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HUMAN NATURE
 HUMAN NATURE

DAVID BERLINSKI

SEATTLE DISCOVERY INSTITUTE PRESS 2019

Description
Conventional wisdom holds that the murder rate has plummeted since the Middle Ages;
humankind is growing more peaceful and enlightened; man is shortly to be much improved
—better genes, better neural circuits, better biochemistry; and we are approaching a
technological singularity that well may usher in utopia. Human Nature eviscerates these and
other doctrines of a contemporary nihilism masquerading as science. In this wide-ranging
work polymath David Berlinski draws upon history, mathematics, logic, and literature to
retrain our gaze on an old truth many are eager to forget: there is and will be about the
human condition beauty, nobility, and moments of sublime insight, yes, but also ignorance
and depravity. Men are not about to become like gods.

Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2019 by Discovery Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Library Cataloging Data

Human Nature by David Berlinski
330 pages, 6 x 9 x 0.7 inches & 1.0 lb, 229 x 152 x 17.5 mm. & 0.445 kg
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019951015
ISBN: 978-1-936599-71-4 (Paperback), 978-1-936599-73-8 (Kindle),
978-1-936599-72-1 (EPUB)
HIS049000 HISTORY / Essays
SCI080000 SCIENCE / Essays
SCI075000 SCIENCE / Philosophy & Social Aspects
SCI027000 SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Evolution

Publisher Information
Discovery Institute Press, 208 Columbia Street, Seattle, WA 98104
Internet: http://www.discoveryinstitutepress.com/
Published in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
First Edition, First Printing, November 2019.
 Dedication
Pour les pompiers de Paris
 ADVANCE PRAISE
Polymath David Berlinski’s appraisal of a transcendent human nature
is really a military history, a discourse on physics and mathematics, a
review of philosophy and linguistics, and a brilliant indictment of
scientific groupthink by an unapologetic intellectual dissident. Read it
and learn something original and incisive on every page.
—Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institution,
Stanford University, author of The Second World Wars

Berlinski is a modern Hannah Arendt, but deeper, more illuminating

and wittier (i.e., smarter). His ability to use science and mathematics
to illuminate history is nearly unique. If I were assembling a list of
essential modern books for undergraduates at my college or any
college, this book would be number one. Not only would students
learn a tremendous lot from this book; many would also love it.
Likewise their teachers. Berlinski’s gift to mankind is gratefully
received.
—David Gelernter, Professor of Computer Science, Yale University

As the lights of Western civilization go out, it is nevertheless a treat

to read these deep reflections on what we can be proud of, and
where we went badly astray. Wonderfully unconventional and
stimulating, with David Berlinski’s characteristic wit and penetrating
insight!
—Greg Chaitin, pioneer of algorithmic information theory and
metamathematics, and Emeritus Researcher, IBM’s Thomas J.
Watson Research Center in New York, whose festschrift Unravelling
Complexity: The Life and Work of Gregory Chaitin is forthcoming
Berlinski combines mastery of classical culture and deep knowledge
of mathematics and the natural sciences with sharp, elegant, and
insightful writing. The man is fearless in pursuing lines of reasoning
that are considered taboo by current standards. A wonderful display
of common sense and reason at a time of great confusions.
—Sergiu Klainerman, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics,
Princeton University

These essays represent a reflection on man and modern times as

erudite as the finest history, as profound as the most searching
philosophy, as beautifully wrought as the loveliest prose, and as
shocking and indignant as the best journalism. The work of a
magnificent mind.
—Peter Robinson, Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the
Hoover Institution, host of Uncommon Knowledge

Another tour de force by David Berlinski. Few writers indeed, about

science or society, can boast such a thoroughgoing command of the
significant ideas of the past century, the confident mastery of every
centrally significant scientific theory. Yet if Berlinski derives obvious
joy from the great theories that unify the world, he is never more
memorable than when he vividly displays its irreducible particulars,
holding the quiddities of place and person more clearly before our
imagination than we might even see them ourselves.

Indeed, if Berlinski glories in science’s achievements, he is no less

dismissive of those attempts to see pattern and abstraction born not
of vision but of ignorance; and he repeatedly marshals his
exceptionally deep historical and scientific knowledge (and his
inimitable wit) to drive facile theories of man and the world into the
shoals. He is a relentless and devastating enemy of all attempts to
reduce the tragic, bizarre, glorious world that confronts us to simple
answers or easy slogans at the expense of the facts. We will
treasure this book.
—Stephen McKeown, Assistant Professor of Mathematics,
University of Texas at Dallas
 CONTENTS
Introduction

I. VIOLENCE
1. The First World War
2. The Best of Times
3. The Cause of War

II. REASON
4. Relativism—A Fish Story
5. The Dangerous Discipline
6. Necessary Nature
7. Disgusting, No?
8. Majestic Ascent: Darwin on Trial
9. Memories of Ulaanbaatar
10. Inn Keepers

III. FALL
11. The Social Set
12. Godzooks

IV. PERSONALITIES
13. A Flower of Chivalry
14. Giuseppe Peano
15. Sonja Kovalevsky
 16. A Logician’s Life
17. Chronicle of a Death Foretold

V. LANGUAGE
18. The Recovery of Case

VI. PLACE
19. Prague, 1998
20. Old Hose
21. Vienna, 1981

VII. INTERVIEWS
22. A Conversation with Le Figaro
23. A Conversation with Evolution News

Endnotes
Credits
Index
 INTRODUCTION
I HAVE LIVED WITHIN HALF A CITY BLOCK OF NOTRE DAME FOR THE last twenty
years. I saw the spire from my bedroom window every morning, and
on leaving my apartment, I could walk within a few feet of the
cathedral walls, dark with grime on the tail-end of the rue du Clôitre,
white and sparkling at the head of the street, the stones
steamcleaned and scrubbed. On mild winter days, I liked to wander
through the Square Jean XXIII on the east side of the cathedral. The
square was always carefully tended, a fountain and a lovely flower-
garden at its center. When I needed to get home after the metro
had closed, and I was too tired to walk, I told taxi drivers to head for
Notre Dame, and even if they had never heard of rue Chanoinesse—
my street—they knew how to get there. My father was great friends
with Pierre Cochereau, the organist at Notre Dame, and he
performed often on the great Cavaillé-Coll organ, water-logged now.
My father sometimes let me sit in the organ loft during his recitals.
From the loft, the organ seemed to boom and echo. In winter, when
there were few tourists, I would go into Notre Dame and light a
candle for my friend, M. P. Schützenberger. He told me as he was
dying that he wished to return as one of the gargoyles, and,
perhaps, he had. No building has ever been more a part of my life.
I saw the spire topple, slowly at first, and then quickly. The police
forced me to evacuate to the other side of the Seine. All of Paris was
there. I thought of myself as a Parisian, if not by birth, then, at
least, by sentiment. Twenty years is a long time. The pompiers were
in their glory that night, and, when I was allowed to return home as
dawn was breaking, they were still there, red-eyed, exhausted,
sooty, grim, and proud. The police, too. The enormous plume of
smoke had already drifted to the west and south. Later that day, I
saw the front of the cathedral. Its towers were still standing, but its
great bells, which I had heard every day, were silent.
 The fire did a great deal of damage to the cathedral; it could not
be contained, and, in the end, it burnt itself out. The fourteen
hundred year old oak timbers that had supported the roof were
consumed, and the roof destroyed. President Macron spoke
optimistically of rebuilding the cathedral within five years, but no one
believed him. The structural stability of the north and south towers is
still in doubt. International architects were quick to sketch their
plans for the cathedral’s restoration, and, without exception, they
were, if not hideous, then grotesque. One firm proposed putting a
swimming pool on the roof; another, a design in which the roof and
spire would be made of glass. The destruction of Notre Dame
evoked an almost universal sense of cultural horror. Everyone quite
understood that a structure of comparable grandeur lay completely
beyond our collective competence.
Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there must have been men
in Europe who doubted the Catholic faith, and who had little use for
its consolations. If atheism was a real presence in the early and high
Middle Ages, it was not one that the philosophers or the chroniclers
remarked. The contrast to the Moslem world is striking. Many
Moslem intellectuals undertook a journey from faith to doubt and
from doubt to despair. For many years, his physician remarked, God
had put a lock on Al-Ghazali’s tongue. The astrologer, Abu Mashar,
ended his days as an atheist. Doubt about the faith was never
endorsed in the Moslem world, but it was understood. Europe was
more conventional, its literate thinkers either in the service of the
Church or captive to its control. Of all the twelfth-century
philosophers, Peter Abelard came closest to skepticism. He provoked
and was reprimanded. Having begun his life in Holy Orders, he
ended his life in Holy Orders. He did not change.
When almost ten years ago I published The Deniable Darwin, I
was struck by the fact that the contemporary scientific community
resembled in its swaggering assurance the intellectual community of
the high Middle Ages. A professor at Harvard in the early twenty-first
century, finding himself at the University of Paris in the thirteenth,
would require only a few days to get his bearings. Nothing more
than the polarity of his beliefs would change. As an experienced
intellectual, he would have been right at home. Had the same
professor been returned to tenth-or eleventh-century Baghdad, he
would have been flustered by its intellectual diversity. There is an
irony in this that is worth remarking.
Faith in the twenty-first century is secular and scientific. If I
sometimes write to deplore the faith, it is because I am among the
faithful. My criticisms are self-criticisms. I am what I have always
been: a secular Jew. We secular Jews accept an ostentatious
commitment to logic, inference, irony, and skepticism: if they
engender an ever-present sense of emptiness, that is the price that
they command. It is the price that we are prepared to pay. In an
elegant essay published in the last decade of the twentieth century,
V. S. Naipaul made popular, or, at least, better known, the idea of a
universal civilization. He wrote as the Soviet system was collapsing,
a moment of triumph. There is little of that sense today. The idea of
a universal civilization remains, something like a complicated
Diophantine equation, one describing the modern technological
societies of the West. We know how to solve the equation, and every
society has solved the equation in the same way. The necessary
parameters are plain. The universal civilization requires an elaborate
bureaucracy and a rational legal system enforcing the law of
contracts; it requires a scientific elite; it requires science as a source
of awe; and it requires relatively free markets. A doggish form of
secular humanism prevails throughout. These are ideas—all of them
—that invite a certain cynical asperity. Whatever else it may be, the
universal civilization is emotionally and aesthetically repellent. All
that is solid melts into air, all that is Holy is profaned.
There is no society without its underlying ideology, and the
ideology of a universal civilization is expressed by a universal theory,
a Court of Last Resort. No matter the debate, whether a matter of
gender identity or global warming, the terms are drawn from the
vocabulary that the Court enforces. In arguing for a position, it is
necessary to say that science supports it, and fatal to admit that it
does not. The result is very often comic. The idea that there are any
number of genders is championed by the mentally defective and
sullenly tolerated by everyone else. On the rare occasions in which
men persuaded that they are women are pressed in debate, they are
remarkably confident in appealing to scientific authority. And for
every good reason. There is no position that some scientists will not
support, and some scientists will support any position. If in our day
competitive appeals to scientific authority are as frivolous as they are
unpersuasive, this has not always been so. Both the Nazi and the
Soviet states were pleased to observe that their genocidal
imbecilities were the overflow in action of what the scientific
community had antecedently determined. In this they were largely
correct. Racial science flourished in Germany and Marxist science in
the Soviet Union.
The universal theory is a part of the great structure of theoretical
physics, but it contains in Darwin’s theory of evolution an ancillary
rider, something like a carbuncle on the main body. There is no
obvious connection, after all, between theoretical physics and
Darwinian biology, and no esoteric connection either. A commitment
to Darwinian theory is nevertheless as imperative among academics
as a comparable commitment to the Nicene Creed is among
Catholics. However insincere, some form of genuflection is required.
Like any theory, the universal theory conveys a certain aura, one
that cannot be found in either its axioms or its conclusions. It is an
aura that thaws and resolves itself into a number of familiar
propositions: The universe is a physical object. It is nothing less, and
there is nothing more. The emergence of life on earth may be
explained by synthetic chemistry; it has already been entirely
explained by synthetic chemistry. Religions are among the delusions
of mankind and are responsible for its misfortunes. The mind is the
brain in action. There is, on the largest scales, nothing distinctive
about the earth or the abundant life it nourishes. Human beings and
all of man’s passions are inadvertent and accidental. Beyond the
laws of nature, there are no laws. The universe is large, remote,
indifferent, and strange. Human life may be enjoyed; it must, in any
case, be endured.
Even those ardent in defense of the universal theory, and the
claims that it makes, wonder whether there is some radical point of
incoherence in its structure, some fundamental deficiency that it
cannot accommodate. Some hope secretly that this is so. I am
among them. No one doubts that a great deal about the life that
men lead must forever lie beyond the reach of any theory. Neither
man nor machine has the power deductively to exhaust the premises
of a theory as well-known as quantum field theory. The question is
whether the universal theory commands its power as an ideal. In a
recent essay entitled “The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics,” Steven
Weinberg suggests what is at issue. “We want to understand,” he
writes, “the relation of humans to nature.”1 He then draws a
distinction between two ways of grasping that relationship. In the
first, the laws controlling human life are incorporated into the
universal theory as axioms. In the second, the facts of life are
deduced from premises that make no reference to human life at all.
It is in this prospect that Weinberg has invested his hopes.
My own view is that a structure from which everything about
human life follows as a deduction, if impossible in practice, is also
impossible in principle. Any theory must be interpreted in the
reflective gaze of those who appeal to it. If the universal theory
admits of no interpretation, then it remains ineffable, and if it admits
of some interpretation, then only a part of the interpretative
apparatus—its ideas, concepts, rules of procedure—can be
represented within the universal theory. Something must be left out,
and if what is left out is let in, then something new must be left out.
This process of interpretation is never-ending. This logicians know. It
is something that the physicists do not know. It is, this ignorance, a
reason for their confidence.
This book ranges over many topics, and incorporates a number
of different styles, but is unified, I think, by a common concern for
what is an indistinct concept, and that is the concept of human
nature. It is a concept severely in disfavor because it suggests that
there is something answering to human nature, some collocation of
ineliminable and necessary properties that collectively define what it
is to be a human being. There are such properties. Of course there
are. That men are men is an obvious example. Men are men is true
because men are necessarily men. And the fact that there are such
properties does involve a commitment to essentialism. No one
disposing of essentialism in biology is disposed to disregard it in
logic, mathematics, physics, or ordinary life. Human beings are not
indefinitely malleable. There are boundaries beyond which they
cannot change. We are not simply apes with larger brains or smaller
hands, and the distance between ourselves and our nearest
ancestors is what it has always appeared to be, and that is
practically infinite. Human beings are perpetually the same, even if
in some respects different.
In the preface to his Dictionary of the English Language, Dr.
Johnson remarked that his dictionary “was written with little
assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great;
not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of
academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in
sickness and in sorrow.”2 These are memorable words, and if I find
myself reaching for them for my own work as well, it is only because
they are true of my own life as well.
—Paris, 2019
I. VIOLENCE
 The Austrian ultimatum was delivered to Serbian officials late on
the 23rd of July, almost a month after the assassination of Franz
Ferdinand. European diplomats had resigned themselves to his loss,
the European public, to his absence. Flustered Serbian officials were
unwilling to accept the Austrian ultimatum in person and unable to
read it in German. It is a pity that they did not try harder and try
harder at once. Austria was asking little enough of Serbia, so little
that one wonders, in fact, why they bothered asking anything at
all.38 The ultimatum made no demands that the Serbian government
could not evade with ease or ignore with impunity.39 A show of
Serbian compliance would have left Austrian officials fuming in
frustration. There is some evidence that a few members of the
government of Prime Minister Nikola Păsić thought originally to
accept the Austrian ultimatum without demurral, until Sazanov, in a
careless but characteristic gesture of irresponsibility, encouraged
them peevishly to scruple at one or two Austrian demands.40
Păsić delayed acceding to Austria’s ultimatum as he searched for
a way in which he might delay acceding to anything at all. He had
not survived unwounded in the jungle of Serbian politics by acting
vigorously. In moments of crisis, he preferred to scuttle. The
response the Serbians finally offered the Austrians on the 25th of
July was as incompetent as the ultimatum that the Austrians had
presented the Serbians, an exercise in cunning as low as the
original. Having agreed to eight of the ten Austrian demands,
Serbian officials hoped that Austria would overlook the other two
and regard its note as a gesture of compliance. On noting that the
Serbians had rejected two of its demands, the Austrians discounted
the other eight and regarded the Serbian note as a gesture of
defiance. Each side got not what it wished, but what it deserved.
Russia had during the same week begun what it called partial
mobilization, a charade designed to persuade the Germans that
despite the fact that the Russian state was sopping wet, it was
unacquainted with water. No one was fooled, least of all the
Germans. The Russian military, as short-sighted as it was over-
confident, began to preen itself in the glow of its imagined victories.
Another random document with
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älä pois mua manaa, pyydän ma,
ja semminkin, jätä paatos!

Ole aave en aikojen menneiden,

en hautojen kouko ja peikko,
ja retoriikast' en pidä, mun on
hyvin filosofiiakin heikko.

Olen käytännön mies ma, vaitelias

ja verkkainen aina. Vaan tiedä:
mit' olet sa miettinyt mielessäs,
sen lupaan ma perille viedä.

Ja vuodet jos menköön, ma työtä teen

yhä väsymättömin voimin,
kunis todellisuutena aattees nään;
sa tuumit, ja ma, ma toimin.

Sa tuomari olet, ma pyöveli,

joka täytän tuomios määrät,
kuin tulee orjan tottelevan,
oli oikeat ne tai väärät.

Kävi Roomassa liktori kirveineen

ain' edellä konsulin ennen.
Niin sunkin, mut takana tappara käy,
nyt itses edellä mennen.

Ma olen sun liktoris, alati sua seuraan, liepeessä vaatteen

teloituskirves, mi valmis on — Teko olen ma aivojes aatteen."
VII LUKU

Menin maata, ja oli kuin tuutineet ois enkelit. Sulolta tuntuu

uni Saksan sängyissä, semminkin jos untuvapatjoille untuu.

Kuink' usein kaipasin makeutta

ma pieluksen kotimaisen
öin unettomin noilla kovilla
matrasseilla maanpakolaisen!

Hyvät untuvapatjamme maata on

ja ne hyviä unia suopi.
Niissä sielu saksalainen se maan
kaikk' ikeet yltään luopi.

Luo ikeet ja kohoo ja korkeimmat

valontaivasten tarhat tapaa.
Sielu saksalainen, kuink' untes tie
on öisten uljas ja vapaa!

Käy kalpeiksi korkeat jumalat,

kun kotkanlentoos sa rupeet!
Sun siipes kirkasti kiitäissään
jo monen tähtösen kupeet!
 Maa ranskalaisten ja ryssäin on,
ja meren on herroina britit,
mut isännät ilmojen ihannemaan
on meidän Meyerit, Schmidtit.

Se on valtamaamme, siellä on
ehyt heimomme, pilvien päällä;
muut kansat kaikki on kehittyneet
maan matalan tasalla täällä. — —

Ma nukuin ja katuja noita taas,

valetuita kuutamon valoin,
olin kaikuvin askelin astuvinain
ohi vanhanaikaisten taloin.

Taas naamio silmillä takana mun

tuli tumma se seuralainen.
Mua väsytti, polvet kuin poikki ois,
mut yhä me astuimme vainen.

Yhä astuimme. Sydän mun rinnastain

oli avattu, auki rippui
se ammottavasti, virtanaan
veri sydänhaavasta tippui.

Verivirtaan monesti sormeni

ma kastoin ja pieltä oven
myös monta ohitse astuissain
ma sivusin punalla poven.

Ja aina, kun talon ma minkä noin

olin merkinnyt, kuolinsoitto
niin väräjävästi valittain
mun korvaani kumahti loitto.

Mut yöhyt synkkeni, kirkas kuu

taa peittyi kolkkojen varjoin,
rajut pilvet mustina ratsuina
ens ilmassa häilyvin harjoin.

Ja yhä olento tumma tuo

tuli perässä. Tuima terä
hihan varjosta välkki. Niin vaellettiin
me katuja hyvä erä.

Yhä mentiin, tuomiokirkkoon taas

me kunnes jo yhdyttäytiin;
ovet kaikk' oli sepposen selällään,
me kirkkoon sisälle käytiin.

Tuon holvin äärettömän vain yö

ja kuolo äänetön täytti;
joku palava lamppu se ikäänkuin
vain pimeytt' oikein näytti.

Pilaristoa kauan ma kävelin,

vain askelet saattajan vakaan
mun korviini soi yhä, jäljistäin
ei jäänyt hän askeltakaan.

Oli vihdoin paikka, min kynttilät

valas kirkkaat, mi kiviin ja kultiin
oli koristeltu; — me kappeliin
pyhän kolmen kuninkaan tultiin.
 Vaan nuo pyhät kuningas-vainajat,
jotka muuten niin hiljaa nukkuu,
kas ihme! nyt arkkuinsa kannella
ne siellä kolmisin kukkuu.

Luurankoa kolme, koristein

eriskummaisin, — kurjat, valjut
pääkallot kruunua, valtikkaa
käsirangat kanteli kaljut.

Kuin nuoranuket ne heiluivat

nuo luut, jotka ammoin kuoli;
mädän löyhkää puol' oli hajussaan
ja suitsutussavua puoli.

Höpis yhden huuletkin, puheen hän

hyvin pitkän ja laajan laati;
hän selitti, miksikä minulta
hän kunnioitusta vaati.

Näet koska hän kuollut ensiksikin

ja toiseksi kuningas oli,
ja pyhimys kolmanneksi, mut ei
moneks auttanut tuo holipoli.

Vain nauravin mielin ma vastasin:

"Tuo kaikki on hukka-huolta!
Mies ollut ja mennyt sa olet, sen nään,
vaikka katsoisin miltä puolta.

Pois täältä, pois! Tilaks omansa

teille haudan on mustat mullat.
 Nyt elämä ottaa haltuunsa
tään kappelin kivet ja kullat.

Ajan uuden ratsassaatto saa

ilon lyöden ja ottaa majan
tässä templissä — mielin menkää pois,
tai ma asevoimalla ajan!"

Niin lausuin ja käännähdin ja näin,

kun kamalasti se välys,
ase kamala saattajan sanattoman —
ja hän viittaukseni älys.

Kävi kirveineen hän päin ja löi

alas armahtamattomasti
nuo taikauskon katalat
luurangot pirstoiks asti.

Joka holvissa, sopessa raikui, soi

kuin tuomiopäivän pauhu!
verivirrat syöksähti rinnastain,
ja siihen mun herätti kauhu.

VIII LUKU
 Kuus groshia Kölnistä Hageniin meni kuudetta riksiä
Preussin. Paha kyll' oli vaan diligenssi täys, varavaunuista
tilan ma löysin.

Syysaamu harmaa ja kostea,

loan vallassa vaunut sousi;
mut säässä ja kelissä kehnossakin
sulo tunne se suoniin nousi.

Kodin kultaisenhan se ilmaa on,

jota polttava poski tapaa!
Ja maantien rapakko onhan tuo
isänmaani rakkaan rapaa!

Hevot mulle huiskutti häntää kuin

tutut vanhat tuhansin muistoin,
kakaratkin ne kauniilta näyttivät
kuin heelmät Hesperian puistoin!

Tiellä Mühlheim on. Soma kaupunki

ja uurasta, hiljaista väki.
Oli toukokuu kolmekymmentä-yks,
kun viimeks sen silmäni näki.

Ilos silloin ilmassa päivän koi,

maa kukkaishäitä vietti,
kevätkaihoja linnut liversi,
ja ihmiset toivoi ja mietti —

ne mietti: "Pian jo pääsemme noista laihoista ritareista,

eromaljan pitkistä mittaamme heille teräspikareista!
 Saa Vapaus liehuvin lippuineen,
käy karkelot, soitot soipi,
ehkä Bonapartenkin takaisin
se tuonelta tuoda voipi!"

Hyvä Jumala! tääll' ovat ritarit vaan,

ja moni nulikka-paha,
joka itikkahoikkana maahan sai,
nyt on mahtaja isomaha.

Nuo kalpeat kanaljat, naamaltaan

kuin rakkaus, toivo ja usko,
heillä meidän viljoista viineist' on
nyt nokalla rohkea rusko. — —

Eikä juosta ja rynnätä Vapaus

voi enää, sen jalka on nilkku;
alas Pariisin torneista tuijottaa
vain trikolori-tilkku.

Ylös sittemmin keisari noussut on,

mut mieheksi äänettömäksi
madot Englannin hänet jo saattoi nuo,
hän jälleen hautaan läksi.

Omin silmin ne hautajaiset näin,

näin kultaiset vaunut, joilla
kuus voitotart' oli kultaista,
arkku kultainen hartioilla.

Kautt' Elyseisten kenttien,

kautt' uljaan Riemukaaren,
kautt' usmain ja lunten hiljaa niin
kävi saatto sankaripaaren.

Rämis vihloin kauhea musiikki,

väris soittajat viiman alla.
Sotalippujen kotkat tervehti
mua katseella murehtivalla.

Niin oudoilta, vanhaan muisteloon

lumotuilta ihmiset näytti —
tarun keisarillisen kangastus
taas mielet tenhoi ja täytti.

Sinä päivänä itkin. Kyyneltä en silmästä estää voinut, kun

kajahti huuto "Vive l'Empereur!" tuo armas, ammoin soinut.
IX LUKU

Ma neljännest' ennen kahdeksaa olin aamulla Kölnistä tiellä;

tulin kolmen jo korvilla Hageniin, on päivällispaikka siellä.

Oli pöytä katettu. Herkut näin

ma taas peri-germanilaiset.
Sua hapankaalini tervehdin,
sun lemus on ihanaiset!

Kera kaalisten haudotut kastanjat!

niit' ennen söin emon koissa! —
Kapaturskat te kotoiset, terve myös!
miten viisaina virutte voissa!

Isänmaa joka ihmissydämen

on ainainen aarre — maistaa
myös hyvältä munat ja silakat,
kun hyvin ne paahtaa ja paistaa.

Miten riemusi makkarat rasvassaan!

Ja rastaat, paistetut, pienot
herran-enkelit omenahilloineen,
tervetullut! ne visersi vienot.
 "Tervetullut, maanmies!" — ne visersi —
"jo viikon viivyitkin poissa,
kera vierasten lintujen leikamoit
vain vieraissa viidakoissa!"

Oli pöydässä hanhi, hiljainen,

hyvänsävyinen olento siellä.
Mua kerran lempinyt lie kenties,
kun nuor' oli kumpikin vielä.

Mua silmäs se katsein niin merkitsevin,

niin syvin, niin hellin, niin heikein!
Oli kaunis sisällä sielu kai,
mut liha ei murennut leikein.

Tinavadissa pöytään vaeltavan näin sianpään myös rehdin;

siankärsät ne meillä koristetaan yhä vielä laakerinlehdin.
X LUKU

Heti Hagenin takana tapasi yö, ja puistatus päälleni pakkas

omituinen. Se vasta Unnassa majatalomme lämmössä
lakkas.

Siellä mulle kiltisti punssia kaas

soma tyttö tyllykkä muudan —
kuin keltasilkkiä kiharat,
ja silmät kuin lempeä kuudan.

Tuo westfalilainen soperrus

taas soittona korvissa soi mun.
Sulomuistoja punssi se höyrysi,
tutut veikot mielehen toi mun,

kera joitten ma Göttingenissä join jo kerran sen

kymmenenkin, kunis toistemme povelle langettiin ja alle
pöydän ja penkin!

Niin paljon heist' ain' olen pitänyt

kelpo Westfalin pojista noista —
väki niin luja, vakaa ja uskollinen,
ei koskaan kuorella loista.
 Miten miekkasill' uljaina seisoivat
he leijonamielin ja -tarmoin!
Niin vilpittömästi he iskivät,
niin kvartein ja terssein varmoin.

Hyvin taistelevat, hyvin maistelevat,

ja silmiss' on kyynellammet,
kun ystäväliittoon he kättä lyö,
nuo sentimentaaliset tammet.

Sua kaitkoon taivas ja kartuttakoon,

jalo kansa, sun kylvöjes keot,
sodat maaltas ja maineet estäköön
ja uroot ja urosten teot.

Läpi tutkinnon suokoon solahtaa joka poikas, ja morsiamen

joka tyttärestäsi laittakoon lain jälkeen aina — amen!
XI LUKU

Siis Teutoburgin on metsä tää, josta Tacitus tarinoipi, tää siis

on se klassillinen suo, johon tarttui Varuksen koipi.

Jalo Hermann, kheruskein ruhtinas

tässä häviöön hänet hääsi;
tässä ravassa Saksan kansallisuus
se voiton päälle pääsi.

Jos Hermann vaalevin heimoineen

ois tässä tappion saanut,
me roomalaisia oltais nyt,
ois Saksan vapaus laannut!

Tavat Rooman täällä nyt vallitseis,

ja Rooman kieli se soisi;
vestaaleja Münchenissäkin ois,
qviriittejä svaabit oisi!

Nyt Hengstenberg olis haruspex

ja sonnein suolia urkkis.
Neander, neuvokas auguuri,
se lintuin kulkua kurkkis.
 Birch-Pfeiffer tärpättiä jois
kuin muinen naiset Rooman
(uriinille kuuluu se antaneen
niin erinomaisen arooman).

Ei lumppusaksa nyt Raumer ois,

vaan roomalainen Lumpacius,
ja riimittä laulais Freiligrath
kuin muinen Flaccus Horatius.

Isä Jahn, tuo ruokoton kerjuri,

ois nimeltä Grobianus.
Puhuis Massmann, me hercule! latinaa,
tuo Marcus Tullius Massmanus!

Jalopeurain, hyenain, shakaalein

kera otella totuuden tulkit
areenalla sais, katulehdiss' ei
tulis kintuille penikka-nulkit.

Yksi Nero, ei kolmea tusinaa

maanisää meill' olis tuhmaa.
Me valtimot avaten näytettäis
orjuuden vahdeille uhmaa.

Ois Schelling maar koko Seneca,

kun kohtais moinen fatum.
Corneliuksemme kuulla sais:
"Non pictum est, qvod cacatum!" —

Vaan onneksi Varuksen legiot

löi Hermann taistelollaan,
pois roomalaiset ne tungettiin,
ja me saksalaisia ollaan!

Meillä Saksan mieli ja kieli on,

kuin ollut on iät päivät;
nimi aasin on aasi, ei asinus,
ja svaabit svaabeiksi jäivät.

On Raumer lumppusaksa vain,

saa kotkantähden viimein.
Ei ole Horatius Freiligrath,
vain laatii lauluja riimein.

Puhu onneks ei Massmann latinaa,

Birch-Pfeiffer vain draamoja valaa,
tärpättiä saastaista särpi ei
kuin Rooman naikkoset salaa.

Oi Hermann, se on sun ansiosi

Siks sulle patsas suuri
Detmoldiin tehdään — se kohtuus on
panin lisäni listaan juuri.
XII LUKU

Läpi öisen metsän vaunumme meni, nytki — yht'äkkiä rysäys,

ja pyörä irti. Ei erittäin juur' ollut hauska se pysäys.

Alas astui ajaja laudaltaan

avun hakuun kylästä kiirein.
Jäin yksin, metsä mun ympäröi
sydänöisin, ulvovin piirein.

Sudet nälistyneillä äänillään

ne ulvoi viiltävin vimmoin.
Kuin kynttilät yössä tuikkivat
nuo silmät kiiluvin kimmoin.

Kai oli kuullut mun tulostain

tuo metsän karvainen kansa,
ja kunniakseni tulitti tien
ja kaiutti kuorojansa.

Mulle kunniavastaanotto, sen nään,

noin suodaan silmillä, suilla!
Otin asennon heti ja vastaamaan
kävin liikkeillä liikutetuilla:
 "Sudet, veljet! Onnekas hetki tää,
joka jaloon seuraanne toi mun,
niin sydämenpohjainen ulvonta
missä tervehdykseksi soi mun.

Oi, mittaamaton on tunne tuo,

minkä mielelleni se antaa;
tään hetken ihanan iäti
ma tahdon muistossa kantaa.

Teitä luottamuksesta kiittää saan,

jota minulle olette suoneet
ja koetuksissa näkyviin
ain' uskollisesti tuoneet.

Sudet, veljet! Te minuun luotitte,

ette käyneet kurjien paulaan,
muka ett' olin koiraksi kääntynyt
ja ottanut renkaan kaulaan,

pian luopio muka ett' ilmestyis hovineuvosna

lammaslaumaan — alapuoll' oli arvoni astuakin mun moisista
puolustaumaan.

Jos lampaanturkin mä toisinaan

vedin päälleni pahaan säähän,
mun haaveilla onnea lammasten
toki tullut ei ikinä päähän.

En ole lammas, en koira, en

hovineuvos, en silli mikään —
susi oon, suden mulla on sydän ja suu
ja ikenet niin-ikään.

Olen susi ja sutten keralla

ain' ulvon ma — teit' en heitä.
Niin, itseänne kun autatte,
niin luojakin auttaa teitä!"

Se oli mun puheeni, sellaisnaan kuin hetki mieleeni toi sen!

"Yleisiin Sanomiinsa" Kolb typisteltynä kopioi sen.
XIII LUKU

Nous aurinko Paderbornissa kovin nuivalla katsannolla. Sen

viraton virka on tosiaan, maan tyhmän lamppuna olla!

Kun yhden kupeen valaistuaan

se hehkuvin kiirein heittää
valon toiselle puolle, niin pimeys
sill' aikaa jo toisen peittää.

Kivi Sisyphon yhä se vierii pois,

Danaiidit seulaansa täyttää
ei saata, ja turhaan aurinko
maapallolle soihtua näyttää! — —

Tien varrella, valoon kun alkavaan

sumu hälveni aamun suussa,
sen miehen kuvan ma huomasin,
joka riippui ristinpuussa.

Näkös, serkku parka, mun murheiseks

saa aina, jok' alttihisti
tämän maailman mielit lunastaa,
sa narri, sa utopisti!