The reader may have laughed at this chronometer; but every man in whom virtue is anything higher than an accidental water-sucker and wood-shoot, must be able to tell the hour wherein she became the Hamadryad of his inner being,—which the theologians call conversion and the Moravians the breaking-through. Why should not time mark off our spiritual sensations, when in fact it is only they that mark off its periods?
There is—or comes—in every man who is more solar than planetary, a lofty hour when his heart, amidst violent commotions and painful rendings, at last, by a lifting-up, suddenly turns round towards virtue, in an indescribable transition like that in which man lifts himself over from one system of faith to another, or, suddenly, from the highest point of wrath to a melting forgiveness of all faults;—that lofty hour, the birth-hour of the virtuous life, is also its sweetest hour, because it is to man as if his oppressive body were taken off from him; because he enjoys the bliss of feeling in himself no contradictions; because all his chains fall; because he fears nothing more in the awfully sublime universe.—The spectacle is great, when the angel is born in man; when, thereafter, on the horizon of earth, the whole solar warmth of virtue falls upon his heart unobstructed by a cloud.
But poor mortal man, the prisoner man, immersed in blood, encased in flesh, soon feels the difference between his raptures and his powers; he who was going to subdue the promised land, when its clusters of grapes came to meet him, hesitates, when he has to march against its giants (the passions). I do not, however, reject even the extravagance of that enthusiasm; Man, like buildings, must be screwed up into the air, in order to be rebuilt; a syllogism does not lead off the blood streams of our desires. It is singular that the devil in us must have alone the right to spend blood, nerves, beverage, passions, upon his military operations and for his imperial treasury, but the angel not....
So it is, however; men are vicious, because they look upon virtue as too hard, and they again become so, because they held it easier than it is. Not reason (i. e. conscience) makes us good: that is the outstretched wooden arm on the road to virtue; but this arm can neither draw nor drive us thither,—reason has the legislative, not the executive force. The power of loving these commandments, the still greater power of giving one's self up to them, is a second conscience by the side of the first; and as Kant cannot indicate with ink that which makes man bad, so neither can that be set forth which keeps his heart upright above moral filth or lifts it out of it.
Who can explain the fact, if there are men who, from youth up, either possess or do without a certain sense of honor,—in the female sex this line of division is still sharper and more important,—if there are men who, from youth up either experience or forever live without a certain yearning for the super-earthly, for religion, for the nobler principle in man (and for systems which seal this nobler quality instead of disputing it)?—(With children a warm feeling for religion is often a sign of genius.) Man does not become good (though he does grow better) because he is converted, but he gets converted because he is good.
Were virtue nothing but stoicism, then it were a mere child of reason, whereas it is at the highest her foster-daughter. Stoicism represents virtue as so useful, so reasonable, that it is nothing more than a conclusion; it gives one nothing to conquer but errors. As (according to the stoical principle) it is, not the highest, but the only good,—as, according to that principle, all desires aim at an empty nothing—it follows that virtue is no merit, but a necessity. E. g. if there is nothing odious: then love and the victory over anger towards an enemy are not harder or more meritorious than towards a friend, but all one.
What then has the Stoic to sacrifice to Virtue according to his notion, but mock-goods, air-castles, and fever-images? Nevertheless Stoicism renders Virtue, as criticism does genius, negative services; the stoical chill calls forth no spring, but it destroys the insects which gnaw it; the stoical winter, like the physical, removes the pestilence, ere the warmer months come, which bring new life....
Although Victor said: "Thou dear one, no heart can be pure, still, tender, and great enough for thine, but the weak one which thou endurest will sanctify itself through thine and come to thee improved"; still mere love was not the source of his virtue, but the reverse was the case, only virtue could manifest itself by such a love. But even without taking that into account, a half-selfish change of purpose becomes by action a disinterested one, as the love which starts from beauty of face ennobles itself at last into love for beauty of soul.
His separation from Clotilda gave him joy in the thought that so long as it lasted he should spare the delusions of her jealous brother. General love now led the way to friendship for the better sort of women, and tolerance toward the worse. He annulled his satirical intolerance—which, however, was not half so great as that of young wags of authors—by toleration-mandates of his own. He read Gulliver's last journey into Horse-land (Houynheim), as a recipe against lying when one goes to court. His Kubach[[52]] and jewel-casket and his collegium pietatis consisted of three dissimilar volumes,—Kant, Jacobi, and Epictetus.
I could wish, however, that he would not make himself ridiculous. Of a man who had been nine months at court, one was surely justified in expecting that he would behave differently, and not offend against that equality of ranks and of vices; as men practise sins best in common, as in Swiss churches the hearers must cough simultaneously, or as recruits on their march must make water at the same time. At least, the well-bred man seeks to conceal his love for his religion, as well as that for his wife.—I return to the story.