The Campaner Thal and Other Writings Part 27

[Footnote 22: The Guernsey lily from j.a.pan has its name from the Island of Guernsey, on which some roots of it were cast by a wrecked vessel.]

[Footnote 23: For the climatic dissimilarity of the planets must produce, as the climatic difference between the zones, Negroes, Greeks, Indians, etc., but always human beings.]

[Footnote 24: One ought, therefore, not to say _mundus intelligibilis_, but _mundus intellectus_.]

[Footnote 25: It may be said, that in this manner every Utopia, which is also a copy, must be realized, for the original of all dreams and Utopias does indeed exist,--though partially and disconnectedly; but the Original of the Eternal cannot exist in pieces and by parcels.]

[Footnote 26: This applies chiefly to the higher and richer orders, with whom the saturation of the five camel stomachs, the senses, and the starving of Psyche or the soul, at last determines into a horrible horror of life, and into a repulsive mingling of _high aspirations and grovelling desires_. The savage, the beggar, and the provincialist far surpa.s.s the rich and high in spiritual enjoyment, for in these, as in the houses of the Jews, (in memory of the destruction of Jerusalem) there must always be something incomplete, and the poor have too many of their earthly wants a.s.suaged to be overwhelmed and pained by the demands of their ethereal nature.]

[Footnote 27: The new moon always rises with the sun, although dark and invisible.]

[Footnote 28: There are three kinds of men. To some, a heaven is granted even on this earth; to others, a _limbus patrum_ in which joy and sorrow reign equally; and, lastly, to some a h.e.l.l in which grief predominates. Beings who have suffered for twenty years on the sick-bed of bodily pain, which is not, like mental sorrow, worn out by time, have certainly had more unhappiness than happiness, and, but for immortality, would be an eternal reproach to the highest moral being.

And if there exists no such unhappy being, it is yet in the power of a tyrant to make one, on a clinical torture-bed, with the a.s.sistance of a physician and a philosopher. Such a one, at least, has a right to demand a future indemnity for his sufferings, because the Creator cannot have formed a creature to mourn more than it can rejoice.

Besides, though the object of our grief may seem but a deception in the eyes of the Eternal One, our grief itself cannot. Human suffering is also distinguished from brutish pain, because the animal only feels the wound, as we perhaps do in sleep, but it sees it not. Its pain is not trebled and increased by _antic.i.p.ation_, _recollection_, and _sensibility_; it is an evanescent sting, and nothing more. Therefore tears were only given to human eyes.]

[Footnote 29: Ignorance concerning our connection with the body and our connection with the second world.]

[Footnote 30: The yearly destruction of the slowly developed, beautiful flower-world does not argue against this; for to the tangible world each condition of its parts is as indifferent and perfect as the other, and rose-ashes are as good as rose-buds (without, of course, considering the organic soul). Nothing is beautiful but our appreciation of the beautiful, not the object itself. If it should be said that nature destroys so many developments, for whose growth she had already provided, that she breaks many thousand eggs, tears so many buds, crushes men in all stages of life with her blind tread, I would reply that the interrupted development is yet a condition of the perfected one, and that every position of its parts is indifferent to material objects, and, as coverings of the spiritual being, they still testify to a compensating immortality of the latter.]

[Footnote 31: Methinks the folly of spiritual mortality has not been sufficiently considered from this point of view. The living or spiritual whole (for the lifeless one has no other object than to be a means for the living), as such, can attain no object which each portion of it does not attain, for each one is one whole, and every other whole can only exist as a collective idea, and not as a reality. To consider the untenability of a progress contained in a course of vanishing shadows more vividly, one might shorten the life of a soul so that he, e. g. could only read one page of Kant's Critic, and then die. For the second page another soul must be created, and so for the new edition 884 souls. The mistake will perhaps become perceptible to most people by the increasing moonlight of liberality which has gradually risen over the past centuries; but the necessity for compensation demands immortality.]

[Footnote 32: Raphael died when he had finished the painting of the resurrection, and Haman died while his essay on resurrection and disembodiment was being printed.]

[Footnote 33: So are the Vampires called.]

[Footnote 34: _Fixlein_ stands in the middle of the volume; preceded by _Einer Mustheil fur Madchen_ (A Jelly-course for young Ladies); and followed by _Some_ Jus De Tablette _for Men_. A small portion of the Preface relating to the first I have already omitted. Neither of the two have the smallest relation to _Fixlein_.--Ed.]

[Footnote 35: _J. P. H_., _Jean Paul_ Hasus, _Jean Paul_, &c., have in succession been Richter's signatures. At present even, his German designation, either in writing or speech, is never _Richter_, but _Jean Paul_.--Ed.]

[Footnote 36: For understanding many little hints which occur in this _Life of Fixlein_, it will be necessary to bear in mind the following particulars: A German _Gymnasium_, in its complete state, appears to include eight Masters; Rector, Conrector, Subrector, Quintus, Quartus, Tertius, &c., to the _first_ or lowest. The _forms_, or cla.s.ses, again, are arranged in an inverse order; the _Primaner_ (boys of the _Prima_, or first form) being the most advanced, and taught by the Rector; the _Secundaner_, by the Conrector, &c.; and therefore the _Quartaner_ by the Quintus. In many cases, it would seem, the number of Teachers is only six; but in this Flachsenfingen Gymnasium we have express evidence that there was no curtailment.--Ed.]

[Footnote 37: A university beer.]

[Footnote 38: From Peter I will copy one or two of these privileges; the whole of which were once, at the origin of universities, in full force. For instance, a student can compel a citizen to let him his house and his horse; an injury, done even to his relations, must be made good fourfold; he is not obliged to fulfil the written commands of the Pope; the neighborhood must indemnify him for what is stolen from him; if he and a non-student are living at variance, the latter only can be expelled from the boarding-house; a Doctor is obliged to support a poor student; if he is killed, the next ten houses are laid under interdict till the murderer is discovered; his legacies are not abridged by _falcidia_, &c., &c.]

[Footnote 39: _Literary Germany_, a work (I believe of no great merit) which Richter often twitches in the same style.--Ed.]

[Footnote 40: See _Schmelzle's Journey_, p. 289--Ed.]

[Footnote 41: As in the State.--[V. or Von, _de_, _of_, being the symbol of the n.o.bility, the middle order of the State.--Ed.]]

[Footnote 42: In Erlang, my pet.i.tion has been granted. The _Bible Inst.i.tution_ of that town have found instead of the 116,301 As, which Fixlein at first pretended with such certainty to find in the Bible-books (which false number was accordingly given in the first Edition of this Work, p. 81), the above-mentioned 323,015; which (uncommonly singular) is precisely the sum of all the letters in the Koran put together. See _Ludeke's Beschr. des Turk. Reichs_ (Ludeke's Description of the Turkish Empire. New edition, 1780).]

[Footnote 43: _Paravicini Singularia de viris claris_, Cent. I. 2.]

[Footnote 44: _Ejusd_., Cent. II. Philelphus quarrelled with the Greek about the quant.i.ty of a syllable; the prize or bet was the beard of the vanquished. Timotheus lost his.]

[Footnote 45: Their prayer-barrel, Kurudu, is a hollowed sh.e.l.l, a calabash, full of unrolled formulas of prayer; they sway it from side to side, and then it works. More philosophically viewed, since in prayer the feeling only is of consequence, it is much the same whether this express itself by motion of the mouth or of the calabash.]

[Footnote 46: In German, as in some other languages, the common mode of address is by the _third_ person; plural, it indicates respect; singular, command; the _second_ person is also used; plural, it generally denotes indifference; singular, great familiarity, and sometimes its product, contempt. _Dutzenfreund_, _Thouing-friend_, is the strictest term of intimacy; and among the wild _Burschen_ (Students) many a duel (happily however, often ending like the _Polemo-Middinia_ in one drop of blood) has been fought, in consequence of saying _Du_ (thou) and _Sie_ (they) in the wrong place.--Ed.]

[Footnote 47: These antique Christmas festivities Richter describes with equal _gusto_ in another work (_Briefe und Zukunftige Lebenslemf_); where the Christ-child (falsely reported to the young ones to have been seen flying through the air, with gold wings); the Birch-bough fixed in a corner of the room, and by him made to grow; the fruit of gilt sweetmeats, apples, nuts, which (for good boys) it suddenly produces, &c., &c., are specified with the same fidelity as here.--Ed.]

[Footnote 48: Which he purposed to make for his Island of St. Pierre in the Bienne Lake.]

[Footnote 49: Borrowed from the "Imperial Mine-product-sale-Commission,"

in Vienna. In their very names these Vienna people show taste.]

[Footnote 50: As, by the evidence at present before us, we can found on no other presumption, than that he must die in his thirty-second year; it would follow, that, in case he died two-and-thirty years after the death of the testatrix, no farthing could be claimed by him; since, according to our fiction, at the making of the testament he was not even one year old.]

[Footnote 51: In St. Paul's Church at London, where the slightest whisper sounds over, across a s.p.a.ce of 143 feet.]

[Footnote 52: So much, according to Political Economists, a man yearly requires in Germany.]

[Footnote 53: This singular tone of my address to a Prince can only be excused by the equally singular relation wherein the Biographer stands to the Flachsenfingen Sovereign, and which I would willingly unfold here were it not that, in my Book, which, under the t.i.tle of _Dog-post-days_, I mean to give to the world at Easter-fair, 1795, I hoped to expound the matter to universal satisfaction.]

[Footnote 54: His _Clerical Law_, p. 551.]

[Footnote 55: Eichhorn's _Einleitung ins A. T_. (Introduction to the Old Testament), Vol. II.]

[Footnote 56: Both have the same sound. _Fuchslein_ means Foxling, Fox-whelp.--Ed.]

[Footnote 57: Campe, a German philologist, who, along with several others of that cla.s.s, has really proposed, as represented in the text, to subst.i.tute for all Greek or Latin derivatives corresponding German terms of the like import. _Geography_, which may be _Erdbeschreibung_ (Earth-description), was thenceforth to be nothing else; a _Geometer_ became an _Earth-measurer_, &c., &c. _School-undergovernor_, instead of _Subrector_, is by no means the happiest example of the system, and seems due rather to the Schadeck Lawyer than to Campe, whom our Author has elsewhere more than once eulogized for his project in similar style.--Ed.]

[Footnote 58: _New Universal German Library_, a reviewing periodical, in those days conducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to what has since been called the New School.--Ed.]

[Footnote 59: Superst.i.tion declares, that on the spot where the rainbow rises a golden key is left.]

[Footnote 60: To the Spring, namely, which begins with snow-drops, and ends with roses and pinks.]

[Footnote 61: This Christian superst.i.tion is not only a Rabbinical, but also a Roman one. _Cicero de Senectute_.]

[Footnote 62: For, according to the Jurists, fifteen persons make a people.]

[Footnote 63: A long philosophical elucidation is indispensably requisite; which will be found in this Book, under the t.i.tle, _Natural Magic of the Imagination_. [A part of the _Jus de Tablette_ appended to this Biography, unconnected with it, and not given here.--Ed.]]

[Footnote 64: This pygmy piece of ordnance, with its cunningly devised burning-gla.s.s, is still to be seen on the south side of the Paris Vanity-Fair; and in fine weather, to be heard, on all sides thereof, proclaiming the conversion (so it seems to Richter) of the Day from Forenoon to Afternoon.--Ed.]

[Footnote 65: The Wild Hunter, _Wilde Jager_, is a popular spectre of Germany.--Ed.]

[Footnote 66: Indicating to the congregation what Psalm is to be sung.--Ed.]

[Footnote 67: Salerno was once famous for its medical science; but here, as in many other cases, we could desire the aid of Herr Reinhold with his _Lexicon-Commentary_.--Ed.]

[Footnote 68: This hospitable Potentate is as unknown to me as to any of my readers.--Ed.]

[Footnote 69: A little work printed in ma.n.u.script types; and seldom given by him to any but Princes. This piece of print-writing he intentionally pa.s.ses off to the great as a piece of hand-writing; these persons being both more habituated and inclined to the reading of ma.n.u.script than of print.]