



Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive





Transcriber's Notes:
  1. Page scan source:
     http://www.archive.org/details/lostmanuscripta01freygoog
  2. Diphthong oe represented by [oe].






                          THE LOST MANUSCRIPT.






                                  THE

                            LOST MANUSCRIPT

                                A NOVEL


                                   BY

                             GUSTAV FREYTAG


        Authorized Translation from the Sixteenth German Edition
                        _COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME_


                       SECOND, UNALTERED EDITION


                                 PART I


                           *   *   *   *   *

                        "_A noble human life does not end on earth
                     with death. It continues in the minds and
                     the deeds of friends, as well as in the thoughts
                     and the activity of the nation._"

                           *   *   *   *   *



                                CHICAGO
                   THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
               LONDON: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co.
                                  1898






                        TRANSLATION COPYRIGHTED
                                 --BY--
                   THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
                                 1887.




                          PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.


Gustav Freytag has expressed the central idea of his novel _The Lost
Manuscript_ in the motto which he has written for the American edition:

"A noble human life does not end on earth with death. It continues in
the minds and the deeds of friends, as well as in the thoughts and the
activity of the nation."

This idea of the continuity and preservation of soul-life permeates the
whole work. It meets us at every hand. We observe the professor in his
study, ever eager to fathom the thoughts of the great thinkers of the
past and imbuing his students with their lofty spirit. We sympathize
with the heroine of this novel, the strong, pious Saxon maiden, in her
religious and intellectual development; we behold her soul enlarging
under the influence of unusual and trying situations; we watch her
mentally growing amid the new ideas crowding in upon her. We enjoy the
droll characterizations of the half-educated, of Mrs. Rollmaus and the
servants, in whose minds the mysteries of soul-life appear in the shape
of superstitious notions. And we see, again, the consequences of
wrong-doing, of errors, and of mistakes continuing like a heavy curse,
depressing the mind and hindering its freedom. And this last provokes a
wholesome reaction and is finally conquered by unshirking courage in
honest spiritual combat.

Illustrations of psychical laws showing the connections and continuity
of the threads in the warp and woof of human soul-life, are found
indeed in all the works of Gustav Freytag. The great novelist
anticipated the results that have of late been established by the
experiments of modern psychology. He says in his Autobiographical
Reminiscences:

"What a man's own life accomplishes in the formation of his character,
and the extent to which it fully develops his native capacities, we
observe and estimate even in the best cases only with imperfect
knowledge. But still more difficult is it to determine and comprehend
what the living have acquired in the way of advancement and hindrance
from their parents and ancestors; for the threads are not always
visible that bind the existence of the present to the souls of
generations past; and even where they are discernible, their power and
influence are scarcely to be calculated. Only we notice that the force
with which they operate is not equally strong in every life, and that
sometimes it is too powerful and terrible.

"It is well that from us men usually remains concealed, what is
inheritance from the remote past, and what the independent acquisition
of our own existence; since our life would become full of anxiety and
misery, if we, as continuations of the men of the past, had perpetually
to reckon with the blessings and curses which former times leave
hanging over the problems of our own existence. But it is indeed a
joyous labor, at times, by a retrospective glance into the past, to
bring into fullest consciousness the fact that many of our successes
and achievements have only been made possible through the possessions
that have come to us from the lives of our parents, and through that
also which the previous ancestral life of our family has accomplished
and produced for us."

Is not this a revival of the old idea of the transmigration of souls?
To be sure, the soul is not a material thing made of an invisible and
airy substance, fluttering about after death and entering into another
body. There are no material migrations of soul taking place, however
tenuous the substance of the soul might be imagined to be. The memories
of the present, our recollection of