Part 16

The next thought again was this: Pantheism does not place any one unconditional goal in front of man. The unbeliever passes his life interested in the many aims that man, as man, has. The Pantheist will therefore have difficulty in living a perfect ethical life. There are many cases in which, by deviating from the strictly ethic code, you do not harm anyone, you only injure your own soul. The Non-Believer will in this case only hardly, for the sake of impersonal Truth, make up his mind to the step which the God-fearing man will take actuated by his passionate fear of offending God.

Thus was I tossed backwards and forwards in my reflections.

XVIII.

What I dreaded most was that if I reached a recognition of the truth, a lack of courage would prevent me decisively making it my own. Courage was needed, as much to undertake the burdens entailed by being a Christian as to undertake those entailed by being a Pantheist. When thinking of Christianity, I drew a sharp distinction between the cowardice that shrunk from renunciation and the doubt that placed under discussion the very question as to whether renunciation were duty. And it was clear to me that, on the road which led to Christianity, doubt must be overcome before cowardice--not the contrary, as Kierkegaard maintains in his For Self-Examination, where he says that none of the martyrs doubted.

But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or madness. For me it was sometimes both. I concluded therefrom that I had no consciousness of sin, and found this idea confirmed when I looked into my own heart. For however violently at this period I reproached myself and condemned my failings, they were always in my eyes weaknesses that ought to be combatted, or defects that could be remedied, never sins that necessitated forgiveness, and for the obtaining of this forgiveness, a Saviour. That God had died for me as my Saviour,--I could not understand what it meant; it was an idea that conveyed nothing to me.

And I wondered whether the inhabitants of another planet would be able to understand how on the Earth that which was contrary to all reason was considered the highest truth.

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 worshipper 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 Bröchner, by confessing as much. "Indeed," said Bröchner, "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 quantity 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 assent.

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 passing 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 Bröchner that they, who in this life did not know how to kill so much as one Sunday evening, should be so passionately anxious to have a whole eternity to fill up. His pupil then caught a glimpse himself of the grotesqueness of wishing 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 worship. 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 Competition--An Interview with the Judges--Meeting of Scandinavian Students--The Paludan-Müllers--Björnstjerne Björnson--Magdalene Thoresen--The Gold Medal--The Death of King Frederik VII--The Political Situation--My Master of Arts Examination--War--Admissus cum laude praecipua--Academical Attention--Lecturing--Music--Nature--A Walking Tour--In Print--Philosophical Life in Denmark--Death of Ludwig David--Stockholm.

Among my many good comrades, there was one, Julius Lange, with whom comradeship had developed into friendship, and this friendship again assumed a passionate 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 association 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 assistance to one another in the interchange of thoughts and information. Entirely at variance in our attitude 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 worshipping.

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 Saturday 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 associated 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 sex; my passion for pictures to the stormy passion 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 worshipped 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 assistance of a teacher. But I had felt the want of one. And when a newly appointed docent at the University, Professor H. Bröchner, 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 Bröchner 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 Bröchner. 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.