don't take him seriously. We realize also why Heine should be execrated as a renegade by the fools, since Hegel had uttered an equally scathing condemnation of both Rationalists and Mystics. And Heine's character of renegade is all the more accentuated in view of the fact that even so late as in his 'Harzreise' he had ridiculed, in true Romantic style, "that scholastic pride with which we vaunt our attainments in the realm of logic, the pretty classification of all concepts as objective and subjective, and the pigeonhole classification of heads, the last compartment of which contains absolutely nothing, namely the 'idea'" (III, 73).
But it requires a further review of Heine's mental development to appreciate the seriousness underlying the apparent flippancy with which he styles the Hegelians as 'die Vernünftigen' and confesses to his own unrequited passion for 'die Vernunft.'
With the second volume of the 'Reisebilder,' the 'Nordsee' and 'Le Grand,' Heine had consciously turned to political journalism. Already his 'Harzreise," it is true, had abounded in satirical allusions to the Wars of Liberation (III, 23), to the trembling of cathedrals and chairs of coronation (36), to the league of German states (60), to the persecution of the 'demagogues' (68-9) and to the social caste system, resulting from the privileges of the nobility (69). Even then he had proclaimed himself "a knight of the Holy Ghost"; but his first attempt at serious political thinking we meet in the 'Nordsee.'
Heine's political hopes and strivings centered on a reconstruction of Europe on the basis of the principles of the French Revolution. A new era of liberty and equality, he confidently hoped, was to take the place of privilege and injustice sanctioned by tradition. Historical law was to be superseded by the 'law of nature,' the law of reason. Exactly this was the point of view of Eduard Gans,[1] the Hegelian professor of Jurisprudence at Berlin who propounded these views in open hostility to Savigny, the leader of the historical school.
Since Heine was a student of law it may be assumed as a fact that in the circle of friends at Berlin, in which Gans was the intellectual leader and Moser played the rôle of mediator between Gans and Heine, the legal and political aspects of Hegelianism occupied
- ↑ Heine's most complete characterization of the views and personality of Gans is to be found in his Confessions, VI, 119 ff.
