That a drama like this should in general have found little favor with the critics is not surprising. Surprising and highly gratifying—is the fact that the verdict of the reading public seems in this case to differ widely from that of the critics. Already, hardly three months after its first performance, the drama has reached a tenth edition. That it has its serious artistic blemishes it would be folly to deny. There is a certain forced grandeur in the heroic parts and an equally forced vulgarity in the subordinate figures. And reasonable exception might perhaps be taken to this whole genre of symbolical poetry. It certainly is true that the leading idea of this drama, embodied in characters of our own time and in actions belonging to the sphere of our own experience, would have touched the average reader of today more quickly and more surely. But may it not be that, on that very account, this work will speak more distinctly to future generations, that its very timelessness and inconcreteness will give it permanence and universal value? Even if this should not be the case, it will most assuredly live in history as a noble monument of German intellectual life at the end of the nineteenth century, as a magna pars of the artistic revival which has placed the German drama once more in the very front rank of European literature. For, however strange and far away at first sight its characters and its actions may seem to be, it is, after all, most closely related to our own lives; it brings before us what may be called the problem of problems of our own time, the reconciliation of intensest activity with simple enjoyment; of restless striving with spiritual peace. III. PAULSEN'S PHILOSOPHIA MILITANS With the exception of Herman Grimm, there is no German scholar now living who may be said to maintain the traditions of the classic era of German idealism in as vigorous and broadly effective a manner as Friedrich Paulsen. In temper and training he is widely apart from his older colleague. Grimm seems to belong to the idyllic atmosphere of Weimar court life. One might characterize his habitual state of mind by the lines in which Goethe expressed one side at least of his own all-embracing nature: Zierlich Denken und süss Erinnern Ist das Leben im tiefsten Innern. One may imagine him roaming about with Goethe in "forest and cavern" of the Thuringian Highlands, reveling in the stillness of the woods, and musing about the destiny of man; one may think of him as delightful companion and graceful raconteur at one of those simple and unpretentious entertainments at the Dornburg or the Belvedere which fascinated the worldly Mme. de Staël. Paulsen is made of harder stuff. The leading professor of ethics at the foremost German university is still at heart the farmer's boy of forty years ago. He has something in him of Fichte's uncompromising temper; he is altogether a man of the people; he does not care to shine in society; he opens up only when in company with a few trusted and old-time friends; he is most truly himself when called upon, either in the lecture-room or in the literary arena, to expound or defend a far-reaching moral principle. Both Grimm and Paulsen seem somewhat out of place in the stir and rush of the intensely modern and intensely practical German capital; but it is a hopeful sign for the future of German culture that two such men should have risen to influence and leadership in the midst of these very surroundings. Just now Paulsen has published a volume of essays, entitled Philosophia Militans, which will perhaps still more clearly than his former, more systematic writings bring home to the popular mind his peculiar position as defender of idealism. As these essays address themselves avowedly to the auditorium maximum of persons interested in the literary aspect of philosophy, it may be not unfitting for one of this class of readers to note down some of the impressions which he received from them, and to point out the place which they seem to him to have in the general movement of contemporary German thought. All of the essays here collected deal in one way or another with the great intellectual conflict which, though it pervades the life of all modern nations, is being fought at present with particular bitterness in Germany: the conflict of the idealistic view of the world with the supernaturalistic dogma on the one hand, and with materialistic science on the other. As typical representatives of these two extremes of supernaturalism and materialism, Paulsen considers at length two books which, during the last two years, have aroused public opinion in Germany to a remarkable degree: a His tory of Idealism, by the Catholic philosopher, O. Willmann, and Haeckel's ultra- (or shall we say pseudo-) scientific Riddles of the Universe. These two books illustrate to Paulsen the condition in which Philosophy has found herself placed now for a good many years past. Her road, he says in effect, passes through two hostile camps, from both of which she is continually being insulted and attacked. On the one side she is accused of leading to atheism and moral perversion; on the other she is reviled as a traitor to science, as a mountebank cheating the credulous with such useless patent-medicine stuff as “God, Freedom, and Immortality." No doubt, the two extremes hate each other, but in their enmity against idealistic philosophy they are at one. And in a certain way they esteem each other and are indispensable to each other. There can be little question but that Haeckel's Riddles of the Universe will be greeted by the Clerical party with a certain joyous satisfaction as a complete incarnation of the evil principle of modern philosophy. And Haeckel, on his part, takes a certain æsthetic pleasure in Catholic theology and philosophy, since here he sees in its normal and fully developed form |