THE SPRING THAW
The school educates, not the family. The family is too narrow; its aims are too petty, selfish, and anti-social. In the case of a second marriage, such abnormal relations are set up, that the only justification of the family comes to an end. The children of a deceased mother should simply be taken away, if the father marries again. This would best conduce to the interests of all parties, not least to those of the father, who perhaps is the one who suffers most in a second marriage.
In the family there is only one (or two) ruling wills without appeal; therefore justice is impossible. In the school, on the other hand, there is a continual watchful jury, which rigorously judges boys as well as teachers. The boys become more moral; brutality is tamed; social instincts awaken; they begin to see that individual interests must be generally furthered by means of compromises. There cannot be tyranny, for there usually are enough to form parties and to revolt. A teacher who is badly treated by a pupil can soonest obtain justice by appealing to the other pupils. Moreover, about this time there was much to arouse their sympathy in great universal interests.
During the Danish-German War of 1864 a fund was raised in the school for the purchase of war-telegrams. These were fastened on the blackboard and read with great interest by both teachers and pupils. They gave rise to familiar talks and reflections on the part of the teachers regarding the origin and cause of the war. They were naturally all one-sidedly Scandinavian, and the question was judged from the point of view of the students' union. Seeds of hatred towards Russia and Germany for some future war were sown, and at the burial of the popular teacher of gymnastics, Lieutenant Betzholtz, this reached a fanatical pitch.
The year of the Reform Bill,[1] 1865, approached. The teacher of history, a man of kindliness and fine feeling, and an aristocrat of high birth, tried to interest the pupils in the subject. The class had divided into opposite parties, and the son of a speaker in the Upper House, a Count S., universally popular, was the chief of the opposition against reform. He was sprung from an old German family of knightly descent; was poor, and lived on familiar terms with his classmates, but had a keen consciousness of his high birth. Battles more in sport than in earnest took place in the class, and tables and forms were thrown about indiscriminately.
The Reform Bill passed. Count S. remained away from the class. The history teacher spoke with emotion of the sacrifice which the nobility had laid upon the altar of the fatherland by renouncing their privileges. The good man did not know yet that privileges are not rights, but advantages which have been seized and which can be recovered like other property, even by illegal means.
The teacher bade the class to be modest over their victory and not to insult the defeated party. The young count on his return to the class was received with elaborate courtesy, but his feelings so overcame him at the sight of the involuntary elevation of so many pupils of humble birth, that he burst into tears and had to leave the class again.
John understood nothing of politics. As a topic of general interest, they were naturally banished from family discussions, where only topics of private interest were regarded, and that in a very one-sided way. Sons were so brought up that they might remain sons their whole lives long, without any regard to the fact that some day they might be fathers. But John already possessed the lower-class instinct which told him, with regard to the Reform Bill, that now an injustice had been done away with, and that the higher scale had been lowered, in order that it might be easier for the lower one to rise to the same level. He was, as might be expected, a liberal, but since the king was a liberal, he was also a royalist.
Parallel with the strong reactionary stream of pietism ran that of the new rationalism, but in the opposite direction. Christianity, which, at the close of the preceding century, had been declared to be mythical, was again received into favour, and as it enjoyed State protection, the liberals could not prevent themselves being reinoculated by its teaching. But in 1835 Strauss's Life of Christ had made a new breach, and even in Sweden fresh water trickled into the stagnant streams. The book was made the subject of legal action, but upon it as a foundation the whole work of the new reformation was built up by self-appointed reformers, as is always the case.
Pastor Cramer had the honour of being the first. As early as 1859 he published his Farewell to the Church, a popular but scientific criticism of the New Testament. He set the seal of sincerity on his belief by seceding from the State Church and resigning his office. His book produced a great effect, and although Ingell's writings had more vogue among the theologians, they did not reach the younger generation. In the same year appeared Rydberg's The Last Athenian. The influence of this book was hindered by the fact that it was hailed as a literary success, and transplanted to the neutral territory of belles-lettres. Ryllberg's The Bible Doctrine of Christ made a deeper impression. Renan's Life of Jesus in Ignell's translation had taken young and old by storm, and was read in the schools along with Cramer, which was not the case with The Bible Doctrine of Christ. And by Boström's attack on the Doctrine of Hell (1864), the door was opened to rationalism or "free-thought," as it was called. Boström's really insignificant work had a great effect, because of his fame as a Professor at Upsala and former teacher in the Royal Family. The courageous man risked his reputation, a risk which no one incurred after him, when it was no longer considered an honour to be a free-thinker or to labour for the freedom and the right of thinking.
In short, everything was in train, and it needed only a breath to blow down John's faith like a house of cards. A young engineer crossed his path. He was a lodger in the house of John's female friend. He watched John a long while before he made any approaches. John felt respect for him, for he had a good head, and was also somewhat jealous. John's friend prepared him for the acquaintance he was likely to make, and at the same time warned him. She said the engineer was an interesting man of great ability, but dangerous. It was not long before John met him. He hailed from Wermland, was strongly built, with coarse, honest features, and a childlike laugh, when he did laugh, which occurred rarely. They were soon on familiar terms. The first evening only a slight skirmish took place on the question of faith and knowledge. "Faith must kill reason," said John (echoing Krummacher). "No," replied his friend. "Reason is a divine gift, which raises man above the brutes. Shall man lower himself to the level of the brutes by throwing away this divine gift?"
"There are things," said John (echoing Norbeck), "which we can very well believe, without demanding a proof for them. We believe the calendar, for example, without possessing a scientific knowledge of the movement of the planets."
"Yes," answered his friend, "we believe it, because our reason does not revolt against it."
"But," said John, "in Galileo's time they revolted against the idea that the earth revolves round the sun. 'He is possessed by a spirit of contradiction,' they said, 'and wishes to be thought original.'"
"We don't live in Galileo's age," returned his friend, "and the enlightened reason of our time rejects the Deity of Christ and everlasting punishment."
"We won't dispute about these things," said John.
"Why not?"
"They are out of the reach of reason."
"Just what I said two years ago when I was a believer."
"You have been——a pietist?"
"Yes."
"Hm! and now you have peace?"
"Yes, I have peace."
"How is that?"
"I learned through a preacher to realise the spirit of true Christianity."
"You are a Christian then?"
"Yes, I acknowledge Christ."
"But you don't believe that he was God?"
"He never said so himself. He called himself God's son, and we are all God's sons."
John's lady friend interrupted the conversation, which was a type of many others in the year 1865. John's curiosity was aroused. There were then, he said to himself, men who did not believe in Christ and yet had peace. Mere criticism would not have disturbed his old ideas of God; the "horror vacui" held him back, till Theodore Parker fell into his hands. Sermons without Christ and hell were what he wanted. And fine sermons they were. It must be confessed that he read them in extreme haste, as he was anxious that his friends and relatives should enjoy them that he might escape their censures. He could not distinguish between the disapproval of others and his own bad conscience, and was so accustomed to consider others right that he fell into conflict with himself.
But in his mind the doctrine of Christ the Judge, the election of grace, the punishments of the last day, all collapsed, as though they had been tottering for a long time. He was astonished at the rapidity of their disappearance. It was as though he laid aside clothes he had outgrown and put on new ones.
One Sunday morning he went with the engineer to the Haga Park. It was spring. The hazel bushes were in bloom, and the anemones were opening. The weather was fairly clear, the air soft and mild after a night's rain. He and his friend discussed the freedom of the will. The pietists had a very wavering conception of the matter. No one had, they said, the power to become a child of God of his own free will. The Holy Spirit must seek one, and thus it was a matter of predestination. John wished to be converted but he could not. He had learned to pray, "Lord, create in me a new will." But how could he be held responsible for his evil will? Yes, he could, answered the pietist, through the Fall, for when man endowed with free will chose the evil, his posterity inherited his evil will, which became perpetually evil and ceased to be free. Man could be delivered from this evil will only through Christ and the gracious work of the Holy Spirit. The New Birth, however, did not depend upon his own will, but on the grace of God. Thus he was not free and at the same time was responsible! Therein lay the false inference.
Both the engineer and John were nature worshippers. What is this nature worship which in our days is regarded as so hostile to culture? A relapse into barbarism, say some; a healthy reaction against over-culture, say others. When a man has discovered society to be an institution based on error and injustice, when he perceives that, in exchange for petty advantages society suppresses too forcibly every natural impulse and desire, when he has seen through the illusion that he is a demi-god and a child of God, and regards himself more as a kind of animal—then he flees from society, which is built on the assumption of the divine origin of man, and takes refuge with nature. Here he feels in his proper environment as an animal, sees himself as a detail in the picture, and beholds his origin—the earth and the meadow. He sees the interdependence of all creation as if in a summary—the mountains becoming earth, the sea becoming rain, the plain which is a mountain crumbled, the woods which are the children of the mountains and the water. He sees the ocean of air which man and all creatures breathe, he hears the birds which live on the insects, he sees the insects which fertilise the plants, he sees the mammalia which supply man with nourishment, and he feels at home. And in our time, when all things are seen from the scientific point of view, a lonely hour with nature, where we can see the whole evolution-history in living pictures, can be the only substitute for divine worship.
But our optimistic evolutionists prefer a meeting in a large hall where they can launch their denunciations against this same society which they admire and despise. They praise it as the highest stage of development, but wish to overthrow it, because it is irreconcilable with the true happiness of the animal. They wish to reconstruct and develop it, say some. But their reconstruction involves the destruction of all existing arrangements. Do not these people recognise that society as it exists is a case of miscarriage in evolution, and is itself simultaneously hostile to culture and to nature?
Society, like everything else, is a natural product, they say, and civilisation is nature. Yes, but it is degenerate nature, nature on the down-grade, since it works against its own object—happiness. It was, however, the engineer, John's leader, and a nature-worshipper like himself, who revealed to him the defects of civilised society, and prepared the way for his reception of the new views of man's origin. Darwin's Origin of Species had appeared as early as 1859, but its influence had not yet penetrated far, much less had it been able to fertilise other minds.[2] Moleschott's influence was then in the ascendant, and materialism was the watchword of the day. Armed with this and with his geology, the engineer pulled to pieces the Mosaic story of the Creation. He still spoke of the Creator, for he was a theist and saw God's wisdom and goodness reflected in His works.
While they were walking in the park, the church bells in the city began to ring. John stood still and listened. There were the terrible bells of the Clara Church, which rang through his melancholy childhood; the bells of the Adolf-Fredrik, which had frightened him to the bleeding breast of the Crucified, and the bells of St. John's, which, on Saturdays, when he was in the Jacob School, had announced the end of the week. A gentle south wind bore the sound of the bells thither from the city, and it echoed like a warning under the high firs.
"Are you going to church?" asked his friend.
"No," answered John, "I am not going to church any more."
"Follow your conscience," said the engineer.
It was the first time that John had remained away from church. He determined to defy his father's command and his own conscience. He got excited, inveighed against religion and domestic tyranny, and talked of the church of God in nature; he spoke with enthusiasm of the new gospel which proclaimed salvation, happiness, and life to all. But suddenly he became silent.
"You have a bad conscience," said his friend.
"Yes," answered John; "one should either not do what one repents of, or not repent of what one does."
"The latter is the better course."
"But I repent all the same. I repent a good deed, for it would be wrong to play the hypocrite in this old idol-temple. My new conscience tells me that I am wrong. I can find no more peace."
And that was true. His new ego revolted against this old one, and they lived in discord, like an unhappy married couple, during the whole of his later life, without being able to get a separation.
The reaction in his mind against his old views, which he felt should be eradicated, broke out violently. The fear of hell had disappeared, renunciation seemed silly, and the youth's nature demanded its rights. The result was a new code of morality, which he formulated for himself in the following fashion: What does not hurt any of my fellow-men is permitted to me. He felt that the domestic pressure at home did him harm, and no one else any good, and revolted against it. He now showed his real feelings to his parents, who had never shown him love, but insisted on his being grateful, because they had given him his legal rights as a matter of favour, and accompanied by humiliations. They were antipathetic to him, and he was cold to them. To their ceaseless attacks on free-thinking he gave frank and perhaps somewhat impertinent answers. His half-annihilated will began to stir, and he saw that he was entitled to make demands of life.
The engineer was regarded as John's seducer, and was anathematised. But he was open to the influence of John's lady friend, who had formed a friendship with his step-mother. The engineer was not of a radical turn of mind; he had accepted Theodore Parker's compromise, and still believed in Christian self-denial. One should, he said, be amiable and patient, follow Christ's example, and so forth. Urged on by John's lady friend, for whom he had a concealed tenderness, and alarmed by the consequences of his own teaching, he wrote John the following letter. It was inspired by fear of the fire which he had kindled, by regard for the lady, and by sincere conviction:
"To MY FRIEND JOHN,—How joyfully we greet the spring when it appears, to intoxicate us with its wealth of verdure and its divine freshness! The birds begin their light and cheerful melodies, and the anemones peep shyly forth under the whispering branches of the pines——"
"It is strange," thought John, "that this unsophisticated man, who talks so simply and sincerely, should write in such a stilted style. It rings false."
The letter continued: "What breast, whether old or young, does not expand in order to inhale the fresh perfumes of the spring, which spread heavenly peace in each heart, accompanied by a longing which seems like a foretaste of God and of His love? At such a time can any malice remain in our hearts? Can we not forgive? Ah yes, we must, when we see how the caressing rays of the spring sun have kissed away the icy cover from nature and our hearts. Just as we expect to see the ground, freed from snow, grow green again, so we long to see the warmth of a kindly heart manifest itself in loving deeds, and peace and happiness spread through all nature——"
"Forgive?" thought John. "Yes, certainly he would, if they would only alter their behaviour and let him be free. But they did not forgive him. With what right did they demand forbearance on his part? It must be mutual."
"John," went on the letter, "you think you have attained to a higher conception of God through the study of nature and through reason than when you believed in the Deity of Christ and the Bible, but you do not realise the tendency of your own thoughts. You think that a true thought can of itself ennoble a man, but in your better moments you see that it cannot. You have only grasped the shadow which the light throws, but not the chief matter, not the light itself. When you held your former views you could pass over a fault in one of your fellow-men, you could take a charitable view of an action in spite of appearances, but how is it with you now? You are violent and bitter against a loving mother; you condemn and are discontented with the actions of a tender, experienced, grey-headed father——"
(As a matter of fact, when he held his former views, John could not pardon a fault in anyone, least of all in himself. Sometimes, indeed, he did pardon others; but that was stupid, that was lax morality. A loving mother, forsooth! Yes, very loving! How did his friend Axel come to think so? And a tender father? But why should he not judge his actions? In self-defence one must meet hardness with hardness, and no more turn the left cheek when the right cheek is smitten.)
"Formerly you were an unassuming, amiable child, but now you are an egotistical, conceited youth——"
("Unassuming!" Yes, and that was why he had been trampled down, but now he was going to assert his just claims. "Conceited!" Ha! the teacher felt himself outstripped by his ungrateful pupil.)
"The warm tears of your mother flow over her cheeks——"
("Mother!" he had no mother, and his stepmother only cried when she was angry! Who the deuce had composed the letter?)
"—when she thinks in solitude about your hard heart——"
(What the dickens has she to do with my heart when she has the housekeeping and seven children to look after?)
"—your unhappy spiritual condition——"
(That's humbug! My soul has never felt so fresh and lively as now.)
"—and your father's heart is nearly breaking with grief and anxiety——"
(That's a lie. He is himself a theist and follows Wallin; besides, he has no time to think about me. He knows that I am industrious and honest, and not immoral. Indeed, he praised me only a day or two ago.)
"You do not notice your mother's sad looks——"
(There are other reasons for that, for her marriage is not a happy one.)
"—nor do you regard the loving warnings of your father. You are like a crevasse above the snow-line, in which the kiss of the spring sun cannot melt the snow, nor turn a single atom of ice into a drop of water——"
(The writer must have been reading romances. As a matter of fact John was generally yielding towards his school-fellows. But towards his domestic enemies he had become cold. That was their fault.)
"What can your friends think of your new religion, when it produces such evil fruit? They will curse it, and your views give them the right to do so——"
(Not the right, but the occasion.)
"They will hate the mean scoundrel who has instilled the hellish poison of his teaching into your innocent heart——"
(There we have it! The mean scoundrel!)
"Show now by your actions that you have grasped the truth better than heretofore. Try to be forbearing——"
(That's the step-mother!)
"Pass over the defects and failings of your fellow-men with love and gentleness——"
(No, he would not! They had tortured him into lying; they had snuffed about in his soul, and uprooted good seeds as though they were weeds; they wished to stifle his personality, which had just as good a right to exist as their own; they had never been forbearing with his faults, why should he be so with theirs? Because Christ had said.... That had become a matter of complete indifference, and had no application to him now. For the rest, he did not bother about those at home, but shut himself up in himself. They were unsympathetic to him, and could not obtain his sympathy. That was the whole thing in a nutshell. They had faults and wanted him to pardon them. Very well, he did so, if they would only leave him in peace!)
"Learn to be grateful to your parents, who spare no pains in promoting your true welfare and happiness (hm!), and that this may be brought about through love to God your Creator, who has caused you to be born in this improving (hm! hm!) environment, for obtaining peace and blessedness is the prayer of your anxious but hopeful
"AXEL."
"I have had enough of father confessors and inquisitors," thought John; he had escaped and felt himself free. They stretched their claws after him, but he was beyond their reach. His friend's letter was insincere and artificial; "the hands were the hands of Esau." He returned no answer to it, but broke off all intercourse with both his friends.
They called him ungrateful. A person who insists on gratitude is worse than a creditor, for he first makes a present on which he plumes himself, and then sends in the account—an account which can never be paid, for a service done in return does not seem to extinguish the debt of gratitude; it is a mortgage on a man's soul, a debt which cannot be paid, and which stretches over the whole subsequent life. Accept a service from your friend, and he will expect you to falsify your opinion of him and to praise his own evil deeds, and those of his wife and children.
But gratitude is a deep feeling which honours a man and at the same time humiliates him. Would that a time may come when it will not be necessary to fetter ourselves with gratitude for a benefit, which perhaps is a mere duty.
John felt ashamed of the breach with his friends, but they hindered and oppressed him. After all, what had they given him in social intercourse which he had not given back?
Fritz, as his friend with the pince-nez was called, was a prudent man of the world. These two epithets "prudent" and "man of the world" had a bad significance at that time. To be prudent in a romantic period, when all were a little cracked, and to be cracked was considered a mark of the upper classes, was almost synonymous with being bad. To be a man of the world when all attempted, as well as they could, to deceive themselves in religion, was considered still worse. Fritz was prudent. He wished to lead his own life in a pleasant way and to make a career for himself. He therefore sought the acquaintance of those in good social position. That was prudent, because they had power and money. Why should he not seek them? How did he come to make friends with John? Perhaps through a sort of animal sympathy, perhaps through long habit. John could not do any special service for him except to whisper answers to him in the class and to lend him books. For Fritz did not learn his lessons, and spent in punch the money which was intended for books.
Now when he saw that John was inwardly purified, and that his outer man was presentable, he introduced him to his own coterie. This was a little circle of young fellows, some of them rich and some of them of good rank belonging to the same class as John. The latter was a little shy at first, but soon stood on a good footing with them. One day, at drill time, Fritz told him that he had been invited to a ball.
"I to a ball? Are you mad? I would certainly be out of place there."
"You are a good-looking fellow, and will have luck with the girls."
Hm! That was a new point of view with regard to himself. Should he go? What would they say at home, where he got nothing but blame?
He went to the ball. It was in a middle-class house. Some of the girls were anæmic; others red as berries. John liked best the pale ones who had black or blue rings round their eyes. They looked so suffering and pining, and cast yearning glances towards him. There was one among them deathly pale, whose dark eyes were deep-set and burning, and whose lips were so dark that her mouth looked almost like a black streak. She made an impression on him, but he did not venture to approach her, as she already had an admirer. So he satisfied himself with a less dazzling, softer, and gentler girl. He felt quite comfortable at the ball and in intercourse with strangers, without seeing the critical eyes of any relative. But he found it very difficult to talk with the girls.
"What shall I say to them?" he asked Fritz.
"Can't you talk nonsense with them? Say 'It is fine weather. Do you like dancing? Do you skate?' One must learn to be versatile."
John went and soon exhausted his repertoire of conversation. His palate became dry, and at the third dance he got tired of it. He felt in a rage with himself and was silent.
"Isn't dancing amusing?" asked Fritz. "Cheer up, old coffin-polisher!"
"Yes, dancing is all right, if one only had not to talk. I don't know what to say."
So it was, as a matter of fact. He liked the girls, and dancing with them seemed manly, but as to talking with them!—he felt as though he were dealing with another kind of the species Homo, in some cases a higher one, in others a lower. He secretly admired his gentle little partner, and would have liked her for a wife.
His fondness for reflection and his everlasting criticism of his thoughts had robbed him of the power of being simple and direct. When he talked with a girl, he heard his own voice and words and criticised them. This made the whole ball seem tedious. And then the girls? What was it really that they lacked? They had the same education as himself; they learned history and modern languages, read Icelandic, studied algebra, etc. They had accordingly the same culture, and yet he could not talk with them.
"Well, talk nonsense with them," said Fritz.
But he could not. Besides, he had a higher opinion of them. He wanted to give up the balls altogether, since he had no success, but he was taken there in spite of himself. It flattered him to be invited, and flattery has always something pleasant about it. One day he was paying a visit to an aristocratic family. The son of the house was a cadet. Here he met two actresses. With them he felt he could speak. They danced with him but did not answer him. So he listened to Fritz's conversation. The latter said strange things in elegant phrases, and the girls were delighted with him. That, then, was the way to get on with them!
The balls were followed by serenades and "punch evenings." John had a great longing for strong drinks; they seemed to him like concentrated liquid nourishment. The first time he was intoxicated was at a students' supper at Djurgårdsbrunn. He felt happy, joyful, strong, and mild, but far from mad. He talked nonsense, saw pictures on the plates and made jokes. This behaviour made him for the moment like his elder brother, who, though deeply melancholy in his youth, had a certain reputation afterwards as a comic actor. They had both played at acting in the attic; but John was embarrassed; he acted badly and was only successful when he was given the part of some high personage to play. As a comic actor he was impossible.
About this time there entered two new factors into his development—Art and Literature.
John had found in his father's bookcase Lenstrom's Æsthetics, Boije's Dictionary of Painters, and Oulibischeff's Life of Mozart, besides the authors previously mentioned. Through the scattering of the family of a deceased relative, a large number of books came into the house, which increased John's knowledge of belles-lettres. Among them were several copies of Talis Qualis's poems, which he did not enjoy; he found no pleasure in Strandberg's translation of Byron's Don Juan, for he hated descriptive poetry; he always skipped verse quotations when they occurred in books. Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, in Kullberg's translation, he found tedious; Karl von Zeipel's Tales, impossible. Sir Walter Scott's novels were too long, especially the descriptions. He therefore did not understand at first the greatness of Zola, when many years later he read his elaborate descriptions; the perusal of Lessing's Laokoön had already convinced him that such descriptions cannot convey an adequate impression of the whole. Dickens infused life even into inanimate objects and harmonised the scenery and situations with the characters. That he understood better. He thought Eugène Sue's Wandering Jew magnificent; he did not regard it as a novel; for novels, he thought, were only to be found in lending libraries. This, on the other hand, was a historical poem of universal interest, whose Socialistic teaching he quickly imbibed. Alexandre Dumas's works seemed to him like the boys' books about Indians. These he did not care for now; he wanted books with some serious purpose. He swallowed Shakespeare whole, in Hagberg's translation. But he had always found it hard to read plays where the eye must jump from the names of the dramatis personæ, to the text. He was disappointed in Hamlet, of which he had expected much, and the comedies seemed to him sheer nonsense.
John could not endure poetry. It seemed to him artificial and untrue. Men did not speak like that, and they seldom thought so beautifully. Once he was asked to write a verse in Fanny's album.
"You can screw yourself up to do that," said his friend.
John sat up at night, but only managed to hammer out two lines. Besides, he did not know what to say. One could not expose one's feelings to common observation. Fritz offered his help, and together they produced six or eight rhyming lines, for which Snoilsky's A Christmas Eve in Rome supplied the motive.
"Genius" often formed the subject of their discussions. Their teacher used to say "Geniuses" ranked above all else, like "Excellencies." John thought much about this, and believed that it was possible without high birth, without money, and without a career to get on the same level as Excellencies. But what a genius was he did not know. Once in a weak moment he said to his lady friend that he would rather be a genius than a child of God, and received a sharp reproof from her. Another time he told Fritz that he would like to be a professor, as they can dress like scarecrows and behave as they like without losing respect. But when someone else asked him what he wished to be, he said, "A clergyman"; for all peasants' sons can be that, and it seemed a suitable calling for him also. After he had become a free-thinker, he wished to take a university degree. But he did not wish to be a teacher on any account.
In the theatre Hamlet made a deeper impression on him than Offenbach's operas, which were then being acted. Who is this Hamlet who first saw the footlights in the era of John III., and has still remained fresh? He is a figure which has been much exploited and used for many purposes. John forthwith determined to use him for his own.
The curtain rises to the sound of cheerful music, showing the king and his court in glittering array. Then there enters the pale youth in mourning garb and opposes his step-father. Ah! he has a step-father. "That is as bad as having a stepmother," thought John. "That's the man for me!" And then they try to oppress him and squeeze sympathy out of him for the tyrant. The youth's ego revolts, but his will is paralysed; he threatens, but he cannot strike.
Anyhow, he chastises his mother—a pity that it was not his step-father. But now he goes about with pangs of conscience. Good! Good! He is sick with too much thought, he gropes in his in-side, inspects his actions till they dissolve into nothing. And he loves another's betrothed; that resembles John's life completely. He begins to doubt whether he is an exception after all. That, then, is a common story in life! Very well! He did not need then to worry about himself, but he had lost his consciousness of originality. The conclusion, which had been mangled, was unimpressive, but was partly redeemed by the fine speech of Horatio. John did not observe the unpardonable mistake of the adapter in omitting the part of Fortinbras, but Horatio, who was intended to form a contrast to Hamlet, was no contrast. He is as great a coward as the latter, and says only "yes" and "no." Fortinbras was the man of action, the conqueror, the claimant to the throne, but he does not appear, and the play ends in gloom and desolation.
But it is fine to lament one's destiny, and to see it lamented. At first Hamlet was only the step-son; later on he becomes the introspective brooder, and lastly the son, the sacrifice to family tyranny. Schwarz had represented him as the visionary and idealist who could not reconcile himself to reality, and satisfied contemporary taste accordingly. A future matter-of-fact generation, to whom the romantic appears simply ridiculous, may very likely see the part of Hamlet, like that of Don Quixote, taken by a comic actor. Youths like Hamlet have been for a long time the subject of ridicule, for a new generation has secretly sprung up, a generation which thinks without seeing visions, and acts accordingly. The neutral territory of belles-lettres and the theatre, where morality has nothing to say, and the unrealities of the drama with its reconstruction of a better world than the present, were taken by John as something more than mere imagination. He confused poetry and reality, while he fancied that life outside his parent's house was ideal and that the future was a garden of Eden.
The prospect of soon going to the University of Upsala seemed to him like a flight into liberty. There one might be ill-dressed, poor, and still a student, i.e., a member of the higher classes; one could sing and drink, come home intoxicated, and fight with the police without losing one's reputation. That is an ideal land! How had he found that out? From the students' songs which he sang with his brother. But he did not know that these songs reflected the views of the aristocracy; that they were listened to, piece by piece, by princes and future kings; that the heroes of them were men of family. He did not consider that borrowing was not so dangerous, when there was a rich aunt in the background; that the examination was not so hard if one had a bishop for an uncle; and that the breaking of a window had not got to be too dearly paid for if one moved in good society. But, at any rate, his thoughts were busy with the future; his hopes revived, and the fatal twenty-fifth year did not loom so ominously before him.
About this time the volunteer movement was at its height. It was a happy idea which gave Sweden a larger army than she had hitherto had—40,000 men instead of 37,000. John went in for it energetically, wore a uniform, drilled, and learned to shoot. He came thereby into contact with young men of other classes of society. In his company there were apprentices, shop attendants, office clerks, and young artists who had not yet achieved fame. He liked them, but they remained distant. He sought to approach them, but they did not receive him. They had their own language, which he did not understand. Now he noticed how his education had separated him from the companions of his childhood. They took for granted that he was proud. But, as a matter of fact, he looked up to them in some things. They were frank, fearless, independent, and pecuniarily better circumstanced than himself, for they always had money.
Accompanying the troops on long marches had a soothing effect on him. He was not born to command, and obeyed gladly, if the person who commanded did not betray pride or imperiousness. He had no ambition to become a corporal, for then he would have had to think, and what was still worse, decide for others. He remained a slave by nature and inclination, but he was sensitive to the injustice of tyrants, and observed them narrowly.
At one important manoeuvre he could not help expostulating with regard to certain blunders committed, e.g., that the infantry of the guard should be ranged up at a landing-place against the cannon of the fleet which covered the barges on which they were standing. The cannon played about their ears from a short distance, but they remained unmoved. He expostulated and swore, but obeyed, for he had determined beforehand to do so.
On one occasion, while they were halting at Tyreso, he wrestled in sport with a comrade. The captain of the company stepped forward and forbade such rough play. John answered sharply that they were off duty, and that they were playing.
"Yes, but play may become earnest," said the captain.
"That depends on us," answered John, and obeyed. But he thought him fussy for interfering in such trifles, and believed that he noticed a certain dislike in his superior towards himself. The former was called "magister," because he wrote for the papers, but he was not even a student. "There it is," he thought, "he wants to humiliate me." And from that time he watched him closely. Their mutual antipathy lasted through their lives.
The volunteer movement was in the first place the result of the Danish-German War, and, though transitory, was in some degree advantageous. It kept the young men occupied, and did away, to a certain extent, with the military prestige of the army, as the lower classes discovered that soldiering was not such a difficult matter after all. The insight thus gained caused a widespread resistance to the introduction of the Prussian system of compulsory service which was much mooted at the time, since Oscar II., when visiting Berlin, had expressed to the Emperor William his hope that Swedish and Prussian troops would once more be brothers-in-arms.
[1] See Encyclopedia Britannica, art. "Sweden."
[2] In 1910 Strindberg wrote: "I keep my Bible Christianity for private use, to tame my somewhat barbarised nature—barbarised by the veterinary philosophy of Darwinism, in which, as a student. I was educated."—Tal till Svenska nationen.