Guillaume Hyacinthe Bougeant - "Voyage du Prince Fan Federin dans la romancie"

B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols - "Searchlights on Health"

Various - "Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891"

Frederick Marryat - "Poor Jack"

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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: written by Various

V >> Various >> The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries:



VOLUME V

THE GERMAN CLASSICS

Masterpieces of German Literature

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

Patrons' Edition IN TWENTY VOLUMES

ILLUSTRATED

1914





CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS

VOLUME V

* * * * *

Special Writers

FRANK THILLY, PH.D., LL.D., Professor of Philosophy, Cornell
University: The Romantic Philosophers--Fichte, Schelling, and
Schleiermacher.

GEORGE H. DANTON, PH.D., Professor of German, Butler College: Later
German Romanticism.


Translators

PERCY MACKAYE, Dramatist and Poet: Departure; Would I were Free as
are My Dreams.

A.I. DU P. COLEMAN, A.M., Professor of English Literature, College
of the City of New York: Taillefer; The Lion's Bride; The Crucifix;
The Old Singer; From My Childhood Days; The Invitation; A Parable;
At Forty Years; etc.

MARGARETE MUeNSTERBERG: Selections from The Boy's Magic Horn; Union
Song; The Mother Tongue; Spring Greeting to the Fatherland; Freedom;
Charlemagne's Voyage; Chidher; etc.

HERMAN MONTAGU DONNER: Luetzow's Wild Band; Cavalryman's Morning
Song.

LOUIS H. GRAY, PH.D.: Addresses to the German Nation.

FREDERIC H. HEDGE: The Destiny of Man; The Wonderful History of
Peter Schlemihl; The Golden Pot.

GEORGE RIPLEY: On the Social Element in Religion.

J. ELLIOT CABOT: On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature.

MRS. A.L.W. WISTER: From the Life of a Good-for-nothing.

MARGARET HUNT: The Frog King, or Iron Henry; The Wolf and the Seven
Little Kids; Rapunzel; Haensel and Grethel; The Fisherman and His
Wife.

F.E. BUNNETT: Selections from Undine.

H.W. DULCKEN: Song of the Fatherland; The White Hart; Evening Song;
Before the Doors.

C.T. BROOKS: Men and Knaves; Prayer During Battle; Song of the
Mountain Boy; The Chapel; etc.

W.W. SKEAT: The Shepherd's Sang on the Lord's Day; The Hostess'
Daughter; The Good Comrade.

W.H. FURNESS: The Lost Church; The Minstrel's Curse.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW: The Luck of Edenhall; Remorse; The Castle by
the Sea.

KATE FREILIGRATH-KROEKER: On the Death of a Child.

C.G. LELAND: The Broken Ring.

ALFRED BASKERVILLE: Morning Prayer; The Castle of Boncourt; Woman's
Love and Life; The Spring of Love; etc.

BAYARD TAYLOR and LILIAN BAYARD TAYLOR KILIANI: The Women of
Weinsberg; Barbarossa; the Grave of Alaric.

JOHN OXENFORD: The Sentinel.

LORD LINDSAY: The Pilgrim Before St. Just's.

BAYARD TAYLOR: He Came to Meet Me.




CONTENTS OF VOLUME V

The Romantic Philosophers--Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher.
By Frank Thilly


Friedrich Schleiermacher

On the Social Element in Religion. Translated by George Ripley


Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The Destiny of Man. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge
Addresses to the German Nation. Translated by Louis H. Gray


Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling

On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature. Translated by J. Elliot
Cabot

* * * * *

Later German Romanticism. By George H. Danton


Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano

The Boy's Magic Horn. Selections translated by Margarete Muensterberg.
Were I a Little Bird
The Mountaineer
As Many as Sand-grains in the Sea
The Swiss Deserter
The Tailor in Hell
The Reaper


Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Fairy Tales. Translated by Margaret Hunt.
The Frog King, or Iron Henry
The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids
Rapunzel
Haensel and Grethel
The Fisherman and His Wife


Ernst Moritz Arndt

Song of the Fatherland. Translated by H.W. Dulcken
Union Song. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg


Theodor Koerner

Men and Knaves. Translated by C.T. Brooks
Luetzow's Wild Band. Translated by Herman Montagu Donner
Prayer During Battle. Translated by C.T. Brooks


Maximilian Gottfried von Schenkendorf

The Mother Tongue. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg
Spring Greeting to the Fatherland. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg
Freedom. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg


Ludwig Uhland

The Chapel. Translated by C.T. Brooks
The Shepherd's Song on the Lord's Day. Translated by W.W. Skeat
The Castle by the Sea. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow
Song of the Mountain Boy. Translated by C.T. Brooks
Departure. Translated by Percy MacKaye
Farewell. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
The Hostess' Daughter. Translated by W.W. Skeat
The Good Comrade. Translated by W.W. Skeat
The White Hart. Translated by H.W. Dulcken
The Lost Church. Translated by W.H. Furness
Charlemagne's Voyage. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg
Free Art. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg
Taillefer. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Suabian Legend. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg
The Blind King. Translated by C.T. Brooks
The Minstrel's Curse. Translated by W.H. Furness
The Luck of Edenhall. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow
On the Death of a Child. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker


Joseph von Eichendorff

The Broken Ring. Translated by C.G. Leland
Morning Prayer. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
From the Life of a Good-for-nothing. Translated by Mrs. A.L.W. Wister


Adalbert von Chamisso

The Castle of Boncourt. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
The Lion's Bride. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Woman's Love and Life. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
The Women of Weinsberg. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani
The Crucifix. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
The Old Singer. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
The Old Washerwoman. From the _Foreign Quarterly_
The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge


Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann

The Golden Pot. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge


Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouque

Selections from Undine. Translated by F.E. Bunnett


Wilhelm Hauff

Cavalryman's Morning Song. Translated by Herman Montagu Donner
The Sentinel. Translated by John Oxenford


Friedrich Rueckert

Barbarossa. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani
From My Childhood Days. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
The Spring of Love. Translated by Alfred Baskerville
He Came to Meet Me. Translated by Bayard Taylor
The Invitation. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Murmur Not. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
A Parable. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Evening Song. Translated by H.W. Dulcken
Chidher. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg
At Forty Years. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman
Before the Doors. Translated by H.W. Dulcken


August von Platen-Hallermund

The Pilgrim Before St. Just's. Translated by Lord Lindsay
The Grave of Alaric. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani
Remorse. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow
Would I were Free as are My Dreams. Translated by Percy MacKaye
Sonnet. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg




ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME V

Heidelberg
Friedrich Schleiermacher. By E. Hader
The Three Hermits. By Moritz von Schwind
Johann Gottlieb Fichte. By Bury
Volunteers of 1813 before King Friedrich Wilhelm III in Breslau. By F.W. Scholtz
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. By Carl Begas
The Jungfrau. By Moritz von Schwind
The Magic Horn. By Moritz von Schwind
Ludwig Achim von Arnim. By Stroehling
Clemens Brentano. By E. Linder
The Reaper. By Walter Crane
Wilhelm Grimm. By E. Hader
Jacob Grimm. By E. Hader
Haensel and Gretel. By Ludwig Richter
Ernst Moritz Arndt. By Julius Roeting
Theodor Koerner. By E. Hader
Maximilian Gottfried von Schenkendorf
Ludwig Uhland. By C. Jaeger
The Villa by the Sea. By Arnold Boecklin
Leaving at Dawn. By Moritz von Schwind
Joseph von Eichendorff. By Franz Kugler
Adalbert von Chamisso. By C. Jaeger
The Wedding Journey. By Moritz von Schwind
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hofmann. By Hensel
Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouque
Wilhelm Hauff. By E. Hader
The Sentinel. By Robert Haug
Friedrich Rueckert. By C. Jaeger
Memories of Youth. By Ludwig Richter
August Graf von Platen-Hallermund
The Morning Hour. By Moritz von Schwind




THE ROMANTIC PHILOSOPHERS--FICHTE, SCHELLING, AND SCHLEIERMACHER

By FRANK THILLY, PH.D., LL.D. Professor of Philosophy, Cornell
University


The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century had implicit faith in
the powers of human reason to reach the truth. With its
logical-mathematical method it endeavored to illuminate every nook and
corner of knowledge, to remove all obscurity, mystery, bigotry, and
superstition, to find a reason for everything under the sun. Nature,
religion, the State, law, morality, language, and art were brought
under the searchlight of reason and reduced to simple and self-evident
principles. Human institutions were measured according to their
reasonableness; whatever was not rational had no _raison d'etre_;
to demolish the natural and historical in order to make room for
the rational became the practical ideal of the day. Enlightenment
emphasized the worth and dignity of the human individual, it sought to
deliver him from the slavery of authority and tradition, to make him
self-reliant in thought and action, to obtain for him his natural
rights, to secure his happiness and perfection in a world expressly
made for him, and to guarantee the continuance of his personal
existence in the life to come. In Germany this great movement found
expression in a popular commonsense philosophy which proved the
existence of God, freedom, and immortality, and conceived the universe
as a rational order designed by an all-wise and all-good Creator for
the benefit of man, his highest product; while other thinkers regarded
Spinozism as the only rational system, indeed as the last word of all
speculative metaphysics; for them logical thought necessarily led to
pantheism and determinism. In France, after reaching its climax in
Voltaire, it ended in materialism, atheism, and fatalism; and in
England, where it had developed the empiricism of Locke, it came to
grief in the scepticism of Hume. If we can know only our impressions,
then rational theology, cosmology, and psychology are impossible, and
it is futile to philosophize about God, the world, and the human soul.
Consistently carried out, the logical-mathematical method seemed to
land the intellect in Spinozism or in materialism--in either case to
catch man in the causal machinery of nature. In this dilemma many were
tempted to throw reason overboard as an instrument of ultimate
truth, and to seek for certainty through other functions of the human
soul--in feeling, faith, or mystical vision of some sort; the claims
of the heart and will were urged against the proud pretensions of the
intellect (Hamann, Herder, Jacobi). Another way of escape was found
by substituting the organic conception of reality for the
logical-mathematical view of the _Aufklaerung_; nature and life,
poetry, art, language, political, social, and religious institutions
are not creations of reason, not things made to order, but
organic--products of evolution (Lessing, Herder, Winckelmann, Goethe).
Man, himself, moreover, is not mere intellect, but a being in whom
feelings, impulses, yearnings, will, are elements to be reckoned with.
And reality is not as transparent as the Enlightenment assumed it to
be; existence divided by reason leaves a remainder, as Goethe had put
it.

It was Immanuel Kant who tried to arbitrate between the conflicting
tendencies of his age. He was an _Aufklaerer_ in so far as he brought
reason itself to the bar of reason and sat in judgment upon its
claims, and, likewise, in so far as he insisted on the objective
validity of physics and mathematics. But he was as much opposed to
the pretentiousness of dogmatic metaphysics as to the pusillanimity
of scepticism and the _Schwaermerei_ of mysticism. He repudiated the
shallow proofs of the existence of God, freedom, and immortality
no less emphatically than he rejected materialism with its
atheism, fatalism, and hedonism. He tried to save everything worth
saving--rational knowledge, modern science, the basal truths of
the old metaphysics, and the most precious human values. For
the scientific intelligence, so he held, nature and the self are
absolutely determined; every physical occurrence and every human act
are necessary links in a causal chain. But such knowledge is
possible only in the field of phenomena (_Erscheinungen_); through
sense-perception and the discursive understanding we cannot reach the
inner core of reality; nor can we pierce the veil of appearances by
means of intellectual intuitions, mystical visions, feeling, or faith,
i.e., through the emotional and instinctive parts of our nature. It is
the presence of the moral law or categorical imperative within us that
points to a spiritual world beyond the phenomenal causal order and
assures us of our freedom, immortality, and God. It is because we
possess this deeper source of truth in practical reason that freedom
and an ideal kingdom in which purpose reigns are vouchsafed to us, and
that we can free ourselves from the mechanism of the natural order.
It is moral truth that both sets us free and demonstrates our freedom,
and that makes harmony possible between the mechanical theory of
science and the teleological conception of philosophy. The scientific
understanding would plunge us into determinism and agnosticism; from
these, faith in the moral law alone can deliver us. In this sense
Kant destroyed knowledge to make room for a rational faith in a
supersensible world, to save the independence and dignity of the human
self and the spiritual values of his people. In claiming a place
for the autonomous personality in what _appeared to be_ a mechanical
universe, Kant gave voice to some of the deeper yearnings of the age.
The German Enlightenment, the new humanism, mysticism, pietism,
and the faith-philosophy were all interested in the human soul, and
unwilling to sacrifice it to the demands of a rationalistic science or
metaphysics. In seeking to rescue it, the great criticist, piloted by
the moral law, steered his course between the rocks of rationalism,
sentimentalism, and scepticism. It was his solution of the controversy
between the head and the heart that influenced Fichte, Schelling, and
Schleiermacher. They differed from Kant and among themselves in many
respects, but they all glorified the spirit, _Geist_, as the living,
active element of reality, and they all rejected the intellect as
the source of ultimate truth. They followed him in his
anti-intellectualism, but they did not avoid, as he did, the
attractive doctrine of an inner intuition; according to them we can
somehow grasp the supersensible in an inner experience which Fichte
called intellectual, Schelling artistic, Schleiermacher religious. The
bankruptcy of the intelligence was overcome in their systems by the
discovery of a faculty that revealed to them the living, dynamic
nature of the universe. They were all more or less influenced by the
romantic currents of the times, seeking with Herder and Jacobi an
approach to the heart of things other than through the categories
of logic. Like Lessing and Goethe, they were also attracted to
the pantheistic teaching of Spinoza, though rejecting its rigid
determinism so far as it might affect the human will. They likewise
accepted the idea of development which the leaders of German
literature, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, had already opposed to the
unhistorical _Aufklaerung_, and which came to play such a prominent
part in the great system of Hegel.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Ramenau, Oberlausitz, May 19, 1762,
the son of a poor weaver. Through the generosity of a nobleman,
the gifted lad was enabled to follow his intellectual bent; after
attending the schools at Meissen and Schulpforta he studied theology
at the universities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg with the purpose
of entering the ministry. His poverty frequently compelled him to
interrupt his studies by accepting private tutorships in families, so
that he never succeeded in preparing him self for the examinations. In
1790 he became acquainted with Kant's philosophy, which two students
had asked him to expound to them, and to which he now devoted himself
with feverish zeal. It revolutionized his entire mode of thought and
determined the course of his life. The anonymous publication of his
book, _Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation_, in 1792, written
from the Kantian point of view and mistaken at first for a work of
the great criticist, won him fame and a professorship at Jena (1794).
Here, in the intellectual centre of Germany, Fichte became the
eloquent exponent of the new idealism, which aimed at the reform of
life as well as of _Wissenschaft_; he not only taught philosophy, but
_preached_ it, as Kuno Fischer has aptly said. During the Jena
period he laid the foundations for his "Science of Knowledge"
(_Wissenschaftslehre_) which he presented in numerous works: _The
Conception of the Science of Knowledge_, 1794; _The Foundation of
the Entire Science of Knowledge_, 1794; _The Foundation of Natural
Rights_, 1796; _The System of Ethics_, 1798--(all these translated by
Kroeger); the two _Introductions to the Science of Knowledge_, 1797
(trans. by Kroeger in _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_). The
appearance of an article _Concerning the Ground of our Belief in a
Divine World-Order_, 1798, in which Fichte seemed to identify God with
the moral world-order, brought down upon him the charge of atheism,
against which he vigorously defended himself in his _Appeal to the
Public_ and a series of other writings. Full of indignation over the
attitude which his government assumed in the matter, be offered his
resignation (1799) and removed to Berlin, where he presented his
philosophical notions in popular public lectures and in writings which
were characterized by clearness, force, and moral earnestness rather
than by their systematic form. There appeared: _The Vocation of Man_,
1800 (translated by Dr. Smith); _A Sun-Clear Statement concerning the
Nature of the New Philosophy_, 1801 (trans. by Kroeger in _Journal of
Speculative Philosophy_); _The Nature of the Scholar_, 1806 (trans. by
Smith); _Characteristics of the Present Age_, 1806 (trans. by Smith);
_The Way towards the Blessed Life_, 1806 (trans. by Smith). After the
overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon, in 1806, Fichte fled from Berlin to
Koenigsberg and Sweden, but returned when peace was declared in
1807, and delivered his celebrated _Addresses to the German Nation_,
1807-08, in which he sought to arouse the German people to a
consciousness of their national mission and their duty even while the
French army was still occupying the Prussian capital.

Fichte was appointed professor of philosophy (1810) in the new
University of Berlin, for which he had been invited to construct a
plan and in the establishment of which he took a lively interest.
During the last period of his life he devoted himself to the
development of his thoughts in systematic form and wrote a number of
books; most of these were published after his death, which occurred
January 27, 1814. Among them we mention: _General Outline of
the Science of Knowledge_, 1810 (trans. by Smith); _The Facts of
Consciousness_, 1813; _Theory of the State_, published 1820. The
Complete Works, edited by his son, J.H. Fichte, appeared 1843-46. New
editions of particular works are now appearing.

The world for Fichte is at bottom a spiritual order, the revelation
of a self-determining ego or reason; hence the science of the ego, or
reason, the _Wissenschaftslehre_, is the key to all knowledge, and we
can understand nature and man only when we have caught the secret
of the self-active ego. Philosophy must, therefore, be
_Wissenschaftslehre_, for in it all natural and mental sciences find
their ultimate roots; they can yield genuine knowledge only when
and in so far as they are based on the principles of the Science of
Knowledge--mere empirical sciences having no real cognitive value.
The ego-principle itself, however, without which there could be no
knowledge, cannot be grasped by the ordinary discursive understanding
with its spatial, temporal, and causal categories. Kant is right: if
we were limited to the scientific intellect, we could never rise above
the conception of a phenomenal order absolutely ruled by the causal
law. But there is another source of knowledge: in an act of inner
vision or intellectual intuition, which is itself an act of freedom,
we become conscious of the universal moral purpose; the law of duty or
the categorical imperative commands us to be free persons. We cannot
refuse to accept this law without abandoning ourselves as persons,
without conceiving ourselves as _things_, or mere products of nature;
the choice of one's philosophy, therefore, depends upon what kind of
man one is--upon one's values, upon one's will. The type of man who
is a slave of things, who cannot raise himself out of the causal
mechanism, who is not free, will never be able to conceive himself
otherwise than as a cog in a wheel. Fichte accepts the ego, or spirit,
as the ultimate and absolute principle, because it alone can give our
life worth and meaning. Thus he grounds his entire philosophy upon a
moral imperative which presents itself to the ego in an inner vision.
He also tells us that we can become immediately aware of the
pure activity of the ego, of our free action, in a similar act of
intellectual intuition. But we cannot know this free act unless we
perform it ourselves; no one can understand the idealistic philosophy
who is not free; hence philosophy begins with an act of freedom--_im
Anfang war die Tat_.

In order that we may rise to free action, opposition is needed, and
this we get in the spatial-temporal world of phenomena, or nature,
which the ego creates for itself in order to have resistance to
overcome. Fichte conceives of nature as "the material of our duty,"
as the obstacle against which the ego can exercise its freedom. There
could be no free action without something to act upon, and there could
be no purposive action without a world in which everything happens
according to law; and such a causal world we have in our phenomenal
order, which is the product of the absolute spiritual principle.
By the ego Fichte did not mean the subjective ego, the particular
individual self with all its idiosyncrasies, but the universal ego,
the reason that manifests itself in all conscious individuals as
universal and necessary truth. In his earlier period he did not define
his thought very carefully, but in time the absolute ego came to be
conceived as the principle of all life and consciousness, as
universal life, and ultimately identified with God. His philosophy is,
therefore, not subjective idealism, although it was so misinterpreted,
but objective idealism; nature is not the creation of the particular
individual ego, but the phenomenal expression, or reflection, in the
subject of the universal spiritual principle.

Upon such an idealistic world-view Fichte based the ethical teachings
through which he exercised a lasting influence upon the German people
and the history of human thought. The universal ego is a moral ego,
an ego with an ethical purpose, that realizes itself in nature and in
man; it is, therefore, the vocation of man to obey the voice of duty
and to free himself from the bondage of nature, to be a person, not a
thing, to cooeperate in the realization of the eternal purpose which
is working itself out in the history of humanity, to sacrifice himself
for the ideal of freedom. Every individual has his particular place in
which to labor for the social whole; how to do it, his conscience will
tell him without fail. And so, too, the German people has its peculiar
place in civilization, its unique contribution to make in the struggle
of the human race for the development of free personality. It is
Germany's mission to regain its nationality, in order that it may
take the philosophical leadership in the work of civilization, and to
establish a State based upon personal liberty, a veritable kingdom
of justice, such as has never appeared on earth, which shall realize
freedom based upon the equality of all who bear the human form.

The Fichtean philosophy holds the mirror up to its age. With the
Enlightenment it glorifies reason, the free personality, nationality,
humanity, civilization, and progress; in this regard it expresses the
spirit of all modern philosophy. It goes beyond the _Aufklaerung_ in
emphasizing the living, moving, developing nature of reality; for it,
life and consciousness constitute the essence of things, and universal
life reveals itself in a progressive history of mankind. Moreover,
the dynamic spiritual process cannot be comprehended by conceptual
thought, by the categories of a rationalistic science and philosophy,
but only by itself, by the living experience of a free agent. In the
categorical imperative, and not in logical reasonings, the individual
becomes aware of his destiny; in the sense of duty, the love of truth,
loyalty to country, respect for the rights of man, and reverence for
ideals, spirit speaks to spirit and man glimpses the eternal.