Villa Elsa: A Story of German Family LifeHenry, Stuart Oliver
General
Villa Elsa: A Story of German Family Life
Henry, Stuart Oliver
Americans -- Germany -- Fiction
"That is simple enough. First, by claiming that the French are
degenerate. Second, by retaining religion with its morals as an
adjunct of an unmoral and authoritative militarism. Religion is to
them a topic for expert investigation and study just as is
militarism or any natural product--oil, coal, the chemical elements,
anything. The Teuton specialist goes at it as at any objective
science. His analytical and synthetic processes simply explore in
his own subterranean caverns apropos of theology. He has taken over
the Bible as the Kaiser has taken over Jerusalem. Wilhelm is
becoming the Cerberus of Christianity--sole and surly guardian of
its meanings and influence.
"But you never see any men in these German churches, do you? They
don't go to church. Nor the women very much. You see old women and
children at worship. This is because the German has always typically
worshipped Gott on the battlefield or in the military camps--out in
the open. The German God is an out-of-doors God and is distinctively
associated with the thought of war. God within walls, within a
church, is a deity of good will on earth. He is a deity of peace.
Naturally this does not appeal to the Goth. He don't pay much
lively attention to God unless there's a war on hand or in immediate
prospect. Then he begins to shout and 'holler' at Him to attract His
attention, because He is so far off from Germany."
Gard laughed. Then, after a moment, he asked, almost shyly,
"If German morals and religion have little necessary
relation--little actual relation--how about love?"
"The German would never have known of love if he had not heard it
talked of," replied Anderson with responsive geniality, pleased with
Kirtley's amused face. "Generally an excess of a moral religion
destroys love, just as the absence of it in the past has been apt to
go with an indecent and widespread sensuality. So we have, what is
called, the beastliness in the Teuton. For he has to go, as you
know, to an extreme in things--logical extreme. This is why he is
only partly human, from our standpoint. The human is so constructed
that he can't stand excess in any direction very long and remain
human. Everything has to be diluted, alloyed, temporized for him or
it is not bearable--it will not work successfully.
"We see this in medicine--conspicuously. Medicines pure from the
hands of Mother Nature are too strong, too rank in their purity, to
be properly effective. They have to be weakened, reduced, compounded
with inferior elements, to be of service. So with Truth. People are
always begging for Truth, seeking the ultimate Truth, as if that
would bring the perfect state of happiness. This is childlike
ignorance. Truth in its pure, perfect condition would simply kill
them--like unadulterated drugs. They could not stand its blinding
light. They could not stand the shock. Like the rest--to change the
metaphor--it has to be made up so largely of shoddy to wear well or
wear at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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