Chapter i
POLEMICS POLITICAL AND SCHOLARLY
In his conscious formulation of an ideal of life Max Muller wanted to be a studious recluse, seeking knowledge and truth for their own sake, and believing that there must be a division of labour in human activities
None the less, all through life he was involving himself in political controversies, and showing himself eager to fight the opinions of majorities when they were baying in a pack out of nationalistic passions This was due to his interest in politics As a student in Germany he was a liberal nationalist As an adult scholar in England he remained the same liberal, and associated with the English Liberals At no age did he shrink from expressing his opinions in conversation or correspondence Though the realization of German unity and the creation of the German Empire in 1870 satisfied his nationalism, he never ceased to take an interest in Anglo-German friendship in the international field Even in his letters to his young son he set down his political views very freely
But his interest in politics did not remain confined to private expression As soon as he had acquired sufficient standing in the scholarly world he began to intervene in the public discussion of all the burning political questions of his times He was also given a hearing, for celebrity flows out through all sorts of outlets But it was not the desire for personal publicity which made him do so He felt that it was his duty to support the side which he believed to be right, and in committing himself to a cause he showed neither timidity nor half-heartedness, though this brought him more than a controversialist’s share of abuse.
But in the first instance he was only the typical German scholar of the mneteenth century After the French Revolution and the Romantic Movement, which between them created a new form of nationalism, a life like that of Kant became impossible for a European philosopher or scholar, because this nationalism put an end to the specialized, restricted and calculating manifestation of politics, and based it on the passion for selfhood of a whole people
Moreover, there stood behind that a far older Western tradition
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of involvement in public affairs Plato created the political function, both theoretical and practical, of the thinker Before him the Athenians had begun to think that a man who took no interest in the affairs of thcpohs was not just a harmless man, but a useless man Since that time nobody in the West has disputed that the scholar and also the poet, the philosopher and the historian, have their practical role in politics But till the end of the nineteenth century the political intervention of the writer was almost without exception on the side of right, and never on the side of might, whereas from the end of the mneteenth century onwards the perversion of the political function of the intellectual was an accompaniment of the perversion of its driving force, nationalism
Max Muller’s interventions in politics conformed to the older tradition in Europe Even so he seemed to think that a justification for them was called for, and once he wrote ‘If you want to be at peace with yourself, do not mind being at war with the world ’
In the course of his life Muller was drawn into public controversy by three wars the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864 between Denmark and the German Confederation, but fought on its behalf by Austria and Prussia, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and the Boer War of 1899.
As a German nationalist he held that the two Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were German So, when they were annexed by Denmark in 1850 and Prussia did nothing to prevent that, he wrote to Bunsen. c God help Schleswig-Holstein, and not punish Prussia in His wrath But if a power, to which all Europe has offered the leading position, allows itself to be intimidated by the threats of the Danes and Russians, and withdraws a given promise, that is worse than a retreat before a battle ’
The status of the two Duchies became an issue of war again when King Frederick VII of Denmark died at the end of 1863 The new king laid claim to them, but the German Confederation rejected his claim and called upon Austria and Prussia to take military action against Denmark They did, and of course the defeat of the Danes was inevitable
In England feeling ran high against Germany The Queen herself was pro-German, but her ministers and people were inflamed against Austria and Prussia There was even talk of war, and Palmerston himself would have liked it Almost all the newspapers were wholly on the side of Denmark At this juncture Max Muller
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thought he would explain the German case, and try to remove the grave misunderstanding between the German and the English people
On February 15, 1864, he sent a long letter to The Times from Oxford The editor, Delane, wrote to inform him that he would publish it, though he and his paper supported Denmark The communication was published on February 18, accompanied by an editorial which expressed lack of conviction Muller feared that public clamour might at any moment carry England into a war with Germany, and that, he said, would be the most terrible misfortune As for the English attitude, he understood it ‘The sympathy felt for Denmark as the weaker Power/ he said, ‘is both natural and honourable But weakness, as has been well said, does not confer the divine right of doing wrong, and in this conflict between Denmark and Germany, Denmark has been in the wrong from beginning to end ’
Then followed what Delane described as Muller’s elaborate defence of the conduct of Germany towards Denmark But on the larger public in England it fell flat
Yet his views were moderate He upheld the right to independence of the Duchies, and disapproved of the highhandedness of Bismarck He said ‘They are sovereign and independent states and are indissolubly united ’ But this question was not as simple as he made it out to be In fact, it was discussed in law for a long time and was set as a question in examination papers His advocacy of the German claim pursued him not only to the end of his life, but even after his death
He himself revived it in an article published in the Nineteenth Century ra its May 1897 issue In substance he made it a restatement of the German case The Editor of the review published it with the following note ‘The subjoined article has been submitted to and approved by the highest possible authority upon the facts, who vouches for the correctness of this version of them 5
The challenge was at once taken up by a Danish historian, A D. Jorgensen, who was also Keeper of the State Archives of Denmark He flatly denied the impartiality of Muller and observed that Muller had derived most of his information from the University of Kiel, ‘the headquarters’, as he put it, ‘of all the seditious writings against Denmark/ The Editor of the Nineteenth Century published this rejoinder in the December number of his review, and to it also
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he added an explanatory note ‘The following reply to Professor Max Muller’s article in the May number of this Review is published at the desire of an exalted Personage in this country, interested in the Danish side of the question, who considers that Professor Max Muller’s views are incorrect and inconsistent with historic truth 9 The Personage could only have been Alexandra, Princess of Wales, or her husband the future Edward VII Even this was not the end of the matter In November 1915, both the articles were republished as a pamphlet in London, with a preface by K Lmdblom It was a piece of war propaganda against Germany, but the moral drawn in the preface was incontrovertible
The Powers [Lmdblom wrote] who acted neither honourably nor wisely — the same thing if people only had knowledge to see it — have since had cause bitterly to regret their passivity Some may look on what the Great Powers have suffered since in the light of retribution 1864 shows what could well have been realized in 1914, namely, that a war in Europe, however small, is not merely somebody’s but everybody’s concern
1864 shows that it is easy to see injustice done and difficult to redress it Knowledge of injustice in the past and its consequences may help to the avoidance of injustice in the future Hence the repubkcation of the following articles, of which the net proceeds of sales will go to the Red Cross societies of the Allies
The long-drawn-out causality hinted at by the writer is indisputable if the fundamental cause of the First World War is assumed to be the very foundation of the German Empire To Bismarck the Schleswig War was the first trial of a method which he was to use with ever greater confidence and thoroughness in order to unite Germany under the hegemony of Prussia Eventually Max Muller recognized it himself, although during the war he condemned the action of Bismarck and the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein to Germany As his wife related in her biography ‘In later years he saw that Bismarck’s policy with regard to the Duchies was the first link in the chain that led to the unity of Germany ’ And Muller himself explained the connexion very clearly in his article published in 1897
There can be no doubt [he wrote] that without the initiative taken by Duke Frederick and the people of Schleswig-Holstein in resisting the Danish claim the great events of the second half of our century, the
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war between Prussia and Austria, and the subsequent war between Germany and France, would never have taken place, at all events not under the very peculiar circumstances in which they actually took place The name of Zundholzchen , lucifer match, given at the time to Schleswig-Holstein, has proved very true, though the conflagration which it caused has been far greater than could ha\ e been foreseen at the time
But the end of this war, which left the Duchies divided in control between Austria and Prussia, did not set at rest Muller’s anxiety about them He still awaited a final settlement, and tried to interest Gladstone in it Thus on April 2, 1865, he wrote to that statesman But obviously nothing came out of it The next year the status of the Duchies was finally decided by force by Bismarck, and that led to the war between Prussia on the one hand and Austria and the South German States on the other This was the second step in the process of realizing German unity under Prussia
In this conflict Muller’s convictions and sympathies were wholly with Prussia But he refrained from giving public expression to them He did not think it binding on him to declare himself publicly as a partisan of one of the two German States which were at war with each other Nevertheless, he wrote frankly to his mother and, while offering his view of the conflict, he also set down his anticipations for Germany In both he was remarkably correct On June 17, one day before the formal declaration of war by Prussia on Austria, he wrote to her
Sooner or later a war between Austria and Prussia was unavoidable, and if it is decisive, it will lead to what all true Germans have desired for years, a united Germany Prussia and Austria are merely names, and stand for no more than Anhalt and Reuss The great thing is that the dualism of Prussia and Austria should be ended Who conquers, or is conquered, is of little consequence Germany remains Germany, and cannot be governed, even by a Roman Catholic Emperor, otherwise than she allows herself to be governed If Prussia wins, she must cease to be Prussia, Austna the same So wait quietly, no excitement, no partisanship.
He reassured his mother about the practical consequences of the war for her Her investments were in Austrian stocks, and they had fallen So he told her that she must not scruple to ask him for money, for, as he put it, ‘if I don’t give you, I give to others’
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After the battle of Komggratz he wrote again
All good Germans have long desired what is now happening The methods employed might have been better, here and there, but Prussia staked her existence to make Germany united and strong, and though I thoroughly doubt whether the motives were throughout honest and pure yet I rejoice over the results Prussia will have a yet harder war to wage, for a war with France can hardly be avoided But m spite of all that, Germany will at last take her right place in Europe, and that she never could have done with the Bundestag and thirty princes
This war made him forget a good deal of the dislike which as a German liberal he felt for Bismarck’s authoritarianism, and even made him regard that statesman as a possible benefactor of Germany He wrote to his mother on July 16 4 You can well imagine I am no admirer of Bismarck, but I am convinced that his policy is the only one to make Germany strong and respected by other nations 5
About the final outcome for Austria Max Muller offered to his mother consolation in a fatalistic vein ‘One cannot alter matters, and when you think that Babylon and Nineveh, and Athens and Rome, have passed away in the course of time, you cannot wonder so much at the Hapsburg catastrophe.’ One wonders, however, if instead of Austria Prussia had suffered a resounding defeat, whether he would have been so philosophical.
Max Muller’s next involvement in current politics was over the Franco-Prussian War It moved him heart and soul This war roused the German nationalist that lay dormant in his scholar’s personality Being divided between Germany and England also he could not forget the issue of AngloGerman understanding, and this gave him as much concern during the war as the cause of German unity
On July 17, 1870, even before the formal declaration of war by France, he wrote to his mother. T do not for a moment doubt the result Germany may lose some battles, but Germany cannot be killed. The present devil’s brood in France will fall after one lost battle. There is perhaps nothing better for the ultimate consolidation of Germany than this war , Who knows how long this war may last? I should like to live to see its end 1 ’ He was only fortyseven *
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He wrote to Stanley
My heart is too full to say anything about this terrible war I believe it is a cup that could not pass France cannot break a united and strong Germany , and the reckless gambler who usurps the throne of France took advantage of this national jealousy to save himself from his inevitable end for a few years longer But the misery it bangs to thousands of happy homes passes all description * This war can only end either in the destruction of Germany, or in a revenge without parallel m history
He rebutted in advance any plea that might come from Stanley to show no vindictiveness to a beaten enemy ‘War in Germany is different from war in England It was easy for the Duke of Wellington to preach moderation at Paris He had to avenge defeat, but no outrages, whilst every German soldier that marches into Pans (and I trust I shall live to see it ! ) has to avenge the blood of brothers, and tears such as only a mother can shed 5
That reveals nationalism as an amoral biological phenomenon, which can make nations faced with a threat to their independent existence as blindly fierce as a wild beast at bay. But in Max Muller’s age this ferocity burst out in periodical crises It had not solidified into a persistent human hatred (called ‘cold war’ in modern jargon) which can contemplate and plan in cold blood the annihilation of a rival human group Thus, as soon as the tide of war turned, Muller’s tone became different On August 14 , even before the battles of Vionville, Mars-la-Tour, St Pnvat and Gravelotte were fought — and these French defeats decided the war — he wrote to his mother. ‘You can fancy all our thoughts are with Germany, and I wish I were there Such a triumph of a good cause has seldom been seen in history.’ On the same day, he wrote to his historian friend Freeman’ ‘Though I never doubted of ultimate success, I was afraid of reverses in the beginning Now I expect the war will be over soon, and what I looked forward to for the last eighteen years almost everyday as I opened the paper — the downfall of the Empire — has come to pass at last Peace will be easy, for Germany wants no conquests, not even Alsace and Lorraine , the land is fine enough, but the people are not worth having 9 He was soon to form different views about these provinces
Even then his mood was not wholly one of triumph The following passage from bus letter to Stanley written just on the eve of
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Sedan, on August 30, reveal the mingling of nationalism and humamtarianism in him T cannot tell you how this war crushes me I sometimes feel as I could bear it no longer and must be off What savages we are in spite of all these centuries 1 But surely the Teutonic race is better than the Latin and the Slavonic, and the Protestants better Christians than the Romans , and the Germanic cause is surely thoroughly righteous, and the French thoroughly unrighteous 5
It would be easy to label Muller as a German chauvinist But it was not in Muller’s nature to be partisan, though he always chose what m his lights was right So he wrote to his mother after the defeat of France T cannot agree with the German abuse of the French nation The French as a nation fight bravely, and show that they are by no means so depraved and perishing as the writers in the German papers think 5
Soon after he also wrote to Gladstone T feel quite ashamed when I see German writers speak of the whole of France as one vast Babylon, implying at the same time that Heaven has granted to us the exclusive privilege of all virtue and godliness ’
In spite of being a German and his complete identification with the German cause, Muller showed himself to be less of a partisan than Carlyle, who concluded a long letter to The Times (November 11, 1870) with the words ‘That noble, patient, deep, pious, and solid Germany should at length be welded into a nation and become Queen of the Continent, instead of vapouring, vainglorious, gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless, and over-sensitive France, seems to me the hopefullest public fact that has occurred in my time *
In a letter to his friend Professor Bernays, Max Muller even spoke regretfully of the respect with which the world was now treating victorious Germany ‘I feel with you,’ he wrote, ‘the horrors of this time, and though I am so proud of the heroism of the German nation, I am nevertheless ashamed to think how often the world looked upon the great spiritual victories of the Fatherland with scorn and indifference, and now is on her knees because we have learnt to aim our bullets with accuracy and skill However, I trust that the wild beast will soon retire, and that the spirit in Germany will attain the upper hand ’
For the sake of the mental sanity of the German people he wished France to remain strong, and not to be permanently weakened He wrote on September 16, 1870, to his American friend Moncure
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Conway, who was reporting the war T doubt whether it is w lse to weaken France at the very moment that Germany becomes so much more powerful As to making France harmless, that can never be done, and I doubt whether for the sake of Germany it is desirable *
Naturally Max Muller’s wife w T as proGerman, and he informed his mother that ‘G [Georgina] is e\en more German than I am’, and also told Abeken that ‘she is German through and through, and she and my three girls, the youngest only six years old, w T ork mdefatigably for the wounded 5 But though Muller’s anxiety in regard to the outcome of the war was over, a new 7 cause of anxiety arose for him in the signs that he observed of a misunderstanding between England and Germany
He was bound to wush for wholehearted friendship between the English and the German people But he went even further and thought that the peace of the world could only be preserved by creating an alliance of the Teutomc Powers, among whom he included the United States ‘My great anxiety through all this war/ he wrote to Gladstone on October 6, 1870, ‘has been the unfriendly feeling that is springing up between England and Germany The whole future of the world seems to me to depend on the friendship of the three Teutomc nations, Germany, England, and America 5 He looked upon France and Russia as the potential disturbers of peace, and set down the idea of an Anglo-German alliance to counteract them
Already in England a deep suspicion of Germany was taking shape At first sympathy in England was for Germany as the attacked side, but with the German victories there came about a change There w r ere some eminent British intellectuals who were wholly pro-German, such as Carlyle, the historian Freeman, and the political writer Goldwm Smith John Stuart Mill supported Germany from his antipathy to Napoleon III, and at first Gladstone, as Muller reported to Abeken, was on the German side, ‘not from natural sympathy, but from a conviction, from a feeling of right and duty 5
The British attitude began to be reversed after Sedan At the beginning of this change of opimon Max Muller wrote to his mother ‘The best part of the nation was for Germany, but the Anstocracy has strong sympathy with France 5 This change was partly the expression of the familiar British inclination to sympathize with the weaker side, but was also due to the tendency to 9
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be intolerant of the successes, especially military, of other nations Soon the disapproval of Prussia became quite vocal The idea gamed ground that France, instead of being the aggressor without qualification, might have been manoeuvred into that role by the astuteness of Bismaick, for whom there was great dislike in English political circles This found its first public and very strong expression in a letter to The Times written by Sir Harry Verney and published on August 29, 1870 In it the writer accused Bismarck of complicity in a design put forward by France to partition Holland, Belgium and Switzerland between the two as a quid pro quo for a French acceptance of the unity of Germany under Prussian hegemony Sir Harry Verney charged Prussia and Bismarck with entertaining this scheme, and said that ‘an English Minister who could dishonour his country by listening for a moment to such proposals, would be driven from office by an indignant people*
Max Muller at once replied, denying that the acceptance of the document by Bismarck in any way implied his agreement with the proposals But on the very next day (July 26) he wrote to Stanley ‘I feel by no means quite happy about the Traite de paix entre la France et la Prusse If it is genuine, however, then neutrality on the part of England would be criminal * Afterwards he contended that though Bismarck kept the document he was not in collusion with France But the mam contention of Sir Harry Verney was that Prussia and Bismarck had aggressive designs already prepared and so were responsible for the war This Muller disputed, and declared that Prussia was only fighting a purely defensive war
But Max Muller’s task became more difficult when Prussia disclosed the obvious intention of taking Alsace and Lorraine from France British opinion, and still more that of Gladstone, turned sharply against Germany At the beginning of October Gladstone, then Prime Minister, himself wrote to Muller conveying his strong view that he could not approve of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany, and seeking more information on its possibility But it was not easy to justify the German intention, and Muller had to admit that ‘the conquest of territory inhabited by people that are not German in national sentiment is an idea repugnant to the German mind’ He himself had at first thought that Prussia would make no such demand But he could see that it would be made and the cession exacted So he had to justify the step on the ground of military security
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He also knew, however, that there was more in the German claim on Alsace-Lorraine than military security He informed Gladstone that these provinces once belonged to Germany, and that had never been forgotten by the German people But he added that any offensive war to recover the lost patrimony was impossible. Only the action of France had provided the opportunity He now supported the claim, and in his letter even w T ent to the length of saying that hf there are people in the annexed portions of Alsace and Lorraine who cannot bear the idea of belonging to Germany, surely it is not too much to expect from their patriotism that they should follow the example of thousands of German families which emigrated to Philadelphia when Alsace was annexed to France’
The correspondence with Gladstone continued, and Muller even had one prolonged meeting with him at Hawarden But in the meanwhile he involved himself in a controversy in The Times on the whole subject
A long letter, his second on the w r ar, was called forth by an appeal made to England by a French merchant-politician, Arles-Dufour, to save Alsace-Lorraine for France Max Muller recogmzed ArlesDufour’s sincerity, but restated the case with the same arguments he had employed with Gladstone, and set forth more elaborately This led to a lengthy and sharp controversy in The Times between him and a writer who signed himself Scrutator Muller did not underrate either the knowledge or the controversial ability of Scrutator Indeed, he wrote at the beginning of his fifth letter, ‘When I ventured to accept the first challenge of Scrutator, it was not from any presumptuous confidence that I should be able to withstand the arguments of one of the most powerful athletes of our time ’ This statement was made under the belief that Gladstone was the mspirer of Scrutator
After Max Muller’s death, Mrs Max Muller in her biography repeated all this, and in a letter to The Times , published on February 3, 1903, Scrutator revealed himself to be the Rev Malcolm McColl , and also said that long after the controversy both he and Gladstone had informed Muller about this To clear up the matter, he wrote ‘Will you kindly allow me to say emphatically, and once for all, that Mr Gladstone was as ignorant as the rest of the world of the identity of Scrutator ’ Mr McColl repeated his view that Prussia had brought about the war deliberately from aggressive designs against France After praising the Berlin correspondent who at that
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time was warning England against the similar designs of Germany against England, he hoped that these warnings would be heeded
Even without knowing the real identity of Scrutator, Max Muller was pleased to find that the controversy had not lessened Gladstone’s friendly feelings towards himself In fact, Muller was invited to Hawarden expressly to discuss the war and the prospective peace He arrived there on December 9, and stayed till the afternoon of the 1 2th There he found the American General Burnside as well He was one of the commanders of the Unionist armies in the Civil War, and it was from his ample side whiskers that the word side-burns has come to us He, as Muller reported to his wife, ‘told Gladstone some useful truths’
Muller was fully aware of the sympathies and attitude of Gladstone Even in October he had written to Abeken that Gladstone’s sympathies were more Latin than Teutonic
In his letter of the 13th he elaborated the theme further As I told you before, Gladstone’s sympathies are by no means for Germany, neither is he familiar with the German language or literature, or the German character or ways, also the French refugees have taken great hold on him He distrusts Germany, especially Prussia ’ Still Max Muller thought that he could be persuaded, once the justice of the German claims could be brought home to him Then, Muller thought, Gladstone would be loyal to his perceptions
But Gladstone put Muller on the most unfavourable ground The conversation turned mainly on the future of Alsace-Lorraine Here Muller himself had private mental reservations He had informed Stanley in his letter of August 30 that he felt it was a misfortune that the provinces should be demanded by Germany But he added sadly. ‘The so-called logic of facts makes it almost impossible not to demand them ’ It was on this logic of facts’ that he now took his stand when answering Gladstone, putting forward the plea of strategical necessity
Gladstone at once replied that the greatest mistakes of the statesmen of his time lay in giving greater consideration to physical than to moral powers, and that the realization of German wishes would become a misfortune for Germany Max Muller could only reply that Germany had the right to decide, and would have to bear the responsibility and the consequences. In his anticipation Gladstone was certainly right On the other hand, Muller showed himself to
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be prescient on the practical plane He threw in the hint that hostile relations between Germany and England would force the former to found a formidable navy As Muller admitted, the discussion accomplished nothing, but the participants certainly parted fnends
Between the two peoples, on the contrary, unfriendliness grew German public opinion and the German press were very hostile and at times abusive towards England Gladstone’s attitude w T as well known there, and the British policy in the war w r as attributed largely to his influence
For his efforts to make the British people understand the German case, Bismarck himself thanked Muller through Abeken, who wrote ‘First my thanks for what you ha\e done and are doing for Germany, for our holy cause 5 This expression of gratitude is not from me alone I write in the name of Count Bismarck, who spoke to me only yesterday with a full and thankful recognition of your great and influential activity during this time, which he has heard through newspapers He rejoiced to have such an ally ’ Georgina Muller got the Cross of Merit for Ladies from the German Emperor for her w r ork for the wounded
Looking back on Max Muller’s involvement in the FrancoPrussian War, one finds it unnecessary to pronounce a judgement on his view that Germany was fighting an unprovoked defensive war Even now historians are not in agreement either about the immediate or the basic responsibility, and the more cautious of them apportion the blame evenly Bismarck himself spoilt the case for German innocence by taking credit in later years for having ‘played the part of a toreador and trailed his coat to make the French bull charge’
What is forgotten is that there are basic political situations which make wars inevitable between certain nations, and the immediate occasions are like the windings of a river flowing into the sea The plain fact was that France had held a dominant position in Europe since the seventeenth century, and Germany w r as now trying to acquire this for herself In a poultry run the pecking order is established easily and almost instinctively But men do not have that good sense, either individually or collectively.
If this fundamental aspiration of Germany, which was consistent with her new power, had brought her into conflict with France, the same basic situation promised a prospective conflict with Great Britain, whose traditional policy was to keep the first
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power in Europe in check It has now to be recognized that the Franco-Prussian War was the watershed across which the British people moved from their opposition to one Continental Power to their opposition to another The causes of the First World War, and a fortiori of the Second, have to be traced back to the situation created by the war between Germany and France in 1870 So Max Muller’s anxieties about the consequences of the Anglo-German misunderstanding that was arising out of this war were fully justified
The same passionate eagerness for maintaining or resuscitating Anglo-German friendship, which was already gone, made Max Muller join in his last political controversy only a few months before his death, when his physical strength was reduced to its lowest It was over the Boer War, during which the whole Continent and more especially Germany displayed a fierce emotional hostility towards Great Britain On this occasion Germany could take up the moral position of Great Britain in 1870 with greater plausibility, and represent her as a Great Power which was brutally suppressing the independence of two small and weak republics
This Muller would not admit, and he thought it was his duty to demonstrate the rightness of the British action in the same way as he had tried to show that of Germany in 1870 In the summer of 1899 he fell very ill, and the illness continued well into the autumn Even so he followed the course of events with attention, and by the beginning of September had become convinced that a conflict was unavoidable On September 8, when his doctors had given up all hope for him, he wrote to his son that he had a voice in the matter too, and drew his attention to the possibility of war ‘Today is an ominous day, war or peace, and I am afraid it must be war, and all about the definition of a word, sovereignty ’ Then he added T want rest, but must take care not to indulge too much in it In fact . . I do not mean to lay down my arms as yet True, I am growmg thin, and very yellow Many things are wrong, yet every morning after a good night I feel as if nothing was the matter with me 9
A few days after the war had begun, on October 29, he wrote again to his son ‘That horrible war makes me feel very unhappy — but now it cannot be helped, and the more it is fought out, the better. I still hope that before the appearance of England’s real power, the Boers and South Africa may collapse Is it not a mistake that England has now no foreign newspapers in her pay? She had
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formerly, but not now They do little good, but they can prevent mischief ’
He thought too that British generalship was poor, and the soldiers would not fight well under such leadership That was before Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener had gone to South Africa It must not be imagined from all this that Max Muller was a warmonger Even when he was trying to prove that Great Britain had the right to subjugate the Boer republics, he raised the question £ Was the war justified ? I, in my own heart, am convinced that no war is ever justified, even when it seems inevitable ’
He had no fear that Britain would not win the war But the aggravation of the already existing AngloGerman misunderstanding was causing him great worry He wrote to his friend Prince Christian on January 2, 1900 ‘The Germans do not indeed think of sending any Pomeranians to help Kruger, but the entire misunderstanding of the position of England is very grievous It was different in the old times, but even England’s old friends in Germany are misled How much I should like to step m, but my bodily strength fails me 5
The Prince suggested that he should w r rite in some serious German magazine, and Max Muller sent an article to the Deutsche Rundschau of which he was an old contributor But the Editor could not publish the article. However, afterwards another German paper, Deutsche Revue , published the piece At once there was an outcry against Muller in Germany, and the really solid attack on his position being made by the German historian Mommsen, who was a friend of his Muller wrote a second article as answer to Mommsen’s rejoinder, and Mommsen again replied This controversy ended in April 1900 In addition Max Muller contributed an article to the American magazine Forum explaining the causes of the antiEnglish feeling in Germany.
In England Muller’s articles were very much appreciated, and Lord Salisbury wrote the following note in his own hand
20 Arlington Street S W
Mr Barrington,
This is an excellent statement Please tell the Professor how much I
was impressed by it
S Ap 1 1900
But in Germany there was fury, and it was only from the fury that
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Max Muller could guess that his arguments had gone home In one letter he was even threatened with the gallows should he venture to show himself in Germany But even apart from such extreme outbursts, it would seem that sober opinion in Germany regretted Max Muller’s advocacy of the British cause After his death a German scholar and publicist, Karl Blind, a friend of his too, wrote in the May (1901) number of the Westminster Review that deep regret was universally felt in Germany when Muller set his face against the cause of the South African Republics Tt is a pity that the cloud of obloquy which thus suddenly overshadowed his name should have dimmed the lustre of his renown near the very end of his laborious life ’
This may be one of the reasons why his name was forgotten in Germany But if Max Muller courted all this unpopularity, it was m obedience to his conviction that peace in the world could be maintained in the future only through friendship between Great Britain, Germany and America However, it must be recognized that in regard to the true character of the Boer War Mommsen was more correct He observed in his reply to Muller
The Transvaal war is one of the strangest, as well as one of the saddest, known to history The old, obstinate, religious-political fanaticism is struggling, in this forgotten and lost remnant of the Cape-Dutch, with modern civilization, based on a not less fanatical desire of exploiting the whole world Two views of the world are here in conflict — the battle is being waged, so to speak, between the 16th and 20th centuries
What Mommsen regarded as unconvincing was the legalistic justification of the war, about which there was no disagreement between him and Muller The final outcome has also shown that Max Muller’s arguments did not touch the heart of the matter The position of Great Britain in relation to the European colonists in South Africa could not be worse today if the Boer War had not been fought It is Krugerism which has won, and all the optimism created by the reconciliatory measures taken from 1908 onwards has been proved to be unfounded The Dutch have even won over the British in the Cape Province and Natal That has happened because the Dutch clung to a living idea with faith The British standpoint was merely well intentioned, and had no genuine ideological strength behind it That is not realized even now by the British people in their thinking about South Africa
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Nevertheless, Max Muller clung to his idea till the very end of his life in spite of all the signs against him In his article in the Deutsche Revue he wrote ‘Germans, instead of looking for true blood relations and allies for the future in England and America, have sought for them in France and Russia They may look for a long time I hope they will discover, before it is too late, that blood is thicker than ink, and that the Saxons of Germany, England and America are the true, manly and faithful allies in all struggles for freedom in the future as in the past 5
In the American magazine Forum also he wrote
The German and English characters form complements of each other Why not admire what is good in Germany and what is good in England ? If Germany, wherever she turns in her colonial expansion, finds ground occupied by England this is, no doubt, provoking, but it cannot be helped now Property is property A war of words between the two countries seems harmless enough, but a real war would be so terrible that humanity shudders at the very mention of it
Fortunately, he did not live to see that war
Though Max Muller found any opening for joining in a political discussion irresistible, he seems always to have had a feeling that such controversies were almost futile During the Franco-Prussian War he had written to Gladstone ‘We must take men as they are, and we must take nations as they are , a nation flushed with victory and crushed by grief is not like a nation in its right mind It is with nations as with individuals ?
All that can be said in explanation of the intellectual who involves himself with political matters is that in the first place he is driven by the innate impulse of man the political animal; and in so far as he is a sentient being, it becomes a case of conscience with him Not even this tenuous plea can be put forward to justify scholarly controversies They are always barren and futile, often ill-tempered and unmannerly, at times scurrilous Only those who do not follow such controversies and their results can imagine that knowledge is advanced by them Max Muller wrote in 1875, when he opened the only scholarly duel of his life T am not one of those who believe that truth is much advanced by public controversy, and I have carefully eschewed it during the whole of my literary career/ There can be no doubt that he was right in this view Scholars are scarcely ever convinced by the opinions of other scholars workmg 9*
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m their field Max Muller himself wrote that he had considered the objections of his critics but had been confirmed by them in his conclusions At all events he said to some of his distinguished opponents, as he did to Mommsen ‘Let us agree to differ 5 So he wrote to Romanes in 1891 T believe we both care far more for what is right, than for who is right Facts and correct deductions from facts, are all we ought to care for, who discovered them and who made them is of very little consequence Yet I know from experience that there are but few who would be so completely above all personal feelings as you have shown yourself to be ’
He knew it only too well, and was taking the most charitable view of scholarly disagreements These are due in the first instance to dogmatism, which will ignore facts deliberately when the}’ are not consistent with the dogmatic view, and beyond dogmatism stands self-conceit and jealousy, which make the disputants descend to personalities When a scholar gets hardened in his animosities he behaves like a gladiator or a prize-fighter, or rather worse because he is not exposed to any physical punishment But Max Muller, even when he had to be severe on the arguments of his opponents, never indulged in discourtesy, far less abuse He even scrupulously avoided expressing an opimon when it might be attributed to personal motives
It was not however Max Muller’s fate to be spared scholarly attacks, and some of the worst kind, in spite of his disapproval of them These continued over more than thirty years during his life, and were carried on even after his death They came from a single source, partly inspired from another The direct source was the American Sanskntist, William Dwight Whitney of Yale, and behind him stood a clique of German Sanskntists Scholars who do not agree in their positive views generally agree in their animosities. The feud of Whitney against Max Muller was almost like an inherited Corsican vendetta
But the immediate occasion of this disagreeable controversy was furnished by a very pleasant expression of difference between two learned men They were Darwin and Max Muller An account has been given in a previous chapter of Max Muller’s view that Darwin’s theory of evolution could not be extended to explain the origin of language Th z pooh-pooh theory , as it was popularly called, which Darwin had originated under the influence of his friend H Wedgwood, the author of the Etymological Dictionary of the
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English Language , could not, according to Muller, account for human speech
Early in 1873 Max Muller decided publicly to express his dissent to Darwin’s theory, and in March he gave a series of lectures at the Royal Institution entitled Mr Darwin’s Philosophy of Language These were printed in the May, June and July issues of Fraser’s Magazine Max Muller sent the pamphlet to Darwin on June 29 and expressed the hope that he would accept the remarks in it ‘as what they were intended to be — an open statement of the difficulties which a student of language feels when called upon to explain the languages of man, such as he finds them, as the possible development of what has been called the language of animals’ He also assured Darwin that he was one of his diligent readers and sincere admirers
On July 3 Darwm replied with equal courtesy and frankness
As far as language is concerned, I am not worthy to be your adversary, as I know extremely little about it, and that little learnt from very few books I should have been glad to have avoided the whole subject, but was compelled to take it up as well as I could He who is fully convinced, as I am, that man is descended from some lower animal, is almost forced to believe a prion that articulate language has been developed from inarticulate cries, and he is therefore hardly a fair judge of the arguments opposed to this belief
Later Muller and Darwin met He was taken to Down, Darwin’s house in Kent, by Sir John Lubbock, later Lord Avebury, and in his autobiographical reminiscences Muller said that there were few episodes in his life which he valued more I shall quote the whole account from Auld Lang Syne , vol I, which in the copy of the book I am using bears corrections in his own hand He wrote
I need not describe the simplicity of his house and the grandeur of the man who had lived and worked in it for so many years Darwin gave me a hearty welcome, showed me his garden and his flowers, and then took me into his study, and standing leaning against his desk began to examine me He said at once that personally he was quite ignorant of the science of language, and had taken his facts and opinions chiefly from his friend, Mr Wedgwood I had been warned that Darwm could not carry on a serious discussion for more than about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, as it always brought on his life-long complaint of sickness I therefore put before him in the shortest way possible the
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difficulties which prevented me from accepting the theory of animals forming a language out of interjections and sounds of nature I laid stress on the fact that no animal, except the human animal, had ever made a step towards generalization of percepts, and I gave him a few illustrations of how our words for one to ten, for father, mother, sun and moon had really and historically been evolved That man thus formed a real anomaly in the growth of the animal kingdom, as conceived by him, I fully admitted , but it was impossible for me to ignore facts, and language in its true meaning has always been to my mind a fact that could not be wiped away by argument, as little as the Himalayas could be wiped away with a silk handkerchief even in millions of years He listened most attentively, he asked questions, but raised no serious objections Before he shook hands and left me, he said in the kindest way, ‘You are a dangerous man ’ I ventured to reply, ‘There can be no danger in our search for truth,’ and he left the room
Max Muller also sent to Darwin his subsequent controversial pieces, and though in them there were strong criticisms of Darwin’s theory the latter never took offence To the last pamphlet that Muller sent him, Darwin sent the following characteristic reply
‘Down, Beckenham, Kent
15th October, 1875
My dear Sir,
I am greatly obliged to you for so kindly sending me your essay In Self-defence, which I am sure will interest me much With respect to our differences, though some of your remarks have been rather stinging, they have all been made so gracefully, I declare that I am like the man in the story who boasted that he had been soundly horsewhipped by a Duke
Pray believe me,
Yours very sincerely, CHARLES DARWIN
Anything more to the credit of two great mmds in their disagreement over a scientific question cannot be imagined Yet this balance of mind was completely absent in its offshoot, in the course of which Darwin’s son George forced Muller into his only open controversy with another scholar, Whitney
George Darwin was not very straightforward in defending his father in the Contemporary Review , for instead of calling his article a reply to Muller and relying on his own arguments he gave it the
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deceptive title of ‘Professor Whitney on the Origin of Language ‘, and leaned heavily on the American scholar The article was substantially a dishing out in England of Whitney’s attacks on Max Muller in America So Muller did not read the piece until a friend told him about it
Max Muller in his reply to George Darwin in the Contemporary Review (November 1874) was very severe on Whitney, and Whitney then published another intemperate attack This provoked Muller so much that he gave up his wise resolution to take no notice of Whitney’s attacks (which had been going on for more than a decade), nor to take up any of his frequent challenges, and came out with a long pamphlet of seventy-seven pages, to which he gave the title In Self-defence
However, Muller put forward a practical suggestion, which was to place the differences before a panel of three scholars who were to be chosen by Whitney from his best friends who were also Pro - fessores ordmaru in any English, German, French or Italian university He also promised to abide by their judgement unreservedly He then set forth twenty points as to simple matters of fact which he regarded as the principal bones of contention between himself and Whitney They were indeed bones, and very bare ones too, as will be seen from the selection of five that I give The numbers are Muller’s
1 Whether the Latin of the inscription on the Duihan Column represents the Latin as spoken in 263 b c
2 Whether Ahura-Mazda can be rendered by ‘the mighty spirit*
3 Whether sarvanama in Sanskrit means ‘name of everything*
14 Whether in saying that the soft consonants can be intonated, I could have meant that they may or may not be intonated 1 8 Whether E Burnouf has written two or three bulky volumes on the Avesta 9 or only one
Publicly Whitney took no notice of the proposal for arbitration It is impossible to explain the ferocity of Whitney on any scholarly grounds The American journalist Moncure Conway, who was a friend of both, felt very distressed by this misunderstanding He tried to mediate and bring about a leconcihation He said that when leaving England to visit the United States for a few months he met Max Muller and discussed his intention with him Muller authorized him to put the proposal for arbitration personally to Whitney,
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which Conway did But Whitney was not willing, and Conway was not able to discover exactly why Nothing further came out of his efforts
Whitney took his revenge on Max Muller in a review of Muller’s edition of the Rig-Veda , which had been completed in 1874 This review, published in The New Englander for October, 1876, proclaimed Aufrecht’s edition as the real publication of the Veda and added that ’nothing can take away from this scholar the chief honour of being the editor of the Veda ’ As to Max Muller, he observed, apart from what he had done in publishing the commentary of Sayana, ‘he has yet to link his name with the Rig-Veda itself by any special tie which will bear testing’ Then he concluded
He has had his reward No man was ever before so lavishly paid, in money and in fame, for even the most unexceptionable performance of such a task For personal gratitude in addition, there is not the slightest call If Muller had never put hand to the Veda y his fellowstudents would have had the material they needed perhaps ten years earlier, and Vedic study would be at the present moment proportionately advanced
Not satisfied with this, Whitney added a footnote which ran ‘The original honorarium, of about £500 a volume, is well-nigh or quite unprecedented in the history of purely scholarly enterprises , and the grounds on which the final additional gift of £2,000 was bestowed have never been made public ’
One wonders whether Whitney was conscious that in all this he was providing a self-revelation not less frank than Rousseau’s deliberate Confessions
He continued his attacks, and in 1892 published a violent one on a new edition of Max Muller’s Science of Language Upon this Max Muller wrote to a friend who had criticized Whitney
I feel very grateful for what you said about Whitney I do not know whether you have followed his raids from the first I thought at first he was honest and sincere, and took the trouble to answer him in a long paper, In Self-Defence He went on sending me articles, anonymous or signed, in fact, he placed himself outside the pale of literary criticism As without losing all self-respect, I could not answer him, I have made it a rule for at least fifteen years never to read his invectives
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Whitney died in 1894, and Max Muller had a respite for a few years before his own death
But Whitney bequeathed his vendetta When Max Muller died, m its obituary notice the New York Nation revived Whitney’s rejection of the claim of Max Muller to be the editor of the Rig-V eda , and wrote ‘What Max Muller constantly proclaimed to be his own great work, the edition of the Rig-Veda, was in reality not his at all . A German scholar did the work, and Muller appropriated the credit for it ’
In great distress Mrs Muller wrote to the well-known Sanskrit scholars who had known her husband or collaborated with him, and after obtaining their opinion set down their version of the matter ‘Had there been any truth in the accusation its discovery would not have been left to an anonymous accuser in America, nor its exposure reserved until after Max Muller’s death ’
This so infuriated the writer in the Nation that when reviewing Mrs Muller’s biography of her husband he repeated the statements m a more offensive and cruel manner He said that there was no due acknowledgement from Max Muller of the help received from his assistants, and gave his version of the facts in the following words
Muller was hired to bring out the Rig-Veda A part of the work had already been done by Rosen This part of the text, together with the commentary, Muller brought out without Aufrecht’s assistance But Muller had already grown weary of the scholarly toil He spoke of it as slavery, and said that, in his opinion, life was meant for more than the drudgery of collating manuscripts So, for part of the next volume and for all of the third volume, he hired Aufrecht to do his work for him, though it was just the work he himself had been hired to do
There was more in this vein
How Max Muller worked on the Rig-Veda and what help he received, as well as his acknowledgements to Aufrecht and his other helpers, has been described in a previous chapter
Perhaps from the point of view of a specialist in Sanskrit scholarship the opinion which Cowell expressed to Mrs Muller was the most balanced Cowell knew Max Muller well, and was then Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge He wrote *
My dear Mrs Max Muller,
I sympathize with you most sincerely in what you say — my doubt is whether it would be well to rouse up again old feelings of animosity
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which the lapse of years has very much thrown into oblivion Professor Whitney was the mam leader in those attacks, and since he passed away we have heard hardly any allusion to them I hardly think it is right to consider the edition of Rig-Veda your husband’s pre-eminent work, surely such books as his History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature and other similar, works show more clearly his real genius and original powers The text of the 1 RigVeda has been kept so religiously in the MSS that it was a very easy task to edit it The Commentary which fills so much of Max Muller’s edition and which I and many Sanskntists prize so highly, was an especial object of attack to Whitney and most of the representatives of his school Max Muller proved that he thoroughly understood that difficult commentary by the masterly way m which he edited alone the whole of Vol I and the great part of Vol II After that he left part of the labour of collation etc to his younger co-adjutors, while he himself thus gained some leisure for researches into other fields of Sanskrit literature He was doing far better service to the Sanskrit cause by interesting such a wide circle of readers by his enthusiastic lectures and disquisitions, expressed in his singularly beautiful English style, than he would have done if he had spent the years in toiling alone to complete the text of Sayana’s Commentary You will thus see that I look on the great edition of the Rig-Veda as only one part of the wide field of Max Muller’s energy, and by no means the part which showed his powers at their highest point
I hope this letter will not grieve you I hope you will think it quietly over
Nothing could be more sensible, if Max Muller’s work on the Rig-Veda were only for fellow-scholars But it was not He edited it to make it widely known both in the West and the East, and with the more practical motive of influencing the religious life of contemporary Hindus So far as popularization was concerned he fully succeeded, and he also did for Hindus what no other scholar had ever accomplished From the very first the value of his edition was recognized in India Among the notable Hindus to do so was Raja Radhakanta Deb, a Bengali nobleman, patron of Sanskrit scholarship and himself the editor of a new Sanskrit encyclopaedia and dictionary, and a leader of orthodox Hindus in Bengal On receiving the first volume, he wrote a long letter of appreciation to Max Muller in which among many other things he said ‘Your labours will furnish the Vaidik Pandits with a complete collection of the holy Samhita of the first Veda only detached portions of which are to be found in the possession of a few of them ’
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He wrote again when the second volume was also sent to him ‘By successfully embarking on such an arduous undertaking, you have done to the Hindus an inestimable benefit, supplying them with a correct and superb edition of their Holy scriptures Accept therefore my most grateful and sincere thanks, which, in common with my countrymen, I owe to you 3
After the publication of the first three volumes Dr Martin Haug, who was at Poona, informed Muller how a great assembly of Brahmin pundits there had made use of them to correct their own MSS They would not themselves touch the volumes, because the idea had got abroad in India that the ink used in printing them had cow’s blood in it and so had become impure They had Muller’s text read to them, and pronounced the judgement ‘This edition must be written by a great Pundit versed in the Vedas and Sastras 3
Finally, when the whole work was published, one of the associations of the new monotheistic Hindus formally thanked Muller and wrote ‘By publishing the Rig-Veda at a time when Yedic learning has, by some sad fatality, become almost extinct in the land of its birth, you have conferred a boon upon us Hindus, for which we cannot but be eternally grateful 3 Last of all I shall translate from Bengali the public tribute which Swami Vivekananda, leader of the new Hindu revivalist movement in Bengal, paid to Max Muller in one of his books He wrote ‘Professor Max Muller is the leading figure among Western Sanskrit scholars The RigVeda , upon which nobody could set his eyes as a whole, has now been beautifully printed, and can be read by the general public, as a result of an enormous expenditure on the part of the East India Company and years of labour on the part of the Professor. 3
The fact remains that Max Muller’s text was the only one for decades in which modern Indians could read or see their oldest scripture That was why, after the exhaustion of the first volume and expected exhaustion of the others of the first edition, when the Secretary of State for India would not sanction the money for reprinting the whole work, an Indian Prince came forward to contribute more than £4,000 for a complete and revised second edition In his preface to the first volume of this second edition, Max Muller wrote.
The Members of the India Council, however, took a different view from that taken by their predecessors, the Directors of the old East
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India Company While the Directors on the advice of the greatest Sanskrit scholar of the time, Professor H H Wilson, their illustrious Librarian, declared that ‘the publication of so important and interesting a work as the editio pnnceps of the RigVeda was in a peculiar manner deserving of the patronage of the East India Company, connected as it is with the early religion, history, and language of the great body of their Indian subjects’, the Literary Committee of the India Council, acting on somewhat different advice, declined my offer of publishing a new edition of the RigVeda , though a strong desire for it had been expressed by scholars both in India and Europe, and though my gratuitous services were placed at their disposal
Even this involved Muller in an unpleasant controversy with a fellowSanskritist, Professor Boehtlmgk of St Petersburg, who had never forgiven him for refusing to go to that city to work under him In 1891, in a pamphlet attacking him as a mythologist, he said that what Muller had written about the refusal of the India Office to bear the cost of the second edition was pure invention
A general moral seems to be justified by all scholarly controversies scholars themselves should avoid them, and the layman should ignore them