The Progressionists, and Angela. Part 35

doctor. There is at the weather-cross a Madonna of stone. Angela has imposed upon herself the singular task of adorning this Madonna, daily, with fresh flowers."

"You are a profane fellow, Richard. You should not speak in such a derisive tone of actions which are the out-flowings of pious sentiment."

"Every one has his hobby. What will not people do through ambition? I know ladies who torture a piano for half the night, in order to catch the tone of the prima-donna at the opera. I know women who undergo all possible privations to be able to wear as fine clothes, as costly furs, as others with whom they are in rivalry. This exhaustive night-singing, these deprivations, are submitted to through foolish vanity. Perhaps Angela is not less ambitious and vain than others of her s.e.x. As she cannot dazzle these country folk with furs or toilette, she dazzles their religious sentiment by ostentatious piety."

"Radically false!" said the doctor. "Charity and virtue are recognized and honored not only in the country, but also in the cities. Why do not your coquettes strive for this approval? Because they want Angela's n.o.bility of soul. And again, why should Angela wish to gain the admiration of the peasants? She is the daughter of the wealthiest man in the neighborhood. If such was her object, she could gratify her ambition in a very different way."

"Then Angela is a riddle to me," returned Richard. "I cannot conceive the motives of her actions."

"Which are so natural! The maiden follows the impulses of her own n.o.ble nature, and these impulses are developed and directed by Christian culture, and convent education. Angela was a long time with the nuns, and only returned home two years ago. Here you have the very natural solution of the riddle."

"Are you acquainted with the Siegwart family?"

"No; what I know of Angela I learned from the people of Salingen."

They arrived at the platform. Klingenberg stood silent for some time admiring the landscape. The view did not seem to interest Richard. His eyes rested on Angela's home, whose white walls, surrounded by vineyards and corn-fields, glistened in the sun.

"It is worth while to come up here oftener," said Klingenberg.

"Angela's work," said Richard as he drew near the statue. The doctor paused a moment and examined the flowers.

"Do you observe Angela's fine taste in the arrangement of the colors?"

said he. "And the forget-me-nots! What a deep religious meaning they have."

They returned by another way to Frankenhohe.

"Angela's pious work," began Richard after a long pause, "reminds me of a religious custom against which modern civilization has thus far warred in vain. I mean the veneration of saints. You, as a Protestant, will smile at this custom, and I, as a Catholic, must deplore the tenacity with which my church clings to this obsolete remnant of heathen idolatry."

"Ah! this is the subject you alluded to yesterday," said the doctor. "I must, in fact, smile, my dear Richard! But I by no means smile at 'the tenacity with which your church clings to the obsolete remnants of heathen idolatry.' I smile at your queer idea of the veneration of the saints. I, as a reasonable man, esteem this veneration, and recognize its admirable and beneficial influence on human society."

This declaration increased Frank's surprise to the highest degree. He knew the clear mind of the doctor, and could not understand how it happened that he wished to defend a custom so antagonistic to modern thought.

"You find fault," continued Klingenberg, "with the custom of erecting statues to these holy men in the churches, the forest, the fields, the houses, and in the market?"

"Yes, I do object to that."

"If you had objected to the lazy Schiller at Mayence, or the robber's poet Schiller, as he raves at the theatre in Mannheim, or to the conqueror and destroyer of Germany, Gustavus Adolphus, whose statue is erected as an insult in a German city, then you would be right."

"Schiller-worship has its justification," retorted Frank. "They erect public monuments to the genial spirit of that man, to remind us of his services to poetry, his aspirations, and his German patriotism."

"It is praiseworthy to erect monuments to the poet. But do not talk of Schiller's patriotism, for he had none. But let that pa.s.s; it is not to the point. The question is, whether you consider it praiseworthy to erect monuments to deserving and exalted genius?"

"Without the least hesitation, I say yes. But I see what you are driving at, doctor. I know the remorseless logic of your inferences.

But you will not catch me in your vise this time. You wish to infer that the saints far surpa.s.sed Schiller in n.o.bility and greatness of soul, and that honoring them, therefore, is more reasonable, and more justifiable, than honoring Schiller. I dispute the greatness of the so-called saints. They were men full of narrowness and rigorism. They despised the world and their friends. They carried this contempt to a wonderful extent--to a renunciation of all the enjoyments of life, to voluntary poverty and unconditional obedience. But all these are fruits that have grown on a stunted, morbid tree, and are in opposition to progress, to industry, and to the enlightened civilization of modern times. The dark ages might well honor such men, but our times cannot.

Schiller, on the contrary, that genial man, taught us to love the pleasures of life. By his fine genius and his odes to pleasure, he frightened away all the spectres of these enthusiastic views of life.

He preached a sound taste and a free, unconstrained enjoyment of the things of this beautiful earth. And for this reason precisely, because he inaugurated this new doctrine, does he deserve monuments in his honor."

"How does it happen then, my friend," said the doctor, in a cutting tone that was sometimes peculiar to him, "that you do not take advantage of the modern doctrine of unconstrained enjoyment? Why have you preserved fresh your youthful vigor, and not dissipated it at the market of sensual pleasures? Why is your mode of life so often a reproach to your dissolute friends? Why do you avoid the resorts of refined pleasures? Why are the coquettish, vitiated, hollow inclinations of a great part of the female s.e.x so distasteful to you?

Answer me!"

"These are peculiarities of my nature; individual opinions that have no claim to any weight."

"Peculiarities of your nature--very right; your n.o.ble nature, your pure feelings rebel against these moral acquisitions of progress. I begin with your n.o.ble nature. If I did not find this good, true self in you, I would waste no more words. But because you are what you are, I must convince you of the error of your views. Schiller, you say, and, with him, the modern spirit, raised the banner of unrestrained enjoyment, and this enjoyment rests on sensual pleasures, does it not?"

"Well--yes."

"I knew and know many who followed this banner--and you also know many.

Of those whom I knew professionally, some ended their days in the hospital, of the most loathsome diseases. Some, unsatiated with the whole round of pleasures, drag on a miserable life, dead to all energy, and spiritless. They drank the full cup of pleasure, and with it unspeakable bitterness and disgust. Some ended in ignominy and shame--bankruptcy, despair, suicide. Such are the consequences of this modern dogma of unrestrained enjoyments."

"All these overstepped the proper bounds of pleasure," said Richard.

"The proper bounds? Stop!" cried the doctor, "No leaps, Richard! Think clearly and logically. Christianity also allows enjoyment, but--and here is the point--in certain limits. Your progress, on the contrary, proclaims freedom in moral principles, a disregard of all moral obligations, unrestricted enjoyment--and herein consists the danger and delusion. I ask, Are you in favor of restricted or unrestricted enjoyment?"

Frank hesitated. He felt already the thumbscrew of the irrepressible doctor, and feared the inferences he would draw from his admissions.

"Come!" urged Klingenberg, "decide."

"Sound reason declares for restricted enjoyment," said Frank decidedly.

"Good; there you leave the unlimited sphere which G.o.dless progress has given to the thoughts and inclinations of men. You admit the obligation of self-control, and the restraint of the grosser emotions. But let us proceed; you speak of industry. The modern spirit of industry has invoked a demon--or, rather, the demoniac spirit of the times has taken possession of industry. The great capitalists have built thrones on their money-bags and tyrannize over those who have no money. They crush out the work-shop of the industrious and well-to-do tradesman, and compel him to be their slave. Go into the factories of Elfeld, or England; you can there see the slaves of this demon industry--miserable creatures, mentally and morally stunted, socially perishing; not only slaves, but mere wheels of the machines. This is what modern industry has made of those poor wretches, for whom, according to modern enlightenment, there is no higher destiny than to drag through life in slavery, to increase the money-bags of their tyrants. But the capitalists have perfect right, according to modern ideas; they only use the means at their command. The table of the ten commandments has been broken; the yoke of Christianity broken. Man is morally and religiously free; and from this false liberalism the tyranny of plutocracy and the slavery of the poor has been developed. Are you satisfied with the development, and the principles that made it possible?"

"No," said Frank decidedly. "I despise that miserable industrialism that values the product more than the man. My admissions are, however, far from justifying the exaggerated notions of the saints."

"Wait a bit!" cried Klingenberg hastily. "I have just indicated the cause of this wretched egotism, and also a consequence--namely, the power of great capitalists and manufacturers over an army of white slaves. But this is by no means all. This demon of industry has consequences that will ruin a great portion of mankind. Now mark what I say, Richard! The richness of the subject allows me only to indicate.

The progressive development of industry brings forth products of which past ages were ignorant, because they were not necessary for life. The existence of these products creates a demand. The increased wants increase the outlay, which in most cases does not square with the income, and therefore the accounts of many close with a deficit The consequences of this deficit for the happiness, and even for the morals of the family, I leave untouched. The increased products beget luxury and the desire for enjoyment; the ultimate consequences of which enervate the individual and society. Hence the phenomenon, in England, that the greater portion of the people in the manufacturing towns die before the age of fifteen, and that many are old men at thirty.

Enervated and demoralized peoples make their existence impossible. They go to the wall. This is a historical fact. Ergo, modern industry separated from Christian civilization hastens the downfall of nations."

"I cannot dispute the truth of your observations. But you have touched only the dark side of modern industry, without mentioning its benefits.

If industry is a source of fict.i.tious wants, it affords, on the other hand, cheap prices to the poor for the most necessary wants of life; for example, cheap materials for clothing."

"Very cheap, but also very poor material," answered Klingenberg. "In former times, clothing was dearer, but also better. They knew nothing of the rags of the present fabrication. And it may be asked whether that dearer material was not cheaper in the end for the poor. When this is taken into consideration, the new material has no advantage over the old. I will freely admit that the inventions of modern times do honor to human genius. I acknowledge the achievements of industry, as such. I admire the improvements of machinery, the great revolution caused by the use of steam, and thousands of other wonders of art. No sensible man will question the relative worth of all these. But all these are driven and commanded by a bad influence, and herein lies the injury. We must consider industrialism from this higher standpoint. What advantage is it to a people to be clothed in costly stuffs when they are enervated, demoralized, and perishing? Clothe a corpse as you will, a corpse it will be still. And besides, the greatest material good does not compensate the white factory-slaves for the loss of their liberty.

The Lucullan age fell into decay, although they feasted on young nightingales, drank liquified pearls, and squandered millions for delicacies and luxuries. The life of nations does not consist in the external splendor of wealth, in easy comfort, or in unrestrained pa.s.sions. Morality is the life of nations, and virtue their internal strength. But virtue, morality, and Christian sentiment are under the ban of modern civilization. If Christianity does not succeed in overcoming this demon spirit of the times, or at least confining it within narrow limits, it will and must drive the people to certain destruction. We find decayed peoples in the Christian era, but the church has always rescued and regenerated them. While the acquisitions of modern times--industrialism, enlightenment, humanitarianism, and whatever they may be called--are, on the one hand, of little advantage or of doubtful worth, they are, on the other hand, the graves of true prosperity, liberty, and morality. They are the cause of shameful terrorism and of degrading slavery, in the bonds of the pa.s.sions and in the claws of plutocracy."

Frank made no reply.

For a while they walked on in silence.

"Let us," continued Klingenberg, "consider personally those men whose molten images stand before us. Schiller's was a n.o.ble nature, but Schiller wrote:

"'No more this fight of duty, hence no longer This giant strife will I!

Canst quench these pa.s.sions evermore the stronger?

Then ask not virtue, what I must deny.

"'Albeit I have sworn, yea, sworn that never Shall yield my master will; Yet take thy wreath; to me 'tis lost for ever!

Take back thy wreath, and let me sin my fill.'

"Is this a n.o.ble and exalted way of thinking? Certainly not. Schiller would be virtuous if he could clothe himself in the l.u.s.tre of virtue without sacrifice. The pa.s.sionate impulses of the heart are stronger in him than the sense of duty. He gives way to his pa.s.sions. He renounces virtue because he is too weak, too languid, too listless to encounter this giant strife bravely like a strong man. Such is the n.o.ble Schiller. In later years, when the fiery impulses of his heart had subsided, he roused himself to better efforts and n.o.bler aims.

"Consider the prince of poets, Goethe. How morally naked and poor he stands before us! Goethe's coa.r.s.e insults to morality are well known.