The Double.—The pupil said: "When a man begins to love a woman he throws himself into a trance, and becomes a poet and artist. Out of her plastic, unindividualised material he fashions an ideal form into which he puts all that is best in himself. Thus he creates an homunculus which he adopts as his double, and with that she lets him do as he likes.
"But this astral image may be also the doll which she the huntress sets up as a decoy, while she with a loaded gun lies behind the bush and watches for her prey. The love of a man for his homunculus often survives every illusion; he may have conceived a deadly hatred against herself, while his love for his double continues. But this masquerade gives rise to the deepest dissonances and troubles. He becomes squint-eyed by contemplating two images which do not coincide. He wishes to embrace his cloud, but takes hold of a body; he wishes to hear his poem, but it is someone else's; he wants to see his work of art, but it is only a model. He is happy during his trance, although the world cannot understand him. When he awakes from his somnambulism, his hatred to the woman increases in proportion as she fails to correspond to his image of her. And if he murders his double, then love is done with, and only boundless hate remains."
Paw or Hand.—The pupil said: "In Kipling's wonderful Jungle Book, the boy is intimate with all kinds of animals but not with apes, which are the worst of all creatures and composed of wickedness and crime. When Goethe, in the second part of Faust, wishes to represent phantoms and evil spirits, he uses the same masks and costumes as for the monkeys in the Witches' Kitchen in the first part. And it is among these degenerate brutes that man (?) now does his best to seek his ancestry. For my part I would rather trace my origin from a noble horse, or a sagacious and honest elephant, or from a courageous and thankful eagle.
"But it is probable that apes spring from degenerate men, escaped criminals, and ship-wrecked Robinson Crusoes. The hand of the chimpanzee is not a paw which is being evolved into a hand, but it is a human hand which is degenerating into a paw. A palmist could read the lines of it; a manicurist could improve it and make it capable of wearing a glove. If man really sprang from apes, according to the law of phylogeny, a child ought to be born with a hairy body. But now it comes into the world as smooth as an angel, often without hairs even on its head. It is a disgrace to me that I served the Ape-king, the seducer of my youth! And it was so stupid!"
The Thousand-Years' Night of the Apes.—When the sun of Christianity rose over the world, it naturally became night for the apelings. When they turned their backs to the light, everything became distorted for them. Right became left, east became west, good became evil, black became white, day became night. Therefore one reads still of their thousand-years' night, as they call the Middle Ages. When the savage tribes of Europe became tame, when the aged and sick became objects of pity, when governments ruled and laws protected, when faith, hope and love, self-sacrifice and chivalry flourished, then it was night for the pagans. When Europe received science, when Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Arnold, and Basilius founded chemistry, metallurgy, and physic, their darkness increased. When mediæval art culminated in the noblest work of art there is—the Gothic cathedral—then it grew dark before the eyes of the giants; their ears could not endure the chime of bells and organ-music. Finally the Middle Ages discovered gunpowder, the compass, and printing. A religious man, whose sails bore the sign of the cross, discovered America. But Pauli, the disciple of Clemens Romanus, already knew "the ocean which cannot be crossed by men, and the lands which lie behind it."[1]
In the midst of the darkness of the heathen there was the light of convent-schools and universities, in which spiritual as well as worldly wisdom was taught. Poems of chivalry, romances and dramas were composed. Charlemagne was a Christian King Solomon; he defeated the Philistines in Saxony, built temples out of the ruins of Rome, held learned conversations and listened to legends, cultivated the land and gave laws. That was the brightest phase of a Europe grown patriarchal and Christian. The gods certainly did not walk any more on earth, but God's messengers were in constant communication with men, and disclosed to them the secrets of God's kingdom, which were written down in Apocalypses and, best of all, in the Legenda Aurea. Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ was printed and is still read even by Protestants. One can even read the Church Fathers, Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom; Augustine was used in my youth as a confirmation-manual. Two hundred years before the Reformation—the schism in the Church as it should rather be called—Dante wrote the most Christian of all poems, which the heathen have tried to steal for themselves. Boccaccio expounded the Inferno from a professor's chair, a fitting penalty for the trespasses of his youth. Botticelli, Lippi, Ghirlandajo were the great religious painters of the Middle Ages. Their pupils Michael Angelo and Raphael were devout Christians, although the heathen have wished to appropriate them under the false designation Renaissance, or new birth of heathenism. When at the beginning of modern times it began to grow dusk, the dawn rose for the heathen and for "the last Athenians." The last? There will certainly be more Athenians who will wish to carry owls to Athens.
[1] Clement, Epistle to the Romans, chap. xx.
The Favourite.—Julian was an Illyrian, from the predatory state composed of a mixed Phœnician race who worshipped Baal and Astarte. He had a small head, and no occiput; he had thick lips, a beard that swarmed with vermin, long nails and black hands with which he groped in the bleeding bodies of slain beasts in order to prognosticate the future from their hearts and livers. His cheerful religious services consisted in the sacrifice of animals, and were accompanied by the dances of immodest girls. In order to refute ancient prophecy, he wished to build again the Temple at Jerusalem. But fire broke out of the ground, so that the undertaking was frustrated at its commencement. This madman once came to Antioch, where there were a hundred thousand heathen whom he expected to receive him with public sacrifices and dances. Instead of which he was met by a solitary priest bearing a goose. That was all!
This unattractive person, who has become the darling of The Last Athenian[1] and the new heathen, was finally enticed into a desert. There he suffered hunger and thirst till a lance pierced his liver. But it is incredible that he exclaimed, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" He was far too stupid for that.