XXXV
MORITZ VON EGIDY
His confession of faith · Further development · Candidacy for the Reichstag · From his address to the electors · On the fear of revolution · Idealists in act · My first meeting with Egidy · Visit at his home · Consistency of preaching and practice · A letter from Egidy
Von Halbheit halte den Pfad rein,
Der ganze Mann setzt ganze Tat ein,
Und wahre Ehre muss ohne Naht sein.
Emst Ziel
Keep thy path from halfness free;
Whoso is whole, whole deeds plies he;
Genuine honor must seamless be.
When the report went through the papers that a lieutenant colonel of the Prussian army had written a pamphlet entitled “Serious Thoughts,” in which he renounced the teachings of the Church, and that as a result of this he had been obliged to send in his resignation, it was regarded as a spicy bit of news. People sent for the pamphlet expecting to find in it the views of an enemy of religion; and behold, they were the thoughts, the serious and quickened thoughts, of one of the most religious and Christian men that could be found; but one who, like unnumbered multitudes of his contemporaries, did not regard the dogmas and formulas of official orthodoxy as true and binding—who, however, in contradistinction to the contemporaries that pass over this discord, considered it incompatible with his human dignity and his religious nature to pretend to a belief which he did not cherish.
His demand was that the Church should cease to impose articles of faith that are in contradiction with the conscience of the time, and that instead of the narrow sects a broad, great, united Christianity should embrace all those who feel the need of a consecrated life, and who carry in their hearts faith in God, and the Christian ideal.
Honest, solid, frank, glowing with inward warmth, was every word of the booklet; and even one who occupied a quite different standpoint—that is to say, one who had not reached the author’s degree of doubt or who had got far beyond it—could not but feel the one desire to shake that man’s hand.
That it is not compatible with the position of an active officer to utter thoughts that are not merely “serious” but revolutionary, since they assail an established institution sanctioned by the State, was doubtless clear to the penalized lieutenant-colonel himself; and he accepted his discharge without resentment, as a matter of course. And where he had posted himself he kept his stand, with head erect.
To be of use to the men of his time, to make a way out of untenable contradictions for them, to free the sacredness of genuine inward religion from external fetters of falsehood, was what had constrained him to write. And he felt himself doubly bound to continue the work that he had begun after a multitude had flocked to him waiting for his further leading.
The sentence above, “Where he had posted himself he kept his stand,” is in reality inaccurate, for Egidy went on from this place step by step in the same direction—that is, along the upward path of knowledge—with the same resolute gait, and where he stood a few years later he had immeasurably widened his field of view, and consequently his field of influence also. Although he remained true to himself, or rather by remaining true to himself, he had become almost another man since his first appearance with his “Serious Thoughts”; he had gone on thinking with the same seriousness, gone on willing with increasing power, and the domain which he surveyed at the end of his career, the ideal toward which he was then striving, went as far beyond his first announcement as that went beyond the narrow dogmatic track which he had originally renounced. And yet he did not for a moment need to disavow the basis of his endeavor; the watchword that he followed was from first to last “Religion no longer beside our life, our life itself religion!” Only his religion was then no longer “Mere Christianity,” but the push toward goodness, inner consecration; the striving for knowledge, for development. “Love is power” was another of Egidy’s maxims. He had begun with the demand for a change in the religious sphere, because there first he felt the discrepancy between old canons and new needs of the spirit; but gradually his demands had extended to the bettering of all—especially social and political—conditions.
He had put himself at the service of his convictions with a strength of character that was matched only by his strength for work. He went on lecture tours, published a weekly entitled Die Versöhnung (“Reconciliation”), gave an answer to every one who in person or by letter came to meet him either as a seeker for advice or as an opponent; he took a stand publicly with regard to all problems and events of the day, and when election time came he announced himself a candidate for the Reichstag.
But the election went against him. One who subscribes to no party programme does not get the voters, for they too have been drilled into partisan politics.
Here are a few passages which I have extracted from his appeal to the electors, premising only that this man was never an opportunist, that he forever scorned to say A and insinuate B, or to show gray in order to attain white. Certainly this method is unpolitical according to prevalent customs, and apparently Egidy’s attempt to enter political life was wrecked on that reef. The worship of party and special interests in which our life is swamped comports but ill with a series of declarations in which the first sentence ran, “I belong to no party and to no group of interests,” and where a little further on it says:
The question does not concern the advantage of a group or class, or the principles of a party; the question is to serve the community—without any limitation of the concept. He who cannot take into his heart and brain the concept community (Gemeinsamkeif) in all its completeness and elevation, is no such representative of the people as the times require.
The goal which Egidy saw before him was,
for every individual an intellectual independence limited by nothing, and an existence secured against all material oppression, for these are the conditions of inner freedom. There is no such thing as a welfare outside of freedom, at least for any one who feels himself a man. Until all are free, none is free. The ruling portion of the people is just as little free as the ruled. The continual fear of losing the rule paralyzes the sense of welfare—makes unfree.
We need conditions which shall make it possible for every one of the people to lead a life worthy of humanity. We are a people no longer under guardians, and we shall get ourselves these conditions. The way to this end: a peaceable transformation of our circumstances, from the present as starting-point, with the unselfish coöperation of all. No tabula rasa, not a “future society” to begin day after to-morrow; but a resolution of the people, clearly expressed in some form or other, that from now on other fundamental conceptions sway our institutions and consequently our existence. The change of conditions takes place in proportion to the progressive development in ourselves.
We all, without exception, are in a process of development. The transition to a new view of the world, which has long been on the way, is to take place during the next few years in the soul of the people. Whoever hampers this development commits a crime against the ordinances of God. Only when rationality and natural sensibility rule the thought of the majority, can we dare think of actual upbuilding. All enterprises undertaken in the meantime are only barracks which will be crushed by the spirit of the new time as it will soon appear with elemental power.
Again, as to his attitude toward the military bills that were pending at the time of his candidacy, Egidy expresses himself in such fashion as no legislator in our country has yet ventured on. He binds himself neither to Yes nor to No. He reserves the right to examine each situation as it comes:
Should the duty of the representative of the people be understood as many would have it, he would not need to enter the hall, but might send in on paper the written Yes or No with which his electors have stamped him for each individual question. Just because I believe so fearlessly in the victory of good in the world as a whole, just because I believe rock-firmly in peace, I must also conscientiously hear the others. If the representative comes to-day to a decision that binds him, then he relinquishes the right to approach the champions of the measure with questions, desires, proposals, and discussions. What more intelligence does any one need who is tagged beforehand?
On the other hand, a candidate for election must carry with him serious reflections regarding this as well as every question. My reflections are as follows: I am persuaded that we are not on the immediate verge of a war; nor is a war between civilized nations any longer thinkable. We are on the verge of peace. A war of battles is a phenomenon which the consciousness of civilized nations has got beyond. “Peace” does not mean “no more struggle”; “peace” means only “no more war.” That we ourselves do not desire war and have no use for it, we affirm on every occasion; our neighbors assert the same. Either we have confidence in these assertions, and then nothing hinders us from accordingly realizing peace,—to-day we are only living in an armistice,—or we do not have confidence in these assertions, and then we must forthwith get a certainty of how we stand with our neighbors. The present status is unworthy of a dignified nation. “The quietest man cannot live in peace if it does not suit his malignant neighbor”—but the proof that the neighbor is malignant is lacking; the proof that it does not suit the neighbor is lacking; and, above all, the proof is lacking that from the moment when we should pave the way for peace it would not suit the neighbor; quite apart from the fact that we have no right to designate ourselves as quietest men. As yet nothing has been done to convince our neighbors by our actions that we love peace. Only after attempts directed toward this end have shown a negative result will it be permissible to say that our neighbor is thinking of war. But in that case the sooner we strike the better. So I shall first ask for the proof of the factors of danger which the champions of these measures may allege, and shall, as occasion may demand, suggest and support measures which shall practically demonstrate to our neighbors that love for peace which we have always professed. Si vis pacem, para pacem. One party must begin; he is free to begin who is most sensibly conscious of his strength; he is bound to begin who can say with the best conscience: “Not from fear of war do I put aside my weapons, but from love for peace.” The manliness of the nation should assuredly not be lost; but for its exercise the handiwork of war is no longer necessary, nor for its preservation the battlefield.
It was a time when in the German Empire the combating of the so-called revolutionary parties was part of the order of the day. Egidy took a stand with regard to this question also, and gave his discussion of it a particularly interesting turn; for his conception of “religion, order, propriety,”—three ideas which he assuredly held in the highest esteem,—differed fundamentally from the popular conception which demands a clinging fast to all the established. He who fights under the banner of Evolution does not want to “revolutionize” the established, but to “transform” it. I let Egidy speak for himself:
I do not see any revolution (Umsturz, “upset”) threatening, anyhow: at least I do not feel threatened so long as I still have the confidence, which hitherto remains unshaken, that we shall wake to reason at the right time. To begin with, there is no need of thinking of such a thing as an upset, but only of the breakdown, the collapse, of an antiquated view of the world. Things can come to an upset, i.e. a topsy-turvy state, a reign of terror, only if the representatives of the hitherto-existing order, in melancholy blindness or from outright selfish motives, contumaciously oppose the collapse of antiquated notions, set themselves against the breakdown of untenable social formations. That they can prevent the collapse is of course a thing not to be thought of, no more than any one may imagine that he occasioned this breakdown.
Egidy’s style acquires a distinct individuality from its conciseness and perspicuity of expression, which are the consequences of the absolute honesty and straightforwardness of his thought. Never, for the sake of a fine-sounding phrase or a rhetorical effect, will a superfluous word or a periphrasis be found in it; but the heartfelt quality of the thought does now and then create for itself new words and new compoundings which unintentionally become stylistic beauties:
The community is a living organism, in which injuries can be cured only from within outward, only by a new, pure, warm heart-blood. No sentimentality, no full-toned din of words. The will to resolve. The doing, also, by each in his own way. We want to be practical idealists, idealists in realization, idealists in act.[37]
We were entertaining callers when Lieutenant Colonel von Egidy was announced: our ambassador Count Szechenyi, and Ossip Schubin the famous Austrian novelist, who had moved from Bohemia to Berlin awhile previously with her sister the painter. A pretty, vivacious, elegant lady. A new novel of hers had just been published, adding yet more to her already well-established reputation as a notable delineator of Austrian high life. When Egidy came in Count Szechenyi took his departure, but Ossip Schubin remained awhile longer. Joyously we went forward to greet our caller and shake hands with him. After a long correspondence a first meeting is the meeting after an absence.
Egidy, although rather short in stature, had a very martial appearance; his bearing, his voice, his accent, were altogether those of a Prussian officer of hussars. But the rigorous face with its thick mustache was lighted up by a pair of smiling, gleaming blue eyes.
The presence of the strange lady kept the conversation in conventional channels at first; there was no talk about the things that were close to our hearts. The lieutenant colonel and the authoress had ten minutes of very lively converse. Then Ossip Schubin took leave of us. Later it came out that neither of them had ever heard of the other. Evidently Egidy was not interested in fiction and Ossip Schubin cared still less for political addresses.
Then, as soon as we were alone, we broached the subject of the efforts in which we were respectively engaged. I had not then heard any of Egidy’s public speeches, but even in his conversation words flowed warmly and eloquently from his lips. He was so completely penetrated with his ideas, his plans, his hopes, that he uttered what he was full of. Such an utterance were his speeches also, as I afterward discovered; only in them he spoke with an exceptionally loud, clear, and deliberate utterance, and was often carried to heights of eloquence by his inward fire. In the drawing-room, of course, he spoke gently and more simply, but still with ever logical fullness of thought, always consistent with himself. We now let him know our ideas and aims also. The peace cause Egidy had not yet included in his programme, although theoretically he agreed with us.
The next day we visited him in his home. A beautiful, harmonious family circle. A congenial wife—born Princess of something, I have forgotten the name—and ten children. To be sure, not all ten were at home. The oldest son was serving in the navy; one daughter was studying in Sweden; but at any rate there was a fine bunch of Egidy children present, and all seemed to worship their father. One of the daughters acted as his secretary. Charming hours those were which we spent in the plainly furnished home in eager speech and reply, in which the wife and the older children took part, about the loftiest aims of human struggle and labor,—reconciliation, peace, consecration of life. “We are pulling on different ropes,” said Egidy to us, “but it is the same bell.”
Later, when on the occasion of his candidacy I wrote to him how desirable it was that such servants of the community, such thinkers who stood above narrow party interests, should be members of the popular assembly, and how different everything would then at once be, he wrote back to me:
Everything will not be different at once, but gradually—of course; but the tempo decides. “Gradually” everybody says; the point is whether it is slow step by numbers—One—back again—One—back again—Twooooo (you surely know something of the drillground?) or, of course, rather livelier, try even a bit of quick step for aught I care—no need that it be a double quick with tambours battants. And it is coming. It has to come. What phases we may still have to pass through I would not say, in view of the latest phenomena in our public life. As yet I still do not believe in a bloody settlement. The incoming of the new view of the world will come about, not without tears and outcries, but still as a natural process, as a birth.
You speak of my working power. Well, yes, I have working power and creative impulse, and how I yearn to be able to bring both “immediately” into service. Inwardly I am so well prepared and equipped that at a second’s notice I could take up my duties. I am sure of myself. If one chooses to speak at all of a value which I may be supposed to represent (as your words do in such a wonderfully pretty way), this value can only be seen in the future. Many have already spoken and written, but if they were put before the “doing” they gave out; they made miserable compromises with shallow unchangeableness and other wretched notions. Honesty, concord, the bringing into concord of preaching and practice, is what the business means for me. And in this matter I will not yield a hair’s breadth from my apprehension of the truth.
On our return from Hamburg, where we had gone after my Berlin address, we stopped in Berlin (as has already been mentioned) for only an hour at the railway station. Thereupon Egidy wrote me the following letter, which also I will put on record here because it shows so very clearly how Egidy conceived of his busy work and of a possible coöperation with me:
Berlin, N. W., Spenerstrasse 18, May 11, 1892
Highly honored Lady:
You passed through Berlin and we knew nothing about it, when we had been taking so much pleasure in the anticipation and planning everything so as to enjoy, if possible, a few more hours of interchange of thought with you and Herr von Suttner.
For in truth I had my heart very much set on it. I would gladly have anchored our acquaintance on a ground that might be fruitful for the community. We must act (operate) on one set of principles. Guerrilla warfare of individuals, or even of groups, must be superseded by a systematic action of all under one controlling idea, with each one conscious of the object to be attained. The heads of all columns must now appear on the battlefield; those who always do nothing but talk of religion, Christianity, and the Church, without being honest men or thinking of their brothers,—those we leave to march in circuit around the battlefield as they have been doing in the past. Our idea is the conquest, not merely the combating, of the old view of the world; the new appears to me under the name “Christianity,” to you under the name “Humanity.” That ought not to separate us, however, but should make the one complement the other. Perhaps, too, with the meaning which I give to the concept “Christianity,” “Humanity brought closer to the Godhead,” you may be able to accept the word. For the success of our endeavors, and that is the only point that concerns us, the word “Christian” is indispensable. Yes, the circles that you already have will be content with the word “Man”; but millions will not accept it.
We must take Christianity seriously—that is the sentence which I lately cried out to the literary world when I had invited them to meet in the Chamber of Deputies. In speech and writing, in our own lives, wherever we come forward, we must verify the Christian consciousness, must “live love” I was understood without doubt—but faith is lacking; faith in the possibility of a realization of my endeavors. And that is fearfully sad!
Others again, who share the faith with me, cannot conceive the realization with retention of the external forms, as I strive for it; often, therefore, they scarcely believe in the audacity and intrepidity of my will. The sort of spiritualization of the established (altar and throne), or “idealization,” is to them unthinkable, and just as unthinkable to them is it that in my concrete demands on the future I go beyond them all. None of all these dream of anything so radical as the changes I want to make, because in many cases, it must be admitted, they lack the clear conscience: they want to “destroy”—much at any rate—while I would only build up.
I recently had an intensely serious interview with two teachers. One of them wanted to compile the views of the most prominent champions of the development of mankind relative to the schools: the anonymous author of Maschinenzeitalter—I helped him over the anonymity to begin with (could do so the more freely because on the day before that splendid booklet Wilhelm II., Romantiker oder Sozialist had come into my hands, on the cover of which Frau v. S. is named as the author of that work). It was highly interesting to hear and to see how the two developed the fact that, and the reasons why, they had believed, not believed, believed again, and ultimately not believed, this or that. The other observations of these (still rather young) men were also very noteworthy, their zeal for the development of mankind downright magnificent. And of such there are thousands—only the faith is lacking, and for that we ourselves are to blame, if we do not work unitedly and so become to those who are striving and willing, demanding and yearning, a real safeguard for their hopes.
Therefore, Frau von Suttner, place your efforts also under the banner of a pure religiousness, true and genuine;[38] only so can you uphold them before every one as justified. Those who care nothing for the word “Religion” will not ostracize your efforts because of a word; and those to whom religion is everything will recognize your efforts for very religion’s sake. But religion in a sense which excludes any limitation of belief, any Churchism and any Judaism, all sectarianism, and the like.
I had my heart too much set on saying these additional words, highly honored lady; I may take it, since the acquaintance we have formed, that you have a friend’s comprehension of the unreservedness of my discussion. We are dealing here with something too high for phrase-making. Above all, I beg you to see in the fact that I have written you thus at all a proof of pure and genuine esteem—else had I remained silent. And this honest and convinced esteem I feel (together with all my family) in no less a degree for your husband, whom I respectfully salute. My wife and daughter desire me to express to both of you their warmest greetings and respects. Your visit remains for us all a valued memory.
Sincerely yours
M. von Egidy
I should not be at a loss to characterize the whole man Egidy in one word. Just as there are, for example, men of steel and iron, so hard and keen; men of gold, so good and true; men of wax, so soft and plastic; so is Egidy, in his transparent luster, a man of crystal.