He next comes into conflict with the third fundamental force, Klingsor.  The latter is really only a variant of Satan and, while interesting, is somewhat less fundamental, being more a philosophic and literary, than an active, antagonist.  His symbol is the circled serpent, the embodiment of permanence within the changing world of actuality.  He represents the nature-philosophy of Romanticism and especially of Schelling, a philosophy so vast and unsubstantial that all values of conduct and all incentives to action disappeared in its featureless abyss.  Immermann intensely disliked it.  He was, as he said, a lover of men; the worship of nature drained and exhausted the sympathies, the wills and the spirits of men.  The passages in which Klingsor himself, in his moments of despair, and Merlin expose the emptiness of this philosophy, are among the best philosophic statements of the play.  They are, how ever, too exhaustive.  But they are good philosophy, if they are bad drama and poetry.  Klingsor says of the “nature book”

“It asserts:  all is vain; nought but stale mediocrity—­while we are shaken from, shell to core by the breath of the times.”  He is worshipped by the dwarfs because he has opened the mysteries of inanimate nature, and he commands the spirits of classical life represented by Antinous, and the pagan’ gods and demi-gods, the personifications of the naive impulses of nature.  But he realizes that his wisdom, while it makes dwarfs happy, is inadequate for human beings.

The teaching of Merlin is essentially the humanism of the moderate liberalism of Baron von Stein and his followers.  Klingsor, voicing the sentiments of Romantic aristocratism, accuses him: 

“You tell the mob:  Be your own Savior; seek inspiration in your own work.  The people like to be told of their majesty.  Keep on bravely lying, sweetly flattering, and the prophet is complete.”

Merlin retorts: 

“You describe yourself, not me.  Men have a deep sense of truth, and pay in false coin only him that offers them false gifts.”  He then continues, lashing the transcendent egotism of the Romantic conception of man in the universe:  “To you the earth, the ocean, the firmament, are nothing but a ladder for your own elevation, and you must absolutely reject the thing called humility.  In order to maintain yourself strong and whole you have to find men weak and only partial beings,” etc.  Later, in lines 1637ff., he proceeds, in what are probably the finest and richest passages in the work, to state his own purpose of combining all that is great, true, beautiful, human, and noble, into one comprehensive and rational faith of humanity.