see it, and believe it not only to be true, but the foundation and essence of all other truth, may, in such language as we are here using, be said to be the problem of Critical Philosophy. In this point of view, Kant's system may be thought to have a remote affinity to those of Malebranche and Descartes. But if they in some measure agree as to their aim, there is the widest difference as to the means. We state what to ourselves has long appeared the grand characteristic of Kant's Philosophy, when we mention his distinction, seldom perhaps expressed so broadly, but uniformly implied, between Understanding and Reason (Verstand and Vernunft). To most of our readers this may seem a distinction without a difference; nevertheless, to the Kantists it is by no means such. They believe that both Understanding and Reason are organs, or rather, we should say, modes of operation, by which the mind discovers truth; but they think that their manner of proceeding is essentially different: that their provinces are separable and distinguishable, nay, that it is of the last importance to separate and distinguish them. Reason, the Kantists say, is of a higher nature than Understanding; it works by more subtle methods, on higher objects, and requires a far finer culture for its development, indeed in many men it is never developed at all; but its results are no less certain, nay, rather, they are much more so; for Reason discerns Truth itself, the absolutely and primitively True; while Understanding discerns only relations, and cannot decide without if. The proper province of Understand ing is all, strictly speaking, real, practical, and material knowledge, Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy, the adaptation of means to ends in the whole business of life. In this province it is the strength and universal implement of the mind: an indispensable servant, without which, indeed, existence itself would be impossible. Let it not step beyond this province, however, not usurp the province of Reason, which it is appointed to obey, and cannot rule over without ruin to the whole spiritual man. Should Understanding attempt to prove the existence of God, it ends, if thorough-going and consistent with itself, in Atheism, or a faint possible Theism, which scarcely differs from this: should it speculate of Virtue, it ends in Utility, making Prudence and a sufficiently cunning love of Self the highest good. Consult Understanding about the Beauty of Poetry, and it asks, where is this Beauty? or discovers it at length in rhythms and fitnesses, and male and female rhymes. Witness also its everlasting paradoxes on Necessity and the Freedom of the Will; its ominous silence on the end and meaning of man; and the enigma which, under such inspection, the whole purport of existence becomes. Nevertheless, say the Kantists, there is a truth in these things. Virtue is Virtue, and not prudence; not less surely than the angle in a semicircle is a right angle, and no trapezium: Shakspeare is a Poet, and Boileau is Joe think of it as you may: Neither is it more certain that I myself exist, than that God exists, infinite, eternal, invisible, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. To discern these truths is the province of Reason, which therefore is to be cultivated as the highest faculty in man. Not by logic and argument does it work; yet surely and clearly may it be taught to work: and its domain lies in that higher region whither logic and argument cannot reach; in that holier region, where Poetry, and Virtue, and Divinity abide, in whose presence Understanding wavers and recoils, dazzled into utter darkness by that "sea of light," at once the fountain and the termination of all true knowledge. Will the Kantists forgive us for the loose and popular manner in which we must here speak of these things, to bring them in any measure before the eyes of our readers?—It may illustrate this distinction still farther, if we say, that, in the opinion of a Kantist, the French are of all European nations the most gifted with Understanding, and the most desti tute of Reason;* that David Hume had no forecast of this latter, and that Shakspeare and Luther dwelt perennially in its purest sphere. Of the vast, nay, in these days boundless, importance of this distinction, could it be scientifically established, we need remind no thinking man. For the rest, far be it from the reader to suppose that this same Reason is but a new appearance, under another name, of our own old "Wholesome Prejudice," so well known to most of us! Prejudice, wholesome or unwholesome, is a personage for whom the German Philosophers disclaim all shadow of respect; nor do the vehement among them hide their deep disdain for all and sundry who fight under her flag. Truth is to be loved purely and solely because it is true. With moral, political, religious considerations, high and dear as they may otherwise be, the Philosopher, as such, has no concern. To look at them would but perplex him, and distract his vision from the task in his hands. Calmly he constructs his theorem, as the Geometer does his, without hope or fear, save that he may or may not find the solution; and stands in the middle, by the one, it may be, accused as an Infidel, by the other as an Enthusiast and a Mystic, till the tumult ceases, and what was true is and continues true to the end of all time. Such are some of the high and momentous questions treated of, by calm, earnest, and deeply meditative men, in this system of Philosophy, which to the wiser minds among us is still unknown, and by the unwiser is spoken of and regarded as their nature requires. The profoundness, subtilty, extent of investigation, which the answer of these questions presupposes, need not be farther pointed out. With the truth or falsehood of the system, we have here, as already stated, no concern; our aim has been, so far as might be done, to show it as it appeared to us; and to ask such of our readers as pursue these studies, whether this also Academischen Studium, pp. 105-111,) in terms which we Schelling has said as much or more, (Methode des could wish we had space to transcribe. is not worthy of some study. The reply we must now leave to themselves. old Saxon speech, which is also our mother tongue. As an appendage to the charge of Mysticism We confess the present aspect of spiritual brought against the Germans, there is often Europe might fill a melancholic observer with added the seemingly incongruous one of Irre- doubt and foreboding. It is mournful to see so ligion. On this point also we had much to many noble, tender, and high-aspiring minds say; but must for the present decline it. Mean- deserted of that religious light which once while, let the reader be assured, that to the guided all such: standing sorrowful on the charge of Irreligion, as to so many others, the scene of past convulsions and controversies, as Germans will plead not guilty. On the contra- on a scene blackened and burnt up with fire; ry, they will not scruple to assert that their lite- mourning in the darkness, because there is derature is, in a positive sense, religious; nay, solation, and no home for the soul; or what is perhaps to maintain, that if ever neighbouring worse, pitching tents among the ashes, and nations are to recover that pure and high spirit kindling weak earthly lamps which we are to of devotion, the loss of which, however we may take for stars. This darkness is but transitory disguise it or pretend to overlook it, can be obscuration: these ashes are the soil of future hidden from no observant mind, it must be by herbage and richer harvests. Religion, Poetry, travelling, if not on the same path, at least in is not dead; it will never die. Its dwelling the same direction, in which the Germans have and birthplace is in the soul of man, and it is already begun to travel. We shall add, that eternal as the being of man. In any point of the Religion of Germany is a subject not for Space, in any section of Time, let there be a slight but for deep study, and, if we mistake living Man: and there is an Infinitude above not, may in some degree reward the deepest. him and beneath him, and an eternity encomHere, however, we must close our examina-passes him on this hand and on that; and tones tion or defence. We have spoken freely, be- of Sphere-music, and tidings from loftier cause we felt distinctly, and thought the matter worlds, will flit round him, if he can but listen, worthy of being stated, and more fully inquired and visit him with holy influences, even in the into. Farther than this, we have no quarrel thickest press of trivialities, or the din of busiest for the Germans; we would have justice done life. Happy the man, happy the nation that them, as to all men and all things; but for their can hear these tidings; that has them written in literature or character we profess no sectarian fit characters, legible to every eye, and the soor exclusive preference. We think their re- lemn import of them present at all moments to cent Poetry, indeed, superior to the recent every heart! That there is, in these days, no Poetry of any other nation; but taken as a nation so happy, is too clear; but that all nawhole, inferior to that of several; inferior not tions, and ourselves in the van, are, with more to our own only, but to that of Italy, nay, per- or less discernment of its nature, struggling haps to that of Spain. Their Philosophy, too, towards this happiness, is the hope and the must still be regarded as uncertain; at best glory of our time. To us, as to others, success, only the beginning of better things. But surely at a distant or a nearer day, cannot be uncereven this is not to be neglected. A little light tain. Meanwhile, the first condition of success is precious in great darkness: nor, amid the is, that, in striving honestly ourselves, we homyriads of Poetasters and Philosophes, are Poets nestly acknowledge the striving of our neighand Philosophers so numerous that we should bour; that with a Will unwearied in seeking reject such, when they speak to us in the hard, Truth, we have a Sense open for it, wheresobut manly, deep, and expressive tones of that ever and howsoever it may arise. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF WERNER. [FOREIGN REVIEW, 1828.] If the charm of fame consisted, as Horace | with the finger, and having it said, This is he!" has mistakenly declared, "in being pointed at *1. Lebens-Abriss Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werners. Von dem Herausgeber von Hoffmanns Leban und Nachlass.) Sketch of the Life of Frederic Ludwig Zacharias Werner. By the Editor of "Hoffmann's Life and Remains.") Berlin, 1823. 2. Die Söhne des Thals. (The Sons of the Valley.) A Dramatic Poem. Part I. Die Templer auf Cypern. (The Templars in Cyprus.) Part II. Die Kreuzesbrüder. (The Brethren of the Cross.) Berlin, 1801, 1802. 3. Das Kreuz an der Ostsee. (The Cross on the Baltic.) A Tragedy. Berlin, 1806. 4. Martin Luther, oder Die Weihe der Kraft. (Martin Luther, or the Consecration of Strength.) A Tragedy. Berlin, 1807. 5. Die Mutter der Makkabder. (The Mother of the Maccabees) A Tragedy. Vienna, 1820. few writers of the present age could boast of more fame than Werner. It has been the unhappy fortune of this man to stand for a long period incessantly before the world, in a far stronger light than naturally belonged to him, or could exhibit him to advantage. Twenty years ago he was a man of considerable note, which has ever since been degenerating into notoriety. The mystic dramatist, the skeptical enthusiast, was known and partly esteemed by all students of poetry; Madame de Staël, we recollect, allows him an entire chapter in her "Allemagne." It was a much coarser curiosity, and in a much wider circle, which the dissipated man, by successive indecorums, occasioned; till at last the convert to Popery, the preaching zealot, came to figure in all newspapers; and some picture of him was required for all heads that would not sit blank and mute in the topic of every coffeehouse and asthetic tea. In dim heads, that is, in the great majority, the picture was, of course, perverted into a strange bugbear, and the original decisively enough condemned; but even the few, who might see him in his true shape, felt too well that nothing loud could be said in his behalf; that, with so many mournful blemishes, if extenuation could not avail, no complete defence was to be attempted. service. His "Life of Hoffmann,” pretending to no artfulness of arrangement, is redundant, rather than defective, in minuteness; but there, at least, the means of a correct judgment are brought within our reach, and the work, as usual with Hitzig, bears marks of the utmost fairness; and of an accuracy which we might almost call professional: for the author, it would seem, is a legal functionary of long standing, and now of respectable rank; and he examines and records, with a certain notarial strictness too rare in compilations of this sort. So far as Hoffmann is concerned, therefore, we have reason to be satisfied. In regard to Werner, however, we cannot say so much: here we should certainly have wished for more facts, though it had been with fewer consequences drawn from them; were these somewhat chaotic expositions of Werner's character exchanged for simple particulars of his walk and conversation, the result would be much surer, and, especially to foreigners, much more complete and luminous. As it is, from repeated perusals of this biography, we have failed At the same time, it is not the history of a mere literary profligate that we have here to do with. Of men whom fine talents cannot teach the humblest prudence, whose high feeling, unexpressed in noble action, must lie smouldering with baser admixtures in their own bosom, till their existence, assaulted from without and from within, becomes a burnt and blackened ruin, to be sighed over by the few, and stared at, or trampled on, by the many,-to gather any very clear notion of the man; there is unhappily no want in any country; nor with, perhaps, more study of his writings nor can the unnatural union of genius with than, on other grounds, they might have merdepravity and degradation have such charms ited, does his manner of existence still stand for our readers, that we should go abroad in out to us with that distinct cohesion which quest of it, or in any case to dwell on it, other-puts an end to doubt. Our view of him the wise than with reluctance. Werner is some-reader will accept as an approximation, and be thing more than this: a gifted spirit, struggling content to wonder with us, and charitably pause earnestly amid the new, complex, tumultuous where we cannot altogether interpret. influences of his time and country, but without Werner was born at Königsberg, in East force to body himself forth from amongst them; Prussia, on the 18th of November, 1768. His a keen adventurous swimmer, aiming towards father was Professor of History and Eloquence high and distant landmarks, but too weakly in in the University there; and further, in virtue so rough a sea, for the currents drive him far of this office, Dramatic Censor, which latter astray, and he sinks at last in the waves, at-circumstance procured young Werner almost taining little for himself, and leaving little, daily opportunity of visiting the theatre, and save the memory of his failure, to others. A so gave him, as he says, a greater acquaintglance over his history may not be unprofita-ance with the mechanism of the stage than ble; if the man himself can less interest us, the ocean of German, of European Opinion, still rolls in wild eddies to and fro; and with its movements and refluxes, indicated in the history of such men, every one of us is concerned. Our materials for this survey are deficient, not so much in quantity as quality. The "Life," now known to be by Hitzig of Berlin, seems a very honest, unpresuming performance; but, on the other hand, it is much too fragmentary and discursive for our wants; the features of the man are nowhere united into a portrait, but left for the reader to unite as he may; a task which, to most readers, will be hard enough for the work, short in compass, is more than proportionally short in details of facts; and Werner's history, much as an intimate friend must have known of it, still lies before us, in great part, dark and unintelligible. For what he has done we should doubtless thank our Author; yet it seems a pity, that, in this instance, he had not done more and better. A singular chance made him, at the same time, companion of both Hoffmann and Werner, perhaps the two most showy, heterogeneous, and misinterpretable writers of his day; nor shall we deny, that, in performing a friend's duty to their memory, he has done truth also a even most players are possessed of. A strong taste for the drama it probably enough gave him; but this skill in stage mechanism may be questioned, for often in his own plays no such skill, but rather the want of it, is evinced. The Professor and Censor, of whom we hear nothing in blame or praise, died in the fourteenth year of his son, and the boy now fell to the sole charge of his mother, a woman whom he seems to have loved warmly, but whose guardianship could scarcely be the best for him. Werner himself speaks of her in earnest commendation, as of a pure, high-minded, and heavily-afflicted being. Hoffmann, however, adds, that she was hypochondriacal, and generally quite delirious, imagining herself to be the Virgin Mary, and her son to be the promised Shiloh! Hoffmann had opportunity enough of knowing; for it is a curious fact that these two singular persons were brought up under the same roof, though, at this time, by reason of their difference of age, Werner being eight years older, they had little or no acquaintance. What a nervous and melancholic parent was, Hoffmann, by another unhappy coincidence had also full occasion to know: his own mother parted from her husband, lay heipless and broken-hearted for the last seventeen years of her life, and the first seventeen of his; a source of painfu. influences, which he used to trace | through the whole of his own character; as to the like cause he imputed the primary perversion of Werner's. How far his views on this point were accurate or exaggerated, we have no means of judging. Of Werner's early years the biographer says little or nothing. We learn only that, about the usual age, he matriculated in the Königsberg University, intending to qualify himself for the business of a lawyer; and with his professional studies united, or attempted to unite, the study of philosophy under Kant. His college-life is characterized by a single, but too expressive word: "It is said,” observes Hitzig, "to have been very dissolute." His progress in metaphysics, as in all branches of learning, might thus be expected to be small; indeed, at no period of his life can he, even in the Language of panegyric, be called a man of culture or solid information on any subject. Nevertheless, he contrived, in his twenty-first year, to publish a little volume of " Poems," apparent ly in very tolerable magazine metre, and after some" roamings" over Germany, having loitered for a while at Berlin, and longer at Dresden, he betook himself to more serious business, applied for admittance and promotion as a Prussian man of law; the employment which young jurists look for in that country being chiefly in the hands of government: consisting, indeed, of appointments in the various judicial or administrative Boards by which the Provinces are managed. In 1793, Werner accordingly was made Kammersecretär (Exchequer Secretary;) a subaltern office, which he held successively in several stations, and last and Longest in Warsaw, where Hitzig, a young man following the same profession, first became acquainted with him in 1799. What the purport or result of Werner's "roamings" may have been, or how he had demeaned himself in office or out of it, we are nowhere informed; but it is an ominous circumstance that, even at this period, in his thirtieth year, he had divorced two wives, the last at least by mutual consent, and was looking out for a third! Hitzig, with whom he seems to have formed a prompt and close intimacy, gives us no full picture of him under any of his aspects: yet we can see, that his life, as naturally it might, already wore somewhat of a shattered appearance in his own eyes, that he was broken in character, in spirit, perhaps in bodily constitution; and, contenting himself with the transient gratifications of so gay a city, and so tolerable an appointment, had renounced all steady and rational hope either of being happy or of deserving to be so. of unsteady and irrational hopes, however, he had still abundance. The fine enthusiasm of his nature, undestroyed by so many external perplexities, nay, to which, perhaps, these very perplexities had given fresh and undue excitement, glowed forth in strange many-coloured brightness, from amid the wreck of his fortunes, and led him into wild worlds of speculation, the more vehemently, that the real world of action and duty had become so unmanageable in his hands. Werner's early publication had sunk, after a brief provincial life, into merited oblivion; in fact, he had then only been a rhymer, and was now, for the first time, beginning to be a poet. We have one of those youthful pieces transcribed in this volume, and certainly it exhibits a curious contrast with his subsequent writings, both in form and spirit. In form, because, unlike the first fruits of a genius, it is cold and correct: while his later works, without exception, are fervid, extravagant, and full of gross blemishes. In spirit no less, because, treating of his favourite theme, Religion, it treats of it harshly and skeptically; being, indeed, little more than a metrical version of common Utilitarian Freethinking, as it may be found (without metre) in most taverns and debatingsocieties. Werner's intermediate secret history might form a strange chapter in psychology: for now, it is clear, his French skepticism had got overlaid with wondrous theosophic garniture; his mind was full of visions and cloudy glories, and no occupation pleased him better than to controvert, in generous inquiring minds, that very unbelief which he appears to have once entertained in his own. From Hitzig's account of the matter, this seems to have formed the strongest link of his intercourse with Werner. The latter was his senior by ten years of time, and by more than ten years of unhappy experience; the grand questions of Immortality, of Fate, Free-will, Fore-knowledge absolute, were in continual agitation between them; and Hitzig still remembers with gratitude these earnest warnings against irregularity of life, and so many ardent and not ineffectual endeavours to awaken in the passionate temperament of youth a glow of purer and enlightening fire. "Some leagues from Warsaw," says the Biographer, "enchantingly embosomed in a thick wood, close by the high banks of the Vistula, lies the Cameldulensian Abbey of Bielany, inhabited by a class of monks, who in strictness of discipline yield only to those of La Trappe. To this cloistral solitude Werner was wont to repair with his friend, every fine Saturday of the summer of 1800, so soon as their occupations in the city were over. In defect of any formal inn, the two used to bivouac in the forest, or at best to sleep under a temporary tent. The Sunday was then spent in the open air; in roving about the woods; sailing on the river, and the like; till late night recalled them to the city. On such occasions, the younger of the party had ample room to unfold his whole heart before his more mature and settled companion; to advance his doubts and objections against many theories, which Werner was already cherishing: and so, by exciting him with contradiction, to cause him to make them clearer to himself." Week after week, these discussions were carefully resumed from the point where they had been left: indeed, to Werner, it would scem, this controversy had unusual attractions; for he was now busy composing a Poem, intended principally to convince the world of those very truths which he was striving to impress on his friend; and to which the world, as might be expected, was likely to give a similar reception. The character, or at least the way D of thought, attributed to Robert d'Heredon, the Scottish Templar, in the Sons of the Valley, was borrowed, it appears, as if by regular instalments, from these conferences with Hitzig; the result of the one Sunday being duly entered in dramatic form during the week; then audited on the Sunday following; and so forming the text for further disquisition. "Blissful days," adds Hitzig, "pure and innocent, which doubtless Werner also ever held in pleased remembrance!" The Söhne des Thals, composed in this rather questionable fashion, was in due time forthcoming; the First Part in 1801, the Second about a year afterwards. It is a drama, or rather two dramas, unrivalled at least in one particular, in length; each Part being a play of six acts, and the whole amounting to somewhat more than eight hundred small octavo pages! To attempt any analysis of such a work would but fatigue our readers to little purpose it is, as might be anticipated, of a most loose and formless structure: expanding on all sides into vague boundlessness, and, on the whole, resembling not so much a poem as the rude materials of one. The subject is the destruction of the Templar Order; an event which has been dramatized more than once, but on which, notwithstanding, Werner, we suppose, may boast of being entirely original. The fate of Jacques Molay, and his brethren, acts here but like a little leaven; and lucky were we, could it leaven the lump; but it lies buried under such a mass of Mystical theology, Masonic mummery, Cabalistic tradition, and Rosicrucian philosophy, as no power could work into dramatic union. The incidents are few, and of little interest; interrupted continually by flaring shows and long-winded speculations; for Werner's besetting sin, that of loquacity, is here in decided action; and so we wander, in aimless windings, through scene after scene of gorgeousness or gloom; till at last the whole rises before us like a wild phantasmagoria; cloud heaped on cloud, painted indeed here and there with prismatic hues, but representing nothing, or at least not the subject, but the author. spiration is not wanting: Werner evidently thinks that in these his ultramundane excursions he has found truth; he has something positive to set forth, and he feels himself as if bound on a high and holy mission in preaching it to his fellow-men. To explain with any minuteness the articles of Werner's creed, as it was now fashioned, and is here exhibited, would be a task perhaps too hard for us, and, at all events, unprofitable in proportion to its difficulty. We have found some separable passages, in which, under dark symbolical figures, he has himself shadowed forth a vague likeness of it: these we shall now submit to the reader, with such expositions as we gather from the context, or as German readers, from the usual tone of speculation in that country, are naturally enabled to supply. This may, at the same time, convey as fair a notion of the work itself, with its tawdry splendours, and tumid grandiloquence, and mere playhouse thunder and lightning, as by any other plan our limits would admit. Let the reader fancy himself in the island of Cyprus, where the Order of the Templars still subsists, though the heads of it are already summoned before the French King and Pope Clement; which summons they are now, not without dreary enough forebodings, preparing to obey. The purport of this First Part, so far as it has any dramatic purport, is to paint the situation, outward and inward, of that once pious and heroic, and still magnificent and powerful body. It is entitled The Templars in Cyprus; but why it should also be called The Sons of the Valley does not so well appear; for the Brotherhood of the Valley has yet scarcely come into activity, and only hovers before us in glimpses, of so enigmatic a sort, that we know not fully so much as whether these its Sons are of flesh and blood like ourselves, or of some spiritual nature, or of something intermediate, and altogether nondescript. For the rest, it is a series of spectacles and dissertations; the action cannot so much be said to advance as to revolve. On this occasion the Templars are admitting two new members; the acolytes have already passed their prelimIn this last point of view, however, as a pic-inary trials; this is the chief and final one:ture of himself, independently of other considerations, this play of Werner's may still have a certain value for us. The strange chaotic nature of the man is displayed in it: his skepticism and theosophy; his audacity, yet intrinsic weakness of character; his baffled longings, but still ardent endeavours after Truth and Good; his search for them in far journeyings, not on the beaten highways, but through the pathless infinitude of Thought. To call it a work of art would be a misapplication of names: it is little more than a rhapsodic effusion; the outpouring of a passionate and mystic soul, only half knowing what it utters, and not ruling its own movements, but ruled by them. It is fair to add that such also, in a great measure, was Werner's own view of the matter: most likely the utterance of these things gave him such relief, that, crude as they were, he could not suppress them. For ought to be remembered, that in this performance one condition, at least, of genuine in ACT FIFTH.-SCENE FIRST. Midnight. Interior of the Temple Church. Backwards, a deep perspective of Altars and Gothic Pillars. On the right-hand side of the foreground, a little Chapel; and in this an Altar with the figure of St. Sebastian. The scene is lighted very dimly by a single Lamp which bangs before the Altar. ADALBERT (dressed in white, without mantle or doublet; groping his way in the dark.) Was it not at the Altar of Sebastian Here should it be ; but darkness with her veil That I was bid to wait for the unknown? (Advancing to the Altar.) |