id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.

Private Education and Independent Study.

In my sixth year my father began to read the Bible with me. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Here I interrupted my father, and asked, "But, papa, who created God?"

"God was not created by any one," replied my father; "He existed from all eternity."

"Did he exist ten years ago?" I asked again.

"O yes," my father said, "He existed even a hundred years ago."

"Then perhaps," I continued, "God is already a thousand years old?"

"Silence! God was eternal."

"But," I insisted, "He must surely have been born at some time."

"You little fool," said my father, "No! He was for ever and ever and ever."

With this answer I was not indeed satisfied; but I thought "Surely papa must know better than I, and with that I must therefore be content."

This mode of representation is very natural in early youth, when the understanding is still undeveloped, while the imagination is in full bloom. The understanding seeks merely to grasp, the imagination to grasp all round.[13] That is to say, the understanding seeks to make the origin of an object conceivable, without considering, whether the object, whose origin is known, can also be actually represented by us or not. The imagination, on the other hand, seeks to gather into a complete image something, the origin of which is to us unknown. Thus, for example, an infinite series of numbers, which progresses according to a definite law, is for the understanding an object, to which by this law definite qualities are attached, and an object just as good as a finite series, which progresses according to the same law. For the imagination, on the other hand, the latter indeed is an object; but not the former, because it cannot grasp the former as a completed whole.

A long time afterwards, when I was staying in Breslau, this consideration suggested to me a thought, which I expressed in an essay that I laid before Professor Garve, and which, though at the time I knew nothing of the Kantian philosophy, still constitutes its foundation. I explained this somewhat in the following way:—The metaphysicians necessarily fall into self-contradiction. According to the confession of Leibnitz himself, who in this appeals to the experiment of Archimedes with the lever, the Law of Sufficient Reason or Causality is a principle of experience. Now, it is quite true that in experience everything is found to have a cause; but for the very reason, that every thing has a cause, nothing can be met with in experience which is a first cause, that is, a cause which has no cause to itself. How then can the metaphysicians infer from this law the existence of a first cause?

Afterwards I found this objection more particularly developed in the Kantian philosophy, where it is shown that the Category of Cause, or the form of hypothetical judgments used in reference to the objects of nature, by which their relation to one another is determined a priori, can be applied only to objects of experience through an a priori schema. The first cause, which implies a complete infinite series of causes, and therefore in fact a contradiction, since the infinite can never be complete, is not an object of the understanding, but an idea of reason, or, according to my theory, a fiction of the imagination, which, not content with the mere knowledge of the law, seeks to gather the multiplicity, which is subject to the law, into an image, though in opposition to the law itself.

On another occasion I read in the Bible the story of Jacob and Esau; and in this connection my father quoted the passage from the Talmud, where it is said, "Jacob and Esau divided between them all the blessings of the world. Esau chose the blessings of this life, Jacob, on the contrary, those of the future life; and since we are descended from Jacob, we must give up all claim to temporal blessings." On this I said with indignation, "Jacob should not have been a fool; he should rather have chosen the blessings of this world." Unfortunately I got for answer, "You ungodly rascal!" and a box on the ear. This did not of course remove my doubt, but it brought me to silence at least.

The Prince Radzivil, who was a great lover of the chase, came one day with his whole court to hunt in the neighbourhood of our village. Among the party was his daughter who afterwards married Prince Rawuzki. The young princess, in order to enjoy rest at noon, betook herself with the ladies of her court, the servants in waiting and the lackeys, to the very room, where as a boy I was sitting behind the stove. I was struck with astonishment at the magnificence and splendour of the court, gazed with rapture at the beauty of the persons and at the dresses with their trimmings of gold and silver lace; I could not satisfy my eyes with the sight. My father came just as I was out of myself with joy, and had broken into the words, "O how beautiful!" In order to calm me, and at the same time to confirm me in the principles of our faith, he whispered into my ear, "Little fool, in the other world the duksel will kindle the pezsure for us," which means, In the future life the princess will kindle the stove for us. No one can conceive the sort of feeling which this statement produced in me. On the one hand, I believed my father, and was very glad about this future happiness in store for us; but I felt at the same time pity for the poor princess who was going to be doomed to such a degrading service. On the other hand, I could not get it into my head, that this beautiful rich princess in this splendid dress should ever make a fire for a poor Jew. I was thrown into the greatest perplexity on the subject, till some game drove these thoughts out of my head.

I had from childhood a great inclination and talent for drawing. True, I had in my father's house never a chance of seeing a work of art, but I found on the title-page of some Hebrew books woodcuts of foliage, birds and so forth. I felt great pleasure in these woodcuts, and made an effort to imitate them with a bit of chalk or charcoal. What however strengthened this inclination in me still more was a Hebrew book of fables, in which the personages who play their part in the fables—the animals—were represented in such woodcuts. I copied all the figures with the greatest exactness. My father admired indeed my skill in this, but rebuked me at the same time in these words, "You want to become a painter? You are to study the Talmud, and become a rabbi. He who understands the Talmud, understands everything."

This desire and faculty for painting went with me so far, that when my father had settled in H——, where there was a manor-house with some beautifully tapestried rooms, which were constantly unoccupied because the landlord resided elsewhere, and very seldom visited the place, I used to steal away from home whenever I could, to copy the figures on the tapestries. I was found once in mid-winter half-frozen, standing before the wall, holding the paper in one hand (for there was no furniture in this apartment), and with the other hand copying the figures off the wall. Yet I judge of myself at present, that, if I had kept to it, I should have become a great, but not an exact, painter, that is to say, I sketched with ease the main features of a picture, but had not the patience to work it out in detail.

My father had in his study a cupboard containing books. He had forbidden me indeed to read any books but