The boundless freedom, nay, audacity, of speculative thought indulged by the Germans is stimulantly contrasted with their strangely contented subserviency (which then was) in more material matters. The sentence we italicize below was canceled by Napoleon’s censors, before their master took the shorter method of canceling the book:
The enlightened men of Germany dispute vehemently among themselves the dominion of speculations, and will suffer no shackles in this department; but they give up, without difficulty, all that is real in life to the powerful of the earth. This real in life, so disdained by them, finds, however, those who make themselves possessors of it, and these, in the end, carry trouble and constraint even into the empire of the imagination.
The following passage concerning Voltaire and a particular production of his pen is one of the most trenchantly critical expressions that the reader would find in the whole course of the “Germany.” The German name of Leibnitz occurring in it will suggest the association of contrast by which such a criticism of a Frenchman found its way into a book treating of things German. Leibnitz had propounded a metaphysical theory of universal optimism, which—like all philosophic hypotheses, even those apparently least practical, let them once become widely entertained—was having its influence on national thought and national character. With Voltaire’s “Candide” the readers of this volume will already have acquired sufficient acquaintance to make Madame de Stael’s remarks upon it here presented additionally interesting:
Voltaire so well perceived the influence that metaphysics exercise over the general bias of men’s minds that to combat Leibnitz he wrote Candide. He took up a curious whim against final causes, optimism, free will, in short, against all the philosophical opinions that exalt the dignity of man; and he composed Candide, that work of a diabolical gayety, for it appears to be written by a being of a different nature from ourselves, insensible to our condition, well pleased with our sufferings, and laughing like a demon or an ape at the miseries of that human species with which he has nothing in common....
Candide brings into action that scoffing philosophy, so indulgent in appearance, in reality so ferocious; it presents human nature under the most lamentable point of view, and offers us, in the room of every consolation, the sardonic grin which frees us from all compassion for others by making us renounce it for ourselves.
When Madame de Stael comes in due course to speak of the masterpiece of Goethe, his “Faust,” she prepares her French readers to be shocked with a first disappointment. She says:
Certainly we must not expect to find in it either taste, or measure, or the art that selects and terminates, but if the imagination could figure to itself an intellectual chaos, such as the material chaos has often been described, the Faust of Goethe should in propriety have been composed at that epoch.... The drama of Faust certainly is not a good model. Whether it be considered as an offspring of the delirium of the mind, or of the satiety of reason, it is to be wished that such productions may not be multiplied; but when such a genius as that of Goethe sets itself free from all restrictions the crowd of thoughts is so great that on every side they break through and trample down the barriers of art.
We close our series of extracts by giving what this most brilliant among the French women that have been at the same time great talkers and great writers found to say of that high art of conversation in which her countrymen surpass the world and in which she surpassed her countrymen:
The bon-mots of the French have been quoted from one end of Europe to the other. Always they have displayed the brilliancy of their merit and solaced their griefs in a lively and agreeable manner; always they have stood in need of one another, as listeners taking turns in mutual encouragement; always they have excelled in the art of knowing under what circumstances to speak, and even under what circumstances to keep still, when any commanding interest triumphs over their natural liveliness; always they have possessed the talent of living a quick life, of cutting short long discourses, of giving way to their successors who are desirous of speaking in their turn; always, in short, they have known how to take from thought and feeling no more than is necessary to animate conversation without overstaking the feeble interest which men generally feel for one another.