VII.
NATHAN THE WISE.[1]
THE fame of Lessing is steadily growing. Year by
year he is valued more highly, and valued by a
greater number of people. And he is destined, like his
master and forerunner Spinoza, to receive a yet larger
share of men's reverence and gratitude when the philosophic
spirit which he lived to illustrate shall have
become in some measure the general possession of the
civilized part of mankind. In his own day, Lessing,
though widely known and greatly admired, was little
understood or appreciated. He was known to be a
learned antiquarian, a terrible controversialist, and an
incomparable writer. He was regarded as a brilliant
ornament to Germany; and a paltry Duke of Brunswick
thought a few hundred thalers well spent in securing
the glory of having such a man to reside at his provincial
court. But the majority of Lessing's contemporaries
understood him as little perhaps as did the Duke
of Brunswick. If anything were needed to prove this,
it would he the uproar which was made over the
publication of the "Wolfenbüttel Fragments," and the
curious exegesis which was applied to the poem of
"Nathan" on its first appearance. In order to understand
the true character of this great poem, and of
Lessing's religious opinions as embodied in it, it will be
necessary first to consider the memorable theological
controversy which preceded it.
During Lessing's residence at Hamburg, he had come
into possession of a most important manuscript, written
by Hermann Samuel Reimarus, a professor of Oriental
languages, and bearing the title of an "Apology for the
Rational Worshippers of God." Struck with the rigorous
logic displayed in its arguments, and with the quiet
dignity of its style, while yet unable to accept its most
general conclusions, Lessing resolved to publish the
manuscript, accompanying it with his own comments
and strictures. Accordingly in 1774, availing himself
of the freedom from censorship enjoyed by publications
drawn from manuscripts deposited in the Ducal Library
at Wolfenbüttel, of which he was librarian, Lessing
published the first portion of this work, under the title of
"Fragments drawn from the Papers of an Anonymous
Writer." This first Fragment, on the "Toleration of
Deists," awakened but little opposition; for the eighteenth
century, though intolerant enough, did not parade
its bigotry, but rather saw fit to disclaim it. A hundred
years before, Rutherford, in his "Free Disputation," had
declared "toleration of alle religions to bee not farre
removed from blasphemie." Intolerance was then a
thing to be proud of, but in Lessing's time some progress
had been achieved, and men began to think it a good
thing to seem tolerant. The succeeding Fragments were
to test this liberality and reveal the flimsiness of the
stuff of which it was made. When the unknown disputant
began to declare "the impossibility of a revelation
upon which all men can rest a solid faith," and
when he began to criticize the evidences of Christ's
resurrection, such a storm burst out in the theological
world of Germany as had not been witnessed since the
time of Luther. The recent Colenso controversy in
England was but a gentle breeze compared to it. Press
and pulpit swarmed with "refutations," in which weakness
of argument and scantiness of erudition were compensated
by strength of acrimony and unscrupulousness
of slander. Pamphlets and sermons, says M. Fontanès,
"were multiplied, to denounce the impious blasphemer,
who, destitute alike of shame and of courage, had
sheltered himself behind a paltry fiction, in order to let
loose upon society an evil spirit of unbelief." But Lessing's
artifice had been intended to screen the memory
of Reimarus, rather than his own reputation. He was
not the man to quail before any amount of human opposition;
and it was when the tempest of invective was
just at its height that he published the last and boldest
Fragment of all,—on "the Designs of Jesus and his
Disciples."
The publication of these Fragments led to a mighty
controversy. The most eminent, both for uncompromising
zeal and for worldly position, of those who had
attacked Lessing, was Melchior Goetze, "pastor primarius"
at the Hamburg Cathedral. Though his name is
now remembered only because of his connection with
Lessing, Goetze was not destitute of learning and ability.
He was a collector of rare books, an amateur in
numismatics, and an antiquarian of the narrow-minded
sort. Lessing had known him while at Hamburg, and
had visited him so constantly as to draw forth from his
friends malicious insinuations as to the excellence of
the pastor's white wine. Doubtless Lessing, as a wise
man, was not insensible to the attractions of good
Moselle; but that which he chiefly liked in this theologian
was his logical and rigorously consistent turn of
mind. "He always," says M. Fontanès, "cherished a
holy horror of loose, inconsequent thinkers; and the
man of the past, the inexorable guardian of tradition,
appeared to him far more worthy of respect than the
heterodox innovator who stops in mid-course, and is
faithful neither to reason nor to faith."
But when Lessing published these unhallowed Fragments,
the hour of conflict had sounded, and Goetze cast
himself into the arena with a boldness and impetuosity
which Lessing, in his artistic capacity, could not
fail to admire. He spared no possible means of reducing
his enemy to submission. He aroused against
him all the constituted authorities, the consistories, and
even the Aulic Council of the Empire, and he even succeeded
in drawing along with him the chief of contemporary
rationalists, Semler, who so far forgot himself as
to declare that Lessing, for what he had done, deserved to
be sent to the madhouse. But with all Goetze's orthodox
valour, he was no match for the antagonist whom
he had excited to activity. The great critic replied
with pamphlet after pamphlet, invincible in logic and
erudition, sparkling with wit, and irritating in their
utter coolness. Such pamphlets had not been seen
since Pascal published the "Provincial Letters." Goetze
found that he had taken up arms against a master in
the arts of controversy, and before long he became well
aware that he was worsted. Having brought the case
before the Aulic Council, which consisted in great part
of Catholics, the stout pastor, forgetting that judgment
had not yet been rendered, allowed himself to proclaim
that all who do not recognize the Bible as the only
source of Christianity are not fit to be called Christians
at all. Lessing was not slow to profit by this unlucky
declaration. Questioned, with all manner of ferocious
vituperation, by Goetze, as to what sort of Christianity
might have existed prior to and independently of the
New Testament canon, Lessing imperturbably answered:
"By the Christian religion I mean all the confessions
of faith contained in the collection of creeds of the first
four centuries of the Christian Church, including, if you
wish it, the so-called creed of the apostles, as well as the
creed of Athanasius. The content of these confessions
is called by the earlier Fathers the
regula
fidei, or rule
of faith. This rule of faith is not drawn from the writings
of the New Testament. It existed before any of
the books in the New Testament were written. It sufficed
not only for the first Christians of the age of the
apostles, but for their descendants during four centuries.
And it is, therefore, the veritable foundation upon which
the Church of Christ is built; a foundation not based
upon Scripture." Thus, by a master-stroke, Lessing secured
the adherence of the Catholics constituting a majority
of the Aulic Council of the Empire. Like Paul
before him, he divided the Sanhedrim. So that Goetze,
foiled in his attempts at using violence, and disconcerted
by the patristic learning of one whom he had
taken to be a mere connoisseur in art and writer of
plays for the theatre, concluded that discretion was
the surest kind of valour, and desisted from further
attacks.
Lessing's triumph came opportunely; for already the
ministry of Brunswick had not only confiscated the
Fragments, but had prohibited him from publishing
anything more on the subject without first obtaining
express authority to do so. His last replies to Goetze
were published at Hamburg; and as he held himself
in readiness to depart from Wolfenbüttel, he wrote to
several friends that he had conceived the design of a
drama, with which he would tear the theologians in
pieces more than with a dozen Fragments. "I will
try and see," said he, "if they will let me preach in
peace from my old pulpit, the theatre." In this way
originated "Nathan the Wise." But it in no way
answered to the expectations either of Lessing's friends
or of his enemies. Both the one and the other expected
to see the controversy with Goetze carried on, developed,
and generalized in the poem. They looked for a satirical
comedy, in which orthodoxy should be held up for
scathing ridicule, or at least for a direful tragedy, the
moral of which, like that of the great poem of Lucretius,
should be
"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
Had Lessing produced such a poem, he would doubtless
have gratified his free-thinking friends and wreaked
due literary vengeance upon his theological persecutors.
He would, perhaps, have given articulate expression to
the radicalism of his own time, and, like Voltaire, might
have constituted himself the leader of the age, the
incarnation of its most conspicuous tendencies. But
Lessing did nothing of the kind; and the expectations
formed of him by friends and enemies alike show how
little he was understood by either. "Nathan the Wise"
was, as we shall see, in the eighteenth century an entirely
new phenomenon; and its author was the pioneer
of a quite new religious philosophy.
Reimarus, the able author of the Fragments, in his
attack upon the evidences of revealed religion, had
taken the same ground as Voltaire and the old English
deists. And when we have said this, we have sufficiently
defined his position, for the tenets of the deists
are at the present day pretty well known, and are, moreover,
of very little vital importance, having long since
been supplanted by a more just and comprehensive
philosophy. Reimarus accepted neither miracles nor
revelation; but in accordance with the rudimentary
state of criticism in his time, he admitted the historical
character of the earliest Christian records, and was thus
driven to the conclusion that those writings must have
been fraudulently composed. How such a set of
impostors as the apostles must on this hypothesis have
been, should have succeeded in inspiring large numbers
of their contemporaries with higher and grander
religious notions than had ever before been conceived;
how they should have laid the foundations of a theological
system destined to hold together the most enlightened
and progressive portion of human society for
seventeen or eighteen centuries,—does not seem to have
entered his mind. Against such attacks as this, orthodoxy
was comparatively safe; for whatever doubt might
be thrown upon some of its leading dogmas, the system
as a whole was more consistent and rational than any
of the theories which were endeavouring to supplant
it. And the fact that nearly all the great thinkers of
the eighteenth century adopted this deistic hypothesis,
shows, more than anything else, the crudeness of their
psychological knowledge, and their utter lack of what
is called "the historical sense."
Lessing at once saw the weak point in Reimarus's
argument, but his method of disposing of it differed
signally from that adopted by his orthodox contemporaries.
The more advanced German theologians of that
day, while accepting the New Testament records as
literally historical, were disposed to rationalize the
accounts of miracles contained in them, in such a way
as to get rid of any presumed infractions of the laws of
nature. This method of exegesis, which reached its perfection
in Paulus, is too well known to need describing.
Its unsatisfactory character was clearly shown, thirty
years ago, by Strauss, and it is now generally abandoned,
though some traces of it may still be seen in the recent
works of Renan. Lessing steadily avoided this method
of interpretation. He had studied Spinoza to some
purpose, and the outlines of Biblical criticism laid down
by that remarkable thinker Lessing developed into a
system wonderfully like that now adopted by the Tübingen
school. The cardinal results which Baur has reached
within the past generation were nearly all hinted at by
Lessing, in his commentaries on the Fragments. The
distinction between the first three, or synoptic gospels,
and the fourth, the later age of the fourth, and the
method of composition of the first three, from earlier
documents and from oral tradition, are all clearly laid
down by him. The distinct points of view from
which the four accounts were composed, are also indicated,—
the Judaizing disposition of "Matthew," the
Pauline sympathies of "Luke," the compromising or
Petrine tendencies of "Mark," and the advanced Hellenic
character of "John." Those best acquainted with
the results of modern criticism in Germany will perhaps
be most surprised at finding such speculations in a book
written many years before either Strauss or Baur were
born.
But such results, as might have been expected, did
not satisfy the pastor Goetze or the public which sympathized
with him. The valiant pastor unhesitatingly
declared that he read the objections which Lessing
opposed to the Fragmentist with more horror and disgust
than the Fragments themselves; and in the teeth
of the printed comments he declared that the editor
was craftily upholding his author in his deistical assault
upon Christian theology. The accusation was
unjust, because untrue. There could be no genuine cooperation
between a mere iconoclast like Reimarus, and
a constructive critic like Lessing. But the confusion
was not an unnatural one on Goetze's part, and I cannot
agree with M. Fontanès in taking it as convincing
proof of the pastor's wrong-headed perversity. It appears
to me that Goetze interpreted Lessing's position
quite as accurately as M. Fontanès. The latter writer
thinks that Lessing was a Christian of the liberal school
since represented by Theodore Parker in this country
and by M. Réville in France; that his real object was
to defend and strengthen the Christian religion by relieving
it of those peculiar doctrines which to the freethinkers
of his time were a stumbling-block and an
offence. And, in spite of Lessing's own declarations,
he endeavours to show that he was an ordinary theist,
—a follower of Leibnitz rather than of Spinoza. But
I do not think he has made out his case. Lessing's
own confession to Jacobi is unequivocal enough, and cannot
well be argued away. In that remarkable conversation,
held toward the close of his life, he indicates
clearly enough that his faith was neither that of the ordinary
theist, the atheist, nor the pantheist, but that his
religious theory of the universe was identical with that
suggested by Spinoza, adopted by Goethe, and recently
elaborated in the first part of the "First Principles" of
Mr. Herbert Spencer. Moreover, while Lessing cannot
be considered an antagonist of Christianity, neither did
he assume the attitude of a defender. He remained outside
the theological arena; looking at theological questions
from the point of view of a layman, or rather, as
M. Cherbuliez has happily expressed it, of a Pagan.
His mind was of decidedly antique structure. He had
the virtues of paganism: its sanity, its calmness, and its
probity; but of the tenderness of Christianity, and its
quenchless aspirations after an indefinable ideal, of that
feeling which has incarnated itself in Gothic cathedrals,
masses and oratorios, he exhibited but scanty traces.
His intellect was above all things self-consistent and
incorruptible. He had that imperial good-sense which
might have formed the ideal alike of Horace and of
Epictetus. No clandestine preference for certain conclusions
could make his reason swerve from the straight
paths of logic. And he examined and rejected the conclusions
of Reimarus in the same imperturbable spirit
with which he examined and rejected the current theories
of the French classic drama.
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, certainly 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 looked 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.
Modern psychology has demonstrated that this is the
way in which the creative artistic imagination proceeds.
It has proved that a vast portion of all our thinking
goes on unconsciously; and that the results may arise
into consciousness piecemeal and gradually, checking
each other as they come; or that they may come all at
once, with all the completeness and definiteness of
perceptions presented from without. The former is the
case with the critical, and the latter with the artistic
intellect. And this we recognize imperfectly when we
talk of a genius being "inspired." All of us probably
have these two kinds of imagination to a certain extent.
It is only given to a few supremely endowed persons
like Goethe to possess them both to an eminent degree.
Perhaps of no other man can it be said that he was a
poet of the first order, and as great a critic as poet.
It is therefore apt to be a barren criticism which
studies the works of creative geniuses in order to ascertain
what theory lies beneath them. How many systems
of philosophy, how many subtle speculations, have
we not seen fathered upon Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare,
and Goethe! Yet their works are, in a certain
sense, greater than any systems. They partake of the
infinite complexity and variety of nature, and no more
than nature itself can they be narrowed down to the
limits of a precise formula.
Lessing was wont to disclaim the title of poet; but,
as Goethe said, his immortal works refute him. He had
not only poetical, but dramatic genius; and his "Emilia
Galotti" has kept the stage until to-day. Nevertheless,
he knew well what he meant when he said that he was
more of a critic than a poet. His genius was mainly of
the critical order; and his great work, "Nathan the
Wise," was certainly constructed rather than created.
It was intended to convey a doctrine, and was carefully
shaped for the purpose. And when we have pronounced
it the greatest of all poems that have been written for a
set purpose, and admit of being expressed in a definite
formula, we have classified it with sufficient accuracy.
For an analysis of the characters in the poem, nothing
can be better than the essay by Kuno Fischer, appended
to the present volume. The work of translation has
been admirably done; and thanks are due to Miss
Frothingham for her reproduction of this beautiful
poem.
June, 1868.
[[1]]
Nathan the Wise: A Dramatic Poem, by Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing. Translated by Ellen Frothingham. Preceded by a brief account
of the poet and his works, and followed by an essay on the poem
by Kuno Fischer. Second edition. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.
1868.
Le Christianisme Moderne. Étude sur Lessing. Par Ernest
Fontanès. Paris: Baillière. 1867.