Part 8 (2/2)
[Illustration: XV THE HANDS OF ERASMUS]
It was the world of Antiquity, but illuhout by Christian faith It was a world that had never existed as such For with the historical reality which the tireat fathers of the Church hadhellenis Byzantinisined world was an aamation of pure classicism (this meant for hi period of the Greek er) and pure, biblical Christianity Could it be a union? Not really In Erasht falls, just asin the history of his career, alternately on the pagan antique and on the Christian But the warp of his mind is Christian; his classicism only serves him as a form, and from Antiquity he only chooses those elements which in ethical tendency are in conformity with his Christian ideal
[Illustration: XVI ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF 57]
And because of this, Erash he appeared after a century of earlier Humanism, is yet new to his time The union of Antiquity and the Christian spirit which had haunted the ht of by his disciples, enchanted as they were by the irresistible brilliance of the antique beauty of forht about by Erasmus
What pure Latinity and the classic spirit meant to Erasmus we cannot feel as he did because its realization does not lorious triumph To feel it thus one must have acquired, in a hard school, the hatred of barbaris his first years of authorshi+p had suggested the composition of the _Antibarbari_ The abusive term for all that is old and rude is already Gothic, Goths The term barbarism as used by Erasmus comprised much of e value reat intellectual crisis of his day was distinctly dualistic He saw it as a struggle between old and nehich, to hiood In the advocates of tradition he saw only obscurantisnorant opposition to _bonae literae_, that is, the good cause for which he and his partisans battled Of the rise of that higher culture Erasmus had already formed the conception which has since doun two or three hundred years before his time, in which, besides literature, all the plastic arts shared Side by side with the terms restitution and reflorescence the word renascence crops up repeatedly in his writings
'The world is co out of a deep sleep
Still there are so convulsively with hands and feet to their old ignorance They fear that if _bonae literae_ are reborn and the world groise, it will co' They do not kno pious the Ancients could be, what sanctity characterizes Socrates, Virgil, and Horace, or Plutarch's _Moralia_, how rich the history of Antiquity is in exa profane that is pious and conduces to good nified view of life was ever found than that which Cicero propounds in _De Senectute_
In order to understand Erasmus's mind and the charin with the ideal of life that was present before his inward eye as a splendid dream It is not his own in particular The whole Renaissance cherished that wish of reposeful, blithe, and yet serious intercourse of good and wise friends in the cool shade of a house under trees, where serenity and hare yearned for the realization of siination was always steeped in the essence of Antiquity, though, at heart, it is more nearly connected with medieval ideals than they themselves were aware In the circle of the Medici it is the idyll of Careggi, in Rabelais it embodies itself in the fancy of the abbey of Theleme; it finds voice in More's _Utopia_ and in the work of Montaigne In Erass that ideal wish ever recurs in the shape of a friendly walk, followed by ascene of the _Antibarbari_, in the numerous descriptions of meals with Colet, and the numerous _Convivia_ of the _Colloquies_ Especially in the _Conviviuiosum_ Erasmus has elaborately pictured his dream, and it would be worth while to compare it, on the one hand with Thelearden which Bernard Palissy describes The little Dutch eighteenth-century country-seats and garden-houses in which the national spirit took great delight are the fulfilment of a purely Erasiosum_ says: 'To me a simple country-house, a nest, is pleasanter than any palace, and, if he be king who lives in freedo here'
Life's true joy is in virtue and piety If they are Epicureans who live pleasantly, then none are more truly Epicureans than they who live in holiness and piety
The ideal joy of life is also perfectly idyllic in so far that it requires an aloofness from earthly concerns and contempt for all that is sordid It is foolish to be interested in all that happens in the world; to pride oneself on one's knowledge of the land's plans, the news from Rome, conditions in Denmark The sensible old man of the _Colloquium Senile_ has an easy post of honour, a safeand smiles upon all the world
Quiet for oneself, surrounded by books--that is of all things most desirable
On the outskirts of this ideal of serenity and harmony numerous flowers of aesthetic value blow, such as Erasreat need of kindly courtesy, his pleasure in gentle and obliging treatment, in cultured and easy manners Close by are some of his intellectual peculiarities He hates the violent and extravagant Therefore the choruses of the Greek drama displease him The merit of his own poems he sees in the fact that they pass passion by, they abstain frole storeration whatever There is great frugality in words My poetry would rather keep within bounds than exceed theh seas' In another place he says: 'I am always most pleased by a poem that does not differ too much from prose, but prose of the best sort, be it understood As Philoxenus accounted those the most palatable fishes that are no true fishes and the e, that along the shores, and the e; so I take especial pleasure in a rhetorical poem and a poetical oration, so that poetry is tasted in prose and the reverse'
That is the ht that is never completely expressed But he adds: 'Farfetched conceits may please others; to me the chief concern seems to be that we draw our speech fro off our invention than to present the thing' That is the realist
From this conception results his admirable, simple clarity, the excellent division and presentation of his argument But it also causes his lack of depth and the prolixity by which he is characterized His iae_ of his later years, ever new argues to point, or quotations to support, his idea He praises laconism, but never practises it Erasmus never coins a sentence which, rounded off and pithy, becomes a proverb and in this manner lives There are no current quotations froia_ has created no new ones of his own
The true occupation for a , in which, indeed, he a was just the work he liked It is characteristic that he paraphrased the whole New Testament except the Apocalypse
Erasmus's mind was neither philosophic nor historic His was neither the work of exact, logical discri the deep sense of the way of the world in broad historical visions in which the particulars thee His ical in the fullest sense of the word But by that alone he would not have conquered and captivated the world His mind was at the sa aesthetic trend and those three together have reat
The foundation of Erasmus's mind is his fervent desire of freedom, clearness, purity, siave new substance by the wealth of his mind Without liberty, life is no life; and there is no liberty without repose The fact that he never took sides definitely resulted froement, even a temporary one, was felt as a fetter by Erasmus An interlocutor in the _Colloquies_, in which he so often, spontaneously, reveals his own ideals of life, declares himself determined neither to marry, nor to take holy orders, nor to enter a monastery, nor into any connection from which he will afterwards be unable to free himself--at least not before he knows himself completely
'When will that be? Never, perhaps' 'On no other account do I congratulate myself more than on the fact that I have never attached myself to any party,' Erasmus says towards the end of his life
Liberty should be spiritual liberty in the first place 'But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he hied of no man,' is the word of Saint Paul To what purpose should he require prescriptions who, of his own accord, does better things than huance it is to bind by institutions a man who is clearly led by the inspirations of the divine spirit!
In Erases upright h to dispense with fixed forms and rules As More, in _Utopia_, and Rabelais, Erasmus relies already on the dictates of nature, which produces ood and which we may follow, provided we are imbued with faith and piety
In this line of confidence in what is natural and desire of the simple and reasonable, Erasmus's educational and social ideas lie Here he is far ahead of his ti to discuss Erasmus's educational ideals hteenth century The child should learn in playing, by reeable to its ently corrected The flogging and abusive schoolmaster is Erasmus's abomination; the office itself is holy and venerable to hiin from the moment of birth Probably Erasmus attached too much value to classicism, here as elsewhere: his friend Peter Gilles should ies in his two-year-old son, that he s in Greek and Latin But what gentleness and clear good sense shi+nes from all Erasmus says about instruction and education!