After the cure had lasted longer than was reasonable, Lobstein had begun to hesitate, and to repeat himself in his treatment, so that the affair would not come to an end; and Peglow, too, had confided to me in private that a favourable issue was hardly to be expected; the whole position became gloomy; Herder became impatient and out of temper, he could not succeed in continuing his activity as heretofore, and was obliged to restrain himself the more, as they began to lay the blame of the surgical failure upon his too great mental exertion, and his uninterrupted, animated, nay, merry intercourse with us. It is sufficient to say, that after so much trouble and suffering, the artificial tear-channel would not form itself, and the communication intended would not take place. It was necessary to let the wound heal over in order that the disease should not become worse. If, now, during the operation, one could but admire Herder's firmness under such pains, his melancholy and even fierce resignation to the idea that he must bear such a blot about him all his life, had about it something truly sublime, by which he gained for ever the reverence of those who saw and loved him. This disease, which disfigured so expressive a countenance, must have been so much the more afflicting to him, as he had become acquainted with an excellent lady in Darmstadt, and had gained her affections. It may have been for this cause principally that he submitted to the cure, in order, on his return, to appear more free, more cheerful, and more handsome in the eyes of his half-betrothed, and to unite himself more certainly and indissolubly with her. However, he hastened away from Strasburg as soon as possible, and since his stay had hitherto been as expensive as it was unpleasant, I borrowed a sum of money for him, which he promised to refund by an appointed day. The time passed without the arrival of the money. My creditor, indeed, did not dun me; but I was for several weeks in embarrassment. At last the letter and the money came, and even here he did not act unlike himself; for, instead of thanks or an apology, his letter contained nothing but satirical things in doggerel verse, which would have puzzled, if not alienated, another; but it did not move me at all, for I had conceived so great and powerful an idea of his worth that it absorbed everything of an opposite nature which could have injured it.
One should never speak, publicly at least, of one's own faults, or those of others, if one does not hope to effect some useful purpose by it; on this account I will here insert certain remarks which force themselves upon me.
Gratitude and ingratitude belong to those events which appear every moment in the moral world, and about which men can never agree among themselves. I usually distinguish between non-thankfulness, ingratitude, and aversion from gratitude. The first is innate with men, nay, created with them; for it arises from a happy volatile forgetfulness of the repulsive as well as of the delightful, by which alone the continuation of life is possible. Man needs such an infinite quantity of previous and concurrent assistances for a tolerable existence, that if he would always pay to the sun and the earth, to God and nature, to ancestors and parents, to friends and companions, the thanks due to them, he would have neither time nor feeling left to receive and enjoy new benefits. But if the natural man suffers this volatility to get the control in and over him, a cold indifference gains more and more the ascendancy, and one at last regards one's benefactor as a stranger, to whose injury, perhaps, anything may be undertaken, provided it be advantageous to ourselves. This alone can properly be called ingratitude, which results from the rudeness into which the uncultivated nature must necessarily lose itself at last. Aversion from gratitude, however, the rewarding of a benefit by ill-natured and sullen conduct, is very rare, and occurs only in eminent men, such as, with great natural gifts, and a presentiment of them, being born in a lower rank of society or in a helpless condition, must, from their youth upwards, force themselves along, step by step, and receive, at every point, aids and supports, which are often embittered and repulsive to them through the coarseness of their benefactors, since that which they receive is earthly, while that which, on the other hand, they give, is of a higher kind, so that what is, strictly speaking, a compensation, is out of the question. Lessing, with the fine knowledge of earthly things which fell to his share in the best years of his life, has in one place bluntly, but cheerfully expressed himself. Herder, on the contrary, constantly embittered his finest days, both for himself and others, because he knew not how to moderate, by strength of mind in later years, that ill-humour which had necessarily seized him in youth.
Artificial Gratitude.
One may well make this demand of oneself: for, to a man's capability of cultivation, comes, with friendly aid, the light of nature, which is always active in enlightening him about his condition; and generally, in many moral points of culture, one should not construe the failings too severely, nor look about after the most serious and remote means of correcting them; for certain faults may be easily and even playfully removed. Thus, for instance, by mere habit, we can excite gratitude in ourselves, keep it alive, and even make it necessary to us.
In a biographical attempt, it is proper to speak of oneself. I am, by nature, as little grateful as any man, and on forgetting the benefit received, the violent feeling of a momentary disagreement could very easily beguile me into ingratitude.
To obviate this, I accustomed myself, in the first place, with everything that I possessed, to call to mind with pleasure how I came by it, from whom I received it, whether it was by way of present, exchange, or purchase, or in any other manner. I have accustomed myself, in showing my collections, to mention the persons by whose means I obtained each article, nay, even to do justice to the occasion, to the accident, to the remotest cause and coincidence, by which things which are dear and of value to me have become mine. That which surrounds us thus receives a life; we see in it a spiritual combination, full of love, reminding us of its origin; and, by thus making past circumstances present to us, our momentary existence is elevated and enriched, the originators of the gifts rise repeatedly before the imagination, we connect with their image a pleasing remembrance, ingratitude becomes impossible, and a return, on occasion, becomes easy and desirable. At the same time, we are led to the consideration of that which is not a possession palpable to the senses, and we love to recapitulate to whom our higher endowments are to be ascribed, and whence they take their date.
Before I turn my attention from that connexion with Herder, which was so important and so rich in consequences for me, I find yet something more to adduce. Nothing was more natural than that I should by degrees become more and more reserved towards Herder, in communicating those things which had hitherto contributed to my culture, but especially such as still seriously occupied my attention at the moment. He had destroyed my enjoyment of so much that I had loved before, and had especially blamed me in the strongest manner for the pleasure I took in Ovid's Metamorphoses. I might defend my favourite as I would, I might say that, for a youthful fancy, nothing could be more delightful than to linger in those cheerful and glorious regions with gods and demi-gods, and to be a witness of their deeds and passions; I might circumstantially quote that previously mentioned opinion of a sober-minded man, and corroborate it by my own experience; all this, according to Herder, went for nothing; there was no immediate truth, properly so called, to be found in these poems; here was neither Greece nor Italy, neither a primitive world nor a cultivated one, everything was rather an imitation of what had already existed, and a mannerised representation, such as could be expected only from an over-cultivated man. And if at last I would maintain, that whatever an eminent individual produces is also nature, and that always, in all nations, ancient and modern, the poet alone has been the maker; this was not allowed to pass, and I had to endure much on this account, nay, I was almost disgusted with my Ovid by it; for there is no affection, no habit so strong, that it can hold out in the long run against the animadversions of eminent men in whom one places confidence. Something always cleaves to us, and if one cannot love unconditionally, love is already in a critical condition.
