The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine Part 8

Cold winter fled, spring came again, The flowerets blossomed far and near.

The shepherd sought his love;--in vain!

No more did she appear.

"Oh, welcome! welcome! princess fair!"

His words were mournful now, and drear.

A spirit voice rang through the air, "Farewell, my shepherd dear."

And as I sat on the ruins of the old castle and recited this poem, at times I heard the water-fays of the Rhine mockingly, and with comic pathos, take up my refrain, and from amidst the sighing and the moaning of the river that ran below I could hear in faint tones----

"A spirit voice ring through the air, 'Farewell, my shepherd dear.'"

But I would not let myself be disturbed by the bantering of the mermaids, even when at some of the most beautiful pa.s.sages in Uhland's poems they t.i.ttered ironically. At that time I modestly ascribed the t.i.ttering to myself, particularly when the twilight was sinking into darkness, and I raised my voice somewhat to overcome the mysterious feeling of awe with which the old castle ruins inspired me, for there was a legend that the ruins were haunted by a headless woman. At times I seemed to hear the rustling of her silken gown, and my heart beat quickly;--that was the time, and that the place, to be an enthusiast over the poems of Ludwig Uhland.

I hold the same volume again in my hands, but twenty years have flown since then, and I have seen much and learned much. I no longer believe in headless human beings, and the old ghost story has no longer power to move me. The house wherein I sit and read is situated on the Boulevard Montmartre; the fiercest turmoil of the day breaks in tumultuous billows around this spot, and loud and shrill are heard the voices of the modern epoch. First, a burst of laughter; then a heavy rumbling; next, drums beating quick time; and then, like a flash, the national guards dash by in quick march; and every one speaks French. And is this the place to read Uhland's poems? Thrice have I again declaimed the concluding lines of the same poem, but I do not feel the keen, unspeakable pain that once thrilled me when the little princess died, and the handsome shepherd lad so pathetically calls to her, "Oh, welcome! welcome! princess fair!"

"A spirit voice rang through the air, 'Farewell, my shepherd dear.'"

Perhaps my lack of enthusiasm for this cla.s.s of poems also partly arises from my experience that the most painful love is not that which fails to win possession of the object of its affections, or loses her through death. In truth, it is more painful to fold the loved one in our arms, and yet have her worry us with her contrariness, and her silly caprices, until night and day are rendered unendurable, and we are finally forced to close our heart against her who is most precious, and send the dear plague of a woman off in a post chaise--

"Farewell, oh! princess fair!"

Verily, more grievous than the loss through death is the loss through life; for instance, when the loved one in the spirit of mischievous coquetry turns away from us; when she insists upon going to a masked ball, to which no respectable person dare escort her; and when there, with jaunty dress and roguish curls, takes the arm of the first scamp that comes along, and leaves you all alone.

"Farewell, my shepherd dear!"

Perhaps Herr Uhland himself fared no better than ourselves. Perhaps his temperament has changed since then. With a few exceptions, he has produced no new poems in twenty years. I cannot believe that this beautiful poet soul was so stingily endowed by Nature, and had but one spring-time. No, I explain Uhland's silence as the result of the contradiction between the tendencies of his muse and his political position. The elegiac poet, in whose ballads and romances the praises of the Catholic-feudal past were sung so beautifully; the Ossian of the middle ages has since then become a member of the a.s.sembly of notables in Wurtemburg, a zealous champion of popular rights, and a bold advocate of the equality of all citizens, and of freedom of opinion. Herr Uhland has proved the absolute sincerity of his democratic and Protestant convictions by the great personal sacrifices that he has made in their behalf. In his earlier days he fairly earned the poet's laurels, and now he has also won the bays of civic virtue. But just because he was so honest in his sympathy for the modern epoch, he could no longer sing the olden songs of the olden time with the former fervour. His Pegasus was a knightly steed that gladly trotted back to the past, but obstinately refused to budge when urged forward into modern life; and so our worthy Uhland smilingly dismounted, quietly unsaddled the unruly steed, and led it back to the stable. There it remains to this very day; like its colleague, the famous war-horse Bayard, it possesses all possible virtues, and only one fault; it is dead.

It will not have escaped keener eyes than mine, that the stately war-horse, decked with its brilliant coat of arms and proudly-waving plumes, was never rightly suited to its _bourgeois_ rider, who, instead of boots with golden spurs, wore shoes with silk stockings; and who, instead of helm, wore the hat of a Tubingen professor. Some claim to have discovered that Herr Ludwig Uhland never was wholly in sympathy with his theme; that in his writings, the nave, rude, powerful tones of the middle ages are not reproduced with idealised fidelity, but rather they are dissolved into a sickly, sentimental melancholy. It is claimed that Uhland has taken up into his temperament the strong, coa.r.s.e strains of the heroic legends and folk-songs, and boiled them down, as it were, to make them palatable to our modern public. And in truth, when we closely observe the women in Uhland's poems, we find that they are only beautiful shadows, embodied moonshine; milk flows in their veins, and sweet tears in their eyes; that is, tears which lack salt. If we compare Uhland's knights with the knights in the old ballads, it seems to us as if the former were composed of suits of leaden armour, which were entirely filled with flowers, instead of flesh and bones. Hence Uhland's knights are more pleasing to delicate nostrils than the old stalwarts, who wore heavy iron trousers, and were huge eaters, and still greater drinkers.

But that is no reason for finding fault with Herr Uhland; he did not seek to give an exact copy of the German past; perhaps he only wished to please us with a fanciful reflection, and so he mirrored a flattering picture by the crepuscular lights of his genius. This perhaps lends an especial charm to his poems, and wins for them the admiration and affection of many gentle and worthy persons. The pictures of the past cast some of their magic glamour over us, even in the feeblest conjuration. Even the men who have warmly espoused the cause of modernism always retain a secret sympathy for the heritages of the olden time. Those ghostly voices of the past, no matter how faint their re-echo, marvellously stir our souls. Hence it is to be readily understood that the ballads and romances of our worthy Uhland not only received the most cordial applause from the patriots of 1813, from pious youths and sentimental maidens, but also from more powerful and more modern minds.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY.

[A considerable portion of this, which is one of Heine's most important works, marked by luminous exposition and bold and brilliant ideas, is here presented. It was published in French, under the t.i.tle _De l'Allemagne depuis Luther_, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for 1834, and shortly afterwards it appeared in German, terribly mutilated by the censor, like nearly everything that Heine wrote. It was written at the suggestion of Prosper Enfantin, and dedicated to him, as at that time, in Heine's opinion, the foremost champion of human progress. The translation here given is Mr. Fleishman's; it has been revised and brought closer to the original.]

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION (1852).

...The book which lies before you is a fragment, and shall remain a fragment. To be candid, I would prefer to leave the book wholly unprinted; for since its first publication my views concerning many subjects, particularly those which relate to religious questions, have undergone a marked change, and much that I then a.s.serted is now in opposition to my better convictions. But the arrow belongs not to the archer when once it has left the bow, and the word no longer belongs to the speaker when once it has pa.s.sed his lips, especially when it has been multiplied by the press.... At that time I was yet well and hearty; I was in the zenith of my prime, and as arrogant as Nebuchadnezzar before his downfall.

Alas! a few years later, a physical and spiritual change occurred. How often since then have I mused over the history of that Babylonian king who thought himself a G.o.d, but who was miserably hurled from the summit of his self-conceit, and compelled to crawl on the earth like a beast, and to eat gra.s.s (probably it was only salad). This legend is contained in the grand and magnificent book of Daniel; and I recommend all G.o.dless self-worshippers to lay it devoutly to heart. There are, in fact, in the Bible many other beautiful and wonderful narrations, well deserving their consideration; for instance, the story of the forbidden fruit in Paradise, and the serpent which already six thousand years before Hegel's birth promulgated the whole Hegelian philosophy. This footless blue-stocking demonstrates very sagaciously how the absolute consists in the ident.i.ty of being and knowing; how man becomes G.o.d through knowledge, or, what amounts to the same thing, how G.o.d arrives at the consciousness of himself through man. To be sure, this formula is not so clear as in the original words: "If ye eat of the tree of knowledge, ye shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil." Dame Eve understood of the whole demonstration only this--that the fruit was forbidden; and because it was forbidden she ate of it. But no sooner had she eaten of the tempting apple than she lost her innocence, her nave guilelessness, and discovered that she was far too scantily dressed for a person of her quality, the mother of so many future kings and emperors, and she asked for a dress--truly, only a dress of fig-leaves, because at that time there were as yet no Lyons silk fabrics in existence, and because there were in Paradise no dressmakers or milliners--oh, Paradise! Strange, that as soon as a woman arrives at self-consciousness her first thought is of a new dress!

...Officious, pious Christian souls seem very anxious to know how my conversion was brought about, and seem desirous that I should impose upon them an account of some wonderful miracle. With true Christian importunity they inquire if I did not, like Saul, behold a light when on the way to Damascus; or if, like Balaam, the son of Beor, I was not riding a restive a.s.s, which suddenly opened its mouth and discoursed like a human being. No, ye credulous souls, I never journeyed to Damascus. Even the name would be unknown to me if I had not read the "Song of Songs," wherein King Solomon compares the nose of his beloved to a tower looking towards Damascus. Nor have I ever seen an a.s.s--that is, no four-footed one--that spoke like a human being; whereas I have met human beings in plenty that every time they opened their mouths spoke like a.s.ses. In fact, it was neither a vision, nor a seraphic ecstasy, nor a voice from heaven, nor a remarkable dream, nor any miraculous apparition, that brought me to the path of salvation. I owe my enlightenment simply to the reading of a book! one book! yes, it is a plain old book, as modest as nature, and as simple; a book that appears as work-day-like and as unpretentious as the sun that warms, as the bread that nourishes us; a book that looks on us as kindly and benignly as an old grandmother, who, with her dear tremulous lips, and spectacles on nose, reads in it daily: this book is briefly called _the_ book--the Bible. With good reason it is also called the Holy Scriptures: he that has lost his G.o.d can find Him again in this book, and towards him who has never known Him it wafts the breath of the divine word. The Jews, who are connoisseurs of precious things, well knew what they were about when, at the burning of the second temple, they left in the lurch the gold and silver sacrificial vessels, the candlesticks and lamps, and even the richly-jewelled breast-plate of the high-priest, to rescue only the Bible....

...Distinguished German philosophers who may accidentally cast a glance over these pages will superciliously shrug their shoulders at the meagreness and incompleteness of all that which I here offer. But they will be kind enough to bear in mind that the little which I say is expressed clearly and intelligibly, whereas their own works, although very profound, unfathomably profound--very deep, stupendously deep--are in the same degree unintelligible. Of what benefit to the people is the grain locked away in the granaries to which they have no key? The ma.s.ses are famishing for knowledge, and will thank me for the portion of intellectual bread, small though it be, which I honestly share with them. I believe it is not lack of ability that holds back the majority of German scholars from discussing religion and philosophy in proper language. I believe it is a fear of the results of their own studies, which they dare not communicate to the ma.s.ses. I do not share this fear, for I am not a learned scholar; I, myself, am of the people. I am not one of the seven hundred wise men of Germany. I stand with the great ma.s.ses at the portals of their wisdom. And if a truth slips through, and if this truth falls in my way, then I write it with pretty letters on paper, and give it to the compositor, who sets it in leaden type and gives it to the printer; the latter prints it, and then it belongs to the whole world.

The religion of Germany is Christianity. Therefore I shall have to relate what Christianity is, how it became Roman Catholicism, how out of this sprang Protestantism, and out of the latter German philosophy.

Inasmuch as I am about to speak of religion, I beg beforehand of all pious souls not to be uneasy. Fear naught, ye pious ones! No profane witticisms shall offend your ears. It is true that these are yet necessary in Germany, where, at this juncture, it is important to neutralise ecclesiastical power. For there we are now in the same situation that you in France were before the Revolution, when Christianity was yet in the closest union with the old _regime_. The latter could not be overthrown so long as the former maintained its sway over the ma.s.ses. Voltaire's keen ridicule was needed ere Samson could let his axe descend. But neither the ridicule nor the axe proved anything; they only effected something. Voltaire could only wound the body of Christianity. All his jests gathered from the annals of the Church, all his witticisms against the doctrines and public worship of the Church, against the Bible, this holiest book of humanity, against the Virgin Mary, that loveliest flower of poesy, the whole encylclopaedia of philosophical shafts which he launched against the clergy and priesthood, wounded only the outward, mortal body of Christianity, not its inner being, not its profound spirit, nor its eternal soul.

For Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea. But what is this idea?

Just because this idea has not yet been clearly comprehended, and because the essential has been mistaken for the fundamental, there is as yet no history of the Church. Two antagonistic factions write the history of the Church, and contradict each other incessantly. But the one as little as the other will ever distinctly state what that idea really is which is the underlying principle of Christianity, of its symbolism, of its dogma, of its public worship, and which strives to reveal itself throughout its whole history, and has manifested itself in the actual life of Christian nations.

...How this idea was historically evolved, and disclosed itself in the world of phenomena, may be discovered as early as the first centuries after the birth of Christ, if we study impartially the history of the Manicheans and the Gnostics. Although the first were branded as heretics, and the latter defamed, and both anathematised by the Church, yet their influence on the doctrines of the Church was lasting. Out of their symbolism Catholic art was developed, and their modes of thought penetrated the whole life of Christendom. The First Cause of the Manicheans does not differ much from that of the Gnostics. The doctrine of the two principles, the good and the evil, constantly opposing each other, is common to both. The Manicheans derived this doctrine from the ancient Persian religion, in which Ormuz, the light, is at enmity with Ahriman, the darkness. The others, the real Gnostics, believed in the pre-existence of the good principle, and accounted for the rise of the evil through emanation, through the generation of aeons, which, the farther they are removed from their origin, the more vicious and evil do they become.

...This Gnostic theory of the universe originated in ancient India, and brought with it the doctrine of the incarnation of G.o.d, of the mortification of the flesh, of spiritual introspection and self-absorption. It gave birth to the ascetic, contemplative, monkish life, which is the most logical outgrowth of the Christian principle.

This principle has become entangled among the dogmas of the Church, and has been able to express itself but very obscurely in the public worship. But everywhere we find the doctrine of the two principles prominent; the wicked Satan is always contrasted with the good Christ.

Christ represents the spiritual world, Satan the material; to the former belong our souls, to the latter our bodies. Accordingly, the whole visible world, which const.i.tutes nature, is originally evil, and Satan, the prince of darkness, through it seeks to lure us to ruin. Therefore it behoves us to renounce all the sensuous joys of life, to torture the body, which is Satan's portion, in order that the soul may the more majestically soar aloft to the bright heavens, to the radiant kingdom of Christ.

This theory of the universe, which is the true fundamental idea of Christianity, spread itself with incredible rapidity, like a contagious disease, over the whole Roman empire. These sufferings, at times strung to fever-pitch, then again relaxing into exhaustion, lasted all through the middle ages; and we moderns still feel in our limbs those convulsions and that debility. And if among us, here and there, there be one who is already convalescent, he cannot flee from the universal hospital, and feels himself unhappy as the only healthy person among invalids.

When once mankind shall have recovered its perfect life, when peace shall be again restored between body and soul, and they shall again interpenetrate each other with their original harmony, then it will be scarcely possible to comprehend the fact.i.tious feud which Christianity has instigated between them. Happier and more perfect generations, begot in free and voluntary embraces, blossoming forth in a religion of joy, will then smile sadly at their poor ancestors, who held themselves gloomily aloof from all the pleasures of this beautiful world, and through the deadening of all warm and cheerful sensuousness almost paled into cold spectres. Yes, I say it confidently, our descendants will be more beautiful, more happy, than we; for I have faith in progress; mankind is destined to be happy, and I have a more favourable opinion of the Divinity than those pious souls who imagine that He created mankind only to suffer. Already here on earth, through the blessings of free political and industrial inst.i.tutions, would I seek to found that millennium which, according to the belief of the pious, is not to be until the day of judgment. The one is perhaps as visionary a hope as the other, and possibly there will be no resurrection of humanity, either in the politico-moral or in the apostolic-Catholic sense. Perhaps mankind _is_ doomed to eternal misery; the ma.s.ses _are_ perhaps condemned to be for ever trodden under foot by despots, to be plundered by their accomplices, and to be jeered at by their lackeys.

Alas! in that case we must seek to maintain Christianity, even if we recognise it to be an error. Barefoot, and clad in monkish cowls, we must traverse Europe, preaching the vanity of all earthly good, and inculcating resignation. We must hold up the consoling crucifix before scourged and derided humanity, and promise, after death, all the seven heavens above.

...The final fate of Christianity is dependent upon our need of it. This religion has for eighteen centuries been a blessing to suffering humanity; it was providential, divine, holy. All that it has benefited civilisation, by taming the strong and strengthening the weak, by uniting the nations through like emotions and a like language, by all that its panegyrists extol--all these are insignificant in comparison with that great consolation which in itself is bestowed upon mankind.

Eternal praise is due to that symbol of a suffering G.o.d, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the Christ crucified, whose blood was a soothing balsam dripping into humanity's wounds. The poet, in particular, will reverently recognise the solemn grandeur of that symbol. The whole system of allegory, as expressed in the life and art of the middle ages, will in all times excite the admiration of poets.

What colossal consistency in _the_ Christian art!--that is, in architecture! How harmoniously those Gothic cathedrals are adapted to the religious services of the Church, and how the fundamental idea of the Church itself is revealed in them! Everything towers upward; everything transubstantiates itself; the stone blossoms into branches and foliage and becomes a tree; the fruits of the vine and of the wheat-stalk become blood and flesh; man becomes G.o.d, and G.o.d becomes a pure, abstract spirit. The Christian life during the middle ages is for the poet a rich, inexhaustible store-house of precious materials. Only through Christianity could, in this world, such varied phases arise--contrasts so striking, sorrows so diverse, beauties so strange, that one is inclined to believe that they never did exist in reality, and that all was but a colossal fever-dream, a delirious fantasy of an insane G.o.d. Nature herself appeared in those times fantastically disguised; but notwithstanding that man, occupied with abstract metaphysical speculations, turned peevishly away from her, yet at times she awoke him with a voice so solemnly sweet, so deliciously terrible, so enchanting, that he involuntarily listened and smiled, then shrank back with terror, and sickened even unto death. The story of the nightingale of Basle here comes to my mind, and, as it is probably unknown to you, I will relate it.

In May 1433, at the time of the Ec.u.menical Council, a party of ecclesiastics, prelates, learned scholars, and monks of every shades took a walk in a grove near Basle, wrangling over theological disputations, drawing hair-splitting distinctions, or arguing concerning annates, expectatives, and reservations, debating whether Thomas of Aquinas was a greater philosopher than Bonaventura, and what not! But suddenly, in the midst of their abstract and dogmatical discussions, they paused, transfixed, before a blooming linden-tree, on which sat a nightingale, trilling and trolling the sweetest and tenderest strains.

The learned men were ravished with delight. The glowing melodies of spring penetrated to their scholastic, musty, bookworm hearts, their souls awoke from the mouldy, wintry sleep, they looked at one another in astonished ecstasy. But finally one of them made the sagacious remark that such things could not come of good, that the nightingale might be a devil, and that this devil might be seeking through its sweet music to decoy them from their pious conversations and to lure them to voluptuousness and similar pleasant sins; and then he began to exorcise, probably with the usual formula--"Adjuro te per c.u.m, qui venturus est, judicare vivos et mortuos," etc. It is said that at this conjuration the bird replied, "Yes, I am an evil spirit!" and flew away, laughing. But those who heard its song sickened that very night, and soon after died.

This legend needs no commentary. It bears distinctly the horrible impress of a time when all that was sweet and lovely was denounced as diabolical. Even the nightingale was slandered, and it was customary to make the sign of the cross when she sang. The true Christian, like an abstract spectre, walked timorously, with closed senses, amidst the loveliness of nature.

...As regards the good principle, the same conception prevailed over all the Christian countries of Europe. The Roman Catholic Church took care of that, and whoever deviated from the prescribed faith was a heretic.

But in relation to the evil principle and the empire of Satan, different views were held in different countries, and the Germanic North had quite different conceptions from the Latin South. This was caused by the fact that the Christian priesthood did not reject the previously existing national G.o.ds as baseless fantasies of the brain, but conceded to them an actual existence; a.s.serting, however, that all these G.o.ds were nothing but male and female devils, who, through the victory of Christ, had lost their power over mankind, and now sought through wiles and stratagems to lure them to sin. All Olympus was now transformed into an airy h.e.l.l; and if a poet of the middle ages sang of Grecian mythology ever so beautifully, the pious Christian would persist in seeing therein only devils and hobgoblins. The gloomy fanaticism of the monks alighted with special severity on poor Venus: she was considered a daughter of Beelzebub, and the good knight Tannhauser tells her to her face--

"O Venus, lovely wife of mine, You are but a she-devil!"

Tannhauser had been enticed by her into that wondrous mountain-cavern called the Venusburg, where, according to tradition, dwelt the beautiful G.o.ddess with her nymphs and her paramours, beguiling the hours with the most wanton carousings and dancing. Even poor Diana was not spared, and, notwithstanding her previous reputation for chast.i.ty, similar scandals were fastened on her good name. It is said that she, together with her nymphs, indulged in nightly rides through the forest; hence the legend of a strange midnight chase, by wild and furious hunters. This legend reveals clearly the then pervading Gnostic theory of the degeneration of the former divinities. In this transformation of the ancient national religion the underlying principle of Christianity is most fully manifested. The national religion of Europe in the North, even more than in the South, was pantheism. All the mysteries and symbols of that religion were founded on and had reference to a worship of nature; each of the elements was regarded as the embodiment of some mysterious being, and as such was revered and worshipped; in every tree dwelt a divinity, and all nature swarmed with G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. Christianity exactly reversed this, and in place of G.o.ds it subst.i.tuted devils and demons.

The cheerful figures of Grecian mythology, beautified as they were by art, had taken root in the South along with Roman civilisation, and were not so easily to be displaced by the hideous, weird, and satanic divinities of the German North. The latter seemed to have been fashioned without any particular artistic design, and even before the advent of Christianity they were as sombre and as gloomy as the North itself.

Hence there could not arise in France so frightful a devil-dom as among us in Germany, and even the witchcraft and sorcery of the former a.s.sumed a cheerful guise. How lovely, fair, and picturesque are the popular superst.i.tions of France as compared with the b.l.o.o.d.y, hazy, and misshapen monsters which loom gloomily and savagely from out the mists of German legendary lore!

Those German poets of the middle ages who chose such themes as had originated, or been first treated, in Brittany and Normandy, thereby invested their poems with somewhat of the cheerfulness of the French temperament. But the old Northern sombreness, of whose gloom we can now scarcely form any idea, exercised full sway over such of our literature as was distinctly national, and over such popular traditions as have been orally transmitted. The superst.i.tions of the two countries offer as striking a contrast as that which exists between a Frenchman and a German. The supernatural beings that figure in old French _fabliaux_ and legends are bright and cheerful creations, and remarkable for a cleanliness which is noticeably lacking in our filthy rabble of German hobgoblins. French fairies and sprites are as distinguishable from German spectres as a spruce and daintily-gloved dandy, jauntily promenading the Boulevard Coblence, is different from a burly German porter, carrying a heavy load upon his shoulders. A French nixen, such as a Melusina, is to a German elf as a princess to a washerwoman. The fay Morgana would stand aghast at sight of a German witch, her body naked and besmeared with ointment, riding on a broom-stick to the Brocken. The Brocken is no merry Avalon, but a rendezvous for all that is weird and hideous. On the very summit of the mountain sits Satan, in the shape of a black goat. The infamous sisterhood form a circle around him and dance, and sing, "Donderemus! Donderemus!" Mingled in the infernal din are heard the bleating of the goat and the shouting of the demoniac crew. If, during the dance, a witch happens to drop a shoe, it is an evil omen, and portends that she will be burned at the stake ere the year ends. But all the terror which such a portent inspires is forgotten amid the wild and maddening Berlioz-like music of the witches'

sabbath--and when in the morning the poor witch awakens from her delirium, she finds herself lying, stark naked and tired, by the glimmering embers of her hearth.

The most complete account of witches we find in the learned Dr. Nicolai Remigius's _Demonology_. This sagacious man had the best opportunity to learn the tricks of witches, as he officiated at their trials, and during his time, in Lotharingia alone, eight hundred women were burned at the stake, after trial and conviction. The trial was generally as follows:--Their hands and feet were tied together, and then they were thrown into the water. If they went under and were drowned, it was a proof that they were innocent, but if they floated on the surface, they were recognised as guilty and burned. Such was the logic of those times.... When the learned Dr. Remigius had completed his great work on witchcraft, he deemed himself so great a master of his subject as to be able to work magic, and, conscientious man that he was, did not fail to accuse himself before the courts; in consequence of which accusation he was burned as a sorcerer.

...I must confess that Luther did not understand the real nature of Satan. Whatever evil may be said of the devil, it cannot be denied that he is a spiritualist. Still less did Luther understand the real nature of Catholicism. He did not comprehend that the fundamental idea of Christianity, the deadening of the senses, was too antagonistic to human nature to be ever entirely practicable in life; he did not comprehend that Catholicism was a concordat between G.o.d and the devil--that is to say, between the spirit and the senses, in which the absolute reign of the spirit was promulgated in theory, but in which the senses were nevertheless practically reinstated in the enjoyment of their rights.

Hence a wise system of concessions allowed by the Church to the senses, always, however, under formalities which cast a slur on every act of the senses, and maintained the sham usurpation of the spirit. You might yield to the tender impulses of your heart and embrace a pretty girl, but you must confess that it was a flagrant sin, and for this sin you must make atonement. That this atonement might be made with money was as beneficial to humanity as useful to the Church. The Church imposed fines, so to say, for every indulgence of the flesh; hence there arose taxes on all sorts of sins, and there were pious colporteurs who, in the name of the Roman Catholic Church, hawked for sale through the land absolutions for every taxed sin. Such a one was that Tetzel against whom Luther first entered the field.

...Leo X., the keen Florentine, the pupil of Politian, the friend of Raphael, the Greek philosopher with the triple crown, bestowed by the Conclave, probably because he suffered from a disease, nowise due to Christian abstinence, which was then very dangerous, Leo of Medici, how he must have smiled at the poor, chaste, simple-minded monk who imagined that the evangelic gospels were the chart of Christianity, and that this chart must be a truth! Perhaps he never comprehended what Luther was aiming at, for at that time he was busily occupied with the building of St. Peter's Cathedral, the cost of which was defrayed by the money derived from these sales of absolutions, so that sin actually furnished the means wherewith to build this church, which became thereby, as it were, a monument to the l.u.s.ts of the flesh, like that pyramid which an Egyptian girl built with the money she had earned by prost.i.tution. Of this house of G.o.d it perhaps might be said more truly than of Cologne Cathedral, that it was built by the devil. This triumph of spiritualism, compelling sensualism itself to build its most beautiful temple--this reaping from the mult.i.tude, by concessions made to the flesh, the means wherewith to beautify spiritualism, was not understood in the German North. For there, more easily than under the burning skies of Italy, was it possible to practice a Christianity that should make the fewest concessions to the senses. We Northerners are cold-blooded, and needed not so many price-lists of absolution for sins of the flesh as the fatherly Leo sent us. The climate makes the exercise of Christian virtues easier for us; and when, on the 31st of October 1517, Luther nailed to the door of St Augustine's Church his thesis against indulgences, the city moat of Wittenberg was, perhaps, already frozen over with ice thick enough for skating, which is a chilly pleasure, and therefore no sin.

...In Germany the battle against Catholicism was nothing else than a war begun by spiritualism when it perceived that it only reigned nominally and _de jure_; whereas sensualism, through conventional subterfuges, exercised the real sovereignty and ruled _de facto_. When this was perceived, the hawkers of indulgences were chased off, the pretty concubines of the priests were exchanged for plain but honest wedded wives, the charming Madonna pictures were demolished, and there reigned in certain localities a puritanism inimical to every gratification of the senses. In France, on the contrary, during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the war was begun by sensualism against Catholicism, when it saw that while it, sensualism, reigned _de facto_, yet every exercise of its sovereignty was restrained in the most aggravating manner by spiritualism, and stigmatised as illegitimate.

While in Germany the battle was fought with chaste earnestness, in France it was waged with licentious witticisms, and while there theological disputations were in vogue, here many satires were the fashion.