VII What Is Philosophy?
In text-books of philosophy you will find most diverse answers to this question. During the twenty-five hundred years of its existence it has been able to make an immense quantity of attempts to define the substance of its task. But up till now no agreement has been reached between the acknowledged representatives of the lovers and favourites of wisdom. Every one judges in his own way, and considers his opinion as the only true one; of a consensus sapientium it is impossible even to dream. But strangely enough, exactly in this disputable matter wherein the agreement of savants and sages is so impossible, the consensus profanorum is fully attained. All those who were never engaged in philosophy, who have never read learned books, or even any books at all, answer the question with rare unanimity. True, it is apparently impossible to judge of their opinions directly, because people of this kind cannot speak at all in the language evolved by science; they never put the question in such a form, still less can they answer it in the accepted words. But we have an important piece of indirect evidence which gives us the right to form a conclusion. There is no doubt that all those who have gone to philosophy for answers to the questions which tormented them, have left her disenchanted, unless they had a sufficiently eminent gift to enable them to join the guild of professional philosophers. From this we may unhesitatingly conclude, although the conclusion is for the time being only negative, that philosophy is engaged in a business which may be interesting and important to the few, but is tedious and useless to the many.
This conclusion is highly consoling as well for the sage as for the profane. For every sage, even the most exalted, is at the same time one of the profane—if we discard the academical use of words—a human being, pure and simple. To him also it may happen that those tormenting questions will arise, which ordinary people used to bring to him, as for instance in the case of Tolstoi’s Ivan Ilyich or Tchekhov’s professor in The Tedious Story. And then he will of course be obliged to confess that the necessary answers are missing from the great tomes which he has studied so well. For what can be more terrible to a man than to be compelled in the hard moments of his life to acknowledge any doctrine of philosophy as binding upon him? For instance, to be compelled to hold with Plato, Spinoza, or Schopenhauer that the chief problem of life is moral perfection, or in other words, self-renunciation. It was easy for Plato to preach justice. It did not in the least prevent him from being the son of his time, or from breaking to a permissible extent the commandments which he himself had given. By all the evidence Spinoza was much more resolute and consequent than Plato; he indeed kept the passions in subservience, but that was his personal and individual inclination. Consistence was not merely a property of his mind, but of his whole being. Displaying it, he displayed himself. As for Schopenhauer, it is known that he praised the virtues only in his books; but in life, like many another clever, independent man, he was guided by the most diverse considerations.
But these are all masters, who devise systems and imperatives. Whereas the pupil, seeking in philosophy an answer to his questions, cannot permit himself any liberties and digressions from the universal rules, for the essence and the fundamental problem of any doctrine reduces to the subordination not merely of men’s conduct, but of the life of the whole universe to one regulating principle. Individual philosophers have discovered such principles, but to this day they have reached no final agreement among themselves, and this to some extent lightens the burden of those unhappy ones who, having lost the hope of finding help and guidance elsewhere, have turned to philosophy. If there is not in philosophy one universal principle binding upon and acknowledged by all, it means that it is permitted to each man, at least for the meantime, to feel and even to act in his own way. A man may listen to Spinoza, or he may stop his ears. He may kneel before Plato’s eternal ideas, or he may give his allegiance to the ever-changing, ever-flowing reality. Finally, he may accept Schopenhauer’s pessimism, but nothing on earth can compel him to celibacy on the ground that Schopenhauer successfully laughed at love. Nor is there any necessity at all, in order to win such freedom for one’s self, to be armed with the light dialectic of the old Greek philosopher, or with the heavy logic of the poor Dutch Jew, or with the subtle wit of the profound German. Neither is it necessary to dispute them. It is even possible to agree with them all. The room of the world is infinite, and will not only contain all those who lived once and those who are yet to be born, but will give to each one of them all that he can desire: to Plato, the world of ideas, to Spinoza, the one eternal and unchangeable substance, to Schopenhauer, the Nirvana of Buddhism. Each of these, and all the other philosophers, will find what they want in the universe even to the belief, even to the conviction, that theirs are the only true and universal doctrines. But, at the same time, the profane will find suitable worlds for themselves. From the fact that people are cooped up on the earth, and that they must put forth efforts beyond belief to gain each cubit of earth, and even their illusory liberties, it by no means follows that poverty, obscurantism, and despotism must be considered eternal and original principles, and that economical uniformity is the last refuge of man. A plurality of worlds, a plurality of men and gods amid the vast spaces of the vast universe—this is, if I may be forgiven the word, an ideal. It is true it is not built according to the idealists. Yet what a conclusion does it foreshadow! We leave the disputes and arguments of philosophers aside, so soon as we begin to speak of gods. According to the existing beliefs and hypotheses the gods also have always been quarrelling and fighting among themselves. Even in monotheistic religions people always made their God enter a fight, and devised an eminent opponent for him—the devil. Men can by no means rid themselves of the thought that everything in heaven goes on in exactly the same way as it does on the earth, and they attribute all their own bad qualities as well as their good ones to the denizens of heaven. Whereas it is by far the most probable that a great many of the things which are, according to our notions, perfectly inseparable from life do not exist in heaven. Among other things, there is no struggle. And this is well. For every struggle, sooner or later, develops inevitably into a fight. When the supply of logical and ethical arguments is exhausted, one thing is left for the irreconcilable opponents—to come to blows, which do in fact usually decide the issue. The value of logical and ethical arguments is arbitrarily assigned, but material force is measured by foot-pounds and can be calculated in advance. So that where on the common supposition there will be no foot-pounds, the issue of the fight will very often remain undecided. When Lermontov’s demon goes to Tamara’s cell, an angel meets him on the way. The demon says that Tamara belongs to him; the angel demands her for himself. The demon will not be dissuaded by words and arguments: he is not built that way. As for the angel, he always considers himself doubly right. How can the issue be decided? At last Lermontov, who could not or dared not devise a new solution, admitted the interference of material force: Tamara is dragged away from the demon exactly as the stronger robber pulls his prey from the weaker on earth. Evidently the poet admitted that conclusion, that he might pay his tribute to the piety of tradition. But in my opinion the solution is not pious, but merely blasphemous. In it the traces of barbarity and idolatry are still clearly visible. The tastes and attributes of which earthly despots dream are attributed to God. By all means he must be, he desires to be, the strongest, the very first, just like Julius Caesar in his youth. He fears rivalry above all things, and never forgives his unconquered enemies. This is evidently a barbarous mistake. God does not want to be the strongest, the very first, at all. Certainly—for that would be intelligible and in accordance with common sense—he would not like to be weaker than others, in order that he might not be exposed to violence; but there is no foundation at all for attributing to him ambition or vainglory. Therefore there is equally no reason to think that he does not suffer equals, desires to be supreme, and seeks at all costs to destroy the devil. Most probably he lives in peace and concord even with those who least adapt themselves to his tastes and habits. Perhaps he is even delighted that not all are as he, and he readily shares his possessions with the devil, the more readily because by such a division neither loses, since the infinite—I admit that God’s possessions are infinite—divided by two and even by the greatest possible finite number still leaves infinity.
Now we can return to the original question, and it seems that we can even give an answer to it—two answers even, one for the sage, another for the profane. To the first, philosophy is art for art’s sake. Every philosopher tries to construct a harmonious and various system, curiously and nicely fashioned, using for his material his own intrinsic experience as well as his own personal observations of the life beyond him, and the observations of others. A philosopher is an artist of his kind, to whom his works are dearer than everything in life, sometimes dearer than life itself. We very often see philosophers sacrifice everything for the sake of their work—even truth. Not so the profane. To them philosophy—more exactly, that which they would call philosophy if they possessed a scientific terminology—is the last refuge when material forces have been wasted, when there are no weapons left to fight for their stolen rights. Then they run for help and support to a place which they have always taken care to avoid before. Think of Napoleon at St. Helena. He who had been collecting soldiers and guns all his life, began to philosophise when he was bound hand and foot. Certainly he behaved in this new sphere like a beginner, a very inexperienced and, strange to say, a pusillanimous novice.
He who feared neither pestilence nor bullet, was afraid, we know, of a dark room. Men used to philosophy, like Schopenhauer, walk boldly and with confidence in a dark room, though they run away from gun shots, and even less dangerous things. The great captain, the once Emperor of nearly all Europe, Napoleon, philosophised on St. Helena, and even went so far as to begin to ingratiate himself with morality, evidently supposing that upon morality his ultimate fate depended. He assured her that for her sake, and her sake alone, he had contrived his murderous business—he who, all the while a crown was on his head and a victorious army in his hands, hardly knew even of the existence of morality. But this is so intelligible. If one were to come upon a perfectly new and unknown world at the age of forty-five, then surely everything would seem terrible, and one would take the incorporeal morality for the arbiter of destiny. And one would plan to seduce her, if possible, with sweet words and false promises, as a lady of the world. But these were the first steps of a tyro. It was as hard for Napoleon to master philosophy as it was for Charlemagne at the end of his days to learn to write. But he knew why he had come to the new place, and neither Plato nor Spinoza nor Kant could dissuade him of this. Perhaps at the beginning, while he was as yet unused to the darkness, he would pretend to agree with the acknowledged authorities, thinking that here too, just as there where he lived before, exalted personages do not tolerate opposition; perhaps he would lie to them as he lied to morality, but his business he would not forget. He came to philosophy with demands, and would not rest till he had received satisfaction. He had already seen how a Corsican lieutenant had become a French Emperor. Why should not the beaten Emperor fight his last fight?... And how shall he be reconciled with self-renunciation? Philosophy will surrender: it is only necessary not to surrender in one’s self. So does a Napoleon come to philosophy, and so does he understand her. And until the contrary is proven, nothing can prevent us from thinking that the Napoleons are right, and therefore that academical philosophy is not the last nor even the penultimate word. For, perhaps, the last word is hidden in the hearts of the tongue-tied, but bold, persistent, implacable men.
VIII
Heinrich Heine
More than a hundred years have passed since the birth, and fifty years since the death, of this remarkable man, but the history of literature has not yet finally settled accounts with him. Even the Germans, perhaps the Germans above all, find it impossible to agree upon the valuation of his gift. Some consider him a genius, others a man devoid of talent and insipid. Moreover, his enemies still bring as much passion to their attacks upon him as they did before, as though they were waging war upon a live opponent in place of a dead one. They hate him for the same things which made his contemporaries hate him. We know that it was principally for his insincerity that they did not forgive him. No one could tell when he was speaking seriously and when in jest, what he loved and what he hated, and finally it was quite impossible to determine whether or not he believed in God. It must be confessed that the Germans were right in many of their accusations. I value Heine extremely highly; in my opinion he is one of the greatest German poets; and yet I cannot undertake to say with certainty what he loved, what he believed, and often I cannot tell how serious he is in uttering one or another of his opinions. Nevertheless I find it impossible to detect any insincerity in his works. On the contrary, those peculiarities of his, which so irritated the Germans, are in my eyes so many proofs of his wonderful and unique sincerity. I think that if the Germans were mistaken and misunderstood Heine, hypertrophied self-love and the power of prejudice is the cause. Heine’s usual method is to begin to speak with perfect seriousness, and to end with biting raillery and sarcasm. Critics and readers, who generally do not guess at the outset what awaits them in the event, have taken the unexpected laughter to their own account, and have been deeply offended. Wounded self-love never forgives; and the Germans could not forgive Heine for his jests. And yet Heine but rarely attacked others: most of his mockery is directed against himself, and above all in the work of his last creative period, of the years when he lived in the Matrazengrab.
With us in Russia many were offended with Gogol, believing that he was jeering at them. Later, he confessed that he had been describing himself. Nor does the inconstancy of Heine’s opinions in any way prove him insincere. His intention was by no means always to fling at the Philistines. Indeed, he did not know what to believe; he changed his tastes and attachments, and did not even always know for certain what he preferred at the moment. Of course, had he wished, he might have pretended to be consequent and consistent. Or, had he been less eagle-eyed, he might with the vast majority of men have adopted a ceremonial dress once for all, he might have professed and invariably preached ideas which had no relation to his real emotions and moods. Many people think that one ought to act thus, that (particularly in literature) one must speak only officially and exhibit lofty ideas that have been proclaimed by wise men since time immemorial, without their having made the least inquiry whether they correspond to their own natures or not. Often cruel, vindictive, spiteful, selfish, mean people sincerely praise goodness, forgiveness, love to one’s enemy, generosity and magnanimity in their books, while of their tastes and passions they speak not a single word. They are confident that passions exist only to be suppressed, and that convictions only are to be exhibited or displayed. A man rarely succeeds in suppressing his passions, but it is extremely easy to hide them, especially in books. And such dissimulation is not only not condemned, but recognised and even encouraged. The common and familiar programme is accepted: in life ‘passions’ judge ‘convictions,’ in books ‘convictions,’ or ‘ideals,’ as they are called, pass sentence upon ‘passions.’ I would emphasise the fact that most writers are convinced that their business is not to tell of themselves, but to praise ideals. Heine’s sincerity was really of a different order. He told everything, or nearly everything, of himself. And this was thought so shocking that the sworn custodians of convention and good morals considered themselves wounded in their best and loftiest feelings. It seemed to them that it would be disastrous if Heine were to succeed in acquiring a great literary influence, and in getting a hold upon the minds of his contemporaries. Then would crumble the foundations, constructed through centuries of arduous labour by the united efforts of the most distinguished representatives of the nation. This is perhaps true: the lofty magnificence of life can be preserved only upon the indispensable condition of hypocrisy. In order that it should be beautiful, much must be hidden and thrust away as far and deep as possible. The sick and the mad must be herded into hospitals; poverty into cellars; disobedient passions into the depths of the soul. Truth and freedom are only allowed to obtrude upon the attention as far as is compatible with the interests of a life well arranged within and without. The Protestant Church understood this as well as the Catholic, perhaps better. Strict puritanism elevated spiritual discipline to the highest moral law, which ruled life with unrelenting and inexorable despotism. Marriage and the family, not love, must be the aim of man; and poor Gretchen, who gave herself to Faust without observing the established ceremonial, was forced to consider herself eternally damned. The inward discipline still more than the outward guarded the foundations and gave strength and force to the State as well as to the people. Men and women were not spared; they were not even taken into account. Hundreds and thousands of Gretchens, men and women, were sacrificed, and are being sacrificed still, without pity to ‘the highest spiritual interests.’
Acknowledgment and respect for the prescribed order had become so deeply rooted in the German soul—I speak of Germany, because no other nation upon earth is so highly disciplined—that even the most independent characters yielded to it. The most dreadful sin is not the breaking of the law—a violation which like Gretchen’s can be explained by weakness and weakness alone, though it was not forgiven, was less severely condemned—but rebellion against the law, the open and daring refusal to obey, even though it be expressed in the most insignificant act. Therefore every one tends to show his loyalty from that side first of all. In a greater or less degree all have transgressed the law, but the more one has violated it in act, the more imperative he considers its glorification in words. And this order of things aroused neither suspicion nor discontent. Therein could be seen acknowledged the superiority of spirit over body, of mind over passion. Nobody ever asked the question: ‘Is it really true that the spirit must have the mastery over the body, and the mind over the passions?’ And when Heine allowed himself to put the question and to answer it in his own way, the whole force of German indignation burst upon him. First of all they suspected his sincerity and truthfulness. ‘It is impossible,’ said the pious, ‘that he really should not acknowledge the law. He is only pretending.’ Such a supposition was the more natural because the ring of conviction was not always to be heard in Heine’s tone: one of his poems ends with the following words: ‘I seek the body, the body, the young and tender body. The soul you may bury deep in the ground—I myself have soul enough.’ The poem is daring and provocative in the extreme, but in it, as in all Heine’s daring and provocative poems, may be heard a sharp and nervous laugh, which must be understood as the expression of the divided soul, as a mockery of himself. It is he who tells of his meeting with two women, mother and daughter. Both please him: the mother by her much knowledge, the daughter by her innocence. And the poet stands between them, in his own words, like Buridan’s ass between two bundles of hay. Again, daring, again, the laugh; and again the well-balanced German is irritated. He would prefer that no one should ever speak of such emotions, and if they are to be spoken of, then it must be at least in a penitent tone, with self-accusation. But Heine’s misplaced laughter is indecent and quite uselessly disconcerting. I repeat that Heine himself was not always sure that his ‘sincerity’ was lawful. While he was still a youth he told how there suddenly ran through his soul, as through the whole earth, a rent which split asunder the unity of his former emotions. King David when he praised God and good did not remember his dark deeds—of which there were not a few—or, if he did remember them, it was only to repent. His soul was also divided, but he was able to preserve a sequence. When he wept, he could not and did not want to rejoice; when he repented, he was already far from sin; when he prayed, he did not scoff; when he believed, he did not doubt. The Germans, brought up on the great king’s psalms, had come to think that these things were impossible and ought never to be possible. They admitted the succession of different, and even contradictory spiritual conditions, but their simultaneous existence appeared to them unintelligible and disgusting, in contradiction with divine commandments and the laws of logic. It seemed to them that everything which formerly existed as separate, had become confused, that the place of stringent harmony had been usurped by absurdity and chaos. They thought that such a state of things threatened innumerable miseries. They did not admit the idea that Heine himself might not understand it; in his creation they saw the manifestation of a false and evil will, and they invoked divine and human judgment upon it. The Philistine irritation reached the extreme when it became clear that Heine had not humbled himself even before the face of death. Stricken by paralysis, he lay in his Matrazengrab, unable to stir a limb; he suffered the most intense bodily pains, with no hope of cure, or even of relief, yet he still continued to blaspheme as before. Worse still, his sarcasms every day became more ruthless, more poisonous, more refined. It might have been thought that it was left to him, crushed and destroyed, only to acknowledge his defeat and to commit himself utterly to the magnanimity of the victor. But in the weak flesh a strong spirit lived. All his thoughts were turned to God, the power of whose right hand, like every dying man, he could not but feel upon him. But his thoughts of God, his attitude to God, were so original that the serious people of the outer world could only shrug their shoulders. No one ever spoke thus to God, either aloud or to himself. The thought of death usually inspires mortals with fear or admiration; therefore they either kneel before him and implore forgiveness or sing his praises. Heine has neither prayer nor praise. His poems are permeated with a charming and gracious cynicism, peculiar and proper to himself alone. He does not want to confess his sins, and even now on the threshold of another life he remains as he was in youth. He desires neither paradise, nor bliss, nor heaven; he asks God to give him back his health, and to put his money affairs in order. ‘I know there is much evil and many vices on earth. But I have grown used to all that now, and besides I seldom leave my room. O God, leave me here, but heal my infirmities, and spare me from want,’ he writes in one of his last poems. He derides the legends of the blissful life of sinless souls in paradise. ‘Sitting on the clouds and singing psalms is a pastime quite unsuited to me.’ He remembers the beautiful Venus of the Louvre and praises her as in the days of youth. His poem, Das Hohelied, is a mixture of extreme cynicism, nobility, despair, and incredible sarcasm. I do not know whether dying men have had such thoughts as those which are expressed in this poem, but I am confident that no one has expressed anything like them in literature. In Goethe’s Prometheus there is nothing of the provocative, unshakable, calm pride and the consciousness of his rights which inspired the author of Das Hohelied. God, who created heaven and earth and man upon the earth, is free to torment my body and soul to his fill, but I myself know what I need and desire, I myself decide what is good and what is bad. That is the meaning of this poem, and of all that Heine wrote in the last years of his life. He knew as well as any one that according to the doctrines of philosophy, ethics, and religion, repentance and humility are the condition of the soul’s salvation, the readiness even with the last breath of life to renounce sinful desires. Nevertheless, with his last breath he does not want to own the power over himself of the age-old authorities of the world. He laughs at morality, at philosophy, and at existing religions. The wise men think so, the wise men want to live in their own way; let them think, let them live. But who gave them the right to demand obedience from me? Can they have the power to compel me to obedience? Listening to the words of the dying man, shall we not repeat his question? Shall we not take one step further? Heine is crushed, and if we may believe, as we have every reason to believe what he tells us in his ‘Song of Songs,’ his painful and terrible illness was the direct effect and consequence of his manner of life. Does it mean that in the future, too (if future there is), new persecutions await him, until the day when of his own accord he will subscribe to the proclaimed and established morality? Have we the right to suppose that there are powers somewhere in the universe preoccupied with the business of cutting out all men, even down to the last, after the same pattern? Perhaps Heine’s contumacy points to quite a different intention of the arbiters of destiny. Perhaps the illness and torture prepared for those who fight against collars and blinkers—experience demonstrates with sufficient certainty that any declination from the high road and the norm inevitably brings suffering and ruin in its train—are only the trial of the human spirit. Who will endure them, who will stand up for himself, afraid neither of God nor of the devil and his ministers, he will enter victoriously into another world. Sometimes I even think, in opposition to existing opinion, that there the stubborn and inflexible are valued above all others, and that the secret is hidden from mortals lest the weak and compliant should take it into their heads to pretend to be stubborn, in order to deserve the favour of the gods. But he who will not endure, but will deny himself, may expect the fate of which philosophers and metaphysicians generally dream. He will be united with the primum mobile, he will be dissolved in the essence of being together with the mass of individuals like himself. I am tempted to think that the metaphysical theories which preach self-renunciation for the sake of love, and love for the sake of self-renunciation, are by no means empty and idle, as the positivists affirm. In them lies a deep, mysterious, and mystical meaning: in them is hidden a great truth. Their only mistake is that they pretend to be absolute. For some reason or other men have decided that empirical truths are many, but that metaphysical truth is one. Metaphysical truths are also many, but that does not in the least prevent them from living in harmony one with another. Empirical truths like all earthly beings are continually quarrelling, and cannot get on without superior authority. But metaphysical truths are differently arranged and know nothing whatsoever of our rivalry. There is no doubt that people who feel the burden of their individuality and thirst for self-renunciation are absolutely right. Every probability points to their at last attaining their purpose and being united to that to which they should be united, whether neighbour or remote, or perhaps, as the pantheists desire, even to inanimate nature. But it is just as probable that those who value their individuality and do not consent to renounce it either for the sake of their neighbours or of a lofty idea, will preserve themselves and will remain themselves, if not for ever and ever, at least for a sufficiently long while, until they are weary. Therefore the Germans must not be cross with Heine, at least those Germans who have judged him not from the utilitarian point of view—from this point of view I too utterly condemn him, and find for him no justification at all—but from the lofty, religious or metaphysical point of view, as it is called nowadays. He cannot possibly disturb them in any way. They will be united, down to the last they probably will be united in the Idea, the thing in itself, in Substance, or any other alluring unity; and not Heine with his sarcasms will keep them from their lofty aspirations. While if he and those like him continue to live in their own way in a place apart and even laugh at ideas—can that really be the occasion of serious annoyance?