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Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt cover

Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt

Chapter 198: 190. JOBARD TO HUMBOLDT.
By Alexander von Humboldt
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Essays, Letters & SpeechesGerman LiteratureHistory - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

A curated correspondence collects letters from Alexander von Humboldt to his friend and confidant Varnhagen von Ense, supplemented by diary excerpts and letters from other contemporaries. The missives blend personal friendship with professional exchange, discussing scientific observations, lectures, manuscripts, travels, and reactions to peers and events. Editorial apparatus preserves original phrasing and provides contextual notes and extracts that illuminate relationships and chronology. The selection highlights the writer’s methods of observation, precise descriptive habits, and modes of intellectual collaboration. Together the documents form a compact portrait of an engaged scholar whose private reflections and public endeavors intersect across a wide range of topics.

190.
JOBARD TO HUMBOLDT.

Brussels, November 26th, 1856.
Monsieur le Baron:

Perhaps you will not be displeased to learn the rôle you have been made to play in the unfortunate debate of our religious politics.

The old Minister Dechamps, who sat on your right at the dinner of the Baron of Arhim, and who was so much astonished at hearing you say that you were as much of a Republican as your friend Arago, having associated your name with those of the illustrious believers who profess the Catholic faith, a liberal journal this morning answered him as follows:—

“M. Dechamps, in the last homily delivered by him in the Chamber, cited the name of M. de Humboldt to prove that science could well be made subservient to the creed. It must be admitted, as Mr. Devaux showed, that the example could not have been worse chosen. M. de Humboldt is one of those rationalists, pure and simple, against whom M. Dechamps has already written so many letters. If M. Humboldt had taught in Belgium he would most certainly have been pursued in pastoral letters, and discharged by M. Dechamps, if M. Dechamps had been the Minister. Nevertheless, it is thus that history is written, and thus that the most important questions of our intellectual and moral future are appreciated!”

Here is another unmixed and undisguised political opinion:—

“As often and so sure as you base your church upon human obtuseness, the gates of the mind will not prevail against it, because there will always be consummate fools, old fools, and little fools, to uphold and repair it. Pure reason has not the same chance.”

Yours, ever devotedly,
Jobard.