Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany

by Georg Brandes

But even in the plants and the clouds there is still too much endeavour and unrest to satisfy the Romantic soul. Even vegetation is not perfect abstraction, perfect quiescence; there is tendency upwards in the straining of the plant towards the light. Therefore even the plant life is not the highest. Novalis goes a step further than Friedrich Schlegel.

"The highest life is mathematics. Without enthusiasm no mathematics. The life of the gods is mathematics. Pure mathematics is religion. It is arrived at only by revelation. The mathematician knows everything. All activity ceases when knowledge is attained. The state of knowledge is bliss (Eudämonie), rapturous peace of contemplation, heavenly abstraction."

Now we have reached the climax. All life is crystallised into dead mathematical figures.

At this point the life of the soul is condensed to such a degree that it comes to a standstill. It is as if the clock of the soul had ceased to strike. Every noble aspiration, every tendency towards independent action is forced back and stifled in the airless vaults of the soul.

It is at this point, therefore, that intense spirituality turns into gross materialism. When all capacity of producing new outward forms is not only despised, but actually destroyed, we have reached the turning-point, the point at which all established outward forms are recognised and accepted, and accepted the more gladly the more rigid they are, the closer they approach to crystallised petrifaction, the more certain it is that they only leave room for the life of vegetation. The step is taken by Novalis in a remarkable essay, Christendom in Europe, which Tieck by his erasures vainly tried to nullify, and which Friedrich Schlegel, by leaving out one most important passage, converted into a defence of Catholicism.

In this essay he writes as follows:—"These were happy, glorious days, when Europe was still a Christian continent, the home of the one, undivided Christian religion.... The wise head of the Church rightly set himself against the bold cultivation of the human mind at the cost of religious faith, and against untimely and dangerous discoveries in the domain of science. Thus he forbade the scientists to maintain openly that this earth is an insignificant planet, for he knew well that men would lose, along with their respect for their earthly home, respect for their heavenly home and their fellow-men, that they would choose limited knowledge in preference to unlimited faith, and would acquire the habit of despising everything great and wonderful, as being simply the result of lifeless law."

We could almost suppose ourselves to be listening to the sermonising of a parish-clerk of the eighteenth century. And yet we are sensible of the poet's consistency. Poetry, which led Schiller back to Greece, leads Novalis back to the Inquisition, and induces him, like Joseph de Maistre, to side with it against Galileo.

Of Protestantism he says: "This great spiritual disruption, which was accompanied by disastrous wars, was a notable proof of the harmfulness of knowledge, of culture—or at least of the temporary harmfulness of a certain degree of culture.... The schismatics separated the inseparable, divided the indivisible Church, and presumptuously dissociated themselves from the great Christian communion, in which, and through which alone, true, lasting regeneration was possible.... A religious peace was concluded, based upon principles which were as foolish as they were irreligious; for the continued existence of so-called Protestantism was equivalent to the establishment of a self-contradiction, namely, permanent revolutionary government.... Luther treated Christianity arbitrarily, mistook its spirit, and introduced a new letter, a totally new doctrine, that of the sacred and supreme authority of the Bible. This, unfortunately, meant the interference in religious matters of a perfectly foreign, entirely earthly science, namely, philology, the destructive influence of which is thenceforward unmistakable.... The popularisation of the Bible was now insisted upon, and its contemptible matter and the crude abstract sketch of a religion provided by its books had a remarkable effect in frustrating the inspiring, revealing activity of the Holy Spirit.... The Reformation was the death-blow of Christianity.... Fortunately for the Church, there came into existence at this time a new religious order, on which the expiring spirit of the hierarchy seemed to have bestowed its last gifts. This order gave new life to the old forms, and with wonderful intuition and determination set about the restoration of the Papal power. Never before in the world's history had such a society been known.... The Jesuits were well aware how much Luther owed to his demagogic arts and his knowledge of the common people.... From of old, the scholar has been the instinctive enemy of the priest; the learned and the ecclesiastical professions must carry on a war of extermination against each other so long as they are separated; for they are struggling for the same position.... To the outcome of modern thought men gave the name of philosophy; and under philosophy they comprehended everything that was hostile to the old order of things, consequently every attack upon religion. What was at first personal hatred of the Roman Catholic Church became by degrees hatred of the Bible, of the Christian faith, indeed of all religion."

We see how clearly Novalis understood that free-thought was a consequence of Protestantism. He continues:—

"Nay, more; the hatred of religion developed naturally and inevitably into a hatred of all enthusiasms, denounced imagination and feeling, morality and love of art, the past and the future, barely acknowledged man to be the highest among the animals, and reduced the creative music of the universe to the monotonous whirr of an enormous mill, driven by the stream of chance—a mill without a builder or miller, a true perpetuum mobile.... One enthusiasm was magnanimously left to mankind, enthusiasm for this glorious philosophy and its priests. France had the good fortune to be the seat of this new faith, which was patched together out of fragments of knowledge.... On account of its obedience to the laws of mathematics and its audacity, light was the idol of these men.... The history of modern unbelief is very remarkable, and is the key to all the monstrous phenomena of these later days. It only begins in this century, is little noticeable till the middle of it, and then quickly develops with incalculable force in every direction; a second, more comprehensive and more remarkable Reformation was inevitable, and of necessity came first in the country which was most modernised and had suffered longest from want of freedom.... During this anarchy religion was born again, true anarchy being its generating element.... To the reflective observer the overthrower of the state is a Sisyphus. No sooner does he reach the summit, where there is equipoise, than the mighty burden rolls down on the other side. It will never remain up there unless it is kept in position by an attraction towards heaven. All your supports are too weak as long as your state has a tendency towards the earth."