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voices an orthodox meliorism-Meyer a modernistic pessimism; while in truth the first tends to be a pessimistic free-thinker-the latter a contented fundamentalist.16

In terms of morality this means that Meyer accepts the absolutistic ethics of Protestantism for his own person, but measures his heroes by Machiavelli's code of power. Keller proves himself a relativistic Feuerbachian and at the same time a moral absolutist by standardizing "natural ethics" in his writings. Where Keller seems didactic and moralizing, Meyer is superior and aloof. Keller favors those characters who conform to his viewpoint through the device of the happy ending in store for them. Meyer, disdaining all appearance of favoritism, is satisfied with a coldly poetical justice. In his way, Meyer is a representative of “tragic guilt” in the sense of Hebbel, when he allows his protagonists to perish, not because they violate the code of their conscience but, on the contrary, because they are strong enough to decide in the case of moral conflicts between irreconcilable aims and stick to their decision without fear. Of this, Keller, with all his modernism, is as innocent as, say, Schiller with his "moral guilt."

Like Schiller and Hebbel, the two are divided in their political attitude. Keller sides with the liberal Left, Meyer with the conservative Right. According to Keller, the State is the servant of its members; according to Meyer, the State disposes of its subjects, the State being identified with the public authorities or even successful usurpers. Keller did not hesitate to air in novels his Swiss democratic ideals, whereas Meyer tactfully refrained from advocating his reactionary beliefs.17 "Even like the most faithful subject from across the border," Meyer sym

16 Cf. W. Köhler, Meyer als religiöser Charakter (Jena, 1911); E. Ermatinger, "C. F. Meyer u. d. Protestantismus," Zeitwende, Jahrg. 1, Heft 2, pp. 142–159 (1925). For a pseudo-modernist attack on Keller by the presumable model for the Pfarrer von Schwanau (Das Verlorene Lachen) see: C. W. Kambli, G. Keller nach seiner Stellung zu Religion u. Christentum, Kirche, Theologie u. Sittlichkeit (St. Gallen, 1891). For a Catholic criticism see: J. Overmanns, "G. Kellers Abfall von Gott," Stimmen d. Zeit, vol. 94 (Freiburg i. B., 1917), pp. 302–311.

17 Cf. E. F. Hauch, G. Keller as a Democratic Idealist, Columbia Univ. Press (New York, 1916); H. M. Krieß, G. Keller als Politiker (Frauenfeld, 1918); Th. Greyerz, "G. Keller als Politiker," Wissen u. Leben. II, Bd. 2 (Zürich, 1918), pp. 356-360; O. Dammann, “G. Keller als Politiker," Nord u. Süd, Jahrg. 43, Bd. 170 (Breslau, 1919), pp. 90–93.

pathized with Germany's ailing crown prince and Keller declared that if it were not for her democratic traditions, Switzerland might possibly in the future consider her return to the Reich. The German-French War opened Meyer's eyes to the realization that he was after all a Teuton and not a Latin, and Keller even took part in a public celebration of the reëstablishment of the German commonwealth.18

Meyer's political manifesto, Huttens letzte Tage, originated according to his own words in a sketch, "where the invalid knight looks into the waning sunset-glow, while a Holbein death gathers a golden grape from the bay-window with the motto: 'Reif sein ist alles.'"' 19

To Meyer's mind, life and death are closely interwoven; death leavens life, relaxes, redeems it. To Keller, death means the final, irrevocable end, whose threat should warn us to live life's noble possibilities to the full. He might have said: "Jung sein ist alles."

Keller, the poet of youthful freshness who refused to grow old-Meyer, the artist of golden ripeness, who had never been truly young-thus the two may be characterized in a few words.20

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

18 Cf. E. Ermatinger, G. Kellers Leben, etc., p. 435 f., and H. Maync, C. F. Meyer, etc., p. 50.

19 From C. F. Meyer, "Mein Erstling Huttens letzte Tage," Deutsche Dichtung, Bd. IX, Heft 7, 1. Jan. 1891, pp. 172-174.

20 Cf. the two poems, Keller's "Jugendgedenken" and Meyer's "Lenzfahrt."

RICHARD DEHMEL AND OUR AGE

BY HARRY SLOCHOWER

"AM Ausgang des Jahrhunderts stand der Mensch gebückt

und ratlos da, beladen mit hundert Abhängigkeiten, fast blind und taub für alles, was weltschöpferische Kraft in seinem Innern war und ganz Aug und Ohr für alles, was als Außenwelt auf ihn eindrang, und in Wahrheit sein Schicksal, ja sein Wesen war." 1

Many and variegated were the forces that contributed to this dismal situation. Cartesian rationalism and the Newtonian world, in which every object and every event was explained ac cording to the strict law of causality, experienced a grandiose renaissance in the second half of the nineteenth century. In view of its basic tendencies and in contrast to the reaction which set in at the beginning of our century, the former period has been aptly designated as the age of natural science and of mechanism. The mechanistic methodology dominated the several sciences, such as physics and inorganic chemistry. Darwin and, following him, Mendel and Jacques Loeb proclaimed that the occurrences in the organic world are equally subject to strictly causal explanations. The milieu theories of Karl Marx, Thomas Buckle and Hippolyte Taine held further that the evolution of society and of art follows certain definite laws. The same methodology is apparent in the methods which the science of literary criticism adopted. The methodological procedure of Wilhelm Scherer, Richard M. Meyer and Erich Schmidt, which was based upon the same mechanistic temper, served as the model for the Ger manic research of the time. Toward the close of the century the methodology of the natural sciences invaded even the field of aesthetics. The ultimate goal of consistent naturalism was to present a true picture of the causal occurrences in nature. The poet was to sing hymns to the laws of nature, such as those of heredity, and reflect the external influences of the environment. Even philosophy showed the traces of the rise of the new scien1 Julius Bab in R. F. Arnold, Das Deutsche Drama, München, 1925, p. 670.

1

tific temper. In place of its previous privileged status, as a theory of being (metaphysics) and a study of the cosmos (cosmology), the study of philosophy came to be a study of various separable disciplines. The systems of von Hartmann and of Wilhelm Wundt mark the sole attempts to uphold the traditional assumption of philosophy.2

The point of view which beheld occurrences from the perspective of the law of causality bore within itself, however, a real danger: that of the relativity of values. If every phenomenon is a necessary product of the forces that surround it, then we lack any criteria by means of which any one phenomenon can be placed above or below another. Everything is as it must of necessity be. Determinism, which goes hand in hand with the methodology of the natural sciences, linked itself together with historicism (Dilthey) and with psychologism (implicitly contained even in Spranger's Typen) and produced a relativity of all norms.3

A movement that expressed the same relativistic tendency, was democracy. The basic principle of this movement was that every individual was the equal of any other. Here again the quantitative norm dominated. Synchronously with the birth of the democratic ideal, industry experienced its remarkable progress. Industry was to give man dominance over outer nature, democracy was to purify his inner nature, was to organize his activities on an ever loftier plane. Spencer concluded from Darwin's Origin of Species that humanity was on an ever progressing road leading to perfection. Industry, democracy and the employment of strictly scientific methods were the three keys that were to unlock the miraculum coelum for

man.

Time passed, but the expected millennium did not arrive. The industrial system, far from liberating man's inner energies, reduced him to a marionette. People hurried faster and faster

2 The dominance of the scientific tendency was also reflected in the critical reactions on the part of such Neo-Kantians as J. Ward, Riehl, Laßwitz, Hermann Cohen, Cassirer and others.

Einstein's theory of relativity is not a case in point. Far from reducing the scientific formulas to relative validity, it attempts to state the one universal formula through which all physical events could be explained. Compare Wm. P. Montague in Journal of Philosophy, 1925, in review of Carr, A Theory of Monads.

but failed to ask themselves "whither"? Emerson had already spoken of "things riding mankind." Plays like Robots, The Adding Machine, Gas and Massemensch were written. Democracy, too, came to be questioned. Schopenhauer's "Fabrikwaare der Natur" became a popular and oft-cited term. Emerson, Carlyle, Nietzsche and others turned against the levelling tendency of democracy.

This rationalistic, mechanistic, quantitative leit-motif of the second half of the nineteenth century appeared to many spirits too rigid, too symmetrical for it to do justice to the surge of life with all its motley of colors and medley of tones. In vain did they look here for the soulful content, the non-conceptual expression, the wholeness of the "Gestalt", for the inevitable irrational remainder. Natural-scientific methodology left no room for novelty, nor for the significance of the temporal flux. As against the earlier rationalism and mechanism these critics emphasized irrationalism and vitalism. Proponents of a lifephilosophy ("Lebensphilosophie") appeared. Bergson and, independently of him, the great American logician Charles S. Peirce championed a "creative evolution" as against the earlier mechanistic one. Wilhelm Ostwald opposed the traditional presumptions of the atomists. Hans Driesch and Uexküll defended a vitalistic position in the field of biology. Intuition, immediate "seeing" ("Sehen') received emphasis from such scientifically trained philosophers as Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler and Moritz Geiger. Stress was laid on the elemental, on pulsating immediacy, in contrast to the deduced, the reflected. Nietzsche stands out here as one of the most significant inspirations of his day. Bergson's doctrine of the élan vital tended to make of intuition the key to true being. William James in America and Croce in Italy represented similar tendencies. Georg Simmel in his last works emphasized "life" and Wilhelm Dilthey made "das Erlebnis" the basis of his philosophy. The Freudian school probed the depths of the unconscious, the subconscious, the irrational. Occult phenomena found champions in spiritualists such as Sir Oliver Lodge and in pseudo-philosophers such as Rudolf Steiner.4

These opposing movements were, of course, to some extent contemporaneous. Thus in England and in France for example, the decadent tendencies flourished in the

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