The children of Israel occupy a peculiar and exceptional position from a social point of view. They have forgotten the Messianic promise and do not believe in it. In most European countries they have remained among the middle classes; to join the lower classes was for the most part denied them, though not so widely as is generally believed. Nor could they join the upper classes; therefore they feel related to neither of the latter. They are aristocrats from habit and inclination, but have the same interests as the lower classes, i.e. they wish to roll away the stone which lies upon and presses them. But they fear the proletariat who have no religious sense and who do not love the rich. Therefore the children of Abraham rather aspire to those above them, than seek sympathy from those below.
About this time (1868) the question of Jewish emancipation began to be raised. All liberals supported it and it was practically a discarding of Christianity. Baptism, ecclesiastical marriage, confirmation, church attendance were all declared to be unnecessary conditions for membership in a Christian community. Such apparently small reforms make an impression on the state, like the dropping of water on a rock.
At that time a cheerful tone prevailed in the family, the sons having a brighter future in prospect than their fathers, whose academic course had been hindered by State regulations.
A liberal table was kept in the house; everything was of the best quality, and there was plenty of it. The servants managed the house and were allowed a free hand in everything; they were not regarded as servants. The housemaid was a pietist and allowed to be so, as much as she pleased. She was good-natured and humorous, and, illogically enough, adopted the jesting tone of the cheerful paganism which reigned in the house. On the other hand, no one laughed at her belief. John himself was treated as an intimate friend and a child alternately and lived with the boys. His work was easy and he was rather required to keep the boys company than to give them lessons. Meanwhile he became somewhat "spoiled" as people, who have the usual idea of keeping youth in the background, call it. Though only nineteen, he was received on an equal footing among well-known and mature artists, doctors, littérateurs and officials. He became accustomed to regard himself as grown up, and therefore the set-backs he encountered afterwards, were the harder to bear.
His medical career began with chemical experiments in the technological institute. There he obtained a closer view of some of the glories he had dreamed of in his childhood. But how dry and tedious were the rudiments of science! To stand and pour acids on salts and to watch the solution change colour, was not pleasant; to produce salts from two or more solutions was not very interesting. But later on, when the time came for analysis, the mysterious part began. To fill a glass about the size of a punch-bowl with a liquid as clear as water and then to exhibit in the filter the possibly twenty elements it contained,—this really seemed like penetrating into nature's secrets. When he was alone in the laboratory he made small experiments on his own account, and it was not long before with some danger he had prepared a little phial of prussic acid. To have death enclosed in a few drops under a glass stopper was a curiously pleasant feeling.
At the same time he studied zoology, anatomy, botany, physic and Latin,—still more Latin! To read and master a subject was congenial to him, but to learn by heart he hated. His head was already filled with so many subjects, that it was hard for anything more to enter, but it was obliged to.
A worse drawback was that so many other interests began to vie in his mind with his medical studies. The theatre was only a stone's throw from the doctor's house and he went there twice a week. He had a standing place at the end of the third row. From thence he saw elegant and cheerful French comedies played on a Brussels carpet. The light Gallic humour, admired by the melancholy Swedes as their missing complement, completely captivated him. What a mental equilibrium, what a power of resistance to the blows of fate were possessed by this race of a southern sunnier land! His thoughts became still more gloomy as he grew conscious of his Germanic "Weltschmerz" lying like a veil over everything, which a hundred years of French education could not have lifted. But he did not know that Parisian theatrical life differs widely from that of the industrious and thrifty Parisian at the desk and the counter. French comedies were written for the parvenus of the Second Empire; politics and religion were subject to the censor, but not morals. French comedy was aristocratic in tone, but had a liberating effect on the mind as it was in touch with reality, though it did not interfere in social questions. It accustomed the public to sympathise with and feel at home in this superfine world; one came to forget the lower everyday world, and when one left the theatre it felt as though one had been at supper with a friendly duke.
As chance fell out, the doctor's wife possessed a good library in which all the best literature of the world was represented. It was indeed a treasure to have all these at one's elbow! Moreover the doctor possessed a number of pictures by Swedish masters and a valuable collection of engravings. There was an efflorescence of æstheticism on all sides, even in the schools, where lectures on literature were delivered. The conversation in the family circle mostly turned on pictures, dramas, actors, books, authors, and the doctor felt from time to time impelled to flavour it with details of his practice.
Now and then John began to read the papers. Political and social life with their various questions opened up before him, but at first with a repelling effect, as he was an æsthete and domestic egoist. Politics did not seem to touch him at all; he considered it a special branch of knowledge like any other.
He continued his lessons to the girls and his intercourse with their family. Outside the house he met grown up relatives, who were tradesmen, and their acquaintances. His circle was therefore widened, and he saw life from more than one point of view. But this constant occupation with children had a hampering effect on his development. He never felt himself older, and he could not treat the young with an air of superiority. He already noticed that they were in advance of him, that they were born with new thoughts, and that they built on, where he had ceased. When later on in life, he met grown-up pupils, he looked up to them as though they were the older.