Recollections of My Childhood and Youth Part 10

XIX.

With Pantheism likewise I was on my guard against its being lack of courage, rather than a conviction of its untruth, which held me back from embracing it. I thought it a true postulate that everything seemed permeated and sustained by a Reason that had not human aims in front of it and did not work by human means, a Divine Reason. Nature could only be understood from its highest forms; the Ideal, which revealed itself to the world of men at their highest development, was present, in possibility and intent, in the first germ, in the mist of primeval creation, before it divided itself into organic and inorganic elements.

The whole of Nature was in its essence Divine, and I felt myself at heart a wors.h.i.+pper of Nature.

But this same Nature was indifferent to the weal or woe of humans. It obeyed its own laws regardless of whether men were lost thereby; it seemed cruel in its callousness; it took care that the species should be preserved, but the individual was nothing to it.

Now, like all other European children, I had been brought up in the theory of personal immortality, a theory which, amongst other things, is one way of expressing the immense importance, the eternal importance, which is attributed to each individual. The stronger the feeling of his own _ego_ that the individual has, the more eagerly he necessarily clings to the belief that he cannot be annihilated. But to none could the belief be more precious than to a youth who felt his life pulsate within, as if he had twenty lives in himself and twenty more to live. It was impossible to me to realise that I could die, and one evening, about a year later, I astonished my master, Professor Brochner, by confessing as much. "Indeed," said Brochner, "are you speaking seriously? You cannot realise that you will have to die one day? How young! You are very different from me, who always have death before my eyes."

But although my vitality was so strong that I could not imagine my own death, I knew well enough that my terrestrial life, like all other men's, would come to an end. But I felt all the more strongly that it was impossible everything could be at an end then; death could not be a termination; it could only, as the religions preached and as eighteenth- century Deism taught, be a moment of transition to a new and fuller existence. In reward and punishment after death I could not believe; those were mediaeval conceptions that I had long outgrown. But the dream of immortality I could not let go. And I endeavoured to hold it fast by virtue of the doctrine of the impossibility of anything disappearing.

The quant.i.ty of matter always remained the same; energy survived every transformation.

Still, I realised that this could not satisfy one, as far as the form which we term individuality was concerned. What satisfaction was it to Alexander that his dust should stop a bung-hole? or to Shakespeare that Romeo and Juliet were acted in Chicago? So I took refuge in parallels and images. Who could tell whether the soul, which on earth had been blind to the nature of the other life, did not, in death, undergo the operation which opened its eyes? Who could tell whether death were not, as Sibbern had suggested, to be compared with a birth? Just as the unborn life in its mother's womb would, if it were conscious, believe that the revolution of birth meant annihilation, whereas it was for the first time awakening to a new and infinitely richer life, so it was perhaps for the soul in the dreaded moment of death....

But when I placed before my master these comparisons and the hopes I built upon them, they were swept away as meaningless; he pointed out simply that nothing went to prove a continuation of personality after death, while on the contrary everything argued against it,--and to this I could not refuse my a.s.sent.

Then I understood that in what I called Pantheism, the immortality of the individual had no place. And a slow, internal struggle commenced for renunciation of the importance and value of the individual. I had many a conversation on this point with my teacher, a man tired of life and thoroughly resigned.

He always maintained that the desire of the individual for a continuation of personality was nothing but the outcome of vanity. He would very often put the question in a comical light. He related the following anecdote: In summer evenings he used to go for a walk along the Philosopher's Avenue (now West Rampart Street). Here he had frequently met, sitting on their benches, four or five old gentlemen who took their evening ramble at the same time; by degrees they made each other's acquaintance and got into conversation with one another. It turned out that the old gentlemen were candle-makers who had retired from business and now had considerable difficulty in pa.s.sing their time away. In reality they were always bored, and they yawned incessantly.

These men had one theme only, to which they always recurred with enthusiasm--their hope in personal immortality for all eternity. And it amused Brochner that they, who in this life did not know how to kill so much as one Sunday evening, should be so pa.s.sionately anxious to have a whole eternity to fill up. His pupil then caught a glimpse himself of the grotesqueness of wis.h.i.+ng to endure for millions of centuries, which time even then was nothing in comparison with eternity.

XX.

But in spite of it all, it was a hard saying, that in the pantheistic view of life the absorption of the individual into the great whole took the place of the continued personal existence which was desired by the _ego_. But what frightened me even more was that the divine All was not to be moved or diverted by prayer. But pray I had to. From my earliest childhood I had been accustomed, in anxiety or necessity, to turn my thoughts towards a Higher Power, first forming my needs and wishes into words, and then later, without words, concentrating myself in wors.h.i.+p. It was a need inherited from many hundreds of generations of forefathers, this need of invoking help and comfort. Nomads of the plains, Bedouins of the desert, ironclad warriors, pious priests, roving sailors, travelling merchants, the citizen of the town and the peasant in the country, all had prayed for centuries, and from the very dawn of time; the women, the hundreds and hundreds of women from whom I was descended, had centred all their being in prayer. It was terrible, never to be able to pray again.... Never to be able to fold one's hands, never to raise one's eyes above, but to live, shut in overhead, alone in the universe!

If there were no eye in Heaven that watched over the individual, no ear that understood his plaint, no hand that protected him in danger, then he was placed, as it were, on a desolate steppe where the wolves were howling.

And in alarm I tried once more the path towards religious quietude that I had recently deemed impracticable,--until the fight within me calmed again, and in renunciation I forced my emotion to bow to what my reason had acknowledged as the Truth.

ADOLESCENCE

Julius Lange--A New Master--Inadaption to the Law--The University Prize Compet.i.tion--An Interview with the Judges--Meeting of Scandinavian Students--The Paludan-Mullers--Bjornstjerne Bjornson--Magdalene Th.o.r.esen--The Gold Medal--The Death of King Frederik VII--The Political Situation--My Master of Arts Examination--War--_Admissus c.u.m laude praecipua_--Academical Attention--Lecturing--Music--Nature--A Walking Tour--In Print--Philosophical Life in Denmark--Death of Ludwig David-- Stockholm.

I.

Among my many good comrades, there was one, Julius Lange, with whom comrades.h.i.+p had developed into friends.h.i.+p, and this friends.h.i.+p again a.s.sumed a pa.s.sionate character. We were the two, who, of them all, were most exactly suited to one another, completed one another. Fundamentally different though we were, we could always teach each other something. We grew indispensable to one another; for years there seldom a day went by that we did not meet. The a.s.sociation with his junior cannot possibly have given Julius Lange a delight corresponding to that which his society gave me. Intellectually equal, we were of temperaments diametrically opposed. Having the same love of Art and the same enthusiasm for Art,--save that the one cared more for its pictorial and the other for its literary expression,--we were of mutual a.s.sistance to one another in the interchange of thoughts and information. Entirely at variance in our att.i.tude towards religious tradition, in our frequent collisions we were both perpetually being challenged to a critical inspection of our intellectual furniture. But I was the one who did the wors.h.i.+pping.

When Julius Lange, on December 17, 1861, after having twice been to see me and found me out, the third time met with me and informed me: "I have received an invitation to go to Italy on Sat.u.r.day and be away five months," was, though surprised, exceedingly glad for my friend's sake, but at the same time I felt as if I had received a blow in the face.

What would become of me, not only during the interval, but afterwards?

Who could say whether Lange would ever come back, or whether he would not come back changed? How should I be able to endure my life! I should have to work tremendously hard, to be able to bear the loss of him. I could hardly understand how I should be able to exist when I could no longer, evening after evening, slip up to my friend's little room to sit there in calm, quiet contentment, seeing pictures and exchanging thoughts! It was as though a nerve had been cut. I only then realised that I had never loved any man so much. I had had four eyes; now I had only two again; I had had two brains; now I had only one; in my heart I had felt the happiness of two human beings; now only the melancholy of one was left behind.

There was not a painting, a drawing, a statue or a bas-relief in the galleries and museums of Copenhagen that we had not studied together and compared our impressions of. We had been to Thorwaldsen's Museum together, we went together to Bissen's studio, where in November, 1861, I met for the first time my subsequent friends, Vilhelm Bissen and Walter Runeberg. The memory of Julius Lange was a.s.sociated in my mind with every picture of Hobbema, Dubbels or Ruysdael, Rembrandt or Rubens, every reproduction of Italian Renaissance art, every photograph of church or castle. And I myself loved pictures even more ardently than poetry. I was fond of comparing my relations with literature to affection for a being of the same s.e.x; my pa.s.sion for pictures to the stormy pa.s.sion of a youth for a woman. It is true that I knew much less about Art than about Poetry, but that made no difference. I wors.h.i.+pped my favourite artists with a more impetuous enthusiasm than any of my favourite authors. And this affection for pictures and statuary was a link between my friend and myself. When we were sitting in my room together, and another visitor happened to be there, I positively suffered over the sacrifice of an hour's enjoyment and when Lange got up to go, I felt as though a window had been slammed to, and the fresh air shut out.

II.

I had for a long time pursued my non-juridic studies as well as I could without the a.s.sistance of a teacher. But I had felt the want of one. And when a newly appointed docent at the University, Professor H. Brochner, offered instruction in the study of Philosophy to any who cared to present themselves at his house at certain hours, I had felt strongly tempted to take advantage of his offer. I hesitated for some time, for I was unwilling to give up the least portion of my precious freedom; I enjoyed my retirement, the mystery of my modest life of study, but on the other hand I could not grapple with Plato and Aristotle without the hints of a competent guide as to the why and wherefore.

I was greatly excited. I had heard Professor Brochner speak on Psychology, but his diction was handled with such painful care, was so monotonous and sounded so strange, that it could not fail to alarm. It was only the professor's distinguished and handsome face that attracted me, and in particular his large, sorrowful eyes, with their beautiful expression, in which one read a life of deep research--and tears. Now, I determined to venture up to Brochner. But I had not the courage to mention it to my mother beforehand, for fear speaking of it should frighten me from my resolution, so uneasy did I feel about the step I was taking. When the day which I had fixed upon for the attempt arrived --it was the 2nd of September, 1861,--I walked up and down in front of the house several times before I could make up my mind to go upstairs; I tried to calculate beforehand what the professor would say, and what it would be best for me to reply, interminably.

The tall, handsome man with the appearance of a Spanish knight, opened the door himself and received the young fellow who was soon to become his most intimate pupil, very kindly. To my amazement, as soon as he heard my name, he knew which school I had come from and also that I had recently become a student. He vigorously dissuaded me from going through a course of Plato and Aristotle, saying it would be too great a strain-- said, or implied, that I should be spared the difficult path he had himself traversed, and sketched out a plan of study of more modern Philosophy and Aesthetics. His manner inspired confidence and left behind it the main impression that he wished to save the beginner all useless exertion. All the same, with my youthful energy, I felt, as I went home, a shade disappointed that I was not to begin the History of Philosophy from the beginning.

My visit was soon repeated, and a most affectionate intimacy quickly sprang up between master and pupil, revealed on the side of the elder, in an att.i.tude of fatherly goodwill to which the younger had hitherto been a stranger, the teacher, while instructing his pupil and giving him practical guidance, constantly keeping in view all that could further his well-being and a.s.sist his future; my att.i.tude was one of reverence and affection, and of profound grat.i.tude for the care of which I was the object.

I certainly, sometimes, in face of my master's great thoroughness and his skill in wrestling with the most difficult thoughts, felt a painful distrust of my own capacity and of my own intellectual powers, compared with his. I was also not infrequently vexed by a discordant note, as it were, being struck in our intercourse, when Brochner, despite the doubts and objections I brought forward, always took it for granted that I shared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was still tossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But the confidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had an attraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfully prejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of a lifetime behind him, he looked down from superior heights on the sympathies and antipathies of a young man.

To me, for instance, Ploug's _The Fatherland_ was at that time Denmark's most intellectual organ, whereas Bille's _Daily Paper_ disgusted me, more particularly on account of the superficiality and the tone of finality which distinguished its literary criticisms. Brochner, who, with not unmixed benevolence, and without making any special distinction between the two, looked down on both these papers of the educated mediocrity, saw in his young pupil's bitterness against the trivial but useful little daily, only an indication of the quality of his mind. Brochner's mere manner, as he remarked one day with a smile, "You do not read _The Daily Paper_ on principle," made me perceive in a flash the comicality of my indignation over such articles as it contained. My horizon was still sufficiently circ.u.mscribed for me to suppose that the state of affairs in Copenhagen was, in and of itself, of importance. I myself regarded my horizon as wide. One day, when making a mental valuation of myself, I wrote, with the navete of nineteen, "My good qualities, those which will const.i.tute my personality, if I ever become of any account, are a mighty and ardent enthusiasm, a thorough authority in the service of Truth, _a wide horizon_ and philosophically trained thinking powers. These must make up for my lack of humour and facility."

It was only several years after the beginning of our acquaintance that I felt myself in essential agreement with Hans Brochner. I had been enraptured by a study of Ludwig Feuerbach's books, for Feuerbach was the first thinker in whose writings I found the origin of the idea of G.o.d in the human mind satisfactorily explained. In Feuerbach, too, I found a presentment of ideas without circ.u.mlocution and without the usual heavy formulas of German philosophy, a conquering clarity, which had a very salutary effect on my own way of thinking and gave me a feeling of security. If for many years I had been feeling myself more conservative than my friend and master, there now came a time when in many ways I felt myself to be more liberal than he, with his mysterious life in the eternal realm of mind of which he felt himself to be a link.

III.

I had not been studying Jurisprudence much more than a year before it began to weigh very heavily upon me. The mere sight of the long rows of _Schou's Ordinances_, which filled the whole of the back of my writing-table, were a daily source of vexation. I often felt that I should not be happy until the Ordinances were swept from my table. And the lectures were always so dreary that they positively made me think of suicide--and I so thirsty of life!--as a final means of escape from the torment of them. I felt myself so little adapted to the Law that I wasted my time with Hamlet-like cogitations as to how I could give up the study without provoking my parents' displeasure, and without stripping myself of all prospects for the future. And for quite a year these broodings grew, till they became a perfect nightmare to me.

I had taken a great deal of work upon myself; I gave lessons every day, that I might have a little money coming in, took lessons myself in several subjects, and not infrequently plunged into philosophical works of the past, that were too difficult for me, such as the princ.i.p.al works of Kant. Consequently when I was nineteen, I begun to feel my strength going. I felt unwell, grew nervous, had a feeling that I could not draw a deep breath, and when I was twenty my physical condition was a violent protest against overwork. One day, while reading Kant's _Kritik der Urteilskraft_, I felt so weak that I was obliged to go to the doctor.

The latter recommended physical exercises and cold shower-baths.

The baths did me good, and I grew so accustomed to them that I went on taking them and have done so ever since. I did my gymnastic exercises with a Swede named Nycander, who had opened an establishment for Swedish gymnastics in Copenhagen.

There I met, amongst others, the well-known Icelandic poet and diplomatist, Grimur Thomsen, who bore the t.i.tle of Counsellor of Legation. His compatriots were very proud of him. Icelandic students declared that Grimur possessed twelve dress s.h.i.+rts, three pairs of patent leather boots, and had embraced a marchioness in Paris. At gymnastics, Grimur Thomsen showed himself audacious and not seldom coa.r.s.e in what he said and hinted. It is true that by reason of my youth I was very susceptible and took offence at things that an older man would have heard without annoyance.

IV.

I continued to be physically far from strong. Mentally, I worked indefatigably. The means of deciding the study question that, after long reflection, seemed to me most expedient, was this: I would compete for one of the University prizes, either the aesthetic or the philosophical, and then, if I won the gold medal, my parents and others would see that if I broke with the Law it was not from idleness, but because I really had talents in another direction.

As early as 1860 I had cast longing eyes at the prize questions that had been set, and which hung up in the Entrance Hall of the University. But none of them were suited to me. In 1861 I made up my mind to attempt a reply, even if the questions in themselves should not be attractive.

There was amongst them one on the proper correlation between poetic fiction and history in the historical romances. The theme in itself did not particularly fascinate me; but I was not ignorant of the subject, and it was one that allowed of being looked at in a wide connection, i.e., the claims of the subject as opposed to the imagination of the artist, in general. I was of opinion that just as in sculpture the human figure should not be represented with wings, but the conception of its species be observed, so the essential nature of a past age should be una.s.sailed in historic fiction. Throughout numerous carefully elaborated abstractions, extending over 120 folio pages, and in which I aimed at scientific perspicuity, I endeavoured to give a soundly supported theory of the limits of inventive freedom in Historical Romance. The substructure was so painstaking that it absorbed more than half of the treatise. Quite apart from the other defects of this tyro handiwork, it lauded and extolled an aesthetic direction opposed to that of both the men who were to adjudicate upon it. Hegel was mentioned in it as "The supreme exponent of Aesthetics, a man whose imposing greatness it is good to bow before." I likewise held with his emanc.i.p.ated pupil, Fr. Th.

Vischer, and vindicated him. Of Danish thinkers, J.L. Heiberg and S.

Kierkegaard were almost the only ones discussed.

Heiberg was certainly incessantly criticised, but was treated with profound reverence and as a man whose slightest utterance was of importance. Sibbern's artistic and philosophical researches, on the other hand, were quite overlooked, indeed sometimes Vischer was praised as being the first originator of psychological developments, which Sibbern had suggested many years before him. I had, for that matter, made a very far from sufficient study of Sibbern's researches, which were, partly, not systematic enough for me, and partly had repelled me by the peculiar language in which they were couched.

Neither was it likely that this wors.h.i.+p of Heiberg, which undeniably peeped out through all the proofs of imperfections and self- contradictions in him, would appeal to Hauch.

When I add that the work was youthfully doctrinaire, in language not fresh, and that in its skeleton-like thinness it positively tottered under the weight of its definitions, it is no wonder that it did not win the prize. The verdict pa.s.sed upon it was to the effect that the treatise was thorough in its way, and that it would have been awarded the prize had the question asked been that of determining the correlation between History and Fiction in general, but that under the circ.u.mstances it dwelt too cursorily on Romance and was only deemed deserving of "a very honourable mention."

Favourable as this result was, it was nevertheless a blow to me, who had made my plans for the following years dependent on whether I won the prize or not. Julius Lange, who knocked at my door one evening to tell me the result, was the witness of my disappointment. "I can understand,"

he said, "that you should exclaim: _'Oleum et operam perdidi!'_, but you must not give up hope for so little. It is a good thing that you prohibited the opening of the paper giving your name in the event of the paper not winning the prize, for no one will trouble their heads about the flattering criticism and an honourable mention would only harm you in People's eyes; it would stamp you with the mark of mediocrity."