I cannot forget Aufrecht. Is he free from care and contented? The family greet you and your dear mother. We expect Charles and his young wife next week. Ernst is, as you will know, back at Abbey Lodge. With unaltered affection.
[77.]
The month is nearly over, my dear friend, before the close of which I must, according to agreement, deliver up my revised copy of the amendments and additions to the English edition of my “Egypt.” (They are already there.) I hoped that in this interval you would have found a little leisure (as Lepsius and Bernays have done, who sent me the fruits of their reading already at the beginning of the month, in the most friendly way) to communicate to me your criticisms or doubts or thoughts or corrections on that which I have touched on in your own especial territory, as I had expressly and earnestly begged you to do. I have improved the arrangement very much. As you have not done this, I can only entertain one of two disagreeable suppositions, namely, that you are either ill or out of spirits, or that you have only what is disagreeable to say of my book, and would rather spare yourself and me from this. But as from what I know of you, and you know of me, I do not find in either the one or the other supposition a sufficient explanation of your obstinate silence, I should have forced myself to wait patiently, had I not to beg from you alone a small but indispensable gift for my “God in History.”
I have again in this interregnum taken up the interrupted studies of last year on the Aryan God-Consciousness in the Asiatic world, and thanks to Burnouf's, yours, Wilson's, Roth's and Fausböll's books, and Haug's assistance and translations, I have made the way easy to myself for understanding the two great Aryan prophets Zaraduschtra and Sākya, and (so far as that is possible to one of us now) the Veda; and this not without success and with inexpressible delight. My expectations are far exceeded. The Vedic songs are by far the most glorious, which in first going through that fearful translation of Wilson's, seemed to wish to hide themselves entirely from me. The difficulties of making them intelligible, even of a bare translation, are immense; the utter perverseness of Sâyana is only exceeded by that of Wilson, to whom however one can never be grateful enough for his communications. I now first perceive what a difficult but also noble work you have undertaken, and how much still remains doubtful; even after one has got beyond the collectors and near to the original poets. It is as if of the Hebrew traditions we only had the Psalms, and that without an individual personality like David, without, in fact, any one; on the contrary, allusions to Abraham's possible poems and the cosmical [pg 479] dreams of the Aramæans. But yet how strong is the feeling of immediate relation to God and nature, how truly human, and how closely related to our own! What a curious similarity to the Edda, Homer, and Pindar, Hesiod, and the Hellenic primitive times! Nothing however gave me greater delight than the dignity and solemnity of the funeral ceremonies, which you have made so really clear and easy to be understood. This is as yet the only piece of real life of our blood relations in the land of the five rivers. I have naturally taken possession of this treasure with the greatest delight, and perfected the description for my problem by the explanation of Yama (following on the whole Roth, who however overlooks the demiurgic character), of the Ribhus (departing entirely, not only from Nève's mistaken views, but also from what I have read elsewhere, representing them as the three powers which divide and form matter, namely, Air, Water, and Earth, to whom the fourth, Agni, was joined under the guidance of Tvash'ar), and of the funeral ceremonies as the condition of the laws of inheritance; where I return to my own beginning. And here it strikes me at once that in the Vedas, so far as they are accessible to me, there is not a trace to be found of the joining together of the three generations (the departed and his father and grandfather), and making them the unity of the race through the sacrificial oblations. And yet the idea must be older than the Vedas, as this precise, though certainly not accidental limitation is found with Solon and the Twelve Tables, just as clearly as with Manu and all the books of laws, and the commentaries collected by Colebrooke. You would of course have mentioned this in your account if anything of the sort had existed in the tenth book. But even the Pitris, the fathers, are not mentioned, but it passes on straight to Yama the first ancestor. Haug, too, has discovered nothing; if you know anything about it, communicate it to me in the course of May, for my second volume goes to press on the 1st June. I shall read it aloud to George and Miss Wynn here, between the 25th and 31st.
But my real desire is that you should send me one of your melodious and graceful metrical translations of your hymn, “Nor aught nor nought existed.” I must of course give it (it belongs with me to the period of transition, therefore, comparatively speaking, late); and how can I venture to translate it? I have, to be sure, done so with about five poems, which Haug chose for me out of the first nine books, and translated literally [pg 480] and then explained them to me; as well as with those which I worked out of Wilson's two first volumes by the help of Roth and Haug. But that is your hymn, and I have already written my thanks for your communication in my MS. and then left a space. That good Rowland Williams thinks it theistic, or at all events lets one of the speakers say so.
Rowland Williams' “Christ and Hinduism” has been a real refreshment to me, in this investigation of the Indian consciousness of God in the world. The mastery of the Socratic-Platonic dialogue, the delicacy and freedom of the investigation, and the deep Christian and human spirit of this man, have attracted me more than all other new English books, and even filled me with astonishment. Muir, that good man, sent it me through Williams and Norgate, and I have not only thanked him, but Williams himself, in a full letter, and have pressingly invited him for his holidays to our little philosophers' room. It is an especial pleasure to me that Mary and John, whose neighbor he is in summer, have appreciated him, and loved and prized him, and Henry also.
Henry will bring me “Rational Godliness.” This book, English as it is, should be introduced into India, in order to convert the followers of Brahma and the English Christians! One sees what hidden energy lies in the English mind, as soon as it is turned to a worthy object, but for this of course the fructifying influences of the German spirit are required. I have, on the contrary, been much disappointed by G——'s communication contained in Burnouf's classical works, on that most difficult but yet perfectly soluble point of the teaching of Buddha, the twelve points “beginning with ignorance and ending with death.” G—— leaves the rational way even at the first step, and perceives his error himself at the ninth, but so far he finds Buddha's (that is his own) proofs unanswerable. How totally different is Burnouf. He is fresh, self-possessed, and clear. I can better explain why William von Humboldt went astray on this subject. But I have already gossiped too much of my own thoughts to you. Therefore to Anglicis.
What are you about in Oxford? According to Haug's account you have abused me well, or allowed me to be well abused in your “Saturday Review,” which passes as yours and Kingsley's mouthpiece. If it were criticism, however mistaken, but why personal aspersions? Pattison's article on the “Theologia Germanica” in the April number of the “Westminster [pg 481] Review” is very brave, and deserves all thanks. He has learnt to prize Bleek: in all respects he has opened himself more to me in the last few weeks, and I like him. But the man who now writes the survey of foreign literature in the “Westminster Review” might have just read my book: this he cannot have done, or else he is a thorough bungler; for he (1) understands me only as representing the personal God (apparently the one in the clouds, as you once expressed it, a-straddle, riding) and leaving out everything besides; (2) that the last twenty-seven chapters of the book of Isaiah are not, as one has hitherto conceived, written by one man, but by Jeremiah, although he is already the glorified saint of the 53d chapter, and by Baruch. Now thank God that the sheet is finished, and think occasionally in a friendly way of your true friend.
I shall to-day finish the ante-Solonic God-Consciousness of the Hellenes. That does one good.