Part 18 (2/2)
Freisleben.--One must not allow one's-self to speak of the outer form of the head in which a free spirit dwells, as one would of a pumpkin; as little must we calculate circ.u.mstances which depend upon it, as we would calculate an eclipse. Others a.s.sert, with equal probability, that the character of a man lies in his countenance, whilst they appeal to the capability of drawing a conclusion on the whole from the indications of a part; as others, supporting themselves on this sufficient ground, a.s.sert, that man must act as a machine. And to this cla.s.s of reasoning belongs--”in a handsome body dwells a handsome soul.”
Ridicule majis hoc dictum, quam vere aestimo, Quando et formosos saepe inveni pessimos, Et turpi facie multos cognovi optimus.
_Phaedrus_.
Pittschaft.--Ah, if we could but first rightly understand the changes in the brain itself. But a great visible change in the brain may be a very little change for the soul, and _vice versa_. And how will people draw conclusions from the very vault of the brain?
Mr. Traveller.--But, gentlemen, recollect how often phrenologists, from the outward form of the skull, have drawn correct conclusions.
Recollect the allocation of distinguished heads as they are to be seen in plaster in the English and German museums.
Freisleben.--Yes, they have drawn some very neat conclusions, but we know very well how that stands. The false conclusions have been carefully put out of sight; and yet sufficient of them have come to the daylight to render the phrenologists ridiculous. They are, indeed, often still more innocent, the worthy demonstrators only seeing that which they knew very well before. Recollect also what a sagacious German naturalist says:--”The proof of the demonstration which the phrenologist makes is, in most cases, as superficial as the demonstration itself. Let a man eat a shovelful of salt, according to the prescription of Aristotle, with the person upon whose head and heart he makes so superficial a judgment, and he will then find what will become of his former judgment. But to err is human, and that not exclusively, for it is sometimes the fate of angels.” Talent, and the endowments of the spirit, generally have no signs in the solid portion of the head. To prove this, let the selected casts of thinking heads, and selected ones of fools and not-thinking men, be placed side by side; and not the head of the learned man, of a careful education, be placed in opposition to that of the worst specimen of the totally uneducated country b.o.o.by. Bedlam is peopled with inhabitants, who, if they did not stand staring as if chilled into stone, or smiling at the stars, or listening to the song of the angels, or would blow out the dog-star, or stood trembling with folded arms,--if, in fact, they were not judged by these aberrations, but by the shape of their heads alone, would command the highest respect. Still less can we draw correct conclusions from the shape of the living head than from the bare skull itself. A skilful artist, without exceeding the bounds of the probable, would be able to cast in wax a covering of muscles and skin for the head of any skeleton, and give it an expression which should possess any aspect that he pleased. And thus may the skull of a living person be, in reality, so covered with an irregular ma.s.s of muscular and cuticular integuments, as shall give an equally delusive effect.
Von Kronen.--whose attention had become excited by this ill.u.s.tration--here interposed. What an immeasurable leap from the exterior of the body to the interior of the soul! Had we a sense which enabled us to discover the inner quality of bodies, yet would such a leap still be a daring one. It is a well established fact, that the instrument does not make the artist; and many a one with a fork and a goosequill would make better sketches than another with an English case of instruments. Sound manly sense soon sees into this; it is only the pa.s.sion for innovation, and an idle sophistry, soothing itself with false hopes, which will not see it. If a s.h.i.+p-captain answered a fellow who offered himself to his service with enthusiasm--”Thy will is good, but, nevertheless, thou art of no use to me. Thy shoulders are too narrow, and thou art too small altogether for the service,” then must the good fellow probably put his hand on his mouth; but if the captain said, ”Thou actest like a worthy fellow, but I see by thy figure that thou constrainest thyself at this moment, and art a scamp in thy heart;” in truth, such an address would, in any place, to the end of the world, be answered by any honest fellow with a box on the ear.
Mr. Traveller.--You will make me in the end suspicious of the whole circle of physics, or otherwise I must believe that you allow no place to the phrenologist amongst natural philosophers.
Freisleben.--I permit him freely to cla.s.s himself amongst the naturalists; but he must attempt to take no greater rank amongst them than the _soi-disant_ political prophet does amongst subtle statesmen.
But one can by no means cla.s.s the genuine natural philosopher and the phrenologist and physiognomist together. The first err often humanly, the others err continually and monstrously.
While this discussion had grown warm, amongst the others a lively conversation had arisen on recent literature. They gave their opinions on the recent English romances of Bulwer and Marryat, which then were the order of the day. They condemned some of the later productions of the French. They contended for and against the influence of the young Germany; criticised Gutzhow's newest romance; and soon were upon a general theme, the different tendency of the public in England and Germany. There the preference for popular representation; the neglect of scientific reading, together with the very superficial school education; here, on the contrary, reverence for science, and over-driven grasping after scientific things, and a pa.s.sion to be learned, which especially shows itself repulsively in the ladies, when they are carried away into the scientific vortex; they bewailed the wretched ma.s.s of rubbish that was now read, and especially that the Germans by reading too much did themselves injury. That, in particular, in the schools the children were held more to learning by rote than to thinking; at the same time thankfully acknowledging that it was sought with all diligence, to correct this error in the new Folks' Schools.
”In England,” says Freisleben, ”one finds more original character in company, and amongst the common people, as may be seen in the English writings. In Germany it is totally different. And if any one stumbles on an original discovery, how long it continues, till his discovery, and till he himself become known. In Germany the greatest discoveries have been made, but they weighed them, and doubted so long whether they were new and would be useful, that their neighbours the French or the English seized on them, and secured the advantages of them to themselves.”
Eckhard.--No nation feels so much the worth of other nations as the Germans; and yet is, alas! so little regarded by most of them, even for this obeisance.
Enderlin.--I think the other nations are quite in the right. A nation that would please all, deserves to be despised of all. This has been pretty much the case with Germany, and it is only just now that other people have learned to estimate her properly.
Von Kronen.--Lichtenberg in his time said justly--”The character of the Germans lies in two words: patriam fugimus.”--_Virgil_.
Hoffmann.--Yes, Lichtenberg--_that_ is an original character! I have learned to prize him properly from Von Kronen. Yesterday, for the first time, I read his famous essay on the state of the German Romance of his time. It pleased me so much that I must read it out to you. It is short, and will at least be finished before the Phrenologists and Anti-Phrenologists there have finished their discussion.
ON THE GERMAN ROMANCE.
Our mode of living is become so simple, and all our customs so little mysterious; our cities are, for the most part, so small, the land so open; all is so simply true, that a man who is desirous to write a German romance, hardly knows how he is to bring the people together, or to lay his plot. Then, as the mothers now in Germany suckle their own children, there is an end of all exchanging them, and a fountain of emotion is thus stopped, that is not to be purchased with money. If I would persuade a maiden to come out in man's clothes, that is immediately discovered, and the servants betray it, before she can get out of the house; and besides, our ladies are educated in such housewifely notions that they have not the heart in them to do any thing of the kind. No, to sit fine by mamma, to cook and to sew, and to become themselves cooks and sewing mothers, that is their business. It is undoubtedly very convenient for them, but it's a shame to the Fatherland, and an invincible obstacle to the romance writer.
In England, people think that if two persons of the same s.e.x sleep in the same room, a fever is unavoidable, on which account the people in one house are by night, for the most part separated, and a writer has only to take care that he sets open the house-door, and he can let who he will into the house, and need not fear that any body will awake sooner than he would have them. Furthermore, in England the chimneys are not merely the channels of smoke, but the especial windpipes of the chambers, and afford at the same time such an excellent way to come down into any room of the house, at once and unheard, that I have often been told that he who had once gone up and down a chimney would prefer it to a staircase.
In Germany a lover would make a pretty journey if he were to come down a chimney! Yes, if he had a mind to fall into a fire-hearth, or into a wash-kettle with lye, or into an anti-chamber with two or three stoves, which one probably could not open from within at all. And suppose one should let the lover come down into the kitchen, the question then is, which way would you bring him first upon the roof? The cats in Germany can take this way to their loves, but not men. On the contrary, in England, the roofs make a kind of street which sometimes are better than those on the ground; and when a man is upon one, it costs him then no further trouble to get upon another than to run across a village street in winter.
People will say that those contrivances have been hit upon on account of fires; but as these scarcely occur once in one hundred and fifty years in any house, so I conceive that they have rather been found advantageous to lovers driven to extremity and to thieves, who very often take this way, when they might have chosen others, and certainly always when a hasty retreat is necessary, exactly as the witches and the devil are wont to do in Germany. Finally, a right powerful prevention of intrigues is that otherwise fine and praiseworthy conceit of the post-directors in Germany, by whom a vast amount of the virtues of the times are preserved, since instead of the English coaches and chaises, in which a princess in the most delicate condition would neither fear nor be ashamed to travel, they have subst.i.tuted those so-beloved open Rumpelwagen. For what mischief the convenient coaches and the most excellent highways of England may occasion, is not to be expressed by words.
For, in the first place, if a maiden goes out of London with her lover of an evening, they may be in France ere the father awoke, or in Scotland ere he has come to resolve with his relations what he shall do; therefore, a writer has need of neither fairies, conjurors, nor talismans in order to bring the beloved into security, since if he can only bring them to Charing-Cross or Hyde-Park Corner, they are as safe as if they were in Weaver Melek's chest in the Persian Tales.
On the contrary, in Germany, if the father misses but his daughter on the third day; if he only knows that she is gone by post-wagon, he can mount his horse and seize her again at the third station. Another mischievous circ.u.mstance is the, alas! much too good company in the commodious stage-coaches of England, which are always filled full of beautiful and well-dressed ladies, and where--a thing which parliament ought not not to suffer--the pa.s.sengers so sit, that they must gaze upon one another; whereby is endangered, not only a highly dangerous bewilderment of the eyes, but sometimes a highly shameful, and on both sides a smile-exciting bewilderment of the legs of the opposite traveller; and finally, as frequently as dissolving a bewilderment of souls and thoughts arises, so that many an honourable young man who was proposing to travel from London to Oxford, has instead of that travelled to the devil. Such things, thanks to heaven, are impossible in our post-wagons; since, in the first place, no genteel ladies could possibly seat themselves in such a conveyance if they had not in their youth been after climbing hedges, magpie-nesting, apple-gathering and battering down of walnuts; since the spring over the side-ladder requires a remarkable nimbleness, and no lady can do it without setting the coach-master and the ostler-fellows that are standing round, laughing. In the second place, the pa.s.sengers so seat themselves, when they at length do seat themselves, that they cannot look each other in the face, and in such a situation, whatever may be said to the contrary, cannot very well begin an intrigue. Conversation loses all its spice, and one can at the most only understand what another says, but not what he desires to say. In short, one has something else to do in a German post wagon than to gossip; one must hold one's-self fast when we come to holes, hold ourselves in readiness for a spring in case of accident; must keep an eye on the boughs, and duck at the proper time, that one's hat or one's head may be left in its place; keep an eye to the windy side, and keep strengthening the clothing on that quarter from which the attack comes; and if it rains, why then one has the property common to other creatures that live neither in the water nor on the water, of being silent when it is wet; and thus the conversation stands at once stock still. If one at length reaches a Wirthshaus (inn,) thus pa.s.ses the time amongst other things--one dries himself, another shakes himself, one sucks his lozenge, another blows up his cheeks, or enacts whatever other child's megrim he may be in the habit of on such occasions. And hereby comes a circ.u.mstance into notice which makes all friendly intercourse in a Wirthshaus impossible; to wit,--that since so many miseries are bound up with post-wagon travelling, so care has been taken that the Wirthshauses shall be made so much worse than is necessary, in order to render a return to the post-wagons the more tolerable. And n.o.body can imagine to himself what an effect that has too. I have seen people who were pounded and knocked to pieces, and sighed ardently for repose, that when they saw the Wirthshaus in which they were to refresh themselves, with the courage of heroes, have resolved to travel on, which was similar to the fort.i.tude of Regulus, which drove him back to Carthage, although he knew that they would there put him into a sort of German post-wagon, and so let him roll down the hill.
So fall through altogether the stage-coach intrigues with the stage-coaches themselves, those true hot-houses of episodes and declarations. But, it will be said, there is now a stage-coach in Hanover. Good, I know it; and one quite as good as an English one. And must we, therefore, begin all our romances on the way between Haarburg and Minden, which we now leave so swiftly behind us that we have hardly time to see it? All that the travellers do there, is to break out in praise of the king who has ordered this coach, and to sleep; for they are generally so wearied before they get into this coach, that they then fancy they are got home, or that they lie in bed. But those are proper objects truly to fill a romance with! To introduce five sleeping merchants, all snoring; or to fill out a chapter with the praises of the king! The first is by no means a fit subject for any book, and the latter for no romance.
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