George will have arrived in London yesterday with wife and child; his darling Ella has a serious nervous affection, and they are to try sea air. He is much depressed.
[80.]
Your affectionate letter, my dear friend, has touched me deeply. First your unaltered love and attachment, and that you have perfectly understood me and my conduct in this affair. Naturally my fate will be very much influenced by it. I must be every year in Berlin: this year I shall satisfy myself with the last three weeks after Easter. In 1859 (as I shall spend the winter in Nice) I shall take my seat, when I return in April across the Alps. But later (and perhaps from 1859) I must not only live in Prussia, which is prescribed by good feeling and by the constitution, but I must stay for some time in Berlin. They all wish to have me there. God knows how little effort it costs me not to seek the place of Minister of Instruction, to say nothing of declining it, for everything is daily going more to ruin. But it could only be for a short time, and Bethmann-Hollweg, Usedom, and others can do the right thing just as well, and have time and youth to drag away the heavy cart of a Chinese order of business, which now consumes nine tenths of the time of a Prussian minister (who works twelve hours a day).
What I wish and am doing with my “Biblework,” you will see between the lines of my first volume; other people, twelve months later, when my first volume of the Bible documents “comes out:” and even then they will not see where the concluding volume tends,—the world's history in the Bible, and the Bible in the world's history. Already in the end of 1857 I finished all of the first volume: the stereotyping goes on fearfully slow. You will receive one of the first copies which goes across the Channel; and you will read it at once, will you not? I am delighted that you are absorbed in Eckart: he is the key to Tauler, and there is nothing better, except the Gospel of St. John. For there stands still more clearly than in the other gospel writings, that the object of life in this world is to found the Kingdom of God on earth (as my friends the Taipings understand it also). Of this, Eckart and his scholars had despaired, just as much as Dante and his parody, Reineke Fuchs. You will find already many pious ejaculations of this kind in my two volumes of “God in History;” but I have deferred the closing [pg 488] word till the sixth book, where our tragedy will be revealed, in order to begin boldly with a new epos. I send you to-day four sheets by book-post, “The Aryans in Asia;” for I cannot finish it without your personal help. You will find that you have already furnished a great portion of the matter. The same hymn which I translated with difficulty and trouble from Haug's literal translation (in strophes which you however do not recognize?) (Ps. li.), you have translated for me, in your own graceful manner, on a fly-sheet, and sent to me from Leipzig. Of course I shall use this translation in place of my own. I therefore venture to request that you will do the same with regard to the other examples which I have given. If you wish to add anything new, it will suit perfectly, for everything fits in at the end of the chapter: the number of the pages does not come into consideration in the present stage. You will receive the leaves on Saturday; it would be delightful if you could finish them in the course of the following week, and send them back to me. (We have a contract here with France, which gives us a sort of book-post.) I expect next week the continuation of the Brahmanism and Buddha. I should like to send both to you. The notes and excursus will only be printed at the close of the volume, therefore not before May. The rest (Books V., VI.) will be printed during the summer, to appear before I cross the Alps. In this I develop the tragedy of the Romano-Germanic world, and shall both gain many and lose many friends by it. I have read your brilliant article on Welcker with great delight. I possess it. Have you sent it (if only anonymously) to the noble old man? He has deserved it. The article makes a great noise, and will please him very much. In fact, everything would give me undisturbed pleasure, did I not see (even without your telling me, which, however, you have done, as is the sacred duty between friends) that you are not happy in yourself. Of one thing I am convinced,—you would be just as little so, even less, in Germany, and least of all among the sons of the Brahmans. If you continue to live as you do now, you would everywhere miss England,—perhaps also Oxford, if you went to London. Of this I am not clear: in general a German lives far more freely in the World-city than in the Don-city, where every English idiosyncrasy strengthens itself, and buries itself in coteries. Unfortunately I have neither read “Indophilus” nor “Philindus:” please tell me the numbers of the “Times.” I can get a copy of the “Times” here from [pg 489] the library from month to month. Trevelyan is an excellent man, occasionally unpractical and mistaken, always meaning well and accessible to reason. But does any one study in London? Dubito! But I don't understand the plan of an Oriental College. Perhaps it is possible to undertake London without giving up Oxford entirely. The power of influencing the young men, who after ten or twenty years will govern the land, is far greater in Oxford or Cambridge than in London. I am curious about your “German Reading Book.”
I maintain one thing,—you are not happy; and that comes from your bachelor life. The progress of your Vedic work delights me: but how much in it is still a riddle! Thus, for instance, the long hymn (2 Ashtaka, third Adhyâya, Sûkta viii. CLXIV.) p. 125. The hymn is first of all, as can be proved, beyond verse 41 not genuine; but even this older portion is late, surely already composed on the Sarasvatî. The Veda is already a finished book (verse 39), Brahma and Vishnu are gods (35, 36). The whole is really wearisome, because it wishes to be mysterious without an idea. (See 4 Ashtaka, seventh Adhyâya, vol. iii. p. 463.) Is not Brahma there a god like Indra?
I depend on your marking all egregious blunders with a red pencil. Many such must still have remained, leaving out of view all differences of opinion. Tell me as much as you can on this point in a letter, for on the Continent only notes for press are allowed to go as a packet. (But of these you can bring in as much as you wish: the copy is a duplicate.) At the end I should much like to write something about the present impossibility of enjoying the Rig-Veda, and of the necessity of a spiritual key. But I do not quite know, first of all, whether one can really enter upon the whole: there is much that is conventional and mortal by the side of what is imperishable. An anthology in about two or three volumes would find a rapid sale, and would only benefit a more learned and perfect edition. If you have arrived at the same conclusion, I will blow the trumpet.
George greets you heartily, as do his mother and sisters. Perhaps I shall move in April, 1859, to Bonn; here I shall not stay. Deus providebit. With truest affection, yours.
Best remembrance to your mother. Have you read my preface to “Debit and Credit?” I have poured out my heart about Kingsley in the Introduction to the German “Hypatia,” and told him that everybody must say to himself, sooner or late, “Let the dead bury the dead.”
[81.]
With threefold joy, my loved friend, have I heard the news through your great admirer Mme. Schwabe, of your charming intention of delighting us in August with a visit. First, on account of the plan itself: then because I can now compress into a few lines the endless letter I have so long had in my thoughts, to develop it in conversation according to my heart's desire; thirdly, because really since yesterday the day has come when the one half of the concluding volume (iii.) of “God in History” has gone to press, so that its appearing is secured. A letter to you, and a like debt to Lepsius, therefore open the list. And now before anything else receive my hearty thanks for your friendly and instructive letter, and what accompanied it in Vedicis. It came just at the right time, and you will see what use I made of it in the work.