On the Heights Part 146

What will people say?--These few words represent the world's tyranny, the power that perverts our nature and temperaments, and account for our mental obliquity of vision. These four words rule everywhere.

Walpurga is swayed by them, while Hansei has quite a different standard, the only true one. Without knowing it, he acts just as Gunther would have done.

Man's first and only duty is to preserve his peace of mind. He should be utterly indifferent as to "what the people will say." That question makes the mind homeless. Do right and fear naught! Rest a.s.sured that with all your consideration for the world, you can never satisfy it.

But if you will go on in your own way, indifferent to the praise or blame of others, you have conquered the world, and it cheerfully subjects itself to you. As long as you care for "what the people will say," so long are you the slave of others.

I believe that I know what I have done. I have no compa.s.sion for myself. This is my full confession.

I have sinned--not against nature, but against the world's rules. Is that sin? Look at the tall pines in yonder forest. The higher the tree grows, the more do the lower branches die away, and thus the tree in the thick forest is protected and sheltered by its fellows, but can, nevertheless, not perfect itself in all directions.

I desired to lead a full and complete life and yet to be in the forest, to be in the world and yet in society. But he who means to live thus, must remain in solitude. As soon as we become members of society, we cease to be mere creatures, of nature. Nature and morality have equal rights and must form a compact with each other, and where there are two powers with equal rights, there must be mutual concessions.

Herein lies my sin.

_He who desires to live a life of nature alone, must withdraw himself from the protection of morality, I did not fully desire either the one or the other; hence I was crushed and shattered._

My father's last action was right. He avenged the moral law, which is just as human as the law of nature. The animal world knows neither father nor mother, so soon as the young is able to take care of itself.

The human world does know them and must hold them sacred.

I see it all quite clearly. My sufferings and my expiation are deserved. I was a thief! I stole the highest treasures of all: confidence, love, honor, respect, splendor.

How n.o.ble and exalted the tender souls appear to themselves when a poor rogue is sent to jail for having committed a theft! But what are all possessions which can be carried away, when compared with those that are intangible!

Those who are summoned to the bar of justice are not always the basest of mankind.

I acknowledge my sin, and my repentance is sincere.

My fatal sin, the sin for which I now atone, was that I dissembled, that I denied and extenuated that which I represented to myself as a natural right. Against the queen, I have sinned worst of all. To me, she represents that moral order which I violated and yet wished to enjoy.

To you, O queen, to you--lovely, good, and deeply injured one--do I confess all this!

If I die before you--and I hope that I may--these pages are to be given to you.

We cannot take nature for our only guide. He who follows its law has no share, no inheritance in the world of history. He knows nothing of the beings who lived before him, and who helped to make the world what it is. With him, the world is barren; with him, it dies. He who follows naught but nature's law and persuades himself that he is thus doing right, denies humanity and, at the same time, denies that the human race has a history which is not represented by himself alone, but has existed before him and now exists without him. In spite of gloss and varnish, he who denies humanity is but a savage. He stands without the pale of civilization. All that he does, or wears, or enjoys, of the fruits of culture, is but a theft. He should sing no song but that which is natural to him, like the bird which brings its plumage and its song into the world with it, and has no special garb or tones; for there all is species, all is the law of nature.

In this alone lies the truth.

Above all right and all duty, is love, leading lover and beloved to the pure unfolding of their natures.

Woe to those who desecrate its divine mission!

My father's fate is also clear to me, now. He wished to live for and perfect himself; and yet he had children whose love and affection he claimed. His death was one of the terrible consequences of the life he had led. That, however, does not make me innocent, and he dealt justly toward me.

I have no desire to offer excuses for anything I have done. I mean to be perfectly truthful. That is my only happiness, my only pride.

Your worth depends upon what you are; not upon what you have.

I have found the center about which my mind revolves.

During the last few days, it has seemed to me as if my father's terrible punishment had never been executed, as if it were only the guilty presentiment of my own imagination.

What has induced this sudden thought that will not leave me?

I know! I know! Whatever may have happened is now atoned for! There can be a renewed life, a deliverance achieved by ourselves, and I feel that this has been vouchsafed me. I am once more free! I can return to the world and remove the bandage from my brow!

To the world! What is the world? I have it within me. I am in the world, and the world is in me. I am!

I have sung again for the first time. Oh, how much good it did me! No one heard me but myself.

No bird sings for itself; it sings for its mate. Man alone can sing and think for himself. He alone possesses self-consciousness.

The calm of morn, which is always so dear to me, now seems to last during the whole day.

Yonder brook often seems to roar much more loudly than at other times.

It is because a sudden wind catches it and bears the sound-waves toward me.

(At work.)--When the material on which we work is hard and unyielding, we learn to make a virtue of necessity. I often chance upon changes in the fiber or grain which necessitate new beauties or deformities. I often bring out touches which I did not intend, and those that I did intend become quite different from what I had expected, just because the wood is master, as well as my hand. Varnish, blessed friend in need, covers both beauties and defects.

We create nothing. We merely shape and discover that which already exists and which, without our a.s.sistance, cannot release itself from chaos.

Oh, I feel as if I at last understand the whole world and all of art and work. I feel that my longings for the infinite are satisfied.

I now know the cause of the clas.h.i.+ng between our lofty thoughts and our lives of petty detail.