Our physical as well as our social life, manners, customs, worldly wisdom, philosophy, religion, and many an accidental event, all call upon us, to deny ourselves. Much that is most inwardly peculiar to us we are not allowed to develope; much that we need from without for the completion of our character is withheld; while, on the other hand, so much is forced upon us which is as alien to us as it is burdensome. We are robbed of all that we have laboriously acquired for ourselves, or friendly circumstances have bestowed upon us; and before we can see clearly what we are, we find ourselves compelled to part with our personality, piece by piece, till at last it is gone altogether. Indeed, the case is so universal that it seems a law of society to despise a man who shows himself surly on that account. On the contrary, the bitterer the cup we have to drink, the more pleasant face must one make, in order that composed lookers on may not be offended by the least grimace.
To solve this painful problem, however, nature has endowed man with ample power, activity, and endurance. But especially is he aided therein by his volatility (Leichtsinn), a boon to man, which nothing can take away. By its means he is able to renounce the cherished object of the moment, if only the next presents him something new to reach at; and thus he goes on unconsciously, remodelling his whole life. We are continually putting one passion in the place of another; employments, inclinations, tastes, hobbies—we try them all, only to exclaim at last, All is vanity. No one is shocked by this false and murmuring speech; nay, every one thinks, while he says it, that he is uttering a wise and indisputable maxim. A few men there are, and only a few, who anticipate this insupportable feeling, and avoid all calls to such partial resignation by one grand act of total self-renunciation.
Such men convince themselves of the Eternal, the Necessary, and of Immutable Law, and seek to form to themselves ideas which are incorruptible, nay which observation of the Perishable does not shake, but rather confirms. But since in this there is something superhuman, such persons are commonly esteemed in-human, without a God and without a World. People hardly know what sort of horns and claws to give them.
My confidence in Spinoza rested on the serene effect he wrought in me, and it only increased when I found my worthy mystics were accused of Spinozism, and learned that even Leibnitz himself could not escape the charge; nay, that Boerhaave, being suspected of similar sentiments, had to abandon Theology for Medicine.
But let no one think that I would have subscribed to his writings, and assented to them verbatim et literatim. For, that no one really understands another; that no one attaches the same idea to the same word which another does; that a dialogue, a book, excites in different persons different trains of thought:—this I had long seen all too plainly; and the reader will trust the assertion of the author of Faust and Werther, that deeply experienced in such misunderstandings, he was never so presumptuous as to think that he understood perfectly a man, who, as the scholar of Descartes, raised himself, through mathematical and rabbinical studies, to the highest reach of thought; and whose name even at this day seems to mark the limit of all speculative efforts.
How much I appropriated from Spinoza, would be seen distinctly enough, if the visit of the "Wandering Jew," to Spinoza, which I had devised as a worthy ingredient for that poem, existed in writing. But it pleased me so much in the conception, and I found so much delight in meditating on it in silence, that I never could bring myself to the point of writing it out. Thus the notion, which would have been well enough as a passing joke, expanded itself until it lost its charm, and I banished it from my mind as something troublesome. The chief points, however, of what I owed to my study of Spinoza, so far as they have remained indelibly impressed on my mind, and have exercised a great influence on the subsequent course of my life, I will now unfold as briefly and succinctly as possible.
Influence of Spinoza.
Nature works after such eternal, necessary, dime laws, that the Deity himself could alter nothing in them. In this belief, all men are unconsciously agreed. Think only how a natural phenomenon, which should intimate any degree of understanding, reason, or even of caprice, would instantly astonish and terrify us.
If anything like reason shows itself in brutes, it is long before we can recover from our amazement; for, although they stand so near to us, they nevertheless seem to be divided from us by an infinite gulf, and to belong altogether to the kingdom of necessity. It is therefore impossible to take it ill if some thinkers have pronounced the infinitely ingenious, but strictly limited, organisation of those creatures, to be thoroughly mechanical.
If we turn to plants, our position is still more strikingly confirmed. How unaccountable is the feeling which seizes an observer upon seeing the Mimosa, as soon as it is touched, fold together in pairs its downy leaves, and finally clap down its little stalk as if upon a joint (Gewerbe). Still higher rises that feeling, to which I will give no name, at the sight of the Hedysarum Gyrans, which without any apparent outward occasion moves up and down its little leaves, and seems to play with itself as with our thoughts. Let us imagine a Banana, suddenly endowed with a similar capacity, so that of itself it could by turns let down and lift up again its huge leafy canopy; who would not, upon seeing it the first time, start back in terror? So rooted within us is the idea of our own superiority, that we absolutely refuse to concede to the outward world any part or portion in it; nay, if we could, we would too often withhold such advantages from our fellows.