I return to that which I properly meant by this whole episode. I have conceived the idea, namely, of not only announcing my intention to give the extra leaflets and side-shoots wherewith the Intercalary Days are to be filled up, in alphabetical order,—for disorder is the death of me,—but also to make a beginning here on the spot, and continue as far as the letter I.
INTERCALARY—AND SIDE-SHOOTS, ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED.
A.
Age of Women.—Lombardus (L. 4. Sent. dist. 4) and Saint Augustin (l. 22. de Civit. c. 15) prove that we all rise from the dead at that age at which Christ rose, namely, in the thirty-second year and third month. Accordingly, as in the whole of heaven there is no quadragenarian to be found, a child will be as old there as Nestor, namely, thirty-two years and three months. Knowing this, any one will highly esteem the fine modesty of women, who after the thirtieth year give themselves out (like relics) to be older than they are; for it would be enough, if a quadragenarian, or one of eight-and-forty years, should make herself out as old as good Rhine wine, or, at most, as old as Methuselah; but she thinks it is being more modest, if she ascribes to herself at once, however much her face contradicts it, the extreme old age which she can have only when her face has lain some thousands of years in the earth, namely, thirty-two years and three months. The merest dunce can see that she means only her future resurrection-age, and not any earthly age,—because she does not deviate from that standing year, which in eternity, indeed, when no human being can grow an hour older, is a matter of course. This unity of time they introduce into the Intrigue drama of their life already in the thirtieth year, for the reason that after that time in Paris no woman can any longer dance in public, and (according to Helvetius) no genius can any longer write in a masterly style. This last fact they perhaps took into account in old times in Jerusalem, where any one after his thirtieth year, but no sooner, could get an office as teacher.
B.
Basedow's School System.—Basedow proposes in his Philalethia to hedge up thirty uneducated children in a garden, to leave them to their own development, and to assign them only mute attendants, who should not even wear human clothing, and then to publish in a protocol the results of the experiment. Philosophers are so preoccupied with possibility that they do not see reality; otherwise Basedow must have observed that our country-schools are just such gardens, in which Philosophy would try the experiment of what will at last come of human creatures, if they are absolutely deprived of all culture. I confess, however, that all these attempts must continue uncertain and imperfect so long as the schoolmasters cannot refrain from imparting to these little probationers some instruction, though it were the least possible; and the thing would work better with wholly dumb teachers, as there are deaf and dumb pupils.
C (vide K).
D.
Divine Poet.—The Poet, although he paints the passions, nevertheless will hit them best at that period of life when his own, have slackened,—just as convex mirrors, precisely in those summers when the sun burned the faintest, have acted the most intensely, and in the hot ones the least so. The flowers of poesy are like other flowers, which (according to Ingenhouse) thrive best in a dim, hazy sunlight.