Through the barren period succeeding the Thirty Years' War some vital processes were going on; indeed that most vital of all processes, thought, was active. Broken into fragments as by an earthquake, the people had been left without one healing touch from the hands of their infatuated rulers. It was a sorry spectacle to see those German princes gayly arraying themselves in French finery while their country was a ruin. Did they not know that a wound might better not heal at all, than to begin by forming new tissue at the top!
Whatever capacity Germany had for being, was in those neglected fragments. If she ever developed into greatness it must be along the line of their elemental tendencies, and by being German, not French.
So a nation, helpless, broken, disorganized, out of harmony with itself and with others, could not act, but it could think. And in this time of chaos and confusion there commenced mighty stirrings in the thought of Germany. Slumbering in that chaos were the germs of wonderful music and a wondrous literature.
The gloomy and despondent Spinoza had found peace in discovering that the reality of things was not in political overturnings, nor in the disappointing facts and phenomena which we call life, but in the Eternal Order, of which we are all a part.
He might have discovered the same sustaining truth in religion; but Spinoza's mind led him to seek it instead in a philosophical system which should harmonize the discordant facts of existence. This was the foundation of German speculative philosophy, which took possession of the German mind and which by progressive steps was to lead to a union with a science, founded upon the despised facts of life—and finally, whether they wished it or not—a harmonizing of both with RELIGION.
With deeply philosophical mind the great German, Leibniz, was investigating the truths of the natural world; and Handel also belongs to this time of soul-awakening during a period of national neglect and depression, while at this very time there was also borne in a stimulating wave from England, where Newton had revealed the fundamental law and the "ETERNAL order" of the physical universe.
It would seem like a dim twilight to us if we should go back to it now; but then these new lights were very dazzling, almost blinding people with their splendor.
CHAPTER XII.
It was into such a world as this that Frederick the Great was ushered in 1712. Few children, be they princes or peasants, have ever had a more unhappy childhood. If he had not been born to be a King, Frederick's tastes would have led him to be a musician or a poet. A son whose chief pleasures consisted in playing the flute, and reading French books, became an object almost of aversion to the austere Frederick William. In the midst of severities past belief Frederick obtained most of his education in secret, at the hands of French émigrés, who formed his taste after French models, the influence of which could be traced throughout his life. His passion for music was pursued also in the same secret way.