THE PRUSSIAN STATE AND PRUSSIAN

LITERATURE.

MOST

OST of our readers will remember Mr. Carlyle's characteristic reference to the meetings which took place between Mirabeau and Frederick the Great shortly before the death of the latter. During one of those memorable "half-hours," when they met face to face, "the last of the old gods, and the first of the modern Titans," Mirabeau said to the king:-"It is to be regretted that your Majesty has not chosen to be the Augustus of your people as well as their Cæsar.” Frederick fixed upon the French Count those eyes of which we have heard so much, "such a pair of eyes as no man, or lion, or lynx of that century bore elsewhere," and replied, "You do not know what you say. By giving to my people free scope, and not intermeddling with their literary concerns, I have done more for the enlightenment than if I had endeavoured to force them on." The reproach implied in the words of Mirabeau has often been repeated; and not Frederick II. only, but the Prussian monarchy, has been blamed for a neglect of German literature. Their admirers can scarcely deny that there is some truth in the imputation. No such traditions of kindly aid to German genius, and munificent patronage of art, belong to the Court of Berlin as those that linger around Weimar and the Court of Saxony. Although Frederick the Great was himself a literary man, and during his reign some of the most eminent names in European literature and

philosophy, among others, Lessing and Kant, were to be found in his dominions, he treated the literature of his country with cold neglect, sometimes indeed with rude scorn. Frederick Schlegel did not speak without some ground when in the lectures which he delivered at Vienna, he inveighed against a king in whose land Lessing, Kant, Winkelmann, and Klopstock lived, but who failed to recognise the greatness which was growing up around him, while he lavished his praise and his patronage upon a foreign literature. It would have been unquestionably better for the fame of Frederick personally had he possessed the fresh insight and sympathy that would have enabled him to do justice to the great writers who lived in his own dominions; although, even with regard to the personal matter, something may be said in behalf of "old Fritz;" for, as Goethe pointed out, a recognition of German literature would have been for him to "lose his years;" and it was not easy for the old king to learn in his age to respect a literature which had yielded so little to satisfy the thirst of his youthful spirit. But however the matter may be viewed as affecting our estimate of Frederick personally, he was in the right when he said to Mirabeau that he had acted in the interests of German culture by permitting every man in his dominions to be literary as well as religious in his own fashion. If he did not patronize the literary men of Germany, he did what was far more important— he formed a great German state, to which literary men came from all parts of the Fatherland, because they found there greater freedom, and an atmosphere more favourable to thought than elsewhere. That no attempt was made to bind these men to the throne of Prussia, and that they were not tempted by acts of gracious condescension to adopt a Prussian-provincial tone, was assuredly a gain for German literature, whatever occasional hardships individuals may have suffered.

The whole subject of "the influence of the Prussian State upon German literature" is admirably handled in an essay so entitled, in Julian Schmidt's recent "Pictures from the Intellectual Life of our Time." No one who reads that essay will be disposed to regard Prussia as the victim of a mistaken literary policy on the part of its Government. The impression which it leaves is, on the contrary, one of surprise at the almost disproportionate number of great thinkers. and writers who have lived in Prussia during its short history. In none of the great spiritual or intellectual movements of the last two hundred years is it otherwise than well represented; and in not a few its place is absolutely the foremost. Some of the instances cited by Schmidt will make this evident. The first sketch in his essay relates to what is known under the name of Pietism-the most important movement which has taken place in the Church of Germany since the Reformation. Pietism was in the first instance a protest of

the Christian conscience and of Christian feeling against the unspiritual dogmatism which claimed to itself the name of orthodoxy; and also, and perhaps to a greater extent, a protest against the low standard of Christian morality and devotion which had grown up side by side with this arrogant doctrinal dogmatism. A practical more than a speculative movement, the burden of the teaching was that men ought to be more holy; and, in order to be so, more inward in their religion. Those, however, of the party who concerned themselves with theory, saw clearly enough that the practical ends aimed at could only be fully attained by a freer, fuller, and more spiritual use of the Holy Scriptures than was customary in the schools of the theological dogmatists of the day. In this way a desire after intellectual freedom grew up side by side with longings after holiness. The intellectual part of the movement, it is true, which was from the first subordinate to the practical, soon disappeared, or passed over into other camps; but, as a practical religion, Pietism is still an active and recognised power in the Church of Germany. With the early history of this movement Prussia is intimately connected. It was in the new Prussian University of Halle that the Pietists found a centre, by which they were able to scatter the seeds of their teaching throughout Germany. Driven from Leipsic, Thomasius found refuge in Halle, and, on the founding of the University, was appointed one of its professors. He at once introduced the novel custom of delivering academical lectures in German, discarding the traditionary Latin; and by these lectures, as well as by his numerous writings, carried on a formidable war of wit and argument against the abuses, formalisms, and shams by which the life of the German people was at the time so largely overrun. He especially protested against the employment of torture in judicial processes, and against those trials for witchcraft which were at the time conducted by the State, and advocated by the Church as a needful protection against the wiles of the devil. Franke, in a deeper and more devout spirit, contributed his share to the same regenerative work, chiefly through his sermons, but also for a time by lectures in the University, and always by his admirable life and his labours in the cause of practical philanthropy. These men, along with others, such as Lange and Michaelis, soon rendered Halle remarkable among the universities of Germany. Its young theologians became distinguished by a higher morality, a deepened tone of Christian feeling. and, in some cases, by a more intelligent as well as a more devout theology, at a time when an astonishing coarseness of manners and looseness in morals, combined with an ignorance scarcely less astonishing, were common even in theological circles at the German universities. In the Prussian capital, as well as in Halle, the pietistic influence, in its best form,

was at this time making itself felt. There the leader of the party, the devout and noble-minded Spener, occupied an important ecclesiastical position, for which he had left the Court Church in Dresden.

It was a fortunate circumstance for Pietism that it possessed such a leader, so wise and moderate, as well as devout, and that his high position and his noble and winning character enabled him to exercise great influence over others of the school. He communicated to the movement at its commencement a depth and a sobriety of tone which, however, it did not unfortunately always retain. His manner of dealing with adversaries, in its gentleness and humility, was something very different from that adopted at a later period by some of his followers; for as Pietism hardened into a system, the Pietists began to think it necessary, in order to retain the influence which they had gained, to refuse to others the freedom of thought and of speech to which their own party owed its existence. It is painful, after reading with admiration the account of their own early contendings and sufferings, to find them combining with some of their old enemies to persecute an inoffensive philosopher. The story of the expulsion of Christian Wolf from Halle is a disgraceful page in the history of religious persecution. He had been brought to Halle, through the influence of Leibnitz, as a lecturer on philosophy. A clear and ambitious thinker, and a lecturer who could clothe his thoughts in vigorous German, his crowded lecture-room soon gave evidence of his great popularity in the University. The stately fabrics of demonstration which he built up, and his bold manner of dealing with traditional thought, astonished and delighted his youthful hearers, and gave rise to one of those fevers of metaphysical speculation to which German universities have always been specially subject. Wolf became unquestionably the most influential man in Halle, but this influence was viewed with anything but satisfaction by his brother professors. Emptied lecture-rooms had perhaps something to do with this feeling, but in some cases we cannot doubt it was a genuine and conscientious disapproval of his philosophy which led to the melancholy results which followed. But those who hated his popularity as well as those who disliked his philosophy, were at one in the resolution that, if possible, Halle should be rid of Wolf. Nor did he fail to give occasion which could be laid hold of against him. In an academical oration which he delivered, he praised somewhat ostentatiously the moral system of Confucius, and went so far as to say that a pure ethical system might exist without a pure theology. It was enough. The ecclesiastical batteries were opened upon him, and he was publicly denounced from the pulpits as a heretic and a teacher of error. There might, notwithstanding, have been difficulty in persuading the prosaic Prussian Government to

take active steps in a matter of speculative thought, had not an ingenious enemy of Wolf, who possessed the ear of the king, devised a plan of placing it in an eminently practical light. He represented to his Majesty that Wolf denied the freedom of the human will, and that if such a doctrine got abroad it would assuredly work mischief among the people. For instance, if one of the king's tall grenadiers were to desert, it would be said that the grenadier had been predestined to be a deserter, and his punishment would be regarded as an injustice. Laughable as it may appear, the stratagem had the desired effect; and the corporal-king became thoroughly alive to the danger of having such a philosopher in his kingdom. A cabinet order was at once issued from Berlin, by which Wolf was deprived of his professorship, and commanded to leave the Prussian dominions within forty-eight hours, under pain of the halter. The sentence was carried out in the spirit in which it was given, and Wolf was driven from the University which he had adorned, with a haste and violence which could scarcely have been exceeded had he been a wild beast, or the most dangerous of criminals.

It would have been well for the honour of all parties concerned, had Frederick the Great's policy of non-intervention in literary concerns been on this occasion adopted by his father. As might have been anticipated, the persecutions to which Wolf was subjected only added to his fame, and rendered his philosophy more popular. Expelled from Halle, he found a sphere of labour in Marburgh, from which he was recalled to Prussia by Frederick the Great in the first year of that monarch's reign, who said of him that "a man who seeks and loves the truth ought to be held in honour in every human society." His philosophy became widely popular, and was for long after his death the dominant system of speculative thought in Germany. Even so late as the first decade of the present century, when Hegel began to lecture at Jena, he found Wolfianism respectably represented there, notwithstanding that it had been so long exposed to the powerful light of the Critical Philosophy.

Pietism and Wolfianism are now somewhat forgotten, especially the latter; but the classical genius of Lessing still keeps green the recollection of another school of writers who, in the middle of the eighteenth century, in Prussian Berlin, laboured untiringly, in their own fashion, for the enlightenment. Lessing was not a Prussian, but was attracted to Berlin by the intellectual atmosphere of the place. The newspaper exists to the present day which he edited when there, and much that he contributed to it is classical in German literature. Every question was discussed in its columns-theology, poetry, the drama, and philosophy; and these subjects were handled with a power and unsparing freedom which made the editor of the