The Silesian Horseherd. Questions of the Hour

Chapter II.
The Pferdebürla (Horseherd)

A contributor to a periodical, which, like the Deutsche Rundschau, has a world-wide circulation, receives many letters from every corner of the earth. Many of them are nothing more than the twitter of birds in the trees; he listens and goes his way. Others contain now and then something of use, for which he is thankful, usually of course in silence, for a day and night together contain only twenty-four hours, and but little time remains for correspondence. It is interesting to note how radically one is often misunderstood. While one person anonymously accuses the writer of free thinking and heresy, another, and he generally gives his name, complains of his orthodox narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, and blindness, which for the most part are attributed to poor Oxford, which, in foreign countries at least, still has the reputation of high church orthodoxy.

Yet, in spite of all this, such letters are useful, for they give us a knowledge of the public which we desire to influence, but which for the most part goes its own way, as it may find most convenient. Often such opinions come to us from the highest circles, at times also from the lowest, and it is difficult to tell which of the two are the more instructive. The problems of humanity in all their simplicity are after all the same for us all, only they are viewed from different standpoints, and are treated with scientific or practical design. Members of the same profession readily understand each other; they employ their own technical language; but the unprofessional person often goes straighter to the heart of a question, and refuses to be satisfied with authorities or traditional formulas. These gentlemen it is often difficult to silence. We can easily contend with combatants who wield their weapons according to the rules laid down by the schools; we know what to expect, and how to parry a quart or a tierce. But an opponent who strikes regardless of all rule is often hard to manage, and we get a scar where it is least expected or deserved. In this wise I was served by an unknown opponent, who wrote to me from a place in the neighbourhood of Pittsburgh, not far from Ohio. He had read in his country solitude my article on Celsus in the Deutsche Rundschau. I know nothing of him, except what he himself writes, but the man interested me. After all, he says in his rude way very much the same things as others veil in learned phrases, and his doubts and difficulties are manifestly products of his heart as well as of his brain. The problems of humanity have troubled him with genuine pain, and after honestly thinking them out as well as he knew how, his convictions stand firm as a rock, and all who disagree with him seem to him not only fools, but unfortunately hypocrites as well. It is the misfortune of these lonely thinkers that they cannot comprehend how any one can hold opinions differing from their own without being dishonest. They cannot doubt that they have been honest toward themselves, and as a consequence they cannot conceive how others, who are of a different mind, can be equally honest, and have come by their convictions by a straightforward path. Often it has been very difficult for them to break with their old faith, cherished from childhood, and they can only look upon it as cowardice and weakness if others, as they think, have not made or wished to make this sacrifice. But we shall let the horseherd who emigrated to America speak for himself.

I here print his letter exactly as I received it, without any alterations.³⁴ To me it seems that the man speaks not only for himself, but for many who think as he does, but who have not the ability nor the opportunity to express themselves clearly. I resolved, accordingly, to reply to him, and once begun, my pen ran on, and my letter unexpectedly covered more ground than I had intended. Whether he received the letter or not, I do not know; at least it must have been delivered to his address, for it was not returned to me. As I have not, however, heard from him again since February, and as he speaks in his letter of chest catarrh, which he hopes will in no long time bring him to a joyful end, I must wait no longer for an answer, and publish the correspondence in the hope that there are other “Pferdebürle” in the world to whom it may be of value.

* * * * *“

Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S., February 26, 1896.

Dear Colleague Max Müller:

“Your article in the Deutsche Rundschau on Celsus pleased me very much. What does it matter that you do not know me? I love you, and that gives me a right to address you. Why those vain regrets over the loss of the original? I would not stretch out my little finger for that Celsus; gone is gone like the lost parts of the Annals of Tacitus. More than likely both of these losses are to be ascribed to Christian fanaticism. Tacitus hated the Jews and the Christian sect derived from them. But, father Max, have we not much greater modern Celsuses and Tacituses, for instance David Hume and Schopenhauer? One would think that after the writings of these heroes positive Christianity would be an impossibility, and yet the persistence of error is so great that it may take several centuries more before the end of the Christian era is reached. Has there ever been anything in the history of the world more humiliating to the human understanding than this false and lying tale of the Christian religion? And is there anything in face of our knowledge, and of the realm of nature and of man's position in it, so unbearable, yes so odious, as the inoculation of such error in the tender consciousness of our school children? I shudder when I think that in thousands of our churches and schools this systematic ruin of the greatest of all gifts, the consciousness, the human brain, is daily, even hourly, going on. Max, can you, too, still cling to the God-fable? The English atmosphere may serve as an apology. I could not strike a dog, but I am filled with bloodthirstiness toward the Jewish idea of God, the soul-phantom, and the hallucination of immortality.—The facts are so simple and clear; we are the highest existing forms of being in the animal world of this planet, and share one and the same nature with them. After death we are just as entirely reduced to nothing as before our birth. Nature tells us so plainly that the eternal conditions before and after our birth are identical.

 
“You ask me what this juggling means;
Take this short answer for your pains;
A game of chance from the eternal sea
By the same sea again will swallowed be.
 

—Omar Khayyam (Bodenstedt).

“But there is nothing in this world so false as the statement that good can ever come out of lies. Nothing in the world is so wholesome as truth, and truth is under all circumstances lovable, beautiful, and holy. Let us kneel before the truth of nature; nature cannot go astray. The distinction between good and evil, the evil heritage of Judaism, must fall in the end. Max, on quiet fields, in a mountain village of Silesia, I turned somersaults with joy at the discovery that this distinction is false, and that good and evil are identical. Max, you will not be angry with me? I am no learned fellow. I never attended a high school, and now I rejoice at it, for what a German calls education can only serve to miseducate after all. Modern life is, for every open-minded person, the real high school. Max, all German savants, or, if you please, the majority of them, still labour under the delusion that the mind is a ‘prius.’ By no means, Max! Mind is a development, an evolving phenomenon. One would suppose it impossible that a thinking man, who has ever observed a child, could be of any other opinion; why seek ghosts behind matter? Mind is a function of living organisms, which belongs also to a goose and a chicken. Then, Max, why not be content with the limits of our knowledge, conditioned by experience, and give up this infamous romancing and tyrannical lying? The only affection which after fifty years I still cherish in my bosom is the sweet, unquenchable longing for that truth which fate has denied us.

“Max, you are by no means a free man, as I observe that the religious congress in Chicago impressed you very much.³⁵ I was present when the gayly dressed idolators from Cardinal Gibbons down to the stupid Shinto priest and the ill-favoured Baptist woman preacher sat together on the platform. It was very pretty and refreshing to look upon. They all talked nonsense and thought themselves very wise. There was but one exception which interested me: a yellow Buddhist monk inquired, what they thought of English missionaries, who in time of famine distributed bread to the poor, but only on one condition, that they adopted the Christian superstition (indifferent whether honestly or not). The so-called ‘Ethical Culture Societies’ were not admitted by the committee to their congress of many religions. Max, it was pitiful to listen to the tittle-tattle that was read. None had learned beforehand what he wanted to say. Dicere de scripto is a shame for learned men. Only Cardinal Gibbons made a short, but colourless and dull extemporaneous address, which closed with the hypocrisy, what a great thing it is to keep oneself unspotted by this world. Accursed hypocrites, you yourselves are this world,—pitifully incarnate, it is true,—but you yourselves are this ‘spotted world.’ Why then still hold to the stupid distinction between good and evil, when we must admit that evil is essential to the very existence of things, and it would be impossible for the world to be, except as it is. We must be as we are, or we should not be at all. O beautiful longing for the primeval cause! Our ignorance is like evil, welcome. Let us, O Max, embrace the evil and ignorance, for if we were nothing but wretched cripples of virtue, and knew everything, we could not bear to live. As it is, we enjoy the spirited battle, and carry a sweet yearning in our breasts.

“Max, how are you personally? Have you a family? How is your health? How old are you? What relation do you bear to the learned set in England? Do you know the one German philosopher, with the courage of his convictions, Emil Dühring, in Berlin. I consider my knowledge of the writings of Dr. Dühring as the greatest gift of fate which has been vouchsafed to me. The Jews and state professors hide his fame under a bushel. Oh! could not such independent men as you, honoured Max Müller, do something to bring this hero nearer to our young students? Dühring is the only writer of the present day who is to be enjoyed almost without drawback. What is to be said of our German set which is cowardly enough to repress so long the greatest mind which our century has produced? Were I in your position, how would I shout my ‘Quos Ego’ across to Germany! Please, my countryman, favour me with a few lines in answer to this effusion, in order that I may learn who and what you are. I am a Silesian horseherd (to be distinguished from the cowherds [kühbürla's], who till their field with pious moo-moos). Instead of attending a high school, I herded cows, ploughed, harvested, and helped to thrash in the winter. While herding I played the flute in the valleys of the Sudetic Mountains; and because the hands of the old village schoolmaster trembled very much, I begged of him to let me try to play the organ for him. ‘Ah, you rascal, you can play better than I,’ and he boxed my ears. Then my eldest brother took possession of the farm of seventy-five acres, gave us no compensation, and the rest of us lads had to pack off. We scraped together the passage money to America, and about thirty years ago I arrived here, where—I almost said God be praised—it has always gone pretty hard with me. Whether I fare well or ill is the same to me. I make no distinction, for in view of the rapid passing of life, it does not pay to give much thought to unnecessary distinctions. I never could think of marrying, chiefly because the majority of the women in this country are shrews, cannot cook, and spend much too much money on the housekeeping. Besides, I have but a short time to live, for I possess a chest catarrh most loyally devoted to me, verging upon a perfect asthma, which I hope erelong will bring me to a joyful end. No doubt you will think what a disconsolate fellow this is who has written to me. O pshaw! I have always enjoyed the sunshine, and have sat alone hundreds of snug hours before my winter's companion, a small iron stove. During the last three nights I have repeatedly read through your article on Celsus, published in the Deutsche Rundschau, by a tallow-candle. In relation to your enthusiasm over the religious clap-trap in Chicago, I should like to observe that you would have been entirely in the right if you had represented the Exhibition as the greatest event of the past ten years. I came through Chicago in September, 1892, visited the prospective site of the Exposition, and found there a mere wilderness, scarcely a single building half finished, and it was a wonder of wonders what American enterprise and genius for organisation accomplished within the single intervening winter. One could scarcely recover from one's astonishment at what ten thousand labourers, urged on by the Yankee lash, could make ready in six months. ‘There was money in the business,’ and for money Jonathan works real miracles. Its like the world has never produced. The American is cut on a large pattern, and in spite of his political delusions I entertain the greatest hopes for the future of a country which is in such hands.”

With many friendly greetings,

A Silesian Horseherd.

Emigrated to America.”

* * * * *

I answered my unknown friend and correspondent as follows:—

* * * * *“

“My Good Friend: You are an honest fellow, and I believe that I am one too, but our views are widely divergent. I am an old professor, am now seventy-two years old, or as has been often said to me, seventy-two years young. Like yourself I commenced life with nothing, and have laboured till I have become not rich, but independent. Here in wealthy England and in wealthy Oxford I am considered a poor man, but I am quite content, and call that riches. I have been married thirty-seven years, have one son, secretary to the Embassy at Constantinople, and a happily married daughter, with four grandchildren. Now you know all that you wished to know. Of my sorrow, the loss of two daughters, I must remain silent.

“All my life I have been engaged in investigating the past; I am a philologist and have therefore been also a student of history, have especially studied the historical development of the various religions of mankind, and to this end have had to make a study of ancient languages, particularly Oriental languages. When one consecrates one's life to such a cause, one acquires an interest in and a love for the ancients, and a wish to know what has consoled them in this vale of grief. As you probably acquired a love for your colts, mares, and stallions, I acquired an interest in ancient and modern religions. And as you probably do not immediately kill or reject your horses because they possess a blemish, shy, kick, prance about, etc., so I do not immediately destroy all beliefs, and least of all my own mount, because they are not faultless, occasionally leave me in the lurch, behave foolishly, even dance on their hind legs with head in air; but I endeavour to understand them. When we understand even a little, we can forgive much. That many religions, including our own, contain errors and weak points, just as your horses do, I know perhaps even better than you. But have you ever asked yourself, what would have become of mankind without any religion, without the conviction that beyond our horizon, that is beyond our limit, there still must be something? You will answer, ‘How do we know that?’ Well, can there be any boundary without something beyond it? Is not that as true as any theorem in geometry? If it were not so, how could we explain the fact that mankind has never been without a belief in a world beyond, nor without religion, either in the lowest or in the highest levels.

“This horizon, this boundary, does not relate only to space, as all will agree, even when carried beyond the Milky Way; it relates as well to time. You assert, ‘The world is much older than we suppose;’ you are right, but if it were a million years, still there must have been a time before it was even a day old. That also is indisputable. But when we reach the limit of our senses and our understanding, then the horse shies, then we imagine that nothing can go beyond our understanding. Now let us begin with our five senses. They seem to be our wings, but seen in the light they are our fetters, our prison walls. All our senses have their horizon and their limits; and the limits in the external world are our making. Our sight scarcely reaches a mile, then it ceases; we can observe the movement of the second hand, but that of the minute hand escapes us. Why? We might know that a cannon-ball passes through our field of vision, but we cannot locate it. Why not? Our sense of touch is also very weak and only extends over a very limited space. And as it is on the large scale, so is it with the small. We see the eye of a needle, but infusoria and bacteria, which we know to be there and which affect us so much, we cannot see. With telescopes and microscopes we can slightly extend the field of our perception, but the limitations and weakness of our sense-impressions remain none the less an undeniable fact. We live in a prison, in a cave as Plato said, and yet we accept our impressions as they are, and form out of them general notions and words, and with these words we erect this stately building, or this tower of Babel, which we then call human science.

“Yes, say certain philosophers, our senses may be finite and untrustworthy, but our understanding, and still further our reason, they are unlimited, and recognise nothing which is beyond them. Well, what does this most wise understanding do for us? Has not Hobbes long since taught us that it adds and subtracts, and voilà tout? It receives the impressions of the senses, combines them, feels them, comprehends and designates or names them after any characteristic, and when man has found words, then the adding and subtracting begin, but unfortunately also the jumbling and chattering, till we finally establish that philosophy and religion, which have aroused in so great degree your anger, and even your blood thirstiness. In spite of all it remains true that we can no more get beyond the horizon of our senses than we can jump out of our skins. You know that old saying of Locke's, although it is much older than Locke, that there is nothing in our intellect which was not first in our senses. And therefore, however much we may extend our knowledge by adding and subtracting, everywhere we feel in the end our horizon, our limitations, our ignorance, for with the limitations of our senses it cannot be otherwise. Invariably we receive the old answer, ‘You are like the mind which you conceive, not me.’

“But you say that we have no right whatever to speak of a mind. That is possible, but everything depends upon what we understand by the term ‘mind.’ Is not mind, that is to say, a recipient, essential to our seeing and hearing? The eye can no more see than a camera obscura. True seeing, hearing, and feeling are not perceptible through the organs of sense, but through the recipient, for without it the organs of sense could make no resistance, could not receive, could not perceive. This unknown element which lies beyond the senses, this recipient must be there. It is true he cannot be named. Perhaps it would have been better to have called him ‘x’ or the Unknown; but when we know what is meant, why not call it mind or spirit, that is, breath? You call it a soul-phantom. Well, good, but without such a soul-phantom we cannot get on; you would have to consider yourself a mere photographic apparatus, and I do not believe that you do.

“Of course you can still say that the mind is a development, a self-evolving phenomenon. Rightly understood that is quite true, but how misleading that word ‘evolution’ has been in these latter days. Darwin certainly brought much that is beautiful and true to the light of day. He demonstrated that many of the so-called species are not independent creations, but have been developed from other species. That means that he has corrected the earlier erroneous nomenclature of Natural History and has introduced a more correct classification. He has greatly simplified the work of the Creator of the world. Of that merit no one will deprive him, and it is a great merit. And those who believed that every species required its own act of creation, and had to be finished by the Creator separately (as was the established opinion in England, and still is in some places), cannot be grateful enough to Darwin for having given them a simpler and worthier idea of the origin of the earth and of its animal and vegetable kingdoms.

“But now comes Mr. Herbert Spencer and tells us, ‘We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.’ That sounds splendid, but every one who does not quite ignore the past, knows that evolution or development is neither anything very new or very useful. Formerly we used simply to say the tree grows, the child develops, and this was metaphorically transferred to society, the state, science, and religion. The study of this development was called history, and occasionally genetic or pragmatic history; but instead of talking as we do now of evolution with imperceptible transitions, it was these transitions which industrious and honest investigators formerly sought to observe. They aimed at learning to know the men, and the events, which marked a decided step in advance in the history of society, or in the history of morals. This required painstaking effort, but the result obtained was quite different from the modern view, in which everything is evolved, and, what is the worst, by imperceptible degrees. In Natural History this is otherwise; in it the term ‘evolution,’ or ‘growth,’ may be correctly applied, because no one really has ever seen or heard the grass grow, and no one has ever observed the once generally accepted transition from a reptile to a bird. In this we must doubtless admit imperceptible transitions. Yet even in this we must not go beyond the facts; and if a man like Virchow assures us that the intermediate stages between man and any sort of animal have never been found to this day, then in spite of all storms we shall probably have to rest there. But I go still farther. Even supposing, say I, that there is an imperceptible transition from the Pithecanthropos to man, affecting his thigh, his skull, his brain, his entire body, have we then found a transition from the animal to man? Certainly not; for man is man, not because he has no tail, but because he speaks, and speech implies not only communication,—an animal can do that perhaps better than a man,—but it implies thinking, and thinking not only as an animal thinks, but thinking conceptually. And this small thing, the concept, is the transition which no animal has ever accomplished. The moment an ape achieved it, he would be ipso facto a man, in spite of his miserable brain, and in spite of his long tail.

“Concepts do not present themselves spontaneously (or we should find them also among animals), but they are a special product, in part the work of our ancestors, and inherited by us with our language, and in part even now the work of more gifted men from time to time. This making necessarily implies the existence of a maker, and if we now provisionally call this maker, this transcendent, invisible, but very powerful ‘x,’ mind, are we thereby chargeable, as you say, with having conjured up a soul-phantom? Call it a phantom if you will, but even as a phantom it has a right to exist. Call it mind, breath, breathing, willing, or (with Schopenhauer) will, there is always a He or It to be reckoned with. Of this He or It, this pronominal soul-phantom, you will never rid yourself.

“And if we now perceive with our senses a world as it is given us whether we will or no, and in this objective world, without us, which so many regard as within us, we everywhere recognise the presence of purpose, must we then not also have a name for that which manifests itself in nature as purposive or rational? Shall we only call it ‘x,’ or may we transfer the word designating what works purposively in us to this Unknown, and speak of a universal Mind without which nature could not be what it is? Nature is not crazy nor incoherent. When the child is born, has the mother milk, and to what purpose? Why, certainly, to nourish the child. And the child has the lips and muscles to suck. When the fruit has ripened on the tree, it falls to the earth full of seed. The husk breaks, the seed falls in the soil, it rains and the rain fertilises the seed, the sun shines and makes it grow, and when the tree has grown and again bears blossoms and fruit, this fruit is useful to man, is food and not poison to him. Is all this without purpose, without reason? Is it a symphony without a composer? Man, too, needs rain and sunshine, and warmth and darkness; and all this is given to him so that he may live and work and think. What would man be without darkness, without the rest afforded by night? Probably crazy. What would he be without sunshine? Perhaps an Esquimau or a mole. But how remarkable it is that as the tree always reproduces itself, so also does man. The son differs from the father, and yet how like they are. Where is the form which retains the continuous resemblance to itself, and yet leaves to each separate person freedom and individuality? Whence comes this purpose in all nature? That is an old question which has received many answers, both wise and foolish. Unfortunately men so frequently forget what has already been attained, and then begin again at the beginning. Darwin was an industrious and delicate observer, and showed admirable power of combination. But he was no philosopher, and never sought to be one. He was of opinion that everything in nature which appeared to show purpose proceeded from the survival of the fittest. But that is no answer. We ask, Why does the fittest survive? And what is the answer? Because only the fittest survives. And when we come to Natural Selection, who is the selector that selects? These are nothing but phrases, which have long been known and long since been abandoned, and still are always warmed up again. If we recognise in nature purpose or reason, then we have a right to conclude that the source of it lies in the eternal reason, in the eternally rational. Behind all objects lies the thought or the idea. If there are rational ideas in nature, then there must be a rational thinker. Behind all trees—oaks, birches, pines—lies the thought, the idea, the form, the word, the logos of tree. Who made or thought it before ever the first tree existed? We can never see a tree; we see only an oak, a birch, a pine, never a tree. But the thought or idea of tree meets us, realised and diversified in all trees. This is true of all things. No one has ever seen an animal, a man, a dog, but he sees a St. Bernard, a greyhound, a dachshund, and strictly not even that. What, then, is it that is permanent, always recurring in the dog, by means of which they resemble each other, the invisible form in which they are all cast? That is the thought, the idea, the logos of dog. Can there be a thought without a thinker? Did the ideas in nature, the millions of objects which make up our knowledge, fall from the clouds? Did they make themselves or did nature make them? Who, then, is nature? Is it a masculine, feminine, or neuter? If nature can choose, then it can also think and produce. But can it? No, nature is a word, very useful for certain purposes; but empty, intangible, and incomprehensible. Nature is an abstraction, as much as dog or tree, but far more inclusive. When we recognise thought, reason, purpose in nature, still it is all in vain, we must assume a thinker in, above, behind nature, and we must as a matter of course have a name for him. The infinite thinker of all things, of all ideas, of all words, who can never be seen and never comprehended, because he is infinite, but in whose thoughts all creatures, the entire creation, have their source, and who when rightly understood approaches us palpably or symbolically in all things, in the sole path of sense by which he can approach us sentient beings, why should we not call him Mind, or God, or as the Jews called him, Jehovah, or the Mohammedans, Allah, or the Brahmins, Brahman? Either reason operates in nature, or nature is without reason, is chaos and confusion. Neither survival of the fittest nor natural selection could bring order into this confusion; we might as well believe that if the type in a printing office be thoroughly shaken and mixed, it could produce Goethe's Faust by chance. If we insist upon adhering to the theories of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, be it so; we only transfer the choice to a Something which can choose, and leave the fitness or adaptability to the judgment of an originator, who can really judge and think.

“I hope that I have made this plain to you; but what would be plain to us would not be plain to children, and still less to mankind in its infancy five thousand or fifty thousand years ago. I have especially endeavoured to discover what led these men of old, in many respects so uncultivated, to believe in something beyond, invisible, superhuman, supernatural. We can see from their language and from the oldest monuments of their religion that they early observed that something happened in the world. The world was not dark, nor still, nor dead. The sun rose, and man awoke, and asked himself and the sunshine. ‘Whence?’ he said; ‘stop, what is there? who is there?’ Such an object as the sun cannot rise of its own volition. There is something behind it. At first the sun itself was considered a labourer; it accomplished the greatest work on earth, gave light, heat, life, growth, fruits. It was quite natural, then, to pay great honour to the sun; to be grateful to it, to appeal to it for light, heat, and increase. And therefore the sun became a God, e.g. a Deva (deus), which originally meant nothing more than light. But even then an old Inca in Peru observed that the sun was not free; could not, therefore, be a being, to whom man could be grateful, to whom he could pray. It is, said he, like a beast of burden, which must daily tread its appointed round. And although the worship of the sun was the religion of his country, and he himself was worshipped as a child of the sun, he renounced the ancient faith of his country, and became what is now frequently called an atheist; that is, he longed after a truer God. What say you to this Inca? This same thing occurred also in other lands, and instead of continuing to worship the sun and moon, the dawn, the storm-wind, or the sky, they worshipped that which must be behind it all, which was called Heaven-Father, Jupiter, and every conceivable name. These names were no longer to indicate the visible object, but Him who had thought and created the object, the thinker and ruler of the world. This is the fundamental idea from which all religions have arisen: not animism, fetishism, totemism, or whatever the little tributaries may be called, which have poured for thousands of years into the main stream. Every people has produced its own religion, its own language, in the course of thousands of years; later, religions have been framed for all mankind, and we are still engaged in that task, even in what you call that clap-trap of Chicago. Even though we have all been born and educated in some religion, we nevertheless have the right, even the duty, like the old Inca, to examine every article of our hereditary religion, to retain it or to cast it aside, according to our own judgment and conception of the truth. Only the fundamental principle must remain; there is a thinker and a ruler of the universe. Of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, of Joseph and Mary, of the resurrection and ascension, let each one believe what he will, but the highest commandment applies to all, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.’