: CHAPTER III. EARLY EXPERIENCES. It is profoundly false to say that Character is formed by Circumstance,' unless the phrase, with unphilosophic equivocation, include the whole complexity of Circumstances, from the creation downwards. Character is to outward Circumstance what the Organism is to the outward world living in it, but not specially determined by it. A wondrous variety of vegetable and animal organisms live and flourish under circumstances which furnish the means of living, but do not determine the specific forms of each organism. In the same way various Characters live under identical Circumstances, excited by them, not formed by them. Each Character assimilates, from surrounding Circumstance, that which is by it assimilable, rejecting the rest; just as from the earth and air the plant draws those elements which will serve it as food, rejecting the rest. Every Biologist knows that Circumstance has a modifying influence; but he also knows that these modifications are only possible within certain limits. Abundance of food and peculiar treatment will modify the ferocity of a wild beast; but it will not make the lion a lamb. I have known a cat, living at a mill, from abundance of fish food, take spontaneously to the water; but the cat was distinctively a cat, and not an otter, although she had lost her dread of water. Instead, therefore, of saying that Man is the creature of Circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that Man is the architect of Circumstance. It is Character which builds an existence out of Circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can make them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid ruins: the block of granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong. If the reader agrees with this conception of the influence of circumstances, he will see that I was justified in laying some stress on Goethe's social position, though I controverted Viehoff and Gervinus on the point of school education. The continued absence of Want is one of those permanent and powerful conditions which necessarily modify a character. The well-fed lion loses his ferocity. But the temporary and incidental effect of school education, and other circumstances of minor importance, can never be said to modify a character; they only more or less facilitate its development. Goethe furnishes us with a striking illustration of the degree in which outward circumstances affect character. He became early the favorite of several eminent painters, was constantly in their ateliers, playing with them, and making them explain their works to him. He was, moreover, a frequent visitor at picture sales and galleries, till at last his mind became so familiarized with the subjects treated by artists, that he could at once tell what historical or biblical subject was represented in every painting he and saw. Indeed, his imagination was so stimulated by familiarity with these works, that in his tenth or eleventh year he wrote a description of twelve possible pictures on the history of Joseph, and some of his conceptions were thought worthy of being executed by artists of renown. It may be further added, in anticipation, that during the whole of his life he was thrown much with painters and pictures, and was for many years tormented with the desire of becoming an artist. If, therefore, Circumstance had the power of forming Character, we ought to find him a painter. What is the fact? The fact is, that he had not the Character which makes a painter; he had no faculty, properly speaking, for plastic art, and years of labor, aided by the instruction and counsel of the best masters, were powerless to give him even a respectable facility. All, therefore, that Circumstance did in this case, was to give his other faculties the opportunity of exercising themselves in art; it did not create the special faculty required. Circumstance can create no faculty: it is food, not nutrition ; opportunity, not character. Other boys, besides Goethe, heard the Lisbon earthquake eagerly discussed; but they had not their religious doubts awakened by it, as his were awakened in his sixth year. This catastrophe, which, in 1755, spread consternation over Europe, he has described as having greatly perturbed him. The narratives he heard of a magnificent capital suddenly smitten-churches, houses, towers, fallen with a crash- the bursting land vomiting flames and smoke and sixty thousand souls perishing in an instant God, - shook his faith in the beneficence of Providence. the creator and preserver of heaven and earth,' he says, 'whom the first article of our creed declared to be so wise and benignant, had not displayed paternal care in thus consigning both the just and the unjust to the same destruction. جوان In vain my young mind strove to resist these impressions. It was impossible; the more so as the wise and religious themselves could not agree upon the view to be taken of the event.' At this very time Voltaire was agitating the same doubts. 'Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes: Dieu s'est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leur crimes? Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglans? Lisbonne qui n'est plus, eût-elle plus de vices We are not, however, to suppose that the child rushed hastily to such a conclusion. He debated it in his own mind as he heard it debated around him. Bettina records that on his coming one day from church, where he had listened to a sermon on the subject, in which God's goodness was justified, his father asked him what impression the sermon had made. Why,' said he, it may after all be a much simpler matter than the clergyman thinks; God knows very well that an immortal soul can receive no injury from a mortal accident.' Doubts once raised would of course recur, and the child began to settle into a serious disbelief in the benignity of Providence, learning to consider God as the wrathful Deity depicted by the Hebrews. This was strengthened by the foolish conduct of those around him, who, on the occasion of a terrible thunderstorm which shattered the windows, dragged him and his sister into a dark passage, 'where the whole household, distracted with fear, tried to conciliate the angry Deity by frightful groans and prayers.' Many children are thus made sceptics; but in a deeply reflective mind such thoughts never long abide, at least not under the influences of modern culture, which teaches us 1755.] EARLY EXPERIENCES. 33 that Evil is essentially a narrow finite thing, thrown into remotest obscurity by any comprehensive view of the Infiand that any amount of evil massed together from every quarter must be held as small compared with the broad beneficence of Nature. nite; The doubts which troubled Wolfgang gradually subsided. In his family circle he was the silent reflective listener to constant theological debates. The various sects separating from the established church all seemed to be animated by the one desire of approaching the Deity, especially through Christ, more nearly than seemed possible through the ancient forms. It occurred to him that he, also, might make such an approach, and in a more direct way. Unable to ascribe a form to the Deity, he resolved to seek Him in His works, and in the good old Bible fashion, to build an Marke altar to Him.' For this purpose he selected some types, XVI such as ores and other natural productions, and arranged them in symbolical order on the elevations of a music stand; on the apex was to be a flame typical of the soul's aspiration, and for this a pastille did duty. Sunrise was awaited with impatience. The glittering of the house tops gave signal; he applied a burning-glass to the pastille, and thus was the worship consummated by a priest of seven years old, alone in his bedroom! * Lest the trait just cited should make us forget that we are tracing the career of a child, it may be well to recall the anecdote related by Bettina, who had it from his mother. It will serve to set us right as to the childishness. One day his mother, seeing him from her window cross the street with his comrades, was amused with the * A similar anecdote is related of himself by that strange Romancist, once the idol of his day, and now almost entirely forgotten, Restif de la Bretonne. See Les Illuminés, par Gérard de Nerval. |