SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.
Sandt.—Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice of antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into their studies or their society.
Kotzebue.—They should rather those than others. The young must cease to be young, and the unlearned may cease to be unlearned. According to the letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth against you. In the seclusion of a college life, you appear to have studied with much assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued no other courses than the paths of wisdom.
Sandt.—Do you approve of the pursuit?
Kotzebue.—Who does not?
Sandt.—None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the slough. May I ask you another question?
Kotzebue.—Certainly.
Sandt.—Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek information from you?
Kotzebue.—The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to truth and happiness.
Sandt.—If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what rational happiness to expect? To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth. Nonsense is better than falsehood; and we come to that.
Kotzebue.—How?
Sandt.—No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to happiness—I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a truth—whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet, the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or reduced to poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links. Who then, unless for others, would be a darer of wisdom? And yet, how full of it is even the inanimate world? We may gather it out of stones and straws. Much lies within the reach of all: little has been collected by the wisest of the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power! ye carry your own scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you, even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where the Old Serpent went before you.
Kotzebue.—I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic and strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.
Sandt.—I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the power of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease, comfort, independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.
Kotzebue.—The idea is, truly, no humble one.
Sandt.—A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine work of creating the capacity.
Kotzebue.—Childish! childish!—Men have cravings enow already; give them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be contented in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place us; and let us render ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power, without idle aspirations after impracticable good.
Sandt.—O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of your intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small and how vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?
Kotzebue.—Is this to me?
Sandt.—To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?
Kotzebue.—What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and travels. I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.
Sandt.—You sought celebrity.—I blame not that. The thick air of multitudes may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of solitudes is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping of hands; others fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us come to the point. Imperial courts! What do they know of letters? What letters do they countenance—do they tolerate?
Kotzebue.—Plays.
Sandt.—Playthings.
Kotzebue.—Travels.
Sandt.—On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along which their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke of your rammers. When will ye lay them by?
Kotzebue.—We are not such drudges.
Sandt.—Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?
Kotzebue.—Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich possessions.
Sandt.—None; not the highest.
Kotzebue.—Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost yet, although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow them up. But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force. The promise of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude. The wise know that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that she never can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both; in the dazzle of arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never more agitated than in the midst of peace.
Sandt.—The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing that could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that lightening which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our homes. Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and where no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir, at the celebrity and the distinctions you have obtained?
Kotzebue.—My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them, quite satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age—neither in difficult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself the tutor or the guardian of mankind.
Sandt.—I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and gratefully. You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the travels; but, pardon my question, who called you to the courts of princes in strange countries?
Kotzebue.—They themselves.
Sandt.—They have no more right to take you away from your country, than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to the land that bore you, and were not at liberty—(if right and liberty are one, and unless they are, they are good for nothing)—you were not at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.
Kotzebue.—No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of freedom are these!
Sandt.—A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be coerced to act against Germans.
Kotzebue.—I would not.
Sandt.—Perhaps you think so.
Kotzebue.—Sir, I know my duty.
Sandt.—We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the will is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you left the ranks of your fellow-citizens—already have you taken the enlisting money and marched away.
Kotzebue.—Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak rather the language of books than of men.
Sandt.—What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect than ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men. I was wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the productions of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the continuity of sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to maintain it, even in words, to the end of their lives. You are aware that I am speaking now of political ethics. This is the worst I can think of the matter, and bad enough is this.
Kotzebue.—You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our patriotism, not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical mind should consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so minutely into it as to see the lines that divide nations and governments; much less should it act the part of a busy shrew, and take pleasure in giving loose to the tongue, at finding things a little out of place.
Sandt.—We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is better with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this indistinctness in the moral and political line begets indifference. He who does not keep his own country more closely in view than any other, soon mixes land with sea, and sea with air, and loses sight of every thing, at least, for which he was placed in contact with his fellow men. Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest: Let usages and familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us confederate for security and peace with all the people round, particularly with people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others: but to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We irrigate the ground in our gardens: the public road may require the water equally: yet we give it rather to our borders; and first to those that lie against the house! God himself did not fill the world at once with happy creatures: he enlivened one small portion of it with them, and began with single affections, as well as pure and unmixt. We must have an object and an aim, or our strength, if any strength belongs to us, will be useless.
Kotzebue.—There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old enough to have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no means deficient in the relations I bear to society.
Sandt.—Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover against the rain and the wind.
Kotzebue.—This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with large drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my dear young man! and less enthusiastic.
Sandt.—They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by force. Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must love them more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all, profess a parity.
Kotzebue.—Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.
Sandt.—I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could speedily bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their ears were calked and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died sadly!
Kotzebue.—Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of authority, your voice is gentle—almost plaintive.
Sandt.—It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!
Kotzebue.—Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each other for many years.
Sandt.—What! should I have asked you such a question as the last, after long knowing you?
Kotzebue, (aside.)—This resembles insanity.
Sandt.—The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick apprehensions.
Kotzebue.—I really beg your pardon.
Sandt.—I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them grievously; a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again and again I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that fasten them to pillar and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the remains of respect for you, in your domestic state, I should never have held with you this conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought to have nothing political in common with what is not Germany. Her freedom and security now demand that she celebrate the communion of the faithful. Our country is the only one in all the explored regions on earth that never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely; France falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of Darius fell and crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Rome was buried in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not. Britain, the wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the most literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we surrender them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled cities, and enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push us upon one another's sword, and command us to thank God for the victories that enslave us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are the festivals we hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed are those who lie under them! blessed are also those who remember what they were, and call upon their names in the holiness of love.
Kotzebue.—Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you. There is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.
Sandt.—There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great, for instance, in our disunion.
Kotzebue.—We have only been conquered by the French in our turn.
Sandt.—No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny princes were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns from the very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and spoons. A cunning traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured them, and slept upon their feathers.
Kotzebue.—I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of our country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to us. We may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages of every capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.
Sandt.—Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed and hirelings.
Kotzebue.—The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival us in poetry, or in any works of imagination.
Sandt.—While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with England and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on our inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than they? Our mothers are like their mothers; our children are like their children; our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our desire of improvement in the arts and sciences is neither less vivid and generous, nor less temperate and well-directed. The Greeks were under disadvantages which never bore in any degree on us; yet they rose through them vigorously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what ought to be the finer part of the affections; their women were veiled and secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave, never sat by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated in the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the future; and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush we not at our degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure at finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms ultimately mingled, although the character of the governors, and perhaps of the governed, is congenial to few. What delight, then, must overflow on Europe, from seeing the mother of her noblest nation rear again her venerable head, and bless all her children for the first time united!
Kotzebue.—I am bound to oppose such a project.
Sandt.—Say not so: in God's name, say not so.
Kotzebue.—In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and rebellion, and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if possible.
Sandt.—Bound! I must then release you.
Kotzebue.—How should you, young gentleman, release me?
Sandt.—May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again: think better: spare me!
Kotzebue.—I will not betray you.
Sandt.—That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has been done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper; here is your ink.
Kotzebue.—Do you imagine me an informer?
Sandt.—From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood, the necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good men thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the bad. I must go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to think of losing you! Be my friend!
Kotzebue.—I would be.
Sandt.—Be a German!
Kotzebue.—I am.
Sandt, (having gone out.)—Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is kindly. I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of the privilege to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I lived of old. Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls: I will enter the door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people together, and hold them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim follows willingly. (Enters again.)
Turn! die! (strikes.)
Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish with one guilty! and writhe longer!
Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left me. In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals dishonour, commiseration covers it.