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NO 1286.03™" ""'""'"y-fbrary 
 
lEIS. 
 
PRINTED BT MORRISON AND OIBB, 
 FOR 
 
 T- & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONDON, . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 DUBLIN, GEORGE HERBERT. 
 
 NEW YORK, , , SORIBNER AND WELFORD. 
 
IRIS: 
 
 STUDIES IN COLOUR AND 
 TALKS ABOUT FLOWERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 FEANZ DELITZSCH, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, LEIPSIC. 
 
 ExmsMzO from ti&e ©n'ginal 
 
 Eev. a. CUSIN, M.A., Edinburgh. 
 
 EDINBUEGH: 
 
 T & T CLAEK, 38 GEOEGE STEEET. 
 
 18J. 
 

 (2.4(.^^^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The subjects of the following papers are old pet children, 
 which have grown with me since ever I began to feel 
 and think. For I can scarcely remember the time when 
 I was not irresistibly drawn to observe the refraction of 
 light, and to muse on the language of colours. With 
 flowers I have always been on the most confidential 
 footing; they have heavenly things to tell me, and in 
 their perfume I feel the nearness and breath of the 
 Creator. It is true that with wine and dancing I am 
 less familiar, but I have had the more to do with them 
 as a student of the Bible. Down to old age, the sight 
 of youth has served to make me young again ; I have 
 rejoiced to sun myself in those bright rays of the Kfe 
 eternal — alas! too evanescent— which play on the youthful 
 countenance. From my youth up no enjoyment has 
 o-iven me such delight as the love of friends. Many of 
 these friendships have gradually faded, but, as I hope, 
 only to bloom again like the Jericho rose of the 
 wilderness. 
 
 It was these favourites of mine which suppUed me 
 
6 PEEFACE. 
 
 with theme and matter for occasional lectures which I was 
 called to deKver. I have collected them here under the 
 emblematical name lEIS. The prismatic colours of the 
 rainbow, the brilliant sword-lily, that wonderful part of 
 the eye which gives it its colour, and the messenger of 
 heaven who beams with joy, youth, beauty, and love, 
 are all named Iris. The varied contents of my book 
 stand related on all sides to that wealth of ideas which 
 are united in this name. 
 
 r. D. 
 
 Lbipsic, 1888. 
 
C N T E N T S. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Blub of the Sky, . . .9 
 
 II. Black and White, . . .33 
 
 Colours of Ecclesiastical Dress, . . 49 
 
 III. PuiiPLB AND Scarlet, ... 59 
 
 The Four Colours of tlie Mosaic Service, . . 68 
 
 IV. Academic Official Robes and their Colours, . . 79 
 
 V. The Talmud and Colours, . . . 101 
 
 Phenomena of Colours in connection with the Feelings, 1 1 7 
 
 The Colours of the German Empire, . . 126 
 
 Yl. Gossip about Flowers and their Perfume, . 129 
 
 Vir. A Doubtful Nosegay (from the History of the 
 
 Reformation), . . . . . .147 
 
 VIII. The Flower-Riddle of the Queen of Shera, . 153 
 
 IX. The Bible and W^ine, .... 171 
 The Vinestock of David in the " Doctrine of the Twelve 
 
 Apostles," ..... 184 
 
 X. Dancing and Criticism of the Pentateuch as 
 
 mutually related, . . . . 189 
 
 XI. Love and Beauty, .... 207 
 
 XII. Eternal Life : Eternal Youth, . . .221 
 
Eije Blue of tfje Slfeg* 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 
 
 The creation of light in the beginning was also the 
 creation of colours. The mystery of light touches very 
 closely the mystery of God. The call went forth over 
 chaos in its first throes toward formation : " Let there be 
 light ! " But for its production there were needed, as 
 we shall immediately find, impulses to set the cosmic 
 ether in vibratory wavy motion. Whence did those 
 impulses proceed ? Whence but from Him who is Him- 
 self absolute Light. Darkness lay on the primeval 
 waters, and so no luminous body capable of communi- 
 cating to the ether the necessary vibrations was yet in 
 existence. 
 
 Light is a mystery. We can explain its phenomena, 
 but its nature we cannot understand. The question, 
 where or how light and darkness have their origin, re- 
 duces a Helmholtz in our day as thoroughly to silence as 
 it did Job, when the Lord put the question to him 
 (xxxviii. 19). Newton held light to be a substance of 
 infinite subtlety, which was emitted by luminous bodies 
 in variously coloured particles. In this matter more 
 recent science has gone beyond him. It regards light as 
 a phenomenon arising from the vibration of the object, i.e. 
 the motions of the ether by which it is penetrated ; and 
 it teaches that as sound is propagated by the vibrations of 
 
12 lEIS. 
 
 the sounding body communicated to the air, so light 
 is propagated by the vibrations of the luminous body 
 communicated to the ether which pervades the universe : 
 ether in motion gives light, and ether at rest is darkness. 
 This ether certainly is not like the air, a real object dis- 
 cernible by the senses ; it is only an assumption, found 
 necessary to explain the phenomena of light, but one 
 which approves itself as a working hypothesis. On the 
 ground of this assumption, we explain the origin of colours. 
 In colourless white light there is contained an innumer- 
 able multitude of rays, the undulations of which increase 
 or diminish in length according to the slowness or rapidity 
 of the ether-vibrations by which they are propagated. 
 The light-sensation of blue and violet arises when the 
 ether makes from 700 to 800 billions of vibrations in a 
 second, and strikes the retina of the eye in its course in 
 correspondingly short undulations. Though Goethe's 
 doctrine of colours, which ascribes their origin to the 
 ' mixing of light and darkness, is easier to understand, and 
 has the recommendation that it lends itself readily to 
 testhetieal and symbolical applications ; modern science, 
 herein confirming the discovery of Newton, holds firmly 
 that it is the colourless white light which contains the 
 coloured rays, which is unequally resolved into them in 
 the spectrum, and may again be formed by uniting them, 
 — a magnificent image supplied by nature of the unity 
 of God and of the riches of absolute life contained in 
 His unity. 
 
 When first the light, with the intensity characteristic 
 of all creative beginnings, broke into the gloomy mists 
 which lay on the waters of chaos, then appeared all the 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 13 
 
 phenomena of colour which accompany light, as it 
 passes more slowly or more c[uickly through impure 
 media, or as it is reflected. At some points, violet, 
 blue, and green light, with their short undulations, com- 
 bined to form blue ; and at other points, where the impure 
 layers were thicker, their colouring rose from yellow and 
 yellowish red, and red, to white. It was the first day- 
 break, immediately produced by God, the Sun of suns. 
 The earth was not yet formed out of chaos ; land, sea, 
 and atmosphere were not yet divided ; the centres of 
 light destined for the world, with the sun at their head, 
 were not yet in existence. But now there was light, 
 God's firstborn, and with it, colours, the children of light. 
 All creatures, which thereafter came into being, had, 
 along with their peculiar forms, at the same time their 
 peculiar colours. And when the ascending scale of 
 organic and animated beings reached its highest step 
 in man, the human body was distinguished by that 
 manifold soft mingling of colours, the rendering of 
 which, the so-called carnation, is almost the painter's 
 despair. It is celebrated by the Shulamite in the Song 
 of Songs (ver. 14) as she exclaims: "My beloved is 
 white and ruddy." This flesh colour was further 
 heightened by the colour of the eyes and hair, and 
 varied by the transparent brightness of the nails, which 
 in the same passage is compared to the topaz (RV., 
 marg.), and the blue of the veins gleaming under the 
 skin, compared to sapphires inlaid in ivory. And now 
 encircling man, the flnished cosmos was bright with 
 every colour, from the carpet of flowers beneath his 
 feet to the play of colour in the rising and setting sun. 
 
14 lEIS. 
 
 and to the stars shedding their variously-coloured light 
 during the night. If he looked after sunrise to the sky 
 over his head, he found himself overarched with a vast 
 dome of deep blue, which toward the extremities of the 
 horizon passed over into bright blue, and melted away 
 more and more into white. If he looked beneath him, 
 dewdrops reflected to him all the colours of the rainbow, 
 and the world of plants met his eye in inexhaustible 
 richness of form and colour on a fresh green of the most 
 varied degrees of brightness. The birds, too, which 
 chirped to him from the branches and from the air, the 
 fishes which splashed in the stream, the whole animal 
 world which surrounded him, was arranged with infinite 
 combinations of colour according to the composition of 
 their bodies. All nature lay before man like an open 
 book with coloured letters and pictures. That he should 
 assimilate at once this boundless range of colour- 
 sensations was absolutely impossible. Human history, 
 though human and not merely animal, yet had its child- 
 hood. The observation of objects, and the naming of 
 what was observed, have their history in every depart- 
 ment. Man's colour-sense also has had its growth. An 
 example of this gradual development is the blue of the 
 sky. We can all distinguish and name it ; and where is 
 there a modern poet who does not celebrate this blue 
 in song ? J. H. Voss, for example, when he says of a 
 beautiful sunrise, — 
 
 Suftig in lauterer SStoue jcrfiof lote (Sitter bag grvt^votj^^ 
 
 1 Balmy to brightest blue, 
 The red dawn melted like silver. — Tr. 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 15 
 
 or W. Jordan, of the morning sky, — ■ 
 
 3n reincr aSIauc l^oc^ int Dfien jianb ber 5Korgcnjlcrn, ber 
 •SimntelSbianiont ; ^ 
 
 or Count Platen, of wooded hills, — 
 
 2)e3 •gtmmetg SBfau, ber Sonne ®oIb oerfc^weJen uni eure 
 
 or Immanuel Geibel, of a beautiful day, — 
 
 Sou rear bte £uft, ber ttefe •gimmel ilautc.^ 
 
 But to reach the conscious perception and designation of 
 this blue required a period not of centuries only, but of 
 millenniums. 
 
 In the hymns of the old Indian Eigveda, the chariot 
 of the sun is described as inlaid with mother-of-pearl, 
 having a golden pole, and showing every colour. Its 
 horses are gold-like, or beaming with sevenfold hues. 
 But though blue comes into play in the symbolism of 
 the cultus of Indra, the god of the sky, the brightness 
 of the day-sky caused by the revolution of the sun-god 
 is nowhere designated as blue. The language has the 
 word nila for blue, using it to denote the dye of the 
 indigo plant, the colour of the blue water-rose, the colour 
 of the sea and of river-water, but never the colour of the 
 day-sky. Neither does the old Persian Avesta ever any- 
 where celebrate the blue of the sky. The north Semitic 
 
 ' In purest blue, high in the East, 
 
 Stood the morning star, the diamond of heaven. — Tr. 
 2 The heaven's blue, the sun's pure gold, 
 
 Enweave your airy tops. — Tr. 
 ' Soft was the air, blue showed the deep, far sky. — Tr. 
 
l6 IRIS. 
 
 languages have not even an adjective for blue, neither 
 has the Egyptian, though the Egyptians' as well as the 
 Babylonians and the Assyrians were acquainted with 
 blue mineral dyes. In other tongues where there is a 
 word, it is not used of the sky. Notwithstanding the 
 laughing blue of the Greek sky, neither the Homeric 
 songs nor classical Greek literature in general ever 
 describe the sky by this colour; violet or cyan-blue is 
 the term applied to the sea, but nowhere in any of the 
 old Greek poets to the sky. Neither in the ancient 
 Edda do we find the bright clear sky named by its 
 colour; the waves of the sea and the Moor are there 
 called hid, — that is, blue, — but not the sky. So the old 
 High German hldo (pldo ; hldu, pldu) appears as an 
 attribute of water and of night, but not of the sky. 
 
 If now we ask, apart in the meantime from Old 
 Testament Scripture, when it was that Literature began 
 to speak of the blue sky, it appears that in this, as in 
 other things, the Chinese must have the palm of priority. 
 My friend Victor von Strauss und Torney, to whom I 
 apphed for information,^ has examined those writings of 
 the Chinese which extend over the seven centuries 
 before the Christian era, to investigate the expressions 
 contained in them for blue and green, and this is the 
 result. Besides the word niudn (ngun), which denotes 
 blue, but at the same time also the most diverse dark 
 hues down even to black, there is found the colour-name 
 
 ^ See his paper, " Bezeiclmung der Farben Blau und Griin ini 
 clainesisolien Altertum," in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenland- 
 ischen Gesellschaft, xxxiii. pp. 502-508. 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 17 
 
 thsang {thong), which undoubtedly denotes the blue of 
 the sky. In the Schi-king, a collection of songs from 
 about 1709 to 618 B.C., the sky is called the vaulted 
 blue {kniung thsang), as in the more modern language it 
 is called the reigning blue {kiun thsang). The same 
 mode of designating heaven meets us (and I am not 
 aware that it does so elsewhere or earlier) in the oldest 
 Latin poets of the third century B.C. They use the 
 colour-name coerulus of the sky. This word occurs also 
 of green, but mostly denotes blue. Naevius calls it 
 concavum cmrulum, the blue vault; in a later age the 
 Christian poet Synesius speaks of it as Kvavdvrv^, the 
 dark blue vaulted ; and Ennius names it ccerula tenvpla, 
 the blue dwelling of God. Thenceforth ccendus is a 
 favourite pictorial epithet of heaven with the Latin 
 poets. If from that time onwards the blue sky occurs 
 both in the Christian song to the sun in the later Edda, 
 and in middle High German poetry, this is only what we 
 should expect. But this progress in colour-sense is not 
 uniform. To denote the pure sky-blue, Arabian poetry 
 uses a homonym {el-hadrd) which signifies green, blue, 
 fawn, and dark. The bright day-sky passes for white. 
 It is in the learned language that we first find for sky- 
 blue the adopted Persian word asmdngHn, i.e. sky-colour, 
 and the adjective samdwi, i.e. sky-coloured. Old Greek 
 writers on science use in the same sense aSrinos, i.e. air- 
 coloured, — substitutes, that is to say, for proper colour- 
 names. 
 
 How slowly consciousness of the blue of the sky and 
 the naming of it came to maturity is shown by the 
 Eoman and Byzantine chariot races, which formed part 
 
 B 
 
18 IRIS. 
 
 of the games of the circus. The teams fell into four 
 parties {factioTies), which were known hy the four 
 different colours worn by the charioteers. One was 
 green, prasina ; another white, alba ; another blue, veneta 
 (called from the colour of the sea on the coast, which 
 was inhabited by the ancient Venetians) ; and a fourth 
 red, russata. The blue faction was sacred to Cronos 
 (Saturn), who in Hindustani also receives the epithet 
 nilavdsas (the blue-clad), or to Poseidon, the ruler of the 
 dark-coloured sea; so that seamen took it as a favourable 
 omen if the blue faction won, and the landsmen if the 
 green was victorious. At a later period the circus was 
 regarded as an image of the course of the year, and the 
 four colours were explained of the four seasons. But so 
 far from the blue being associated with summer and its 
 prevailing sky-blue, it was rather associated with the 
 cloudy winter. Or the four colours were explained in 
 reference to the four elements. But so far was blue 
 from being referred to the air, that white was associated 
 with the air, and blue with water. Nowhere is it clearly 
 declared that blue belonged to the sky. We have only 
 solitary utterances to this effect, among them TertuUian's, 
 who says hesitatingly that it was counted sacred to the 
 sky and the sea (ccelo et mari). 
 
 Another proof that the colour-sense for the blue of 
 the sky was not developed till very late is found in the 
 literature of the Talmud and Midrasch, where it discusses 
 the purple-blue of the fringes worn by the Hebrews, and 
 of the cloth in which the ark of the covenant was 
 wrapped during the wanderings in the wilderness. To 
 the question why purple -blue, or the colour of the 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 19 
 
 hyacinth, is distinguished above other colours, the answer 
 is given. Because the hyacinth is like the sea, and the sea 
 like the firmament of heaven. Elsewhere there comes 
 in between these even the green of plants : the hyacinth 
 is like the sea, and the sea like plants and trees, and 
 these are like the firmament of heaven. Here blue and 
 green are confounded, as blue and black are by Easchi, 
 the commentator on the Talmud, when he remarks : " The 
 hyacinth is like the firmament when it is growing black 
 at eventide." Ambrose, indeed, following Columella, is 
 on the right track when he says that the hyacinth 
 presents the colour of the bright sky. But taking all 
 these expressions together, it follows clearly that down 
 even to the Middle Ages, blue was not accurately distin- 
 guished either from green or from black. 
 
 How comes it that blue as a colour was so long of 
 being distinguished and named ? An able scientific 
 oculist, Hugo Magnus of Breslau, has drawn the follow- 
 ing conclusion from the course of development through 
 which the colour-sense has passed. The men of primeval 
 times, he says, did not see colours : colour-sense was 
 preceded by light-sense, i.e. the sense for various quan- 
 tities, but not yet for various qualities of light. And 
 colour-blindness, which belongs to many persons as a 
 natural organic defect, is due to an arrest of the develop- 
 ment, which prevents the retina from emerging from 
 that yet undeveloped original stage. But this view 
 implies a rudimentary beginning, which cannot be 
 historically proved, and which regards the process of 
 development one-sidedly, because only physically. If we 
 
20 IRIS. 
 
 take the grown man, we find him susceptible of colour- 
 sensations, even among the most uncultivated peoples ; 
 they love to paint themselves red or yellow, and so 
 beautify their persons. And how can we suppose that 
 the retina of man was ever insensible to colour impres- 
 sions, when even insects, which gather honey or pollen, 
 are guided, as has been observed, more by the colour 
 than by the form of the flower ; and coloured as well as 
 colourless light produces in that mosaic of minute lines 
 and points, which forms the retina of the frog, changes 
 constantly varying according to the kind of colour ? It 
 is true that the ancient colour-names express only the 
 contrast of bright and dark, and move within these 
 fundamental conceptions. But we dare not conclude 
 from this that the retina of man in those ancient times 
 was only capable of distinguishing the effects of light, 
 not the hues of colour. Eor at the present day, as much 
 as thousands of years ago, human language is utterly 
 incapable of rendering any colour by an adequate 
 expression. Either the colour is named according to 
 the fundamental conceptions of bright and dark, as, for 
 example, green, fawn, grey have their names in Semitic, 
 from their faintness of light ; or from the cause which 
 produces it, e.g. brown is connected with burning, hraun 
 with hrennen ; or from something or other to which this 
 colour belongs, e.g. the names for red and blood are 
 mutually related in Semitic. Indeed, there is no word 
 of man whatever which perfectly mirrors the impression 
 made by the thing. It is always a merely fragmentary 
 designation of the object from some mark or analogy. 
 Baum {tree), for example, denotes that with which we 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 21 
 
 haiien {build). But there are other building materials 
 besides. Thus the word is not co-extensive with the 
 thing. A child's pencil which scratches the picture of 
 a tree on his slate achieves more than human language. 
 Xot only in relation to God, but in respect also of the 
 world of things, we are mere babblers. Our words are 
 poor ciphers. 
 
 Admitting that the senses for light and colour have 
 never existed separately, and that language down to the 
 present day in naming colours has never got beyond the 
 contrasts of light and dark, yet the development of the 
 colour-sense, i.e. the distinction of colour impressions in 
 sensation, perception, and nomenclature follows the same 
 law as all human development, — the law of progress 
 from coarse to fine, from the obvious to the recondite, 
 from the near to the far. A child is immediately 
 arrested when strong bright colours, such as red, are 
 held before it, whereas it takes no interest in the fainter, 
 so-called indefinite colours. The reason of this is that 
 its mind is yet only half awake, and is only excited by 
 strong impressions. And so also the attention of the 
 race was attracted first by the light and colour impres- 
 sions produced by fire, by the red of dawn and of 
 evening, by the sun, moon, and stars, rather than by 
 the blue of the sky. Eed and yellow came first. Pliny 
 is so far right in saying that the most ancient preference 
 was for yellow. Men were first strongly affected by red 
 and yellow, and especially the orange colour of fire. 
 There is an Indian legend which reckons ether, air, fire, 
 water, and earth as the five elements ; and it ascribes 
 to ether the property of sound, to air the properties of 
 
22 IRIS. 
 
 sound and tangibility, to fire the properties of sound, 
 tangibility, and colour, thus dating colour from fire. 
 Homer gives Eos {Dawn) a garment of crocus and 
 fingers of rose, thus making yellow and red the pro- 
 minent colours of the morning sky. Before seven colours 
 were reckoned to the rainbow, three only were counted. 
 The rainbow, according to the Edda, is a three-coloured 
 bridge between heaven and earth, and its red is described 
 as like a burning fire. A bride among the Eomans was 
 clad in yellow, and the conqueror at his triumph 
 appeared in red. In comparison with the strong effects 
 produced by these two colours, blue seemed dark, and 
 green pale. On the whole, the historical proof sketched 
 by Magnus^ cannot be disputed, that the development 
 of the colour-sense follows the order of the prismatic 
 colours, having begun, as it did, with the reddish-yellow 
 extremity, and having only after a long interval reached 
 the blue - violet. Moreover, the development of the 
 colour-sense is not the same in all races, any more than 
 in all individuals. To the present day blue is the weak 
 side of many in respect of their sense of colour. From 
 want of attention and practice, their eye has not attained 
 the requisite power of distinction. We may safely say 
 that most people cannot distinguish between blue, indigo, 
 and violet. If they were asked how the blue of the 
 larkspur, of the cornflower, of the wild anemone, and of 
 the forget-me-not are distinguished, they could only 
 answer by saying that they call the one flower bright 
 blue, and the other dark blue. But if it comes to the 
 
 1 See his paper, Ueher ethnologische Untersiwhungen des Farhen- 
 sinns, 1883 (in the Virchow-Holtzendorf collection). 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 23 
 
 distinguishiug of lilac, violet, and pansy-colour, i.e. the 
 blue of the elder, the violet, and the hearts-ease, one 
 would need to be initiated into the mysteries of the 
 milliner and the dyer in the matter of colouring. 
 
 Incapable of naming the many varieties of blue 
 directly from the impression they make, language calls 
 to its aid the natural objects which exhibit these shades. 
 Lilac is so called from the blossom of the lilac, the 
 name in Turkish for the elder or the syringa. Azure is 
 the ultramarine of the lapis-lazuli (Ger. lazur-stein). 
 Pavonazzo in Italian (from pavone, peacock) is the blue 
 opalescent colour playing into reddish which belongs to 
 the feathers of the peacock, etc. If we want to describe 
 by its colour the perfectly clear day-sky over our head, 
 we cannot say it is sky-blue, for that would be a 
 tautology, and not even correct. We should have to say 
 it is ultramarine blue, thus showing that we can only 
 describe it by way of comparison. Besides, the degrees 
 of brightness vary exceedingly according to the weather, 
 season, and climate ; and if we are to determine the exact 
 hue, we must be content to help ourselves with a cipher, 
 the one corresponding to it of the fifty - one grades 
 marked on the plate of the cyanometer, a modern 
 invention for measuring the blue of the sky. What 
 language fails to do by forming a direct word must be 
 supplemented by comparison or figures. Even the 
 widespread name, blue, is one of those makeshifts, and 
 a rather amusing one too. All the later lexicographers 
 of High German, old, middle, and new, such as Graff, 
 Lexer, Muller-Zarncke, the brothers Grimm, ascribe the 
 adjective blue (hlau) to the verb lleuen, old High German 
 
24 IRIS. 
 
 bliuwan (pliuwan), hlivan, middle High German hliuwen, 
 hliwen, which, like the Greek cpXaeiv and the Latin 
 fligere, means to heat. Let any one be violently beaten 
 with a blunt instrument, and the soft parts under the 
 skin give way, the blood pours into them, and, shining 
 through the skin, colours it blue. Thus blue is the 
 colour of the skin with the blood flowing under it 
 in consequence of a heavy blow or stroke. Hence it is 
 that the notion of beating blue has come to be connected 
 with the verb bleuen, to strike, which is to be found 
 twice, so late as in Luther's translation of the Bible. 
 And now the two words hlauen, to make blue, and its 
 original Ueuen, to strike, are completely identified both in 
 spelling and thought. We no longer distinguish between 
 the Blauen of the washerwoman and the Bleuen of the 
 teacher, whom Klopstock defines as " the spelling-master, 
 who does the youngsters blue."' In a way so peculiar 
 and roundabout have the Germanic peoples gained a 
 word for the colour blue, and particularly for the colour 
 of the cloudless sky. They have literally cudgelled 
 out the word for blue, or to express it a little more 
 respectably, they have won it with their fists. We can 
 still trace the connection in Jacob Ayrer, the famous 
 dramatist of the sixteenth century, when we find him 
 putting a threat thus : You'd better, or I'll beat thee 
 heaven-blue {oder ich schlag dich himelhlah). 
 
 So hard was it for human reflection and speech to fix 
 
 and express the sensation of blue. In sketching this 
 
 tedious and clumsy process, we have hitherto left out of 
 
 account the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. 
 
 1 „S)cn SBu^fiatierer, wetd^ev bie aBic^tci: Uawt." 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 25 
 
 We have already remarked, however, that the northern 
 Semitic languages, to which Hebrew belongs, did not 
 come the length of inventiag an adjective for blue, and 
 that a specific name for the blue of the sky is wanting 
 even in the Greek language. We could not therefore 
 expect that the sky should anywhere be called blue in 
 Old or New Testament Scripture ; the language of the 
 sacred writers had not a word for it. Where we speak 
 of the blue of heaven, Scripture speaks of the brightness, 
 the beauty, the clearness of heaven. Goethe says, iising 
 the German colour-word, — 
 
 SBenn ber 5(et^er, SBotfen tragenb, 
 
 Sffiit bent ftarcn S^agc ftreitet, 
 Unb ein D^reinb, fie Ucrjagenb, 
 
 Slaue ©onnenfea^n tcrcitct.^ 
 
 Horace expresses the same without such a word : 
 
 " Albus nt obscuro deterget niibila coelo 
 SsepeNotus . . ." ;' 
 
 and the Book of Job (xxvi. 1 3) says the same also without 
 a colour-word, with inimitable brevity, in three majestic 
 words, berHcho schamdjim scliiphra, i.e. the breath of His 
 wind creates the beauty of heaven. 
 
 But though biblical language has no adjective for blue 
 at its command, the Book of books yet maintains its 
 uniqueness in the literatures of the nations, in this 
 
 ^ When the ether, thick clouds bearing, 
 Hides the clear bright day from view, 
 And an east wind, through them tearing, 
 Makes the sun a path of blue.— Tr. 
 
 (Goethe's Werhe, i. 60, ed. Hildburghausen.) 
 ^ " As oft, from the dusky sky the south- wind sweeps 
 The clouds with its light-bringing breath " . . .— Tr. 
 
26 lEis. 
 
 particular also, that it indirectly bears the grandest and 
 most beautiful testimony to the blue of heaven. So we 
 find in the history of the Sinaitic legislation. Israel 
 has heard the fundamental laws and given promise of 
 obedience ; and by sprinkling with the blood of the 
 covenant, it has been consecrated to be the covenant 
 people. Then it is related that Moses, Aaron, and the 
 other representatives of Israel, in obedience to the 
 divine call, ascended Sinai, and there they saw, as we 
 read in Ex. xxiv. 10, the God of Israel, and "under His 
 feet as it were a work of transparent sapphire, and as 
 it were the body of heaven in its clearness." To the 
 people God's glory had appeared in the cloud which 
 covered the mountain-top, and out of which went flames 
 of fire ; for in the law God reveals Himself as a devouring 
 fire. But His holy severity has for its inner side His 
 holy love, and this was to be impressed on the representa- 
 tives of Israel now that the covenant was concluded. 
 Hence they see over them the place of God's feet, formed, 
 as it were, of transparent sapphire, and like the substance 
 of heaven in clearness, i.e. clear as the heaven illumined 
 by the sun, without a speck of cloud. In Ezekiel's 
 vision of the divine throne, borne up by cherubs, — that 
 vision so rich in form and colour, by which he is con- 
 secrated to his prophetic office, — the sapphire figure of the 
 Sinaitic legislation is repeated. On the heads of the 
 throne-bearers floats the firmament like a vast crystal, 
 and over the firmament appears a throne like a sapphire 
 stone, and on this One enthroned in human form, 
 dazzling from the loins upwards like electrum, from the 
 loins downwards glowing like fire, and round about Him, 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 27 
 
 as it were, the brilliance of the bow in the cloud on a 
 day of rain. 
 
 If the throne of the heavenly King appears here like 
 sapphire, sapphire-blue is understood as equivalent to 
 sky-blue, and this is stated in express terms in Ex. 
 xxiv. 10. Both visions require the transparent sapphire, 
 which is the more precious the deeper its blue. But 
 the lapis-lazuli is also called sapphire by the ancients, 
 though distinguished from it by its want of transparency 
 and, as appears from Job xxviii. 6, by the gold dust 
 contained in it. "When raised to a glowing heat and 
 reduced to powder, it yielded the ancient genuine ultra- 
 marine. Its name lagverd, lathwerd, lazwerd, in the form 
 lazur or azur, has passed over from the Persian and 
 Arabic to the West. Since then, now the one, now the 
 other blue stone has served to designate the blue of the 
 sky. A right sapphire, says the master-singer Muscatblut, 
 is himelhld {heaven blue). And a poem in Massmann's 
 Monuments says of the sky in fine weather : der himel 
 der vin was unde IdsHrNd (the fair heaven beneath was 
 azure blue). 
 
 Thus, though holy Scripture does not name blue, 
 because the language has no word for it, yet it is in the 
 books of the Old Testament, which date from a time 
 before the composition of the holy books of the Chinese, 
 that we find the sky most beautifully and significantly 
 described as blue with the help of the sapphire, and that, 
 the sky to whose pure cloudless depths the eye of the 
 adoring suppliant strains to find, the abode of God, and 
 the throne of grace. So we can understand the words of 
 Isaiah (liv. 11), when he promises to the city of God, 
 
28 IRIS. 
 
 which is now desolate and swept by every storm : 
 "Behold, I will lay thy foundation with sapphires." 
 Sapphire-blue is the blue of heaven, blue is the colour 
 of the atmosphere illumined by the sun, through which 
 shine the dark depths of space, the colour of the finite 
 pervaded by the infinite, the colour taken by that which 
 is most heavenly as it comes down on the earthly, the 
 colour of the covenant between God and men. And 
 blue passes almost universally as the colour of fidelity. 
 Even in middle High German hid is symbolically equiva- 
 lent to staete (stedfast) and staetekeit (stedfastness). The 
 Sanskrit shows us how it came to have this meaning, 
 when it gives to the man who is stedfast in his devotion 
 the character of being as unchangeable as the indigo 
 colour; which is not only beautiful, but lasting. But in 
 biblical symbolism there is associated with blue the idea 
 of the blue sky, and with the blue sky the idea of the 
 Godhead coming forth from its mysterious dwelling in 
 the unseen world, and graciously condescending to the 
 creature. 
 
 The purple-blue, or hyacinth, among the four colours of 
 the Mosaic cultus also points to heaven. According to 
 the old Jewish interpretation, the fringes worn by the 
 Israelites, which were either wholly blue or partly blue 
 and partly white, were meant to recall Him whose throne 
 is set on a foundation of sapphire. They were required 
 to be at least seven in number, corresponding to the 
 seven heavens. Blue indicates heaven, and on this 
 account it is the old and still prevailing colour of the 
 nimbus assigned to angels. The old tradition of the 
 painters makes blue the colour of our Lord's upper 
 
THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 29 
 
 garment. "We can trace it back in pictures, frescoes, 
 and mosaics at least to the twelfth century. That blue 
 points to the heavenly, appears from the fact, that He 
 who is now hidden with God is represented when He 
 appears again as judge as having His body enveloped in 
 a flowing garment of blue. No doubt our Lord is also 
 represented with only a red garment, as in the frescoes 
 of the Calixtine catacombs and the mosaics of Eavenna, 
 or with a blue garment over the red,^ as here in the 
 picture of Him on the Via Dolorosa.^ But from what 
 we have seen in the former instance, we may conclude 
 that there is a distinct idea associated with the red, as 
 there is with the blue. If, then, blue denotes the 
 heavenly, what means the red of His other garment ? 
 We ask with the seer in the Book of Isaiah (Ixiii. 2) : 
 " Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy 
 garments like him that treadeth in the winefat ? " The 
 answer to this question, in connection with the biblical 
 symbolism of colour, may be reserved for another lecture 
 on purple and scarlet. 
 
 1 A red tunic under a stole of a different colour was not unusual, 
 see Moed katon, 23. 
 
 " The lecture was delivered in a hall at Leipsic which is adorned 
 with a picture by Jager, to which the lecturer here points. — Tr. 
 
II. 
 3Slacl{ anti TOftite. 
 
II. 
 
 BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 Light and darkness are represented in the Bible as 
 contrasts. Physically, they are contrasts, and conse- 
 quently in the domain of natural law; but also spiritually, 
 and so in the domain of freedom. God, says Scripture, 
 is light, the good angels are angels of light, men whose 
 life is from God and in God are children of light. 
 
 "When Scripture says : God is light, of course it does 
 not mean that the substance and material phenomenon, 
 which we perceive with the senses and call light, 
 constitutes God's essence. But neither is it of the same 
 kind as the expressions : God is a rock, or God is a shield. 
 These are figures accidentally taken to denote that our 
 trust may be founded on Him, and that, when in danger, 
 we may take the comfort of His protection ; accidental 
 figures, because they may be interchanged with many 
 others of the same meaning, as that God is a strong 
 tower, or a wall of fire. But when Scripture says, God 
 is light, it describes God's essence, not by a figure taken 
 at random from the field of nature, but by that figure 
 of His essence which He Himself has inwrought into 
 creation, as Platen puts it in a hymn to light,- — 
 
 &[(f)t, e§ ijl bcj: grofe 3Kittrer 
 3«ifi^en @ott unb jwife^cn SOIenfc^en. 
 2tIS bie SBelt gefioren rcurbe, 
 SBarb bag &i(i)t Oorangeioren, 
 c 
 
34 iKis. 
 
 Unb fo vravb beg (sd^6»)fer8 ^fari^eit 
 ©ag sDJsjfterium ber @^o)3fung.i 
 
 If this scriptural view of the poet is correct, if it is 
 the brightness, i.e. the holiness and glory of the Creator 
 Himself, which creation reflects iij the form of light, it 
 must be more than an accidental metaphor, when Scrip- 
 ture says of evil, ungodliness, that it is darkness. In 
 fact, we are taught by experience in a very humiliating 
 and terrible way, that there is a connection between evil 
 and darkness. Evil produces a heat of passion in man, 
 which, when it is burned out, leaves his mind darkened ; 
 and even when a man with an evil conscience stands in 
 a festive hall, bright with a thousand lights, his inner 
 being is enveloped in night, it is with his soul as if he 
 were in a dark prison. 
 
 Thus there are phenomena and sensations of light and 
 darkness which, though they do not belong to physical 
 nature, are yet homogeneous with it. And so it is more 
 than a figure of speech, when Scripture regards the struggle 
 between light and darkness as constituting the history of 
 the world, with the victory of light for its final issue. 
 There is a tragical dissonance which echoes throughout the 
 Gospel of John, remaining unharmonized to the end. It 
 makes itself heard in the prologue in the pathetic words : 
 " The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness com- 
 prehended it not." And this plainly presupposes that 
 
 1 Light, 'tis tlie great middle being, 
 Touching God and touching man : 
 When the world came to its birth, 
 Already was the Light begotten ; 
 Thus was the brightness of the Uncreated 
 The mystery of created universe. — Tb. 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 35 
 
 light and darkness are contrasts, which have their anti- 
 types in the domain of spirit. They are contrasted 
 principles, however, which do not come to manifestation 
 in the present world in an absolute form. For the 
 essential character of the present is the mingling of 
 light and darkness. Day and night are so far from 
 being absolute contrasts, that the sky-blue of a bright 
 day remains visible in a starry night, — I read only the 
 other day a Christmas song which began with this 
 address to the evening star, — 
 
 aSo fd^auft bu '^'m, bu ©ilBerfJern, 
 3lu3 beiner ttauen Sflac^t.^ 
 
 So evil casts its dark shade over the good of man, and 
 the good darts rays even through the night of evil. 
 Only heaven and hell represent the contrasts in their 
 absolute perfection. This perpetuation of the unhar- 
 monized dissonance does not satisfy, but the view into 
 the future which God's "Word allows, extends no further. 
 Enough, that hell as well as heaven is God's creation, 
 and must yield praise to Him who says of Himself: 
 " I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and 
 create evil, I am the Lord that doeth all these things." 
 
 With these antitypes of light and darkness before us, 
 we ask the question. What is their relation to the know- 
 ledge of the typical, i.e. of the natural light and its 
 contrast, which science furnishes ? 
 
 One thing is certain : the illuminating effect of light 
 
 is due to vibrations, propagated by undulatory motion. 
 
 The ray is the line described by the vibrations of the 
 
 1 Where tends thy glance, thou silvery star, 
 Out from thy deep blue night. — Tb. 
 
;36 .; iKis. 
 
 light in its undulatory course. But if light is an efful- 
 gence which is due to vibrations, and moves in the form 
 of waves, the question arises, What then is the substance 
 which vibrates and undulates ? Here experimental 
 knowledge is at a complete standstill, and hypothesis 
 begins. The matter of light, we assume, is an extremely 
 subtle, elastic substance, and, to distinguish it from air, 
 we call it ether. If this ether is an elastic substance, one 
 would naturally think that light would be propagated in 
 vibrations proceeding in a straight direction like sound,' 
 the waves of which are propagated by impulses parallel 
 to the line of projection ; whereas it is propagated in 
 vibrations, which take place in a plane at right angles to 
 the direction of the ray. The hypothesis is thus exposed 
 to a difficulty like that of the two electric fluids which, 
 when they are discharged, produce the electric stream, 
 which shows itself in the electric spark. The hypothesis 
 does not clear the mystery in the one case any more than 
 in the other, but its relative truth at least is confirmed 
 by the fact, that it affords a basis on which the pheno- 
 mena can be explained by natural law. 
 
 We say, therefore, that light is ether in motion. A 
 body becomes self-illumined when the ether held in tension 
 between its molecules begins to vibrate. Its light is pro- 
 pagated by those vibrations being communicated to the 
 ether which fills space. Bodies on which light falls, 
 become visible by reflecting in all directions the light 
 which falls on them. Colouring is determined by the 
 colour of the light which falls on the object, or, if this is 
 not single-coloured, by those colours of the light which the 
 body reflects in a greater or less measure, while absorbing 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 37 
 
 certain others, or reducing them to a degree of which our 
 eye is no longer susceptible. The colour of light itself is 
 determined by the time of its vibration, and this measures 
 the length of its waves. The slowest vibrations, about 
 450 billions in the second, and consequently the longest 
 waves, produce the colour-sensation of Eed. The quickest 
 vibrations, about 800 billions in the second, and con- 
 sequently the shortest waves, and so the most refrangible 
 rays, produce the colour-sensation Violet. The arc of 
 vibration determines the quantity of light, and the 
 length of the wave determines the quality of the light or 
 colour. If the kinds of colour combined in daylight fall 
 simultaneously on the retina of our eye, we experience 
 White ; and if the substance which we see gives back 
 none of the light which falls on it, but wholly absorbs 
 it, it appears to us Black. White is the imion of all 
 colours, black is the negation of all colours. If black 
 reflects any light, it is not a pure black. In pure black 
 all light is absorbed, and, as it were, killed and buried. 
 
 If now we compare the biblical terms and ideas with 
 these scientific facts, they have many points of contact. 
 But no anachronism could be more stupid, than to read 
 into the Bible discoveries of natural science, which were 
 not made till after the time of the Eeformation, and were 
 the fruit of untiring observation and experiment, in com- 
 bination with the insight of genius. Now and then we 
 hear that the earth is called erez in Hebrew, from ruz, to 
 move {run), because it moves round the sun, or that water 
 has the dual name majim, because it consists of oxygen 
 and hydrogen. These can only be regarded as poor 
 witticisms; for the earth is called erez, not because 
 
38 iKis. 
 
 it moves, but because we move on it, and majim is not a 
 dual at all, but a plural, denoting water as a union of 
 fluid particles. As little bas the Old Testament name of 
 light, 6r, anything whatever to do with the wave and 
 vibration theory. But it is worth while remarking that 
 the Semitic languages, by a peculiar felicity, denote 
 light as vibration; for the special root-sound in 6r is 
 the quavering sound r, which is formed either by a 
 vibration of the tongue (the front r) or with the vibration 
 of the uvula (the back r). The phenomena of vibration 
 which guided man when he was yet at the stage of child- 
 hood to the formation of this word for light, were the 
 glancing of the rays of the sun, the twinkling of the 
 stfers, the flickering of the taper, the darting of the 
 lightning, the playing of the flame. 
 
 Of ether vibrations antiquity knew nothing ; but when 
 science defines darkness as ether in a state of fixity, i.e. 
 the cessation of motion in ether, this falls in remarkably 
 with biblical modes of representation. For motion, life, 
 and light are interchangeable Bible conceptions, and 
 stillness, death, and darkness are their opposite. Accord- 
 ing to the gloomy Old Testament view of the other world, 
 the one relief from which is faith in the living God, the 
 realm of death is the land of stillness and darkness. 
 The name of Edomis modified by Isaiah into the name 
 of Dumah, which means stUlness, to indicate that a 
 gloomy future awaits Edom, which will wring out the 
 question addressed to the prophet in anguish of spirit : 
 " Watchman, is the night quite gone ? " And when pro- 
 claiming a like fate to the Chaldeans, the prophet says : 
 " Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, daughter 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 39 
 
 of the Chaldeans!" The very name of darkness in 
 Hebrew designates it from the idea of compression and 
 condensation. Here we have a hindering and arresting, 
 the opposite of speed, with which the light flies (hence 
 poetry gives wings to the dawn and to the sun), or, as 
 we can also say in biblical language, with which its 
 waves speed on, for in the verb nahar the ideas of pro- 
 ceeding in waves and rays are united; the names for 
 river and for light are both formed from it. 
 
 Again, when science defines black as the appearance 
 of a body which absorbs all light and reflects none, this 
 is in keeping with biblical modes of thought and expres- 
 sion. Of course we cannot expect this real definition of 
 black in the Bible, but the idea of absorption essential to 
 it is thoroughly biblical. To swallow, in the language 
 of the Bible, is to abolish and render invisible. ¥0 doubt, 
 when we read that " death is swallowed up in victory," 
 the relation is reversed ; light is the absorbent, for death 
 is darkness and victory is light. But when in Ps. cvii. 
 it is said of the. shipwrecked who can find no way of 
 deliverance : Their wisdom is swallowed up (marg.), the 
 meaning is, that despair envelops them in darkness ; or 
 when Isaiah says of the false prophets : They have 
 swallowed up the way which thou shouldest go, the 
 meaning is, that their preaching leaves the people in 
 darkness as to the way in which they might be saved. 
 
 Again, black and white are the extremest contrasts in 
 holy Scripture. Black is where light and its colours 
 have vanished. When the final judgment brings the 
 history of this world to an end, the sun, according to 
 Joel's prophecy, is changed into darkness and the moon 
 
40 IRIS. 
 
 into blood, or, as the seer of the Apocalypse has it : The 
 sun becomes black, and the moon as blood, i.e. dark red, or 
 black with a reddish hue. Thus what is said of the sun 
 does not mean that it shall be enveloped in dark clouds, 
 but the meaning is that the heavenly luminaries of the 
 earth cease to yield their light, because, as it is otherr 
 wise expressed, they withdraw it, and their motion ceases. 
 
 Again, black is the result when the bright complexion 
 is lost, and the colouring which healthy blood gives it. 
 " My beloved is white and ruddy," exclaims the Shula- 
 mite, when celebrating his beauty. So Homer says of 
 Menelaus, his skin was like ivory tinted with purple. 
 And Jeremiah, speaking of the nobles of Jerusalem, says 
 that the snow-white or milk-white of their bodies was 
 blended with coral-red, and that their appearance was as 
 of sapphire : but how has their comeliness vanished with 
 the desolation of Jerusalem ! Their visage has become 
 " darker than blackness," they are no more recognisable 
 when they appear in the streets, their skin cleaves to 
 their bones, it is withered like a stick. This vanishing 
 of colour and moisture is the consequence of famine ; 
 and for the same reason the third of the four riders in the 
 Apocalypse, who brings dearth, goes forth on a black horse. 
 
 The common Hebrew word for black has for its root 
 idea that of " covering," for black is to light as a cover, 
 hiding it and preventing it from passing. And the 
 German "schwarz'' (black) is connected with the Latin 
 surdus (deaf), which not only denotes one who is insen- 
 sible to the impressions of sound, but also any object 
 which does not give forth such impressions. Newton in 
 reckoning the seven prismatic colours was guided, as is 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 41 
 
 well known, by the analogy of the Phrygian musical scale ; 
 but altogether apart from this, the human mind in the 
 formation of language compares notes and colours. In 
 Hebrew, for example, the names for the sound of the 
 horn and the red of dawn, for leek-green and the blast of 
 a trumpet, are formed from similar roots. This analogy 
 meets us also in the word " schwarz.'' As Propertius 
 calls the lyre which gives no sound, surda lyra ; that is 
 black which gives back none of the light that falls on it. 
 The objects which we call black are not so in the full 
 sense of the word, because they, after all, reflect more or 
 less of colourless or coloured light. 
 
 We have also the testimony of language, that the 
 black, which nature and art present to us, does not 
 correspond fully to the idea. Under this name it 
 includes also the dark hues which approach black. 
 What we call the grey of the morning, is called by the 
 Semite the black of the morning. Dark red wine passes 
 among the Semites sometimes as red, sometimes as black, 
 as in Italy at the present day it is called vino nero. 
 Nay, in contradistinction to white, even green appears to 
 the Semite as black. Once on a time, when the territory 
 of an Arab tribe was visited with drought, three spies 
 were sent out in quest of pastures. One of them wished 
 to praise the magnificent green meadows of the region 
 which he recommended as their resting-place, and how 
 did he express himself ? " The face of the land," said 
 he, " is like the night, so green is it all." This wavering 
 in the designation of colours is found even in the Greek 
 of the New Testament. In Mark we read that our Lord 
 makes the five thousand, whom He is about to feed, sit 
 
42 IRIS. 
 
 down on the green grass. The name for green is chloros, 
 but the same name is applied to the colour of the horse 
 of the fourth rider in the Apocalypse, who brings death 
 in all its forms and who is followed by Hades. Night 
 is green, somewhat like the dull green of the olive or 
 sage leaf, and death is green in the sense in which 
 jaundice is called chlorosis, that is to say, green in the 
 sense of yellow and fawn. 
 
 Similarly, the name white embraces under it the rela- 
 tively as well as the absolutely white. In the full sense 
 of the word, the rays of the sun, and those which proceed 
 from a body raised to white heat, are white. Those rays 
 are white, because all the colours in the spectrum are 
 united in them. But even the common daylight is not 
 absolutely colourless, nor does the direct light of the sun 
 itself appear white. It seems yellowish, or, to speak 
 poetically, golden. Only when it is refracted by the 
 prism do we find that it is the colourless union of all 
 colours. Yet the Arab calls the day white. Instead of 
 saying " night came on," Hariri says, " the white day 
 became black." Moonlight nights, too, are called " white 
 nights ; " and the moon bears two names in Hebrew, one 
 of which describes it as white, the other as yellow. For 
 the language gives the name white also to what is 
 yellowish. The fields, says Jesus, are already white to 
 the harvest ; the ripening ears are white, as distinguished 
 from the green blade. The byssus of Elis, Pausanias 
 tells us, is not inferior in fineness to that of the Hebrews, 
 but it has not the same beautiful yellow. Yet byssus, 
 among sacred colours, represents white, not yellow, as 
 Arnold Ewald thinks possible in his treatise on colour 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 43 
 
 motion (1878). The latter could only be represented 
 by gold, which, however, is considered, not in respect of 
 its colour, but of its brilliancy and preciousness. Neither 
 is our linen perfectly white ; we bleach linen to take the 
 colour out of it, without, however, always succeeding in 
 the same degree, and never perfectly. Pure snow is 
 whiter than the whitest linen. The sunlight of day 
 shining on the snow is more nearly colourless than that 
 which is reflected from the innumerable facets of the tiny 
 crystals of ice which form the snow. And so Mark says 
 of the Lord when He is transfigured on the Mount, that 
 His garments became glistering white as snow, so as no 
 fuller on earth could whiten them. But Matthew says, 
 as if he had studied optics : " His face did shine as the 
 sun, and His garments became white as the light." 
 
 White and black have direct significance, because light 
 is white, and darkness is black, everything appearing 
 white which reflects the light without diminution, and 
 everything black which absorbs it without reflection. 
 Beyond this, colours become symbolical only because 
 definite objects to which they belong get to be associated 
 with them in thought. We regard red as the colour of 
 love, because we think of the heart's blood in which it 
 makes itself felt. Green is with us the colour of hope, 
 because we think of the green of plants which dies out 
 in winter, to reappear in spring. Blue is the colour of 
 fidelity (in English we speak of true blue). Thus we find 
 in the High German poetry of the middle period : hid is 
 staeteheit, Ud bezeigt die minne (blue is stedfastness, blue 
 denotes love). How this has come about appears from 
 the literature of the great branch of the human family 
 
44 IRIS. 
 
 to which we belong. True love is called in Sanscrit 
 devotion as imperishable as ntld, i.e. the colour of indigo. 
 Yellow, as the colour of envy, appears first in the Middle 
 Ages. Freidank's' Modesty says : Gruene gel und vjeitin 
 daz sol diu nitvarwe sin, that is to say, green, yellow, and 
 blue, such as woad, German indigo, yields. Blue, as the 
 colour of the air, is also used to express what is ground- 
 less ; lying and deceit we call Uauen Dunst (blue vapour), 
 and old wives' tales, hlatie Geschichten, — in French, contes 
 Ueus (blue stories). A recent writer on aesthetics makes 
 blue the tragic colour, associating it with the heaven- 
 storming Titans ; yellow, the colour of comedy, associating 
 it with the merrily dancing flame, mirth-giving wine, etc. 
 Green he makes the colour of humour, because it is 
 formed of blue and yellow, and is the colour of the 
 raukly luxuriant growth between birth and death, plea- 
 sure and pain, the colour of what is juicy and moist, 
 flowing and bubbling. Such fanciful specimens of wit 
 must not be allowed to disgust us with the symbolism of 
 colour presented in popular proverbs, poetry, and eultus. 
 But they show plainly that no colour is symbolical in 
 itself ; that it acquires symbohcal value only by associa- 
 tions more or less close. 
 
 But it is otherwise with black and white. These are 
 symbolical in themselves, they mean what they are. That 
 is black which absorbs all colours and reflects no light of 
 the sun ; light perishes, and the colours are buried in it. 
 Therefore it denotes mourning and death, and of the 
 quarters of heaven it denotes the north. White, on the 
 other hand, is that which gives back the light of the 
 sun unimpaired ; all colours are glorified in it, and it 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 45 
 
 comprehends them all within itself. Therefore it denotes 
 purity and victory. And the Persian horses in the eighth 
 vision of Zechariah are white, because no great monarchy 
 ever showed a purer or nobler disposition toward Israel 
 than the dynasty of the Achaemenidse, which set them 
 free from exile, and promoted the building of the temple. 
 And the first rider in the Apocalypse has a white horse, 
 because he " went forth conquering and to conquer." 
 
 The revealed religion of the Old Testament saw clearly 
 the meaning of white, which pertains to its very being. 
 There was therefore nothing arbitrary, but a lofty necessity, 
 in its adopting white as its leading liturgical colour. The 
 other liturgical colours were purple-red, purple-blue, and 
 scarlet, but white always stands either first or with 
 emphasis in the last place. White was the ground colour 
 of the veil which divided the sanctuary, of the curtains 
 which covered it, of the attire which distinguished the 
 high priest, and the garinents of the priests were exclu- 
 sively of white linen. In extra-biblical literature we are 
 told that the firstborn, before the choosing of the tribe 
 of Levi, and that Moses, before and during the consecra- 
 tion of Aaron, performed their sacred functions in white 
 garments ; and this is a just inference from the customs 
 of later times. White denotes purity, or, what is nearly 
 the same, holiness ; for holiness is separation from the 
 impure ; the Holy One of Israel and Light of Israel are 
 parallel designations of God. The priests are clad in 
 white as servants of the Holy One, and as those who 
 should be the people's examples in holiness. 
 
 Among metals, silver corresponds to white linen as the 
 image of purity. Speaking of the princes of Jerusalem, 
 
r46 IRIS. 
 
 whose ignoble character contrasted with their nobility of 
 birth and rank, Isaiah says : " Thy silver has become dross." 
 And when three deputies from the exiles of Babylon 
 brought a contribution of silver and gold for the temple, 
 Zechariah received instructions to make a double crown 
 of it, one, that is, of silver, and one of gold, and to put it 
 on the head of the high priest Joshua, as the type of the 
 future Zemacli {Branch), who was to be king and priest 
 in one person. The silver crown is the priestly, and the 
 golden one the kingly distinction. What byssus and 
 purple-red are among linen and woollen stuffs, that silver 
 and gold are among metals. For silver is white, and 
 gold among the Semites passes as yellow or red.^ When 
 the Caliph Mu§,wijja derided the SasaS, as a barbarian, 
 in the words, " red-face," the latter proudly answered, 
 " Gold is red." Even in our old popular epic poets, 
 Wirnt and Wolfram, we find rdtez golt (red gold) ; and 
 Meyfart, the singer of the heavenly Jerusalem, joins gold 
 and purple without distinguishing between yellow and 
 red, — 
 
 SffiaS ifJ bag gutbne ©tucE 
 
 aSon ®otb, 3ierb unb Oefc^mucf? 
 
 ®oIb iji Jtur rote Grb, 
 
 ©ie (Srb iji nid^t titet ttjert. 
 
 SBaS ifi baS rot ©creanb, 
 2)aa ^Pur^jur reirb genannt? 
 aSon ©c^netfett aug bent spjeer 
 J!ommt aller 5Pur)3ur l^er.^ 
 
 ' The Mischna, Joma iv. 4, distinguish.es 'betweeii yellow and red 
 gold, the latter as the more costly. 
 
 ^ What's all your gaudy prate 
 
 Of gold, ring, costly state ? 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 47 
 
 CoiTesponding to the images of glory and purity among 
 the metals presented by gold and silver (the Egyptians 
 called it white gold), are the golden sun and the silver 
 moon among the lights of heaven. The sun produces 
 the impression of sublimity, and the moon, with its white 
 on a dark ground, that of purity. The world of flowers 
 has also its pair of figures. The purple rose is the queen, 
 and the white lily the priestess of the flowers. The 
 latter is thus addressed by Etickert, — 
 
 ©Idnjenbe Silie 
 ©ic aBIumcn :^attcn @otte8bicnfi im ©artett, 
 Su lift i)er *Prieflei: unter ber ffamilte.^ 
 
 As in Old Testament Scripture, so in the New, white 
 is the appearance of those who are devoted and conse- 
 crated to God and His service. When Paul says to the 
 Galatians: "As many of you as were baptized into Christ, 
 did put on Christ," he takes his figure from the toga, 
 the putting on of which by the Eomans betokened the 
 transition to the age of manhood. But this toga was 
 white. The Psalmist says of God, that He is clothed 
 with light as with a garment. Daniel sees the Ancient 
 of Days, i.e. the Everlasting One, in a snow-white 
 
 Gold is but ruddy earth, 
 And earth's hut little worth. 
 
 What is your red array 
 That's purple, as they say ? 
 From out the sea from snails 
 All that is purple hails.— Te. 
 
 Beauteous lily ! 
 The flowers hold their service to God in the garden : 
 Of all thou'rt the priest in the fair family.— Tk. 
 
48 iKis, 
 
 garment ; nay, even with white hair (not like that of one 
 grey with years, for the exalted Christ also, as seen by 
 John, has white hair, i.e. radiant with light). And so 
 also God's angels, when they become visible in human 
 form, as at the resurrection and ascension, appear in 
 white garments. The saints above, also, who are with 
 God, are beheld by the Apocalyptic seer in white robes. 
 This clothing of the intermediate state is called by the 
 Ancient Church stola prima (first robe), in contradistinc- 
 tion to stola secunda (second robe), the glorified body which 
 comes with the resurrection. It is made white in the 
 blood of the Lamb, i.e. by the purifying and transfiguring 
 power of this blood. Everything in the Apocalypse is 
 white which relates to the heavenly kingdom of light 
 and its victory over darkness. The throne of God, as 
 seen by Ezekiel above the crystal firmament, is like 
 a sapphire stone, that is, it appears to him deep blue. 
 But when the visions of the New Testament seer 
 extend beyond the history of time to the forms of the 
 eternal world, that same throne is white. "I saw 
 a great white throne, and Him that sat upon it, 
 from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, 
 and there was found no place for them." The throne 
 is white and not sapphire-blue, when before the glance 
 of the Divine Judge the world of sin and death passes 
 away, to give place to the new transfigured world of 
 righteousness. For blue is the colour of the sky 
 pervaded by the sunlight, and white is the immediate 
 appearance of the sun itself ; blue denotes the softened 
 Divine Majesty condescending to man in grace, and 
 white denotes the victory and triumph of light finally 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 49 
 
 gained in the way of grace. White in Greek is called 
 leukos, and this is related to hoc, the name of light. 
 
 The official dress of the ministers of the Church has 
 also been white from the first. The Apostolical Con- 
 stitutions require the bishop to appear at the altar in a 
 bright dress, and surrounded by priests ; and a bright 
 dress, according to the usage of the time, means a white 
 one. Catechumens were required to be clad in white on 
 the day of their baptism, and so Gregory Nazianzen says 
 of the clergy officiating on such occasions, — 
 
 Unb bie ©otteSgel^ilfcn in lid^trein gtattjenben ^Icibern 
 
 All liturgical vestments — the dalmatica, the tunic, the 
 surplice, the girdle, the pallium — were originally white, 
 and only later were they coloured or variegated. From 
 the time of Constantine, the apostles are represented in 
 the philosopher's mantle, and that of white. On one of 
 the mosaics of Eavenna, the so-called procession of the 
 apostles, their mantles and tunics are alternately coloured 
 white and yellow. In the Koran the apostles, as being 
 clothed in white (in their pictures, namely), are called 
 el-hawdrijj4n, i.e. the white ones. It is true the Church- 
 historian Socrates relates, that a Novatian bishop of 
 Constantinople, of the fourth century, was censured, 
 because he wore, not black, but white ; but it is his 
 everyday clothing that is in question, for black was 
 unheard of for official dress except on days of mourning. 
 
 1 And God's good servitors, in garments bright as the light, 
 Stand like the figures of gracious angels around. — Tr. 
 D 
 
50 iKis. 
 
 When the Patriarch Acacius, in the year 475, at Con- 
 stantinople, clothed himself and his seat in the church 
 and at the altar in black, it was in token of mourning 
 over the assaults of the Emperor Basilicus on the Council 
 of Chalcedon. White was, down to the Middle Ages, the 
 chief liturgical colour for East and West. In the West it 
 was varied significantly on certain days with red, green, 
 violet, and black, but with black only at Advent and on 
 fasts, or when, for any other reason, the prevailing 
 reference was to sin and death. Even at Advent and 
 on fasts, black was largely supplanted by violet, and 
 became limited to Good Friday, masses for the dead, and 
 burial services. 
 
 Our German Eeformers did a good and necessary work 
 when they sifted and simplified the wardrobe of the 
 Church of that day, so complicated, ostentatious, and in 
 some respects babyish, as it had become. But we may 
 commend them for avoiding the radical extreme to which 
 the Swiss Eeformation went, and for recognising the 
 seemliness of distinguishing between the secular dress 
 and the official vestments of their ministers. The great 
 closing vision of Ezekiel, in which he beholds the future 
 commonwealth of Israel, also stands in a reforming 
 relation to the Mosaic cultus ; it abolishes hierarchical 
 distinctions in the priesthood, and reduces liturgical 
 colours to one, but that one is — white. In this vision- 
 given Torah, as in that of Moses, black is wholly 
 excluded from the cultus. Should it not all the more 
 be excluded from the New Testament cultus ? Black is 
 darkness, but Paul says of Christians (1 Thess. v. 5) : Ye 
 are all children of the light and of the day : we are not 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 51 
 
 of the night, nor of darkness. Black is the keeping up 
 of esoteric mystery. Christianity, on the other hand, 
 though prepared in secret, addresses itself with the 
 completest unreserve to the conscience of all men 
 according to the words of its Founder : " What I tell you 
 in darkness, that speak ye in light ; and what ye hear in 
 the ear, that preach ye on the house-tops.'' Black is 
 death and condemnation, hut the apostle says of the New 
 Testament ministry in comparison with the Old (2 Cor. 
 iii. 9) : " If the ministration of condemnation is glory, 
 much rather does the ministration of righteousness 
 exceed in glory." Black is trouble and mourning, 
 Christianity is the religion of joy. Our Lord proclaims 
 this fact by working His first miracle at a marriage 
 feast. The normal condition of Christians is not sadness, 
 but joy, even in the midst of trouble, as the apostle says 
 (Phil. iv. 4) : " Eejoice in the Lord alway ! " Black is 
 the dress of penitents and Lenten preachers, but the 
 Christian preacher finds his pattern neither in Elias nor 
 his counterpart John the Baptist. Penitence is only the 
 preparatory step to that fulness and power of grace which 
 have appeared in Jesus Christ ; this he has to proclaim ; 
 he finds his pattern in him who, by the mouth of the 
 prophet Isaiah, chap. Ixi., exults in the glory of his office, 
 and cries out : " The Lord hath clothed me with the 
 garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe 
 of righteousness." Garments of salvation are certainly 
 garments of light, as the Psalmist says (xxvii. 1) : " The 
 Lord is my light and my salvation." And the robe of 
 righteousness is certainly not black, for it is byssus (fine 
 linen), which, as the Apocalypse (xix. 8) says, denotes! 
 
52 lEis. 
 
 the righteousness of saints. Thus black is in every 
 respect in contradiction to the essential character of the 
 New Testament religion and of the gospel ministry. 
 
 Yet in our Church black has become the chief 
 liturgical colour. In rightly breaking with the Eomish 
 doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, it was thought 
 necessary at the same time to set aside all priestly 
 vestments connected with the mass. Thus it came about 
 that nothiag survived except the black gown, now in 
 the form of a close-fitting coat, again in the form of a 
 wide gown, sometimes with open sleeves, sometimes with- 
 out sleeves at all. The raising of this black clerical 
 costume (vestis communis) to be the official dress was 
 contrary to ecclesiastical tradition. This required as the 
 very first part of ecclesiastical dress, that the white 
 humeral and the alb, the long one flowing down to the 
 feet, or at least the short alb, the surplice, should be put 
 over the black soutana. We owe it to the Leipsic 
 interim of the year 1548, that a form of the alb like a 
 scapulary has been maintained as a liturgical vestment 
 in Old Saxony. Frederick William I. of Prussia forbade 
 the alb in 1730 in favour of the Eeformed, but Frederick 
 II. again allowed it in 1740, and Frederick William III. 
 decreed that the alb, or as it is called in the Cabinet 
 order of 20th March 1811, the surplice, wherever it 
 was in use, should be worn over the prescribed black 
 gown. To these are added the frilled collars and the 
 so-called bands ; — whatever may be thought of them 
 artistically, they are at least white, and so of the ancient 
 and natural colour appropriate to divine service. 
 
 True, the dress of the clergy is an adiaphoron (matter 
 
BLACK AND WHITE, 53 
 
 indifferent), yet it is seemly when the external appearance 
 corresponds in a significant way to the inner nature. It 
 is outrageous when dress is so capriciously determined as 
 that of the Venetian nobles. At a time when Venice 
 was carrying on the commerce of the world in scarlet 
 stuffs, they chose black as the colour of jiheir order, so 
 that down to the present day gondolas in black ply as if 
 in funeral procession in the canals of the City of the 
 Doge. Let us hold fast to our white on a black ground ! 
 Black exclusively admits of no meaning corresponding to 
 the nature of Christianity ; but white on black impresses 
 us by the contrast, and yields a meaning. Black denotes 
 penitence, and white the righteousness which is of grace, 
 and which is gained in the way of repentance and faith. 
 So Gustav Jahn, in his precious " Hohenlied in Liedern " 
 (Song of Songs in songs), makes the Shulamite say : — 
 
 @(|tt)orj Bin id^, ^waq gefcorett, 
 
 ©Dc^ «3ei^ im ©nabenponb. 
 aSeif Bin id^ erfl gettiorbcn, 
 
 Qltg i^ mi(3^ fi^tt>flt5 Befanb. 
 
 ©(^warj ift Uor ®ott Uerbammet, 
 
 2>cnn ©otteS ^leib ift Sid^t. 
 SBei^ faiin OS) ntic^ nid^t nennen — 
 
 ©c^rearj Ici^t mein >&en: mid^ nic^t.^ 
 
 1 In myself, still black remaining, 
 I am naked, poor, and mean ; 
 But since mercy thus enfolds me, 
 Glorious, rich, and mighty seen. 
 
 Black indeed I am by nature. 
 White, by heavenly love adorned. 
 
54 IRIS. 
 
 In reference to the person of the preacher, black 
 denotes that he has died to the world and its pleasures ; 
 and white, that as servant in the spiritual world he lives 
 and walks in the light of God. Therein also is expressed 
 the way in which the Church, whose minister he is, 
 follows her Head. It leads through death to life, through 
 defeat to victory, and so through darkness to light. Black 
 is the lost glory of the present, and white the glory of 
 the world beyond, which is grasped by faith and disclosed 
 more and more to vision. 
 
 Nay, the light beyond will reveal colours to us, for 
 which we lack the power of sight here below. Our 
 colour-sense is limited, beginning with the extreme red 
 of the spectrum, and terminating with the ultra-violet, 
 beyond which it can scarcely go. Our life is as a shadow, 
 and everything fair with which it is furnished, only 
 a phantom, a finger-post pointing upwards ; — and the 
 prismatic colours and their combinations belong to the 
 shadows of heavenly things. Therefore it is that in 
 the Apocalypse gold and crystal and pearls and precious 
 stones, with all their play of various colours, are laid 
 under tribute to give to the unveiled but still sense- 
 bound eye of the seer, an image of the heavenly 
 Jerusalem ; and no mortal, on whom a ray from above 
 
 He bestowed on me my whiteness, 
 When my blackness first I mourned. 
 
 Blackness meets His condemnation, 
 
 For the robe of God is light ; 
 Since myself I cannot alter, 
 
 He must make His chosen white. 
 
 — Anna M. May. 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 55 
 
 has fallen, giving ever so fugitive a foretaste of that 
 glory, can help saying with the poet, — 
 
 SBaS id^ ini Oelfl gcfe^n ! 
 3)u tifl oUmdc^tig, 
 
 Drum Ip ijein gic^t fo fd^on. 
 ^6«nt' i^ an biefett l^eHett JE^ronen 
 
 Do(!^ fd^on son l^eute an erelg wo'^itm!' 
 
 So glorious it shone 
 
 What I in spirit beheld ! 
 Thou'rt the Almighty One, 
 
 Hence is Thy light unparallel'd. 
 If only those bright thrones beside 
 
 I might from this day evermore abide ! — ^Tr. 
 
III. 
 ?PurpU anil ScarUt* 
 
III. 
 
 PUEPLE AND SCAELET. 
 
 Colourless light is the union of all colours. When 
 passed through a prism, it forms the beautiful succession 
 of colours which we call the spectrum. The coloured 
 rays appear, from the one extremity to the other, more 
 and more divergent from the direction which the colour- 
 less white ray would have taken had there been no 
 refraction. Farthest from this direction is the violet 
 ray, and nearest to it the red. The red ray is thus the 
 first which light gives off when it is broken up. This is 
 also shown by the fact, that invisible light first becomes 
 visible as red. When heat rises to glowing intensity, 
 the red rays are those which first become perceptible, and 
 as the glow, and with it the vibration of the body increases, 
 it gives forth yellow, and then white rays, rising to the 
 brightness of the sun. The rapidity with which the rays 
 of light or heat are propagated is the same in all. The 
 ether particles, however, vibrate more slowly or more 
 quickly, and corresponding to this the ether waves are 
 longer or shorter. The longer ones are, because of their 
 length, more powerful and less refrangible. The shorter 
 ones, because of their shortness, weaker and more 
 refrangible. And this it is which determines the 
 various colour - sensations. The red rays have the 
 longest waves, and are the most potent; the violet 
 
 59 
 
60 IRIS. 
 
 have the shortest waves, and are the feeblest. The 
 laws regulating the propagation of light and the pheno- 
 mena of colour, arising from its various radiations, 
 refractions, and combinations, are ascertained with 
 mathematical exactness ; nevertheless, light is a great 
 wonder, and in its last principles an unexplored 
 mystery. 
 
 As human investigations into the nature of light come 
 on impassable barriers, over which they can only get by 
 way of hypothesis, so the human capacity for colour- 
 sensation is narrowly limited. The seven colours we 
 distinguish in the spectrum are not so many sharply 
 separated rays, but whole groups of rays which we name 
 from their collective impression. The scale, rising from 
 red to violet, embraces an endless number of transitions 
 which we cannot fix. And beyond violet there are yet 
 other colours, which are either dimly or not at all 
 discernible by us, because the duration of the vibration 
 of their rays is too short. Some of them have waves of 
 such length that they are known as a faint glimmer, the so- 
 called lavender-grey of the old naturalists. By the help 
 of experiment others beyond these may be made visible, 
 but we are far from being able to command their full range. 
 The rays of heat also, which have all the physical pro- 
 perties of those of light, are to a great extent invisible to 
 us. We see the rays of a body in red or white heat. 
 Bat colder bodies also give forth rays, which can be 
 registered by a sensitive thermometer, but to which our 
 eye is altogether insensible. If the light-sense and the 
 colour-sense of the eye were not thus limited, all bodies 
 would probably appear to us as more or less self-luminous. 
 
PUKPLE AND SCAKLKT. 61 
 
 Their degree of brightness may be so low as to become 
 invisible to us, or it may be so high, that our eye cannot 
 bear such a light-sensation. The light from heaven 
 which shone round Paul before Damascus prostrated 
 him to the ground. 
 
 The beauty of colour in the objects seen will contribute 
 its part to the blessedness of vision in the future world. 
 This is symbolized by the description of the heavenly 
 Jerusalem in the Apocalypse. The city is of pure gold, 
 and that, transparent gold like clear glass. The wall, 
 above which it towers, is founded on twelve precious 
 stones of different colours, beginning with jasper and 
 closing with amethyst ; and twelve gates of pearl lead 
 through the twelve walls, each having its own colour, into 
 the city with its golden streets. Even within the course 
 of human history a process has been at work, by which the 
 colour-sense has gained in subtlety and command of 
 varying hues ; and, if so, we may surely expect that in 
 the glorified body in the future state it wiU reach a 
 perfection which is denied to it here on the earth. For 
 the variety of colour is infinite, while our colour-sense 
 here below is confined within fixed limits. And how 
 miserably does language halt behind the development of 
 the colour-sense, wholly impotent as it is to reflect the 
 impressions of colour in corresponding words, or even to 
 designate a single colour by its specific character ! The 
 utmost it can express is the brightness or darkness of 
 luminous phenomena, the more or less of the quantity 
 of light, but never its quality — that is to say, its 
 colour. 
 
 To this imperfection of human speech the language of 
 
62 IRIS. 
 
 Holy Scripture is no exception, for the Bible is not a 
 book which fell from heaven, written in such unspeakable 
 words as Paul once heard when he was caught up to the 
 heavenly paradise ; but it presents to us what God has 
 decreed and provided for our salvation through the 
 instrumentality of human testimony, and therefore bear- 
 ing all the marks of time, race, and individuality. We 
 have an example of this in the biblical and especially the 
 Old Testament names of colours. Colour-names, such 
 as might be taken to reflect the peculiar character of this 
 or that colour, are no more to be found here than in any 
 other human language. The rendering of the impression, 
 made by the various colours, moves, so far as we can 
 understand the radical meanings of the names, within 
 the range of such ideas as the following : — The ideas of 
 light and glow give us the name of white ; those of con- 
 suming and reducing to carbon that of black ; those of 
 bright and thick, or dark, that of bright red, e.g. of the 
 chestnut horse, and the name for dark red, e.g. of blood. 
 Mixed colours must be content with the names of the 
 simple colours. The word for white also denotes yellowish, 
 e.g. the colour of the moon ; the word for red also denotes 
 reddish-brown, e.g. the ruddy countenance of David, the 
 shepherd-lad ; the word for black also denotes grey, that, 
 e.g., of early dawn. One and the same word denotes 
 green and yellow, the root-idea being that of toning 
 down, in comparison, that is, with the more luminous 
 colours. And hence language is forced to use it not 
 only to express the healthy green of the sprouting grain, 
 but also the sickly yellowing of blighted fields and of the 
 human countenance, nay, even the pallor of the dead. 
 
PUKPLE AND SCARLET. 63 
 
 The Old Testament language has no adjective whatever 
 for blue. But it is due to an odd mistake that it does 
 not appear in Luther's translation. Though without an 
 adjective for blue, Old Testament Scripture knows a blue 
 shell-dye, namely, purple-blue, or more exactly purple- 
 violet, which is called tecMleth. The old Greek transla- 
 tion and the Latin ones render this word by hyacinthus. 
 It is still doubtful, however, whether we are to under- 
 stand thereby the colour of the precious stone or of the 
 flower, which both bear this name. Anyhow, the colour- 
 name refers either to a blue stone or a blue flower, not at 
 all, perhaps, to our hyacinth, but to the blue larkspur 
 (Delphinium Ajacis, L.) or a blue species of sword-lily. 
 Luther, however, in uniformly translating hyacinth by 
 gel, gelwerck, gele seide (yellow), was misled chiefly by the 
 orange or yellow of the precious stone (a bastard kind of 
 zirkon), which in his time, as it is still, was called 
 hyacinth. At the same time, yellow was for him the 
 chief colour of the flower so called, though not that 
 which we now call hyacinth, because the hyacinthus 
 orientalis was not transplanted into German gardens in 
 1530, and the yellow variety was not in existence for 
 nearly two centuries thereafter. 
 
 Purple-red and purple-blue are both dyes derived 
 from shells, but here again language betrays its inability 
 to express the character of colour by designating purple- 
 blue by the name of the shell tecMleth, and purple-red, as 
 a parti-coloured dye, by the name argaman (in Aramaic, 
 argewdn). Both, in accordance with the law, entered 
 into the religious services of the Hebrews, even during 
 the forty years between the exodus from Egypt and the 
 
64 IKIS, 
 
 entrance into Canaan. Thus it is taken for granted that 
 woollen stuffs were already in use, which were coloured 
 with both shell - dyes. And this supposition is not 
 improbable, though neither purple nor scarlet has yet been 
 discovered in the monumental language of ancient Egypt. 
 In the very earliest times purple was a monopoly of the 
 inventive and artistic Phoenicians, who were well known 
 to the Egyptians. They were the great traders of the 
 Syrian coast of the Levant. In later times the Phoeni- 
 cians discovered shellfish yielding purple on other coasts, 
 and there they settled or put up factories. Ezekiel, 
 accordingly, when describing the mart of Tyre, expressly 
 mentions purple imported from Elishah, i.e. probably 
 Lacedemonian purple from the Peloponnesus. Such Greek 
 purple was manufactured in'^the inland city of Thyatira, 
 to the north-east of Smyrna, where that Lydia, whose 
 heart the Lord opened for the gospel, was a seller of 
 purple, i.e. sold purple-dyed yarns. But the oldest site 
 of the purple trade was Tyre itself, and it was so even 
 long before it had eclipsed the ancient Sidon. At the 
 present day, in the neighbourhood of the miserable 
 ruined village which bears the name of ancient Tyre, 
 there are found clear traces of those purple dye-works 
 which were celebrated far into the Christian era. Close 
 to the beach circular basins are found hewn in sandstone, 
 from two to eight feet in diameter, and from four to five 
 feet deep, some of them connected by ducts. Some are 
 empty ; several, however, contain fragments of shellfish, 
 which cannot have been floated thither, but must have 
 been placed there in ancient times by human hands, for 
 their angular points are cemented together so as to form 
 
PURPLE AND SCARLET. 65 
 
 a kind of breccia. They are remains of the purple 
 shellfish, and these remains tell us most certainly what 
 sort of molluscs they were from which the purple was 
 got at Tyre. There are a good many kinds of marine 
 snails with and without shells, which, when irritated in 
 any way, give out a red or violet fluid. But none of 
 these is the genuine purple snail; the colour of their 
 discharge grows pale after being some time exposed to 
 the air and daylight. The genuine purple snails are, as 
 has been shown by E. von Martins, in his able treatise 
 on Piorple and Pearls (1874), the murex trunculus, and 
 the murex brandaris with its spines and long feelers ; to 
 the same class belongs that kind of Mediterranean sea- 
 snail which is now called purpura, and more particularly 
 purpura hcemastoma ; but the remains found in the 
 neighbourhood of ancient Tyre all belong to the murex 
 trunculus, and those found near Taranto in Southern Italy, 
 and in the Peloponnesus, belong to the murex brandaris. 
 The dye taken from these shellfish is not their blood, 
 but the slimy secretion of a gland which they have in 
 common with all snails. This secretion is not at first 
 red or violet, but whitish. When exposed, however, to 
 the sunlight, it begins to colour like a photographic 
 surface, and passing through shades of yellow and green, 
 settles into the purple colour which is a combination of 
 red and violet light; and this mixed colour, having 
 sometimes more of a blue, sometimes more of a red hue, 
 is ineffaceable. Pliny says that the red of the Tyrian 
 purple is reckoned most precious when it is like curdled 
 blood, and when, as seen from above, it appears black ; 
 when looked at sideways, it reflects the light falling on 
 
 E 
 
66 IRIS. 
 
 it. And of its purple-blue, he says it is a dusky, or, to 
 use the fashionable expression, a cold colour, which 
 resembles a chafing sea, i.e., as Von Martins explains, 
 the sea when a storm is brewing, or the dark blue colour 
 of the Mediterranean when it is overcast by the dark 
 sky, and the waves are rising/ Purple was still costly 
 in the time of the Eoman supremacy. A pound of that 
 violet-purple which came first into fashion, cost in the 
 last days of the Eepublic 100 denarii, i.e. over £i. 
 And a mantle of the best purple of Tyre, such as the 
 luxurious habits of the empire required, cost 10,000 
 sesterces, i.e. over £100, and this was counted cheap 
 rather than dear. Now the purple of shellfish is a 
 thing of the past. Even at the beginning of the Middle 
 Ages, the command laid on the Israelites by the Mosaic 
 law to wear fringes on their garments, could no longer 
 be carried out, for, so runs the self-dispensing ordinance, 
 we have no longer any purple-blue. Those inhabitants 
 of the sea, which in countless numbers were once 
 crushed and torn, have now rest, only disturbed at rare 
 intervals by some shell collector or zoologist. Por the 
 ancient purple could not compete with that of every 
 hue which is now artificially produced by chemical 
 processes. 
 
 Another red, more of a yellow or brown-red, than the 
 blue or black red of purple, was furnished to the ancient 
 world by a small insect of the size of a pea, which draws 
 
 1 To tlie same effect the Midrasch. says that purple-blue, as a 
 colour of the Mosaic cultus, is an imitation of black fire. See my 
 article " Farben in der Bibel " in Herzog's Real-EncyUopiidie, 2nd 
 edition, vol. iv. p. 488. 
 
PURPLE AND SCARLET. 67 
 
 its nourishment from plants of the oak and other kinds, 
 by piercing and sucking them. This insect was taken 
 for a berry {coccus) of the tree itself, and so was called 
 coccus; the oak to which it is attached is therefore 
 classified as qucrcus coccifera. But so early as in the 
 language of the Mosaic law, which also turns this dye 
 to account for the purposes of its cultus, we have the 
 animal as such recognised ; both it and the dye it yields 
 are called tol&ath schani, i.e. bright worm and bright 
 worm colour. In Persian the worm is called kirm. 
 From this word is derived the name given to this bright 
 red from the time that the Jewish people came under 
 the Persian supremacy. In the Book of Chronicles we 
 find it called Jcarmil ; ^ the Eomanic vermiglio, vermeil, 
 i.e. worm-red, is like the word transferred. A similar 
 designation, though different in root, is found in the 
 Turkish, Persian, and Arabic kirmiz, kirmizi, which is 
 heard in the Eomanic names of red hues, carmine and 
 carmoisin (carmesin). The name scarlet, also, which 
 from the Middle Ages downwards has been in use for 
 the dye of the coccus insect, is Turkish. 
 
 This coccus-colour was among the Greeks and Eomans 
 the proper colour for the military cloak, especially that 
 of a commander. And so it is a scarlet cloak which, 
 according to Matthew, is put on the Saviour by the 
 soldiers in Pilate's judgment hall. Mark and John say, 
 purple, for the language of the people did not distinguish 
 the two kinds of red. The words were still more 
 
 1 See on the subject my paper, " Die Altertiimlichkeit der 
 elohistischen Farbenbezeichnungen," in Luth. Zeitschrift (1878), pp. 
 590-596. 
 
68 IRIS. 
 
 frequently interchanged when, in the Middle Ages, 
 purple was supplanted by the more fiery, and more 
 easily obtained, scarlet. Hence it is that Luther, in his 
 translation of the Bible, uses now purple instead of 
 scarlet, and again scarlet instead of purple. Por scarlet, 
 however, and for it only, he has the special name rosin- 
 colour, or rosin - red ; the common rose - red is indeed 
 brighter than scarlet-red, but Pliny also says that scarlet 
 resembles the rose somewhat, though when looked at 
 obliquely it is more like purple-red. It would now be 
 very difficult to put this to the test. For the purple of 
 the shellfish has gone quite out of use, and though the 
 ancient kermes insect has not yet disappeared as an 
 article of commerce (the so - called kermes berries, or 
 scarlet kernels, are still used for dyeing, and make 
 carmine and lac) ; but far more in request than the 
 coccus ilicis, i.e. the scale insect of the oak, is the coccits 
 cacti, i.e. the scale insect of the cactus, the cochineal 
 which comes chiefly from Mexico and Peru, of which the 
 ancient world could know nothing. But if it be asked 
 whence the Israel of the time of Moses had its red 
 worm-dye, the answer is here, as in the case of double- 
 dyed purple, that they got it from Phoenicia. For even 
 Solomon, when he wishes a skilled worker acquainted 
 with dyeing in purple and harmil, sends to his good 
 friend the king of Tyre ; and this bright red is called 
 by the Greeks and Eomans ^oivikovv, phcenicium, 
 posnicium, punicium, i.e. Phoenician or Punic red. The 
 French ponceau, which denotes the red poppy and its 
 colour, is the same word. 
 
 Purple-red, purple-blue scarlet, and white, — these are 
 
PURPLE AND SCARLET. 69 
 
 the four colours used in the Mosaic cultus. Of four 
 colours, i.e. woven of threads of four colours with 
 inwrought cherubs, were the ten curtains which formed 
 the inner roof of the tabernacle; of four colours with 
 cherubs was the veil which separated the Holiest from 
 the Holy place ; of four colours, the curtain which 
 covered the entrance to the Holy place, and that which 
 covered the entrance into the outer court ; of four 
 colours were the ephod, the girdle, and the breastplate 
 of the high priest, which was fastened with golden rings 
 and chains to the ephod. Of three colours, to wit, 
 purple - blue, purple - red, and scarlet, were the pome- 
 granates which adorned the fringe of his robe. Of one 
 colour, white namely, were his under robe and his mitre. 
 Of one colour, namely purple-blue, were the fifty loops 
 which held together the ten lowest curtains of the 
 tabernacle, the cord by which the breastplate was 
 fastened to the ephod, and that by which the diadem 
 with its inscription, " Holy to Jehovah," was attached to 
 the mitre. Of one colour, also, sometimes and mostly 
 purple blue, sometimes purple-red, were the coverings of 
 the sacred furniture of the tabernacle when it was 
 carried from place to place ; and of one colour, white, 
 were the clothes of the ordinary priests, with the one 
 exception, according to the testimony of Josephus, of 
 their parti-coloured girdle. When to these we add the 
 purple-blue cord, which the law required to be attached 
 to the so-called fringes on the dress of the Israelites, we 
 have before us the entire application and distribution of 
 the four sacred colours. 
 
 It is thoroughly original. To suppose it borrowed 
 
70 IBIS. 
 
 from the Egyptians is impossible, for the names of purple 
 and scarlet have never yet been found in the monumental 
 language of Egypt. That the selection of the four 
 colours is not determined merely by taste, but has a 
 religious purpose, appears from the fact that not only 
 black but yellow (gold excepted) and green are excluded. 
 Darkness and Hades are black, but the sanctuary is the 
 place of Him of whom the congregation sings : With 
 Thee is the fountain of life, and in Thy light do we see 
 light. Mourning in feeling and dress is black, but the 
 call which summons to the house of God has for its 
 keynote : Serve the Lord with gladness, come before His 
 presence with singing. Yellow and green are the colours 
 of the earth, they are out of place where God sits 
 between the cherubim and heaven has come down to 
 earth, where, as we have it in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 everything is a pattern and shadow of heavenly things, 
 and so a finger-post pointing heavenwards. But not 
 only is the exclusion of black, yellow, and green signi- 
 ficant ; the chosen colours are of themselves significant. 
 This may be concluded from the fact that purple-red 
 appears alone in only one instance, and scarlet aloue not 
 at aU. The colours which appear by themselves are 
 exclusively purple-blue, and white, which is the basis of 
 all other colours. 
 
 Before inquiring, however, into the symbolical meaning 
 of the four colours, we must premise that no colour has 
 any symbolical meaning taken in itself, but only through 
 association. With the abstract colour-impression there 
 comes to be connected in our consciousness the idea of 
 a certain object, and this object represents the colour, so 
 
I'UEI'LE AND SCARLET. 7l 
 
 that the latter immediately suggests it. No doubt the 
 various colours, according to their degree of light and 
 heat (that is, tlieir relation to yellow-red), give rise to 
 various moods when they are quietly and clearly reflected 
 by the mind. Eed stimulates, and when present in a high 
 degree disturbs. Yellow exhilarates. Green, whether 
 with Goethe we regard it as the equipoise of yellow 
 and blue, or of light and warmth, stirs without exciting. 
 Blue has such a tranquillizing effect that, as has been 
 recently observed, maniacs become quiet in blue apart- 
 ments, and hysterical patients get relief from their fits. 
 Ultramarine and brown together have a pathetic influence, 
 and are therefore suitable colours for the dress of the 
 Mater Dolorosa. But these moods do not give the 
 colours the character of symbols. Yellow, for example, 
 is rightly called the colour of mirth and jest. In our 
 modern times, indeed, it passes as the colour of envy ; 
 but this is to be understood, not as a consequence of its 
 impression, but only because of the sunken, yellow face 
 of the envious, which we associate with it. This 
 symbolism has its history, for not only the impressions 
 of the colours, but the associations relating to them, vary 
 greatly in different times and peoples. Green passes in 
 antiquity as a pale colour. Among the Egyptians it is, 
 along with black, brownish, and yellow, a colour of the 
 deities which had to do with death and the dead, and 
 was therefore unsuited to be the symbol of hope. 
 Among the Mandingoes, in the region of Sierra Leone, 
 white is the colour of peace ; among the Ashantees and 
 many negro tribes it is the colour of joy ; while among 
 the natives of Terra-del-Fuego it is the colour of war ; 
 
72 IRIS. 
 
 and red, on the contrary, is the colour of peace and 
 friendship. Thus, in seeking to explain the real meaning 
 of the sacred colours of the Old Testament, we must 
 beware of admitting modern or alien associations, and 
 confine ourselves within the circle of ideas familiar to 
 antiquity, and more especially to that which is Israelitish 
 and biblical. 
 
 "We start from the assumption, that the four colours 
 of the priestly garments point to the duties which 
 belonged to the priestly office, or, in other words, to 
 those divine operations in which the priests, and above 
 all the high priest, were to act as mediators. We 
 naturally begin with white. For white was the colour 
 of the priestly vestments in general. Even the high 
 priest wore his so-called garments of gold (robe, ephod, 
 breastplate, and diadem) over white. The Levites, who 
 conducted the temple music, were required by David 
 (according to the chronicler), and later by King Agrippa, 
 to wear white garments. In the temple of Ezekiel's 
 vision every article of priestly dress is purely of white 
 linen, to the exclusion of every variety of colour. Thus 
 white is the fundamental colour of the priestly official 
 dress. But light is white. The garments of Jesus, on 
 the Mount of Transfiguration, became, Matthew tells us 
 (xvii. 2), " white as the light." And what created light 
 is to the world of nature, that God is over all creation' 
 and for every creature. He is light, and dispenses 
 light ; or what is the same, He is holy, and, in particular. 
 Holy Love. His priests are clad in white, as servants of 
 the Holy One, called as such to stand out before the 
 congregation in the light of holiness. They are dressed 
 
PURPLE AND SCARLET. 73 
 
 in white, as mediators of holy love, and as such called 
 to bless the congregation and to say : " The Lord make 
 His countenance to shine upon thee, and be gracious 
 unto thee." 
 
 The yellow-red of scarlet forms a pair with white as 
 its counterpart. Yellow-red is the colour of fire. The 
 dark red horses in Zechariah's first vision bring bloody 
 war, and the yellow-red bring consuming fire. Light 
 and fire, when regarded ethically in Holy Scripture, are 
 contrasts : light, the image of beneficent love ; and fire, 
 of destroying anger. Jealousy, yes, and God's jealousy, 
 because of His love despised, has in Hebrew the name 
 of that bright, glowing red which it produces. And 
 Isaiah (i. 18), when he would portray the sin which 
 challenges condemnation, calls the sin not red like purple, 
 which would be wholly unsuitable, but red as scarlet. 
 As scarlet is the colour of fire, so it is that of sin and 
 of the anger which sin awakens. Scarlet with white in 
 the dress of the high priest, therefore, means that he is a 
 servant of that God who is holy not only in His love, 
 but also in His anger, of Him who says of Himself : " I 
 the Lord thy God am a jealous God ; " and of whose holy 
 love passing over into anger against His apostate people, 
 Isaiah (x. 17) says: "The light of Israel shall be for a 
 fire, and His Holy One for a flame." There is a tradition 
 which says that over the door of the temple hung a strip 
 of scarlet, which became white when the scapegoat had 
 reached the wilderness ; but that in the last days preced- 
 ing the destruction of Jerusalem it kept its colour. The 
 meaning of the tradition plainly is, that the ministry of 
 the high priest, on the great day of atonement, either 
 
74 lEis. 
 
 procured grace which removed sin, though scarlet-red, or 
 anger which leaves it unpardoned and visits it with 
 punishment. 
 
 That white and scarlet are to be taken as forming a 
 pair, appears from the fact that purple-blue and purple- 
 red, whether side by side with white and scarlet or 
 between them, are placed inseparably together. The 
 ancient purple dye was enormously costly, and the 
 impression it produced was strikingly magnificent ; and 
 hence purple garments are mentioned in the Book of 
 Judges as worn by the Midianitish kings, and undoubtedly, 
 even in the time of Moses, purple was the symbol of 
 sovereign dignity. Not in Egypt, indeed, wliere the 
 Pliaraoli is represented in priestly fashion, in a garment 
 of the finest transparent white. Thus the purple of the 
 high priest's garments means that he is the servant of 
 that God of whom it is declared, in the song sung on 
 the shore of the Eed Sea : " The Lord shall reign for 
 ever and ever." 
 
 But purple-red and purple-blue are only two kinds of 
 the same colour. This is not a simple colour, but a 
 combination of red and violet ; all the colours of the 
 spectrum taken together, if green be excluded, also yield 
 purple. The two kinds of purple, therefore, point to the 
 twofold manifestation of the heavenly King ; purple-red 
 to God's majesty as the exalted One, and purple-blue to 
 God's majesty in His condescension. Even taken in 
 itself, the impression produced by purple-red is severe 
 and earnest ; whereas purple-blue has a soft tranquilliz- 
 ing effect. And whereas purple-red suggests the God of 
 judgment who, when He frowns in anger, changes the 
 
PURPLE AND 1 SCARLET. 75 
 
 heavens into blackness and the mooh into blood, purple- 
 blue suggests the God of peace, who overarches the 
 earth with the blue of heaven, like a tent of peace. 
 And, moreover, purple-blue bears a relation to a never- 
 to-be-forgotten incident belonging to the time of the 
 giving of the law. For, when Moses and Aaron, Nadab 
 and Abihu, and the seventy elders were summoned to 
 Mount Sinai, they saw the God of Israel, and there was 
 under His feet " as it were a likeness of a sapphire stone, 
 and as it were the body of heaven in its clearness." It 
 was not the blue of the sky itself whicli they beheld over 
 them, but a marvellous blue, like the most transparent 
 sapphire, and the clearness of heaven in its most perfect 
 beauty. By this the high and lofty One, who had con- 
 descended to reveal Himself on the earth, made His 
 presence known. Israel had just made their vow of 
 fealty to the covenant, and now God presented Himself 
 in this way to the representatives of Israel as the 
 covenant God. From that date purple-blue was associated 
 in the consciousness of Israel with that God who had con- 
 descended to enter into covenant with the nation. It was 
 in this light that the Israelite was to regard the purple- 
 blue of his fringes. And while, during the wanderings 
 in the wilderness, the altar of burnt-ofiering was to be 
 wrapped in a covering of purple-red, and the other 
 vessels of the sanctuary in purple-blue and scarlet, seal- 
 skins being put above all, the ark of the covenant, with 
 the vail of the Holiest of All, is distinguished by having 
 the sealskin covering put inmost, and the purple-blue 
 covering being preserved above to meet the eye of the 
 spectator. If you ask the question, Why ? there is an 
 
76 IRIS. 
 
 old Jewish interpretation which gives answer : Because 
 purple-blue is like the sea, and the sea like the firmament, 
 and the firmament like the sapphire stone, and the 
 sapphire stone like that throne of glory which the 
 representatives of Israel beheld when the law was given 
 on Sinai. The answer is perfect ; purple-blue distin- 
 guishes the holy things which, above all others, serve 
 to express God's condescension in the midst of His 
 people, and to secure sacramentally the blessing of the 
 covenant relation. We shall therefore not be mistaken 
 if we say purple-red and purple-blue in the vestments of 
 the high priest point him out as the servant of the high 
 and lofty One, who is at once exalted above all, and faithful 
 to His covenant. And with this there harmonizes very 
 closely the Jewish cabalistic doctrine which distinguishes 
 three colours of the rainbow — ^white, red, and blue : 
 making white the principle of grace as the right side of 
 the divine character, red the principle of severity on 
 the left side, and blue the attribute of mercy as the 
 pillar between them. 
 
IV. 
 
 ^caDemtc ©ffictal HBxtss aria its Colours. 
 
IV. 
 
 ACADEMIC OFFICIAL DEESS AND ITS 
 COLOUES/ 
 
 Since the 4th of November 1743, when our university 
 was founded, many a theme has been handled by its 
 Vice-Eectors on their entrance upon office. And the 
 German university system is so incomparably rich in 
 personalities and developments, ideas and relations, 
 that the material for addresses is still far from being 
 exhausted. Indeed, it is to escape as far as possible 
 the torture of choosing from the mass of material which 
 offers, that I take up a theme which lies to my very 
 hand, and ask. What is the meaning of these caps, black, 
 scarlet, green, dark-blue, and of these like-coloured gowns ? 
 The theme is not unscientific. Any one who dips, how- 
 ever slightly, into such works as v. Hefner- Alteneck's 
 Dresses of the Christian Middle Ages, or v. Eye's and Jac. 
 Ealke's Art and Life of Early Times, will not doubt 
 that my subject falls under the viewpoint of science 
 as well as of art. The proof, indeed, is not given in 
 such works, which are purely illustrative and descriptive, 
 
 ^ This Lecture was originally delivered by Dr. Delitzsct in the 
 Aula (Public Hall) of the University of Erlangen, on the occasion of 
 his installation as Vice-Rector, on the 4th November 1859. For the 
 sake of the English reader, it may be mentioned that the University 
 of Erlangen has no Rectors, but Vice- Rectors ; or rather, the King 
 himself is Rector of the University, and so Rector Magnificentissimus. 
 — Tb. 
 
 79 
 
80 IRIS. 
 
 but in a treatise by the antiquarian Jacob Falke just 
 named, entitled, Die Deutsche I'rachten und Modenwelt 
 (the German World of Dress and Fashion), the history of 
 dress is carried far beyond descriptive empiricism to the 
 rank of science. All through, it traces the changeful 
 succession of fashions to its iinal grounds, mental and 
 moral, ecclesiastical and civil. And thus the history of 
 dress is treated in its profoundest connections as an 
 essential part of the national life, and so as an integral 
 portion of the history of culture. This work is a pledge 
 for the scientific character of my question ; but far from 
 answering it, it has not a word on academic dress. Von 
 Hefner's magnificent work leaves us in the very same 
 position ; and our older literature supplies no material to 
 make up for this blank. Thus, even in the interest of 
 scientific progress, it is well that the question be raised, 
 in order that some time, if not now, it may be satis- 
 factorily answered, for everything that carries us beyond 
 a merely superficial knowledge is an enriching of science. 
 Neither is the theme untheological, and therefore 
 unworthy of a Vice-Eector, belonging to the Theological 
 Faculty. For whether we look to the beginning, middle, 
 or end of Holy Scripture, we are met with the subject 
 of dress. Looking to the beginning, we read that God 
 made coats of skin and therewith clothed fallen man : 
 thus dress appears as a gift of God. If we look to the 
 middle, we read that Isaiah beholds the Lord on a throne 
 high and lifted up, and His train filling the temple : 
 dress appears as something godlike. And if we look to 
 the end, we read that the spirits of the just made perfect 
 are clothed in byssus - white garments : dress appears 
 
ACADEMIC OFFICIAL DEESS AND ITS COLOUES. 81 
 
 as something heavenly. All that is, from the Being of 
 beings down to the lily of the iield, according to the 
 biblical view, has its dress, whether one self-produced or 
 one taken from without ; it has a dress whereby it at 
 once conceals and reveals its nature. But it is not only 
 dress in general, but official dress in particular, that has 
 a theological interest. Por no small part of the Mosaic 
 Pentateuch treats of the official dress of the priests, and 
 pre-eminently of the high priest. We have his purple- 
 blue robe, with the parti-coloured pomegranates and the 
 ringing golden bells at its hem ; the shorter tunic over 
 it of fine twined linen, with inwoven threads of gold, 
 purple-red, purple-blue, and crimson ; the purple-blue 
 turban, with its golden plate, fastened by purple-blue 
 cords, etc. Nay, I might even take these priestly 
 Aaronic vestments as the starting-point of my address. 
 I should have better right to do so than our revered 
 ancestors, when they delighted to begin the history of 
 universities with the School of Paradise, or at least from 
 the Beth-ha-Midrasch, that is, the High School of Shem, the 
 son of Noah, or certainly from Kirjath-Sepher, the alleged 
 university town of the Canaanites. Or I might quote in my 
 defence a French writer on heraldry,^ who starts from the 
 time when Adam bore a red escutcheon, to remind him of 
 the red earth from which he was created ; and on this red 
 escutcheon a black apple, to remind him of his sore fall. 
 
 But since that happy time is gone, when one could 
 spin out such a question as that before us to quartos and 
 
 1 This French writer on heraldry, of the sixteenth century, is the 
 advocate of the Paris Parliament, Jean le Feron, in his Histoire des 
 Connestables, etc, 
 
 ' F 
 
82 lEis. 
 
 folios, I had better start at once from the 4th August 
 1827. This is the year and day of that sovereign 
 rescript, which in the name of His Majesty the then 
 reigning King Louis, and after the example of the 
 University of Munich, regulated the official dress of the 
 professors, both of Wiirzburg and Erlangen, — the dress 
 we are now wearing in honour of the day's celebration. 
 " As to their robes," says the royal rescript, " the Theo- 
 logical Faculty wears black ; that of Law, scarlet ; that of 
 Medicine, green ; that of Philosophy, dark blue." How 
 much trouble it cost till the expensive arrangement was 
 carried through, and how many attacks it had to bear even 
 when completed, is shown by the Minutes. It is rather 
 surprising to find that when our Frederico-Alexandrina^ 
 was required to come into conformity with her sister 
 in the Eesidency town, it was regarded as an innovation. 
 It was really nothing more than a restoration. For the 
 official dress of our professors has been almost the same 
 since the foundation of the university. On the memor- 
 able 4th of November 1743, the professors in the 
 procession — which first of all halted at the market-place 
 to receive the insignia of the university exhibited in the 
 castle, and then marched to the church of Neustadt to 
 celebrate the solemnities of its foundation — wore four- 
 cornered caps of four colours, and gowns to correspond. 
 The colour of the Theologians was black; that of the 
 Jurists, purple (pkceniceus) ; that of the Philosophers, violet 
 {violaceus) ; and only the colour of the Medical Faculty 
 differed from what it is to-day, in being not green, but 
 blood-red (sanguineus), as the history of the festival says, 
 ' The name of tlie Erlangen University.— Th. 
 
ACADEMIC OFFICIAL .DKESS AND ITS COLOURS. 83 
 
 or, as Lammers expresses it in his history of the town of 
 Erlangen, incarnat (carnation). Thus the royal ordinance 
 required only the restoration of the original state of 
 matters, the green excepted, which became the dress of 
 the honourable Faculty of Medicine ; and this change of 
 the Medical blood-red into green, resulting in the change 
 of the purple of the Jurists into scarlet,. was, as we shall 
 see, a thoroughly significant innovation. 
 
 Eeturning, then, to my question, I divide it into 
 two : What is the historical, and what the permanent 
 significance of these caps and ^owns ? 
 
 The head-dress of the German student has changed 
 more than once since the Thirty Years' War. Then his 
 broad cocked hat of black velvet, with aigrette, was 
 changed for the military hat with feathers. Then came 
 the period of wigs, hair bags, and queues. When these 
 monstrosities happily disappeared, it became the common 
 modern cap. But there was a time when the student 
 was not allowed to wear a cap, at least not a high round 
 or four-cornered one ; but if he dressed according to 
 regulation, he wore a long toga, falling down to his feet, 
 with a cape ; ^ even the Bachelor and Licentiate were 
 obliged to content themselves with this caputium cucul- 
 latum. The beretta was the distinction of those who 
 had gained the highest academic degree, that of Master 
 (afterwards Doctor) in Theology and that of Doctor in the 
 
 1 No one is entitled to use a beretta publicly — says a Freiburg 
 enactment quoted in Schreiber, Geschichte der Stadt und Univ. 
 Freiburg ira Breisgau, i. 2. p. 34 — unless he has the degree of Master : 
 under penalty for the first offence of six, for the second of twelve 
 plaoks [German plapperten = 3 kreuzers each], et ita in infinitum. 
 
84 iKis. 
 
 other Faculties. The bestowment of the beretta (hireti 
 impositio) formed a prominent part in the conferring of 
 degrees. Cape and beretta distinguished the lower from 
 the highest graduates, as they did the inferior from the 
 higher clergy. The beretta was originally round. A 
 theologian of the Sorbonne, Jean Launoy,^ has left a 
 notice that the form of the liretum quadratum cornutum 
 (four-cornered) was worn in Paris in 1520. To the 
 same effect is the written testimony of a regular canon 
 belonging to an abbey in Soissons^ in the year 1708: 
 " More than four hundred years ago our berettas received 
 their four-cornered shape ; they are woven wholly of 
 wool, and have four horns, as it were, which project 
 upwards a very little." The berettas of our professorial 
 dress are thus genuinely clerical. 
 
 And our gowns ? — They have not the form of the old 
 Tabardus,^ with its many folds. They want the orna- 
 mentation which the Strassburg professors still retained 
 in the French period, the so-called chausses, i.e. the hoods 
 falling from the shoulder before and behind, and bordered 
 with ermine, in respect to which an old enactment of 
 the Greifswald Faculty* says, that the Dean must 
 
 1 Jean Launoy in his book, De vera causa secessus Brunonis in 
 desertum. 
 
 2 See his report, in the form of letters, in Hippolyt' Helyot's 
 History of the Orders of MonkJiood and Knighthood. From the French. 
 Vol. ii. p. 114. 
 
 ' The Tdbardus is veslis rugata [garments with folds], see Tomek, 
 Geschichte der Prager Universitdt, p. 37. 
 
 * See the appendices containing original authorities in Rosegarten's 
 History of the University of Greifswaldt, p. 210 : Item conclusum fuit 
 quod decanus pro tempore ad singulas convocationes, similiter ad 
 magistrorum disputationes puhlicas, debet incedere alatus ad minus, 
 
ACADEMIC OFFICIAL DKESS AND ITS COLOURS. 85 
 
 appear on solemn occasions, if not in tabardo, at least 
 alatus, winged. But to our gowns applies what the 
 Italian jurist, Guido Panziroli, says in his Varice Lediones : 
 " Afterwards, when the Doctors began to wear for their 
 distinguishing dress long priestly garments and the four- 
 cornered hat, they were called clerics, and others, in 
 contradistinction, laymen." Thus these gowns of ours 
 also are genuinely clerical. 
 
 Shall we take offence at the fact ? We should not 
 be the first. We could appeal not only to German 
 professors, but even to a German Emperor. Herm. 
 Couring, in his Antiguitates Academicce, sees nothing but 
 hierarchical objects in our academic dress. Though he 
 has to confess that he does not know when the Eector's 
 purple gown and the silver maces became customary, 
 yet he maintains that the purple gown is the counter- 
 part of that introduced by Paul II. for cardinals, and 
 intended by the Pope to withdraw the universities from 
 the supremacy of the Emperor and subject them exclu- 
 sively to his own.^ Christian Thomasius, the famous 
 champion of the national system [in opposition to the 
 
 si non tabardo poterit commodiore magistrorum more vestitus, donee 
 magistris major arrideret pinguiorque fortuiia (It was also resolved 
 that the Dean for the time, in attending convocations or the public 
 disputations of the Masters, should at least be alatus [winged], if 
 he cannot wear the tahardus after the more convenient fashion of 
 the Masters, until a larger and richer provision be made for the 
 Masters). 
 
 ' Couring speaks of the official dress with disgust : sed et parum 
 refert, hujus (p»tiroi.Gi»; (liceat mihi quod res est fateri) originem 
 primam accurate novisse. But it is of very little consequence to 
 make out accurately the first origin of this fantastic show (if I may 
 call a spade a spade). See his seven dissertations, De Antiquitatibus 
 Academicis, Diss. v. § 20, p. 163. 
 
86 IRIS. 
 
 papal], agrees with him, and thiaks that the Eectors may- 
 retain the purple, but under protest against the view 
 of the Pope.* More severe was the judgment of the 
 Emperor Joseph II., who in 1784 abolished all academic 
 official dress whatever, and in particular the gown of the 
 Eector, because " by the monk's hood stitched on behind, 
 it betrayed the dark times when the Papal See arrogated 
 to itself the exclusive right of establishing universities." ^ 
 Our caps and gowns, as the gift of a Protestant 
 prince, run no risk of such misrepresentations. For the 
 Frederico-Alexandrina is a national institution, not sanc- 
 tioned by the Pope, nor by Pope and Emperor, but 
 by the Emperor alone, and has for its pattern Alma Mater 
 the University of Halle, which was founded at the 
 instigation of Thomasius. Our official dress, however, 
 dates from the year of our foundation, for, as Councillor 
 Gadendam, the first Vice-Chancellor of our university, 
 writes, the munificence of the royal founder went so far, 
 that he presented those whom he had invested with the 
 office of public teachers also with their costly dress. 
 And this official dress, with its ecclesiastical character, 
 must surely have some better meaning than that we 
 have simply to protest against its proper meaning. The 
 
 1 Thomasius in his Diss, de Jure circa colores, the fourth of his 
 Leipsic Dissertationes juridicce. There he says, § 58 : Jure retinere 
 possunt habitum istum purpureum Eectores nostri, non approbantes 
 videlicet intentionem Pontificis, sed potius perpendentes, se a princi- 
 pibus hanc habere purpuram eorundemque reprsesentare personam 
 (Our Eectors may properly retain their purple dress, without sanc- 
 tioning, however, the intention of the Pope ; but rather esteeming 
 that they have it from their princes, and represent their persons). 
 
 '■' See Phillip's Vermischte Schriften, vol. i. p. 464 ; aus Kink, Gesch. 
 der Univ. Wien, vol. i. p. 112, note. 
 
ACADEMIC OFFICIAL DRESS AND ITS COLOURS. 87 
 
 Christian Church and the Christian State are not radi- 
 cally related to one another as yea and nay. And there- 
 fore the secularizing of the universities, while detaching 
 them from the guardianship, at least the exclusive 
 guardianship, of the heads of the Church, cannot have 
 been intended to convert them into unchurchly — that is 
 to say, anti-Church — State institutions ; and a university 
 may be a national and, therefore, from the first a secular 
 foundation, without being divorced from the spiritxial 
 organism, the common faith, the universal work of the 
 Church. That our Frederico-Alexandrina in particular 
 is at once national and churchly, and even with a due 
 combination of freedom and restraint a confessional 
 institution, is apparent to every impartial observer from 
 its anniversary festival and its statutes. 
 
 Coming back, then, to the question. What mean these 
 caps and gowns ? we may answer they signify that we 
 are members and servants of a body which, though not 
 subject in its regulations to the oversight of the Church, 
 is yet, both personally and in respect of the sciences 
 which the several Faculties represent, in living connection 
 with the Church. Whether the domain of our investiga- 
 tions be the divine plan of salvation, or human legislation, 
 or the laws of nature, or universal history, with the 
 history of civilisation and the languages and the final 
 bases of all things, always and everywhere it is one and 
 the same light which illumines our diverging paths : that 
 spiritual light, without which the European universities 
 would never have come into being, the light of Chris- 
 tianity, the bearer of which is the Church. We give 
 testimony to this to the present day, by bestowing 
 
88 IRIS. 
 
 degrees only in the name of the Triune God. And in 
 this relation to the Church, there is no oppressive 
 restraint. So far is Christianity from enslaving science, 
 that the latter owes to it its emancipation and freedom. 
 And therefore our predecessors, in bestowing the first 
 degrees in the year 1743, after making the renunciatio 
 in nomine Sacrosanctce Trinitatis, designated the cap which 
 they put on the heads of the new Doctors, signum lihertatis. 
 ^Nevertheless the academic filei impositio cannot 
 properly claim this meaning, which was transferred to 
 it from Eoman law. The four-cornered cap is a clerical 
 or priestly symbol. Thus Guido Panziroli, who died a 
 member of the Faculty of Law in Padua in 1599, pro- 
 ceeding on this more correct view, says : " The insignia 
 of our Doctors are gown and pileus quadratus, such as 
 the priests wear, to indicate that the priesthood of justice 
 (justiticB sacerdotium) is committed to those who are 
 created teachers of law." Yes, the ministry of science is 
 a priesthood. For science ministers to truth, and truth 
 is the divinely established element, that which endures 
 and approves itself ; as the last ground, God Himself is 
 the truth of all things, and therefore science of the right 
 kind is a priestly service of God. The Theological Faculty 
 serves the God of grace, who has shown mercy to sinful 
 humanity in Christ Jesas. The Faculty of Jurists serves 
 the God of law, who has established the family and the 
 State and nations. The Medical Faculty serves the God 
 of life, who has ordained the laws of life and death. 
 And the Philosophical Faculty serves the God of wisdom, 
 who has implanted in the human mind the impulse to 
 analyse all that is into its final elements and bases. It 
 
ACADEMIC OFFICIAL. DEESS AND ITS COLOURS. 89 
 
 is one and the same God whom they all serve, only He 
 reveals Himself in manifold ways in different domains. 
 They are children of one truth, as colours are the 
 children of one light. Light is one, hut the colours 
 into which it falls are many. 
 
 There are universities in which from ancient times 
 only two colours have been used, one for each pair of 
 Faculties, as at Leipsic and Tubingen : ^ purple for Law 
 and Medicine, violet for Theology and Philosophy. This 
 phenomenon cannot be explained even by those who 
 were nearer to the beginning of it. In answer to the 
 question why the Law Faculty wear purple, Cothmann 
 and Middendorp answer : quia regihus assidenf, i.e. because 
 they rise to the dignities which are nearest to princes. 
 But Thomasius in his original work De Jure circa colores, 
 or of law in relation to colour, is not satisfied with this 
 answer, for in Leipsic not only does the Dean of Law 
 wear a purple mantle, but also the Dean of Medicine. 
 Or might he have been thinking of the old well-known 
 saying : Dat Galenus opes et Justinianus honores (Galen 
 gives wealth and Justinian honours) ? He is still more 
 exercised by the question, why the theologians have not 
 purple but violet ; and he thinks it is to be explained by 
 the i'act, that originally there were only magistri, not 
 doctores theologice. That is true. An Imperial rescript of 
 Charles V. to the University of Vienna in regard to the 
 
 1 At Tubingen tlie Bachelor of Philosophy [Arts] wore a round 
 violet-blue cap ; the Bachelor of Theology, a four-cornered purple 
 one. See Klupsel, Geschichte der Univ. Tubingen, p. 18. The jurists, 
 also, on being promoted received a violet-blue. See Muther, Der 
 Beformationsjurist Schiirpf, p. 7. 
 
"90 IRIS. 
 
 burning of Luther's , writings is addressed : " To the 
 worthy, our dear, pious, and faithful, etc., Eector, Masters, 
 and Doctors." But the theological Masters have the pre- 
 cedence here as usual ; and therefore the name of Master 
 does not avail to explain the violet ^ worn by them, and 
 which in dignity is certainly inferior to purple. 
 
 Our university having four colours, one for each of its 
 Faculties, we have not such riddles to perplex us. We 
 have not yellow for the colour of Philosophy, as at 
 Strassburg. We can also boast that it is not with us as 
 at Gottingen, Strassburg, and the Prussian uni\ersities, 
 where two Faculties have a different red assigned them, an 
 arrangement in which there appears a strange vacillation 
 as to which purple belongs and to which scarlet. Purple is 
 excluded from our colours, yet not quite. For if it is asked 
 where it comes in, the Vice-Eector of this university has 
 the honour above the Eectors of the two national sister uni- 
 versities, to answer that, as is shown by the royal portrait ' 
 over my head, it is worn by our Rector Magnijlcentissimus. 
 
 If now we examine the four colours of our Faculties, it 
 deserves to be remarked that, when taken along with the 
 white, which is common to all the Faculties, they are the 
 five liturgical colours of the Western Church,* the con- 
 
 ^ Color Coeruleus est excellentior, postponitur tamen aureo et purpurea 
 (Blue is the more excellent colour, but it ranks after gold and purple). 
 See Linnaus, Jus Publ. Imperii Romano-Germanici, vi. 6. 64^65. The 
 Undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, wore togam cohris 
 violacei (a gown of violet colour) to distinguish him from the Doctors, 
 who wore toga cocdnea (a scarlet toga). 
 
 " An oil-painting of the reigning King of Bavaria, Maximilian IL, 
 in his coronation robes. — Tr. 
 
 ' See the Ruhricce generates prefixed to every edition of the Missa, 
 No. xviii. ; comp. Hefele's Beitrage, vol. ii. p. 156. 
 
ACADEMIC OFFICIAL DRRSS AND ITS COLOURS. 91 
 
 stant use of which is attested from about the year 1200. 
 Thus again is indicated the close connection between the 
 Church and science. 
 
 The black of Theology seems, but only seems, to be 
 most easily explained. For neither in the Old nor New 
 Testament Scriptures is black to be found among the 
 colours of holy places or of divine worship. Only when 
 the priests of Jerusalem were unfit for service did they 
 V7ear, black. And when we reflect that the gospel of 
 the New Testament announces not shadows but realities, 
 not death but a life which overcomes death, not of 
 gloomy mourning but blessed joy, that the watchword of 
 the New Testament is, " The night is far spent, the day 
 is at hand" (Rom. xiii. 12), and the apostolic confession, 
 " We are not of the night, nor of darkness " (1 Thess. 
 V. 5), it will be obvious that the colour of shadows, of 
 mourning and of death, that no-colour which swallows 
 up all light and reflects none, is wholly unsuitable for 
 New Testament teachers ; and therefore white, not black, 
 was the liturgical colour of the early Church, and it was 
 the monkish system which first brought black into 
 honour. What, then, is the significance of Christian 
 theologians being dressed in black? The best answer 
 of antiquity is : qida mundo mortui ccelestia consedantur 
 (because, dead to the world, they pursue heavenly things) : 
 a fine answer when it applies, a bad answer if thereby 
 a dispensation is given to the other Faculties consigning 
 them to secularity. 
 
 It is only the glaring red of the Legal Faculty which 
 supplies its own explanation, and yet I have not found 
 this explanation put in a brief and pithy form by any 
 
92 IRIS. 
 
 ancient author. I have consulted many libraries, and 
 with this result, that the liturgy of the Church and 
 secular love poetry created a significant symbol of coloiir, 
 but that academical science had not made its colours 
 a matter of conscious thought. Even Goethe in his 
 Farhenlehre (Doctrine of Colour), that great poet, with 
 deep insight into natural science, and Oersted in his 
 two chapters on the Natural History of the Beautiful,^ 
 that great naturalist of poetic insight, — even these two 
 have left the colours of the Faculties unnoticed. And 
 the most recent writers on the symbolism of colour leave 
 us wholly in the dark, though one has found leisure to 
 inquire what is the meaning of the Prussian national 
 colours in Homer. Thus, unless I am to do violence to 
 isolated notices from the works of ancient authors, giving 
 them a forced connection, I am thrown on my own 
 resources and the indulgence of this august assembly, — 
 
 Unb fo laffet ou^ bte Sfartcn 
 STOid^ na^ meiner Qtrt uerfunbcn, 
 
 D^ne SBunben, o'^nc SiJarben, 
 SKit ber IafUd;ften ber ©iinben.i 
 
 There are four spheres of life with which the four 
 Faculties have to do : the mystical, the political, the 
 physiological, and the speculative. The colours follow 
 this division. 
 
 Theology has to do with the inner or mysterious life of 
 
 1 So grant me too, in my o-vm fashion. 
 
 My views of colours to submit ; 
 
 Witliout or wound or other passion, 
 
 With sin the lightest to remit. — Te. 
 
 Last lines of the poem entitled " Dem Cromatiker," Werke, i. 328. 
 
ACADEMIC OFFICIAL DKESS AND ITS COLOURS. 93 
 
 man, which is determined by grace. We bear our treasure, 
 says Scripture regarding this mortal life, in earthen vessels 
 (2 Cor. iv. 7). And of the God of revelation it says: 
 " The Lord said that He would dwell in the thick dark- 
 ness" (1 Kings viii. 12), for when He reveals Himself 
 He does it so as at the same time to hide Himself from 
 the eyes of the profane. With this God of revelation, 
 and with the life flowing out of and maintained by His 
 grace. Theology has to do. And therefore to it black is 
 allotted, for black is the colour of night, and so of 
 mystery. The mystery of grace is in itself pure light, 
 but on a dark ground, and behind a dark veil, through 
 which only faith penetrates. 
 
 Jurisprudence has to do with the social life of man, 
 which is determined by tradition and the letter of the 
 law. The most crying breach of legal social order is the 
 blood-red sin of murder, and the extreme satisfaction 
 which is paid to the order of society thus outraged is 
 the penalty of death. Therefore our Legal Faculty, as 
 wielding the bloody sentence awarded to the deed of 
 blood, has scarlet allotted to it ; for its burning red is the 
 colour of fire, and therefore of jealousy and inexorable 
 severity. 
 
 Medicine has for its domain the natural life of man 
 and of animals generally, which is determined by 
 physical and, in its higher departments, physiological or 
 even psychological laws. Its occupation with the lifeless 
 body is only a means to an end, for its final object is the 
 knowledge and healing of the living. And therefore 
 green is allotted to it, for green is the colour of plants, 
 and so of that organic life which breaks forth from an 
 
94 IRIS. 
 
 inorganic basis, and which blossoms and decays in accord- 
 ance with natural laws. 
 
 And Philosophy finds its home in the life of human 
 thought, which is determined by logical laws and the 
 ideal tendency native to the mind, with the world of 
 phenomena for a background. To it blue is allotted, 
 of which an old theological author — quoted by Goethe 
 — says, that it means "marking and thinking." Such 
 is really the case. It is not only on physical 
 grounds that dark blue and violet light most appro- 
 priately represents spiritual reflection rising to the 
 immaterial ; it is still further appropriate from the fact 
 that it suggests the blue of the sky, with the mirror of 
 it in the deep sea and the blue summits of distant 
 mountains. Therefore blue is the colour of Philosophy, 
 and it is in keeping with the nature of this colour that 
 the Philosophical Faculty is the least sharply defined. 
 Moreover, the science of the ideal world is reminded by its 
 blue most nearly related to black, of its relationship to 
 the science of mystery ; for Philosophy and Theology are 
 sisters, which never fall out except when they do not 
 understand one another. 
 
 In the olden times there was many a fight about the 
 rank of the Faculties. On the question whether the 
 Faculty of Law or that of Medicine should have the 
 precedence, whole volumes were written. H. J. Scheurl,^ 
 
 ^ Heinricli Julius Scheurl in his Dissertationum politicarum Decas, 
 4, § 34 : Consuetudine potius quam jure ceteris Facultatibus postponi- 
 tur philosopliica, quse duoere ordinem istum disoiplinarum (sola 
 Theologia excepta) debet, quern nunc magno cum Ecclesise ac 
 Eeipublicse detrimento claudit. 
 
ACADEMIC OFriCUL DEESS AND ITS COLOURS. 95 
 
 Professor of PhilosppHy &t Helmstadt, maintains that the 
 Philosophical Faculty should come immediately after the 
 Theological, and that it is the last at present he holds to 
 be magno cum Ecelesim ac Beipuhlicm detrimento (greatly 
 to the detriment of Church and State). No wonder, says 
 Freinshemius/ tha,t the Theological Faculty is chief ; the 
 Popes honoured themselves when they gave it this honour. 
 They gave the second place to the Juridical Faculty, on 
 account of the canon law ; and to the Medical next, by 
 way of recognising their physicians. But Philosophy was 
 thennil; and when it became something, it had to content 
 itself, like a guest arriving too late, with the last place. 
 
 In this, as in many other instances, the old authors 
 (for Freinshemius does not stand alone) show themselves 
 incapable of understanding the idea which lies in a 
 historical fact. The order of the Faculties which still 
 subsists is to be accounted for, so even Brehm^ says, as 
 
 ' So Treinsheim literally in his Diatribe de Prceced. Elector, et 
 Cardinalium. His words are ; Ne miremur, si Pontifices maxime 
 honorarunt ordinem, in quo ipsi honorabantur. Is autein turn 
 Theologorum vooabatur. Juris civilis nulla dum erat notitia, 
 Pontificium obtinebat ; bujus ergo Professores, jure suo locum prinio 
 proxinium nacti, mox etiam Juris Justinianei consultos eodem perdux- 
 erunt, prsesertim postquam utriusque fieri coepere. Neque sperni 
 Medici poterant, quorum opera ipsi quoque Pontiiices \itebantur. 
 Philosophia qusB turn erat nihil habebat, cur de primatu contenderet 
 . . . Postquam eraersit, jam occupatus erat locus, et . . . infimum 
 in locum coacta est, secundum legem convivalem opinor, quas sedes 
 incoramodiores decernit tarde venientibus. More to the same effect 
 in liter, De Honoribus et Oradibus academieis. 
 
 ^ Brehm in his AltertUmern, Gesch. und neuerer Statistik der hdhen 
 Schulen (1783), says in so many words, following older authorities, 
 p. 147 f.: "Die heutige Einriclitung der Facultaten ist eine 
 Erfindung der Clerisei," etc. (The present arrangements of the 
 Faculties is an invention of the clergy.) 
 
96 IBIS. 
 
 an invention of the clergy ! And yet in Paris, where 
 the Theological first arose, no other Faculty had a right to 
 the Eectorship, except the Philosophical. At Heidelberg, 
 following the example of Paris, none but the Faculty of 
 Philosophy bore the academic mace. And at the ultra- 
 clerical Ingolstadt only the Dean of Philosophy was 
 entitled on the day of the patron, or rather patroness, of 
 the Faculty (for it was St. Catherine), to march in pro- 
 cession cum sceptris. And why ? Because the Faculty 
 of Philosophy, says the annalist of Ingolstadt,^ is the first 
 teacher of the youth of the university, because she is the 
 foundation and basis of the so-called higher Faculties, and 
 because these are all under the deepest obligation to her 
 tanquam fideli matri. He thinks of the Philosophical 
 Faculty much more truly and honourably than Kant. 
 For his mode of allaying the strife of the Faculties is so 
 poor, that he says of the Philosophical Faculty, with proud 
 modesty, it comes last, because "it alone is concerned 
 with studies which are not taken as authoritative at 
 the command of a superior." But we, most honoured 
 colleagues, have only to look to our colours ; we need 
 neither so bad a Menenius Agrippa nor a better one. 
 We wear the four colours on white, for as all colours 
 are children of the white light, so all the Faculties are 
 children of one truth ; and each serves in its own way 
 the God of truth, the Father of lights. 
 
 Fellow-students, who are putting yourselves under this 
 fourfold light of the Frederico-Alexandrina, see that you 
 do not put asunder what that divine wisdom, which 
 
 1 Valentin Eotmar, in the work began by him, Annales Ingol- 
 stadiensis Academice. 
 
ACADEMIC OFFICIAL DRESS AND ITS COLOURS. 97 
 
 presides in history, has made one ! Whether gathered 
 into societies ( Vereine) or not, your colours certainly form 
 a still more variegated display. May they all reflect the 
 one light, the light of truth and science, nobility of 
 disposition, purity of morals ! May they all be like the 
 colours of the rainbow, which do not stand apart in 
 hostile isolation, but together form the symbol of peace ! 
 Yes, may God make the year of my fasces a year of peace, 
 and pour out the fulness of His blessing on professors and 
 students, and on the royal purple ! 
 
V. 
 
 Eiit STalmutr anti Colours. 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOURS. 
 
 In contradistinction to the Torah, i.e. the five books of 
 the Mosaic law, the Talmud is the codex of the orally 
 transmitted law, which completes the former in various 
 ways, expounding it, treating points of casuistry, and 
 defining many subjects left indefinite. 
 
 This codex, like the Justinian, covers every domain of 
 law, whether applying to the State, the individual, or the 
 family, whether civil or criminal. Here _we have all 
 these departments regulated by the Jewish spirit, as in 
 the other by the Roman. Its main portion, however, 
 relates to all the sides and points of the religious 
 ceremonial, by which Jewish life, both individual and 
 social, is regulated down to its minutest particulars. 
 And it is not mere conclusions as to what is valid in 
 law which are set forth in this codex, under the appro- 
 priate rubrics. The discussions are given. We see, as in 
 the action of a drama, how the result is reached through 
 the conliict of opinions and the arguments pro and con. 
 Learned men and schools of learning belonging to five 
 centuries, the first five of our era, take part in the 
 discussion ; and the language of this jurisprudence and 
 of its dialectic is so sharply and finely cut, that in 
 
102 lEis. 
 
 absolute contrast to clear and full exposition, it passes 
 over into thought - ciphers and thought - abbreviations. 
 It may be safely affirmed, that in the whole range of 
 human literature there is not, a more extraordinary 
 writing than this Talmud, I should rather say these 
 Talmuds ; for there are two of them, one edited in 
 Palestine about the year 400, and preserved only in an 
 imperfect condition, and the more perfect and authorita- 
 tive one, which received its final form at least a century 
 later in Babylonia, under the then reigning Sassanid 
 dynasty. The former, with the commentaries indispens- 
 ably belonging to it, embraces four, and the latter twelve 
 folio volumes. 
 
 This gigantic work, however, contains here and there 
 lighter and brighter parts of a general, religious, and 
 ethical nature, which, like oases in the desert, afford 
 rest to the ,tired faculties. Tlie hair-splitting exposi- 
 tion of law, Halacha, is followed now and again by a 
 digression into proverbs, parables, and narratives, the 
 so-called Hagada, of which Heinrich Heine in one of 
 the Hebrew melodies of his Eomancero speaks as a 
 master : — 
 
 Se^tre nfier, bie <§ogaba, 
 
 SffiiU ic^ cinen ©arten ncnnen, 
 einen ©arten, :^od^.)):^antoftifc^ 
 
 Unb ijergleic^tar jcnem anbern, 
 
 SBelc^er eBenfatlg bcm SSobm 
 
 aSa'btjIonS cntftiroffen »eilanb — 
 ©arten bcr ©cniiramig, 
 
 5l^te8 SCBunberaerf ber SBelt. 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOURS. 103 
 
 •§octl ouf cofoffaren ®aulen 
 
 5Pratigten 5Patmen unb (Sl)^3«f|cn, 
 ©olborangen, SBtumcnfceete, 
 
 SKarmorfiitbcr, and) ©)3ring6runnen, 
 
 5tKeg f[ug xinb fejl scrtunben 
 
 Surd^ unja^t'qe >§ange=SBrucEen, 
 2)ie wie Sc^Iinge^jftansen au8[a^n 
 
 Unb iBorauf ft£^ SSfigel wiegtm, 
 
 ©rofe 6unte ernfle SSoget, 
 
 S^iefe ®enfer, bic nict;t flngeti, 
 SOBa^rcnb fie umflattcrt fleineS 
 
 3eif!gijolt, bag tufiig triBert.i 
 
 ' But the latter, the Hagada, 
 I should rather call a garden ; 
 Yes, a garden, most fantastic. 
 Comparable to that other. 
 
 Which in days of yore was planted 
 In the town of Babylon, — 
 Great Semiramis's garden. 
 That eighth wonder of the world. 
 
 High upon colossal pillars 
 Palms and cypresses were standing, 
 Golden oranges, fair flow'r beds. 
 Marble statues, gushing fountains, — 
 
 Firmly, skilfully united 
 By unnumber'd hanging bridges. 
 Which appeared like climbing plants. 
 And whereon the birds were rocking, — 
 
 Solemn birds, large, many-colour'd. 
 All deep thinkers, never singing, 
 While around them finches flutter'd. 
 Keeping up a merry twitter. — Bowrinq. 
 
104 IRIS, 
 
 After a short saunter in this Hagada-garden, the tussle 
 of the dialectic athletes ("Fechterschule der dialektischen 
 Athleten ") begins with reinvigorated force ; and the 
 matter soon again becomes so difficult, that even the 
 Jewish disciple of the Talmud, in order not to lose the 
 thread or the situation, begins to cantillate and gesticu- 
 late and sway the body to and fro. So subtle is it, so 
 unintelligible apart from Jewish manners and traiuing, 
 and withal couched in such mysterious brevity, that the 
 man who has not grown up in this atmosphere of thought, 
 and been schooled from his youth in its forms and speech 
 and its modes of legal inference, finds himself, as it were, 
 in a labyrinth of woods or mountains, from which there 
 is no hope of escape without a guide. 
 
 The Talmud may be regarded from various sides. It 
 may be looked at from the standpoint of the history of 
 law. To consider it thus demands a thorough train- 
 ing in jurisprudence, without which the law contained 
 in it can neither be reconstructed in its systematic con- 
 nection, nor in its historical development and assimilation 
 of Greek and Eoman elements. Only the faintest begin- 
 nings have yet been made toward the accomplishment of 
 this task in such a way as the spirit of modern science 
 demands. The learned and able jurist, Edward Gans, 
 in his great work, Das Erlrecht in weltgeschichtlicher 
 Entwickelung (The Law of Inheritance as developed in 
 Universal History), treats also the Talmudic law of 
 inheritance, a task for which he was pre-eminently fitted 
 as a Christian of Jewish descent. More recently a 
 Jewish lawyer, Leopold Auerbach, began to treat 
 systematically the Talmudic law relating to bonds. The 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOUES, 105 
 
 first volume appeared in 1870, the second will probably 
 have to wait till the science of law appropriates Goethe's 
 words to the Divan, and says of itself, — 
 
 SBer ffc^ felfcfi utib anbre fennt, 
 
 SIBirt and) |ier crfennen: 
 Orient unb Dccibent 
 
 Sitib nic^t m(i)x ju trennen.^ 
 
 A second side from which it may be regarded is that 
 of the history of religion. To me, as a theologian, it 
 comes as near as the juridical is distant. If I were to 
 characterize the Talmud from this standpoint, I should 
 certainly avoid two extremes. The one is represented by 
 Emanuel Deutsch in his much-read article on the Talmud, 
 which appeared ten years ago in the Quarterly Review, 
 and which amounts to this, — ^^that the Talmud is the 
 ocean, and the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament an 
 inland sea fed from its waters. The other is the course 
 followed by August Eohlings, who has collected the 
 silliest and filthiest matter which older polemical writers 
 had extracted from the Talmud, and gives out these 
 sweepings as a representation of the whole. To form a 
 bridge between the synagogue and the Church, I should 
 prefer, without prejudice to chronological order, to bring 
 out what the Talmud contains which is related to 
 Christianity, as was to be expected, to use the words of 
 
 ^ He who knows himself and others, 
 Here will also see, 
 That the East and West, like brothers, 
 Parted ne'er shall he. — Bowbing. 
 
 {Werlce, i. 460). 
 
106 IRIS. 
 
 Eeuchliii against Pfefferkorn, iu a "book written by 
 Christ's nearest relatives." 
 
 For the present, however, the standpoint from which 
 I consider the Talmud is that of the general history of 
 culture. I shall seek to explain and illustrate by 
 examples its relation to colour, and in general to the 
 beautiful in nature. 
 
 The subject to which I wish to make a contribution is 
 one that was raised twenty years ago by Mr. Gladstone's 
 studies in Homer, which has recently been a favourite 
 theme in Germany and England. Lazarus Geiger, who 
 rose quickly into fame from 1867 by his able writings 
 on the origin of language and on the origin and develop- 
 ment of human language and reason, but who was 
 snatched away by an early death in 1870 from the 
 construction of his philosophy of history and the enjoy- 
 ment of his fame, was the investigator who made the 
 development of the colour-sense the latest order of the 
 day in the parliament of science. In the year 1867, at 
 a conference of naturalists at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in a 
 glowing discourse regarding the colour-sense of mankind 
 and its development, he showed that the organs of the 
 sense belonging to man in ancient times, as compared 
 with those of later ages, were still undeveloped, and had 
 not yet been educated to the same manifold and sharply- 
 defined perceptions. Since then. Dr. Stein in Frankfort- 
 on-the-Main, Dr. Hugo Magnus in Breslau, and others 
 have maintained that the colour-blindness which frequently 
 occurs as a defect of training, is a relic of that impotency 
 to distinguish colours, above which man has only gradually 
 risen. And a survey of ancient literature establishes the 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOURS. 107 
 
 conclusion, — for the proof I can refer to two articles of 
 the Gartenlaule of the years 1876 and 1877, — that the 
 ancients were blue-blind, and in particular blind to the 
 blue of the sky, especially of the day-sky. The observa- 
 tion from which this inference is drawn is certainly 
 striking. In vain will a word be sought in the Eigveda, 
 the Homeric poems, or the ancient Edda, in praise of the 
 lovely blue of the bright sky. So, if we take the many 
 folios of both the Talmuds, which are a thousand years 
 later, and search them through and through, it will 
 be equally impossible to find a current, unambiguous 
 adjective for the blue sky. Thus at a time when the 
 blue of the heavens is beginning to find an expression, at 
 least here and there in Greek, and still more in Eoman 
 poetry, the Semite seems to remain as insensible to it as 
 ever. Or must we suppose that the clouds of dust raised 
 by their scholastic learning conceals from the Talmudic 
 teachers the open and fair face of nature, and leaves no 
 room for any warm interest in it ? This view readily 
 suggests itself, but turns out to be untrue. 
 
 The Talmuds, along with their dry law-prose, contain 
 expressions and descriptions which betray a genuine and 
 exact observation of nature, associated with a poetical 
 style of thought. Here, for example, is a customary 
 way of marking time : " From the hind of the morning 
 over the east the light is breaking." The first rays of 
 the morning sun, by which it announces its appearance 
 before being itself visible, are compared to the fork-like 
 antlers of a stag ; and this appearance is called, Ps. xxii. 1, 
 the hind of the morning, because those antler rays precede 
 the red of dawn, which again forms the transition to 
 
108 lEis. 
 
 sunrise. The changes of the colour of the sky connected 
 with sunrise take place more quickly in the East, and 
 the sun mounts up more in a straight line. Accordingly 
 the Talmud says, the pillar of the sun, also the pillar of 
 the dawn and the pillar of the moon ascend ; and of the 
 pillar of the moon it is said, it mounts straight as a star, 
 while the pillar of the sun divides hither and thither, i.e. 
 pours out its rays on all sides. When stiR under the 
 horizon it works its way upwards, cleaving the firmament, 
 as it were. Its breaking through is called its budding ; 
 it stands in the sky purple or golden, like an opened 
 rose. And the time between the down-going and setting 
 of the sun, when the lower half of the horizon has lost 
 its colour, while the upper half still retains it, — this 
 twilight is called the time between the suns. When the 
 walls of the horizon grow black, it is evening ; and when 
 the upper half of the sky has lost its colour and has 
 passed through grey to black, and the light of the stars 
 shines from their dark background, it is night. 
 
 Such and similar descriptions of nature need not 
 surprise us, for the Israelites could not follow the ordin- 
 ances of their religion without careful observation of the 
 heavens. The very first page of the Talmuds, in propos- 
 ing the question when the evening prayer is to be said, 
 plunges into exact determinations of the evening as it 
 passes into night with- the two twilights as its boundary, 
 and the rising of the pillar of the morning as the dividing 
 line between the night half and the day half of the whole 
 day. The zenith of the night half is midnight, which, as 
 is said, David knew, from the fact that the north wind, 
 which usually rises about this time, set the strings of the 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOUKS. 109 
 
 harp, which hung over his bed, a-sounding, so that, 
 awaked thereby from his light sleep, he broke out 
 in the words of the Psalm: Awake up, harp and 
 cithern, I will awake the dawn ! And in the Tract 
 on the day of Atonement, it is related that when 
 the ashes had been removed from the altar of burnt- 
 offering, the person presiding called on the priests to 
 go out and see whether the time had come for slaying 
 the victim, as this must not be done so long as the night 
 lasted. If the moment had come, he who first observed 
 it called out, It lightens, — that is to say, the morning, or 
 according to another interpretation, the morning star. 
 Or he said. The whole eastern sky is red. And then the 
 priests standing under the watch-tower asked again. Does 
 the red reach as far as Hebron ? If he answered. Yes, 
 this was the watchword for beginning the morning 
 worship. It is added that the latter question was put 
 because on one occasion, on a cloudy morning, rays of 
 moonlight, which shot here and there through drifting 
 clouds, were mistaken for rays of the sun, and the morn- 
 ing lamb was sacrificed sooner than it should have been. 
 When the Pharisees and Sadducees asked of Jesus a 
 sign from heaven. He refused, saying : Ye hypocrites, ye 
 can discern the face of the sky, and can ye not discern 
 the signs of this time ? In fact, the law itself required 
 sharp observation of the appearance of the sky, to fix the 
 times of worship and the feasts which depended on the 
 phases of the moon ; and it would be extraordinary if 
 those eyes dutifully directed to the sky had been unable 
 to see and distinguish blue among its colours and hues, 
 especially when we take into consideration how powerfully 
 
110 IRIS. 
 
 the development and exercise of the colour-sense were 
 furthered by the practical religious duties required by 
 the law, especially in the domain of those examinations 
 by which the diseased were distinguished from the 
 healthy. 
 
 There is no passage in the Bible where we find so 
 many names of colours as in that early portion re- 
 garding leprosy, in Lev. xii.-xiv., which has excited the 
 wonder of modern as well as ancient physicians. The 
 traditional law has introduced many refinements into the 
 semiotic (doctrine of symptoms) given in the Mosaic law. 
 There is an innocent lepra alba. But the white of the 
 mark of leprosy is reckoned malignant in the following 
 ascending scale : white like the membrane of an egg ; 
 white like the lime-coating of the temple ; white like the 
 wool of a washed lamb a day old ; white like snow. If 
 the white is mixed with red, the colour rises in malig- 
 nancy in the following four degrees : according as it 
 resembles the reddish white of a cupful of milk, with 
 which there have been mixed two, four, eight, or sixteen 
 drops of blood. In this connection it is not forgotten 
 that one and the same spot of leprosy will show dull 
 white on the fair - complexioned German and bright 
 white on the dark Ethiopian ; and it is laid down as a 
 rule that the standard in judging both shall be the 
 intermediate complexion of the Israelite, designated as 
 of the colour of boxwood (as at the present day that of 
 the natives of Palestine and Syria is described as wheat- 
 coloured) ; and the corresponding colour of the painter's 
 palette is used in measuring the degree. In the case of 
 house leprosy — that is, when the walls are overgrown with 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOURS. Ill 
 
 leprous-looking streaks of lichen — the following colours 
 are distinguished : yellowish like wax and like the yolk 
 of an egg ; iridescent green like the wings of the peacock 
 and like a sprig of dates; reddish like the beautiful 
 carmine of the sea, i.e. the deep red, which is sometimes 
 seen where the sea is under shadow, while the part lying 
 under the sun is glancing in emerald green. 
 
 The same nice development of the colour-sense is seen in 
 determining the colours of unclean blood. Here we find 
 the following red shades : red like water poured on the red 
 earth of the valley of Beth-Kerem ; red like the mixture 
 of two-thirds water and one-third red wine of Sharon ; 
 red like the red of the lily or the blood from a recent 
 wound ; and in addition to these we have : black like 
 the dregs of ink at the bottom of the bottle ; yellow like 
 a beautiful crocus petal. The school of Schammai also 
 declares unclean the colour of the juice of the fenugreek ^ 
 and of roast meat. The yellow-green colour of the ethrog, 
 or apple of paradise, is matter of dispute. 
 
 It is well known what anxiously minute rules the 
 Jewish butcher has to observe to prevent any beast from 
 being eaten on which there are symptoms of disease. 
 The colour of the lung especially is subjected to the most 
 careful examination. It is reckoned healthy if it is black 
 like the Eastern eye paint, — that is, tending to blueish, — 
 or green like leek, or red, or liver-coloured; but it is 
 declared to be unsuitable for eating if the colour is black 
 as ink, yellowish-green like hops, yellow like the yolk of 
 an egg, yellow like saffron, yellow-red like raw flesh. 
 
 Is this not a richly variegated sampler of colours ? 
 ^ Ger. Fonkraul = lngonella fcenum grmcum, Linn. 
 
112 IRIS. 
 
 Blue does not occur among them, for black eye-paint is 
 not azure, as the great mediaeval expositor of the Baby- 
 loiiian Talmud alleges. The absence of blue arises from 
 the nature of the case. The colour blue was known, for 
 blue dyes, especially purple-blue and indigo-blue, were 
 known from high antiquity. The so-called fringes which 
 the ancient Israelite wore at the four corners of his linen 
 or woollen coat consisted of purple-blue woollen thread, 
 or of tassels of mixed purple-blue and white. Indigo as a 
 substitute for purple-blue is strictly forbidden ; God will 
 take vengeance — so it runs — on him who puts halwilan 
 (in Greek kaldinon), i.e. indigo-blue, for purple-blue on 
 his dress. 
 
 We accidentally learn from the discussion of the ques- 
 tion whether a dress itself purple-blue needs such fringes, 
 that blue was a common colour for the upper dress. 
 There were also many other colours used for dress, and 
 to denote them exactly it was necessary either to name 
 them, as in the case of purple-blue, by the dye, or by 
 somethina; which had the colour. A Jew wished to sell his 
 coat. Asked how it looked, he answered. Like mangold 
 taken from the ground. This is praised for its distinct- 
 ness, in opposition to the incorrectness and obscurity of 
 Galilean description ; the questioner knew that the piece 
 of dress had the colour of the yellow vegetable drawn 
 out of the ground. If the man had used the correspond- 
 ing colour-name, the questioner would not have known 
 whether it was yellow, or green, or even blue. For the same 
 word signifies green like grass, or yellow like jaundice, 
 or pale like death. Anyhow, it may also denote blue. For 
 example, blue-purple is introduced in one place, saying : 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOURS. 113 
 
 My nature is purple, but my appearance like the grasses. 
 As compared with white, green also denotes all sorts of 
 dark hues. " His skin is green," means in Arabic, He is 
 of dark colour, and therefore of pure Arab race. Black 
 land is in Arabic equivalent to green land, and white 
 land to waste land destitute of vegetation. In this sense 
 of green, equivalent to dark, the Midrasch says of Esther, 
 whose Persian name denotes star, and whose national 
 name, Hadassah, means myrtle, " She was greenish, but 
 the thread of grace was woven round her." A green 
 face would be an enormity according to our ideas, even 
 in a wood or water nymph ; it passes with us only as a 
 hyperbole for ugliness, as in the Eachel of Sacher-Masoch's 
 Jewish tales : " A small green face, covered with heat- 
 spots, and with red swollen eyes." But the language of 
 the Semites uses the word green in a laudatory way, not 
 only for a dark complexion, — sebz, i.e. green is applied to a 
 brunette among the Persians, — but it compares the glossy 
 black of a fine beard to the moist deep green of the 
 myrtle. Even we Westerns know of a knight Bluebeard. 
 No doubt it was the anger of the fairy which gave 
 him a beard of this colour; but Arabian poets, with 
 perfect seriousness, compare the sprouting down on the 
 face of the youth with lilies or violets blossoming between 
 roses, that is to say his cheeks, and myrtles, that is to 
 say his hair.^ Human speech, in designating colours, 
 treats them as phenomena of light, and that essentially 
 only in two categories, bright and dark. Assigning blue 
 to the category of the dark, the Semite calls that eye 
 disease which we call the grey and black cataract, the blue 
 1 The short curly hair of the Buddha is also painted blue. 
 
114 IBIS. 
 
 cataract. Even bright blue gravitates in the thought of 
 the ancients to the category dark. An Indian poet calls 
 the sky, as it appears in rainy weather, dark like flax 
 blossom. So much in his feeling is the brightness of the 
 blue overborne by the impression of cold and faintness 
 of light. 
 
 Besides the upper garment, with its purple-blue tasselSj 
 the Jewish dress also included bright-coloured shoes, or 
 black ones with white fastenings ; wholly black ones 
 were regarded as heathenish. Once on a time a Eabbi, 
 Baroka by name, stood in the market-place of B^-Lefet, 
 one of the many Palestinian towns that have passed away. 
 There stepped to his side Elia, that Elia for whom, down 
 to the present day, at the feast on occasion of a circum- 
 cision, a seat is placed whereon the guest from the spirit- 
 world may seat himself. Do you think, asked he of the 
 Eabbi, there is on this market-place any child of the world 
 to come ? The Eabbi, with the severity of a moral censor, 
 thought no. While they were speaking, they saw a man 
 with black shoes and without blue fringes to his cloak. 
 That, said Elia, is a child of the world to come. There- 
 upon Eabbi Baroka ran after him, and asked him, What 
 is thy occupation ? But he put him off, and said. Let me 
 go, and come to-morrow. When he repeated his question 
 the next day, the man told him he was a gaoler, and had 
 to use every means of force and cunning to keep the 
 prisoners in order, and to defend the females among them, 
 especially a Jewish maid, from the importunity of the 
 males. Then Baroka asked. Why, then, hast not thou blue 
 fringes, and why wearest thou black shoes ? He answered, 
 I go out and in among heathens, and bear myself like a 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOURS. 115 
 
 heathen, that' they may not know I am a Jew, and that 
 when any evil device is going on against my people, I 
 may inform our teachers of it secretly, that they may 
 implore God's mercy to bring it to nought ; hence my 
 haste yesterday. Meanwhile there came up two, who 
 were going hand in hand like brothers, and he said, These 
 also are children of the world to come. Then Baroka 
 asked, What, then, is your occupation ? We are merry- 
 makers, they answered. We cheer the sorrowing, or if 
 two have fallen out, we seek to restore them to peace 
 with one another. 
 
 That is a specimen of the Hagada, — of the " kleinen 
 Zeisigvolks, das lustig trillert " (the finches keeping up 
 a merry twitter). Having introduced it to relieve the 
 tedium of our discourse, we return to our Kaschja, i.e. 
 our thorny subject of discussion. Is it possible that a 
 people whose males reckoned purple-blue indispensable 
 to their dress, could have been blind to the blue of the 
 sky ? Dr. Stein, in the Gartenlaube for the year 1877, 
 contends that they were, venturing to maintain that that 
 purple-blue was rather a shade of black. Now it is cer- 
 tainly true that purple-blue is related to purple- red, as 
 dark blue to dark red ; but since purple-red passed for 
 red, and purple-blue for blue, neither of them was regarded 
 by the Israelites as black, nor even as a shade of black. 
 For white and purple-blue are the prevailing colours 
 among the four used in the Mosaic service ; whereas 
 black is deliberately and absolutely excluded from the Old 
 Testament worship, because, as Gustav Jahu says in his 
 paraphrase of the Song of Songs, " Schwarz is vor Gott 
 verdammet, denn Gottes Kleid ist Licht " (black is of God 
 
116 lEIS. 
 
 condemned, for God is clothed in light). Moreover, the 
 purple-blue of the fringes and of the cloth with which 
 the ark was covered on the inarch, is expressly explained 
 as symbolically pointing to the sapphire-blue of the sky. 
 To this Dr. Stein answers, "Perhaps the sapphire, then, 
 produced a similar impression to the black of the sky on 
 the eye of the ancients." But no, it had for them, as 
 for us, no other than a blue colour, and when it was 
 particularly beautiful, a deep blue colour like the lapis- 
 lazuli, which was embraced under the name sapphire. 
 And it is the blue of the day, not the night sky, which 
 is compared in the giving of the law (Ex. xxiv. 10) to 
 sapphire-blue, when it is said of the representatives of 
 Israel summoned to Sinai : They saw over them as it 
 were a paved work of transparent sapphire, and as it 
 were the very heaven for clearness. But undoubtedly 
 this comparison of sapphire-blue with the clearness of 
 heaven is an isolated ray in the darkness ; nowhere else 
 is the blue of the sky mentioned, not even in the Arabian 
 poetry hundreds of years later, though it is impossible to 
 maintain that the Bedouin was blind to the ultramarine 
 of the sky overarching his grey wilderness. What under- 
 goes historical development is not the power of seeing 
 taken by itself, the conditions of which are fixed once 
 for all by natural laws, but the guidance and exercise of 
 sight with reflective observation superadded. Accord- 
 ingly it was the language of the Arabian schools which 
 first coined a word for bright blue, calling it sky- 
 coloured (samdm) or water - coloured (mdwi). But 
 down to the present day the Hebrew has invented 
 no adjective for blue, and would be greatly perplexed 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOUES. 117 
 
 if he had, for example, to translate Euckert's two 
 lines, — 
 
 ©ie ©onn' if} eine gotbne 0lof' im aSIaucn, 
 2)ie Slof ij} cine tote ©onn' im ®mnen . . .^ 
 
 As a makeshift he uses Greek adjectives, such as haldinon, 
 indigo-coloured, or ianthinon, violet-coloured, and has only 
 a substantive which denotes the violet of the shell-dye. 
 To express the time when the dawn passes into the 
 morning, the Talmud says not only as soon as dog and 
 wolf, or ass and wild-ass can be distinguished, but also 
 as soon as purple-blue and white, or purple-blue and 
 leek colour, — that is, green, — can be distinguished. 
 Thus they had the power of distinguishing blue and 
 green if they wished. The blue of the sky was also 
 known, but it is true that it did not stir the Semite to 
 enthusiasm ; language failed him here, his colour-sense 
 was never fully at home in the upper blue half of the 
 colours of the spectrum. White and black, and red and 
 yellow, or green, are reckoned as the colours of the sky ; 
 but blue is not among them, it is only indirectly men- 
 tioned, and in isolated cases. 
 
 The comparison of a domain which is nearly akin, 
 namely, those phenomena of colour in which strong 
 emotions are wont to have a place, shows how careful 
 we must be to avoid rash conclusions. The feeling of 
 shame has the deepest religious significance both in the 
 Old and New Testaments. The fact that men, who had 
 no occasion for shame before they sinned, have felt 
 shame since the fall, is one reason why they are capable 
 
 1 The sun's a golden rose in the blue (sky), 
 The rose is a red sun on the green (earth). — Tr. 
 
118 IRIS. 
 
 of redemption. Yet neither in the books of the Old, 
 nor in those of the New Testament, is the blush of 
 shame (schamrote) mentioned. Luther, indeed, frequently 
 translates "to be ashamed" by "to blush" (schamrot 
 werden), but neither in Hebrew nor in Greek are the 
 words thus translated colour-names. When colour is 
 assigned to the face as an accompaniment to the feeling 
 of shame, it is not red, but white, as in Isa. xxix. 22 : 
 " Jacob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his face 
 now wax pale (white)." In both the Talmuds, also, " to 
 make white " is the same as to put to shame ; to put 
 one's neighbour publicly to shame is reckoned as great a 
 sin as bloodshed, for — such is the reason given — "red 
 disappears and white takes its place," as deadly paleness 
 comes over the mortally wounded. But it would be a 
 mistake to conclude from this, that blushing was un- 
 known among the ancient .Israelites. Darwin, in his 
 book on the expression of the emotions in men and 
 animals, has collected observations on blushing from all 
 parts of the world ; and it appears that even the negro's 
 countenance, though black as ebony, becomes more 
 deeply black, or if we may say so, purple or cinnabar- 
 black, when he is ashamed. In some parts of the 
 Talmuds, hhishing actually occurs. A pious person — so 
 runs the story — was offended, because a publican's son 
 was buried with honour by his fellow - citizens, who 
 followed his remains to the grave in a numerous pro- 
 cession. Thereupon a spirit - voice said to him in a 
 dream: My son, despise not God thy Lord! That 
 Maon (the man's name) did a good thing, which is 
 hereby recompensed to him. One day he went out to 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOURS. 119 
 
 the street, and let fall a loaf of bread. A poor man saw 
 it, and lifted it up ; but he said nothing, lest he should 
 .bring the red to his face. Thus blushing is seldom 
 mentioned, and yet it was known, as the blue sky is 
 almost never mentioned and was yet seen. 
 
 The reason why only becoming pale (white) from 
 shame is mentioned is this, that the feelings of the 
 Eastern are deeper, more sudden and more violent, than 
 those of the "Western. Eed and white give place to one 
 another according to the degree of feeling. The admir- 
 able Swedish author, August Blanche, in one of his 
 narratives introduces a young lady in a green veil, who 
 has lost a letter, and, returning in great trepidation, 
 snatches it from the finder. The latter says : " Though 
 the veil concealed her features, it could not altogether 
 hide the deep blush and deadly pallor ; it appeared to 
 me as if through the leafage of a hedge I had seen the 
 sun rapidly exchanging his gold for the silver of the 
 moon." And Levin Schucking says of a princess, who 
 was wooed by one beneath her in birth, though secretly 
 loved by her : " Growing almost deadly pale, she answered 
 with flushed countenance, You are a bold suitor." Darwin 
 heard the following account given of a young lady. In 
 a large and very distinguished company her hair was 
 caught in the button of a servant who was passing, and 
 it took considerable time till she could be disentangled. 
 Her sensation was that she blushed scarlet, and yet a 
 friend assured her that she had become deadly pale. 
 The phenomenon is easily explained. The shame arising 
 from such distress enlarges the blood-vessels, and drives 
 the blood, to the face and the nearest parts of the body ; 
 
120 IMS. 
 
 but horror contracts the arteries spasmodically, and 
 drives the blood back. Shame raised to the highest 
 degree becomes horror, and such for the most part is 
 the shame of the Oriental. I say of the Oriental, for 
 not only in the Talmud, but also in Tamil, shame is 
 called " whiteness " (vedkam). 
 
 But on the bronze-coloured face of the Eastern this 
 white looks yellow. Not long ago, we read of two 
 youths who met one another with drawn swords. The 
 one suddenly became yellow, so that the other was 
 terrified and dropped his weapon. This is an extra- 
 ordinary case. But in the Talmud it is quite a common 
 thing for one to become yellow under violent excitement. 
 The word used for this might certainly denote blue. 
 Suppressed anger makes the countenance really of a 
 leaden colour, and this, perhaps, is the explanation of 
 the fact, that in Persian deep pallor in the face, and 
 especially in the cheeks, is sometimes described as 
 becoming azure. But that in the language of the 
 Talmud it is a yellow colour which is meant, is shown 
 by the expression which is used interchangeably with it. 
 His face became crocus- or saffron-coloured. The Arabs 
 sometimes use red, but in addition to it only yellow, as 
 the colour of shame. To make the face white is with ' 
 them the same as to light it up with joy ; in a case 
 when we would pledge in a toast, the Arab wishes him 
 the white banner, i.e. he exclaims : God make his face 
 white ! But yellow is the colour of one ashamed, as 
 well as of the lover who pines away because his love 
 is not returned ; and for this reason the lover and the 
 beloved are compared to the two sides of an apple — the 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOURS. 121 
 
 loved one to the red, and the lover to the yellow. 
 When one loses his fresh complexion from shame, or 
 terror, or care, what happens to him is described as a 
 blackening of the face. A father parting with his son 
 says to him solemnly. Do not blacken my face ; desiring 
 that when he is absent he will cause him no shame or 
 grief. 
 
 The extreme limit to which the closing of the two 
 Talmuds can be brought down is the year 550. Most 
 certainly it is a full millennium which has passed since 
 then. In so long a period it is not merely our mode 
 of thought, but our ways of feeling, our tastes, our 
 passions that undergo many changes. None of us goes 
 mad about the colour or fragrance of saffron. But in 
 ancient times, down to the period of the Eoman 
 Emperors, the whole of the West was bewitched by 
 the yellow colour yielded by the stamina of the saffron ; 
 sight and smell alike knew no greater delight ; theatre 
 and circus must be sprinkled with saffron-water. Which 
 of our poets, on the other hand, has not celebrated the 
 blue sky, whereas antiquity and the Semite poets, down 
 to modern times, are as silent about it as if it had 
 no existence. And yet the oldest Indians knew the 
 beautiful lasting indigo-blue, and the old Egyptians not 
 merely, knew a mineral blue, under the name cJiesteb, 
 pre-eminently that of the lapis - lazuli, but in their 
 hieroglyphic writing they paint the sky blue, — not only 
 the sky with stars painted on it, but the sky in itself. 
 Yet what is in their mind is the dark blue of the 
 night-sky, not the bright blue of the day-sky, which 
 they call the whiteness, or brightness, or clearness of 
 
122 IRIS. 
 
 the sky. When we speak of the azure of the sky, we 
 are following the example of the Persians, who first 
 applied the blue of the lapis-lazuli to the sky. But they 
 too put the ingredient of dark in this ultramarine blue ; 
 the Persian name contrasts the azure with the bright 
 sky. Thus it is with Semite antiquity down to the 
 times of the Talmud. The day - sky passes for white, 
 for light is white. A Eabbi once made the following 
 request to Samuel ben Nachmani: I have heard thou 
 art a master of the Hagada; tell me, then, whence 
 comes the light of the world ? He answered : The Holy 
 One, blessed be He, clothes Himself in a white robe, 
 and the whole world shines with the splendour of His 
 majesty. This he said in a whisper, and the questioner 
 rejoined : Why, that is word for word the expression of 
 the Psalm — Light is Thy garment which Thou wearest ; 
 and thou dost tell it to me as a secret. He answered : 
 I heard it as a secret, so I tell it as a secret. 
 
 In another place where two kinds of wheat are dis- 
 tinguished, the dark-coloured which yields more flour, 
 and a sun-coloured which makes finer bread, this leads 
 to a discussion regarding the colour of the day-star. On 
 the one side it is maintained that the sun is red, and if 
 it is not seen by us as red during the day, this is because 
 of the weakening of our vision by the bright light. But, 
 on the other hand, it is maintained that the sun is white, 
 and that the red of the morning and evening sun, accord- 
 ing to its position in the east or west, is the reflection of 
 the fire of hell, or of the roses of Paradise. That the 
 purple appearance of the ball of the sun on a misty 
 morning is due to the reflection of light by the atmosphere 
 
THE TALMUD ANB COLOURS. 123 
 
 was certainly not known. But it was known that the 
 sun is a body in a state of glowing heat, whether a red 
 or white glow. An Arabian tradition says, that the sun 
 is daily deluged with snow and ice by seven angels, lest 
 its heat should destroy the earth ; and there is a similar 
 saying of the Eabbi Nathan, that the sun is contained 
 within a covering which the Psalmist calls its tent, and 
 in front of it is a reservoir. At the hour when it is 
 about to rise it flames up, and the Holy One, blessed be 
 He, weakens its strength by the water, lest it should 
 burn up the world. But the time will come when He 
 shall let it rise in its full glow, and while the righteous, 
 to whom it brings healing in its wings, find delight in its 
 heat ; to the ungodly it shall be the fire of hell. The 
 ancient world, the Semitic included, thought in figures. 
 Sometimes it is easy, sometimes difficult, to get beyond 
 the shell to the kernel of the thought. The Arabs have 
 a tradition, that the sun in starting on his course requires 
 to be daily put in order by seven thousand angels. The 
 underlying thought here is the heaviness of the enormous 
 ball. A Jewish Hagada gives to this thought a more 
 intelligible turn. The patriarchs in the other world, on 
 hearing from Moses what their enemies have inflicted on 
 the Jewish people, begin to weep and lament. Moses, 
 touched thereby, breaks out into abuse of the sun, because 
 he lent his light to enable the enemy to invade the 
 temple. But the sun answers : By thy life, Moses, thou 
 faithful shepherd, how could I keep dark when I was 
 allowed no rest by the powers above ; they seized me, 
 and laid on me with sixty whips of fire, and commanded 
 me, saying, Go forth, and let thy light shine ! The thought, 
 
124: IRIS. 
 
 that God blesses willingly and punishes unwillingly, is 
 here transferred to the world of nature ; it does only on 
 compulsion what God Himself only does reluctantly. 
 
 We have again got unexpectedly into the "high 
 fantastic " garden of the Hagada ; we return to the 
 proposition which we left. Among the Semites, the 
 white day represents the blue sky. A poetical word 
 regarding early sunrise : " The cheek of the sun on the 
 blue vault is changing to yellow," shows itself at once by 
 the mention of blue to be Persian, not Semitic. But 
 when another poet says of his love : She is as white as if 
 she herself were the bright mid-day sky, and her hair as 
 black as if she were the night, we at once recognise the 
 Semite by this white. 
 
 The state of the case is essentially the same among the 
 Egyptians and Chinese, Persians and Arabs. What charms 
 them in the cloudless sky of day is not the quality of the 
 light, i.e. its colour, but the quantity of the light, and 
 therefore the white in the blue. But they saw the blue, 
 for we have notices of it, though rarely, and ever more 
 rarely ; and consequently the historical proof, taken 
 especially from blue, that the retina of the ancients was 
 not developed as ours is, is far from reliable. Professor 
 Pranz Boll lately' conducted three separate investigations 
 at Pome, in which he used not less than three times fifty 
 frogs. The result he has established is, that the retina 
 of the eye, into which the great nerve of vision spreads 
 out, has a peculiar red colour ; that this network of nerve 
 vessels, consisting of a mosaic of portions partly green 
 
 ^ Soon afterwards he died, on the 19th December 1879, at the age 
 of 30. 
 
THE TALMUD AND COLOUES. 125 
 
 but mostly red, undergoes various changes as it is affected 
 by colourless or coloured light, and by blue or violet 
 (excepting ultra-violet), and that these changes probably 
 contribute to make the coloured images of the things 
 which are the objects of perception. But the soul is 
 always needed, without which it is utterly impossible to 
 understand how the various light-impressions go to form 
 the unity of the picture, how the inverted picture on the 
 retina is adjusted to show the natural position, and how 
 it is projected to its definite place in external space. In 
 reality we see not with two eyes, but with three — with 
 the two eyes of the body and the eye of the soul behind 
 them. And it is this eye of the soul in which and on 
 which there takes place that progressive development of 
 the sense of sight, and especially of colour, which is 
 traceable in the history of culture. Yes, it is not only 
 with three, but with four eyes that we see. For what a 
 difference there is between the eye of the frog, the retina 
 of which is affected by blue and violet, exactly as that 
 of man is, and the eye of the naturalist who brings a 
 reflective observation to bear on this, and draws conclu- 
 sions from it to shed light, as far as possible, on the 
 mystery of the act of vision ! The eyes of the body 
 receive images from the outer world, the eye of the soul 
 discerns them, and the eye of the spirit makes the 
 functions of the three other eyes the object of its 
 observations, and seeks to see through and through 
 them. 
 
 Thus in a sketchy way I have reached the end of my 
 task. In the course of my preparation for it I have 
 
126 lEis. 
 
 been in a manner haunted by a Hagada. It certainly 
 presents a significant combination of colours, and I would 
 fain have interwoven it with these variegated pictures 
 from the Talmud, but I could not understand it. It runs 
 thus : " When God created man. He took earth from the 
 site of the sanctiiary and from the four quarters of the 
 heavens, and created him red, black, and white, and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.'' Where the 
 Chaldee translator of Gen. ii. 7 got this triad of colours, 
 and what meaning the inventor had for it, I know not. 
 But one thing is clear. The three colours appear here 
 as the colours essential to man as such, and therefore as 
 emblems of humanity,^ and they are the very colours of 
 the German Empire. May it then in conformity with 
 its colours approve itself a helper of humanity, — a helper, 
 that is, of the religious and moral disposition and destina- 
 tion, which are set before us by the Sinaitic law, and its 
 profounder exhibition in the Sermon on the Mount, as the 
 bond and goal of the human brotherhood. And may the 
 triumphal monument,^ to which our lectures are a contri- 
 bution, tell to later generations that from the black of 
 that mourning over the harvest of death produced by war 
 there came the white of victory and peace, and that from 
 this white there blossomed the mighty red of that love 
 which, being rooted in the fear of God, is the fulfilling 
 of the law and the one solution of all social problems. 
 
 1 According to the Midrasch on the Book of Numbers, the colours 
 of the priestly tribe of Levi were white, black, and red. 
 
 ' The splendid monument now erected in the market-place at 
 Leipsic to commemorate the German victories in the Franco-German 
 war.— Tr. 
 
VI. 
 
 ffiogsijj a&out Jlotoers ani tljcir 
 JFragrance* 
 
VI. 
 
 GOSSIP ABOUT TLOWEES AND THEIE 
 FEAGRANCE. 
 
 " If one of our great naturalists had announced a 
 lecture on flowers and fragrance, we should have been 
 sure of getting the reliable instructions of a professional 
 in a popular form. But when one who is not a botanist, 
 but an old man on the very verge of life, a theologian, 
 and an old Lutheran theologian to boot, chooses such a 
 theme, and gives his lecture so sportive a title, it is rather 
 strong, unworthy of him, and somewhat offensive." Such 
 captious criticism was to be expected. It may be that 
 many a one has suspected me of sensational advertis- 
 ing, for this among others is a characteristic of human 
 nature, that the more offence a thing gives, the more it 
 draws. 
 
 Nothing certainly can be truer than that I am no 
 botanist. My knowledge of plants goes scarcely beyond 
 the popular average. I love flowers, and their varied 
 beauty is mirrored in my soul in varied feelings. If, in 
 addition to their native beauty, they have also a significant 
 name, it. appears to me like a halo encircling them. 
 I take delight in the sense for nature and in the 
 poetry, which come out in so many of the popular names 
 for flowers. I like snowbell better than galanthus, and 
 Christmas rose better than helleborus ; heaven's key even 
 
 I 
 
130 IRIS. 
 
 better than primrose, and none-so-pretty better than 
 
 saxifrage. I long for the coming spring, to see its 
 
 heralds take their place in the shady grass, as Geibel 
 sings of them, — 
 
 IiaS <gi§ jerge^t, ber <Sc^ttec jcrrinnt, 
 2)ann grunt e§ uicr ein SBeil(^cn, 
 
 UnD leife fingt bcr lauc SBinb: 
 aSac^t auf, na(t)t auf, i^r aSci%n!i 
 
 But to give a morphological description of the violet 
 would be quite beyond me, and as to its peculiar fra- 
 grance I know indeed that it proceeds from an ethereal 
 oil, but that is all. I need not, however, at least in this" 
 one point, be ashamed of my ignorance, for even science 
 knows no more. It has gained a deep insight into the 
 chlorophyll, the dye - stuff which produces the magic 
 colours of the vegetable world. As to the ethereal oil, 
 it can only tell us that it is formed in the cells, is found 
 in all parts of the plant, and is quickly dissipated in the 
 air ; but it can say nothing as to how the infinite variety 
 of the aroma of plants is caused. 
 
 Well, then, I am no botanist, only a dilettante, and to 
 confess the truth, scarcely that. All the less, it will be 
 said, does such trifling become your years ! But do I 
 appear before you like an old fop, with a rosebud in my 
 button-hole ? There is nothing more repulsive than an 
 old man playing the youth. Supposing even that his 
 heart is yet young, his age prescribes certain limits 
 
 1 The ice breaks up, quick melt the snows, 
 The earth dons her green toilet, 
 And softly sings each wind that blows : 
 Wake up, wake up, fair violet. — Tr. 
 
GOSSIP ABOUT FLOWERS AND THEIB FEAGRANCE. 131 
 
 which he dares not break through without giving offence. 
 We like the rosebud on the breast of the young man, 
 edelweiss and Alpine rose in the hat of the Tyrolese, 
 myrtle in the hair of the bride, and a nosegay of primrose, 
 violet, heath, and hyacinth, or other variegated combina- 
 tion, on the breast of the dancer. But if the time is 
 past for one far in years adorning himself with flowers, 
 must he also refrain from speaking of them ? Who has 
 a better right than he to think of flowers, — the flowers 
 among which his body, dead to this world, must soon be 
 laid, — the flowers which will soon be thrown upon his 
 bier as the last mute farewell ? This was never an Old 
 Testament custom, but it was a Christian one even in the 
 first centuries, when the Catacombs were the burying- 
 places. For an essential feature of Christianity is the 
 sweetening, beautifying, transfiguring of death by point- 
 ing to a better world beyond, as we sing, — 
 
 Unter Silicn iener Sreubcn 
 9Berb i^ treiben — 
 
 ©eete, f^reinge bic^ em^sor! 
 Qltg eiu 5ttler fleug Bel^enbe, 
 Sefu ^anbe 
 
 Deffnen fc^ou ba§ fPerlent^or.i 
 
 To encircle the head of the deceased in the heaflien 
 fashion with a garland was discontinued ; for since Christ 
 
 1 'Mid the lilies, full of rapture, 
 I shall pasture — 
 Soul, seek thy high estate ! 
 
 Mount, as on eagle's wing, 
 Behold, thy King 
 
 Opens wide the pearly gate. — Tk. 
 
132 IRIS. 
 
 wore a crown of thorns, it becomes not His confessors, 
 as TertuUian says, to wear a crown of flowers. And 
 why should we put on the head of the departed a fading 
 wreath ? We expect, says Minucius Felix, from the 
 hand of God a wreath of everliving flowers. But the 
 bier of the departed was encircled with flowers in token 
 of love and hope ; and the .days on which the grave was 
 visited by mourning friends were called dies violationis 
 and dies rosationis, because it was then adorned with 
 roses and violets. The nearer one is to such flowery 
 tribute from his survivors, the nearer to him, as I think, 
 lie thoughts of flowers. 
 
 All earthly beings must serve man, the king of nature : 
 but of his servants flowers are not only the most ornate, 
 but also the most faithful, for they give up their life to 
 serve him in joy and sorrow, and when all else remains 
 behind, they follow him to the grave, there to die by his 
 side. And it shall be thought unworthy of a theologian 
 to speak of flowers ! On the contrary, it befits no one 
 better to sound their praises. For he who does this is 
 fulfilling a duty of gratitude, and this gratitude is surely 
 due first of all to God, whose goodness in its inexhaustible 
 ingenuity has provided us with those dear partners of our 
 joy and grief. Flowers are relics of paradise lost, and 
 delight in flowers is a foretaste of paradise regained. In 
 Canto xxviii. of the Purgatorio, Dante enters a magni- 
 ficent grove filled with fragrance. A sweet zephyr cools 
 his brow, and the gentle rustling of the tree-tops accom- 
 panies the song of the birds as they greet the morning. 
 In the middle of the grove he is suddenly brought to a 
 stand by a shady brook of crystal water rippling past 
 
GOSSIP ABOUT FLOWERS AND THEIR FRAGRANCE. 133 
 
 between grassy banks, and across the streamlet he 
 
 espies — 
 
 Una Donna soletta, che si gia 
 Cantando, ed iscegliendo fior da fiore, 
 Ond'era pinta tutta la sua via.' 
 
 Enchanted with her gracious form, he beseeches her 
 to come nearer, and to tell him what she is singing, and 
 why she smiles so. Whereupon she answers from the 
 opposite bank, " Trattando pifl. color con le sue mani," " 
 that her smiling is not on his account, as perhaps he 
 suspected, because he is yet a stranger to the joy of 
 paradise ; the explanation of her mirth will be found in 
 the Psalm Delectasti (ma luce rende il Salmo Delectasti).^ 
 That is Ps. xcii., where the poet says : " Thou, Lord, hast 
 made me glad through Thy work (Delectasti me, JDomine, 
 in factura tua), I will triumph in the works of Thy hands. 
 How great are Thy works, Lord, Thy thoughts are very 
 deep. A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool 
 understand." The fair woman, who is afterwards called 
 Matilda, is the representative of the earthly, as Beatrice 
 of the heavenly paradise. And Dante could think of no 
 better way of picturing her contemplative absorption in 
 the wonders of creation than by her delight in flowers. 
 For more than other creatures, flowers produce the impres- 
 sion of divine thoughts realized. These thoughts of God, 
 
 1 A lady all alone, who, singing, went, 
 
 And culling flower from flower, wherewith her way 
 Was all o'er-painted. — Cart. 
 
 ' As through her graceful fingers shifted still 
 
 The intermingling dyes. — Cabt. 
 
 * .... But that sweet strain of psalmody, 
 
 " Thou, Lord ! hast made me glad," will give ye light. — Cart. 
 
134 lEis. 
 
 however, await us in the world beyond, as I once rendered 
 it when I was young, and now and again felt the poetic 
 afflatus, — 
 
 ®^rlfi be3 Sroigett ftnb bie rei^en 
 
 Slumentejj^ji^c ber Slur — 
 SBer ijerfie^t bie magifc^en 2n(l}m, 
 
 Sie^ bie ©^rac^e ber S'Jatur.i 
 
 But ia those days of my enthusiasm for the philosophy 
 of nature I was still better pleased with a verse by a 
 man called Blumenfeld, who passed through our city and 
 left no trace behind, — 
 
 5(uf jcber IJorat rul^t ein Oe'^cimniS, 
 
 3n bunfetn SWi^t^en rebet fte — 
 SufammenfJie^en afle Ttl^fyn 
 
 Unb ®ott iji bie SOJ^tliologic.^ 
 
 Nonsense fuU-blown ! And yet no ! Is it not true that 
 all the enigmas which meet us in nature have their 
 origin in God, and ascend to Him, the enigma of all 
 enigmas, the one primal mystery ? 
 
 A theologian, therefore, is not going out of his sphere 
 in proclaiming the praise of flowers. But if he occupies 
 himself chiefly with the Old Testament, he must be at 
 home in Palestine, and Palestine is a land of flowers. 
 Tabor and Carmel are among the most flower-clad of 
 
 1 The Eternal's writing rioMy show 
 The flower-beds of the meads — 
 Who can the magic symbols know, 
 The speech of nature reads. — Tr. 
 
 ^ Each form doth bear its mystery impressed, 
 In myths it speaketh darksomely — 
 Together into one flows every myth, 
 And God is true mythology. — Tr. 
 
GOSSIP ABOUT FLOWERS AND THEIR FRAGRANCE. 135 
 
 mountains. The springs of Palestine are the high festival 
 times of the flower-world, and are of fairy beauty. When 
 the heavens have heard the earth, and have sent to it 
 the longed - for showers of spring, then the rocks about 
 Jerusalem are overrun with a luxuriant and fantastic 
 growth of virgin's bower and the many-flowered clematis. 
 Even the strips of soil among the rocks are thick with 
 flowers ; the plains and heights are brilliant with richly 
 varied colours ; it is as if all hues and shades vied with one 
 another for the prize of beauty, e.g. the red of the scarlet 
 anemone with the red of the purple iris, and this with 
 the red cinnabar-coloured adonis ; and though the tiny 
 pimpernel is not very imposing singly with its reddish 
 blossoms, yet it is found in such profusion that it forms 
 a main feature of the landscape in Judea. Even our 
 poor daisy, with its yellow disc and white rays, is not 
 wanting in this concert of colours. But every other red 
 is surpassed in brilliance by the blossoms of the pome- 
 granate and of the oleander, whose luxuriant growths are 
 reflected in the waters of the Jordan and of Gennesaret.- 
 But not only do such flower-pictures float before the eye 
 of the theologian, but flower-studies are indispensable to 
 him. There is a book of the Bible into which the poet 
 has interwoven the fairest and choicest of the flower- 
 world that lay within his horizon ; and the poet is a 
 king famed for his insight into nature and art, who took 
 pleasure in laying out parks and gardens on a great scale, 
 and had costly exotic plants brought to him by land and sea. 
 I mean the Song of Songs, in which Solomon celebrates 
 his youthful love to Shulamith, the maid of Galilee, that 
 one and only one who captivated him wholly by her child- 
 
136 lEis. 
 
 like soul, in a body so delicate that its texture seemed as 
 ethereal as the fragrance of flowers. She compares herself, 
 too, to a flower, not one, however, of the king's garden, but 
 of the field. I am a rose (narcissus) of Sharon, she says, 
 a lily of the valley, or as Luther has it, a flower of Sharon 
 and a rose in the valley. It would be an utter mistake 
 to think in this connection of the queen of flowers, the 
 rose, with its hundred leaves, for it was not transplanted 
 from Upper Asia to Palestine till long after Solomon's 
 day, only the hawthorn with its white and pale-red wild 
 roses was then known. 
 
 Speaking of Luther, it occurs to me that I might have 
 cited him in the outset in defence of my theme. It is a 
 happy circumstance that the statue which Leipsic has 
 erected to him has come to stand in a flower-garden. 
 From 1527 onwards he pursued gardening almost as a 
 profession. He frequently said that if he could have left 
 theology with a good conscience, he would have been a 
 gardener rather than anything else. He used to order 
 seedlings from Erfurt and JSTiirnberg, and though his 
 cloister garden was enough to occupy him, he had the 
 weakness of buying up every piece of garden ground in 
 Wittenberg that came into the market. He sowed and 
 reared melons, gourds, radishes, and other kitchen vege- 
 tables, but above all he preferred flowers. In translating 
 the colour which in the Greek -Latin Bible is called 
 hyacinth, by the word Gel (yellow), though purple-violet 
 is meant, he was probably misled by the fact that the 
 flowers of his garden which were then called hyacinths 
 were yellow. He prided himself on the fine laying out 
 of his garden with its trees. " Come," he wrote in 1526 
 
GOSSIP ABOUT FLOWERS AND THEIR FRAGRANCE. 137 
 
 to his patron and friend Spalatin of Altenburg, " and let 
 me show you it all ; I shall honour you with a garland of 
 lilies and roses." This delight in flowers was manifested 
 by Luther here in Leipsic during his disputation with 
 Eck in the summer of 1519. David met the giant 
 Goliath with stones for his sling in his shepherd's scrip. 
 And what did Luther do when confronted with his anta- 
 gonist, tall and burly, and with a voice like thunder ? 
 He smelt a bunch of flowers. Even if it is not true, the 
 legend is full of meaning. 
 
 Do you ask if he really derived strength thence ? Later 
 in life he once said : " While Satan with his members 
 rages, I will meantime laugh at him, and look at my 
 garden, that I may enjoy the blessing of the Creator 
 and what goes to glorify Him." Yes, God is not far 
 from us. He is nigh to us in His works, and he who is 
 not self-seeking, but above all seeks the Creator in His 
 works, gets to taste and to see how good He is. He 
 reveals Himself in storqi and earthquake and fire, but 
 Elijah on Horeb discovered that God's nature is more 
 clearly made known in the gentle breath (1 Kings xix. 
 11-13), — such a breath is the fragrance of flowers, which 
 Lamartine celebrates in his greeting to Ischia, — 
 
 II est doux d'aspirer, en abordant la gr&ve 
 Le parfum que la brise apporte h I'dtranger, 
 
 Et de sentir les fleurs que son haleine enleve 
 Plenvoir sur votre frond du liaut de I'oranser.^ 
 
 1 How sweet to breathe the perfume-laden breeze, 
 Borne to the stranger from the nearing shore, 
 And feel the blossoms from the orange trees, 
 Like a soft shower on his forehead pour ! 
 
 — Waltek Chas. Ubqdhabt. 
 
138 lEis. 
 
 The Lord rideth, says Isaiah (xix. 1), upon a swift cloud, 
 — such a light, ethereal cloud is the scent of flowers. 
 An Arabian poet compares the breath of his beloved to 
 the morning wind blowing over a bed of carnations ; we 
 apply the figure, and say, the morning wind gently stirring 
 a bed of carnations is like the breath of creative love. 
 From the sight and smell of flowers there goes a divine 
 strength which begets feelings and thoughts that are full 
 of joy, comfort, and rest. 
 
 A divine strength ? — ^Yes, a divine strength, for it is a 
 law implanted in the human mind to reason from an 
 effect to its cause, and in this cause to recognise the effect 
 of a higher cause, till at length it reaches the cause of all 
 causes, and stands in the awful presence of the Infinite. 
 The French poet and prose writer, Saintaine, in his 
 Picciola, gives the history of a Count de Charney, who in 
 the time of the French Consulate was accused of conspiracy 
 against the rising power of Bonaparte, and thrown into 
 the rocky fortress of Fenestrelle. During his lonely cap- 
 tivity, a plant, from the description an antirrhinum, which 
 grew up between two of the paving-stones in his prison 
 court, became the object of his attention and care. With 
 tender affection he named it Picciola, i.e. his dear little 
 pet. The prisoner was lying ill when his gaoler surprised 
 him with the news that it was in flower. Putting forth 
 all his strength, he rose, and when he had his favourite 
 with its crown of coloured and fragrant flower before him, 
 he from that moment felt a new life pervade his body, 
 and not only his body, but his soul. What advantage, 
 said he to himself, have the flowers from their splendid 
 perfume ? Do they enjoy it themselves ? No. Is it 
 
GOSSIP ABOUT FLOWERS AND THEIE FRAGRANCE. 139 
 
 for the lower animals ? No ; for never was either a sheep 
 or a dog seen standing before a rose and inhaling its 
 odour. Their perfume, then, is for man. And why for 
 him ? Maybe to make him love them. Gradually, how- 
 ever, he went further, and drew the conclusion that God 
 may be loved in them. A blasS man of the world, with 
 his cold intellect, who till then had no other god than 
 accident, was converted by this flower to the true God, 
 whose nature is love ; and life acquired a new charm for 
 him, and a consecration formerly unknown. The daughter 
 of a fellow-prisoner secretly carried a written petition from 
 him to the emperor, that the two paving-stones, which 
 threatened the life of his beloved flower, might be taken 
 up. Slie presented it at Alexandria, and engaged the 
 intercession of Josephine. Afterwards she became his 
 wife, and Saintaine used to see her as a widow at Belle- 
 ville, where the Count was buried, wearing on her breast 
 a costly medallion, in which there was set a colourless 
 withered flower. 
 
 So much was done by a flower shooting up from an 
 unpromising soil, but even a plucked flower, a simple 
 nosegay, may have much to say and do for us. I hate 
 bouquets, says a sentimental young lady in a recent novel, 
 they are corpses laid out in state. This holds, we must 
 admit, of those tasteless, fashionable bouquets which con- 
 sist of heads of flowers inextricably spitted, and arranged 
 as by a decorator, and clasped in a paper frill. These 
 are certainly flower corpses in dead-clothes, suggesting 
 only how proud they look, how much they cost, and that 
 to-morrow they will be withered. But a flower taken 
 from the stem with its stalk is not killed. It lives so 
 
140 IRIS. 
 
 long as its leaves and petals do not close and shrivel, and 
 its aroma remains fresh. Many, like the rose, jessamine, 
 and carnation, retain the smell of life even in death, — 
 
 aSHite bet 0letfe ! 
 
 35a8 unterfc^eiwt bic^ S5om SStumenijoIfe, 
 
 (Sie buften frif^, bu bufteji ncc^ al§ mlU.^ 
 
 The Bible calls this fragrance the soul of plants. Not 
 as if it were itself the soul,, but because it is the breath 
 of their soul. The scent of a flower is its life's breath, 
 and in a manner its speech, as the Persian Haiiz, the 
 mystical poet of love, says, — 
 
 >§6rt, ^6rt ba§ ©e^eimniS bet flflofen, 
 
 aCBie fie ^att mit SB5orten rait J)uften iiur fcfeu.^ 
 
 Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, is God's call to 
 His prophets in the Book of Isaiah. A flower may 
 become a prophet of comfort, the sight of it may cast 
 a ray of light into the darkness of the human soul, the 
 smell of it may give a foretaste of victory to the man 
 who is wrestling to escape from! this woiid. When 
 the cholera was raging in Halle, my friend Professor 
 Guericke has told me that he used to put a pink in his 
 mouth, and protected himself from the miasma by its 
 bright look and healthful scent. The reviving effect of a 
 fragrant flower is shown by a scene in Jul. Kompert's 
 Zwisehen den Euinen (Among the Ruins), in which the 
 
 ^ Carnation blossom ! 
 In this, of all the flowery tribe, thou art alone, 
 They smell when fresh, thou still when life is gone. — Te. 
 
 * List, list, if the roses' secret you'd steal, 
 Not in words, but in perfumes their loves they reveal. — Te. 
 
GOSSIP ABOUT FLOWERS AND THEIR FRAGRANCE. 141 
 
 love of a Jewish youth and a Christian maiden for one 
 another, and the conflict between their religion and their 
 love, are depicted. - 
 
 Dorothea has plucked a bunch of the most beautiful 
 wild-flowers for the old blind widow, whom Jonathan, 
 her master, revered and loved as a son, and, not con- 
 cealing from herself the all too obvious meaning of her 
 present, she offers it with a beating heart. 
 
 " Grandmother," she called out, as loud as if she had 
 to do with a deaf person, but it was only to conceal her 
 extreme emotion from the observation of the old woman, 
 " I have brought you something pretty." 
 
 She pressed the nosegay into her hand. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Veile Oberlander. 
 
 " Don't you know it, grandmother ? " she answered ; " it 
 is flowers !" 
 
 " Flowers ! " cried Veile. " How did you come on 
 them ? I have forgotten what a flower is ! But as they 
 come from you, I will keep them beside me. You must 
 know that it is not since I became blind that I have 
 forgotten what a flower is, but since my husband passed 
 away. He had lain long, long ill, and that came to him 
 from the many scholars, who gave him a weak chest. 
 But it is curious what fancies take such people on their 
 dying bed. One day he said to me, ' Veile, my darling, 
 I should like to smell something good.' 'Will you 
 have the smelling-bottle ? ' I asked. ' I should like to 
 have a fresh flower.' ' But where am I on the spot to 
 get a fresh flower? Am I a gardener?' But as his 
 wish sounded so earnest, and I could not have refused 
 him anything, I set myself to seek it. One thing. 
 
142 IRIS. 
 
 however, I had forgotten — it was winter. As I am going 
 along the street and looking into all the windows to see 
 if there was any flower-pot (there was nothing to be 
 seen in the whole street), I meet Madlena, the shoe- 
 maker's wife, who always lighted my fire on the Sabbath. 
 ' What are you seelcing ? ' asked she. ' I am seeking a 
 fresh flower,' said I, ' for my husband. He would fain 
 scent something good.' 'Then come to my house with 
 me,' said she, 'my daughter has a slip of carnation 
 which has twined round her heart as if it were a lover. 
 But as it is you, she will cut off a flower for your sake.' 
 So I went with her, and got my fresh flower all right. 
 And, do you know, Dorothea, my girl, my husband died 
 with the flower at his lips ; it did him good to his last 
 breath. Since that time I have never had another 
 flower in my hand." 
 
 It is a good sign when a patient on his sick-bed finds 
 relief from the sight and smell of a flower, or when a 
 captive beguiles his loneliness with the care of a living 
 plant. It is a proof that he has not yet broken away 
 from the bosom of nature, and therefore not wholly from 
 the heart of God. In the case of a child we can assume 
 this. For unconscious growth still predominates in the 
 child over that responsible use of freedom with which 
 the worth, but also the danger of all action rises. Man, 
 as such, has his perishableness in common with the 
 flower, but the child has, besides, the charm of innocence. 
 Is not a sick child like a withered white rose or a tuHp 
 casting its leaves ? The child having so much of. the 
 nature of the flower, we shall not have to wait till it 
 longs for flowers on its sick couch. Its very look is a 
 
GOSSIP ABOUT FLOWEliS AND TUEIK FBAGEANCK. 143 
 
 call to US to associate like with like, and to relieve, if 
 not to restore like with like. 
 
 It is well known that the perfume of flowers, filling a 
 close room to excess, has the effect of stupefying, lulling 
 asleep, and, if it be overnight, producing even death. 
 We might therefore expect, that if the scents of flowers 
 were properly applied, according to their different kinds, 
 their effect on the sick would be healthful. It is 
 generally recognised that forest air is beneficial; it is 
 now even sold in bottles. Might not an atmosphere 
 filled with the fragrance of thyme, camomile, or arnica, 
 and such like be, in proper circumstances, as beneficial 
 as one filled with pine ? Perhaps a time will come when 
 medicine will not disdain to experiment in this direction, 
 and when we shall learn to distinguish the scents of 
 plants by their effects. At present the best manuals tell 
 us nothing more than that camomile has an aromatic 
 smell, mignonette a soft one, basil a spicy, marjoram a 
 bitter. But most frequently there is no distinction 
 whatever, and we read of sweet -smelling jessamine, 
 sweet-smelling balm, sweet-smelling narcissus, and so on 
 in endless monotony. 
 
 But where am I straying to? Eeturning to the 
 psychological standpoint, I would in closing address to 
 you, Gentlemen of the Children's Hospital, a modest 
 request : lay a flower from time to time on the bed of 
 your little patients ! It need not be a flower of fragrant 
 aroma ; all flowers smell sweetly to the young life. It 
 need not be a grand flower ; all flowers smile when they 
 are looked at with a kindly eye. Every flower is in 
 itself a gift of divine love, and when human love takes 
 
144 IRIS. 
 
 part by presenting it, then love joins love, and its impres- 
 sion is the more gladdening. Every flower is a child of 
 heaven and of earth ; it says to us, earth is fair, but 
 heaven is fairer. Spend a flower on the child-soul ; it 
 will go to beautify the death, if not the life of the fragile 
 being, as Fr. Eiickert puts it in his address to his two 
 children lost in infancy, — 
 
 3^r ^aU nur Dup: gefogen 
 
 Unb feib in Sufi entflogen, 
 aSon SSlutenftauB gelett, 
 
 me aSlutenftauB entf^wcBt.^ 
 
 But I cannot close with this melancholy note. Spring 
 is near, and the snowdrops are already bringing us the 
 resurrection perfume of mother earth. We hope, then, 
 that the spring sun, as its rays renew the youth of 
 the world, will also give wings to all the dear 
 little butterflies now wrapped in their chrysalis state in 
 the Children's Hospital, long to flit over the flowery 
 meadows of this present world. And with this hope 
 let my gossip take end ! 
 
 1 Airy treath is all ye've known, 
 Into airy breath ye've gone ; 
 By the scent of flowers regaled, 
 Like the scent of flowers exhaled. — Tr. 
 
VII. 
 
VII. 
 
 A DOUBTFUL NOSEGAY. 
 
 It is a fine trait in the sketch of the Leipsic Disputation, 
 which was again brought up in one and another anni- 
 versary publication of the year 1883, that Luther took 
 a nosegay with him to his pulpit, and smelt it in the 
 heat of the controversy.* The story is as credible as 
 it is interesting. Luther was passionately devoted to 
 gardening and a lover of flowers. The Disputation fell 
 in the month of roses, and was protracted into August. 
 They were hot, sunny days. And what more natural on 
 one of the July days, in which he had to take up the 
 fight instead of Carlstadt, than that a nosegay should be 
 presented to him on his way to the Pleissenburg from 
 Melchior Lotter's, where he lodged, or in one of the 
 families which invited the Wittenbergers to dinner ? It 
 is so like him also, while proudly reposing in self- 
 conscious strength, to regale himself with the fragrance 
 of flowers, while the gigantic Eck thundered away at 
 him and paraded his eloquence and learning, as if he 
 would smite his antagonist dumb. 
 
 This graceful trait was put in circulation by Seide- 
 mann, who in 1843 published a monograph of the 
 Leipsic Disputation, which is based on the most compre- 
 hensive and minute study of the original sources, and has 
 itself become an authority for all later students of 
 ^ So Mich. Banmgarten, Doctor Martin Luther (1883), p. 58. 
 
 147 
 
148 lEis. 
 
 Eeforination history. In this monograph, and from that 
 which appeared in 1842 on Thomas Miinzer/ the nose- 
 gay finds a place. In the former monograph, p. 63, 
 Seidemann gives it as a complaint of Luther ahout the 
 suspicious dislike with which his movements were watched 
 in Leipsic : " The Leipsic people observed that I carried a 
 nosegay in my hand, to look at and to smell." But the 
 passage of Luther's letter, from which these words are 
 taken, scarcely bears this meaning. 
 
 The state of the case is as follows. A Franconian 
 studying in Leipsic, by name Johannes Eubeus (Eubius), 
 who took the designation Longipolitanus (of Langstadt 
 in Hesse), had in August 1519 published a pamphlet 
 under the title, Solutiones ac Responsa Wit. Doctorum in 
 publica Disputatione Lipsica contra fitlmina Eckiana parum 
 profutura, which in the most outrageous way exalted 
 Eck to the skies, and depreciated the Wittenbergers.^ 
 Joh. Montanus, in a pamphlet issued from Wittenberg, 
 Neminis Wittebergensis Encomium Buiei Longip., disposed 
 of this self-constituted partisan of Eck (and at the same 
 time of the like-minded Joh. Cellarius). Then Eubeus 
 rejoined in a Neuen Biichlein von der Leipziger Disputation 
 (1519, 4), in which he sought to avenge himself on the 
 Nemo (Montanus), and continued to disparage Luther 
 in comparison with Eck. It is written in such wretched 
 doggerel, so empty, insipid, and senseless, that Loscher, 
 after quoting three lines, says : " It is not worth the 
 pains to give more of this trash." ^ 
 
 ''- The author says, p. 4 : " That Luther, during his discussion with 
 Eck, regaled himself with a nosegay, is well known." 
 ^ Printed in Lbsoher's Reformations-Aden, i. pp. 252-271. 
 '' Loscher, ibid., p. 272. 
 
A DOUBTFUL NOSEGAY. 149 
 
 This answer in rhyme is thus referred to hy Luther, 
 in a letter to Joh. Lange on St. Gall's day [16th October] 
 1519: Euhius asinus [he calls him Zongipilus, the long- 
 haired, instead of Longipolitanus] denuo vernacule me 
 proscidit pessime nee sic satura Zipsia invidice est ; ^ and 
 in December of the same year in a letter to Spalatin : 
 {Eccius) edidit denuo suis expensis Augustce Ruiii rhythmos 
 mrnacM'os in nos? But the passage which Seidemann 
 reproduces on p. 63 of his work on the Leipsic 
 Disputation, is taken from a letter to Spalatin, of 
 13th October 1519. After saying: Vides quam acute 
 me Lipsienses ohservent (you see how sharply the 
 Leipsic people watch me), he continues shortly after^ 
 wards : Quid enim non scriherent qui per Ruhium effutiunt, 
 quod Lipsice in manu complicatum ac compressum sertum 
 odoris et spectandi gratia gestavi, libentius dicturi, quod 
 in capite gestassem, si auderent ! ' In English : " For 
 what would they not write, who by Eubius give out the 
 silly tale, that at Leipsic I carried in my hand a wreath 
 of flowers folded and pressed together to smell and look 
 at, and who would be more pleased to tell that I had 
 worn it on my head, if they dared ! " Admitting that 
 sertum may elsewhere mean a wreath of flowers, the con- 
 nection excludes this signification here. The insinuation 
 is that Luther, while he shrank from holding the wreath 
 openly in his hand, a token and prize, as it were, of 
 victory, yet hid it in his hand, and regaled himself self- 
 
 1 The ass Bubius has again attacked me as badly as possible in 
 the vernacular, and withal the ill-will of Leipsic is not exhausted. 
 
 2 In de Wette, i. pp. 352 and 375 : " Eck has issued at his own 
 expense a new edition of the rhymes of Eubius against us in the 
 vernacular at Augsburg." 
 
 3 In Loscher, iii. p. 786 ; de Wette, i. p. 346. 
 
150 iKis. 
 
 complacently by smelling and looking at it. But the 
 calumny perhaps consists only of the allegation that he 
 held a wreath (sertum) in his hand, whereas it was only 
 a modest bunch of flowers (fasciculus) 
 
 To appear before a public audience with a flower in 
 the hand would not excite criticism now-a-days ; but 
 in those times it was regarded as affected, effeminate, 
 unmanly. Perhaps Luther really defied public opinion 
 in this case, as he seems to have done on his departure 
 from Leipsic. For Thomas Miinzer, in his Defence and 
 Answer to Luther, which appeared in 1524, says: "So 
 you had a good time of it at Leipsic ; you drove out at 
 the gate with wreaths of carnation and drank good wine 
 at Melchior Lotther's." ' 
 
 Kostlin has rightly passed over the questionable 
 flower-wreath in silence. All the more true to history 
 is the statement he makes in his account of the Leipsic 
 Disputation to this effect : " The professors of Leipsic 
 with few exceptions kept deliberately and strangely aloof 
 from the Wittenbergers to the very end. They showed 
 them no attention beyond sending them the guest-present 
 of wine, which the barest civility required." ^ The accounts 
 of the Law Faculty of Leipsic, which begin with the year 
 1516, contain the following entry under the expenses 
 of the year 1519: item III. Jl. XVII. gl. ad propinam 
 D. EcMo, Martina et Garolstadio^ (item, 3 florins 17 
 groschen, to pledge Dr. Eck, Martin and Carlstadt). 
 
 1 Seidemann, Thomas Munzer (1842), ibid. 
 
 2 Lehen Luther's, i. p. 269 ; comp. Seidemann, Leipziger Disp. p. 65. 
 * Friedberg, Das Collegium Juridicum. Ein Beitrag zur Oesch. der 
 
 Leipx. JuristenfacuUat (1882), p. 43, note 8. 
 
VIII. 
 
 Wilt JIotwer=iailHile of tl}e mtm of ^ije^a. 
 
VIII. 
 
 . THE FLOWER-EIDDLE OF- THE QUEEN OF 
 SHEBA. 
 
 Strau^enfebetn, giei^criufiSe fc^tcanfen icte cin SSalb balder, 
 SBatbad^inc, Sriebengfa^nen njogcn luie ein Sarfcenmeer, 
 ebclfteine, 5|JevIen UH^m iric ber Slegen gtcinjt im Sid^t, 
 9loffe ni(^txn gteid^ beni ©turnu, ber auS SDotfenlagcrn Bric^t. 
 
 Surftig miifjlt bie 5(6enbfonne in bie Ǥervlic[)fcit fi^ cin, 
 Durftig trinft beg aSoIfeS 5tuge all beg ®oIb6 unb ©ilBerg ©c^cin. 
 5J6er burft'ger l^dngt olg olle feineg ebten ©afteg fxol) 
 Qtn bem 5lngefid^t ber Jlon'gin, ^ofjiiung atmenb, ©alomo.' 
 
 Thus Gustav Pfizer describes the arrival of the Queen 
 of Sheba in Jerusalem, in the cycle of poems which he 
 calls Salomo's Ndchte (Nights of Solomon). Even in 
 the Bible history of Solomon, this meeting is a prominent 
 and brilliant event. But in the Solomonic Legend, 
 spread in the Semitic languages, the meeting, with what 
 went before and followed, is picturesquely expanded, with 
 
 1 Plumes of the ostrich, plumes of the heron, sway like a wood in 
 
 the hreeze, 
 Canopies, standards of many a hue, float like the waves in the seas ; 
 Jewels and pearls, like the raindrops in sunlight, are glancing ; 
 Like the tempest which breaks from the storm-cloud, the horses are 
 
 neighing and prancing. 
 
 Eager into the splendour seek the rays of the evening hour. 
 Eager this golden show the eyes of the people devour ; 
 But, eager above all others, does Solomon, proud of his guest, 
 On the face of the noble queen, with high-pulsing hope, fondly 
 rest.— Te. 
 
 153 
 
154 lEis. 
 
 many fabulous details. Solomon appears as a lord of 
 nature and of the spirit-world, invested with magical 
 powers, and the Queen of Sheba has for her mother a 
 princess belonging to the world of spirits. The royal 
 house of Ethiopia traces its origin back to a son of 
 Solomon by this queen. Her Ethiopian name is Makeda, 
 her Arabian name Bilkis (Balkis).^ Jews and Moslems 
 vied with one another in elaborating the legend. From 
 them it passed to the Byzantines, Celts, and Sclaves, ever 
 undergoing new transformations, and finally receiving a 
 Christian character. The Queen of Sheba becomes a sibyl, 
 i.e. a heathen prophetess ; her prophetic gift showing itself 
 by her discerning, in an extraordinary tree, which resisted 
 all attempts to fit it into Solomon's temple, the future 
 wood of the Cross.* The revelations of the future which 
 she made to Solomon, were a favourite theme of the 
 Eomanic and German literature of the Middle Ages.' In 
 the exposition of the Song of Songs she was the repre- 
 sentative of heathendom doing homage to Jesus Christ, 
 Solomon's antitype.'' Among the emblematic pictures of 
 the ancient Church we sometimes come upon her, as she 
 is engaged in conversation with Solomon.' The Lord 
 
 ' Gust. Bosch, Die Konigin von Saba als Konigin Bilquis. Mne 
 Studie. Leipsic, Barth, 1880. 
 
 ^ Wilh. Meyer, Die Geschichte des Kreuzeshokes vor Christus 
 (Abhandlung der Kgl. Bayerischen AJcademie). Munich, 1882. 
 
 ^ Friedr. Vogt, Ueber Sibyllen-Weissagung, in Pauls und Braunes 
 Beitragen, Bd. iv. 1877. 
 
 * So in the Expositio in Cantica Canticorum, Tom. clxxii., by 
 Honorius of Autun. 
 
 ' Springer, Quellen der Kunstdarstellungen im Mittelalter, tm 
 Jahrg. 1879 &r Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Sachsischen Gesellschaft der 
 
THE FLOWEE-BIDDLE OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 155 
 
 Himself pays her high honour, when He says (Matt. 
 xii. 42) : " The queen of the south shall rise up in the 
 judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it : for 
 she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom 
 of Solomon ; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here." 
 Thus she is a pattern of zealous striving after heavenly 
 wisdom, as a sequence ^ celebrates her, — 
 
 Hsec Chrieti stupescens bonis 
 Jesu veri Salomonis, 
 Sophise dat operam.^ 
 
 Among the 1400 pieces of the Lichtenstein picture 
 gallery in Vienna, there is found a picture by Quellinus, 
 which represents Solomon's reception of the queen. He 
 is sitting on his throne, to which steps with figures of 
 lions lead up, under a canopy, stretching out his right 
 hand to the queen, who stands at the foot of the throne. 
 At her side and behind her is a numerous retinue of 
 women, white and coloured, one of whom carries a green 
 and red parrot ; also soldiers, one of whom appears in 
 the background riding on a camel. The procession of 
 the queen has therefore just arrived, and she is presenting 
 the king with her gifts, to which belong the vessels 
 placed on the ground filled with the precious things of 
 her land. In August of the year 1872 I passed a night 
 in Lermos in a room one wall of which was covered with 
 a similar large oil - painting of the mutual greeting 
 between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In front 
 
 J In the Roman Catholic Church a hymn introduced into th« 
 mass on certain festival days. — Tr. 
 
 ' She, with the bounties of her Lord spell-bound, 
 
 For the true Solomon in Him is found, 
 
 To wisdom gives herself. — Tr, 
 
156 IRIS. 
 
 of the pipture stood three Moors, the sign of the inn, 
 which was named from them. ' > «■ 
 
 This scene has also been adopted as a theme in the 
 weaving of tapestry. To these woven pieces we give 
 the name Gobelin, because the house of the Trench 
 dyer's family Gobelin, in Paris, became the home of this 
 art from the time of Louis XIV., after the famous 
 Flemish weaver of tapestry, Janssens (Jans) removed 
 to it. A piece representing this scene from Solomon's 
 history, about a square metre in size, was seen by the 
 banker Becker in the Boasberg Antiquarian Museum in 
 Amsterdam. By his kindness I have in my possession a 
 photograph of the piece, which is beautifully wrought in 
 coloured wools. 
 
 Miillenhoff, founding on a communication by Becker, 
 gives the following description of it in the Zeitschrift fiir 
 Deutsches Alterthum und Deutsche lAteratur of the year 
 1879. On the left sits the king, in a beautiful flower 
 garden, on a golden throne, with crown and sceptre. 
 The queen approaches him, holding in her hand a 
 flower of the carnation or lily kind (round which a 
 bee is buzzing), also richly arrayed and with a crown 
 on her head; behind her a female attendant, at her 
 feet two boys of unequal size, about two or three years 
 old, who are plucking flowers and carrying them in their 
 hands. Midway between the king and queen rises a 
 large rose tree, through which there winds a scroll bearing 
 on it the date 1506, with the following verse, — 
 
 S>ie aSten bie red^te tWm nitt f:part, 
 J)ife8 fjnb jcigt an [ttt witti^ art. 
 
THE FLOWER- RIDDLE OF UHE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 157 
 
 S6ef(^cibe mic^,!inig d6 bie Bluntm ttnb !tnb 
 aSon att gtic^i^bei: Sjngtid^ finbt.^ 
 
 The description is incomplete. The two last of the 
 four lines, which should stand first, are manifestly a 
 double question addressed to the king, and that king 
 Solomon, by the Queen of Sheba, and the two first are 
 Solomon's answer. He is supposed to tell which are the 
 right, i.e. natural, flowers and which the artificial; and 
 he decides that the right are those on which the bees are 
 settling. The children are dressed alike. But the king 
 discerns that one of them is a girl. How he knows it 
 is not explained by the description. 
 
 We are now acquainted with another Gobelin, which 
 represents the same scene as ^he Amsterdam one, but far 
 more richly executed, and which has been rescued from 
 its long concealment to the joy of all lovers of art. 
 Having passed into the possession of his Highness Prince 
 Eeuss of the junior line, it has been restored and firamed 
 with care and skill at Munich. The detailed description 
 we owe to a contribution of the Court - Marshal of 
 Meysenbug in the Gera News (1882, No. 78). 
 
 It was found in the church of Kirschkau near Schleiz. 
 The old church there was built in the year 1503 and taken 
 down in 1751. Bruckner, in his Gazetteer, reports that 
 the tapestry was used there as an altar-cloth. Thence 
 it was transferred as an antiquity to the new church. 
 There it was found behind the sacristy and the so-called 
 
 1 The bee the living flower not spares ; 
 This child its female sex declares. 
 Eesolve me, king, the flowers and child at sport, 
 Are they of like or unlike sort ? — Tr. 
 
158 iKis. 
 
 " old oratory," where it was nailed to a wooden partition, 
 much injured, with ragged fringes and greatly faded in 
 colour. The description referred to is to the following 
 effect. 
 
 On the right side (from the spectator's standpoint) sits 
 the king, with crown and sceptre, in rich mediaeval attire, 
 on a magnificent throne. The throne stands in a garden 
 among fruit-laden trees, with birds fluttering among the 
 branches. On the trunk of the one tree behind the 
 throne is a coat of arms, showing a heraldic golden lily 
 on a red mountain in a white field ; opposite, on the left 
 side of the picture, another coat of arms, apparently a 
 golden cross in a black field, — probably the arms of the 
 donors. Behind the throne stand two men wearing the 
 dress of nobles of the sixteenth century ; at the side is 
 perched a brown ape, chained^ by the foot ; in the far 
 corner on the right side sits a white rabbit. On the 
 left of the picture a female figure is seen approaching 
 the king, in the costly dress of the sixteenth century ; 
 likewise with a crown on the head and flowers in the left 
 hand ; her train is carried by a young woman ; she is 
 followed by two women dressed alike ; and a little white 
 dog walks at her side. In front of her are two children, 
 exactly the same in appearance and dressed alike in 
 short frocks, one of whom is bending down to the red 
 fruits lying on the ground. The one hand is stretched 
 out to take an apple, while the other is holding up the 
 skirt of its dress ; the standing child, on the contrary, is 
 opening the dress over its breast with one hand, while 
 it is concealing the other (with the fruit it has picked 
 up, however) in the opening. The centre of the picture 
 
THE FLOWER-BIDDLE OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 159 
 
 is occupied by a tree with dense foliage and abundant 
 fruit, on the topmost branch of which sits an owl ; while 
 the ground is covered with all sorts of flowers and grasses, 
 among which birds and a peacock are moving. 
 
 From the queen to the king, in manifold windings 
 through the boughs of the tree behind her, passes [a 
 scroll, on which there is embroidered in black, small 
 Gothic characters,— 
 
 a3ef(i^eib mic^ finig 06 bie ttumcn unb finb 
 toon art gteli^ obcr ungtei^ finb.^ 
 
 And on a similar scroll, which winds among the branches 
 of the tree in the middle, that on which the owl, the 
 symbol of wisdom, sits, we read, — 
 
 Die tienn bic recite 'fcluin nit f^iart 
 bieg finbt jeigt on fein mUiCS) art.^ 
 
 The queen's iirst question refers to the lily-like flowers 
 held before her in her left hand, which in their varied 
 colours hang on long stalks, and show large insects 
 buzzing round them. These flowers are evidently 
 thought to be partly natural, partly artificial, — the king 
 is to distinguish them from the distance. The other 
 question he answers by pointing to the child which is 
 stretching out its one hand to take the fruit, and with 
 the other gathering up its dress. 
 
 At the end of the second inscription stands the date 
 1560 or 1566. 
 
 1 Resolve me, king, the flowers and child at sport, 
 Are they of like or unlike sort ? — Tr. 
 
 2 The bee the living flower not spares, 
 This child its female sex declares. — Tr. 
 
160 lEis. 
 
 The subject of the piece is taken from 1 Kings x. 
 (2 Chron. ix.). The Queen of Arabia, i.e. Arabia Felix 
 (as Luther translates Sheba), proves the king, the fame 
 of whose wisdom has drawn her to Jerusalem, with hard 
 questions. It is this chapter, also, whence come the ape 
 and the peacock. The two riddles, however, are certainly 
 not the invention either of the weaver of the tapestry, or 
 of the painter whose pattern he imitated in coloured 
 wool. They belong, undoubtedly, to the ancient legend. 
 We are in a position to prove this, in regard to the one 
 riddle wherein Solomon distinguishes the sexes. 
 
 In the Moslem legend, Balkis sends to Solomon five 
 hundred (the figure varies) boys and girls dressed alike, 
 and so similar in appearance that they cannot be 
 distinguished from one another. Besides other presents, 
 she sends a locked casket containing a pearl, which he 
 is to pierce ; a diamond perforated with crooked windings, 
 through which he is to pass a thread ; and a crystal cup, 
 which he is to fill with water which has neither fallen 
 from the sky nor risen from the earth. The king knows 
 the contents of the casket before opening it. He pierces 
 the pearl by means of a wonderful stone, which cuts 
 stone and metal without sound; he had come into 
 possession of it by the directions of a prince of the 
 spirit-world. He succeeded in passing a thread through 
 the diamond by means of the silkworm, to which, in 
 gratitude for the service, he assigned the mulberry tree 
 for a habitation. The crystal cup he" filled with the 
 sweat that poured from a burly slave, having first made 
 him take a long and rapid ride on a young fiery horse. 
 According to another form of the legend, he named 
 
THE FLOWEE-RIDDLE OF THE QUEEN OP SHEBA. 161 
 
 tears, as the water which comes neither from heaven 
 nor from earth, but drops sometimes sweet, sometimes 
 bitter, from the human eye. The boys and girls he 
 thus distinguished : when, according to the usual 
 custom in the harems, water was brought to be poured 
 on their hands, the girls received it in the palm, the 
 boys on the backs of their hands/ Or the tale runs 
 thus: the boys lifted the hand, on which the water 
 was poured, immediately to their face, whereas the girls 
 first filled the right hand with the water falling on 
 the left, and then washed the face with both hands at 
 once.^ 
 
 The two Byzantine writers, Georgius Cedrenus and 
 Michael Glykas,^ relate this proof of wisdom in the 
 following way. Over the people of Sheba there reigned 
 at that time the wonderful sibyl who, though she knew 
 not the law and the prophets, was divinely moved to 
 seek Solomon, and constrained to praise God for the 
 wisdom vouchsafed to him. She put his wisdom to the 
 proof, among other ways, by presenting to him boys and 
 girls of great beauty, whose dress and hair she had made 
 exactly alike, and asked him to distinguish the sexes. 
 He did this by commanding them to wash themselves ; 
 the male children rubbed their faces with right good 
 will, the females gently and timidly. 
 
 An automatic work of art, representing in a panorama 
 the meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, was 
 
 1 J. Von Hammer, Rosenol. Erstes Bdndchen (1813), p. 160 f. 
 
 2 "Weil, Biblische Legenden der Muselmiinner (1845), p. 262 f. 
 
 ' Cedrenus in Bd. i. p. 166 f. ; and Glykas, p. 343 der Boniier 
 Ausgabe. 
 
 L 
 
162 IRIS. 
 
 once to be seen in the old Labyrinth {Doolhqf) of 
 Amsterdam, which was cleared away in 1850. On the 
 history and literature of this oude Doolhof, D. C. Meijer, 
 jr., wrote two articles in Dutch in 1883. An explana- 
 tion ( Verldaringe) of the wonders exhibited in it circulated 
 in the sixteenth century in several editions, e.g. of the 
 year 1550 (printed by Syoion Houthaak in Amsterdam). 
 The queen, intent on proving the king's wisdom, had 
 brought with her — so says the catalogue, referring to 
 Cedrenus as its authority — some of the most beautiful 
 boys and girls who could possibly be found. She had 
 them all disguised in female dress, so that no difference 
 could be seen in their appearance, and she proposed to 
 the king to guess which were boys and which girls. 
 The king, who understood quite weU what she wished, 
 immediately ordered a shallow basin of water to be 
 brought, and bade the children in their fine dresses wash 
 themselves with their hands, and thus he soon came to 
 distinguish the one sex from the other. For the boys 
 washed their faces like men without more ado, but the 
 girls, with characteristic prudery, would scarcely touch 
 the water with the tips of their fingers. 
 
 The story in its Jewish form differs still from the 
 foregoing. In neither of the Talmuds, the Palestinian or 
 the Babylonian, is it found. Neither does it appear 
 in the second Targum, i.e. the complete Chaldee para- 
 phrase of the Book of Esther. There the queen 
 propounds to the king three riddles, relating to a box 
 of cosmetics, to naphtha, and flax. The narrative, how- 
 ever, also tells, that before she began her journey, she 
 sent to the king ships laden with presents, and among 
 
THE FLOWER-RIDDLE OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA, 163 
 
 them six thousand hoys and girls, all horn in one and 
 the same year, month, day, and hour, and who were of 
 the same size and proportions, and wore the same purple 
 dress.^ That there lay in this the purpose of putting 
 Solomon's wisdom to the proof, is a matter of course, 
 but this continuation is not given. It appears, however, 
 in the beginning of the Midrasch on the Proverbs of 
 Solomon, and thence it has passed over to the Jalhut 
 Schimoni (a collection of old expositions in the style of 
 the Midrasch). on the first Book of Chronicles. Is that 
 true, Solomon, says the Queen of Sheba, which I have 
 heard of thee and thy kingdom and wisdom ? He 
 answers : Yes. Then she propounds a riddle to him, 
 respecting the various stages through which the human 
 being passes, till he becomes a babe on the maternal 
 breast ; " and then a second, founded on the extraordinary 
 relationship of Lot's daughters when they had become 
 mothers. When he had answered both riddles, she 
 brought in boys and girls all of the same appearance 
 and size, and dressed alike. Now, cried she, distinguish 
 the male from the female children ! Then he beckoned 
 to his lackeys, and they brought nuts (egdzin) and 
 confections (Mijoth"), which he divided among them. 
 The boys stuffed them into their pockets without the 
 least hesitation ; but the girls modestly put them in their 
 
 1 Cassel's Commentary on the Book of Esther (T. & T. Clark), p. 
 279 ff. 
 
 2 This riddle is also found in a somewhat enlarged form in the 
 Midrasch on the first verse of Lamentations, an Athenian in Jeru- 
 salem being thereby sorely puzzled. 
 
 ' In the older language, kelijoth denotes roasted ears ; in the 
 later it is used of all sorts of confections. 
 
1 64: IRIS. 
 
 napkins (suddrin). Those, exclaimed Solomon, are the 
 males, and these the females. 
 
 Of the flower-riddle there is not a trace in Jewish 
 literature, but in two dramas of Calderon's, which both 
 handle the legend, we find that the Queen of Sheba,^ as 
 a sibyl gifted with the spirit of prophecy, recognised the 
 future cross of the Eedeemer in a tree which she found 
 in Jerusalem. The source from which Calderon took 
 this legend is, as has been proved by Wilhelm Meyer,^ 
 the great work of the Spanish Jesuit Johannes de Pineda, 
 de rebus Salomonis regis, 1608 (concerning the affairs of 
 King Solomon). In Pineda there is not a word of the 
 flower-riddle, and he knows the other relating to the 
 distinguishing of the sexes only in the form in which 
 it is given by Cedrenus. The older of the two dramas, 
 according to Meyer, is the Auto (religious play). El 
 A rbol de mejor fruto (the tree of better fruit) ; the 
 drama La Sibila del Oriente is a later handling of the 
 fable.' In the third act of the Sibyl, a bunch of natural 
 and artificial flowers is held out to Solomon, and Saba 
 (the queen), along with Irene (one of her female 
 attendants), challenge him to distinguish between the 
 
 1 He calls her Nicaula, as Gottfried of Viterbo also does : Australis 
 regina venit Nicaula Sibylla (the southern queen came, Nicaula the 
 sibyl). The name is from Josephus, who refers to Herodotus. In 
 the Irish legend she is called Eerhes Nicolaa. See Gust. Schirmer, 
 TJeher die Kreuzeslegenden m Leahhar Breac, St. Gallen, 1886. 
 
 ^ Ueber Calderon's Sibylle des Orients, Mlinchener akad. Festrede, 
 1879. 
 
 ^ The auto was translated and illustrated by Franz Lorinser, 
 1861 ; the Sibyl of the East has been inserted by him in vol. v. 
 (1875) of his larger translation ; Calderon's grosste Dramen religiosen 
 Inhaltes. 
 
THE FLOWER-KIDDLE OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 165 
 
 true and the false. He bids them hold out the bunch 
 for a little, and soon decides, — 
 
 Sine Siene 
 <Sa^ ic^ e6en fte utnf(^TOarmen, 
 ©od^ fic^ nid^t btouf nleberlaffert. 
 2)o8 ga6 beutlic^ ju erlennen, 
 2)0^ bie aSIume funftlld^, ba jle 
 51IS untraud^Bar warb ticrf(^mal§ct.i 
 
 In the religious play there are two bunches laid 
 before Solomon, by order of the q^ueen, for his decision : 
 the bunch of Astrea consisting of natural Arabian flowers, 
 and the bunch of Palmyra (idolatry personified) of 
 artificial flowers. Meantime a second riddle is proposed : 
 Why the same object when seen through one and the 
 same polished crystal, appears to one diminished, to 
 another magnified ? Before occupying himself with this 
 puzzle, he exclaims : Those are the natural flowers, these 
 the false. How dost thou distinguish ? asks Saba. 
 He answers, while all eagerly listen in silence, — 
 
 Utbex jenen aStumen fc^reimn 
 Siefccnb, in gefc^dft'gen ^reifett, 
 ©orgfam cmf'ge SBienett; iibex 
 5)ic[en onbern nur unmnc 
 gliegenj Jenc trinfcn burftig 
 9tu8 ben fiif en Sartenfel(|en 
 Slittax, ben in <§onig Hmfilic!^ 
 
 1 A bee 
 Even now I saw among them buzzing, 
 But not once did it thereon settle. 
 Thus clearly gave it to be understood, 
 That art-made are the flowers, for they, 
 As all unuseful, were despised. — Tr. 
 
166 IKIS. 
 
 ®ic ucwanbein, wo^renb {ene 
 @ie umfliegenb nur tefiecfen.^ 
 
 Calderon was born at Madrid on the I7th of January 
 1600, but the two tapestries, that of Amsterdam and 
 that of Gera, bear the dates 1506 and 1560 (66). The 
 flower-riddle is therefore not the invention of Calderon. 
 
 Pliny, in his Natural History, xi. 8, says that bees do 
 not settle on dead flowers, far less dead bodies.^ Conrad 
 of Megenberg repeats this in his Book of Nature : si 
 schadent hainer frulit noch den toten pluomen (they harm 
 no fruit nor dead flowers). But dead flowers are not 
 artificial, but withered ones, as he adds : daz sint die 
 dUrren pluomen. The origin of the flower-riddle is to 
 some extent, but not yet satisfactorily, cleared up. For 
 even supposing dead flowers include those that are arti- 
 ficial, the question still remains : How came the weaver 
 of the tapestry, who first represented this trial of 
 Solomon's wisdom by the Arabian queen, or rather how 
 came the designer or painter who furnished him with 
 the cartoon on this riddle, to connect it with that 
 about the sexes in the form of the Jewish Midrasch ? 
 To this question "Wilh. Hertz, in his learned study on 
 the Queen of Sheba's riddles, has no answer; for the 
 
 1 Over those flowers you see 
 A Irnsy, well-pleased eager throng 
 Of bees in restless circles ; 
 Over these others nought but 
 Unclean insects ; those thirstily 
 Out of the sweet cups many-hued 
 Drink nectar, which into honey 
 They artfully convert, while those 
 Touch the fair petals, only to befoul. — Tb. 
 2 MoTtuis nefloribus quidem, non modo corpoTibus, insidunt. 
 
THE FLOWER-ElDDLE OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 167 
 
 frescoes of Landshut, which represent scenes from the 
 life of Solomon, and among others the scene of the 
 flower-riddle, were executed in 1672, that is to say, a 
 century later than the two tapestries.^ 
 
 Eaphael's Cartoons for the Sixtine Chapel were sent 
 to Flanders. It was in Brussels, and from these models, 
 that the magnificent tapestries were wrought, which on 
 St. Stephen's day, 1519, were first seen on the walls of 
 the chapel, amid universal admiration.' So early as 
 the twelfth century, tapestry was a flourishing Flemish 
 industry. Charles Fifth gave the guild of tapestry- 
 weavers a constitution dating from the 16th of May 1544, 
 assigning them their rights in twenty-four articles sur le 
 style et mestier des fapisseries des Fays-has. Lacordaire, in 
 his Notice Historigue (Paris, 1853), gives a full account 
 of the history of the Paris Gobelin manufacture with the 
 previous Flemish history. He gives a list of hundreds of 
 their designs, but the Queen of Sheba is not among them. 
 
 Both tapestries, that of Amsterdam, which has passed 
 into the hands of the well-known collector Spitzer of 
 Paris, and that of Kirschkau, now in Gera, in the 
 possession of Prince Eeuss of the younger line, are, as 
 the scrolls indicate, of German workmanship, and if we 
 are to judge from the costumes, most probably from a 
 Low Country pattern. The language, however, in which 
 the four lines of rhyme are written (kinig, wiblich, glich, 
 imglich), points rather to the Upper than the Lower 
 Ehine. It is the common High German of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 ^ Zeitschrift fUr Beutsches Alterthum u. Deutsche Litteratur, 1883. 
 2 Springer in Dohme's Kunst und Kunstler Italiens, Bd. ii. p. 265. 
 
IX. 
 
 Efjc 33t6U anti Mint, 
 
IX. 
 
 THE BIBLE AND WINE. 
 
 A YEAR ago I was sitting in confidential talk with a friend 
 
 in a vine-covered arbour near the bank of our glorious 
 
 Ehine, I, as host for the time, with my glass of beer, he 
 
 with a bottle of the npble growth of his native region. 
 
 Carried away by a sudden fit of enthusiasm, I exclaimed : 
 
 Is it not so ? Just as this view of the Ehine charms us 
 
 both, so the Jordan laved the roots of Christianity not less 
 
 than those of Judaism; for it was through the Jordan that 
 
 Israel, coming out of Egypt, marched into Canaan, and 
 
 it was through the Jordan that Jesus, having returned 
 
 out of Egypt, passed, afterwards to traverse the Holy 
 
 Land as a preacher of the kingdom of heaven. I 
 
 observed, that though the parallel did not offend my 
 
 friend, yet it surprised him, and I gave the matter a 
 
 more harmless turn, saying : Well, then, about one thing 
 
 there can be no difference of opinion, that, just as we 
 
 two are sitting in one and the same vine-covered arbour, 
 
 so the Old and the New Testament Scriptures are 
 
 equally pervaded by figures taken from wine and vines, 
 
 and vineyards and vine-culture. However many may 
 
 be the things in which they differ, in respect of wine 
 
 in 
 
172 IRIS. 
 
 they are one. They are like an arbour overrun by the 
 vine in front and rear, and filled with its perfume. 
 To this effect let us pledge one another ! The matter 
 deserves a toast : — 
 
 In vino Veritas 
 Atque sinceritas. 
 Quidquid latebit 
 Mox apparebit. 
 
 In wine is verity 
 And pure sincerity. 
 What's dark as night 
 'Twill bring to light. 
 
 Let this reminiscence from the Middle Ehine be the 
 preface to my talk with you to-day. 
 
 Ehineland was not always a vine land, but Palestine, 
 which is fondly called the land of joy, was in the 
 earliest times a country of the vine. At the time, indeed, 
 when the good Eoman Emperor Probus, from 276, took 
 an interest in the cultivation of his conquered territories, 
 and planted the vine on the banks of the Ehine, the 
 culture of it had already suffered severely in the land 
 of the Jordan; for the wars of independence against 
 the Eomans, the first of which terminated in the year 
 72 with the destruction of Jerusalem, and the second 
 in the year 135 with the exclusion of the Jews from 
 Jerusalem rebuilt, had laid the once richly-laden trellises 
 utterly waste. The Jewish city became heathen under 
 Hadrian, and Christian under Constantine. But from 
 the time it became a Moslem city in the year 637, and 
 the whole land, as far as Lebanon, fell into the posses- 
 sion of Moslem rulers, the culture of the vine, owing to 
 the prohibition of wine by the Koran, utterly collapsed. 
 The erection of a Christian kingdom of Jerusalem by 
 the Crusaders made little change in this respect, for the 
 
THE BIBLE AND WINE. 173 
 
 vine, as the Prophet Zechariah ' calls it, is a " seed of 
 peace." Vine-culture demands peace still more than 
 agriculture. But the dominion of the Christians was 
 maintained only by constant readiness for war, and 
 without anything like assured peace. And since the 
 Osmanlis, in 1517, became masters of Palestine, their 
 indolence and mismanagement have wholly effaced its 
 former fertility, and there is now only the merest 
 remnant of the once widespread and far-famed culture 
 of the Palestinian vine. The Moslems only cultivate it 
 either to use the grapes themselves, or to sell them. 
 Up till 1869 it was only grown for the purpose of 
 making wine by the Christians, in the region of Lebanon, 
 and by the Jews, chiefly in Hebron. But since that 
 date the so-called Temple Society, founded by Hoffman 
 of Wiirtemberg, has colonized Palestine, and wherever 
 the settlers have established themselves, — on the coast 
 of the Mediterranean (Jaffa, Sharon, Haifa), and in the 
 highlands of Judah (Jerusalem), — a better day has 
 dawned for the vine, which may be regarded as a first 
 step towards the fulfilment of the words of the Prophet 
 Joel (iii. 18) regarding the mountains dropping down 
 sweet wine. 
 
 There was a time when the mountains of the Holy 
 Land, and especially of Judea, were cultivated in 
 terraces to a great elevation, so that the poet of Ps. 
 Ixxii., regarding the time of peace under Solomon, can 
 without exaggeration express the wish : " May there be 
 abundance of corn in the land to the tops of the 
 mountains, may the fruit shake like Lebanon." And 
 Isaiah, in chap, v., comparing the disappointed expecta- 
 
174 lEis. 
 
 tion of the God of Israel with that of a husbandman, 
 strikes up the song as if he were a strolling musician : 
 "Now wiU I sing of my well-beloved [the prophet's 
 well-beloved is his God], a song of my well-beloved 
 touching His vineyard. My well-beloved had a vine- 
 yard on a hill, the son of fatness. And He made a 
 trench about it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and 
 planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in 
 the midst of it, and also hewed out a wine-press therein ; 
 and He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and — 
 it brought forth wild grapes." The hill was the son of 
 fatness — fatness, that is, was native to it ; it belonged 
 naturally to the fruitful soil. The earth from which 
 the fruit sprang was not laboriously carried up, but was 
 natural to it. The chief element which goes to form 
 this cultivable superficial stratum of the mountains on 
 this side the Jordan is the limestone, which has been 
 decomposed by the action of the weather. That " hill " 
 (mountain-horu) of the parable, half-way to the top or 
 on the plateau immediately below the summit, was 
 richly covered with such fat soil, in a situation so 
 protected that it could not be washed down. And 
 from such ground the best possible crop was to be 
 expected from the choice vines with which it was 
 planted. The experiments of recent times confirm the 
 fact, that while the saudy soil of the coast yields more, 
 the chalky soil of the highlands yields better wine. The 
 wine of Jaffa, in respect of the amount of alcohol it 
 contains, corresponds to that of France ; the wine of 
 Hebron and Jerusalem is as fiery as that of Spain, or 
 even more so. 
 
THE BIBLE AND WINE. l75 
 
 The rapidity with which the culture of the viae has 
 developed in the hands of those Templars to whom I 
 have referred, shows what a wine-country Palestine 
 might become, if the soil on the slopes of the hills were 
 supported by terraces, and the work of cultivation were 
 sedulously carried on and protected. So it was formerly. 
 As the peninsula of Sinai, when the chosen people 
 wandered in it for forty years, was not yet to the same 
 extent the howling wilderness which it afterwards 
 became, so Palestine, as described by Moses in 
 Deuteronomy, was " a good land, a land of brooks 
 of water, of fountains and depths springing forth in 
 plains and hills, a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, 
 and fig-trees, and pomegranates, a land of oil-olive and 
 honey, a land where the people needed not to eat their 
 bread sparingly." The cultivation of the vine is treated 
 in the Mosaic law as one of the chief matters of national 
 industry. Of the kings, Solomon and Uzziah are 
 specially celebrated for their services in promoting it. 
 When the land came under the dominion of the 
 Chaldees, even the conquerors sought to maintain the 
 worth of the province by keeping up agriculture and 
 vine-culture as much as possible. When we collect the 
 images of Holy Scripture from the books of history, 
 prophecy, and doctrine, and make them pass before us, 
 with an open eye for the beautiful in nature, we can 
 see a spectacle stretching right and left before us (from 
 the oasis of Engedi on the Dead Sea upwards to 
 Lebanon, and from Hebron south - westwards to the 
 southern border of Judah, and still more, northwards from 
 the plain of Jezreel across to the outspurs of Carmel), of 
 
176 lEis. 
 
 silver-green plantations of the olive, and dark-green planta- 
 tions of fig-trees and smiling vine-trellises. A considerable 
 portion of this beauty remained down to the first century 
 of our era. Josephus boasts that on the shore of the 
 Lake of Gennesaret, it was possible during ten months of 
 the year to pluck ripe grapes and figs (these two he calls 
 the kings of fruits). And where the vine is cultivated 
 at the present day, the productive power of nature is 
 shown to be enormous. The missionary Stephanus 
 Schultz tells that there are clusters twelve pounds in 
 weight, and with grapes of the size of plums. On the 
 southern slopes of Lebanon he found a Adne thirty feet 
 high, the branches of which formed an arbour more 
 than fifty feet in length and breadth. And in the work 
 on Palestine by Ebers-Guthe, mention is made of a vine 
 found in one of the gardens of Jericho, the stem of 
 which was in diameter from twelve to fifteen inches. In 
 the district of Jaffa the vine is almost indestructible ; it 
 may be cut or sawn under the head, again it grows 
 up, and even when, year after year, it is cut at the 
 depth of a foot under ground, it rises again in full 
 vigour. 
 
 So rich in wine was the land, and especially Judea in 
 former times, that in the poetical language of prophecy, 
 it is said that the inhabitants could wash their clothes 
 in wine as in water, and without any anxiety about the 
 harm that might be done, could bind their horses or 
 mules to the choicest vine for a stake. The olive, fig, 
 and vine are the ancient emblems of the land of Israel. 
 In the fable which Jotham tells the men of Shechem, to 
 warn them against submitting to the sovereignty of the 
 
THE BIBLE AND WINE. 177 
 
 fratricide Abimelech, the trees go to anoint a king. 
 First, they approach the olive, which, as the producer 
 of the anointing - on, seems to be designated for the 
 honour most immediately; then the fig-tree, whose 
 mantling crown resembles a canopy ; next, the vine, 
 which is rather a creeper than a tree, and prefers to 
 spread itself over the stem of the fig; but the vine 
 also declines : " Should I leave my wine, which cheereth 
 God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees ? " 
 It is a standing image of a time of prosperous peace, 
 when every man is described as sitting under his own 
 vine and fig-tree. As the Prophet Zechariah pictures 
 to himself the future time of freedom and peace, he 
 exclaims (ix. 17): " How good and how beautiful ! 
 Corn shall make the young men flourish, and new 
 wine the maids," i.e. the young men shall thrive on 
 the strengthening food of the land, and the soft sweet 
 juice of the grape impart a youthful freshness to the 
 cheeks of the maiden. And in the Song of Songs, where 
 all that is grandest in the vegetable world is gathered 
 together, as in the Isola Bella of the Lago Maggiore, the 
 vine stands foremost. Solomon's only beloved has a 
 browned complexion, because her stern brothers have 
 made her the keeper of the vineyard. Visiting her 
 home at the foot of the little Hermon, leaning on 
 Solomon's arm, she uses a figure borrowed from his 
 vineyard in Baalhamon, to make the king aware that as 
 he rewards the keepers of this vineyard, so he must not 
 leave the keepers of hers, i.e. her brothers, the keepers of 
 her virginity, without suitable gifts. Meanwhile we hear 
 how she is visited by the king before she is led home, 
 
 M 
 
178 IRIS. 
 
 and how, when challenged to let the notes of her voice 
 be heard, she sings a vineyard song, — 
 
 ©ie^c nut buftigen Stuten gef^tnucEet 
 ©te^et bcr SBein6erg, f^on fcimen bie Seeren. 
 
 5(uf benn unb fa^et bie Sui^fe, bie tfeineit, 
 S)af fie ben liefclic^en unS nid^t Serl^eeren ! ^ 
 
 The opening of the vine-blossom, which in Hebrew bears 
 the beautiful name semadar, appears three times in the 
 song as a sign of spring. Every one who visits a vine- 
 yard at the blossoming time (on the Ehine, the end of 
 May), is delighted with the matchless perfume. 
 
 Apart altogether from the vintage - feast, vineyards 
 were chosen as the scene of popular festivals. As 
 Israelitish history has its Iphigenia ia Jephthah's 
 daughter, who faUs a victim to a vow, it has also a 
 counterpart to the rape of the Sabines in that of the 
 maidens of Shiloh. The tribe of Benjamin, had been 
 reduced to a small remnant by the war of vengeance, 
 which the other tribes had waged against it, and these 
 had sworn not to give their daughters in marriage to 
 Benjamites. It was a popular festival which was kept 
 yearly in Shiloh, which provided a way of escape from 
 the dilemma. The daughters of Shiloh were engaged in 
 their dances, when the Benjamites burst forth from the 
 vineyards, and carried them off as their wives, the elders 
 of the congregation meantime conniving at the deed. 
 And so late as the time of the Herods, there were 
 
 1 See, with s-weet-smelling blossoms the vineyard 
 Stands all arrayed, the grapes bud in haste. 
 Up then, and catch us the foxes, the small ones, 
 Lest the fair promise they cruelly waste. — Tr. 
 
THE BIBLE AND WINE. 179 
 
 connected with the 15 th of Ab (the last day of the 
 felling of sacrificial wood), and the 10th of Tisri (the 
 day of Atonement), two singular merry-makings for the 
 whole population of Jerusalem ; for on these days the 
 maidens went out to the surrounding vineyards in white 
 dresses, which even the richest had borrowed, that the 
 feelings of the poor might be spared. There they danced 
 before the youths who gathered to the spectacle, and 
 whom they twitted in sportive songs. 
 
 It is worthy of note that the winged word, "Wine 
 maketh glad the heart of man," is found in the Psalter, 
 and that, too, in Ps. civ., which is a song of praise to 
 God the Creator. The interest of Holy Scripture in 
 nature is not determined merely by the charm of natural 
 beauty, nor merely by the enjoyment which the products 
 of nature furnish in the form of food and drink, but it 
 is supremely a religious interest. Scripture sees divine 
 thoughts embodied in them, earthly copies of heavenly 
 originals, miracles of creative omnipotence and wisdom, 
 gifts of heavenly love. The enchanting view of a noble 
 vine-landscape points upwards to God the Creator and 
 Giver, and when it is laid waste, the view of this 
 desolation saddens, very much like a table heaped up 
 with festal gifts, when it is overturned and all that 
 stood on it is wrecked. In this mood Isaiah, in his 
 oracle on Moab, laments the desolation of the Moabite 
 vineyards by the Assyrian war. The city Jazer 
 weeps for the desolated vines of Sibmah, the prophet 
 joins in the weeping, and laments with it, that over the 
 
180 lEis. 
 
 rich fields of the sister cities of Heshbon and Elealeh 
 there has been heard the hedad (hurrah, war-cry) of the 
 storming foe instead of the hedad (tra-la-la) of the 
 vintagers, — 
 
 Therefore I will weep witli the weeping of Jazer for the vine 
 
 of Sibmah, 
 I will water thee with my tears, Heshbon and Elealeh ! 
 For upon thy summer fruits and on thy vintage 
 The hedad (battle-shout) has fallen. 
 
 Joel's lamentation, likewise, over the all - parching 
 drought and all - devouring clouds of locusts, is chiefly 
 a strain of sympathetic mourning with nature herself, 
 though embracing also the destruction of the provision 
 for man and beast, and especially of the needful supplies 
 for the daily worsMp : " The meat - offering and the 
 drink-offering is cut off from the house of Jahveh ; the 
 priests, the ministers of Jahveh mourn." They mourn 
 because the offering of the daily morning and evening 
 sacrifice, which was never intermitted before, even under 
 the sorest pressure of siege, has become impossible 
 through the laying waste of the fields and vines. 
 
 The daily morning and evening sacrifice closed with 
 a libation of wine, during which the trumpets of the 
 priests and the singing and music of the Levites 
 sounded forth. This is described in the Book of Sirach, 
 and excellently translated by Luther : " He (namely, the 
 high priest, Simon II.) stretched out his hand with the 
 drink-offering, and offered red wine, and poured it out 
 at the foot of the altar, as a sweet-smelling savour to 
 the Highest, who is King of all. Then the sons of 
 Aaron shouted, and blew with high-sounding trumpets, 
 
THE BIBLE AND WINE. 181 
 
 that their memorial might come up before the Highest. 
 Then suddenly all the people at once fell to the ground, 
 on their faces, and prayed to the Lord, their Almighty 
 God, Most High. And the singers praised Him with 
 psalms, and the whole house rang again with the sweet 
 sounds." In the Mischna Tract on meat-offerings 
 (meiiacJboth), the places are named from which the 
 best and second best wine for the libation was brought. 
 Among the latter places there is named the white city 
 on the hill. This is probably Nazareth, for in ancient 
 documents it is called the white city, because the houses 
 are built of white limestone, and because it lies in an 
 amphitheatre formed of white chalky hills. At the 
 present day, its cultivation of the vine is unimportant. 
 The branches trail on the ground; the red and white 
 grapes are cut before they are ripe, and are brought to 
 market to be taken as a refreshing dessert. 
 
 That the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments 
 condemn immoderate indulgence in wine is a matter 
 of course. It would be an impious error if the contrary 
 inference were drawn from the fact that they sometimes 
 speak of a raised, exultant frame {e.g. Ps. xxxvi. 8) as a 
 being drunk. Wine and every other strong drink are 
 forbidden to priests when officiating, under threat of 
 death ; and it is a principal requisite in the case of 
 the elders and deacons of the Church, that they be not 
 given to wine. Only two parties, however, in the Old 
 Testament were total abstainers from wine — the Nazarite, 
 who had taken a vow of abstinence for a definite period, 
 
182 lEiS. 
 
 or for his lifetime, and the nomad family of the 
 Eechabites, whose inexorable adherence to their heredi- 
 tary practice was held up by Jeremiah as a pattern to 
 his own countrymen. There were also Jewish - Chris- 
 tians in the Church of the Eomans who, on principle, 
 denied themselves the use of flesh and wine, perhaps 
 because the time seemed unsuitable for such indulgence, 
 as many after the destruction of Jerusalem said : " Should 
 we eat flesh and drink wine now when that altar is 
 destroyed, on which God was wont to have flesh offered 
 and wine poured out to Him ? " Under certain circum- 
 stances, there are undoubtedly justifiable reasons for 
 abstaining from wine, and for organizing such voluntary 
 abstinence, to counteract the terrible evil caused by the 
 use of alcoholic drinks. This is the ground which the 
 Anglo-American representatives of the temperance move- 
 ment should take, without attempting to wrest the 
 Scripture argument to support the conclusion that all 
 use of fermented wine is anti- scriptural. How often 
 have I been asked in this connection, Whether the wine 
 of the four cups used at the Jewish Passover was 
 fermented ! They would so like to substitute unfer- 
 mented must for fermented wine in the Lord's Supper. 
 But the Jewish Paschal wine is really fermented. Must, 
 in the proper sense of the word, i.e. grape-juice freshly 
 drawn from the wine-press, and yet unfermented, there 
 is none at Easter ; after the first few days the first 
 fermentation begins, and therewith the formation of 
 alcohol. The juice of preserved grapes is also excluded 
 by the season of Easter; at the utmost we can only 
 think of a distilled liquid, with the addition of spices 
 
THE BIBLE AND WINE. 183 
 
 poured over dried grapes — an allowable substitute for 
 real wine, but this, too, is not without intoxicating 
 power. So it must have been fermented wine^ which 
 Jesus gave to the disciples at His parting feast, when 
 He closed with the mysterious utterance: "VerUy I 
 say unto you, T will not drink henceforth of this fruit 
 of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with 
 you in My Father's kingdom." The words suggest a 
 figurative saying of the ancient synagogue, that there is 
 a wine in the future world, which has been preserved 
 since the close of the six days of creation, to be at 
 length enjoyed by the blessed. 
 
 The vine is a beautiful figure of rising from lowliness 
 to honour in the service of men. Among useful plants 
 there is not one more modest or more patient ; not one 
 which does so much without ostentation, or which, with 
 an unpretentious form, contributes so much delight. 
 The vine suffers with magnanimity ; it puts up with the 
 most diverse soils, and somewhat severe degrees of cold, 
 and does not succumb even to bad treatment. Hence 
 in Jacob's blessing, Joseph is compared to a vine, the 
 dreamer given over by his brothers to the heathen, 
 who, in his exalted condition, became the saviour and 
 benefactor of his people. Hence, in Ps. Ixxx., Israel is 
 compared to a vine, a stock transplanted from the soil 
 of Egyptian bondage to Canaan, which, though sorely 
 
 1 In the first impression, by an oversight, " unfermented " 
 appeared, which gave rise to serious errors in the circle of my 
 German, and yet more of my English, readers. Meanwhile Edw. 
 Millard of Vienna recognised the " droll accident ; '' and D. Burns, 
 in the Temperance Record, corrected the error of the press from the 
 context. 
 
184 lEis. 
 
 torn and gnawed, yet remains an object of the divine 
 choice and protection, and of a love which cannot fail to 
 be revealed iq the end. And hence, also, Jesus compares 
 Himself to a viae, His Father to a vine-dresser, and His 
 disciples to the branches ; and the Church sings of the 
 wine which He administers sacramentally, — 
 
 >§einger Sffiein, jei mir gefegnet, 
 
 aBcit mir ber mit bir Begegnet, 
 ©effen Stut mic^ loffet finben 
 
 IDie a5erge6ung meiner <&unben.i 
 
 Through these three figures taken from the vine, the 
 circle of historical connection revolves, but an inter- 
 mediate member is yet wanting. The Messiah is Son of 
 David, and the prophets know Him familiarly under the 
 name of David. But where is David compared to a vine ? 
 Sitting with my friend in the vine-arbour on the Ehine, 
 I told him how in the library of the Jerusalem convent 
 at Constantinople there had been found an old Church 
 Service undoubtedly of Jewish-Christian origin, the text 
 of which has been known since 1883. In it there occurs 
 a prayer connected with the Holy Supper, to this effect : 
 " We thank Thee, our Father, for the holy vine of Thy 
 servant David, which Thou didst make known to us by 
 Thy servant Jesus." No one has yet succeeded in 
 pointing out whence this image of the vine of David has 
 been taken. 
 
 I think I know, said my friend, but we have no 
 
 ^ Hallowed wine, accept my greeting, 
 For thou with Him provid'st a meeting, 
 Whose blood enables me to gain 
 Forgiveness of my every stain. — Tr. 
 
THE BIBLE AND WINE. 185 
 
 books here. Then he took a draught, smiled, and con- 
 tinued : It is remarkable how the old Jewish and old 
 Christian literature agree in the matter of wine. That's 
 what I wanted to be at, cried I : Old and New Testament 
 are one stream, like the German Middle Ehine from 
 Bingen to Coblenz and from Coblenz to Bonn, — one 
 stream in which mountains and vineyards and stars and 
 sun are mirrored. He was silent, and let me have the 
 last word. And so let it be my last word to you 
 to-day ! 
 
 POSTSCEIPT. 
 
 The explanation, of which my friend on the Ehine 
 was thinking, was to be found, I have little doubt, in 
 Ps. Ixxx. There Israel is compared to a vine trans- 
 planted from Egypt to Canaan, and vers. 14 and 15 
 run : " Eeturn, we beseech Thee, God of hosts : look 
 down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine. And 
 shelter that which Thy right hand hath planted, and 
 the Son [branch] Thou didst bind fast to Thyself." 
 These verses are translated in the Targum (the Aramaic 
 paraphrase) : " Eeturn, we beseech Thee, God of hosts, 
 look down from heaven, and behold, and think in mercy 
 of this vine ; and of the shoot which Thy right hand 
 hath planted, and of the King Messiah (malka mescMcha), 
 whom Thou madest strong for Thyself." Here the 
 parallel is completed : Vine = Messiah (David). I may 
 
186 IRIS, 
 
 add, that in the Apocalypse of Baruch, which belongs 
 to about the same date as the " Doctrine of the Twelve 
 Apostles," the vine (with a fountain beneath it) appears 
 as an emblem of the Messiah (chaps, xxxvi.-xxxix.). 
 While the cedar representing the world - power takes 
 fire, and is burned to ashes, the vine grows, and all round 
 about it becomes a field full of unfading fl'owers. 
 
X. 
 
 ©ancins antr tfje Critictgm of tl^e IPentateuclj tn 
 relation to one anotijer. 
 
X. 
 
 DANCING AND THE CRITICISM OF THE 
 PENTATEUCH IN RELATION TO ONE 
 ANOTHER 
 
 Among the Hebrews dancing was common in the earliest 
 times, and continued to be so in their later history. It 
 prevailed at their feasts, and never did they learn to 
 celebrate these with hanging heads. 
 
 These propositions we maintain, in face of modern 
 criticism on the Pentateuch. We do not stop to 
 challenge the assertion, that the middle books of the 
 Pentateuch present the latest form of the Mosaic law, 
 but we deny that this legislation impaired the natural 
 joy of earlier times belonging to the ancient feasts. 
 
 We are not speaking of the Judaism of the Talmud 
 and of the Ghetti, but of the people after their restora- 
 tion from the exile. It is said they no longer formed 
 a people, but a sect.^ But they heroically wrested their 
 independence from the Seleucidae in the; time of the 
 Maccabees ; they reasserted it in two insurrections 
 against the Eoman yoke, and it expired only under the 
 
 1 Wellhausen, Prolegomena (1886), p. 29 : " It was not the nation 
 that returned from the exile, but a religious sect, — those who had 
 given themselves body and soul to the reforming ideas." Smend, 
 in Stade's Zeitschrift, ii. 94 : " Ancient Israel was a people and a 
 national state, the Jews a religious body." 
 
 18S 
 
190 IRIS. 
 
 Emperors Vespasian and Hadrian in a manner tragical 
 beyond all example. The histories of these wars of 
 independence are undoubtedly great national histories. 
 
 And why should the post-exilic people be counted a 
 sect ? Unity of religion, common religious worship, and a 
 central sanctuary, are surely not things which rob a people 
 of national character. The Arab tribes and those nation- 
 alities which all unite in praying with their faces turned 
 toward the Caaba in Mecca, and know no higher blessed- 
 ness than at least once in their life to make a pilgrimage 
 to that sacred spot, surely are not on that account 
 sects. 
 
 But, it is said, the legislation of the post - exilic 
 priestly code robbed the religious services of their fresh, 
 popular character, by regulating them by statute, bind- 
 ing them to the temple, giving to the sacrifices a pre- 
 ponderating reference to sin and atonement, and making 
 the old feasts of the seasons, whose name haggim 
 denotes " dances," into general Church feasts with his- 
 torical references. " Threshing-floor and winepress, corn 
 and grape-juice, were the bases of the ancient Israelitish 
 worship ; simple joy and jubilant mirth were its ex- 
 pression." ^ 
 
 We maintain that it continued to be the same in 
 later times. After the exile the feasts were divested 
 of their earlier heathen character, and became the 
 national feasts of a monotheistic people, without im- 
 pairing the festal joy. Delight in the dance remained 
 the same as before. To prove this, let us take a few 
 pictures from the life of the people, and these from the 
 1 Wellliausen, Prolegomena, pp. 99, 100. 
 
DANCING AND THE CKITICISM OF THE PENTATEUCH. 191 
 
 rather dark than bright period, when they were ruled by 
 the vassal Herods under the Eoman dominion. 
 
 On the north side of the hill, on which stands 
 Anathoth, the birthplace of the Prophet Jeremiah, four 
 miles and a quarter to the north of Jerusalem, there 
 appears a group of the inhabitants eagerly looking out 
 into the distance. The sound of music has been caught. 
 For in the pure air of Palestine sound is propagated 
 more quickly and to a greater distance than with us. 
 After long waiting, a procession is seen coming down 
 from a height, and by and by it crosses the valley to 
 the sound of music. The music ceases, as the procession 
 climbs the steep path to Anathoth. Meanwhile the 
 news has spread to the whole neighbourhood. The 
 comers are welcomed from the flat roofs of the upper 
 houses by the waving of handkerchiefs. The youth of 
 the place run hither and thither shouting merrily 
 chalilajja (flutes !) majtajja de-hikkurajja (bringers of 
 firstlings !). Now the procession has gained the ridge 
 of the hill, the music sounds forth again, and crowds 
 swarm from all the houses of the neighbourhood. In 
 front of the procession walks a stately ox, its horns 
 gilded, and a garland of olive on its head. Then come 
 musicians, playing merry airs on the flute ; then asses 
 laden with baskets, some of them plain, others adorned 
 with gold and silver, full of fresh figs and grapes, other 
 asses with baskets full of dried figs and raisins, and 
 others still with cages full of young doves and turtles. 
 Last come the representatives of the district of Michmash, 
 
192 IRIS. 
 
 who are now bearing its first-fruits to the temple. The 
 flute is the proper instrument for dance-music, and ac- 
 cordingly in the Lord's similitude, taken from the children 
 playing in the market-place, those who are in ill-humour 
 say to the others : We have played the flute unto you, 
 and ye have not danced (Luke vii. 32). The whole 
 population of Anathoth is as if it had been stung by 
 the tarantula. The procession, after taking some re- 
 freshment, again moves on to the sound of music and 
 descends into the green valley. Thereupon old and 
 young follow in the rear ; mothers dandle their babies 
 as if to take part in the dance ; girls trip merrily in 
 front, forming rings in the path of the procession, to 
 break up on its approach ; male choirs strike up national 
 melodies, such as " Pray for the good of Jerusalem, let 
 them prosper who love thee ! " Many follow almost to 
 the walls of Jerusalem, where the procession halts and 
 sends messengers into the city to announce its arrival. 
 Meanwhile the firstlings are tastefully arranged, and the 
 finest of the grapes, pomegranates, and other fruits are 
 laid out in the form of a wreath. Deputies from the 
 temple come to receive the visitors with all honour, and 
 when now they march into Jerusalem to the sound of 
 music, the workmen, who there work in front of their 
 houses on the street, pause for a little, rise, and greet 
 the visitors with the words: Brethren, men of Michmash, 
 welcome to our city ! Then the full baskets, with the 
 doves fastened to them, are borne up the temple hill on 
 the shoulders of the offerers themselves, and as they 
 enter the outer court of the temple, they are welcomed 
 with a psalm sung by Levites. The doves are presented 
 
DANCING AND THE CRITICISM OF THE PENTATEUCH. 193 
 
 as a burnt-offering, the ox as a peace-offering, and of 
 this the offerers receive a portion for a joyous meal, 
 which might be held anywhere, wherever they lodged 
 in Jerusalem.^ Is not all this popular, full of nature, 
 beaiitiful and merry ; and was it not natural that, when 
 the people had their own land again, land and people in 
 their totality should present this tribute of gratitude 
 from the fulness of the blessing divinely vouchsafed ? 
 Thereby no limit was imposed on the free-will offerings 
 of individuals. 
 
 The land was divided into twenty-four districts, so 
 that there was scarcely a highway in it the dwellers on 
 which might not between Pentecost and the feast of 
 tabernacles have the opportunity of enjoying the glad 
 spectacle of such a hikkurim procession. The days of 
 the last-mentioned feast also gave abundant proof that 
 the post - exilic feasts left the mirthfulness of nature 
 associated with them unimpaired. At that season, 
 before the grey dawn of the first feast-day, if it was 
 not a Sabbath, there might be seen a festal throng 
 streaming out of Jerusalem by the Jaffa gate. The 
 way leads first over stony ground, and then winds down 
 a long slope into the Chanina valley, above which, on 
 the right, stood the villages of Moza and Colonia. The 
 green of the orchards, restored by the first showers 
 of the early rain, is hailed with jubilant shouts. The 
 people spread out on either side of the bridge which 
 crosses the brook, with its shade of high black poplars, 
 some of them to pluck branches with their own hands, 
 
 1 Chief passage : Mischna, Bikkurim, iii. 2, 3, and also the Pales- 
 tinian Gemara, 
 
194 iKis. 
 
 to be borne at the feast, others to watch the men who 
 are honoured with the commission to fetch from Colonia 
 the leafy adornment of the altar. They seek out the 
 longest and finest branches of those poplars and cut 
 them off. Then the whole multitude forms again in 
 procession, and with shout and song and jest they 
 return to the temple hill, where the large poplar 
 branches are received by the priests and set upright 
 round the sides of the altar, so that the tops meet over 
 it. While the altar was thus embowered, trumpets were 
 blown by the priests ; and once every feast day, and on 
 the seventh, seven times, the people moved round it 
 with willow branches or the festal garland, formed of a 
 palm branch (lulah) bound with myrtle and willow. As 
 they did so they uttered the usual hosanna shout ; and 
 when the last round was completed, they cried out : 
 Beauty becometh thee, altar ! Beauty becometh thee, 
 altar ! ^ Wliether we regard these post-exilic customs 
 in good taste or not, they are certainly not sour and 
 gloomy. Luther, in translating Ps. cxviii. 27:" Adorn 
 the feast with May-trees {Maien), even to the horns of 
 the altar," compares those poplar boughs to the birches 
 which we set up at Whitsuntide as May-trees, and round 
 which the May or Whitsun dance is performed. For 
 the world of creation has its feasts, and the world of 
 spirits has its feasts, and there is nothing more joyous 
 and full of meaning than when they interpenetrate and 
 pervade one another. 
 
 1 Mischna, Succa, division iv. Maimonides, Hilchoth Lulah, iv. 
 21-23 ; oomp. in regard to what was carried in procession ronnd 
 the altar, Succa, 43>>. 
 
DAXCma AND THE CKITICISM OF THE PENTATEUCH. 195 
 
 And now we come to those which may properly be 
 called dance - feasts. One of the happiest days the 
 people had was the 15th Ab, a July or August day, 
 when the felling of wood for the altar of burnt-offering 
 was completed, on which, even when there was no 
 sacrifice, fire was to be kept glimmering day and night, 
 by renewing the fuell As the Greeco-Eoman fights in 
 the amphitheatre were the chief cause of the disappear- 
 ance of the lion from Palestine and all the countries 
 round the Mediterranean, so that altar, which consumed 
 an enormous quantity of wood, is mainly accountable for 
 the fact that there are no woods to be found far and 
 wide round about Jerusalem, only brushwood or solitary 
 trees. But at the time to which we go back, notwith- 
 standing the devastating wars which had preceded it, it 
 was otherwise. Then there were still woods with tall 
 trees not far from Jerusalem, and especially on the 
 highlands of Ephraim and Benjamin ; and the duty of 
 supplying the altar thence with fuel was a distinction 
 coveted by the priestly, Levite and patrician families, 
 among whom the woods were divided by lot. NehemiaE, 
 in the biblical book composed of extracts from his 
 memorabilia, attaches great importance to the organization 
 formed for this supply of wood, or, as it is called, wood- 
 offering. The 15 th Ab was the last day of the felling 
 of the wood, when all, without family distinction, could 
 take part in bringing it to the city, — the feast of the 
 Xyloplwrice, as Josephus calls it. Old and young, rich 
 and poor, marched out to the woods, the finest ornament 
 was the axe on the shoulder, and as the wood was 
 brought in waggons or on beasts of burden, chiefly oxen. 
 
196 IRIS. 
 
 or on stout backs to the precincts of the temple, the 
 jubilation was not inferior to the joy of the harvest- 
 feast.^ For a people is and remains a natural, not a 
 spiritual, quantity, and therefore celebrates even religious 
 festivals v^ith a natural outburst of feeling, simple mirth, 
 jubilant exultation. It lies in the nature of a people as 
 such. 
 
 Even the deep solemnity of the day of Atonement 
 changed on the same evening to glad merriment. 
 " Nothing is more characteristic, it is said of the post- 
 exilic worship, which, in contrast to the old, points at 
 every turn to sin and expiation, than that it cidminates 
 in a great feast of atonement." ^ But the later celebra- 
 tion of this day in funereal dress is only a black shadow 
 of the original style. The celebration in the temple was 
 from beginning to end a drama of the most arresting and 
 significant character. When the high priest came out 
 of the Holy of Holies after completing his functions 
 there, the sight was rich in comfort and gladness to the 
 people, and poetry could not find words fit to describe 
 it : " like the peace-speaking bow on the painted clouds, 
 like the evening star when it emerges from the eastern 
 dusk, like the sun when it unfolds its blossoms of rosy 
 light." ^ Again, it was a gleesome interlude, when he 
 gave over the scape-goat to the man who had to lead it 
 from the outer court of the temple down to the city. 
 
 ^ Authorities : Misohna, Taanith, part iv., with Neh. x. 35, xiii. 
 31 ; Joseph us, Bell. Jud. ii. 17. 6 ; comp. Herzfeld, Gesch. Israels, i. 
 67 f., 144 f., ii. 126, 182 f. ; and Eosenzweig, Das Jahrhundert nach 
 dem hahyl. Exile (1885), p. 126. 
 
 2 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 113. 
 
 2 See my History of Jeioish Poetry (1836), p. 21 f. 
 
DANCING AND THE CRITICISM OF THE PENTATEUCH. 197 
 
 The people thronged to see the goat and to pull and 
 chase it, in such numbers that it and its leader needed 
 a strong guard.* When the ceremony was over, a pro- 
 cession accompanied the high priest to his dwelling in 
 the city, where a banquet awaited him with his nearest 
 friends. With this, however, the young people did not 
 concern themselves. They made ready to go out to the 
 vineyards. For round about Jerusalem there are hills, 
 vine-clad hills. In the limestone uplands of Judea, and 
 especially near Jerusalem, there grows a wine which is 
 superior to the German and even the Spanish in 
 strength. Twice in the year, on the last day of the 
 wood-offering and on the day of Atonement, there was 
 pleasure- dancing in the vineyards.^ The maidens, without 
 ornament, were dressed in white, borrowing newly washed 
 dresses for the occasion ; even the rich borrowed them, 
 not to put the poor to shame. The enjoyment reached 
 its height in the circular dances. The males and 
 females stood opposite and met one another dancing and 
 singing. The singing was done by the male voices ; but 
 under the chastening influence of the day's solemnities, 
 the meeting took the form, in a measure, of looking for 
 or choosing a bride. In the Book of Judges (chap, xxi.) 
 we read that a similar dance-feast was celebrated yearly 
 by the maidens of Shiloh in the vineyards outside the 
 city. There it is called a feast to the Lord. And 
 neither was the dance of the daughters of Jerusalem 
 without a religious significance. Thus there is no proof 
 
 1 Mischna, Joma, vi. 3-6. 
 
 * Mischna, Taanith, iv. 8 ; comp. Gesch. der judischen Poesie, 
 p. 195 f. 
 
98 IRIS. 
 
 that the legislation of the priestly code converted the 
 piety which had formerly been a popular observance, 
 into individual exercises. It is true that Mosaism did 
 not at any stage of its development make dancing a part 
 of religious worship, but neither did it banish it from 
 this sphere ; but after the exile, as well as before, left 
 it untouched as a popular custom, hallowed by religious 
 associations. Feasts were dances before, and they 
 remained dances after. This is proved by the history. 
 
 For we have still to mention a non plus ultra, — the 
 delight of the Beth-has-choeba or torch-dance feast, of 
 which the common saying was, that he who did not know 
 this joy, did not know what joy was. The feast of taber- 
 nacles, as that of the harvest-home, was the most joyous 
 of all ; and therefore the inventive genius of the people 
 enriched it with graceful and mirthful customs, going far 
 beyond the letter of the Pentateuchal law. To this 
 Category belong the illumination of the temple and the 
 torch-dance during the nights of the half-feast days.* 
 This dance is mentioned by a professional connoisseur, 
 I mean the Court teacher of dancing at Berlin, Eudolph 
 Voss, in that distinguished work of his on Dancing and 
 its History (1868), which shows such a marvellous know- 
 ledge of books, and he praises it in terms only too 
 extravagant : " There is not a people in the world which 
 down to the present day has a dance to point to, which 
 for nobnity and grandeur of idea and execution can 
 compare with this holy torch- dance." 
 
 ^ The feast of tabernacles lasts eight days. Days one, two, and 
 seven and eight are high or full feast days, the intervening three, 
 four, five, and six are half-feast days, on which one might follow his 
 business and do necessary work. 
 
DANCING AND THE CRITICISM OF THE PENTATEUCH. 199 
 
 When the high day at the beginning of the feast was 
 at an end, priests and Levites set to work in the women's 
 court of the temple and erected a double gallery for the 
 spectators, the upper for the women and the lower for 
 the men. Enormous candelabra were set up, each with 
 four gilded bowls. Mounted on ladders, four young 
 priests supplied these with oil, and wicks without 
 number were laid in the bowls. When the lamps of 
 these candelabra began to sparkle, and the light of the 
 numerous torches was added, not only was the temple 
 converted, as it were, into a sea of fire, but the whole of 
 Jerusalem to its remotest courts was illuminated. It 
 was not women, but men, the foremost and most 
 honoured of the city, who performed the play of the 
 torch-dance. They danced with torches, throwing them 
 into the air and catching them again, often performing 
 prodigies with a dexterity acquired by long practice. 
 And dancing and jugglery were varied with the choir- 
 singing of festal songs, sometimes impromptu. Music 
 and singing sounded forth without ceasing, for on the 
 fifteen steps which led down from the court of the men 
 to that of the women, stood the Levites with citherns, 
 harps, cymbals, and many other instruments, and struck 
 up song after song. At the top of the fifteen steps, at 
 the Nicanor gate, two priests waited for the first crowing 
 of the cock, to announce with three blasts of the trumpet 
 the breaking of the day, the signal on which this nightly 
 carnival was followed by the pouring out of the water of 
 Siloam. Simultaneously with the wine libation of the 
 morning sacrifice, water fetched from Siloam was poured 
 upon the altar, a sensible symbol of the promise : " With 
 
2 00 lEis. 
 
 joy shall ye draw water from the wells of salvation." ^ 
 One of the discourses of Jesus on the seventh day of this 
 feast (John vii. 37—39) relates to this pouring out of 
 " Siloa's " water. 
 
 It is unquestionably possible that the leafy taber- 
 nacles of the feast of harvest-home owe their origin to 
 the practice of going to the vineyards, and, during the 
 time of harvest, passing the night there in the open air.^ 
 But was the festal joy lessened or perverted, when the 
 tabernacles were rebaptized to commemorate the barracks 
 in which the people, emancipated from their Egyptian 
 bondage, were wont to camp on their way to Canaan 1 
 Such historical adaptations of natural feasts, far from 
 burying the natural occasion out of sight, serve rather 
 to idealize it.^ The feast Pasch or Easter has remained 
 for the Church, as it was for the people of the Old 
 Testament, a spring-feast. Spring in nature is for us 
 an image of the spring which has come in the kingdom 
 of grace, through the resurrection of the Conqueror of 
 death. The Sunday after Easter was called the Flower- 
 Pasch in the ancient Church, and Gregory Nazianzen 
 thus closes an Easter sermon : " Now it is natural spring 
 and spiritual spring; spring for the life of the soul, 
 spring for the Ufe of the body ; visible spring and in- 
 visible spring." 
 
 If you found yourself with a man, from whose face 
 there beamed on you the rich pure love of a kindred 
 
 ^ Mischna, Sucm, v. 1-4, iv. 1, 9 f. ; Maimonides, Hilchoth Imlab, 
 viil, 12 f. ; Gesch. der jiidischen Poesie, p. 194 f. 
 
 ' Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 86. 
 
 * In opposition to Wellhausen, iUd., p. 92, 102 : Historicizing of 
 feasts -rdenatnralization. 
 
DANCING AND THE CRITICISM OF THE PENTATEUCH. 201 
 
 soul, in the charming surroundings of an Alpine valley, 
 and if you had to choose that either that friendly face 
 or that transporting panorama should grow pale and 
 vanish, you would not hesitate in your choice for a 
 moment. The personality of a single human being 
 outweighs the entire world of unconscious nature ; and 
 human history is a mirror of the Deity, reflecting the 
 Divine Being far more deeply and richly than the 
 changes in nature. Hence a feast gains in festivity 
 when it ceases to be a mere feast of nature, and becomes 
 also an analogical historical feast, as, for example, when 
 in post - biblical times the commemoration of the 
 giving of the law,' and later, of the foundation of the 
 Church, is associated with Pentecost, the ancient feast 
 of wheat - harvest ; or when the celebration of that 
 brighter half of the world's history, which began with 
 Christmas, is associated with the feast of the winter 
 solstice. Joy in what is good and glorious in nature is not 
 thereby in the least weakened. That very Ps. Ixv., which 
 praises God the Orderer of history : " By terrible things 
 Thou answerest us in righteousness, God of our 
 salvation," closes thus : " Thou crownest the year with 
 Thy goodness ; and Thy paths drop fatness. They drop 
 upon the pastures of the wilderness, and the hills are 
 girded with joy. The pastures are clothed with flocks ; 
 the valleys also are covered over with corn, — they all 
 shout, they all sing." And Isaiah, transported in spirit to 
 the cradle of the Holy Christ, looking up to God the Giver 
 of the Child Wonderful, says (ix. 3) : " They joy before 
 
 1 See Pesachim, 68", where it is said that the feast was all the 
 more joyous on that account. 
 
202 i-Ris. 
 
 Thee according to the joy in harvest." The mirth of 
 reapers and binders, the mirth of grape-gatherers and 
 wine-pressers, was, and continued to be, proverbial 
 
 In post-exilic as in pre-exilic times, delight in nature, 
 as well as delight in history, appear inseparably united 
 with the joy of dancing. Miriam, the sister of Moses, as 
 leader of the choir of women, celebrates the overthrow 
 of Pharaoh, and Jephthah's daughter the victory of her 
 father over the Ammonites, and the women of Jerusalem 
 the victory of Saul and David over the Philistines, with 
 dancing and music ; and just so the author of Ps. Ixvui., 
 which is alleged to be post-exilic, describes a triumphal 
 celebration in the temple : " They have seen Thy goings, 
 God, even the goings of my God, my King, in Loliness. 
 The singers went before, the minstrels followed after in 
 the midst of the damsels playing with timbrels." And 
 in the post-exilic historical romance of the Book of 
 Judith, the whole womanhood of the land execute dances 
 in honour of their sister, who has delivered them from 
 Holofernes. They all wear ^vreaths of olive, while she 
 marches at their head. The men of war, wearing chap- 
 lets, and singing praises, receive them into their midst, 
 and thus they enter Bethulia, which has been freed from 
 the enemy. 
 
 Thus the legislation, of the priestly code made no 
 change in the taste of the people for dancing. This 
 grew, rather than . waned, in the later period. For it 
 even made its way into the religious service without 
 any feeling of contradiction to the law. Even the hymn- 
 
DANCING AND THE CKITICISM OF THE PENTATEUCH. 203 
 
 book of the congregation, the Psalter, in which nothing 
 
 is now allowed to pass as decidedly pre-exilic,^ closes 
 
 with calls to festal dancing: "Let them praise His 
 
 name in the dance ; let them sing praises unto Him 
 
 with timbrel and harp" (Ps. cxlix. 3); and, "Praise 
 
 Him with timbrel and dance, praise Him with stringed 
 
 instruments and the pipe ! " (Ps. cl. 4). And it is just 
 
 in the latest prophetjjp pictures of the future that 
 
 dancing becomes a characteristic feature. "When 
 
 Jerusalem shall be the spiritual metropolis of the 
 
 nations, then, as is prophesied in Ps. Ixxxvii., by a 
 
 poet and seer of the sons of Korah, they shall confess 
 
 with song and dance : " All my springs, the springs of 
 
 my life and joy, are in thee." And Jeremiah, the 
 
 prophet of Anathoth, who saw the kingdom of Judah 
 
 break up and Jerusalem in flames, comforts his people, 
 
 saying, in the name of God (xxxi. 4) : " Again will I 
 
 build thee, and thou shalt be built, virgin of Israel ! 
 
 Again shalt thou be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt 
 
 go forth in the dances of them that make merry." N"ay, 
 
 even in the discourses of our Lord and Saviour, there are 
 
 not wanting such figures taken from dancing. Who 
 
 does not know the parable of the prodigal son ? The 
 
 prodigal son is the heathen world, and the elder son, 
 
 proud of his goodness, is the people of the law. When 
 
 the prodigal has returned to the open arms of his father, 
 
 the elder son, as he comes near the house, to his 
 
 1 Wellhausen, Skwzen (1884), p. 89 : The Psalms belong througli- 
 out to the period of post-exilic Judaism. Stade, Oesch. des Volkes 
 Im-ael, p. 85 : The Psalter is not a product of Israelitism, but of the 
 Jews after the exile ; and p. 298 : The opinion that David was the 
 father of Psalm-poetry originates with the Jews after the exile. 
 
204 lEis. 
 
 wonder and annoyance, hears symphonies and choirs, i.e. 
 music and dancing (Luke xv. 25). The whole house is 
 sharing the father's joy in an ecstasy of delight. 
 
 Why then should it be taken amiss, if I, a Christian 
 theologian, adopt such a theme ? The circle of hearers 
 I am addressing resembles those who gather to hear 
 Eobertson-Smith in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Kuenen 
 in London and Oxford, and 1. have taken this one 
 opportunity of showing, in a particular instance, that 
 all will not stand the test in the newest reconstruction 
 of pre - Christian Israelitish history ; and that, in our 
 attitude toward it, while we should not without more 
 ado meet it with a negative, we should yet hold it open to 
 criticism, and not allow ourselves to be carried away by 
 it. The preacher Solomon says : " There is a time to 
 mourn and a time to dance ; " but it is equally true 
 that proving is always timeous. An old Hebrew proverb^ 
 says : " If thou wilt hang thyself, hang thyself on a great 
 tree,'' i.e. if thou wilt have an authority to depend on, 
 choose a great one. But the proverb speaks conditionally, 
 for not to hang oneself at all, is not this more advis- 
 able — is not this better ? But enough of this talk ! 
 ^ See Dukes, Sahhinische Blumenlese (1884), p. 111. 
 
XI. 
 
 3L0&C anlr Btmt^. 
 
XL 
 
 LOVE AND BEAUTY. 
 
 "What is love ? From the hawthorn blossom to the 
 rose of a hundred leaves there are endless varieties, and 
 so the forms of what is called love constitute a ladder of 
 many steps. When David says to God (Ps. xviii. 1): 
 " I will love Thee, Lord, my strength ; " and Hosea 
 says of the princes of Israel: "Israel's rulers dearly 
 love shame " (iv. 1 8) ; what a distance there is between 
 that love to God and this love to shame ! And when 
 Solomon says (Prov. xix. 8) : "He that getteth wisdom 
 loveth his own soul ; " and Paul, on the otlier hand, 
 that "in the last days men shall come who shall be 
 lovers of themselves " (2 Tim. iii. 2) ; what a gulf there 
 is between that God-sanctioned self-love and this egoistic 
 one, of which a verse says, — 
 
 SBric^ gnnj entsmet ten aBiflen ber fic^ Iie6t; 
 ©e^enf mir cin -^tri, bag fi^ nur bir ergiefit, 
 
 And when we are commanded (Lev. xix. 1 8) to love our 
 neighbour as ourselves, by seeking to further his good 
 as we do our own, this love may be but a cold flame, 
 proceeding from reflective thought, but apart from 
 reflected feeling, far heneath such love as that of 
 
 1 Break quite in twain the will that loves its own ; 
 Give me a heart that hows to Thee alone. — Tr. 
 
 207 
 
208 IRIS. 
 
 Jonathan to David, of whom it is said, 1 Sam. xviii. 
 1, 3, that he loved him as his own soul, his own life ; 
 and of whom David says in turn : " I am distressed for 
 thee, my brother Jonathan ; very pleasant hast thou 
 been unto me ; thy love to me was wonderful, passing 
 the love of women" (2 Sam. i. 26). There is a love 
 which is so deep, that another not equally deep appears 
 in comparison like hatred. In contrast to Jacob's love 
 to Eaehel, his weaker love to Leah is as hatred. For 
 love which deserves the name in the true sense is, as 
 the Song of Songs says, " strong as death ; its jealousy 
 is cruel as the grave ; the glow thereof is fiery ; a very 
 flame of the Lord" (viii. 6). This is a love which, 
 though it may not remain always at the same pitch, is 
 never extinguished. For it says, — 
 
 SBen cinmat bu gcliefit, 
 
 Der fci fur aUt Qdt, 
 SCBie a aii^ imnier fei, 
 
 iBir ^eitig unb gercei^t.^ 
 
 Leaving out of account that emotional love, which 
 consists only of a sort of intellectual good-will, a dutiful 
 esteem, and which is only a shadow of love, proceeding 
 by way of abstraction we reach the fact, that all love 
 accompanied with emotional feeUngs has this for its 
 universal characteristic, that it is found in a drawing of 
 the soul which is produced by the attractive power of its 
 object. Thus a man may love even gold and jewels, 
 
 ' Once thou hast loved a friend, 
 Let him for ever be, 
 Through fortune good or ill, 
 Still consecrate to thee. — Tr. 
 
LOVE AND BEAUTY. 209 
 
 dogs and horses, things of this world ; even in these 
 cases love may be an affection, and may rise to a very 
 passion. But we wish to speak here of that love which 
 is related to beauty, of the love of person to person 
 occasioned by beauty. Not all love of man to man is 
 caused by beauty, but all affectionate love is caused by 
 the loved one's external or inward beauty. It is a power 
 which overcomes man. Morally regarded, it is extremely 
 varied. Heaven and hell take part in inflaming this love. 
 Love in its emotional form, and especially as ideally 
 conceived, that is to say, in the form corresponding to its 
 real nature, can hardly be defined, though it may be 
 described by certain manifestations. When the Psalmist 
 says, Ps. xvi. 2 : " Thou art the Lord, I have no good 
 beyond Thee," and (Ixxiii. 25): "If only I have Thee, I 
 ask for nothing in heaven or earth," we see that true 
 love to God prefers fellowship with Him to all else, and 
 willingly gives up all else, if it can only maintain this 
 fellowship. And when Paul says : " To me to live is 
 Christ," and : " I live, yet not I, but He liveth in me," 
 we see that love to Christ is life in Christ and Christ's 
 life in us. Thus we may say in general : Love is life in 
 the loved one, and such an intimacy and blending with 
 him, that he becomes the life of our life. But this is not 
 to define love. Love is an impulse implanted in the 
 creature by God, who is the fountain of love, a power 
 bestowed on them, which, when actually experienced, is 
 their blessedness, and which is attended with a pecuhar 
 class of joyful thoughts and emotions. It is through love 
 that life obtains its charm and consecration, it alone 
 makes life worth living, it is its pulsing heart. 
 
 
 
210 lEis. 
 
 But all have not an equal portion of this gift of the 
 Creator. When sin prevailed over man, his nature 
 turned on these two poles : in some the lust of the flesh, 
 in which love becomes materialized and loses its spiritual, 
 divine nature ; and in the rest selfishness, which is even 
 worse than fleshly lust. There are men in whom selfish- 
 ness prevails to such a degree that they can love nobody 
 except themselves. The capacity of loving seems to be 
 denied to their nature, their heart is encrusted with 
 selfishness ; even to know that those nearly related to 
 them are loved by others is unbearable. The gift of 
 heaven is swallowed up in them by egoism. They 
 cannot love. They are the unhappiest of human beings. 
 
 Beauty, also, is a conception which it is hard to define. 
 Is the Beautiful so objectively, i.e. in itself, or is the 
 name given merely to that which appears to a beholder 
 beautiful ; in other words, does the Beautiful depend 
 merely on individual or conventional appreciation ? The 
 Shulamite in the Song of Songs boasts of her beloved as 
 white and ruddy (v. 10), and Jeremiah says of the nobles 
 of Jerusalem .that they were purer than snow, whiter 
 than milk, more ruddy in body than rubies (Lam. iv. 7) ; 
 but perhaps such colouring of the body only passes for 
 beautiful among the Caucasian race, while the Mongolian 
 with equal right regards his wheaten - yellow, the 
 Ethiopian his black, the American Indian his copper- 
 colour, the Malay his mahogany or chestnut-brown, as 
 beautiful. Perhaps. But more decisive than the colour 
 of the skin is the formation of the body. We can hardly 
 persuade ourselves that the conformation of the negro, 
 with his prominent jawbones, his flat nose, and his thick 
 
LOVE AND BEAUTY. 211 
 
 lips, is more beautiful than the Caucasian, from which 
 Greek sculpture took the models of its statues. When 
 we see a man with a receding skull and a projecting" 
 face, we are forced to think that Hogarth's line of beauty 
 has a foundation of truth. As the characteristic mark of 
 bodily beauty, Platner of Leipsic gave die sanfte Altmah- 
 lichkeit, the absence of angularity, a smooth, moulded 
 contour ; and in point of fact, the head is beautiful when 
 it forms a pleasing oval, and when the high brow falls 
 down almost vertically toward the face. Or if we see a 
 long body on disproportionately short legs, there seems to 
 be some truth in the golden pattern, according to which 
 Zeissing and Fechner have sought experim^entally to lay 
 down the proportions of the Beautiful. And it was 
 surely not a mere individual peculiarity of taste, when 
 Jacob thought the bright eyes of Eachel more beautiful 
 than the dull eyes of Leah. We may therefore ascribe 
 objectivity to ideal beauty, though it cannot be put into 
 the forms of a logical or mathematical definition, as ideal 
 love is an experience which, when we seek to describe 
 it, ever retains an element which is undefinable and 
 mysterious. 
 
 In addressing ourselves now to consider Love and 
 Beauty in their mutual relations, we start from the 
 following general and indisputable propositions. 
 
 God is all that is ; He is not a being among many 
 beings, but the Being of all beings. The creature is 
 something ; one being among many. Its moral task is 
 so to maintain its existence that it shall remain in con- 
 nection with God, and be a member in the harmonious 
 whole of creation. Has it a twofold nature, bodily and 
 
212 IRIS. 
 
 spiritual, its moral task is to subordinate the sensuous to 
 the spiritual, and thus preserve its harmony with God 
 and with its fellow-creatures. It is true, the world of 
 the senses and the world of spirit are not in themselves 
 irreconcilable contrasts ; but they are so in their present 
 condition, sin has set them at enmity to one another. 
 Even taken in itself, matter, in the domain of creation, 
 is the furthest from God and the most unlike Him. 
 And on that account, nearness to God is the greater in 
 proportion as there is isolation from matter, and superi- 
 ority to it. But since sin has come into the world, this 
 holds in a higher degree, and comes home to us with an 
 accentuated claim on our regard. We must break with 
 the flesh, if we would taste the blessedness of the life of 
 the spirit ; we must break with the earthly, if we would 
 have a foretaste of the heavenly. With God, who is 
 spirit, we can only commune in spirit. On the other 
 hand, the play of sensuous charms may enter into the 
 love of man to man, without this being in itself sinful, 
 but never without danger of disturbing the purity of love 
 and robbing it of its moral worth. Now the inter- 
 mediate cause of these sensuous charms is beauty. 
 
 Let us then consider the particular kinds of love in 
 relation to this fact. 
 
 1. There is a natural love, love from natural impulse, 
 the love of blood relations, which is not in itself volun- 
 tary, and neither, therefore, moral, but an involuntary 
 necessary consequence of the family bond. Such is the 
 love of parents to children, of children to parents, and 
 of relatives to one another. Here, as a rule, beauty is 
 not a co-operating factor. It becomes so, however, in 
 
LOVE AND BEAUTY. 213 
 
 the case of marriages within close degrees of relationship, 
 as when an uncle marries a niece (which is customary 
 among the Arabs), or when cousins marry. These 
 marriages are not to be regarded as sinful in them- 
 selves, but sin enters when, for example, a son becomes 
 enamoured of his stepmother. Such a case occurred in 
 the Corinthian Church, and was censured and punished 
 by Paul (1 Cor. v. 1). And Don Carlos entered into a 
 similar relation with his stepmother Isabella, the third 
 wife of his father Philip. If this relation did not 
 degenerate into sinful acts, it certainly produced discord 
 between father and son. 
 
 2. Neither is beauty a joint factor in that love of our 
 neighbour, in virtue of which, according to Lev. xix. 18, 
 we ought to do good to our neighbour and save him from 
 harm, as if we were in his place. No doubt bodily 
 affections become associated with this love when it goes 
 beyond a disinterested well-wishing, founded on a sense 
 of duty, and rises to sympathetic fellow-feeling, especially 
 when we are met by a case of need awaking our com- 
 passion. "Whoso hath this world's goods," says the 
 apostle, 1 John iii. 1 7, " and beholdeth his brother in need, 
 and shutteth up his compassion (Greek, to. (TirXdyx'^'^ 
 aiiTov, Ms howels) from him, how doth the love of God 
 abide in him ? " Strong compassion of soul is reflected 
 in the inner bodily organs, and hence we speak of the 
 heart turning at the sight of great suffering. Now, if 
 the misery which awakes compassion meets us in a 
 sufferer of a beautiful, graceful exterior, then sensuous 
 charms readily combine with love to our neighbour. 
 Many a one, through not being on his guard against this. 
 
214 lEis. 
 
 has become the prey of ignominious deception, especially 
 when the suppliants have been women who turn the 
 power of pantomime, natural to the sex, to play with 
 professional dexterity on the instinct of compassion. 
 " Grace is deceitful," says the proverb-maker (xxxi. 30), 
 " and beauty is vara." Beauty deceives by fleeing, many 
 a time also by fleecing.^ 
 
 3. We come now to sexual love, which, like the love 
 of kindred, is an ordinance of the Creator, for everything 
 that lives on the earth, the vegetable world included, 
 is propagated by the pairing of the sexes. Here the 
 sensuous element is entitled to enter, for it is a condition 
 essential to the continuance of the species. In the brute 
 it is regulated by instinct, in man it ought to be regu- 
 lated by the spirit. The God-appointed goal is marriage, 
 which as a union at once bodily and spiritual is the 
 highest, most concentrated form of earthly love. Here, 
 if anywhere, with the attractive power of bodily charms, 
 beauty is active as the mediating cause of love. But 
 here too beauty, even when it is not a mere illusion 
 produced by artificial adornment, shows itself only too 
 often as empty deceit. Marriage, when it is of the 
 right kind, rests on a harmony of souls, and common 
 striving and working in the calling of life. But how 
 many have made themselves unhappy for life, by 
 abandoning themselves to the impression which beauty 
 made on them, and therewith linking hopes from the 
 marriage relation, which afterwards turned out fallacious ! 
 It is a mistake to suppose that ia a beautiful body there 
 
 1 Die ©c^on'^ctt tiigt, inbent fie fc^^witibet, mani^mal ala au&), 
 inbem fie fc^winbett. 
 
LOVE AND BEAUTY. 215 
 
 always dwells a beautiful soul. It might be more 
 correct to say that a body, in which a beautiful soul 
 does not dwell, however beautiful it may be, is yet 
 not truly beautiful. Our great German philosophers, 
 Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze, have taught us that 
 a charming form does not of itself constitute beauty, 
 but that it consists in the harmonious interplay of the 
 spiritual and sensuous. When beauty is merely external 
 symmetry and grace, its captivating power is not lasting ; 
 for this it requires a corresponding inner character 
 shining through it. When the intoxication of the 
 senses is over, the impression passes to the opposite 
 extreme ; for an ugly soul makes the loveliest body 
 appear ugly, while a lovely soul, through prolonged 
 intercourse, makes even an unlovely body appear ever 
 lovelier. The beauty of any one, when he has become 
 known to be hollow, vulgar, deceitful, has a repulsive 
 effect, while unloveliness is transfigured by a noble inner 
 character. Without harmony of soul, marriage as a life- 
 long relation is the most frightful embittering of life. 
 How many a student of theology has allowed himself to 
 be befooled by the fair exterior of a heartless doll, and 
 has found in his pastoral calling, not a helpful alterum 
 ego (second self), but a Satan ever coming in the way and 
 hindering ! The God -appointed flame of sexual love 
 constitutes a moral task set to man. If he does not 
 confine it within the limits of marriage, and control it by 
 spiritual power, it brutifies him; and when it is not 
 suffused with the silvery light of soul-affection, it makes 
 the two miserable and mutually hateful. In marriage it 
 is possible on material basis to rise to a mutual relation- 
 
216 lEis. 
 
 ship at once spiritual and bodily, which is described 
 in Holy Scripture as the highest degree of love, and 
 is called by Paul (Eph. v. 32), "a great mystery" 
 (Vulgate : sacramentum magnum). A¥here husband and 
 wife are not merely outwardly wedded, but joined by 
 inward affinity, marriage embodies an everlasting kernel 
 in a temporal wrapping. 
 
 4. In the love of friends, also, beauty often plays a 
 part, especially in the friendships formed by the young. 
 But seldom ever is it what attracts and captivates of 
 itself. In the relation of man to man, there is scarcely 
 a parallel to what Dante and Petrarch experienced, when 
 the one was captivated by the sight of Beatrice, and the 
 other by the sight of Laura, and when both, without 
 requital, derived their life-long poetic inspiration from 
 the devout adoration of these saintly figures. But when, 
 with a noble disposition and character, a youth unites a 
 pleasing exterior, then it often happens that a companion 
 of his own age, or even a senior, is smitten with a love 
 to him, which is at once physical and psychical, and 
 feels himself drawn to him, not only spiritually, but 
 with his entire personality of spirit and body. For the 
 most part, it is the loved one who is the less independent 
 of the two, and spiritually inferior to the lover, while the 
 latter seeks, with, a self-sacrificing zeal inflamed by love, 
 to raise the other to his own level. This is the form of 
 love in which, as Plato describes it, sensuous yearning is 
 mastered by ideal aspiration, which carries the loved one 
 with it. This love is also susceptible of a Christian 
 transfiguration. To David's love to Jonathan corresponds 
 the love of the second David to John. Our Lord loved 
 
LOVE AND BEAUTY. 217 
 
 all His disciples with a holy love, but John can describe 
 himself, without depreciating the others, as the disciple 
 whom Jesus loved, and who, at their common meals, 
 could lean on His bosom. And such a relation subsisted 
 between Paul and Timothy, whom the former (Phil. ii. 
 20) describes as "one heart and one soul" with him, in 
 a way no other was. In my novel, Burch Krankheit zur 
 Genesung (18 7 3), I have delineated such a love of man 
 to man, in the relation between Jose and Benjamin.^ 
 But the unhappy dualism which, as Paul describes it in 
 Eom. vii., is the misery of this present world, involves 
 this love also in dangers, whereby it easily becomes 
 unlike those holy exemplars. It may turn into idolatry, 
 sinful love of the creature, which takes possession of the 
 whole man, and destroys the love of God, who will be 
 loved above all. Pascal recognised this in his maxim : 
 Se n'attacher d aucivn? 
 
 Not in themselves, but in man's present condition, 
 amor rationalis and amor sensualis (love rational and 
 love sensual) are diverse in principle and in conception ; 
 in point of fact, and morally, they are to be distinguished, 
 unless the higher love is to be degraded and perverted. 
 
 1 This work is so excellently handled in English by J. G. 
 Smieton, Jos^ and Benjamin (London : Hodder & Stoughton. 1882), 
 that it is more than a mere reproduction of the German original. 
 
 2 This theme is fully treated in the tenth essay of my Philemon 
 Oder von der christlichen Freundschafi. Aufzeichnungen des Fraiilein 
 S. C. von Klettenberg und ihres Freundehreises, Aufl. 3, 1878. This 
 essay is written by Fraulein Susanna Catharina herself, extracts 
 from whose Diary have been published by Goethe, imder the title, 
 Bekenntnisse einer schonen Seele. The fourth essay, so closely related 
 in its theme, on 'delicacy in friendship, is by Frederick Carl von 
 Moser. 
 
218 lEis. 
 
 The flesh, as things are, cannot be sublimated into spirit. 
 In its condition here and now it is incapable of trans- 
 figuration ; its transfiguration can only be effected 
 through a radical change. It draws near its glorifica- 
 tion here on earth only when it is crucified. Not till 
 we reach the world of the future, which we now hope 
 for, shall we find a world of sinlessness, in which holy 
 love bears the sceptre of peace. The present world, in 
 which sin has brought disharmony into the constituent 
 parts of man and of nature, is for the soul, so long as it 
 is united to matter, an arena of conflict.- 
 
 Note to Page 213, No. 2. 
 
 The verb "to love," in the commandment requiring 
 love to our neighbour, as it is expressed in the original 
 (Lev. xix. 18), is not construed with the accusative, but 
 with the dative of the object, being equivalent to " to 
 exercise love ; " and, therefore, thou shalt exercise love 
 to thy neighbour as to thyself, i.e. as if thou wert in his 
 place. Thou shalt show him love like to that which 
 thou wouldest show thyself, if thou wert he. If in a 
 case of shipwreck two are clinging to a lifeboat which 
 is already full, and can at the utmost only take one 
 more, then he acts in the spirit of this command who 
 surrenders himself to the waves that the other may be 
 rescued. The nature of perfect love requires us not 
 merely to put our neighbour on an equal footing with 
 ourselves, but to put ourselves in his place. In every 
 act of true love, an exchange of parts takes place. In 
 what our Saviour did and suffered for mankind, this love 
 culminates. 
 
XII. 
 
 Eternal %iit: lEternal loutlj. 
 
XII. 
 
 ETERNAL LIFE: ETEENAL YOUTH. 
 
 It would be to falsify and corrupt the true and pure 
 conception of God, were we to comprehend Godhead 
 essentially considered under any class of created beings. 
 No doubt pur Lord says : Trpevfia 6 6e6<i, God is spirit 
 (John iv. 24), but He does not mean that God belongs 
 to the class of spiritual beings. The created world falls 
 into three divisions, the world of bodies, the world of 
 spirits, and between them the world of beings consisting 
 of body and spirit. But God belongs to none of these 
 classes, not even to the highest. The words quoted, 
 therefore, should rather be translated : God is spirit (so 
 the Eev. Ver., marg.), than: God is a spirit (so the 
 Auth. Ver.). God is spirit means that He is self-moved, 
 free, immaterial. Human language has no word which 
 covers this conception. 
 
 Similarly we must dissociate from God the ideas of 
 time and space, though when we speak of Him we 
 cannot escape from expressions which are taken from 
 time and space. And such expressions are justified 
 when we are speaking of God in relation to the world 
 and to history. Then He may be called. He who was, 
 and is, and is to come, not however as if this variety of 
 time affected Him, but only described Him as filling all 
 the spheres of time with His working. For as He is 
 
222 lEis. 
 
 above all space, so that the heaven of heavens cannot 
 contain Him, so He is above all time, before Him a 
 thousand years being as one day, and one day as a 
 thousand years. Time imposes no limit on Him; He 
 is exalted above the world of time and space as its 
 Creator. 
 
 The creature, on the other hand, lives and moves in 
 time and space. This holds of all creatures, of spirits, 
 and of the blessed, who have passed from this world to 
 the world beyond. When, therefore, the heaven of angels 
 and of the blessed is spoken of, what is meant is a 
 region of space lying beyond the visible world around us, 
 and which becomes heaven from the fact that God there 
 reveals Himself in the unveiled glory of His love. And 
 when we speak of the eternal life of the blessed, we 
 mean life enduring from seons to aeons, that is to say, 
 an endless course of time, which is measured, not by 
 earthly hours and not by our solar and lunar calendar, 
 but by seons, that is, incomparably long periods of time. 
 
 But " eternal life " (^w^ alcovio?) has a yet deeper 
 meaning than blessed existence without end. "When 
 John says in the beginning of his First Epistle : " The 
 life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness 
 and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was 
 with the Father and was manifested unto us," eternal 
 life is something else than endless existence in the 
 other world. What is meant is the holy, glorious, 
 blessed life of the Godhead itself, which has been 
 historically revealed in Jesus the Christ, and which may 
 be shared in communion with Him. " For this is eternal 
 life," He says Himself in His farewell prayer (John 
 
ETERNAL LIFE: ETERNAL YOUTH. 223 
 
 xvii. 3), " to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
 Christ whom Thou hast sent." Here eternal life is more 
 than an everlasting lieavenly life, it is raised above time 
 and space, rooted in God who is above both, and deriving its 
 nourishment from Him, a portion in the being and life of 
 the Godhead. True, the creature remains subject to the 
 limitations of time and space, — their abolition would be 
 the abolition of creaturehood, — but man can lose himself 
 in God by withdrawing from the world of sense and its 
 charms, and as a creature renouncing everything created, 
 making God his highest good. The pattern and mediator 
 of such life in God is Jesus Christ ; and such tasting and 
 seeing of the blessedness of Him who is above time and 
 space, is eternal life in the profoundest sense of the word. 
 
 When we maintain that eternal life is eternal youth, 
 we do not mean this mystical life in God ; for youth is a 
 temporal idea, whereas the mystical life in God is pro- 
 perly associated with eternity in the sense of being above 
 time, and even supposing that such life in God could 
 be here and now without break or interruption, yet it 
 is only at passing moments of exaltation that it becomes 
 matter of conscious and happy experience. In ascribing 
 eternal youthfulness to eternal life, we mean the heavenly 
 life of the blessed, which undoubtedly has life in God, 
 the Eternal One, as its hidden background, but stands in 
 somewhat the same relation to it, as the plant with its 
 blossoms and fruits to its root hidden in the earth. 
 
 It is of the very essence of the heavenly life of the 
 blessed, that it excludes everything like ageing, and so it 
 is eternal youth. The seer (Eev. xx. 12) beholds great 
 and small standing before the great white throne. 
 
224 IRIS. 
 
 Apparently, therefore, we must assume that even there 
 there is a variety, and accordingly a growth in age. 
 But that going down to the grave, which is here wont 
 to succeed to the highest attainment of strength and 
 beauty, cannot be supposed to exist in the world beyond. 
 For that which is old and waxeth aged — we read in 
 Heb. ,viii. 13 — is nigh unto vanishing away. Thus, if 
 there is a growing older, there is no ageing. Ageing is 
 a slowly progressive dying ; it is decay setting in after 
 the highest point 'Of growth has been reached. Such a 
 process of dissolution and retrogression is in contradiction 
 to that glorified life, of which Paul (1 Cor. xv. 54) says, 
 that this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
 mortal immortality. Ageing is a gradual decay of the 
 powers, and of that freshness of youth which of itself is 
 beautiful and even makes up for unloveliness of form ; 
 but the glorified life is the contrast of such ageing, for it 
 is sown in dishonour, — says the apostle (1 Cor. xv. 43), 
 — it is raised in glory ; it is sown in weakness, it is 
 raised in power. The life beyond is called (1 Pet. i. 4) 
 incorruptible and undefiled and unfading ; and the crown 
 of glory, which the faithful receive as their reward, is 
 called (1 Pet. v. 4) one that fadeth not away (a/iapdv- 
 Twos). The life beyond is the abiding for ever in 
 unfading bloom. 
 
 To the same effect is the description of the future 
 world in the last chapter of the Kevelation, when it is 
 said that there will be no more death (xxi. 4), and 
 therefore no more ageing, not that gradual disintegration 
 of the elements of a being which issues in its dissolution; 
 or when it is said there shall be no night there (xxii. 5), 
 
ETERNAL LIFE: ETERNAL YOUTH. 225 
 
 for night is day when it has aged and died out. Con- 
 sequently, also, there shall be no more winter, for winter 
 is the world of nature when it has aged and died out 
 There, all remains in healthy beauty and freshness 
 Here on earth, the imposing and gracious beauty of man- 
 hood, the lovely sweet-smelling blossom of flowers, are 
 only a fugitive shadow of that abiding heavenly glory 
 
 ©njigeg Seten, bu :^ei:rtt(^c8 Sort, 
 SBtu|ienbe SSIumc, bie nimmer iJcrboOT ! ^ 
 
 The blessed will be equal to the angels (Luke xx. 36). 
 The being of the angels is youthful strength, and their 
 appearance youthful beauty. Never did an angel appear 
 as an old man. Not only had those two angels that 
 came to Sodom (Gen. xix.) the beauty of youth ; that 
 Eaphael also, who joins young Tobias, appears as a youth 
 (Tob. V. 5) ; and the angel, also, who was seen by the 
 women sitting in white raiment on the right in the 
 empty tomb of the Eisen One, had the appearance of a 
 veavL(7K0<;, i.e. youth (Mark xvi. 5). 
 
 It is also significant that our Lord was in His thirtieth 
 year when He entered on His work as a public teacher 
 (Luke iii. 23). He stood at the meeting-point between 
 youth and manhood, at the apex of adolescentia, the 
 interval (comp. John viii. 57) between pueritia and 
 senechis (boyhood and old age), at that time which is 
 capable of everlasting duration, whereas old age admits 
 of no such continuance. When Paul (Eph. iv. 13) sets 
 before the Church, as the goal of its progressive develop- 
 
 1 Life everlasting, word regal in praise, 
 FuU-tlooming flower, that never decays. — Tr. 
 P 
 
226 IRIS. 
 
 ment, the attaining to the measure of the perfect age 
 [stature] of Christ, he means, that the task set before the 
 Church is to gain a ripeness and strength of knowledge 
 and practical experience corresponding to the Saviour's 
 manhood, whom we cannot think of either as a beardless 
 youth or as an old man who has lived out his days, but 
 in His historical character of Eedeemer, as the spiritual 
 counterpart of the Greek Apollo, or the Canaanitish 
 Adonis, or the Scandinavian Baldur. 
 
 There is no contradiction between this and what we 
 find in the Book of Daniel, where God, who sits in 
 judgment over the kingdoms of the world, and sets up 
 the everlasting kingdom of the holy people of the Most 
 High, is called Ancient of Days (Dan. vii. 9), and further 
 on the Ancient of Days (vii. 13, 22). He is so called as 
 the God of all history from the beginning of time. The 
 hair of His head is likened to pure wool, to indicate that 
 His being reaches back to the past eternity, and His 
 raiment, white as snow, represents Him as one whose 
 manifestation is holy as His nature is. So also the 
 raiment of Jesus becomes white as the light at His 
 transfiguration (Matt. xvii. 2), for unbroken light is 
 white. The metaphors of white snow and pure wool 
 express the truth, that to Him belong pre-existence in 
 infinite measure, and light or holiness in the highest 
 degree. He is the Eternally Ancient, who always was ; 
 and so Christ (Heb. xiii. 8) is described as the Eternally 
 Ancient, who ever was and ever shall be, and that as 
 the same, ever like Himself, and therefore excluding the 
 possibility of growing aged. For what Ps. cii. 27, 28, 
 says of Jehovah holds also, according to Heb. i. 12, of 
 
ETERNAL LIFE: ETERNAL YOUTH. 227 
 
 Christ, who is God manifest in the flesh : " The heavens 
 shall perish ; but Thou continuest . . . but Thou art 
 the same, and Thy years shall not fail." 
 
 The Forty-eighth Psalm closes with a puzzling verse, of 
 which there are four ancient interpretations. "We may 
 use them to sum up our thoughts of the world beyond. 
 Some take them to mean : He (our Lord) guides us over 
 death {al-mUt). Others : He guides us to immortality 
 (al-maweth). Others : He guides us through aeons on 
 eeons (olamdth). And yet others, to whom Luther 
 adheres : He guides us to youthfulness (ullSmuth). The 
 blessed life beyond death is the life of immortality, an 
 8Bons-long life of eternal youth. 
 
 MOKRISON AHD GIEB, PKINXERS, EDIKBUEGH. 
 
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