The Robbers | Page 8

that will stretch handsomely as occasion may require. Am I to
blame? It is the tailor's affair? I have heard a great deal of twaddle
about the so-called ties of blood--enough to make a sober man beside
himself. He is your brother, they say; which interpreted, means that he
was manufactured in the same mould, and for that reason he must needs
be sacred in your eyes! To what absurd conclusions must this notion of
a sympathy of souls, derived from the propinquity of bodies, inevitably
tend? A common source of being is to produce community of sentiment;
identity of matter, identity of impulse! Then again,--he is thy father! He
gave thee life, thou art his flesh and blood--and therefore he must be
sacred to thee! Again a most inconsequential deduction! I should like to
know why he begot me;** certainly not out of love for me--for I must
first have existed!
**[The reader of Sterne will remember a very similar passage in the
first chapter of Tristram Shandy.]
Could he know me before I had being, or did he think of me during my
begetting? or did he wish for me at the moment? Did he know what I
should be? If so I would not advise him to acknowledge it or I should
pay him off for his feat. Am I to be thankful to him that I am a man? As
little as I should have had a right to blame him if he had made me a
woman. Can I acknowledge an affection which is not based on any
personal regard? Could personal regard be present before the existence
of its object? In what, then, consists the sacredness of paternity? Is it in
the act itself out of which existence arose? as though this were aught
else than an animal process to appease animal desires. Or does it lie,
perhaps, in the result of this act, which is nothing more after all than
one of iron necessity, and which men would gladly dispense with, were
it not at the cost of flesh and blood? Do I then owe him thanks for his
affection? Why, what is it but a piece of vanity, the besetting sin of the
artist who admires his own works, however hideous they may be? Look
you, this is the whole juggle, wrapped up in a mystic veil to work on

our fears. And shall I, too, be fooled like an infant? Up then! and to thy
work manfully. I will root up from my path whatever obstructs my
progress towards becoming the master. Master I must be, that I may
extort by force what I cannot win by affection.*
*[This soliloquy in some parts resembles that of Richard, Duke of
Gloster, in Shakespeare's Henry VI., Act V. Sc. 6.]
[Exit.]

SCENE II.--A Tavern on the Frontier of Saxony.
CHARLES VON MOOR intent on a book; SPIEGELBERG drinking at
the table.

CHARLES VON M. (lays the book aside). I am disgusted with this age
of puny scribblers when I read of great men in my Plutarch.
SPIEGEL. (places a glass before him, and drinks). Josephus is the book
you should read.
CHARLES VON M. The glowing spark of Prometheus is burnt out,
and now they substitute for it the flash of lycopodium,* a stage-fire
which will not so much as light a pipe. The present generation may be
compared to rats crawling about the club of Hercules.**
*[Lycopodium (in German Barlappen-mehl), vulgarly known as the
Devil's Puff-ball or Witchmeal, is used on the stage, as well in England
as on the continent, to produce flashes of fire. It is made of the pollen
of common club moss, or wolf's claw (Lycopodium clavatum), the
capsules of which contain a highly inflammable powder. Translators
have uniformly failed in rendering this passage.]
**[This simile brings to mind Shakespeare's: "We petty men Walk
under his huge legs, and peep about." JULIUS CAESAR, Act I., Sc. 2.]

A French abbe lays it down that Alexander was a poltroon; a phthisicky
professor, holding at every word a bottle of sal volatile to his nose,
lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the
tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out
of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio,
because they are obliged to construe them.
SPIEGEL. Spouted in true Alexandrian style.
CHARLES VON M. A brilliant reward for your sweat in the
battle-field truly to have your existence perpetuated in gymnasiums,
and your immortality laboriously dragged about in a schoolboy's
satchel. A precious recompense for your lavished blood to be wrapped
round gingerbread by some Nuremberg chandler, or, if you have great
luck, to be screwed upon stilts by a French playwright, and be made to
move on wires!