by Robert Musil
All of this could have been expressed by saying that little by little the “probable human being” and the “probable life” were beginning to supplant the “true” human being and “true” life, which were nothing more than a vain illusion and pretense; rather like something Ulrich had suggested previously, when he said that the whole problem was nothing more than the result of a haphazard evolution. He himself evidently still felt somewhat in the dark trying to fathom the meaning of all such observations, yet precisely this weakness gave them the capacity to illuminate wide regions, like a Saint Elmo’s fire, and he knew so many examples of contemporary life and thought to which they applied that he found himself vividly challenged to transform the felt sense he had of them into something more lucid. So there was no lack of a need for a continuation, and he now decided after all that he would not neglect to take it up on a more fitting occasion. He had to smile at his surprise when he realized that with this resolve he was well on his way, without wanting it, to introducing Agathe to something that long ago, in a skeptical mood, he had called “the world of ‘the like of it happens.’” It was the world of unrest without meaning; he now called it the world of “probable humanity.” With revived curiosity he observed the streams of people whom they had been following, by whose passions, habits, and alien pleasures they were being drawn away from themselves: it was the world of those passions and pleasures, and not that of a possibility not yet dreamed to its conclusion! And because it was that, it was also the world of limits, which set boundaries to even the most dissolute emotions, and it was the world of the middling condition of life. For the first time he was thinking, not just through his feelings but in the way in which something real is expected, that the difference that makes it impossible for emotion to come to rest and lasting fulfillment, in one case, or to find an evolving and worldly movement, in another, can perhaps be ascribed to two fundamentally different states or kinds of feeling.
Breaking off, he said: “Look at that!” and both of them became aware of what was meeting their eyes. It happened as they were crossing a well-known and, if one may say so, generally well-regarded public square. There stood the Neue Universität, an imitation of a baroque building overloaded with fussy little details; not far from it stood a “neo-Gothic” church, an expensive affair with two towers that looked like a successful carnival prank; and the background was formed by two expressionless institutions belonging to the university, a palatial bank, and a large, drably sparse building serving as courthouse and prison that was several decades older. Swift carriages and massive carts crisscrossed this view, and a single glance could encompass both the solidity of what had evolved over time and the preparations for future prosperity, exciting admiration for human agency no less than poisoning the mind with an imperceptible residue of vacuousness. And without actually changing the topic of conversation, Ulrich continued: “Imagine a band of robbers had seized control of world power, endowed with nothing but the crudest instincts and principles! After a while, works of the mind would grow from this savage soil! And again over a period of time, once the mind had become cultivated, it would stand in its own way! The harvest grows, and its substance diminishes; as if the fruits tasted of shadows once the branches are full!”—He did not ask why. He had simply chosen the image to express his sense that most of what calls itself culture exists between the condition of a band of robbers and a state of indolent maturity; for if that was the case, it might also excuse all the talk into which he had been diverted, even though a tender first breath of promise had inspired its beginning.
32
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF
It could be said of many things that they might have determined Ulrich’s words or been obviously or tangentially associated with his thinking. For example, it was not long ago, on that unfortunate evening at Diotima’s, that he had talked to his sister and even to others about the great disorder of the emotions to which we owe the disastrous tides of history in much the same way as we do the small upheavals of confused opinion, one of which happened to be taking place then and there. But as soon as he said something now that might have general significance, he had the feeling that such words were coming out of his mouth a few days too late. He lacked the desire to involve himself with anything that did not directly concern him; what interest there was would dissipate quickly. For his soul was exceedingly ready to abandon itself to the world through all the senses, however that world might turn out to be. His judgment played all but no part in this. It even meant almost nothing whether something was to his liking or not. For he was more affected by everything than he could understand. Ulrich was used to occupying himself with other people; but that had always happened in connection with feelings and views that are meant to apply in the large, and now it was happening on the scale of small, particular impressions, adhering to every detail for no discernible reason. It was almost a state that he himself, in conversation with Agathe not long ago, had brought under suspicion of being the desire for fellow feeling on the part of a nature that does not truly empathize with anything, rather than a capacity for genuine caring. That had happened on the day when, provoked by a not insignificant difference of opinion concerning an individual he did not know very well, Professor August Lindner, he had made a hurtful remark to the effect that one never participates in anything or anyone as one ideally should. And indeed, once the state he was in now had lasted a while and reached a full measure, it became unpleasant or seemed ridiculous to him, and then, with the same motiveless readiness he had felt for self-abandonment, he was prepared to take himself back.
But this time Agathe, in her own way, fared not very differently from him. Her conscience was oppressed when it was not uplifted; for she had swung into action too forcefully and now felt like a woman standing on a swing, exposed to judgment. At moments like this she feared the revenge of the world for the capriciousness with which she usually treated men who spoke of reality in earnest, like the husband she had provoked and the preserver of that husband’s memory who was so eagerly concerned for her soul. In the thousandfold flurry of charming activities life is filled with by day and by night, not a single pursuit could have been found for her that she would have wanted to engage with wholeheartedly; and whatever she ventured to do of her own accord had to be safe above all from the reproach, deprecation, or even contempt of others. And yet what a strange peace there was precisely in that! Perhaps it is permissible to say, in variation of a proverb, that a bad conscience makes an almost softer pillow than a good one, provided the conscience is bad enough. The mind’s ceaseless ancillary occupation of trying to eke out a good personal conscience from whatever wrong it is involved in then comes to a stop, and what remains is an independence without bounds or measure. A tender solitude, a sky-high pride occasionally poured their splendor over these outings into the world. At such moments, Agathe’s inner experience could make the world seem bloated and rotund, like a tethered balloon circled by swallows, or degrade it to a background as small as a forest on the edge of the horizon. The violated civil obligations were only distantly alarming, like a far-off, rudely advancing sound; they were unimportant, if not unreal. An immense order that is ultimately nothing but an immense absurdity was what the world had become. And yet precisely for that reason every detail Agathe encountered had the tautness, the throbbing tension of the “once and never again,” the almost exalted nature of a personal first discovery that is magically appointed and permits no repetition; and when she wanted to talk about it, it was with the understanding that not a single word could be said twice without changing its meaning. All of this endowed the irresponsibility of strolling through the crowd with a responsibility that was difficult to grasp.
The siblings’ attitude toward the world at that time was therefore not an entirely impeccable expression of sympathy with others; in its own way, it contained affection and aversion side by side in a state of emotion that hovered in space like a rainbow, instead of these opposites setting up house as a hybrid
blend, the way they do in the self-assured state of ordinary experience. And so it happened that one day their conversation took a turn that was indicative of their attitude toward each other and their surroundings, even though this exchange did not yet go beyond their familiar horizons.
Ulrich asked: “What does the commandment: ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself!’ actually mean?”
Agathe gave him a sidelong look.
“Apparently,” Ulrich continued, “it means: Love even the person farthest away, the furthest from being your neighbor! But what does ‘as thyself’ mean? How does one love oneself? In my own case the answer would be: Not at all! In most other cases: More than anything! Blindly! Without question and without restraint!”
“You’re too belligerent; a person who attacks himself will do the same to others!” Agathe replied, shaking her head. “And if you’re not good enough for yourself, how could I be good enough for you?” She said this in a tone that lay between that of cheerfully borne pain and a polite turn in the conversation. But Ulrich failed to hear it and continued in a generalizing vein, gazing rigidly into the distance: “Maybe I should say instead: Usually everyone loves himself best and knows himself least! Love thy neighbor as thyself would then mean: Love him without knowing him and under all circumstances. And strangely enough, in loving one’s neighbor, if such a joke is permitted, there would also be found, as there would be in every other love, the hereditary curse of eating from the tree of knowledge!”
Agathe looked up slowly. “I liked it when you once said about me that I was your self-love, which you had lost and found again. But now you are saying that you don’t love yourself, and, by force of logic and example, that you love me only because you don’t know me! Isn’t it actually an insult that I’m your self-love?” The pain in her voice had now fully given way to amusement.
Her question provoked a counterquestion: Would it have been better if he loved her even though he knew her? Because that, too, is part of the commandment to love one’s neighbor. This causes embarrassment for most people. They love one another without liking each other. “They find each other somehow unappealing or know that they will eventually, and then counteract that much too energetically!”
The cheerfulness of this exchange was contrived. Nevertheless it also served to scout out the boundaries of an idea, and of a feeling, whose pronouncement—irrespective of what had or had not transpired since then—had begun on that evening when Agathe, exhausted from her trip and arrival, retired to her new room and Ulrich, standing at her bedside, used the words “you are my lost self-love” during a conversation in which he confessed that he had lost both his love of self and his love of the world, and which had ended with their declaring themselves to be “Siamese twins.” Since then, all their observations of ordinary and average life had served this purpose of exploration, even the banter they had just engaged in, though it had hurt them by its superficiality.
Abruptly, Ulrich’s tone became morose: “We should have simply said that ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ is nothing other than the useful admonition: Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.”
Agathe again shook her head, but there was warmth in her eyes. “It’s a high-hearted, passionate, happy, magnanimous assignment!” she cried out reproachfully. “Examples of it are ‘Love your enemies!’ ‘Repay their misdeeds with kindness!’ ‘Love without thought of reward!’” Suddenly she paused and looked at her brother dumbfounded. “But what is it that one loves in a person if one doesn’t know him at all?” she asked innocently.
Ulrich gave himself time before answering. “Haven’t you noticed today that it’s actually disturbing when you encounter a person whom you personally like and find so beautiful you would like to say something fitting about him?”
Agathe nodded. “So our feeling,” she conceded, “isn’t about the real world and the real person.”
“Which leaves us with the question: What is it that our feeling is responding to—what part of the world, or what transformation and transfiguration of the real person and the real world?” Ulrich quietly completed her thought.
Now it was Agathe who at first gave no answer; but her gaze was excited and lit up by imagination. Finally, she responded shyly with a counterproposal: “Maybe from behind the ordinary truth the great truth will appear?”
Ulrich hesitantly resisted this, shaking his head; but shimmering through Agathe’s inquiring assertion was something undeniably evident. The air and the pleasure of those days were so buoyant and tender that one could not resist the impression that man and the world must perforce show themselves to be more real than real. There was a small suprasensory thrill of adventure in this transparency, comparable to the flowing transparency of a brook that allows one to see to the bottom, yet, even as one’s wavering glance arrives there, makes the gaily colored mysterious stones resemble the skin of a fish, whose smoothness now all the more thoroughly hides what the eye thought to discern. By merely relaxing her gaze a little, Agathe, surrounded by sunshine, was able to feel that she had entered a supernatural realm; it was then quite easy for her to believe, for a very brief span, that she had come in contact with a higher truth and reality, or at least glimpsed an aspect of existence where a little door behind the earth secretly leads from the earthly garden to that which is not of this world. But when she returned her gaze to its usual range and let the full glare of life stream in, she would see whatever happened to be there: perhaps a little flag gaily and not at all mysteriously swung by the hand of a child; a police van with prisoners, its black-green paint flashing in the light; a man with a colorful cap sweeping away manure among carts and carriages; a division of recruits whose shouldered rifles were pointing their barrels at the sky. And all this was bathed in something that had a kinship with love; and all the people, too, seemed more ready to open themselves to this feeling than usual: But to believe that the kingdom of love was now really here, Ulrich finally said, was surely as difficult as it would be to imagine that at this moment dogs could not bite and no one could do anything evil!
It may be worth noting that there are many attempts at explaining the sense of a festively human high tide, as of a great wedding, and that some of those theories account for the experience of natural piety and love at such moments by supposing that behind the everyday earthly-round, bad-good, but at any rate definitely existing man or woman some far-off true human being can be expected to come to light. The siblings examined these well-intended attempts one by one and did not believe any of them. Not the Sunday wisdom according to which nature on her feast days brings to the fore all that is good and beautiful in her creatures. Not the more psychological explanation that while man, even in this tender transparency, does not turn out to be a different sort of creature, he nevertheless displays the lovable qualities for which he would like to be known: sweating out through his pores, like honey, as it were, all his self-love and inward-gazing indulgence. Nor the variant according to which human beings display their goodwill, which certainly never prevents them from doing bad things but on such days emerges from the ill-will that usually controls them, miraculously unharmed, like Jonah from the belly of the whale. And the briefest and most exhilarating explanation, which Agathe shyly touched on once more, that it is the immortal portion of our inheritance that occasionally shimmers through the mortal part, was certainly not believable to either of them either. Incidentally, all these solemn inspirations had one thing in common: every one of them sought the salvation of man in a state that does not come into its own under ordinary, inessential conditions; and just as the presentiment of salvation is clearly an upward-directed process, there is a second, no less plentiful group of self-deceptions where the same process clearly moves in a downward direction: These are all the familiar confessions and testimonies, not a few of them fondly preserved in historical record, according to which man is supposed to have forfeited the innocence of his natural state, his own natural innocence, through spiritual pride and other plagu
es of civilization.
Accordingly, there were two kinds of “true human being” that proposed themselves to spiritual perception with perfect punctuality on the same occasion; except that—insofar as one of them was supposed to be a celestial superman, the other an unalloyed creature of the earth—they were on opposite sides of the actual human being, und Ulrich’s dry comment was: “All they have in common is that the real human, even at elevated moments, does not feel himself to be the true human, except plus or minus something that makes him appear enchantingly unreal to himself!”
And so the siblings had arrived from one limit case of interpretation to the other, and there remained only one last possibility of explaining this love, which was so gentle, settling on all things without distinction, like dew on an early morning. It was Agathe, finally, who gave voice to this possibility, with a graceful sigh of vexation. “So the sun shines, and one is gripped by an unconscious urge like a schoolgirl and a schoolboy.”
Ulrich enlarged on it: “The social instincts expand in the sun like mercury in the thermometer, at the expense of the egotistic instincts, which ordinarily balance them out!”
Now brother and sister were tired of feeling; it happened from time to time that while talking of nothing but their feelings they neglected feeling itself. Also, because the profusion of feeling, when it found no outlet, was actually painful, they sometimes requited it with a little ingratitude. But after they had both spoken in this manner, Agathe looked at her brother sidelong once again and hastened to revoke what she had said: “And yet! It’s certainly not like truant schoolchildren who want to hug the whole world and have no idea why!”