But how could the reader fail to hit upon still weightier reasons,[[143]]—1. General love, and 2. Victor's maternal marks?
1. General love is too little understood. There is as yet no description of it extant but mine,—namely, in our days, reading-cabinets, dancing-halls, concert-halls, vineyards, coffee-tables, and tea-tables are the forcing-houses of our hearts and the wire-mills of our nerves; the former are too big, the latter too fine. Now when, in these marriage-seeking and marriageless times, a young man, who still watches like a Jew for his female Messiah, and still is without the highest object of the heart, accidentally reads with a dancing-partner, with a lady member of his club, or an associée, or sister in office, or other collaboratress, a hundred pages in the "Elective Affinities" or in the Dog-post-days,—or exchanges from three to four letters with her upon the culture of silk or clover, or on Kant's Prolegomena,—or scrapes the powder from her forehead some five times with the powder-knife,—or with her, and by her side, ties up the intensely fragrant kidney-beans,—or actually at the ghostly hour (which becomes full as often the sentimental hour) quarrels with her on the first principle of morals;—then is this much certain,—that the aforesaid youth (provided refinement, feeling, and reflection hold a mutual balance within him) must needs behave a little madly, and feel towards the aforesaid collaboratress (that is, if she does not by some higglings of head or heart offend against his feelers) something which is too warm for friendship and too unripe for love,—which borders on the former, because it includes several objects, and on the latter, because of this it dies. And this is, in fact, neither more nor less than my general love, which I have otherwise called simultaneous and Tutti-[[144]]love. Examples are odious; else I would adduce mine. This universal love is a glove without fingers (or mitten), into which, because no partitions separate the four fingers, any hand easily slips; into the partial love, or the glove proper, only a single and particular hand can squeeze itself. As I was the first to discover this fact and island, I can give it the name wherewith others will have to name and call it. It shall be christened henceforward collective or simultaneous love, though I might also, if I and Kolbe chose, let it be named preluding love,—confederate-tenderness,—general warmth,—the fidelity of adopted childhood.
To please the theologians and humor their fiddle-faddle about final causes, I throw in here the following fixed principle: I should like to see the man who, without this general love, could in our times, when paired love is, by the demands of a greater metallic and moral capital, made more rare, hold out three years.
2. The second cause of Victor's so easily falling in love with women was his maternal mark,—i. e. a resemblance to his own and every mother. Besides, he asserted that his ideas had exactly the pace—that is, the leap—of woman's, and that he had, in fact, a great deal of woman in him; at least, women resemble him in this,—that their love springs up through talking and intercourse. Their love, it may safely be said, has not much oftener begun than ended in hatred and coldness. An imposed and hated bridegroom makes often a loved husband. "I will," he used to say in Hanover, "get into her heart's ears, if not into her heart. Could Nature, then, have built into the female bosom two such spacious heart-chambers—one can turn round therein—and two such neat heart's-alcoves—the heart's treasure-bag I have not yet touched upon—merely for this purpose, that a man's soul should hire these four apartments all alone without a mother's son beside, as a female soul inhabits the four cerebral chambers of the head's female suite? Quite impossible! and in fact they do no such thing: but (but whoever is afraid of immoderate wit, let him now step out of my track) in the two wings of this rotunda and in the side-buildings everything takes up its quarters that goes in, i. e. more than comes out—as in a toll-house or pigeon-house there is a constant coming and going—one cannot count, if one is there to see—it is a beautiful temple in which there is right of thoroughfare.—Such regard not the few who so shut themselves up as to give the chief box of the heart to only a single lover, and merely the two side boxes to a thousand friends."
Nevertheless Jean Paul never could succeed—though there might be ever so much surplus room—even so far as to get into the heart's ears, which, to be sure, is the very least thing. Because his face looks too meagre, his complexion too sallow, his head is much fuller than his pocket, and his income that of a titular-mining-superintendency: so they quarter the good rogue merely in the coldest place away up under the eaves of the head not far from the hair-pins,[[145]]—and there he is still sitting now and laughing out (in writing) his Eleventh Chapter....
[12. DOG-POST-DAY.]
Polar Fantasies.—The singular Isle of Union.—One more Bit from previous History.—The Stettin-Apple as Coat-of-Arms.
We are living now in the dark middle-ages of this Biography, and reading on toward the enlightened eighteenth century or Dog's-day. Still, even in this twelfth, as in the night before a fair day, great sparks fly. "Spitz," said I, "eat me out of what thou wilt, only enlighten the world."
Sebastian hastened on Saturday with joyful soul under an overclouded heaven to the island of Union. He could arrive there, if he did not delay, before the cloudiness was absorbed. Under a blue heaven, like Schickaneder[[146]] he brought out the Tragedies, but under an ashen-gray one the comedies, of his inner man. When it rained, he absolutely laughed out. Rousseau built up in his brain an emotional stage, because he cared neither to go out of the coulisse nor into a box of actual life; but Victor had in his pay between the bony walls of his head a comic theatre of the Germans, merely for the sake of not ridiculing actual men; his humor was as ideal as the virtue and sensibility of other people. In this mood he delivered (like a ventriloquist) purely internal discourses to all Potentates;—he posted himself on the bench of Knights with church-visitation-discourses,—on the bench of the cities with funeral-discourses,—in the Papal chair he held forth in straw-wreath[[147]]-discourses to the virgin Europe and the Ecclesiastical bride. The potentates had all, to answer him again, but one may imagine how—when he, like a minister from his prompter's hole put everything into their mouths;—and then, to be sure, he went his way and made fun of every one of them.