Schillers Philosophical Letters | Page 7

for my
own affection had changed me into Raphael.
Was it not this almighty instinct That forced our hearts to meet In the
eternal bond of love? Raphael! enraptured, resting on your arm, I
venture, joyful, the march towards perfection, That leadeth to the

spiritual sun.
Happy! happy! I have found thee, Have secured thee 'midst millions,
And of all this multitude thou art mine! Let the wild chaos return; Let it
cast adrift the atoms! Forever our hearts fly to meet each other.
Must I not draw reflections of my ecstasy From thy radiant, ardent eyes?
In thee alone do I wonder at myself. The earth in brighter tints appears,
Heaven itself shines in more glowing light, Seen through the soul and
action of my friend.
Sorrow drops the load of tears; Soothed, it rests from passion's storms,
Nursed upon the breast of love. Nay, delight grows torment, and seeks
My Raphael, basking in thy soul, Sweetest sepulchre! impatiently.
If I alone stood in the great All of things, Dreamed I of souls in the
very rocks, And, embracing, I would have kissed them. I would have
sighed my complaints into the air; The chasms would have answered
me. O fool! sweet sympathy was every joy to me.
Love does not exist between monotonous souls, giving out the same
tone; it is found between harmonious souls. With pleasure I find again
my feelings in the mirror of yours, but with more ardent longing I
devour the higher emotions that are wanting in me. Friendship and love
are led by one common rule. The gentle Desdemona loves Othello for
the dangers through which he has passed; the manly Othello loves her
for the tears that she shed hearing of his troubles.
There are moments in life when we are impelled to press to our heart
every flower, every remote star, each worm, and the sublimest spirit we
can think of. We are impelled to embrace them, and all nature, in the
arms of our affection, as things most loved. You understand me,
Raphael. A man who has advanced so far as to read off all the beauty,
greatness, and excellence in the great and small of nature, and to find
the great unity for this manifold variety, has advanced much nearer to
the Divinity. The great creation flows into his personality. If each man
loved all men, each individual would possess the whole world.

I fear that the philosophy of our time contradicts this doctrine. Many of
our thinking brains have undertaken to drive out by mockery this
heavenly instinct from the human soul, to efface the effigy of Deity in
the soul, and to dissolve this energy, this noble enthusiasm, in the cold,
killing breath of a pusillanimous indifference. Under the slavish
influence of their own unworthiness they have entered into terms with
self-interest, the dangerous foe of benevolence; they have done this to
explain a phenomenon which was too godlike for their narrow hearts.
They have spun their comfortless doctrine out of a miserable egotism,
and they have made their own limits the measure of the Creator;
degenerate slaves decrying freedom amidst the rattle of their own
chains. Swift, who exaggerated the follies of men till he covered the
whole race with infamy, and wrote at length his own name on the
gallows which he had erected for it--even Swift could not inflict such
deadly wounds on human nature as these dangerous thinkers, who,
laying great claim to penetration, adorn their system with all the
specious appearance of art, and strengthen it with all the arguments of
self-interest.
Why should the whole species suffer for the shortcomings of a few
members?
I admit freely that I believe in the existence of a disinterested love. I am
lost if I do not exist; I give up the Deity, immortality, and virtue. I have
no remaining proof of these hopes if I cease to believe in love. A spirit
that loves itself alone is an atom giving out a spark in the immeasurable
waste of space.
SACRIFICE.
But love has produced effects that seem to contradict its nature.
It can be conceived that I increase my own happiness by a sacrifice
which I offer for the happiness of others; but suppose this sacrifice is
my life? History has examples of this kind of sacrifice, and I feel most
vividly that it would cost me nothing to die in order to save Raphael.
How is it possible that we can hold death to be a means of increasing
the sum of our enjoyments? How can the cessation of my being be

reconciled with the enriching of my being?
The assumption of immortality removes this contradiction; but it also
displaces the supreme gracefulness of this act of sacrifice. The
consideration of a future reward excludes