|
Chapter XX
THE hospitable welcome I met in the family of
the Records Keeper at the Goethe-Schiller Institute, Eduard
von der Hellen, was
most delightful. This man stood in a peculiar relationship to the other
collaborators at the archives. He had an extraordinary reputation among
the philological specialists because of his remarkably successful initial
work on Goethe’s Anteil an Lavaters Physiognomischen Fragmenten (Goethe’s
Contribution to Lavater’s Physionomic Fragments) Von der
Hellen had in this work produced something
which every contemporary philologist accepted forthwith as “complete”. Only the author himself did not think so. He looked upon the
work as a methodical achievement whose principles could be learned by anyone, whereas his own endeavour
was to fill himself with inner spiritual content.
When there were no visitors, we sat for long
spells together in the old collaborators' room of the Institute while
this was still at the castle: three of us:
von der Hellen, who
was working at an edition of Goethe's letters; Julius Wahle,
occupied with the journals; and I with the natural-scientific writings. But
the very requirements of von der Hellen's mental life gave rise to conversations in
the midst of the work touching upon the most manifold aspects of public
life, spiritual or other. However, those interests which
are connected with Goethe always received their due. The notes written by
Goethe in his journals and letters reveal a standpoint so elevated and
such comprehensive vision,-these gave rise to
reflections which led into the very depths of existence and the breadth
of life. Eduard von der
Hellen was friendly enough to introduce me into
his family, in order further to develop the relationship growing out of
these meetings in the Institute, often so stimulating. A still further
extension of the delightful companionship came about by reason of the
fact that von der Hellen's
family likewise mingled in the circles I have already described - such as those grouped about Olden, Gabrielle Reuter, and others.
Especially has the profoundly congenial
personality of Frau von der Hellen
always remained fixed in my memory. Hers was a wholly
artistic nature. One of those persons who, but for other duties
intervening in her life, possessed the capacity for achieving something
beautiful in art. Such was her destiny that, so far as I am aware, the
artistic side of this woman came to expression only in the early part of
her life. But every word about art that one could exchange with her was a
satisfaction. She showed a basic quality of reserve, always cautious in
judgment, and yet profoundly sympathetic in a purely human way. I seldom
went away from such a conversation without carrying with me in long
continued reflection what Frau von der Hellen had suggested rather than spoken.
Very lovable also were the father of Frau von der Hellen and his two daughters
- the father a lieutenant-general who had fought through the war
of the 'seventies as a major. While one was in this group of persons one
experienced the most beautiful aspect of German spiritual life: that
spiritual life which had flowed into all circles of the social life out
of the religious, aesthetic or popular-scientific impulses that for so
long constituted the real nature of German spirituality.
Eduard von der Hellen's interests brought
me into touch with the political life of the times. Discontent with
things philological drove von der Hellen into the lively political affairs of Weimar. There he
seemed to find a broader perspective of life. And my friendly personal
interest in him led me also - although without active
participation in politics - to become interested in public life.
Much of that which has been found to be
impracticable in our present-day life, or else, in a terrible
metamorphosis, has given rise to absurd social forms, - much of this was
to be seen at that time in its genesis, associated with all the hopes of
a working class taught by trained and forceful leaders to believe that a
new time must come for men in the forms of social life. The cautious and
the altogether radical elements among the workers were enforcing their
views. To observe them was all the more impressive since what there
appeared was like a boiling up of the lower levels of the social life. In
the upper levels there was something vital which could have expressed
itself only in a worthy sort of conservatism bound up with a hope for everything
that is human - a hope marked by capable and profound
thinking and by vigorous activity. In the atmosphere then present there
sprang up a reactionary party which considered itself as indispensable,
and in addition the so-called National Liberty Party.
To adjust himself to
all this that he might gain effective leadership and bring men out of
this chaos - such was the interpretation one had to
place upon the feeling of Eduard von der Hellen at that time. And
one had to share in the experience through which he passed in this
respect. He discussed among his circle of friends every detail of a
brochure he was preparing. One was forced to take as deep an interest as Eduard von der Hellen himself in the conceptions - at that time accompanied by feelings quite unlike
those of the present - of the materialistic
interpretation of history, the class struggle, surplus
value. One could not refrain from attending the numerous gatherings at which
he appeared as lecturer. Over against the theoretically formulated Marxist
programme he proposed to set up another which
should grow out of a good will toward social progress on the part of all
friendly working men of every party. He was thinking of a sort of revival
of the middle parties by the incorporation into their platforms of those
impulses which would enable them to solve the social problem.
The effort proved futile. Only I am confident
that I could not have participated in the public life of that period so intensely as I did had I not shared von der Hellen's struggle.
Yet public life had its influence upon me from
another direction also, though far less intensely. Indeed, it always
seemed that a mild repugnance arose within me -
which
was not true in relation to von der Hellen - in the very proximity of
anything political. There lived in Weimar
at that time Dr. Heinrich Fr�nkel, a liberal
politician, an adherent of Eugen Richter and
also active in politics in the same spirit. We became acquainted. A brief
acquaintance which was later brought to an end by reason of a
misunderstanding, but to which I often look back with pleasure; for the
man was, in his way, extraordinarily lovable, had a strong political will
and was led by his good purpose and far-sighted views to the belief that
it was necessary to create enthusiasm among men on behalf of a right way
of progress in public affairs. His life became a succession of
disillusionments. Unluckily, I myself had to be the occasion of one of
those for him. He was working just at the time that I knew him on a
brochure which he hoped to circulate in very great numbers. What
concerned him was the desire to oppose the establishment of a combination
between big industry and the agrarians, which was already beginning to
take form in Germany
and which, according to his view, would certainly bring devastating
results in the train of its later development. His brochure bore the
title, Kaiser, werde hart! �(Kaiser, Be Stern!) He
thought he could dissuade the entourage of the Kaiser from what he
believed to be harmful. The man accomplished not the slightest result by
this effort. He saw that the party to which he belonged and for which he laboured could not bring to birth those forces which
were needed to lay down a foundation for the policies thought out by him.
This led him to conceive the idea of exerting
himself to revive the Deutsche Wochenschrift,
which I had edited for a short time a few years before in Vienna. By means of
this he wished to set up a political current which would have enabled him
to move forward from the “liberalism”
of that time into a more national-liberal activity. It occurred to him
that I could do something along with him in this direction. That was
impossible; even for the mere revival of the Deutsche Wochenschrift I could do nothing. The manner in
which I informed him of this led to misunderstandings which in a short
time put an end to our friendship.
But another friendship grew out of this one. The
man had a very dear wife and a dear sister-in-law, and he had introduced
me into his family. This in turn brought me in touch with another family.
And then something came to pass that seemed like a repetition of the
remarkable relationship which destiny had brought me once in Vienna. I was
intimately associated with a family there, but in such a way that the
head of the family remained always unseen, and yet he came so close to me
in soul and spirit that after his death I delivered the address at his
funeral as if he had been my best friend. The whole spiritual being of
this man stood before my mind by means of his family.
And now I entered into almost the same
relationship with the head of the family into which I was brought in a
roundabout way by the liberal politician. The head of this family had
died a short while before; the widow's life was filled with pious
thoughts about her dead husband. It came about that I left the home in Weimar in which I
had lived till then, and took up my residence with the family. His
library was there. He was a man of interesting spirit in many ways, but
living just like that other one in Vienna,
refusing all relationships with others, living his own “mental world” and considered by the world to
be a recluse, as the other had been.
I felt this man like that one-Though I had never
met him in the flesh, I felt the man when entering into my destiny “from behind the veils of existence.” In Vienna a beautiful relationship
between the family of the “unknown”
thus known and myself; and in Weimar there came about between the
second “unknown” and myself a
relationship even more significant.
When I must speak in this way of the two “unknown knowns” I am aware
that
what I have to say will be called fantasy by most people. For this has to do with the way in which I was able to draw near
to the two men in that sphere of the world in which they were after they
had passed through the portal of death. Everyone has the inner right to
exclude from the group of subjects which interest him all statements in
regard to this sphere; but to characterize such statements as merely
fantastic is something quite different. When anyone does this, then I
must emphasize the fact that I have always sought in such exact branches
of science as mathematics and analytical mechanics for the sources of
that temper of soul which qualifies one to make assertions concerning
things spiritual. When, therefore, I assert what follows I cannot justly
be accused of mere careless talk unsupported by the requisite knowledge.
The power of the spiritual vision which I then
bore in my soul made it possible for me to enter into a close union with
these two souls after their earthly death. They were unlike other dead
persons who, immediately after their earthly death go through a life
which is, in essence, closely related to earthly life, and which only
gradually comes to resemble the life one experiences in that purely
spiritual world where one's existence continues till the next earthly
life.
The two “unknown
knowns” had been rather familiar with the
thinking of this materialistic age. They had elaborated in concepts within
themselves the natural-scientific way of thinking. The second, whom Weimar brought to
me, was indeed well acquainted with Billroth
and other natural scientific thinkers. On the other hand, during their
earthly lives both had remained aloof from a spiritual conception of the
world. The spiritual conception which they might have encountered at that
time would have repelled them, since they were forced to believe that natural-scientific thinking, according to the habits of thought of the
time, was demanded by the facts.
But this union with the materialism of the time
remained wholly in the world of ideas of the two persons. They did not
share in the habits of life which followed from the materialism of this
thinking, and which were predominant in the case of all other people. They
became “recluses from the world”;
lived in more primitive ways than were then customary and would have been
natural to men of their means. Thus they did not carry over into the
spiritual world that which a union with the materialistic “will-evaluations” would have given to their
individualities, but only that which the materialistic “thought-evaluations” had planted in them. Naturally this
worked itself out for the souls mostly in the unconscious. And now I
could see how these materialistic thought-evaluations are
not something which alienates man after death from the world of the
divine and spiritual, but that this alienation comes about only through
materialistic will-evaluations. Both the soul which had come close to me
in Vienna and also the one which I came to
know spiritually in Weimar
were, after death, noble shining spiritual forms whose soul-content was
filled with conceptions of those spiritual beings who
are at the foundation of the world. And the only result of their
acquaintance with those ideas by means of which they mastered the
material in thought during their previous earthly life was that after
death they were also able to develop a relationship with the world that
included a capacity for judgment. This would not have been the case if
the corresponding ideas had remained unknown to them.
In these two souls there had crossed my
predestined path beings through whom the significance of the
natural-scientific way of thought was revealed to me directly from the
spiritual world. I could see that this way of thought in itself need not
lead away from a spiritual perception. In the case of these two
personalities this had happened during their earthly life because they
found no opportunity there to elevate the natural-scientific way of
thinking into the sphere where spiritual experience begins. After death
they accomplished this in the most complete fashion. I saw that one can
achieve this elevation of thought if one brings inner mood and force to
the task during the earthly life. I saw also, through my participation in
what is significant in the spiritual world, that
humanity had of necessity to evolve to the scientific way of thinking. Earlier
ways of thinking could unite humanity with the supersensible world; they
could lead man, especially if he entered into self-knowledge (the
foundation of all knowledge), to know himself as a copy, or even a
member, of the spiritual world; but they could not bring him to the point
where he could feel himself to be a self-sufficient, self-enclosed
spiritual being. Therefore the advance had to be made to the grasp of an
ideal world which is not kindled from the spirit itself, but is
stimulated out of matter - which is, indeed, spiritual, but
not derived from the spirit.
Such a world of ideas cannot be generated in man
in that spiritual world where he has his vital relationships after death
and before a new birth, but only in the earthly existence, because only
there does he stand face to face with materialist forms. I could realize,
therefore, through these two human souls what man wins for the totality
of his life, including his spiritual life after death, by reason of his
being woven into the natural-scientific way of thinking. But in the case
of others who had taken into themselves during their earthly lives the
effects of the crass natural-scientific way of thinking upon the will, I
saw that they estranged themselves from the spiritual world; that they
had, so to speak, arrived at a totality of life in which man is less man
in his full humanity with the natural-scientific way of thinking than
without it.
Both these souls had been recluses from the
world because they did not wish to lose their humanity during the earthly
life; they had accepted the natural-scientific way of thinking in its
full comprehensiveness because they wished to reach that stage of the
spiritual man which cannot be attained without it.
It might well have been impossible for me to
attain to these perceptions in the case of these two souls if I had
encountered them within earthly existence as physical personalities. In
order to perceive the two individualities in the spiritual world in which
they were to reveal to me their being, and through this also many other
things, I needed that sensitiveness of the soul's perception in
relationship to them which is easily lost when that which has been
experienced in the physical world conceals what is to be experienced
spiritually, or at least interferes with it.
I was forced, therefore, to perceive that the
manner in which both souls entered into my earthly life was something
ordained by way of destiny along my path to knowledge. But nothing
whatever of a spiritistic sort can be
associated with this way of relating oneself to souls in the spiritual
world. Nothing could ever count with me in the relationship to the
spiritual world except the genuine spiritual perception which I later
discussed publicly in my anthroposophical
writings. Moreover, the Viennese family and all its members, as well as
that of Weimar,
were far too sane for a communion with the dead by the help of mediums.
Wherever such things have been under discussion,
I have always taken an interest in such a seeking on the part of human
souls as is manifested in spiritualism. Modern spiritualism is a way
toward the spirit for such souls as would seek for the spirit in external
- almost experimental – ways, because they
cannot any longer experience the real, the true, the
genuine in a spiritual manner. It is just the sort of person who
interests himself in an entirely objective manner in spiritualism, without
himself having the desire to investigate something by means of it, who
can see through to correct conceptions of the purpose and the errors of
spiritualism. My own research moves always by a different path from that
of spiritualism in any of its forms. Indeed, there were opportunities in Weimar for
interesting intercourse with spiritualists; for there was an intense
interest for a long time among the artists in this way of seeking to
relate oneself to the spiritual. But there came to me from my intercourse
with the two souls (he of Weimar was named Eunicke) strength for the writing
of
my Philosophy of Freedom. What I aspired to do in that book was
this: First, the book is the product of my way of philosophical thinking
during the eighties; in the second place, it is the product also of my
general concrete perception in the spiritual world; but in the third
place, it was reinforced through my participation in the spiritual
experiences of those two souls. In these I had before me the ascent which
man owes to this natural-scientific world-conception. But I had in them
also the fear which noble souls feel of entering vitally into the
will-element of this world-conception. These souls shrank back from the
moral effects of such a world-conception.
Now I sought in my Philosophy of Freedom
for the force which leads from the ethically neutral ideal world of
natural science into the world of moral impulse. I sought to show how the
person who knows himself as a self-enclosed being of a spiritual sort
because he lives in ideas which are no longer streaming out from the
spirit but are stimulated by material being, can nevertheless evolve out
of his own being an intuition for the moral. In this way the moral shines
in the individuality now made free as individual impulsion toward the
moral, just as ideas arise from the perception of nature.
The two souls had not pressed on to this moral
intuition. Hence they shrank back (unconsciously) from life because this
could have been maintained only in the sense of natural-scientific ideas
and not as yet extended further. I spoke at that time of “moral fantasy”
as the source of the moral in the isolated human individuality. I was far
from any intention of referring to this source as to something not wholly
real. On the contrary, I wished to point out that “fantasy”
is the force which helps the spiritual world in all its aspects to break
through into the individual man. Of course, if one is to attain to a real
experience of the spiritual, then it is necessary that the spiritual
forces of knowledge should enter into one: imagination, inspiration,
intuition. But to a person conscious of himself as an individual, the
first ray of a spiritual revelation comes by means of “fantasy”;
and we observe, indeed, in Goethe the way in which fantasy holds aloof
from everything fantastic, and becomes a picture of the spiritually real.
In the family left behind by the Weimar “unknown known”
I lived for much the greater part of the time that I remained in Weimar. I had a part of the house for
myself; Frau Anna Eunicke, with whom I was soon
on terms of intimate friendship, watched over all my needs in the most
devoted fashion. She valued greatly the fact that I stood beside her in
her heavy responsibilities for the education of the children. She had
been left after Eunicke's death a widow with
four daughters and a son. �I saw the
children only when there was some occasion for me to do so. That happened
frequently, since I was looked upon just as if I belonged to the family. My
meals, however, except the morning coffee and
supper, I took elsewhere.
In this place where I had formed so delightful a
family connection it was not only I who felt at home. When young visitors
from Berlin
who had formed intimate ties with me, attending the meetings of the
Goethe Society, wished for once to be quite comfortable together, they
came to me at the Eunicke home. And I have
every reason to assume from the way in which they acted that they felt
very much at ease there. Otto Erich Hartleben
also was happy to be there whenever he was in Weimar. The Goethe Breviary that
he published was there put together by us two in the space of a few days.
Of my own larger works, The Philosophy of Freedom and Nietzsche
as the Adversary of His Age there took form.
And I think that numbers of Weimar friends also spent many a congenial
hour with me at the Eunicke
home. In this connection I think most of all about the man to whom I was bound
in intimate love and friendship: �Dr. August Fresenius. He had become a
permanent collaborator at the Museum. Before that he had been editor of
the Deutsche LiteraturZeit. His
editorial work was universally considered as the standard of excellence. I
had many things in my heart against philology, especially as the science
was then pursued by the adherents of Scherer. August Fresenius
armed me over and over again by the way in which he was a philologist. And
he never for a moment made any secret of the fact that he wished to be a
philologist, and only a true philologist. But with him philology was
really the love of words, which filled the whole man with its vital
force; and the word was to him that human revelation in which all the
laws of the universe are mirrored. Whoever wishes to see into the
mysteries of words must possess an insight into all the mysteries of
existence. The philologist, therefore, must do nothing less than pursue universal
knowledge. True philological methods rightly applied can move outward
from the utterly simple until they cast a powerful illumination upon
extensive and important spheres of life. Fresenius
showed this at that time in an example greatly interested me. We had
discussed the matter a great deal before he published it in a brief but
weighty article in the Goethe Year Book.
Until the discovery by Fresenius,
everyone who had busied himself with the interpretation of Goethe's Faust
had misunderstood a statement made by Goethe five days before his death
to Wilhelm von Humboldt. Goethe made this statement: Es sind �ber sechzig Jahre dass die Konzeption des Faust bei mir jugendlich von vornherein klar, die weitere Reihenfolge hingegen weniger ausf�hrlich vorlag. (For more than
sixty years the conception of Faust has been present to my mind - the
earlier parts clear in my youth, the latter parts less fully developed.) The commentators
had understood von vornherein to mean
that from the beginning Goethe had had an idea, a plan,
of the entire Faust drama in which he had at that time more or less
elaborated the details. Even my beloved teacher and friend, Karl Julius Schr�er, was of this opinion. Consider: If this were
correct, then we should have in Goethe's Faust a work which Goethe had
conceived in main outline as a young man. We should have to assume that
it was possible for such a temper of soul as Goethe's so to work outward
from a general idea that the work of elaboration could go on for sixty
years and yet the idea remain fixed. That this is not so was proved
irrefutably by Fresenius's discovery. He
maintained that Goethe never used the expression von vornherein in the way ascribed to him by the
commentators. He said, for example, that he had read a book >von vornherein, das
weitere nicht mehr.” He used the expression von
vornherein only in a spatial sense. It was
thus shown that all Faust commentators were wrong, and that Goethe had
said nothing about a plan of the Faust existing von vornherein (from the first), but only that the first parts were clear to
him as a young man, and that here and there he had developed something in
the latter parts.
Thus an important light was cast upon the whole
psychology of Goethe by the correct application of the philological
method. At that time I only marveled that something which ought to have
had the most far-reaching effects upon the conception of Goethe's mind
really produced very little impression after it was published in the Goethe
Year Book, among those who ought to have been chiefly interested in
it.
But other things than mere philology were the
topics of conversation with August Fresenius. Everything
that stirred the men of that time, everything interesting to us which
happened in Weimar or elsewhere, became the subject of long conversations
between us; for we spent much time together. At times we grew excited in
conversations about many things; but they all ended in complete harmony,
for we were convinced of the earnestness with which our respective views
were held, even though opposed. So much the more distressing must it be
to me to reflect upon the fact that even my friendship with August Fresenius sustained a rupture in connection with the
misunderstandings associated with my relationship to the Nietzsche
Archives and to Frau Dr. F�rster-Nietzsche. These
friends could form no conception of what really had happened. I could do
nothing to satisfy them. For the truth is that nothing at all had
happened. Everything rested upon misconceptions and illusions which had
become fixed in the Nietzsche Archives. What I was able to say is
contained in my article published later in the Magazin
fur Literatur. I felt this misunderstanding
deeply, for the friendship with August Fresenius
was firmly rooted in my heart.
Another friendship to which I have often looked
back was that which I formed with Franz Ferdinand Heitm�ller,
who had just then - later than Wahle, von der Hellen, and I -
become a collaborator at the Institute. Heitm�ller's
life was that of a fine soul with the sensibilities of an artist. He made
all his discriminations through his artistic sense. Intellectualism was
remote from him. Through him something artistic entered into the whole
tone of our conversations in the Institute. He had already published
stories marked by a delicate refinement. He was by no means a bad
philologist, and he did no worse than others in what he had to work at as
a philologist for the Institute. But he always maintained a sort of inner
opposition to what was worked out in the Institute, especially to the way in which this work was conceived. Through
him it came about that for a long time we felt very deeply the fact that Weimar had once been
the place giving birth to the most inspired and famous productions, but
that people now contented themselves with going back to the things once
produced, fixing the readings, and giving
the best interpretations with superstitious care. Heitm�ller
published anonymously what he had to say about this in S. Fischer's Neue Deutsche R�ndschau
in the form of a story Die Versunkene
Vineta (Venice Submerged). How people
then tried to discover who had made of the once spiritually flourishing Weimar a drowned
city! Heitm�ller lived in Weimar with his mother, a wonderfully
lovable woman. She became a friend of Frau Anna Eunicke
and enjoyed coming to her home. And so I then had the happiness of
frequently seeing the Heitm�llers also in the
house in which I lived.
One friend I have to recall who came into my
circle rather early during my stay in Weimar, and with whom I was
associated in intimate friendship until I left, and, indeed, even after
that, when I went back and forth on visits to Weimar. This was the
painter Joseph Rolletscheck. He was a German
Bohemian, and had been attracted to Weimar
by the art school. He impressed as altogether lovable, and to whom one
gladly laid open one's heart. Rolletscheck was
sentimental and slightly cynical at the same time; he was a pessimist on
one side, and inclined on the other side to value life so little that it
did not seem to him worth the trouble to lay so much stress upon those
things which give ground for pessimism. When he was present the talk dealt
much with the injustices of life; and he could storm endlessly over the
injustice which the world had done to poor Schiller in contrast with
Goethe, the chosen of destiny before his birth.
Although daily contact with such persons kept up
a constant and stimulating exchange of thought and feeling, yet it was
impossible for me to speak directly during this Weimar period about my experience of
the spiritual world even to those with whom I
was otherwise on terms of intimacy. I maintained that people must come to
see that the true way into the spiritual world must lead first to the
experience of pure ideas. The thing for which I argued in was this: just
as man can have in his conscious experience colour,
tone, and heat qualities, so also he can experience pure ideas
uninfluenced by any perception of the external, but appearing with the
fullness of man's experience of himself. And in these ideas there is real
and living spirit. All other experience of the spirit in man, so I then
said, must spring up within consciousness as the result of this
experience of ideas. �The fact that
I sought for the experience of the spirit first in the experience of
ideas led to the misunderstanding of which I have already spoken-that even intimate friends did not see the living reality in
ideas, and considered me a rationalist, or intellectualist.
Firmest in maintaining an understanding of the
living reality of the ideal world was a young man who came frequently to Weimar: Max Christlieb. It was rather early after the beginning
of my stay in Weimar
that I saw him, a seeker after knowledge of the spirit. He had completed
his preparation for the evangelical ministry, was just then taking his
doctor's examination and was getting ready to go to Japan to
engage in some sort of missionary work, as he soon afterward did. �This man saw “inspired”, I dare say, that man is living in the spirit when he lives in
pure ideas, and that since all of nature must shine forth before the
understanding in the world of pure ideas, therefore in everything
material we have only appearance (illusions); that all physical being is
revealed by means of ideas as spirit. It was profoundly satisfying to me
to find a person who possessed an almost complete understanding of
spiritual being. It was an understanding of the spiritual being within
the idea. There, of course, the spirit so lives that feeling and creative
spiritual individualities do not yet separate themselves for the
conscious vision from the sea of general ideal spirit-being. Of these
spirit individualities I could not yet speak to Max Christlieb.
It would have shocked his beautiful idealism too much. But genuine
spirit-being - of this one could speak with
him. �He had read with thorough
understanding everything that I had written up to that time. And I had
the impression at the beginning of the 'nineties: “Max Christlieb has the gift of entering
into the spiritual world through the spirituality of the ideal in the way
that I must consider the most suitable.”
The fact that he did not later wholly maintain
this direction of mind, but took a somewhat different course - of this there is now no occasion to speak.
|
