II.
I had for a long time pursued my non-juridic studies as well as I could without the assistance of a teacher. But I had felt the want of one. And when a newly appointed docent at the University, Professor H. Bröchner, offered instruction in the study of Philosophy to any who cared to present themselves at his house at certain hours, I had felt strongly tempted to take advantage of his offer. I hesitated for some time, for I was unwilling to give up the least portion of my precious freedom; I enjoyed my retirement, the mystery of my modest life of study, but on the other hand I could not grapple with Plato and Aristotle without the hints of a competent guide as to the why and wherefore.
I was greatly excited. I had heard Professor Bröchner speak on Psychology, but his diction was handled with such painful care, was so monotonous and sounded so strange, that it could not fail to alarm. It was only the professor's distinguished and handsome face that attracted me, and in particular his large, sorrowful eyes, with their beautiful expression, in which one read a life of deep research--and tears. Now, I determined to venture up to Bröchner. But I had not the courage to mention it to my mother beforehand, for fear speaking of it should frighten me from my resolution, so uneasy did I feel about the step I was taking. When the day which I had fixed upon for the attempt arrived --it was the 2nd of September, 1861,--I walked up and down in front of the house several times before I could make up my mind to go upstairs; I tried to calculate beforehand what the professor would say, and what it would be best for me to reply, interminably.
The tall, handsome man with the appearance of a Spanish knight, opened the door himself and received the young fellow who was soon to become his most intimate pupil, very kindly. To my amazement, as soon as he heard my name, he knew which school I had come from and also that I had recently become a student. He vigorously dissuaded me from going through a course of Plato and Aristotle, saying it would be too great a strain-- said, or implied, that I should be spared the difficult path he had himself traversed, and sketched out a plan of study of more modern Philosophy and Aesthetics. His manner inspired confidence and left behind it the main impression that he wished to save the beginner all useless exertion. All the same, with my youthful energy, I felt, as I went home, a shade disappointed that I was not to begin the History of Philosophy from the beginning.
My visit was soon repeated, and a most affectionate intimacy quickly sprang up between master and pupil, revealed on the side of the elder, in an attitude of fatherly goodwill to which the younger had hitherto been a stranger, the teacher, while instructing his pupil and giving him practical guidance, constantly keeping in view all that could further his well-being and assist his future; my attitude was one of reverence and affection, and of profound gratitude for the care of which I was the object.
I certainly, sometimes, in face of my master's great thoroughness and his skill in wrestling with the most difficult thoughts, felt a painful distrust of my own capacity and of my own intellectual powers, compared with his. I was also not infrequently vexed by a discordant note, as it were, being struck in our intercourse, when Bröchner, despite the doubts and objections I brought forward, always took it for granted that I shared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was still tossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But the confidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had an attraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfully prejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of a lifetime behind him, he looked down from superior heights on the sympathies and antipathies of a young man.
To me, for instance, Ploug's The Fatherland was at that time Denmark's most intellectual organ, whereas Bille's Daily Paper disgusted me, more particularly on account of the superficiality and the tone of finality which distinguished its literary criticisms. Bröchner, who, with not unmixed benevolence, and without making any special distinction between the two, looked down on both these papers of the educated mediocrity, saw in his young pupil's bitterness against the trivial but useful little daily, only an indication of the quality of his mind. Bröchner's mere manner, as he remarked one day with a smile, "You do not read The Daily Paper on principle," made me perceive in a flash the comicality of my indignation over such articles as it contained. My horizon was still sufficiently circumscribed for me to suppose that the state of affairs in Copenhagen was, in and of itself, of importance. I myself regarded my horizon as wide. One day, when making a mental valuation of myself, I wrote, with the naïveté of nineteen, "My good qualities, those which will constitute my personality, if I ever become of any account, are a mighty and ardent enthusiasm, a thorough authority in the service of Truth, a wide horizon and philosophically trained thinking powers. These must make up for my lack of humour and facility."
It was only several years after the beginning of our acquaintance that I felt myself in essential agreement with Hans Bröchner. I had been enraptured by a study of Ludwig Feuerbach's books, for Feuerbach was the first thinker in whose writings I found the origin of the idea of God in the human mind satisfactorily explained. In Feuerbach, too, I found a presentment of ideas without circumlocution and without the usual heavy formulas of German philosophy, a conquering clarity, which had a very salutary effect on my own way of thinking and gave me a feeling of security. If for many years I had been feeling myself more conservative than my friend and master, there now came a time when in many ways I felt myself to be more liberal than he, with his mysterious life in the eternal realm of mind of which he felt himself to be a link.