The Malady of the Century | Page 9

more attentively I followed in the beaten track of art- studies, the clearer it was to me that he who would secure an abiding success in art must be a blind copyist of nature. Certainly the personal peculiarities of an artist often please his contemporaries. It is the fashion to do him honor if he flatters the prevailing direction of taste. But those of the race who follow after, scorn what those before them have admired, and exactly what those of one time have prized as progressive innovations, they who come after reject as mere aberration. What the artist has himself accomplished, I mean his so-called personal comprehension or his capricious interpretation of nature, passes away; but what he simply and honorably reproduces, as he has truly seen it, lives forever, and the remotest age will gladly recognize in such art-work its old acquaintance, unchanging nature."
Fraulein Ellrich hung on his words in astonishment, while her parents calmly went on eating their fish.
"So," went on Wilhelm, speaking chiefly to his opposite neighbor, "so, I tried when I drew or painted to reproduce nature with the greatest truth; but at a certain point I became conscious of a perception that a hidden meaning in an unintelligible language lay written there. The form of things, and also every so-called accident of form, appeared to me to be the necessary expression of something within, which was hidden from me. The wish arose in me to penetrate behind the visible face of nature, to know why she appears in such a way, and not in another. I wanted to learn the language, the words of which, with no understanding of their sense, I had been slavishly copying; and so I turned to the study of physical science."
"So your two years at the Art School were not wasted," remarked Herr Ellrich.
"Certainly not, for to an observer of natural objects it is most valuable to have a trained eye for form and color."
"Yes, and beside, drawing and painting are such charming accomplishments, and so useful to a young man in society."
"Playing the piano and singing are still more so," put in Frau Ellrich.
"But dancing most of all," cried Fraulein Ellrich. "Do you dance?"
"No," answered Wilhelm shortly.
The words jarred upon him, and a silence ensued.
The councilor broke this with the question:
"Then you are a doctor of physical science?"
"Yes, sir."
"What is your particular department? Zoology, botany?"
"I have principally studied chemistry and physics, and I think of devoting myself to the latter."
"Physics, oh yes. A wide and beautiful sphere. So much is included in it. Electricity, galvanism, magnetism--those are all new faculties very little known; and as regards submarine telegraph the knowledge cannot be too useful."
"These sides of the question have not hitherto interested me. I ask of physics the unlocking of the nature of things. It has not yet given me the key, but it is something to know on what insecure, weak, and limited experiments our vaunted knowledge of the existence of the world of energy, of matter and their properties, depend."
Frau Ellrich looked at him approvingly.
"You speak beautifully, Herr Eynhardt, and it must be a great enjoyment to hear you lecture."
"You will soon have a professorship, I suppose?" remarked Herr Ellrich, turning around to the blushing Wilhelm.
"Oh, no!" said he quickly, "I do not aspire to that; I believe in Faust's verse: 'Ich ziehe... meine Schuler an der Nase herum--Und sehe dass wir nichts wissen konnen;' and I also bilde mir nicht ein, Ich konnte was lehren.' I wonder at and envy the men who teach such things with so much influence and conviction, and I am very grateful to them for initiating me into their methods and power of working properly. But there has never been a likelihood of my venturing to approach young men and saying to them, 'You must work with me for three years earnestly and diligently, and I will lead you to knowledge, so that at last, through the contents of a book, you may get a flying glimpse of the phantom which has so often eluded you.'"
"Your opinions are very interesting," said Herr Ellrich; "but a professorship is still the one practical goal for a man who studies physics. Forgive me if I express my meaning bluntly; there is money to be made in physics through a professorship."
"Happily I am in a position which makes it unnecessary for me to work for my bread."
"That is quite another thing," said the councilor in a friendly way, while his wife cast a quick glance over Wilhelm's clothes, unfashionable and rather worn, but scrupulously clean.
"One can see that this idealist neglects his outward appearance," her good-natured glance, half-apologetic, half-compassionate, seemed to say.
Herr Ellrich changed the conversation to the management of the hotel; discussing for a time the Margrave's wines, the south German cookery, the