Villa Eden Part 14

Eric once more gave a brief and concise sketch of his life. Mindful of Clodwig's advice not to say anything about his fancied mission to educate convicts, an incident occurred to him, which he had, in an incomprehensible way, wholly pa.s.sed over before. He gave an account of his once having had charge of a powder-mill. "I was driven away by a revolting expression of my employer. From some cause never yet explained, the mill blew up, and four men were killed. But what said my employer when he reached the spot? Not one word of pity for the lost men, but 'that it was a shame for so much good powder to be lost.'"

"What was the man's name?" asked Sonnenkamp.

Eric gave one of the most distinguished names of the princ.i.p.ality, and was not a little surprised to hear Sonnenkamp say, "A wonderful man,--influential and powerful."

Eric found it difficult to continue his narrative with composure after this incident, and ended by saying,--

"I beg that you will not regard me as a weak, restless person, for having so often changed my calling."

"On the contrary," Sonnenkamp declared, "I have had experience enough both in the old and new world, to teach me that the most capable people are just those who determine for themselves upon their employment.

Whoever changes his calling must do so either from some external necessity, or from real fitness for something else. Allow me to ask one question. Do you believe it possible for a man who undertakes, compelled by want or because he can find nothing better to do, some employment, I do not like to call it a service, but a dependent position--you know what I mean, but I am not familiar with the German--is it possible for him to devote himself heartily to that occupation? Will he not always feel himself bound, under obligation to serve, and often ill at ease?"

"Your frank objection," Eric replied, "does me great honor. I know well that the calling of an educator requires to be made supreme, from morning until night. Nothing can be more desirable to me than to perceive that you are as deeply interested in the matter as I could wish."

Again a peculiar expression darted across Sonnenkamp's countenance; but Eric, without appearing to perceive it, continued, in a voice full of emotion, "It is not because I can find nothing better to do that I apply for the position of tutor in your family. I agree with you, that he who takes such a place merely from necessity can never fulfil its duties, although I do not mean to a.s.sert, and unconditionally, that inclination may not be developed, or as we say, that one may not make a virtue out of necessity. My knowledge is not great, but I have learned what one must do in order to learn, and therefore I think that I am able also to instruct. As far as earnest sincerity of purpose is concerned, I will yield to no one; and so far as I can judge, I venture to say, that were I placed in the most favorable circ.u.mstances, I would enter upon the calling of an educator in a spirit of freedom, with joyful zeal."

"Right honorable, right honorable! go on!" Sonnenkamp interposed in such a tone that Eric was somewhat confounded, hearing as he yet did, in a measure, the echo of his own earnest utterance, now so strangely interrupted. In a sort of triumphant tone, Sonnenkamp continued:--

"An amateur is all very well; but I prefer a man with a profession."

"I am entirely of the same opinion," Eric answered; "and I am amazed at the good results practically secured in the new world, by adopting a different course."

With constrained calmness he continued,--

"In regard to this matter, I have only one desire, and only one request to make."

"And that is?"

Sonnenkamp again placed his hand upon the table as if he were laying down a stake at play.

"I should like that you would not find it disagreeable to consider me at first, for some days, a guest in your house."

Eric said nothing more, hoping that Sonnenkamp would answer at once in the affirmative; but he cracked in two, abruptly, a cigar which he had just lighted, and which did not seem to draw freely, and threw it away into the shrubbery. His face became red again, and a mocking smile played upon his lips, as he thought: "Very confident indeed! This young man imagines that if he can only get a lodgment for a few days, he can so bewitch every one that he will be deemed indispensable. We shall see!"

As he maintained a persistent silence, Eric said:--

"It would be desirable as well for you as for me, before making a permanent agreement, to know more of each other; and I especially desire this on Roland's account."

Sonnenkamp smiled, and watched two b.u.t.terflies chasing each other, hardly giving any attention to Eric as he went on to state, that the boy seemed to him in one respect too mature, and in another not mature enough to be made acquainted with the selection of a tutor, and perhaps to have a voice in it; therefore he must first know him as a guest in the house, and afterwards as his tutor; also it was his own desire that Roland should not know that his tutor received pay in money, or at least, should not know the amount.

At the word money, Sonnenkamp seemed to come out of his b.u.t.terfly-gazing.

"What sum would you demand?" asked he, putting into his mouth a fresh cigar that he had held for some time in his hand. Eric replied that it was not for him, but for the father, to determine that.

Sonnenkamp brought his cigar to a glow with a few violent whiffs, and with great unction declared how well he knew that no sum was large enough to compensate adequately the painstaking duties of education and instruction.

Then leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, and holding on to his left leg with the right hand, manifestly well satisfied with this declaration of his n.o.ble sentiments, he said,--

"Would you be willing to give me an exposition in a few words of the principles and method you must employ in the training of my son?"

"The method to be marked out in any particular case, the course I should adopt in actual instruction, I myself do not as yet know."

"What! you yourself not even know that?"

"I must take my method from Roland himself, for it must be adapted to the pupil's natural characteristics. Let me take an ill.u.s.tration from your own surroundings. You see here the river. The boatmen have sounded the bottom, and knowing where the shoal-banks are, keep well clear of them. So must I, first of all, fathom, in the peculiar sense of that word, the depths of Roland's nature."

Eric looking up continued:--

"Or let me take a yet more pertinent ill.u.s.tration. If you see that your servants, in going from the house to the servants' quarters, take by preference a short cut over a gra.s.s-plot artistically measured and laid out, you will, if it is possible, give in to this beaten track, and not obstinately adhere to your artificial plan, however correct it may be, and however much in conformity with the principles of landscape-gardening. You will adopt this natural foot-path as a part of your plan. This is the method adapted to circ.u.mstances. Such thoroughfares are found also in human beings."

Sonnenkamp smiled; he had, in fact, tried very hard, by means of stringent prohibitions, to keep a bed of shrubbery in the middle of the court-yard free from foot-pa.s.sengers, and finally had laid out a pathway through it.

"Agreed as to the method, but how about the principles?" He smiled with self-satisfaction, for he perceived how nice a distinction he had drawn. The man had made him conscious that, in an intellectual struggle, he had here no mean antagonist.

"Here I must take a wider range," resumed Eric. "The great contest, which runs through the history of humanity and the whole of human life, shows itself in the most direct way in the training of one human being by another; for here the two elementary forces confront each other as living personalities. I may briefly designate them as individuality and authority, or historic civilization and nature."

"I understand--I understand, go on!" was thrown in encouragingly by Sonnenkamp, when Eric paused for a moment, anxious not to get lost in generalities.

"The educator is necessarily the representative of authority, and the pupil is a personality by the very endowment of nature," resumed Eric.

"There is continually then a balance to be adjusted between the two, a treaty of peace to be made between the contending forces, which shall at last become a real reconciliation. To train one merely as an individual is to place a child of humanity outside of actual existence, and for the sake of freedom to isolate him from the common life, and make it burdensome to him; to subject him merely to prescribed laws is to rob him of his inborn rights. The human being is a law to himself, but he is also born into a system of laws. It was the great mistake of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the French Revolution, that in their indignation at the traditions contradictory to reason, they thought that an individual and an age could develop everything from themselves.

A child of humanity neither contains all within himself, nor can he receive all from without. I think then that there is a mingling of the two elements, and there must be an hourly and an imperceptible influence exerted both from within and from without equally, inasmuch as man is a product of nature and a product of history. It is through the last, only, that man is distinguished from the beasts, and becomes an heir of all the labors and all the strength of the past generations."

Sonnenkamp nodded acquiescingly. His whole mien said, This man lays down very aptly what he heard yesterday from the lecturer's desk; and Eric continued,--

"Man alone comes into an inheritance, and an inheritance is the heaviest human responsibility."

"That is something new to me. I should like to ask for a fuller explanation."

"Permit me to ill.u.s.trate: the beast receives from nature, from birth, nothing except its individual strength and its stationary instinctive capacity, while the human being receives from his progenitors and from humanity a superadded strength which he has not in himself, but of which he becomes possessor, and so he is the only inheritor. And let me say further, that it is difficult to decide whether it is harder to turn to good advantage that which a man is in himself, or that which he may receive, as for example your son will, as an inheritance. Most persons are of account only through what they possess. I consider this last of no trifling importance, but--"

"Wealth is no sin, and poverty is no virtue," Sonnenkamp interrupted.

"I admit the depth and fineness of your perception in all this. I confess it is new to me, and I think that you have taken the right view. But whether, in the education of one individual boy, you shall find occasion for such great fundamental principles--"

"While engaged in the work of instruction," Eric quietly replied, "I shall not be likely to have directly before my eyes universal principles, as everything must be developed from its own basis. While one is loading, aiming, and firing off a musket, he does not define to himself the various physical laws that come into play, but he must know them in order to proceed in the right way."

Sonnenkamp was rather tired of this discussion; it was somewhat out of his line, and he had the unpleasant consciousness, that while trying to make an impression upon the stranger, he had himself been made to appear infinitely small.

"Pardon, gracious sir," a groom interposed, as Eric was beginning to expatiate anew. Sonnenkamp stood up hastily, and remarking that it was time for his ride, with affable condescension he waived with his hand the discussion to some other time.

He went quickly away. Roland came along the path, and called out,--

"I may ride out with Herr Dournay, may I not, papa?"

Sonnenkamp nodded, and departed with a hurried step. He mounted on horseback, and was soon to be seen riding a spirited black horse along the white high-road by the river. He made an imposing appearance as he sat on horse-back; the groom followed him.