Einstein, the searcher

by Alexander Moszkowski

Nevertheless, he speaks with reverence of a series of authors, to whom he owes enrichment: among them are the classical writers, who naturally occupy the highest position, with certain exceptions, which he equally naturally wishes to be taken as a personal opinion and not in the sense of a critical valuation. With him the difference reveals itself in the intonation from which we may read a greater or lesser measure of affection. When he says "Shakespeare," the eternal greatness seems to be inherent in the actual sound of the name. When he says "Goethe," we notice a slight undertone of dissonance, which may be interpreted without difficulty. He admires him with the pathos of distance, but no warmth glows through this pathos.

I had ventured to deduce from my knowledge of his nature the men and the works which, in my opinion, should awaken strong echoes in him. A fairly clearly defined line leads to the true path. Outside of any systematic series, I may mention Dostojewski, Cervantes, Homer, Strindberg, Gottfried Keller in the positive sense, Emile Zola and Ibsen in the negative sense. Taken as a whole, this prognostication does not disagree seriously with his own statement, excepting that he lays still greater emphasis on Don Quixote and the Brothers Karamasoff than I had surmised. He expressed himself with reserve about Voltaire. He has no belief in Voltaire's poetic qualities, and sees in him only a subtle-minded and amusing writer. Perhaps if Einstein were to devote himself a little more intensively to Voltaire and Zola, he would assign a higher value to these related spirits. But there is little hope of this occurring, as the wide range of Voltaire's works tends to restrain him. Time, which the physicist Einstein has shown to be relative, has an absolute value for him when measured in hours, and whoever seeks to persuade him to read thick volumes is not likely to gain his goodwill.

Our philosophical literature is not received with acclamation by him. If some one wished to undertake the task of ascertaining Einstein's attitude towards philosophy, he would be well advised to plunge into Einstein's works rather than to ask him personally. In them the questioner would find ample hints, pointing towards a new theory of knowledge, the first indications of which are already perceptible. A great portion of philosophic doctrine will yet have to pass through the Einstein filter to be purified. He himself, it seems to me, leaves this process of filtering mostly to other thinkers, but we must not lose sight of the fact that these others derive their views of space, time, and causality from Einstein's physics. It is thus immediately evident that he does not find revelations about ultimate things in already extant literature, for the simple reason that they are not to be found there. For him famous works represent, in Kant's language, "Prolegomena to every future system of metaphysics which can claim to rank as a science." The accent is to be put on the future that has not yet become the present. He praises many, particularly Locke and Hume, but will grant finality to none, not even to the great Kant, not to mention Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, whom he barely mentions in this connexion. To Schopenhauer and Nietzsche he assigns a high position as writers, as masters of language and moulders of impressive thoughts. He values them for their literary excellence, but denies them philosophic depth. As far as Nietzsche is concerned, whom, by the way, he regards as too glittering, Einstein certainly experiences ethical objections against this prophet of the aristocratic cult whose views are so diametrically opposed to Einstein's own opinion of the relations between man and man.

Earlier when we were talking of classical poetry he had particularly emphasized Sophocles as one who was dear to him. And this name leads us to the innermost source of Einstein as a man. "I am not here to hate with you but to love with you," is the cry of Sophocles' Antigone, and this cry is the keynote of Einstein's emotional existence. I shall not give way to the temptation to follow those who in the turmoil of the present day refer to Einstein as a political figure. That would lead to a description of policy and party arguments that lie beyond the scope of this book; so much the less am I inclined to do so as Einstein's convictions may be expressed very clearly without reference to schematic terms of a very elastic nature. An individuality such as his cannot be compressed into a party programme. And if anyone should insist on placing him among the radicals or on assigning him far to the left, I should suggest that it would be better to choose, instead of the classification right and left, that of above and below. I look up towards his idealism, whose altitude may perhaps be reached one day by the raising of our ethical standards. But not by means of paragraphs of laws. I have seldom heard him talk of such schematic recipes, but so much the more have I noted utterances which bore witness to a very intense and ever-present sympathy with every human creature. His programme, which is written not in ink but in heart's-blood, proclaims in the simplest manner the categorical imperative: Fulfil your duty to your fellow-being: offer help to every one: ward off every material oppression. "Well, then, he is a socialist," so the cry runs. If it is your pleasure to call him so, he will not deny you it. But to me this term seems to denote too narrow limits for him. I see no contradiction in applying the term, but there is no perfect congruence. If one word is necessary, I should be rather more inclined to say that he is in the widest sense a democrat of liberal trend.

For him the State is not its own aim, nor does he imagine himself to be the possessor of a panacea. "The attitude of the individual to socialism," he said, "is uncertain owing to the fact that we can never ascertain clearly how much of the iron compulsion and blind working of our economic system may be overcome by appropriate institutions." And I should like to add that such institutions would scarcely have a permanent result, but that more may be expected from the ethical example of those who have the power of renunciation. Whoever realizes the motto of Antigone, "I am here to love with you," brings us nearer the goal. All in all, our longing continually flees from the confusion of political considerations to simple morality. For Einstein this is the primary element, that which is directly evident and not open to misrepresentation. It includes sympathy, and, what is more important, joy in conjunction with others. "The best that life has to offer," he once exclaimed, "is a face glowing with happiness!"

This look is expressed on his own face when he discusses his ideals, above all the internationality of all intellectual workers and the realization of eternal peace among the nations. To him pacifism is a matter of mind as well as of heart, and he is of the opinion that the course of history so far is but the prelude to its realization. The past, with its bloodstained fingers that reach into the present, does not discourage him He points to the endless city wars of the Middle Ages in Italy, which had finally to cease in answer to the increasing feeling of solidarity. So he believes in the victory of peace, which the unified consciousness of all humanity will one day win over the demonic powers of tyranny and conquest.

The pacifistic goal seems to him to be attainable without the peculiarities of the various States being destroyed. National characteristics arising from tradition and hereditary influences do not signify in his eyes a contradiction to the internationalism that embraces the common intellectual factors of civilized peoples. Thus the desire for the preservation and care of particularities directs him to the secondary goal of Zionism. His blood asserts itself when he supports the foundation of a State in Palestine, which seems to him to be the only means of preserving the national individuality of his race without the freedom of the individual being affected.

We had left Art to talk of the State, and then returned to the former theme to touch lightly on the pictorial arts. Painting was allowed to pass with merely a fleeting remark. It plays no considerable part in Einstein's existence, and he would not suffer great grief if it were to vanish from the plane of culture, a consummation to which definite signs seems to point. I have described these signs in other writings (as in Kunst in 1000 Jahren), and maintain the point of view that the latest branches of painting as represented by expressionism and cubistic futurism denote, in essence, the last convulsions of a dying surface art. And even the chief representatives of former flourishing periods are beginning to fade away, and Einstein will not be the only one who will relegate this art, as compared with music, to a lower plane among the inspired arts that bring joy to humanity. He is only more frank than others when he freely confesses that he cannot convince himself that a life without the joys of pictorial art would be hopelessly impoverished. But he bows his head to sculpture, and, for him, architecture is a goddess. It is again his deeply rooted piety that asserts itself when memory recalls to him the Gothic dome with its pinnacles striving towards heaven. Goethe and Schlegel have called architecture "frozen music," and this picture is present in his mind when he sees Gothic architecture as frozen music of Bach. It is open to anyone to analyse this specific impression in another way by seeking the fundamental elements, in which the essence of the art is to provide support for a weighty structure and to overcome gravitation. For a spirit that works with mechanics and that feels within itself the pressures and tensions occurring in external nature, architecture is a kind of statics and dynamics transformed into a thing of beauty, a ravishing picture of his own science.

* * * * * * * *

Einstein has told me many a story of his travels, and these reports were characterized by an absence of definite purpose. The conception of something worth seeing in the tourists' sense does not exist for him, and he does not set out in eager pursuit of those things that are marked with two asterisks in Baedeker. The intense romanticism of Swiss scenery, that lay within such easy reach for him, has never enticed him into its magic circle, and he has nothing to do with the abysmal terrors of glaciers and the world of snow-peaks. His enthusiasm for landscape beauty conforms with the behaviour of the barometer: the greater the altitude, the lower the mercury. In simple contact with Nature he prefers the lesser mountains, the seashore, and extensive plains, whereas brilliant panoramic contours like those of the Vierwaldstetter See do not rouse him into ecstasy. It is unnecessary to remark that he does not arrange his living on the standard of the Grand Palace Hotels en route. It is nearer the truth to picture him as a vagrant who tramps along without a sense of time and without a goal, in the fairy atmosphere of a joyous wanderer who has unconsciously adopted the old rule of Philander: Walk with a steady step: make your burden small: start early in the morn, and leave home all care!