christendom and knighthood and free- dom rose like stars on the dark horizon of Europe, school buildings lay scattered around as mere dull, little, dark, savage hut«, or monks' cells. And what have the political vowels of Europe — the English — whose island is a school of citizens, and whose election every seven years is a wandering seven-day Sunday school? what have thej' hitherto better than mere establishments for mal-education? Where do the children more resemble the parents — and to 88 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. I. any thing else than a mirror of himself, be it a flat, a concave, or a convex one, the teacher cannot wish to mould and polish -his pupil — than even in those places where the educators are silent, among savages, Green- landers and Quakers ? And the further one looks back through past ages to the hoary nations of antiquity, the fewer school books and Cyropedias — in fact, from want of all books — were there : all the more was the man lost in the state; all the less was the woman, who might have educated, formed for it : nevertheless, every child was the image of its parents, which is more than the best ought to desire, since God can only behold his own image in men as a caricature. And are not our present improved educational institutions a proof that men can raise themselves freely and without aid from bad to better, and, consequently, to all other establishments of a similar kind ? §6. But who then educates in nations and ages ? — Both ! — The living time, which for twenty or thirty years struggles unceasingly with men through actions and opinions, tossing them to and fro as with a sea of waves, must soon wash away or cover the precipitate of the short school years, in which only one man, and only words taught. The century is the spiritual climate of man, mere education the hothouse and forcing pit, out of which he is taken and planted for ever in the other. By century is here meant the real century, which may as often truly consist of ten years as of ten thousand, and which is dated, like religious eras, only from great men. What can insulated words do against living present action ? The present has for new deeds also new words ; the teacher has only dead languages for the, to all appear- ance, dead bodies of his examples. '1 he educator has himself been educated and is already possessed, even without his knowledge, by thespirit of .the age, which he asiduously labours to banish out of the youth (as a whole city criticises the spirit of the whole city). Only, alas ! every one believes himself to stand so CHAP. II.] LEVANA. 89 precisely and accurately in the zenith of the universe, that, according to his calculation, all suns and nations must culminate over his head ; and he himself, like the countries at the equator, cast no shadow save into himself alone. For were this not so, how could so many — as I also here- after propose to do — speak of the spirit of the age, when every word implies a rescue from, and elevation above it ; just as we cannot perceive the ebb and flow of the tide in the ocean, but only at its boundaries, the coasts. In like manner a savage cannot depict a savage so clearly as a civilized man can do. But in truth, the painters of the spirit of the age have for the most part represented the last one, nothing more. The great man, the poet and thinker, has never been so clearly known to himself that the crystal light -holder and the light have become one ; much less then have other men. However easily blooming every man may open towards the sky, he is yet drawn down by a root into the dark, firm earth. §7. The spirit^ofthejiation and of the age decides and is at once theschoo lmaster a nd the school j for it seizes on the pupil tcibmr^m with" fwo vigorous hands and powers ; with the living lesson of action, and with its unalterable unity. If — to begin with unity — education must be, like the Testament, a continuous endeavour to withdraw the force of interrupting mixtures, then nothing builds up so strong as the present, which ceases not for a moment and eternally repeats itself; and which, with joy and sorrow, with towns and books, with friends and enemies — in short, with thousand-handed life, presses and seizes on us. No teacher of the people continues so uniformly one with him- self as the teaching people. Minds, molten into masses, lose something of free movement, which bodies, for in- stance that of the world, perhaps that of the universe, seem to gain by their very massiveness, and as heavy colossi move only the more easily along the old, iron- covered track. For however much marriages, old age, deaths and enmities, are in the individual case subject to the law of freedom ; yet lists of births and deaths can 90 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH RICIITi^B. [fEAG. I. be made for a whole nation, arid it may be shown that in the Canton of Berne (according to Mad. de Stael) the number of divorces, as in Italy that of murders, is the same from year to year. Must not, now, the littie human being placed on such an eternally and ever similarly acting world be borne as uj)on a flying earth, where the only directions that a teacher can give avail nothing, because he has first unconsciously received his line of movement upon it ? Thence, in spite of all reformers and informers, nations, like meadows, reach ever a similar verdure ; thence, even in capital cities, where all schoolbooks and schoolmasters, and even parents of every kind educate, the spirit maintains itself unalterably the same. Eepetition is the motl;er not only of study but also of education. Like the fresco painter, the teacher lays colours on the wet plaster which ever fade away, and which he must ever renew until they remain and brightly shine. \vho then, at Naples for instance, lays the colours most frequently on the spiritual tablet of one individual, the one tutor, or the multitude of 30,000 advocates, 30,000 lazzaroni, and 30,000 monks ; a threefold company of fates, or nine- fold one of nine murderers, compared with which Vesuvius is a quiet man who suffers himself to be entreated by Saint Januarius * (although not in January) ? Certainly one might say that also in families there educates, besides the popular masses, a pedagogic crowd of people ; at least, for instance, aunts, grandfathers, grand- mothers, father, mother, godparents, friends of the family, the yearly domestics, and at the end of all, the instructor beckons with his fore-finger, so that — could this force continue as long as it would gladly be maintained — a child, under these many masters, would resemble, much more than one thinks, an Indian slave who wanders about with the inburnt stamps of his various masters. But how does the multitude disappear compared with the highei one by which it was coloured ; just as all the burnt marks of the slave yet cannot overcome the hot black colouring of the sun, but receive it as a coat of arms ii a sable field! * The protecting saint of the NeaDolitans against Ves vius. CHAP. IT.] LEVANA. 91 The second mighty power by which the spirit { f thf age and people teaches and conquers is the living actior . Not the cry, says a Chinese author, but the rising of a wild duck impels the flock to follow him in upward flight. One war fought against a Xerxes inflames the heart quite differently, more purely and more strongly than the perusal of it three times in Cornelius, Plutarch, and Herodotus: for this last, along with the whole teaching of school phrases, is merely an intellectual imi- tation in cork (a phelloplastic, according to Bcittiger's retranslation into the Greek) in order easily to represent ancient temples and magnificent buildings in light cork forms. Yea, the mere ancestral images of deeds in Plutarch's Westminster Abbey cast the seeds of the cUvine word more deeply into the heart than one or a few thou- sand volumes of sermons full of true pulpit eloquence. Heaven ! if words could be compressed to deeds, only a thousand to one, could they yet arouse upon an earth in which pulpits, professors' chairs and libraries of all ages snow down unceasingly their most pure cold exhortations, one single passion to hurl forth volcanic fiie? Would not history then be surrounded with mere snow craters and icebergs ? Ah ! most respected teachers, if even we, with our great college libraries that preach to us for tens of years, have never once been brought so far as to become holy men for a month, nay for a week, what dnre we expect from the few volumes of words which we let fall in school hours ? Or what more should the parents at honje expect ? The pedagogic powe rles sness of woi d^uis unfortunately confessed in a peculiar manner, whiclTis daily renewed in each of us. Namely, every individual being is divided into a teacher and his scholars ; or is split up into the teacher's chair and the scholars' bench. Should you now believe that this perpetual house-tutor in the four chambers of the brain — who daily gives private lessons to the shurcr of his apartment, philanthropist and boarder— who is a morning, evening and night preacher— who never ceases 92 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH RICHTEK. [fRAG. I. with his conversatorium and repetitorium — who accom- panies the pupil, whom he loves as himself and conversely, everywhere with notes of instruction as tutor on hit> travels, in idle hours and wine-drinkings, by seats on the throne, by the chair of instruction and elsewliere — who, as the most unlimited head-master to be found under the skull, ever sleeps with his scholar, as a Serjeant with a recruit, in the same bed, and from time to time reminds him of much when a man has forgotten himself, — in short, could you believe that this so extremely rare Mentor, who from the pineal gland, as the lodging place of the high light, eternally teaches downward, nevertheless after fifty and more judgments and years, has experienced nothing better in his Telemachus, than what the pure Minerva (the well-known and anonymous Mentor in the Telemachus) with all her modesty, in the greatest head of the world, in that of Jupiter, also had to experience, namely, that she could not spare her pupil a single one of his animal transformations? This, indeed, were scarcely to be believed if we did not daily see the most lamentable instances of it in ourselves. There is, for example, in the history of the learned something very usual and yotj pitiful : that excellent men have resolved for many years to rise earlier in a morning, without much coming of it — unless they may perhaps break through the habit at the last day. § 9. Permit us to return : and since we have easily asked whether a man may be more effectually moved by a thousand outward foreign words than by a billion of his own inward ones, let us not be very much astonished if the stream of words which is given to the youth, in order that he may thereby guide and bear himself up in the ocean, should be dissipated by the winds and waves on every side. But give us leave to remark that we lay many things to the account of school-rooms, that is, of words, which have in fact had their sole origin on the common teaching-ground of action ; just as, in former times, general pestilences were ascribed to the poisoning of particular wells by the Jews. The schoolhouse of the CHAP. II.] LEVANA. 93 young soul does not merely consist of lecture and lesson rooms, but also of the school ground, the sleeping room, the eating room, the play-ground, the staircase, and of every place. Heaven! what intermixture of other in- fluences, always either to the advantage or prejudice of education ! The physical growth of the pupil nourishes and draws forth a mental one ! Nevertheless, this is ascribed to the pedagogic tan-bed ; just as if one must not necessaril}^ grow cleverer and taller at the same time ! One might quite as properly attribute the service of the muscles to the leading-strings. Parents very often in their o^vn children regard that as the ettect of educational care and attention which in strangers they would merely con- sider the consequence of human growth. There are so many illusions ! If a great man have gone through any one educational establishment, he is ever after explained by that : either he did not resemble it, and then it is held to have been a moulding counter-irritation ; or he did, and then it acted as an incitement to life. In the same way one might regard the blue library, whose binding taught the librarian Duval his first lessons in arithmetic, as an arithmetical book and school for arithmetic. If parents, or men in general, in all their education seek nothing else than to make their physical image into their more perfect mental one, and consequently to varnish over this copy with the departed brightness of the original, then must they readily fall into the mistake of esteeming an inborn resemblance an acquired one, and physical fathers spiritual ones, and nature freedom. But in this and the former consideration, that holds true of children which does of nations : there were found in the new world ten customs of the old — six Chinese in Peru, four Hottentotish in western America*, — without any other nearer descent to account for these resemblances than the general one from Adam, )r humanity. §10. We may, excellent fellow-workers, especially flatter ourselves with services to humanity when the position is proved true, that we eflfect little, or nothing, by education. * ZiaunerinaDD*d History of Man, vol. iiL 94 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH EICHTER. [fRAG. I. As ill the mecliaiiical world every motion, if the opposition of friction were removed, would be unceasingly continued, and every change become eternal ; so, in the spiritual world, if the pupil less bravely opposed and vanquished the teacher, a more beggarly life would be eternally repeated than we can at all picture to ourselves. I mean this : if all the ways and times of this poor earth were to be filled with dull stiff images from pedagogic old prin- cipality-liw-codes and 8wabia-law-codes, that is with counterfeits of school-men, so that consequently every age would be reprinted from the preceding one, manikin for manikin ; * what else is wanted for this tedious misery but that education should succeed beyond our expectations, and a tutor and schoolmaster allow his head, like a crowned one, to pass stamped in all hands and corners ? And a whole bench of knights might become an assembly of candidates fit for the tournament, because they had been previously clean and well copied after the quiet burgher's pattern ? But we will venture to hope the opposite ; the school- master and tutor is ever afterwards connected with the nobleman as God with nature ; concerning which Seneca justly writes — semel jussit^ semper paret — i.e., the tutor's study is very soon closed, and the ante-chamber and audience-hall opened. In order not to fall into the error of those who introduce the bird Phoenix and the Man in the Moon un wived, I have here in my thoughts girls also, on whom, as on pigeons and canary birds, false colours are painted by governesses, as well as by tutors, which the first rain or moulting removes. But, as has been said, every woman becomes in time something peculiar ; a beautiful Idioticon of her many provinces of language. §11. Through long teaching, to which no advance of the pupil is sufficiently proportioned, schoolmasters of under- standing may arrive at the question : " How will the poor * An exp r< ssion used of a s( cond edition when it is a reprint of the fijTbt ; whicli (a^ this minor proposition demonstrat-.s) is not the case here. CHAP. II.] LEVANA. 95 scholar be able to walk in the right path without our leadincr-strings, since even with them he runs into error ?" — and also at this wish : " Good heavens ! that we could but wand him up and fix him, exactly like an astronomical hundred-y eared chronometer, so that he might show the hours and positions of the planets and every thing quite accurately long after our death ! " — and consequently at this opinion : " That tliey were in fact the soul of his inner man, and had to raise his every limb, or were at least his supporting mould, in which he ought not merely to carry his broken arm, as in a gentle bandage, but also his leg, liis head and his entrails, so as to be completely strengthened." If the tutor accompany his young master to the university, the one goes into much good society without the other : and if they both at last set off on their travels, the young gentleman goes into much of a suspicious nature, and the tutor ends his anxiety ; — which resembles the anxiety of a mother as to how the poor naked f(jetus can exist when it comes into this cold blowing world and is no longer nourished by hei blood. Truly your singing bird of a pupil will continue to whistle for you through the night ; because, by a night- light, that is by an education out of season, you delude him into the belief of an artificial day-light ; but, when he once flies into the open air, he "svill then only arrange his notes and sound them at the general break of day. If we place ourselves on another eminence to con- mplate thence the directions, fears and demands ol I. ackers, we almost feel tempted to drive them down from tli« ii- lofty position, especially because they, the educators, assume and presume so much / for they do not take and } set before them the great World-plan as their school-plan, 1 nor the All-educator as an example to the poor hedge- schoolmaster man, — but do so anxiously endeavour, with 'leir narrow views, to assist the infinite Pedagogiarch Prince of teachers) who permits sun to revolve round sun, and child round father, and so the child's and father s liither are alike, — as if humanity, neglected for thousands of years, were laid before them, like warm wax, on which they had to impress their own individual induration, to pr iduce future indurations ; so that they might as re- 96 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. 1. creators agreeably surprise the Creator with a living seal and plaster cabinet of their coats of arms and heads. A long period, and here again a long period ! § 12. None of all my hearers, of whom I am the nearest, can have forgotten that at the commencement I asked why so much at present in Germany is written about educa- tion and grounded upon it, as I also myself intend to lay some printed ideas on the subject before the public. I answer, for this reason ; because by cultivation all humanity has become a speaking machine, and the flesh a word. The more education the more notions; the less action the more speech ; man is becoming a man by profession, as there were formerly Christians by profession; and the ear his sensorium commune. The beggar, for instance, passes by the great citizen unnoticed ; the one has fled from the other, not merely in deed, but beyond that, in word : just as battles, pestilences and such like, pass over us only as gentle sounds. Therefore is poetry so beneficial as a counterbalance to civilisation, because it draws an artistic life round the thin shadows, and erects on the battle-tield of mere sensuous views its own glorious visions. But as the German spends no time so willingly as a time for consideration — to the most important step he made, namely that into life, he took an eternity of con- sideration — he prefers steady, slow writing, to quick hither and thither roving speech ; unlike the Southerns, he is less a speech-loving than a writing-loving people, as his registries and book-shelves prove. " A word, a man," * means now " black on white, a man." Writing and fact, or clothing and body, are now as distinct from one another as shoe and foot, which, as a measure, mean with us the same thing. It all depends on one little stroke whether Christ is God or not; namely, on the well-known passage, 1 Tim. iii. 16, in the Alexandrine codex, where a little stroke with the back of the pen changes OC [i.e. Os] into * A common proverbial expression, signifying that no written contract is necespary when a man has given his word. — Tb. CHAP. II.J LEVANA. 97 0C (0CO5), aud apon an " Or " in the Carolina,* whether a man should be hanged or not. But now if the inner being of the cultivated man is merely composed, like some drawings, of letters and words, then enough can never be said of and in education, since the consciousness of having separated the inner life into ideas, consequently into words, secures the certainty of being able again to re-construct it by means of the sepa- rated component parts, that is, by means of words ; in short, to educate through the means of speech, by the pen and the tongue. " Draw," said Donatello to the sculptors, *' and you will be able to do the rest." " Speak," say we to teachers, " and you will show how to act." As every kind of existence only propagates itself by itself ; for example, deeds only by deeds, words by words, education by education ; we will, excellent fellow-labourers, cheer and strengthen ourselves in the hope that our teach- ing may spiritually reward us by the elevation of our pupils into teachers, who may hereafter speak more ex- tendedly with others ; and that our Johanneum-Paullinum may serve as an educational institution for many educa- tional institutions, while we send forth from our school- gates matured house-tutors, school-keepers and catechizers, to produce their equals in good school-houses, — not Cyruses, but Cyropedias and Cyi'opedagogiarchs. § 13. I now turn to the most worshipful fathers of the city, our supporters and school archs, not only with thanks, but i»lso with entreaties. There remains, namely, in the most unpractical men and speakers a somethiug harsh and real — it is called, harshly enough. Stomach — which, from selfishness, values in the tongue only its imports, not its exports. Enough ; every one possesses this member ; and it is this especially that makes us wish our school might bo raised into a finance or industrial school for all those who receive their incomes from it, so that every one whc as scholar subscribes to it may gladly again enter it in • Art. 159. 98 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. I. order to be paid as teacher. Moreover our school book- shop, less truly school-library, and our school-purse, yea and our school widow's fund, might be well supported; and so of 'every thing else, for the only school sickness which teachers have is hunger, an evil for which the state should supply domestic means, or so called housekeeper's provision. But since all of us, especially as educators of youth, wish to live for something fairer and more enduring than our dinner of black soup, for which we must first all day long distribute whipping-soup, I venture, unabashed, to prefer the proud request : That the desk from which the third master and music teacher, as well as myself, have to pro- pound the needful instruction, may be newly coloured, merely like a book or a Prussian post house, black and white ; and that the Lyceum may receive, if not the name Gymnasium, yet the epithet Koyal, and that we may all, as far as possible, be addressed by the title of Professors. Perhaps the school friendship, which has hitherto con- fined itself to the scholars, might then be extended to the teachers. Fiat ! — Dixi I § 14. Scarcely had the author composed and delivered this inaugural discourse, than so much of a resignation speech was found in it, that a fair opportunity to deliver this also, and to explain himself more at large, was afforded by his removal which occurred a few days afterwards. There- by he was placed in a position to take leave of his fellow- teachers as publicly as he had received his dismissal, and at the same time to choose as text for his short farewell discourse — The Educational Chair (which he mounted for the second and last time), and to impress upon them its importance. CHAP. III.1 LEVANA. 99 CHAPTER m. IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. § 15. Most honoured brothers in office! In laying down my sbort-held office with a certain consoling consciousness that none of those intrusted to my charge will ever stand forth to reproach me with an erroneous plan of teaching, or with hours of instruction gossiped away, I can find no theme for a farewell more connected with the subject than the consideration how deeply a good education penetrates into the heart of the age ; and I choose this the more readily, because it will give me an opportunity to place in a new light much that the day before yesterday was laid down by my predecessor in this desk, the deliverer of the in- augural discourse, — for here I do not venture to speak of myself in any (jther way since my dismissal. It shall only be proved that he advanced mere sophisms, which originally, according to Leibnitz, signified only exer- cises in wisdom. " For what other reason," he asks, " do men now write 80 much about education, than because," he answers, " our whole existence has passed into words, and words so easily, by means of tongues and ears, into the soul." But is this, pray, anything different from what 1 myself maintain? >Ve shall see. §16. No former age or people is to be compared with any since the invention of printing ; for since that time there have been no more isolated states, and consequently no isolated influence of the state on its component parts. Strangers and returned travellers, whom Lycurgus ex- cluded from his republic, like episodes and the intervention of gods from the dramatic unities, now traverse every countiy in the shape of cheap books and waste paper. No one is any longer alone, not even an island in the most distant sea ; thence oomes it that the political balance of u 2 100 JEAN PAUL FEIEDKICH KICHTER. [FRAG. I. power of many states collected under one arm of the balance is now first mooted. Europe is an interlaced, mis-grown, banyan-forest round which the other quarters of the world creep, like parasitic plants, and nourish them- selves on its decayed parts. / Books form a universal republic, a union of nations, or a society of Jesus, in a nobler sense, or a Humane society, whereby a second or duplicate Europe arises ; which, like London, lies in several counties and districts. As now, on the one side, the book-pollen flying everywhere brings the disadvantage that no people can any longer produce a bed of flowers true and unspotted with foreign colours : — as now no state can be any longer formed purely, slowly, and by degrees from itself, but, like an Indian idol composed of different animals, must see the various members of the neighbouring states mingled with its growth ; — so, on the other side, through the (Ecumenic Council of the book- world, the spirit of a provincial assembly can no longer slavishly enchain its people, and an invisible church frees it from the visible one. — And therefore we educate now with some hope for the age because we know that the spoken word of the German teacher is re-echoed by the printed page ; and that the citizen of the world, under the supervision of the universal republic, will not sink into the citizen of an injurious state, all the more because,,' though books may be dead yet glorified men. their pupils' will ever hold them- selves as their living relatives. / That the age writes so much on education shows at once its absence and the feeling of its importance. Only lost things are cried about the streets. The German state itself no longer educates sufficiently ; consequently the teacher should do it in the nursery, from the pulpit, and from the desk. The forcing-houses in Eome and Sparta are destroyed, — in Sinai and in the Arabian desert some few 3^et stand. The old circle, that the state should plan and direct the education, and this again act on that, has been very much rectified, or indeed squared, by the art of printing; for now men, elevated above all states, educate states ; dead men, for instance, like Plato ; just as in the deep old morning-world, according to the Saga, angels with glories wandered about, guided, like children, CHAP. III.] ,LEVAl!rA. • "' 101 the Dew men who had sprung out of 'tiLe*rU{nT3,- ^nelf — a parasitical worm living on another being, the mimic of every new example, the slave of every master at his elbow ? If a human being be once thrown out of his own individuality into a foreign one, the centre of gravity that held together his whole inner world becomes moveable and wanders from spot to spot, and one oscillation passes into another. In the meantime the teacher has to separate from the individuality which he allows to grow another which he must either bend or guide ; the one is that of the head, the other that of the heart. Every intellectual peculiarity, be it mathematical, artistic, philosophical, is a beating heart, which all teaching and gifts only serve as conducting veins to fill with material for working and motion. At this exact point more weight may be added to the preponderating weight of natural disposition ; and the teacher must not give in the morning of life a sleeping draught — say to peculiar talents for art. The moral nature, however, must be quite differently treated ; if that be melody, this is harmony : you must not. enfeeble an Euler by engrafting on him a Petrarch, nor the latter by the former ; for no intellectual power can become too great, and no painter too great a painter. But every moral faculty needs to have its boundaries fixed in order to the cultivation of its balancing powers ; and Frederick the Great may take his flute, and Napoleon his Ossian. Here education may, for instance, deliver sermons on peace to the heroic character, and charge with electric thunder the disposition of a Siegwart. So one X2 116 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [fEAG. II. j might — since, with girls, head and heart are reciprocal — I frequently put a cooking spoon into the hand of the boy ' of genius, and into that of the little cook by birth some romantic feather from a poet's wing. For the rest let it be a law that, as every faculty is holy, none must be weakened in itself, but only have its opposing one aroused ; by which means it is added harmoniously to the whole. So, for instance, a weakly affectionate heart must not be hardened, but its sense of honour and purity must be strengthened; the daring spirit must not be rudely checked and made timid, but only taught to be loving and prudent. The conditions may now be required of me under which is to be formed the character of the child, and also that of the prize or ideal man into which he is to be fashioned. But for that purpose one book among the endless multitude of books would not serve ; moreover the books must possess the rare gift of being interpreters of the dreams and symbols of the closely-folded child's character ; which, in a child, who does not display everything matured as a grown-up man, but only budding, would be as difficult to discover as a butterfly in the chrysalis to all who are not Swammerdams. But alas ! three things are very difficult to discover and to impart — to have a character — to draw one — to guess one. To ordinary teachers a naughty trick seems a wicked nature — a pimple or a pock-mark as parts of the countenance. If one must translate the prize and ideal man into words, one might perhaps say, that it is the harmonious maximum of all individual qualities taken together, which, without regard to the resemblance of the harmony, is yet connected in all its different parts, as one tone in music is with another. Whosoever now, out of the musical abcdefg, should change, for instance, a piece set in a to b, would injure the piece much, but not so much as a teacher who would convert the all- variously arranged natures of children into one uniform tone. § 30. ^ elevate ^bove the spirit ^L the age must be re- garded as the endT of education ; and this must stand CHAP. III.] . LEVANA. 1 17 clearly developed before us ere we mark out the appointed road. The child Is not to be educated for the present — for this is done without our aid unceasingly and powerfully — but for the remote future, and often in opposition to tho immediate future. The spirit which is to be shunned must be known. Permit me then a THIRD CHAPTER, ON THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. §31. Yoa invoke the Spirit of the Age freely and boldly, but let it truly appear before us in your discourse, and do you inswer? Since time separates into ages, as the rainbow into falling drops, indicate the greatness of the age of whose indwelling spirit you speak. Has it a century of duration ; and by what chronology is it reckoned — the Jewish, the Christian, the Turkish, or the French ? Does not the expression " spirit of the century " easily escape the lips of a man because he, born in a century and partly measuring one with his life, really means nothing more by " age " than the little day-span which the eternal sun describes from the morning to the evening of his life ? — Or (hjes the age extend from one great event (the Reformation, for instance) to another, so that the spirit of the first vanishes as soon as the second is bom? And what re- volution will be considered by you the animating one of the age — a philosophical, a moral, a poetical, or a political one? Further : is not every spirit of the age less changing tlian flying, — indeed, already flown; what might be more 1 )roperly called the spirit of that immediately preceding ? 1 or ita traces presuppose that it is already gone, conse- (jiioTitly gone further. And only from lofty heights can the l»;i< kward road be surveyed and the future estimated. l>ut since the same period unfolds at the present time a totally different spirit in Saturn — in his satellites — in his 118 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. II. rings — Tipou all the countless worlds of the pi'ey.ent ; and again in London, Paris, Warsaw ; and since it follows that the present moment of time must have a million different spirits of the age, — I would ask you where the invoked spirit of the age is clearly manifested — in Germany, France, or where ? As, before, you found it difficult to mark out its limits in time, so will you now to determine them in space. I joartly spare you the great question which concerns every one, yourself among the number, — how you, how all encircled in the same age, can raise yourselves so far above its wa\es as to be able to observe its course, not merely to feel its dark irresistible march ? And does not the stream which bears you lead into an ocean whose movements you cannot measure because it has no shore ? § 32. , What we call spirit of the age our ancestors called the end of the world, the latest times, signs of the last day, kingdom of the devil and of Antichrist. Mere melancholy names ! No golden or innocent age ever called itself golden, but only expected one; and an age of lead expected one of arsenic : — only the past glitters, as ships occasionally draw after them a shining train. But the former inter^Dretations of dreams and gazings into the present — would that some one would collect such a dream book of departed great spirits ! — teach us to mistrust those now made. If man, from the observation of the three quarters of the globe, could not prophetically consti-uct the fourth from the combinations of matter, far less can he divine a future from the more complicated ones of spirit. For man is feeble and poor : his star-reading of the future — a mere strengthening or weakening of the present — sees only a crescent moon in the sky, which waxes and wanes in unison with himself, but no sun. Every one regards his own life as the new-year's eve of time, and also, like the superstitious, his dreams, woven from memories, as prophecies for the year. Thence there always comes — not the foretold good or evil, nor yet its opposite, but Bomething quite different, which receives the prophecies CHAP. III.] LEVANA. 119 and their objects as an ocean does the rivers, and resolves them into the circle of its waves. For, in the moment when you are prophesying in the desert, the fine seed- pollen of an oak falls upon the earth and, in a century, grows up to be a forest. How, indeed, could man accurately divine any approaching age without at the same time knowing and depicting all after times? He, for instance, who, from the present course and position of the winds, clouds and planets during one academical half year, could accurately guess the weather of a second, might and must be able, from the data he had foretold, to decipher the third season's weather, and from that every succeeding one — supposing no intervention ; —but thei e do always intervene comets^ earthquakes, the clearing of forests, or the growth of new ones, and all the other power of the Almighty. In the same way, before the eye of the seer, one century after another must be produced in regular order, consequently thousands of years, and finally, the whole time which can dwell upon an earth; supposing as has been already said, nothing intervenes. But, heavens ! What is there does not intervene! The prophet himself — and the freedom of the spiritual world — and the Almighty, who here withdraws and there sends forth spirits and suns. Thus it is that every one lives so completely in a spiritual twilight (a beautiful word for that dusky time of day) that God himself decides which of the two contending lights shall gain the victory by a new one from the sun or the moon, which men so frequently mistake the one for the other. §33. How, indeed, were this foregoing two-and-thirtieth paragraph to be written or to be comprehended, if something more were not added about it ; namely, a three- and- thirtieth which follows after it? The older the world grows, the more complacently can it, and will it, adopt the prophesying character of an elder. From tho fore-world a spirit speaks an ancient language to us, which we should not understand if it were not born with us. It is the Spirit of Eternity, which judges and overlooks every spirit of time. And what does it sa;y of the present? 120 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICn RTCHTEE. [fKAG. II. Very hard words : — It says thjat the age can now more easily raise up a great people than a great man ; because the powerful union springing from civilisation joins together the men of one spirit like the vapour-drops of a huge steam engine ; so that even war is now only a war- game between two living creatures. Something, it says, must have decayed in our age, for even the mighty earthquake of the Revolution before which for centuries, as before a physical earthquake, an infinite multitude of worms had crept out of the ground and covered it, has produced and left behind it nothing greater than pretty wings on these said worms. The Spirit of Eternity, which judges the heart and the world, strongly declares what spirit is wanting to the present men inspired by the senses, to these fire-worshippers of the passions, — the Holy one of Him who is above the earth. The ruins of His temple sink lower and lower into the present earth. Prayer is thought to draw along with it the false lights of fanaticism. The apprehension and belief in what is beyond the world, which formerly extended its roots under the foulest ages, bear no fruits in our pure thin, air. If, formerly, religion was in war, there is now no longer war in religion — there has grown for us out of the world a mighty edifice, out of ether a cloud, out of God a mere power, out of heaven a coffin ! At last the Spirit of Eternity holds up before us our shamelessness, by which we, in our darkness, have per- mitted to play, as a festive illumination, the flames of anger, love and desire, from which all religions, all ancient nations, all great men have held themselves aloof, or regarded with shame : and it says that we, living only in our hate and hunger, like other decaying corpses, only retain our teeth uninjured, the instruments both of revenge and enjoyment. Passion belongs of right to the sickness of the age ; nowhere is found so much impatience, carelessness, indulgence towards self and unrelenting selfishness towards others as on the sick-bed. Now this century lies upon a sick bed. As among the Spartans the men cut away a full prominent breast as something womanish,* so is the same thing done now in spiritual * In Russia in former times it was the fadiion for men to stuff out their clotliin": into lar^e false breasts. CHAP. III. J LEVANA. 121 matters under the same pretext ; and the heart mnst be as hard as the cavity of the chest above it. Finally, th^re are some very cultivated men who split themselves in opposite directions towards heaven and hell, as a sala- mander cut in two runs forward with its front, backwards with its hind part. § 34. So speaks the severe spirit within us, the Eternal one ; but it becomes milder if we hear it to the end. Every heartfelt lamentation and weeping over any age points, like a spring on a mountain, to some higher mountain or peak : only those nations remain sunk in their lethargy who go in the same dull path from age to age, not lament- ing over themselves but over others : and those who suffer from the mental falling-sickness of the French philosophy have, like bodily epileptics, no consciousness of their malady, but only pride in their strength. Sorrow of the spirit (as Kight, according to the Greeks) is the mother of gods j though that of the body is a dark mist bringing poison and death. The bold and soaring thought of the I'almud- ists — that even God prays ; like that of the Greeks, that Jupiter was subject to Fate — receives a meaning from the lofty though often conquered longings of the soul, which tlio Infinite himself has planted within us. One religion after another fades away, but the religious ncuse, which created them all, can never become dead to humanity : consequently, it will only manifest and lead its future life in more purified forms. The saying of Tyrtaeus,* that God, in the commencement, appeared to men in their own likeness, then as a voice, and afterwards only in dreams and by inspiration (or spiritual illumina- tion), has a beautiful signification for ours, and all future ages, if by dream we understand poetry, and by illumina- tion, philosophy. So long as the word God endures in a language so long will it direct the eyes of men upwards. It is with the Eternal as with the sun, which, if but its smallest part can shine un-eclipsed, prolongs the day and gives its rounded image in the dark chamber. Even in France, which could for a short time observe a total eclipse • Tyrtficua de Apparitione Dei, c. 17. 122 JEAN PAUL FETEDRlCIl RICIITEE. [fEAG. II. of the STin, arose a Chateaubriand, a St. Martin and liis admirers, and other idndred spirits. Our present age is indeed a criticising and a critical one, wavering between the desire and the inability to believe, — a chaos of timeg struggling against one another : but even a chaotic world must have a centre, revolution round that point, and au atmosphere ; there is no such thing as mere disorder and confusion, but even that presupposes its opposite in order to begin. The present religious wars on paper and in the brain — very different from former ones, which were tempests full of heat, rage, devastation and fertilisation — rather resemble the northern lights (thunder and light- ning of the higher and colder quarters of the sky) full of noisy lights without blows, full of strange shapes and full of frost, without rain and in the night. Does not in fact, the bold self -consciousness — the life of this age — extend still further the original character of man and mind ! And can the character of men, the mental waking, ever be too much awake ? At present it is only not sufficiently so ; for an object is necessary to reflection, as its absence is to thoughtlessness ; and the common minds of the age are too impoverished to give a rich field to reflection. But there is one strange, ever-returning spectacle : That every age has regarded the dawning of new light as the fire-de- stroyer of morality ; while that very age itself, with heart uninjured, finds itself raised one degree of light above the preceding ! Is it, perhaps, that as light travels faster than heat, and as it is more easy to work upon the head than on the heart, the burst of light, by its suddenness, always appears inimical to the unprepared heart ? To the present age is ascribed productiveness and changeableness of opinions, and at the same time indifference to opinions. But that cannot arise from this : no man in all corrupted Europe can be indifferent to truth as such ; for it, in the last resort, decides upon his life ; but every one is at last become cold and shy towards the erring teachers and preachers of truth. Take the hardest heart and brain which withers away in any capital city, and only give him the certainty that the spirit which ap- proaches brings down from eternity the key which opens and shuts the so weighty gates of his life- prison of deatli. CHAP. ni.j LEV ANA. 123 and of heaven, — and the dried-up worldly man so long as he has a care or a wish, m:ist seek for a truth which can reveal to him that spirit. The present march of light indicates anything rather than standing still ; and it is only this which begets and immortalizes poison, as it is on stagnant air that tempests and whirlwinds break. Certainly we are very little able to determine in what manner a brighter age than that we have experienced will be educed from the present troublous fermentation. Every varied age, — and therefore our own, — is only a spiritual climate for an approaching spiritual seed ; but we do not know what foreign seed heaven will cast into it. Every sin appears new and near, as in painting black stands out most strongly ; man is readily accustomed to the repetition of love, but not to the repetition of injustice. Thence every one regards his own age as morally worse, and intellectually better than it really is; for in science the new is an advance ; but in morals the new, as a contra- diction to our inner ideals and our historic idols, is ever a retrogression. As the errors of nations in past ages, unlike decorative paintings, seem very distorted and shapeless, because distance hides from us their finer and true com- pleteness ; so, on the other sid^, the black sin-stains of the past, of the Eoman and Spartan for example, show softened and rounded, and, as on a moon, the high rugged shadow nf the past falls round and transparent on the present. For instance, if men estimate the worth of the age after a war, that most ancient barbarism of humanity, and especially after the bad innovations consequent upon it, then the spirit ot the age rises before this touch of death in frightful illumination and distortion. But war, as the general storm in the moral world, and the tongue and heart-confusing Babel of the physical world, had in every age repeated injustices which only appeared new because each had heard from the preceding age nothing save the number of the vanquished armies and towns ; but experienced in itself the sufferings. On the contrary, our age has, more than any other, besides a certain humanity of war in respect to life, also a growing insight into its unlawfulness. , Among nations the head has at all times preceded the 124 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. II. heart by centuries, as in tlie slave trade ; yes, by thousands of years, as will perhaps be the case in war. § 35. Since modes of life beget modes of thought, and opinions actionKS, and head and heart, spiritually as well as physically, mutually improve or injure each other, so has fate, when both are to be healed at once, only one cure, and that a long one ; the harsh viper-like cure of affliction. If sorrow purify men, why not nations ? Certainly, and it is for this reason that men perceive it less, if wounds and fast-days improve the one, battle-fields and centuries of jDcnance do the other, and generations must sink sadly and sorrowfully to destruction. Not by a splendid martial funeral with firing of cannon, but by a battle of the elements, is the sky made blue and the earth fruitful. At the same time in history, as in the almanac, the thick dull St. Thomas's day is shorter than the bright warm St. John's day, although both conduct into new seasons of the year. But until, and in order that our children and children's children may pass through the winter centuries, this it is that nearly affects us and education. We must meet the great entanglement by partial unravellings. The child must be armed against the future ; yes, even against the close pressing present, with a counterbalancing weight of three powers against the three weaknesses of the will, of love, and of religion. Our age has only a passionate power of desire, like the brute, the madman, the sick, and each weakest thing ; but not that energy of will which was most nobly displayed in Sparta and Eome — in the Stoa, and in the early Church. And now the arts, as the state formerly did, must harden the J^oung spirit and subdue the will. The uniform colour of a stoic oneness must extinguish the vulgar praise of the various tiger-spots and serpent brilliancy of passionate agitation ; the girl and the bo}^ must learn that there is something in the ocean higher than its waves ; namely, a Christ who calls upon them. When the stoic energy of will is formed, there is then a loving spirit made free. Fear is more egoist c than CHAP. I V.J LEVANA. 125 courage because it is more needy ; the exausting parasitical plants of selfishness only attach themselves to decayed trunks. But power kills what is feeble, as strong decoction of quassia kills flies. If man, created more for love than for opposition, can only attain a free clear space, he possesses love ; and that is love of the strongest kind, which builds on rocks, not on waves. Let the bodily heart be the i)attem of the spiritual ; easily injured, sensitive, lively, and warm, but yet a tough free-beating muscle behind the lattice work of bones, and its tender nerves are difficult to find. As there is no contest about the nature of power and love, but only about the ways to attain them (these, however, penetrate deep into the matter) ; but as about religion, on the contrary, the doubts of many must first be solved as to whether there be only one, and whether different paths lead to it ; so the third point, according to which the child is to be educated against the age, must aim at placing before the soul first, not the means, but the right to educate religiously. Power and love are two opposing forces of the inner man ; but religion is the equal union of both, the man within the man. CHAPTER IV. RBLIGIOUS EDUCATION. § 30. Beuoion is now no longer a national, but a household goddess. Our little age is a magnifying glass, through which, as is well known, the exalted ajjpears flat and level. Since wo now send all our children out into a town like futurity, in which the broken church bells only dully call the i)opulous market place to the silent church, we must, more anxiously then ever, seek to gi ve them a house — Xff p raye r in the heart, anl folded hands, anJ humility before the invTslWfi World, if we believe in a religion and distinguish it from morality. 126 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RIGHT Eli. [fRAG. II. The history of nations determines that there is this separation. There have been many religions, but there is only one code of morals ; in those a god has always become a man, and, therefore, been concealed under manj'- folds ; in this a man has become God, and been clearly manifested. The middle ages had, along with moral churchyards full of dead bodies and rank vegetation, full of cruelty and lust, also churches and spires for the religious sentiment. In our times, on the contrary, the sacred groves of religion are cleared and trodden down, and the public roads of morality made straighter and more sure. Ah ! a con- temporaneous decline of religion and morality would be too sad ! The age will conceal the departure of me sense for the heavenly by the greater sharpness and severity of that for the mcral ; and at least by small, delicate, and therefore more numerous sides, acquire a moral breadth. As men in towns, where they cannot build in width build in height, so we, reversing the matter, build in width instead of in height ; more over the earth than into the sky. We may truly say that France, in general, with its chemical, physical, mathematical and warlike noon-day lights, can hardly behold in the starry heaven of religion more than a last shadowy quarter of the moon, resembling rather a cloud than a star ; whilst in England and Germany religion is still at least i3een as a distant milky- way, and on paper as a star chart; but one could not, without injustice, describe the religious difference of these countries as a moral one. Was, therefore, and is Stoicism, this noble son of morality, as love is its daughter, in and by itself religion ? If the difference between religion and morality were not founded on something true, it were in- comprehensible how so many fanatical sects of the early and later centuries — for instance, the Quietists — could have arrived at the illusive belief that in the inmost enthusiastic love of God enduring sinfulness consumes itself, so that none remains as it does in the worldly man. It is true that religiousness, in its highest degree, is identical with morality, and this with ■'^hat ; but that equally pertains to the highest degree of every power; and every sun wanders only through the heavenly ether. All that is divine must as certainly meet and unite with morality, as /^ CHAP. IV.J LEVANA. 127 science and art ; so that in every soul rescued from sin there must as certainly be religious Tabors as there are hills in the crater of Etna. It must be understood that we do not here speak of that beggar religion which only prays and sings before the gates of heaven until the Peter's pence are bestowed upon it. § 37. .-.«,^^^^j^ What then is Religion? Prayerfully pronounce the ' . answer. Xhe Belief in God. It is not only a sense for the holy, and a belief in the invisible, but a presentiment of it, without which no kingdom of the incomprehensible were conceivable. Efface God from the heart, and every- thing which lies above or below the earth is only a recur- ring enlargement of it ; that w^hich is above the earth would become only a higher grade of mechanism and, consequently, earthly. If the question be put. What do you mean by the word God? I will let an old German, Sebastian Frank,* answer : " God is an unutterable sigh lying in the depths of the soul." A beautiful, profound saying ! Hut as the unutterable dwells in every soul, it must be manifested to every stranger by words. Let me give to the God-fearing Spirit of every age the words of our times, and listen to what it says of religion. *' Religion is, in the beginning, the learning of God; — hence the great name Divine, one learned about God — -^..^ truly religion is the blessedness arising from a knowledge y of God. Without God we are lonely throughout eternity ; but if we have God we are more warmly, more intimately, more steadfastly united than by friendship and love. I am then no longer alone with my spirit. Its great first Friend, the Everlasting, whom it recognises, the inborn Friend of its innermost soul will abandon it as little as it can do itself, and in the midst of the impure or empty whirl of trifles and of sins, on the market-place and the battle- field, I stand with closed breast in which the Almighty and All-holy speaks to me, and reposes before me like a near sun, behind which the outer world lies in darkness. • " Zinkrefd der Teutwhon scLarpfdinnige klugc SpriicLo," 1639. 128 JEAN PAUL FBIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. II, I have entered into His clinrcli, the temple of the universe, and remain therein blessed, devout, pious, even if the temple should become dark, or cold, or undermined by graves. What I do, or suffer, is no sacrifice for Him, it counts as little as one made to myself ; I love Him whether I suffer or not. The flame from heaven falls on the altar of sacrifice and consumes the beast, but the flame and the priest remain. If my great Friend demand something from me the heaven and the earth seem glorious to me, and I am happy as He is ; if He deny me anything, it is a storm en the ocean, but it is spanned by rainbows, and I recognise above it the kindly sun which has no tempestuous sides, but only sunshiny ones. A code of morality only rules bad, unloving souls, in order that they may first become better and afterw'ards good. But the loving con- templation of the soul's first Friend, who abundantly animates those laws, banishes not merely the bad thoughts which conquer, but these also which tempt. As the eaglo flies high above the highest mountains, so does true lovo above struggling duty. " Where religion is, there both men, and beasts, and tlio whole world are loved. Every being is a moving temple of the Infinite. Everything earthly purifies and suns itself in the thought of Him; only one earthly thing remains darkly existent, sin, the true annihilation of the soul ; or the unceasing Tantalus, Satan. " One may with some right speak to others about that of which one never speaks to oneself: for within me He is so near me that I can with difficulty separate His word and mine ; for from the second self my own is reflected, and I only find Him who illumines myself as well as the dew-drop. " But if it be no error to believe all this, how wilt Thou, O God ! appear to those who have overcome the agitations of life in the one still hour of death ; then, when world after world, human being after human being, has dis- appeared, and nothing but the Eternal remains with the mortal-immortal ? He who brings God with him into the last darkest night cannot know what it is to die ; for he beholds the Eternal Star in the boundless distance." If 3^ou do not believe that religion is the poetry of CHAP. IV.J LEVANA. 129 morality, the lofty, nay, the loftiest, style of life, think less of the mystic enthusiasts, who, as despisers of the doctrine of happiness, were willing to be damned if but the love of God remained within them, than of Fenelon : could you be purer, more steadfast, richer, more self-sacri- ficing, or more blessed than he, at once child, woman, man, and angel ? §38. How then is the child to be led into the new world of religion ? Not by arguments. Every step of finite know- ledge can be reached by learning and perseverance; but the Infinite, which supports the end of those steps, can only be seen at a glance, not reached by counting; we arrive there by wings, not by steps. To prove, as to doubt, the existence of God, is to prove or to doubt the existence of existence. The soul seeks its Original — not merely an original world near the present one — that freedom from which finite existence received its laws : but it could not seek if it did not know and did not possess. The greatness of religion is not confined to one opinion, it extends over the whole man ; as greatness, of whatever kind, resembles the rock-bound mountains, one of which is never found alone in a level plain, but rises up among neighbouring heights and extends into a mountain range. As there is no corporeal world without a spiritual soul (or no resurrection-ashes without a phoenix), so there is no soul or spiritual world without God ; just as in the same way there is no fate without a Providence The purest distinction of man from the lower animals is neither reflection nor morality ; for sparks at least of these stars shine in the ranks of the brute creation ; but religion, which is neither merely opinion nor disposition, but the heart of the inner man, and therefore the ground- work of the rest. In the middle ages, so dark for other knowledge, religion, like the sky at night, hung nearer to the earth and extended brightly over it ; whereas, to us, God like the sun in the day-time, seems only like the key-stone ,pf the arch of heaven. The old chronicler introduces bloody rain — monsters — fights of birds — children's ganieb — flights of locusts — yes, even sudden deaths — among the 130 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRTCH RICHTER. (FRAG. H. great events of the world, as important signs, as the smoke clouds of an impending war ; and war, a still more impor- tant sign, had, as a judgment upon sin, its heavenly as well as its earthly origin. At the same time this paral- lelism, or rather predetermined harmony between earth and heaven, was at least more consistent than the new physical influence which allows not the day watch of one man but the thousand-yeared watch of the history of the world to be fixed by a God, resembling a theatrical one, only that he is not a mock sun, but a real sun ; as if the difference between the earthly and the heavenly rested only on degrees of greatness ; and as if the admission or exclusion of the Infinite did not equally apply to the whole of the finite universe and to its smallest part ! He who possesses religion finds a Providence not more truly in the history of the world than in his own family history : the rainbow, which hangs a glittering circle in the heights of heaven, is also formed by the same sun in the dew-drop of a lowly flower. The diffident modesty of present individuals who prefer leaving the care of them- selves to blind fate, rather than to watchful Providence, testifies less to unbelief and self-depreciation than to the consciousness of not believing and acting piously. Herder proves that all nations have received writing and their earliest forms of civilisation from the teachinge of religion ; but does he not thereby prove something further ? — namely, this : That in nations and consequently in men, the ideal is older than the real ? — that so the child is nearer the highest than the lowest, for that lies in him ; and that we reckon time by the stars and the sun earlier than by the town clock ; and that the Godhead, as once in paradise, so now in the desert, impresses His image on man before he can discolour it, and so afterwards he can never lose or be without it ? Every thing holy is before what is unholy ; guilt presupposes innocence, not the reverse ; angels, but not fallen ones, were created. Hence man does not properly rise to the highest, but first sinks gradually down from it, and then afterwards rises again : a child can never be considered too innocent and good. It is thus that the Infinite Being appears to nations and in- dividuals earlier than the finite, yea than infinite space' CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 131 as the almighty power of young nature produced, according to Schelling, the fixed suns earlier than the worlds which roll round them. If a whole system of religious meta- physics did not dreamingly sleep within the child, how oould the mental contemplation of infinity, God, eternity, holiness, &c., be imparted to him, since we cannot com- municate it by outward means, and indeed have nothing for that purpose but words, which have not the power of creating, but only of arousing ? The dying and the faint- ing hear inward music which no outward object gives ; and ideas are such inward tones.* In general even the questions, that is the objects of proper metaphysics, are among children, as among the uneducated classes, much more active and common than one supposes, only under different names ; and the four-year old child will ask, what lies behind the curtains of the hidden world, whence is the origin of God? &c. For instance, in children talking together, the author heard his five-year old boy philosophise and say, " God has made every thing, so if one off'ers Him any thing He has made it;" whereupon his four-year old sister said, " He makes nothing;" and he answered, "Ho makes nothing, because He has made it." Again ; the seven-year old sister maintained, if the soul in the head had another set of arms, legs and a head, another soul must dwell in that, and this again would have a head, and 80 on for ever.f If Kousseau give up God, and consequently religion, as the late inheritance of a matured age, he can, except in the case of great souls, expect no more religious inspiration and love than a Parisian father, who, after the fashion of some nations, never sees his son till he no longer needs a father, can expect filial affection.| When, indeed, could • So the fear of phosts, this unceasina; droad, which without any (mtwiird cause — by tlmt only corporeal fear ia produced — obtains the mastery, and makes men stiff and cold. t While writintf thi«j, the above-mentioned four, now six-year old 3hild said, '* Counting has a one und begins, and what begins must also leave off." At hist slie showed me a stick and asked — *' Does it not leave off on all sides?" 4 At least Mercier says that the fashionable Parisians, even the women, do not see their children, who are brought up in tbe country until they are folly growa. K 2 132 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. |FEAG. II. the Most Holy take deeper root than in the m Dst holy age of innocence, or that which shall have eternal influence, than in the age which never forgets ? Not the clouds of the fore or afternoon, but the overcast or blue sky of the morning, decides upon the fairness of the day. But as the first rule to be observed by any one who will give something is, that he must himself have it ; so it is true, that no one can teach religion who has it not : mature hypocrisy, or lip -religion, can beget nothing but immature ; such a mock-sun can neither warm nor give light, and an acoustic deception returns every optic one. He who has no God in heaven and in his own heart can, without immorality, believe himself bound by no morality ( though perhaps for the sake of utility) to implant in his children a nothing which he has already torn from himself and which he afterwards intends to eradicate from them. But, properly, neither belief in the morality of a religious lie, nor in its political advantages, sows deceit in the trusting open heart of childhood; that is only done by the selfish weakness which willingly makes terms at once with God and the devil ; that argumentum a tuto * (a keeping open of a back-door into heaven, worthy, but for its wound- ing of reason and morality, of a very opposite name) does not rank, thank God ! among the sins of our age. The younger a child is the less let him hear the Un- speakable named, who only by a word becomes to him the speakable : but let him behold His symbols. The sublime is the temple step of religion, as the stars are of immeasur- able space. When what is mighty appears in nature — a storm, thunder, the starry firmament, death — then utter the word God before the child. A great misfortune, a great blessing, a great crime, a noble action, are building sites for a child's church. Show every where to the child, as well as on the borders of the holy land of religion, devotional and holy sentiments ; these pass over and at last unveil for him the object ; just as if you are alarmed he is so too, without knowing why. Newton, who uncovered his head when the Greatest Name was uttered, would have been, without saying a word, a teacher of religion to children. Not with them, but only * The Safety and Exigency Creed. CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 133 before them, should you pray your own prayers, that is, think aloud of God ; but their own you should pray with them. A stated exaltation and emotion is a desecrated one. The prayers of children are empty and cold, and are in fact only remains of the Jewish-Christian belief in sacrifices which will reconcile and win the favour of God by means of innocent beings, not of innocence ; and the child secretly regards the God whom you give him by word of mouth as the Kamtschatkadale and every savage does his. A grace before meat must make every child deceitful. As he grows older let a day of prayer, or of any religious observances, become more rare, but on that account more solemn ; what the first afiecting Lord's Supper is to the child, that let every hour be in which you consecrate his heart to religion. Let children go to church but rarely, for you might as well take them to hear an oratorio of Klopstock or of Handel, as that of the church ; but when you do take them, impress on them the value of a sympathy with the devotional sentiments of their parents. Indeed, I would rather — since as yet there I y/ ^ is no special public worship of God and no special preachers J, for children — you should lead them on the great days of the seasons, or of human life, merely into the empty temple, and show them the holy place of their elders. If you add to that, twilight, night, the organ, singing, a father's preaching, you will at least leave behind on the young heart more religious consecration by that one church-going than you could on an old one by a whole year of church- attending. After these considerations it makes one's heart ache to think of that already nearly abandoned custom, which some however kindly wish back,* I mean that of setting the children and young people to take down the sermon, at least an outline of it, in church and afterwards to write it out fully at home or at school. Although this nearly borders on jest, we will ask in earnest, whether this must not convert the religious sincerity of fellow-feeling into a mere anatomy and skeleton, and draw down what is holy and the aspiration of the heart into a means of exercising the understanding, and hold every emotion at a * Professor Petri in the new "Bibliothek fiir Fadagogik," &p., July, 1811, who appeals to Beinhard'a Youttiful example tiiereauend Vh. 134 JEAN PAUL FEiEDKICH RICHTEE. [fRAG. U. distance becanse feeling might hinder writing "^ It were, |!erhaps, something about as good if a young woman made u short pragmatic abstract of her lover's declaration of love ; or a soldier, of the fiery speech of his leader befoi e oattle ; or an evangelist, a neat exposition of Christ's sermon on the mount with all its subdivisions. When teachers thus convert all the highest ends into new means and ways, that is to say backways, do they not spiritually use spiritual things, as the modern Eomans really do triumphal arches and temples of Jupiter, which they degrade into wash-houses ? For the poor children of the people, whose parents are still pupils of the Sunday, and for whom, as a set-ofFto the deep desert of the week, a raising hand must not fail to lift them out of their low cloudy heaven, is a public church service more necessary than for the children of the upper classes. The church walls, the pulpit, the organ, are to them the symbols of the Divine ; and as a symbol it is indifierent whether it be the village church or the temple of nature. And do we ourselves know where, or if ever, the Unsearchable can terminate the ascending scale of His symbols ? Does not the higher spirit require again a higher symbol ? Let the eye of the pupil, even where he only seep outer walls and forms, yet every where gaze into the Holy of Holies of religion, which the church-goer must bring with him into the church as the temple- court of the heart. Let every foreign exercise of religion, and every outward preparation for it, be as holy to him as his own. Let the Protestant child h.>ld the Catholic saints' images by the road-side to be as worthy of reverence as the ancient oak-forests of his forefathers; let him receive different religions as lovingly as different languages, in .jarhich but one spirit of humanity is expressed. Every genius is all-powerful in his own language, every heart in its own religion. But let not fear create the God of childhood : fear was itself created by a wicked spirit ; shall the devil become the grandfather of God ? He who seeks something higher in its own nature, not merely in degree, than what life can give or take away. OHAP. IV. J LEVANA, 135 that man has religion, though he only believe in infinity, not in the Infinite, only in eternity, without an Eternal ; as if, in opposition to other artists, he did not paint the 6un with a human countenance, but rounded off this to resemble the former. For he who regards all life as holy and wonderful, whether it dwell in animals, or, still lower, in plants ; he who, like Spinoza, by means of his noble soul floats and rests less upon steps and heights than upon wings, whence the surrounding universe — the stationary and that moving by law — changes into one immense Light, Life and Being, and surrounds him, so that he feels absorbed in the great light and wishes to be nothing but a ray in the immeasurable splendour ; such a man has, and consequently imparts, religion ; since the highest ever reflects and paints the highest, even though formless, behind the eye. I'rue unbelief relates to no individual propositions, or counter-propositions, but to blindness towards the whole. Excite in the child the all-powerful perception of the whole, in opposition to the selfish perception of the parts, and then you raise the man above the world, the eternal above the transitory. Place in the child's hand our religious book; but do not give the explanation after, but before the reading, so that the strange form may enter the young soul as something entire. Why should misunderstanding be the precursor of understanding ? Without wonder there is no faith ; and the belief in the marvellous is itself an inward faith. You must impart a Bun-beam of its origin to every thing great which comes before you, — to genius, to love, to every power; only things weak and curved consist of steps, stairs and torture-ladders; the true ladder of heaven has no steps. At least two miracles, or revelations, remain for you uncontested in this age which deadens sound with un- reverberating materials; they resemble an Old and a New Testament, and are these — the birth of finite being, and the birth of life within the hard wood of matter. For in one inexplicable thing every other is involved, and one miracle annihilates the whole philosophy. Consequently, you do not act the part of a hypocrite when you permit the child to draw any thing out of the book of religion, or 136 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH RICHTER. [fRAG. II. the seciet book of nature, which you cannot explain. Living religion grows not by the doctrines, but by the narratives, of the Bible * the best Christian religious doctrine is the life of Christ; and, after that, the suffer- ings and deaths of his followers, even those not related in Holy Writ. In the fair spring of the religious admission of the child among his elders, an important one, since then first he comes publicly before the altar and acts with all the rights of an independent being; in this never-recurring time when the dawn of life suddenly breaks into the morning red, and thereby announces the newness of love and of nature; there is no better priest to lead and accompany the young soul with dancing and great joy to the high altar of religion, than the poet who annihilates a mortal world to build on it an immortal ; so that our life on earth may resemble those polar lands which, so void of animals and flowers, so cold and colourless, yet, after sunless days, display rich nights in which heaven pours down its gifts upon the earth, and where the northern or polar lights fill the whole blue with fire-colours, jewels, thunder, splendid tropical storms, and remind the inhabitants of the cold earth of that which lives above them. ( 137 ) THIKD FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Digression upon the beginning of Man and of Education. § 39—42. Chap. II. Joyousness of Children, § 43—45. Chap. Ill Their Games, § 4(3—54. Chap. IV. Their Dances, § 55—57 Chap. V. Music, § 58—60. Chap. VI. Commanding, Forbidding, § 61—63. Chap. VII. Punishments, § 64, 65. Chap. VIII. Pas- sionate Crying of Children, § 66—70. Chap. IX. On the Trust- fulness of Children, § 71, 72. CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATION. §39. When does Education begin its work? , With the first breath of the child but no sooner. The Light of the Soul, which we call Life, issuing from I know not what sunny cloud, strikes upon the bodily world and moulds the rough mass into its dwelling place, which glows on until Death, by the nearness of another world, allures it still further on. In this primitive moment — for from it the pulse reckons its first beat, even though time be else- where already — is the invisible beam of individual exist- ence broken into the coloured spectrum of his bodily appear- ance: the dispositions, the sex, yes, even the resemblance to the father's and mother's countenances are distinguished by yet unseen lines. For the unity of the organism, of this state within the world, tnat is, the emliodied system of laws, cannot form itself piece-meal like the in- dividual parts which it governs : for example, the form-» ing influence, which moulds the transparent child's face like its father's or its grandfather's, cannot lie in the pine-months' fancies of the mother, but must exist in ^jj^ child itself. 138 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH KICHTEK. [fKAG. HI. The two life- chains of the parents are somewhat different ; especially the last link, from which the spark of the new man issued in order to animate the physical clod of earth into an Adam. When one considers how little has yet been done for the races of the coming world (except in the case of horses, sheep and canary birds) not even observations, to say nothing of institutions, merely for a cradle rather than for the child in the cradle ; — how the connexions of the sexes, of years, of months, of hours, are so lawlessly and carelessly forgotten and injured when the foundation stones of centuries are laid ; — how here the giddy, sensual man requires more laws than the unchanging beast which moves straight on in the leading strings of instinct and of health, and when one considers how the divergence — growing by means of culture wider and wider — from savages and aborigines, who still re- tained the advantages of beasts, has doubled lawlessness and ignorance of law — and how the world becomes con- tinually more clamorous in desire, more indiffei-ent to wisdom ; one must, from a carelessness for moral requisi- tions, which contents itself only with the bare fulfilment of the ten commandments for ruffians, finally come to the conclusion, that men seek to settle with morality as with a creditor. It is true that the noble-hearted instructor Schwarz would maintain that the Holy Spirit takes cog- nizance of the future for sin in the highest love ; but he is right only for the highest first love ; and only in the case of want of thought or knowledge. A physician, for example, on the other hand, has not this want of know- ledge. And may not a state, at any rate, like an elder, prescribe for all, with its cold ever-during hand, laws which a loving individual would never have thought of making, and yet is obliged to obey ; just as the law- book, not a pair of lovers, contemplates divorce. For the rest we may well venture to complain that Kature, during the "twelve holy nights" in which, as creatress she wanders alone with her youngest creatures, makes it too difficult even for the conscientious not to steal and murder in the dark. At every step down the deep gloomy ladder of futurity up which men and ages ascend, conscience calls " Here is a man, there perhaps a genius, CHAP. I.] LEVANA. 139 the heaven of his people ;" but we, like night wanderers, must spare the known and injure the unknown. Since parents play so prominent a part in the history of the creation of the child's body, one can with difficulty refrain from the question, how much they contribute to the theogony (divine generation) of the child's spirit ? If we must think of a dark problem it is also permitted, nay necessary, for us to think of some solution. The mental dissimilarity of dispositions is a mere product of bodily diflferences, since both mutually presuppose each other. Il is, indeed, easier for us to apprehend diiference in bodies than in minds ; but properly, there is only an apparent diflference of quantity visible in those, and only a real one of quality in these; so, it is onlj'- minds which grow or inure themselves to anything. If it will not be admitted that that spark of distinguishing individuality flies down from the stars in clouds during conception, it must then, either, precisely in the moment of inducting its human covering, cast off a previous covering spun from the father's or the mother's life, or it was, like thought and motion, born of soul. Creation of spirits is not more diflScult to comprehend than creation of thoughts by spirits, or than any other change. In both cases, especially in the second, not only does the bodily life of the parents cradle the bodies of the future, but also their spiritual life its spirits. But, then, with what trembling should this balance be held ! If thou knewest that every black thought of thine, or every glorious independent one, separated itself from thy soul and took root without thee, and for half a century pushed and bore its poisonous flowers or healing roots, oh ! how piously wouldest thou choose and think ! — And dost thou, then, so certainly / know the reverse ? ^ §40. I come back to my own opinion that spiritual education begins at birth; for up to that period the mother — as often afterwards in a worse sense — has only a blood relationship, not a nerve relationship, with the child sleeping at the gates of the world. So that all that is false which has been said about an electric charging chaii. 140 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. III. to which the little invisible is attached, and by which he is charged with the streams and sparks of the maternal passions and feelings. Since, according to the best anatomists, the mother does not nourish the child with her blood directly, but through media, the maternal passions which are to affect it through the blood can only work in two ways, either by mechanical change, slow or quick, or by chemical change, oxidised or unoxidised. The embryo soul does not partake of the mechanical change ; because the mother's blood may move as fast in the ball-room of love as in the servant's hall of anger ; or creep as slowly when sitting full of hope before the embroidery frame, as of despair before a bier. The chemical change of the blood by passion, or other external excitement, is itself, in the first instance, a product of the mind and of the nerves which serve it either mediately or immediately. The excitement of the nerves gives the full beat of the pulse, but the converse is not the case ; else the excitement of a race would have as strong an effect as a drink has upon thirst. How the oxidised or unoxidised blood of the mother can more affect the child's mind than her own, must arise from the influence of the blood as nourishment ; and as the blood, before it is capable of affording nourishment must be assimilated by the little foreign body, it can possess no influence dif- ferent from that of every other nourishment: and, in nourishing, as little propagates its differences as does the blood of sheep or of lions. The objections made by nurses go far in justification of this. The best proof of this physiological chain of argument is its superfluousness, for experience demonstrates it. For were it true, that the mother had a more spiritual influence on shiftless naked human creatures than that which nourishes them ; what a sorry humanity would be sent out into the world from the nine-months' training institute, where on the mother's side all the spiritual and physical defects of female nature are brought together in the nine months and in the time of travail : while on the side of the children the brain and the susceptibility to impressions are greatest, and thereby every fancy of the mother must develop itself in the magnifying glass CHAP. l.J LEVANA. 141 of the victim, as outward form in the child, and every pain as distortion. Heaven! if the loathing at food and people, the un- natural longing, the fear, the weepings and the feebleness communicated themselves thus spiritually; so that the mother's womb were the first " foundling hospital " and "deaf-and-dumb" institute for souls, and effeminacy the constitutional sanatarium for men, what a sickly, timid, feeble after-race of progenerated child-bearers. Not a man would then be left— each one would have lived, wept, longed and come to nothing. But this is just as it is not: woman gives men, as the soft cloud gives thunder and hail : the first-born and natural children, by whom the mothers suffer the most, are in fact the strongest: the children of the criminals, the nervous, the consumptive, the mourning widows, or even of the fictitious ones who live for the prospect of divorce, prove themselves just as strong in intellect as the children of other mothers who dance on from joy to joy. If the mother, spiritually copying herself — impressed herself so strongly and spiritually upon the child's soul, 1 do not know whence originates the distinctive character of children of the same mother: each child must be a mental copier in duplicate of his brothers and sisters and the whole nursery a mental casting-foundry for the mother. As otherwise concems the body, that of each child is formed in the very same mother's womb and in an equal period, and with all similarity of condition on the part of the mother — the male twin (to take this case) growing to greater strength and the female to less. He wlio takes physical abortions for the volcanic outcome of heated fancies on the part of the pregnant mother, forgets that fche great Haller denies the whole thing, and adduces the mis-growths of animals and plants in respect to which, to plants especially, heated fancies are little to be regarded : wbereunto I add — that amongst 10,000 brooding mothers each one of whom for nine months might have been terrified by an equal number of distorted forms, scarcely one brings into tiie world anything that is not suited to the world. Tell me not that the beautiful Madonna faces 142 JEAN PAUL FP.rEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. III. eeen in Catholic countries are to be regarded as copies of those painted in the churches ; or that the Greeks hung beautiful pictures in the chambers of those blessed, in order to procure living types from them ; for I reply, do not all these circumstances indicate antecedently the productions of beautiful lands and beautiful men; and further does not the life-long impression of many forms of beauty recoin with more strength than that of nine months the humanity current in the world ? At the same time, the disbelief that the nine-months' mother decides on the mental and physical form of her child leaves room for the true belief that her health or sickness is repeated in the little second being : and it is for this very reason that superstitious fancies about marks, mis-births and similar things ought to be so much guarded agairst; not because what is dreaded brings its fulfilment, but because it, along with those evils which are produced by alarm before a thing occurs and undue anxiety after it has happened, weakens the body, and brings for the sufferer years of trouble. § 41. At last the child can say to the father — Educate, for I breathe. The first breath, like the last, closes an old with a new world. The new is, in this case, the world of light and colours the life on earth, like a painter, begins with the eye. The ear, indeed, preceded it — so that it is the first sense of the living as it is the last of the dying — but then it belonged to the realm of feeling ; and it is on this account that birds in the egg, and soft many-punctured silkworms die from a loud report. The first sound falls with a darker chaos on the closely covered soul than the fi.rst beam of light. So the morning of life opens on the freed prisoner with the two senses imparting knowledge of distance, like the morning of the day with light and song, or bustle. At the same time, light continues to be the first enamel of the earth, the first fair word of life. The sound which breaks upon the slumbering ear can be but loud, but none near the labouring mother causes it, but her own travail, and the child ; and so the world of CHAP. I ] LEV ANA. 143 Bornid begins with a discord, but the world of sight with beauty and glory. Every first thing continues for ever with the child ; the first colour, the first music, the first flower paint the fore- ground of his life ; yet we can prescribe no other law than this, Protect the child from all that is impetuous and violent, and even from sweet impressions. Nature, so soft, defenceless and excitable, may be distorted by one error, and hardened into a growing deformity. For this reason the crying of children, if composed of a union of discord, hastiness, imperiousness and passion, ought to be guarded against by all due means, but not by effeminacy which only increases it. §42. If in the ocean of a human soul sections may be made, and degrees of longitude and latitude ascribed to it, we must, in the case of a child, make the first section of the first th ree ^ ears, during which, from the want of the power of speech, he still lives in the animal cloister, and only approaches us through the speech-grating of natural signs. In this speechless period, of which we shall now treat, the pupils are quite given up to feminine fluency ; but how women ought now to educate can only be seen later on, when we inquire how they themselves ought to have been educated. In this period of twilight, in thit first moon's quarter, or eighth of life, let the light only grow of itself, do not kindle it. Here the sexes are un- separated, neither divided by the Platonic Aristophanes, nor by the tailor. The whole human being is as yet a closed bud whose blossom is concealed. Like the eggs of birds, whether of song or of prey, and like the new-born young of the dove or of the vulture, all at first require warmth, not nourishment, which might have a very different effect. And what, then, is warmth for the human chicken ? — Happiness. One has but to give them play room, by taking away what may be painful, and their powers shoot up of themselves. The new world which the suckling brings with him, and the new one which he finds around him, enfold him as learning, or develop themselves as know- lodge; and neither world yet requii-es the ploughing or 144 JEAN PAUL FEIEDKICH EIOHTER. [fRAG. HI. sowing of stranger hands. Even the artificial gymnastics of the senses, which will teach a year-old child to see and hear and hold, are not much more necessary than the leading strings which show him how to walk ; and can the advantage of teaching some use of the senses, say in three months, which would have come of itself in four, be a recompense for neglecting and wearying oneself in the first year and with the first child, to the injury of after years and the next children, about something which imconstrained life necessitates in savages and country people ? The excellent Schwarz, in his Treatise on Education, prompts, by his proposition of an early gymnasium for all the senses, to an appendix to this paragraph. As to the material advantage of these school classes for the five senses, it is certain that rich varied life, by its unceasing influence, educates and practises the senses with a power which does not require the poverty of particular institu- tions for practice, except you wish to convert the whole child into one single sense — into a painter's eye, or a musician's ear. On the other hand, these practices have a formal utility in constraining the mind to perceive the finer subdivisions of its sensations, and to measure the world more accurately by lines than by yards. In the mean time, the inner world offers itself to a finer and higher school than the outward. Especially leave out all exercises of the sense of taste, for whose haul gout the kitchen is the best school ; since we do not need by its means to distinguish between nourishment and poison, but rather teach by its exercise at rich tables to confound the two, so that we, unlike the beasts who only when young, from unpractised taste, crop injurious weeds, when old, from refined taste, long for poison-dishes, and poison-goblets. Let there be here not so much a (?i-gression as a pre- gression concerning the order of development of the senses. Schwarz, in his Treatise on Education, assigns too late a birth-time, almost beyond the age of childhood, for the senses of taste and smell. He seems, however, to con- found the refinement of these senses, which, no doubt, takes place in mature ago, with their existence and power, CHAP. 1. 1 LEVANA. 145 which ceriainly flourish in their greatest strength during childhood. Every one may remember how as a child, like the animals (which remain stationary on this first step) and like savages, he imbibed every thing tasty, fruits, sugar, sweet wine, fat, with a delight and enjoyment which weakened with every year of the subsequent refine- ment of the sense ; hence the so much lamented love of sweatmeats in all children; hence the experience of so many grown-up people, who have had the favourite dishes of their childhood cooked for them, that they did not like them. Infants, no doubt, take bitter medicines without resistance ; but this is no reproach to their taste ; wo ourselves in later life seek a pure bitter as a higher excitement, in bitter beer, water, and almonds. If a young animal eat poisonous plants which an old one avoids, there is proved by this less want of taste than superabundance of appetite, that is hunger; which, in it, as easily conquers instinct as, in us, it unfortunately over- comes reason. Smell, the dulness of which sense speaks as little in favour of mental delicacy as that of the eye or of the ear does against it,* awakes with consciousness, consequently, last in a child. We are less aware of its advent because it subserves few necessities ; and because itg continuance, either, for instance, in spice islands, or in Augean-stable- like streets, renders the consciousness of it difficult. Children have little scent-glands for the persons nearest them, for instance, for their parents ; and thereby dis- tinguish them from individuals more rarely seen. And it is precisely smell which dies away the first of all the senses ; although it, unlike the other senses, is seldom worn out by too powerful stimulants. And who is there who has not experienced in himself what I have done — that often a r.osegay of wild flowers, which was to us, as village children, a grove of pleasure, has, in after years of manhood and in the town, given us by its old perfume an indescribable transport back into god-like childhood ; and how, like a flower-goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora-clouds of our first dim feelings ? But * Haller with his weak eves: Pope and Swift with unmusical ears. L 146 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH KICHTER. [fRAG. III. how couM such a remembrance so strongly affect us if our childish sensibility to flowers had not been strong and heartfelt ? Ascribe, then, to after life nothing more than the refinement of a deeply implanted feeling. CHAPTEK II. THE JOYOUSNESS OF CHILDREN. § 43. Should they have any thing else ? I can endure a melan- choly man, but not a melancholy child ; the former, in whatever slough he may sink, can yet raise his eyes either to the kingdom of reason or of hope ; but the little child is entirely absorbed and weighed down by one black poison- drop of the present. Think of a child led to a scaffold ; think of Cupid in a Dutch coffin ; or watch a butterfly, after its four wings have been torn off, creeping like a worm, and you will feel what I mean. But wherefore ? The first cause has been already given ; the child, like the beast, only knows purest (though shortest) sorrow ; one which has no past and no future ; one such as the sick man receives from without, the dieamei from himself into his asthenic brain ; finally, one with the consciousness not of guilt but of innocence. Certainly all the sorrows of children are but shortest nights, as their joys are but hottest days ; and, indeed, both so much so that in the later, often clouded and starless, time of life, the matured man only longingly remembers his old chiLl- hood's pleasures, while he seems altogether to have for- gotten his childhood's griefs. This weak remembrance is strangely contrasted with the opposing one in dreams and fevers in this respect, that in the two last it is always the cruel sorrows of childhood which return : the dream, this mock-sun of childhood — and the fever, its distorting glass, — both draw forth from dark corners the fears of defence- CHAP. II.] LEVANA. 147 less childhood, which press and cut with iron fangs into the prostrate soul. The fair scenes of dreams mostly play on an after stage ; whereas the frightful ones choose for theirs the cradle and the nursery. Moreover, in fever the ice hands of the fear of ghosts, the striking ones of teachers and parents, and every claw with which fate has pressed 'the young heart, stretch themselves out to catch the wandering man. Parents! consider, then, that every childhood's Kupert,* even though it has lain chained for tens of years, yet breaks loose and gains mastery over the man as soon as it finds him on a sick bed. The first fright is the more dangerous the sooner it happens; as the man grows older he is less and less easily frightened ; the little cradle or bed canopy of the child is more easily quite darkened than the starry heaven of the man. § 44. Cheerfulness, or joyousness, is the heaven under which every thing but poison thrives. But let it not be con- founded with enjoyments. Every enjoyment, even the refined one of a woi k of art, gives man a selfish mien, and withdraws him from sympathy ; hence it is only a con- dition of necessity, not of virtue. On the contrary, cheer- fulness, the opposite of vexation and sadness, is at once the ground and flower of virtue and its crown. Animals can enjoy, but only men can be cheerful. The holy father is at the same time called the blessed, and God is the all blessed. A morose God is a contradiction, or the devil. The stoic philosopher must unite scorn of enjoy- ment with the preservation of cheerfulness. The Christian heaven promises no pleasures, like the Turkish, but the clear, pure, infinite ether of heavenly joy, which flows from the contemplation of the Eternal. The foretaste of heaven — Paradise, to which the theologians denied pleasures, but not cheerfulness — sheltered innocence. The cheerful man wins our eye and heart, as the morose man drives both away : it is the contrary with pleasures, we turn our back on the luxurious, and open onr heart to tlie * Tho name given in Geimany to the fictitious being employed to frighten children into ohndience. — Tr. L 2 148 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICETER. |'FRAG, 111. starving. If pleasure be a self-consuining rocket, cheer- fulness is a returning light star, an object which, unlike pleasure, is not worn away by continuance, but receives from it new birth. § 45. Now let us return to the dear children. I do indeed think, that they ought to inhabit their Paradise like our first parents, those true first children. But pleasures make no Paradise, they only help to laugh it away. Play, that is activity, not pleasures, will keep children cheerful. By pleasure I understand every first agreeable impression, not only of the taste, but also of the ear and the eye : a plaything gives in the first place pleasure by looking at it, and only afterwards cheerfulness by using it. Pleasure is an irritating burning spot, not an all-embracing warmth, on the excitable skin of the child. Further, if refined, perpetual drunkards and epicures multiply and extend their pleasures by the past and the future ; so children, from want of both, can only have shortest but, conse- quently, deepest pleasures. Their point of sight, like their eye, is less than ours ; the burning-glass of pleasure should not strike them at focal distance, but far ofi" and gently. In other words, divide the great pleasure into little merry-makings, a gingerbread cake into gingerbread nuts, a Christmas eve into a church year. In one month of nine-and-twenty days a child might be mentally destroyed, if one could make out of every day a first Cluistmas Day. Not even a grown-up head could stand being crowned every day by a new country : the first in Paris, the second in London, the third in Rome, the fourth in Vienna. But little enjoyments work like scent bottles on the young souls, and strengthen them from action to action. Nevertheless, this ramification of pleasures only serves for their earliest years : afterwards, in a reversed way, wiil a Midsummer-feast, a grape- gathering, a Shrove-tide, for which children have long to wait, together with the gleanings of a lively memory, shine all the more brightly in the dull interval. A word about children's love :)f sweetmeats, against C?HAP. II.] LEVANA. 149 which Schwarz strives perhaps too eageily, may be dropped here. I never yet knew a child to whom sweet savory things and pastry did not seem the most inimitable cakes and altar paintings, and this merely because a child, half animal, half savage, is all taste. Bees have at the same time a honey and a wax stomach ; but among human beings, children have the first, grown people the second. If Schwarz has always found love of eating and want of modesty united, he can only declare this of the age of manhood ; but even then the love of eating was only the consequence and companion of deeper sensual pleasures, not their cause. Certainly, the unbridled sensualist will alter in his meats, and also in his tastes, as the lover of eating does on other grounds ; but, on the other hand, how can the pleasures of taste, which grow weaker as every year is further from childhood, end in still lower sen- sualities, especially since the generality of souls, in regard to love, resemble the Egyptians, among whom the gods reigned earlier tlian mortal men ? The fathers do not hop, but the children do ; then leave them their other Egyptian flesh-pots before their journeying forth into the desert. The author has often made the sugar-island of the tongue, on which of itself no Paphian wood grows, into a kind of palaestra of self-denial ; at the same time he relates the matter with difl&dence, only as a question, not an answer. For instance, he gave to the two- and three-year old children candied marchpane (the most wholesome thing) with the command only to suck it at a certain place, and only for so long a time as he permitted. The children learned to value and to keep a promise. He also offered sugar or honey prizes for the endurance of the most strokes on the hand ; but he did it seldom. Most royal children can shorten our inquiries by their decision. For, as regards pleasures, they have everything from toys and drinking- and eating- things to carriage seats and bed cushions; but, as far as happiness is concerned, they are tormented from their governors up through every member of their court ; so that the kingly crown is very early underlined with a crown of thorns, or, to speak differently, the black round of sorrow is made iiroader in proportion to their high rank. For, indeed, 150 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH EICHIER. [fRAG. HI; when we consider how generally a prince, satiated with eating and drinking, is so educated that he cannot make a step without tutors and lectures, nor a skip without the dancing-master, nor take a breath of fresh air without four horses, we must almost believe that the ancient heretic Basilides is now again right as regards princes, when he declared that the early Christians would often have been martyrs for future sins, if the after-pains were not added to the fore-pains of the future. Cheerfulness — this feeling of an entirely free nature and life, this self- enjoyment of the inner world, not of an out- ward minute part of the world — opens the child to the penetrating All; it receives nature, not loveless and de- fenceless, but loving and armed, and lets all the young powers rise like morning beams, and play upon the world and upon itself; and it imparts, as moroseness takes away, strength. The early blossoms of gladness are not corn- flowers among the seed, but are themselves little young ears of corn. It is a beautiful tradition that the Virgin Mary and the poet Tasso never wept as children.* But now the question is of the means and starry influences which preserve this cheerfulness. If it merely resulted from negative and physical conditions, then, at least for the most instructive half year of life, that is the first, all would be obtained by a child who was bom in spring. Why do not men begin life, as Oriental nations do the year, with spring ? A child bom at this season, might an almanac say without lying, moves slowly on from charm to charm, from leaves to flowers, from the warmth of rooms to that of the sky : the wind is not yet his enemy — instead of storms, melodies breathe in the branches — born to a half year's festival of the earth, he must believe that life remains so — he sees the rich earth only afterwards hidden by its covering — and the enjoy- ment of life which the suckling mother imbibes flows warm through the little heart. * Pertschen's Church History. CHAP. III. I LEVANA. 151 CHAPTER III. GAMES OF CHILDREN. § 46. That which produces and maintains cheerfulness is nothing but activity. The usual games of children, unlike ours, are only the expressions of earnest activity, clothed in lightest wings : children have also a game (it is one to them) I mean that of joking, of unmeaning speech, in order to have something to say to themselves, and so forth. Now if a German were to write a book about the games of children, which would at least be more useful than one about games of cards, he would, it seems to me, distinctly and correctly divide them only into two classes: \ first, into games or exertions of the receiving, apprehending, ^ \ learning faculties ; and, secondly^ into games of the acting, .^^Ai-^ \ forming powers. The first class would embrace activity "^^ ' from without working inwardly, like the nerves of sense ; \ the other activity from within working outwardly, like the nerves of motion. Consequently, if the author went deeply into the first class, which he calls the theoretic, — the second, on the other hand, the practical, — he would adduce games which are properly only a ^cl^jld^ experimental ^^....-phj^cSj optics, mechanics. Children have great pleasure for instance, in turning or raising anything — putting keys into locks and, in general, one thing into another — opening and shutting doors, to which is added, moreover, the dramatic fancy of seeing the room now large now small, and themselves alone one moment, in company the next ; — watching the employment of their parents is to them a * game of this kind, as is also listening to conversation. In the second or practical division, the author must put all those games in which the child seeks to relieve himself of his mental superabundant activity by dramajicj^cies, ^_ and of his bodily, by movements. The examples wiUcollIe ^^ in the next paragraph. 152 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH TJCHTER. [fRAG. IH, But T think so very scientific a man would form a third class, already hinted at ; namely, that in which the child only plays the game, does not really act and feel it, that is, where he takes and gives a comfortable form and tone ; for instance, looks out of the window, lies upon the grass, listens to the nurse and other children. § 47. Play is, in the first place, the working off at once of the overflow of both mental and physical powers ; afterwards, when the school sceptre has carried off the mental source of all fire, even till rain comes, the limbs only throw off I ^ the fulness of life by running, throwing, carrying. jPlay f I is the first poetry of the human being. (Eating and drinking are his prose ; and striving to get the needful supplies his first solid bread-study and labour of life.) Consequently play forms all the powers, without imparting an overweening influence to any one.* If a teacher would be cruel enough to form a whole man into one member, for instance, into a magnified ear, he must during the first years so mix the playing cards, by abstracting some, that nothing could ever be obtained but games of sound. If he wished to be anything better in the games than cruel, he would perhaps endeavour to lead his pupil with gentle hand, imitating chance which acts from all sides and develops all. But I dread that grown-up hairy hand and fist which knocks on the tender fructifying dust of childhood's blossoms and shakes a colour off, first here, then there, so that the proper many marked carnation may be formed. We often think to rule the external but broad empire of chance by means which some inner narrow accident has thrown together in ourselves. * Many children's games are imitations (but mental, whereas those of monkeys are physical), that is to say, not fjom any especial interest in the thing, but merely because imitation falls in most readily with the mental impulses of life. Probably the monkey, like Dr. Monro's nervous patient, only imitates strange movements, compulsorily and, from weakness. CHAP, in.] LEVANA. 153 §48. We will, however, step further into the play-place of the little folks, if not to be lawgivers, yet to be markers of their games. During the first months of existence the child knows nothing of creative play or efforts, only of . the passive r eception of impressions. During that period ^ of the most rapm pliysical <;rowth and inpouring of the world of sense, the overwlitlmed soul does not direct itself towards those active games in which afterwards its super- abundant powers find relief. It can only look, listen, catch, touch ; so laden, its little hands and arms quite full, it can do and attempt little with them. It is only at a later period, when, by means of the five acts of the five senses, the knowledge of the outer world is attained, and one word after another gradually liberates the mind, that greater freedom produces active play ; and that fancy begins to move, whose unfledged wings lan- guage first plumes. Only by words does the child obtain an inner world opposed to the outer, by which he can set . the external universe in motion. He has two kinds of play very different both in direction and time — first, that with playthings ; and second, that with and among playmates. § 49. In the first place the child plays with things, con- sequently with himself. A doll is to him a nation, or a company of players, and he is the theatrical poet and director. Every bit of wood is a gilded flower rod, on which fancy can bud hundred-leaved roses. For not merely to grown-up people, but also to children, the plaything itself becomes indifferent if a happy imagination alone be per- mitted to decide ; whether it be with regard to imperial or laurel crowns, shepherds' crooks, or marshals' staves, the flails of war or of agriculture. In the eyes of wonder- working fancy every Aaron's rod blossoms. As the Elysian fields of the ancients near Naples were grounded (accord- ing to Maccard) on nothing more than a bush in a cave, 80, for children, is every bush a forest ; and they possess 154 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH KICHTER. [fRAG. IH. that heaven which Luther in his table-talk promises the saints, where the bugs are sweet-scented, the serpents playful, the dogs gold-skinned, and Luther a lamb. I mean to say, that in the heaven of childhood the father is God the Father, the mother the Mother of God, the nurse a Titaness, the old servant an Angel of the Communion, the turkey a Cherub of Eden, and Eden itself is restored. Do you not know that there is a time when fancy is more actively creative than even in youth, namely, in child- hood, in which nations create their gods, and only speak in poetry ? Never forget that the games of children with inanimate playthings are so important, because for them there are only living things : (a doll is as much a human being to a child as a baby is to a woman ;) and also because to them every word is a reality. In beasts the body alone plays, in children the mind. Life meets them on every side ; they cannot comprehend death, or any thing dead; and therefore the happy beings, animating every thing, sur- round themselves only with life, and hence it is they say, for instance, " The lights have covered themselves up and gone to bed — the spring has dressed itself — the water runs down the glass— his house lives there — the wind dances," * : — or of a watch from which the works are removed, " It is not alive." But among richer realities fancy fades and grows poor ; in the mean time every plaything and play world is only a distaff of flax from which the soul spins a many coloured coat. As the rook in chess was among different people, now a camel, now an elephant, a stork, a boat, a castle ; BO among children, one plaything often acts many parts, and every time it seems to them, as manna did to the Jews, the very thing they desired. The author remember^ a little girl of two years old who, after having long carried about an old doll reduced to the bare wood, had at last placed in her arms a very pretty and skilfully dressed one — a foster-sister of the most beautiful in Bertuch's Journal des Modes, which it resembled as mu »h in optio beauty as it surpassed it in size. Soon afterwards the * Some girl in terror at the raging of the wind substituted " dance ^ euphemistically. CHAT, in.] LEVANA. 155 child not only resumed her former conduct towards the wooden sloven, but went so far as to take into her arms, in the place of child or doll, a shabby boot-jack of her father 8, which she nursed and rocked to sleep as lovingly as the above-mentioned original of Bertuch's pictures. So much more readily does fancy invest an invisible Adam's rib with human limbs and fashionable costume than a doll which only differs in size from a lady, and which, on its side, appears to the imagination at the next tea-party so perfect that it can be improved in nothing. , Just so the same little lassie, sitting beside the author, wrote for a long time with a pen dipped only in air on an ever-white sheet of paper, until he almost fancied it was a satire on himself. Consequently do not surround your children, like princes' children, with a little world of the turner's : do not give them eggs coloured and painted over with figures, but white ; they will soon from their own minds hatch the coloured feathers. On the contrary, the older a man growb the more rich a reality should appear : the heath on which the youth gleaned at least the morning-dew of the light of love, grows cold with the dark night-dew ta the half-blind old man, and at last man requires a whole world, I mean the next, in order only to live. §50. But by the same fancy which, like the sun, paints the colours on the leaves are they also again removed from them. The same mistress of the robes dresses, and also undresses; consequently there is for children no ever- enduring play or plaything. Therefore ^j? not let a play- thing whj^ch has lost its charm lie long before the eye con8Cious~of the change ; lay it by. After a long time Uhe dismissed favourite will be received with honour. The same is to be said of picture-books ; for a poetic animation is as necessary to the picture-book as to the play drawer. A few words about that. The proper picture-books for ABC children do not consist of a sequence of unknown plants and animals, whose differences only the instructed eye perceives, but of historical pieces which present the actions of animals or men taken from the child's circlo» 156 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH EIGHT EK. [FRAG. III. Then this living gallery, in whose universal history the child can more clearly paint the individual being than the reader or author can in the all-embracing generality of poetry, may be exalted into historic groups ; for instance into a Joseph among his brethren, selling or recognising him, — into a Hector's farewell of wife and child, and such like subjects. Children — those of one or two years old excepted who still need the spur of colour — only require drawings, not paintings ; colours resemble the above-mentioned luxurious-' ness of playthings and, by reality, weaken the creative faculty. Therefore give no plaything whose end is only to be looked at ; but let every one be euch as to lead to work. For instance, a little complete mine, after being a leW hours before the child's eyes, is altogether gone over and each tiny vein of ore exhausted ; but a box of building materials, a collection of detached houses, bridges and trees, by their ever-varying location, will make him as rich and happy as an heir to the throne who makes his mental dispositions known by rebuilding his father's palace in the park. Moreover, small pictures are better than large ones. What is to us almost invisible is tc children only little ; they are physically short sighted, consequently suited to what is near ; and with their short yard, that is, with their little body, they so easily finci giants everywhere, that to these little juveniles we should present the world on a reduced scale. §51. Before the new philosophers, who in education more readily give everything than something, one grows so very much ashamed of such a paragraph as this that one scarcely knows how to deck and sweeten it. I must, however, say that for children in their early years, I know • no cheaper and more lasting plaything, one that is also clean and suited for both sexes, than\what everyone has in the pineal-gland, some in the bladder, and birds in the stomachjL-sand. I have seen children weary of play use it for hours as building material, as hurling machine, as a cascade, water for washing, seed, flour, finger-tickler, aa A CHAP. III. J LEVANA. 157 inlaid work, and raised work, as a ground for writing and painting. It is to boys what water is to girls. Philo- sophers! strew sand less in than before the eyes in the birdcage of your children. Only one thing has to be cared for with regard to it, that they do not eat their plaything. §52. The second kind of play is the playing of children with children. If men be made for men, so are children for children, only much more beautifully. In their early years children are to one another only the completion of their fancy about one plaything : two fancies, like two flames, play near and in one another, yet un-united. Moreover children alone are sufficiently childlike for children. But in later years the first little bond of society is woven of flower- garlands ; playing children are little European savages in social contract for the per- formance of one drama. On the play-place they first issue from the speaking and audience hall into the true sphere of action, and begin their human praxis. For parents and teachers are ever to them those strange heaven- descended gods, who, according to the belief of many nations, appeared teaching and helping the new men on the new-born earth : at least they are to the child gigan- tic Titans ; — consequently in this theocracy and monarchy free resistance is forbidden and injurious to them, obe- dience and faith serviceable and salutary. Where then can the child show and mature his governing power, his resistance, his forgiveness, his generosity, his gentleness, in short every root and blossom of society, except in freedom among his equals ? Teach children by children ! The entrance into their play-room is for them an entrance into the great world ; and their mental school of industry is in the child's play-room and nursery. It is often of more use to a boy himself to administer the cane than to receive it from his tutor ; and still more to have it inflicted by one of his equals than by one of his superiors. If you wish to form a slave for life, fasten a boy for fifteen years to the legs and arms of his tutor, who is to be at once theatrical director, and occasional member of the two^ 158 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH KICHTER. [Fi^AG. III. personed company. Like all slaves, the child will probably keep his eye and heart armed against his tyrant's individuality ; but, accustomed to one climate and sailing only with one wind, he will be unable in future to with- stand the all-sidedness of individualities. §53. The teaching and feeding master of the little one always acts as if the proper life of the child, as a hulnan being, were not actually begun, but waited until he himself had departed in order then to lay the key-stone of the arch. Even the travelling tutor believes that, so long as he walks beside and sows seed in the furrow, the time of leaves and flowers has not arrived. For man, needing an external whole, when once an inner one animates him, fixes that outer one, like the arch of the sky and the approach of heaven to earth, in the distance and on the horizon, although from every hill which he successively mounts that heaven flies away into the more distant blue; and so man arrives at old age, and at last, on the mound of the grave, heaven rests upon earth. The whole of life is, then, nowhere or everywhere. Heavens ! where a man is, there eternity, not time, begins. Consequently the plays and actions of children are as serious and full of meaning in themselves and in reference to their future, as ours are to ours. The early game becomes the earnest of later years ; although children in play often repeat something as the echo of an earlier reality, just as the Neapolitans play cards during theatrical representations. Moser dictated his works while playing ombre : perhaps his have been secretly suggested to many an author by his early childhood's games. As chess is «aid to serve for instruction in war and government, so the ■'^uture laurels and tree of knowledge grow in the play-ground. The bishop Alexander considered those children on whom Athanasius when a child playfully bestowed baptism, to have been really baptized. If, as Archenholz relates, the hojs of Winchester School once rebelled against their masters, garrisoned the principal entrance to the schoolhouse, and provided themselves sa CHAP. ni.J LEVANA. 159 well with arms and munition that the high sheriff of the county, although he marched against them with 150 constables and 80 militia men, was yet obliged to grant an honourable capitulation — I see in this angry play nothing further than the youth of that present (even though it be unjust) manhood, which bars rivers and harbours and their own island, 'and on the sea conquers countries : so much does the foam of childish play subside into true wine ; and their fig leaves conceal not nakedness but sweet figs. § 54. If one were to make propositions, that is wishes, one might express this : That for every child a circle of / games and real actions should be provided, composed of as ) >- many different individualities, conditions and years as can possibly be found, in order to prepare him, in the orhia pictus of a diminished play-world, for the larger real one. But to give the social account of these three play provinces would require a book within the book. Moreover, I would propose pleasure and playmasters, as the precursors and leaders of the schoolmaster — and also play-rooms, empty as those rooms on whose plaster walls Kaphael's immortal flowers bloom — and also play gardens. And I am just reading that Grabner, in his travelling v^ description of the Netherlands, gives an account of play- schools, to which the Dutchman sends his children sooner than to the schools of instruction. Certainly if one of the two must fall, it were better the former should continue in existence. Yet a few miscellaneous observations. Children love no plays so much as those in which they have something to expect, or to dread : so early does the poet, with his knot making and loosing, play his part in man. From time to time they, like deep, unlucky players, ask for new cards. But this changeableness is not merely that of luxury, but also the consequence of their rapid growth — for the so quickly ripening child seeks new fruits in new countries, as the aged seeks new ones in the old. Perhaps also it is the consequence of that want of a future and a pa«t, whereby a child is so much more strongly affected 162 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTEE. [fRAG. III. CHAPTER IV. I children's dances. §55. I KNOW not whether I should most deprecate children's balls, or most praise children's dances ! The former — before the dancing-master — in the society of lookers-on and fellow dancers — in the hot temperature of the ball- room, and among its hot products — are, in the highest degree, the front ranks and leading steps to the dance of death. On the contrary, children's dances are what I will now commend more at large. As the first speech long precedes grammar, so should dancing precede and prepare the way for the art of danc- ing. A father who has an old piano, or fiddle, or flute, oi an improvising singing voice, should call his own and neighbour's children together, and let them every day foi an hour hop and turn by his orchestra, in pairs, in rows, in circles, very frequently alone, accompanying themselves with singing, as their own grinding organ; and also in any way they like. In the child happiness dances ; in the man, at most, it only smiles or weeps. The mature man can in dancing only express the beauty of the art, not himself and his emotions : love would thereby comport itself too rudely, joy too loudly and boldly, before the stern Nemesis. In the child, body and soul still live united in their honeymoon, and the active body dances after the happy soul ; until afterwards both separate from bed and board, and at last entirely leave one another. In later times the light zephyr of contentment cannot turn the heavy metal standard to point its course. §56. Children are like Ferrer's watches which wind them- selves up if you walk about with them. As in the old astronomy, eleven of their heaveas are moveable, and only one, that of sleep, stationary. It is only dancing in a circle that is light enough for a (3hild ; only for youth is a CHAP. IV.] LEV ANA. 163 straight course not too difficult. As to the heavenly bodies, 80 to children, do the motion and music of the spheres belong; whereas the older body, like water, takes the etraight path. To speak more plainly: Women, it is well known, cannot run, but only dance ; and every one would more easily reach by dancing than by walking a posthouse, to which, instead of a straight poplar alley, a lordly row of trees planted in the English fashion, con- ducted. Now children are diminutive women — at least boys are, although girls are often only diminutive boys. Dancing is the easiest of all movements, because it needs the least space and is the moiJL varied ; hence joy is not a runner but a dancer: hence the indolent savage dances, and the wearied negro slave rouses himself by dancing to fresh exertion : hence the runner — all other circumstances being the same — has more frequently fallen down dead than the dancer. Hence camels, and armies, and Oiiental labourers continue their laborious marches for a longer time and with more ease to the sound of music; not principally because music produces cheerfulness, that might easily be attained by other pleasures, but because music rounds off the straight movement into the circling dance and its still returning rhythm ; for it is only in a circular, not in a straight line, that every thing returns in thirds. As an argumentative or a narrative sequence (science or history) prepares us by every effort of attention for a still stronger, whereas the zigzag of the epigram each moment compels us to a new beginning and fresh exertion; so physically the same is the case in running and walking, in which, up-hill, or down-hill, no effort is cause of its successor, but the great follows the littla or the strongest the strongest, as the case may be : in dancing, on the contrary, without aim or compulsion, one movement constantly springs out of the other and renders cessation, rather than continuance, difficult. All running, but no dancing, desires an end. What better movement, then, can there be for children than this revolving one ? The gymnastic of running, going on stilts, climbing, dance, may poison it three or four times a day. What concerns another mental poison-draught for the child I utterly deny. If, as I believe I am able to prove, no partial transmigration of soul from the mother into the new-born child be possible, how much less can mind in- fluence mind by means of a nourishment which first affects the stomach ! One might just as well believe, with the Caribbees, that pork produces small eyes ; or, with the Brazilians, that the flesh of ducks imparts the lazy awk- ward pace of a duck.* On this principle, goat's milk, and perhaps most nurses' milk, would have the same effect as that of Jupiter's nurse, which so completely transformed the god that he may be employed as anything rather than an example of many of the ten commandments. Bechstein, it is true, remarks that otters may be tamed by human milk; but one may find a much nearer and truer cause in the circumstances which such a milk-diet presu]3poses. Much contention may take place about the relation of the mother's milk to the child's body. If a healthy stomach, like death, make all alike, potatoes, bread, venison steaks, ship biscuits, ale, insects (crabs), worms (snails), and, finally, human flesh, into the same chyle, will not the stomach of a child be able to reduce its nurse's milk to the same substance ? And does not tin Hoiiie'a * History of Mankind,' tJ. ii. APPENDIX.] LEVANA. 191 child's body, in all its organic peculiarities, as frequently resemble its father as its mother? Why, if the milk (instead of organisation) effect so much, are not most of the nobility giants, since peasants' milk is often added to aristocratic blood as wine to water? Indeed, on the ground of the influence of maternal relationship, there would be more to determine for, than against, a nurse. The body ceaselessly polarises itself; consequently the nitrogen, for instance, of the nurse would counterbalance the oxygen of the lady ; and, on the other side, a town lady would be the best official nurse of a peasant boy. A cosmopolite tutor and diet master might go still farther, and, in order all-sidedly to exercise and train a swaddled child — mummies are swaddled corpses and helmsmen swaddled men — insist on its having one day, ass's milk (the positive pole, thesis), the next, dog's milk (the nega- tive pole, antithesis), the day after, human milk (indiffer- ence, synthesis). As early as possible determine the hours of eating, and consequently the times for sleep ; only observing that in the first years the intervals must be more frequent and shorter than afterwards. The stomach is such a creature of habit, such a time- keeper, that if, when hungry, we delay its usual period of gratification for a few hours, it does nothing but reject food. But if its hours of compulsory service be appointed it works beyond its powers. It is only in later years when the sketch and colours of the little man are more strongly marked that middle tints and half shadows may be ventured on ; a child, like a savage, is often freed, often made a slav , by sleep and eating ; the physical nature is then either exercised or vanquished, and the spiritual is crowned in both cases. Do not keep the tumult of daily life far distant from the little infant, as though it were an aristocratic patient. If you do not actually permit the fire bell or the discharge of artillery to be heard by its cradle, its long deep slumber in the world will so harden it against every noise, that afterwards, when its ears are quicker, it will yet be able to sleep in the midst of noise ; and what is still better, and prevents injurious night feeding, it will only sleep-all 192 JEAN PAUL rrJEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. III. the sounder in the contrasting stillness of night. I earnestly contend against suckling in the night ; for your wife ought to sleep ; and it is quite sufficient if she suckle her little darling shortly before going to sleep, and then again immediately after wakening. It is a trifle, but so is a line ; why may I not give one to the other ? I mean, why do you lay the head of a new-born child higher than its body ? In the months preceding birth the body actually stood on the head; I should think that a horizontal direction after a perpendicular was quite sufficient ; where- fore, then, create a new want, or prevent the subsequent use of a remedy, which the higher placing of the head is to children in case of colds, by employing it before it is needed ? With regard to animal food, most people say — Wait till there are teeth to bite it. Whj ? toothless children take, with advantageous effects, broths, and the strongest honey- thick extract of meat that I know, the yolk of eggs. Even flesh-meat is less to be objected to on account of its size, since it may be cut quite as small as it can be chewed, than on account of its being swallowed without chewing, that is, without saliva. But children enjoy and digest milk and broth almost entirely without previous gastric juice, the saliva, as birds of prey do pieces of flesh. Pro- bably large pieces are chiefly injurious because we take more of them and quicker than little ones in the same time ; for the stomach reckons satiety — in hunger as in thirst — not according to quantity (for a pint of water will frequently not quench the thirst as well as a slice of lemon) but according to organic assimilation : hence of no kind of food does one more easily eat so much too much as of what is indigestible; because the difficult and more tardy assimilation delays and conceals the feeling of satiety. What digestion is, no physiologist has hitherto been able to explain. The gastric juice which is said to excite or produce hunger (is there any thirst juice for thirst?) with its few spoonfuls is not sufficient — when diluted and surrounded by a bottle of wine and a plate of soup, as a grain of arsenic by oil — to dissolve a Styrian cock's comb, not to mention an early meal, or even a late jne. The gentle animal warmth which, as August is the APPENDIX.] LEVANA. 193 wine-cook, ought to be the cooking-wine of food, is cooled and deluged by cold liquids with less of disadvantage than advantage to the digestion. If the stomach of men, as their nature in general, work as an ellipse, with two foci, and 80 not merely as a membranaceous vulture stomach, but also as a fleshy poultry stomach, and along with chemical possess also mechanical force, I do not understand how a pressure — that, for instance, of meat -broth or of gruel — assists it in digestion. But we are concerned with the thing itself, not with iHa explanation. Flesh-meat seems especially useful to coun- teract the weakness of childhood and the superabundance of sour food ; since even the young of granivorous birds are fed advantageously with eggs, worms and insects. A slight and rare surfeit will exercise and strengthen the stomach's power of endurance : only do not let the beast of burden be overloaded with easily injurious substances, such as eggs or meat, but with things of moderately long duration, such as pulse or potatoes. Why do not people give children, at times when they will not take their food, sugar (as distinct from con- fections as food from poison) on whose nourishing sub- stance the negro feeds himself and his horse during journeys of days together ? During the earliest years — I was about to commence so again, but without any reason, — for the strict ordering of life only comprehends a period sufficiently long to raise and fasten the scaffolding of life. But as the danger of death diminishes every day — it is well known to be greatest at first — growing freedom and powerful many-sidedness must arm the child against all the two-and-thirty winds and storms of life. Tea and coffee, as well as cakes and fruit, are generally given much more willingly and abundantly to children than wholesome wine as a tonic, and wholesome hopped beer as a drink ; whereas it were much better not to give the two liquids at all, cakes very seldom, and fruit abundantly only in the early glowing years. As to the emperor Joseph II., who by an ordinance of 1785 forbade that wine should be given to children* (somewhat as * No imperial law would be less likely than this to be observed in L O 194 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICHTER. [fRAG. IH. tobacco, liops, and Peruvian bark were at an earlier date prohibited) — T put him to flight by the children of the many wine-countries, who have not yet perished thereby; else would there meanwhile be no longer a right bank to the Rhine — to leave the left out of the question. By all means give them wine, (but not any old, Spanish ol- Hungarian,) not out of a punch-ladle, but out of a tea-- spoon, and more frequently than abundantly, and every year less, and in the season of manly strength and vigour none at alL Bitter beer, at a proper distance from two meals, is at once excitement and nourishment. After- wards, in the eighth and tenth years, water must be tho drink and beer the tonic. I would not merely allow girls to drink beer longer than boys, but always ; unless the mothers, like true Lycurguses, forbid growing fat. Thank God, my friend, in the name of your posterity, that you, like myself, do not live in Saxony, or in th6 Saxon Yoigtland, but in Baireuth, near the best beer — the champagne beer. White beer without hops is a slimy poison for children ; and unhopped brown beer not much better. Those who are too fat should only take it in water, as the Greeks did wine. In the early ages of Germany, be-fore tea, coffee, and foreign wine ruled and weakened, fj)urfold stronger beer was brewed ; then people did not dig the bones of giants out of the earth, but frequently consigned them to it ; whereas for us, under the government oj concentrated tea and coffee poison, the only antidote, beei*, is weakened. About one point, my friend • (forgive my following no other order than that of yourself and your wishes) you will in future often grow hot or cold towards your gentle wife, at least I expect so — and that is, actually about heat and cold. It is a well-known fact that moi'e than one excellent author has much prolonged the continuance of the honey-moon, holding it to resemble the yeai'- weeks of Daniel, and has only fixed its certain end after tlie birth of the first child ; concerning this, however, there has Scotland, where the smallest children before they ,grow up into the Btronge.;t Scots, have brandy given to them. — Humphry) ClinJcet'M Travels, vol. iii. p. 19. Appendix.] levana. 195 heen much quarrelling : partly on tlie man's side with medical reasons, and partly on the woman's with her own ; I mean this in case the child be healthy ; if it bo «ickly perfect rage ensues. I once wrote a paragraph on this subject in case I should ever experience the happiness of forming myself on my own principles of education. Since women, like a bom parlour-race, or household divinity — we are merely sea, land, and air gods ; or, com- pared to those domesticated doves, kindly-meaning but untamed wild pigeons — love warmth as they do coffee, and so, besides covering, seek all manner of warm wraps, only far too many for one body ; and would rather have nine accumulated veils and shawls than one, though of the largest, and for that reason lay aside furs, however warm and costly they be; therefore it is that these mentally tropical beings willingly press their preferences and necessities on the beings they love best — their children. But does not nature herself at birth make the most marked change when she casts it out of an organic bed, which she herself wanned, through the air, into a lifeless one for which the child must be the bed- warmer ? To which is to be added the partial and, moreover, injurious uncovering, that of the face and head, after the previous uniform warmth of the whole body. Hence the question might be mooted, whether the head of the new-bom infant — so hair- less, so thin-skulled and unclosed — does not need to be protected by warm coverings more, or at least as much as the other members, if many men, among whom we, the whole congregated posterity of our ancestors, aro to bo reckoned, had not hitherto withstood it and are still alive : 80 richly does Nature gush forth in new springs whether you close against her one or one hundred. In the mean- time she receives the child after this transit from the hot zone of the earth into the cold one, with two invigorating provocatives ; with nourishment for the lungs and nourish- ment for the stomach — two hitherto unemployed members. Well, then, let the mother imitate therein the universal mother, and not let the child fly from extemal cold, but conquer it by excitements to inward warmth. The best ftir-coat for children grows on wine mountains. Joy is 2 196 JEAN PAL'L FRIEDEICH EIGHT ER. [fEAG. IH. the warm stinny side of the mind and of the body. Exer- cise is the third non-conductor of frost. The new eulogists of warmth are only in the right when they are interrupted. In the cold air of a room a child would shrivel np like a plant on the top of a mountain ; but it would do the same in everlasting heat : the strongest men are not produced either in the immediate neighbourhood of the equator, or of the poles, but in the temperate zones, which alternate between frost and warmth, but with a preponderance of the latter. Do not let any apartments for children be cold, with the exception of the sleeping-room ; for bed is of itself an external fur covering, and sleep an internal one ; and what additional warmth is possible, in case of illness, if you have already more than reached the degree per- mitted ? If you allow your future Paul (if I may venture to choose, his godfather before you) to go without shoes (which would be to you but a saving of leather, but to Mm of a whole funeral train of evils) ; or if you order your future Paulina (to whom he will, probably, with gentle- manly politeness permit the first entrance into life, for most first children are females,) to go without stockings, though soled or shoed, then, in every illness where a warm foot-bath is advisable, you can give one of the longest duration simply by a pair of shoes and stockings. I had my reasons, friend, for recommending shoes, as though they were bridal shoes, to your Paulina, although, alas ! along with them all the corns, cold feet, thin tender soles and heels, which a shoe includes. For I know from afar off the despair, the womanly dread, lest feet without shoes should really grow as large as nature intended, and so quite beyond the conventional size of a foot. Our Chinese Podolatry (foot- worship) more readily suffers the nakedness of the higher parts, for instance, of the bosom or of the back, than for a girl to go barefoot. Luckily — in this case — a boy is not a girl. So let him dance barefoot through his young world, like the ancient heroes, who are always represented with bare feet. If his foot grow into a pedestal, what signifies it to us two men, since we and even rational women, care so little about it? Why do mothers talk a hundred times about taking cold, and scarcely once about becoming over-heated, which, APPENDIX.] LEVANA. 197 especially in winter, so readily passes into fatal cold ? 1 shall answer this in a very unexpected way, when I say, It is because winter lies nearest to their heart, and con- sequently most in their eyes. Winter is, in fact, the bleacher and fair colourer of their faces, and they approach the snow as a new whitening material ; hence summer is much too warm for them to uncover their necks and shoulders as they do in winter which does not discolour them. Hence those tender chamber-covered nurslings, lily-white and lily-fragile, come from the north, and re- semble those white blades of grass which may be found under stones in the midst of green spring. Certainly this dazzling winter- snow does not bear the fruits of the true blossom-snow, for which, nevertheless, we often mistake it, as we do beauty for strength. A fortunate accident for daughters is the Grecian garment-fashion of the present Gymnosophists, (naked female runners,) which, it is true, injures the mothers, but hardens the daughters ; for as age and custom should avoid every fresh cold, so youth exercises itself on it, as on every hardship, until it can bear still greater. ITie Unalasks (hear it, ye enemies of every hardening process !) dip a crying child into the sea until it is quiet ; it necessarily afterwards grows the stronger for it.* So, eimile-wise, the present naked manner of dressing is a cohl bath into which the daughters are dipped, who usually grow cheerful in it. A physician should always invent the fashions ; since he cannot remove a new one except by something still newer. A system of physical hardening is, indeed, mentally necessary, because the body is the anchor-ground of courage. Its aim and consequence is not so much health and pro- longation of life — for weakly and sensual persons often grow old, and nuns and court ladies still oftener — as a fortification against weakness of character, and for cheer- fulness and activity. As it is not a woman's but only a man's mind which becomes more womanish by effeminacy, it may easily happen in the higher ranks, in which the men are, comparatively, more effeminate than the women, that the weak will surpass the weakened sex ; and men See Kanfs Phys. Geog. von Vollmeer, vol. iiL Ist diy. 198 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICS EICHTER. [fKAG. Tit and women have the delightful prospect of resembling date-trees, of which the female only produces fruit, the male nothing but flowers. The present fashion in dress, regarded as an air bath establishment, might have its ♦^nd more perfectly obtained among children, if the garments were occasionally entirely laid aside. I mean, why do not we give ourselves, but still more our children, the pleasure of playing naked half a day in the warm air and sunshine, like Adam in his paradise of innocence ? In ancient Germany, where our ancestors tasted the forbidden fruit later, and consequently hung the fig-leaves later round them, the children were permitted, as in Egypt, to remain ten years longer in nakedness: what spirits of physical power must not have stepped from their cold forests, when eighteen hundred years of warmth and luxury have not sufficed to make their descendants weaker than either of us two ! So the wood of stripped trees can bear a greater weight than that of those which retain their bark. One need but see how light, active, and refreshed an unclothed child feels, drinking and swimming through the air, moving its muscles and limbs freely, and ripening in the sun like a fruit from which the leaves have been removed. So many children's games are Olympic and gymnastic, let the children, then, at least be Greeks, that is to say, unclothed. The ccld water bath may be best used immediately after the air bath ; if, in other respects, it may be uncondition- ally recommended to children under four years old. There is, however, one substitute for the bath ; that of a baptism in daily colder water of the whole body, though each limb be only wet in turns and quickly rubbed dry. I permitted this Anabaptist (re-immersing) sin against Brown and his followers* to be perpetrated every day upon my own chil- dren : the consequences were, not chilliness, colds and weakness, but the very reverse.* Schwarz, in his treatise on education, regards the dislike of a child to this treatment * With regard to the advantages of coldness without retardation, aa to how such sun-obscurations exist, see Vorschule der Aesthetiky iii. p. 578, APPENDIX.] LEVANA. 199 as a hint from nature ; but then the samereascn would apply to many medicines, and also to the warm bath, which children struggle against in the first instance, because they feel all at once so many unaccustomed delights. If cold water have medicinal powers for the stomach which evaporate when warmed, so has it also for the imbibing skin. After air, cold and warm baths, sleep is beneficial. There is still one kind of bath, hitherto unused, which would be very advantageous both to parents and children, 1 mean a thunder-storm bath. Physicians employ in their experiments on nervous invalids, electric air, electric plates, electric baths; but thunder, or rather thunder water, they have not as yet prescribed. Have they never experienced that a person never feels so fresh, cheerful and elastic as after a warm or tepid rain has penetrated to the skin ? Since human beings, when dry again after a storm, feel so much invigorated, and the w<;rld of flowers still more 80, why will they not receive this united fire and water baptism from above, and suffer themselves to be raised and healed by the wonder-working arm in the thunder cloud ? One ought to have an especial rain or bathing suit of clothes, as a frequenter of the spring cloud-baths; and then, when there is promise of wet weather, make a rain party, and return home dripping. The bath company must, alas ! change their clothes — the only thing about it which does not please me. The shepherd boy, even in the cold rainy days of November, takes no chest of clothes with him to the field; neither does any French soldier who has marched himself warm all day in the rain, and lies down at night on the cold ground ; the fisher stands with his feet in the water and his head in the sun, precisely breaking and reversing the physician's rule ; — yet the only hundred-and-seventy year old man in England was a fisher, and had previously been & soldier and a beggar ! Heavens ! with what a fair play- ^ound and free city of the body is our mind originally surrounded ! and how long must it have been the slave of Bin and of opinion ere it was condemned to bo the chained" helmsman or ship-mover of the body ! Mental all-sidedness, which means all-powerfulness, is not granted us, but physical is ; now let childhood at least 200 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. III. be formed for this, and the body, which can inhabit all countries, be exercised in accommodating itself to all ; as the Russian does who imitates his own empire, a miniature Europe in climate, and endures a vapour-and-ice-bath, and the extremes of hunger and of repletion. Is it not enough to be so pampered as to make a pillow of a snow- ball ? — and now do we actually use a cloak bag, or even a feather bed ? * I add to the above remarks, that parents in physical matters — alas ! that it should happen in morals — ought to require more from their children than from themselves : in accordance with this, let the rain-wet clothes at ap- pointed times dry on the children. Would that every mother would consider that, as she opposes inoculation to natural small-pox, so, on the same grounds, she should oppose the blow of accidental, un- expected, and therefore unprepared-for danger, by the favourable hardening of versatile childhood when the choice of the battle-field is so easy ! Our modern women might more readily imitate the ancient Germans in every point than in this ; of becoming ministers of the art of healing, and so the midwives of the future world. If I were a physician, or an important teacher in a girls' school, I should consider it my most useful work to prepare a medical ' Theory of Doubts * for women ; I would therein merely ask questions, give a hundred answers to each, and then ask them to choose. I would, for instance, lay quite undecided before them the theory of fever in all its infinite variety, yes, and even the thousand causes of headache, the intermixture of which so much increases it. Whosoever, even in the cradle, gave attention to the science of medicine — a science in which, more than in any other, genius and learning should form one indivisible compound being — would b© * In Home's ' History of Mankind,' p. 384, is the following : A party of Highlanders were overtaken by night, and encamped upon the smooth snow. A somewhat pampered youth, of good birth, wished to make himself more comfortable, and rolled himself a small pillow out of the snow. " What," said his father (Sir Evan Cameron), " will you be 80 womanish ? " and kicked with his foot the snow pillow away from under his head. — Ah ! our ideal would be to rival cmly the son of Sii Evan Cameron, APPENDIX.] LEVANA, 201 astonished at the boldness with which any no-doctor, and his wife into the bargain, pronounces on the parentage, name and progeny of every illness. Good heavens ! my friend, women think they understand something, we will say the very smallest part, of the most difficult of all applied sciences, that which is applied to the various mental and physical nature united undistinguishably in one organisation ; whereas whole cities would thank God if there were to be had in each of them but one graduated man, universal doctor, medical counsellor, and first physician, who would assist you less to heaven than to your legs again; and would not, as if he were a pope, regard every pilgrim on this earth as a pilgrim of the cross, whom he had to send forth to win a consecrated grave (if he deserved one). The best physician is a prize in the lottery ; the best medicine from him is a prize in the lottery. And yet every woman considers herself to be both lotto and lottery ; at once both the groat prize, and that fifth in order ! Whence comes this absurd pretension to the art of healing among women and — let us include ourselves — among other human beings, myself for instance (whose whole letter proves it) and among men of former ages, as the old Latin proverb testifies*, and Eulenspiegel also, to whom every passer-by prescribed a cure for his tooth- ache? This folly proceeds from a hundred causes; for instance, from the confusion of the science of medicine and the art of surgery; from the differences among physicians ; from anxiety and affection, &c. &c. — but, I believe, chiefly from trust in the proposition of a sufficient reason. Man, a cause-seeking animal as well as one of mere habit, — however modestly he may listen to all scientific things which end in history or mere information, to all histories of the world or of nature, to information about measurement, coining, language, arms, antiquity, history, — this man cannot restrain his power and insight when any scientific theory is presented to him, whether it be of the subject in hand, of nature, of morals, of taste, Fingunt se medicos quivis idiota, sacj-idcg. Judrous, monaf'hiia, histrio, rasor, anus — i.e. Every laviimn funcies hiiiiBe.f a physician—* priest, jew, monk, jack-pudding, barber, and dame. 202 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH RICHTER. [FKAG. Ilf. of sickness. The peasant gives his opinion about the causes of the world, of a thunder storm, of sin, of a per- formance on the organ, of bodily j^ain ; for in all these cases he draws his theory entirely out of himself. If women particularly desire to cure something, I would propose to them besides souls, — for which they would be better soul-curesses than the soul-curei s are — wounds ; as in some Spanish provinces women remove the beard, so should they also legs and arms; their hands, so gentle, tender and apt, their keener survey of what is actually before them, and their compassionate hearts would certainly as sweetly heal common wounds as they make those of the heart. Many a soldier, if the female surgeon of his regiment were pretty, would boldly expose himself to wounds were it only to have them bound by her, or suffer his arm to be amputated by her in order to give her his hand. The blood-fearing eye of women would become sufficiently hardened, though not so flinty, as that of men ; as the Parisian fish- women prove by wounds and blows. Moreover, at this present time the whole world is forming hardening-schools for the feelings, — I mean wars. I will only add a page or two to my over-lengthy epistle and then break off. Although every mother plays the doctor, she yet constantly requires one for the child. Then she wants very many remedies, in order to try each only once, and so, in consequence, not at the wrong time. Then she requires many doctors, in order to hear and to say much. And many even think to instigate the doctor to a more active campaign against the malady by representing it as worse than it is, and concealing the favourable symptoms : as if a person should try to rescue himself from the danger of drowning by screaming fire, or from fire by the distress signals in use at sea. Meanwhile, as no woman's mind will suffer itself to be deprived of a physicking finger along with the doctor's ring, nor of its brains as well as the doctor's hat, a man might, myself for instance, remove the chief danger of a domestic practice of medicine for the family circle by a lew general rules, such, perhaps, as the following : — Grant in general, for instance, that most illnesses are asthenic or weakening — according to Brown above eight-ninths, to Schmidt the full nine-ninths; now, the younger the APPENDIX.] LEVANA. 203 children are the more asthenic are tney, and so more likely to die from sudden loss of strength than from sudden over- stimulants ; wherefore, in every case you may prescribe strengthening domestic remedies, that is to say nourish- ment, a tonic of the least injurious kind. The heat of fever can only be allayed by what the child himself fancies ; and still less must it be strengthened by medicines instead of nourishment ; and least of all by food instead of drink. A few words on this point ma}^ be allowed even to the laity ; the superior excellence of a glass of wine to all glasses of medicine in cases of weakness is seen in grown-up people, in whom, after all apothecary's essences, the electric spark of life has frequently been re- kindled by one strengthening bottle of T\ane, — of this I have experienced strangely decisive instances. And many things might easily be added to this; wine has the advan- tage of a Aonger, slower, and more constant influence ; whereas the tonics of the apothecary assume the name of aquavitae and act like earthquakes, that is to say, by small doses and long intervals. I will give yet one other piece of good advice, the very best, to women; that is, when a child is really ill to do nothing whatever — es])ecially nothing new — not to change a moderate temperature — to give him what he wishes to eat or drink — to say nothing if he fast for a few days — and to avoid all domestic recipes. A mistake in a domestic remedy, giving wine, for instance, instead of vinegar ; or, in an opposite case, fruit instead of eggs, may just as easily be the cause of death as a mistake in a prescription. The only thing I would further recommend to the mother is Dr. Kilian's excellent ' Home and Travelling Physician,* — and that, not that she may attem.pt to cure by it, but that, after a physician has named the complaint, she may nse a treatment in accordance with it. For the husband I should recommend Kilian's ' Clinical Handbook,' a new edition of the former work, enlarged and enriched with receipts. Both books will be sent for your perusal by the next carrier. The gymnastic instruction of your Paul shall be discussed another time, in some six or seven years, when he shall be bom and have attained that ago. In any case I would, at least, let my own children, for weeks together, climb, leap, 204 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [FRAG. III. swim, run races, play at ball and nine pins ; but I would also just as soon, for weeks together, let them dig like a burrowing mole, or be kept quiet like a person recovering from scarlet fever ; and this not that they become well, but may continue well, and in a century given more to Bitting than to speaking, may bring with them so much sitting faculty that they may not suffer penance on their bench every session. At least, I would exercise the strong in sitting as much as the weak in exercise. I would also rather 6et them to hard bodily labour in the evening than in the morning, and so cause physical exertion to follow, not precede, mental. Sitting and thinking after violent exercise is not nearly so healthy or agreeable as the reverse. Active exercise in the morning, as an excite- ment to the sluggish early pulse, along with the greater excitability experienced at that time, will frequently exhaust for the whole day. The leaps which boys practise on their way from school show the bent of nature. In spite of all these reasons I would yet do the opposite — not always, but yet occasionally, in order to inure the body to it. I will now close my letter, which consists almost en- tirely of postscripts because I constantly intended to conclude and always went on. Fare you well, and your wife still better. J. P. F. E. P.S. If you should have purchased Dr. Marshall's * Instructions for the care of Mothers, Children, &c. &c., in their peculiar illnesses,' third edition, two parts — be somewhat mistrustful and disobedient with regard to his instructions; or at least, let them be first filtered and refined by some Brownian physician. When, for instance, he orders a lying-in woman to have nothing during the first nine days but sour fruit, saltpetre and other weaken- ing diets, he does just the same as if one were to lay a person apparently frozen to death, who can only be recovered by very gradual application of warmth begin- ning at the lowest possible degree, in an ice-house for a few days in order that he might recover gradually from the cold. Certainly he would do so slowly enough as he would scarcely become warm before the resurrection. V ( 205 ) COMIC APPENDIX AND EPILOGUE TO THE FIEST VOLUME. A DREAMED LETTER TO THE LATE PROFESSOR GELLERT, JN WHICH THE AUTHOR BEGS FOR A TUTOR. Suffer a dreamed letter to find its place here, for the recreation both of reader and writer. Few men have experienced so rational a kind of dreaming as I have done ; — whereof more shall be said at some future time in a revision of my treatises : others must treasure up their rational waking thoughts. I was obliged, when awake, to help out this dream, even with some changes in its order, so that it might — by the system of opposite ends and aims, as well as of memory and oblivion — really appear what it is. For the rest, I hope I paid it sufficient heed; for, as soon as it was over, I employed the well- known art of recalling dreams by shutting the eyes and keeping every limb motionless. Unfortunately all the fancies or foundlings of a dream — the enfana perdus of the imagination, all the more truly because they usually carry us back to the days of our childhood, and so form a limhus infantum — have this great fault, that they shine brilliantly until we awake, but then little or nothing of them is to be found. At least, such is my case ; and I hope the reader consents. . " Excellent departed Gellert ! I want a tutor for my son Max : for(l am at present engaged in writing on educa- \ tion, and consequently have not a spare minute to devote | to the practice of it ; just as Montesquieu found himself obliged to resi-^n the office of president to devote himself to the ' Spirit of Laws.' Since at every university there are pedagogic engrossers and purveyors, and fewer subjects of instruction than accomplished instructors ; and since, moreover, you, before your decease, exercised the patron'6 right of appointing tutcirs. I did not know why you 206 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [APPEND. TO should not proceed in it still better now, not merely because you have marched forward with time, but also with eternity. In the extended acquaintance your im- mortal part must have formed on many planets — for aa virtue in futurity is the reward of virtue, so also heavenly authorship will be the reward of earthly — you cannot fail to have ample choice of people and candidates in out system. Only you must not propose to me any tricked out, spurred dweller in Leipsig, of your time, clothed throughout in beautifying cement ; no, not even the late Gellert himself (except as far as regards his loving gentleness and naive cheerfulness) : I want a very hard material — mind. There are, unavoidably, so many born harlequins, shall we also make educated ones, or both together; stamped pinchbeck pieces, crawling, cringing, worms ? " Heavens ! how is it that I always find something good in books on education, and so seldom anything of it in teachers ? What have I not seen of these last, Gellert, and yet may see in any town I please ? I do not (because I will n<)t)«think of those peevish creatures full of child- hate, those living aversions to little ones — for manly justice makes even a false sj^stem of education good ; and, to give an instance, nothing is so dangerous in icebergs as the clefts or chasms — but of those sickly-sweet, honey- dewed, sugar-of-lead perpetual teachers, who would con- secrate every thing for the young, even the swaddling clothes, as a pope does those actually used. Oh ! I perfectly understand that tutor : after every step and every leap of the young creature he will sow something ; and, moreover be most anxious to know whether the mental cherry-stones, which he has brought him enveloped in their sweet covering, will grow and take root in his stomach as he hopes; or, to use another different living metaphor, whether the frog's eggs he has given him in a draught of pond water are developing themselves. In j)hysical matters, says he, the same thing is commoner but in- lurious, and then he shortly alludes to the lessons in which he also teaches it. " The tutor stands up for the U without which the child's Q cannot be pronounced. ' Let my sermon precede FIRST VOL.J LEVANA. 207 every action,' says he, * the man, forsooth, must strengthen with many reasons every childish action of the child, and shave it with a scythe.' " He who has seen such a man frequently, though not everywhere, has learned much. In China there is a law- book, and interpreters of it too, to teach the best method of drinking tea genteelly. But the above-mentioned man would wish the thing to be done improperly and properly also; because, indeed, he finds a very great want of direc- tions for children how to take coffee, tea, tobacco, stones — for throwing ; hands — for kissing ; and cakes — for stealing. It is the same man who chalks up the Ten Commandments on the study door, as on a pillar of remembrance, so that the young may always have them before their eyes — which is precisely the best means of never seeing them. Most parental and tutoral commands resemble the inscription one sees on eome doors — of ' shut the door ' which cannot be read if he have left the door open. *' Observe from above a tutor who chains himself to his prisoners ; who permits himself to be adopted as spiritual father — which the real father ought to be, since we can indeed give instruction to a stranger's child but education only to our own, because the one may know cessation, the other must proceed without interruption — observe him and he must appear to you (even without the bird's eye per- spective of another world) less in that serious light which is usual above than in a very different one ; when, for instance, you see him take a walk with his auditory of slaves, endeavouring to turn every hill, and stream, and knot of people (in themselves nothing) into a medium of imparting instruction to his slaves. For as long as the child is awake he cea«es not to develop him; although, perhaps, his dreams develop him much better. If every eastern pearl costs the life of a fJave, evciy western pupil costs a teacher, and something more. The teacher, who cannot live to himself, suffers his pupil as little life to himself; and so they mutually impart to each other sins of weakness; somewhat as the new and the old world imparted to each other a new di>ease, that of the double gmall-pox. "To speak in figures, departed friend, tutors and 208 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTEE. [APPEND. TO beggars mutilate children in order to feed themselves i only thie former expose the distortions as curved lines of beauty, the latter as holes and chinks in their living alms* boxes. " Or by their long polishing of the child they rub off its pure form; like those glass dishes in which curious specimens of glass are so laboriously piled that at last their original depth is positively diminished. " But should this be, excellent immortal ? Must my good Max, whose eye and hand aim at power, fall down so weakened and weary ? Must, in short, a boy of the nineteenth century be blown out by his tutor so thin, and tender, and brittle, that he — like the man recorded by Lusitanus, who thought his seat was made of glass and therefore always remained on his legs — must regard everything about him as moral, aesthetic, intellectual glass, and so not venture to sit, to stand, or to lie — nay, not even to be ? As was said above, dear friend, I chose to say this in a somewhat figurative style, because I wished to tread in your footsteps. But, like all imitators (I know that too well) I must retire with a longer nose and not much shorter ears ; for your present figurative style (since in heaven or Uranus you are near the greatest objects and worlds — Jupiter and Hell — and have them to inspire you) must be totally different from any other, even you own mortal style, from which doubtless it is dis- tinguished by bold oriental imagery; and you will say, even Gellert, naturalised in heaven, writes in some degree more wittily and instructively, and no one there speaks dully. — For the rest I know perfectly well, even to your very phrases, the objections you will make to me against the influence of tutoral glazing. For you will find an anecdote which you have read in Marville* applicable to the point. As an instance how accurately I can guess, I will myself relate it to you. ' A young gentleman, a preacher, with fine action, voice and so forth, mounted the pulpit and began his sermon ; but lo ! he had forgotten it, and knew, even less than before, what he had to say. However, he composed himself, raised his voice (and himself too, as he hoped by the action) and proclaimed to * Melange d'histoire de Vie;neuel-Marville. FIRST VOL.] LEVANA. 209 his audience, with rare energy, one conjunction after another — enfin, car, done, si, or — and muttered with falling voice all kind of inaudible matter between the particles. The poorer parishioners were excited and in the highest degree attentive, yet without being able to understand much ; and so they, naturally and reasonably, attributed their not hearing to the distance of their sittings from the pulpit, which one part of the congregation supposed too far off, and the other too near. And so this soul-curer, with his connecting, passionate and apostrophising words, preached about three-quarters of an hour, throwing himself and the pew occupiers into a fever and perspiration ; then pronounced the Amen, and descended from the pulpit with the reputation of a true pulpit orator. The whole body of hearers resolved next time to choose their seats better ; some to sit nearer, some farther off, so as not to lose a syllable.' " Now what else do most teachers preach to children, and philosophers to the sons of muses and their readers, than a few thousand «w, doncSy cars, without any rational word attached? " What else are most lessons to children — as most men's conversations to women — than customary marks to pay no attention ? " You now know what kind of a spiritual father I, the physical father, wish to adopt for my child. Naturally I only speak of the tutor's soul. His body may just as well be kneaded out of the earth of Uranus, Saturn, the moon or the sun, as out of the earth of this world. As to the soul, I wish that you would select such from among the candidates out of the present ten planets as you did formerly from those out of the ten German circles — which circles, dear Gellert, since your removal, have almost undergone ten persecutions of the Christians and meta- morphoses of Vishnu— and then, out of this selection from the planets, choose one for me. You will spare me a subject out of the leaden, dull and heavy, selfish Saturn ; who, with all his breadth of rings and abundance of moons, has wearisomely long years and gives a bad light ; as well as a spring beetle out of that merry lancer round the sun. Mercury, the domestic Frenchman cf the solar system, I. p 210 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH RICHTER. [APPEND. TO who always intoxicates himself in the sunshine and yet, when he really comes before the sun, only looks like a black spot. Excellent professor, you now know every- thing, and many things much earlier than we do; of which I only name to you Pallas, Ceres, Juno, and the planets discoverable in future. I will have no in- structor out of Pallas — a morsel broken from the earth, and, moreover, at such a distance, for light and heat irom the sun Apollo ; I purposely mention this dwarf jplanet because your preference for Athens, whose pro- tecting deity Pallas was, might perhaps influence yon. You must be partial to nothing but the next world, and my first child. " In one word, I do not know any distinguished star from which I would select my tutor but the morning and evening star ; and so let it be, Gellert ! Much might be said about that star — its double name, indeed, says two things — moreover it is named after the goddess of beauty ; also after a certain light-bearer (Lucifer) not light-destroyer — especially the star possesses this excellent quality (and many others) that it occupies a very perfect position in the heaven, neither too far from the sun, nor too near the earth ; and that (for children) it does not so strikingly wax and wane as the nearer moon. In short I consider Venus to be the best nurse. And so, I beg my tutor may come from Hesperus. " For your son of JHesperus will certainly, I imagine, deal excellently with my child. He will — since liberality is in every case inestimable, and why not then in education in the first place— treat him with practical freedom and power, and not deprive him of his own. He will find little fault with what is childish. Quickly and perfectly appre- hending what is outward, what inward, he will in no case make many words and vast preparations ; will draw him on to what is great and universal, not to what is insigni- ficant ; will rather be the physician to his weakness, than the extinguisher of his strength. He will above all lend his aid to the child of earth ; and shine before and be- hin-^. him as his starry dwelling, Hesperus, does for the earth, and that only when the sun has not yet risen, or is already set ; it is certain that so wise a Hesperid will FIRST VOL. J LEVANA. 211 not attempt to help tlie sun in the day time ; I know him too well to suppose it possible. " Even in physical matters he will not, with womanish anxiety, be perpetually fearful lest the child should break his leg against every twig — though, indeed, the breaking of a leg is better than the dread of it ; and, on the other hand, children are themselves careful, owing to the novelty of all their experiments and the natural magnifying of a place where they may fall, caused by the shortness of their own bodies — or lest he should be poisoned by tin soldiers and children's trumpets ; or hurt by a rocking-horse ; or spoiled by wearing trowsers. He who is so fearful for others may himself be suspected of fear ; and a coward makes a coward, as a hermit does a hermit. Our ancestors, old Gellert, grew up sufficiently strong and modest with all their trowsers, feather beds, saddles and spices. " It would on another account be particularly agreeable to me that you choose my tutor out of Venus ; because there, according to the best telescopes and astronomers, may be found the loftiest mountains, compared with which our Chimborazzo were but a mole-hill — and so the purest mountain air is near the hottest sultriness of the valley ; (I can readily picture to myself the heat of Lucifer or Venus). What a powerful, manly Alpine breast, joined tc an Italy in the heart, must the inhabitant of Phosphorus bring to me at Baireuth, in the capacity of a right carefully Relected tutor ; who must resemble a general full of con- trasting powers, of irrevocable strictness and order, sincere friendship, good fellowship, and persuasiveness. " I am convinced my tutor will understand me when I say, that as the man can do without the scholar, but not the scho'ar without the man, I pray you above all things to ingraft the scholar upon the man, but not the reverse. Our nineteenth century, (I might thus speak to him more distinctly in the evening under the warm rain of punch,) whatever century you may reckon on your little planet, will not be the best, at least not the strongest, although it may, like yours, deserve the names of Phosphorus and Lucifer. What we magnify ourselves about is the French Revolution ; or the changes of something little. The ■tones which the giants formerly hurled became islands ; p 2 (. 212 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH EICHTER. [APPEND. TO now, wlien islands are hurled, there come but stones, tomb- stones and grindstones. The Eevolution, like an earth- quake, put some motion into the skeletons of a chamel house. Tutors, like the anatomist Walther in Berlin, seek their glory in preparing skeletons by removing the flesh, and then bleaching them. Brother-dwellers on Venus, or rather on this earth, could you think so ? Then should I repent wiiting to Gellert ! To impart strength, and to leave strength will, I hope, be your first and last words in education. What is educated for the age will be worse than the age. The Hesperid answers me : * In the springtime of childhood, fathers often look forward as far as the distant snow-white mountain peaks, and point out the winter to the spring. Far better the wind-fall of a Bpring storm, than the snow-fall of age.' As true as beautiful, candidate ! I reply. Lavoisier made an instru- ment of ice into a calorimetre, or measurer of heat ; thus fire is often measured by ice ; the boy by the grey-headed man. " The candidate will animadvert on much in the con- versational style of his paymaster; but I go on little afi'ected by his remarks ; ' Howsoever I may express myself, it is certain that the artistic, compound-fractured style, into which writing masters and tutors would break the souls of their pupils, like letters, is in nothing dif- ferent from the compound fractures of surgeons, except in the case of wit, which truly requires variety in order to find without restraint distant resemblances.' The candi- date replies : ' If only to the innate energy of a child the sap of life and room for its development be afibrded, there will be no need to graft on every branch, to cut the leaves, or paint the flowers; one must, like a king, direct the whole, but not interfere with the individual parts.' " I exclaim, ' You are the man for me, (if not, indeed, more than a man !) If the tutor's situations which I once filled were yet vacant you should be my vicar in them — but you shall be so in the last, in the one I overlook and present to as father and patron. The easy conditions need scarcely be mentioned. You are not to torment the child with a thousand languages — for merely to PmST VOL.] LEV ANA. 213 learn languages is to throw away one's money in buying beautiful purses, or to learn the Lord's Prayer in all lan- guages without ever praying it.' " ' I agree, with all my heart ! ' said he boldly. ' So you will only teach him French, English, Spanish, Italian ; — Greek, Latin, and German, of course — but the last most thoroughly. As regards the sciences, the child will bo fed by you, as its young are by the house swallow, only on the wing — not attached to any long appointment of the hours of study.' " ' You know the human heart, and show a most beauti- ful one,' interrupted he, and drank. ' But when your usual eight hours of study are over, and the child or you testify any further desire of study, you may, without hesitation, take as much from the second or from the last third of the day as you choose, and teach during the whole of it. Now in what appertains to science itself (for the art'^ of dancing, fencing, swimming, riding, leaping, singing, playing on the violin, the horn, and the piano, will be recreations for both of you), it will satisfy me if the poor child only learn history — namely, as much of the past as is already gone ; and also I would wish that, along with the most recent, a little of the piquante future should be insinuated, together with other not less necessary histories: those of nature, of books, of heretics, of gods, of church history, &c. — in the same way a few of the most necessary branches of knowledge — knowledge of the stars, of coins, of antiquity, of heraldry, &c. ; and the doctrines of natural science, of jurisprudence, of medicine, of nobility, of morality, &c. ; and the descriptions — as descriptions of the earth, &c., a few tea, as aesthetics, dietetics, phello- plastics, (fee. ; for, say I perpetually, why the devil should a poor, unbearded, thin-skulled child be immeasurably laden with learned fat and refuse ? Why should his life be interwoven, not with fair white leaves, but with whole fall books ? And he himself become a pack and baggage- bearing Pegasus ? Wherefore this, say I ? ' ** You have to do, and can do, much ; for you are a few tliousand tutors in one. Frequently I cannot at all understand why a whole regiment of tutors and gover neBSGs is not engaged at once ; especially when I consider 214 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH KICHTEE. [APPEND. TO how many demigods and goddesses the Eomans ascribed to children and worshipped ; for instance, Nascio, or Natio, presiding over the birth — Eumina over suckling — Edusa over eating — Potina over drinking — Levana, moreover — Statilinits and Statana over the standing of both sexes — l-'abulintts over speaking — I purposely omit, from detesta- tion of prolixity in others, many half divinities, such as Yagitans, Ossitago, Nundina, Paventia, Carnea.* Could one so arrange it, and pay, one should appoint a distinct teacher for almost every faculty, who should direct that only ; yea, and even teachers for the various subdivisions of the same faculty were at least pious wishes. I could like (but nothing will come of it) if I possessed that army of various teachers, to have a son exercised, say in aesthetics, according to the different divisions of Krug ; one teacher instructing him in that author's Hypseology, another in his Kalleology, a third in his Krimatology; and so the child might at one time have his sublime tutor, at another his feeble, at another his naive. I would also wish, dear friend, that, in the virtues, you should prescribe special private exercises and instructions in each virtue, so that they might not all run into one another and the poor child stand there like a stupid angel, who knows neither right nor left, but only what is right. If Franklin schooled and exercised himself each week in a different virtue, might not the various Sundays and festivals, which as holydays can be used for little real instruction, be applied to the inculcation of many virtues? On every festival might 'be taken a new one : on three holydays the three parts of repentance ; and on every Apostle's day some fault might be eradicated. I can, indeed, picture to myself a long feast of the Trinity, in which one might, hour by hour, allow the child to go through all the virtues, so that at the prayer-bell he might be presented as a saint of a month, or holy image. " Moreover, so excellent a tutor for my child might rest assured that, were the good Gellert still living, 1 would with pleasure, at the end of his engagement (when Max would no longer require him) and with all the influence which I, aa an author, might possess with Gellert, give • Augustine, de Civit. Dei, i. 4 & 9. FIRST VOL.] LirVAW. 215 him recommendations to him, in order that he might further recommend the young man ; and so provide for him according to his merits." At this point I awoke; wanted to know what I had dreamed ; and tried to recall it. But I soon found that, out of my dreamed letter to Gellert — quite in accordance with the mad order of a dream-;;— I had fallen into a new conversation with a teacher who was there sitting before me. Meanwhile such a conclusion may be in so far good, as, should I print it, it will serve to prove that I have not, as is, alas ! very usual, dreamed in sport, and for the sake of publishing, but in very deed and truth. 216 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. IV. FOURTH FEAGMENT. ON FEMALE EDUCATION. Chap. I. Jacquelina's Confession of her Education, § 73 — 75. Chap, II. Destination of Women less for their Husbands than for theij Children, § 76—78. Chap. III. Nature of Women, Proof of their predominating Purity of Heart, § 79 — 86. Chap. IV. Education of Girls in regard to Reasonableness, § 87, 88 ; to Purity of Heart and Love of their own Sex, § 89 ; to Gentleness, and the Tendency to Female Passionateness, § 90 ; to Economy of Living, and Domestic Affairs. § 91—93 ; to Knowledge and Skill, § 94, 95 ; to Dress, Ornament, &c., § 96; to Cheerfulness, § 97; Education of Girla endowed with Genius, § 98. Chap. V. Private Instructions of a Prince to the head Governess of his Daughter, § 9 CHAPTER I. § 73. Under female education I understand three things at once, which are in themselves contradictory ; first, the education which women generally give; second, their peculiar call to a right education as compared with men ; third, the education of girls. The first and second would have required an earlier consideration if the characteristics of the female sex, according to which its education should be regulated, were not united in them both ; and, especially, if in this little experimental work it were necessary to arrange the position of its matter in very strict order. A reader, to whom so many systems are presented must hold his way armed with a predetermined one, unless each is to occupy his mind in turn. CHAP. I.] LEVANA. 217 § 74. Ill-educated and ill-educating states, as well as fathers immersed in business, can only trust the welfare of educa- tion to mothers, as the second chapter shall show ; but the evil that mothers might obviate can be easily stated in this paragraph. Were it in other respects accordant with the tone of this work, I willing;ly confess that I would offer to the world in a merrier manner this little register of sins, or list of losses in gaming, and debts of honour; and the more so because, in this very case, a certain, otherwise excellent, mother of five children, Madame Jacquelina, luckily turning over the pages of my Levana, offered to give me an airy embodiment of it. Ladies love to dress, undress, and redress. For as I had known my excellent friend a long time, much was pre- pared and made easy ; and I could well imagine that the fair Jacquelina, as sister- orator for her whole sex — though without any other commission to show than her beauty — would stand before my writing desk, as though it were a confessional, and declare she heartily desired to be absolved by me ; only, for very shame's sake, it was impossible for her to make an auricular confession, but she would take it very kindly if I would i egard her as a deaf person — after the fashion of former confessors who pronounced the confession of their fair deaf and dumb penitents over them — and 80, as her representative and spiritual father, make the following confession for her : — § 75. " Honourable and dear sir ! " (I was thus to put the address to me into her own mouth lest the joke should be continued^ " I confess before God and yourself that I am a poor peoagogic sinner, and have broken many commands of Kousseau and of Campe. I confess that I never truly carried out any one principle for a month, but only for an hour or two ; that 1 have often, half with thought, and BO half without thought, forbidden my children to do something, without afterwards observing whether tLey 218 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. IV. did it or not ; that I never could deny them anything, when both they and I were floating in the midst of a sea of happiness, which else from calm reason I should have at once refused ; and that precisely at two seasons, the most sunshiny and the most cloudy, whether of myself or of the children, did I spoil them most. Have I not even done still worse? Have I not, when strangers were present, said to my Bella, as well as to my pet (I mean by that only my poodle) Faites la helle ! " Have I not, at each of our great fairs, given holy days on account of strangers' visits, especially those of eminent frequenters of the Mr to my husband, and thus valued a visitor more highly than five children ; so that I very little resembled that German woman, of whom my husband read in the twelfth volume of the mental Fama, who had the courage to decline dancing with two kings on the same evening because she considered it to be unchristian ? And during all last year did I not see my two youngest children, Josephine and Peter, only once a day, at break- fast, and that merely because I wanted to finish a novel and a piece of worsted- work ; and, also, because my noble friend, the princess, for whom I was working it, had taken up her residence here ? Only this consideration can tranquillise my conscience, that I took the greatest trouble to procure a trustworthy nurse for my little ones, who promised me to treat them as a real mother ; and may Heaven punish her if she was ever inatten- tive to so dear a trust, or ever let my precious lambs go out of her sight for a moment, or ever left them in the hands of strangers ! Ah, God ! when I think of the possibility of such a thing ! But, alas ! what do such creatures know of the anxieties of a tender mother's heart? " At other times, I have indeed (and that consoles me) always allowed all my children to come to me twice a day, after breakfast and after dinner, and have then often for hours fondled and taught them. But I confess that my impetuosity would never let me be satisfied to kiss them in moderation ; and so I drew on me my husband's blame, who dislikes that exceedingly and says, * Children (even if not my own) may, with the Princess of Conde, CHAP. I.J LEVANA. 219 lament that their miBfortune is to be loved by old people — the holy seal of the heart, a kiss, is to children an empty, meaningless thing ; p very energetic one may even be painful, and perhaps injurious, to the fifth pair of nerves in the lips — a gentle stroking of the head is better, and a gentle loving word, a kiss which they give, and a softer one which they receive.' " I confess that, as in the game of forfeits, when I asked myself. What shall this forfeit (that of love) which I hold in my hand do ? I always answered, Love me immeasurably. Whereby, because I required so many marks of love, I have made Josephine too sensitive, Sophia hypocritical, and Peter ill-tempered. After any severe punishment I inflicted instead of allowing the whole of my former love to glow warmly on them, (a striking change, which my husband says is the only means of correcting and reconciling a child, during at least the first eight or ten years,) I suffered the long cloud of after- wrath to hang over them ; as if their young hearts could trace hidden love, or suffer for it long, or, in the best case, not learn to imitate that sulkiness. " I confess that, though not in the least nervous at whatever may happen out of the house, I yet never could be tranquil with my dear children, although I knew that the least impetuosity, were it even of a hasty running to their assistance, is injurious, and has a tendency to produce a similar disposition in them. And I confess that I show anger too soon, even towards my maid-servants, in spite of my knowing perfectly what my husband so beautifully says that to give way to an angry expression of countenance, or of voice, before even the youngest children, is in fact to teach them anger. For, as the whole soul is imprisoned and moulded into the whole body, it follows that every mental is connected with some physical part, and thus these mutually excite each other — ^the outward expression of passion produces the mental emotion, and so of the reverse. '* My husband asserted and, moreover, carried out tho principle, that a husband can never so well establish a normal school for female teachers (like a good wife, I use his very expressions) as during the first year after mar- 220 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER [fRAG. IV. riage ; in this time, he thought, a wife might be mentally enriched with every kind of manly instruction, which, should she afterwards neglect, she would yet seek and cherish for the love of her first child, and of him who ia even before the first, her husband ; for at an after period, continued he, somewhat of that glowing love-service towards the husband, and somewhat, also, of that anxious solicitude about the children, vanishes; and so, still continued he, the education of many children does not proceed better, at least, not more carefully. But I rejoice that I have confuted him in this, as in many other things, and that I brought up my third child, even while expect- ing the fourth, for several months precisely as my wedded lord and school-master directed during the school-weeks of the honeymoon. *' But, venerable father, you certainly do not know by experience what whims husbands take some nine or ten months after marriage ! Did not mine positively, seriously desire, that when I occasionally washed the little thing, I would not rub its face and wipe it quickly up and down ; because, said he, this kind of violence is disagree- able to them and excites their passion ; but that I would softly glide from above downwards, and then gently round ? What ridiculous pedantry I Surely a woman must know how to wash! So 1 go on just as usual, and care not how loudly both little and big cry out against it. *' For the rest I confess, and would willingly do penance for it, that I am never so soon angry as whenr dressing, or engaged in any other important business; the beautiful, perfect repose of my education then vanishes. My husband wants to place, for penance and the removal of my angry wrinkles, a magnifying glass beside my toilet glass ; but, thank God ! 1 do not yeu need such a glass of detraction; and, besides, my features are less changed than my colour. Perhaps I am excusable for admitting my three eldest girls (and Lucy, too, often) to my toilet, because in the first place, they watch me so gladly, and are so quiet (especially when X tell them that they may perhaps go with me), and because, secondly, a young girl's eye is best exercised in taste with CHAP. I.] LEVANA. 221 regard to matters of dress on the costume of a grown-up person. " It consoles me, however, to reflect that I never purchased a handsome new article of dress, either for myself or my daughters, without labouring to rej^ress the love of finery, by telling them how little a woman's worth depends on dress, and that a rich habit is only chosen because thereby alone can rark be shown. At the same time I must confess that all my daughters are vain : however many sermons I make to them during my toilet, I am not listened to but only looked at. How often do I turn round with reproaches when my really beautiful Maximiliana stands behind me peeping into the glass and say, ' There, again, a pretty, rosy, blue- eyed mask is looking at herself, and can never be tired of peeping and staring ! ' " I farther confess, worthy sir, that I was certainly in- finitely more displeased with Peter when he lately threw Veritas (really a most exquisite ideal figure from Bertuch's repository of arts) out of the window, than if he had told ten lies; on the other hand, I hope I remain perfectly tranquil when my husband sometimes makes such an uproar about some little fibs or other the children may have been telling ; or about their frequently quite justifiable scoldings of the servants: then, says he, reflecting on my anger, ' The Romans did wisely when they wrote the initial letter of the word signifying man inverted to indicate woman.' " If God will only forgive me the sins wherein I meant well, I shall be satisfied to bo punished for the rest. 1 certainly have sinned much, and deserved temporal punishments and bad children. I will, however, from this time forth amend my educational life and become better and better ; and I entreat you, reverend, dear sir, to forgive me my sins in God's stead." In which case I fihould certainly lay my hand on Jacquelina's round white shoulder, and readily absolve her past, though truly not her future, siua. 222 JEAN PAUL PRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. IV. §76. But tlie seriousness of the subject demands tliat a SECOND CHAPTER, ON THE DESTINATION OF THE FEMALE SEX, Should restore to it its due honour. A father, who only sees and educates his children for an hour or two, must be careful not to require his own hour's strict attention and persistency from the mother who wearies herself with them all day long. This longer companionship excuses much maternal overflowing, both of love and anger. In the same way, a stranger always considers parental displeasure too severe, because he sees the fault for the first time and isolated, which the parents behold for the thousandth time, and in an ever-strengthening chain of habit. Mothers readily acquire an over-estimation of their children because, placed sufficiently near the development of their minds to count every new leaf, they regard each universal human growth as a particular individual one, and thence infer some few miracles. And then how much must the physical care of the children, which in the middle classes entirely devolves on the mother, weary and deaden her — as compared with the independent father — for their mental culture. § 77 The education of the first half of the first decade of life is already placed in the hands of the mother, owing to the necessities of the body. His avocations in the state, in his profession, or business, only grant the father intervals, and those rather for instruction than education — two happy classes of fathers alone excepted. The first is a country gentleman, who reposes in such a golden mean of all circumstances that he converts his mansion into a bene- volent institution for his children, if he love his successors better than cards, and hares, and rents. The second is the CHAP, n.] LEVANA. 223 man whom lie appoints— a country clergyman. The six days' leisure, the country's separation from the turmoil of towns, the open air, the office, which is itself a higher educational institution, and, finally, the seventh day, which presents their physical father to his children on a glorifying elevation as a holy and spiritual father, and impresses an official seal on the lessons of the week — all these things open to the minister a sphere of education into which he may attract other children ; since he may always better convert his parsonage into a school-house than a tutor's study into a parish. I would rather trust my son to a clergyman than to a tutor ; because he is freer, and stands on his legs, not upon crutches. In the middle ranks the men educate best, because the women are little cultivated : in the higher classes, generally, the women, because there they are more carefully brought j up than the men. What, now, can the man do ? a philo- ' sopher, we will suppose, or a minister of public affairs, a soldier, a president, poet, or artist ? In the very first instance he must love and recompense his wife better, in order that she, by double support, the love of her children and the love of her husband, may more easily carry out the most difficult part of education — the first. In this way the husband may bestow care and attention on the first and most impoitant education, that given by the mother, which no after tutors, schools, or paternal praise and blame, can ever replace; that is to say, he will exetcise the law-giving power of education, the mother the administrative. Let the husband only continue to be the lover of his wife and she will listen to what he says about education, at least of the mind. How readily will a noble-minded marriageable girl, or a bride, surveying from afar her future work, listen to the educa- tional rules which even a youth gives ! And, when married, a woman willingly adopts many a good suggestion about the education of her children which a stranger offers. Only by the union of manly energy and decision with womanly gentleness does the child rest and sail as at the conflux of two streams ; or, in another figure, the sun raises the tide and so does the moon, but he raises it only one foot, she three, and both united four. The husband 224 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKTCH EICHTER. [FRAG. IV. only marks full stops in the child's life, the wife commas and semicolons, and both more frequently. One might exclaim, " Mothers, be fathers !" and " Fathers, be mothers!" for the two sexes perfect the human race, as Mars and Venus gave birth to Harmony. The man works by exciting powers ; the woman by maintaining order and harmony among them. The man, in whom the state, or his own genius, destroys the balance of powers for the advantage of one, will always bring this overlaying influence to education : the soldier will educate warlikely ; the poet poetically ; the divine piously ; the mother only will educate humanly. For only the woman needs to develop nothing in herself but the pure human being ; as in an ^olian harp no string predominates over the rest, but the melody of its tones proceeds from unison and returns to it. §78. But you mothers, and especially you in the higher and less busy classes, whose fortune spares you the heavy burden of careful housekeeping, and surrounds you with a cheerful green garden for the education of your children, how is it that you can prefer the tedium of solitude and of society to the enduring charms of your children's love — to the drama of their fair development — to the sports of the best beloved beings — to the reward of the most delightful and lasting influence? That woman is despicable who, having children, ever feels ennui. Well formed nations have been, according to Herder, the educators of the human race; so let your beauty be, not merely the external garment, but the very instrument of instruction and education. Towns and countries have female names, and are represented as females ; and, in truth Ahe mothers who educate for the future the first five years w their children's lives do found cities and countries. Who can replace a mother? Not even a father. For she, attached to the child by the daily and nightly bonds of care for its physical wants, can and must weave and embroider mental instruc- tion in glittering characters on those tender ties. Will you, then, neglect the fairest time for working purely and deeply on posterity, since the stronger sex and the state CHAP. II.] LEVANA. 225 will soon step in, and bring pulleys and grappling irons instead of your leading strings and gently raising levers, and therewith move them harshly and roughly? Dost thou, royal mother, consider it nobler to guide the intrigues of a cabinet than the little future heir-apparent? Thou hast borne him within thee, when a heavier burden, and hast suffered acutest pain when he was taken from thee, and this only for his physical life ; and wilt thou shun to undertake something less than both these, whereby thou mayest draw a holy spiritual ^lory around thy victory ? How often are your night watches recompensed by a child's coffin ; but your day watches over his m^nd ever by rich daily rewards ! If you once believe that everything depends on education, what name do you deserve when, precisely as your position is high, you intrust the education of your children to persons of lower rank ; and while the children of the middle classes have their parents, those of the higher classes have only nurses and maids, as the directors of their path in life ? The whole ancient world elevates maternal above paternal love ; and the mother's must be great indeed, for a loving father cannot even picture to himself any love greater than his own ; why, then, are you, compared with the fathers, who are so anxious about education and who even write great books upon the subject, so indifferent about its application ? For your lover you can freely give wealth and health ; why not then spare a few hours for the little helpless creature you love ? For the one you overcome opinions and inclinations ; why should you do less for the other ? You, on whose physically and spiritually nourishing bosom Nature has cast the orphans of the earth, will you let them fade and die on a cold hired breast ? You, who are provided by nature with patience, grace, gentleness, eloquence and love for the beings who fly to you even from their father, can you not watch over them ? I do not mean during the night, but only during the day. See ! they who once rested beneath your heart, and have now no longer a place in it, stretch their little arms towards her who is most related to them, and beg again for nourishment. As in many ancient nations no request was denied to a woman holding a child in her Q 226 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH KICHTEK. [fRAG. IV. arms, so now do children, lying in your arms, or in their nurse's, offer np petitions for themselves. It is true that the sacrifices you make for the world will be little known by it — men govern and earn the glory ; and the thousand watchful nights and sacrifices by which a mother purchases a hero, or a poet, for the state are for- gotten, not once counted ; for the mothers themselves do not count them; and so, one century after another, do mothers, unnamed and unthanked, send forth the arrows, the suns, the storm-birds, and the nightingales of time ! But seldom does a Cornelia find a Plutarch who connects her name with the Gracchi. But as those two sons who bore their mother to the temple of Delphi were rewarded by death, so your guidance of your children will only find its perfect recompense at the termination of life. Twice, however, you will not be forgotten. If you believe in an invisible world in which the glad tears of a thankful heart are more valued and shine more brightly than worldly crowns set round with the petrified tears of sorrow ; if you believe this, you know your future ! And, if you have educated rightly, your child knows you. .. Never, never has one forgotten his pure, right-educating "^^mother. On the blue mountains of our dim childhood, towards which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers who marked out to us from thence our life; the most blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, women ! to be ardently loved, and for ever, even till death. Be, then, the mothers of your children. But you mothers who do not educate your children, how should your thanklessness for an unmerited blessing cause you to hang down your head in shame before every childless mother, every childless wife, and blush because one worthy woman sighs after that heaven which you have abandoned like a fallen angel. Oh ! why does fate, which often for some century's blood- hound gives a million souls to the rack, deny to the most lovely gentle being the bliss of one child's heart ? Why must Love long for an object, and Hate, not? Ah! Ernestina,* how wouldst thou have loved and made * The excellent lady to whom the poet here pens so fine a memorial was his wife's younger sibter, Ernestina Augusta Philippina Mahl CHAP. III.] LETANA. 227 happy ! But thou wast not permitted : the death-cloud parried thee away with all the roses of thy j^outh, and thy warm mother's heart was called, childless, into the unknown world of spirits. Oh ! how wouldst thou have loved and educated with thy clearness of perception, thy Strength of character, thy ever-flowing spring of love, thy self-sacrificing soul — thou, who wert adorned with all the virtues of an ancient German woman ! CHAPTER III. NATURE OF GIELS. § 79. The education of daughters is the first and most im- portant business of mothers ; because it may be uninter- rupted, and continue till the daughter's hand glides straight from the mother's into that which holds the wedding ring. The boy is educated by a many-toned world, school-classes, universities, travels, business, and libraries ; the mother's mind educates the daughter. For that reason he is more independent of the shocks of foreign influence than his sister ; ffor outward contradic- tion compels him to an inner balancing unity ,>whereas one little comer of the world easily appears a whole quarter, nay, a whole world, to the maiden. Before we speak of the education of the sex, we must first determine its character. According to well-known principles the nature of men is more epic, and formed for reflection ; that of women more lyrical, and endowed with feeling. Campe truly remarks that the French have all the failings and perfections of children — hence, I believe, they gladly call themselves Athenians, whom the old mann, of Leipsig. 8he died, Feb. 18, 1805, in the twenty-bixth year of her age. The desire to press a child to her heart occupied the last moments before her death, ^e was one of the noblest beings that ever lived.— Thans. Q 2 228 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICHTER. [fkAG. IS. Egyptian priest found at once very childlike and very childish. T have discussed more at large in other places the great resemblance between the character of the French nation and that of women. From these two assertions, at least from the more flattering, a third would follow, the resemblance between women and children. The same unbroken unity of nature — the same clear perception and understanding of the present — the same sharpness of wit — the keen spirit of observation — ardour and quietness — excitability and easily raised emotions — the ready, quick passage from the inward to the outward, and, conversely, from gods to ribbons, from motes in the sunbeam to solar systems — the admiration of forms and colours, and excitability carry out, by a mental alliance, the physical alliance of the two beings. Hence, to use an appropriate simile, children are in the first instance dressed in women's habits. He who loves antitheses of the newest fashion might call women antique, Grecian, or even Oriental beings; men, on the contrary, modern, northern, European ; those poetical, these philosophical. A man possesses, as it were, two selfs ; a woman but one, and needs another to see her »4 ^,> own. From this female incapacity for holding dialogues with self may be explained most of the advantages and disadvantages of woman's nature. And so, because their >v ^k near echo readily becomes a resonance and confused with ''^^"-^^e original sound, they can neither poetically nor philo- ^ sophically separate and re-unite their component parts, . ^: and are more truly poetry and philosophy than poets and ^^^^^^ philosophers. Women show more taste in dressing others 3 than themselves ; and, precisely because it is the same with their bodies as with their hearts, they can read in those of others better than in their own. §80. Let us illustrate in various ways the unity and sincerity of woman's nature. Because in her no power predominates and all her powers are rather receptive than formative ; because she, true mirror of the versatile present, accom- panies every external by an internal change ; even because CHAP. III.J LEV ANA. 229 of these things does she seem to us so enigmatic. To guess what her soul is, means to guess her physical and other external relations; hence, the man of the world loves her as well and names her after those long, thin wine-glasses, called impossibles, because they cannot be emptied how high soever you raise them. Like the piano-forte, we might call her pianissimo- fortissimo, so accurately and strongly does she reflect the extremes of accident ; at the same time, and for this very reason, her natural position must be one of repose and equal balance, like Vesta, whose holy fire none but women tended, and which everywhere, in town, temple, or private room, took, by law, the middle place. Passion drives the man, passions the woman; him a stream, her the winds : he declares some one power to be monarchic, and suffers himself to be ruled by it ; she, more democratic, lets the passing moment rule. The man is more frequently serious ; the woman, for the most part, either blessed or cursed, joyful or sorrowful ; which does not contradict our former praise of her measured tranquil constitution; for cheerfulness dwells all day with one woman, sadness with another ; it is only passion that hurls both headlong. §81. • Love is the life-spirit of her spirit ; her spirit the law, the motive-spring of her nerves. How deeply she can love without cause and without return, even if not perceived in her love of children, may be remarked in her dislikes, which prey on her as strongly and unreasonably as her love animates. Like the Otaheitans, who are so gentle and childlike and yet eat their enemies alive, these delicate creatures have a similar appetite, at least for their female foes. They often yoke doves to a thunder car. The somewhat shrewish Juno demanded, and obtained, from antiquity gentle lambs as her favourite sacrifice. Women love, and that infinitely and truly ; the most enthusiastic mystics were women ; it was no man but a nun who died of longing love to Jesus. But it was only a man, and no woman, who could demand from the Stoic sage indifference to friendship. Nature sent women into the world with 230 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG, IV this bridal dower of love, not, as men often think, that they may altogether and entirely love them from the crown of their head to the sole of their feet, but for this reason — that they might be, what their vocation is,* mothers, and love children, to whom sacrifices must ever be offered and from whom none are to be obtained. Woman, in accordance with her unbroken clear-seeing nature, loses herself and what she has of heart and happiness in the object she loves. The present only exists to her ; and this present, again, is a determinate one, it is one, and only one, human being. As Swift loved not the human race, but only individuals belonging to it, so women, though they have the warmest hearts, are no citizens of the world, scarcely citizens of a town or a village, but only of their home ; no woman can at the same time love the four quarters of the world and her own child, but a man can. He loves the idea ; she the manifestation, that which alOne is ; as God — if this bold figure be not too bold — has only one loved object — His Universe. This pe- culiarity is seen in many other ways. Men love things best ; for instance, truths, possessions, countries : women love persons best : the former, it is true, readily personify what they love. Just as what is the goddess of wisdom to a man, to a woman easily becomes a man who has wisdom. Even when a child, a woman loves a mock-human being — a doll, and works for it ; the boy gets hold of a wooden horse and a troop of tin soldiers, and works with them. It probably arises from this very fact, that among boys and girls, sent at the same age to school, though the latter mature sooner they yet retain their play-persons longer than boys do their play-things. When, however, grown- up women of the lower classes look intensely after a beautiful doll, carried by a child in the higher ranks of life, it seems their love of dress may exceed their love of children. Further, girls kiss one another more frequently than boys ; those look at the rider, these at the horse ; those inquire about appearances, these about their causes ; those about children, these about animals. * See § 83. CHAP, in.] LEVANA. 231 § 82. The more corrupt a century, the more contempt is there ^ in it for women. The more slavery in the form, or form- lessness, of government, the more do they become the handmaidens of servants. In old free Germany women were considered sacred, and, like their images, the do\es of Jupiter at Dodona, pronounced oracles; in Sparta and England, and in the fair age of chivalry, women bore the order-jewels of man's reverence. Now, since women rise and fall, become noble or base, according to the form of government — and this is constantly created and maintained by men— it is clear that women, after the character of men is formed, imitate that model : that there must first be seducing men before seduced women ; that every deteri- oration of the female character is but the after winter of a similar one in men. Place moral heroes in the field, and heroines follow them as brides ; but the opposite does not hold true ; no heroine can create a hero through love of her, but she may give birth to one. Therefore, all the more contemptible is the narrow-minded, squeamish Parisian man who makes tirades against the Parisian women, and, consequently, against all women, while he only ingrafts on them his own old sins, and poisons their womanhood by his own womanishness. How would such a plaster-cast creature of the ago stand and tremble and wither away before a Spartan or an ancient German woman ! Consequently the present age, in complaining of female sensuality, admits the previous existence of the sin in men Meanwhile let the devil's advocates stand forth against women, and those of holiness for them, and to the advantage of women. There are many satirical crea- tures who get something printed, and are viewed with wonder, and written up by German critics as men deeply read in human nature for no other reason than this, be- cause, without any further pretension to knowledge of the world, insight, heart, or mind, they have converted every woman into nothing more than a fifth or sixth sense, and all their own desires into one overlaying one : and then especially the critic (he's a school-teacher!) thanks God 232 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. IV. and the autlior that now, for a few pence, which he does not pay but receive as a reward for his favour, he at last holds in his hand the key of the French and allied female castle. These denouncers of women are, at all events, only half right, and certainly half wrong ; the former when they speak of physiological, the latter when of moral, sensuality. Of the former — when without the concurrence of a perfectly innocent heart — no one is guilty but God the Father ; and just as well might the greater beauty of a woman's bosom be attributed to her as a sin and excess. But, if Heaven created her especially for children, it is manifest that this physiological sensuality was ordained by the great Father of all children for the advantage of the growing after- world. The first dwelling which man inhabits is an organised one ; and can this be too rich, too strong for his first original formation? Can want of power and life ever form an organic creature full of power and life. And which moment is the most important in the whole life ? Certainly not the last, as theologians have often stated ; but probably the first, as physicians show. On the other hand, there is allotted, as a counterpoise to the senses of woman a purer heart than that of man, which makes common cause with them; and thus the accusation of her physical conformation closes with an eulogy on her spiritual nature. But these good beings do not defend themselves save by proxy ; and it is probable that, with their facility of belief, mistrustful words may at last turn their watchfulness away from their inward heart; just as many lose their religion, or their religious sentiments, without knowing how, merely because they hear discussions, and nothing else, about it. §83. Nature has directly formed woman to be a mother, only indirectly to be a wife ; man, on the contrary, is rather made to be a husband than a father. It were, indeed, somewhat strange if the stronger sex must lean on the weaker, the flower support its stem, the ivy the tree; nevertheless he, just because he is the stronger, does CHAP, in.] LEVANA. 233 enforce sometliiiig of that kind, makes his wife into the bearer of his arms and burdens, his marketer and provision cooker ; and the husband regards the wife as the barn and outer shed of his household goods. He is far more created for her than she for him : she is for physical what he is for mental posterity. Fleets and armies prove the dis- pensableness of women ; on the contrary, societies for women, convents for instance, do not arise without some male directing lever as primum mobile. Nature, which moves on kindly, yet cruelly, towards her vast ends in the world, has, for this purpose, armed women — the colleges and training houses of posterity — mentally and physically with power of giving and power of denying : both their physical and mental charms and weaknesses afford them protection. Hence arise regard and attention to their persons, with which their souls are more in- timately united into one existence than ours ; hence their dread of wounds, because these affect a double life, and their indifference to sickness ; whereas men fear wounds less than illnesses, because those affect the body most, these the mind. Connected with these are her temperance, her love of cleanliness, and also her modesty and her inclina- tion to housewifery and quietness. The moral and ap- prehensive nature of girls is more rapidly developed than the mind of boys (as, according to Zach, satellites move quicker than planets; or, as flowers in valleys bloom sooner than on mountains ;) because to the physical, and, oonsequently, maternal, maturity of fifteen, nature has also added that of the mind. So soon as the luxuriant flower has, with its pollen, provided for another spring, Nature harshly destroys its attractive colours, and leaves it to its mental treasures and harvest. On the con- trary, she preserves man's body, which has to serve on a longer journey of action and thought, active into the vale of years, and far beyond the season of woman's bloom. We may here subjoin this remark, drawn from the animal kingdom, that the male shows his greatest courage and power in the love-season, but the female after having given birth to her offspring. It is easy to draw out these assertions into the lessei 234 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [fRAG. iV. iiiatters of detail; for instance, female avarice, which saves not for self but for her children ; love of trifles ; love of talking ; the gentle voice, and many things which we blame. §84. We return to the former complaints about women. But why do men use this word so often about those beings to whom they owe the first thanks for existence, and who are sacrificed by Nature herself that life may follow life ? Why are the treasure-houses of humanity, its creators under God, not esteemed more highly; and why do they only receive the wreath of corn ears to carry because it is prickly ? Were there only one father on the earth we should worship him ; but were there only one mother we should reverence and love her as well as worship. The noblest and fairest quality with which nature could and must furnish women for the benefit of pos- terity was love, the most ardent, yet without return, and for an object unlike itself. The child receives love, and kisses, and night-watchings, but at first it only answers with rebuffs ; and the weak creature which requires most pays least. But the mother gives unceasingly ; yea, her love only becomes greater with the necessity and thank- lessness of the recipient, and she feels the greatest for the most feeble, as the father for the strongest child. " But," it may be objected to this view of woman's destination, "women particularly seek after and honour all mental or physical power; they love their own sex little, and judge its weaknesses more harshly than the roughness of men. However angry a master may be with his servant, a mistress is far more so with her slave, whether in the colonies or in Germany ; and the Koman ladies chose to have their toilets performed by maidens with bared bosoms, so that they might, at the least mis- take in dressing, stick pins into them for punishment. Mothers, as well as courts, celebrate the birth of a princess with fewer cannon shots than that of a prince. If a woman, in any trick of cards, is asked to fix on some one card, she always chooses the king or knave, at all events, ClliP. HI.] LEVANA. 235 nevex a queen ; and actresses like to perform no parts better than those of disguised young men. But one does not need to be very long in Paris, or in the world, aye, or upon the world, to guess what they want by it." Nothing bad; but a protector for their children. As Herder has beautifully remarked, nature has implanted reverence for men in women's heart ; from this reverence springs, in the first instance, love for men, but afterwards it passes into love for children. If even men, loving with the fancy and after preconceived notions far more than with the heart, follow actresses because they have seen them play fine romantic characters, — queens, goddesses, heroines, yes, heroines of virtue ; why should not women fall in love from reverence when they see us play the greatest parts, not as an actress does Lucretia, Desdemona, or Iphigenia, for a short evening's amusement, but for years of sober seriousness on the theatre of the world or of the state : one man is a hero, another a president, a third a king, a fourth a world-teacher, I mean an author ! Children demand this love of the mother for their father as their inheritance, or pledged property, and she can only keep some interest ; until, in old age, when the children themselves are parents, she, a grey-headed woman, as silver-bride*, again experiences a kind of love for her silver-bridegroom. In a childless marriage the wife regards the husband as her first and only son, possessed of qualities which constitute her true honour- and support her during her whole life ; and she loves the young man nnutterably. §85. If a young woman cherish a Ipve compressed into the bud of esteem, she will do little less than all for her lover ; or what a mother does for her child. She forgets herself in him, because only through him does she remember herself; and her paradise is only valued as a condition and fore-court of heaven to him : and she would receive a hell at the same price. Her heart is the citadel, every In (iermany, as sometimes in England, the twenty-fifth anniversary of a m»rriud couple's wedding-dav ia called their silver wedding-day : tbe fiftieth, their golden weddin^t-rlay — Tbavs. 236 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [fRAG. 17. thing else is but the suburbs and country round about it ; and only with the former is the latter vanquished. If it be true that the lost, in their haunts of misery, would gladly exchange the poisonous lures by which they must maintain and deceive themselves for the sweet intoxication of sincere heart-felt love, will not the fresh virgin heart resign all for the sunrise of life, for the first unbounded love, which is ardent in accordance with its purity and its previous non-existence, to the god-man ; who, for a being hitherto bound to a little comer of the world, suddenly reveals a whole new world which is, for the maiden, this world joined with the next. Who, then, shall restrain the gratitude of love towards him who has opened happiness and freedom to a mind chained to the narrow present, who has embodied all those dreams which formerly the unoccupied soul personified in the stars, in spring-time, in friends, and child-like duties? I know him well who shall place that restraint ; it is even he who requires the opposite, — the lover. Certainly a wisely and purely educated maiden is so poetic a flower of this dull world, that the sight of this glorious blossom hanging some years after the honey-moon with yellow faded leaves in unwatered beds, must grieve any man who beholds it with a poet's eye ; and who must, consequently, in sorrow over the common usefulness and servitude of the merely human life, over the difference between the virgin and the matron, utter the deadliest wishes : yes, I say, he would rather send the virgin with her wreath of rose buds, her tenderness, her ignorance of the sufferings of life, her dream-pictures of a holy Eden, into the grave- yard of earth, which is God's field, than into the waste places of life. Yet, do it not, poet : the virgin becomes a mother, and again gives birth to the youth and the Eden which have fled from her ; and to the mother herself they return, and fairer than before : and so let it be as it is ! §86. How is it that in morally, as well as architecturally,* undermined Paris the women read the characters of • It is well known that Paris is built from the quarries beneath it. CHAP. III.] LEV ANA. 237 Heloise, Attila, Valeria, in whicli only the love of the heart plays and bums with as great eagerness as love letters ? Women, even old women, and young men devour such works ; whereas older men prefer being devoured by works of a very different kind. As in a well played game of chess, or in war, he wins who makes the first move, so must women, as the assaulted party, succumb. But who attacks us, save ourselves ? And which is more guilty, the serpent on the tree, or Eve under the tree ? And how small and transitory is often the price for which we bar- gain away the whole happiness of a woman's life ! It is like Xerxes who carried a war into Greece because he liked eating Attic figs. Farther : a woman's imagination, not worn out like a man's by wine and excitement, must all the more easily burst, on our account, into those flames which consume happiness. Hippel remarks, and with justice, that a man overtaken in wrong-doing is ashamed and speechless, but that a woman becomes bold and passionately indignant. And this is the cause of it : the man clearly beholds himself, not so the woman ; therefore, she the more readily makes her innocence appear both to others and herself. In short, our sins are more generally intentional ; hers thoughtless, and therefore the more excusable. And finally : there are everywhere more chaste damsels than young men, more chaste women than men, more old maids than old bachelors. Man, however, may glorify himself on two accounts. First : his relations to life and the world, and his courage lead him more frequently into temptations ; — and second : the man who preserves his chastity on principle possesses therein a prcetorian cohort ; but the woman who protects hers with her heart and from regard to social morality has a guardian angel and guard of honour. The cohort, however, is stronger than the angel and the guard. / ^ 238 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. | FRAG. IV. CHAPTER IV. EDUCATION OF GIRLS. § 87. After the last chapter this might be a short one, because, according to it, girls are to be educated as mothers, that is, as teachers. Our only duty would consist in giving them printed and verbal lessons in instruction :* and for this purpose no more susceptible period is offered to the parents than the time of hope and the six months of their daughter's engagement ; nor to the husband, than the first year of wedded life : and then, again, that the elder daughters should be permitted to educate the younger. The last is probably the most spiritual school for obtaining clearness of ideas, patience and circumspection to which parents can send their daughters : unfortunately it is closed against the youngest child. But before and after being a mother, a girl is a human being ; and neither motherly nor wifely destination can overbalance or substitute the human, but must become its means, not end. As above the poet, the painter, or the hero, so above the mother, does the human being rise pre- eminent : and as the artist, while forming his work, does, at the same time, form something higher — himself, the creator of that work ; so the mother forms, along with the child, her own more holy self. Every divinely human thing has attached to it by nature the condition of locality ; the ideal dwells within the bodily manifestation, the flower pollen within its cup : the costliest pearls, so easily lost, are strung on common bands and threads, and pierced in order to be preserved. Since nature has ordained woman for maternity, it has also ordered her development ; and we need but not to * Why do they not have published for them gleanings, especialiy for the female sex, from Hermes' many novels, rather than from otliei writers; since they comprise so many fine, deep, severe and weighty views and hints. CHAP. IV.] 1.EVA.NA. 239 oppose nor anticipate its determinations. But as it always labours blindly and fixedly on, only for its own one-sided aims, its end or ends, so education must not attempt to vanquish it, — for every natural energy is holy, — but to make the whole nature complete by softening, purifying and harmonizing the preponderating power by means of the other balancing powers. § 88. A woman feels, but does not see, herself; she is all heart; her very ears are ears of the heart. To observe herself and what appertains thereunto, viz. reasons, is too disagreeable for her. I^erhaps it was on this account that our ancient jurisprudence sooner relieved a man than a woman from an oath, but applied the torture sooner to him than to her. Reasons (change and affect the firm man more easily than the weak versatile woman : as lightning passes better through solid bodies than through the thin air. What then will happen ? Feelings come and go, like light troops following the victory of the present ; but principles, like troops of the line, are undisturbed and stand fast. Shall we now by anatomising it rob the heart of its fair fulness of inner life. It were sad if one could do it ; but Sommering, after the thousand ears he has dissected, still experiences the charms of harmony; and the philosopher, even after publishing his theory of morals and of taste, still feels the power of conscience and of beauty. Let a girl learn to prove, analyse and explain, not her feeling, but the object of that feeling ; and then, having experienced the wrongness of the object, she will be com- pellod during the whole continuance of the sensation to follow only the insight she has gained. Do not oppose the feelings, but the imagination. This, in a picture of war, for instance, compresses the miseries of a nation into one heart ; those of a day or of a year into one moment; the various possibilities into one certainty : now, if by means of the severing concave mirror of reation, wo separate this fancied focus into its 240 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. IV. various individual rays, the feeling is not destroyed, but only deferred. But, dear mother, cherish and jDrotect every warm and tender feeling which years themselves bring and form, and do not revel in the sensibility of your youngest daughter, and lose yourself in tears of love while relating some lamentable story, or imparting such feelings in all their nakedness. For in future years either these beings will succumb to their feelings, or their feelings to them. Feelings, flowers, and butterflies, live all the longer the later they are developed. Any thing, whether mental or physical, which will certainly at some time come into real existence, may without injury arrive somewhat late, but not too soon ; and the Germans of Tacitus pre- served without disadvantage that heart full of energy which they gave for ever to one, even though it might not be a young virginal one, which had beaten for them in many battles. Sin not against your daughters, nor blasphemously offend the spirit of God, by showing and recommending, even indirectly, any excellence they may possess, be it art, science, or the sanctuary of the heart, as a lure to men, or bait for catching a husband : to do so is truly to shoot wild-fowl with diamonds, or to knock down fruit with a sceptre. Instead of making heaven a means and handle for this earth, we should, in the highest possible degree, elevate this as a means of attaining that. Only an under- standing of the general regulation of a house, — order, knowledge of house-keeping, and similar matters, should be spoken of as valuable for the future groundwork of the marriage tie. The so called lady-like accomplishments are, at most, but garlands of flowers by which Cupid may be bound ; but Hymen, who breaks through these, and garlands of fruit too, is best guided and held by the golden official chain of domestic capability. By persuasive speech impart clearness to principles, and, by dint of repetition, give them the force of intuitions. Especially, permit as little as possible the enjoyment of self- commiseration, which, merely for the pleasure of hugging pain, flies from every cheerful light. The hatred and correction of every humour, and war against every obiectless frame of mind, are exercises- Even in the CHAP. IV.J LBVANA. 241 Bmallest matters, let nothing wilful pass nnpunislied ii\ your daughters. To effect all this, some man is needed round whose firm stem this weak wavering flower-stalk may be trained. A lover before marriage generally prefers looking at the rainbow of tearful sensibilities, of fickle whims, and helpless weaknesses ; but after marriage, when the rainbow turns into wet weather, he requires reasonableness and thorough- ness, because he sufibrs more from whims which are perpetually recurring than from graver faults ; and, if he does not find these qualities, he awakes from his private dreams without finding them realised. His dreams are these : he had, forsooth, when a lover, in various pastoral Arcadian hours of the heart, led his love to different resolutions, — for which he had given his own good reasons, — hence he was led to expect a marriage full of governing reasons ; " For," said he, " if now, in the warmth of youth, she already follow reasons, what will she do when cooler and older ? " Merely the very opposite. For she had only paid attention to his wishes, not to his chain of reasoning, and done every thing solely from love. Wherefore, ye husbands, retain the love of your wives and you are raised above the necessity of sermons on reason. Should it be more difficult or more unprofitable, to live and act in company with your own wife and household queen, than to enter into partnership with the Virgin Mary, the queen of heaven, as a merchant in Messina did, and honourably handed over to her a share of his profits ?* Preserve girls from fear and affectation, which, for the meet part, find place where reason is excluded. Even at a very early age you may cover with a coloured veil many imaginary fears : for instance, you may tell a child that the first clap of thunder she hears is the rolling of the chariot on which the so long expected spring arrives ; or you may yourself unconcernedly regard animals which alarm by the rapidity of their movements, as mice ; or by their size, as horses ; or by their unpleasing forms, as Bpiders and toetds. Then direct the child's eye from the whole to the individual beautiful limbs, and gradually, withe at compulsion, draw child and beast together: for * Nene Sammlnng der Beisebeechreibungen, B. 7. B 242 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [fKAG. IV. children, unlike animals governed by instinct, have scarcely any other fear than that produced by strangeness. One scream of fear from a mother may resound through the whole life of her daughter ; for no rational discourse can extinguish the mother's scream. You may make any full stop, colon, semicolon, or comma of life before your children, but not a note of exclamation ! §89. The morality of girls is custom, not principle. Boys might be improved by the bad example of drunken Helots ; gii-ls only by a good one. Even boys return from the Augean stable of the world with some of its smell adhering to them ; but girls are frail, white Parisian apple-blossoms, parlour-flowers, from which decay must be averted, not with the hand but with fine camel-hair brushes. They, like the priestesses of antiquity, should be educated only in holy places, and never hear, much less see, what is rude, immoral, or violent. Magdalena Pazzi said, on her death- bed, that she did not know what a sin against modesty was : let education at least try to imitate this example. Girls, like pearls and peacocks, are valued for no other colour than the most perfect whiteness. A corrupt youth may lay down a noble book, walk up and down the room in passionate tears and exclaim, " I will amend ;" and keep his word. At the end of forty years Eousseau accomplished his first transformation from the caterpillar state, and con- tinued in it until death removed him by a second change. I have hitherto read of few women who have reformed themselves by other means, even in the most favourable cases, than that of a husband ; and, what concerns some Magdalen asylums in great Magdalen cities, no man desirous of marrying would accept from them, as from a matrimonial-office, his wedded half, properly but a kind of broken fragment. Perhaps this consideration excuses the conduct of the world which regards the errors of men but as the chicken-pox, which leaves few or no marks behind ; but those of women as the small-pox, which imprints its traces on the recovered patient, and lives on in the general remembrance. The purer the golden vessel the more reaJily is it bent ; CHAP. IV.] LEV ANA. 243 the higher worth of women is sooner lost than that ot men. According to the old (lennan rural custom, the sons walked to church behind the father, but the daughters before the mother, apparently because the latter should not be much left out of sight. Nature herself has surrounded these delicate souls with an ever-present in-bom guard, with modesty, both in speaking and hearing. A woman uses no figure of eloquence — her own, at most, excepted — so often as that of accismus* Keep watch over this guard, and pursue, by this indication of nature, the way to education. On this account mothers, fathers, men, and even youths, are their best companions ; and, on the contrary, girls connected with other girls of a similar age, as in schools, provoke one another to an exchange of foibles rather than of excellences, to love of dress, admiration and gossip, even to the for- getting of accismus. Even sisters of unequal age injure one another, how much more, then, similar-aged play- fellows. To know this one needs only to listen to the mutual teazing among the members of a girl's school when perchance a young man has entered, or even approached the door. In the paternal dwelling little would be made of such a circumstance, because it would happen more frequently, with 23erfect seriousness, and among fewer rivals. And what more is there to say about these despotic interim-convents ? Men are made for society, but women for maternal solitude. A boy's school is right, but not a girl's ; just as a ship of war filled with women would be merely a castle in the air, — from its requiring so much unity, quickness, punctuality and obedience. Girls depend upon one heart, boys o;n many heads. The most that a girl could find in a school would be a second mother ; but the father would bo wanting. Another thing which a mother should carefully guard against can scarcely be avoided in a girls' school. It is, that as a mistress rules and speaks, (for a master would speak quite differently) and as rude, violent, dull-minded girls must be mingled with gentle, delicate and susceptible ones, the bad must be cured by means of many punish- So rhetoriciana tenn the figure by which one spt-aka, without nil longing, of the very objects for which the strongest desire is felt. R 2 244 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [fEAG. IV. ments which are poison to the best. I mean this ; nothing so roughly brushes the tender auricula-dust, or flower- pollen, ofl" the minds of girls as that old-maidish cry of alarm at our sex : that prudish abuse of a sex from which every one must make an exception in favour of her father and her husband. There is a kind of bad, unspiritual modesty that resembles the stone veil in a statue of modesty by A. Corradini, which, according to Volkman, hangs down from it clearly and separately as another body. There are certain precipices along which women, like mules in Switzerland, must not be led if they are not to fall. Definite warnings against them serve as attractions and lures. Let the parents shine before them as pure examples, and they will not need to strengthen modesty, the wing-covers of Psyche's wings, with extra coverings. By instruction a child is robbed, in the first instance, of her innocent want of shame, afterwards of its silent presence. What follows is true, though in a less degree, of other schools besides those for girls. In the parental dwelling educational precept is lost in practice, and the child, to the unspeakable advantage of his feeling of freedom and his quicker susceptibility, receives all moral instruction only as the natural unobtrusive accompaniment of his thread of life ; in a school, on the contrary, the child feels as if life only served for instruction, as if he himself lay like a block of marble, chisels and hammers passing over him in every direction, from which so much was to be hewn away that a grown-up man should, at last, rise from the block. The secret parental formation, under which the child believed himself to be growing of his own accord, stands here revealed in its naked aim ; he feels his carnation buds opened with a penknife, not gently disclosing themselves, after warm rain, by their own native force. For this very reason a young creature would scarcely wish to remain longer than the appointed time in the school-house, but would gladly live for ever in its parent's home. Somewhat better than girls' boarding-schools are day- schools, places where they merely receive instruction. It were to be wished that in both of these, as well as in the girls' room at home, there could be more womanly class- spirit inspired, more love arsd reverence for their own sex, CHAP. IV.] LEV ANA. 245 and woman's excellence shown as well as the more brilliant advantages of men. This leads me to a disinclination not sufficiently struggled against in giris' schools, I mean that of women towards women. When Eichardson had put every means of torture, or passion, which such a preying shark hides under his skull to use against women sufferers, into the head of that devil towards women, Lovelace, against the angel Clarissa ; and when he really permitted this holy virgin to be crucified by him, he could naturally only expect that women would take the part of the sufferer, not of the beast of prey ; but, to his utter astonishment, every day's post brought him letters from women entreating the final happiness of the good Lovelace, just as Klopstock received similar ones for the reformation of his Abadonna. Much the same befel a converter of the heathen in Greenland ; who, after having employed, as he hoped, every admitted power of eloquence to depict the burning heat of hell, saw, to his astonish- ment, an ever-increasing cheerfulness in the faces of the Greenlanders ; until at last, on descending from the pul- pit, he learned that, by his warm description of hell, he had excited a special longing in the whole congregation to go thither as to a milder climate. Such a charming hell was Lovelace to women, although a purgatory to Clarissa. It almost sounds like satire to say that women are not particularly fond of each other, and that, with all their friendly words to one another, they rather imitate the nightingale, which, in BeohstciJi's opinion,* aims by its luring tones to scare other nightingales; and so the assertion of the schoolman, that they would rise up as men at the last day, may be in some measure confirmed by the nature of heaven, in which, as the abode of eternal love, women changed into men would naturally and more readily feel a universal love by the entire absence of their own sex. Moreover, we possess the facts that the ancient Boman women (according to Bottiger's Sabina) manifested a degree of cruelty towards their female slaves, and European women in the Indies also towards theirs ; and the most ancient governing sister on the island of Lesbos * See his Instructions for catching Birdji, 1796. 246 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH EICHTEK. [FKAG. IV. towards her other sisters, and even towards their mothers ; and, finally, modern mistresses towards their maid ser- vants ; to which our conduct towards our male domes- tics forms a noble contrast, so that we bear away, to our astonishment (for we often flog servants), the honourable name of the gentler sex. I only passingly mention calumniation, or the " doing to death by evil tongues," whereby a parlour is converted into a canvassing society of the heads and hearts of such foredoomed women as are not there drinking tea. Should we not then, seriously, exclaim, " Oh ! mother, above all other things implant and cherish in your daughter a love and reverence for her own sex. Is it possible that you cannot succeed in so doing if you show her the crown of noble women shining gloriously amid the darkness of past ages ; the elevating examples of united female friends; and the relationship of all their sex's sisters with them in worth and in danger ; and the thought that in her sex each honours or despises the sex of her mother; and the certainty that as hatred of humanity is punished in misanthropes, so the half of that sin, towards half the human race, will be punished in the haters of women ? " Even the father may contribute his share, and indeed the largest, towards this end, by not merely preaching to his daughter but showing her more regard towards her sisters, as the mother also may show more love. And, since no precept insures the practice of any virtue, it were well if the daughter were accus- tomed to regard in maid-servants not merely their common humanity, but their fellowship with her in sex. Some of the modern aesthetic lithologists would gladly see female flowering plants converted into petrifactions : they ought, say they, to repose more fully on the rights of the stronger. First, however, it were to be wished that more wood and kernel were imparted to the present soft spongy character of men : when that is effected the woman will enclasp it like an ivy plant and form its second crown. How strong in will women are, is a CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 247 question to be asked not of lovers, but of such husbands as, on their wedded penitential stools, are summoned to Socratic discourses with a female Socrates, or to such as Job's wife held. In the love before marriage the girl appears too weakly characterless and submissive ; but marriage, in accordance with her destination for children suddenly opens, like a northern sun, all her blossoms, be they those of an aloe, or of a thistle. Is it on this account that most Slavonians* call their beloved, as the Poles, indeed, do all women. The Uncertain ? In short, the girl matures into the mother; and the man, who wishes to possess in his wife at once a slave and a goddess, stands half discomfited by the change ; the little that he can say on the matter consists in such ideas as these rather than any thing else : " He had, trusting in his own steadfast- ness, lovingly proposed to himself to have been a prop to her ; but she had brought with her and packed up for use 80 much of her own that subsequently, between man and wife, the sex was as difficult to distinguish as in young birds ; which was God, which Goddess, was, in his own case, as hard to guess as in the early Grecian statues of deities ; indeed, it were to be wished that the similarity were less absolute." Consequently the will of girls is less to be strengthened than bent and polished. Like plastic divinities, women should only gently and mildly express their feelings. Every outward and inward excess is a blemish in their charms, a poison to their children. Even a man chooses gentleness as the first, though perhaps not the second, mode of expressing his will and determination. No mere strength goes to war against feminine gentleness ; so the tranquil moonshine is rarely broken by a storm, though the glowing sunshine may be. From the moment in which the bravest man shall speak in the gentlest manner will sweetness and compliance arise more and more in the strongest woman : she may continue to be a pyramid, but in the pyramids is found a soft echo. Since the present warlike age and present style of German poetry send women less to the flute-school of gentleness than to the fighting-school of war, a few * See Anton's Esaay on the ancient Slavonians, vol. i. 248 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH KICHTER. [fRAG. IV. sentences added to this ninetieth section which, though not bringing cure, may yet possibly avert the evil, will not be useless, at least to those daughters who add their own character as a female water pipe to our present tempestuous season. Passionateness in a woman's soul is often found united with all the overflowing fulness of a deep noble heart, yes even with predominant gentleness and affection ; — and yet such a hard adjunct of nature may draw the being herself, and all who love or are loved by her, into the most irre- mediable misfortunes. The usually tranquil female character is naturally so much inclined to whirlwinds of passion that even the laws (those of Prussia for instance), dreading the angels of destruction in these otherwise mild angels, forbid an apothecary to sell poison to any woman, whereas they permit violent men to procure it. The laws seem usually to consider them as snow-white, snow-dazzling, and snow- cold Heclas full of fire. If, now, this naturally over- powerful disposition of the sex be increased by that of the individual, we behold a thunder-goddess, who beats down with waterspouts her little flower- children, not to mention her drenched husband, flooded house, and drowned love. A storming motlier is a contradiction in education, and resembles those tropical storms which injuriously increase the temperature of the atmosphere; whereas a storming father coolingly purifies the air. To the child, yet standing on his pure, clear heights, passion perhaps sounds as weak as does a crash to one ascending lofty mountains ; but in the valleys of future life it becomes a thunder clap, and every fit of maternal passion returns as a sevenfold echo in the married life of her daughter. As I have above said, I do not refer to conjugal love, in which, during these female hurricanes, the thin axle of Aphrodite's fair car breaks, or her yoked doves tear themselves loose and fly away, because the readers do not here require the poison to be shown them, but its antidote. This, however, is not so close at hand, as our discourse is only of girls six or seven years old. But to oppose violence to violence, to attack passion by passion, is to try to put out fijre with boiling oil : punishments, especially CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 249 in early youth, do more injury than the stifling of the flames warrants ; to which must be added that punishment, as is natural, only affects the passion when it has provided the match for a still greater future one. Every repetition of the fault becomes, in this case, a doubling of it, to which even the furrows of pain act as inflammatory incitements. As a physical remedy one might advise more vegetable than animal diet, and that of a cooling nature, were it not that advancing years with their fiery blood would again produce heat. But the best means to use against it in early life are the prevention of all, even the smallest, occasions for it, or sparks for the match : and, on the other hand, let every power of love, of patience, of peacefulness be cherished and manifested and employed against that consuming fire. Commands effect nothing ; but examples of gentleness, whether given or related in tone and action, do all. The children of Quakers are gentle without punishment ; they see their parents ever shining as tranquil white stars through the stormy clouds of foreign environ- ment. On the contrary, in the later years of reflection and the blush of shame, this punishment may be permitted, indeed ordained ; that such a female Boreas of fifteen years old may, in the midst of her roaring storm, openly and harshly receive the metaphorical blow in the face on her burning swollen cheeks, which, given previously, without its figurative meaning, would only, as I have already said, have increased the whole swelling evil. § 91. The wife of a nobleman was formerly called house-wife The ancient Britons were often led to battle by brave women. Many Scandinavian women, according to Home, were pirates. A North American on the land, and a Tarisian woman in the shop, do every thing that with us devolves on the man. Ought it, indeed, to be sufficient if a girl can j-ew, and knit, and net ? When Sweden, under Charles the Twelfth, had sent forth all her men at the call of glory, the women became postmasters, cidtivators of the 250 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH EICHTER. [fEAG. IV. land and overseers of the public offices.* And since it may possibly happen in time that all the men may be engaged in a war and peace establishment, it seems to me we should think more of educating girls to be the conductors of our business, and the managers of our estates ; for, subsequently, if the men were killed, there might be another conscription and enlisting demanded from the women than that under husbands. The gymnastics of life and labour are, if the two former sections be correct, the third commandment in female education. But these do not consist of so-called ladylike occupations. Sewing, knitting, or spinning with a Parisian pocket spinning wheel, are recreation and repose from labour, not labour and exercise ; for that spinning while walking, as the Moldavians do f, at least must be oi dered. Worsted work, this female mosaic work, not unsuitable for the higher classes who must refresh themselves from doing nothing by doing little, easily converts the pattern into a covering for indisposition or ill humour. Xenophon tells us that Lycurgus sent the Spartan women to the public places of exercise, and only the slaves to the embroidery frame and the spinning wheel. I do not reckon as greatest those physical disadvantages, the slavish carriage of the person, for instance, which need a dancing-school to correct what the sewing-school has done, for a watchful mother might as easily enforce correct sitting during the sewing lesson as a writing master can do during the writing lesson ; neither do I reckon the nerve-enfeebling, finger- pricking irritation of knitting ; and the physical evils of a sedentary life &hall be treated of hereafter. But most employments of the fingers by which you attempt to fix the female quicksilver have this injurious effect, that the mind left to idleness rusts away, or is entirely given up to the waves of circle after circle spreading fancy. Sewing and knitting needles, for instance, keep open the wounds of an unhappy attachment far more than do all romances they are thorns which themselves pierce the falling rose. If the young woman have, as the young man generally has, some occupation which every moment demands new * Memoires secrets sur les regnes de Louis XIV. par Duclos. t Suraarakoffs Tour in the Crimea CHAP. IV. J LEVANA. 251 thought, the old one cannot perpetually stand out in the most prominent light. A change of occupation is es- pecially adapted to the female character, as the stead;^ pursuit of one is to that of the man. Distraction, forgetfulness, want of consideration and of presence of mind, are the first and worst consequences of this sweet internal and external far niente ; and a woman needs nothing more to poison the holy trinity of wedlock, child, husband, and self. Heavens ! how a young man must every day draw his thread of life from a new fieece, or conduct his plans on their long journey nearer to the goal, while a young woman repeats yesterday in to-day as the image of to-morrow ; he indeed walks, and she sits ; the one is permitted to stand, the other only to sit. The female sex has such a preference for every anchoring manner of life, that it would gladly, as Gerning says the Greek women actually did, carry a camp stool with it, so as after every step to have a seat ready at hand. Yet I should think women might be satisfied to resemble the sun in its shining and warming powers, and not also in its immoveableness. They, in common with the sitting pro- fessions, tailoring and shoe-making, are the victims of spleen and fanaticism. This sedentary life, full of noon- tide rests, morning and afternoon rests, and vesper rests, in which great ladies with full tables and stomachs in- dulge, gives so much trouble to the doctors, running hither and thither, that finally a knowledge of medicine will be as necessary as a knowledge of French to every chevalier d'honneur and chamberlain. In such a circle one certainly need seek few Swiss heroines, not to mention that Czekleress from the district of Gyergyoer, who, in a battle with the Moldavians, killed seven of them at one stroke, and in the evening returned and was brought to bed of a son.* This circumstance happened on the seventh of September, 1685. A certain Quoddeusvult, in the (yet unprinted) twenty- third volume of the Flegeljahre, thinks to find some excuse, when, after having spoken of the female love of flitting and dancing until he hit upon a simile drawn from those hovering flies which hover unwaveringly and shoot * Sapplements of the A. L. Zeitang, No. 19. 252 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH EICHTER. [fKAG. TV. down swift as arrows, he thus expresses himself concerning it : " The reason why the female nature loves rest better than man's is less obvious even in crabs — of which the female has much the fewer legs under its tail — than in the human foetus itself, for the boy begins to move in the third, the girl in the fourth month. Also in the Culs de Paris is the sitting mode of life sufficiently exemplified. But Nature softens this as she does other things ; she gives a desire for sour kraut and herrings as a curative diet to fever patients, and has implanted in the bed and sofa-lying woman, as well as in the lazy savage, the love of dancing. As in a concert, so in her, prestissimo follows adagio. I know not what is more necessary to the present largo di mqlto sitting than the hop furioso. A ball is a strengthening snail and oyster cure for crawling snails and sitting oysters ; a the dansant is the best cure for a tea drinking. The two medical fingers tread on the foot as ten medical toes ; and at a masked ball the uncovered lady has her pestilence preserver in her hand, as the plague doctors formerly went about in wax masks. If you want ladies to go faster than posts and couriers, arrange an English country dance between Leipsig and Dessau, and let the girls ' chassez,' then see who arrives first, the post or the dancers," — and so on. For however true some of it may be, it is yet better placed where it is, in the twenty-third volume. This love of sitting also affects the minor branches of family and household affairs, in which women often permit and neglect matters merely not to have to rise from their seats : they unwillingly purchase the exercise of their children with their own, or willingly delay physical, and force mental, growth. In London ringing twice summons the footman, thrice the chambermaid, apparently to give time to the sex. §92. Now how can this be obviated ? Just as it is obviated among the lower classes. Let a girl, instead of her dreamy monotonous finger- work, manage the business of the house- hold, which every moment restrains dreaminess and absence of mind by new duties and calls on the attention ; CHAP. IV.J LEVANA. 253 in early years let her be emploj'ed in every thing from cooking to gardening ; when older, from the management of the servants to keeping the accounts. \Yhat a minister is in a small state that a woman is in her lesser state; namely, the minister of all departments at once, the husband managing the foreign aifairs ; more especially is she the minister of finance, who, in the state, in the last resort, according to Goethe, regulates peace, as well as, according to Archenholz, the magazines of war. Even noble ladies would be healthier and happier if they fulfilled the duties of maitre d'hotel and femme de charge, I mean for the house: I know they frequently act in both capacities for their husbands. Certainly, as a whole, the females of the higher classes are rendered more delicately beautiful by this absolute idleness ; but such a Venus resembles that of Rome, who was also the goddess of corpses ; among these may be reckoned her children, her husband, or herself. I do not speak about the art of cookery, in order not to be laughed at, as Kant was who wished that here (as in Scotland) regular lessons should be given in it as well as in dancing. Rather will Seneca's beautiful words addressed to sacrificers — " Puras Deus, non plenas adspicit manus " (God regards pure not full hands) — acquire a new meaning with noble ladies ; and they will suppose their husbands value pure white hands more than those which present them some good dish they have cooked. But how is it that in the order of female r&uk her real title, housewife, is not esteemed higher ? Is it not in that capacity that as once physically, so now financially, she prepares a freer future for her children ? And can a woman find that in detail beneath her regard, in which, as a whole, the greatest of men, a Cato of L tica, a Sully, and others, sought their glory ? Once for all, the household must be managed in some way; and is it better that the husband should add this extra weight to his out-of-door duties ? If so, I should merely be lost in astonishment that the women — for the thing is practicable, as Humboldt and others have seen examples of it among the men in South America— do not commit to our charge the reasonable and easy duty of suckling the children. After a little creative practice there might be male instead of female, 254 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER, [fRAG. IV. wet-nurses ; the ministers, presidents, and other principals (the children carried after them into court) would stand it better than the women, &c. &c. For the rest, let no more flighty than intellectual woman declare that housekeeping, as a mechanical affair, is beneath the dignity of her mind, and she would rather be as mentally happy as a man. Is there, then, any mental work without hand work ? Do accountants' offices, secretaries' rooms, the military parade, places of govern- ment set the hands less in motion than the kitchen and household affairs, or is it merely that they do so in a different way? Can the mind show itself earlier, or otherwise, than behind the mask of the laborious body ? for instance, the ideal of the sculptor otherwise than after millions of blows and chisel-strokes on the marble ? Or can this present Levana appear in the world and in print unless I make pens, dip them in the ink and draw them up and down ? Ye holy women of German antiquity ! ye knew as little of an ideal heart as of the circulation of the pure blood which flushed and warmed you when you said, "I do it for my husband, for my children ;'' you, with your anxieties and cares, seeming only subordinate and prosaic ! But the holy ideal descended through you, as heaven's fire through clouds, upon the earth. The mystic Guyon, who in a hospital took on himself and fulfilled the duties of a loathing maid servant, has a higher throne among glorified souls than the general who, with the arms of others, yea, and with his own, makes wounds which he does not heal. All strength lies within, not without ; and whether a poet on his printed sheet, or a conqueror on his missives and treaty-i^apers divide and unite countries, the difference is only externally so great as that between all and nothing : I mean to the vulgar. §93. Women are by nature intended for people of business : they are called to it by the equal balance of their powers and their keen sense of observation. Children require an ever-open eye, but not an ever-open mouth : claude os, apen oculos. But what circle of talking, which always encloses CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 255 only small and trifling relations, could so well exercise that ever-present glance as the circle of domestic afiairs ? Boys destined for certain occupations, to be artists, professors, or mathematicians, may dispense with a capacity for business, but never a girl who will marfy, — especiallj^ one of the above-mentioned boys. Above all things must that wandering or absence of mind be strictly combated which is no fault of nature, but solely of the individual, and is never the determining condition of any superior power. Every dissipation of mind is partial weakness. For instance, were the poet or philosopher who wanders about so absently in the outer world, which is foreign to his sphere of action, to work with equal want of reflection in his inner world, which alone he has to observe and govern, he would certainly be either mad or useless. The same thing is true in the opposite case ; if a woman, indifferent to the outer practical world in which her business lies, neglects it for the sake of the inner. If, now, a girl is intended to grow up with a clear eye for every thing round her, — if she is not to waste her many eyes in company, as Argus did his, by misplacing them as painted eyes in a peacock's tail ; or if she is not, like that sea fish, the turbot, to have two eyes on the right side, but, in compensation, to be blind on the left, — let her be many-sidedly exercised in household affairs ; and the parents must not be disturbed if some admirer of an ethereal bride should find fault with her, as Plato did with Eudoxus, for having profaned pure mathematics by applying them to mechanics ; for to-day or to-morrow the wedding comes, and the husband, the honey-moon being past, kisses the mother's hand for all that the daughter does beyond his expectations. §94. Let every thing be taught a girl which forms and exercises the habit of attention, and the power of judging things by the eye. Consequently botany, — this inexhaust- ible, tranquil, ever-interesting science attaching the mind to nature with bonds of flowers. Then astronomy, not the properly mathematical, but th3 Lichtenbergiau and 256 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [fRAG. IV religious, whicli with tlie expansion of the universe expands the mind ; along with which it does no harm if a girl experiences why a longest night is advantageous to sleep, a full moon to love. I should also even recommend mathematics; but here, unfortunately, women who have a Fontenelle for astronomy have not one for mathematics ; for, with regard to girls, I only mean those simplest principles of pure and mixed mathematics which boys can understand. And geometry itself, as a second eye, or dioptric line, which brings as distinct separations into the world of matter as Kant has done by his categories into the world of mind, may also be commenced early ; for geometrical observations, unlike philosophical, strain the mind to the injury of the body as little as the external sense of sight. Sculptors and painters study mathematics as the skeleton of visible beauty without injury to their sense of beauty : I know a little girl of two years and a half old who recognised, in the full foliage of nature, the dry paper skeleton of the mathematical figures which she had learned to draw in play. In the same way these little beings have early developed powers of calculation, especially for the important part of mental arithmetic. Why are they not also taught a multiplication table for the reduction of the various kinds of money and yard measurements ? Philosophy is something quite different, indeed dia- metrically opposite. Why should these lovers of wisdom and of wise men learn it ? A lottery ticket with a great premium has been occasionally drawn from among this sex — a true born poetess ; but a philosopheress would have broken up the lottery. A woman of genius — Madame Chatelet — may understand Newton in English, and render him into French ; but none could do that in German for Kant or Schelling. The most spiritual-minded and intellectual women have a way of their own, a certainty of understanding the most profound philosophers, which even their very scholars despairingly aim at— namely, thej find every thing easy, especially their own thoughts, that is feelings. In the ever-changing atmosphere of their fancy they meet with every most finely-drawn skeleton of the philosophers ; just like many poetical followers of the CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 257 new schools of philosophy who, instead of a clearly defined circle, give us a fantastic wreath of vapour. Geography, as a mere registry of places, is utterly worthless for mental development, and of little use to women in their vocations ; on the contrary, that is indis- pensable which, teaching the enduring living history of the earth — in opposition to that which is transitory and dead — is at once the history of humanity, which divides itself into nations as well as into contemporaneous historic periods, and also that of the globe itself, which converts the twelve months into twelve contemporaneous spaces. The mind of a girl attached to her chair and her birth- place, like an enchanted princess in a castle, must be delivered and led forth to clearer prospects by the de- scriptions of travellers. I wish some one would give us a comprehensive selection of the best travels and voyages round the world, shortened and adapted for the use of girls; if the editor were well furnished with Herder's patience and insight into the most dissimilar nations, J know of no more valuable present to the sex. With regard to descriptions of places, every station requires a ditferent one, a merchant's daughter one very unlike that provided for a princess. Almost all this equally applies to petrified history, which only conducts from one past age into another. For a girl it can scarcely be too barren in dates and names. How many emperors in the whole history of German emperors are for a girl ? On the other hand, it cannot be sufficiently rich -in great men and great events, which elevate the soul above the petty histories of towns and suburbs. Music, vocal and instrumental, is natural to the femaJie mind and is the Orphean lute which leads her uniniui*e«i past many siren sounds, and accompanies her with its echo of youth far into the autumn of wedded life. Drawing, on the contrary, if carried beyond the first principles, which educate the eye and taste in dress more perfectl)', steals too much time from the husband and childrei: • therefore it is usually a lost art. One foreign language is necessary, and at the same time quite enough, for the scientific explanation of her L S 258 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH HICHTFB. [fRAG. ivi own. Unfortunately French pushes itself most promi- nently forward, because a woman really must learn it to comply with the necessities consequent on the billeting of French soldiers. I would wish — why should one not wish, that is, do every day of the year what one does on the first? — that a selection of English, Italian, i.atin words were placed before every girl as an exercise in reading, so that she might understand when she heard them. The talking and writing world has sent into circulation so large a foreign treasury of scientific words that girls, who do not, like boys, learn the words along with the sciences, should have weekly lessons in them out of a scientific dictionary, or translate into comprehensible phrases tules in which such anti-Campean words are pur- posely employed. I wish that for this end an octavo volume full of foreign words, with an explanatory ency- clopsedia to them, were published. The best women read dreaming (the rest truly sleeping) ; they pass gliding as easily over the mountains of a metaphysical book as sailors do over the mountainous waves of the ocean. None of them ever thinks of asking the dictionary, nay, not even her husband, what any word means; but this vow of silence which regards asking questions as a forbidden game, this contentment with dark thoughts, which possibly learns in the twentieth book the meaning of a scientific term used in the second, ought to be pre- vented. Else they will read books as they listen to men. There is one charm which all girls might possess, and which frequently not one in a provincial town does possess; which equally enchants him who has, and hiin who has it not; which adorns the features and every word, and which remains imperishable (nothing can exist longer) while a woman speaks; — I mean the pronunciation itself, the pure German indicating no birthplace. I entreat you, mothers, to take lessons in pure German enunciation and to rehearse them constantly with your daughters. I assure you — to place the matter on a firmer foundation — that a vulgar pronunciation always rather reminds one of a vulgar condition, because, in general, the higher the rank the better is the pronunciation, though CHAP. IV.J LEVANA. 259 not always the language. The higher ranks, contrary to Adelung's change of words, are not the best musical artistij of language (composei-s), but they are the best deliverers of it (virtuosi). Girls, unlike authoresses, cannot write too much. It is as though on paper, this final metamorphosis of their dear flax, they themselves experienced one, and, in the back- ward viewing of the rough and smooth external world, won space and rest for their own inner world ; so often in lettei-8 and diaries do we find women, the most ordinary in conversation, reveal an unexpected spiritual heaven. But the theme on which gtnd for which they write must not be one drawn from a learned caprice, but from the observation of life — for their sensations and thoughts depend upon climate far more than those of boys; of course I speak of real letters and their own diaries, not mere exercises. From this cause — that an appointed goal marked and restrained their course — the author has re- ceived so many eloquent, profound and brilliant letters from feminine, nay, masculine, minds, that he has often exclaimed in vexation, " If only five authoresses wrote as well as twenty lady-letter-writers, or twenty authors as well as forty correspondents, literature would be of some value!" § 95. The greatest part of the above will help to form female power in connection with female mind, activity along with gentleness : not only in marriage, but in the woman herself, ought there to be a reflection of that heavenly jKxliac in which the Lion shines beside the Virgin. Intellect acts democratically on the mind ; feeling, mon- archically. Any circumstance, even dressing for a ball, seizes on a woman, like the Romans on the Sabines, and tears her fnjm her inner world. One who before the toilet for the ball can think of any thing better loses mar)y more inches of mental elevation. The present governs none more powerfully with one single idea than minds which step dazzled out of their little dream-cell into the clear daylight. 8 2 260 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH KICHTER. [PRAG. IV. On this is grounded the well known experience that they are never ready till it is too late, and have always forgotten something. But how easy were it to send a daughter every week into the struggling school of im- provement ! Let the father say, " Dear Nanny, Fanny, or Annie, if you are ready dressed in one hour you shall dance to-day." In a similar way he might cure them of forgetfulness and want of punctuality by pleasure parties, as stipulated rewards for immediate cessation from their occupations and quick packing up of all necessaries. § 96. There is just as much to be said against the vanity of women as against the pride of men ; that is, just as little. Charms, which like flowers lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity ; hence women, wits, players, soldiers are vain^ :)wing to their presence, figure and di ess. On the contrar;^ , other excellences, which lie deep down like gold and are only discovered with difficulty, strength, profoundness of intellect, morality, leave their possessors modest and proud. Nelson could become just as vain by decorations and the loss of his eye and arm, as proud by his cool bravery. No man can with sufficient liveliness place himself in the position of a beautiful woman who carrying her nose, her eyes, her figure, her complexion, as sparkling jewels through the streets, blinds one eye after another with her dazzling brilliance, and risks no capital in exchange for her profits. Contrariwise the very clever and learned rector creeps behind her, like a man chained and imprisoned, covering his inner pearls with two thick shells ; and no one knows what he knows, but the man himself must admire and dazzle himself only. The desire to please with some good quality which rules only in the visible or external kingdom is so innocent and right that the opposite, to be indifferent, or disagreeable, to the eye or ear, would even be wrong. Why should a painter dress to please the eye, and not his wife ? — I grant you there is a poisonous vanity and love of approbation ; that, namely, which lowers the inner kingdom to an outer one, spreads out sentiments as snaring nets for the CHAP. IV.J LEVANA, 261 eye and ear, and degradingly buys and sells itself with that which has real inherent value. Let a girl try to please with her appearance and her dress, but never with holy sentiments ; a so-called fair devotee, who knew that she was so and therefore knelt, would worship nothing save herself, the devil and her admirer. Every mother, and every friend of the family, should keep a careful watch over tneir own wish to praise — often as dangerous as that to blame — which so easily names and praises an unconscious grace in the expre^ions of the heart, in the mien, or in the sentiments, and thereby converts it for ever into a con- scious one ; that is to say, kills it. The counting of his subjects lost them to David. The gold presented by demon hands vanishes when spoken of. While man finds a cothurnus on which to raise and show himself to the world in the judge's seat, literary rank, the professor's chair or the car of victory, woman has nothing save her outward appearance whereon to raise and display her inner nature ; why pull from under her this lowly foot-stool of Venus ? And as man stands in some college or corporate body, as in an assurance office for the maintenance of his honour, but woman only asserts the lonely woiih of her own individuality, she must attach herself to it all the more strongly. Perhaps this is a second reason why women cannot endure modified praise ; for the first is surely this, that from want of self division, and owing to their constant subjection to the present, which always presents the bitter more powerfully than the sweet, they are more sensitive to the limits set to the praise than to the praise itself. We will now pass to the clothes-devil, as the old theo- logians formerly called the toilet. What else does a woman's dressing-room signify than the attiring-room of a theatre? And why, then, are there so many sermons against it ? The preachers do not sufficiently bear in mind the fol- lowing considerations : to a woman her dress is the third organ of the soul (the body is the second, and the brain the first), and every upper garment is one organ more. Why? Because the body, her true wedding-gift, is more completely one with her destination than ours is with ours ; while ours is rather a pilgrim's or miner's dross 262 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH RICHTEE. [fHAG. IV^. with its protecting apron, hers is a coronation robe, a court suit. It is the holy relic of an invisible saint which cannot be sufficiently worshipped and adorned; and the touch of this holy body works all kinds of miracles. To cut off a man's hand was in early ages scarcely less dangerous than to touch a woman's, on which pressure the Salic law lays a fine of fifteen gold pieces ; a violent kiss formed the ground for a criminal indictment; and in Hamburg there is still a fine of twopence on every kiss imprinted in a work-shop. Hence dress and ornament must be as important to women as varnish to paintings ; they must regard them as a multiplication of their surfaces or facets. Hence for the most part women visit a lying- in-state to see how people look under the ground among the dead. Perhaps the love of dress may be among the causes of our having had great female painters, but no great female musicians ; for a great space in women's pic- tures is filled with dress, but in music they think they cannot be sufficiently seen unless they sing. Hence, also, light falls on the female art of putting on a shawl of a Hamilton. Even in old age and on the sick bed, of both which a man takes advantage to make himself comfortable in night-cap and dressing-gown, they still put on an orna- mental costume, not to please men but to please themselves : in the most secret coffin of the most lonely Carthusian convent of La Trappe they will not be behind the exhumed corpses of Pompeii, which advantageously display them- selves to posterity in ornaments and ear-rings. If there were a Miss Robinson Crusoe on a desolate island, with no one to please but her own reflection in the water, she would yet every day make and wear the newest fashions. How little they make themselves into artificial work and three-cased watches for the sake of men may be seen in the fact that they never dress more carefully than for ladies' parties, where every one studies and vexes the rest. Unembarrassed by witnesses, each one places herself before her ideal world — the mirror — and dresses the bridal pair. Formerly, in France, every woman carried a glass on her person, apparently to be more agreeable to her friends, and to indemnify them by their own pictures for CHAP. IV.J LEVANA. 263 the bearer of them. In Germany, in olden time, a mirror was bound up with the hymn-books — why is it not so now ? Pity that such loss of the divine image should be caused by the want of a looking-glass ! On this same ground of natural destination not even the cleverest can pardon the censure of her personal appear- ance ; she even values its praise more highly than that of her mind. From the time of Louis the Fourteenth the French kings have sworn never to forgive two things, both perpetrable only between man and man, the duel and something worse. Women will willingly forgive all save one thing ; not, indeed, the denying of their charms, but the loud proclamation of some deformity or want of personal attraction. And every man's tongue which could declare such a thing is immorally cruel. Woman, more subject to the sensuous present, to appearance and opinion than we are, must painfully feel her affirmed unsightliness to have, as her beauty has, a wide extending influence. I should even consider this very speaking of it cruel did I not know from my own experience, as well as from that of others, that a woman's lovely heart as completely effaces all external blots as an unlovely one does all personal charms ; and that a fair soul has at most only the first moment, but a foul one the whole future, to dread. Woman's body is the pearl oyster; whether this be brilliant and many-coloured, or rough and dark from the place of its birth, yet the pure white pearl within alone gives it value. I mean by this thy heart, thou good maiden, thou who expectest not to be appreciated, but only to be misunderstood ! From the destination of women may possibly be derived the greater coldness and severity with which women of rank treat their female domestics ; they cannot conceal •from themselves many resemblances and many possi- bilities of exchanged circumstances ; in which husbands, to whom more is attributed in the proposition of in- ^flEerence than in that of contradiction, readily confirm -them. Women, especially beauties, regard very little the diflference of mental cultivation ; men that only in regard to their servants ; and Pompev, assured of his victory, did not inquire whether his cook looked as he did. 264 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICHTER. FfRAG. IV Woman's love of dress has, along with cleai^liness which dwells on the very borders between physical nature and morality, a next-door neighbour in purity of heart. Why are all girls who go out to meet princes with addresses and flowers dressed in white? The chief colour of the mentally and physically pure English women is white. Hess found white linen most used in free countries ; and I find states all the more modest the freer they are. I will become no surety for the inner purity of a woman who, as a counterpart to the Dominicans who wear white in the cloister but black when abroad, only puts on the colour of purity when walking in the streets. I might speak of the wardrobe — the female library ; for our white cloth consists of black on white. I might also ask whether girls do not love clothes more on this account; because they make many of them, and consequently enjoy all the more heartily a garment they have made in their own little summer-house. But the more immediate question is, how the water-shoots of a flowering branch engrafted by nature are to be repressed or cut off? Animate the heart, and it no longer thirsts for common air, but for ether. No one is less vain than a bride. Mark out for your daughter any long course to some important business and she will look the seldomer about her. A true work takes possession of the author as well as afterwards of the reader — neither thinks any more about himself. In a sea-fight no Nelson is vain; in a land-fight, no Alcibiades ; in a council of state, no Kaunitz. Let a daughter learn and exemplify the artistic charm of dress on other persons. Treat her as an artistic mannikin and lay the value on the product itself; she may then regard herself as an actress who does not become a queen by means of her dress. Costly clothes make much vainer than pretty ones. Do not permit nurses, ladies' maids and such-like locusts, to praise and deify the dressed-up girl : yes, even keep a sharp eye on her play-fellows, especially those of lower rank ; because they readily lose their astonishment at the fine dress in admiration of the wearer. Ascribe to cleanliness, symmetry, propriety of dress, and CHAP. IV.J LEVANA. 265 all the aesthetic requisites of beauty, their brilliant and true worth ; so a daughter, like a poet, forgets herself in her art and in her ideal, and her own beauty in what is beautiful. She will be a painter who paints herself — whom not the original, but the copy, charms. Finally, if the mothers are not their own incessant purveyors of fashionable dress, nor a fruitless tulip-bed of modish colours, much, if not all, is done for the daughters. §97. 1 could -vvrite a whole paragraph merely in favour of cheerfulness and merriment in girls, and dedicate it to mothers who so frequently forbid them. But seriously to assure girls they may laugh on suitable occasions would look very much like presenting them an opportunity of doing so. Mothers have much a habit of grumbling, even though they may smile inwardly ; the daughters, on the contrary, generally only laugh visibly. The former have passed out of the triumphant church of virgins into the church militant of matrons ; their growing duties have increased their seriousness ; the bridegroom is changed from a honey-bird, who invited them to the sweets of the honey-moon, into a resolute honey-hunting bear, who will himself have the honey. Then all the more, mothers ! grant these dear light- hearted beings their sports around the flowers ; their minute's play before long years of serious duties. Why may not comedy precede tragedy, with them, as with the Bomans ? If the boy may be a zephyr, why may not the girl be a zephyrette ? Is there in the whole range of life any thing so beautiful, so poetical, as the laughing and joking of a maiden who, still in the full harmony of all er powers, plays with every thing in luxurious freedom, and neither mocks nor hates when she jests ? For girls, the antipodes of fish, which, as is well known, are not only deaf but also possess no diaphragm, have and impart the true sportiveness of poetry, so difficult for authors to imitate, so unlike satire and the humour of men. Their seriousness is rarely so innocent as their fun; and still i 266 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICn RICHTER. [fRAG. IV, less innocent is that Bupercilious discontent which con- verts the virginal Psyche into a heavy, stupid, humming, wing-drooping moth ; a death's head, for instance. The melancholy night-flyer may possibly please the lover ; but the husband requires his day Psyche, for marriage demands cheerfulness. In a certain Libyan people* the young man married that girl among his guests who laughed at his jokes ; perhaps my meaning is contained in that custom. Laughing cheerfulness throws sunlight on all the paths of life. Peevishness covers with its dark fog even the most distant horizon. Sorrow causes more absence of mind and confusion than so-called levity. If a woman can perform this comedy impromptu in married life, and occasionally enliven the serious epic of the husband, or hero, by her amusing heroic ballads, or get up, as the Eomans did, a merry farce against misfortunes, she will have bribed and won joy, and her husband, and her children. Never fear that feminine merriment precludes depth of soul and feeling. Does it do so in men ? And did not the lawgiver Lycurgus, and his Spartans everywhere, build an altar in his house to Laughter ? It is precisely under external cheerfulness that the quiet powers of the heart increase and grow to their full stature. How heavenly must it be, then, when, for the first time, the smiling face weeps for love, and the irrepressible tears mirror the whole gentle heart ! Wherefore, ye mothers, do not merely suffer but assist your daughters to become externally French girls, in- ternally German, and to convert life into a comic poem which surrounds its deep meaning with merry forms. I know few books to recommend for this purpose — we men always think of these first when advice is to be given — besides the letters of the incomparable Sevigne. But wit, mere wit, is — in opposition to aesthetics — the comedy and humour of women; an epigram is to them a humorous chapter, a Haug or a Martial, a Sterne or an Aristophanes. They will laugh themselves ill, or rather well, about the curious marriage of the great and little ; which only seema no mis-alliance to man surveying the long connected chain Alex, ab Alex lib. I. o. 24. CHAP. IV.] LEVAKA. 267 of being. But langh away ! and may your mothers read you many epigrams ! I wish much there were a suitably selection of these for girls, and a few comic works writter^ expressly for them, which would certainly sound very French ! Then let the dear merry children laugh to their hearts' content among one another, and especially at any grave pompous man who comes among them, even were he the author of this ninety-seventh paragraph. § 98. Inquiries might still be made concerning the educatiou of women of genius, and one of a peculiar nature required for them. But I will only insist the more strongly on the necessity of an ordinary one for them, which may act as the balance and counterpoise of their fancy. Genius-^ which with wonderful works as with holy festivals breaks into the common course of the week — cannot be learned, can be very little taught, and not at all overcome ; and will boldly raise its brow above time and sex and every difficulty. Talent, not genius, can be repressed, that is, annihilated ; just as a compound can be destroyed, that is decomposed, but not a simple power. And truly, were the repression of genius by circumstances possible, we should never once have experienced its existence. For then genius, always appearing only as the one intercalary day of many years, as one single day contradicting and voting against a majority of 1400 days, must have fallen a prey to the opposing tendencies of its age — that is to tendencies which, enslaving men from the earliest times, would bind them down to the latest — as a horse to the multitudinous stings of bees. Nevertheless, genius has existed, for we have the word. They whom it inspired made, like other generals and monarchs of this world, separate treaties of peace with their neighbours, and only after death a general one with the whole world. But if a man of genius must also be a man and a citizen, and, if possible, a father too, a woman must not suppose herself elevated by her genius above her appointed day- labour in life. If a Jean Jaaj[ue8 write upon education, an 268 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. IV. intelligent Johanna Jacqnelina need not be ashamed of the occupation of intelligent men ; on the contrary, the rare excess of female talent should rather be an additional call to education than a passport for neglecting it. But, if women are ever ashamed of acting up to the ideas on which they pride themselves, their destiny avenges itself upon them justly and severely. First, justly. For woman is appointed to be the Vesta, or Vestal priestess, of home — not the sea nymph of the ocean. The fuller she is of an ideal perfection the more must she endeavour to express it in reality ; as the ideal of all ideals — God — ^has manifested Himself in the world ; she should educate a daughter as He educates the whole human race. If a poet can express his ideal as well in the narrow limits of the Dutch school as in the far horizon of the Italian, wherefore should she not be able to express hers in the kitchen, store-room and nursery ? And, secondly, the punishment of the neglected re- lations of life is severe. A woman can never forget to love, though she be a poet or a ruler. Then, instead of children, women of genius seek the society of men. By these they expect to be loved as women, though they themselves only love as men. So they, like flying-fish between the two elements, hover between manhood and womanhood, injured by both, and persecuted in both kingdoms. They then become the more unhappy the wider their intellectual circle extends; a poetess, for instance, becomes more so than a painter. But, if they unite their woman's destiny with genius, a mighty and rare blessedness fills their hearts ; the clouds which pour their floods in the valleys, gently dissolve on their heights as on mountain tops. What is most to be desired for such heads is a crown, a prince's or a ducal coronet ; and this brings us to the next chapter. CHAP, v.] LEVANA. 269 CHAPTER V. PRIVATE INSTRUCTIONS OF A PRINCE TO THE GOVERNESS OF HIS DAUGHTER. § 99. Permit me to embody in a dream tlie few thotiglits 1 have to ofifer on the education of princesses. The dream of which I speak elevated me at once above all middle grades into the rank of princes; an elevation you will please to ascribe less to secret veneration than to excessive newspaper reading. It seemed to me, then, that I was called Prince Justinian, and my consort Theodosia, the mother of the Princess Theoda, and our governess Pomponne, apparently some French surname. The private instructions which 1 imparted, my princely hat upon my head, to Madame de Pomponne, may sound sufficiently dreamy in somewhat of the following form : — My dear Pomponne, I like going at once openly to work. What my consort arranged with you yesterday about Theoda's education I ratify with pleasure, because she wishes it : but as soon as you have read my wishes on this subject I confidently expect some private altera- tions in the list of rules which has been laid before you. For truly I give out my laws as readily as another, though I also intentionally receive some; one cannot always have the crown close at hand in one's pocket, as the German emperors formerly carried their imperial in- signia along with them in every journey : but let people beware of resembling my royal cousins, who —albeit the an- cient Persian kings dared refuse nothing to their queens on their birthday —scarcely ever close their birthday-festivals. I confess that shortly aiter my nuptials I hoped my wife, like those in humbler stations, might possibly take upon herself the education of a future princess, and that you would merely have borne the title of governess. In fact when I, who best know what a longest day and a longest night combined in one four-and-twenty hours signify, take into consideration the tedium of a court, I ^70 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTEll. [fP.AG. IV. should think that a princess, who must feel it even more severely than a prince, would for that very reason gladly expend her time and her whims on the education of a daughter. Since one becomes so weary of courtiers, who, like people in boots and stirrups, always think they stand on the palace floor most securely with bended knees, that one actually longs for dogs and parrots and monkeys ; because they, indifferent to rank, are always free, new and inter- esting; surely my child, who in a court belongs to the small number of my equals, and therefore ventures freely to say what she thinks, must be even more interesting And should not an excellent royal mother, who can devote whole years to a painting or a piece of embroidery, more gladly sit to herself and jiaint herself in the living copy of her daughter ? And why do the simple priests at the a,ltar only pray that princesses may become happy mothers, and not that they should continue such by educating their children ? But these are only questions. There are many difficulties which my beloved Theodosia could not so easily overcome as my paternal imagination fancied. For the rest she is so loving and tender a mother, as you will yourself experience, that she seldom or never permits a week to pass without once sending to call Theoda. Nevertheless, dear Pomponne, much, indeed most, depends upon your love and attention to the child. 1 yesterday heard and subscribed tlio long chapter on external propriety, royal female dignity and reserve ; so let that be ; and I will myself, at the right time, procure the princess a daneing-master from Paris who shall instruct her in the art of raising or letting fall her train. But, my good lady, I hope you will not carry too far that self-confining fence round every step, that consideration of every verbal expression, that squeezing mould, and that crooked or straight bending of the body. Oh ! my good Theoda ! must it be so? Cou t is indeed a yays coutumier, and only the country a jpays du droit civil, which the regal palace least of all is. Many attitudes and impetuosities which, in my officers, I should regard as improprieties and offences against my majesty, are in me, the master, treated (perhaps from flattery) as original traits, as piquant and CHAP. V.J LEVANA. 271 amiable peculiarities; and the earnest wish is expressed that they may be frequently repeated. Acting on this method of interpretation, 1 pray you to permit the princess always to run a little. After my marriage I became acquainted with one of the fairest and most amiable princesses — excepting, of course, your mistress — who had the charming ill-manners — any thing else in her were not to be supposed — of never moving in a concert-room, or other assembly, save at a running pace with full sails. And what said the court, and foreign princes, myself Among the rest, to this ? We all praised her animation ! Now, had she been twelve years old, and her governess present, that celestial animation might have excited a fire of a very different description. Must, then, poor unhappy princesses be deprived of all soul, and converted into mere machines of propriety, and be placed in the court as in an ice-oven through which the little naphtha-flame cannot pass ? Must a princess be indeed 80 closely imprisoned that she may never venture to cross a bridge on foot, except the fancy park-bridge ? Are tears the best princess's washing water? It is at least fortunate that we princes have given our name to some- thing harder — prince's metal. Must not the poor children, in later yeats, be bound down in formality with golden chains, pompously introduced into life's desert where love is not, and banished under the polar sky of the throne, which sends forth as much fog and frost as does the actual pole? Even a ruling master lies oppressed under it, who could be very different and thunder. By all means let every thing during public exhibitions and festivals be measured and cold ; but not so when she is alone with you. White gravel may lie glittering and smooth on the garden walks, but no one u-es it in flower-beds. The Duko of Lauzun said. To make princesses love you treat them harshly and scold them unceasingly. You will certainly not confound this ducal method of securing love with that to be adopted by a teacher. You admire, a& I heard you say on Sunday, the Scandinavian mythology . tell me, now, would you wish only to be Nos-a * to my daughter and not also Gefione? Health is the true Gefione; and * The goddett Noasa gave maidens beauty : Gefione, prutection. 272 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH RICHTER. [fRAG. IV. may this goddess lead Theoda by the left hand, as well as Kossa by the right ! Certainly a beautiful princess has more subjects than, her prince, and certainly nowhere does female beauty display its bloom so perfectly as on the Alps of the throne ; but my offspring will not give to posterity a perfectly bloomed flower. The prince's hall in which, as in a fortress, the German future lays down its safety and its freedom must indeed be built by fair and tender, but also by strong hands. If every mother is a being of importance I should think a royal mother is one of the greatest im- portance. If I can only arrange it so Theoda shall ac- company me next July, and I shall have the pleasure of accompanying you. I will then effect much. It is stated in the Indian travels of the old Mandelsloh that only the kings among birds of paradise have feet ; apparently we princes are only birds of paradise, and every common person is our king. But at that time my Queen Theoda shall go on foot; and, what is more, she shall ride on horseback, which no Eoman Dictator ventured to do. I really do not like to think how the health of royal persons must be undermined by things which they probably drink every day; had I an hereditary prince royal I should almost lose my senses with anxiety ! I should wish you to allow my Theoda to read more English than French books, and more German than both. I know not what witty author* has shown the similarity of the courtly and worldly tone of mind to that of the French literature; at the same time, the thought is striking. In a French book we always live in the fashion- able world and at court; in a German book occasionally in villages and in the market-place. I must also have the princess lose some of that awful ignorance about the people which makes her imagine them only a multitudinous re- petition of the fat servants who stand behind her chair to remove her plate and clear the table. She must not fancy that a beggar cannot be relieved with silver coin, because for convenience she only carries with her gold. This, however, is but a very small matter. In German books as * This was I myself in the third volume of the iEsthetics ; but in dreams the best known thiugs are forgotten. CHAP, v.] LEV ANA. 273 a whole there predominates a healthy force of affec- tions, boldness of language, love of morality and religion, carefully balanced understanding, sound-common sense, unbiassed all-sidedness of view, hearty love of human happiness, and a pair of eyes which look towards heaven. Now, if this German strength and purity be ingrafted on a mind tenderly formed by sex and rank, it must necessarily bear the loveliest flowers and fruits. A French library, on the contrary — if I do not judge unjustly, embittered by Gallic newspaper writers and by my old loyal tutors — is nothing better than a kind of anteroom or exchange. Theoda would only read in it what she every day hears ; — the same softness of speech with hardness of thought (just as mineralogists append to their newly discovered stones the soft Greek termination t7e, as Hyalite or Cyanite) ; — the same flattery of diame- trically opposed occurrences, because the man of the world resembles the Epicurean who denied that a proposition was either true or false; the same resemblance in other matters of the worldly man and the Frenchman to the Epicurean school which, unlike every school of philosophy, had no sects because the whole school agreed about wine and meats, women and God — . No, no, let my Theoda read her Herder (she will hear Voltaire in plenty amongst her chamberlains) and Klopstock and Goethe and Schiller. You, dear friend, of children and of French people, are a quite suflicient French library. Formerly in German courts — not merely in mine — your countrymen and their works were equally welcome and effective ; as if what the Romans found in real life, that Gallic slaves made the best shepherds,* were also true figuratively, and that your nation could furnish the best shepherds of the shepherds of the people — that is to say, tutors of princes — and also the best shepherds of the people— that is to say, princes. Only do not forget Kousseau and Fenelon, nor Madame de Necker and her Memoires. A book more delicate, re- fined, elegant, religious and, moreover, interesting is scarcely to be found for well educated women than this * Meinex's Hisiory of the Decline of Morals in the Romaua, from Varro. 1. T 274 JEAN PAUL FEEEDEICH RTCHTER. [fRAG. IV. "by Madame de Neeker, whose jewels possess as mucH medicinal virtue as colour and brilliancy. But lier daughter, Madame de Stael, may postpone leaving her cards for my daughter until the girl is old enough to receive so intellectual a visit. German princesses now fill and unite almost all Euro- pean thrones ; as — if I dare speak so pedantically — Aurora's rosebuds do the mountain tops. Formerly, as Thomas remarks, heathen princes were converted to a better religion by their marriages with Christian princesses. This achievement cannot now be expected from any princess ; but it is well for her if she have been brought up in a pure religion. He who has no higher and firmer heaven above his head than the canopy of the throne, composed of wood and velvet, is very circumscribed, and has but a narrow prospect. And he who, on the blooming heights of humanity, attains no happiness is, if he possess not God in his heart, more helpless than the most lowly who, in lamenting over his own humble condition, seeks the hope of improvement. Eeligion only can reward and arm with energy, tranquillity, life and peace princesses who, like Narcissus, are too frequently sacrificed to an infernal deity. By what othe raid could women in former ages, when there was less refinement, endure and even forget to grieve at the rudeness and cruelty of men, than by that of religion, which transfigured many an hour of tears into one of prayer ? A woman, to whom so much perishes ere she herself dies, needs, more than a man does, something which may accompany her as a glorious star from youth to age. And what is the name of this star? In the morning of life it is the star of love ; later, it is only called the evening star. Henry the Eighth of England forbad women to read the New Testament ; the age, alas ! does so now. Happily for my wishes I know you and your sex. An unbelieving princess is almost as rare as a believing prince, and you perhaps grant both. In earlier ages, it is true, we find Gustavus, Bernard, Ernest, and some others, anchored to religion as to a firm mountain.* My position may possibly * E. g. to the mountain of Tachwa in Novgorod. Hube's Physic, vol. i. CH\P. v.] LEVANA. 275 lead me astray, but I confess that to every ideal I form of female beauty a throne is the footstool. My travels may form an excuse for this — but so it has always been with my ideals of woman's mental beauty, and I have ever seen it crowned. "With thorns?" you ask. "Probably," I answer, " but also with gold." In short, I believe that a certain ideal delicacy and purity of the female soul can be developed nowhere so beautifully as in the highest position — on the throne — as the loveliest flowers bloom on mountains, and the sweetest honey comes from hilly countries; two resemblances which hold forth a promise jf the third. As female nature for her fairest flowers requires forms and customs, which may be compared to fine soil and elegant vases, whereas man's roots can press through and burst open the hardest earth and rocks ; so she finds what alone she needs at court, which is, confessedly, all form and custom, and that of the narrowest and most absolute description — I do not say this, self-laudatorily, of my own —for the mere fact of an education among the highest ranks, as well as the contemplation of the most refined politeness, — these forms and reflections of morality, — will be there not only as the reversed and dim counterpart, but as the original bright-coloured rainbow. I might also adduce decency, honour, propriety (of the men as well as of the women), delicacy, forbearance, which are all required by courts; and not merely, as is falsely supposed, in the public, but also in the private personal demeanour ; I mean in every word by which the courtier expresses, not himself, but something better — a moral seeming. Woman's virtue is the music of string instruments, which sounds best in a room; but man's that of wind instruments, which sounds best in the open air. As men always act most honourably in public — the act of cowardice which might be committed in a closet or in a wood becomes impossible at the head of an army or a uation, and as we royal mai-tyrs in our apartments too much resemble the Greek tragic actors whom the chorus never left for a moment alone on the stage, and, finally, as women, avoiding the observation of many eyes yet pay regard to them by the fairest actions, my proposition is natural. T 2 276 TEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH EICHTEK. [fRAG. IV, I can still add something. The princess, free from distracting labour in the rough service of life ; placed in the mild climate of physical repose, advantageous to the heart as well as to the beauty ; brought up rather to observation than to action, at least unless she absolutely will, without compulsion, enter that black pit of statecraft at whose mouth prince and minister throw off the mantle of love, as they would give their servants a woollen cloak to hold ; — I really do not remember how or why I began, but I do know this; that the nobler class of women, even after a long black funereal train of misanthropical expe- riences, still keep alive their loving heart and genuine feeling ; whereas men in such cases, yes, even sometimes after one single grievous misfortune, bury their desolate lost heart in the perpetual hatred of their species. A woman could more easily close for ever her mouth than her heart. Why waste many words? I have seen excellent princesses. Without the advantages of the throne they would have lost much, and without its disadvantages, the rest. In fact, patience, a little suffering, and that of the mind — as when, for instance, years convert the wedding-ring into a chain — and other things of a similar nature form within the flower the fruit, and within that the seed of a heavenly life. To this head belongs the patience necessitated by the courtly tedium of our rank. The Sabbath was especially ordained by Moses as a rest day for slaves ; but it is pre- cisely this day of rest which at court is converted into a day of unrest. As often as my people envies me during these tumultuous festivals, I seem to myself to resemble the Spartan helots who were flogged to death to the sweet sound of flutes. M}'" dear Theodosia would gladly have her daughter as highly gifted as herself, and therefore strongly impressed upon you the desirability of cultivating her imagination. It is, perhaps, because I myself am of a dryer and harder nature, and prefer keeping myself warm with my wings to flying far up into the cold ether, that I lay so very much stress on my daughter's possessing sound common- sense. Indeed, if I could, I should like to undermine this CHAP, v.] LEYANA. 277 powerfiilness of imagination. Fancy in a princess pro- duces a great many fancies in a prince ; hence arise storms in the royal atmosphere and all kinds of volcanic products, burning of the treasure closets, maledictions on the crown jewels, and much else that I could name. If a fanciful woman could carry the whole verdure of the country, in its meadows and its woods, compressed and poetically sub- limed into one ring, on her finger, in the shape of the largest emerald — by Heavens! Pomponne, she would do it ! Therefore, I would most gladly exchange it for a sound understanding, if I had it not. I grant one can make but very little show with it, but then one can judgo all the more correctly. And this I certainly know, that many a princess, who, during her husband's reign, modestly showed herself as nothing more than a sensible affectionate mother and wife, could, after his death, (I pray you call to mind the widow of my dear old friend in M — g — n,) replace the father by the mother of her country, and with her clear eye, and ear open to instruction, rightly guide the vessel of the state. Fancy and fancies on the throne, round which, as round other heights, more winds blow than behind the low hull of the ship, are only full spread sails in a storm, which the captain, or the understanding, ought to take in. I would wish Theoda to have as much cheerfulness as possible, but wit only in moderation. The latter, when united with good sense and a constant kindly heart, may perhaps guide, or, at all events, drive the prince consort, as the weak sorceress formerly ruled the devil ; but wit alone without heart, salt without meat, transforms a woman, like Lot's wife who became a pillar of salt from whom the old Lot parted and went on his way. But to return to the imagination. I should be glad, Madam, if you could discover, or excite in my daughter a talent for either music or drawing. Music, if only listened to and not scientifically cultivated, gives too much play to the feelings and fancy ; the difficulties of the art draw forth the whole energies of the soul. Hence a certain minister, Hermes, in Berlin, * recommended girls to be taught : Now consistorial-couQcillor in Breslau. Princely and dream- lilie trammutation withaL 27^ JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH KICHTER. [fEAG. IVi thorough bass. Drawing also is good, a Ithough it has the disadvantage of giving too much preponderance to a woman's naturally keen eye for forms. One thing or the other ; a painting, for instance, at which a princess has laboured for about half a year, if it have not been produced with the help of the court artist, as private instructor and father of the piece, would to her, — a bee imprisoned in the variegated tulip-bed of the court, — smell sweetly as the flowers ; for thus she possesses something which she sees daily grow under her hands, in which consists the happi- ness of life. The old Saxon princess who, as I have read, embroidered the banks of the Ehine on a robe, was certainly as happy, yes, happier, while embroidering it, than in the robe itself. At the present day half her heaven would have been stolen from her, since, as I hear we no longer possess the left bank.* With regard to female vanity 3'ou need do — that is, say — nothing; for every word in your apartment is useless if, in the evening at tea or in the concert room, Theoda heal the very opposite from grave men and women, who think to do honour at the same time to both rank and sex, and by this very confounding of both constantly intrude the latter on the poor child. As she grows older a very marked admiration becomes the duty of every courtier, since, unfortunately, the stupid printed genealogical tables every year declare the age of a princess ; in London they act in a still more foolish fashion and actually shoot the number of years into people's ears by the discharge of cannon ; therefore, she need not — like the modern Roman women, whose dislike of perfumes keeps them at a distance from the altar with its incense — retreat from the admiration naturally attendant on her rank and sex, but simply remain standing. And now I come to the most important point ; namely, — all of religion and human happiness which I have hitherto desired at your hand for Theoda must assist and be subservient to her princely destiny, and not by any means work against it. Consolation and fortitude I would wish her to draw thence, but no arms against her parents* will. This, between ourselves, is what I mean. Since * Written in 1805. CHAP, v.] LEV ANA. 279 my last travels I do not feel by any means certain that, in eight or ten years, my Theoda, regarded as a cement of se\ered lands, or rivet of different crowns, may not be uuited to a prince whom, which Heaven forbid ! she may from her heart detest. To this fear royal parents must submit : in fact, I must regard the glory of my house ; and I have always considered childien as royal pledges, whom I have only to place as far from me as possible in order to win an extension of territory. Wherefore, Madam, on this point my daughter must leani to give no other answer than ye«. Would that bridegrooms were as easily selected by diplomacy as brides ! Still some good may be made out of the worst case ; and on the rocks of the throne, against which others make shipwreck, we can only bleed. A woman, previously so imdetermined and obedient to the whole compass of male zephyrs, becomes, under the influence of .a fixed husband who determines her fate, a steady trade-wind. The most ugly often becomes, at the altar, or shortly afterwards, the most beautiful ; and a similar change often accompanies pieci>ely opposite condi- tions. The priest's words, like lightning on the magnet, ^sily reverse the positfon of the positive and negative poles. But too much of this. I consider my little future son-in- law to be honourable, and no one yet knows what kind of a man may grow out of the merry boy. But even supposing that the priestly blessing were to the princess a priestly anathema, and that her honeymoon were passed in courtly mourning, yet I cannot help her, at all events before she gives her hand. It is true that in Loango a princess, and only a princess, can choose what husband she will ; and in Homer, Penelope had a hundred-and-eight wooers, without reckoning the absent husband ; but that is of no avail to our princesses, especially before marriage, for those are neither our times nor countries. Diplomatic marriages must be like English soldier marriages, provided not merely hands and hearts but whole countries are to be united. Should it really happen that a* throne became a Gold Coast where a daughter was sold into a slave ship, then you can give her no fairer princestt's dowi-y and mirriage gift than a mother's 280 JEAN PAUL FRIF.DRICH RTCHTER. [fRAG. IV heart ; this will compensate her for all her sacrifices ; a child's love is more certain than a husband's. After such confidence I require from yon no other ansv7er than the future, which the governess of a princess holds more surely in her hand than does the tutor of a prince ; for the latter is relieved and removed, and his successors less resemble the popes, each of whom continued the building of St. Peter's, than princes who, for the most part, leave the buildings of their predecessors unfinished. You, on the contrary, may long lead Theoda by the hand ; perhaps even till you resign it into that of her husband. May you succeed well ! Justinian. My dream came to an end along with my letter and I arose. But as I laid aside the crown along with my night- cap and became as usual a private person, a critic who should blame any thing in my instructions would prove nothing more than that he was ignorant of, or indifierent to, Kant's axiom, that a deposed sovereign can never be punished for faults committed by him on the throne. It is something quite different when I am awake, and then fall into errors. ( 281 ) FIFTH FKAGMENT. CHAPTER I. ON THE EDUCATION. OF A PRINCE. §100. Many readers, especially critical ones, will probably, without my aid, make the remark and the reproach, that in the former Chapters I have treated of the particular before the general — of the education of women before that of men, which extends into a wider sphere of moral, intellectual and assthetical development ; and that, again, in this Chapter the particular education of kings is placed before the general one of men. And, truly, in the fragment about girls, readers will miss any systematic order, and only find a systematic want of order for women. Now, should any one forget to make these remarks and reproaches, they are here set down ready for him. Moreover, in treating of the education of a prince, the author must again avail himself of the kind reader's former permisson, to turn letter writer ; but in this instance he did not dream a letter in bed, but really sent the Bubjoined one by post. LETTER ON THB EDUCATION OP PRINCES, ADDRESSED TO MR. ADELHARD, prince's TUTOR AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. Balreuth, Oct. 1, 1805. Your invitation, my dear friend, to visit you and the prince at his country residence could not have come more opportunely than just now when I am In the very act oi 282 JEAN PAUL FEIEDT.ICH RICHTEIl. [fEAG. V. packing up and taking flight because the lava stream of war seems to take its course towards our country. And, what is still better, I am at present engaged on a Doctrine of Education in fragments, one of which, at least, must contain a few words about the education of royal children ; and I am very much mistaken if I shall not find with you that Magna Charta and electoral franchise which is the most important for a prince ; namely, that which the tutor lays down and prescribes for the little prince. In fact, I expect from you two patterns ; one of a teacher, and one of a pupil. If you will not regard it as a jest, dear Adelhard, I will now write a long letter, divining and predicting what you have begun and accomplished with your pupil, merely that I may place the letter among my fragments as a pocket mirror for princes' tutors. It seems to me that when I prophesy my predictions at once become rules. For I have a kind of dislike absolutely to lay down rules. If one must place oneself in the soul of the pupil, in order thence to educate him, the task becomes in the highest degree difficult for any fellow-creature, especially for the tutor of a prince ; because the external conditions of royalty differ from ours not in degree but in kind. Kingly government is totally different from any other; we only experience power over parts, not over the whole ; we see approaches to ourselves both from above and from below: the prince sees one; but the highest and the lowest servants of the state are to him equally distant from the throne, equally incapable of holding the sceptre. While common plants are contented with the common earth and air, the prince, like a plant of foreign growth, requires a peculiar soil, a southern aspect, and a hothouse. Therefore the choice of the royal gardener is all the more important. Fortunately the kingdom of education, at least, is an elective monarchy. Even the court — which formerly employed learned men as the fair Spaniards use glow-worms at night, only as glittering gems, but not as the Indians do fire-flies, as lights — regards the choice of a prince's tutor as a matter of sufficent importance to break it up into sects. Do you not remember the Schismatics and Separatists in the court of Flachsenfingen about the CHAP. I.] LEV ANA. 2S3 choice of t he prince's tutor ? I once related them to you on the verj' best authority, in the presence of the principal gover- ness of the royal children. You, dear Adelhard, were only selected by the father and mother for their child, so that no one should be able to say which of the four human beings was the most fortunate. But in Flachsenfingen the queen-mother and her party declared in favour of the flat, dull-gold, court preacher ; — the king and his adherents concurred in desiring to secure my services ; — the third party, that of the lord high chamberlain and his worn out favourite, the chief governess, all my declared enemies, unanimously voted for that genteel, nice, young man whom we all pretty well know, that wretched powder without report which every one previously avoided. So very wisely does a court know how to unite the happiness of the country with the good fortune of its own relatives, by seeking the former through the latter ! This is the reason why courtiers do not appear by any means so unselfish and honourable as they are. Just as the banker at a great gaming-table fastens to his hat the card (let us suppose it the ace of hearts) upon or against which he will not bet ; so the marshal by a golden star, and the governess by a golden heart, as symbols of light and love, showed which were the two cards on which they would never lose nor win anything. This is what many people call intriguing for the choice of the prince's tutor. Charles the Great, owing to his physical strengtli, was called an army : every prince, owing to his political power, may be regarded as a moral army ; and this army at first has no otlier generalissimo than the tutor. He alone may freely instruct and touch the mind, which, in after years, will neither experience nor suffer C(mtradiction. This task is more ea death, to one of the southern cities of Germany, he did not visit courts, balls princes and women : but machines, manufactories, soup-kitchens, mines, artists and thei/ 304: JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [FRAG. V. works, financiers and their tables — ah! why was he doomed so shortly afterwards to make the longest journey to the mo-t distant country? A noble prince who love-* his people can never tread that path too late. But, if your Friedanot must go on his travels before he ascends the throne, I would wish you to be ennobled and to accompany him. Every i oyal tutor should receive nobility from his connection with a prince, just as iron becomes magnetic by contact with a magnet, in order 'hat he may afterwards be employed at the dinner or card-table, when, otherwise, his place must be occupied by some one whose rank admits him to the royal table. How happy is a princeiss whose Orbilia and La plus Bonne is, from the commencement, of such high rank that she may ever remain near her ! " Turba medicorum perdidit Caesarem : " * this epitaph on Adrian is also true of the multitude of ** soul curers.'* Many of your regulations for princes may be readily guessed, because they must also have a place in the educa- tion of eveiy child ; only that qualities which the latter must use as small coin in every-day life, are required from princes as gold for the mint and for the adornment of the palace. In the first place I rank keeping his word. Princes rarely break their word, except to whole countries ; their own and foreign lands. The word given to one man, themselves perhaps excepted, they always keep, Chamfort remarks that, up to the ministry of the Cardinal de Lomeuie, tifty-six public breaches of faith were reckoned in Henry IV. These may readily be explained by the rarefying power of space, which, far more than time, immediately decomposes the strongest powers; as, for instance, electricity, attraction, philanthropy, freedom, and a promise. Distance, for instance, inconceivably diminishes British freedom even in Ii eland, as it fonuerly did in North America ; but at sea and in the cohmies, it is, by distance, rarefied to such a degree that only the quick eye of a captain or a nabob can distinguish it from absolute slavery. In the same way a promise is so weakened by distance that even a peace concluded a centary or so * ♦' The multitude of doctors killed Cfesar." tJHAP. I.] LEVANA. 305 6efore, by the naval powers of Europe, could not avert war from India. Physics, as already said, show the cause of this phenomenon. This fact, perhaps, renders a lecture- room and teacher for speaking truth more necessary to an heir-apparent. Indeed, this speech is quite as impor- tant as the Lusatian or Italian, which, according to the golden bull,* every fniure elector, king of Bohemia, and pfalz-graf of the Ehine, had to learn in his seventh year ; or even as the French, though no bull has declared that essential. Royal truthfulness towards his own and other nations is not only, as others have said, a monarch's highest policy, but also, and for that very reason, the most diffi- cult. Upright minds are like straight roads, which seem to the eye scarce half so long as those which wind artfully about ; but their true length is found by a nearer exa- mination. Only a prince who cherishes noble and well considered desires will choose to reveal them ; as it is only cut diamonds of the purest water which can be set so that the light may shine through. Under all treaties of war and peace there lies a higher bond of union than power — because without it they could not even be formed — it is reliance on a given word, on the power of character, not on land and sea forces. But in history, which else accurately lays before us from month to month the cost of the new triumphal arches for fresh victors, there is nothing more rare than an honour- able niche devoted to a king who speaks truly for the present, and prophesies truly for the future. lioyal truth- fulness presupposes force of character, resolute courage, and just strength of will. Finally, where this oak forest stands and grows around a throne, there is the ancient German sanctuary ; the throne within its shadow works miracles, and the people round its base pray to heaven for protection. You and I hear such a forest rustling so near our study that we could count its leaves. Baireuth, January 1806. I have again unpacked my goods because peace con • tinues ; sc that our meeting, as well as the review and * Aur. BulL 0. 30. § 2. I. t 306 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH KICHTER. [fEAG. V. ratification of my predictions, must be postponed to a more favourable season. In conclusion, and in jest, I append a few aphorisms on education suitable for insertion in albums, which I prepare from time to time for the various royal and noble tutors who visit my study, so as to have a few useful impromptu thoughts ready to be written down when they hand me their albums. The following thoughts have not yet been inserted in such books : — To form a brave man, educate boldly ! Brave painters alone, says Lavater, can hit a brave face. Not without reason do the rarest flowers borrow their names from princes. Power cannot have too gentle an expression. The look of a king is itself a deed. Conse- quently a king can choose whether he will all day kill or make alive. The sceptre should not be a rod of authority ; but, like a magnetic needle, should assume the form of a lily. It is easier, like the tragic Crebillon, to obtain the surname of the terrible, than, like Virgil, to merit the epithet of the maidenly. A flute lay side by side in his tent with Frederick the Great's baton of command. Let every prince regard this as an allegory.* He who mistrusts humanity is quite as often deceived as he who trusts men. The wicked and despotic favourite always advises a king to rule for himself, not to let others govern for him; to see and hear for himself (at least to see and hear the favourite), and not to be a mere repeater on which an external hammer strikes the time, but to be a church bell, which sounds with its own tongue, and which the favourite rings whether for funerals or weddings. Tutor ! Have at heart no work of your pupil so much as love of work : it is this he should learn by that. And, unless he learn to be a lover of work, he will in after * Since these four thoughts only express a fifth, which is the same they will be inserted in four different albums. CHAP. I.] LEVANA. 30? years (as Vopiscus tells us the Emperor Carimis did) keep a servant to write his signature ; or, if he write it himself, he will do so like that self-made slave of his own servants, Philip the Fifth of Spain. On the throne everything, even time— as in Basle — is wanted to be an hour earlier than it really is ; thought, consequently, long before reflection. Eoyal impromptus, as the winged seeds of action, are always dangerous ; they often make long diets and long judgment-days necessary, and have to count forced imposts instead of freely granted tributes. How many subjects has a hon mot killed ! How many suggestions of the wicked one have been acted on by haste ! He who needs proofs has but to inquire of the chief justice in history. What more excellent object, I ask, can a teacher set. before himself than to accustom his pupil never to say an important yes or no, never to express a like or a dislike, without taking an hour's respite to consider the question, request, or sin ? With such a letter of grace (moratorium) he might write himself a brevet of infallibility. But why speak I of princes ? Every one is in this position ; only that the high rank of monarchs fearfully increases the rolling, avalanche-like, consequences of every sound. And it is precisely in the higher ranks that men perversely attend more to deeds expressed in words — hon mots, impromptus, &c., than to words expressed in deeds — decretals, resolutions, &c. ; and take time to consider a jest, though not a serious matter. Let the teacher invert this inversion. . . . Dear Adelhard, I am myself this moment guilty of improvising ; so difficult is it to be avoided. For this last article for the album I really made for the letter ; the former would require it to be much more compressed. So powerful is the influence of the present moment ; one confounds letter, album, and book all together. Fare you well, dear Adelhard ; and, in this respect, fare better than I. . I Wished to add this apophthegm also: "Above all things inspire a prince with the taste for reading — not merely the inscriptions on triumphal arches and in illu- minations — but books and acts ;" but, if I am not mistaken, it i.s already written in your album. Cabinet secrets, like X 2 308 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [FRAG. T. the light of the fixed stars, reach us for the first time many years after their emanation ; but the secrets of the stud}'', like the light of the planets, never reach so far as the fixed stars. Yours, J. P. F. E. Postscript. — As there was no post, this letter to yoTi, excellent prince's tutor, has lain in my desk during the sale of the whole first edition of Levana ; it was printed, but not despatched : luckily, while preparing the second, a young tutor, dismissed from a certain conrt, visited me and promised to deliver you my letter. For the rest he curses the whole matter for hours every day, and declares he would almost rather be a prince than a prince's tutor ; for the one only spoils himself, whereas the tutor spoils others too. He openlj^ derides my whole letter to you, as a mere waste of paper and ink, and saj^s I have only for- gotten the principal thing, the so-called governor both of prince and tutor. He asked me to teach him " what use it was to be the very best of tutors, as a man must become the very worst if the prince's governor so choose ; who is regarded as the upper-house to the tutor's lower-house, or college rector to his inferior school." But, instead of waiting my instructions, he continued angrily : " The governors, who never permitted him even to be vice- governor to the prince, were as old in rank as in age, and consequently took precedence in every thing of him, who was only perfectly capable of all his duties ; so that the young prince regarded him merely as a subordinate, as a kind of school-fox whose master Eeynard was the governor. The word of a man who sat at the same dinner table with the prince was more esteemed by him and by the whole court, than the sermons of one who might only sit near him at the study table." I replied, that on this matter I would take the part of the men of the world. The schoolman has about as much relation to the nobleman as the Abbot Fowler, for instance, has to a fowl. As, according to Kant's observations, we soon grow weary of the most excellent human singing, but never of the perpetual singing of birds, because it is subject to no rule, and its variations are quite undeter- CHAP. I.] LEVANA. 309 mined ; so, the scholar, by the monotonous unity of his thoughts and discourses, always aiming at one end, soon drives to sleep ; whereas the courtier, flitting from one subject to another, engages the attention, just because he says nothing very definite, and because variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something. " A governor,"' continued he, " who only thinks ot king, court and nobility, and orders the prince to be educated only for these, will bar with the collars of his multitudinous orders all the havens into which a tutor would C(jnduct his pupil to the sound of silver flutes. He will throw in his teeth the accurate ' revision ' of his plan of education (none so good as that which is printed) ; and, if the tutored tutor think diflerently, he has only the choice of being frightened, or being angry." '' Truly, not bad ! " said I, '* for by this means the tutor will be educated to be tender and better than he can educate the prince. In the same way, cooks make poultry tender and tasty by putting them into a pond, oi- a turkey by throwing it from a considerable height before killing it — this has the effect of fright on them ; or they irritate them by whistling and shaking red cloths at them — which has the effect of rage." " We must then experience," concluded the tutor, ** what is the consequence if the governor can use the sceptre as a good school cane to the citizen-teacher ; I do not mean what the governor becomes (for he goes away like myself), but what the innocent prince becomes, in whom, placed as a young master between a flattering upper servant and a kneeling slave, no manly character can possibly be developed, — no bones grow." *' But,'' said I, " I do not see the evil of that. I myself know many people of rank whose whole inner man does not contain one whole bone, but who precisely resemble people struck by a thunder-bolt, in whom the lightning generally only breaks the bones, without in the smallest degree burning or injuring the external form. And so it is, my friend ! " As, however, we could neither of us quite agree, and I could not become perfectly serious, I think I nave 310 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH EICHTER. [FRAG. V, adopted a very sensible plan in sending him to yon with this postscript, so that you may either alter or ccmfirm his opinion. You must certainly know whether there is any difference among governors, and whether the course of the little prince may not occasionally describe an accurate ellipse round the two foci. Heaven grant that, and many other things too ! ( 311 ) SIXTH FRAGMENT. ON THE MORAL EDUCATION OF BOYS. Chap. I. Moral Strength, — Physical Strength. — Games of Hurting.— Injurionsness of Fear and of Fright. — Love of Life. — Insufficiency of the mere Passions. — Necessity of a youthful Ideal, § 101 — 108. Chap. II. Truthfulness, Charades, and Children's Plays, § 109—113. Chap. III. Education of the Afifections. — Means of arousing them. — Love of Animals, § 114 — 119. Chap. IV. Supplemental Appendix on Moral Education. — Various Consolatory Kules. — Stories of Parents for their own Children. — Children's Journeys. — Danger of a premature Feeling of Shame, and on the Modesty of Children, § 120—127. CHAPTER I. § 101. Honour, honesty, steadfast will, truthfulness, indifference towards threatening wounds and endurance of those inflicted, openness, self-respect, just self-appreciation, contempt for the opinion of the world, justice and per- severance — all these and similar words indicate only one half of the moral nature, viz. moral strength and elevation of character. The other half embraces all our connections with others ; the realm of love, gentleness, benevolence — in short, what may be called moral beauty. If the one seem to turn inwards, towards itself, the other outwards towards others ; the one to be a repelling, the other an attracting pole ; if the one regard an idea as holy, and the other rather esteem life to be so, yet boih are equally elevated above self, which is only the object of the animal propen^itie8, and of the sins against the twin stars of the heart ; for honour, as well as love, 312 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH EICHTER. [fRAG. VI. sacrifices selfishness. Moreover love does not seek and contemplate in another what it avoids in itself ; but it beholds and embraces therein the image of the divinity. We find God twice ; once within, once without ns ; within US as an eye, without us as light. Yet is it every- where the same ethereal fire, indifferent whether it spring up from without or within ; and, indeed, the one pre- supposes the other, and consequently a third which produces and unites both. Call it the Holy. In the spiiitual world there is properly no out and no in. Love is naturally the companion of true moral strength, as we ever find sweet fruits on strong branches ; weakness trembles like a Vesuvius only to destroy. Even so, pure love can not merely do all, but is all. § 102. But here we are only concerned with the difference of appearances, not with their foundations. The former show us man born and fitted out more for moral strength, or honour, and woman for moral beauty, or love. From our farmer position, " that woman does not divide and contemplate herself as man does," we might deduce the division of the two moral poles, with varying balance between both sexes, ascribing love to the female and strength to the male, because the former is more occupied with what is external to herself, but the latter in examin- ing what passes within himself. But why reason about facts ? This moral difference between the sexes is repeated, although in miniature, in every individual ; but more of this hereafter. We will now view the educational means of adapting the boy to his destination by developing moral strength of character. § 103. One age requires men in order to exisc, another in order to subsist ; ours needs both ; and yet education dreads nothing more than making boys manly, and, where possible, strives to unman them. Nurseries and schoolrooms are like altars in the temples which the CHAP. I.] LEV ANA. 313 Eomans dedicated to Pavor and Pallor (pale fear). As though the world were now too full of courage, teachers ordinarily engraft fear by punishments and actions, but only recommend courage by words. Not undertaking, but letting alone, receives the victor's crown. In Nestor's order of battle* the timid occupied the middle ranks ; it is so also in our states ; and more physical courage is found in the highest and lowest ranks than the scholar or the schoolmaster usually possesses. Hence the latter expects his boys to resemble the Iroquois, who think a hare is a deity ; and even endeavours to raise tlieiu to a place among these gods. The ancients, in their veneration for strength, forgot benevolence ; we err in the contrary direction. The effeminate teaching-class may, however, be excused by its disappointment ; for the coJirage of children, owing to their deficiency in counter- balancing prudence, readily turns to rashness and attacks teacher and fate. But let us remember that years do indeed increase light but not strength, and that it is easier to provide a pilgrim on life's journey with a guide, than to restore to him, like a statue, the legs and wings which have been removed lest he should run or fly away. We will, like warriors, begin with common courage, and l)roceed upwards to honour. § 104. The body is the coat of mail and breastplate of the soul ; so let this in the first place be hardened into steel by heat and cold. Let every father provide, as well as he can, a little gymnastic scliool round his house ; the very street in which the boy plays, runs, falls, climbs, and bids defiance, is something. Wounds got in the street a»e sooner healed and more wholesome than wounds got at school, and they teach better how to bear pain. Out of the wild English youth there grows a thoughtful member of Parliament ; as out of the early Roman robbers a virtuous self-sacrificing senate arose. The RDmans bled the rashly brave ; the schoolmaster's rod also lets blood ; • Horn. U. iv. 297. t'^14 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. TfRAO. VI. and the starving method, solitary confinement (fee, pales the remainder. Ao power should ever be weakened, — one cannot repeat this too often — but only its counterbalancing power strengthened : in squirrels the upper row of teeth often grows painfully long, but only when the lower one is lost. A rash twelve-year-old Dreadnought might soon enough be made thoughtful; you need but read through with him some anatomical or surgical book, but this remedy, like arsenic, is only to be used in the most desperate cases and in the smallest possible doses. Bodily weakness makes mental weakness ; and mental weakness leaves deeper, aye, perpetual, traces behind it : the broken arm is much sooner cured than the broken heart of a child. And, lastly, children are spoiled in two different ways in the young sick-room ; the healthy by severity, the sick by weak indulgence. Now the sick would be much better served by the mental excitement of pictures, little games on the pillow and tales, than by physical indulgences. 1 f health be the first step to courage, bodil}^ exercise is the second against pain. I'his in modern times is not only abandoned, but actually contradicted ; and with us the boy is fastened up, not that he may learn but that he may not learn to bear it, and that he may at once begin to confess. Detest- able method ! How can the torture-system of the punishing police so far confuse your ideas with regard to education, that you do not value the power of mental strength as opposed to physical strength, but consider firmness a repetition of the denounced fault? This is as egregious a mistake as Locke's advice to disgust children with card-playing by compelling them to practise it; for this official change, produced by disgust at the compulsory repetition of the game, would be a worse disease than that it cured. Must we not, in this place, severely attack another error in education — a most repulsive one, though concealed by the showy paint of custom — it is that of harshly punishing children before other children, in order to make them a so-called example? For either the child, as a cold observer, shares the sentiments of the passionate punisher and feels no compassion for the torture-wrung cries of his equal, no disgust at the repulsive sight of the cruelly used CHAP. I.J LEVANA. 315 victory of the strong over the weak, — and then, indeed, I know not what more his heart can lose, — or else the child experiences all the pain which the judgment-seat raised in the nursery inflicts, and so, as is the case with grown-up people at executions, thinks the punishment greater than the fault, — and then any advantage to be derived from the painful sight is lost; or, lastly, he at once pities and comprehends the punishment, and feels the greatest dread of such terrible pain, — and then you certainly do secure obedience, but you increase fear. In short, do not inflict severe punishments in the presence of children ; be satis6ed that their invisibility, coupled with what is related of them, will secure the advantages without the disadvan- tages. It would be much more desirable to establish exercises in bearing pain, schools of the cross in a stoic sense ; and indeed boys themselves have games of a similai- nature. Formerly in Mexico one child bound his arm to that ot another child, and placed a live coal between ; both con- tended who should longest bear the burning pain. In Montaigne's childhood the nobility consideied fencing- schools mean because, by their aid, victory no longer de- pended solely on courage. The ancient Danes did not even wink the eye at wounds in the face.* What was formerly attained by whole nations and, consequently, was not the gift of birth but of education, — this surely must be sufficiently easy to repeat in individuals. Never make lamentation over a child's hurt, but pass it off with a joke. If a liitle child runs to you to show its hurt, let him wait a little before he engages your eye or ear, and in the mean time say quietly to him, " I must first finish my writing," or " knit ofl" this needle." Or tell him to go and fetch you something ; nothing draws the thorn from the wound so soon as action- soldiers do not feel their wounds in the heat of battle. *' My nose is bleeding," says the youngest child in a doleful tone. " Oh I look at the pretty red blood, how it drops ; where does it come from ? There was none in your little nose just now," you say ; and the pain is forgotten in the inquiry * Bibliothbque uniTcrselle, xy. 385 316 JEAN PAUL FKIEDEICH KICHTEE. [fRAG. VI. — what is internal in what is external. Further : protect a child's ear even more carefully than his eye. The ear is especially the sense of fear; hence those animals which hear quickly are timid. As harmonj^ holds the heart en- tranced in delight, so does the scream of fear in horror. An inexplicable sound is the true night for fear. The eye becomes at last reconciled to every monstrous form, if it only remain sufficiently long before it ; but the abyss of sound does not become clearer, but more dreadful, by continuance. A little girl, to whom the colour of the chimney-sweeper had only seemed curious, received the first fright in her life from hearing the uninterrupted noise of his sweeping. Give therefore to every strange noise, such as that of the wind, some merry name. Our age is the first that has made it a duty to devise rules against that fear which disarms and fetters man- kind. In every child there lies, side by side with the jomantic hope of an infinite Heaven, the equally romantic dread of an infinite Orcus. But you hold this Orcus dreadfully open before the child if you give this ideal fear an object by naming such a thing. The author committed this error by saying to his children, in order to prevent their hating and fearing soldiers or other people, '* Only bad men are to be feared." Hereby their fear, previously scattered over various visible objects, was concentrated in the unchanging focus of a single invisible object; and they carried this fancied bug-bear with them everywhere, and saw it in every thing. In no emotion of the soul — not even in love — does fancy push its creative and ruling power so far as in fear. Children, else religiously be- lieving all their parents say, anxiously desire the word which is to arm them against ghosts, and yet, with that very dictum on their lips, succumb to imagination in their hearts. Further: children who have long since examined, and even themselves made, the object of their alarm, — a cloak, for instance, and a hat hung upon a stick — will yet run away from it with terror. So they fear less what has already hurt them than what their parents, either by looks or words, have mentioned with fear ; a mouse, for instance. Therefore, especially avoid and guard against all suddenness of speech, — such as CHAP. I.] LEVANA. 317 exclaiming in the night, " Look ! " or even " Listen ! " which alarms yet more — and of appearance or action ; for in that case the senses do not restrain, but only inflame, the fancy, and the reality is wildly confused by the ha-ty explanation. Thus, alarm during thunderstorms princi- pally arises from the rapidity with which the lightning momentarily reveals the dark sky to the straining sight. If the whole firmament remained one long flash we should fear it less. Do not merely spare children reading any painful stories, but also every verbal description of any unknown phj'sical suffering ; for in children of a lively imagination mental fear easily springs out of bodily fear, and this — which is never considered — even through dreams. These gigantic chaotic painters in the mind form, out of the little terrors of the daj', those monstrous masks of the Furies which wake and nourish the fear of ghosts which slumbers in every human being. We should attend far more to the dreams of children than to those of mature persons, especially on account of this difference, — that in ours resound the echoes of our childhood ; what then in theirs ? — Who has not ex|)erienced sudden presentiments, an inexplicable and perfectly unexpected fore-taste ot approaching good or ill fortune, wafted upon him like air from some mountain precipice? Or who in new countries, cocurrences, or men, has not sometimes found, deep within him, a mirror whereon, from old time, these very things were darkly pictured and beheld ? And to whom, in subsequent dreams and fevers, has not the same serpent form, the same mis-shapen tortuous monster, con- tinually re-appeared, of which, in his whole remembered life, he had beheld no archetype? Might not these shapes be buried remnants of old childhood's dreams which rise from the deep, like sea-monsters, in the night? Be careful to conceal your own grief about others' necessities or your own. Nothing is more infectious than fear and courage ; but the parent's fear is doubled in the child ; for where the giant trembles the dwarf must surely fall. The father especially should never come before his children with a melancholy, penitential face, or the ap- 318 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VI. pearaiice of mucli suffering, as if there were so much to I'ose in life that he could even lose himself: at most let him only point out a gloomy future, but not anxiety con- cerning it ; and at least let him have no other copies of his lamentations and " liber tristium " than one for his wife and friend. Yet the very opposite of this is most generally the case. It is in the house (as though every barricade and city wall must make people cowardl}^), in some hole in the shore, that the externally armed lobster casts his shell ; and it is in the nest with its poor little ones that the bold eagle moults, thus permitting them only to see its domestic cowardice, not its public courage. Eather let every one resemble the pastor Seider, who, in reading the newspapers, lamented that of all the printed accounts of his sufferings nut one was true. § 105. Since indifference to actual blows, and disregard of anticipated ones, mutually strengthen each other,* I hope I may continue to confound them without reproach. Courage does not consist in blindly overlooking danger, but in meeting it with the eyes open. Therefore do not attempt to make boys brave by saying " It will not hurt you," — for in that case the sheep would fight as bravely as the lion ; — but by saying more truly, " What is it ? Only a hurt." For you may safely reckon on a something in the human breast which no wounds can reach, on a steadfast celestial axle among the mutable earthly axles ; insomuch as man, unlike the beasts, has something more than pain to dread. There is a courage manifested against the future and the imagination, and also a courage manifested against the present and the imagination : the one is opposed to fear, the other to terror. If there must be the one or the other, fear is, for children, preferable to terror, but not so for men ! If fear, as the Cardinal de Eetz said, enfeeble and distort the understanding more than all the other * Not however exactly as one might assume ; if a boy only have a quick fancy he will fear the wounds of the future whilst he diaregarcU those of the present CHAP. I.J LEVANA. 319 emotions of the mind, terror entirely destroys it, and puts madness in its place. Fear may be imparted so slowly- and in so carefully measured doses, that it will rather act as an incitement than as a poison to thought and reso- lution. AVhereas terror — whether inspired by sight or sound — is a flash of lightning shivering the whole man, unarming and slaughtering him at one stroke. Chiarugi * shows, on the authority of Giasone, that children who have been brought up harshly and kept in order by images of -tenor frequently fall victims to insanity. One shock of terror may produce long-lasting fear ; but fear cannot give birth to terror, for its imagination, dwelling on the future, finds even its present there. With the exception of good health, there is no pre- servative from terror save acquaintance with its object it is produced only by what is new. The bravest may be terrified, as the Romans were by elephants, or as the bravest modem European might be by some strange gigantic beast-like form — dropped out of Jupiter, let us suppose — whose poisonous qualities and modes of attack he knew not. Then arm the young mind against the thunder-storms of accident by a lightning conductor ^rhich you yourself make. The present assembly hall for the sittings of col- leges and societies of learned men unfortunately helps them to pass through their sitting mode of life and death without becoming remarkably brave. It is a significant fact, that all important offices are marked by the appendage of a seat, — the Bench of judges and of bishops, the Chair of divinity, the Stool of prayer, the Seat of instruction, — and their reward is Rest in Abraham's bosom, or on the 'I'hrones of the twelve apostles. He who sits when attacked by an enemy loses his courage, as is shown by every regi- ment awaiting an attack: and we run away with our heels, where alone the Homeric Achilles was vulnerable. But even in modern times the runner would be brave if no inimical runner pursued him. No Napoleon could spend sufficient money in building golden bridges for a flying enemy. As a person can be really terrified only once by the • See hie work on Insanity, b. i. § 282. 320 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH EICHTER. [fRAG. Vt 8ame thipg, I think it possible to spatre children the reality by sportive representations of alarming circnm- stances. For instance : I go with my little nine-year-old Paul to walk in a thick wood. Suddenly three blackened and armed ruffians rush out and fall upon uh, because I had hired them for the adventure with a small thieves' premium the day before. We two are only provided with sticks, but the band of robbers are armed with swords and a pistol without bullets. Here nothing is of use but presence of mind and resolution. One is opposed to three (for Paul must be reckoned as nothing, though I call upon him to fight) ; but because I turn away the pistol so that it may miss me, and strike the dagger out of one of the thieves' hand with my stick, and seize upon it to attack the third, I hope that the ruffianly troop may be van- quished and put to flight by one honest man with his son's help. We pursue the routed army for a little distance, but 80on desist as many stray shots are fired ; and I main- tain a constant derision of the enemy's line, — which, like an orderly book-shelf, only shows the backs — so that even my little ally can conclude for himself how much courage alone is superior to numbers, especially of'villains, who, according to all experience, are seldom brave. But (I add in this second edition) all such games are of doubtful advantage, because of their falsity ; and only by repetition can they altogether lose the evils attendant even on a fright which ends in nothing. A great many tales of victorious courage are, perhaps, better means of arousing and strengthening that virtue. Other " cloak and dagger pieces," as Bouterwek tells us the Spaniards call their intriguing comedies, might be tried advantageously in the night, in order to bring the fancies, inspired by a belief in ghosts, to common everj^-day light ; at the same time I admit that there is always a deep-seated fear of this kind, which only God, or the next world, can thoroughly remove. Even the fear of storms cannot be altogether eradicated, at least by reasoning; the tranquillity, or, still better, the cheerful- ness of grown-up persons during them in the best cure. Since what is uncommon is most dreaded it may perhaps be numbered among the few advantages of a town-educa- CHAP. I.] LEVANA. o21 tion, that in it the eyo and ear of a child tecome in- diflereut to more objects than they can do in a village. In nothing, fear itself scarcely excepted, does a man make such rapid advances as in courage. Kight marches, the alliance of many boys — for company increases courage as well as fear — and finally the histories of true heroes, such as Charles XII. of Sweden, rivet the shield of courage more and more firmly on the breast. § 106. Permit me still to add a few ingredients to the tonic medicines of manliness, ore I pass to the mental moans of strengthening it. The following reflections may stand in the same relation as brandies to the top of a tree. What, from the Fakoor to tlio martyrs of Christianity, of love, of duty, and to those who sacrificed their lives for liberty, has vanquished pain, opinion, desire, torture? — One linling Idea in the heart. Implant, then, in the boy some such living idea, wore it but that of honour, and he is fit to boeomo a man. Every fear may be overcome by placing it clearly before him. Every child pictures to himself some position, sonic trade, as the work- and sorrow-dwelling of life , and some other (usually his father's) as the look-out spot or belvidero of hope. Take fnmi him those t>rvonoou8 charts of heaven and hell, which, like warrants of arrest, disarm and render hiui the prisoner of fear and of desire. Brinj;' him — not by dead listening, but by living observation— to a k iiowledgo of the happiness of the most various conditions, BO that he may look upon life as on the level ground of a pleasure encampment, where even the slave has pitched iiis tent. It \h much more important that a child should not causelessly drrud and a\'oiil any condition, liowovt>r fflocmiy, than that he whould not hopefully dcsiro and labour after any, even the most brilliant ; for hope leaves us more understanding and more happiiu»Hs than fcMir. In order to extract from the tear-press of com passicm some feeling and jience foV a beggar, you choose to ernsli u power which could sustain itself on the bc>ggar's palitt! What else do you do than cause the little shocked creature I, Y 322 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH KICHTER. {fRAG. -VI, to prefer making a hundred beggars in after life, to being one himself, and perhaps giving something to some other ? Always let oneness of purpose rule over a boy : he wanted, perhaps, to have, or to do, some certain thing ; oblige him, then, to take or to do it. And never command any thing twice. Raise up in him by every possible means the conception of a higher tribunal than that of feeling. If he desire any forbidden thing, do not move it further from but rather nearer to him, so that he may overcome that desire by the sense of duty. Place your command simply before him, without any attractive concomitants which may make it seem lighter than it is; for, by this delicate concealment of the nile, chance, which accustoms to nothing, is made master. The manner in which the command is obeyed is of infinitely more importance than the mere fulfilment of it. Neither veil a refusal, as mothers are too apt to do; perpetual concealments are impossible. Why will you not spare yourself by a plain No, and accustom your boy to cheerful resignation ? Quiet submission to arbitrary despotism weakens the character, but to necessity strengthens it ; be then a fate to your child ! A child's obedience, without other con- sideration, can be of no advantage to himself, for how if he obeyed all the world ? But it is the motive to it, as reverential loving trust, and the perception of necessity, which ennobles him. Those who are obedient only from fear become mechanical automata, hypocrf+es, flatterers, and are totally ungovernable when behind the back of their drivers. You bend (or break) the young mind if, before the age of insight into political inequalities, you teach it to paj' other respect than what is due to every human being and to age ; unfettered by order-ribbons, blind to stars and gold, let the child regard both the servant and the master of his father with equal respect. A child is by nature a Diogenes to every Alexander, and a gentle Alexander to every Diogenes ; let him continue so ; never let enervating humility towards rank approach him. Only great objects can worthily occupy a boy's heart ; and what, except knowledge, can fill it better than tixe CHAP. I.J LBVANA. 323 love of his country, even thongli broken in the diamond- mortar of the present age ? This holy flame should be fanned in all schools, but certainly not after the method of Tyrtaeus, that is, by enthusiasm for a decrepit and justlv fallen state, but by inspiration of the " Hermann's Battle " and " Order of Fire " of Klopstock. However, I scarcely expect this from the old humanists, who, in great poems, take most pleasure in that which is most palatable in the elephant — the feet. No science has so many teachers as the science of happiness, or pleasure ; as if this had not already planted its throne in the hearts of cats, vultures and, in short, of all other beasts. Will 3'ou then teach what the beasts know ? Shall the human mind, like a Centaur, enter the world of mind with a body bearing the marks of the spur ? For what reason— save a bad one — are the selfish excesses of children more indulged than those which display obstinacy, the love of eating more than the love of quarrelling, as if the teeth for tearing and those for • hewing were not equally important? If you seek to inspire reverence for pure Worth, Justice, and Religion by any other means than the simple forms of these children of God, — were it merely by showing as an appendage some advantage thence derivable to the animal propensities, instead of teaching that they are due sacrifices to those goddesses, — then have you sullied the pure spirit, and made it little and hypocritical. You, like the cold north, have suffered the lions of the south to shrivel up into cats, its crocodiles into lizards. If life is a battle, let the teacher be a poet, who may animate the boy to meet it with needful songs. Ac- custom him to regard his future, not as a path from pleasures (though innocent) to other pleasures : nor even as a gleaning, from spring time to harvest, of flowers and fruits; but as a time in which he must execute some long }>lan : in short, let him aim at a long course of activity, not of pleasure. Enjoyment soon wearies both itself and us : effort, never. That man is happy, for instance, who Vjvotes his life to the cultivation of an island, to the liscoverv of one that is lost, or of the extent of the ocean. In London it is he who was bom rioh, not he who has Y 2 824 JEAlN' PAUL FEIEI>EICH EICHTEK. [FEAG. VI. made himself rich, that commits suicide ; and, on the other side of the picture, it is not the poor m ai, but he who has become poor, that kills himself. The miser grows old enjoying rather than wearied of life ; but the heir who comes into possession of his active gains sinks into ennui. So I would rather be the court gardener who watches and protects an aloe for fifteen j-ear.s, until at last it opens to him the heaven of its blossom, than the prince who is hastily called to look at the opened heaven. The writer of a dictionary rises every morning like the sun to move past some little star in his zodiac ; a new letter is to him a new year's festival, the conclusion of the old one a harvest-home; and, since after each capital letter the whole alphabet follows successively, the author on his paper may perhaps frequently celebrate on one and the same day a Sunday, a Lady-day, and a Crispin's holiday. Do not fear the rise of the sentiment of honour, which is nothing worse than the rough husk of self-esteem, or the expanded covers of the tender wings which elevate above the earth and its flowers. But, to raise and en- noble that honour of the individual into honour of the race, and that again into honour for the worth of mind, never praise him who has gained a prize, but those who rank below him ; give the honourable title, not as a dis- tinction for the steps which have been mounted, but as a notification of neighbourhood to what is higher; and, lastly, let your praise afford more pleasure because you are pleased than the enjoyment of the distinction gives. § 107. If man resemble iron in his strength, he also, by the inflammability of his passions, resembles that metal in connection with sulphur, at whose touch the hot bar of iron dissolves in drops. Does mere passion give strength ? As certainly as a Parisian revolution gives freedom, or a comet bright comet-lighted nights ; only they pass away again. The most powerful men of antiquity, the rulers or judges of their age, and the examples of all other ages, ever sprung from the Stoic school ; passions served CHAP. I.J LEVANA. 325 them only as supports during storms, nc t as the oeam of a balance ! As with the strength, so it is with the light which passions, according to the declaration of Helve tius, ought to throw upon their objects ; it is, forsooth, just as Cha- teaubriand says, that in storms rocks shine with the foam of the waves, and so warn oflF ships : — very dear, and very changeful, light-houses ! Admit your boy, then, as much as possible into the Stoic school ; and that less by instruction than by the example of true Stoics of all ages. But that he may not mistake the Stoic for a lethargic Dutchman, or even a stupid savage, let him see that the true inner fire of the breast glows most intensely in those men who manifest thix)ugh life a steadfast will, and not, like the slaves of passion, various isolated ebullitions and desires : and name to him such men as Socrates and Cato, who were animated by a constant, but therefore tranquil, inspiration. § 108. This steadfast volition, which tranquillises every mental tumult, does not presuppose any mere single object, but the grand final aim of life— a high ideal — which is the central sun of all its revolutions. It serves, therefore, to produce a brave or great life ; not a great or brave indi- vidual action : of this, indeed, ever}'- weakling is capable. And so it never presents the spectacle of a lonely moun- tain, though there are such upon the earth, but it resembles those continuous chains of mountain-like clouds we see in the sky. An unchanging will can only aim at what is universal, at what is divine, be it freedom, or religion, or science, or art. The more divided the will is, the more is it liable to be disturbed by the outer world. As man — in opposition to the beasts, which only apprehend the single individuals presented to their senses — extends and resolves the known world into various species, and his thoughts into categories, 80 does the ideal concentrate the desires in one general all-embracing effort. This ideal can be imparted by no education — for it is 326 JEAN PAUL FKIEDRICH EICHTER. [PRAG. VI. our very inmost self — but it must be presupposed, and so maybe animated by all. Life is kindled only by life; and the highest life can only be called into existence in a child by example, whether present or historical, or, which unites both, by poetry. The present living time cannot so easily purchase, or find, great men as littL^ tin figures for children. But the distant history of the universe can furnish them to us : — we need but call to mind the soul-stirring contempt of life displayed in wars for freedom which would have immortalised Plutarch, had he been its historian, as cer- tainly as his ancient heroes ; — -but it has found no Plu- tarch. Greatness, if not misrepresented, is yet forgotten ; and so, in the midst of the best present time, we yet need the mighty past, as birds of passage do the moonshine, to fly into warm countries. Parents and teachers and a few acquaintances are, unfortunately, placed before the growing boy instead of the saints' images of the ideal — bad and useless ! A lawgiver, or any man, who daily in the child's presence changes from dressing gown to dress coat, can never arouse that purest sentiment (such Chateaubriand considers wonder) in whose heights all the stars of the child's ideal move and shine. If children must pass behind the light of fair examples, why, why, should you give them gloomy instead of glorious ones ? But Clio, the Muse of the past, stands by you, and calls her father Apollo to her assistance. Only fill the boy's mind with the glorified world of heroes, with lovingly painted pictures of great men of every kind, and his in-born ideal will not first be called to life in the midst of that work-a-day ideal which also sleeps in every one. So let every poetic ideal shine free and bright before him ; his eye will not thereby be blinded to two greater ideals, — to that which his own conscience commands him to be, and to the idea of God. The educator, Campe, rightly recommends the illumined hemisphere of the present human race to be turned towards children : but certainty not that they may thereb}' learn patience towards the mediocre — impatience were better — but that the glory of the world, supposing it to come from C^IAP. I.l LEVANA. 327 dew-ying and stealing, (which, as an acted lie, deprives of honour though murder does not) and a box on the ear, which the ancient German dreaded more than a wound, are brought into close connection by our language in its proverbs: and our near relatives, the English, know of no more abusive epithet than liar. The German tournaments were closed to the liar as well as the murderer .f I grant, however, that in the greatest of all tournaments, war, the greatest lying opened the lists of knightly exercise in war to a prince with whom no true treaty or peace could be made. Can this abhorrence of false words be merely grounded on the violation of mutual rights and confidence, and the injury arising from broken contracts ? It is contradicted by the fact that we more readily pardon lying a-ctions than lying words. Action, mimicry and silence lie far oftener than the tongue, which men endeavour as long as possible to preserve pure from the hateful perpetration of a lie, the plague-spot of the inner man. Heavens ! are we not already accustomed, without knowing it, to innu- merable fictions of law and of poetry — to political secret articles, mesne tenures, vice-men, masters of ceremonies, comedians and rehearsals of comedies, false hair, false teeth, false calves, and many other things of a similar kind ; and yet are we thereby in the smallest degree less shocked when a man utters a deliberate lie ? What de- ceptions there are everywhere, from the otherwise lie- hating London, where three-fourths of the current-money is false,i to Pekin, where wooden hams are sold wrapped up in pig's skin ! § Since an honourable soldier and * History of the German Nation, i. 66. t Schmidt's History of the Germans, vol. iv. J Colquhoun. § Grosier. CHAP. II.J LEVANA. 331 srentleman is less ashamed of a fraud and a bankruptcy than of a lie, at the bare reproach of which he will shoot himself -and since men of the world, and even moralists, permit themselves ambiguity of action rather than an actual lie — and since, finally, no blush is caused by any sin so burning as that produced by a lie — can words be something higher than deeds, the tongue than the hand ? These questions cannot be perfectly answered by the mimic ambiguity of actions, compared with the simplicity of speech; for actions are not always ambiguous, and men will often consider before speaking decidedly, when they would not before acting. Men are not ashamed to under- mine and bear ill-will towards other men, but they are ashamed openly to tell a lie. § 111. What is it that makes it so unholy ? It is this : two individual beings are stationed with regard to each other as upon different islands, and locked up within prison-bars of the bones, and behind the curtain of the skin. Mere motion shows me only life, but not its internal cause. The animated eye of a Raffaelle's Madonna often speaks to us from the canvas, which yet houses no mind ; wax figures are hollow; and the ape, our mocking image, is dumb. Jn what glorified form, then, does the human soul re- veal itself? In speech only; in reason thus made m^n; in this audible freedom. I speak of universal innate language, without which all its peculiarities, such as modes of verbal expression, were neither comprehensible nor possible. Since instinct and mechanism can imitate all other signs of life, it is by speech only that the freedom of the creative thinker in a free world of thought is re- vealed to another ; and this herald and ambassador (Bath- kol) * of freedom lays the foundations of morality by announcing individuals, like kings, to one another. The fetters of the tongue are the fetters of the soul ; and thero are no customs save the customs of language. The testa- Bath-kol, Hebrew, " Daughter of the Voice," which is to say, the Divine revelation after the cessation of the revelation through the prophets. 332 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VI. ment of the soul is opened by tlie mouth, and its last will made known. It is by the present conversion of mobile speech into quiet writing and painting, by this strict imprisonment of the breath of the soul, that both the power of language and the blackness of a lie are visibly diminished. For, since every thing is but a sign, it follows that every sign can be again signified even to infinity. But now if a fellow-being, another living soul, come to me and utter a deliberate lie, how annihilating ! His soul has fled away from me and left but its fleshly house behind ; what he then says, since it is not the soul which speaks, is as meaningless as the wind which, with all its howling, expresses no pain. A word often effaces or explains an action ; but the reverse scarcely ever occurs. It must be a long course of action which will remove the thorn from one word, or restore the trusted use of the tongue. The whole enchanted palace of a man's thoughts is rendered invisible by the single blast of a lie, for one lie is the mother of all lies. What can I say to him who is, or carries about with him, his own talking machine, and may have thoughts quite different from those ho sounds on his machine ? Moreover, he gives me — what is no partial but a universal injury — instead of my soul, a machine ; instead of my truths, falsehoods ; and breaks down the bridge of mind, or at least converts it into a 1 ridge which he can let down for himself, but draw up y gainst others. § 112. And now back to our dear children ! During the first five years they say neither what is true, nor what is false — they merely talk. Their talking is thinking aloud ; and since the one half of thought is frequently a yes, and the other a no, and both escape them (though not us), they seem to lie when they are merely talking to themselves. Further : at first they find great pleasure in exercising their new art of speech, and so they often talk nonsense only for the sake of hearing their acquisitions in language. They frequently do not understand some word that you have said — little children, for instance, often confuse to- da}^ to-morrow, yesterday, as well as numbers and degrees CHAP, n.] LEV ANA. 333 of comparison, and so give rather a mistaken than a false repl)'. Again, they use their tongues more in sport than earnest, as may be seen in the long discourses they hold with their puppets, as a minister or an author does with his ; and they easilj^ ^PP^y this sjDortive talking to living people. Children always fly to the warm sunny side of hope ; if the bird or the dog have gone away, they will say, without any further reason. It will come back again. And, since they cannot altogether separate their hopes, that is their fancies, from copies or truths, their own self- deception assumes the appearance of a lie. For instance, a truth-speaking little girl related to me frequent appear- ances of the infant Christ,* and what he had said, done, &c. It is worthy of consideration whether children, when they poetise a lie, do not often relate remembered dreams, which must necessarily be confounded by them with real occurrences. To this class belongs that talkative teazing and joking f often seen in eight or ten year old boys, which arises from superabundance of animal spirits. In all these cases, whc?n the form of a lie is not to be shown in any dark glass, say merely, — " Don't talk non- sense, speak seriously." Finally, an untruth about what is to come is often confounded with an untruth about what has hjippened. Kow if, in the case of grown-up men, we do not consider the breach of an official oath, having reference to the future only, equally culpable with the black perjury which relates to the past, we should in a still greater degree in the case of children, before whose little ken time and space are magnified and to whom a day is as inscrutable as a year to us, clearly distinguish between the untruth- fulness of promi^ics and the untruthfulness of statements, something very different, and much worse, is the narra- tive-lie which seekw to gain some future thing by lying. Truthfulness, which would offer even a bloody sacrifice' * The infant Christ is, in Germany, feigned to be the sender of the presents which adorn the Christmas tree. — Trans. t For the true liar seldom jokes, and the true wit does not lie, from the sharp open Swift back to Erasmus, who even experienced a physical antipathy to a liar, as also to fish. — Pabavicini, Singularia di Viru Claris., Cent, il 38. S34 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH RICHTEE. [fEAG. VT. to its word as its word, is a godlike blossom on an earthly plant ; therefore, it is not the first but the last virtue in order of time. The simple savage is full of deceit, both in words and actions ; the peasant, under the in- fluence of some trifling danger, will tell a lie about what is past ; but he considers it dishonourable to tell a pro- spective lie, and keeps his word. And yet you can require in a child, whom you have yet to educate, the last and noblest fruits of truth? How much you err is proved by the fact, that lying children — all other circum- stances being equal — have grown up into truthful men : I appeal to the Eousseau's ribbon-lie of every conscience. There are, however, two decided lies with regard to the two times ; — no other lies are possible than either those which look forward to the future or backward to the past. The flrst is seen when the child endeavours to secure himself some booty by lying words or deeds ; the second, when he denies, through fear, his own actions. What is to be done in both these circumstances ? § 113. What is to be done before they occur? That is the question. The child, blinded and, as it were, imprisoned by his own existence, acquires his first knowledge of morality by observing others ; and only perceives the hatefulness of a heard lie, not of one spoken by himself. Show him, then, the lofty throne of truthfulness in others, compared with the abyss of their falsehood ; be what you desire him to be ; and frequently repeat th^t you do even the most indiff'erent things because you had previously said you would. It has a powerful effect on the little heart if he occasionally hear his father, who seems to him a kind of free universal monarch, complain ; — but mark, it must only be in true cases, for truthfulness in the child cannot grow at the expense of truthfulness in the parents — that, for instance, he would rather not go out with him, but, having promised to do so, he must now unwillingly keep his word. If the child have promised something, remind him C5IIAP. II.] LEVANA. 385 frequently of it as the time approaches, but without using other words than " you said so," and at last compel him to the performance. But i:*^ he have done something, you cannot be too sparing in your inquiries, which may easily become so painful. The younger the child is the fewer questions you ought to ask, the more ought you to seem all-knowing or remain ignorant. Do you not consider that you apply a fiery trial, such as Huss and other martyrs have endured, to children— to whom a threaten- ing father is a penal judge, a prince and a fate, his rod a Jove's thunderbolt, and the next questioning moment an eternity of hellish torments — when, by your concealed anger and the prospect of punishment after confession, you place them in the dangerous position of choosing whether they shall obey instinct or an idea ? To truth belongs freedom ; the criminal stands without fetters during trial ; and man, the reverse of Proteus, speaks the truth when free. The more free the education, the more truthful is the child. All truth-loving ages and nations, from the German to the British, have been free ; lying China is a prison, and romanizare (romancing) meant lying when the Eomans were slaves. At the same time do not let the remission of punish- ment be the incitement and reward of truth : an act of indemnity which can as little make the child good and true as escaped suffering the unpunished thief. If you must inquire, use affectionate words, and apply to the lie the pain you would spare the child. But if a lie be proved against the child, solemnly utter the judgment " guilty of lying," with a shocked tone and look, with all the horrror due to this sin against nature and the Holy Ghost, and inflict the punishment. The only punishments I would permit for lying are such as affect the honour, and can be removed as solemnly, suddenly and completely as inflicted, so as not to lose their effect by gradual diminution. The Iroquois blacken the faces of those who celebrate their heroes with lying songs. The Siamese sew up the lips of lying women, as if they were wounds I have nothing to say against the blackening; on the contrary, 1 have myself occasionally punished a lie Beverely by marking a spot of ink on the brow, which 336 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH KICHTER. [fRAG. VI. was not to be washed off without permission, and which eat deeply into the conscience. But I am more in favour of the Siamese plan of closing the lips, I mean of forbidding speaking to those who have spoken wickedly. The same principle which led the ancient Germans to cut out the tongues of the Roman advocates sends the misused member, which serves the mind worse than the stomach, into the convent of La Trappe. I think this punishment which petrifies the tongue, as Paul did the serpent at Malta, is juster, lighter and more definite than that which Kousseau and Kant would inflict on a lying child ; namely, not to believe him for a time, which only means to seem not to believe him. For in this case the judge himself lies during the punishment for lying : and will not the little culprit arrive at the knowledge of this pretence by his consciousness of speaking the truth ? Moreover, how and when will you make the necessary return from disbelief to confidence ? At the same time, Kant's punishment may occasionally ha\e a beneficial tendency in the case of grown-up daughters. Never tell any child under six years old to conceal anything, even though it were a pleasure you were planning for some one you love. The clear sky of child- like open-heartedness must not be covered even by the morning glow of shame ; and your instructions will soon teach him to add secrets of his own to yours. The heroic virtue of silence requires for its practice the powers of ripening reason. Keason teaches us to be silent; the heart teaches us to speak. For this and other reasons I consider it wrong, at least for the first five years, to forbid a child to ask for any thing ; especially if the mother append the poisonous sugar of a promise to give it afterwards. For, are wishes sins? or is the confession of a wish a sin ? During the silence attached to the gift will not a longing for enjoyment and reward, and the power of dissimulation, be maintained and fostered ? And is it not much easier to give an entire refusal after the short question than after the long wait- ing f This mistaken command arises from the maternal inability to utter an immediate and decisive " no." Do not despise all kinds of little helps. For instance, UHAP. n.J LEVANA. 337 do not press the child for an immediate answer ; a lie easily escapes from haste, and must then be supported by another. Give him a little tim-e for reflection before he speak. Further, remember in your most indifferent pro- mises and declarations — and all the more because they are indifferent to you — that children have a better memory than you about all things, but especially for and against you, and that you must protect them from the dangerous appear- ance of your own innocent over-hasty untruthfulness. The author has occasionally asked himself whether children's sense of truth may not be injured by the acting of charades and little comedies. Besides the necessary excitement of instant creation, children's charades have also this advantage over children's comedies, — that mere charades are only a higher imitation of the puppet games which children, even at an earlier age, played extempore with their dolls and their companions without any injury to truthfulness ; as if, even then, they would take refuge from the cold winds of real life behind the shelter of imaginary life. In charades the child lives, — at onco poet and player — in a strange character, it is true, but still not in a borrowed one, and uttering the words prompted by the eager moment. In plays he coldly learns by heart the representation (simulatio) of a character and certain words, in order afterwards to give a lively repre- sentation of both. Truth has also this advantage in cha- rades ; that the child must at all events reply from his own mind to the changing questions of the time ; whereas, in a learnt comedy, ho brings with him every answer prepared for weeks. And since even great actors do not consider the advantage to be gained by pure universal human nature, without regard to artistic effect, as the matter of chief importance, we should exempt children from an exercise in which the advantage is more doubtful than the injury. Our ancestors magnified every lie into perjury by always pointing out to children the universal presence of God : and why should not this warning, which converts every promise into an oath and doubles the sin while rendering it more difficult of commission to a conscience alive to the Divinity, be still ield up to children ? I. z 338 JEAN PAUL PRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VI. Finally, since truthfulness, as a conscious virttie and sacrifice, is the blossom, nay, the pollen, of the whole moral growth, it can only grow with its growth, and open when it has reached its height. You have otAj to keep away weeds while you give it freedom, save it from over- powering temptations, and forbid all soul-bending customs (such as obliging a child to return thanks for a whipping, and to make compliments to strangers). CHAPTER III. EDUCATION OF THE AFFECTIONS. § 114. I SAID, in the htindred-and-first section, that love is the second hemisphere of the moral world, that it turns to what is external, as honour does to what is internal, and so forth. The holy essence of love has been fathomed neither by the fraternity of novelists who, like selfish women, mingle regard to self with the beloved object, nor by merely intellectual philosophers, who view its depth partly as an instinct utterly without and below their categorical imperative (law of morals), and partly as mere justice, a kind of rational regard ; to such men love and poetry seem a pair of superfluous wings dis- figuring the useful arms behind which they are placed. Only Plato, Hemsterhuis, Jacobi, Herder, and a few like them, have brought to the love of wisdom (philosophy) the wisdom of love. He who called love the positive law of morality, will at least not be condemned by one great man — by Jesus Christ, the founder of the first religion of love in the midst of a Judaism inimical to all other nations, and an age inimical to philanthropy. But the essence of love — this all-sustaining deity, the true divine unity of all, in which the individual soul feels more than it comprehends — demands another place for exa- mination. CHAP. III.'I LEVANA. 339 § 115. Love is an innate, but variously apportioned, power and warmth of the heart ; there are cold and warm blooded souls as well as bodies. Many are born knights of the Love of their neighbour,* as Montaigne ; many are armed neutrals against humanity Whether this power be a holy burning bush, or only a single kindling spark, edu- cation must care for it in two ways, by protecting and by developing it. By protecting it I mean this. The child begins with selfishness which affects us as little as that of animals ; because the soul, darkly hidden under its various wants, cannot yet feel its way to another, but incorporates others, so to speak, with itself. In so far the child finds nothing lifeless without, any more than within, itself; it spreads its soul as a universal soul over every thing. A little girl of two years old — and all children do the same — personified other things than those I mentioned in the earlier part of this work : she said, for instance, of the door which was opened, " It wants to go out." — " I will kiss my hand to the spring." — " Is the moon good ? and does it never cry ? " This animation of all lifeless things, which is peculiar to children, is another reason why we should restrain them from ever harshly alluding to au inanimate object. § 116. Love in the child, as in the animal, exists as an instinct ; and this central fire frequently, but not always, breaks through its outer crust in the form of compassion. A child is often indifferent, not merely to the sufferings of animals and to those of persons unconnected with himselt (except when the cry of pain finds an echo in his own heart), but even to those of relatives. Innocent children will frequently find pleasure in standing on the place where another is to be punished. A second observation, founded on experience, is, that boys, when approaching • The order of knighthood to which I allude, was founded by th« (^een of Charles III. of Spain. 2 2 1340 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH EICHTUK. [FRAG. VI. near to manhood, show the least affection, the most love of teasing, the greatest destnictiveness, the most selfish- ness and cold-heartedness ; jnst as the coldness of the night increases twofold shortly before the rising of the sun. But the sun comes, and warms the world ; the super- abundance of power becomes love : the strong stem encloses and protects the pith; the teasing lad becomes the affectionate young man. 1'he other observation of childish heartlessness, recorded above, vanishes in the very opposite quality of tenderness, so soon as the visible pain of the culprit, by its increase, affects the child; every fresh wound makes a tearful eye. Consequently, there is not so much need to ingraft the buds of affection, as to remc e the moss and briars of selfishness which hide them trom the sun. Every body would gladly show affection, might he or dared he but do it. Wherever a pulse beats, a heart reposes in the back ground ; if there be but some little impulse towards love, the whole essence of love lies behind it. But you plant the selfish weed, instead of eradicating it, if, in the presence of children, you pass contemptuous, though just, judgments on your neighbours, or even your town. How else can the child learn to love the world than by learning to love what is daily around him ? And can we love what we despise ? Or will your sermons warm him into love for the objects you have taught him to scorn ? Since every distinction of your children above their neighbours, whether it consist in position, behaviour, or even more brilliant insti uction, reminds them of them- selves at the expense of others, this distinction very soon and very easily passes into hatied. Never say to your children that other children are ill brought-up. I have frequently seen whole families converted, by similar thoughtless and perverse actions, into watchful and blockading troops of hatred ; whole houses built full of pouting corners, where every child, full of itself, regarded its own demands as the weights, those of others as the goods to be weighed, and expected universal love and admiratior.. If a large town have the injurious effect on children's hearts of compelling them to assume the neu- CHAP, ni.] LEVANA. 341 trail ty of great people, because so many of whcm they are ignorant, and to whom they are indifferent, constantly pass before them, much more must a village harm them jf they hate and despise as many people as they know, that is to say, every body. The simple command, " Forgive the sinner," means with children. Do not regard him as one : you will succeed better if you teach them to distinguish the guilty accomplice — self, from its stains ; to judge the deed, not the doer ; in order especially, by the comparison of things and rights, to prevent, or to exalt, the comparison of persons. Praise the action, not the child. Parents mention their children too often by name. Do not say, *' Ah, the good little Louisa ! " but say, " That is good," — or, at most, " You are as good as Mary." § 117. But while setting forth the repression of selfishness as the one thing needful for exciting kindliness to others, we must observe — as is just — that love requires nothing, save not to be obstructed. This leads us to the second means of maintaining and exciting love : it is this — place another being in sufficiently close and living contact with your child and he will love it ; because man is so good that the devil, so to speak, has only carved and placed a black frame round the divine image. The stem of the individual heart nourishes with the same sap its own branches and those which are ingrafted on it. The means of exciting love consist in identifying the child, as it were, with the life of others, and in reverence for life under every form. Concerning this transposition into extraneous life, by which alone the goodness of our nature can unfold all its love, little needs here be printed because I have already printed much about it* Individuals, yea, whole nations, have often died without having once even thought of themselves in any other position than their own ; how difficult, then, must it be for the child to place himself in * la the Life of SiobenkiM, Book L 342 JEAN PAUL FEIEDKICH KICHTER. [fEAG. VI. the position of others ! Man nsually opens himself to the reception of another's nature only when, in the contest between two other persons, he must transpose himself from the one into the other ; but not, when he is a party- concerned in the contest, by placing himself in the position of his opponent. Moreover, this representative method of viewing our neighbour is a kind of intuition, and, consequently, not always in our own power. I do not attempt to decide whether possibly older children may not be led to attain this intuitive perception at an earlier period than they else would by certain games ; where one child, for instance, assumed the name and imitated the act'ons of another; or, by coloured pictures calling to mind similar situations. But there is something else which may be done to attain this end with better hope of success. § 118. It is this : Teach a child to consider all animal life sacred — in short, give him the heart of a Hindoo, not the heart of a Cartesian philosopher. I here speak of something higher than compassion for animals, though of that also. Why has it been long re- marked that children's cruelty to animals predicts cruelty to men, as the Old Testament sacrifices of beasts fore- shadowed the New Testament sacrifice of a man ? It is certain that, unless associated with other things, the little human being can only sympathise with those sufferings which speak in tones similar to his own. Consequently, the unusual cry of a tortured animal sounds to him only like the strange and amusing howl of the inanimate wind ; but, as he sees life and voluntary motion, and even attri- butes them to inanimate forms, he sins against life when he separates them as though they were but machinery. Life itself should be sacred; every life, irrational as well as any other. And does the child, in fact, know of different kinds of life? Or is the heart, beating under bristles, feathers, or hard wing-covers, therefore any the less a heart ? Permit me a few words about the love of animals, and universal reverence for life ! CHAP, ni.J LEVANA. 343 Once, when man, a new and fresh creature, lived in the full world where one stream flows into another, he recog- nised in every thing the universal life of the Godhead, resembling an infinite tree of life which spreads the lowest insects, like roots, into the earth and sea, stands firm and strong with a trunk of huge powerful beasts, shoots into the air with boughs full of waving leaves, and finally puts forth men, — its tender blossoms — towards the sky. Then had not arisen that stupid human egotism which thinks that the whole animal kingdom, the peopled seas and de- serts full of all their various happy living creatures, were given by God to men as tributary beasts, Michaelmas geese and tithe hens for their stomachs. The earth, Kepler's animal, had not yet become the metallic cow and the Balaam's ass of little man. But the old vanished world — some remnants of which are yet visible in eastern India — finding more life and more divinity in the flower, fast chained by its roots, than we now do in the free-moving beast, worshipped, in animal arabesques, in the living, moving, distorted images of the human form, the infinite Eaffaelle who perfected man. The forms of animals, repulsive to us, revealed to them the veil of Isis, or the Moses' covering of a deity. Hence the lower, but wonder- ful, beast* was worshipped much sooner than the human being ; hence the Egyptians crowned human bodies with the heads of animals. The more childlike, siniple and pious a nation, the greater its love of animals. In Surat there is a hospital for animals. The hero who had taken Nineveh saved it from destruction because of the multitude of its animals. The mercifulness of the Jews "f towards animals was rewarded with long life. Even the punish- ment of animals, if they had participated with men in any crime, the thunders of excommunication hurled against them, and the weighing of their designs J in inflicting punishment, show the early regard felt for these eighth parts, and likenesses, of man. The Indian adoration of Vide Meiners. f Michaelis, Mosaic law, v. iii. X An ox which, among the Jews (according to tlie Gemara), was put to death for killing a Jew, but left unhurt after killing three heathens, was equally unpunisheil if he aimed at goring a heatiien but killed a Jew. — Mischna, 6. iJafa kama, c. 4. 344 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [fRAG. VI. vegetable life passed into Greece under the form of Hama- dryads and other deities dwelling in trees, and into the north under the form of punishment to all who injured trees. I have often pictured to myself situations which would remove the common daily view of animals which, like mis-shapen human bodies, have fallen on to our globe from other worlds producing different forms. For instance ; I have fancied an uninhabited island on which one man, nourished only by the bread fruit tree, had seen no living thing, nothing but waves and sky and his own reflection in the water, and from which he was suddenly transported to a country peopled with animated beings. What an enchanted island full of embodied sprites and fairies ! To the islander who knows no other form than his own, a hairy monkey grinning at him from a bough would seem a wicked spirit, or a misshapen man. The elephant approaches, — a shapeless, living mass ; a whole family compressed into one huge two-eyed body, — a walk- ing island of flesh : the lion comes like anger : the horse flies like victorious pride : little mad sprites, red, green, yellow, and six footed, flutter about the island. A glorious wonder drops from the clouds, in which the two strong useful human arms are changed into burni shed-gold hair or feathers, and its lips drawn out into a horn. Grey shapeless substances, with scarce formed limbs, swim in the waters : yellow creatures, like the masks of the furies, crawl about in the marshes : a single, long, smooth limb creeps up and pricks the wicked spirit on the bough, and he falls down : and then, when these strange dream-like figures began to speak each the language of an unknown world — as we might suppose the various nations of its planets assembled in the market-place of their sun — hum- ming, screaming, howling, laughing — there, on the bough of a tree, sweet sounds from heaver:, at its root wrathful hissings from Erebus : and then the battles and struggles of these animals, the injuries inflicted on them by each other, and yet their continued existence : and, finally, this mingled, fluttering, hurting, killing, caressing, repro- ducing life becomes an infinite breath of life, wherein the individual life flies like a tiny zephyrette . . . CHAP, ni.] LEVANA. 845 The one human soul forgets in itself the human race of the past, the present and the future, and places itself as the tirst figure before all others. How much more does it forget the inferior race of animals, the mouches volantes before an angel's eyes ! I'he so-called instinct of animals —this ass which per- ceives the angel's presence sooner than the prophet — ought to be regarded as the greatest miracle of creation, and also as the key and index to all other miracles ; in so much as the riddle of the universe resembles those riddles which both describe the riddle and signify it. Animals should be rendered familiar to children in every possible way ; for instance, by representing them as an anagram of a human being : thus the poor dog may be regarded as an old hairy man, whose mouth has become blackened and elongated, his ears pulled out, long nails appended to his shaggy paws, and so forth. Little animals must be brought nearer to the eye and heart by means of a magnifying glass. Thus we may become the friends of the denizens of a leaf. The prejudice which values life by the .yard — why, then, are not elephants and whales ranked higher than ourselves? — disappears by the con- templation of the infinity which is the same in every living creature, and, like an infinite series in numbers, is increased by no finite additions ; which is not afiected, for instance, by the two million joints of a centipede, or the many thousand muscles of the willow-caterpillar. " How you would take care of a butterfly as big as an eagle, or of a grasshopper as large as a horse ! And are not you little too ? " Speak thus to the child. Leibnitz replaced a little insect which he had examined for a long time uninjured on its leaf : be this a command for a child. The Stoic school declared that a man who killed a bird without any reason would just as readily kill his father : and the Egyptian priest considered it impious to destroy any animal except for sacrifice. These embody all the commandments of regard for life. Let animals be put to death only from necessity, as sacrifices, accidentally, hastily, involuntarily, defensively. If the long observa- tion of some animal— say a frog — of its breathing, jump- ing mode of life and agonies, have converted this little 346 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICHTER. [fEAG. VI. animal, previously indifferent to the child, into a really living thing, he would, by killing it, destroy with its life his reverence for all life. Hence no domestic animal, a sheep, a cow, should ever be killed in a child's ])resence ; at all events, if his rising love of animals is to be en- couraged instead of repressed (as some nations have been led to eat men from eating monkeys) ; the hard necessity of the case, the careful tending previously, and the sudden easy death, must be cast as a veil of darkness over the slaughtering hand. Even a hunter should never punish his hounds with true hunters' cruelty before a child, especially because their cries express their pain so clearly. Cooks say you should show no pity in killing an animal, for else it dies harder : this superstition at once reveals and hides the true woman's sympathy which it forbids. To the child's eye admit all living things into the human family ; so the greater reveals to him the less. Breathe a living soul into every thing ; and even describe the lily, which he wantonly tears from its organic exist- ence, as the daughter of a fair mother who stands in the bed and nourishes her little white child with sap and dew. I do not refer to any mere empty exercise of compassion in the school of others' sufferings, but to an exercise of religion in the consecration of life, of the deity ever present in the trees and in the human brain. The love of animals, like maternal love, arises from no expectation of reciprocated advantage, still less from selfishness, and has the further advantage of always finding an object on which to manifest itself. Oh! the beautiful time will, must come, when the beast-loving Brahmins shall dwell in the cold north and make it warm ; when the heart, having rejected its worst and cruellest sins, shall also lay aside those which slowly- poison it ; when man, who now honours the multiform part of humanity, shall also begin to spare, and finally to pro- tect, the animated ascending and descending scale of living creatures, so as no more to offer to the Great First Cause the hateful sight of thickly veiled, it is true, but wide- extended, animal suffering. And wherefore must such times come ? Because worse times have passed away : time carries away the national debts (mostly bloody debts) CHAP, in.] LEVANA. 347 of humanity : strand-right is now strand-wrong ; the traffic in negroes is gradually becoming unlawful. Only the toughest, harshest barbarism of past ages — war — remains yet to be vanquished by our innate anti-bar- barism. § 119. The third love-potion, like the third degree of compari- son which admits of no more, is love for love. If love be the highest, what further can it seek than itself, the highest ? A heart can only be held by a heart, the fairest setting of the loveliest jewel. Only the tumult and con- fusion in the nest of self can so darken us that we value pure love for another less than that for ourselves. But do not attempt to found this love in children by caresses, the thirsty springs of love. These soon both grow cold and make cold. I have often seen children, especially young ones, suddenly start away from the caresses of love to the quietest observation of some mere trifle, just like the old epic poets of early nations in their descriptions. In grown-up persons that would betray a withered heart which in children only shows that its buds are still closed. You reveal the form of love to a child less by self- sacrificing actions — for these he, as yet unreasoning and selfish, does not regard — than by the mother tongue of love, affectionate words and looks. Love, to appear un- troubled, must be embodied in nothing save the tender mimicry taught by Nature herself: a look, a word, expresses it directly, a gift only indirectly, by transla- tion. And just so in marriage: love is not preserved by gifts, pleasures and sacrifices, whose influence soon disappears, but by words and looks of love. Moreover, children manifest more love towards present-giving strangers than to present-giving parents; but, on the contrary, not so much to caressing strangers as to caress- ing parents. Let the child occasionally see the fiery pillar of love move before strangers. Contemplation of the mutual love of others sanctifies the beholder, because it cannot be accompanied by selfish desires. But there is one evil 348 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VI. attending this ; namely, that the undeveloped hearts of children either behold the altar flame of others' love with indifference, or frequently, if their parents kindle it, even with jealousy. But this only teaches us that in educa- tion, as well as in art, every violent expression, even of what is most excellent, must be shunned (because the injudicious excess makes a durable impression, but the beautiful fugitive idea is lost) and that quietness and gentleness reflect the aftectionate heart most clearly. And I can assure brides, and still more certainly bride- grooms, that they will only find the children of affec- tionate patents affectionate; and especially that a kind or an unkind father pr(;pagates love or hatred in his children. If love were not natural to us we could never hate. It is true that in us, as in other animals, hate manifests itself earlier, and at first more powerfully than love. This may in part be thus accounted for : in attraction or resemblance some portion of another's excellence is lost to sight by its mixture with our own, whereas the repul- sion of what is dissimilar at once markedly separates our good from others' evil qualities ; the heart, full of ideal light, feels the cold shadow of another's worthlessness more sensibly than the light which is lost in the blaze of his own. But if love be innate, and if the heart be, as Descartes calls the earth, an encrusted sun (soleil encroute) you have but to break away the crust and the glowing warmth is there. In other words, let the child learn to know love by his own actions, as, reversedly, to under- stand your actions by love ; that is to say, let him do something for you so that he may love something ; for in children action awakens desire, though the opposite is the case with men. You may teach a higher than Ovid's Art of Love, by requesting your child to do something without conmand- ing or rewarding performance, or punishing neglect; only depict beforehand, if it be for another, or afterwards if for yourself, the pleasure which the little actor's atten- tion to your wish affords. You excite the benevolence of children less by pictures of people's necessities than of the joy produced by relieving them. For the little heai t CHAP. HI.] LEV AN A. 349 conceals so great a treasure of love that he is less deficient in willingness to make sacrifices than in the certainty that they would give pleasure. Hence, when children have once begun to make presents they would never cease giving. The parents may give them the reward of certain happiness by a gladly praising approval ; an educational lever whose power has not been sufficiently estimated. For children, accustomed only to parental bidding and forbidding, are made happy by permission to do some extra service, and by the recognition of their having done it. This affectionate acknowledgment of pleasure renders them neither vain nor empty, but full ; not proud, but warm. "It does the poor man, or dog, or whatever it may be, good, or harm ! " These few words, said in a proper tone of voice, are worth a whole sermon : and fie ! said to a girl, will abundantly fill the place of half a volume of Ehrenberg's Lectures to the female sex. Moreover, the author does not attempt to hide from the police that, in the presence of his children, he has fre- quently given to beggars; first, because the appearance of cruelty cannot be removed by any political reasons, nor is attempted to be; and, secondly, because a child's heart, excited by compassion for suff'ering, should not be chilled. Yet a few fiagments within the fragment! Do not apprehend too great danger to the affections from children's quarrels. The circumscribed heart of children, their incapacity to place themselves in another's position, and their Adam-like innocence of belief that the whole world is made for them, not they for the world ; all these things combine to raise the inflated bubbles which soon break of themselves. They may speak harshly, or even fly into a passion, with one another, but must not continue it ! You must do many more things to be hated than to be loved by children : hated parents must themselves have hated for a long time. Advancing years raiely awaken a re- pressed or dormant love ; the individual's own selfishness doubles that of others, and this again redoubles that ; and so layer upon layer of ice is frozen. You falsify love by commanding its outward expression ; — kissing the lutDd, for instance. Such things, unlike kind actions, are S50 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH IlICHTER. [fRAG. VI. not the causes, but only the effects, of love. Do not in any instance require love : among grown-up persons would a declaration of affection, if commanded and prescribed by the highest authorities, be well received? It may be again repeated without deserving blame, that the quickest alternation between punishment or refusal and previous love is the true, though (to the fair sex) a difficult art of educating the affections. No love is sweeter than that which follows severity ; so from the bitter olive is sweet, soft oil expressed. And, finally, ye parents, teach to love, and you will need no ten commandments; teach to love, and a rich, winning life is opened to jovly child : for man Cif this simile be permitted) resembles Austria, which increases its territory by marriage but loses its acquisitions by war: teach to love, in this age which is the winter of time, and which can more easil}" conquer every thing than a heart by a heart ; teach to love, so that when your eyes are old, and their sense almost extinguished, you may yet find round your sick couch and dying bed no greedy, covetous looks, but anxious weeping eyes, which strive to warm your freezing life, and lighten the darkness of your last hour by thanks for their first: teach to love, I repeat; that means —do you love ! CHAPTER IV. SUPPLEMENTARY APPENDIX TO MORAL EDUCATION. § 120. What is the third which unites love and honour, which does not suffer love weakly to sacrifice the sacred rights of the individual soul, nor honour to disregard that of others in the cold contemplation of its own ? — Religion. Since every distinguishing quality is again subdivided, we find that the natural distinctions of the sexes, the one inclining more to honour, the other to love, are repeated in the same sex. This is a very important point in femal© CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 351 education. One girl is all quickness of perception and action, full of truthfulness and impatience, her personal and her public honour is ever before her eyes — forgiving only her own severity, not that of others, but even that more readily than any unworthy attack on her honour — reflecting on her own worth rather than duly weighing it, placing justice higher than love, and so forth. Another girl is full of affection, often even to the prejudice of her honour, desirous of approbation, not proud, less obedient to the dictates of propriety than to inclination, sacrificing external form to internal sentiment, eager to lend assist- ance and sympathy, less truthful than patient, and so forth. A perfect soul is to be formed from the union of tliese two. Hardness of character in a woman is more easily corrected than want of honour in a man : a woman's want of honour is as difficult to correct as a man's harsh- ness. A boy utterly without honour, and a girl without love, deserve nothing else at the end of ten years than to be married to each other. The female sex, however, resembles the ocean, or water in general, which contains both greater and smaller beasts than the firm land. Since a theory of education is a moral science of food (dietetics) but not a science of healing, receipts against anger, selfishness, &c., find no place in my treatise, though they are, indeed, implied in what has gone before. And, truly, what a work of giant folios must be written to embrace a description of all the diseases, and all the remedies for the million shades of disease, which the jombinations of different characters and years, various degrees of activity, and external circumstances can produce ! The technical part of morality, such as order, clean- liness, politeness, has already found teachers in larger books than this. It. is well that a treatise on education be occasionally written in pamphlet-form, and completed in three little volumes. Long talking begets short hearing, for people go away. An educational library — unless, indeed, a pocket library be invented — would soon cause men to attend to the first plan which offered itself, rather than be at the trouble of reading a whole host of books. 352 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. \X § 121. But a few more paragraphs may be added without too much endangering the smallness of the book, or the facility of reading it. Would you devote hours to moral instruction? I would rather recommend years, and a never-ending course of that study. No lesson here avails but that founded on living facts, and even it is but as one incident in a fable. Advancing life is a perpetual preacher, home a domestic chaplain, and, instead of morning and evening prayers, life-long prayers must exert their influence. Sciences can be taught ; so in them you may give lessons : genius can only be aroused ; provide it, then, with motives and oppor- tunities. Can the heart of a corpse send forth living blood?— The heart is the genius of virtue; morality its theory of assthetics. If you wish any thing to be forgotten, write it on the inner side of the study door ; if you want to desecrate the holy, hang a table of commandments per- petually before the eyes. Lavater said, " Every man has his devil's moments." Consequently be not lost in sur- prise if the child also have his Satan's seconds as well as angel's minutes. Eather despair of grown men than of children. For these confuse you so much by the beautiful revelation of all their feelings and desires, and by their un- premeditated echo of all sounds, that the key-note remains unknown to you. With the former, on the contrary, one treble-discord presupposes an instrument thoroughly out of tune. And yet again : if a man be so unfathomable to a man, how much more so must his unequal, a child, be which not merely conceals its fruit in its leaves, but those in their buds, and within them the flowers. Hence when new and necessary developments take place, even though they be for the worse, do not blame previous innocent mistakes in the plan of education. For instance; how- ever much you endeavour to conceal and repress the long dormant sexual instinct it will yet finally start up armed where you least expect it, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. I think that we parents, especially we modern parents, CflAP. IV.] LEVANA. 353 separate our children too anxiously from other children ; as gardeners do flowers to preserve the pollen unmixed. Can we very highly value any good or lovely thing which withers at the slightest touch ? If we have educated truly and implanted right principles in a child until his sixth year a few bad examples will not so much drive away what is good as fan it into new life : if the water in the tea-urn be really boiling a little spirit flame will keep it BO all tea-time. Not the badness, but the long continuance, of examples injures children. And, again, the examples of strange children and indifferent people have less effect than those of the persons they most respect, — their parents and teachers ; because the latter, like the external conscience of children, so break or darken their internal conscience, that the devil finds it prepared for his residence. Yes, I go still further, and declare the preponderating influence of a good example over a bad one — or the victory of the angel Michael over the devil — to be so great that I believe the poor children of a thoroughly unmarriage-like union, where one parent is the ally of the devil and the other of the angel, will be gathered hardly, and at great cost, but all the more certainly under the white flag. The younger the children are the more rapidly may we pass before them from jest to earnest ; for they do so themselves. All their modes of going from one thing to another are leaps. How quickly they forget and forgive ! Then do so to them, especially in cases of punishment ; and always inflict short punishments, so that they may never be thought unfounded and unjust. God be thanked for the memory of children which is less retentive of sorrows than of joys ! Else what a prickly chain, formed by the uninterrupted series of punishments, would sur- round these little beings ! But children are capable of being delighted twenty times even on the worst of days. It is as difficult to arouse them from their sweet god- like slumber by domestic or European wars, as to awaken flowers out of their sleep by noise and motion. God grant the dear little ones may awake, like the flowers, to feel the aunshine and behold the day ! There are confused, obstinate hours in which the child I. 2 a 354 JEAN PAUL FEIEDKIOH RICHTEK. [fRAG. VI. positively cannot pronounce certain words, nor ob^y certain commands : but he will do so the next hour. Do not consider this as stubbornness. I know men who have laboured for years to get rid of some expression of the face, mode of writing, or odd word to which they have become habituated, without any particular result. Apply this to children, who are often commanded to abandon some thousand habits at once, and do not exclaim so bitterly against their disobedience, which is often nothing but the impossibility of an overburdened attention. The fruits of the right education of the first three years (a higher triennium than the academic) cannot be reaped during the sowing ; — and you will often be unable to understand why, after doing so much, so much still remains to be done; — but in a few years the growing harvest will surprise and reward you, ; for the numerous earthy crusts which covered the flower-shoots, but did not crush them, have at last burst before them. § 122. Physical nature makes many little steps before taking a leap, and then begins the same process over again : the law of continuity is animated by the law of advancing and retreating efforts. We find the last law most strongly expressed in the leap to sexual power ; but of these leaps, like the bud or knot-severances of the shooting stalk, there are many more ; and for the most part they are closely collected round about the embryo; even as failing age sets them at wide intervals one from the other. The leap from the Graafian vesicles into the uterus — the settling: of the head before the birth — the entry into the atmo- sphere of earth — the first milk — the teething— the grow-, ing-fever, and so on, are my evidences. ISo, in old age, the feeble copy of childhood, nature has sometimes re- commenced her sudden efforts of power in pushing forth teeth, hair, &c. P>ut the mind must always be the companion .of the body ; it is the strophe, the other the antistrophe, though occasionally their positions are reversed. 'J'he heavy, cloud? of the body must break in thunder showers; the CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 355 growth of the physical powers must produce growth in the mental powers also ; and they, again, necessitate the former. But then the teacher stands petrified to behold a new inimical — really friendly — division in the child's nature, and believes the former world to have vani:shed because a new world has sprung into existence. Accus- tomed to the old, he would rather see the child's growth a mere growing old ; in short, he would wish it to be always the same, or, at most, to exhibit no greater change than that from the print to the coloured painting : — the child must not drop his first seed-leaves in the beams of the sharp- cutting world, but yet. must push forth new growing leaves. But since this can never be ; since every applica- tion of the flute to the lipS produces a new incorporeal sound, the teacher ought to be of good courage and only say, " The parts developed last must grow upon the first, and why need I fear for these if there be nothing I would wish to recall in the others ? " § 123. Parents possess a very easy and excellent means of preaching, and at the same time interesting and improving their children, by relating to them how they passed their own childhood with their parents. Independent of all other considerations, whatever is little is, on that very account, most pleasing to a child, himself a little thing ; the author's children have sometimes begged him for a little sea, nay, even for a little God.* Now if the father or mother will descend from their lofty height and speak of themselves, the parents, as having once been children, the little people can scarcely comprehend it, and look, with the anxious desire of learning, into the diminishing i'las.s in which their present giant-parents move about as 1 ittle children. There they see grand-parents now command little parents, and the very people obey whom now the Perhaps this — apart from Love, which likes to express itself with tender diminutives— is one reason more why nurses, &c., make pet- names for over)' thing for children, even to excess; and in fact for all parts of speech, e.g. sch^nde instead of iohOn (pretty), oven »o'chejt foi »o indeed). 2 A 2 356 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH RICHTER. f FRAG. VI. child has to obey. In this relation he will only discover the continuation of a previously acquired right, not of a mere accident ; — here he finds that his father commands now what formerly, when a child, he obeyed; that he dearly loved, and was dearly loved by his parents, in whose breast the little grandchild now nestles all the more closely and warmly from the recollection of former love. Since the history of his parents' childhood must have such fresh and unceasing interest for the child, how great a weight and charm may there not be given by means of this interest to every word, every instruction and, in short, to every thing embraced in that relation ? If it chance that parents, thus describing their own life, were brought up as children in other circumstances, in other dwelling- places, the seed-field of instruction is vastly extended. In short, parents in relating the incidents of their own childhood simply and truly may lay seeds which in the warm soil of their children's childhood will grow and bear fruit. Even the little faults of their parents, and the consequent punishments of the grand- parents, will not in relation lessen the children's reverence for their parents, unless its foundation be grievously hollow, and the superstructure most poorly built. We have here approached so very near the question, What is the best kind of stories for children? that we may as well reply to it forthwith. Oriental and romantic tales seem the most suitable ; such as many of the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, Herder's Palm Leaves and Krum- macher's Parables. Children are little Orientals. Dazzle them with the wide plains of the east, with brillant dew- drops and bright tinted flowers. Give them, at least in stories, the impulse which shall carry them over our cold northern rocks and North Capes into the warm gardens of the south. Let your first miracle be, like Christ's, a turn- ing of water into wine, of fact into poetry. Therefore do not shut up every thing you permit to approach your child in a pulpit with a sermon before it, nor suffer that morbid seeking after " the moral " which deforms most printed children's tales, and by which, precisely when they are on the way to the highest, they lose the path ; just as Charles XII. of Sweden generally lost at chess because he moved CHAP. IV.] LEV ANA. 357 out his king. Every good tale, like every good poem, is necessarily surrounded with instruction. But the im- portant thing is — to paint a romantic morning-glow on the earth-kissing sky which, as age advances, may deepen into a pure evening-red. Tell of terrible wild beasts, but let them be always at last overcome — (still let children be the most frequent actors on your stage) — also of long caverns which lead to heavenly gardens — of being happy, and of making happy — of great dangers, and still more wonderful deliverances — and even the strange adventures of mischievous children ; but always remember in your tales that tears are sooner drawn from children than smiles. For instance, the author has frequently carried this so far as to represent the infant Christ* (he never even mentioned a Rupert*) seated on the moon, surrounded with none but good children ; and the evening glow in the December sky he could only account for by supposing it the reflection of the carriages full of Christmas gifts. In after years, when the children gaze upon the moon and the redness of the evening sky, a wonderful delight will gently fill their souls, and they will not know what strange ethereal air they breathe : The morning breeze of your childhood fans you, my children ! These fictions, when translated into reality, lead to no accusations of parental untruthfulness, as our own ex- amplesf and those of our forefathers, else grounded fast in truth, abundantly prove. And after all this, shall not the freedom which mak.d children citizens of the divine city of romance not open for them the theatre : I do not mean that where comedies and tragedies are played, which only stun, excite, or deceive them, nor yet the little stage where they are themselves the actors — but the opera-house ? Does not the opera reveal romantic fairy-land to their eyes, and yet, by the im- • Vide previous notes. t The rosy pictures yet bloom in the author's heart which his father once painted there, on coming out of the study iuU) tlie December twilight, with the insignificant words, he had seun the infant Clirist with golden beams pass through the dark night clouds. Who now could replace for him this ro:iy blessed beam, this heavenly treasuta still shining in the clouds ? 358 JEAN PAUL FEIEDEICH RICHTEK. [fRAG. VI» possibility of understanding the singing, which throws a wholesome darkness over the intrigue, preserve their ears from every moral taint ? And does not what is glaringly low in close connection with what is noble (as, for instance, in the Zauberflote), like the nnion of a monkey and a nun, strengthen the love for excellence and the detestation of depravity ? It seems to me that the opera, this acting, living fairy-tale, which the music makes metrical and the brillant scenery romantic, might change the heavy plough- like motion and creaking of the present into smooth flying, and is all the more necessary because prose may be taught but not poetry, and wings can more easily find feet than feet wings. At the same time, these suggestions are offered rather interrogatively than affirmatively ; since Aou may venture every thing and replace every thing more easily than a child's innocence. § 124. 1 would wish to say a few words about long journeys for children. Short ones of a few weeks are with justice considered to be physically and mentally improving trans- plantings of these young trees; because the exchange of their old dull corner for the wide airy landscape full of different people and new customs must necessarily enliven and improve them. But something very dif- ferent are children's travels with town-dwellers and land- scourers, who make the grand tour of half Europe — (sm expedition through his native town is one to a child) — during which the daily transplanted tree is merely ex- hausted. If even grown-up people bring back from their journeys round the world full heads and empty hearts ; because daily walks through streets full of men only presenting the gauntlet, or, at all events, never oti'ering a brother's kiss, must at last make the heart as cold as life at court does, where, as in a country dance, the dancer goes down the middle and up again givini!: his hand indifferently to all ; how much must early long journeys — bringing only the ripeness of autumn to matured men — destroy a child by producing such ripeness in spring. Living long in close connection with CHAP. IV.J LEVANa. 359 the same people cherishes in children the warmth of thL> affections. The uniforai sameness of people, dwelling-, play-gi ounds, and even domestic furniture, hangs lovingly on a child, and strengthens thtt magnetic attraction, as a weight does suspended from a magnet: and thus in the spring-time of life is prepared the rich magnetic burst of the future aftectiou&, "because the child naturally learns to love what he daily sees— an easy matter in a village — the hewer of wood for the family, the woman carrier, old Peter, who comes every Saturday to beg for Sunday ; yes, even the more distinguished persons of his acquaintance who live far away. With a childhood full of affection we may endure half a life iu the cold world. If, now, instead of such environments, a child be taken oa long journeys — say half over Europe — and must, since it is impossible to pack up market-places with their inhabitants in the carriage or to crowd them into the hotels of large cities, every day fall upon new people, new rooms, new servants, new j^uests, towards whom it is impossible, from mere lack of time, for the young heart to experience any burst of sympathy : — what, then, can grow out of this little creature? A courtier without a court, cool, polite, elegant, languid, ennaye, sweet and pretty. §125. Since in appendices, as in prefaces, things may be re- peated which are contained in the book, I say again, Let there be rules for children; it is immaterial what, but only us the centre of innumerable rays I Law is unity, unity is deity. The devil only is changeable. Unity of rule at once strengthens and controls both tbe too delicately sensitive girl and the rough active boy ; for the very same reason that we patiently endure the discomfort of frost and the unbroken desolateness of the earth in winter, whereas a few snow-flakes in spring make us angry and gloomy : only because m winter the white enamel of snow, is the rule, but in spring the various tinted floweis. No fcommand seems harsher than the new one ; no necessity than that which is freshly imposed. If you would picture toi yourself the most unhappy and most unf:>rtunately 360 JEAN PAUL FBIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VL circumstanced child, think of one who has been brought up by chance merely, without rule, irritated and appeased without reason — destitute of confidence in the future — finding in every minute a driving storm — wishing nothing else than the fulfilment of his momentary desires — a ball thrown sportively from love to hate — with sorrows that bring no strength, and joys which produce no love. Happily I see no such being near me! Have not even unjust rules a beneficial tendency in producing obedience to rule? When punishments were attached to the un- intentional dropping of the hat, or even falling in riding through the streets of a town, both happened much more rarely : and in brotherhoods or sisterhoods where every snorer is awakened no one snores : and where punishment is threatened even for the accidental breaking of china less is broken. But the threatening must be a year older than the fault or the punishment, else the rule fails. § 126. Give reasons for your requests more readily, and even at an earlier period, than reasons for your assertions : in the first place, it is easier to teach obedience than under- standing ; in the second, a child's tnist must never be weakened by reasons which only lead to doubt; in the third, action requires external quickness, belief demands time ; and, in the fourth, the former is usually more opposed to previous wishes than the latter (for children are seldom orthodox) : at the same time that you smooth the way for your commands, as the French kings did, by gentle reasons, insist, like them, on obedience, if the reasons do not induce it. In a second edition of these rules, even as to giving reasons for commands, we find that the line must be drawn still tighter. Mothers, partly from kindness, partly from an inherent love of the healthy movement of the tongue, give as many reasons for their orders as may overcome the opposing arguments of the child ; and, if at last they should be unable to produce more, finish by asserting their authority. It were better to have begun with it. And certainly, after compliance, the reasons will find readier admittance into the open impartial ears. This is mowt markedly the case in the earliest jears; each ad- CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 361 vancing year requires an additional reason. The united care both for a child's obedience and fi eedom is one of the most diffictilt requirements of education. The parental breath must only move the branch towards the fructifying pollen, but not bend or break the trunk. §127. Teachers generally desire an appendix to the chapter on moral education containing a treatise on the prevention of sensual faults. Why do we find no such lamentations and remedies among the ancients or in the middle ages ? Adults in those days were different from those of present times in this, that the latter by reason of their peniten- tial straw-crowns become bald sooner than grey, but the former the reverse — the pagan and catholic priesthood were a committee of uncleanness;— and the pure vestal virgins of the Romans had to make offerings to Priapus as well as to Vesta, predecessors as it were of the self- offering nuns before the Reformation. Must we suppose that the youth of those periods was better than the present? Scarcely so. Vogel reckons amongst the incitements to secret sins eating of meat, solid food, spices, warm rooms, beds and clothing, and the swaddling of children : — but did not the middle ages take such means of pleasure in still greater measure : for instance, the spices, the fourfold stronger beer, the thicker beds, &c. ? — Even rude health and rough work do not forearm peasant children (as he who understands, if not he who instructs the people well knows) against this youth- cancer. The reason why so much more is said and taught about such matters now — always remembering also that books are now made and a book-trade established about every action — can only lie in this, that in the healthful past, as now among the vigo- rous commonalty or unrestrained animals, many ill-regu- lated actions passed unpunished because the fortifications of these unpolished times were not so easily demolished. But, at all events, the morbid, sickly imagination attend- ant on civilisation is quite as much cause as effect ; to which must be added the acceleration of maturity duo to larger towns and better warmed countries. Luther says, CknUemptus frangit diabolumj obaervatio 362 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH RICHTEE. FEAG. VL inftal ;* which means, that to combat sin you must know it, and that is in itself a kind of defeat. A feeling of shame artificially taught before duly awakened by nature, is a sewing together of the fig-leaves conducting to the fall which in Eden they only covered. The modesty which naturall}'- arises at a later period is like the fig-tree itself, which only hides under its leaves the uniipe fruit which contains no poison. Many persons even say that a child should learn to be ashamed of seeing himself. Himself! Gracious heaven! how much must the young mind have been poisoned before it would blush at the form it cannot change and did not choose ? before, in fact it would blush at its Creator ? To insure modesty I would advise the educating of the sexes together ; for two boys will preserve twelve girls, or two girls twelve boys, innocent amidst winks, jokes and im- proprieties, merely by that instinctive sense which is the forerunner of matured modesty. But I will guarantee nothing in a school where girls are alone together, and still less where boys are. Boys do harm to boys far more •than girls to girls ; for they are bolder, opener, rougher, more sociable, more curious about matters, as girls are about persons. 'I'he imaginary walls and glass bed-screens which teachers put before the mental eyes of children are part of the mistaken instruction in modesty ; a kind of incom- prehensible covering of a cover, the sheep's clothing of a sheep. He who admits that he has a secret to keep has, by doing so, revealed one half of it, and the other will speedily follow. Children's questions about birth—- about where a little baby comes from — show nothing what- ever more than a blameless desire of knowing and asking about strange things. A child's questions about his mother's confinement have no more connection with sex- instinct than his asking why the sun, which goes to bed in the west, lises in the east. But if those about him attach a foolish mystification to the event, instinct, which lies in the back ground, united with accidental expressions which he will treasure up, will prematurely clear away the darkness. To this really injurious secrecy belong such * Contempt vanquisbetii the devil ; inspectioA puffeth him up. LJHA.P. IV.] LEV AN A. 363 expressions as, " This is only for grown up-people," or, " When you are older, you will know all about it," &c. Secret articles always give rise to war; and secret alli- ance with sin is not very far from secret instructions of this kind. But how is the questioning child to be answered ? With as much truth as he wants : " As the little grub grows inside the nut, so the little infant grows within its mother and is nourished by her flesh and blood ; hence she is ill," &c. Since children understand ten times less of what is said than we suppose and, like grown-up people, ask a thousand times less about the final when they know the secondary cause, it will probably be several years before the child again asks whence the little crea- ture comes. Then give him this answer : " From the great God, who sends these little babies to married people who sleep together." We grown-up philosophers know nothing more about it; and you say with perfect truth to the child, " A human being can carve a statue, or em- broider a flower, but he can make no living thing : that grows." And so, by help of the pure word sleep,* children receive from the greatest incomprehensibility no more defilement or disclosure than the edifices of phj^siologic- lore have heretofore afforded us ; to which, howbeit, the sharp- and deep- and many-minded Okeu f has constructed * J. B. Heidegger, Burgomaster in Zurich, from the time that as a boy he heard of the sin of sleeping with a woman, used, as he lay near his nurse, to keep his eyes open the niglit through. {Bauer's Gallery of Hist. Pictures, v. 2.) t *' Die Zeugung," by D. Oken, 1805. By * sacristy,' I mean that he treats of and displays life as incomprehensible in his " Primitive Forms of Life of the Infusoria," in which, in point of fact, he less illustrates conception and life than growth and existence. I also refer to his pleasantly bold hypothesis that in the infusorial chaos (the only one in the universe) several existences become one; and that this unity of pluralities again condenses itself into a more distinct plural unity in a higher life-grade. For the rest I read all that is written about the infusion-creations with an old shrinking; and all the successive grades of the existences which have been developed from the grand infusorium of the whole world. I am also fully persuaded that as tliere is no bridge of stops between mechanism and vitality, so ihe riddle of the widely extended revivification and quickening will be solved in any other wise rather thas in chemistry. 364 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH EICHTER. [fEAG. VI. i fair sacristy. How easily a child's curiosity may be restrained and yet satisfied is very clearly shown in the fact that during the last three centuries millions of Chris- tians have died who have regularly every Sunday heard that baptism took the place of the ancient Jewish rite of circumcision, and yet have never thought, far less asked, what circumcision is. Children learn and ask in the same way. The author received his first instruction in this article of Christian faith after eighteen years' study of Jewish works. Ye teachers of religion, schoolmasters, tutors and preachers, think ye of circumcision in such wise that ye accomplish on yourselves that Jean-Pauline rite of the foreskin of the lips and of the heart ! On the other hand such words, like these, Gebaren (delivery), Hochzeitnacht (wedding-night), &c., prove how un-significant and pure, even holy in all senses, the thing indicated is and appears, so long as the manner of indicating is equally so. But if indeed an older child ask a ques- tion; in that case I quietly begin a regular anatomy- lecture, for example, on the heart (just as a Frenchwoman, with the opposite intention, might do) — and proceed : I give him seriousness, calmness and tediousness, and then an answer. One other remark may perhaps afford consolation to some parents : children at an immature and hobbledehoy age have, simply out of awkwardness and ignorance, or even heedlessness about all puzzle of sex, a particular inclination — which by repeated instruction and correction duly disappears — to do and to say improper things. This is sometimes very strangely manifested. I once heard some really pure-minded good children beg their father to repeat some ugly words (referring to rudeness of speech more than sex) which he had forbidden them to use, be- cause, they said, they liked to hear such words. Be not afraid, if you educate your children carefully, of evil results. In the case of healthy children, especially, you need have no fear ; but physical indisposition too easily induces a morbid sickliness of the mind. Only upon one point, with all possible frankness of explanation one must be careful, and adhere closely to the most anxious-minded preacher on training : namelj on the CHAP. IV.] LEVANA. 365 external action-similitude between men and beasts. Hap- pily it is only an un-similitude. Never allow the modest half-grown youth to dream of or to find out bit by bit any sort of likeness between his revered ones and the beasts of the field. The pure child-like though presaging nature trembles before this likeness. If it is freely displayed to him, and the holy awe is overcome, then the child has grown old by too many years at once: — thought now works in favour of act, as otherwise against it— away from truth and the repeated sight of her impulse still lessens the burning hues — and the storms of his spring rage and afflict. In short, if there be any time when one person's aid is needed in the development of another, it is when the ripening youth (or maiden) first discovers his new Ame- rica-world of sex, when the fresh blooming man bursts away from the fading child. Happily nature herself has provided a counterpoise to these spiritual spring-storms, in the season of fairest dreams, of ideal excellence, and the highest enthusiasm for all that is great. The watch- ful teacher also may add a balancing weight to the heart, namely, the head ; that is, let him reserve for that season some new science, some new object of engrossing interest, some new path in life. It is true this will not extinguish the volcano ; but the lava pouring into this sea will merely harden into a rock, and tho evil will be less than the anxiety. For, out of all the yawning and dreaded preci- pices of this age, does not a majority of healthy living voices arise which have not been silenced and which do not stammer or complain ? It is but a very small number which is silent, without throat — without lungs — without limbs of any sort — without mind — without body — mere unburied corpses of hovering ghosts — Heaven grant them a grave ! 366 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTEE. [PRAG. Vlt SEVENTH FRAGMENT. Chap. I. More accurate definition of the desire for intelleetaal progress, § 128. Chap. II. Speech and writing, §§ 129, 130. Chap. III. Attention, and the power of adaptive combination ; Pestalozzi ; difference between mathematics and philosophy, §§ 131 —133. Chap. IV. Development of wit, §§ 134—136. Chap. V. Development of reflection, abstraction, and self-knowledge ; together with an extra paragrapli on the powers of action and business, §§ 137, 138. Chap. VI. On the education of the recollection, not of the memory, §§ 139—142. CHAPTER I. ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DESIRE FOR INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS. § 128. Other writers on education name the intellectual forming- impulse 'the faculty of knowledge'— that is to say, thev call painting seeing — or ' the intellectual powers,' but think of the senses and the memory as also exerting an educational influence; or they speak of the develop- ment of spontaneous activity, as if the will itself were not such a developing power. The majority (before Pestalozzi) only attempted to pour into the mind a vast amount of knowledge of every kind, and thought an intel- ligent man must be the necessary result. Learned fools, with mind neither for the present nor the future, who (like finite beings in another sense) are continuously created, but never able to create ; heirs of all ideas, but originators of none, they are indeed samples of their education, but no proofs of its excellence ! We will take the straight path which leads to the centre, instead of wandering round and round the circle. CHAP. I.] LEV ANA. 367 The will reprodiicei itself only, and acts only within, not without, itself ; for the external action is as little the new act of the particular volition, as are the words signi- fying it of the particular thought. The desire of mental progress, on the contrary, enlarges its world for the recep- tion of new creatures, and is as dependent on objects as the pure will is independent of them. The will could reach its ideal, but finds a strange opposition to it — Kant's radical-evil —whereas no power stands opposed to thought ^-as bin does to virtue — but only the difference between its steps, and the impossibilit}' of seeing whither they reach. To know nothing is not so bad as to do nothing ; and error is less the opponent than the accompaniment of truth; for to miscalculate means merely to obtain Komething different from what it should be, but btill to calculate; whereas immorality stands directly opposed to morality. The mental desire of advancement which, in a higher sense than the physical, works by means of and in accord- ance with the will, that is to say, creates new ideas out of old ideas, is the distinguishing characteristic of man. No will restrains the order of a beast's actions. In our waking moments we are actually conscious that we think ; in our dreams we receive, if I may so express it, that consciousness. In the man of genius the formation of ideas appears actually creative; in ordinary men, merely recoUective and necessary : the precise shades of difference are, however, difficult to define. The developments of this formative power are, first, language ; and secondly, obser- vation ; both of which by defining and marking an idea bring it more accurately before the mind : thirdly, ima- gination, which is capable of retaining a whole series of ideas, so as to obtain from it the unknown, but sought for and, consequently, anticipated greatness, either as part, consequence, foundation, symbol, or image : fourthly, wit : fifthly, reflection: sixthly, remembrance. From this almost genealogical gradation it is readily Serceived that all instruction naturally falls into two istinct classes, one of which— mathematics, for example — provides organic material for the intelltjotual energies ; the other — such as natural history — only inanimate objects. 368 JEAN PAUL FEIEDRICH EICHTEK. [fRAG. VII. For all cumulative preliminary instruction, be it in natural history, geography, history, antiquities, only provides the intellect with materials, not with incitements tc labour and power. The old division into knowledge of words and knowledge of things is certainly correct; but the inventory of what belongs to one class, and what to the other, is about as erroneous as that of diseases before the time of Brown, which, as by him, were divided into sthenic and asthenic, diarrhoea and plague being placed in the former, and the truly sthenic complaints of coughs, catarrhs, &c., in the latter class. Language, for instance, was ranked as a knowledge of words ; the history of nature and of nations, as a knowledge of things : it ought to be reversed. One word in this place on the abuse, or too great use, of natural history. This seems to be the wishing-cap of those teachers who have little of that on which the hat is usually placed; or the purveyor of those who are deficient in sci- entific knowledge. The author was gratified by finding, iii Goethe's Elective Affinities, accordance with a thought which he had noted down in his children's diary in January 1808 ; namely, what advantage can children obtain from the description of an unknown foreign animal which would not equally result from that of any casual monster? At most this unverified account can but serve as honey on wholesome bread, or as the bill of sale of some animal to be seen; and is altogether a mere home-reading by the light of the embers. But, on the contrary, the most minute family history, with representations the size of life, should be given about all domestic and native animals. Yea, how very much would botany and mineralogy, not only as exercising the observation, but also as enriching the present, exceed the small advantages of foreign zoology ! Just in the same way might the modern expensively painted worlds (orhis pidus) be advantageously replaced by workshops, in which one artificer after another could actually show and explain his trade to his children-guests. CHAP, ir.] LEV ANA. 369 CHAPTER II. SPEECH AND WRITING. §129. To learn to speak is something higher than to learn to speak languages; and all the advantages which are as- cribed to the ancient languages, as educational media, apply with double force to the mother- tongue. Every new lan- guage is only understood by connecting and balancing it with the first : the original primary sign merely acquires another sign ; and so the new language is not formed on the one last learned, nor is one dependent on another, but all on the first native tongue. Name to the child every object, every sensation, every action, in case of exigency even by a foreign word (for to the child, as yet, there is none); and always, where it is possible, arouse his attention and give accuracy to his per- ceptions by naming all the individual parts of whatever you may have in hand. A child has invariably so great a love of hearing that he will constantly ask questions about matters which he knows, merely in order to hear you speak ; or will even tell you some little story, so as to have the pleasure of hearing you afterwards talk about it to him. By the fact of naming, external objects, like islands, are taken possession of, and animals are tamed by accustoming them to answer to a name. Without a de- fining word — the mental index-finger — unlimited nature stands before a child like a column of quicksilver without a barometric scale (to the beast it is even without the ball of quicksilver) and by it no movement can be obseived. Speech is the finest line-drawer of infinity, the dividing water of chaos : the importance of its minute subdivisions is shown in savages, with whom frequently a single word signifies a whole sentence. A village child is inferior to a town child merely by his poverty of speech. To the dumb Ijeast the whole world gives but one impression, and so from want of two he does not even count one. Let every material substance be both mentally and L 2 b 370 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH KICHTER. [fRAG. VII. pliysically divided and analysed before the child during the first ten years of his life ; but suffer nothing spiritual to undergo the same process, for this, which exists only once and that within the child, soon dies, without the chance of resurrection, under the severing-knife ; bodies, on the contrary, return new-born every day. The mother- tongue affords the most innocent philosophy and exercise of reflection for children. Speak very much and very clearly; and oblige them to be definite in the affairs of every-day life. Why do you leave mental de- velopment by means of language to a foreign tongue ? Occasionally attempt longer sentences than the short childish ones of many teachers, or the hackneyed ones of most French writers : an unintelligibleness which brings its own solution by mere unaltered repetition exercises and strengthens the mind. Sometimes exercise even little children with riddles of contradictory words : such as, I heard this with my eyes ; this is very prettily ugly. Do not fear the unintelligibleness even of whole sentences; your mien, your accent, and the forestalling effort to under- stand explain one half, and this, with the assistance of time, explains the other. With children, as with the Chinese and men of the world, accent is half the language. Remember than they learn to understand your language much sooner that to speak it, just as we do Greek or any foreign tongue. Trust to the deciphering aid of time and of the context. A child of five years old understands the words " but, indeed, now, on the contrary, certainly ;" but, if you desire an explanati n of them, ask the father, not the child. The word indeed alone would puzzle a little philosopher. If the child of eight years old finds his improved language understood by a child of three, why should you contract yours to his V( »cabulary ? Always employ a language some years in advance of rhe child (men of genius in their books Speak to us from the vantage ground of centuries) : speak to the one-year-old child as though he were two, and to him as though he were six; for the difference of progress diminishes in the inverse proportion of years. Let the teacher, especially he who is too much in the habit of attri- buting all learning to teaching, consider that the child already carries half his world, that of mind — the objects. CHAP. II.J LEVANA. 371 for instance, of moral and metaphysical contemplation — ready formed within him ; and he- nee that language, being provided only with physical images, cannot give, can merely illumine, Ids mental conceptions. Cheerfulness, like distinctness in conversation with children, should be imparted to us by their cheerfulness and dibtinetness. N\ e may learn to speak from them, as well as teach them by speaking ; for instance, such bold and yet ( orrectly formed words as I have heard from three and four-year-old children : " the beer-casker, the stringer , the bottler," instead of the maker of casks, strings, and bottles — •' the flying mouse," certainly much better than our word bat — " the music fiddles — to ausscheeren * the candle [from Lichtscheere, snutfers] — dreschflegeln, dresclieln [to thresh, from Dreschfiegel, fl^il] — I am the look-through man (when standing behind a telescope; — I wish I had an appointment »s gingerbreadnnteater, or gingerbread- nutter — After all 1 shall be quite too wiser — He has joked me dincn from off the chair — Look (at the clockj how one it is already," &c. In later years it becomes part of instruction in language to show the living foimdation of the colourless images t)f every day speech. A young man uses the expressions, '* all made on the same last," or ''fishing in troubled waters;" and when he finds that the shoemaker really uses such a last, and that fishing in troubled water is practised, he is astonished to discover that a real fact is the foundation of the transparent image. Pestalozzi rommences the division of the universe into parts by that of the body into limbs ; because it is in closest and most important connection with the child, and is eveiy where composed of similar parts, whi( h is not the case with plants or utensils. A still more important ad- vantage is, that there are always two examples of it in the study ; and that the child, between I and thoUy between the larger visible limbs of his teacher and his own smaller ones, sensible only to the touch, can always pass from one object to another and compare them together. At the same time, Pestalozzi will not only divide and illumine the waste ether with clearly marked names, as with stars, but, * Some of these expreuloDS lose their effect in tranalatioa. 2 fi 2 372 JEAN PAUL FEIEDKTCH EICHTER. fFRAG. VII. while he teaches the child to collect the subdivisions under their division, the lesser under the greater whole, he de- velopes the capacity of retaining whole series, or the power of adaptive combination — of which hereafter. Fichte, in his Discourses to the German nation, attaches too little value to the naming and, as it were, A B C, of external objects and observations, requiring them merely for what is internal, for sensations ; because he thinks that the naming of the former class only serves the child for communication, not for the better understanding of it» But it seems to me that, as the speechless animal floats about in the external world as in a dark bewildering ocean, so man would be equally lost in the starry firma- ment of external perceptions, did he not, by means of lan- guage, divide the confused stars into constellations, and thus reveal the whole in parts to the comprehension. Lan- guage alone illumines the vast monotonously coloured chart of the universe. Our forefathers, from pedantic and economic reasons, but with advantageous results as a mental gymnastic and excitement, ranked a foreign language, such as Latin, among the great powers of education. Certainly the dictionary of foreign words developes little, except by teaching the fine shades of difierence among our own : but the grammar, as the logic of the tongue — the first philo- sophy of reflection— does much ; for it carries the signs of things back to the things themselves and compels the mind, turned upon itself, to observe the method of its observations, that is, to reflect, or at least to take firmer possession of the sign and not to confuse it, as a mere expression, with the sensation itself. During immaturity this kind of knowledge is better obtained through the grammar of a foreign language than through that of our own, which is more indissolubly blended with the sensa- tion ; hence logically-cultivated people first learned to con- struct their own language by a foreign one, and Cicero went to a Greek sooner than to a Latin school ; and hence, in those centuries when the Greek and Latin languages formed the whole subject of learning, the intellect became more formal, and unsubstantidl logic filled the mind, as the whole scholastic philosophy proves. When Huart asserts that a good head learns grammar with the most CHAP. II.] LEVANA. 373 difficulty, lie can only mean, unless lie confuses dictionary with grammar, a head formed for business or art rather than for thought. Every good grammarian, the Hebrew Tacitus Danz for instance, is partly a philosopher ; and he must be a philosopher who writes the best grammar. The grammatic analysis of the old schools only diflfers in its object from Pestalozzi's visible series. Consequently a foreign language, particularly the Latin, is among the healthiest early exercises of the power of thinking. § 130. Since writing signifies but the sign of things, and brings us through it to the things themselves, it is a stricter isolator and clearer collector of the ideas than even speech itself. Sound teaches quickly and generally ; writing, uninterruptedly and with more accuracy. Writing, from that which the writing-master teaches to that which approaches the province of the author, gives clearness to the ideas. We will not here lay too great stress on the fact that the letters which Sevigne wrote are much more elegant than those she dictated ; or that Montesquieu, who could not himself write, frequently passed three hours before any thing worthy of preservation occurred to him, whence many deduce the curt style of his writings ; but it is certain that our representation is much more a mental seeing than hearing, and that our metaphors play far more on an instrument of colour than of sound, and therefore writing which lingers under the eyes must assist the formation of ideas to a much greater extent than the rapid flight of sound. The scholar, indeed, carries it so far that, when he reflects, he really seems to read a printed page ; and when he speaks, to give a little declamation out of a quickly and well written pamphlet. Let boys write out their own thoughts sooner than copy yours, so that they may learn to exchange the heavy- ringing coin of sound into more convenient paper money. And let them be spared the writing-texts of schoolmasters, containing the praises of industry, of writing, of their master, or of some old prince ; in short, subjects about which the teacher can produce nothing better than his pupils. Every representation without some actual object 374 JEAN PAXIL FRTEBRICH EICHTER. [frAG. VII. or motive is poison. Since some real occurrence always suggested to men of genius, such as Lessing, Konsseau and others, the subject of their fictions, thus occasional in the highest sense of that word ; how can you require a boy to dip his pencil in the airy blue of indefiniteness, and there- with so paint the vault of heaven that the invisible tint shall produce the colour of Prussian blue ? I cannot understand schoolmasters ! Must the man, even in child- hood, preach from the appointed Sunday text, and never choose one for himself in nature's bible ? Something similar may be said abont the writing of open letters (an unsealed one is almost inevitably half untrue) which the teachers of girls' schools require in order, say they, to exercise their pupils in epistolary style. A nothing writes to a nothing : the whole affair, undertaken by the desire of the teacher not of the heart, is a certificate of the death of thoughts, an announcement of the burning of the materials. Happy is it if the commanded A^olubility of the child, arising from coldness and addiessed to emptiness, do not accustom her to insincerity, if letters must be forthcoming, let them be written to some fixed person, about some definite thing. But what need of so much ado about nothing, since — not even excepting poli- tical or literary newspapers — nothing can be written so easily as letters on any subject when there is a motive for them, and the mind is fully informed of the matter ? The writing of one page excites the desire of learning more strongly than the reading of a whole book. Many readers of select school libraries are scarcely able to write a clear and good account of a fatal accident and a request for charitable assistance for a weekly newspaper. And it is equally true that many writers are just as indifferent speakers : they resemble many great merchants in Am- sterdam who have no warehouse, but onlj' a writing-room ; give them time, however, and they will procure the goods by writing. Comeille spoke badly, but he made his heroes declaim excellently. Kegard every pupil for ex- amination as a stammering dumb Comeille, and provide him a room, time, and a pen ; he will speak by these and so pass a very good examination. I close this chapter as a certain Indian begins his book — Blessed be the man who invented writing I CUAP. III.] LEVANA. 375 CHAPTER III. ATTEXriOy, AND THK POWER OF ADAPTIVE COMBINATION. § 131. Bonnet calls Attention the mother of Genius, but she is in fact her daughter ; from whence does she derive her origin, save from tlie marriage contracted in heaven between the object and the desire for it? Hence attention can really be as little preached or flogged into a person as ability. Swift in a musical academy — Mozart in a philosophical lecture- room — Raifaelle in. a political club — Frederick the Great in a cour d'amour — could you give an attentive ear to these different men, all of whom possess genius, are of mature years, and have thoughts about the important matters of art, science, love, and politics ? And do you expect and desire it in children, in persons of unripe age and inferior capacity'- for much more tiifling objects ? But, in fact, you desire that your individual attention, which exhibits as much caprice with regard to its objects as that of a man of genius, should be acquired by the child, and that your narrowness of view should be shared by him. If you attach reward or punishment to the child's attention to any object, you have put another, that of self- intere?jt, in its place, rather than strengthened the mental power or excited the desire of improvement; at most you have but laboured for the memory. Ko sensuous pleasure lines the path into the empire of mind ; hence studying for a livelihood resembles the stone by whose aid the diver sinks more rapidly to seek pearls for his master, and which the aeronaut takes with him for the very different pur- pose of rising higher towards heaven when he casts it overboard. But what is to be done? So teachers always ask instead of first asking, what is to be avoided? The laws of their order forbid the ile>uits to study longer than two hours ; but your school laws command little children to study, that is to be attentive, a« long as older people can teach : it is quite too much ; especially when one con- •iders the child's senses open to every influence, the cheerful 376 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICIITER. [fEAG. VII. sounds of tlie busy market-place, the blossoming boughs waving round the schoolroom windows, the narrow strip of sunshine on the dull schoolroom floor, and the delicious certainty on Saturday that there will be no lessons in the afternoon. There have been many cases in which the author of Levana himself has resolved to lend an attentive ear to some story, not more than a quarter of an hour long, so as to be able to relate it afterwards : he did inwardly what he could, and laboured to maintain the closest attention ; but this very labour gave rise to incidental thoughts; he was compelled to request a repetition in order to catch the thread of the story; and then, at last, after all this resolute anxiety, determination and design, he had obtained nothing more than a table of contents of the story, which he could enlarge upon in the proper place. Do you think it easier for a child to command his attention and repress weariness than for a grown-up man who addresses him ? 1 1 is possible for a child to take the greatest interest in your instruction, but not just to-day, nor at this particular window ; or, per- haps, because he has seen or tasted some novelty ; or, perhaps, because his father has announced either a country ramble or a confinement ; or because his former inattention has met its punishment, and the child now thinks far more of the punishment than of the means of avoiding it. Human beings, in fact, are incapable of uninterrupted attention (eternal longing may be much more truly promised than eternal loving), and the child's attention is not always identical with that of his parents. If novelty be confessedly the keenest sharpener of the inner ear, the forcing-house of every plant, why do teachers, after constant repetitions, require the first eagerness of attention from the young souls everywhere surrounded by new worlds? Do you suppose their pillow is a gilded cushion on which the glass is rubbed to obtain electricity? If it be difficult to place ourselves in the position of persons similarly circumstanced, how much more difficult must it be to do so with regard to persons unlike our- selves ! How many instances are there of teachers having warmed themselves for years by the schoolroom stove, CHAP. in.J liEVANA. 377 without remarking or remembering anything about the raised figures, by which the manufacturer endeavoured to display his taste and skill. Let every reader after the perusal of these lines examine his apartment, and observe whether he does not become conscious of twenty new objects, among which he has constantly lived without hitherto being aware of their presence ! Were we inclined to enter into more minute particulars, it would, among other examples, be easy to show the different effects of mere writing-copies on a child's attention. If he have the same words to copy throughout the whole page, each line will be worse written than its predecessor , but if the copy change frequently, he will have a new source of interest and attention from line to line ; still, even in this case, novelty will exert its power over the attention, and the first word, like the first line, will be the best written. Kepetition, else the main-spring of instruction, is the chief destroyer of attention ; because, in order to give attention to what is repeated, you must first have found it worthy of a still greater exertion of that "acuity. A very important distinction must be drawn between the power of attention diffused among the generality of men and that appertaining solely to men of genius. The latter can only be recognised, protected and cherished, but not created. Pay attention, teachers ! to the attention manifested by your children, so that you may not, to the injury of his whole future life, demand from the genius who astonishes you with his power and his brilliancy the very opposite qualities to those he possesses : do not expect a painter's eye in a Haydn, nor a poem from an Aristotle. Pay attention to this, and you will not offer to immortal Love an ape instead of a Psyche. This instinct-like attention, waiting till its proper object is manifested, explains some apparent anomalies, such as that the deep -thinking Thomas Aquinas in his youth was called a cow, and that the mathematician fcJchmidt, from incapacity for study or business, continued a mere labourer for thirty-eight years. Good trees at first produce only wood, not fruit. Pure silver when broken seems black. Afterwards, the work advances all 378 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VII. the easier and the quicker ; and while information and talent have to raise their gifts laboriously, like gold out of deep mines, genius presents his like jewels gathered out of loose sand. On the other hand, common every-day attention needs not so much to be aroused, as to be distributed and condensed ; even careless, inattentive children possess the faculty, but it is dissipated upon all passing objects. The child in his new world resembles a German in Rome, a pilgrim in the Holy Land. Attention to every thing is impossible : the whole of no ball can be seen. You elevate the passive being, before whom the world moves unnoticed, into an active one, by placing some one object in a prominent position : by displaying its wonders you excite his interest. Perpetually ask children Why ? The questions of the teacher find more open ears than his answers. You can elevate hi in also, as Pestalozzi recom- mends, by the magnifying glass of separation : and then again by restoring it as before. As God, according to the schoolmen, knows every thing because He made it, teach the child his power of mental creation; readiness of attention in recognising things will then follow naturally. And this brings me to the succeeding paragraphs on the power of adaptive combination. § 132. The old notion that mathematics exercises and requires philosophical accuracy and depth of thought, and that mathematics and philosophy are sisters, has, I hope, disappeared. With the exception of the all-powerful Leibnitz, great mathematicians, such as Euler, D' Alembert and even Newton, have been poor philosophers. The French have obtained more and greater mathematical than philosophical prizes : great masters of numbers and great mechanicians have been frequently found among th people, but equally great philosophers never ; and, on the other hand, powerful and profound philosophers, after the most arduous endeavours, have frequently remained but indifferent mathematicians. Among children we find Bome open to philosophical instruction, some only to CHAP, in.] LEV ANA. .^79 raathematical. This jndgment. of experience is explained and verified by Kant's Critique. The mathematician con- templates quantities, the j philosopher reflects upon and abstracts from them. The certainty of the former is, likn, that of the external world, a present reality, brought about by no logical conclusion : it cam ot prove any thing, but nierely show that it is so ; and if the quantities exceed the power of instantaneous apprehension (as is generally the case even in the simplest arithmetic) they are proved in a merely mechanical manner by the method.* In philosophy there is no such conviction by the truth of the method, but onl}^ by perceiving the truth of the idea. Malebranche sa'd rightly, the geometricia«i does not love truth, but the discernment of it (1. i. ch. 2.); or, to express it more clearly, not its existence, but its proportions. Philosophy, on the contrary, will search into existence ; it places itself and the mathematician — which is what he is incapable of doing — the whole Avorld within, around and above, before its gaze. Hence religion and ptietry, but not dead mathematics, spread living fibree far and deep into philosophy ; hence the great Kant admitted the possibility that the sciences of number and measurement, as exponents of earthly time and observation, might have no more truth beyond this life, whereas he never supposed this to be possible with regard to the ideas of reason and morality. § 133. The former paragraph, with its distinction of mathe- matics from philosophy, is meant to introduce nothing but the praise of Pestalozzi's method of teaching, which leads the child's mind straight between the parallels of numbers and lines-t For in what other manner can you * I at once perceive that 2x2=4; but confidence in the rule makes me believe that 319 x 5011 = 1598o09. t I have read nothing about Pestalozzi but himself, except the little that reviewing critics have extracted from his critioisers : yet his ** Lienhard und Gertrud " already unnounred the antidote-dispt-nsur of his age; and long may he remain and find a goodly number ot apprentioee, master workman as he is ! In " Die uusiciitbure Lege 380 JEAN PAUL FRIEbnlCH RICHTER. [fRAG. VII. arouse the innate desire of mental progress? The impulses of the senses excite and then stupefy, but help not to produce it. To overwhelm the mind with lessons, that is with mere summaries of accounts, resembles the Siberian custom of giving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to infants : to teach reflection and abstraction is, in fact, to tear the body to pieces, and lay open the springs of love and faith in order to anatomize the child's heart and blood. Moreover, philosophy begins with what is highest and most difficult ; mathematics with what is nearest and easiest. What then remains? The meta- physics of the eye ; the knowledge forming the boundary between experience and abstraction ; that cool, tranquil calculation which does not yet enquire about the three giant rulers of knowledge — God, the Universe, and our own Soul ; which rewards every momentary sowing with a harvest ; which neither excites nor represses desires and wishes, and yet finds on every spot of earth, as in a copy book, examples and exercises ; which, unlike thought and poetry, needs fear no difference of result from differences in heart and mind ; and for which no child is too young, for it, like him, grows up from the smallest beginning. Therefore Pestalozzi's gradual and luminous accumula- tion of arithmetical and geometrical proportions is right : it is teaching to carry an increasing weight, like Milo's calf,* which may at last serve for the thank-offering of an Archi- medes. What Pope Sixtus V. roughly said, " that, after all, asses might be taught arithmetic," and the well-known remark in the French Encyclopaedia, that some imbecile persons have learnt to play chess well — for chess is a mathematical combination, and the chess-board may serve as a test of mathematical power — all this commends the wisdom by which Pestalozzi wrote over life, as Plato over his study, *' The geometrician alone may enter here." Consequently, the reproaches cast against the Swiss, " that his school is no school of the prophets, nor even ot (v. complete works of J. P. Eichter, vol. ii. 2n(i edition, pp. 119, 120) the advantage of mathematics over philosophy as a means of training was recognised some time before Pestalozzi. * The athlete Milo, by daily carrying a growing cal^ became at last fstzong enough to carry the full-grown ox. OHAP. in. J LEVANA. 381 philosophers," are, in fact, eulogies; and it were to be regretted if he could show the falsity of the reproaches. Our hazy and inconstant age, fuller of dreams than of poems, of phantasms than of imagination, has great need of the clear, accurate eye of mathematics and of firm hold upon reality. And what, then, has it done towards the development of the mental faculties ? A great thing in childhood : it has unfolded the power of adaptive combination. Since the simple beam of mental activity has been already broken into the colours of many intellectual powers, it may be permitted me to name one more. I mean that power which is as different from imagination, which only partially embraces a subject, as from fancy, which creates ; that power winch assists the philosopher in his chains of reasoning, the mathematician in his calculations, and every inventor in his efforts, by retaining in connection and presenting in order, the daily increasing masses of ideas, numbers, lines and images. The pupil of Pestalozzi exercises no creative power in his long numerical equa- tions {that belongs only to the discoverer of the method) but he calls into play his faculties of examining and surveying. 'J'hese are capable of Unlimited growth : but what would Newton, the mathematical pole-star, have become in an ocean of books? Piobably as incomprehen- sible to others in their best years, as he was to himself in his old age! If many measure the course of ideas by seconds ; — Bonnet required half a second for a clear idea, Chladen only three thirds to recall an old one, according to Haller 8 Physiology ; — they seem only to reckon in that the mental perusal of ])reviously impressed thoughts ; for is it possible to mark thought, to divide the soft breath of heaven into waves ? And is not the vastest idea— God, or the Universe — as truly an instantaneous flash of light as the poorest idea, even nothing? The strengthening of the power in question might afterwards be renewed with advantage to many sciences. In bome cases, for instance, what great advantage would be gained from having thoroughly understood, and being able to recall, the various parts of a watch — from such as wei© the playthings of our childhood to the accurato 382 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICii KICHTER. [fRAG. VII. repeater of half-quarters — the masterly echo of time. This power may be prepared for the most opposite efforts by means of two very different sciences; by astronomy, for the comprehension of vast masses ; by anatomy, for that of the smallest portions of matter : the latter requires an unexpectedly great effort, for it is physically as difficult either for the finger or the eye to embrace the smallest as the largest object. The power we are speaking of may also be strengthened by gradually compressing a long historical or philosophical paragraph into an epigram. For instance, suppose this to be the sentence : " Popular authors do not make a selection among their thoughts, but write them down as they arise, just as, in most states, the monarchs are not elected, but rule in order of birth." You might compress it thus : " Popular authors do not permit their ideas to rule according to the choice of reason, but according to the natural succession of birth." And you might conclude it proverbially thus : " In the popular brain the empire of ideas is hereditary, not elective." Of course, this only applies in the education of children ; for to educated readers such brevity would be wearisome. CHAPTER IV. DEVELOPMENT OF WIT. § 134. " Until the human body is developed, every artificial de- velopment of the mind is injurious. Philosophical strain- ings of the understanding, poetical ones of the fancy, destroy those very faculties in the young mind, and others along with them. But the development of wit, which is scarcely ever thought of for children, is the least hurtful, because its efforts are easy and momentary; the most useful, because it compels the new machinery of ideas to quicker motion; because, by the pleasure of discovery, it gives increased power of command over those ideas CHAP. IV. J LEV ANA. 383 and because in early years, this quality, either in our- selves or others, particularly delights by its brilliancy. Why are there so few inventors, and so many learned men, whose heads contain nothing but immoveable furniture, in which the ideas peculiar to each science lie separately as in monks' cells, so that when their possessor writes about one science, he remembers nothing that he knows about the rest ? Why ? Solely because children arc taught more ideas than command over those ideas, and because in school they are expected to have their thoughts as immoveably fixed as their persons. " Schlozer's historical style should be imitated in other sciences. I have accustomed my Gustavus to hear and to understand, and so himself to discover, the resemblances among dissimilar sciences. For instance, all great or heavy things move slowly ; hence Oriental monai chs, the Dalai-Lama, the ^^un, do not move at all. A\ inckelmann tells us that the wise Greeks walked slowly ; also the hour finger of a clock, the ocean, and the clouds in fine weather move slowly. Again, men, the earth and pendulums go quicker in winter. Or, again, the name of Jehovah, of eastern princes, and of li'ome's guardian deity, as well as the Sybilline books, the most ancient Christian and the Catholic Bible, and the Veda, were concealed. It is in- describable what great readiness and pliability of thought children thus attain. Of course the information which you wish to combine must first be in the head. But enough! the pedant understands and does not approve; find the less prejudiced reader also says. Enough ! " This paragraph follows some introductory arguments in the invisible Lodge, book i. p. 131. § 135. After the severe rule and lesson-time of mathematics the sans-culottish freedom and play-time of wit best follows ; and if the former, like the Neptunist, forms all things coldly and slowly, the latter, like the Vulcanist, ascribes to them a rapid and fiery origin. The glance of wit passes over long and dark series of ideas, acquired by the ])ower of preliminary education, in oider afterwards to create. 384 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH EICHTER. [FRAG. VIL The first efforts of intellectual growth are witty. And the passage from geometry to the electric art of wit, as Lichtenberg, Kastner, D'Alembert and the French in general, prove, is a natural and an easy, rather than a forced march. The Spartans, Cato, Seneca, Tacitus, Bacon, Young, Lessing, Lichtenberg, are examples how the full , heavy, thunder-clouds of knowledge break out in the lightning of wit. Every discovery is at first an incidence ; and from this moving point is developed a progressive living form. The intellectual effort doubles and trebles itself; one witty idea produces another, as the new-born Diana assisted at the birth of her twin brother Apollo. § 136. It is easier to perceive that wit precedes reflection and imagination in the nursery and the schoolroom, than to see how to produce it. The great majority of teachers will object that they do not themselves possess it, and that it is very difficult to imitate the French language- master who helped out his German pupils with their German and yet knewnothing of it. Niemeyer recommends for this purpose charades and anagrams — but these only serve for reflection upon language ; — and riddles — which, though better, are yet but witty definitions ; — and games in company, the majority of which, however, tend to excite a spirit of rational talking rather than wit. But can no witty poems, no witty anecdotes, no play upon words, be discovered? And is it not at first an easy matter to let children seek moral resemblances in phj^sical substances, until their pinions have grown sufficiently strong to reach from mental to bodily resemblances? ( Vide my Introduction to Esthetics, ii.) The author once presided for three years over a small school comprising ten children of his friends ; the best head among his pupils, of different ages and sexes, had only mastered Cornelius Nepos. So, along with the Latin language, German, French and English had to be begun, as well as the so-called practical sciences. The diaries of this eccentric school— during whose holiday hours the Invisible Lodge and Hesperus were composed— along CHAP. IV.] LEV ANA. 385 with the confession of all his mistaken views, belong to the account of the author's life hereafter to be published. But what follows will find its right place here. After half a year's daily instruction for five hours, in the repe- titions of which such witty resemblances as accident offered were sought, and during which the children had the Spartan permission to attack one another, — by which means when out of school they were preserved from the German fault of over-sensitiveness, — the author, to en- courage the children and confirm the habit, made a manuscript book, entitled " Anthology of my Pupils* Bon-mots," in which he wrote in their presence every idea of a not merely local character. A few examples Xnay serve to show his method. A boy, G , twelve years old, the cleverest of the children, endowed with mathematical and satirical talents, said as follows: — ** Man is imitated by four things, an echo, a shadow, an ape, and a mirror ; — the windpipe, the bigoted Spaniards, and ants, suffer no foreign substance within their limits, but drive it out; — the air-bag of the whale, out of which it breathes when under water, is the water stomach of the camel, whence it drinks when there is no other water ; — the concealment of the Greeks in the Trojan horse was a living transmigration of souls ; — when calculations become longer, logarithms must be made of logarithms ; — mercury is poison, and the mythological Mercury con- ducted Bouis both into heaven and hell," &c. &c. The same boj^'s younger brother, ten and a half years old, said, — "God is the only perpetuum mobile; — the Hun- garians preserve both their wine and their beehives in the earth; — Constantinople looks beautiful from a distance, but ugly when near, and it stands upon seven hills ; so the planet Venus shines gloriously from a distance, but on approaching nearer you find it uneven and full of steep mountains," (fee. f, AND SELF-KNOW LEDGE; TOGKTHEll WITH AN EXTRA PARAGRAPH ON THB POWERS OF ACTION AND BUSINESS. § 137. I MAY be most brief about what is most important; for time and libraries are sufficiently prolix about it. The reflective contemplation of self which conceals and annihilates the external and superterrene universe by guiding and lowering man into his own inner world, now finds its mining ladders in every book shop. Moreover our modern life, broken up into particles by the search after pleasure, and destitute of any great, active aims U unite mind and matter, is enough, without further cause, to make every one live within himself, and forget the universe until some shock to his nerves of feeling painfully reminds him of existence. If any men of the present age be of a poetical nature life quickly becomes a desert to them, in whose undulating air, as in that of other deserts, objects appear both wavering and gigantic. If they be of a philosophical disp(jsition they fancy the ideal garden-ladder against which they lean to be a fruit tree, its dead steps living branches, and mount"nz them to be gathering fruit. Hence self-destruction soon follows the philosophical destruction of the world. Hence there are more lunatics and fewer poets than formerly : the philosopher and the madman ceaselessly point with the left-hand index finger to the right hand, and cry out "Object— Subject!" Consequently, in philosophical and poetical natures, always endeavour to postpone the reflecting observation of self until the glowing season of the passions, so that the child may gamer and preserve a fresh, steadfast and earnest life. Children of common and merely active dispositions, who do not so readily lose sight of the outer works of the world, may bo advanced five years earlier, by the 2 c 2 388- JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH EICHTER. [fRAG, VII.} wheels of logic, physiology and transcendental philosophy, into the citadel of the sonl, so that they may learn thence to contemplate their course of life. The inner world is the remedy or antidote for the man of business ; as the external universe is for the philosopher. Poetry, as the happy union of both worlds, promotes the higher welfare of both; as, by it, that healthful reflection and abstraction are attained which raise man above want and time to a nobler view of life. § 138. This is a suitable place to speak of the development of the faculties for business, the sense of the man of the world, which, in contradistinction to reflection, is a me- diator between matter and mind; but it serves to mix rather than to combine them indissolubly. This sense for the objects of sense, this presence of mind for what is ex- ternally present, a quality so gloriously perfect in heroes, creates or annihilates things by the quickest combinations of such dissimilar materials as external and internal observations, or sensations and ideas, by a simultaneous exercise of comprehension, foresight and physical power. Like the two-headed eagle in the fable, which watched with one head while it took nourishment with the other, the man of the world must look at once within and with- out, unblinded by what is within, unalarmed by what is without ; and he must stand upon a point which, though he himself move, yet never alters the circle nor changes its position. But it is difficult to provide a palaestra for the develop- ment of this power suited to boys ; they must contend with the only world they have about them — that of edu- cation. It is not a fighting school they must pass through —for as yet they should have no enemies^ — but they may run a practising gauntlet against what lies in their way, and war upon things, not men. It is to be hoped that the teacher may find them the needful opportunities. OHAP. VI.] LEVANA. 889 CHAPTER VI. ON THE EDUCATION OF THE RECOLLECTION — NOT OF THE MEMORY. § 139. The difference between recollection and memorj'^ is insisted upon by moralists more than by writers on edu- cation. Memory, a receptive not a creative faculty, is Bubjected to physical conditions more than all other mental powers ; for every kind of weakness (direct and indirect, as well bleeding as intoxication) impairs it, and dreams interrupt it ; it is not subject to the will, is possessed by us in common with the beasts ;* and can be most effectually strengthened by the physician : a bitter Btomachic will increase it more than a whole dictionary learnt by heart. For if it gained strength by what it receives, it would grow with increasing years, that is, in proportion to its wealth in hoarded names; but it can carry the heaviest burdens most easily in unpractised youth, and it holds those so firmly that they appear above the grey hairs of age as the evergreens of childhood, ' §140. On the contrary, recollection, the creative power, as free to call forth or to discover a consequence from the given ideas of memory, as wit or imagination are from their own stores; this exercise of the will denied to beasts, which belongs chiefly to the mind, and therefore grows with its growth; this faculty comes within the sphere of the educator. Hence, memory can be iron, recollection only quicksilver, and the graving-tool acts corrosively only on the former. The division of this power into memory for words and memory for things is, therefore, erroneous, at least in expression. He who can retain in his head a page • During moulting (a disorder of birds) the bull-finrh forgets his 8ong, and the hawk his cunning : just as at au earlier stage each loses his nature through a debilitating want of sleep. 390 JEAN PAUL FRIEDBICHr RICHTEK. ^FRAG. VH.) of Hottentot words will certainly much more eaj^ily retain a volume of Kant ; for either he understands it — and then every idea calls up an associated idea more readily than a word can a perfectly dissimilar word — or he does not understand it ; and then he merely retains a philosophical vocabulary, and uses it as well in every disputation, or for every combination, as many renowned students of the Critique already prove. But memory for things does not ]>resuppose mnmorj^ for names ; but only because instead of b«^■!^.ng called memory for things it ought to be called rt collection. Kecollection, like every other mental power, can only work according to the laws of association ; not sounds, but things, that is to say, thoughts, educate. Kead a volume of history to a boy, and compare the copious abstract he can furnish of that with the miserable remnant he could collect from a page of Humboldt's Mexican words which you had read aloud to him. Plattner remarks in his Anthropology that things merely in juxtaposition are retained with more difficulty than things coming in sequence : an animal, as it seems to me, would experience the very reverse ; and for this reason : memory applies to juxtaposition, recollection to sequence, because it, and not, the mrmer, excites to mental activity by causation, or some other association of ideas. Pythagoras recommended his pupils each evening to recall the events of the day, not solely as an act of self-mortification, but also as a means of strengthening the recollection. Kalov knew the whole Bible by heart; Barthius, when but in his ninth year, Terence ; Sallust, Demosthenes ; and Scaliger learned Homer in twenty-one days : but then these are books full of intimately associated words, not mere dictionaries; a whole library with all its volumes is easier to retain — for the connection assists the recollection — than a short list of them. When D'Alembert makes the easy retention of a poem a proof of its excellence, hs position loses something of novelty, but gains in truth by the versus memoriales, mnemonic verses, and the laws of the ancient lawgivers promulgated in verse. He, in other words, observes that the recollection is assisted by the close connection of the parts, a quality peculiarly possessed by good poems. CHAP. VI.] LEVANA. 391 Hence the Abbe Delille rightly regards his poems as better than, for instance, his translated oiiginals; not only because he has them in his mind before he transcribes them, and so can sell the publisher his manus-ript full of the final rhymes, to which he aftei-wards attaches the rest of the verse, — but also because he cannot remember much of Milton or Virgil, although he has read both several times. 'J'o strengthen the combining power of the recollection, accustom your children from their earliest years to relate to you some passage in history, or a tale; and for this purpose the most diffusely told story is the best. Fur- ther, if you wish your child to advance rapidly, both in a foreign language and in power of recollection, do not set him to learn words, but a chapter which he has trans- lated a few times : here recollection assists the memory ; words are remarked in their verbal connection, and the best dictionary is a favourite book. It is more difficult to remember a single thing than many joined together. The example of Lessing, who always devoted himself exclusively for a time to one particular branch of knowledge, proves the truth of Locke's remark, that the way to become learned is to pursue one subject only for a considerable period. The reason lies in the systematic nature of the recollection ; it is certain that a science will adhere more closely which has had time to spread its roots in the soil. Hence nothing so much en- feebles the recollection as leaps from one branch of the tree of knowledge to another ; as men become forgetful who have the management of several dissimilar offices. Tjct your child pursue one and the same branch of knowledge uninterruptedly for a month ; what a probability of growth in twelve branches during the year ! The dislike of the sameness will soon be lost in the pleasure of progress ; and the science thus grounded and daily increasing its limits will in time present a variety of flowers. C'ertainly the foundations of every science should be laid and worked upon for sometime without the intermixture of any other ;* * Even in mechanical handwriting a month's practice in large hand is desirable — interrupted by no running-hand : so that tlie more firmly acquired cliuracter may better witbiataud the luter detriments of 392 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH BICHTER. [fRAG. VII. then a new one may be commenced, and the other re- peated for a change ; and thus we may proceed, until, after the careful erection of the scaffolding, we may begin the building, and not till many of these are completed can a street be formed. For a contemporaneous multiplicity of sciences is not adapted to early youth, which is only capable of embracing an individual subject, — but to maturer age, which can compare them together. Kecollection by association of place — falsely called memoria localis — this play-room of the so-called arts of memory — shows the necessity of connection. For this reason travelling enfeebles local recollection. A prison, said a Frenchman, is a memoria localis; and many, Bassom- pierre for example, have therein written their memoirs solely on the walls — of the skull. § 141. But there is one mental talisman even for the memory — I mean the charm of the object. A woman retains the titles of b(;oks with as much difficulty as her learned husband does the names of fashionable dresses; an old philologist, oblivious of other things, does not suffer an unknown word that adds to his word-treasures to escape him. No one has a memory for every thing, because no one feels an interest in every thing. And the physical powers set bounds even to the strengthening influence of desire on the memory — think of that when with children : — for instance, if a Hebrew bill of exchange for a thousand pounds were promised, on condition of demanding its payment in the very words of the document, as once read alodd, everybody would try to remember them, but unless he were a Jew, the words and the form would fail him. If grown-up people find italics and German-text useful to li^ark their memoranda, I should think it possible that little children also might require some such assistance. But teachers ply them with uninterrupted notation, and then, when they have printed whole books (or lessons) in italic and German-text, ask, with wonder, "whether it is possible a thing can be overlooked, when printed in different CHAP. VI.J LrVANA. 393 or large text ? " Permit something to be forgotten, when you desire them to remem])er so much. Kesemblance, the rudder of recollection, is the dangerous rock of memory. Among related objects only one can exert the charm of novelty or priority. Thus, the correct spelling of very similar words, such as ahnen (to forbode), ahnden (to revenge) ; malen (to paint), mahlen (to grind) ; das (the) and doss (that) ; Katheder (professor's chair), and catheter (although the last two are found occasionally together), is more difficult than that of totally different ones. There are few aged men who remain at home and are able to remember or relate the little circumstances of their monotonous life for a fortnight : by the constant re- currence of the daily echo the historj^ of their lives is as much shortened as life itself is prolonged. The history of the fourth or fifth ten years of life shrivels up into a note compared with the chapter on the fourth or fifth year. An eternity might, at last, become shorter than a moment. It is incomprehensible to me how people fancy they can teach children to read or write the letters easily by pointing out their resemblances, and laying before them at once i y, c e, or, in writing, i r, h k, &c. The very opposite plan ought to be pursued ; i should be placed next g, V next z, o next r ; the contrast, like li^ht and shadow, make both prominent, until reflected lights and half shades can separate them anew from each other. The fast- rooted dissimilarities serve at last to hold fast the resemblance that exists among them. So the old plan of teaching spelling by lists of words alphabetically arranged is bad, on account of the difficulty of distinguish- ing similar sounds ; whereas that of classing together derivatives from the same Latin or Greek word assists the remembrance, because the radical word does not alter. If instruction in arts of memory had a place in the Levana, I might suggest the following sportive ftiethods . daily drawing tickets in a spelling lottery, where each cliild would not only observe his own, but his companions' words ; every pupil might each day receive a foreign word of parole, wherewith to greet his teacher : or the scholar tuight be set to print a short Latin sentence with its translation ; or he might be t'>ld to write the same word 394 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RIGHT ER. [fRAG. VII. in various styles of penmanship : in dates, for which these methods are much more necessary than for words, the teacher might give the years written merely with conso- nants, because the addition of the necessary vowels would impress the whole line on the memory ; and he might cut .worthless maps into sections, allow his pupils to take them home, and expect them to be brought back joined together in the fashion of architectural games ; and so forth : it were, indeed, a miserable prospect if hundreds of such arts did not occur to the teacher. I myself, however, would not choose any of these proposed methods of catch- ing and 3^oking attention, but would adopt that of down^ right force and industry. I do believe that a rod would help a creeping child to walk better than crutches under his arms, which at first carry but afterwards are carried by him. Let yea 3^ea, and nay nay, or warmth and fire be your double watchword. § 142. Artemidorus, the grammarian, forgot every thing when he was terrified. Fear cripples the memory, both by producing physical weakness and mental iiritation ; the frost of cold fear chains every living power which it approaches. The bonds are removed even from the criminal when he is to speak and be judged ! And yet many teachers put fresh fetters on their pupils before they hear, and threaten before they teach them. Do they suppose the terrified soul can observe or remember any .thing better than the pain of fear, and the blows of the stick? Can the free glance of the mental eye co-exist with the abject slavery of the heart? Will the poor sinner on the scafibld embrace the beauties of the sur- rounding landscape and, in contemplating them, forget the impending axe ? ( ^5 ) EIGHTH FRAGMENT. Chap. I. Beauty limited to the outward Sense, §§ 143, 144 ; to the inner Sense, §§ 145, 146. Chaf. II. Classical Education, §§ 147, 148. CHAPTER I. DEVELOPMKNT OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. §143. I USE the expression sense of beauty instead of taste ; taste for the sublime sounds as badly as smeU for the sublime. The French publish one of the best instructions on taste under the title Almanach des Gourmands. Farther; the sense of beauty is not the same as the instinctive desire to express beauty ; the development and improvement of this latter faculty belongs properly to schools of art. If your boy, even in the school-room, be taught to produce instead of only to feel and see beautiful forms and beautiful thoughts, he is as much spoiled as if he were a father before being a lover. Nothing is more dangerous, either for art or heart, than the premature expression of feeling ; many a poetic genius has been fatally chilled by delicious draughts of Hippocrene in the warm season of youth. The feelings of the poet, especially, should be closely and coolly covered, and the hardest and driest sciences should retard the bursting blossoms till the dtie spring-time. Pope, when u Ixiy, wrote poems of sentiment ; when a man, epigrams. It is said that every clever man, such as Leibnitz and Kant, for instance, must have written verses in his youth : this may be very true of him who writes none in mature life; the philosopher, the mathematician, the statesman, may begin where the poet ends, and vice versa 1 Is the poet the only one who reveals the secret, — the holiest, and the tenderest of humanity ; then mubt he guard and keep it 396 JEAN PAUL FRIEDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VIII. in the soul, as tenderly as if he were the Blessed Virgin, from every carpenter, until the Holy Spirit give her the Son. Let the poet first, then, attain the full stature of his model before he copies it. Let him, like the beautiful white butterfly, first live on the leaves of the schools, and unfold his wingS when the flowers hold honey. § 144. Children, like women, always kindly disposed towards pedants, wowld not think it utterly ridiculous if one attempted, for instance, to instil into a boy admiration for a girl's beautiful features by displaying drawings ot hideous noses, lips and necks, and along with them beauti- ful paintings of the same parts, so that when the young man left the school of design he might at once fall in love with a beautiful woman as judiciously as a simpleton who had never been to school. . Something very similar is done by those teachers who try to educate the sense of the sublime ; which, however, is not increased, but diminished, by the given examples of sublimity. The circumnavigator of the world does not think the sea so sublime as does his wife, who views it only from the coast ; the stars come at last to look smaller in the naked eye of an astronomer than in ours. In fact, men want to educate every thing (themselves excepted) which will certainly educate itself ; and they do this the more earnestly because the result is certain and irresistible, as in walking, seeing, tasting, &c. : but for the gense of artistic beauty, which peculiarly needs education, schools are rarely built. A child may be conducted into the artistic realm ot beauties appreciable by the outward senses, such as paint- ing, music, architecture, earlier than into that of beauties appreciable only by the mind, such as poetry. Above all things educate the German eye, which is so far behind the German ear. Conceal from him every distortion of shape or drawing — one might add of the streets, if it were possible to hide the grotesque appearance of our houses, dresses and ornaments, or rather disfigurements — and surround his beauteous age with beauty. The example of the critically correct Italians proves that an artist's hand is not th« CHAP. T. I LEVANA. 397' necessary accompaniment of an artist's eye. Open a child's eye, more than his heart, to the beauties of nature; the latter opens naturally in its proper season, and sees farther and more beauties than those you place before it. Unfor- tunately little can be accomplished in this direction by your unaided efforts; only the state — which, however, loves better to carve its wood into parade-beds than cradles of art — can provide true education for the eye, which is best taught by streets, temples and gardens. May the generous and noble plan for an Art-school of the powerful author of " Die reisende Maler " (The Travelling Painters) soon come into the hands of a prince who will not think that he buys too dearly with his regalia the more worthy crown- jewels of Art. Must royalty and art be everywhere as far distant from each other as the Sun and Venus — a space which a cannon ball would require seventeen 3'ears to traverse ? * The former paragraph clearly excludes poets from the proposed school of art. A great poetic gallery, filled with novices gathered together for the express pur- pose of poetising, could at most but furnish poems upon poetry and poets, in short, but mock-heroic imitations ; an evil which the acquirement of technical facility, the great advantage of a school for art, does not compensate. A true poet must, like Shakspeare and Cervantes, have struggled with life and all its conditions; then he may take the pencil, not merely to lay colour by colour, but to paint his soul upon the canvas. If an intimate acquaintance with poems led to writing poems, actors ought to have written the best plays. An artistic school for the ear is less required from defi- ciency of teachers, patterns and energy, than from a super- fluity of them, for sometimes the teachers will drown one another, though at the risk of being themselves out of tune. Fortunately it is more difficult to change or destroy the simple taste of the hearing, than of the seeing or reading, public. Behind the most sensitive ear the heart always remains open to the simplest melodies : the virtuoso alone is his own empoisoner. • The times, unfortunately, have compelled an affirmative answer ; the Bohool of art remains Btill in the celestial realm of the Beautiful : and its architect has flown away to it— the man of great heart, th« pio^uj man, tlie richly gifted poet. 398 JEAN PAUL FKIKDEICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VHI. §115. If the art of poetry have been pronounced, and with justice, to embrace all human nature, to be the Venus- girdle which enchantingly combines the most opposite powers, the most graceful alternate transformation of form into subject, and this again into that, like the candle whose flame assumes a shape, and yet through which the wick is visible ; if this be so, we must indeed wonder that the study of this unity in plurality should be appointed for that time of life in which variety is small, and the power of combining it weak or even erring. Must not children resemble nations on whom the sun of beauty first shone after the tempest of their wants was stilled ? And does not poetry, the bridal ornament of Psyche, require her to be full-grown and a bride? Before the thirteenth or fourteenth year, before the time of opening manhood, which throws a romantic splendour round sun, and moon, and spring, and sex, and poetrj'-, the child regards poetical flowers as so many dried medicinal herbs. The err(jr of prematurely introducing a child to the treasures of poetry can only arise from the a-sthetic mistake of believing the spirit of poetry to consist less in the whole than in its variously scattered, dazzlino- charms of sound, pictures, events and feelings ; for these a child has naturally a ready ear. Rhymers and verse writers may, indeed, play a useful part at an early age. Ehyme delights both the most uncultivated and the youngest ear ; and the harmony, of full-sounding prose will soon melt the little soul. In- structive poetry, resembling circular light-holders, also ; is good. Songs, too, aie passable. Tales, particularly Oriental tales, the Arabian lights' Entertainments, (those, romantic summer nights, so shorn whether to men or children !) will arouse the dreaming poetic heart with gentle charms until it is afterwards strong enough to comprehend the lofty lyric ode, the wide-extended level epic, the thronging passions of tragedy. When manhood and womanhood have kindled the transitory joy-fires of life, and all their powers seek unity . and the future, then let the poet approach, and be the CHAP. I.] LEVANA. 399 Orpheus who animates dead bodies, as well as tames wild beasts. But what poets shall the teacher bring ? § 146. Our own! Neither Greek, nor Koman, nor Hebrew, nor Indian, nor Fiench, but German. Let the Englishman select English poets, and every nation its own. Only when we call to mind the poverty of the dark ages, whose seeming corpse the miracles of Greece and Eome re- animated, can we comprehend the existing absurdity of not educating and preparing the mind by means of native, related and young beauties for those of foreign and distant ages ; but of precisely reversing the matter and placing him among strangers instead of those who speak his mother-tongue. I'he quickest comprehension and percep- tion of all the secondarv tints in a poet's work, the intensest feeling for its subject, the widest embrace of its aim, and of its humour — all this is only possible to the reader of his own countryman, not of any foreign wonderful being; if the actual conditions of his native country help the poet to colour, they also help the reader to see : she was a Roman who at once inspired RafFaelle— the Roman — Hs a mistress and a Madonna. Must we in the North dig all our beauties and hopes, like vases and urns, out of sepulchres ? We may do so rightly if we speak only of vases and similar objects ; that is to say, of the artistic education of the eye. The most beautiful forms should be first pre- sented to the eye — a Grecian Venus to a Chinese. But if the education of the inner sense be the object, offer the nearest first. The outer sense accustoms itself, by degi ees, to the most preposterous forms, as all journals of fasliion show, and becomes attached to them by length of time ; the inner sense is formed by the contemplation of childish beauties to the comprehension of mental beauty. Begin with Raffaelle and Gluck, but not with l^ophocles. At home and at school let the native poets be first p-aced on the altar as gods of the household and the country ; let the little child rise from the lesser to the greater gods. What love of country must not that hanging 400 JEAN PAUL FKIEDKICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VIII on the lips of native poets inspire ! And to what beau- tiful slow reading should we not be accustomed, (for the German reads every thing quickly that is not very far removed in distance, age and language) if one of Klopstock's odes, for instance, were as critically dissected as one of Horace's! What power should we not obtain over our own language, if, at the age when schoolmasters usually discourse about Pindar and Aristophanes, we were intro- duced to the sonorous odes of Klopstock and Voss, into the antique temple of Goethe, the lofty dome of Schiller ! For even our own language must speak to us according to a model, if it is to produce any effect. Hence the old humanists (and some modern ones too) wrote Latin best, and both old and new worldlings write French best, and both parlies often wrote miserable German : Leibnitz and the Eectors on the one side, and Frederick the Great on the other, confirm my observation. CHAPTER n. CLASSICAL EDUCATION. § 147. For the sake of brevity I begin this chapter with the request that the reader will first peruse, in the Invisible Lodge, Book First, the supplement headed " Why I give my Gustavus witty and bad authors, but forbid the classical, I mean Greek and Latin writers;" thereby I shall be spared both copying and printing it over again ; and also the bad attempt to clothe the same thoughts, or soul, with another body. I have not yet met with any refutation of that paragraph ; nor, during the twenty years which have elapsed since its publication, have I been able to refute myself. What follows might be appended to a second or third edition. I ask whether those men who have given us Wieland'ii; CHAP. II.] LEVANA. 401 explanation of the satires of Horace, Voss's translation of Homer, Schleiermacher's introductory translations of Plato's discourses, have sprung from that Latin town which Maupertuis recommended to be founded ? Only men of mind, of power, and of education, completed by more and higher studies than mere philology, only chil- dren born on fortunate days, such as Goethe and Herder, have ever seen the spirit of antiquity ; the rest have only beheld, instead, treasures of words and gleanings of flowers. Is it not madness to think it even possible that a boy of fourteen or sixteen, however great his abilities, can comprehend the harmony of poetry and deep thougnt contained in one of Plato's discourses, or the worldly persiflage of Horace's satires, when the genius itself has not conducted the men I name to the pure cold heights of antiquity until long after the fiery season of youth ? Why do teachers demand what they can so seldom do themselves? I entreat them to think partly of the in- difference with which they and the Italian savans await the unrolling of the eight hundred manuscripts in Herculaneum ; partly of the stupidity with which they first mistook, and afterwards criticised, the new Greek spirit of Goethe in his elegies on the antique at Weimar partly of the numberless mistakes they have made in attributing a Grecian resemblance to many a flat produc- tion, merely on account of its German dulness and French form,* and denying it to such pure, powerful works as those of Herder. And does not the preference which the youth of our universities manifests towards every new hairy comet really show what is effected by the ancient astronomy in our youthful training places? And is it possible, even if all other things were different, that the tender, indivisible form of beauty can be appreciated if grammatic divisions break it, like the Medicean Venus, into thirteen fragments and thirty smaller pieces. What, in this case, the youth may gladly confound with the enjoyment of the whole, and with the goddess of flowers, is the pleasure derived from some wayside flower in the sandy desert of philological exercises ; and the ordinary * E.g. to many a one of Wieland's, wherein there is often nothing Greek but the scene and the month-name. i 2 o 402 JEAN PAUL FRTEDEICH KICHTER. [fRAG. VIII. teacher mistakes his sand bath for the floral deity. This perversity causes the study of the ancients, which must present its casket of phrases at every boy's toilet, to give his concetti to the Italian, his host of synonymes to the English, and to the German every taste which he can find. And thus the new age is lost to us by the wounds of beauty. § 148. Let antiquity be the Venus and morning star which rises over the evening of our North. It depends on our position with regard to the star of beauty whether it shall shine upon us with a full or only a partial light. The language of the ancients is a very different thing. So, again, is the spirit of their history, or subject ; and, thirdly, the spirit of their form, or poetry. The learning of the ancient languages and their harmonic beauty has no prematurity to dread ; but why are these canonical writings of the spirit desecrated into books for teaching the alphabet and reading ? Do not people understand that no mind, least of all a child's, can turn at once in such opposite directions as language and subjecjt, even though it be a poet's subject, require ? Especial care should be taken never to reduce a reality to a mere arrangement of words, particularly because the recollection rejects as indigestible all single, isolated matters. If the fact stands prominently forth, the word or name is often lost sight of. Thus it has frequently been remarked that those boys find it most difficult to remember the names of the heroes in ancient Greek or Eoman story, who have their deeds impressed most vividly on their minds. So, in novels, the interest of the story and of the hero will sometimes make a young lady read the whole without knowing the names of the hero or heroine, which yet stand upon every page, and cause her to forget them in their lives as completely as the Greeks who, according to Lessing, named their tragedies after persons who did not appear in them. What Greek or Latin books are the most suitable for teaching those languages ? Partly imitations, which may be made in order not to lead a deaf and dumb spirit to CHAP, n.] LEVANA. 403 the divine oracles of the ancients; partly also those ancient books which possess most interest for the youth- ful mind : for instance, the younger Pliny (as a forerunner of the French letter writers), and even the elder Pliny ; at least he is much more suitable than Tacitus, so full of poison, the world and life; also Lucan, Seneca, Ovid, Martial, Quintilian, Cicero's youthful orations, &c. In Greek the romantic Odyssey, in spite of its im- portance, might occupy an early place, then Plutarch, ^lian, and even the Plutarch of philosophers, Diogenes Laertius. The ages of iron and brass, like the metals after which they are named, should be laid at once on the surface, and the nobler metals raised afterwards upon them. In short, to obtain strength, observe the Grecian law which forbade athletes even to look upon beauties. ? The fortifications round the city of God have been laid by the ancients for every age in the history of their own. The present ranks of humanity would sink irrecoverably if the youth did not take its way through the silent temple of the mighty past into the market-place of after- life. The names of Socrates, Cato, Epaminondas, and others, are pyramids of the power of will. Rome, Athens, Sparta, are the three crowning cities of the giant Geryon ; and after-ages fix their eyes on the youth as on the primitive mountains of humanity. Not to know the ancients is to be an ephemeron which neither sees the sun rise nor set. But do not expose this antique temple as though it were a receptacle for cast-off customs and phrases, and as though its holy relics, instead of being worshipped, might, like warriors' bones, be converted into knife-handles and the like. The man can draw the history of the ancients from their own springs ; the child may draw them from the man : one ancient alone I would except, Plutarch, from whose hand the young may receive the animating palm wine of the mighty past. But school- masters willingly dacrific© the purification of the soul by ancient history to a pure Grecian. So Demosthenes, destitute of ornament, poor in flowery garlands, rich in chains of argument, and rich in andst is sacrificed to sounding, flowery Cicero. It were surely well to consult the age and advance- 2 D 2 404 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [fRAG. VIII. ment of the pupils in schools, and begin with the easier classical authors, Cicero, Yirgil, Livy, Herodotus, Ana- creon, Tyrtaeus, Euripides; afterwards advancing to the more difficult, Horace, Caesar, Lucretius, Sophocles, Plato, Aristophanes. Here, as is natural, that orderly disorder is scorned by which masters place the difficulty of under- standing an author in the phrases, rather than in the higher spirit ; just similarly in a French school Goethe would be read by the lower classes, Schiller by the second, Haller by the first, and I by nobody. I call Virgil an easy classical author ; Caesar a difficult one ; the odes ot Horace are easy, his satires difficult ; Klopstock is oftener easy than Goethe, because merely verbal difficulties may be overcome by teaching and industry, but mental diffi- culties only by the maturity of thought, which comes with years. If it be asked where time is to be found for the so- called knowledge of things, and the studies whereby a livelihood is to be obtained, since their subjects constantly increase, and we resemble an army, the last ranks of which must march quickest — I tranquilly answer, Give natural philosophy and natural history, astronomy and geometry, and abundant supplies of " bread studies," in the school- rooms and lecture-rooms of your gymnasiums ; and in so doing you will give the boys ten times more pleasure than they receive from the unfolding of the mummy bandages of the ancient graces ; thus, too, you impart the common nourishment needed by both the future divisions of your pupils into sons of the muses and sons of labour. Then the higher schools are reserved for the instructions of the greatest teachers, the ancients. ( 406 ) NINTH FEAGMENT, OB KEY-STONE. § 149. A TREATISE on education does not include the theory of instruction, whose wide realm embraces the mistakes of all sciences and arts ; nor the theory of remedies, which would require libraries instead of volumes for the complication of mistakes, years, positions and relations. At the same time no science is entirely disconnected from the rest ; the feet cannot move without the hands. § 150. Lavater, in a painted series of four-and- twenty faces, converted a frog's head into an Apollo's : I would that a poem could, in a similar way, depict the restoration of some naturally gifted but ruined child to the pure features of humanity, instead of taking a sun-god to school as Xenophon and Rousseau did. Yes, one might exhibit an educational history of many false cures eflfected on the same human limb ; and it would be nothing else than useful and difficult. How often has not the ill-set arm of humanity to bo broken afresh so as to be rightly healed ! § 151. The best and most complete education cannot exhibit its true power upon one child, but upon a number of united children; — romantic Cyropedagogues of one individual 406 JEAN PAUL FEIEDKICH EICHTER. [fRAG. IX. should think of this : — a lawgiver influences multitudes by multitudes ; one Jew alone could not produce a Moses. But this very Mosaic people — which has spread unaltered through the ocean of all time, as sea-plants in all the zones of the ocean, and has retained its Mosaic colouring even when burning Africa has changed its bodily hue — is the strongest witness to the power of education, for, during its dispersion, the Mosaic education of the people can only be maintained by private education. Let this fact inspire all parents with courage to disregard all that is malignant in the future into which they must send their children. ^§ 152. For the same reason this courage should not be lessened by a well-known contradictory appearance ; namely, that children, like plants acclimatised to the nursery and school- room, can scarcely be recognised in a strange aj)artment, in a carriage, in the country, or at midnight. " It was all forced fruit," says then the good, vexed father, " and I have lost my labour and my hope." But if the angry man will then sit down and consider that he, a plant equally acclimatised to his position, has frequently been made unlike himself by strangeness of place or circumstances, yet with very transitory injury to his powers, he may cool his wrath by applying the same observation, though in a stronger degree, to his children who, being more excitable, feeble and inexperienced, must naturally obey and succumb to every new presence. § 153. In some circumstances we cannot be sufficiently diffuse with children, in others not sufficiently short. Speak at greatest length in tales, and when you wish to give the passions time to cool, as a kind of rhetorical signal that something important is to come. The utmost brevity should be used in confronting logical sentences for exercise — in forbidding — and further, in necessary punishments ; then, after the billows are laid, loquacity may be advan< tageously resumed. FRtLQ. IX.] LEVANA. 407 § 154. If a father be boldly obedient to the right rule of letting a boy, especially one destined to a learned profession, lie fallow during the first five years of life, only learning what he teaches himself, so that his body may become strong enough to bear its future mental treasures, let him be prepared when the child first goes to school for a difficulty which may, perhaps, last some months ; it is this, — that the boy, hitherto accustomed only to his own mental teaching, cannot immediately apply with ease to instruc- tion from without, but receives the foreign rays at first as in a dispersing concave glass. But by and by they will be collected and combined by a convex mirror. Since I have again fallen on the subject of instruction which, especially in later years, becomes continually more and more closely combined with education, I know not how better to make amends for my digression than by pursuing it and here recording the opinion of an excellent scholar of my acquaintance rich alike in feeling, learning, and genius,* that a boy of five years old can be sent to no better preparatory school for a learned education, though but for a few hours daily, than to one of only three classes, Latin, mathematics, and history. In fact, these three kinds of knowledge attune the mind to the threefold harmony of education. First, the Latin language, by its brevity and great dissimilarity to our own, exercises the child's mind in logic, and is, therefore, a preparatory school of philosophy. Brevity of speech gives comprehensiveness of thought. Secondly, mathe- matics, as a mediator between the intuitions of the senses and of the mind, excites and forms a power distinct from philosophy, and not sufficiently esteemed in its connection with the material universe; which, by the analysing of space from without and time from within, brings the ultimate conclusions of numbers within the power of thought. Thirdly, history, like religion, uaites all learning and power; especially ancient history, that is, the history of the nations of the youthful world, Grecian • Prof. L. H. Wagner iu Bairenth, already favourably known to Ifae learned public by Ms logic, physiology, and his wide uttainmenta. 408 JEAN PAUL FRIEDKICH KICHTER. [FRAG. IX. and Roman, Jewish and early Christian. As the epic poem and the romance may be made to contain the float- ing materials of all knowledge, their mother, history, may still more easily be made into the firm pulpit of every moral and religious opinion ; and every department of morality, moral theology, moral philosophy and casuistry, finds its leader in ancient history. The young heart lives in the mighty youthful past, and, by this active art of poetry, buried centuries are raised from the dead in a few school-hours. The devils removed into historic distance grieve less, and tempt far less, than when standing in our presence ; the angels, on the contrary, cleared by distance from neighbouring mists, shine and sparkle more bril- liantly than ever ; and they tell us what there is yet to do in the future which may be worthy of the past. History — if you are not determined to make it into the biography of the devil — is the third Bible ; for the book of nature is the second; and ancient history alone can convert and improve modern history. The father of Levana — although in the case of a goddess this name would be more humbly and appropri- ately changed into worshipper — has (he ventures now to recall to himself) kept the promise of the preface to jest but little. He has wanted room — but that another book will furnish — rather than occasion for two satires, both directed against one evil — the affliction of children — teaching. A short serious epitome must be permitted. Certainly, as regards children's sufferings, we must admit that nature, which makes them cry sooner than laugh, has the precedence of us. Kot the human egg, but the bee's, is laid upon honey. Among all entrances into new circumstances none is so important as that into life, and there also the new apprentice must pay his footing ; or, as a novice in life's mysteries, he, like the ancient Greek, must be severely scourged ; or he must receive that which in prisons — and such Plato esteeryed the earth to be — is called a welcome, which does not consist in the old German sparkling goblet (that his mother's breast offers liim), but in what most would think a flogging. Accord- ing to the Catholic church, children, those of Bethlehem under Herod, were the first martyrs ; it is the emblem of FRAG. IX.] LEVANA. 409 what still exists. According to the same church the un- baptized passed either into hell or into purgatory; but they pass between two fires upon earth if they pursue the way from the first to the second sacrament. If baptism be necessary to salvation, so also is the sacrament of the Eucharist ; therefore before the Lord's Supper, the feast of love, you justly repress whatever seems rather to resemble hate. And so the tears which Garrick could draw by the mere repetition of the alphabet, the child soon learns to shed by itself. But among all the schoolmasters who have flogged either the author or his readers, and endeavoured to enlighten their minds with the cane as with a pedagoojic lamp-post, or who have understood how to use their fists like players on the French horn, who apply theirs to the wide mouth of the horn and draw forth its delicate semi-tones ; yet among all schoolmasters, I say, it is a rare and difficult thing to find a John Jacob Hauberle. Which of us can boast, like Hauberle, of having administered, during his schoolmastership of fifty-one years and seven months, 911,527* strokes of the cane and' 124,000 of the rod; also 20,989 blows with the ruler; not only 10,235 boxes on the ear, but also 7905 tugs at the same member; and a sum total of 1,115,800 blows with the knuckles on the head? Who besides Jacob Hauberle has given 22,763 impositions, partly in the Bible, partly in the catechism, partly in the Psalm book, partly in the grammar, as with four syllogistic logical figures, or a sonate a quatre mains ? And did he not threaten the rod to 1707 children who did not receive it, and make 777 kneel upon round hard peas, and 631 upon a sharp-edged piece of wood, to which are to be added a corps of 500 1 ri