Xttecarp (Sutòe
AND RATIONALIST REVIEW.
[ESTABLISHED 1883.]
No. 36. (New Series.)
JU N E 1, 1899.
Monthly ; T wopence.
Contents.
Ludwig Buchner. B y J . M. Robertson . . . 8 1 The Illusions of Faith. B y A . G. W . . . . 82 Rationalism and Social Questions. By F . J . Gould. 8^ Wagner’s Philosophy and Personality. B y W. J .
I'AGE
Shaxby . . . . . . . 8 3 The New Materialism . . . 85 Wine and Wisdom. . . . , 35 Medieval Dogma . . . , , , 8 6 A Sanctified Sinner . . . , . 8 7 Custom and Progress . . . . , 8 7 Random Jottings . . . . . , 8 8 Chats ahout Books and Miscellanea. XII.—With
Mr. Joseph McCabe . . . , . 8 9 Signs and Warnings ( g lea nedfrom the Relig ious P ress) 91 Rationalism in the Magazines . . . _ 92 The Relations of the Sexes . . . 9, Short Notices . . . . ,
revolutionary as the rest of the family, being implicated, though to a less degree than his brother, in the troubles of ’48. A humorous account of his experiences at that time will be found in the second series of Stettenheim’s Humorous Germ any, underthc title of “ Recollectionsof a Forty-eighter.” His other predilections at that time were wholly romantic, and took form in poetry, play-writing, and a novel called I n B e a u t ifu l G round, of which the scene was laid in Switzerland ; not the only romance he produced, but, I believe, the only one he published It was at his father’s wish that he took to the study of medicine, in which he distinguished himself from the first. His university was Giessen. I have heard him growl benevolently against the duelling habits of the German students, animadverting in particular on a sword-scar which embellished the head of his son. The young man, however, promptly convicted his parent of exactly the same experience, and the force of the lecture was somewhat impaired.
XufcwiQ Biicbncr.
Of few men whose names are widely known, probably, is the prevailing notion more mistaken than that formed by most critics of the brave old thinker who died at Darmstadt on the last day of April. For the ordinary unsympathetic reader of most European countries, the name of Ludwig Büchner stood for “ materialism” in every aspect of aggressiveness that can be associated with that much-abused and much-connotating term. By sheer force of verbal habit, he came to be associated with Nihilism— witness the Russian atmosphere given to his chief book in Tourguenief’s F a th e rs an d Sons ; with Bismarckism ; with “ crass ” utilitarianism ; and with the rejection of all romance, poetry, and imagination. To those who had any knowledge of him the conception was nothing short of ludicrous. As I knew him, in six weeks’ intercourse under his roof in Darmstadt, twelve years ago, he was one of the most domestic of men ■ a kindly and industrious physician; a man of unspoiled’ spontaneity of feeling; a lover of freedom ; a hater of militarism and tyranny ; above all, a man of imagination, who found in his Shakespeare his constant refreshment and his highest poetic and artistic ideal; and who could never be got to take kindly to “ realism ” in fiction. And if all men had only half his kindliness of nature, to say nothing of his absolute intellectual honesty, the phenomena of Nihilism and Bismarckism would be alike non-existent.
An outline of his life will help to a true realization of his cast of mind and character. Born in 1824, third son of the then chief medical officer of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, he was one of a remarkably gifted and energetic family. His eldest brother Georg, dying at twenty-three, had already made a great reputation by his tragedy, The D eath o f D an ton ; a younger brother, Alexander, becoming implicated in the revolutionary movements of 1848, accepted exile, and became a professor at the French university of Caen, whence he published in French histories of English and French literature, several successful romances, and treatises on questions of literature and education ; and an elder sister, Louise, became one of the leading women propagandists of Germany, her Women a n d th e ir M issio n being the chief work in the German feminist movement.
The young Ludwig (Friedrich Carl Christian Ludwig was his complete baptismal name) was as literary and nearly as
At the age of twenty-eight, having studied further at Vienna and Wurtzburg, he was appointed assistant physician in the clinical* department at Tübingen, where he delivered many lectures. It was now that, full of his studies in science, and led on by Moleschott’s Cycle o f L i fe , bethought out the view of things which he expounded in his famous Force an d Matter, first published in 1855. I have heard Frau Büchner say that she thought none of the later editions, so much more elaborate and circumspect, had the brilliance and energy of the first sketch. It had an instant and immense success, a second edition being called for in a few weeks; and he at once began to pay the penalty of his honesty, having to give up his post at Tübingen. He quietly retired to medical practice at Darmstadt, and remained so employed till his death. Had he dissembled his heresy, he would have had a well-paid official post for life, and received all manner of scientific honours such as he had begun to reap even before his appointment at Tübingen. The moral compensation for his official ostracism was the comparative leisure which enabled him to follow up his service to rational thought by a long series of not less solid, though less celebrated, treatises— his Studies in Science an d N a tu re , his lectures on the Darwinian theory, his M an an d H is P la ce in N a tu re , his M in d in A n im a ls, his L ig h t an d L ife , his Love an d L o ve -L ife in the A n im a l World, his God-Ldea au d it s Present Significance, his Modern Science and the F u tu re L i fe , his Facts an d Theories, and a multitude of essays and criticisms, contributed to journals and reviews.
Necessitated as he was to support his family by steady professional work in his quiet native town, and exposed as he was to attacks of extraordinary bitterness, not only from theologians, but from metaphysicians, including even Schopenhauer, Büchner had a wide and decisive literary success, and practically carried his point against the obscurantists. His Force an d M a tte r has passed through at least eighteen editions, and been translated into thirteen European languages, including Armenian and Roumanian. Several of his later books have been rendered in three or more languages; and, despite the stress of hostility, many distinctions, not only scientific, but social, were in course of years conferred upon him. During the wars of 1866 and 1870 he did laborious service in caring for the sick and wounded, and, in addition to a long string of orders— Prussian, Austrian, Hessian, and Saxon— he received from the freethinking Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha the
* In A Short H isto ry o f Frcethought, just published, I have made the error, through misreading an old note, of stating that he was a chemical lecturer.
