The Sleepwalkers (82 page)

Protestantism has had to dispense with that kind of defence against sectarianism. It does not absorb the non-religious values, it only tolerates them. It despises extraneous “aids,” for its asceticism insists on the radical inwardness of religious experience. And although it acknowledges ecstasy to be the source and the crown of religion, yet it exacts that the ecstatic value shall be independently wrested from the sphere of pure
religion, remaining absolutely uncontaminated, uncompromised, and autonomous.

This attitude of severity is what governs the relationship of Protestantism to the non-religious social values, and what it depends on also to ensure its own stability as a Church on earth. In its exclusive and single-minded devotion to God it must of necessity fall back on the sole extant emanation of God’s spirit on earth, the Holy Scriptures,—and so fidelity to the Scripture becomes the highest earthly duty of the Protestant, and all the radicality, all the severity of the Protestant method is applied to maintaining it.

The most characteristically Protestant idea is the categorical imperative of duty. It is in complete opposition to Catholicism: the extraneous values of life are neither subsumed in a creed nor included in a theological canon, but are merely strictly and somewhat bleakly supervised on the authority of Scripture.

If Protestantism had chosen to follow the other line of development, the Catholic, in order to achieve in its turn an organic system of Protestant values, such as Leibniz envisaged, for example, it would perhaps have preserved itself not less successfully than Catholicism against a further splitting-up into sects; but it would have been compelled to lose its essential character. It found itself—and still finds itself—in the situation of a revolutionary party that runs the danger, once it has risen to power, of being forced to identify itself with the old order it has been opposing. The reproach of disguised Catholicism levelled against Leibniz was not quite without foundation.

There is no severity that may not be a mask for fear. But the fear of lapsing into sectarianism would be much too insignificant a motive to account for the severity of Protestantism. And the flight to punctilious fidelity, to the written word, is pregnant with the fear of God, that fear which comes to light in Luther’s
pœnitentia
, that “absolute” fear of the “ruthlessness” of the Absolute which Kierkegaard experienced and in which God “is enthroned in sorrow.”

It is as if Protestantism by clinging to the Scripture wished to preserve the last faint echoes of God’s Word in a world that has fallen silent, a
world where only things speak dumbly, a world delivered over to the silence and ruthlessness of the Absolute,—and in his fear of God the Protestant has realized that it is his own goal before which he cowers. For in excluding all other values, in casting himself in the last resort on an autonomous religious experience, he has assumed a final abstraction of a logical rigour that urges him unambiguously to strip all sensory trappings from his faith, to empty it of all content but the naked Absolute, retaining nothing but the pure form, the pure, empty and neutral form of a “religion in itself,” a “mysticism in itself.”

There is a striking correspondence between this process and the structure of the Jewish religion: perhaps the Jews have carried to a still more advanced stage the neutralization of religious experience, the stripping of all emotional and sensory elements from mysticism, the elimination of the “external” aids to ecstasy; perhaps they have already got as near to the coldness of the Absolute as the ordinary man can bear—but they too have preserved the utmost rigour and severity of the Law as the last vestige of a bond with religious life on the earthly plane.

This correspondence in the process of intensification, this correspondence in the form of religious structure, which is asserted to extend even to the point of causing a corresponding similarity of character between orthodox Jews and Swiss Calvinists or British Puritans, this correspondence could, of course, be attributed also to a certain similarity in the external circumstances of these religions: Protestantism being a revolutionary movement, and the Jews an oppressed minority; they are both in opposition; and it could even be alleged that Catholicism itself when driven into a minority, as for instance in Ireland, exhibits the same characteristics. Yet a Catholicism of that stamp has as little in common with the Catholicism of Rome as the original Protestant faith has with the Romanizing tendencies of the High Church. They have simply inverted their distinguishing signs. And however these empiric facts are expounded, their explanatory value is but little, since the facts would not be available at all were it not for the determining religious experience behind them.

Is it this radical religiosity, dumb and stripped of ornament, this conception of an infinity conditioned by severity and by severity alone,
that determines the style of our new epoch? Is this ruthlessness of the divine principle a symptom of the infinite recession of the focus of plausibility? Is this immolation of all sensory content to be regarded as the root-cause of the prevailing disintegration of values? Yes.

The Jew, by virtue of the abstract rigour of his conception of infinity, is the really modern, the most “advanced” man
kat’ exochen:
he it is who surrenders himself with absolute radicality to whatever system of values, whatever career he has chosen; he it is who raises his profession, even though it be a means of livelihood taken up by chance, to a hitherto unknown absolute pitch; he it is who, unconditionally and ruthlessly following up his actions without reference to any other system of values, attains the highest summit of spiritual enlightenment or sinks to the most brutal absorption in material things: in good as in evil a creature of extremes—it looks as though the current of the absolute Abstract which for two thousand years has flowed through the ghettoes like an almost imperceptible trickle beside the great river of life should now become the main stream; it is as if the radicality of Protestant thought had inflamed to virulence all the dread ruthlessness of abstraction which for two thousand years had been sheltered by insignificance and reduced to its minimum, as if it had released that absolute power of indefinite extension which inheres potentially in the pure Abstract alone, released it explosively to shatter our age and transform the hitherto unregarded warden of abstract thought into the paradigmatic incarnation of our disintegrating epoch.

Apparently a Christian can only decide between two alternatives: either to seek the still available protection of the Catholic harmony of values, in the literally motherly bosom of the Church, or courageously to accept the absolute Protestantism which involves abasement before an abstract God,—and wherever this decision has not been taken, fear of the future lies like an oppression. And in fact it is the case that in all countries where men are still undecided this fear is latent and constantly active, though it may find expression merely in a fear of the Jews, whose spirit and mode of living are felt, if not recognized, to be a hateful image of the future.

In the idea of a Protestant organon of values there certainly exists a
desire for the reunion of all Christian churches, the kind of reunion envisaged by Leibniz, and that Leibniz, who comprehended completely the values of his age, was bound to think of it can now be seen as almost inevitable; but it was equally inevitable that a man like him, a man centuries ahead of his time, who foresaw the
lingua universalis
of logic, must have also envisaged in that final reunion the abstraction of a
religio universalis
, an abstraction of a coldness that perhaps he alone was capable of enduring, being as he was the most profound mystic of Protestantism. But the Protestant line of development postulated first the immolation of life; so it was Kant’s philosophy, not Leibniz’s, that engendered Protestant theology; and the rediscovery of Leibniz was reserved, significantly enough, for Catholic theologians.

The numerous sects that have split off one after another from Protestantism, and have been treated by it with that ostensible tolerance which is peculiar to every revolutionary movement, have all developed in the same direction; they are all a rehash, a whittling away and levelling down of that old idea of a Protestant organon of values; they are all on the side of the “Counter-reformation”: for instance, to leave out of account the grotesque American sects, the Salvation Army not only resembles the Jesuit movement of the Counter-reformation in its military organization, but also exhibits very clearly the same tendency to centralize all values, to draw everything into its net, to show how popular art of every kind, down to the street song, may be reclaimed for religion and reinstated as “ecstatic aids.” Pathetic and inadequate expense of spirit.

Pathetic and inadequate expense of spirit, deceptive hope, to think of saving the Protestant idea from the horror of the Absolute. It is a touching cry for help, a cry summoning all the resources of a religious community, even though that may be seen only as the pale reflection of what was once a great fellowship. For at the door in rigid severity stand silence, ruthlessness and neutralization, and the cry for help mounts more and more urgently from the lips of all those who are not capable of accepting what is bound to come.

On the Sunday afternoon following the celebration in the Stadthalle, Major von Pasenow, to his own surprise, decided to avail himself of Esch’s invitation to visit the Bible class. It came about in the following way: actually he had not been thinking of Esch at all, and what turned the scale was perhaps simply the walking-stick which he suddenly saw leaning in the hall-stand, a walking-stick with a white ivory crook-handle, which in some way had got smuggled in among his other things and evidently must have been hidden until now in some cupboard. Of course he remembered the stick quite well, nevertheless it was strange to him. For a moment it seemed to Major von Pasenow as though he must change into mufti and visit one of those ambiguous pleasure resorts which an officer is not allowed to enter in uniform. And so to speak as a concession, he did not buckle on his sword, but took the stick in his hand and left the hotel. He remained standing hesitatingly for a little in front of the hotel, then set out in the direction of the river. He walked slowly, supporting himself on the stick, somewhat like a wounded or an invalid officer at a health resort,—and he could not help remembering vaguely that the indiarubber bulb at the point of the old stick needed to be replaced. So at a moderate pace he reached the outskirts of the town, and he had the slight agreeable sense of freedom that a man has who can turn back at any moment, like an officer on furlough. And in fact he presently did turn back—it was like a happy and reassuring, yet disconcerting return to one’s home—and as though remembering an urgent promise which he had to redeem at once, he took the shortest way to Esch’s dwelling.

Since the number of Esch’s disciples had increased, and as during the summer months there was no need in any case for a heated room, the meetings were held in one of the empty store-rooms opening on the courtyard. A carpenter who belonged to the circle had provided rude benches; a little table with a chair behind it stood in the middle of the room. As there was no window the door was left open, and the Major, entering the courtyard, knew at once what direction to take.

Now that the Major appeared framed in the doorway and paused for a little to accustom his eyes to the twilight, everybody stood up; it almost
gave the impression of an expected visit of inspection by a superior officer on his rounds, and this impression was strengthened by the uniforms of the soldiers present. This transformation, even though merely figurative, of his unusual situation into the dignified terms of the office to which he was accustomed, mitigated the shock of it for the Major; it was as though a light and yet firm hand had held him back from stepping down dark ways, it was a fleeting intimation of a danger overcome, and he raised his hand in salute.

Esch had sprung up along with the others, and now he escorted the guest to the chair behind the table. He himself remained standing beside it, rather like a guardian angel allotted to the Major. And the Major had somewhat that feeling about it, more, it was as though the object of his visit were already fulfilled, as though he were surrounded by an atmosphere of security, a simplified area of life which was waiting to receive him, the returned wanderer. Even the silence that surrounded him was like an end in itself, it might have endured as it was for ever; no one spoke a word, the room, filled with the silence, strangely emptied by the silence, seemed to extend beyond its own walls, and the yellow sunlight outside the open door flowed past like an eternal immeasurable river on whose banks they were sitting. Nobody knew how long this silent motionless state lasted, it had as it were the frozen timelessness of those seconds when men are faced with death, and although the Major knew that it was Esch who stood beside him, he felt to the full the fraternal presence of death, felt its menace as a sweet support. And when he made to turn round to Esch, it required all the effort which one needs when one awaits something decisive, knowing at the same time that one must maintain one’s calm to the very last instant. With a great effort he turned round to him and said: “Please continue.”

But nothing at all happened, for Esch gazed down on the Major’s white hair-parting, he heard the Major’s low voice, and it was as though the Major knew all about him, as though he knew all about the Major, like two friends who know each other well. He and the Major were there as on an uplifted and radiant stage, they were seated in the places of honour, the audience were still as though a bell had commanded silence, and Esch, who dared not lay his hand on the Major’s shoulder, leaned on the back of the chair, although that too was undeniably presumptuous. He felt strong, steadfast and firm, as strong as in the best days of his youth, at once secure and gentle, as though he were delivered
from all the works of man, as though the room were no longer made of bricks laid one on another, the door no longer of sawn planks of wood, as though all were the work of God and the words in his mouth were God’s words.