Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 40

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THE MOST n.o.bLE VIRTUE.-In the first era of the higher humanity courage is accounted the most n.o.ble virtue, in the next justice, in the third temperance, in the fourth wisdom. In which era do _we_ live? In which do _you_ live?

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A NECESSARY PRELIMINARY.-A man who will not become master of his irritability, his venomous and vengeful feelings, and his l.u.s.t, and attempts to become master in anything else, is as stupid as the farmer who lays out his field beside a torrent without guarding against that torrent.

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WHAT IS TRUTH?-_Schwarzert_ (Melanchthon): We often preach our faith when we have lost it, and leave not a stone unturned to find it-and then we often do not preach worst!

_Luther_: Brother, you are really speaking like an angel to-day.

_Schwarzert_: But that is the idea of your enemies, and they apply it to you.

_Luther_: Then it would be a lie from the devil's hind-quarters.

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THE HABIT OF CONTRASTS.-Superficial, inexact observation sees contrasts everywhere in nature (for instance, "hot and cold"), where there are no contrasts, only differences of degree. This bad habit has induced us to try to understand and interpret even the inner nature, the intellectual and moral world, in accordance with such contrasts. An infinite amount of cruelty, arrogance, harshness, estrangement, and coldness has entered into human emotion, because men imagined they saw contrasts where there were only transitions.

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CAN WE FORGIVE?-How can we forgive them at all, if they know not what they do? We have nothing to forgive. But does a man ever fully know what he is doing? And if this point at least remains always debatable, men never have anything to forgive each other, and indulgence is for the reasonable man an impossible thing. Finally, if the evil-doers had really known what they did, we should still only have a right to forgive if we had a right to accuse and to punish. But we have not that right.

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HABITUAL SHAME.-Why do we feel shame when some virtue or merit is attributed to us which, as the saying goes, "we have not deserved"?

Because we appear to have intruded upon a territory to which we do not belong, from which we should be excluded, as from a holy place or holy of holies, which ought not to be trodden by our foot. Through the errors of others we have, nevertheless, penetrated to it, and we are now swayed partly by fear, partly by reverence, partly by surprise; we do not know whether we ought to fly or to enjoy the blissful moment with all its gracious advantages. In all shame there is a mystery, which seems desecrated or in danger of desecration through us. All _favour_ begets shame.-But if it be remembered that we have never really "deserved"

anything, this feeling of shame, provided that we surrender ourselves to this point of view in a spirit of Christian contemplation, becomes habitual, because upon such a one G.o.d seems continually to be conferring his blessing and his favours. Apart from this Christian interpretation, the state of habitual shame will be possible even to the entirely G.o.dless sage, who clings firmly to the basic non-responsibility and non-meritoriousness of all action and being. If he be treated as if he had deserved this or that, he will seem to have won his way into a higher order of beings, who do actually deserve something, who are free and can really bear the burden of responsibility for their own volition and capacity. Whoever says to him, "You have deserved it," appears to cry out to him, "You are not a human being, but a G.o.d."

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THE MOST UNSKILFUL TEACHER.-In one man all his real virtues are implanted on the soil of his spirit of contradiction, in another on his incapacity to say "no"-in other words, on his spirit of acquiescence. A third has made all his morality grow out of his pride as a solitary, a fourth from his strong social instinct. Now, supposing that the seeds of the virtues in these four cases, owing to mischance or unskilful teachers, were not sown on the soil of their nature, which provides them with the richest and most abundant mould, they would become weak, unsatisfactory men (devoid of morality). And who would have been the most unskilful of teachers, the evil genius of these men? The moral fanatic, who thinks that the good can only grow out of the good and on the soil of the good.

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THE CAUTIOUS STYLE.-_A._ But if this were known to _all_, it would be injurious to the _majority_. You yourself call your opinions dangerous to those in danger, and yet you make them public?

_B._ I write so that neither the mob, nor the _populi_, nor the parties of all kinds can read me. So my opinions will never be "public opinions."

_A._ How do you write, then?

_B._ Neither usefully nor pleasantly-for the three cla.s.ses I have mentioned.

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DIVINE MISSIONARIES.-Even Socrates feels himself to be a divine missionary, but I am not sure whether we should not here detect a tincture of that Attic irony and fondness for jesting whereby this odious, arrogant conception would be toned down. He talks of the fact without unction-his images of the gadfly and the horse are simple and not sacerdotal. The real religious task which he has set himself-to _test_ G.o.d in a hundred ways and see whether he spoke the truth-betrays a bold and free att.i.tude, in which the missionary walked by the side of his G.o.d. This testing of G.o.d is one of the most subtle compromises between piety and free-thinking that has ever been devised.-Nowadays we do not even need this compromise any longer.

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HONESTY IN PAINTING.-Raphael, who cared a great deal for the Church (so far as she could pay him), but, like the best men of his time, cared little for the objects of the Church's belief, did not advance one step to meet the exacting, ecstatic piety of many of his patrons. He remained honest even in that exceptional picture which was originally intended for a banner in a procession-the Sistine Madonna. Here for once he wished to paint a vision, but such a vision as even n.o.ble youths without "faith" may and will have-the vision of the future wife, a wise, high-souled, silent, and very beautiful woman, carrying her first-born in her arms. Let men of an older generation, accustomed to prayer and devotion, find here, like the worthy elder on the left, something superhuman to revere. We younger men (so Raphael seems to call to us) are occupied with the beautiful maiden on the right, who says to the spectator of the picture, with her challenging and by no means devout look, "The mother and her child-is not that a pleasant, inviting sight?" The face and the look are reflected in the joy in the faces of the beholders. The artist who devised all this enjoys himself in this way, and adds his own delight to the delight of the art-lover. As regards the "messianic" expression in the face of the child, Raphael, honest man, who would not paint any state of soul in which he did not believe, has amiably cheated his religious admirers. He painted that freak of nature which is very often found, the man's eye in the child's face, and that, too, the eye of a brave, helpful man who sees distress.

This eye should be accompanied by a beard. The fact that a beard is wanting, and that two different ages are seen in one countenance, is the pleasing paradox which believers have interpreted in accordance with their faith in miracles. The artist could only expect as much from their art of exposition and interpretation.

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