Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1889).
A RABID PHILOSOPHER.
AT last I fell asleep, but it was only to be awakened at
dawn by resounding footsteps passing to and fro in
the adjoining room, intermingled with sounds from which I
judged that there was an impatient searching of drawers or
tables, and in every corner of the apartment. The hurrying
and rummaging grew more violent, a soliloquy which at
first softly accompanied the movements grew louder and
louder, and gradually passed into exclamations of rage, and
at last into a volley of oaths, which was not exactly in
a Christian spirit, and which was accompanied by a savage
stamping and bellowing. It seemed to me the man had
gone mad. I dressed myself hastily, knocked at the door,
and in my excitement, forgetting all form, I entered the
room without awaiting his call. With flashing eyes the
occupant darted at me as if about to seize me by my throat;
suddenly he controlled himself, stood stock-still before
me, gave me a penetrating glance, and said with quiet
severity, "Sir, an unconscious thirst for knowledge has
brought you to this room." My conscience reproaching me for
my breach of good manners, I was disarmed, and merely said
"Yes," in a dejected tone. I then asked him what for
heaven's sake was the matter with him. A. E. for brevity's
sake I will henceforth call my fellow-traveller so falling
back into his fit of violence, cried in a voice of thunder,
" My spectacles, my spectacles ! They've seen fit to go and
hide themselves to say nothing at present of the key, the
little devil ! "
"So you are merely looking for your spectacles? Is this
an object worthy of such rage? Don't you know what it is
to be patient?"
He was about to fly at me again, but, controlling himself
A RABID PHILOSOPHER. 147
once more, he merely looked at me and said : " Screwdrivers ? cork-screws ? "
"What do you mean by that?"
"I dreamed I had a wife horrible to relate. I laughed
at her for reading papers without cutting the leaves, and
for putting up for years with a drawer that would not go.
Thereupon she gave me a sermon on patience, and required
me to exercise myself in that virtue by wearing screws and
screw-drivers on my coat instead of buttons and buttonholes, suggesting that they might be quite ornamental if
made out of oxidised metal ; or she said I might have
corks, which I would be obliged to remove by means of a
cork- screw every time I wished to unbutton my coat. Ah,
pshaw ! a woman is quite capable of putting a cover upon
a dressing-case in such a manner that it will catch every
time the upper drawer is opened and shut. Sir, a woman
has time for the struggle with the villain called matter ;
she lives in this struggle, it is her element ; a man has
no business to have time for this, he needs his patience
for things that are worthy of patience. It is an imposition
to expect him to waste either for what is worthless, an
imposition against which he may, can, and must rage ! You
must know that. You must know that these unworthy
objects, these hooks and crooks of matter, never get
entangled with your destiny except when you are in
most desperate haste to complete something which is
necessary and reasonable ! Miserable gimcrack, worthless
button or ball of twine, or string to my eye-glasses that
gets twisted about one of the buttons of my vest just at
the very moment when it is necessary to look over a timetable in small type at the railway station, I have no time,
no time for ye ! And if I were to set a thousand leeches on
eternity, they would not draw out a single moment of time
for ye!"
"But what is the use of all this bluster?"
Page 148
"Oil, insipid! Was it of no use to Luther if you are
going to talk about use to rail at the devil? Don't you
know what it is to disburden your poor soul ? Have you
never heard of the precious balm that lies in a good round
oath?''
"I TOOK THE EXASPERATED MAN AND POINTED SILENTLY TO THE
SPOT."
The evil spirit took possession of him anew; he rushed
about the room in another paroxysm of rage pouring out a
volley of abuse upon his poor innocent spectacles. Mean-
A RABID PHILOSOPHER. 149
while I looked about the floor; I picked up a couple of
shirts that were clean, but terribly messed, and my eyes
fell upon a mouse-hole in the boards. It seemed to me
I saw something glitter there ; I looked closer, and the
discovery was made. I took the exasperated man by his
arm and pointed silently to the spot. He gazed at it,
recognised his missing glasses, and remarked : " Look at
them well ! Do you notice the sneer, the demoniac triumph
in that evil glassy leer ? Out with the entrapped monster !
"
It was not easy to pull the spectacles out of the hole ;
the trouble was really out of proportion to the value of
the
object. At last we succeeded ; he held them out at arm'slength, dropped them from there, cried in a solemn voice,
" Sentence of death ! Supplicium ! " raised his foot, and
crushed them with his heel, shivering them to bits.
"That's all very well," I said, after a pause of astonishment;" but now you have no spectacles."
"No matter. At any rate this imp has met with a just
retribution after years of indescribable malignity. Look
you!" He pulled out his watch; it was a very common
one in fact, one of the lowest products of the horological
industry." In place of this honest, faithful creature," he
continued," I once had a gold repeater, which, I may truly
say, cost a deal of money. It requited this sacrifice for
years and years with untold malice; it never would go
right; it made a point of falling down and hiding ; the
crystals broke constantly, thereby nearly reducing me to
pauperism; at last the monster conspired with the hook of
my gold watch-chain, and the two together entered into an
intrigue against me. As for the hook, sir, there is much
that might be said on that subject. The insidiousness of
objects in general I should like to talk to you about that,
sir, but I fear I should discourse at some length the
insidiousness, I say, is expressed so visibly in the
villainous physiognomy of hooks that one cannot be too much
on one's guard in having any-
PAGE 150
thing to do with these fiendish features. One is apt to
think:
'I know you, the wicked crookedness of your outer form
betrays you, you shall not get the better of me;' and then
this very sense of security misleads one into being unwary.
It is quite the reverse with other objects. Who, for
instance, would suspect a simple button of any evil
design?"
I begged him to finish the tragic story about his watch
and hook.
"Ah, yes! Well, one night the hook crept softly across
the small table, upon which I had carefully laid my watch,
and artfully entwined itself into the seam of my pillowcase.
I did not want the pillow. I lifted it suddenly and flung
it to the foot-end of the bed, the watch of course going
with it.
In a noble arch it went flying through the air, struck the
wall, and fell to the ground with a broken crystal. This
was the last straw. I crushed it in cold blood like these
criminal spectacles; the imp gave forth a sound, a hiss
like a per-secuted mouse; I swear to you that it was a
sound quite outside the realm of physical nature. I then
went and bought this modest timepiece for an absurdly low
sum. Look at this faithful creature; note the expression of
honesty in these homely features; for twenty years it has
served me with steadfast fidelity; yes, I may say it has
never given me any cause for complaint. The gold watchchain I gave to my footman, the hook was condemned to die a
shameful death in the sewer, and I wear my faithful turnip
on this gentle silken cord."
During this detailed account he had grown quite tranquil,
and now placidly continued
"Now for the story of this black hour! Look at this key"
he pulled out a small key, probably belonging to his
valise" and then at this candlestick!" he held up the
metal candlestick upside down close before my eyes, so that
I could see a hollow place in the foot "what do you
think, what do you suppose, what do you say?"
A RABID PHILOSOPHER. 151
"How am I to know?'
"For the spare of a good half hour I have looked for
that key this morning. I nearly lost my senses; at last
I found it, like this, do you see?"
He laid the key upon the little stand by his bed, and
set the candlestick down upon it; the key just fitted the
place under the foot.
"Now tell me who would suspect this, who would be
capable of such superhuman circumspection as to foresee
and avoid such infernal tricks on the part of the object !
And is this what I live for? Am I to waste the precious
bit of time I have in such a slavish search for a
bagatelle?
To search and search, and to search again! One should
never say A. or B. has lived for such and such a time,
not lived, but searched ! And I am very, very punctual,
believe me!"
"Ah, yes, life is a perpetual search," I said, with a sigh
which might be taken to refer to the trials of life, while
in truth it was called forth by the ennui which this
detailed occupation with the bagatelle had caused. This
accounted for my flat remark, the sole object of which was
to change the subject at all hazards.
I little knew to whom I was talking. "What, sir,
symbolic?" he said. "And I suppose you think that is
deeper! Ah, oh!"
"Well, what now?"
"You see, my dear sir, to search in a symbolical sense,
to think that all of life is but a searching, that is not
what I complain of, that is not what you should sigh about.
The ethical goes without saying. An honest fellow will
search and yearn and never complain, but be happy in the
midst of this misery of an ever-rising and neverterminating line.
That is our upper storey. But what we have to take along
with it, the vexation and bother we must put up with in
the lower storey of life, that is what I am talking of.
There,
PAGE 152
for instance, is the necessity of searching, which makes
you mad, nervous, insane. And, what is more, it strands you
in Atheism. The dear God sitting on high and counting
the hairs on our head, who sees me searching for my
spectacles for hours at a time, he sees the spectacles too,
knows just where they are, can you bear it, the thought
of how he must laugh ? A kind, omnipotent Being! Do
you think such a one would permit the curse of colds in
your head? Alas, we are born to search, to undo knots,
to sneeze and cough and spit ! Man, with a proud world
within his arched brows, with his beaming eyes, his spirit
dipping into the depth and breadth of infinitude, with his
soul rising on silver wings into the heavens, with his
imagination pouring streams of golden fire over hill and
vale and transforming the image of mortality to God, with
his will, the flashing sword within his hand to adjust, to
judge, to conquer, with pious patience to plant, to
cherish, and watch over the tree of life that it may grow
and flourish and bear heavenly fruit of noble culture, Man
with the angelic image of the divine and beautiful within
his longing, yearning bosom, yes, this same Man, changed to
a mollusc, his throat a grating-iron, a nest of devils,
tickling the larynx with finest needles for nights and
nights, his eyes dim, his brain heavy, dull, perturbed, his
nerves poisoned, and, with all that, not considered ill;
and you say that God!"
Here our denier of the existence of God was seized
with so deplorable a fit of sneezing and coughing that I
repressed a remark I had upon my tongue.
Upon entering I noticed that he cast an uneasy glance all
about the floor of the dining-hall; he seemed much relieved
when in one corner he noticed a small object which may be
of service to coughing persons. In a tone of supreme
content he remarked, "This room is really very well
furnished;"
A RABID PHILOSOPER. 153
and from that time he seemed to be in tolerably good
humour. As is common at the Swiss hotels, breakfast had
been placed upon the table awaiting whoever should come
to partake of it, and A. E., having pushed the butter and
honey aside with some violence, helped himself freely. We
were alone in the room, but soon another tourist entered.
He was a middle-aged man, attired in a duster of unbleached
linen, with a short cape hanging over his shoulders, and
carrying a knapsack of some weight on his back. There
were drops of perspiration visible upon his brow; it
appeared evident that he had walked for some hours that
morning.
He laid down his burden, put his bulky umbrella in a
corner, sat down at the other end of the table, pulled his
chair up, took out his glasses, carefully looked at
everything that had been set upon the table, seemed to
quite approve of the completeness of things that go to make
up an English breakfast, and then, with all the appearance
of a soul conscious that the body belonging thereto had
severely earned its breakfast, began the enjoyable task of
cutting and spreading some slices of bread. It was easy to
see that the man belonged to the class of scholars, and his
pale complexion led me to judge that he was one of those
tourists who strive to make up by pedestrian exertions for
the harm they have done their bodies throughout the year by
sedentary habits.
A. E., who had meanwhile appeased his appetite, seemed
to be in no special haste to depart. He lit a cigar, and
said to me, "You admit, then, that physics is at bottom
synonymous with metaphysics, the science of the spiritual.
That is, I take for granted that you admit it, although I
have not yet proved it to you philosophically, for you have
surely recognised the universal insidiousness, ay,
animosity of matter, what physical science has heretofore
insipidly named the law of gravity, statics, etc., while it
is in truth to be explained merely as demoniacal
possession."
PAGE 154
Meanwhile the stranger had split a long roll lengthwise
with dexterity and precision, and was occupied in spreading
on the butter with great regard to perfect smoothness
and evenness; he made a moment's pause at the last
words, casting a peculiar glance from under his bushy eyebrows over to our end of the table, and then thoughtfully
continued his plastic occupation, wagging his head now and
then with an expression of ironical surprise. The thought
came to me that A. E. had designs upon the stranger. But
I concluded that it was not the case. He had given him
but a cursory glance as he entered, though it was a glance
which might be supposed to grasp the personality before
him, for his eye was wont to seize what it looked upon as
if there were a strong hand within it; at the same time
there was no sign of his paying any attention to the
unknown.
"Friend," he continued, "have you noticed how a piece
of falling paper will mock us? Are they not graceful, the
sneering motions with which it flutters back and forth?
Does not every turn tell you with elegant, voluptuous nonchalance that you are beaten? Oh, matter lies ever in
waiting. I sit down cheerfully after breakfast to begin my
work, never suspecting the enemy. I dip in my pen, there's
a hair in it; that is the way it begins. The fiend will not
come out; I get ink on my fingers, the paper gets stained.
I look for another sheet, then for a book, and so on; in
short, my blessed morning is gone. From early dawn until
late at night, so long as there is a human being about,
matter is on the alert to play him a trick. The only way to
do is to treat it as the lion-tamer does the beast whose
cage he has ventured to enter he meets its gaze and the
beast meets his. To talk about the moral power of a human
being is all nonsense, a mere fairy-tale; no, the steady
gaze only tells the brute that the man is on his guard, and
gaze against gaze the monster lurks to see if for one
single moment he will forget himself. So lurks all matter,
lead-
A RABID PHILOSOPHER. 155
pencils, pens, inkstand, paper, cigar, glass, lamp all, all
for the moment when you are not watching. But, ye
saints! who can ever do it? Who has time? And like the
tiger that leaps upon its unfortunate victim the moment he
knows himself to be unnoticed, so does matter, drat it!
sometimes clumsily, sometimes subtly, as the case may be.
Diabolically subtle, for instance, was the bit of iron
filing that landed in my eye the morning I was about to
start out on my tour. Oh, believe me, when a respectable
person is going a-travelling all the devils hold an
ecumenical council to defeat him. But one of the favourite
tricks dear to the heart of all objects is to creep
stealthily to the edge, and drop down from a height to slip
out of your hand you forget yourself but a single moment
and there goes"
At this moment we heard a slight sound at the end where
the other man was sitting; we saw him dodge hastily under
the table, and then emerge with an object in his hand,
which he looked upon in evident distress, and then with
deep dejection. It was his roll, spread first with butter
and then with honey in the most accurate and approved
manner, and, "of course," as A. E. would say, it had fallen
upon the buttered side.
It was with a great effort that I overcame a strong desire
to laugh, for it seemed exactly as if there had been a
mystic primordial relation between his words and the
disaster.
A. E. glanced across the table with perfect gravity, and
gently nodded his head without a vestige of irony; nay,
rather, with an expression of sympathy, as much as to say:
we poor mortals know all about it. The stranger shot not
only one but a whole battery of venomous glances over to
our side, and sullenly set to work to produce a fit
successor to the incurable roll.
A. E. continued quietly: "Then too I don't like that
business about that thing, or rather the two things, that
Kant called the pure form of a priori perception."
PAGE 156
"Space and time?"
44 That's it. What is space but an
ment by means of which I am forced
putting R here" (he illustrated it
bottles, which were rather closely
and
impertinent arrangeto remove A before
with cups, dishes, and
set upon the table), "
"WE SAW HIM EMERGE WITH AN OBJECT IN HIS HAND.
to make room for A put C somewhere else, and so on ad
infinitum? And time? That is what you never have for
anything. For, ye gods and little fishes! is that what
we live for to have need of ten motions for things that are
not worthy of one ! "
A RABID PHILOSOPHER. 157
The stranger now shook his head with more violence,
laughing petulantly, and a vague unrest seemed to take
possession of his legs.
A. E. rambled on. "At other times," he continued, "the
reverse action takes place. Things go together that don't
belong together. Do you know one of the most pestiferous
forms of going along ? When a precious sheet belonging to
manuscript A manages to become attached to manuscript
B, and slips into the wrong drawer, and declines to be
found for days and weeks and years, while you are searching
for it in rage and despair and impotent frenzy. Compared to that such a thing as the well-known slipping under
your chair of a lady's dress is but a little playful
pleasantry on the part of the devil-ridden object, albeit
it is interesting as a fact sufficient to defeat our
nonsensical science of physics, for who could ever explain
such a thing mechanically ? "
Here the stranger jumped up with the exclamation, "This
is too much!" came upon us with heavy strides, planted
himself firmly before A. E., and cried in a voice of
thunder, "Sir, I would have you to know that I am a
Professor of Physics! And, moreover, you have, so to speak,
knocked my roll out of my hand!"
A. E. gave the man a long, contemplative look and was
silent. Who could tell how this was coming out? Suddenly
a crimson flush came into his face, his eyes sparkled, he
jumped up, and I, not knowing my man very well as yet,
was beginning to fear for the peace, when he with enormous
strides, ay, with leaps like a panther, rushed straight
across the room towards the corner which held the article
before delicately referred to, and now followed a fit of
coughing and sneezing intermingled with strange, wild,
gurgling sounds, a perfect storm of rasping, rumbling,
rattling, snarling, groaning, and barking tones; it was
like a chorus of infernal spirits. It took considerable
time for this terrific
PAGE 158
natural phenomenon to pass over; then the
raised his head, seized his hat, bag, and
me in a pitiful, broken treble, "Will you
to appease the gentleman? Good morning to
sufferer feebly
cane, and said to
have the goodness
you both."