The Unseen World, and Other Essays

by John Fiske

  Such a man can have had but little in common with a preacher like Theodore Parker, or with a writer like M. Fontanès, whose whole book is a noble specimen of lofty Christian eloquence. His attribute was light, not warmth. He scrutinized, but did not attack or defend. He recognized the transcendent merits of the Christian faith, but made no attempt to reinstate it where it had seemed to suffer shock. It was therefore with the surest of instincts, with that same instinct of self- preservation which had once led the Church to anathematize Galileo, that Goetze. proclaimed Lessing a more dangerous foe to orthodoxy than the deists who had preceded him. Controversy, he doubtless thought, may be kept up indefinitely, and blows given and returned forever; but before the steady gaze of that scrutinizing eye which one of us shall find himself able to stand erect? It has become fashionable to heap blame and ridicule upon those who violently defend an antiquated order of things; and Goetze has received at the hands of posterity his full share of abuse. His wrath contrasted unfavourably with Lessing's calmness; and it was his misfortune to have taken up arms against an opponent who always knew how to keep the laugh upon his own side. For my own part I am constrained to admire the militant pastor, as Lessing himself admired him. From an artistic point of view he is not an uninteresting figure to contemplate. And although his attempts to awaken persecution were reprehensible, yet his ardour in defending what he believed to be vital truth is none the less to be respected. He had the acuteness to see that Lessing's refutation of deism did not make him a Christian, while the new views proposed as a substitute for those of Reimarus were such as Goetze and his age could in no wise comprehend.

  Lessing's own views of dogmatic religion are to be found in his work entitled, "The Education of the Human Race." These views have since so far become the veriest commonplaces of criticism, that one can hardly realize that, only ninety years ago, they should have been regarded as dangerous paradoxes. They may be summed up in the statement that all great religions are good in their time and place; that, "as there is a soul of goodness in things evil, so also there is a soul of truth in things erroneous." According to Lessing, the successive phases of religious belief constitute epochs in the mental evolution of the human race. So that the crudest forms of theology, even fetishism, now to all appearance so utterly revolting, and polytheism, so completely inadequate, have once been the best, the natural and inevitable results of man's reasoning powers and appliances for attaining truth. The mere fact that a system of religious thought has received the willing allegiance of large masses of men shows that it must have supplied some consciously felt want, some moral or intellectual craving. And the mere fact that knowledge and morality are progressive implies that each successive system may in due course of time be essentially modified or finally supplanted. The absence of any reference to a future state of retribution, in the Pentateuch and generally in the sacred writings of the Jews, and the continual appeal to hopes and fears of a worldly character, have been pronounced by deists an irremediable defect in the Jewish religion. It is precisely this, however, says Lessing, which constitutes one of its signal excellences. "That thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee," was an appeal which the uncivilized Jew could understand, and which could arouse him to action; while the need of a future world, to rectify the injustices of this, not yet being felt, the doctrine would have been of but little service. But in later Hebrew literature, many magnificent passages revealed the despair felt by prophet and thinker over the insoluble problem presented by the evil fate of the good and the triumphant success of the wicked; and a solution was sought in the doctrine of a Messianic kingdom, until Christianity with its proclamation of a future life set the question entirely aside. By its appeal to what has been aptly termed "other- worldliness," Christianity immeasurably intensified human responsibility, besides rendering clearer its nature and limits. But according to Lessing, yet another step remains to be taken; and here we come upon the gulf which separates him from men of the stamp of Theodore Parker. For, says Lessing, the appeal to unearthly rewards and punishments is after all an appeal to our lower feelings; other-worldliness is but a refined selfishness; and we are to cherish virtue for its own sake not because it will lead us to heaven. Here is the grand principle of Stoicism. Lessing believed, with Mr. Mill, that the less we think about getting rewarded either on earth or in heaven the better. He was cast in the same heroic mould as Muhamad Efendi, who when led to the stake exclaimed: "Though I have no hope of recompense hereafter, yet the love of truth constraineth me to die in its defence!"

  With the truth or completeness of these views of Lessing we are not here concerned; our business being not to expound our own opinions, but to indicate as clearly as possible Lessing's position. Those who are familiar with the general philosophical spirit of the present age, as represented by writers otherwise so different as Littré and Sainte-Beuve, will best appreciate the power and originality of these speculations. Coming in the last century, amid the crudities of deism, they made a well-defined epoch. They inaugurated the historical method of criticism, and they robbed the spirit of intolerance of its only philosophical excuse for existing. Hitherto the orthodox had been intolerant toward the philosophers because they considered them heretics; and the philosophers had been intolerant toward the orthodox because they considered them fools. To Voltaire it naturally seemed that a man who could believe in the reality of miracles must be what in French is expressively termed a sot. But henceforth, to the disciple of Lessing, men of all shade of opinion were but the representatives and exponents of different phases in the general evolution of human intelligence, not necessarily to be disliked or despised if they did not happen to represent the maturest phase.

  Religion, therefore, from this point of view, becomes clearly demarcated from theology. It consists no longer in the mental assent to certain prescribed formulas, but in the moral obedience to the great rule of life; the great commandment laid down and illustrated by the Founder of the Christian religion, and concerning which the profoundest modern philosophy informs us that the extent to which a society has learned to conform to it is the test and gauge of the progress in civilization which that society has achieved. The command "to love one another," to check the barbarous impulses inherited from the pre-social state, while giving free play to the beneficent impulses needful for the ultimate attainment of social equilibrium,--or as Tennyson phrases it, to "move upward, working out the beast, and letting the ape and tiger die,"--was, in Lessing's view, the task set before us by religion. The true religious feeling was thus, in his opinion, what the author of "Ecce Homo" has finely termed "the enthusiasm of humanity." And we shall find no better language than that of the writer just mentioned, in which to describe Lessing's conception of faith:--

  "He who, when goodness is impressively put before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty to it, starts forward to take its side, trusts himself to it, such a man has faith, and the root of the matter is in such a man. He may have habits of vice, but the loyal and faithful instinct in him will place him above many that practice virtue. He may be rude in thought and character, but he will unconsciously gravitate toward what is right. Other virtues can scarcely thrive without a fine natural organization and a happy training. But the most neglected and ungifted of men may make a beginning with faith. Other virtues want civilization, a certain amount of knowledge, a few books; but in half-brutal countenances faith will light up a glimmer of nobleness. The savage, who can do little else, can wonder and worship and enthusiastically obey. He who cannot know what is right can know that some one else knows; he who has no law may still have a master; he who is incapable of justice may be capable of fidelity; he who understands little may have his sins forgiven because he loves much."

  Such was Lessing's religion, so far as it can be ascertained from the fragmentary writings which he has left on the subject. Undoubtedly it lacked completeness. The opinions which we have here set down, though constituting something more than a mere theory of morality, certainl
y do not constitute a complete theory of religion. Our valiant knight has examined but one side of the shield,--the bright side, turned toward us, whose marvellous inscriptions the human reason can by dint of unwearied effort decipher. But the dark side, looking out upon infinity, and covered with hieroglyphics the meaning of which we can never know, he has quite forgotten to consider. Yet it is this side which genuine religious feeling ever seeks to contemplate. It is the consciousness that there is about us an omnipresent Power, in which we live and move and have our being, eternally manifesting itself throughout the whole range of natural phenomena, which has ever disposed men to be religious, and lured them on in the vain effort to construct adequate theological systems. We may, getting rid of the last traces of fetishism, eliminate arbitrary volition as much as we will or can. But there still remains the consciousness of a divine Life in the universe, of a Power which is beyond and above our comprehension, whose goings out and comings in no man can follow. The more we know, the more we reach out for that which we cannot know. And who can realize this so vividly as the scientific philosopher? For our knowledge being, according to the familiar comparison, like a brilliant sphere, the more we increase it the greater becomes the number of peripheral points at which we are confronted by the impenetrable darkness beyond. I believe that this restless yearning,--vague enough in the description, yet recognizable by all who, communing with themselves or with nature, have felt it,-- this constant seeking for what cannot be found, this persistent knocking at gates which, when opened, but reveal others yet to be passed, constitutes an element which no adequate theory of religion can overlook. But of this we find nothing in Lessing. With him all is sunny, serene, and pagan. Not the dim aisle of a vast cathedral, but the symmetrical portico of an antique temple, is the worshipping-place into which he would lead us.

  But if Lessing's theology must be considered imperfect, it is none the less admirable as far as it goes. With its peculiar doctrines of love and faith, it teaches a morality far higher than any that Puritanism ever dreamed of. And with its theory of development it cuts away every possible logical basis for intolerance. It is this theology to which Lessing has given concrete expression in his immortal poem of "Nathan."

  The central idea of "Nathan" was suggested to Lessing by Boccaccio's story of "The Three Rings," which is supposed to have had a Jewish origin. Saladin, pretending to be inspired by a sudden, imperious whim, such as is "not unbecoming in a Sultan," demands that Nathan shall answer him on the spur of the moment which of the three great religions then known--Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity--is adjudged by reason to be the true one. For a moment the philosopher is in a quandary. If he does not pronounce in favour of his own religion, Judaism, he stultifies himself; but if he does not award the precedence to Mohammedanism, he will apparently insult his sovereign. With true Oriental tact he escapes from the dilemma by means of a parable. There was once a man, says Nathan, who possessed a ring of inestimable value. Not only was the stone which it contained incomparably fine, but it possessed the marvellous property of rendering its owner agreeable both to God and to men. The old man bequeathed this ring to that one of his sons whom he loved the most; and the son, in turn, made a similar disposition of it. So that, passing from hand to hand, the ring finally came into the possession of a father who loved his three sons equally well. Unto which one should he leave it? To get rid of the perplexity, he had two other rings made by a jeweller, exactly like the original, and to each of his three sons he bequeathed one. Each then thinking that he had obtained the true talisman, they began violently to quarrel, and after long contention agreed to carry their dispute before the judge. But the judge said: "Quarrelsome fellows! You are all three of you cheated cheats. Your three rings are alike counterfeit. For the genuine ring is lost, and to conceal the loss, your father had made these three substitutes." At this unexpected dénouement the Sultan breaks out in exclamations of delight; and it is interesting to learn that when the play was brought upon the stage at Constantinople a few years ago, the Turkish audience was similarly affected. There is in the story that quiet, stealthy humour which is characteristic of many mediæval apologues, and in which Lessing himself loved to deal. It is humour of the kind which hits the mark, and reveals the truth. In a note upon this passage, Lessing himself said: "The opinion of Nathan upon all positive religions has for a long time been my own." Let him who has the genuine ring show it by making himself loved of God and man. This is the central idea of the poem. It is wholly unlike the iconoclasm of the deists, and, coming in the eighteenth century, it was like a veritable evangel.

  "Nathan" was not brought out until three years after Lessing's death, and it kept possession of the stage for but a short time. In a dramatic point of view, it has hardly any merits. Whatever plot there is in it is weak and improbable. The decisive incidents seem to be brought in like the deus ex machina of the later Greek drama. There is no movement, no action, no development. The characters are poetically but not dramatically conceived. Considered as a tragedy, "Nathan" would be weak; considered as a comedy, it would be heavy. With full knowledge of these circumstances, Lessing called it not a drama, but a dramatic poem; and he might have called it still more accurately a didactic poem, for the only feature which it has in common with the drama is that the personages use the oratio directa.

  "Nathan" is a didactic poem: it is not a mere philosophic treatise written in verse, like the fragments of Xenophanes. Its lessons are conveyed concretely and not abstractly; and its characters are not mere lay figures, but living poetical conceptions. Considered as a poem among classic German poems, it must rank next to, though immeasurably below, Goethe's "Faust."

  There are two contrasted kinds of genius, the poetical and the philosophical; or, to speak yet more generally, the artistic and the critical. The former is distinguished by a concrete, the latter by an abstract, imagination. The former sees things synthetically, in all their natural complexity; the latter pulls things to pieces analytically, and scrutinizes their relations. The former sees a tree in all its glory, where the latter sees an exogen with a pair of cotyledons. The former sees wholes, where the latter sees aggregates.

  Corresponding with these two kinds of genius there are two classes of artistic productions. When the critical genius writes a poem or a novel, he constructs his plot and his characters in conformity to some prearranged theory, or with a view to illustrate some favourite doctrine. When he paints a picture, he first thinks how certain persons would look under certain given circumstances, and paints them accordingly. When he writes a piece of music, he first decides that this phrase expresses joy, and that phrase disappointment, and the other phrase disgust, and he composes accordingly. We therefore say ordinarily that he does not create, but only constructs and combines. It is far different with the artistic genius, who, without stopping to think, sees the picture and hears the symphony with the eyes and ears of imagination, and paints and plays merely what he has seen and heard. When Dante, in imagination, arrived at the lowest circle of hell, where traitors like Judas and Brutus are punished, he came upon a terrible frozen lake, which, he says,--

  "Ever makes me shudder at the sight of frozen pools." I have always considered this line a marvellous instance of the intensity of Dante's imagination. It shows, too, how Dante composed his poem. He did not take counsel of himself and say: "Go to, let us describe the traitors frozen up to their necks in a dismal lake, for that will be most terrible." But the picture of the lake, in all its iciness, with the haggard faces staring out from its glassy crust, came unbidden before his mind with such intense reality that, for the rest of his life, he could not look at a frozen pool without a shudder of horror. He described it exactly as he saw it; and his description makes us shudder who read it after all the centuries that have intervened. So Michael Angelo, a kindred genius, did not keep cutting and chipping away, thinking how Moses ought to look, and what sort of a nose he ought to have, and in what position his head might best rest upon his shoulders. But, he look
ed at the rectangular block of Carrara marble, and beholding Moses grand and lifelike within it, knocked away the environing stone, that others also might see the mighty figure. And so Beethoven, an artist of the same colossal order, wrote out for us those mysterious harmonies which his ear had for the first time heard; and which, in his mournful old age, it heard none the less plainly because of its complete physical deafness. And in this way Shakespeare wrote his "Othello"; spinning out no abstract thoughts about jealousy and its fearful effects upon a proud and ardent nature, but revealing to us the living concrete man, as his imperial imagination had spontaneously fashioned him.